It's that time of year again, when the SXSW film festival opens up their panel discussions selection process to the public to vote on which topics they find the most interesting. Audience polling accounts for approximately 1/3 of the decision-making process.
If you feel so inclined please vote for my proposal: Animating Reality: The New Frontier for Documentary Film and maybe I'll see you at SXSW next year!
Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule has posted his latest movie quiz, this time holiday-themed! And I, as per usual, would rather accept a flunking grade than give a witless answer. Hope everyone had a safe and fun holiday this year, preferably with a lot of movies!
1) What was the last movie you saw theatrically? On DVD or Blu-ray?
Tell No One, House Bunny and I'm choosing to just say no to Blu-Ray until I own a tv that I didn't find on the street.
4) Favorite actor/character from Twin Peaks
David Bowie.
5)
It’s been said that, rather than remaking beloved, respected films,
Hollywood should concentrate more on righting the wrongs of the past
and tinker more with films that didn’t work so well the first time.
Pretending for a moment that movies are made in an economic vacuum,
name a good candidate for a remake based on this criterion.
I don't think there's anything wrong with it, but I just saw Samuel Fuller's Underworld USA and it's totally a predecessor to the Wire. That would be a fun one to see modernized.
6) Favorite Spike Lee joint.
Do the Right Thing, a cliche choice because it's true! She's Gotta Have It is also pretty amazing.
8) Are most movies too long?
Yes!! But not because there's anything wrong with a long runtime. I just don't need to sit through 2+ hours of something that's dumb and repetitive.
9) Favorite performance by an actor portraying a real-life politician.
John Travolta & Emma Thompson as the Clintons in Primary Colors.
12) Why would you ever want or need to see a movie more than once?
Because it rocked? Because there's nothing on tv? There's plenty of great reasons so long as it's not New Years Eve.
13) Favorite road movie.
Daytrippers.
16) Favorite opening credit sequence. (Please include YouTube link if possible.)
American Psycho [link], I remember the whole theater was (in on the joke and) loving it and laughing.
18) Jean-Luc Godard once suggested that the more popular the movie, the less likely it was that it was a good movie. Is he right or just cranky? Cite the best evidence one way or the other.
The answer to the question 'is Jean Luc Godard just cranky?' is always "yes". In any context. Dude, take a pill. And preferably not Adderall, kthnx!
19) Favorite Jonathan Demme movie.
I really hope someone says the Manchurian Candidate re-make.
21) Favorite use of irony in a movie. (This could be an idea, moment, scene, or an entire film.)
I'm not even sure what irony means anymore but the scene in Children of Men where Clive Owen's cousin says "I just try not to think about it" still gives me the giggles. Also, everything Slavoj Zizek says in A Pervert's Guide to Cinema.
23) The best movie of the year to which very little attention seems to have been paid.
881, it's a crime this film doesn't have US distribution. RIP, Tartan. I also loved FLOW: For Love of Water but a documentary about the impending water crisis is a tough sell.
25) Favorite movie about journalism.
Shattered Glass is really under-rated.
26) What’s the DVD commentary you’d most like to hear? Who would be on the audio track?
If Hitchcock was still around I think he'd have a lot of fun with them. People forget how funny he was. Also, I don't know why Mira Nair never does them, there's a dvd extra on the Namesake of a lecture she gave and she's brilliant & engaging.
27) Favorite movie directed by Clint Eastwood.
I loved Gran Torino but clearly the answer to this question is Unforgiven. Play Misty For Me is also sublime.
29) Your clairvoyant moment: Make a prediction about the Oscar season.
5 million people will Twitter "I didn't know Hugh Jackman could sing and dance!" Twitter will crash. Then 5 million people will complain about Twitter crashing because no one bothered to do their research on Hugh Jackman.
30) Your hope for the movies in 2009.
I hope the indie producers and distributors that have managed to hang on this long are able to weather this economic storm we're facing. Also, I'm inexplicably enthusiastic about the Friday the 13th remake.
31) What’s your top 10 of 2008? (If you have a blog and have your list posted, please feel free to leave a link to the post.)
TBA!
BONUS QUESTION (to be answered after December 25):
32) What was your favorite movie-related Christmas gift that you received this year?
Movie tickets and a book on the works of Andrezj Wadja are pretty awesome but hands down the best was my grandmother giving me 3 copies of my dvd she had purchased because none of her friends wanted them as gifts.
This Alphabetical favorite films meme has been circulating, and I am certainly not impervious to its charms. But inner Tracy Flick feels the need to kick it up a notch and pair up my favorite narratives and documentaries.
Dear readers, I invite you to imagine what some of these double features might feel like..
All That Jazz / American Movie
Battle Royale / Blue Planet
Conformist / Control Room
Deer Hunter / Doing Time, Doing Vipassana
Elevator to the Gallows / English Surgeon
Funny Face / FLOW: For Love of Water
Glengarry Glen Ross / The Gleaners and I
High Noon / Hearts of Darkness
I Want to Live! / Incident at Oglala
Jacob's Ladder / Joseph Campbell: Myths
King of Comedy / Keep the River on Your Right
Lifeboat / Living Museum
Marie Antoinette / Mondovino
Night of the Comet / No End in Sight
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest / Our Brand is Crisis
Primary Colors / Protagonist
Quid Pro Quo / ???
