a lot can go down between thursday and saturday..
the first time I saw Friday, one of the reasons it made me laugh is because Ice Cube's character, Craig, looked and had expressions exactly like my brother. by now neither mr. Cube nor more brother look much like each other or their younger selves.
set in one of the same neighborhoods that three years earlier had been the site of riots made this light coming-of-age comedy feel hopeful.
the characters of Friday :Craig, Smokey, Deebo, Debbie, are the best thing about it. as memorable, as, say,those of Fast Times at...
the time frame of the movie is the "Friday" of the title. Craig, who still lives at home (much to the dismay of his parents), has just lost his job. as he figures what comes next he becomes involved with his friend Smokey's schemes and troubles. most of the action takes place in and about the front porch of Craig's home
trailer
"you are fuckin' the rotation!" Smokey schools Craig on the etiquette of joint-sharing
Friday's soundtrack feature the biggest hip-hop starts of the mid-1990s. the 'theme' song by Ice Cube
the outstanding track, Dr Dre's Keep their heads ringin
'
there are two movies follow up to Friday: Next Friday, with most of the same actors and crew, and Friday After Next, without. I haven't seen either, but I've heard that Friday After Next is worth watching.
English title: Grand Illusion
part two of a doubleheader. part one was yesterday, and today is Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion: a war movie with no battle scenes, where friendships go across enemy sides, where the futility of war (any war) is noted, and the coming social changes in all of Europe are presaged.
is going to sound awfully familiar if you've been following this series-of-movies-I-like, but whatevs. 'tis all true
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For many years, the original nitrate film negative was thought to have been lost in an Allied air raid in 1942 that destroyed a leading laboratory outside Paris. Prints of the film were rediscovered in 1958 and restored and re-released during the early 1960s. Then, it was revealed that the original negative had been shipped back to Berlin by Dr. Frank Hensel to be stored in the Reichsfilmarchiv vaults. In the Allied occupation of Berlin in 1945, the Reichsfilmarchiv by chance was in the Russian zone and consequently shipped along with many other films back to be the basis of the Soviet Gosfilmofond film archive in Moscow. The negative was returned to France in the 1960s, but sat unidentified in storage in Toulouse Cinémathèque for over 30 years, as no one suspected it had survived. It was rediscovered in the early 1990s as the Cinémathèque's nitrate collection was slowly being transferred to the French Film Archives at Bois d'Arcy. It was restored and released as the inaugural DVD of the Criterion Collection.
“
from the always helpful wiki , full of details, linkage, synopsa, and I hope you already knew, *spoilers*. so be careful
I can talk about the movie, but rather do so after y'all watch it. I am unable to discuss a plot without giving the movie away; the secret of being a good writer-about-films. but I will mention some movies you may have watched that are very influenced by La Grande Illusion:
- The Great Escape
- Casablanca
- Stalag Seven
clipparinos:
this first one is Renoir himself introducing the Criterion Collection DVD.
Renoir is adorable, self-effacing, and I want to hug him. he also reminds me of someone...
in this scene, POWs of several nationalities come together during a talent show in a German camp
English title: The Rules of the Game, though a literal translation would be The rule of the game
I love this movie so much I don't even know how to begin to talk about it. is it a comedy? yep. a drama? indeed. a 'dramedy'? thankfully not. a comedy of manners? absolutely. an allegory, an analysis, a critique? yes. yes. yes.
a perfect snapshot of a moment in time? very much so. set between the wars at a time when an aristocracy on its way down was meeting a bourgeoisie on it way up; when the servant class was morphing into the working class.
that we even have La règle du jeu to watch is little short of a miracle. its remarkable story, lifted straight from imdb:
"
Despite now being considered one of the best films made by many historians, the picture almost became a lost art. Claiming that it was bad for the morale of the country (due to impending war), the French government banned the film about a month after its original release. When Germany took over France the following year, it was banned by the Nazi party as well, who also burnt many of the prints. Allied planes then accidentally destroyed the original negatives. It was thought to be a lost picture. In 1956, some followers of director Jean Renoir found enough pieces of the film scattered throughout France to reconstitute it with Renoir's help. Renoir claimed only one minor scene was missing from the original cut.
trailer
...Everyone has their reasons
NOTE: many think, me amongst them, that the scene below is crucial, a moment where several themes of the movie come together. it is also EXTREMELY DISTURBING. excruciating to watch.
