Duck Amuck

"What a way to run a railroad!"

-Daffy Duck, Duck Amuck

Children of Men

Hitchcock Overkill

Good evening.

Hitchcock rules. Here are some reviews of murders in my favorite Hitchcock movies. Eschewing my policy of not rating movies, these murders are discussed and rated on a scale of 0 to 4 screams. There are minor spoilers about.

Be warned.

The Lodger
Considered to be Hitchcock’s first Hitchcockian movie. The movie opens with an extreme close-up of a chick screaming. Turns out she’s being murdered. Also turns out the movie is silent.
The victim: Some chick.
Method of killing: Very vague. As far as I can tell, it was from a calling card with “The Avenger” written on it.
Rating: This murder is very economically shot. Too economical for my taste. 2 screams.

Blackmail
Britain’s first talkie.
The victim: An evil rapist/painter.
The method: A bread knife.
Rating: Very nicely shot. Shadows on the wall. A pan to the curtain. A hand outstretched – reaching for the knife. The only sounds are shy Alice’s cries of “Let me go!” 3 screams.


The 39 Steps
There are two murders in this movie. The first is hammily acted and slightly illogical. I am reviewing the second murder.
The victim: Mr. Memory.
The method: A gunshot.
The rating: “What are the 39 steps?” When asked, Mr. Memory squirms, quivers his brow and answers. He’s compelled to answer – even though he knows he could die for doing it. He keeps reciting (top secret) trivia until he dies. The killer leaps onto the stage (a la John Wilkes Booth), but is surrounded by the cops in an awesome shot. Pretty good. But I’ve seen better murders. 3 screams.

Sabotage
The victim: Little boy goes boom. And a puppy. A busload of innocent people.
Method: A time bomb.
Rating: Very tense. This is the purest correlation of Hitchock’s example of a classic suspense scene. The little boy unknowingly carries a bomb that will go off at 1:45. He lollygags on the street – letting a stranger brush his teeth! Numerous shots of clocks tracking his time. Little boy plays with a puppy. A puppy! Finally, a shot of the clock hand hitting 1:45. A succession of jump cuts to the bomb. Then, boom! Cut to people laughing. Ha! Awesome! 4 scream murder.

The Lady Vanishes
The victim: A balladeer singing songs in code.
The method: Strangulation by evil, shadowy hands.
Rating: Mrs. Froy liked it. She tossed out a tip. I didn’t. Boring. One scream.

Rebecca
The victim: The proverbial Rebecca.
The method: An anchor to the face.
Rating: The suckiest of all Hitchcock “murders.” The camera pans across an empty room as Laurence Olivier (accompanied by a melodramatic score) narrates what happened that fateful night. Most critics assume Olivier is telling the truth. The truth is boring. One scream murder.

Foreign Correspondent
The victim: European diplomat Van Meer.
The method: Someone took his picture. Seriously! Those things kill!
Rating: A moody, rainy day. A sea of umbrellas nearby. A quick succession of shots – including one of Van Meer with blood running down his face. He drops his umbrella and tumbles down the stairs after it. The killer escapes into the sea of umbrellas. Awesome. Four scream murder.
BONUS: There are actual screams in the scene.

Suspicion
The victim: No victim. 
The method: Not a poisoned glowing glass of milk.
Rating: Lame. Really lame. 0 screams.

Saboteur
The victim: Sick saboteur Fry.
The method: Bad tailoring and the Statue of Liberty.
Rating: Nicely done. An overhead shot of Fry hanging from the Statue. Only the sound of the wind blowing and ships passing. Then he falls away from the camera. Three screams.
BONUS: An actual scream.

Shadow of a Doubt
The victim: Head-traumatized Uncle Charley.
Method: Either the fall from one train, or the wheels of another oncoming train.
Rating: Kind of a boring kill. Not that Hitch didn’t try. There’s the shots of the feet on the edge of the train, the pounding train-like score, shots of the tracks racing past. It seemed to impress Powell & Pressburger. It inspired the climax for Black Narcissus. Two screams.