Red River / Rivers and Tides
Silkwood / Shut Up And Sing
Terminator 2 / The Thin Blue Line
Under the Sand / Up the Yangtze
V.I. Warshawski / Vertical Frontier
What a Way To Go / When the Levees Broke
Xala / ??
Your Friends and Neighbors / The Year of the Yao
Zoolander / Z Channel
To celebrate Mothers Day this year I put together a list of Great Moms in Movie History.
The Understanding Mom: Dianne Wiest's earthy compassion grounds the hyper-whimsical Edward Scissorhands, making a story about a man born with scissors for hands (by Tim Burton, no less) seem more Boo Radley and less Freddie Kruger. Before she became the poster child for troubled celebrity youth Lindsay Lohan was all streaky hair, freckles and charm in the 2003 re-make of Freaky Friday. She and Jamie Lee Curtis bridge the generational divide with great comic aplomb. In the 1977 melodrama Turning Point, Shirley MacLaine plays a former ballerina who left the dance life to raise a family and when her former best friend/top competitor (Anne Bancroft) comes into town; a Dynasty-esque catfight ensues.
Read the full list at Greencine.
In a recent article in the NYTimes author-professor Linda Williams stated, “We’re stuck in this dichotomy of pornography’s un-nuanced pleasure and simulated sex, which does not allow certain kinds of representations”. Hollywood is usually eager to improve the formula until this year when most of the top prestige films (Assassination of Jesse James, There Will Be Blood, 3:10 to Yuma, Into the Wild) barely even had women in them.
Plenty of bloggers are happy to discuss what constitutes a good sex scene, I'm here today to discuss the inexplicable sex scenes.
Inexplicable Sex Scenes:
Under the Sand (Francois Ozon) - Charlotte Rampling has a threesome with the ghost of her missing husband and new lover. Oh, Francois Ozon! You've done it again!
Shadowboxer (Lee Daniels) - Cuba Gooding Jr and Helen Mirren play a team of hitmen related by marriage who hooked up after his Dad dies. I have no words.
Blue Velvet (David Lynch) - Really technically a rape scene
and therefore doesn't belong on this list. However I can never pass
up an opportunity to discuss and asthmatic Dennis Hopper's "baby likes
to fuck" monologue.
Showgirls (Paul Verhoeven) - Okay, an easy shot to take in a gravely misunderstood film that introduced us all to the concept of water epilepsy.
11:14 (Greg Marcks) - A teenage hellion (Rachel Leigh Cook) bones a guy to death... in a cemetery!
Where the Truth Lies (Atom Egoyan) - The entire films revolves around a foggily-remembered night when a bisexual comedian (Kevin Bacon) spurns his long-time lover (Colin Firth) to have overly voice-overed sex with a journalist (Alison Lohman). Just odd.
Body Double (Brian DePalma) - Cheating girlfriends, naked neighbors, Melanie Griffith as a porno star! And this was DePalma's headier days?
Inexplicably Bad Sex Scenes:
Gigli (Martin Brest) - Okay nothing about Ben Affleck is even
approaching sexy but Jennifer Lopez not being able to salvage something
about this scene is just tragic. Gobble, gobble.
Taking Lives (D.J. Caruso) - I suppose it's just a matter of playing the odds, Jolie's had many great sex scenes (Gia, Original Sin, Cyborg 2) but Ethan Hawke .
Black Dahlia (Brian DePalma) - Scarlett Johansson and Josh Hartnett are young and hot (and a real life couple) but their improbable seizure sex in this clunker could be bottled as the cure for sin.
9 Songs (Michael Winterbottom) - It's real! Unsimulated! Really! And it still doesn't work at all.
Monster's Ball (Marc Forster) - Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton are just uncomfortable, unbelievable, forever marred by Ocar's terrible choice that year.
Fur: an Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (Steven Shainberg) - Robert Downey Jr. and Nicole Kidman, so attractive and credible... so awkward and unsexy!
Fear (James Foley) - Essentially the abstinence-preaching equivalent of Showgirls (with an alternately laughable and unsettling interplay of possessive ownership of Reese Witherspoon's virtue between bad-boy boyfriend Mark Wahlberg and her father played by William Petersen). Witherspoon and Wahlberg going to second base on the roller coaster = LOLLERSKATES.
Under-rated sex scenes:
History of Violence (David Cronenberg) - Marital bliss and angst are depicted here with memorable economy.
the King (James Marsh) - Gael García Bernal came on the sex scene with Y Tu Mama Tambien in a very different turn here as a delusional, manipulative (and still manically sexy) man rejected by his long-lost father the scenes between Bernal and Pell James provide a sweet reprieve between the shocking and saddening moments in this little-seen film.
Unfaithful (Adrian Lyne) - In an under-rated film, with an under-rated actress by an under-rated director. Unfaithful's visceral sex scenes of infidelity provide a springboard into a third act marital discord spinning into a feverish, frenzied nightmare.
In the Cut (Jane Campion) - Meg Ryan and Marc Ruffalo in a post-feminist fairy tale. Also just Marc Ruffalo handcuffed to a radiator in general..
40 Year old Virgin (Judd Apatow) - Elizabeth Banks' bathtub masturbation scene was playful and sexy. Viva!
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