September 2008
29 posts
Ten Paul Newman movies I've never seen
Oh, and if it wasn’t entirely obvious, RIP Paul Newman.
The Long, Hot Summer (1958)
The Young Philadelphians (1959)
Exodus (1960)
Sweet Bird of Youth (1962)
Harper (1966)
Hombre (1967)
Cool Hand Luke (1967)
The Life and TImes of Judge Roy Bean (1972)
Absence of Malice (1981)
Nobody’s Fool (1994)
On a more guilty pleasure front, I’ve always wanted to see the bizarre sounding...
I remorselessly watched Sex and the City: The...
Without ever consciously trying, I’ve seen a rather large amount of Sex and the City’s 94 episodes. I’d say I’m missing, in total, just over a season. I’m not even so sure I can call it a guilty pleasure unless you interpret that phrase literally: I, despite my best efforts, find it pleasurable to watch — very fast, mostly light, sometimes even sharp in its...
Plug Tunin' (Round Two)
Plug 1: Did a review of the Arden production of Leonard Bernstein’s unwieldy Candide for the Metro. Again, it’s not online so if you’re reading this hopefully you live in Philthadelphia.
Plug Tunin'
Plug 1: A Six Pack rounding up the filmmaking sons of great filmmakers. Alas, Last King of Scotland director Kevin Macdonald is the grandson of Emeric Pressburger.
Plug 2: A review (second down) of Mister Foe.
“If there’s nothing in your system then why aren’t you wearing any...”
– A medic, exhibiting kindness and patience, to some dude clearly blitzed out of his mind, overheard from a friend at ATP. The guy’s friend was apparently crying as he suspected the medic would drag him away and he’d miss My Bloody Valentine.
All Tomorrow's Parties New York 2008
Who I Saw
Tortoise **
Eugene Mirman
Patton Oswalt
Built to Spill
Growing **
Fuck Buttons *
Harmonia
Edan w/ Dagha
Om **
Low **
Les Savy Favs **
Shellac
The Wounded Knees
Lilys
EPMD
Mercury Rev **
Spectrum
Yo La Tengo
Mogwai
Dinosaur Jr.
My Bloody Motherfucking Valentine
(* = Saw most of the set but for whatever reason was late/had to skip out. ** = Saw like a song or three,...
Plug Tunin' (Again)
Plug 1: Well, I’m now also a theater critic. Unfortunately my paper, the Philadelphia edition of Metro, chooses not to put most of its content online — take that, technology! — so you’ll have to be a Philadelphian who can grab a physical copy to peep my review of a production of Woyzeck. And if you are a Philadelphian there’s a chance you’ve already grabbed a...
Plug Tunin'
Plug 1: An A-List (second down) on International House’s awesome re-opening, the joint having been going through severe but long-, long-, long-awaited renovations, quite a large part of which focused on their literally ass-breaking seats. (My posterior still aches from Jacques Rivette’s four hour L’Amour fou five years ago.) I can’t be happier that this development has...
Out-There Movie Plots (Round One?)
The plot of the movie centers on a homosexual man, played by Joe Dallesandro, who is attracted to ‘Johnny,’ a boyish looking woman, played by Jane Birkin. They begin an affair, which is complicated by the fact that he cannot achieve orgasm through vaginal intercourse. The pain of anal intercourse is so great for Johnny, though, that her screams cause them to be thrown out of every...
Riddle Me This, Batman
So I’m sitting here, just home from the soul-sucking day job, and innocently putting together the Tumblr post you see below you when out of nowhere I hear the sound of air suddenly and very quickly escaping from…something. “What now,” I think, as there was this one time early this year when the electricity in the rowhome I live in just…fucking…died, and it was...
“…Balthazar Getty, about whom the less said the better, probably, except...”
– One of the funnier epic footnotes from “David Lynch Loses His Head,” David Foster Wallace’s essay from the set of Lost Highway (found, in its unedited form, in the collection A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again). Goddam I’m gonna miss this guy.
DFW
I don’t have a ton to add about the suicide of David Foster Wallace that hasn’t been said a thousand other places in the last day. Like most people in my age and social group, I was a huge fan who at least gave his doorstop Inifinte Jest the old college try before throwing it against the wall for what I presumed was the final time. But the stuff I did finish — his primo essay...
Ebert's on a fuckin' tear
First arrives the ailing critic’s thoughtful diss on Sarah Palin, which takes particular aim at the stupidity of voting for someone just because you see yourself in them. Then comes word that New York Post hack critic Lou Lumenick “thwacked” Ebert up at TIFF after the critic, still unable to speak, twice tapped him on the shoulder so that he would budge out of his sight range. ...
“I don’t believe in God, but I believe in Al Pacino.”
– Javier Bardem, in the NYT’s Style Magazine this Sunday. Wow, I don’t even believe in Pacino anymore (and not in the way I no longer believe in god).
Plug Tunin'
Plug 1: A Six Pack on unfortunate movie hairdos. I tried to find some crazy coifs from before the ’80s but completely drew a blank. Dangit. Hat tips to Andrew Dignan for recommending Hopper and Bronwen Liggitt for Cusack.
Plug 2: Caps for the French dramedy The Grocer’s Son and Chris Smith’s Indian drama The Pool.
“The abrupt ending of the film is due to the fact that it was originally intended...”
– IMDb’s helpful trivia section about the amazing freeze frame conclusion to The Sword of Doom (1966, Kihachi Okamoto). Thanks for the tip, dudes, but I prefer my own reading of the film’s ending. (SPOILER ALERT — IF YOU HAVEN’T ALREADY PLEASE GO AND RENT OR SOMEHOW SEE THIS...
Some fuel for that fire. Just some. (I actually... →
What I May Be Seeing at the New York Film Fest
Tickets for the 46th NYFF go on sale for non-members Sunday at noon. Since, as ever, I’m not going to Toronto this, along with the PFF in the spring, is all I got. As with last year I’m only springing for stuff that doesn’t already have a U.S. release date or likely will, so no Changeling, no The Wrestler, no Happy-Go-Lucky, no The Class, no Wendy and Lucy, none of those ones...
Has Gus Van Sant gone back to making regular... →
Plug Tunin'
Plug 1: A lead on Jirí Menzel’s sharp I Served the King of England.
Plug 2: A cap on the not-painful-not-good Everybody Wants to Be Italian.
Plug 3: A Six Pack on movies in which Nicolas Cage simply does not give a fuck.
