THE DARK VINYL DUNGEONS OF SCOREBABY

My thanks to regular reader Robert Hubbard for pointing me in the direction of what promises to be an addictive site just to pore through, let alone download from-- ScoreBaby, described by its proprietor, one ScoreBaby, as “Your guide to cult soundtracks of the ‘60s, ‘70s and beyond!” If the sight of the covers of old LPs of the soundtracks from TV’s The Green Hornet, or Bruno Nicolai’s score for a minor spaghetti western called El Cisco, or Lalo Schifrin’s score for the forgotten horror thriller Abominable, get your pulse racing, prepare to spend a lot of time poring over ScoreBaby’s extensive collection, all with MP3 excerpts you can listen to right there on the page. And if that’s not enough, ScoreBaby has just inaugurated his very own blog, Score Baby Annex, which may be even more frightening and delightful than the main Web page. Here’s ScoreBaby on his latest project:

“Welcome to the ScoreBaby Annex. Six years ago I started ScoreBaby.com, a review site devoted to cult soundtracks of the '50s, '60s and '70s, along with library music and soundtrack-influenced electronica, hip-hop and indie. The ScoreBaby Annex will be home to out of print soundtrack and library files for your listening pleasure. If any of these titles are, in fact, commercially available, please contact me and I will remove them from this blog immediately. Thank you.”

Not commercially available are these downloadables. Yikes! I can’t wait to start digging trough this good stuff. Right there on the main page are enough delights to blow you through a case of CD-Rs in a weekend. Thanks, Robert, for tipping me, and all SLIFR readers, toward ScoreBaby (both links are now available on my sidebar as well). This could be the final nail in the rickety coffin of my dwindling spare time.

PEET GELDERBLOM'S CELLULOID FANTASIA

My friend Peet Gelderblom at 24 Lies a Second has a dizzying and exciting new article posted there entitled ”Nighthawks: A Celluloid Fantasia”. According to 24 Lies editor Jim Moran, “(it) is a new kind of essay that takes a creative, non-expository approach to critical issues in film spectatorship. Peet's ‘celluloid fantasia’ is an unconventional tale spun to stimulate readers to consider their privileged position and responsibility as spectators—but surprisingly, through the subjectivity of some classic (and some nearly forgotten) movie characters encountering each other in a surreal New York City landscape. Film buffs will be extra rewarded.” (Bold is mine!)

I haven’t made yet all the way through Peet’s lively, dense landscape yet, but I’m enjoying the fact that I’m able to savor it. And I’m also enjoying chewing on a couple of Peet’s central concepts: cinema only exists when it is seen, and the notion that people watch, but they don't see. The chance meeting of Mickey Mouse and a somewhat notorious taxi driver that opens Peet’s essay will grab you, and the deft juggling of his ambitious concept will keep you hooked and seduce you further toward his very entertaining exploration of these ideas. Here’s an excerpt from that opening:

“The rodent gazed at his blood-covered gloves under the gleaming neon light and wondered what the hell just happened. Only moments ago he had been standing on his renowned pinnacle surrounded by roaring ocean, orchestrating stars, comets, clouds and bolts of lightning across the nocturnal sky. Everything after that was a blur, as if a blind rage had taken possession of his body. Now, here he was: Mickey Mouse, standing on a sidewalk of 42nd street, dwarfed by mighty skyscrapers in the City that Never Sleeps. Hello reality, or what passed on for it anyway.

But where had all the residents gone? How did he get here? And most of all: Why was there blood on his hands?”

Keep reading right here. Afterward, you can check into the 24 Lies forum devoted to the discussion of Peet’s work and further explore the work and the ideas within it with other readers, including myself and perhaps even the author. This looks to be yet another fascinating addition to the growing library of excellent, challenging film writing available at 24 Lies a Second. Congratulations to Peet on completing what I know was a very exhausting and exhaustive process in writing it, and congratulations to all of us for the opportunity to read it.