Lifeboat
The victim: There are many. I could talk about the chick who commits suicide after she realizes the baby she is carrying is dead. But instead, I’ll focus on Gus and Willy.
The method: A nazi nudge and good ole American mob rule.
Rating: Very, very brutal killings. Poor Gus, deliriously rambling – forgetting that one of his legs is gone. Only the sounds of the sea. The horizon rising and falling behind them. And then Willy’s death. One shot. Previously gentle characters grabbing anything they can find and pounding him mercilessly. The only sounds the grunts of the mob. Three scream murders.


Spellbound
The victim: Ballantine’s little bro.
The method: Fratricide by way of impalement.
The rating: Most of the visuals in this movie are amazing. Everything else – ugh! But seeing the short montage of a little boy sliding down a banister. And seeing another boy drop onto a spikey fence. Ouch! That image has never left me. Fortunately the visuals are so strong I can ignore the absurd score and what Gregory Peck is saying at the time, “Something in my childhood. I remember now!” A three scream murder.

Notorious
The victim: Metrosexual mama’s boy Alex Sebastian.
The method: Unsure. The murder is only implied.
Rating: Very suspenseful. The slow parade of characters descending the stairs. Then the lone climb back up the stairs. The subtle score. The close-ups. Awesome. A four scream murder.

Rope
The victim: Over-achiever David.
Method: Rope.
Rating: Not bad. First the muffled scream. Then the close-up of David being strangled. It gets your attention. Three screams.
BONUS: An actual scream.



Strangers on a Train
The victim: Slutty Miriam.
The method: Strangulation.
Rating. Totally awesome! Just the sounds of the fair. Calliope music, laughter, etc. The murder reflected in the pair of glasses that have fallen off Miriam’s face. Creepy and riveting. Four scream murder.

Dial M for Murder
The victim: Some dude named Swann.
Method: A pair of scissors in the back. Ouch.
Rating: This murder is like an action scene after all the talky boredom of the first thirty minutes. The movie was shot in 3-D, but there’s nothing about this scene to suggest that. Two screams.

Rear Window
The victim: A doggie.
Method: “It’s been strangled. The neck is broken.”
Rating: It fits in nicely with the rest of the movie. Mostly shots from inside James Stewart’s apartment. Just the sounds of the city on the soundtrack. And then the realization that Thorwald is sitting in the dark – puffing his cigar. Three scream murder.
Someone else might get killed in this movie. Or might not. If they did, then their head is in a hatbox in the garden. Just saying.

The Trouble with Harry
The victim: Harry.
Method: Who the hell knows?
Rating: The comically exaggerated shots of Harry’s feet. A lot of discussion about how he died and who did it. Two scream murder(?).


The Man Who Knew Too Much

The victim: Sexy spy Louis Bernard.
Method: A knife in the back.
Rating: Visually seering. He stumbles to the ground – his make-up rubbing off onto James Stewart’s hands. Nothing but a sparse score by Bernard Hermann and foreign chatter. A four scream murder.

Vertigo
The victim: Recently reincarnated Madeline.
Method: Suicide – kind of. But not really.
Rating: Very famous shot here. The simultaneous zoom and tracking shot that keeps Stewart from chasing her up the tower. Then the silly looking dummy falling past the window. All backed up by a menacing score. Marred mostly by the absurdity of the situation. A three scream murder.
BONUS: An actual scream.

North by Northwest
The victim: UN Ambassador Lester Townsend.
Method: A sudden knife in the back.
Rating: Pretty lame murder. No style. All surprise. The sudden burst of brass instruments when the knife hits doesn’t help matters. A one scream murder.

Psycho
There are two murders in this movie. I will only discuss the first. And the more famous.
The victim: Kleptomaniac Marian Crane.
Method: Stabs.
Rating: This is perhaps the most copied scene in all of film. The famous quick-cutting montage. The classic score by Bernard Hermann. The sounds of the shower, the stabs, and the multiple screams from Marion. The most famous of all of Hitchcock’s murders. And rightfully so. Four screams.
BONUS: Many, many actual screams.

The Birds
There are numerous victims in this movie. I will only discuss the first one found.
The victim: Kindly neighbor Dan Fawcett.
Method: Pecking in the bedroom.
Rating: Super creepy. Miss Daisy is first alerted that something is wrong by the broken tea cup. Then the dead bird in the window. The bloody feet, and the quick jump cuts to the eye-less face of Farmer Fawcett. All done in complete silence. Really chilling. Four screams.

