Happy Halloween!

First movie/last movie: Charlie Chaplin

The Kid (1921)
A Countess from Hong Kong (1967)
I'm only including features here, so I'm unfairly leaving out the 50+ short films he made before The Kid, many of them fantastic. By the way, the little kid in The Kid, Jackie Coogan, later went on to grow up and play Uncle Fester on "The Addams Family."

American movies, 1970-1979

from Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973)

My moviegoing: 2003

from Lynne Ramsay's Morvern Callar (2002)

First movie/last movie: John Cassavetes

Shadows (1959)
Big Trouble (1986)

American movies, 1970-1979

from Paul Mazursky's Blume in Love (1973)
They couldn't all be winners, pt. 2

My moviegoing: 2003

from Tian Zhuangzhuang's The Horse Thief (1986)
Austin Film Society's Chinese Films of the Past Two Decades series

First movie/last movie: Frank Capra

The Strong Man (1926)
Pocketful of Miracles (1961)

American movies, 1970-1979

from Terrence Malick's Badlands (1973)

My moviegoing: 2003

from Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973)
James Coburn retrospective: Alamo Drafthouse

First movie/last movie: Luis Bunuel

L'age d'or (1930)
That Obscure Object of Desire (1977)

American movies, 1970-1979

from Sidney Lumet's Serpico (1973)

My moviegoing: 2003

from Spike Jonze's Adaptation (2002)

First movie/last movie: Richard Brooks

Crisis (1950)
Fever Pitch (1985)

American movies, 1970-1979

from James William Guercio's Electra Glide in Blue (1973)
This is the only film directed by musician/entrepreneur Guercio, who, at the time of filming, managed Chicago (the band, not the city) in its "25 or 6 to 4" heyday. A tribute to John Ford's Monument Valley westerns and an ironic reverse-Easy Rider biker cops vs. sleazoid counterculture creeps black comedy, the film contains a great Robert Blake performance and Conrad Hall's gorgeous cinematography. It is eye-poppingly bizarre and compelling in its fine first half before turning into a plot-heavy cliched thriller in its second half, though it manages to get nice and weird again in its final ten minutes. I saw part of it in a hotel in Alabama before the TV broke. When I tried to fix it, I found several empty airplane-sized liquor bottles behind the set. That is to say, the bottles were the size found on airplanes, not the size of airplanes. My god, imagine an alcoholic hotel maid trying to hide a Lufthansa Airbus-sized bottle of Jim Beam. What a sight. I caught up with the whole thing on DVD a few years later.

My moviegoing: 2003

from George Clooney's Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002)

Musicians on film

Musicians on film #22: The Feelies in Jonathan Demme's Something Wild (1986)

First movie/last movie: Robert Bresson

Les anges du peche (1943)
L'argent (1983)

American movies, 1970-1979

from William Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973)

My moviegoing: 2003

from Jean-Luc Godard's In Praise of Love (2001)