National Film Registry 2007 Selections

The latest selections of the National Film Registry include many well known films: Back to the Future (1985), Bullitt (1968), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Dances With Wolves (1990), Days of Heaven (1978), Grand Hotel (1932), In a Lonely Place (1950), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), The Naked City (1948), Now, Voyager (1942), Oklahoma! (1955), 12 Angry Men (1957), The Women (1939), and Wuthering Heights (1939).

There some features that aren't quite as well known that I'd now really like to see: Dance, Girl, Dance (1940), The Strong Man (1926), and Tol’able David (1921). I'd also like to check out Charley Chase's "Mighty Like a Moose" (1926) as well as Ken Jacobs's legendary underground film, "Tom, Tom the Piper’s Son" (1969-71).

And I was pleasantly surprised to find a couple of the shorts available currently available on YouTube, namely, the lovely experimental "Glimpse of the Garden" (1957) and "The House I Live In" (1945), a fascinating glimpse into the politics of the time, featuring young Frank Sinatra (who never sounded better, in my opinion).

There's also an excerpt from the short movie "Peege" (1972), which looks wonderful.

I don't know how we'll ever get to see "Our Day" (1938), an amateur film that sounds incredible - maybe on a future Treasures anthology? Likewise, I would have had no idea where to find "The Sex Life of the Polyp" (1928), which sounded at first like an educational film but turns out to be a comedy. But The Bloodshot Eye points out it's been anthologized on The Paramount Comedy Shorts 1928-1942: Robert Benchley and the Knights of the Algonquin.. Excellent!

Below are some of the more interesting descriptions from the press release:

Dance, Girl, Dance (1940)
Although there were numerous women filmmakers in the early decades of silent cinema, by the 1930s directing in Hollywood had become a male bastion—with one exception. Dorothy Arzner graduated from editing to directing in the late 1920s, often exploring the conflicted roles of women in contemporary society. In “Dance, Girl, Dance,” her most intriguing film, two women (Lucille Ball and Maureen O’Hara) pursue life in show business from opposite ends of the spectrum: burlesque and ballet. The film is a meditation on the disparity between art and commerce. The dancers strive to preserve their own feminist integrity, while fighting for their place in the spotlight and for the love of male lead Louis Hayward.

Glimpse of the Garden (1957)
Though Marie Menken’s volatile marriage to Willard Mass served as the inspiration for playwright Edward Albee in his 1962 play, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” her surprisingly joyful and simple films rate among the more accessible works of avant-garde filmmakers. The beautifully lyrical “Glimpse of the Garden” is a serendipitous visual tour of a flower garden set to a soundtrack of bird calls.

The House I Live In (1945)
This short film directed by Mervyn LeRoy pleads for religious tolerance and won an honorary Academy Award in 1946. Singer Frank Sinatra takes a break from a recording session to tell kids that in America, there are a hundred different ways of talking and going to church—but they are all American ways. The film ends with Sinatra performing the title tune, an inspiring paean to America’s diverse cultural mosaic.

Mighty Like a Moose (1926)
Actor/director/screenwriter Charley Chase is underappreciated in the arena of early comedy shorts. Chase began his film career in the teens, working for Mack Sennett with the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Fatty Arbuckle. Moving on to the Hal Roach Studios, Chase starred in his own series of shorts. “Mighty Like a Moose,” directed by Leo McCarey, is one of the funniest of his silents. A title card at the beginning tells us this is “a story of homely people—a wife with a face that would stop a clock—and her husband with a face that would start it again.” Unbeknownst to each other Mr. and Mrs. Moose have surgery on the same day to correct his buckteeth and her big nose. They meet on the street later, but don’t recognize each other; they flirt and arrange to meet later at a party. A side-splitting series of sight gags follows including Charley’s “fight with himself.”

