A Movie Nearly Every Night: Agatha Christie Double Feature

Death on the Nile (1978)
Dir: John Guillermin
Starring: Peter Ustinov, Mia Farrow, Bette Davis, Maggie Smith

Evil Under the Sun (1982)
Dir: Guy Hamilton
Starring: Peter Ustinov, Diana Rigg, Maggie Smith, James Mason

The murders are somewhat silly and borderline impossible (really, no nail varnish on Simon's hands to give him away? That stuff doesn't just come off, ya know), but taking a photo idea out of The Sartorialist and subject idea from my good friend Archival Clothing, I've found that these movies were fantastic for clothes shopping.

Death on the Nile. Communist, dutiful daughter, drunk author or paid companion -- here at Agatha Christie Fine Fashions have clothes to fit every character.

Death on the Nile. Gentlemen in impeccable tuxedos; ladies in demure chiffon or gaudy Edward Gorey

Death on the Nile. Close up of the Gorey details.

Death on the Nile. I imagine in my later years I will be one of these women, depending on how my fortunes go: Wealthy senior with a habit of stealing jewelry (Bette Davis) or spinster paid companion (Maggie Smith). The comforting thought is that you can look good either way.

Death on the Nile. Evening wear for the best couple on the boat with more of crazy, but fabulous, drunk Salome Otterbourne (Angela Lansbury) in the background.

Death on the Nile. Lounge wear for wealthy thieves.

Death on the Nile. Davis detail -- even wealthy thieves get a little risque. Her collar allows a peak at the black slip (which matches her hat and collar) underneath the sophisticated bone-white top. You want that bit of ventilation when you're on the Nile.

Evil Under the Sun. Polka-dot hostess with the mostest. Those are bumpy beads pasted onto the jacket. I really like the daring mix of patterns as well. Maggie Smith is a role model yet again.

Evil Under the Sun. Evening wear as modeled by obnoxious actress Arlena Marshall (Diana Rigg). Don't bother shopping for this one. It only looks good on Arlena. She'll tell you so.

Evil Under the Sun. Close up of Arlena's matching turban, also pasted with beads. Rex Brewster (Roddy McDowell) looks on in a lovely 3 piece tuxedo.

Evil Under the Sun. Wonderful Wonder Bread beachwear for Arlena and snappy sailor duds for Rex. One day I will have cuffs like that on a beach robe. One day...

Evil Under the Sun. One of Arlena's more somber beach outfits. The sunglasses are especially appealing.

Evil Under the Sun. Apparently Peter Ustinov designed Hercule Poirot's beach attire. Well done, Sir Peter.

Unshun. Reshun.

Facebook blows. That is all.

It's not all. I'm adding to this today (10/9). I have not been able to access my Facebook account since last Saturday. I get this:

Sorry, due to site maintenance your account is unavailable at this time.

It used to say to try back in a few hours. Now at least they're giving me this:

We are currently experiencing an extended site maintenance issue that is preventing some users from accessing their accounts or Pages they may administer. Rest assured that your account has not been deleted or compromised. Your original account will be restored as soon as possible so there is no need to create a new one. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience you've encountered while attempting to log in to Facebook during this time.

Yes, day 7 of no contact with my account. My brother has left for Indonesia, my friend is undergoing chemo -- and they're both updating their Facebook page to keep people informed of their progress. Me? I have no idea what's going on. Can't call the brother. Don't want to bother the friend.

I only logged into the damn thing last January. I can't believe how important it's become. But, more than that, I can't believe that this online-only company is completely unable to fix a data/systems issue in 7 days! Why do we trust them with our personal information?

It's a mystery.

A Movie Nearly Every Night: Petey Wheatstraw

Petey Wheatstraw (The Devil's Son-In-Law) (1977)
Dir: Cliff Roquemore
Starring: Rudy Ray Moore, Jimmy Lynch, Leroy & Skillet, Ebony Wright

Oh man, oh man ... this was recommended a long time ago by Reverend Dick and it finally came through Netflix. So happy.

There is no philosophizing here. There is no deeper meaning. There is only one man's journey from kung fu child to comedian to, yes, becoming the devil's son in-law. It's a strange trip in many, many, many ways and I've decided that no picture or two pictures or three will do this motion picture the justice it deserves. T'anks God for YouTube:

(from seat850c)

This scene actually troubled me a little. He's using the devil's cane to save the first kid (which irritates the devil later: "That boy was MINE") and then gets randomly pummled by some other kid in, what are those? Are those Asics Onitsuka Tigers? Righteous. And he makes the little one cry by trying to comb his hair.

Petey Wheatstraw: Good man? Bad man?

Friends, what does it matter as long as you look good doin' it

A Movie Nearly Every Night: Man Hunt

Man Hunt (1941)
Director: Fritz Lang
Starring: Walter Pidgeon, Joan Bennett, George Sanders, John Carradine

Well, would you?

Big game hunter with some time on your hands in Bavaria ... why not? It's 1939. You know who this guy is. No one likes him -- well, a lot of Germans like him, but most people think he's got crazy ideas and is amassing enough power to carry them out. You've got a pretty good bead on him. Are you going to pull the trigger?

