Image of the Day

from Vincente Minnelli's The Band Wagon (1953)

Image of the Day

from Noel Black's Pretty Poison (1968)

Image of the Day

from David Cronenberg's Scanners (1981)

Images of the Day

Carpenter/teacher/critic/painter Manny Farber died this week at the age of 91. Here are five stills from movies he admired and one of his paintings. From the top:
Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep (1946)
Werner Herzog's Fata Morgana (1971)
Samuel Fuller's Pickup on South Street (1953)
Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)
Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels (1941)
Farber's My Budd (1978)

Image of the Day

from Harmony Korine's Mister Lonely (2007)

Image of the Day

from David Gordon Green's Snow Angels (2007)

Image of the Day

from Luis Bunuel's The Phantom of Liberty (1974)

Image of the Day

from Elaine May's A New Leaf (1971)

Image of the Day

Joan Crawford and a "half-man, half-ape with the strength of twenty demons" play with a doll in Crawford's final film, Freddie Francis' Trog (1970)

Image of the Day

from Tsai Ming-Liang's Goodbye Dragon Inn (2003)

Image of the Day

from Rainer Werner Fassbinder's In a Year with 13 Moons (1978)

Image of the Day

from Robert Altman's California Split (1974)

Image of the Day

from Jacques Tourneur's I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

Image(s) of the Day

Two meals, from Ulu Grosbard's Straight Time (1978)

Image of the Day

from Alan Rudolph's Trouble in Mind (1985)

Image of the Day

from Richard Quine's My Sister Eileen (1955)

Image(s) of the Day

From the top, Jean-Louis Barrault as:
Himself
Baptiste in Marcel Carne's Children of Paradise (1945)
Dr. Cordelier in Jean Renoir's The Testament of Dr. Cordelier (1959)
Opale in Renoir's The Testament of Dr. Cordelier
Opale in action #1, #2, #3

Everything that ever happened to me (abridged), Part 2

To refresh your memory, Part 1 can be found here. On to the timely follow-up, har-dee-har!

The initial idea for that post was a recollection of the first night I realized movies could be something I loved. I got sidetracked, and the post turned into something else entirely, which is perfectly OK and something I welcome. I feel like telling that initial story now. However, the possibility that I will get sidetracked again remains. Don't worry. It won't devolve into another hectoring screed about how you shouldn't see the new Indiana Jones movie. (By the way, I completely failed to get across my real point, which was that the people going to see that film with "low expectations" seemed utterly dejected about having to see the movie. Low expectations aren't anything to be ashamed about if you're also going into the movie with an explorer's attitude of what- the-fuckitude/I'm just there to find out whether it's good or not. But these people approached seeing The Crystal Sanitary Napkin as if they were attending a funeral or on-the-job training or a juvenile court date. A horrible chore that must be done out of a sense of cheerless obligation. Attendance at summer movies as capitalist public service. The free market as stern authority figure. How can you not see this movie? It is your duty as a citizen. Full disclosure: I saw Hellboy II today, with SLIGHTLY DIMINISHED EXPECTATIONS.)

Summer 1985. My parents are still married. Not only that, but happily married. My dad's dad is still alive. My mom's mom is still alive. My aunt is still alive, and she hasn't started drinking yet. My cousin is not yet married to a guy who builds McMansions in Colorado. My dad is not yet married to a manipulative psychopath. My disinterest in sports and weightlifting has not yet become an absolute turnoff to every girl I find attractive. I've still got three years of happy childhood before adolescence starts and brings on a decade of unhappiness, frustration, awkwardness, cynicism, and negativity. I'm still several years away from having to fill out a job application. John Cassavetes, D. Boon, and Kurt Vonnegut are still alive, though those names don't mean anything to me yet. My hometown seems like an open, welcoming, happy little world of possibilities instead of the limited shithole full of ignorant cowards it mostly is. My mind is open, alert, naive, silly, and ready to be blown. Thank god for the mainstream success of Pee Wee Herman.