Our Day (1938)
Wallace Kelly of Lebanon, Kentucky, made this exquisitely crafted amateur film at home in 1938. "Our Day" is a smart, entertaining day-in-the-life portrait of the Kelly household, shown in both idealized and comic ways. This silent 16mm home movie uses creative editing, lighting and camera techniques comparable to what professionals were doing in Hollywood. His amateur cast was made up of his mother, wife, brother and pet terrier. "Our Day" also contains exceptional images of small-town Southern life, ones that counter the stereotype of impoverished people eking out a living during the Depression. The 12-minute film documents a modern home inhabited by adults with sophisticated interests (the piano, literature, croquet) and simple ones (gardening, knitting, home cooking). Kelly was also an accomplished photographer, painter, and writer. He began shooting film in 1929 and continued until the 1950s.

Peege (1972)
Director Randal Kleiser (“Grease”) crafted this renowned, extremely moving student film while at the University of Southern California. Members of a family visit their blind, dying grandmother Peege at a nursing home, but leave in despair at her condition. Remaining behind, the grandson recounts memories to Peege and manages to connect emotionally with the lonely woman and bring a smile to her face.

The Sex Life of the Polyp (1928)
Humorist Robert Benchley’s career was both varied and distinguished: essayist, member of the Algonquin Round Table, writer for Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, actor in Hollywood features ( “Foreign Correspondent”) and several dozen short comedy subjects. “The Sex Life of the Polyp,” Benchley’s second short (following “The Treasurer’s Report”) features him as a daft doctor delivering a droll but earnest lecture on polyp reproductive habits to a women’s club.

The Strong Man (1926)
Harry Langdon, widely considered one of the great silent comedians, had a career that can only be described as meteoric. A vaudevillian for much of his professional life, Harry Langdon was discovered and brought to Hollywood by Mack Sennett in the early 1920s. But he languished until lightning struck in 1925, when director Harry Edwards and then-gagman Frank Capra worked with him on three features and several shorts. The features, “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp,” “Long Pants” and “The Strong Man” put Langdon solidly into the foursome Walter Kerr calls “The Four Silent Clowns” —with Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. “The Strong Man” predated “City Lights” by several years with its plot of a meek man in love with a blind woman.

Tol'able David (1921)
Henry King (1886-1982) had a 50-year career in Hollywood, winning a reputation as one of the most talented directors in capturing the values, culture, history, personality, and character of the nation. His nostalgia was honest, and often bittersweet. In "Tol'able David," King tells a coming-of-age story about a youth who must overcome savage, bullying neighbors as he takes on his first job delivering mail in rural Virginia. "Tol'able David" was studied by Russian filmmakers of the 1920s. They were inspired by King's memorable conjunctions of shots that evoked personalities and emotions without a need for explanatory titles. "Tol'able David" remains a powerful drama and is also known for its craftsmanship, which was tremendously influential on subsequent filmmaking.

Ansen, Bordwell, Rosenbaum, Haynes...and oh so much more

OK, done clearing out the files. These are mostly film/tv-related links (with a couple bookish tidbits):

You mean I'm not the only lunatic who keeps a notebook recording all the movies he watches? Critic David Ansen writes about his notebook and the lifelong love of movies it is a testament to. Cool!

Good list of promising film projects in the works (scroll down for the best ones).

Smart piece by david Bordwell on the use of framing in comedies. I was delighted to see he focused on Play Time and Shaun of the Dead, two very different films I love very much. His comments on a gag in Shaun gave me even more reason to laugh next time I see it.

IFC recently premiered Does Your Soul Have a Cold?, a documentary by Mike Mills (who directed Thumbsucker), which looks at the ramifications of exporting Western definitions of depression and its cures to Japan. Wishing I had cable right about now.

What's the deal with Etgar Keret? The Israeli writer has been getting great reviews for his short story collection, The Nimrod Flipout, and I noticed that he acted in a film that played at the recent Chicago International Film Festival, Jellyfish. He also wrote the story that is the basis for Wristcutters: A Love Story, an independent film that's been making the rounds with solids reviews so far.