Alan Thorndike (Walter Pidgeon) does, but there's no bullet. He thinks better of it and slides a shell into the chamber, but doesn't get in the shot before the Gestapo takes him in to get grilled by Nazi interrogator Quive-Smith (George Sanders). Shot in fantastic evil key lighting, just a tip of it to highlight his monocle, Quive-Smith calls bullshit (or the Nazi equivalent) on Thorndike's excuse that it was just "a sporting stalk" and gives Thorndike the option of release if he signs a confession stating that the British government put him up to assassination.

Menacing Quive-Smith interrogates shadowy Thorndike

Of course, Thorndike is, he is, an E-e-e-e-EEEEE-nglish-mannnnn, so he won't sign. Quive-Smith allows him the opportunity for an "accident" and Thorndike uses it as a chance to escape. He gets back to England, but even there, in the relative safety of his own country, he's hunted down by Quive-Smith and other sundry Nazis, some with more persistence than others.

"Mr. Jones" follows Thorndike underground

There's a lot of Fritz-design in this story --- the close up of dogs nipping at Thorndike's (somewhat distant but implied) rear-end as he escapes Nazi Germany, Quive-Smith's monocle, long shots of deep spaces and great geometric balance --- but there are also a lot of interesting ideas about patriotism and bravery, that could only come from a guy who stands on the outside looking in. If this had been an English film, it would have been much different: everyone would be doing their part, everyone would be true to their Allied and proper government. But it's an American film by a German director and while there's a noisy jingo ending tacked on to the film, there are still a lot of questions raised about who is doing the hunting and why.

We start with Thorndike stalking Hitler, but he's not really going to kill him -- or is he? He puts a shell in the chamber, but is that right or wrong? If it's as right as we think it is, why does he try to hide it? Why doesn't he brave-English come right out and say "Yes, I wanted to take a shot at Hitler"? Then, when he gets back to England, he's pursued through the docks and the underground -- working class locations, although he's clearly a wealthy man with no profession and a lot of leisure time for stalking big game around the world. So he's hunted in his habitat, like an elephant or a lion, but he's out of his element within that habitat, like a tiger in Africa. Not only that, but apparantly the other animals on the safari may help you and they may be looking out for their own skin. Is Jerry (Joan Bennett) helping him or herself? She cries because he won't sleep with her even though she doesn't know anything about him. Could she be one of the Nazis? That arrow in the hat is really obvious. What about Thorndike's wealthy diplomat brother (Frederick Worlock)? He's actually makes things worse for his brother and doesn't seem to care what happens to him or the country.

Thorndike himself is something of an enigma. We don't know if he's brave or foolhardy. But when they catch up to him, when the big game is cornered --- not a shot in the open, not a chance for escape, but well and truly trapped --- that's when we see what he's really made of.

By the way, was Walter Pidgeon ever young?

Fritz lowers the space, squeezes Thorndike into this hole with only an air vent to provide lighting and Thorndike cracks. I've never seen Walter Pidgeon really let loose before and it's shocking. This isn't Mr. Miniver or Mr. Gruffydd or any of the stoic, solid Englishmen he usually played. This is more Ray Milland's territory and if it had been Ray maybe it would have lost it's edge a little. With Walter Pidgeon each time his voice breaks or his body bends with the weight of his frantic shouting you feel it shutter through you. As hunter, he's somewhat confident; as prey with nowhere to go he's a crazy mess.

Does this mean that unless we're winning we're not really brave? We have ingenuity, but first we have hysteria? Maybe that's why the ending was tacked on after all. Maybe it's the studio's way of saying that after you go through hell you find that courage to face the front again ... or maybe you just reach a point where you don't care anymore.

A Movie Nearly Every Night: The Fifth Element

The Fifth Element (1997)
Director: Luc "Film My Fetish" Besson
Starring: Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman, Ian Holm, Milla Jovovich

No pictures. No review except to say that this was the God-awful worst movie I've ever seen. No, really, it beats Dead of Winter, which I would have walked out on except that I saw it drunk and it seemed better just to stay seated so I wouldn't throw up in the aisle. It beats Gangs of New York, which I did walk out on because I wasn't drunk and had only paid $1.50 to see it.

Number 1, top of the charts, 100%, grade A shite.

Oh yeah, and we watched it on Bluray. Dude. When pretty colors can't save you, nothing can.

A Movie Nearly Every Night: Saturday Night Fever

Saturday Night Fever (1977)
Director: John Badham
Starring: John Travolta, Karen Lynn Gorney, Barry Miller

let's throw those heels on the table and see whose is bigger

The story is pretty simple -- Brooklyn kid trying to break out of his dull existence through dancing at the disco -- but that simplicity and the infamous disco explosion that came out of this movie can almost overshadow the seriousness of what's going on. I mean, honestly, it's easy to laugh at the clothes and the dancing and everything that came out of the hype that still surrounds it, but it's also very touching and real, and when they all get on the dance floor in that big group and dance to "Night Fever" I cried.

Here I am/Prayin' for this moment to last/Livin' on the music, so fine

What have they got outside of the disco? If Tony's house is any example, it's unpleasant. His parents snipe at one another ("You never used to hit me ... at least not in front of the kids," his dad says) and the only one everyone admires is Father Frank, who isn't there. When he comes back, no one knows what to do, so they just sit there, dead on the couch.

the collar doesn't really go with the hair

His friends are only out to make it with girls, drink, fight -- knock up their girlfriends who like communion wafers and then not know what to do because they don't love them enough to marry them. And poor Annette, with her married sisters, who can neither be a good girl nor a c*nt, because neither one will get her any kind of respect from the guys she grew up with (and, according to Tony, she can't be both) -- what's out there for her but to get knocked up by someone like Joey or Double J and end up married and miserable?

