what did matt watch?

Weekly Round-up of Material I Wrote on a Professional-Type Basis

Thu, 09 May 2013 17:23:00 -0400

Reviews

Review of The Great Gatsby, which is not a disaster
Review of Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers, which is enjoyably nasty
Review of the Eli Roth’s Aftershock
Review of Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell
Review of Venus and Serena
Review of Hava Nagila: The Movie

Interviews/Miscellany:

Wrote a piece about BAM’s “Booed at Cannes” series
Some Leo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan quotes from a presser for The Great Gatsby
Talked to Joel Edgerton while he was in his briefs
Talked to Eli Roth

Also, check out Vadim Rizov on Peeples.

So, yeah, my comically old bike: 1990ish-2013. Got it when I was...

Fri, 03 May 2013 16:16:00 -0400

So, yeah, my comically old bike: 1990ish-2013. Got it when I was 12 or so, and dug it out of mothballs in 2007, after which I used it almost every day. I can’t even guess how many (thousands of?) miles I got out of it, but I used to bike to work with it, 8+ miles each way, back in Philly. It went on the Schuylkill river trail on numerous occasions, sometimes 25 miles each way to questionable suburban eateries. It was with me on drunk rides, like that one time, when I was slightly more foolish than I am now, when I rode it from Kensington to Roosevelt Blvd in the middle of the night without realizing I was going entirely the wrong way. I never much cared that it didn’t fit me, nor that I looked vaguely unappealing riding it. Trying not to guesstimate how much money I put into it in repairs, but by the end the only thing that hadn’t been replaced was the frame itself, which I just assumed would live into eternity. It didn’t. A nice crack finally formed at the rear tire hub, making it, after all these years, unsafe to ride. Sorry that a cartoonishly snooty bike shop repair dude had to do the final diagnosis — but then I have the amusingly awkward voicemail from said snooty bike shop repair guy, who obviously had no clue how to break the news to a stranger that his bike was totally dead. Anyway, end of an era, it’s been a blast and you’ve been replaced with a bike not originally intended for a growing boy. May it, too, last longer than some pets. (Yes, I eulogized a non-living object made of gears and grease.)

Weekly Round-up of Stuff I Wrote on a Professional-type Basis

Fri, 03 May 2013 15:27:20 -0400

Did this kind of epic round-up of the summer’s movie offerings, with some room found for Computer Chess and ilk
Review of Iron Man 3
Review of Olivier Assayas’ awesome Something in the Air
Review of Carlos Reygadas’ Post Tenebras Lux
Review of Xan Cassavetes’ Kiss of the Damned
Review of the Jeff Buckley thing Greetings From Tim Buckley
Review of the Mumia doc
Interview with Xan Cassavetes for Kiss of the Damned
Interview with former CIA analyst Nada Bakos, who fucking helped find Zarqawi, for the HBO doc Manhunt

Weekly Round-Up of All the Many Things I Wrote This Week Professionally

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 13:48:00 -0400

Review of Jeff Nichols’ Mud, starring Matthew McConaughey as Mud
Review of Terence Nance’s An Oversimplification of Her Beauty
Review of Ramin Bahrani’s At Any Price
Review of Mira Nair’s film of The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Review of the film of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children
Review of Arthur Newman, which stars Colin Firth and Emily Blunt and still stinks
Review of the documentary Koch

Interviews

Tribeca Coverage

And check out my old Philadelphia Weekly comrade Sean Burns tearing apart Michael Bay’s Pain & Gain and Gary M. Kramer on No Place on Earth.

Weekly Round-Up of Professional-Style Writing I Wrote on a Professional-Like Basis

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 09:28:32 -0400

Interview with Rob Zombie, and a review of his new film The Lords of Salem
A piece on the new restoration of Portrait of Jason in which I talk to Milestone Films’ Amy Heller and Dennis Doros
A review of Oblivion, which isn’t terrible
A review of François Ozon’s In the House
A review of Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay
A review of the new faux-silent Blancanieves

Weekly Round-Up of Shit I Wrote on a Professional Basis

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 11:35:00 -0400

A rave of Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder sorry haters
Review of the Jackie Robinson picture 42
Review of Ken Loach’s The Angels’ Share
Review of the indie apocalyptic comedy It’s a Disaster
A “Repertory Round-Up” for NYC this weekend, including Medieval films at Anthology, 1957 ‘scope eyesores at Film Forum and rare Max Ophüls and Julien Duvivier films at MoMA
A piece on Philadelphia’s XPN Music Film Festival, which touts movies about the Flaming Lips, back-up singers, the Beatles’ secretary and Aimee Mann acting

Also be sure to check out Vadim Rizov on Disconnect.

