In the past, I’ve occasionally filled this digital space with a nice, out of context panel or other drawing rendered by Daniel Clowes. You know, like this: I guess I can stop doing that. Someone else already has that online activity covered. (That’s where the above panels come from too). Clearly I need some new material. So something new starts tomorrow. Continue reading They feed your pride with boredom and they lead you on to war
Happy Independence Day! (Due credit: I found this elsewhere) Continue reading You sure know how to control me, you’re as cool as ice cream
The Last Metro (Francois Truffaut, 1980). One of Truffaut’s last films, The Last Metro is set in a struggling theatre during World War II. The Germans occupy France, causing the acclaimed owner and director of the theatre to hide out in the basement relaying covert suggestions as the troupe upstairs mounts a production that needs to be a success to keep the business afloat. Catherine Deneuve plays his wife and muse, the person trying to keep both him and the theatre safe. Gerard Depardieu plays an actor cast in the latest production, though its his life away from the stage … Continue reading Cummings, Hartley, Lord and Miller, Preminger, Truffaut
The first Fourth of July that I specifically remember occurred in 1976. I’d recently turned six years old at the time of the actual holiday, but I think what I really remember is all the run-up to it. It was the country’s Bicentennial. Anticipation was high (and significantly drummed up) that this would be the finest Independence Day celebration the nation had ever seen. The word “Bicentennial” was everywhere, particular used to drive commerce with it rendered in red, white and blue on store windows to announce a sale inside, or at least the presence of home pyrotechnical devices that … Continue reading One for Friday: Albert Brooks, “Phone Call to Americans”
Roger Ebert recently asserted that “Pixar is the first studio that is a movie star.” While it’s possible to quibble with that “first” designation–MGM in its glory years comes to mind as a contender for that honor–the celebrity of the … Continue reading It’s that little souvenir of a colourful year which makes me smile inside
“She hadn’t caught me, obviously enough, at a very erotic moment in my life. I had never been much of a pickup artist–a few ghastly encounters in my twenties had seen to that–and the alternative prospect of a euphoric romance not only exhausted me but, in fact, struck me as impossible. This wasn’t because of any fidelity to my absent wife or some aversion to sex, which, I like to think, grabs me as much as the next man. No, it was simply that I was uninterested in making, as I saw it, a Xerox of some old emotional state. … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature
Easy Virtue (Stephan Elliott, 2008). Based on a play by Noel Coward, Easy Virtue has all the requisite pieces to help the Priscilla, Queen of the Desert director get his artistic sensibilities back on track after the disastrously bad thriller Eye of the Beholder. The story about an English gent bringing his headstrong new American wife home to meet his snobbish, disapproving family is abundant with basic, effective dramatic conflict, and the source material guarantees that the screenplay will be filled with admirable wit. The finished product is sadly in a perpetual state of overexertion, everything ratcheted up to a … Continue reading Bunuel, Elliott, Gast, Hill, Weide
#27 — Primary Colors (Mike Nichols, 1998) Politics is a circus. It’s a bizarre mix of showmanship and exaggerated danger with every effort made to prop up the most artificial spectacles as if they’re the realest things in the world. It’s populated by people with outsized personalities projecting ingratiating joy, but there always seems to be a lurking hint of menace about them. It is controlled lunacy. About the only place the comparison breaks down is when P.T. Barnum’s famous evaluation of the susceptibility of the audience is invoked. A sucker born every minute? In politics, that seems a drastic … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Twenty-Seven
For those who are devoting some of their Sunday summer hours to HBO’s True Blood, I’m afraid I can’t join you. However, do let me know if any vampire spiders show up. If that critter gets added to the cast, … Continue reading And a spider comes out so I know you’re about