"There are ways of killing yourself without killing yourself," he says. It's what he's doing every day in Brooklyn. He's only alive in the disco; the rest of the time he's just "staying alive," marking time, waiting until Saturday to come around again so he can forget that regardless of how he feels about everyone else, he's always going to be looked upon as part of a group of animals. Even Stephanie doesn't know what to make of him at first because he's just another guy from Brooklyn. Is he interesting and intelligent? She doesn't know, maybe, then she thinks about it and says yes, maybe, she doesn't know, maybe.

my friends are liars ... my life ... f**k, what now

But Tony is different and, okay, you can say Travolta has dumb expressions on his face, and if you want to judge him the way Stephanie does, it's easy and it's expected. That's how others see him, so that's how we see him, but that's only at first glance, the simple glance, the "disco movie" glance. If you look again, there's always more going on with Tony. He's always thinking about his future --- whether that's the next Saturday or the next 20 years. Unlike his friends who are out for the quick f**k in the car, Tony always wants more, and he thinks it's attainable until he watches the Puerto Rican dancers beat him at the disco. That's when the darkness really settles.

Up until that point he thought he had a chance, that he wasn't one of the gang, and his first reaction is to give up. He violenty tries to "make it" with Stephanie, fails and realizes that going back, being like the other guys in his neighborhood, isn't an option. He's spent 19 years building himself into something else and it's no use to be what others think he is. It's not honest.

He realizes that he's going to have to work a lot harder to get what he wants, and that means getting out of Brooklyn.

A Movie Nearly Every Night: The Dirty Dozen

The Dirty Dozen (1967)
Director: Robert Aldrich
Starring: Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes

"No, SIR, I will not be shaving, SIR"

So there's pure entertainment, there's the message movie, and there's something that falls somewhere in-between and that would be The Dirty Dozen.

War is hell -- check. But rebellion is cool -- check.

If you believe Sleepless in Seattle, this is a boy movie in the same way that An Affair to Remember is a girl movie, but I'm a girl and I don't really like An Affair to Remember and once this goes on I can't stop watching it. It's like when I discovered that The Three Musketeers were really kind of cool even though it was a boy book. I don't want to be a musketeer, but I wouldn't mind dating one. I feel the same way about boy movies, even ones where the guys don't bathe for a few weeks. I like watching guys do their guy things. That's pretty simple, right?

I also like John Cassavetes. He's intense and crazy and says whatever comes into his head and he's totally inspired as Victor Franco, so much that it's hard to believe he did this movie just to get money to make his own films. There's a lot of love for Franco coming out of Cassavetes, and this makes him a magnet for the audience. Sure, maybe you sort of care that Posey is going to "learn letters," but what you really want to know is: What is Franco going to do next?

Reisman (Lee Marvin) taunts Posey while
Franco (John Cassavetes) cheers from the sidelines

Not that the others are slacking. Even Ralph Meeker makes the most of his short role as the psychiatrist ("You've got one religious maniac, one malignant dwarf, two near-idiots --- and the rest I don't even wanna think about"), and George Kennedy is so amazingly low-key that it's hard to believe this was made the same year he was huffing about "Lucille" in Cool Hand Luke.

But aside from Franco, the one you really care about is Jefferson, played by Jim Brown. He's the only one who seems normal. Even Bronson has some issues and he's something of a post anyway, so, by using the wanting-to-date-a-musketeer standard, Bronson's Wladislaw isn't quite making it. (and Telly Savalas? Maggott?? Are you kidding?) But Jefferson is intelligent, calm, dependable and when you need a guy to ditch grenades down into air vents filled with gasoline, he's your man.

"Blow it, Jefferson!"

It's not a perfect movie by any stretch. You know, maybe it doesn't really make sense that hookers would want to dance with stinky soldiers or that blowing up a chateau of Nazis is going to help the war effort. But it's a good night's fun.

Why I went to Journalism school

Today's Eurosport headline:
Ferrari could dump Raikkonen
+
this picture:

+
this lead:
Team president Kimi Raikkonen has said that Kimi Raikkonen is not assured of racing for Ferrari next season

= editor's day off.

Yeah, no, he's not the president. I was worried about the headline until I got to the page and read the story. No fact checking? No facts to check.

He's on the podium in that shot, by the way, so it doesn't really fit -- Ferrari will drop a winning driver? There aren't pictures of him not giving a %^#@ out there? You bet there are. If I can Google one, Eurosport can. But, more than that, coupled with the headline, it implies an emotion that I just don't think he's going to have if "dumped" by his team, especially since he's been publicly shopping other careers for the past year and a half. What I suspect the photo is actually capturing is (a) a need for sleep; (b) a hangover; (c) a hot day at Spa after just getting out of a 110-degree race car; or (d) all of the above.