SAY, SAY, SAY: TWO OF 2006's BEST LINE READINGS

In lieu of actual content, here are two of my nominees for the best line readings in a movie heard yet in 2006. These are not necessarily the best lines of dialogue, but instead lines of dialogue vaulted unto a level of grandeur simply by the way the actor in question presents them in character on the screen. (Gee, this sounds like the basis for a pretty good question for the next quiz, doesn’t it?) This may end up being a bit of a “guess you had to be there” exercise, in the absence of actual clips that can demonstrate the readings themselves, but in any event, acknowledging that risk, here then are the two most memorable line readings I’ve encountered so far this year.



Amidst the nihilistic grandeur of John Hillcoat’s The Proposition, a pitiless, grimy, blood-soaked and biblically proportioned Australian western made from a spare and brilliant screenplay by Nick Cave, there is the mustachioed dandy played by David Wenham, a British officer who holds power over the constable Her Majesty’s army has placed in charge of rounding up a trio of murderous brothers and their gang. The constable (Ray Winstone) is holding the youngest of the three in a cell as a whimpering poker chip, and has let the another (Guy Pearce) go, promising to spare the younger brother if Pearce finds the oldest brother, their brooding and deadly Kurtzian leader (Danny Huston), and kills him. Wenham’s officer has no idea of this proposition when he first walks into the jail and sees the young man bloodied, bruised and exhausted on the floor of his cell. He slithers up top the bars, makes a quick visual assessment of the prisoner, and dismisses him with a very oily, and not just a little insinuating, bit of class-based condescension as he sniffs, “What an incredible piece of filth!”



And then there is Steve Carell’s voiceover magic in Over the Hedge as the hyperactive Hammy, a squirrel in no need of the extra burst of energy he eventually finds when introduced to the joys of junk food. Hammy loves his chips, and he really digs the burp and the buzz to be had off of a quick blast of carbonated soda. But he has an extra-soft spot for processed baked goods. And when it turns out that he’ll have to be denied his favorite snack, he can only go just slightly slack (for him, that’s still pretty tensile), let his giant eyes go even more saucer-like, and quietly mutter, his lower lip gently quivering, “But I like the cookie.”

The combined running time of these two moments of performance probably don’t total 10 seconds. But they are moments of pleasure that I’ve returned to often in the last month or so, and by themselves they add up to far more good than I received from the whole experience of seeing, say, Mission: Impossible 3. There are many other reasons to do so, but I'd gladly see either Over the Hedge or The Proposition again just to hear those actors deliver those lines.

This will probably end up a question on the next quiz, in some form of another. But even so, what’s your favorite line reading from the movie year so far?

43 REASONS TO GO OUT TO THE MOVIES IN JUNE* (*if you live in Los Angeles, that is)

(NOTE: This past week has been a bad one for finding time to write, and now that I've finally got this rather time-sensitive piece ready to go, Blogger.com seems to be having some issues with its picture posting program. So, rather than letting another day go with the visage of the late Shohei Imamura threatening to become part of the SLIFR official masthead, I've decided to get the text of this one up and running and worry about posting the pictures tomorrow-- and there are some really keen ones, too, that I know will make slogging through this post much more pleasant, so your patience is appreciated greatly in advance. Concentrate instead on the treasures about to be unveiled within...)

One of the bitter lessons I had to learn when I first moved to Los Angeles 19 years ago this month was that you just can’t see it all. I grew up in a small town in the Eastern Oregon desert in the ‘60s and ‘70s (one movie theater in the winter, one drive-in in the summer), which meant one movie a week, plus whatever could be culled from Portland TV stations through the town’s woefully inadequate cable TV system. I rarely missed my weekly chance to visit the Alger Theater or the Circle JM Drive-in Theater, sometimes going more than once to see the same feature.

When I moved on to the University of Oregon in the fall of 1977, from a movie-going standpoint it was like Charlie getting his first taste of the chocolate factory to me. My freshman dorm, in addition to being situated directly behind the world’s most delicious-smelling commercial bread bakery, was literally right next door to the Waco Twin Cinemas, one of the city’s three art houses, which mixed up American independent films, foreign-language releases and second-run double features of played-out hits. (It was here that I saw my first hardcore film, an experience I managed to survive with relatively little psychological scarring—at least that I’m aware of.) Between these art houses and Eugene’s mainstream movie offerings, my friends and I had four multiplexes, four old-fashioned single-screen movie palaces, one run-down dollar house and four drive-in movie theaters in which to run wild and gorge ourselves on the cornucopia of cinema the “big city” had to offer. (And I’m not even factoring in the many American and international classics to which my film courses would introduce me, or the 5-10 campus screenings and midnight movies that were also a staple of the weekend schedule.)