Weekly Round-up of Writings I Wrote on a Professional Writing Basis

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 15:29:20 -0400

On the extreme off-chance that you’re wondering why I’m not playing much with this Tumblr anymore, it’s because I have a real person’s full-time job on top of a real student’s full-time workload. The fruits of the former, from the last week, can be found below:

A review of Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color
An interview with Robert Redford about The Company You Keep
A review of The Company You Keep
An interview with director Antonio Campos and actor/writer Brady Corbet about Simon Killer
A review of Simon Killer
A review of the Evil Dead remake
An interview with Eva Mendes, for The Place Beyond the Pines

Also check Vadim Rizov on Jurassic Park 3-D.

Weekly Round-Up of Things I Wrote on a Professional Basis, 29 March 13

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 11:31:05 -0400

Interviewed someone named Ryan Gosling
Review of The Place Beyond the Pines
Review of The Host
Review of Mental
Review of Wrong
Review of Welcome to the Punch

Also: Philadelphia, you get Beyond the Hills, Ginger & Rosa and The Silence. You lucky dogs!

ALSO: Got Vadim Rizov to review Room 237 and G.I. Joe: Retaliation, which I keep almost writing as “G.I. Joe: Retribution.”

Weekly Round-Up of Stuff I Wrote in a Professional Fashion

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 14:57:00 -0400

Review of Olympus Has Fallen
Review of The Croods
Review of On the Road
Review of The Silence
Talked to Aaron Eckhart for Olympus Has Fallen
Did up New Directors/New Films, with capsules on Upstream Color, The Act of KIlling, Leones, etc.

Also farmed out work to others: Vadim Rizov on Admission and Gimme the Loot, Steve Erickson on My Brother the Devil and Gary Kramer on Starbuck

The Weekly Round-Up of Stuff I Wrote on a Professional Basis

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 10:32:55 -0400

A round-up of NYC repertory cinema this season
Review of The Call
Review of Upside Down
Review of Ginger & Rosa
Review of From Up On Poppy Hill
Review of My Amityville Horror
Review of Like Someone in Love (opens in Philly and Boston)
Review of No (opens in Philly)
Review of Lore (opens in Philly)
Review of West of Memphis (opens in Boston)
Review of Stoker (opens in Philly)
An interview with Michel Gondy
An interview with Tom Folsom, author of the new Dennis Hopper bio Hopper

ALSO: I got the great Vadim Rizov into the Metro. He reviewed Spring Breakers, Reality and The Incredible Burt Wonderstone.

Weekly Round-Up of Stuff I Wrote in the Professional Capacity

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 13:53:00 -0500

Review of Oz the Great and Powerful
Review of No
Review of Beyond the Hills
Review of Dead Man Down
Review of The We and the I
Review of The ABCs of Death
Review of Barbara

Also be sure to check out Steven Erickson’s review of Yossi.

Exciting New News about Exciting New Employment (with soon-to-be-broken promises about doing something with this Tumblr)

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 11:39:00 -0500

As some of you may know, I was recently named Film and TV editor and Features Writer at Metro US. I will be handling and writing about film and TV (but mostly film) in our three American papers in NYC, Boston and my old town of Philadelphia. This unfortunately means I had to tender my resignation at Philadelphia Weekly, for whom I’ve written for a few months shy of thirteen years. It’s sad, but the upside is the world gets more Sean Burns. And that’s a wonderful thing.