Marnie
The victim: Some horny, pedophile sailor.
Method: “I hit him with a stick!”
Rating: Poorly executed. The tracking shot/zoom is nice, but the slightly sepia-toned flashback, the echoing voices and the clumsy blocking ruin it. One scream murder.
BONUS: Actual screams.

Torn Curtain
The victim: Russian spy Gromek.
Method: Strangulation, a knife in the heart, a shovel to the shins, and a head in the oven. It’s a spectacularly messy death.
Rating: The only reason to watch this movie. Brilliantly shot. The overhead shot of dude getting strangled, the low shot of chick holding the knife, her lunging at the camera, the overhead shot of the guy in the oven, the shots from the POV of the victim getting his ass dragged toward the oven. Four scream murder.

Frenzy
There’s more than one murder in this. I will only discuss the first.
The victim: Estranged ex-wife Brenda.
Method: Strangled . . . with a tie.
Rating: Pretty creepy murder. The booby. The tie pin. The off-center shot of Brenda. The sounds of the rapist whispering, “Lovely . . . lovely!” while Brenda recites. The tie tightening around the neck. The legs kicking. The head jerking back and forth. Hard to watch. And then the strange dark humor at the end. Three screams.

War of the Worlds

War of the Worlds

A sci-fi series that aired in syndication in 1988 and 1989.

The Set-Up: A group of terrorists unwittingly unleash hibernating aliens from an army compound. The aliens take over human bodies and run them ragged while causing destruction. After one unfortunate run in with the military, a super cool research scientist named Blackwood (“If I don’t sleep one hour out of every five, I’m useless.”) and his cracked out team of scientists are given the go ahead by the military to stop these aliens. His team includes an uptight, but hot microbiologist (McCullough), a “wise-cracking” sometimes Jamaican wheelchair-bound computer expert (Drake), and a doubting, crusty-but-benign, Native American Lieutenant Colonel (Ironhorse).

Why was it canceled? Well . . . it wasn’t. It was renewed for a second season.

How Does That Qualify as a One Season Wonder, Douche Bag? Because it’s a one season wonder in spirit. Here’s the deal, after the first season, Paramount decided to hand the show over to a new team of writers, despite the fact that War of the Worlds was their highest rated syndicated program at the time. The writers for Friday the 13th: The Series took over. Apparently, these writers had never seen an episode of War of the Worlds because there were massive changes made in the second season.

The setting was shifted from present day to a mid-apocalyptic world. Half the cast was killed off in the first episode. And a new race of aliens was brought in. They killed off the old race and became the new bad guys. And the title was changed to War of the Worlds: The Second Invasion.

If you are ever able to find a fan of War of the Worlds, they will inevitably tell you that the first season is the only true season and that the second season sucks. I can’t speak for the second season – it’s not available on DVD. But I do own the first season, and so, in the spirit of a one season wonder, I am going to count it.

Typical episode: Over-ripe, dramatic dialogue plays over a black screen. The Alien Advocacy discusses what has been going on and what now needs to be done. (“We need more brains! Living brains!”) Some aliens take over some bodies. They skulk around killing people and being insidious. The cracked out team is called in. They stand around a computer arguing data. The Advocacy stands around in their cave hideaway and continues to discuss the various obstacles facing them. Somebody melts. Gross. There is some playful banter. Blackwood does something new age-y. Ironhorse says something conservative. There are some questionable computer graphics. The dialogue from the beginning is spoken. Blackwood defeats the aliens by electrocuting them or blowing them up. Or the aliens escape. Any evidence left behind self-destructs. Little progress is made by either side. Freeze frame.

The style: Grade Z, self-conscious, pulpy X-Files-lite.

Typical Dialogue: “I want to know what happened in there and I want to know yesterday! Lieutenant! A US army installation has been compromised. Our superiors expect credible explanations, not excuses! I want whys and wherefores by 1800 hours, Mister!”

More Dialogue: “It means more than beans and queens.”

Typical Newscast: “One prisoner, and I quote, exploded during practice.”

Typical Exchange: “Thank goodness it’s over.”
“Is it? [Pause] Is it really?”

