Movie Acquisition Madness

I spent approximately too much money thanks to online retailers being jerks and putting things that are normally really expensive on sale so they were only mildly expensive and making releases that are normally reasonable dirt cheap. The good news is I will have a lot of movies to watch in the next few months. Here's what I scored so you can laugh at me when I talk about how they're still in plastic wrap a year from now.

• 9 (that's the animated movie, not the musical "Nine")
• Barry Lyndon
• Being There
• Captain America
• Die Nibelungen (this is two movies)
• The Double Life of Veronique
• Excalibur
• Faust (F.W. Murnau) 
• Les Vampires (not a movie about lesbian vampires, but a French serial about a crime syndicate. 10 installments for a 400 minute total runtime) 
• Quo Vadis
• Scarlet Street 
• Way Down East 
• When Horror Came to Shochiku (Eclipse Boxset, four movies)

A truly excellent job by me choosing several silent and foreign movies to ensure that I will be too tired after work most nights to watch.

Preliminary Revival Attendance Schedule Through December

A very matter-of-fact post title for a very matter-of-fact post. Here's are the movie revivals I'm planning to go check out through the end of the year. It's a combination of record keeping for myself and being able to point people at a page when I am asked about my plans.

Please don't stalk me and other disclaimers.

Date	Movie	Venue
November
Sunday, the 18th	The Black Pirate	Film Forum
Wednesday, the 21st	The Man in the White Suit	Film Forum
Wednesday, the 28th	The Virgin Spring	BAM Rose Cinemas
Friday, the 30th	Big Trouble in Little China	The Anthology Film Archives
December
Saturday, the 1st	Conan the Barbarian	BAM Rose Cinemas
Tuesday, 4th	Tess	Film Forum
Friday, the 7th	The Exorcist	BAM Rose Cinemas
Saturday, the 8th	The Conformist	Film Forum
Sunday, the 9th	Three Colors: Red Confidentially Yours	Film Forum
Tuesday, the 18th	Trans-Europe Express The Man Who Lies	Film Forum
Sunday, the 23rd	Robin Hood	Film Forum

Other stuff under consideration includes any of the Douglas Fairbanks movies showing at the Film Forum.

General stuff of interest going on in the area November/December includes

• A Max Von Sydow retrospective at BAM Rose Cinemas
• Murnau's Sunrise at Anthology Film Archives (December 9th)
• Ben Gazzara retrospective at Anthology Film Archives
• Making Waves: New Romanian Cinema at the Film Society at Lincoln Center

Quick Hits - His Girl Friday

Cary Grant plays a newspaper editor who is determined to get his ex-wife (Rosalind Russell) back. She is his former ace reporter who divorced him because he cared about the job more than her and is set to get married to a much less interesting and strong man than himself, of course.

These kind of Cary Grant vehicles are always interesting to watch because he is such a scum but he's also the hero of the affair, more charming than anyone ever, and everything he thinks is true. Russell's fiance is boring and kind of dumb and she should keep going with hew newspaper career because she is good at it and she enjoys it. It is impossible not to root for Grant.

Russell is tough enough to stand nose-to-nose with Grant--which is why he likes her so much--and foils most of his plots but of course his scheming eventually works and she gets roped back in.

After it's absolutely clear how things work out for the romantic leads in the film it transitions into a critique of politicians using tragedy for their own electoral good. At this point the screwball elements are still present but the subject matter is much more serious, however it's handled in a way that it slips in there without changing the actual tone. This is a sneaky movie that comes off as light material at first but has a clear contemptuous voice for the powers that be.

Color Abuse

Daybreakers uses the teal and orange pallet to show us that we’re in the cold night world of vampires. That’s great but there’s no reason to make it this ugly or insist on beating the audience over the head with your point. Yuck.

A Revealing Poster Design

Unused Prometheus poster and a copy of The Martian Chronicles I stole from my high school. Check out the typeface.

Quick Hits - Only Angels Have Wings

Cary Grant is the manager of a small, struggling air service company near the Andes. Casualty rates are high and the atmosphere is tense. The large cast pulls their weight and Grant's presence does not overpower the movie. Jean Arthur plays against him well in an interesting role where she brings her screwball comedy style to an otherwise serious movie but doesn't actually lighten the mood. She fits well as the outsider character who doesn't understand a lot of the drama and reacts appropriately awkwardly.

The flying sequences are what the film is most known for, and they still look great. They are (mostly) crisp and really keep your eyes glued to the screen. Beyond that, Only Angels Have Wings is filmed on only a few sets but to mix things up little stuff is tweaked as it goes on so that you're not always looking at the same thing.

Although the film is most known for the flying parts these days, it is really driven by the characters and their relationships with one another. There is a lot of very good acting without words, especially in the last third of the movie.

Overall, I was really impressed by the movie.

Quick Hits - I Was a Male War Bride

This film is a Cary Grant vehicle meant to show off his trademark acerbic wit but he doesn't click with Ann Sheridan so it feels like you're watching a trainwreck marriage in progress and is quite uncomfortable. On its face I Was A Male War Bride is a screwball influenced comedy but I read it as more of a cautionary tale about committing to a relationship with a person you don't really like just to get in bed with them.

Veronica Lake and A Cat

Brother Sun, Sister Moon

Like Roberto Rossellini, who sought the essence of St. Francis more in fable than in fact, Zeffirelli makes no special claims to historical accuracy. However, unlike Rossellini, whose "Flowers of St. Francis" is a film of sweet purpose and simplicity, Zeffirelli has made a big, absurd doodad, a movie that confuses simplicity with simple-mindedness and that makes saintliness look like an extreme form of Asian flu.

VINCENT CANBY, NY Times, April 9, 1973

I Always Wondered How This Happened, Now I Know

Several years ago my sister and I went to the Film Forum to see Ingmar Bergman's The Magic Flute during a retrospective they were doing of his work. We very specifically went to see The Magic Flute because our mother had shown it to us in our childhood and we remembered really enjoying it. We also felt that it was safe to see from the obnoxious snobby/know-it-all crowd you run into at showings of things like The Seventh Seal.

I should mention at this point that The Magic Flute is an opera. It is filmed as a theatrical event, with Bergman at several points showing you the audience. It's very different from what most people think of when they think Bergman!, which in my experience are his films like Persona, Wild Strawberries and other very personal dramas.

It was a weekday and the theater was mostly empty, presumably because The Magic Flute is not one of Bergman's more famous works. When it started up, a small group of people sitting in front of my sister and I seemed to be shocked at what they were seeing. During the intermezzo they got up and left, and one of them was muttering in a very annoyed tone that they "had no idea it was an opera".

This confused my sister and I, who didn't really understand how you could wind up at a movie at the Film Forum and not have any idea what you were going to see. I have been wondering about this for years because it just does not compute in my brain. I like to know what I'm getting into when I agree to sit down and not make any noise for a long time.

That brings us to tonight--I work around the corner from the Film Forum and am going to see Robert Bresson's Lancelot du Lac on Thursday with my mom. I decided to make a trip over there after work to buy tickets in advance just in case. I am not really a big fan of Bresson but I've never seen Lancelot and it sounds interesting enough to give it a whirl.

The guy in front of me on line walked up to the ticket counter and said "I want a ticket for the Bresson movie tonight. It's good, right?" Oh dear. At least tonight's feature is Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne and not whatever the Bresson equivalent of a musical theater piece would be*.

_{* Probably Lancelot du Lac}