Rather than inundate my Twitter and Facebook feeds with all the stuff I’m writing, I’ll just compile them here from now on. Here’s what I’ve done recently:

Review of Jack the Giant Slayer
Review of A Place at the Table (and interviewed exec. producer/Top Chef honcho/restauranteur Tom Colicchio)
Review of Stoker
Review of Leviathan
Review of The Sweeney
Review of The Gatekeepers
Review of Snitch
Piece on the 18th annual Rendez-Vous With French Cinema series at the Linc
Piece on the Andrew Sarris “Expressive Esoterica” series at Anthology Film Archives
Piece on the 1933 series at Film Forum
Piece on the 1993 exhibit at the New Museum

A Highly Subjective List of My Best Repertory of 2012 (Slightly...

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 10:48:00 -0500

A Highly Subjective List of My Best Repertory of 2012 (Slightly Late and In No Hierarchal Order)

What Happened Was… (1994, Tom Noonan): What it’s like to go on a date with Tom Noonan, as written and directed (and starring) Tom Noonan. Also what a stage play transplanted to the screen should look like when you’re not going to “open it up.” The only set is Jackie’s (Karen Sillas) spacious apartment, where there are evidently few lights. So, there’s mood, but there’s also the peerless direction/self-direction of actors (whatever happened to Sillas?) and the way Noonan allows the awkwardness of human interaction to hang there, to take its time. (Also caught this year was Noonan’s The Wife, which, like What Happened Was…, suddenly popped up on Netflix Instant. (Both are still there.) It’s more “open,” but even more atmospheric.) [Instant]

Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man (1976, Rugero Deodato): I don’t like Cannibal Holocaust, but my dislike is based on a conceptual problem that, as it happens, stems from what could be classified as overachievement in a film entitled “Cannibal Holocaust.” Which is to say that it’s a smart film – just wrong. I can’t vouch for other films by Ruggero Deodato, but having now seen a second I can confirm that he’s definitely not an idiot. What this is is a Starsky and Hutch twist in which the two buddy cops are raging dickheads: relentlessly cocky and carefree, they share and forcibly disrobe women and, in one scene, assassinate a group of bank robbers before they rob a bank, i.e., before they’re provably committed a crime. It slyly walks a fine line: anyone sincerely into this Death Wish nonsense will have a hoot, and so will anyone who reads it as a devastating satire of same. [Instant]

The Long Day Closes (1991, Terence Davies): Near as I can tell the most perfect distillation of Terence Davies’ lush memory piece shtick. Free of the (mostly) boilerplate evil dad aspect of the (still excellent) Distant Voices, Still Lives, he relentlessly roams through his past, unaware and unworried that he won’t be working much for the next two decades. [Film Forum]

La Région Centrale (1971, Michael Snow): Three hours prowling the same space, from as many angles and positions as can be achieved in that allotted time. And it could still conceivably go on for another three hours, or more. [International House]

Mauvais Sang (1986, Leos Carax): The post-Holy Motors hangover involves fans discovering that Leos Carax is a miserable bastard who is rarely in a mood good enough to make Holy Motors. I’d already known this, but I’d never seen his version of a neo-noir, almost all of which is self-consciously abstract images that wallow in thief Denis Lavant’s poetic bent. The only respite lasts a minute, and even if you’ve never seen the film you’ve possibly seen it: Lavant hears Bowie’s “Modern Love” on the radio and immediately starts running and caterwauling down an empty city street at night. For my money it’s the most accurate and powerful depiction of joy ever captured on film. [DVD]

Moonrise (1948, Frank Borzage): Borzage was one of the filmmakers I finally caught up with this year, and while I adore the silent entries I saw, and while I recognize that this is a director who doesn’t need sound holding back his camera, this late-period noir is my favorite. Of course, it’s one that is not terribly beholden to audio: the opening is a surreal montage even the silent era wasn’t always cool with, while the rest is an almost-cynical tale that benefits considerably from having a romantic behind the lens. [Instant]

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949, John Ford): I’m not even touching the QT Ford snafu, except to say you wouldn’t knock him if you knew him. This was the favorite out of what turned out to be a decent Ford catch-up year (also seen: The Informer, Fort Apache, They Were Expendable and the surprisingly interesting Cheyenne Autumn (in 70mm!)). It’s also the loosest of the bunch: not beholden to a major plot and more of a hang-out picture, where the themes and codes grow organically out of the action. I don’t get people who don’t think Ford was funny, and I’ll point to this as why not. [DVD]