A (Hindi) Movie Nearly Every Night: Seeta Aur Geeta

Seeta Aur Geeta (1972)
Director: Ramesh Sippy
Starring: Hema Malini, Dharmendra, Sanjeev Kumar, Manorama

Geeta (Hema Malini) being cute as a button

The quality isn't always great and they sometimes lack the basics of film scholar-aesthetics, but the more I watch of Hindi cinema the more I'm starting to really love the essence of it. Unlike Hollywood, which seems to want to distance itself from its core beginnings of fiction and fun, Bollywood has captured and maintained one of the most basic functions of film: Escapism. Rather than drop $8 and sit down to watch what I can see outside for free, I like seeing something completely outside of reality. Hollywood, since the 1950s, and maybe in small, independent productions before then, has been pushing itself away from that tradition with the idea that film is a mirror on society. Honestly, it's as though we've gone back to the morality plays of the dark ages. Here is what we are and what we should/could/would be.

Just as an example, there are these movies out now (usually with Emma Thompson, but in the case of Dan in Real Life, with Steve Carell), which have single people of a certain age finding that Special Someone usually by luck (good or bad) and realizing that this person is their soul-mate. My mom likes these movies because it gives her hope that I won't be single my entire life. I don't like these movies because I think they're a Disney-fication of hope. Dan in Real Life is not a bad movie, but essentially it's a message-movie: There's someone out there, middle-age people. You'll find them. What if I don't? Then you've lied to me. Or maybe I just not a good enough person -- psychological play from entertainment? Why? Hindi cinema, on the other hand, doesn't preach, doesn't promise and therefore doesn't lie.

Solid Bollywood spectacle cinema doesn't give you expectations outside of its reality (Satyajit Ray ... well, that's a whole other topic.). You walk out of the world and into the movie, and for 3 hours you are somewhere else entirely, I don't care what's happening on screen. The characters could be mafia dons and there's still time for a song and dance. Bad things happen and good things sometimes come of it, sometimes not, but it's total, complete, 100% fiction. I don't know what it's like where you live, but in my town (and my town is weird) people don't stop in the street and sing about their feelings. I don't know that it really happens all that often in Mumbai, but it does in the movies. But it's not going to preach to you. You can be a good person or a bad person, you can be violent and shoot down the bad guys or you can be the bad guy, it doesn't matter. This isn't really happening. It's a shadow-show on the wall. It's a book with pretty pictures that entertains you for a few hours.

Seeta Aur Geeta, by Hollywood standards, is a silly movie, but by Bollywood standards is a big box of wonderful. Twins separated at birth -- one grows up wealthy but unhappy in this nightmare Cinderella-esque house; one is a gypsy street dancer. They switch places and many adventures and situations follow. I won't say I loved every minute of it, because Seeta's wealthy household is brutal at the beginning, but it's worth sticking it out because gypsy Geeta balances the accounts later (hand, belt, boot and ping-pong paddle, that's all I'm sayin'). But for 2-1/2 hours it made me forget about my horrible week at work and living in a nation of narrow-minded jerks barking down healthcare reform.

Friends, sometimes a lie told to combat injustice is worth a thousand truths and here's how we sing it.

And, yes, there is plenty of singing and dancing. They sing about love, they sing about alcohol, they sing about their love of alcohol because it's not real life, thank you. It's the movies.

I kid not

photo courtesy of
farm1.static.flickr.com/163/436620452_883ab0017e.jpg

I wish we hadn't already sent the disc back to Netflix, but this borrowed shot is probably a lot better than anything I would be able to capture from the grainy DVD.

It's more decorative armor than undergarment, I guess, but it kept the bad man off, so done and done.

The Devil's Playground

Sorry, not keeping up on the blog as well as I'm a-pposed to. We did watch another movie over the weekend called Ganga Ki Saugand, but I didn't review it because I wasn't entirely sure what happened in it.

There's this gold-sequined bustier that fits both the love interest and the sister (and then the sister trying to hit on the brother and the weird silver phallic statues that come between them); and this message that violence is bad, but maybe violence is okay if it's good violence, but non-violence is better, but for violent people violence is the only way to solve things, but it's all thanks to the Ganges anyway?

See? I just don't know. It was crazy. We have another Bollywood coming from Netflix today (Seeta Aur Geeta) and maybe it will be better.

Anyway, can't blame it all on The Beatles, although I finally got 100% playing the hard level on "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" and that took a lot of practice. But I'm also trying to get through the "nose" section of Tristram Shandy and thinking that maybe John Irving swiped a lot of his style from Sterne. Maybe.

I'm just sayin'.

So idle, but busy at the same time. Go figure.

A Movie Nearly Every Night: Poltergeist

Poltergeist (1982)
Director: Tobe Hooper
Starring: Craig T. Nelson, JoBeth Williams, Beatrice Straight

image courtesy of www.paranomaland.com

I don't have any solid screen shots of this one because it was on Bluray and the cousin/roommate had never seen it before. It was better to let him watch it straight than watch it while fussing with the Nikon. I borrowed the above picture from someone else (http://paranormaland.com/Poltergeistthecurse.html).

Spoiler alert -- although if you haven't seen this yet go rent it now and then read on. It's good. Really good. And here's why:

I've seen this a number of times -- one very memorable time on Halloween with my mom -- and every time I see it there's some new layer to discover. I mean, sure, it's a scary ghost movie and it works that way, but the weird family dynamic and the crazy set design (what's with those stairs?) and the strange ambient sounds just make it so much more than a simple fright flick.