When VHS rentals first became widespread, every business hopped on the bandwagon. Every convenience store, pizza place, gas station, etc. had a shelf of videos for rent. I remember my mother and I (and maybe my brother or sister) picking up some root beer and ice cream to make root beer floats at the convenience store on a Friday night. This particular store had just begun carrying VHS tapes for rental. I noticed a copy of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure and I asked my mother if we could rent it. She said yes, and one of the most memorable nights of my young life began. Even in stupid-little-kid world, my aesthetic was remarkably similar to my aesthetic now. I liked character, atmosphere, mood, and images more than plot. Prior to this particular evening, I enjoyed movies as entertainment, but I didn't think of them in the same way as I thought of music or books. I've been a music addict since I was three, and a lover of books since I learned to read at age 5, but movies always followed the same pattern. I loved the first half hour or so, then I got bored when the plot machinations took over. I knew every movie was going to end with all the characters in the same location fighting or yelling. Since I grew up in a small town and only Hollywood blockbusters were available, I was pretty much right in that observation.
Everything changed when I saw Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. First of all, I was simultaneously thrilled and confused, which thrilled and confused me. Pee Wee acted like a kid, but he was clearly a grown man. His house was full of kid stuff, and his bike was clearly a kid's bike, but he had no parents. His rival, Francis, was another grown man, but he also acted like a kid, and lived with his father, who was an old man. Like I already said, this thrilled and confused me. I remember clearly going over these opposing feelings in my mind. Heretofore, when I was confused, I felt bad or angry. But here I was, confused and thrilled. How could this be? Why did I like what was happening onscreen even though I had no explanation for it and clearly wanted an explanation? Later, after Pee-Wee's bike is stolen and he interrogates everyone in his neighborhood, I noticed that an old man in the crowd had a multi-colored mohawk and was referred to by Pee-Wee as Amazing Larry. This blew my fucking mind! "What is going on here," I remember thinking. "I have no idea, but I think I love it." Shortly thereafter, Pee-Wee goes on the road to find his stolen bicycle, which was a riff on the common American road movie genre. However, this was my first ever exposure to the American road movie, and I loved it. I still love road movies, even the shitty ones, probably because I love characters and character actors. The first character Pee-Wee meets on the road is an escaped convict, on the run for tearing the tag off a mattress. The two get past a police roadblock by impersonating a husband and wife, with Pee Wee in drag as the wife. This scene seriously disturbed me and made me feel dirty on that initial viewing. Another seemingly incongruous conflict in my young mind. I felt disturbed and uncomfortable while still feeling completely excited by the movie. How could that be possible? I remember thinking long and hard about that while watching the movie. I was confused, again, by my contradictory feelings, but I was also starting to learn what movies could do when they weren't constrained by genre or studio interference or audience expectation. Later, when the Large Marge scene changes tone from comedy to horror, and Marge's face turns into the crazy 3-D animated jump-out-and-get-you shock scene, I felt this overwhelming feeling of exhilaration. "Oh my god," I remember thinking. "Movies are capable of anything. Why aren't there more movies like this?" It was an important, and fun, lesson to learn, and it started me on my lifelong fascination with the movies. Later, when my love of Beetlejuice led me to discover that Tim Burton made both of these films, I started to get interested in directors, too. I learned that paying attention to directors' credits led to better choices at the video store and the theater and let me know what mediocre, boring schlock to avoid. I had a similar revelation a few years later when Pee-Wee's Playhouse debuted on Saturday morning TV. Goddamn, I love Pee Wee Herman and everything he's done to make loner, misfit kids feel great. From Pee Wee Herman, I learned that anything is possible. Maybe not in life, but at least in art.

You know who should get some of my hard-earned money? The obscenely wealthy!

I spent a large portion of the last two weeks gazing at the sky, looking for the all-seeing puppeteer/ventriloquist who had been employed by Steven Spielberg. Okay, I'm being a dick. However, in conversation with five people who don't know each other (including two people I don't know who I was chatting with at a friend's party) in the last two weeks, I heard these two almost identical sentences. It freaked me out. Here are the sentences:
"I went to the new Indiana Jones movie. It wasn't very good, but I went in with low expectations."
"I'm seeing the new Indiana Jones movie this weekend, but I'm going in with low expectations."
I don't know if I'm still being overly sensitive from dealing with the deaths of two of my favorite relatives a few months ago, but I do know that life always gets shorter, never longer. If you have low expectations, and you're under no obligations, DON'T FUCKING BOTHER!!!!!
Rent Raiders of the Lost Ark if you need some Indiana Jones in your life that badly. Otherwise, do something you actually want to do. Read a good book, listen to Motorhead, have sex with the wife, go for a stroll in the neighborhood, call an old friend, eat a hoagie, challenge a street tough to a best-of-three-falls no-rules bare-knuckled brawl, savor a delightful pastry. Life is short. And if you're looking forward to the movie, by all means go see it. We all deserve as much pleasure and as little pain as we can rustle up in this horribly unfair life. Why willingly invite dissatisfaction and boredom? I don't understand it at all.