The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums (1939, Kenji Mizoguchi): Devastating, as advertised. New York needs a good Mizoguchi retro now that I’m here. [DVD]

Gabriel Over the White House (1933, Gregory La Cava): The Pre-Code era meets a period of serious political unrest, meaning holy shit. Ushered in by Hearst (who gave uncredited screenplay advice), this finds a lazy liberal president possessed by God to become a fascist who fixes all the world’s problems, e.g., setting up kangaroo courts and executing bootleggers. FDR used to ritualistically watch this, as the legend goes, and I hope none of the Breitbots ever discover it. [YouTube]

Wake in Fright (1971, Ted Kotcheff): Went in expecting this to at some point descend into genre hell, but the relatively realistic place it winds up is far more terrifying anyway. As a drinker who sometimes goes on (comparatively light) benders, I identified too strongly with this. [Film Forum]

Le Grand Amour (1968, Pierre Étaix): Hurricane Sandy killed the Pierre Étaix retro at Film Forum halfway through its run, meaning I only got to catch this, the comic filmmaker’s allegedly signature work. (Although friends tell me Yoyo is the real find.) Anyway, I will happily settle for the forthcoming Eclipse box or whatever results, as Étaix’s is one of the oddest comic sensibilities I’ve seen in film. [Film Forum]

Saint Jack (1979, Peter Bogdanovich): While Bob Guccione was pouring millions into Caligula, Hugh Hefner was paying Peter Bogdanovich to slip some nudity into his shaggy portrait of a weathered but always resilient pimp (Ben Gazzara) in Singapore. No one saw it, and Bogdanovich claimed that was too bad as it was one of his best films. And he’s right: Gazzara’s predictable awesomeness aside, it’s one of the last of the ‘70s character studies, and has no loftier goal than to show someone who keeps on keepin’ on, through ups and downs, through doughy middle periods, even through atrocities like getting his forearms forcibly tattooed. [Anthology Film Archives]

2012 was also the year I finally delved into Scottish-Canadian animation pioneer Norman McLaren (favorites: Begone Dull Care, Blankity Blank, C’est l’aviron, Lines Horizontal, Lines Vertical, Mosaic, Pas de deux and Synchromy), Bruce Baillie (dug the most, natch: Castro Street), Jordan Belson (whose eyesores are not on YouTube, Vimeo, etc. for what’s at heart a good reason) and saw more Chick Strand. In fact, the latter’s Kristallnacht was probably the best thing I saw all year.

Also, this was the first year since 2007 that I didn’t do Exhumed Films’ storied 24 Hour Horror-thon, as by then I had relocated from Philadelphia to NYC. But I was around to do their more manageable 12-hour exploitation ‘thon “Ex-Fest,” which I wrote up here. Vice Squad in a pristine 35mm print was lovely.

Bonus Round! Best Films I Re-Saw and Had My Mind (Re-)Blown

Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974, Jacques Rivette): Rivette’s career peak was already one of my all-time favorites, but I’d never seen it properly: trapped in a theater, where you have no other distraction than finding its groove and then not getting off until Celine and Julie indeed go boating. This film has its own logic, and provided you get in synch, letting go once the epic running time is up is one of life’s saddest acts. [Film Forum]

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969, Peter Hunt): As I’ve blabbed about elsewhere, I spent a good chunk of October, for a variety of personal reasons I won’t go into, wasting my repertory time on MoMA’s complete run of the Bond films, archival prints of which had recently been donated to their vaults from, I believe, the Broccolis. The major revelation was that the one with Lazenby was not only terrific – which I’d already known – but that it was the series’ pinnacle. It’s not the most Bondian: it’s too atypical for that. But as my bud/colleague Vadim Rizov pointed out before I saw it, the origins of modern action filmmaking are right here. The editor even takes out frames during fight scenes to make them even more frantic than they are already. [MoMA]

Playtime (1967, Jacques Tati) in 70mm: Only ever saw it on video and ohhhhhhhhh, so that’s what it’s supposed to look like. And it was already Top Ten Ever for me before. [Walter Reade]

IN CASE YOU’RE WONDERING HERE’S HOW I WOULD ROUGHLY...

