I really want to see this but still haven't made it out to the theater yet. Love Mike Leigh.

Gilda
Part of my on-going quest to watch film noirs. I was sort of surprised that this one isn't critically appreciated. From reading about it, it seems most critics consider it a poorly directed vehicle to showcase Rita Haywood's sex appeal. I actually found it to be more modern than a lot of the noirs I've seen. Rita Haywood's Gilda is the best Femme Fatale I've seen so far. She is sexy and the director never does miss an opportunity to play it up. Gilda is much less sexually repressed than most noirs. It constantly pushes the edges of 40's moral bounds.

But the thing I really enjoyed about it is all of characters' pasts are never revealed. It keeps a mystery about all the characters and you're never sure who are the good guys. Gilda is a very morally ambiguous world, where all of the characters are cruel to one another. And the Ballin character is downright bizarre in a good way.

Ordered my wife The Threepenny Opera (Kurt Weill's music is great in this) and Pandora's Box.

In a similar quest, I watched this for the first time a few months back and really liked it, but, while Hayworth was pretty damn sexy, Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice is the pinnacle of sexy femme fatale for me, too bad the movie itself doesn't live up to her hotness.

Yeah, the Postman Always Rings Twice was one of the lesser noirs I've seen too. Turner was great.

Favorite Gilda quote, " I can never get a zipper to close. Maybe that stands for something, what do you think? "

Watched Black Caesar tonight. The scene where Gibbs beats the white cop's face in with his shoeshine box--after applying shine to the guy's face--whilst making him sing "Mammy" was fucking amazing.

Had the rarest of rare "crappy rom-com ended up being better than expected" experience last night. Got roped into watching a DVD of Going the Distance, starring Drew Barrymore and The Mac Guy. The plot/story was ultra-cliche and predictable, BUT there were quite a few hilarious lines and scenes. Plus, a healthy serving of funny dudes like Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis. Definitely more palatable than the numerous alternatives, the vast majority of which feature Katherine Heigl and/or Ashton Kutscher.

La Strada. i'm catching up on fellini since i was introduced to his movies via 8 1/2. i liked this fine. it had some humor and was ultimately pretty depressing. it's not exactly the type of road trip movie i expected, though. about midway through when the fool is introduced, i noticed that he speaks english that's dubbed into italian and then there're english subtitles. that was distracting. i think gelsomina speaks english in scenes with him, too.

Huh, I don't remember that. I need to go back and watch this again. It was the first Fellini movie I saw that I liked having, like you, watched 8 1/2 first. (I might like it now, but I didn't at the time.) I've still only watched those two, La Dolce Vita, and Satyricon. LDV is my favorite.

A fun thing to do is to watch La Strada and then Raging Bull, which is what I did the first time I watched both movies.

Win Win. you know, for a movie coming out in the first quarter of a calendar year and that i'd never heard of until last week, this has some pretty known faces - paul giamatti, amy ryan, melanie lynskey, jeffrey tambor, paulie from rocky, that lady who dexter kills with the key lime pie who also grows weed on justified, etc. and it's written/directed by the baltimore sun's scott templeton. anyway, this is about an attorney who also coaches high school wrestling. he does something shady and it blows out of control. this isn't terribly heavy content. it toes a nice line between drama and comedy. i quite enjoyed it.

My thoughts on Ong Bak 3

Quite a let down. A direct sequel to 2, which was awesome, but a lot more mystical/dreamy shit in it. Basically it was a big fight scene at the beginning, and a big one at the end, and an hour-long montage of physical and spiritual training/healing in the middle. I'm not kidding. Dude was doing yoga and practicing dance moves by the waterfall for like 60 minutes!

It had some good fights. He does some cool stuff very quickly and consecutively, I probably should have watched the fights again to try to catch more of what exactly he was doing - like when someone tries to stab him with a spear he leaps over the thrust, catches the spear in between his legs and breaks it in half as he simultaneously lands a punch on the dude's face. It's like "wait, what did he just do?!??!" and he's already on to kicking someone else's ass. But the "story" was just like I said. A few fights with the bad guys from part 2 and a shit load of Thai interpretive dance.

watched under great white northern lights last night, and enjoyed it. a few thoughts:

1. the idea of touring remote canadian outposts was very cool
2. jack isn't as big of a weirdo as i thought
3. meg is definitely a weirdo
4. DEM TIGGIES
5. she truly is one of the all-time butterfaces
6. seems as if they really do have a genuine bond and truly care about each other

i thought it did a really good job of capturing the essence of them as performers. i wonder if meg will continue to pursue a career in music, now that the white stripes have ceased to be.

i think she's the one who put the kibbosh on continuing the white stripes. i'd be surprised if she does anything in music again. she has a family and probably a boatload of money at this point.

