Batman Begins [2005]
1. Best thing: Gary Oldman slyly underplaying his role, cast (gulp!) as a sympathetic character for the first time in about a million years. That moustache was so cool.
2. At the end, just about the most shameless plug for a sequel that I’ve seen since Back to the Future Part II.
3. As in so many action movies, there are two gratuitous fight scenes in the first half hour. No real reason for either except to get the audience artificially pumped up.
V.O. [2007]
1. Thank God that fringed leather boots are no longer in fashion.
2. Weird subway encounter: Jake Gyllenhaal sort-of look-alike cruises Gary Numan look-alike.
3. Unconscious ethnography: Southern California vs. Manhattan. In 70’s porn there’s no in between.
The above? A typical New York response to visiting Chicago. It’s a nice piece, well-written, but it sure made me chuckle. Don’t get me wrong: NYC is really cool. But Chicago is cool and liveable. Why are New Yorkers always so shocked by that?
I needed a good laugh and found it right here: 1977 J.C. Penney Catalog
Life seems a little less bleak when I see stuff like that.
On Facebook, the Flixster application is supposed to analyze your taste in movies by asking you to rate a list of 50 titles (giving each title a star rating, or saying whether or not you’re interested in seeing it). It’s a cool idea but one that’s hampered by, well, a very lame list. So, as per
I compiled my own list of 50 titles that could be used to analyze someone’s movie taste:
300
2001: A Space Oddesey
400 Blows
An Inconvenient Truth
Annie Hall
Barton Fink
Batman
Beaches
Belle de Jour
Casablanca
Chinatown
Dances with Wolves
Dumbo
E.T.
Ghost Dog
Gimme Shelter
Lawrence of Arabia
Network
Pink Flamingos
Pretty Woman
Psycho
Raging Bull
Rear Window
Roger & Me
Rosemary’s Baby
Salo
Satanango
Scarface
Scarface (remake)
Schindler’s List
Shoah
Shrek
Sid & Nancy
Sin City
Singin’ in the Rain
Spiderman
Spirited Away
Star Wars
Suspiria
The Little Mermaid
The Never-Ending Story
The Pink Panther
The Pink Panther (remake)
The Seven Samurai
There’s Something About Mary
Titanic
Tokyo Story
Top Gun
Velvet Goldmine
Young Frankenstein
What do you think?
If I were tech savvy I’d know to how to modify Flixster and upload this list. Anyone interested?
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde [1941]
1. Ingrid Bergman. Has never been more beautiful. Yet–and this is what floored me–there are certain scenes which are directly echoed in Blue Velvet: Isabella Rossellini standing in for her mom! “Yes, sir” and falling on her knees, begging for help. Very disturbing. How many times had Lynch seen this? Could it all be coincidence?
2. Spencer Tracy, very scary. Did he ever play a villian again?
3. Ingrid at the doorway, pausing. “For a moment I thought …” She pauses. Then leaves. Does she die at the end? We don’t see her again. We don’t know.
The Wolf Man [1941]
1. I swear that Lon Chaney Jr. sounded exactly like Donald Sutherland. That was actually the most eerie thing about the whole movie.
2. Best movie fog I’ve seen in a long time. And there was a lot of it.
3. Maria Ouspenskaya. Mesmerizing in a way that only she can be.
I bagged out of work early yesterday and, spur of the moment, decided to walk home. It was lovely autumn day, sunny and pretty warm too. I found myself heading east on Irving Park Road. When I got to Clark I realized I was at the entrance to Wunder’s Cemetery. It was Halloween. So I went through the gate and walked around. It was very peaceful. I saw a few cars driving through and two bicyclists riding around but I was the only walker. Judging from the names on the gravestones it’s largely Germans and Hispanics buried there. A lot of the headstones though have been worn away from time and you can’t make out the name anymore.
The ground was thick with fallen leaves. It was quiet. I tried to imagine what some of the people had been like when they were alive, tried to imagine what a funeral circa 1907 would have been like. So banal, but once upon a time they were alive. And then they weren’t. What would it be like to actually have a funeral on October 31st?
The south end of the cemetery has a chain-link fence running around it; on the other side of the fence is Jewish Graceland Cemetery.
I walked the rest of the way to lakeview and at the video store I had the good luck to rent The Wolf Man. Andy and I watched it, after ordering out from Oodles of Noodles and consuming martinis. We both had a rotten day at work.
Laurie Anderson:
What Fassbinder film is it?
The one-armed man walks into a flower shop
And says: What flower expresses
Days go by
And they just keep going by endlessly
Pulling you Into the future
Days go by
Endlessly
Endlessly pulling you
Into the future?
And the florist says: White Lily.
I’m heading over to the video store after work because Andy and I want to watch a horror movie tonight. Lord only knows what will be left to rent.
Twilight Zone: The Movie [1983]
1. The segments more or less succeed or fail on their own terms, but I don’t think Rod Serling would have much use for any of them. Any notions of cosmic/poetic justice/irony are fairly tangental.
2. The character of Mr. Agee in Segment #2: he’s obviously gay, but naturally Spielberg makes nothing of it. I’m glad though that he decides to stay a kid.
3. Joe Dante is the only director who makes his segment his own. Love that black & white hallway.
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