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 14:53:00 -0500

IN CASE YOU’RE WONDERING HERE’S HOW I WOULD ROUGHLY RANK ALL THE OFFICIAL EON BOND FILMS [UPDATED TO INCLUDE SKYFALL]

New York City provides a constant buffet of rich cinematic offerings, so I’m not entirely proud that a good chunk of my repertory viewing since moving here two months ago has been dedicated to James Bond. MoMA screened all of the Eon Bonds (that is, save other-studio productions like the ‘67 Casino Royale and the Thunderball remake Never Say Never Again) twice through over October, and even as James Bening films were being screened concurrently in an adjacent theater, I was watching questionable blockbusters I’d already seen at least twice. It was partly a nostalgia thing: at lot of my childhood was spent watching these things on the ABC Sunday Night Movie in the ’80s, and many I haven’t seen since then. It was also to partially relive another age; these were/are mega-events, and I wanted to feel what it was like to see one of the top hits of, say, 1967 in what was a pretty packed theater and an appreciative crowd. It was fun, even when the movie featured a 58-year old tanning addict macking on Tanya Roberts.

Admittedly, I haven’t seen a couple of these in ages. I could stand to touch up on Thunderball, most glaringly. But below is my purely subjective list of the franchise’s best to worst, and the first four at least are absolutely right. (Note: this will change when I finally see Skyfall Friday.)

1. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
2. Casino Royale
3. From Russia With Love
4. Goldfinger
5. Skyfall
6. The Spy Who Loved Me
7. Dr. No
8. You Only Live Twice
9. Goldeneye
10. Thunderball
11. The Living Daylights
12. Tomorrow Never Dies
13. Licence to Kill
14. For Your Eyes Only
15. The Man With the Golden Gun
16. Live and Let Die
17. The World is Not Enough
18. Diamonds Are Forever
19. A View to a Kill
20. Octopussy
21. Moonraker
22. Die Another Day
23. Quantum of Solace

Screening Log: Weekend of 5 Oct 2012 Note: My Tumblr Screening...

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 14:37:36 -0400

Screening Log: Weekend of 5 Oct 2012

Note: My Tumblr Screening Log was made more or less redundant by Letterboxd. However, that site isn’t great with avant-garde cinema, especially new avant-garde cinema. (But also especially old avant-garde cinema.) And since I spent a part of my weekend hunkering down with NYFF’s Views From the Avant-Garde, this site makes a brief mini-return. Avast!

1. Martina’s Playhouse (1989, Peggy Ahwesh) [16mm]

2. From Romance to Ritual (1985, Peggy Ahwesh) [16mm]

3. Confidential Pt. 2 (1980, Joe Gibbons) [16mm]

4. Spying (1977-78, Joe Gibbons) [16mm]

5. Strata of Natural History (2012, Jeannette Muñoz) [16mm]

6. The Girl Chewing Gum (1983, John Smith) [16mm]

7. The Man Phoning Mum (2012, John Smith) [HD]

8. Interstitial Project 3 (2012, Matt McCormick) [HD]

9. Waiting Room (2012, Vincent Grenier) [HD]

10. Interstitial Project 4 (2012, Matt McCormick) [HD]

11. Transit of Venus I (2005, Nicky Hamlyn) [16mm]

12. Transit of Venus II (2012, Nicky Hamlyn) [16mm]

13. WORK IN PROGRESS (2012, Ernie Gehr) [HD]

14. The Strife of Love in a Dream (2012, Camille Henrot) [35mm]

15. 21 Chitrakoot (2012, Shambhavi Kaul) [HD]

16. A Few Extra Copies (2012, Bobby Abate) [HD]

17. 17 New Dam Rd. (2012, Dani Leventhal) [HD]

18. The Voice of God (2011, Bernd Lützeler) [35mm (blown up from Super 8mm]

19. The Tombigbee Chronicles Number Two (2012, Kevin Jerome Everson) [HD]

20. Chevelle (2012, Kevin Jerome Everson) [HD]

21. Wadena (2012, Peggy Ahwesh) [16mm?]

22. Jake Seven (2012, Mary Beth Reed) [16mm]

23. Austerity Measures (2012, Guillaume Cailleau & Ben Russell) [16mm]

24. Another Void (2012, Paul Clipson) Which you can see a clip from above [16mm]

25. Which Ceaselessly Float Up (2012, Beige (i.e., Vanessa O’Neill and Kent Long) [16mm double projection with live music]