Typical Joke: “Can you enhance this digitally?”
“Does a computer download in the woods?”

It Doesn’t End: “Can someone please call me an ambulance!”
“You’re an ambulance.”

Listen to this Shit: “I’d like to disarm the bomb.”
“And I’d like to be President of the United States. Forget it!”

Typical Alien Propaganda: “To life immortal.”

My Favorite Evil Alien Dialogue: “Watching TV has paid off again.”
“But it takes its toll. Softens the brain.”

Best Dismemberment: An alien hybrid rips a nurse’s leg off – mid-shin. It is awesome. And bloody. Ew.

Best Dismemberment Runner Up: A death ray burns a beam through some dude’s head. What’s impressive is the shot of the evil aliens through the hole in the back of the guy’s head. Not technically a dismemberment, but awesome nonetheless.

Best Dismemberment Honorable Mention: A group of drugged humans turn on their alien captors, rip them apart and eat them. Mmmmmmm. Creamy alien guts.

My favorite episodes:
First, a quandary: If something is intended to be enjoyed ironically, is it still ironic?

1.3 “Thy Kingdom Come” Ann Robinson reprises her role from the original 1953 movie. Only now her character is crazy. In order to express craziness, the writers decided she should talk almost exclusively in rhymes. “The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plains. But this isn’t Spain . . . “ The scene where the aliens take over the family in the station wagon: fucking hilarious. “Where’s Grandma?” “I’m here. To life immortal!” And then nuns! Useless nuns! *
1.6 “The Second Seal” Blackwood, clumsily described as a vegetarian and pacifist, touches some cube and suddenly he is pushing around women and ordering pepperoni pizza! You see, this cube is like a drug. It’s fun to touch it, but it makes you act different. “I think it’s boring with a capital “B” that you have to be such a grind!” Don’t do drugs kids! At this point, the goofy z-movie style has grown on me.
1.15 “He Feedeth Among the Lilies” Finally, alien probes. The one-off romance is so goofy, it’s palatable. And the most abrupt ending ever. Seriously. What a bizarre way to end an episode. It certainly is hard to forget. Thumbs up for juggling so many jarring tones so clumsily. Why the fuck not?
1.17 “Unto Us a Child is Born” This episode typifies what frustrates me about this show. I was loving it for a while. This episode is perhaps the most gruesome. An alien takes over a pregnant woman’s body. She gives birth to an alien hybrid. The hybrid is totally gross and absurd and fun and looks like the baby from Dead Alive. But when the hybrid is killed, the original baby crawls out of the mess left behind. I said to myself, I bet there’s not a trace of alien left. Cut to the hot microbiologist actually saying, “Not a trace if alien tissue.” The show becomes incredibly predictable. There’s one more twist that I totally saw coming. The show never really surprises me, but it can be fun.

*According to Wikipedia, Little Bobby and his alien family were originally going to be a running gag, complete with an advertising campaign called Save Bobby. Sadly, Paramount nixed this idea. Too bad. This was the most awesome moment in the whole series.

My Least favorite:

1.1 “The Resurrection” It took me three tries before I finally got through this episode. Ugh. It is awful, awful, awful. I believe the writers realized how goofy and lame the show was and completely embraced it for all the episodes that follow. I have this same theory for the Evil Dead movies.
1.10 “Epiphany” This episode has a random romance-of-the-week vibe. And is anyone really in suspense as they’re disarming the bomb? The cold war paranoia is too on the nose. This episode is just dull and obvious.

How many episodes were produced? 23.

Was there much continuity? Almost none. No progress made by either side is ever carried into following episodes.

Blackwood is depicted as calm and cool and relaxed in the first episode, but he’s a bit of an uptight professional after that – even if he does do weird new age crap to track aliens. Drake’s cringe-inducing Jamaican accent disappears just two or three episodes in.

The time frame is inconsistent. In one episode, Blackwood says the aliens were released fourteen months ago. A few episodes later, he claims it has been almost a year.

Was there closure? I did not see the second season, but apparently almost nothing carried over.

Any unattended issues: The final moments of the first season make for a great dark joke. One of the best moments on the show. It suggests some tricky plotting was to come. Of course, this was never brought up again after someone else took over the show.

