Broadway Danny Rose & The Ox-Bow Incident

Broadway Danny Rose is a Woody Allen film I hadn't seen. Probably because it was a Mia Farrow serious film. At least I think it was supposed to be a serious film. It certainly wasn't a comedy, because I didn't laugh very much. Then again, it could have just been a failed comedy. It does work as a slightly comedic drama, though.

The Ox-Bow Incident was a short movie, looking at the dangers of mob justice. Henry Fonda is very good, as is most of the cast, although you really don't get much chance to get familiar with most of the other characters, since 75 minutes and many characters means not enough time for characterization. It's very well-constructed, although a little too easily moral, with the bad guys clear and the good guys just as clear. Then again, mob justice is pretty evil, no matter the evidence.

I guess I just wasn't too inspired by either of the two movies to write a lot, even though they weren't bad movies. I do want to add Holly Hunter to the list of actresses of whom I've seen their hoo-has and respect as an actress. I completely forgot about that little bit in The Piano. Which I saw years and years ago and keep forgetting on that very short list. Actually, I mainly just wanted to write hoo-ha in a post. Such a ridiculous euphemism. I heartily endorse it. By the way, the other actresses are Jenny Agutter and Toni Collette. I had to go through my entire archive of my old blog searching for various vagina euphemisms to find those two. In case you were wondering, the magic word was labia.

Downfall

Downfall is great. Fascinating, horrible, insane, claustrophobic, well-made. I am not entirely sure whether the movie portrays Hitler as the insane person he clearly was, or whether it humanizes him. It does, but the fact that he's a friggin' insane person doesn't entirely help. Yeah, the people who surrounded him at the end were just as insane as he was, mainly, so just showing him going about his business with a bunch of crazy people will make him seem less insane. Put him together with a bunch of normal people, then he is clearly the nutter he was. There's really not that much else to say, considering the film ends the way it does. A lot of reviews out there blame the film for humanizing Hitler, but it does only to people who are capable of forgetting not only the history not entirely stated in the film, but also the touches added where Hitler complains about the international Jewish conspiracy. They're all insane in the film, it's just the one's who start to feel bad about it that you start to feel for. And then you see the SS uniform and realize that no one is free from guilt. Although Traudl Junge, Hitler's secretary, was young and unaware of what was going on, she clearly recognized, before the end, that she should have figured out about the Holocaust.

Faces, A Woman under the Influence, & Colossus: The Forbin Project

Faces is a hard to watch film, although in this case, it's not because of its uncomfortable subject matter or because it was bad. It's because it's intentionally shot mainly handheld, but also a lot of closeups, which were very distracting. The acting is outstanding, and it was so strange to see Seymour Cassel as young, because I really hadn't seen any of his earlier films when I knew who he was. But really, it's because he always looked old. I don't remember his small role in The Killers, even though I saw it very recently. It's a powerful film, worth seeing if you can handle your films depressing.

A Women under the Influence is from a similar emotional place as Faces, although it's far more polished. Some of it may be the higher budget and the use of color, and some may be that Peter Falk is a good actor. Although his eyes will never stop being freaky. I know it's very superficial, but they're just freaky. The movie is just outstanding. Definitely one you need to see. I'd like to thank TCM for having a little John Cassevettes mini-fest last week, and I'd like to thank Comcast for stopping the signal for around a minute right after the ending of the movie, so I didn't actually miss any of this film. Otherwise, I would have been pissed, since TCM never replays films within a reasonable time.

Colossus: The Forbin Project is a precursor to Wargames, but without the goofy Matthew Broderick fooling with NORAD. It's also very late 60s/early 70s, not quite as paranoid as mid-late 70s films, and there's a little bit of flower power anti-war thrown in. Not that Wargames also wasn't anti-war, but this one is more explicitly pro-peace. I don't know any of the actors in it (although most main people were in other films I've seen) besides James Hong, who's there so you have the token Asian, and there's a token black guy (who, of course, dies), and a couple women, making sure that all races and sexes are well-covered. Wouldn't want to suggest that all scientists are white men. Pretty progressive for a film make in 1970. Anyway, it's sort of like the difference between Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove. Both about similar plots, but they take very different approaches. At least we should be pretty sure that giving all power to a computer to control nuclear weapons is a bad idea. I mean, is there a movie where that ends up where a computer controlling things doesn't go insane? At least the nude scenes were very tastefully done, up there with those early ESPN the Magazines.