26. Bloom (2012, Scott Stark) [HD]

27. Never a Foot Too Far, Even (2011, Daichi Saito) [16mm double projection]

28. Deep Red (2012, Esther Urlus) [35mm]

Favorites: The Peggy Ahwesh stuff, which I’d never seen nor heard of before, and ditto the Joe Gibbons. Spying is particularly funny/queasy, as Gibbons films (on beautifully blurry 8mm) his neighbors, some of whom he said would eventually allow him access and even sunbathe and/or prance about in the buff. John Smith’s classic The Girl Chewing Gum is so brilliant that, while I’ve linked it above, I’ll link it again here. The Gehr is nifty but, at a half hour, a touch tedious. The Voice of God redoes Koyaanisqatsi time lapse in Mumbai in Super 8, which is enough to make it unique. #s 22-28 were part of a program called “Chronocolor,” and as I tend to gravitate towards either structuralist a-g or purely abstract works, this was my bag. Another Void, part of which you can (and should) watch above, is a dynamic use of red — even moreso than the 35mm film that capped the program, entitled Deep Red — while Which Ceaselessly Float Up is the same but for B&W.

"I believe that drugs are basically of more use to the audience than to the artist. I think that the..."

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 16:37:00 -0400

“I believe that drugs are basically of more use to the audience than to the artist. I think that the illusion of oneness with the universe, and absorption with the significance of every object in your environment, and the pervasive aura of peace and contentment is not the ideal state for an artist. It tranquilizes the creative personality, which thrives on conflict and on the clash and ferment of ideas. The artist’s transcendence must be within his own work; he should not impose any artificial barriers between himself and the mainspring of his subconscious. One of the things that’s turned me against LSD is that all the people I know who use it have a peculiar inability to distinguish between things that are really interesting and stimulating and things that *appear* so in the state of universal bliss the drug induces on a ‘good’ trip. They seem to completely lose their critical faculties and disengage themselves from some of the most stimulating areas of life. Perhaps when *everything* is beautiful, nothing is beautiful.”

- Stanley Kubrick, Playboy interview, 1968

My Sight & Sound Ballot, Had Sight & Sound Asked Me For...

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 10:11:21 -0400

My Sight & Sound Ballot, Had Sight & Sound Asked Me For One

The Last Laugh (1924, F.W. Murnau)
Bringing Up Baby (1938, Howard Hawks)
The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums (1939, Kenji Mizoguchi)
A Matter of Life and Death (1946, Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger)
Pierrot le fou (1965, Jean-Luc Godard)
Breakaway (1966, Bruce Conner)
Zorns Lemma (1970, Hollis Frampton)
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975, Chantal Akerman)
Do the Right Thing (1989, Spike Lee)
Sátántangó (1994, Béla Tarr)

I also love lots of other films that have made many of other lists, in case you were worried.

Screening Log: 30 July - 2 August 2012 Note: I’m now on...

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 11:32:18 -0400

Screening Log: 30 July - 2 August 2012

Note: I’m now on Letterboxd, which does render this Log in part redundant, although the site doesn’t list, at least for now, shorts and avant-garde works, so there’s always that to keep me going. I’ll probably keep this going, but I might have to restructure it in some interesting and no doubt thrilling way. Stay tuned, but for now things will mostly stay the same. I say this not knowing if I have more than, like, two regulars.]