FD fave and Orson Welles expert Jonathan Rosenbaum recently championed some footage from Welles' unfinished Don Quixote. Give the clip a minute to get to its payoff, which is pretty cool. And yes, that's the girl from The Bad Seed.

Todd Haynes's Safe, one of my favorite films, was featured at a recent environmental film festival. The director, out promoting his new crazy-looking Bob Dylan movie (can't wait), couldn't attend. So he sent this silly little short introduction. The better you know Haynes's career (including Superstar), the more you'll get a kick out of this.

A good article on the state of the Oscar races at this critical point in the movie season and, much more interesting to me, the announcement of the official nominees from the nations around the world for the foreign category. Which 5 will eventually be chosen? Based on what I know and have seen so far, count on France's Persepolis,
Israel's Beaufort, and Romania's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Strong maybes: Germany's The Edge of Heaven and Spain's The Orphanage. I'm dying to see South Korea's Secret Sunshine, but it hasn't a chance. I also want to see Hungary's Taxidermia, but again, slim chances. I've seen Hong Kong's Exiled, Mexico's Silent Light, and Sweden's You, The Living, and I'd say Mexico and Sweden have a fair chance at a nomination. The real question is, what gems are buried in this list?

The 2007 World Fantasy Awards have been announced.

No one complains like Sarah Schulman. It's not always easy to be a fan of hers, but I think she makes some important points here. It's true that her latest (The Child) has gotten great reviews. I was appalled to learn how long it took for it to get published. I recently read Fritz Peters' Finistere, a masterpiece of gay literature that happens to be largely about a teen boy who becomes romantically, sexually involved with an adult. The book treated the subject appropriately, and I didn't bat an eye until I read the introduction in which it was pointed out that a story which was mainstream in the 50s would be actually meet much more resistance now. Well, Schulman's book sounds like a case in point. Perhaps it's more explicit than the Peters novel, I don't know. But to write such a story is not necessarily to advocate such relationships, and it shouldn't be necessary to state that obvious point.

Eliza Dushku has had success getting Joss Whedon back to work after so many others have failed. This project sounds great. Dare I set myself up to hope again?

Especially with the writers strike going on. Join the writers for The Office (yay! hooray! great show!) on the picket line.

Geniuses, Harvey, Poets and Film, Roth and...the Taliban Glamour Shots?

MacArthur Genius grants: All the Trib really cared to report on was Stuart Dybek's grant, a very happy event which will enable a strong writer to finish three books without taking on part-time work to slow him down. But there were other figures in the arts of interest to me who won: Dawn Upshaw, that champion of the new in classical music, and playwright Lynn Nottage. I haven't seen any of her plays, but I've heard good things. I think it's great MacArthur has been using this money to support writers toiling (and excelling) in short stories (last year George Saunders), translation and theater, as opposed to novelists who tend to get all the glory.

Sean Penn as Harvey Milk? Matt Damon as Dan White? Gus Van Sant directing? Is this good news?

Paul Muldoon takes over editing poetry for The New Yorker. I'd never given a thought to that post before, quite an important one, I'd think, with perhaps more power to help poets than the Poet Laureate has.

This bracing Philip Roth interview from May 2006 turned up recently. I'd like to think some of his statements are irrelevant a year later, but I wonder.

Fascinating short video about some found photos of young Taliban members. The images including young boys are creepy. And the photos of men holding hands reminds me of nothing so much as those photos of men from the 19C you see in various books. Someone needs to interview these young men.

Jonathan Rosenbaum on the South in movie history. Also, a thoughtful mention of JR and a not so flattering mention. (I won't even touch the recent controversy about his Bergman piece because I spent so much time arguing about it on blogs and discussion boards.) It'll be interesting to see if JR touts the new Rivette, but I have to cut him some slack. Those film fests can honestly wear you down.

