Three Colours – Red
Post 300!
Gone with the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939)
Black Narcissus (Michael Powell, 1947)
A Star is Born (George Cukor, 1954)
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Ronald Neame, 1969)
Salo (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975)
Flash Gordon (Mike Hodges, 1980)
Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (Tim Burton, 1985)
Se7en (David Fincher, 1995)
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Shane Black, 2005)
Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008)
Movie Meme
Via FlixChatter via Encore’s World of TV and Film via SortaThatGuy (can I use your first names if we’ve talked to each other on Twitter or commented on each other’s blog) is a 31 Day Movie Meme. I downloaded movies up to the eighth day, I spreadsheeted it, I mapped out all the movies I saw so that every period got representation in proportionate to how many I’ve seen in said era, or tried to anyway. But I had no time. Thankfully, FourofThem did it in short form and I decided to do the same.
Day 01 – Sequel that should not have been made
—American Psycho II: All American Girl (2002). I saw the ending and it was enough. Poor Mila Kunis.
Day 02 – Movie that you think more people should see
—Ballast (2008). I was alone in the theatre watching this. With a whopping 1000 votes from iMDb. See it, nerds, what are you waiting for?
Day 03 – Favorite Oscar-nominated movie from most recent ballot
— Bright Star (2009). Never changed my opinion on it once. Bu then I’m an English/Art History double major so this was up my alley.
ph. Apparition
Day 04 – Movie that makes you laugh every time
— In Bruges (2008). Someone should bar me from watching Harry Potter, because if I go and every time Voldemort comes on screen, I’ll scream “Don’t facking talk to me about my cunt facking keeds!”
Day 05 – Movie you loathe
—Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005). Fucking hate Tyler Perry and his sensationalism.
Day 06 – Movie that makes you cry every time
—A Star is Born ’54. Judy’s monologues make me remember that I have a soul.
Day 07 – Least favorite movie by a favorite actor or actress
—Revolutionary Road (2008) for Kate Winslet. Made her pretty only on the outside.
Day 08 – Movie that should be required high school viewing
—Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936). Weird choice, but lets the freaks know that they can fight back. Also Mysterious Skin (2004).
Day 09 – Best scene ever
–The argument between the titular Malcolm X (1992) and his wife. Fences can’t be as good as that.
Day 10 – A movie you thought you wouldn’t like but ended up loving
—Breaking and Entering (2006). Apparently Minghella’s worst film, but so emotionally resonant.
Day 11 – A movie that disappointed you
—Nine (2009), but as a good gay boy I had to haul my ass and my sister’s to see it anyway.
ph. TWC
Day 12 – Best soundtrack/background music in a scene
—Vertigo (1958), especially the Prelude and Rooftop scene, judging by my iPod play count.
Day 13 – Favorite animated movie
—Up (2009), or if parts of Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003) count. I’m not good at my animation after I turned 13.
Day 14 – Favorite film in black and white
—Waterloo Bridge. It has that one scene that does wonders for black and white cinematography, but what I care about is the content.
Day 15 – Best musical
—Chicago (2002), again, judging by my iPod count. And because it’s really slutty.
Day 16 – Your guilty pleasure movie
—Clueless (1995). When you look at it, it’s really a movie about Rodney King and OJ.
Day 17 – Favorite series of related movies
—The Godfather (1972, 1974, 1990), because I’m boring, and because the last one’s cute.
Day 18 – Favorite title sequence
—Twelve Monkeys (1995), then the tapestry-like The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943).
Day 19 – Best movie cast
—Gosford Park (2001). Rarely do you see Kristin Scott Thomas and other great British actors and actresses together.
Day 20 – Favorite kiss
—Before Night Falls (2000), when a random man takes his glasses off and kisses the audience. Reminds me of many I’ve had.
ph. Artisan
Day 21 – Favorite romantic couple
–Woody and Diane in Annie Hall (1977). Woody’s disgusting, but their chemistry is ideal.
ph. UA
Day 22 – Favorite final scene/line
–“Adios,” by the Marlene Dietrich character in Touch of Evil. (1958) Fierceness.
Day 23 – Best explosion or action scene
—The Big Heat (1953). No fire, all camera movement. I could feel my walls shake.