You need a Point A? Start with the obvious birthing of the mother and daughter and work out from there. What's going on with the levels of motherhood -- the mom, the parapsychologist, the medium? What's up with the men? Steven is both a tool that brings about the destruction and a helpless victim of it. The women do everything -- except the teenage daughter whose only purpose seems to be to show that Steven knocked up Diane in high school (mom - 36; daughter - 16) and that they've spent the last 16 years working up to the dream home and the respectable life. But they still roll their own joints, drink and cry a lot, and after the son gets eaten by the tree they leave him standing there alone while they freak out about Carol Anne. What exactly are their priorities? And when the son later rips into that clown, isn't he just doing what his father was unable to do?

There are comments on violence, death and war, generational sexual mistakes, men requiring the use of remote controls and women using the television set controls (why can they just manually change the channel to watch the football game? Why do they have to fight with the remotes?), and really creative uses of light.

Sure, yeah, if you want to get scared, there's plenty of that too. But if you want to make a study of the social structure of a suburban community, I recommend it.

In the end you've got to wonder what the other neighbors are hiding.

Askoa part deux

Yeah, what a shock, he killed a bunch of people and his role as a Buddhist leader through India gets tossed off in a rolling paragraph at the end ("And then Asoka went forth..." and walked the Earf like Caine). Can't blame them really. What's more important: a few more songs or Asoka spreading Buddhism? It's not that hard to figure it out.

Beatles Rockband is lovely to look at. I kept screwing up because I wanted to watch the pretty cartoon in the background, but I think I did my part as an okay George for most of the songs. The cousin/roommate went in for some Expert play as Ringo and survived, although there is a little something inside that urges us to see if Rockband will really allow the Beatles to get booed off the stage. Somehow I couldn't allow it to happen 'though. That's the magic of British pop, friends.

Maybe tonight we'll start the story from the Cavern to Let it Be, but I have to uncross my eyes first. I'm tellin' ya, trying to play and watch the stuff in the background .... man, I thought playing Boston's Smokin' was hard.

A Movie Nearly Every Night: Asoka

Asoka (2001)
Director: Santosh Sivan
Starring: Shah Rukh Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Danny Denzongpa

A somewhat random moment of singing and dance ... I love Hindi cinema

Title change to the blog since Beatles Rock Band arrives tomorrow and that will cut into movie watching, but also because I still haven't finished this one. At this point I'm not even sure when Netflix will be getting it back. It's only 2 hours and 30 minutes, which is short for Bollywood, but it was mom's birthday and we had to go to the market and I'm only an hour and half into it so far and now it's time for bed. I've got another hour, but I'm too old to stick it out tonight. Besides, this first half has given me plenty to go on and I'm pretty sure it'll end in somewhat the same fashion it started in.

See, it's my theory that you can tell the story of any Bollywood film in 5 minutes or less. Actually, if it takes more than 2 minutes, you're just using too many articles and prepositions.

There's this guy, Asoka (Shah Rukh), and he's a prince, and he leaves the kingdom because his half-brother wants to kill him, and he meets this princess, Kaurwaki (Kareena Kapoor), and she's not really a princess, but that's another story, and they get married. Now he's going back to his kingdom because his mother is sick. An hour and a half into it and that's all that's happened. I suspect it will pick up and he will kill some people when he goes home, but if you know your history (and anyone with access to Wikipedia does, come on) you know that he's going to eventually be an emperor and then convert to Buddhism. There's your final hour.

Shah Rukh is lovely and silly and all those things he tends to be in pictures -- and I have no problem with that. If you've got a good schtick you should make it work until the well runs dry. He's got maybe 10 - 12 years left of it, I'd say. Play it out, my man.

Pre-Buddhism Asoka ... he was a violent cheater, but kinda charming

There's singing, dancing, non-kiss love, meaningful stares and plenty of hair swinging. It's everything I expected so far and more.

But, yes, it's a little silly.

A Movie Every Night: La Decima Vittima

La Decima Vittima (The 10th Victim) (1965)
Director: Elio Petri
Starring: Marcello Mastroianni, Ursula Andress

Murder as performance art -- those crazy New Yorkers will watch anything

It's the 21st Century and, if mankind is still alive, he's playing a game called The Big Hunt. Participants are chosen at random from a contestant database to be either the Hunter or the Victim, and you have to be one or the other at least 5 times and survive to win. Caroline Meredith (Ursula Andress -- she's American. No, really) has just finished number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9 and Marcello Mastroianni (playing a guy named Marcello) is on his seventh game when he's picked to be victim number 10. He needs the money having just annulled his wife (still no divorce in Italy??) and had his furniture repossessed.

"If the big hunt had existed in 1940, Hitler would certainly have become a member and there would have been no World War II."

Interesting theory -- so is this a political comment on the state of mankind in the new millennium? Or is it an Utopian vision of modern morality: instead of illegal murder and suicide you can play in the hunt and not only make your life and death an exciting game, but you also get one million dollars if you win number 10. That's right, one millllllllllllllllllllion dollars.

sheep and plaster casts better scurry...