And then there’s this strange discrepancy regarding the original 1953 movie. While that film is used as the basis for the series, almost no one remembers the invasion. Apparently there was a reconnaissance mission in 1938, but the government capably covered that up by hiring Orson Welles to do his War of the Worlds radio broadcast. (Yes, this is actually explained in the series). But what about the 1953 movie? It’s especially weird since one character is taken directly from that movie.

The verdict:
When I was ten or so, I would hold vast wars with all my action figures. These wars would spread across the house and take weeks to play out. They were usually ended by my mom’s cleaning the house and putting all the action figures in a drawer. Damn you and your infernal cleaning, woman! By the way, Happy Mother’s Day. Anyway, the dialogue spoken by the action figures was generally a mix of dialogue taken directly from other shows and ordinary clichés. Circular dialogue that really had no meaning. That’s the level of dialogue on this show.

In other words, the show is not very good. The acting is desperate and awful! Awful! Awful! Awful! Awful! Awful! Awful! Awful! Awful! Awful! Awful! The dialogue is devoid of personality, over played and full of pregnant pauses. The show is rife with a cheap synthesized score and low rent special effects. Scenes are punctuated with awkward zooms. The formula of the show never breaks out of this perpetual stalemate. The alien-cam effect is shit. And the image is terrible. It looks like a worn out videotape.

Still, there are moments when the shittiness of the show pays off. The humor is sophomoric, but occasionally funny. And the effects are radically gruesome. I mean really nasty-looking. Compared to a lot of TV shows, the computer programs looked half way credible (in that I don’t know what I’m looking at when I see the computer screen). And it is so refreshing that one particular cliché is absent: the government never tries to shut the operation down.

Really your enjoyment of the show depends one how you accept the last episode. If you can appreciate a killer robot in spandex who slowly jazzercises as she speaks with an echo effect, giving the most childish exposition possible and occasionally shooting bad special effects out of her hands, you will like the series. Seriously, I can only imagine the direction this actress was given.

I myself, thought this show was crap. I had never managed to watch the first episode before now, so this was the first time I had watched the show. Absolutely, a poor purchase.

1932-33 Cavalcade

A friend of mine has decided to watch all the Best Picture Oscar Winners in chronological order. A small group of people are joining him - including myself. Here are a few of the comments made at this year's movie.

• “This movie is awfully British.”
  
• “This isn’t very good.”
  
• “Noel Coward wrote this, didn’t he!.”
  

Movies That Should be on DVD Part II

Since a good percentage of my last list has ended up on DVD, I figured I’d work out another list. Unlike the last list, I have not seen the majority of these movies.


An American Family
The Loud family. This PBS documentary series is considered the first reality show. A milestone in American television. I’m shocked it’s not on DVD already.


The Bruce Conner Collection
When Criterion released a collection of Stan Brackage short films, it gave me hope that they might make a habit of releasing avant-garde short film collections. Alas, the Bruce Conner collection never materialized (or the George Kuchar collection for that matter). I would particularly like to see “Report” and “A Movie.” I’ve never seen “Report,” but I hear it’s a recutting of educational and government films for surreal comic effect, mocking the mystique of Civil Defense-era authority.


Corruption
This is not a woman's picture! No women will be allowed in alone!
Peter Cushing plays a creepy doctor who does creepy things with the dead bodies of women. Supposedly, Peter Cushing was creped out by his own movie. I must see it!


Day Break
Groundhog Day as a murder mystery. I saw all thirteen episodes – most of them online. And I believe they are available on iTunes, but for this sprawling, complex mystery, I really need to sit down and watch it in one magnificent sitting – just to keep up with all the red herrings, repeated daily events and how they evolve over the course of the mystery. My favorite part is how people begin reacting to Taye Diggs’ character differently as the series wears on – acknowledging that he is changing even though no one else is. Luckily, the mystery is solved by the last episode.
UPDATE: March 11th, this one season wonder hits DVD. I'm gonna watch it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and . . .


The Dybbuk
A film from an extinct culture. A Yiddish movie about a bride who is possessed by a Jewish Dybbuk just before her wedding. I saw this in college as a part of my World Cinema Class but have never seen it since. All I remember of it, is the eerie atmosphere – that and I liked it.