The Bijou, the Only Living Arthouse in Eugene



But time has not been good to small cities like Eugene when it comes to seeing movies in theaters—the Emerald City is down to two multiplexes and one art house in 2006. And even a large metropolitan center like Los Angeles has only one regularly programmed revival house left in operation, the New Beverly Cinema-- when I moved here in 1987 there were still at least four up and running. Though there is still more playing on local screens every week than any one person could possibly see (and I know some people who still try mightily to take in as much of it as possible), even the most talked-about foreign-language releases from the festival circuit are lucky if they can manage a week on local screens, if they’re even released at all.

Not particularly encouraging news, to be sure. But in the face of all that, and the increasing migration of specialized film viewing from big theatrical screens to big home theater screens, cinephiles in Los Angeles still have much to be thankful for, and much too much to choose from in the month of June, thanks to the American Cinematheque, which has four programs this month designed to drive a viewer like me mad at the prospect of not being able to see it all.

First out of the gate this week is the AC’s Robert Altman Retrospective, a chance for those Los Angeles-based readers of SLIFR and other like-minded blogs who participated in the recent Robert Altman Blog-a-Thon to catch up on some rarely screened titles in the director’s canon. If you just can’t wait until Friday for its wide release, the Cinematheque offers you a chance to get a jump on your Altman-loving buddies and see the director’s newest picture, A Prairie Home Companion, at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica before the great unwashed get a chance to pass it over on their way to see Cars and X-Men 3: The Last Stand.

The series continues at the Aero through Thursday, June 22, with some very rare opportunities to see Altman classics like Nashville (1975) on the big screen. (The director's 1975 masterpiece shows on June 8.) And the week is filled out with some great double features on the Altman schedule too. Friday, June 9, you can take in the director at his most cynically playful and obliquely sinister with a twin bill of The Player (1992) and Three Women (1977); Saturday finds Altman’s increasingly well-regarded take on Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye (1973), paired up with one of his most underappreciated films, the psychological puzzle box Images (1972). Temperamentally and thematically speaking, it would seem the better pairings would be The Player/The Long Goodbye and Three Women/Images, but given the chance just to see these movies in a theater, who really cares, right? However, if you do care, then Saturday’s combo might satisfy your obsessive inclination a little better—Brewster McCloud (1970), the director’s flop follow-up to M*A*S*H, marked his first attempt at the broad, cacophonous canvas style that would find its apex in Nashville and Buffalo Bill and the Indians…, and A Wedding (1978) found Altman returning to and attempting to expand the format from Nashville’s 24-character template to an even rowdier 48-character cast of characters, with arguably diminished results. The final pairing, screening Thursday, June 22, is another thematically satisfying one-- McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971) and Thieves Like Us (1974), two elegiacal, atmospheric evocations of distant, difficult and violent lives framed by Altman’s potent and precise depictions of two distinct milieus—the organic development of community in the American west and a romance flowering amongst the desperation of depression-era criminality in the dusty Midwest. The Altman series wraps up on Wednesday, Jun 28, with Vincent and Theo (1990), and if the Cinematheque could have found room or reason to highlight more from the director’s work that immediately predates Vincent and Theo-- say, very rarely screened titles like Secret Honor, The Caine Mutiny Court-martial, or Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean-- it would have been an even greater cause for celebration. But I’m the last one who would look this particular gift horse in the mouth—even incomplete, this Altman retrospective offers plenty of reasons to buy more than one ticket.