it is a "country hunt" of the kind the guests at a chateau or a country manor of the time would participate in. it features the slaughter of woodland animals, including <gulp> bunnies.
the 'hunt'
it thrills me that this movie, who could have so easily being lost forever, is available to us. it is a gift. Jean Renoir was a great director, a great filmmaker, and a great humanist. we are lucky to have his work.
at least that was my conclusion after reading the excellent series of articles on dental health by June Thomas of Slate
it is long, enlightening and I can't recommend it enough.
some key points:
- why ist dental care separated from health care? there is ample evidence that dental health (lack of) correlates to serious chronic conditions including heart disease, diabetes, digestive problems, etc,
- dentists are doctors but not "really doctor doctors". the significant differences between medical and dental practices
- dental insurance 'separate and unequal' from health insurance
- the prevention model has been very successful in dentistry yet not in medicine
- the appalling lack of dental care to large numbers of individuals
- dental care hasn't gotten barely any mention in the current health care reform debate
I'm a complete scaredity-cat when it comes to horror books and movies. I wasn't born that way; I was made to be that way. and I know who to blame: Stephen King. directly to blame in the case of horror literature (a story for another day) and indirectly in the case of horror movies.
In the case of movies, while not a bigbig fan of horror movies, I went to my fair share of them - The Amityville Horror, The Omen, others. and then I watched The Shining. and that was the end of all that. I can't even watch horror movie trailers. even right now, as I was searching for clips in YT I could barely watch each for a few seconds. they kinda look legit, but don't blame me if you get rickrolled in the middle of watching a clip. blame Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick, who I just noticed, have the same initials. conspiracy anyone?
there are still very contentious arguments as to whether Kubrick messed up/was faithful to/improved upon King's novel. I have no opinion as I havent' read the novel. or plan to, but here be teh movie wiki.
but why am I writing about a movie I can't bear to watch even a few minutes of? well, because of that same fact. I have to respect a movie that affected me so profoundly. and I wasn't the only one. The Shining has endured, and is shown in a form of hommage emblematic of this XXI century: parodies,mashups, recuts. there are a cubic assload of selfsame all over teh internets; won't take you long to find them.
begin the clippage:
trailer
and because it showed up on the first page of results when I googled The Shining
The Shining reenacted by bunnies
one of my favorites: a movie written and directed by Orson Welles, who also played the main character...(no, is not this movie, smartypants. you didn't even read the title. be quiet)
but unlike that other movie, which all of y'all who taken Film 101 will remember 'was written/directed/acted produced by Orson Welles' it also was the only one in Welles's brilliant, contentious, and much-studied career where he was able to maintain control, i.e. deciding what was to be 'the final cut'. in no other movie he directed did Welles have that control.
yaddayaddayadda. why all this? because Touch of Evil, the movie I'm talking about, was originally released after being edited and cut by the studio. Welles's hated it. years after his death, with much fanfare, Touch of Evil was released in 1998 touted as being 'Welles's Original Vision".
this release was possible because all the footage Welles's had shot still existed, alongside his extensive notes. here be teh wiki for much more detail and linkage if interested
this 1998 release is the only one I've seen. on DVD. not on the theater, though I hold out hope to do so someday.
I cannot bloviate on 1958 vs 1998, studio vs. Welles etc. but I suspect the studio must have been embarrassed about overriding Welles's vision, because I can't find a clip from the 1958 release. not even the trailer.
ok, time for the clip show. trailer for the 1998 release:
the opening scene, famous for cinematic reasons. guess why if you like
my favorite exchange between Welles's character, Quinlan, and Marlena Dietrich's, Tanya. can't find a clip, so read on:
Tanya: We're closed.
Quinlan: You've been cookin' at this hour?
Tanya: Just cleanin' up.
Quinlan: Have you forgotten your old friend, hmm?
Tanya: I told you we were closed.
Quinlan: I'm Hank Quinlan.
Tanya: I didn't recognize you. You should lay off those candy bars.
Quinlan: It's either the candy or the hooch. I must say, I wish it was your chili I was gettin' fat on. Anyway, you're sure lookin' good.