A Foreign Affair
Billy Wilder’s post-WWII dramedy about the rebuilding of Berlin by American G.I.s. Marlene Dietrich is hot as the German showgirl with a secret. And Jean Arthur is surprisingly tolerable as the stuck-up congress woman with an agenda. My favorite part is the G.I.s escorting Ms. Dietrich up the stairs.

High School
A documentary about high school kids from the late sixties. Pauine Kael describes it as an expose of the clever, duplicitous tactics teachers use to keep kids in line rather than teach them, though user comments on IMDB suggest the movie is more even handed. I’d like to see for myself.

Homebodies
I was thinking of Student Bodies when I wrote "Homebodies," but this movie sounds so goddamn weird, I have to see it now too!

Johnny Guitar
Nicholas Ray’s campy-looking western starring Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, and Mercedes McCambridge. I’ve never seen it, but I hear the movie is a Western turned inside-out. Supposedly full of sexual imagery and political allegory (aimed directly at McCarthyism). And look at Joan Crawford. Does she look butched out or what?


King of Alcatraz
A short B-thriller from 1938. Never seen it. Know very little about it. Has anybody seen it?

The Major and the Minor
Billy Wilder’s Hollywood directorial debut in which Ginger Rogers pretends to be a twelve-year-old girl in order to get half fare on a train and has to keep up the illusion when she gets Major Kirkeby (Ray Milland) in trouble with his fiancée. Ginger Rogers’ best performance by far. The young girls all smoke and the young cadets make moves on girls under the guise of illustrating tank maneuvers. The movie is elusively pro-pedophilia.
UPDATE: On April 22, Susu Applegate spits again.


The Mother and the Whore
A Special Jury Prize Winner at Cannes. I’ve seen it described as My Dinner with Andre filmed of the scale of Lawrence of Arabia. As I understand it, it’s mostly crazed coffee shop conversation between bullshit artiste extraordinaire Jean-Pierre Leaud and the chick he’s banging.


Neighbors
Originally panned by critics very harshly. I’m a bit torn here. One of my favorite critics listed it as his least favorite movie of 1981, while another said it was one of his favorites – particularly citing the performances of John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd and Cathy Moriarty. They usually play nice. A pitch black comedy according to legend. The last performance from John Belushi. Directed by Academy Award-winning director John G. Avildsen.


Los Olividados
Heavy social drama by Louis Bunuel. Set in Mexican slums, the movie is about a group of juvenile delinquents. It is harsh and unsentimental and by far my favorite of all the Bunuel flicks I’ve seen – all five of them. It’s not sarcastic, it’s not smug, and it portends no easy answers. Shockingly violent – not just because of the time (1950), but because such terrible things are happening to kids. I have the ticket stub, just itching for a DVD case to call home.


Paperhouse
A creepy children’s movie I have never seen.


Skippy
Jackie Cooper was nominated for Best Actor at the ripe old age of nine for this movie. The director, Norman Taurog, holds the record for the youngest person to win Best Director at the Oscars. No doubt he got it for threatening to kill Cooper’s pet if he didn’t cry convincingly. I imagine it to be like the Little Rascals with slightly more substance. I don’t now if that’s better than plain old Little Rascals though.


Smith
The first canceled show of the 2006 fall season. Rumor has it, the show may have been canceled because it was too sinister for the conservative taste of CBS -- as opposed to mediocre ratings. A gang of thieves robbing everybody blind, with great performances from the entire cast. Evil, sociopathic, amoral fun.


Student Bodies
An absurd comedy I saw numerous times on HBO as a kid. I doubt it’s any good at all, but I saw it so many times, it would be more like a trip to my past rather than a real movie-watching experience. Kind of like when I rewatched Monster Squad recently. The number of “Yeah I remember that” moments far out-weighed the “Hey, that was funny” moments.
Update: The Breather breathes again on June 3rd. I just found out that Allen Smithee produced this movie. How can it not be a winner?