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Perhaps even more exciting, however, and packed with films that are even harder to find on a big screen than Altman’s films, is the Cinematheque’s excellent tribute to The Golden Age of British Horror, which fills the Egyptian’s big screen from June 8 through the 25th with unimaginable frights from the vaults of Hammer Studios, the horror fan’s equivalent of the Royal Shakespearean Company, and other companies who had a hand in the popularity of this gruesome and gothic chapter in British film history.

The series kicks off in Grand Guignol fashion with four undisputable Hammer classics. Thursday night, June 8, you can feast on The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), the follow-up to Hammer’s powerful first entry in their Frankenstein series, The Curse of Frankenstein, and a brand-new Technicolor print of my favorite Hammer horror, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1970), both directed by Hammer horror maestro Terence Fisher. Then, Friday, June 9, features a very tasty Christopher Lee double bill—the classic Horror of Dracula (1958), the masterpiece that really put Hammer on the map, and one of the most highly regarded of the Lee/Dracula sequels, Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970; also presented in a new Technicolor print).

Saturday’s first pairing is a giant monster extravaganza-- X-The Unknown (1956) starring Leslie Norman and Dean Jagger, and a title that naturally fascinated me as a kid, The Crawling Eye (1958) featuring Forrest Tucker and Janet Munro battling octopus-like creatures in the Alps. Then stick round for some gothic terror on the evening’s second double feature, Christopher Lee as Sax Rohmer’s classic villain in The Face of Fu Manchu (1965), and Guy Rolfe investigating a series of brutal killings in India in Stranglers of Bombay (1960).

Sunday, June 11, sees a very rare screening of the full-length, restored version of Jacques Tourneur’s chilling Curse of the Demon (1957) paired with the even more scarce Burn, Witch, Burn (1962), a black magic nightmare starring Peter Wyngarde and Janet Blair that is still unavailable on DVD.

Two from the 20th Century Fox vaults kick things off when the series resumes on Wednesday, June 14. Director Don Sharp’s visually atmospheric Witchcraft (1964), screened here in a fresh 35mm print, is well paired with another terrific entry from director Terence Fisher, The Devil Rides Out (1968).

And the weekend of June 16-18 will make even the most jaded fan of British horror feel lucky to be anywhere near the Egyptian Theater, just for the chance to see twin bills like Christopher Lee in two Terence Fisher classics, The Gorgon (1964) and The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960) (June 16); a tribute to director Val Guest featuring two seminal Hammer masterpieces, Quatermass II (1957), not seen in the United States on the big screen in nearly 50 years (the Cinematheque is featuring a sparkling new print), and The Quatermass Experiment (1956) (June 17); and Bette Davis as The Nanny (1965), one that always terrified me as a kid and made me suspicious of more than one baby-sitter, and a strange pastiche of serial killer and coming-of-age stories called I Start Counting (1968), featuring a pre-Walkabout Jenny Agutter, which, according to the Cinematheque, was never released in the USA and remains unavailable on DVD (June 18).

Director Freddie Francis kicks off the first of a Peter Cushing double feature on June 21 with Amicus’ Torture Garden (1967), followed by Cushing and Lee together again on the Horror Express (1973) for Spanish director Eugenio Martin. And finally, two more with Cushing-- Corruption (1967), and Freddie Francis’ The Skull (1965), neither of which are available on DVD-- close out the fesival on June 25.

As I suggested at the beginning of this post, I’m a much more realistic man these days—I couldn’t possibly harbor any illusions of being able to take advantage of all the juicy opportunities being afforded horror film fans this June by the Cinematheque. (I know somebody who’d sure like to give it a try though.) Even so, I have my eye on Revenge of Frankenstein and Frankenstein Must be Destroyed, a heavenly hellish double feature that should sate my desire to relive the particularly pungent, tacky and yet never condescending delights offered by British horror films, Hammer or otherwise. Amazing that I could so take for granted, back on those Halloweens and Friday the 13ths of my cinematically deprived, yet also oh-so-spoiled youth, these movies, and that they would even make it as far down the theatrical food chain as my hometown theater. (Not every kid in every small town was so lucky, I’ll bet.) Now, in an age of tepid horror remakes and giggly torture porn, I miss even more the lurid sensibility combined with, yes, the relative restraint of the typical horror movie of the period covered by the Cinematheque’s tribute to the Golden Age of British Horror. There will be nothing taken for granted this month, at least not by me.