Yeah, maybe it's about that. Maybe it's about kooky interior/exterior decorating and swinging fashion; or maybe it's about the influence of advertising on the lives of everyday people; or maybe it's modern society's need to validate everything through entertainment.

"Don't kill me, Caroline. Without television, wouldn't it be useless?"

Maybe it's about bullet bikinis and the even bigger questions raised by them:

Oh no ... you di'n't ...
you did.

Like where do you load it, and, yeah, come to think of it, how would you pull the trigger?

A Movie Every Night: Green for Danger

Green For Danger (1946)
Director: Sidney Gilliat
Starring: Sally Gray, Trevor Howard (wheet whoo), Rosamund John, Alastair Sim, Leo Genn

Sally Gray, Leo Genn, Trevor Howard, Megs Jenkins and Rosamund John
One of you is a murderer

My GOD I love the Criterion Collection.

This is a somewhat above average murder mystery in that the mystery is a little weak, but everything else is fantastic. The inspector on the case (played by a sly Alastair Sim) gets all the good lines and he shoots them out with a wonderful casual flippancy. He's like a shaved, well-mannered Dr. House. Trevor Howard and Leo Genn are the central men, both capable of love or murder, and the nurses, Sally Gray, Rosamund John, Judy Campbell and Megs Jenkins (who always seems to play a nurse or a housekeeper), have distinct characters and personalities, unlike the typical damsel-in-distress types. It's easy to believe that they could all be capable of murder, but who could it be......

Inspector Cockrill examines ghostly fingerprints left by the victim

Why do I love Criterion? Because this film is beautifully restored so that every nuance is highlighted, from the back lighting through the cabinet to illuminate a victim's fingerprints on glass, to the sharpening up of the background so that we can see the eerie hanging skeleton decorations at the hospital party. (Nurse "Freddie" remarks that it's August, so it's not Halloween. Are the skeletons some nurse's nutty idea of decorations or is it a presentiment of things to come?)

Dr. Barnes drinks away his troubles while the ornamental dead look on

Even the drinks shine with luminosity that made me thirsty for a cocktail (until they started talking about poison). By cleaning up the negative they've restored all of the purposeful shadows and lights, and the sound is so clean you can hear every innuendo that passes between them all. Sure, as mysteries go, the story could have used a little more work at the resolution, but watching it lead up to that point was more than worth it.

Tomorrow, what you've all been waiting for: La Decima Vittima (1965)

A Movie Every Night: Dracula

Dracula (1970)
Director: Jesus Franco (you heard me)
Starring: Christopher Lee, Klaus Kinski, Herbert Lom, Fred Williams, Maria Rohm

One of the many shots detailing the inside of someone's nose

That was excruciating.

I've seen Ed Wood pictures with more going for them than this. I've seen educational films about wheat harvests with more going for them than this. Klaus Kinski, who might have saved it with his craziness, only gets to croak out one word: "Varna." That's it. The rest of the time he's wandering around staring and shaking his hair out of his eyes, and while he's doing it there's a camera man capturing it all. I know, because I saw him.

Shadow of the vampire? Nope, it's the shadow of the hand-held camera guy. Should we shoot it again? Jesus Franco, why should we?

A Movie Every Night: Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss

Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss (1982)
Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Starring: Rosel Zech, Hilmar Thate, Cornelia Froboess, Annemarie Duringer

Poor Veronika, always in some kind of prison

"Love is the best, most insidious, most effective instrument of social repression." -- Ranier Werner Fassbinder

We move from love to suffocation. Everybody is trapped and repressed by something in this movie, whether it's drugs or other people. They want to be free to express art, because, as Veronika says, if you're not free your art isn't free

The contrasts lighting is high and intense. The whites are so blown out sometimes that the darks get sucked in. It's brutal and illuminating. There are plenty of fun little references to UFA, usually in things said by the characters, but more often by the Expressionist sets (what's a mirror ball doing at the drug clinic?). Everything is blank, brutal, cold and full of misery. The war imprisoned Germany, which is then imprisoned by Americans with their black market morphine and their silly music ("The Battle of New Orleans" by Johnny Horton in particular). No one escapes until they die.

Yeah, it was a fun Friday night.

And angels sing thee to thy rest

Good luck, Michael Jackson fans. If you think you're going to get in to his spot at Forest Lawn Glendale I've got a little story for you.

I was a regular at Forest Lawn back when I was a kid (or after I was old enough to drive, but not old as I am now). I would go every month and hang out with Spencer Tracy and Alan Ladd and smoke cigarettes with Errol Flynn.

(Photo from seeing-stars.com)

It was nice. No one seemed to mind my being there and I always brought them daisies because daisies are kind of simple and sweet and less showy than roses. I couldn't afford roses in any case.

Once I was there with friends and we went into the Great Mausoleum with the sincere intention of paying a visit to my hero, Irving Thalberg (okay, you people in my dish about him cutting Greed need to lay off -- it's a complicated story and von Stroheim was mad. A genius, sure, but barking mad)(but I digress). We went in, sat through the entire Last Supper stained-glass window presentation (here's how it looks at sunrise ... now, sunset ...) about how the glass came from Italy piece-by-piece la la la. We get up, after respectfully offering this tribute of attention, and walk over to the Sanctuary of Benediction --- not to go in it, mind, just to lay our daisies at the gate --- and a guard was on us like THAT. No, no, no, he says. You have to go now. It's not allowed.

