What have you been watching: Summer 2006 edition

Question about Bad Timing: at the end, there is a shot of Harvey Keitel looking in the mirror and he suddenly grabs his head, as if dramatizing that he forgot to ask Art G. a question or that there was something that suddenly occured to him about his line of questioning... but it's real quick, not sure if it's intentional... made the ending a little unsettling (apart from the borderline necrophiliac scene).

I finally watched "The Jerk", which I had someone never managed to see. It was all right, there were some great little moments in there.

Also, "Shadows and Fog", which was generally terrible.

Next on the pile to watch: "Late Spring" by Ozu. So excited.

This weekend I watched Wim Wender's Land of Plenty, which is indeed pretty worthless. And The Minutemen doc We Jam Econo, which I found funny, good - and interesting to see a lot of those faces talking about one of my old favorites.

Rules of the Game: incredible.
Boudu Saved From Drowning: enjoyable.
Touchez Pas Au Grisbi: one of the most bad-ass films ever. Jean Gabin is my hero..
Army of Shadows: ditto. lino ventura is my hero, too.
Diabolique: do it, paul meurisse. just fucking do it, you bad-ass.
The Last Detail: minor, but a solid road movie, nonethelesss. jack nicholson is always good, but i want to smack randy quaid almost as much as i did in the last picture show and nowhere near i want to smack him now that he's trying to hustle some more dough out of ang lee for brokeback mountain.
clockwork orange: hadn't seen it in years. i laughed. almost cried. this is pretty much one of the heighs of cinema (obv) even though patrick magee's performance kind of grates.
samurai I: will have to watch the rest of the trilogy, but this was pretty lagging and, aside from mifune and the priest, all the characters blend together into boring mud. nice colors, though.

excited to see The Long Weekend this wednesday at film forum!

Marie first breaking out the trumpet was ideal.

Then you've got to get a hold of The Sicilian Clan . Gabin, Ventura and Alain Delon. Cops & Robbers. 'Nuff said.

Blow-Up-Really hypnotic. Really dug the low-keyness of it all—particularly in light of the films it influenced. It’s like an otherwise average day that gradually gets weirder and weirder. Didn’t know Peter “To The Manor Born” Bowles was in this.

Anticipation-Finally saw this Godard short film (from the omnibus film The Oldest Profession) in a dubbed version on Youtube. This was the last project he did in the 60s w/Anna Karina, and it’s a more graceful farewell than Made In The USA. Karina plays a call girl sent to entertain and enlighten an intergalactic traveler. It’s highly reminiscent of parts of Alphaville. Much of the footage is run through colored filters. You get so used to them that when the unfiltered bits pop up, they come off as the most unreal.

I've also been watching eps of "The Critic". K-LASSIC.

The Shining: hadn't seen this for a LONG time. not really scary. at all. Jack talking to the bartender is incredible.

Black Narcissus: the best cinematography i've ever seen (go jack cardiff! and technicolor!). the psycho-sexuality is niiiice and thick, too. if i taught a class on how to make a movie, i'd probably just show this over and over.

A Scanner Darkly: really well-done. the rotoscopy (?) is just, er, next-level; a tamer sort of the "metaphysics" artaud failed to achieve in the theatre, i think. impeccable casting. the dialogue was appropriately nauseating (and hilarious), in an oh-shit-i-took-too-much sense. the "philosophical" parts lacked subtely and felt out of place. i haven't read the book, but i've read enough philip k dick to know that they stayed truer to his irony/pacing than, say, 'blade runner,' which is so different from the source novel that ridley scott shouldn't have even bothered mentioning it.

i'm not a film critic, obv haha

ah. thanks.

I'm pretty sure everyone else in the theater saw it in original release, and the group behind just loved chattering so.

Saw A Scanner Darkly at the Cinerama Dome. The more I think about it the last satisfying it seems. At least it's true to the spirit of the book - I'll give it that - keeping the same downbeat tone and not adding any car chases, or gun battles etc. But Reeves is a dead hole at the heart of the movie - an almost completely uninteresting performance. The "animation" is completely unnecessary - it would have been a more effective & affective movie without that added barrier away from the human element.

"Star Trek II" has been pretty enjoyable -- the cool thing about Star Trek is that when it's good it's usually pretty good, and when it's bad it's hilarious. You just can't lose with finely-aged cheese like that.

"Uzumaki" I watched a few days ago and . . . well it was pretty awesome but the ending just felt like they ran out of steam. I know they didn't have time to fit the whole of the comics into one movie, but they still could've done better than to just let it peter out like that. However, the entire rest of the movie was alot of fun.

I recently re-discovered "Evil Dead II" and remembered why I liked it so much in the first place. Also, the DVD commentary is hilarious; it's great listening to happy nerds MSTing their own movie. They also talk about how they did the shaky cam stuff and point out where you can see over the edge of the set.

On my list to see next are "Buddy Boy", "Time Masters", "Shivers/The Parasite Murders" and "Marebito". Will buy when I save up some money.

No.

Only truly good American film of the 1990s?

No.

http://onfilm.chireader.com/movies/capsules/10003_HISTORY_IS_MADE_AT_NIGHT

*best

*best
^ guilty pleasure
(also known as: The Summer of Eigeman!) Nothing this summer beat Stillman. Haven't found Last Days of Disco yet.