MOVIES!

Bonnie n Clyde - "hated it" ?

I wandered through HMV last night - they had this thing called the "Alfred Hitchcock Signature Collection" which is 6 x DVDs in a crappy cardboard slipcase. Reduced from 60UKP to 12UKP! I bought it of course - it has Strangers on a Train Two-Disc Edition, North by Northwest, Dial M for Murder, The Wrong Man, I Confess, eh a couple of others, I forget. There's an American edition w/2 more DVDs in it, apparently Pretty fucking good score for 12 quid anyway, eh?

I also got the 2DVD of Errol Flynn "Robin Hood" in super-garish technicolor, and a DVD of the old "42nd Street" musical from the '30's, both pretty cheap, I watched "42nd Street" last night, it was great! Saucy, snappy pre-production code dialogue, great tunes, Ruby Keeler v v cute & likeable. Busby Berkeley v obviously & blatantly a "leg man". Jill totally hated it, she was like "this is REALLY annoying".

children of men -- heavyhanded refs to islamofascism and iraq but pretty riveting nonetheless (DVD)

the killers -- vintage minimalist Kubrick good on TV. corny/great hardboil dialogue: Jim Thmpson

shattered glass

"got it right" w/r/t working at a magazine: endless meetings and pointlessly ambitious youngsters

first 20 of Dial M for Murder (did not pick up on gay stuff seeing this age 11)

hmmmmm? apparently I didn't pick up on this at 21.

Saraband
The Apartment

next:
Angel Face
The Assassination of Jesse James by the CowardRobert Ford

Cinema:

Knocked up
Two Days in Paris
...and the season of Allain Robbe-Grillet's films at the Lumiere that continues this sunday w/ Trans-Europ Express

DVD:

Spirit of the Beehive
L'Elogie D'Amour

the killers isn't kubrick! killing is kubrick. tho killers was on tcm the other night and i still get endless pleasure from fat guy and skinny guy hit men.

both involve heists.

one has tim carey, other has jeff corey

yeah The Killing is the one at the racetrack. one of my all-time faves. don't know if I've seen The Killers.

both killers are pretty awesome (lol critereon). 40s one is kinda boilerplate noir in a lotta ways but v well done, beautifully filmed, and YOUNG BURT LANCASTER is all sweaty and doomed 94/7. opening scene is almost word-for-word hemingway (which you don't really see that often) and effect is pretty cool.

plus extended homage to last words of dutch schultz!

I'm such a douche, it was The Killing (on TCM awhile back) not The Killers. The racetrack setting cornfuses.

I saw the 60s version of The Killers on TV back when Reagan was still president, haha at the scene where he slaps around Angie Dickenson. "grandpa how could you?" director is Don Siegel of Dirty Harry fame.

one of those hitmen in the '46 version is William Conrad! aka the narrator on Rocky & Bullwinkle, later TV's "Cannon"

watched the original d.o.a. tonight. silly but great.

edmond o'brien: noise noir hero

http://www.pmsimon.com/images/johnnymidnight.jpg

you gotta love a dude who got to be a leading man in the '40s just because he was ugly in a way that was almost reminiscent of beloved ugmo humphrey bogart

I wandered through HMV last night - they had this thing called the "Alfred Hitchcock Signature Collection" which is 6 x DVDs in a crappy cardboard slipcase. Reduced from 60UKP to 12UKP! I bought it of course - it has Strangers on a Train Two-Disc Edition, North by Northwest, Dial M for Murder, The Wrong Man, I Confess, eh a couple of others, I forget. There's an American edition w/2 more DVDs in it, apparently Pretty fucking good score for 12 quid anyway, eh?

-- Pashmina, Friday, September 21, 2007 10:20 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Link

woah! s'funny i was going to post on the fopp thread that hmv had another hitchcock box set for £25 that had -- basically -- all of his universal films (eg from 'rear window' onwards excepting 'nnw') and a bunch of forties ones. but then i saw hmv also had that for £25.

DUDES EASTERN PROMISES IS SO FUCK RAW AWES

SEE IT SEE IT !!!!!!!!!!!!!

u probably just tipped me into seeing at the theater instead of renting so it better be good

he just tipped me the other way.