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As if all that weren’t enough to get a film fan with my particular tastes all aflutter, the Aero will play host to a brief but tasty three-night tribute to Walter Hill, and the director himself will be there two of the three nights to talk about his work. He’ll be at the Aero June 15 introducing, on the inaugural evening of the series, a brand-new four-hour, two-part mini-series entitled Broken Trail. The series, starring Robert Duvall and Thomas Haden Church as two trail hands protecting five orphaned Chinese girls from a group of murderous cowpokes who want the girls for their own reasons and turn Duvall and Church’s journey into a nightmare of unexpected ambushes and violence. Broken Trail premieres on AMC June 25 and 26, but this may be the only chance fans of Hill, whose last theatrical release was the underappreciated Undisputed in 2002, to see this new work on the big screen.

The next night, Friday, June 16, Hill sits with Ed Crasnick for the Cinematheque’s monthly “Lasting Impressions” series, focusing on conversations with filmmakers and screening their work. The movies highlighted will be Hill’s directorial debut, the granite-tough Hard Times (1975) starring Charles Bronson as a bare-knuckle boxer and James Coburn as the shady drifter who becomes his manager, and one of Hill’s most unjustly maligned pictures, Johnny Handsome (1989), featuring Mickey Rourke as a disfigured criminal betrayed in a holdup by his vicious partners in crime (Ellen Barkin and Lance Henriksen) who undergoes plastic surgery in the prison hospital and sets out for revenge.

Finally, on Saturday, June 17, sans Hill, the Cinematheque offers an unmissable double feature—the director’s fraternal western masterpiece The Long Riders, a retelling of the story of the James-Younger gang cast with the brothers Carradine (the Youngers), Keach (the Jameses), Quaid (the Millers) and Guest (Christopher and Nicholas as Bob and Charlie Ford), paired with the equally magisterial Geronimo: An American Legend (1993) with Wes Studi as the titular Native American figure, and featuring Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall, Matt Damon and Jason Patric. Geronimo, a visually resplendent look at the passing of another age within the legends of the American West (it was shot by frequent Hill collaborator Lloyd Ahern), will be shown in 70mm.

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And speaking of 70mm, the Cinematheque rounds out June at the Aero with more in its 70mm “Seeing the Big Picture” series-- The Road Warrior (1982) screens Friday, June 23 in a 70mm print blown up from 35mm; Saturday, June 24, brings a spectacular restored 70mm print of Joseph L. Manciewicz’s notorious (1965), screens Sunday afternoon, June 25; Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), an entrancing revelation in 70mm, screens on Thursday, June 29; and the Aero’s month closes in 70mm on June 30 with Ivan Reitman’s sublimely overscaled laugh fest Ghostbusters.

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There you have it— 43 reasons, if you live in Los Angeles, not to complain that the only thing to see in theaters this month are blockbusters like The Da Vinci Code, Cars, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and Nacho Libre. Next up: A look at some of the treats available on Turner Classic Movies in June, in case the only reason you’re not going out to the movies has less to do with selection than because it’s just too damn hot outside.

SHOHEI IMAMURA 1926 - 2006

On the day that Howard Hawks would have celebrated his 110th birthday, news comes of the death of the great Japanese filmmaker Shohei Imamura, who won the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme D’Or twice, for The Ballad of Narayama in 1993, and again for The Eel in 1997. David Hudson at Green Cine Daily has compiled an excellent series of links in tribute to Imamura which talk about specific films in the director’s filmography and his place in the history of the Japanese cinema. Shohei Imamura was 79 at the time of his death, which was attributed to liver cancer.

And as for Hawks, here's Sheila O'Malley with a fine appreciation.