Day 24 – Quote you use most often
–“My art has been considered vaginal by critics, which bothers some men. Vagina.” The Big Lebowski (1998). Imagine medium-sized gAsian say that, and then laugh before the next line.
Day 25 – A movie you plan on watching (old or new)
—Get Low (2010), a movie about a swan song, because I’ve seen a lot lately. If I stay in the country, that is.
Day 26 – Freakishly weird movie ending
—Fat Girl (2001). Doesn’t even prepare anyone.
Day 27 – Best villain
—Mieko Harada in Ran (1985), then Angela Lansbury in The Manchurian Candidate ’62.
ph. Toho
Day 28 – Most over-hyped movie
—No Country for Old Men (2007). This started the iMDb thing of giving ten stars to any male centred movie that just came out.
ph. Alliance/Miramax
Day 29 – Movie you have watched more than ten times
–The closest is Gone with the Wind (1939), with at least four.
ph. MGM
Day 30 – Saddest death scene
—The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005)
Day 31 – Scene that made you stand up and cheer
–The explosion in The Thing (1982), aided by the crowd.
#FilmConfessions
I have really proletarian tastes when it comes to what amuses me, but something wonderful happened at Twitter yesterday afternoon. I’m writing this for posterity, or to tell twitterless Lars about it.
To me it started with Sasha Stone, the woman behind AwardsDaily. She tweeted that ‘I watch Adrian Lyne movies whenever they’re on TV. #filmconfessions.’ Before I had the chance to ask ‘Who the fuck is Adrian Lyne,’ he of Unfaithlful fame, other confessions started pouring in.
ph. Universal/Focus
Web Producer John Gilpatrick also reminded us that boys DO cry – ‘True story: the first time I saw Atonement, two old ladies, who were strangers, consoled me through the credits.’
Guy Lodge from InContention.com looks back at the past – ‘I think FUNNY FACE is superior to SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN in every respect. ‘
Blogger Marya admits to a guilty pleasure – ‘I saw Ask The Dusk in theaters because I love Colin Farrell. It is not so good. I own it on DVD.’
But as you know, the purpose of any film confession weighs less on supposedly ‘shitty’ movies and/or performances one likes. Everyone has guilty pleasures in film. But the fact that someone either likes Post-Big Fish Burton or post-SNL Eddie Murphy or anything by Pauly Shore, makes it a little boring. Then there’s confessions about movie watching ethics which are just boring. Film confessions, thus, lean more towards the classics you dislike because they’re more fun and contentious and garners more discussion. But despite the petty anger I might get from reading those kinds of confessions, those are what confessions are for, and I begrudgingly accept what I read and the emotions thereafter.
It started when Ms. Stone retweeted John Wilson in writing ‘The Deer Hunter made absolutely no sense to me. I don’t care how many Oscars it won, it was a dreadful film.’
My friend Shane Zeagman confessed to disliking musicals, specifically, ‘I ABHORLY HATE the Sound of Music.’ What a troubled childhood you must have had. Boys are so stupid.
ph. RKO
Anna Long shocked and awed a lot of her followers when she unleashed a list of the people, films and performances she thought were overrated or imperfect, like Stanley Kubrick, Julianne Moore in Magnolia, Citizen Kane – to be honest I’ve never met anyone in person who said they LOVED it – and Jaws. But when wrote said that ‘I have no interest in seeing Gone With The Wind.’ I wanna be as nice as I can, but Article 1 of Film Hate states that four out of five of the things listed above. And disliking Gone With the Wind means that the gloves are off, and I start slapping my sisters-in-law and shooting Yankees. But as Chomsky said, I defend your right to say it.
Number 6 on the Film Hate list is Hitchcock, and I finally found someone who has a strange Hitch opinion. ‘@empiremagazine I prefer Psycho 2 to the original Psycho & was saddened that it wasn’t covered in your Hitchcock sections.’
Ryan Helms wrote ‘I’ve fallen asleep 2 out of the 3 times I’ve tried to watch Gosford Park.’ Loved it thought it was hilarious, but British period film, it happens to the best of us.
Fellow Torontonian Jesse Hawken confessed that ‘Everyone liked American Beauty except for me – I hated it.’ Chile, me too.