Tanya: You're a mess, honey.
you the reader have to imagine the voice tones, looks, camera back-and-forths, etc. that make the above exchange bitter/eerie/wistful and able to give you Quinlan' and Tanya's story in those few lines. is one of those scenes used in classrooms to demonstrate why film is an art form, not just moving pictures.
a later scene with the same characters:
a film noir, that schooled any other movie calling itself a film noir before and after it.
being a film noir is impossible to discuss the plot without giving it away.
you didn't hear it from me, but rumor has that 'round teh YT someone has uploaded the whole damn movie in parts. can't think of a better way to spend a rainy fall afternoon
today's woot shirt of the day made me laugh. out loud. may have even snorted a li'l
disclaimer: this is not a paid endorsement or otherwise compensated for post. w00t stuff makes me laugh and if I post about it it seems fair to provide a link. no one is making you click on the link.
what a groundbreaking movie Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was. the movie of a play that many thought impossible to bring to the screen. the first American movie where the word 'goddamn' was said. the movie where Elizabeth Taylor, disheveled, profane, lewd and loud finally proved herself the equal if not the superior actor to her husband-at-the-time, the superb Richard Burton.
the trailer coyly hinted at what was to come
WAoVW? begins with an Elizabeth Taylor who moves and acts as a trapped animal. is impossible to look away
Humiliate the Host is one
if you think that Mad Men exposes what really was going on in the 60s, rent this movie.
first the bad news: there are no video clips, no web-pages-dedicated-to-it, no film stills, not available on dvd or vhs for rental or purchase, the barest of entries in imdb. ... took me an hour of hard searching and all the google-fu I could muster to find this microscopic image of the poster
teh SO is a genius. for realz. he went searching on eBay, and not only found the movie for sale (VHS, used, natch) but even found a trailer ! (the voice over on the trailer does not match my description below. at all) but you must remember that I saw this movie once, 20+ years ago. plus the voice over of the trailer is for the American market and likely to emphasize the funny bits; there are some)
<sigh>
the movie takes place in a small Irish village. when I say "village" it is - the roads (even in town) are dirt, most houses are barely more than shanties, there are large empty areas all over town, overgrown, unkempt.
Eat the Peach is set in the early 1980s, a period when poverty-ridden Ireland was taking a turn for the worse. one of the few employers in town, an automobile factory, closes shop, making a bad situation even more dire. one of the town men (our hero as it were) owns a motorcycle. alongside a friend, our hero catches a TV showing of one-of-the-most-forgettable-among-many-forgettable Elvis Presley movies: Roustabout (1964). the scene we are shown the friends watching is one where Elvis rides his motorcycle around a carnival-type velodrome, and our hero, inspired, decides to build a wooden velodrome in his backyard.
this is hard for me to explain, but the idea is that the velodrome is like a big tall barrel with a ramp entrance: the rider enter the velodrome and goes round and round until riding almost perpendicular to the inside walls of the velodrome. hell, if you've seen The Simpsons movie you may have an idea of what I'm trying to describe.
things happen, other things happen, our hero builds a shakey and fragile-looking wooden velodrome, manages to perform the feat, and since this is not an American movie, fails spectacularly at making any money out of it. not only that, but a veryverybadthing happens towards the end of the movie that leads to... nothing. nothing. no insight, no redemption, ...nothing. we are left with the impression that life will continue kind of as it were. maybe not.
I cannot express the impact this movie had on my thinking and appreciation of movies. it was such a shock to not have a nicely-wrapped-up ending. I'm forever thankful that no American studio was ever interested in remaking Eat the Peach since as we all know, American studios hate untidy movies, untidy people, untidy endings.
another lovely, lovely characteristic of Eat the Peach: though it takes place in Ireland, there is not much "Irishness" in it. there is a pub, yes, but no full-of-wisdom bartender or witty banter. no one with a 'spring on their step and a wink on their eye'. the men sit, silent, staring into their pints at the pub. the women try to maintain their households on a string and a prayer. kids play. there are joyous moments but mostly life is hard, you get kicked regularly and you pick yourself up. sometimes.
update @19:43 11/04/2009: added link to trailer and 2nd paragraph
what do gay men and women do to you? why the fear? how much longer shall we have to endure? to wake up every morning knowing that we still live "separate and unequal"?
how much longer are we going to stand by watching our civil rights being voted down again and again?
(sorry about the pink angel. not in the mood to look for cover art)