SHORT ROUNDS PART 4: DUMBO

Finally, my family and I were lucky enough to find ourselves at the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood this past Sunday for a rare opportunity to see Walt Disney's Dumbo on the big screen, and I will say that if you've ever only seen Dumbo on VHS or on DVD, you've seen it, all right. But I'd wager it has never washed over you or reached out and grabbed you with its vivid, super-saturated colors, wonderfully subtle visual characterizations, honestly moving character relationships and sharp comedy as it does when it comes trumpeting off that giant screen. (When Timothy J. Mouse describes Dumbo's exile from his circus environs to the crows and says, "Socially, he's all washed up!" I laughed out loud as if I'd never heard the line before.) Disney is presenting this rare screening basically as filler until the release of Pixar's Cars next week. That means that if you're reading this in the greater Los Angeles area, you have until next Wednesday, June 7, to get yourself a ticket and see this genuinely brilliant classic of animation the way it was meant to be seen, and it has probably never been seen to this great an advantage ever before. More than once, while watching it, I was reminded of the great, blubbering joy with which Robert Stack's General Stillwell sat and watched Dumbo while all of Los Angeles, or at least Hollywood Boulevard, crumbled around him in Steven Spielberg's gloriously funny 1941. Though it's difficult to determine from the film, I've always fancied that the El Capitan Theater, which at the time Spielberg's movie took place was known as the Paramount and had only just recently played host to the world premiere of Citizen Kane, was also the theater in which Stack sat watching Dumbo. One of the funniest and most touching images in Spielberg's work is that of the stern General Stillwell watching through uncontrollable tears as Mrs. Jumbo's trunk comes snaking out of the caged cart in which she is imprisoned, groping until it finds the slumping figure of the little elephant with the gigantic ears, her son from whom she has been separated, and then caressing him with gentle assurance and love. Looking at this moment at the El Capitan, it also settled on my mind why this movie, in this place, was the perfect activity for me and my family to experience together on this Memorial Day weekend. It wasn't intentional, and maybe that's why it was perfect. Sometimes life is like that.

SHORT ROUNDS PART 3: OVER THE HEDGE

Every once in a while there are still surprises left in the Hollywood jack-in-the-box. A fatherly obligation-type outing with my daughters to see Over the Hedge, the new animated comedy from Dreamworks, had a most unexpected result-- almost complete delight on my part. Based on the preview and the general tone of some fairly dismissive reviews, I went into expecting not much more than a headache, much like the ones I got out of taking them to see Chicken Little and Robots. But Over the Hedge is different-- while not exactly suffused with poetry, there are images here that popped in my head and made me gasp with happiness.

Based on a comic strip with which I'm not familiar, the movie tells the story of a rummaging squirrel (Bruce Willis) who ends up in debt to a very grumpy bear (Nick Nolte) and must make restitution in the form of as much processed junk food as he, and the various woodland creatures he cons into helping him, can pilfer from a nearby suburban housing project located, yes, over a imposingly tall hedge. The voice work from Willis, Nolte and others like Steve Carell, Garry Shandling, Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, William Shatner, Alison Janney and Thomas Haden Church is among the wittiest of any of the post-Pixar computer-animated movies, and Over the Hedge, unsullied by the increasingly lame pop culture raiding that characterize Shrek and so many other sub-par efforts in this genre, can stand beside the best Pixar has to offer (which is just about their whole output, isn't it?) Hedge has an appealing, manic energy, best exemplified by Carell's characterization of an overstimulated squirrel, whose encounter with a can of super-caffeinated energy drink is probably the funniest sequence I've seen all year, but it has pleasing variances in that pace and tone as well-- it's not a marathon of in-your-face slapstick and incessant screaming on the order of Chicken Little.

And though it's not exactly on the order of incisive satire, the degree to which the movie does engage with the idea of holding a mirror up to our consumer culture and impulsive consumption of junk food should probably be commended, particularly considering the movie's core demographic. (Reconciling that thematic notion with the appearance of Over the Hedge Pez dispensers at my local supermarket was, however, slightly more difficult and troubling.) Over the Hedge has a sharpness that I think the likes of Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng would have approved of, and it reminded me a lot of what those great Warner Brothers animators' work would look like if they were alive and working in pixels instead of with pens and paints. Over the Hedge might just be as much of a happy surprise to anyone else who holds their legacy of fiercely intelligent, playful and bright cartoons with love and admiration as it was to me.