I also contributed to this hashtag, possibly too many times. Wayne admitted that he ‘has never seen all of Sunset Boulevard or Chinatown.’ I told him that ‘Faye Dunaway’s performance aside, you’re not missing much in either.’ I kinda retract what I said about Sunset Boulevard, since it’s kind of like Network in a way that Billy Holden is telling a crazy woman that…she’s crazy. He’s always one slap away from Kirk Douglas. In that sense, Mr. Holden’s an auteur, and I’d like to think that that’s all he does in movies, which would be awesome.
Andrew Kim booed me when I confessed about my anti-Audrey stance. And I turned one head when I admitted that I thought ‘I’m sorry, but Blade Runner was two-thirds boring.’
ph. MGM
The best part of this hashtag is reading the conversation between prolific film writer Matt Mazur and Kate Winslet’s first kiss, Melanie Lynskey. Mr. Mazur confessed to his indifference towards Godard and Bresson, flip flopping on American Beauty, his love for Cassavetes, crying during Thelma and Louise and a handful of other 1990’s and early 2000’s classics – that was a good time for women, by the way.
Ms. Lynskey opened up about her indifference towards the Star Wars franchise and her satirical look on Gone with the Wind – ‘I can watch poor little rich girls whine on VH1.’ A love for the works of Hugh Grant and Jennifer Aniston – which got a huge discussion. The actual reason why I’m writing this post is to tell you guys that she replied to the tweet I replied to her. And Heavenly Creatures turned me from an child to an adolescent. I’m not a stalker, I swear! Mr. Mazur wrote that ‘I once broke up with someone I was dating because they hated Altman’s Nashville.’ She replied with ‘if someone hates Nashville they don’t deserve to be loved.’ Classic.
Now go away, Friends is on!
Speaking of TIFF Cinematheque…
ph. RKO
TIFF via Craig from LivinginCinema released their 100 essential films. I’m only doing this post so that I can push back the other stuff I’m already working on/done. Lists like this are supposed to make me feel inferior, but as I’ve watched 48 of these already I kinda feel good about myself. But then, you know, I’m the only douchebag that wrote down a number, and tomorrow someone’s gonna say 72, or 81, or 90.
ph. Paramount
These are the ones I haven’t seen and will hope to see. This list and post also exists for the purpose of telling the four or five people who read this blog who actually know me in real life and telling them what I’ll be doing for the rest of the year, unless hindered by unexpected circumstances like bankruptcy, or worse, Rob Ford shutting down government institutions that supports the arts.