11'09''01 - September 11

11'09''01 - September 11 has an unwieldy title. And some of the segments are terrible. The Egyptian one was some of the worst 11 minutes of my movie watching life, completely self-centered and just stupid in every way that a film could be stupid. And Sean Penn's wasn't much better, although seeing Ernest Borgnine still alive was a surprise. Alejandro Gonzalex Inarritu (too lazy to pull accents) for him was very uncomfortable. But the others: Claude Lelouch, Amos Gitai, Shohei Imamura, Ken Loach, Samira Makmalbaf, Mira Nair, Isrissa Ouedraogo, and Danis Tanovic all did a good job. Imamura's was, by far, the strangest. Very snake-y. Ken Loach definitely took advantage of the coincidence of September 11th, and our completely fouled up relationship with dictatorships. Lelouch's was hokey, but still done well. Makhmalbaf's was interesting, as was Mira Nair's, although neither really stood out. Ouedraogo's was a goofy little story about Osama being seen in a small Burkina Fasoan town, but turns out that it's actually about how much our money that we waste could actually help improve the lives of most Africans. The Bosnian one was, by far, the most heartfelt, as sufferers of one tragedy are capable of remembering more than one at a time. Something of which not enough Americans are capable. But my favorite one was Amos Gitai's segment. An outstanding 11 minute shot of the aftermath of a car bombing in a crowded Jaffa marketplace. As much as I couldn't stand Kippur, this one makes me very impressed with his fimmaking abilities, as making an 11 minute shot is difficult, especially one as complicated as this one was (although that hesitation at the beginning distracted me a little... you'd think they could have covered that up better). My favorite tracking shot is still the opening to Touch of Evil (the restored version, of course), and then The Player, but all extremely long tracking shots are impressive. Unless they're done by Brian DePalma at the beginning of Snake Eyes, and then they suck, because the movie was so terrible.

The Last Days & Zhou Yu's Train

The Last Days is about the destruction of the Jews in Hungary at the end of WWII. But really, it's about five particular Hungarian Jews. Unfortunately, I'm really just Holocaust-documentary'd-out. I know it's really evil for me, a Jew, to say this, but there's no escaping it: a Holocaust documentary really needs to be outstanding to rate. About the only thing that really stood out in this one was that it included interviews with Tom Lantos (D-CA), the only Holocaust survivor to be elected to Congress. I found him more interesting than the others. Otherwise it's just a 90 minute very, very brief overview of Hungarian Jews in the Holocaust with some footage of some of them going to the camps afterwards. But very little makes this one stand out from others. It's clearly just the Zionist conspiracy that got this one the Oscar. Well, I haven't really seen any of the other documentaries that could have won an Oscar then, but I doubt it could be better than Regret to Inform. That one is probably outstanding.

Zhou Yu's Train has the bad Tony Leung. Well, he's actually the not quite as good as the awesome Tony Leung, but that's way too long of a title. And the movie had censorship problems in China because of some sex scenes. Appropriately, it was rated PG-13 in the US. At least I'm not trying to watch movies there. My complaining about NC-17 films here probably would be a serious issue there. Then again, Category III films in Hong Kong are pretty much all R-rated here as well. As for the movie, as much as I find Gong Li extremely attractive, was there a need for her to play two parts? And then edit the film in a very confusing fashion so that it's not really clear as to whether the characters are the same person at different times in her life or if they're two different people. I mean the ending seems to suggest one thing, but beh. It's a well-filmed movie, but the plot was a mess. It also was an obvious attempt to use crappy slo-mo to heighten the effect of some scenes. Just because Wong Kar-Wai does something very well doesn't mean you all have to rip him off. Be your own director! I need to avoid renting films just because attractive Asian women are in them. I need to stick to renting films that have attractive Asian women in them and are good! At least the movie makes me want to go on long train rides...