The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo
Between the 1984 and 1985 seasons of Scooby Doo, some major retooling went on. For one thing, all the characters changed clothes. Secondly, Daphne and Scrappy became really smart – well comparatively. The series then took a turn that was at once darker and sillier. The new plot itself is clever: 13 ghosts are released from the chest of demons and only those who released them (namely Shaggy and Scooby) can put them back, so says warlock Vincent Van Ghoul (who looks and sounds exactly like Vincent Price). They take on a fast-talking Hispanic kid named Flim Flam and set off to capture the demons with their post-modern asides and story-bending plot points. It was canceled half way thru the season, putting an end to seventeen consecutive years of Scooby Doo on Saturday mornings. By the way, they only caught eleven demons.

Zero for Conduct
A short film – forty-five minutes or so – about a group of kids in boarding school who get fed up with the overbearing, authoritative faculty and their repressive regimentation. Often mentioned as a companion piece with If . . . ., it features a full-on revolt by the kids against the teachers. I love me some subversive kids movies.

Coming Home

Soldiers return home from war twenty-five years apart.

or thirty years apart, depending on how you look at it.

Indian Summer

"All the experts say

You ought to start them young.

That way they'll naturally love

The taste of corporate come."

-Pedro the Lion, "Indian Summer"

1931-32 Grand Hotel

A friend of mine has decided to watch all the Best Picture Oscar Winners in chronological order. A small group of people are joining him - including myself. Here are a few of the comments made at this year's movie.

• “I can’t believe the performances got overlooked.” 
  
• “Is [Lionel Barrymore] mentally retarded?”
  
• “I love all the smoke.”
  
• “This movie sucks.”
  
• “I’m sick of the fake fucking accents all these movies have.” 

Cache

Middle Class White Guys Get Ennui, Quit Their Jobs, and Blackmail Their Bosses for a Year's Salary

Silent Light

So I just watched Silent Light. I went on a suggestion from a friend's email, and boy, did I fucking hate it. 

The movie is an overlong, stiff, pretentious piece of doggerel with a bullshit supernatural miraculous ending - ripped off straight from Ordet. It's not just leisurely; it's interminable. An empty shot. Two characters walk into it and slouch near each other. They neither say nor do anything interesting.  There's a cut to a closer shot of one of the actors. After a beat, the actor dutifully recites his lines. Cut to the other actor, who waits a beat before dutifully reciting more insipid dialogue. Eventually, they leave the shot and the camera lingers . . . and lingers . . . In one typical scene, two characters are standing near each other. One says, "Let's go look at the snow." Never mind that they are already standing in snow. They turn and clumsily lumber through the snow for ten feet before stopping and looking at a barn. The camera then pans 180 degrees - slowly passing an empty field before settling on the two actors, staring emptily in different directions (that is, when they're not glancing directly into the camera - I'm looking at you, Grampa!). They wait a beat before mumbling their pedestrian dialogue. They leave the scene. After a moment, there's a cut back to the empty field. This takes about ten minutes to play out. 

Moments when I laughed out loud. 

• When two characters, carrying on an affair, strip down and look at each other - rather than actually, oh say, touching each other or embracing or kissing, etc. 
• In typical fashion, we cut to an old man sitting in a chair, staring off into space. We then cut to the son, standing in front of a bare wall and staring at a calendar while a clock ticks in the background. The entire movie is full of these ridiculously stiffly blocked compositions that Wes Anderson has so thoroughly spoofed. At this moment, I thought, perhaps the movie is making fun of overly austere meditations on nothing. Sadly, no. 
• When the doctor suggests that one character's "attack of the heart" was brought on by obesity. A character who weighs all of ninety pounds soaking wet. 

Typical children's dialogue:

"I hope Daddy buys us some sweets." "Me, too."

Breaking Bad

"Check out these fake Pop-Tarts, yo, they're mad tight!"

-Aaron Paul, Breaking Bad

Trainspotting

Paul Winfield Trains Dogs

1930-31 Cimarron

A friend of mine has decided to watch all the Best Picture Oscar Winners in chronological order. A small group of people are joining him - including myself. Here are a few of the comments made at this year's movie.

• “There are some unfortunate stereotypes here.”
  
• “I’m embarrassed for the movie.”
  
• “This isn’t good.”
  
• “I think I’d rather watch Broadway Melody again.” 
  
• “Why are there so many stuttering people in these movies?”
  
• [Various guffaws from the unchecked racism.]
  
• “Are we sure this won an Oscar?”
  
• “That movie was forty years long.” 
  

The Mist

The Parallax View