Cineaste ponders the best political films and uses their anniversary as an excuse for a look back at some notable films.

TimeOut London: "Gay artists and audiences often joke that Barney is the best gay artist who isn’t actually gay." Also, a fascinating piece on JFK and his best pal. (Thanks, Greg)

TCM lists their top requested films not available on dvd, and aside from The African Queen, the list was pretty surprising to me, at least.

Directors You Didn't Know You Hated

Been meaning to link to The Onion's excellent article on "Directors You Didn't Know You Hated." There were only five listed in the print edition, but the online list is composed of a more generous ten. So much critical attention is spent on great directors (of course), but in some ways it seems just as important to be made aware of the worst "auteurs" working in Hollywood. I avoid these movies like the plague for the most part (though I thought Hairspray was pretty entertaining, though directed by one of this ten), but it's fascinating to see that there are long successful careers to be had in (allaged) mediocrity (or worse), while Hollywood gives so little employment to some of its best and brightest. On the other hand, I wonder if this article could be accused of snobbery.

And I came across this quote on the writing process from David Leavitt in an interesting blog interview:

TEV: Your lengthy acknowledgements testify to a considerable research period. Can you talk about those efforts, about where in the writing they came – for example, was it primarily conducted up front, or did continuing research inform the actual writing process and even necessitate change?

DL: Early on I realized that if I tried to do all the research before I started writing, I'd never start writing. There was simply too much to learn. As Hardy himself might have put it, research can become an "infinite regress." So I made what seems to me, in retrospect, to have been the audacious decision to write and research simultaneously. This was scary at first, in that it involved throwing prose down on the page when in many instances I didn't yet know what I was talking about or what I was describing. Later, as I got deeper into the book, both processes became easier.

Needless to say this approach involved a lot of backpedaling, as, time after time, the discovery of some new and irresistible nugget of historical information required me to revisit a chapter I thought I was done with. But this is not really all that different from the way that I usually write.

James Wood, Film Polls, This-and-That

Just read James Wood's excellent work of criticism on DeLillo's Falling Man. It's searing, certainly balances out more on the negative side than I would have gone, but there's a lot of truth in it. Anyway, I set out looking for more from Wood (I found some) and learned that due to TNR's financial woes, Wood has been scooped up by The New Yorker. (Snarky version of the news here. Smarter reaction to this news here.) I hope this means I get to see more of his work. Update: Best article on Wood's jump yet.

Film Grotto has compiled a top 100 film list out of a bunch of critics' top tens. Results kick AFI butt.

Blogger Edward Copeland invites you to vote on the best non-English language films.

How often do film critics get in front of the camera? I had no idea Jonathan Rosenbaum ever made a movie.

This year's CIFF is dedicated to Roger Ebert. A lovely gesture.

Twitch ran an interesting post about supposedly "unfilmable" books and the dream match-ups of directors (a couple I had to look up) and material.

Excellent coverage of the LOGO presidential candidate debates. Graff, a writer I once corresponded with, is a gem.

The Times fucks up again.

Looking for Something Good to Read?

So many interesting Summer reading features lately.

The NY Times asks several notable authors (including the newly Oprah-annointed Jeffrey Eugenides) what they've enjoyed recently. (Stephen King is still pounding the pulpit for Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski; Dave Eggers obviously has an advance copy of Rembrandt’s Nose; Foer brings attention to the excellently-reviewed Kalooki Nights; Colm Toibin gives his blessing to the book next on my reading pile; Danticat whines about not having enough time to read since she's a mommy; Shteyngart has an even better source for advance books, as he's got the new Edmund White I'm eager to read; and much more!)

But New York Magazine has the really interesting features, making the Times look plebeian in comparison: "The Future Canon" ("Which novels--and novelists--from the past several years will be taught in 50 years’ time?") and "The Best Novels You’ve Never Read" ("Sixty-one critics reveal their favorite underrated book of the past ten years") among other features.