This seems related, but I don't know how to relate it. I'm taking a summer class right now called Overcoming Reading Difficulties that teaches us strategies to get poor readers, kids with reading disorders, and kids who just hate to read engaged with texts. For the last two Fridays, instead of class, I met up with my "reading circle" group and we discussed a novel. I liked everybody in my group, and I enjoyed our conversations. However, one member of my group is also a Radio, Television, and Film major, and her descriptions of required classes made my head explode with rage. She said that in her Intro to Narrative class, the professor told the (impressionable) students that Citizen Kane was the only Orson Welles film worth seeing (though they never watched it in class) and that he declined after that. Then the professor spent three weeks "deconstructing The Matrix." I'm glad she didn't mention the professor's name, because I would have egged his house (I originally wrote this as "I would have carved his obituary on his chest" but I should really be more honest). He's certainly entitled to his incredibly shitty opinion, but his attempt to pass it off as fact to a bunch of 19-year-olds without offering them any evidence, and then spending a ridiculous amount of class time on an entertaining but not very important Hollywood trifle, points out the destructive effect of most university film programs. This doesn't happen in any other discipline. English professors (even shitty English professors) never say, "I'm not going to teach it, but The Naked and the Dead is the only valid Norman Mailer text. For the next three weeks, please open your Anne Rice books to page 12." Or try this one out: "Pythagoras was a one-trick pony. Now for some astrology." Hey, Professor Moron, here are some Orson Welles films to check out during your next sabbatical: The Magnificent Ambersons, Touch of Evil, The Trial, Chimes at Midnight, The Lady from Shanghai, Mr. Arkadin. I could keep going, or you could consult the 98% of film scholars who think that at least one of these films is vitally important to film history. But you're probably watching Speed Racer. Fuck.

The TV show, the movie, the review, the blog post

I'm always a little bummed out when people complain that a particular magazine's or newspaper's critics are bad because they don't like the same movies as the complainer or they don't supply reliable recommendations. Critics should be read for the quality of their ideas and their writing, not for their particular tastes and opinions. I think this used to be the case almost exclusively, until forty years of critics on TV, blurbs, star and number rating systems, weekly box office tabulations, hyperbole, fanboy pantswetting, infotainment, the uniquely American sense of entitlement, the capitalistic demand for the victory of the majority consensus opinion, aggressive advertising hype, the intermingling of advertising and journalism, overpaid stars, the dumbing down of nearly everything, and a consumerist approach to filmgoing turned most American criticism into an offshoot of Consumer Reports. Every film, from the latest McIndiana Jones Mcfranchise to the latest from Bela Tarr, is written about the same way. Comparisons to recognizable brands (or real artists reduced to brands), plot descriptions (careful not to reveal any spoilers), a brief sentence about how good or bad so-and-so was in the lead performance, and a recommendation of whether you should spend your money or wait until it comes out on video. 3 1/2 out of 4 stars. 8 out of 10. 13 screeching owls out of 15. 9 Jon Benet Ramseys out of 10. And don't forget some clever puns! ("Bee Movie" is an A!) Or hyperbole (The best, and only, film I've seen since brunch. I don't think I will see a better film for the rest of the day, though I will be visiting my aunt Judy so I probably won't see any other films today anyway. 75 thumbs up.)
I like to read critics who are good writers, know a lot about their subject, have some interesting ideas, and focus on a variety of films, not just the overhyped business as usual. I usually read their reviews after I see the movie, not before. I don't particularly care whether they share my opinion or not. In conclusion, my way is the best, and the other way is ridiculous. (Not to disavow the importance of a recommendation from somebody who shares your sensibilities, however. That's a little different from 50 critics telling you about a movie you've already heard about 50 times. Still, it's the least important part of a good critic's job, in my arrogant opinion.)

I meant to write about something completely different and got sidetracked on an only slightly related rant. I'm thoroughly enjoying reading some of my favorite critics write and talk about a movie I have no intention of ever seeing, Sex and the City. In fact, two interesting posts are by critics who also have no intention of seeing it. Jim Emerson contemplates the film's popularity and its reviews at this link. Glenn Kenny, who was recently fired from his editing and writing job at Premiere and the blog he wrote on its site called "In the Company of Glenn," wrote a quick, little post on his new blog saying that a perk of unemployment was not having to care about the Sarah Jessica Parker et al. summer juggernaut. He got a pretty heated response to a tossed-off comment and wrote a great post about it here. A couple people who did see the movie and have a lot to say about it are the Real Geezers. I'm always pleased to watch a new Real Geezers review. I worry about one or both of them kicking the bucket since they are well into their eighties. They should have a weekly TV series. Here is their Sex and the City review: