Category: Movies

There is another thing some do to moustache and it costs, I am told, a nickel

November 1, 2007 /

Can you believe Sam Elliott’s IMDB photo shows him without a moustache? I mean, it doesn’t even look like him!

Sam Elliott, clean-shaven.

Ian and I typed almost simultaneously today that his only real job in Tombstone (which I finally saw, and did anyone else realize that Ben Foster was doing a Val Kilmer imitation throughout 3:10 to Yuma?) was to grow a moustache, which is also what he did in The Big Lebowski and (apparently) Ghost Rider. Looks like he’ll be reprising that role in The Golden Compass. You can’t argue with success.

Sam Elliott, moustachioed.

I guess it’s like they say: some are born to moustache, some achieve moustache, and some have moustache thrust upon them.

Sam Elliott, action figure.

I’m willing to bet that anyone who meets Sam Elliott quickly becomes the latter.

August 9, 2007 /

Sneakers, my favorite heist movie, features some plot elements that involve the NSA. It came out in 1992, when that agency wasn’t particularly well-known–o halcyon days!–and so it has this little exchange between Robert Redford (“Martin Bishop”) and Timothy Busfield (“Dick Gordon”) to introduce it to the audience.

Bishop: Sorry to waste your time, gentlemen. I don’t work for the government.
Gordon: We know. (Flashes ID) National Security Agency.
Bishop: Oh, you’re the guys I hear breathing on the other end of my phone.
Gordon: No, that’s the FBI. We’re not chartered for domestic surveillance.

Ah ha ha ha ha! Ha ha! Ah ha ha ha ha. Heh.

Bishop: Oh, so you just overthrow governments–set up friendly dictators.
Gordon: (chuckling) No, that’s the CIA. We protect our government’s communications–try and break the other fellas’ codes. We’re the good guys, Marty.
Bishop: Gee, I can’t tell you what a relief that is. Dick.

Internet is weird

July 2, 2007 /

I am listening, right now, to the live stream from a Canadian university radio station that is rebroadcasting our giggly high-noise recording of Clockers. At least the DJ (one “Jordie Sparkle”) asked our permission first. Wait, no, I meant “forgiveness, after they started, in the hopes that Clockers was CC-licensed because NFD is.”

Okay! Let’s go to the phones!

INCOMING LAWSUITS

How I spent my summer abroad

June 11, 2007 /

So some of you may remember that I like Hackers. I like it a lot. I realized some time ago that while I am not into Rocky Horror, if Rocky Horror was Hackers, I would be a full on costume-wearing hot-dog-throwing line-reciting fanboy. GET A JOB, I would shriek. YOU ARE IN THE BUTTER ZONE.

I recently moved to London and into a house where the function of the residents is, essentially, to egg each other on about goofy ideas. Catriona provided the idea of doing read-throughs of plays or movie scripts as a form of participatory recreation, and Holly asked if there was anything I’d like to toss in the prospective-script pile. Could it be really bad, I asked? Because there was one that could be funny.

Later, we were passing around emails about said read-throughs and a possible visit to a museum full of automata. Somehow Holly came up with the joke of steampunk “hackers” as “clockers,” constructing automata instead of programs. I laughed at it. Then I said “clock the Bigben!” Then I said “oh no,” because I really had more important things to do.

Instead, Holly and I spent a few weeks interpolating the movie script into 1860s London, replacing the absurd computer-feats with absurd clockwork and technobabble with Victorian slang. Then we revised and got it printed and got some friends to come over and wear funny hats, and this was the result: Clockers.

Of the people who did the read-through, only Holly and I had read the script or indeed seen the original movie beforehand, and they all did a fantastic job picking up multiple parts and figuring out what was going on. And putting up with my Matthew Lillard impression. Thanks again, guys, and let me know if you want a link under your name on that page.

April 28, 2007 /

Is there anybody pretending to be in love with Scarlett Johansson who is not, in point of fact, still in love with Charlotte from Lost in Translation? With the girl in the white jacket with the clear umbrella? In love with Sofia Coppola’s vulnerable little other-self in the pink wig with her head on your shoulder who is maybe going to get a zit under the corner of her mouth? Because if so: you’re doing it wrong.

Or with the Air song, or with this song “Too Young” by Phoenix that’s only in it for like five seconds.

April 3, 2007 /

I finally watched Primer, with the expected result.

Calvin is confused!

I guess I’m going to read the plot breakdown before I watch it again (yes, of course it’s on Internet; no, I’m not going to link to it). Mom claims that catch-what-you-can plots are the only kind I like, which is not quite true: I also like plots where good people do their best to destroy each other for perfectly good reasons. And romantic comedies.

Everybody compared Primer to Memento, but I think Primer is superior–both by its refusal to spell things out and by the fact that it doesn’t rely on a weird structure to screw with you. Rethinking a lot of things about structure, lately.

300

March 27, 2007 /

Dumber than Gladiator; much dumber than Braveheart. Still less dumb than Sin City.

Also, really loud.

Some Like It Hot

March 21, 2007 /

I have weird feelings about this movie. I first watched it at GSP, almost ten years ago, when HOLY SHIT TEN YEARS I’M OLD

Let’s try that again. I watched it and I thought it was hilarious, which was remarkable in itself, given my stupid prejudice against anything made before 1981. In 1998 that was the kind of thing you thought about it. On vacation in summer 2000, we watched it get named the funniest American film ever and I pretty much agreed (given AFI’s own stupid but inevitable prejudices). Since then I’ve only trotted it out to prove that yes, I do like something made before I was born.

I watched it again last night with Holly and Kevan, neither of whom had seen it before. Now I’m all jumbled.

There are a lot of one-liners, but does that make a funny movie? I think improv training, the Daily Show and Arrested Development have done something to my humor palate such that those didn’t satisfy me. So I didn’t laugh much at it. But I did find it stunningly subversive.

Now, was it subversive when it was released? Certainly–it helped end the Production Code–but not in the way I’m thinking. A lot of the jokes now can be read as sly commentary on gay marriage, “cures” for homosexuality, and, er, Marilyn Monroe’s death. I don’t know if I’m reaching too far to do that. An English major would say no, but I got my degree in theatre.