Not to mention the Chicago Reader's recent books issue (including some well-deserved scrutiny for Oprah's outside-the-book-club promotion of a very icky book) and TimeOut Chicago's special books issue, including a typically quirky summer reading list.

Stanly Fish, Great Spanish Novels, and the Struggles of Debut Novelists

Stanley Fish wrote a delicious bit of literary criticism in the guise of an op-ed for the NY Times the other day. In it, he exercises some close reading skills on the first sentences of a bunch of recent mystery novels (he asks you to picture him--or, rather, yourself--at the local airport bookstore), and it's the most rewarding attention to sentences I've encountered since Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer. I'm guessing he read the entire books (or at least more than the opening sentence) before theorizing about how much a first sentence can tell you about a novel, but the idea that applying critical thinking skills to a few first sentences could help you find the best book in the heap is enormously appealing in this age of limited time and overabundant choices. Excellently done. GalleyCat identifies (with some help) the novels discussed.

A new poll in the Spanish-language Semana magazine lists the top 100 Spanish language novels of all time. It continues to be a great year for the late Roberto Bolano: two of his novels place in the top 5, including the just-translated Savage Detectives.

Library Journal has a fine, thoughtful sidebar in their annual look at debut novels (scroll down to "Great Expectations") about the fortunes of some high-profile, acclaimed debuts and the challenges of the market.

Granta's Best of Young American Novelists 2

Granta has a new issue coming out on April 24th devoted to the Best of Young American Novelists 2. You can see the list they chose at: www.bestyoungnovelists.com. So I got to wondering, how’d they do last time?

It was back in 1996 in issue 54 that they last chose the "Best of Young American Novelists." Well, Eugenides and Franzen turned out to be prescient choices. Most of the names on this list went on to garner good reviews if not great sales, but I have to admit I haven’t even heard of some of them: David Haynes, Allen Kurzweil, Fay Myenne Ng, Melanie Rae Thon, and Kate Wheeler. And as an Amazon critic points out: no David Foster Wallace or Richard Powers

Highlights of the new list seem to be Gary Shteyngart, Nicole Krauss and her husband Jonathan Safran Foer. Kevin Brockmeier, Daniel Alarcon, Anthony Doerr, Uzodinma Iweala, Maile Meloy, ZZ Packer, and Karen Russell it seems to me, are just getting established. I think it’s too soon to call. The others are fairly unknown but here’s hoping. I’ve read stories by Doerr, which I found more interesting for their research than their narrative, and Russell, which struck me as refreshingly weird but her style still inchoate. She hasn’t yet learned to sustain interest. So, on first consideration this seems a stronger list that last time but still not the all-star team it should be. Hmm, are those Brits trying to rig the game for competition?

Misc. Recent Film and Book News

Haven't seen Superman Returns, but I watched some DVDs of the first season of the old Superman tv show not long ago and found Jack Larson, the actor playing Jimmie Olson, rather handsome. I also found the relationship between him and Superman to be somewhat gay, at least on Jimmie's side. I'd read somewhere that Larson had once turned down a proposition from James Dean, and then recently I read that actor is, in fact, gay:

After a particularly humiliating encounter with the producer Mervyn LeRoy in 1961 — “He started castigating the casting director right in front of me, saying, “I can’t have him in my film! He’s Jimmy Olsen!’ ” — Mr. Larson sought advice from his onetime lover, the actor Montgomery Clift. He remembers the meeting at the Bel Air Hotel.

“Monty said, ‘This is going to continue,’ ” Mr. Larson recalled. “ ‘Don’t put yourself in these situations anymore. You need to leave this behind.’ And that’s when I decided to quit acting.”

He focused instead on his writing, becoming an award-winning playwright and librettist, receiving the first Rockefeller Foundation grant ever awarded to a playwright. He collaborated with composers including Virgil Thomson, Irving Fine and Ned Rorem, and his rhymed verse plays were performed all over the world. He was also a producer on films like “The Paper Chase,” “Urban Cowboy” and “Bright Lights, Big City,” often working with his domestic partner, the director James Bridges, with whom he lived for 35 years before Mr. Bridges’s death in 1993.

Also, the Chicago Tribune recently asked Jack Larson and Noel Neill their opinions of the movie Hollywoodland.

Publishers Weekly recently asked Andrew Holleran an interesting question:

"Why was it so hard to get an author photo from Hyperion?

[Holleran:]"I never wanted photos from the beginning. It's just a privacy issue. When Dancer came out, I thought: "I'm a gay man, I've written a gay book, I'm living in New York. If I go out to the baths or to the bars I don't want people to say, "Oh, that's so-and-so." Writing is being anonymous, it's being the voyeur. I need the cover."

PW's look at the state of gay publishing includes a profile of several interesting books.

One of my favorite reporters for the Chicago Tribune, Patrick T. Reardon, recently came across a book that got his attention (as it did mine--I bought it a couple months ago) and was inspired to make a list of "Ten-Plus-One Novels I Like That You Might Like."

New Directions = Nude Erections? Well done, Ezra Pound. The venerable publisher turns 70.

Film News 9/1/06

Supercritic Jonathan Rosenbaum has contributed an essay to the DVD of Kicking and Screaming and commentary to the latest Criterion edition of Playtime. He's also been contributing a series of fun articles to DVDBeaver.com. I saw an interesting quote from him in a review of The Last Movie.

Joss Whedon won a Hugo award for Serenity. He also recently made a list of favorite tv characters which is written in his trademark style. Rumors continue to flow about who might play Wonder Woman. Pay no attention. Speaking of Whedon, Amber Benson (beloved for her role om Buffy) will guest on an upcoming episode of Supernatural.

The Beat has information on Ursula K. Leguin's reaction to the movie version of her book The Farthest Shore made by Studio Ghibli.

Q World Video asks notable personalities about their favorite gay films. Recently they asked Wash Westmoreland (Co-director of Quincenera and The Fluffer with husband Richard Glatzer):

My favorite LGBT film is A TASTE OF HONEY, a "kitchen sink" drama set in Salford, England in the early sixties. It is the story of Jo (Rita Tushingham) a teenage girl who is abandoned by her gloriously wanton mother (Dora Bryant), gets pregnant by a black sailor (Paul Danquah) and shacks up with Geoff (Murray Melvin), a young gay man she meets in a shoe shop. Geoff's character has no coming-out moment, no self hatred, or angst over his circumstances; he just moves in with Jo, starts "doing the place up" and thereby forms one of cinema's very first queer families. Made at a time when homosexuality was illegal in Britain, the film was the vision of a 19 year-old usherette, Shelagh Delaney, who, legend has it, was bored with the irrelevance of the plays in her theater. It was a big influence on QUINCEANERA , which features a pregnant latina and her gay cholo cousin. In both movies, the affectionate central relationship is clothed in antagonism and irreverence. "What do you do?" Jo asks Geoff with blunt curiosity, "Go on tell! I've always wanted to know..." And this was in 1961!"

I found this interesting because by coincidence I recently watched A Taste of Honey, and when I saw Glatzer's (very solid) film, I could clearly see the influence.

Dalkey Archive is moving from Illinois to Rochester, NY. This neck of the woods will be a bit sadder, but at least they seem to be thriving.

Oliver Sacks has a great reading list on his web site. One book that jumped out at me was Music and the Mind by Anthony Storr, which looks like a good companion to This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession by Daniel J. Levitin (which I just included in my most recent book review roundup).

Fighting the Movie Blahs

Seems like there have been very few new films to get excited about so far this year, but in actuality there are scads of interesting small films out there that just haven't made it to theaters yet. Fest coverage of the Sundance and Tribeca festivals has mentioned several films that caught my eye. Some may prove to be duds, but hopefully there are a few gems in this list:

Top Picks

• The Big Combo - restored film noir with "sadistic gay hit men" (Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman)
• The Case of the Grinning Cat - latest essay film from the brilliant Chris Marker
• Color Me Kubrick - Malkovich plays a "gay, effete, alcoholic slob" who passed himself off as Kubrick, and it's based on a real case
• Comedy of Power - Chabrol directs Huppert in what sounds a bit like an Erin Brockavich inspired by a real French Enron-style scandal (the "Elf Affair")
• Half Nelson - drama about a Brooklyn middle-school teacher with a drug addiction--raves for the acting
• My Dad is 100 Years Old - with Guy Maddin's Help, Isabella Rossellini makes a film about her dad Roberto
• Old Joy - Raves for this American art film
• Science of Sleep - Michel Gondry's proper follow-up to Eternal Sunshine
• Soy Boricua, Pa' Que Tu Lo Sepas! (I'm Boricua, Just So You Know!) - Rosie Perez made this doc about the history of Puerto Rico and it's culture
• Street Thief - doc about a Chicago based burglar responsible for over 100 safecrackings since 1996
• Tell Me Do You Miss Me - doc about Luna's farewell tour
• This Film is Not Yet Rated - doc. about the censorious American ratings system
• Viva Zapatero - In Italy, the local Rupert Murdoch is also prime minister (Berlusconi), and this artist/activist took her critique on the road and filmed it (raves at Sundance and Tribeca)

Waiting for More Reviews

• Air Guitar Nation - a doc about the competitive air guitar circuit
• Backstage - French drama about a teen who befriends a pop idol
• The Descent - about indie horror film about a group of women who go spelunking, looks terrifying
• In Between Days - character study of a teenage Korean girl living in Canada
• Iraq in Fragments - doc of the war thru Iraqi eyes
• Land of the Blind - Radical and outrageous story of a nation plays with ideas of revolution and dictators, with Donald Sutherland and Ralph Fiennes
• Lunacy - Svankmajer's latest stop-motion, with inspiration from Poe and de Sade
• The Mist in the Palm Trees - a Cuban faux memoir
• The One Percent - heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune interviews various the best and brightest about the state of the American economy
• Ontic Antics - Ken Jacobs' latest stroboscopic experiment irradiates an old Laurel and Hardy film
• Pineflat - Andy Warhol meets James Benning according the Film Comment
• Punching at the Sun
• The Shutka Book of Records
• The Treatment - Unformulaic rom-com set in NY, featuring Famke Janseen and Ian Holm
• Two Players from the Bench - another dark, nutty film from the land of Kusturica
• Wordplay - doc about crossword puzzle and word puzzle maniacs, featuring Will Shortz
• The Yacoubian Building - 3-hour Egyptian epic soap opera

To me, the most interesting film lists are the personal ones, like Jonathan Rosenbaum's 1000 Essential Films at the end of his book Essential Cinema, or even Ebert's Great Movies books.

And even though they have their uses, I'm not so wild about the big bland committee-produced lists like the book The A List: The National Society of Film Critics' 100 Essential Films, or the endless AFI 100 Movies lists. (They actually have a special coming up on "AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes." Can you say dregs?) But when I was flipping through a copy of Time Magazine the other day at the gym (ppbhf! do you think I got to the gym for my health?), I got sucked into a teaser for their online list of the All Time 100 Movies. Richard and Richard's list is fairly routine as these things go, but it's not quite as dull as the AFI's. And, in keeping with my preference for the more personal lists, I prefer Schickel's list of films that didn't make the final cut more than the finished product.

Anyway, I count around 30 films on this list that I haven't seen, give or take a couple I can't remember for sure. There are films on the list I've never even heard of, or barely remember hearing of: Closely Watched Trains, The Crime of Monsieur Lange, It's a Gift, The Last Command, Nayakan, Pyaasa, and A Touch of Zen. Oh, and you've heard of--or seen!--every film on the list, I suppose?

Here are the films I haven't seen:
Aguirre: the Wrath of God
Berlin Alexanderplatz
Children of Paradise
Closely Watched Trains
The Crime of Monsieur Lange
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
Detour
Dodsworth
The Fly (1986)
Ikiru
It's a Gift
Kind Hearts and Coronets
The Last Command
Léolo
The Man With a Camera
Mon oncle d'Amérique
Mouchette
Nayakan
Olympia, Parts 1 and 2
On the Waterfront
Psycho
Pyaasa
The Singing Detective
Smiles of a Summer Night
A Touch of Zen
Ugetsu
Ulysses' Gaze
Umberto D
White Heat
Yojimbo

Many are films I know I should see and often have intended to see but just...haven't yet. I'm not a huge Kurosawa fan. To me he's one of those directors that serious straight guys always gush about, like Scorsese. I admire both more than I enjoy them. With some of these I've been holding out for a big screen showing (hello, Psycho). I've been on a Cagney kick lately, so I'll have no problem getting interested in White Heat. Léolo I think I saw a few minutes of years ago and wouldn't mind finishing. Mouchette's one of the Bresson films I haven't seen but will. You just don't rush out and see everything by Bresson once you discover him. Doesn't work that way. The Bunuel, well obviously I want to see it, have missed many chances. Smiles of... I recently missed a chance to see but want to very much. I haven't seen any Mizoguchi, but one of these days they'll do a retrospective in town and I'll do some catching up. A Touch of Zen sounds excellent. King Hu! (Someday in heaven: Hu, meet Vidor...Vidor, Hu).

On the bright side, that leaves around 70 I have seen!

Love the inclusion of Sunrise, Talk to Her, Finding Nemo, The Good The Bad and the Ugly, His Girl Friday, Decalogue, The Awful Truth, Meet Me in St. Louis, Sherlock Jr. City of God? That's a cool and gutsy choice.

But Kandahar? In a Lonely Place? Notorious? (There are so many better Hitchcock films.) Is 8 1/2 really Fellini's best?

Where's Playtime and Bringing Up Baby (to name just two obvious omissions)? Could go on about this all day...

Song: "Rub You Wrong" by De Novo Dahl

A Serving of Irving

In a new paperback edition of A Widow for One Year (with art from the excellent, underappreciated movie The Door in the Floor), there's a supplemental interview with author John Irving.

Asked why he's even more successful in Canada and parts of Europe than in the U.S., John Irving talks about how Grass is disliked in Germany. Then he adds:

"And Grass is not an isolated example. We have our own--Kurt Vonnegut. He is regarded outside the United States as a virtual prophet; he is often ridiculed at home. To a lesser degree--meaning less praised abroad, but also less condemned in the United State--Jospeh Heller is like that. In my view, Vonnegut and Heller are this country's most original novelists; we should treasure them, but we don't. And then there's Salman Rushdie. In England they write terrible things about him, but here we love him--as we should."

Later he mentions that difficult literary works aren't uncommon on the bestseller lists of Germany, France, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, and Canada.

"What can I say? Most Americans who read at all read junk. The British best-seller lists are also disgraceful."

Wow. Brave words, yet true. I'm delighted that he's so keen on Vonnegut and Heller. I adore them. I've yet to read a novel by Rushdie, but I will one of these days.

In other book news, Borders bookstore has listed its Best of 2004, for what it's worth. One book mentioned, Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind, seems to be getting a lot of buzz all of the sudden. I smell a potential hit.

At a glance, the Borders lists seem far better than the Amazon best of 2004 lists--like those for fiction and non-fiction--that they published some time ago.

The 30 most romantic films? Actually, I've seen worse lists (though there's quite a bit of overlap). The Telegraph's list includes Punch-Drunk Love, which is a pretty gutsy (and excellent) choice.