EASTERN PROMISES IS SO FUCK RAW AWES

TRUE! except too short. is it even 90 minutes? i could have happily sat for another 3 hours.

it was a bit short:-/ very entertaining though

awesome tipping action - would influence again!

it's not a great monologue but it's a nice moment that is totally necessary for setting up devastating last scene

lol whoops

should not be defending manhattan in the middle of a cronenberg convo

in fact should prob just drink a beer and forget about it

DRAGON WARS - wuz awesome dudez

broken english - meh. needed more dragons, i think.

proposition was kinda boring

on fast-forward

Ultimax Force - Rambo knock-off. With ninjas. In Vietnam.

The Hole
Eastern Promises
Drugstore Cowboy

fires on the plain -- good lord.
the lives of others -- this was ok but i did not love it. nothing surprising in it, and i sort of didn't believe the main character. plus also the boho artists he was spying on were kind of annoying.

(i am also watching sapphire and steel which i haven't seen since i was 9 and i'm surprised how spooky it still seems. plus joanna lumley and david mccallum are a great proto-mulder-and-scully.)

I hope that means you think fires on the plain is maybe the greatest war film ever

Brothers of the Head (meh)

yeah pretty much. but i also just mean...good lord.

(the interview w/ichikawa included on the disc is really great too, talking about his family surviving hiroshima.)

THE BRAVE ONE

decent, but man, jodie got off way too easy, wtf

Sansho The Bailiff : Beautiful but doesn't get the absolute love from me that Life Of Oharu will always get.

Inland Empire 2xDVD: perhaps the single best DVD purchase I've made in - what? - the last
few months and one I always will cherish just because QUINOA on DVD2 is one of the greatest Lynch
moments ever. + the behind-the-scenes footage is rad. "You don't watch movies on a fucking telephone. Get real!"

THE BRAVE ONE

decent, but man, jodie got off way too easy, wtf

-- elmo argonaut, Monday, September 24, 2007 4:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

OTFM i thought the same thing. i didn't like the ending at all.

sapphire and steel

sometime in the recent past i watched all the episodes on youtube. fuck, what a great show.

what do you guys expect from vigilante movies, even when it's Neil Jordan making them "complex"?

i imagine they expect, or hope, that they are good or satisfying movies, regardless of their subject matter

um recently:

man is not a bird (great, if a bit slight)
fitzcarraldo (wowowowow)
anna karenina (the one w/garbo. liked it well enough)
south pacific (good lord, is this badly directed)

Inland Empire 2xDVD: perhaps the single best DVD purchase I've made in - what? - the last few months

How so? I found watching this on DVD the most frustrating film experience of the last year. Maybe I've a shitty TV or "sound system."

what is "sound system" a euphemism for?

ih, you should see Burden of Dreams next

Blowup (neither as great nor dated as different camps claim)
The Long Riders
Hour of the Wolf

(i am also watching sapphire and steel which i haven't seen since i was 9 and i'm surprised how spooky it still seems. plus joanna lumley and david mccallum are a great proto-mulder-and-scully.)

-- tipsy mothra, Monday, 24 September 2007 15:21 (2 days ago) Bookmark Link

That one with the girl trapped in the old photographs scared the shit out of me as a kid, I couldn't sleep for about a week. I saw it about 5-6 years ago, expecting it to be a bit hokey, but it was still pretty spooky.

There's Always Vanilla (G Romero's 2nd film -- weird 60's fallout film about a drifter who falls into an affair with a model, sort of clumsily influenced by verité things like Brian DePalma's "Hi Mom" and worth the patience if you like Romero's "Season of the Witch", which is amazing)

The 9th Configuration - fucking horrible sophomoric script about an asylum filled with many fast-paced quippy monologues delivered by 'crazy people' w/ tacked on Jesus imagery, watched the last half ffwd but the very ending is so incompetent it's astonishing, all jaws in the room dropped

The Taste of Tea - totally wonderful & happy, if you like Fanny & Alexander and you like Visitor Q but are more in the mood for surreal / heartfelt emotion tears than Miike's funny sadism / incest / lactation / incontinent necromancy scenes, then this is a film

broken sky -- homo-dreamy
the departed -- 50 percent longer than infernal affairs, but only 2/3 as good.

taste of tea!!!!!!

eastern promises
lipstick and dynamite
deadly outlaw rekka