Paying your respects is not allowed at Forest Lawn Glendale. Remember that.

So, while I don't begrudge the famous a little peace in the end, it kind of sucks to get turned away when you're on a sincere mission of adoration. However, at Hollywood Memorial Park (or whatever it's called now) you can lie on top of Tyrone Power without a hassle. That's all I'm sayin'.

A Movie Every Night: Star Trek The Motion Picture

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)
Director: Robert Wise
Starring: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, yeah, yeah, yeah...
Special Bluray edition
(which means the screen shots are courtesy of Nikon and the cousin/roommate)

Kirk, Spock and Bones: as it should be, friends

The idea behind this series is to watch movies I either haven't seen before or haven't seen all the way through. Now, I know you're going to think I'm lying on this one, but the only Star Trek movie I've ever seen all the way through is The Wrath of Khan. Honest as the day is long -- no, wait, I saw that one with the whales, but I never saw the first movie, although I think I maybe tried to watch it once way back when it was on SelecTV and the only thing I remember is that VGER was Voyager. I'm sorry, did I ruin it for anyone? I haven't. Honestly, by the time you get to that point you're already kind of sleepy anyway and the surprise is a little lifeless. It takes them 20 minutes just to get Kirk on board the Enterprise. (That's 20 minutes in a shuttle, not 20 minutes of forwarding the story.)

My mother likes this one, she says, because it's a love story. I think she's absolutely right. Kirk loves his ship enough to challenge the new captain out of ownership. The new captain, soon to demote down to commander, Will Dekker (Stephen Collins), loves the navigator, Lt. Ilia (Persis Khambatta), who apparently likes him, sort-of, but won't sleep with him or anyone, apparently, because she tells the captain and the entire crew that she is celibate even though no one asks.

Brokeback Enterprise

There are some sweet moments of boy-love between Kirk and Spock, machines love other machines --- it's a crazy universe. But the big love is clearly reserved for Dekker and Ilia, who ... it's complicated. Let's just call her Veeger and she's a machine, right, and she has feelings, right, but doesn't have feelings, right, and the machine wants to know if there's MORE, right, than just being a machine, right, so it's tapping into feelings, right, and so the mommy and the daddy when they get together....

Dekker "mates" with the machine

Kirk's reaction: How is it I've never had that kind of action?

Yes, my mother is right. It's all about love, love, Love!

A Movie Every Night: The Black Dahlia

The Black Dahlia (2006)
Director: Brian De Palma
Starring: Josh Harnett, Scarlett Johansson, not nearly enough Aaron Eckhart and far too much Hilary Swank

Josh Hartnett doing what he does best: staring into brown space

"Junior Nash was an inbred, Okie shit-kicker."

That's the only line in the movie worth quoting and it's straight out of Ellroy. I haven't read this book in years, but I seem to remember being interested in what happened to the characters. It was a grisly case, no one was all good or all bad, and that trip down to Tijuana and finding Lee and how he really dies ----- dude. My friend Jeff said he had to shower after reading it. In this version we get guys falling from a balcony and death in a fountain (which reminds me, Scarface is on tv tonight). It was really hard to care about what happened to these people and maybe I wasn't supposed to care, but, then again, maybe investing in them might have made it a better movie to sit through because it certainly made it a good book.

I blame the sepia tone. The whole thing is coated in brown except for one artsy moment at the end, one real, colorful, exciting moment and it's OH wait it's a nightmare hallucination.

Color = bad.

Oh Brian ... geez, you know, when you were copying Hitchcock I thought it was really cool. Some people thought you were just being unimaginative. I said nooooooo he's paying homage. He appreciates Hitchcock. He wants to show his love of Hitch's style. And, sure, some of the acting is kind of flat in The Untouchables, but Mamet's hard to do if you're not used to it ("Nice house. I said. Nice. House.") and who cared since the music was Morricone and the clothes were Armani? But you had Ellroy here. You had some hopped up great dialogue and it's drowned in floppy fake music and lost in weird, slow, unnecessary moments of nothingness.

You could have at least kept the Ensenada burial ground.

O

The full moon is coming. I know because this came through the work email this morning:


Message: You have an employee at one of your San Antonio by the name [name removed, but it was in the email] who used to work the bakery dept. at the Cosco store here in El Paso, TX I need to buy some pot and cocain from him as well as his usual store merchandise he steels and sells. Can you help me contac him?\\ thanks tom


"Tom" also provided his phone number and email address so we could hook him up with the Steelin' Deeler. Oh yeah, I don't work for Costco, so I'm not entirely sure why he chose us for this message, but I'm so glad he did.

A Movie Every Night: A Hard Day's Night

A Hard Day's Night (1964)
Director: Richard Lester
Starring: John, Paul, George, Ringo, and Wilfrid Brambell (the 5th Beatle)

John shares his hobbies

Maybe you don't have brothers. Maybe you haven't seen Jackass. Maybe you went to an all-girls school for your entire life and have never once run around like crazy with a group of boys who don't care if they tear their pants or fall on their face because the fun is in the freedom and the laughing and the falling down and tearing your pants.

It's pretty infectious.