Mrs Miniver. this had always been on my radar because i like william wyler's arsenal and it's the first movie that received academy award nominations in all 4 acting categories. while i have reservations about war movies made during the war, this one didn't really bother me. plus, the sermon at the end couldn't have worked at any other time. excellent writing right there. a couple things stood out and surprised me, especially the comic relief from the miniver's youngest son and the state of the older son's marriage at the end. overall, quite good.

Room at the Top. last year my stepmother was scrolling through my dvr and noticed this movie. she commented that she wasn't allowed to watch it when it was out in theaters because of its adult content. i went into this thinking about that and didn't quite get it. yes, it tackles sex and class structure in a very candid manner, but it didn't strike me as anything more risque than what i've seen in earlier movies. simone signoret straight-up kills it in her role. (i've only seen her before in la ronde and les diaboliques and she's great in those, too.) no one else really stuck out for me and i thought the ending was a bit of a copout, but i liked it.

Paul:
Not as good as I had hoped, but still a lot of fun. I liked the little sci-fi in jokes, but I'm sure that I missed more than I caught.
I am sure that it will be vilified by the folks who love their earlier movies. Not because it was a bad movie (it wasn't a bad movie). But lots of folks will say it was awful because it wasn't as good as their earlier ones. Plus, it's about time for the backlash. Here it comes.

Yes, I will watch it again when it comes out of DVD.

True Grit (2010, Coens). Finally got to watch this, and I'm really glad I was able to catch it in the theater. Deakins' cinematography, as always, makes seeing the movie on the big screen totally worthwhile. It was a really enjoyable movie all around, and of course Jeff Bridges was awesome. I don't think I could sit through the John Wayne movie after having seen this. That said, it was pretty anticlimactic. Events unfolded in a matter-of-fact kind of way, and even though there were similar shots in a similar setting as No Country for Old Men, there was almost none of that kind of dread and suspense. Granted, this is a much lighter story with a lot more humor and gentleness, but it kind of lacked drama where it could have used a little more. There were some great moments, though, like the scene at the cabin before Lucky Ned shows up, and then the wide shots when LeBoeuf shows up and confronts Lucky Ned and his men. As with most Coen films, I'd happily watch it again to pick up on any subtleties that I might have missed and just to appreciate the craft of it even further. I just think they just have a weird way of getting too caught up in the details sometimes and having the overall narrative suffer a little bit for it.

The Fighter

I enjoyed this a lot. Just behind Winter's Bone and Toy Story 3 as my favorites from the year. It seems a lot of the criticism centers around David O. Russell having the gall to actually make a boxing movie be about boxing. Marky Mark isn't a great actor but he chooses roles very wisely that fit in his wheelhouse and this is no different. Melissa whatever deserved her academy award. But it was generally well acted. Just a good sports movie even if it's a bit of Rocky cliche'.

Saw An Education (my wife's pick) over the weekend. Expected the worst but it was actually pretty tolerable(also, predictable). Didn't realize until the credits that Nick Hornby wrote the screenplay.

I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, but the jokes got scarcer as the movie went on and it got a little boring.


Battle: Los Angeles I liked it a lot but wouldn't say it's a great movie by any means. Seemed like it was just a version of Halo with a few changes. Good waste of 2 hours and much better than that stupid Skyline movie that came out a few months ago.

Limitless Snuck into this after the above movie. It wasn't bad but I'm glad I didn't pay for it. Goofy plot and if it wasn't Bradley Cooper in this then it would've fared even worse.

Beyond The Darkness This was horrible but I really couldn't stop watching it. Bad dialogue, awful but super gory f/x, decent score by Goblin. Probably the best Joe D'Amato movie but that's not saying much.

Grown Ups I turned it off after 15 minutes.

DRIVE ANGRY SHOT IN 3D

phenomenal

Amber Heard is god.

did that last line ruin the plot?

ha ha no that wasn't a spoiler

In San Francisco last week, a guy tried to sell me a "fresh" bootleg of Battle: Los Angeles while he was waiting in line for Methadone. I think I'm still convinced that's a TV show for some reason.

Wait, you were in SF last week?

yeah, for a few days on a visit. The aforementioned incident took place on Ellis above the Tenderloin, when we were lost trying to find an art gallery for a Yumiko Kayukawa exhibit.

It was also next to the most hilarious gay bar I've ever seen.

Hopefully we'll be back up in August to catch a Phillies game at Candlestick.