1. I Confess (1953, Alfred Hitchcock) Can see why Catholic Cahier critics went gaga for this, but it’s really just that one trick (i.e., Montgomery Clift holding steadfast, even as his non-actions threaten his life). That, and some dreamy flashbacks to a romance with Anne Baxter, who hubba hubba, as ever. Oh, and a stunning opening where the Hitch cameo and numerous signs reading “DIRECTION” direct us to the corpse that will set the plot in motion. Oh, and a pretty stunning climax, too. So, there is a fair amount going on here, but it’s still neither as great as its ardent fans thought nor remotely dreary, as the people who never speak about it these days would have you believe. (Note: saw before I knew Vertigo would be deemed The Greatest Movie Ever. I’ve been watching the Hitch I’ve never seen — next up: Stage Fright! — not because of the S&S Poll but because I recently tore through Robin Wood’s Hitchcock’s Films Revisted, which please do the same.) [DVD]

2. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (2012, Alison Klayman) Review forthcoming. But it’s fine. [screener]

3. Hope Springs (2012, David Frankel) Review forthcoming, but here’s a helpful analogy: Tommy Lee Jones’ character : marriage counseling :: Tommy Lee Jones : marriage counseling movie. That aspect, at least, is kind of amusing. [advance screening]

4. Arbitrage (2012, Nicholas Jarecki) Review forthcoming, unless Burnsy takes it. [critics screening - or critic screening, as I was the only one who showed up]

5. Elena (2011, Andrey Zvyagintsev) Review forthcoming, but short version: impressive, as expected, but don’t let anyone who thinks The Dark Knight Rises is an intentional smackdown of OWS see it. They’ll just hopelessly reduce it into a anti-poor people misreading. [screener]

6. 360 (2011, Fernando Meirelles) Review forthcoming (sight), but short version: sigh. [online screener]

7. First hour of Lenny (1974, Bob Fosse) [DVD]

8. Neil Young Journeys (2012, Jonathan Demme) Still prefer Trunk Show the most of these Demme-Young projects, but the tour stuff, with Young driving around his hometown, is lovely without being remotely cheesy, and Le Noise sounds fun. Also, “lougee-cam!” [theatrical screening, last of its kind in Philadelphia]

Screening Log: 26-29 July 2012 1. The Well-Digger’s...

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 11:39:35 -0400

Screening Log: 26-29 July 2012

1. The Well-Digger’s Daughter (2012, Daniel Auteuil) Review forthcoming. Liked. [screener]

2. Farewell, My Queen (2012, Benoit Jacquot) Review forthcoming. Also liked, a bit less so. [screener]

3. The Babymakers (2012, Jay Chandrasekhar) Review forthcoming. Did not like. [online screener]

4. School Daze (1988, Spike Lee) More or less a blast. Intra-racial politics + gaudy musical numbers! Also, can someone please command Laurence Fishburne to be this charismatic again? [DVD — full-frame!]

5. Three shorts, one very funny one by friend Eric Bresler [repertory screening]

6. /Possession/ (1981, Andzrej Zulawski) Under-digested thoughts on a nasty divorce. You say that like it’s a bad thing. Feels like it was made while in the midst of mania, which I understand it was? It’s equal parts Scenes From a Marriage, Antichrist and Hellraiser and yet totally sui generus, wtf, etc. [repertory screening]

7. Well, the final 20 minutes of Breaking Bad Season 5, Episode 3. (Was on a bus that was hideously late, rolled in during [redacted]’s freakout. [TV]

Screening Log: 25 July 2012 1. Remaining half hour of Lockout...

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 16:28:26 -0400

Screening Log: 25 July 2012

1. Remaining half hour of Lockout (2012, James Mather & Stephen St. Leger) eeing this and Lawless within 24 hours confirmed that Guy Pearce is one of my favorite things about movies right now. As adverstised, the best Bruce Willis in Die Hard since Bruce Willis in Die Hard. The rest of the movie is perfectly acceptable trash. [DVD]

2. /A New Leaf/ (1971, Elaine May) I know this is missing about an hour — including an entire other murder subplot — but whoever chopped this down did a fucking razor sharp job. Elaine May’s bizarre sense of humor is only trumped by her bizarre sense of comic direction, as well as her outside-the-box thinking that the grotesquely mousy character she plays would be best paired with Walter Matthau, to say nothing about Walter Matthau cast as a blueblood. Anyway, front-to-back hilarious, with Matthau’s career peak, and existing in some absurdist netherworld of May’s own devising. Best line (still): “Excuse me, you’re not by any chance related to the Boston Hitlers?” Now, does anyone have any Mogen-David extra-heavy malaga wine with soda water and lime juice? [Amazon Prime]