And let's face it, adults are boring. They have to conform to conventions. They have to be reasonable. And it's funny, if you think about it, being middle-aged and old takes up most of your time. Get out once and awhile and forget what you've got to do and be what you really are. Parade yourself before it's too late!

Honestly, who can't appreciate that? Love them, like them, hate them -- I defy anyone to keep from joining in however briefly you do so.

Ringo contemplates the diagonal with his lovely Pentax

We all know the ending. We've seen the future. The beautiful black and white photography of Gilbert Taylor is lovely and somewhat poignant, knowing that he later did that weird hazy work in The Omen and the silly, eye-popping Flash Gordon. But this is the past, right after he shot Dr. Strangelove and right before Repulsion; when Richard Lester could move his camera through train corridors and chase his subjects down streets; when the boys were all young and alive and happy.

Do the pony and the jerk, let go of the night and fly through the day. You won't regret it. Not one moment.

Until it ends.

A Movie Every Night: Marked Woman

Marked Woman (1937)
Director: Lloyd Bacon (mmmm bacon)
Starring: Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Lola Lane, the delightful Isabel Jewell

Hostesses with the mostest-es
left to right: Mayo Methot, Lola Lane, Bette Davis, Rosalind Marquis, Isabel Jewell

Hard day on the job? Your boss treating you like you're an idiot? Jerks barking at you on the phone? So, let's say you work at this clip joint run by a mobster and you go all night cozying up to guys, trying to get them to lose at craps, hoping to get a cut of the action so you can pay the gas bill. You think you're smart, because so far you've kept going on the dimes they throw you, but you've got this dopey kid sister who gets mixed up in the "fun" and ends up dead. That sucks, huh? Whaddya gonna do about it? You think you're going to talk, do you? Well, let's say the mobster gets his goons to put the double-cross on the side of your face to shut you up.

So, you go to the DA, but he's not going to help you because you lied once to protect your mobster boss. Why should he believe you now? Because he's got it for you, baby. You're his kind of girl, only you're a "hostess" and he's legit and at the end it's just you and the girls walking off into the fog while reporters start primping him for a run at governor.

So think about it, as you watch them saunter away into the dark, leaving the vocal devotees of society's moral code who support justice, but reject those who serve it: working girls looking for a break, hoping to show that they have scruples like anyone else.

They just work crap jobs.

Today's "I cut my tongue on these pancakes" Moment

cust: YES
cust: I HAVE A CONPLAINT
cust: HELLO
us: I'm sorry to hear that, how can I help you today?
us: Hello---
us: How can I help you today?
cust: WHEN I OPENED A PACK OF YOUR DENTYNE ICE GUM I GOT A SLIVER OF METAL IN MY FINGER
cust: I SPOKE TO A FEW FRIENDS AND THEY SAID IT HAPPENED TO THEM ALSO

It made my day.

Sholay!

Or, as it's known on the Netflix envelope G.P. Sippy's: Sholay.

Best movie EVER --- and we've only watched half of it. It's a really nutty mix of 1970's action and 1960's American western, and I swear, we just watched an almost shot by shot homage to Once Upon A Time in the West and it was AWESOME. Yeah, sure, you've got to get past the silly motorcycle song and the somewhat awkward Hitler humor, but it's totally worth it.

Oh, and Amitabh Bachchan steals it from Dharmendra with his dazzling urbanite coolness. He is my new hero.

unFair

I apologize if you've heard this metaphor before, but I can't think of a better one -- It used to be that hearing a concert at the Lane County Fair was like buying a vowel on Wheel of Fortune: Why would I pay $13 to stand on one side of the barrier when I can hear the same music for free on the other side of the barrier (or the front lawn of our house)? It's useless. I'm not shelling out dough for something I can get for free. Well, apparently someone got wise and moved the concerts inside one of the exhibition halls, right next to the room with the cakes, cookies and shortbreads, and now you can't hear it outside anymore.

Which, on the aside, it was pretty funny to be looking at Junior Yeast Breads and listening some local opening band shout out the old "ROCK ON EUGENE" on the other side of the wall.

This year's big act was Foreigner. We didn't pay for the show (as usual), but since the good bathrooms are in the exhibition halls anyway I figured we'd catch at least one decent song by doing a pop-in. What do you think is playing? Is it "Hot Blooded"? "Urgent"? "Cold as Ice"? "Juke Box Hero"? ANY of the great ones????

No. It was "I Want to Know What Love Is." And since security was there to move along loiterers trying to catch the show for free in the hallway, there was no chance to wait around for something better.

Boo.

So we went on the Zipper. TWICE. The second time my sunglasses zipped right out of the cage. We found them later on the midway.

Thank God for contact lenses, man. That's all. If my bi-focals had come off they'd have knocked somebody out.

This one's for my dad

My pop didn't believe me when I told him I had seen this, so I used the sh--ty phone camera to capture it for posterity.


Who would buy this? You know that when you get it up to the register the first thing they're going to look at is your turkey neck. "That'll be $42.5--wow that is bad."

It's a little better on their website where the tough love packaging is replaced by a common sense tag line: "If you have skin... you need StriVectin®!" Whew, good thing only a few of us have skin. And as much as I love the ellipsis as a pause between thoughts, I'm not sure what its purpose is there. "If you have skin..." -- take a moment and think about it. Do you have skin? Do you? Really... Do you? Okay then, you need...