ph. Kino International
1 THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (Carl Theodor Dreyer) Seen parts in TCM.
3 L’AVVENTURA (Michaelangelo Antonioni)
5 PICKPOCKET (Robert Bresson)
7 PATHER PANCHALI (Satyajit Ray)
11 ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
13 BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (Sergei Eisenstein) Clips in film class.
15 TOKYO STORY (Yasujiro Ozu)
19 L’ATALANTE (Jean Vigo)
20 CINEMA PARADISO (Giuseppe Tornatore)
21 LA GRANDE ILLUSION (Jean Renoir) Parts at TCM.
ph. MGM
23 PERSONA (Ingmar Bergman) Saw THAT part.
27 VOYAGE IN ITALY (Roberto Rossellini)
29 CITY LIGHTS (Charlie Chaplin) Parts
31 SHERLOCK JR. (Buster Keaton)
32 RULES OF THE GAME (Jean Renoir – 2)
35 L’ARRIVÉE D’UN TRAIN À LA CIOTAT (Frères Lumiere Louis Lumière and Auguste Lumière)
37 LA JETÉE (Chris Marker) (parts on TCM)
39 NIGHT AND FOG (Alain Resnais)
47 SALÓ, OR THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM (Pier Paolo Pasolini) August 3!
48 THE SEVENTH SEAL (Ingmar Bergman – 2) Parts.
ph. Paramount
49 LE VOYAGE DANS LA LUNE (Georges Méliès)
53 VIRIDIANA (Luis Buñuel)
54 LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (Roberto Benigni) Saw the ending.
55 THE SORROW AND THE PITY (Marcel Ophüls)
57 THE EARRINGS OF MADAME DE… (Max Ophüls) Parts on TCM.
59 THROUGH THE OLIVE TREES (Abbas Kiarostami)
60 LES ENFANTS DU PARADIS (Marcel Carné)
63 JOHNNY GUITAR (Nicholas Ray)
65 MEMORIES OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea)
67 SCORPIO RISING (Kenneth Anger)
ph. Paramount
69 DUST IN THE WIND (Hou Hsiao-Hsien)
70 SCHINDLER’S LIST (Steven Spielberg) Saw ‘Look at the snow!’
71 NASHVILLE (Robert Altman)
72 CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON (Ang Lee) Seen enough of it.
73 WAVELENGTH (Michael Snow)
75 CHRONIQUE D’UN ÉTÉ (Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch)
77 GREED (Erich von Stroheim)
79 JAWS (Steven Spielberg – 2)
81 THE BIRTH OF A NATION (D.W. Griffith) Can’t wait for the picketing!
82 CHUNGKING EXPRESS (Wong Kar Wai – 2)
ph. Criterion
87 ANDREI RUBLEV (Andrei Tarkovsky)
90 WRITTEN ON THE WIND (Douglas Sirk) Saw the beginning. Betty?
91 THE THIRD MAN (Carol Reed) TCM has been dicking me on this movie.
94 BREAKING THE WAVES (Lars von Trier) Parts.
95 A NOS AMOURS (Maurice Pialat)
96 CLEO DE 5 A 7 (Agnès Varda)
97 ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER (Pedro Almodóvar)
99 OLDBOY (Park Chan-wook) My cousin Antoinette’s favourite.
100 PLAYTIME (Jacques Tati)
New Theme!
The internet is a democracy. If you don’t speak up, Paul Dano’s face is the first one you’ll see every time you come here.
But in all seriousness, I’m an image based person, I look for that in movies. Well, most of the time. This new layout is somehow close to an experience I wanna give my readers without having to actually post clips. I’m not a clips kinda guy. Yet.
Sorry about stretching full-screen images like that in “Gone with the Wind.”
And sorry about the random dinosaur.
But Melanie Wilkes is a ‘Badass’ too
Sure, Scarlet O ‘Hara (Vivien Leigh), the (anti)heroine of “Gone With The Wind,” is the one getting the ‘bitch’ label and Mamie (Hattie McDaniel) has her share of berating Scarlett and trying to tell her what to do, but Melanie Hamilton Wilkes (Olivia de Haviland) had the best zingers. I would love to have known this character and the kind of bitchy stuff she would have said in confidence.
Olivia De Haviland is a star on her own right. It’s somehow baffling that she’d play second fiddle to Vivien Leigh and sometimes, Bette Davis. She portrays Melanie with such placidity that some in the audience might not notice the frankness in rebellion in her words. Like “Phil Meade, you hush your mouth. Do you think it will help your mother to have you off getting shot too? I never heard of anything so silly.”
ph. MGM
One of her character traits is her persistence in protecting and defending Scarlet. Scarlet did save her life after all, something that the other characters around her has forgotten. When Scarlet shoots a Yankee, she drags her husband’s sword, if she’d be called to help. She tells Scarlet that she’s glad the latter killed him. Glad? Anyway, to hide this murder, she assures the others at Tara – “Don’t be scared, chickens. Your big sister was trying to clean a revolver and it went of and nearly scared her to death!”
I think Melanie’s held more deadly weapons than any other character in the movie, male or female. Again, she tries to defend Scarlet, who might be blamed for causing the males’ drunken behaviour and for her second husband’s death. Mellie finds her husband, Ashley (Leslie Howard) under arrest for drunkenness. I can’t believe that I missed her telling off the Yankee captain that ‘If you arrest all the men who get intoxicated in Atlanta, you must have a good many Yankees in jail, Captain.’ With rapid fire impatience from her this time. Her character’s a great observer, being a woman and a Southern wife of a former plantation owner in occupied Georgia. She knows how to behave in any circumstance.
People know Mellie for her kindness especially in her last days. Her last command to Scarlet, to ‘take care of Ashley,’ if we can indulge on some overreading, inadvertently sets off a series of events that somehow made sure that we’d never see Scarlet and Ashley together, nor Scarlet with her third husband Rhett Butler (Clark Gable). Mellie and Scarlet might be best friends, but she keeps her husband, perhaps after her death.
Okinawa Assault 
