top 5 10/24-10/30

1. Dancer In The Dark (Lars Von Trier) JCC. Tues.
2. I Served The King of England (Jiri Menzel)
3,4,5 Alphabetical Order:
Appaloosa (Ed Harris)
City of Ember (Gil Keenan)
Nick & Norah (Peter Sollet)

top 5 10/17-10/23

1. The Shining (Stanley Kubrick) Circle Center. Wed.
2. Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarentino) Galaxy. Wed.
3. Appaloosa (Ed Harris)
4. Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist (Peter Sollet)
5. City of Ember (Gil Keenan) Live action kids movies that do not include bodily function humor or talking animals(apologies to the Babe movies)can't get a break.

top 5 10/10-10/16

1. The Pineapple Express (David Gordon Green) 2nd Run.
2. Nick and Nora and the Infinite Sadness (Peter Sollet)
3. Appaloosa (Ed Harris)
4. The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan)
5. Wall E (Andrew Stanton)- Finally saw it. Little disappointing, but still worth seeing.

Top 5 films for 10/3-10/9

1. The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich) Sun. Key.
2. Talk To Her (Pedro Almodovar) Tues. JCC.
3. Sunset Boulevard (Billy WIlder) Sun. Key.
4. Appaloosa (Ed Harris)- I'm a little surprised by this one. Not a huge Ed Harris fan. He even gives a somewhat restrained performance.
5. Ed Wood (Tim Burton) Sun. Key.

Bamboozled

The only time there should be bookends is if they are being used on a book shelf or if it is a Simon and Garfunkel record. They are rarely useful in films. They are usually just there to manipulate the audience into some over-sentimental connection to the main story. Which is true with Miracle At Saint Anna's. Not even close to all of the film's problems, but the bookends pounds all of the film's problems into the ground. Basically playing like Tom Hanks' greatest hits. Hokey tacked on ending to sob about your fellow soldiers dying (Saving Private Ryan), a miracle that can bring people back to life (The Green Mile), and bad aging makeup (Forrest Gump). If Spike Lee wants to make an all-black World War II movie, fine. If he wants to "correct John Wayne movies", fine. If he wants to publicly start feuds with Clint Eastwood, fine. If he wants to do magical realism poorly, fine. What we don't need is the final scene, we already get that the kid walked away from death. At least the very first scene works as a good set piece. But after that we get Joseph Gordon Levitt doing a "golly, gee" performance and more nonsense that is just there to setup the ending. Why is acting in bookends always so poor? Why do all epics feel the need to use this lazy plot device? Do producers/directors/whoever feel that we need them to emotionally connect to the material? I can just see the pitch meeting now. "We can't have an event that happened 50 to 100 years ago without bookends because the audience wasn't alive then and won't care about what's happening." Guess what, I wasn't alive in the 18th Century either and can enjoy period pieces just fine.

squeezing several posts into one

Let me get this straight, The Muppets are doing op-ed pieces for the New York Times, Lil' Wayne is blogging for ESPN, and Rolling Stone still cares about whether Chinese Democracy is going to be released. Even I have had a version of that album for a couple of years. Note to Axl and the FBI: It was given to me. I didn't ask for it nor do I think the rest of the world needs to hear it.

The most enjoyable article I have come across lately is Tom Perrotta's love-hate relationship with The Breakfast Club. I agree that The Breakfast Club and Dazed and Confused should not be mentioned in the same sentence. Oops. I also agree that Freaks and Geeks took the ball and went way further than John Hughes would be capable of doing.

That said, John Hughes leads me into my top 5 films around the city this week:
1. Ferris Bueller's Day Off (John Hughes) Galaxy. Wed.
2. Night of the Living Dead (George Romero) B Movie Celebration. This weekend.
3. The Last Mistress (Catherine Breillat)
4. Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock) B Movie Celebration. This Weekend.
5. Enter the Dragon (Robert Clouse). Circle Center. Wed.



Troy: Here is some of that shitty (your word, not mine) Human League you were railing against over at Beer Cannes.



It seems like the only Human League anyone ever cares about is the Don't You Want Me single and the corresponding album Dare, which I do love. I wanted to give props to the underrated Louise. The label didn't want to release another single (from The Lebanon) or spend money on a video. The video only happened because Phil Oakley's song with Giorgio Moroder from Electric Dreams was a hit in the UK.

top 5 9/19-9/25

This is a little late. We can go with a) i'm lazy or b) i was out of town on friday or a little bit of both.

1. Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarentino) Wed. Circle Center
2. Once (John Carney) Thurs. Mass Ave's 2nd attempt to show Once.
3. The Pineapple Express (David Gordon Green)
4. The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan)
5. Frozen River (Courtney Hunt)