The Education of Shelby Knox & (the bad) Breathless

The Education of Shelby Knox is the story of a 15 year old girl in Lubbock who wants comprehensive sex education in school and then begins to work for equal rights for the gay students. It's depressing that there could be that many people out there who are so clueless about sex education. Then again, I'm not really sure what the sex ed was in my school. I know it was a rich suburb, so I imagine it wasn't as repressed as in Texas, but I don't really remember it. It was taught by this guy who was clearly very uncomfortable. There was at least one class that was split into male and females. I'm pretty sure there was no hands-on putting condoms on anything resembling a penis. There were probably diagrams, and there was some movie, but I don't remember how explicit or anything about it really. Anyway, it's good to know that some kids of very Republican families can turn out tolerant, even if their pastors feel that that is somehow not Christian. What the hell-ass bitch? Seriously, Christianity is not a tolerant religion? Do these people just read the parts about what you're not supposed to do and then ignore the parts that Jesus actually says? There's a serious problem when you ignore your religion's prophet. It makes me happy that I'm Jewish and not very religious. You don't see too many Humanistic Jews going on and on about how everyone is doomed to go to hell. Mainly because there's no hell in Judaism, but also because we just like people. People are inherently good. It's just when they get taught to hate that they become dangerous. Anyway, I've gotten off my soapbox for this film, and I just wanted to say that I wish the movie were longer. 75 minutes is just not enough time to spend dealing with this issue. And Corey Nichols is a prick. As is Fred Phelps, but he's a very different type of prick.

Breathless is unbelievably annoying. Plus, it's not actually good. The whole remaking a great film, one that's almost perfect, is stupid. Remaking one that's 20 years old, and only adding Jerry Lee Lewis, Richard Gere's penis, and the Silver Surfer is utterly worthless. Why was this remade? Was it really just an excuse to see Richard Gere naked a couple more times? If so, I clearly am not the target audience for the movie. There are just some movies I have to see to be able to complain so much about them. This is crappy acting from Gere, horribly fake rear projection during car scenes, and just in general bad. Oh, and Valerie Kaprisky is horrible and only notable for her nudity. Which is shown enough in the movie to be almost worth watching. But then you realize that you could actually watch a good movie to see nudity. Much better to do that than support some crappy movie by spending your time on it. I am quite capable of multi-tasking, so I don't feel like I'm wasting time.

My Sassy Girl

My Sassy Girl is a little Korean film that just happened to be a huge hit based on a blog. Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my closeup! It's Caseus Velox: The Movie time! Ok, not really, but man, I want my blog to be rich and famous someday. Maybe it'll share some of the spoils and give me some of its castoffs. I'm better than Turtle. Why would a Korean kid in 2001 have a Colorado Rockies pennant on his wall? Apparently, no Korean players played for them then, so he had to like the Rockies. What the hell-ass? And why am I such a total sap? Yeah, I cried at the end. There's just something about a completely hokey ending that can get me. I think I saw a little too much of myself in Kyun-woo. At least my relationships have rarely been that abusive. I know there's supposed to be an American remake of this film. It will suck. There is no doubt in my mind. The complete unpredictableness of the plot and some very Korean aspects of it (The Shower? What?) will resist all translation to America. And there's just something about an attractive Asian girl that makes it hard to take her beating the crap out of a guy seriously enough to have a major problem with it. It was much better than every other Korean comedy I've seen, although that isn't really that many. A few years ago, I said that every Korean film I saw was crap. Of late, I've seen quite a few movies that put that statement to rest. I apologize to the Korean film industry. You're not complete crap. Just make more movies like this and Tae Guk Gi and 3-Iron and less like Sex Is Zero and Lies and I'll be a much happier person.

The Man Who Loved Woman & Wide Sargasso Sea

The Man Who Loved Women is interesting, but I really didn't care for the main character, or pretty much any of them. It does have a lot of fairly famous French actresses in the late 70s, but I just felt it was eh, due to the fact that I don't like people in it. That's a serious problem for a film that depends on one person to carry it. I know that the unlikable character was intentional but I just got tired of women falling for this ass. I'm probably just bitter.

Wide Sargasso Sea is one of the most ridiculous NC-17s ever. Most of the NC-17s I've seen have been ridiculous and very little more than an R-rated film. Stupid prudish country. This may have been somewhat more sensual than some crappy R-rated film, but it's certainly not more explicit. Seriously, did you see how many penii there were in Before Night Falls? Just when you think you're all penised-out, the film just throws another at you. Not like this movie. Not that much full frontal nudity. But at least there aren't any horribe fake breasts in it. Maybe there was one too many thrusts, or one too many grabs of the crotch. Either way, it's a gorgeous film, but ultimately, it will only be remembered because it's NC-17. I imagine having read the book or Jane Eyre probably would have improved it a little. I'd hope at least. Based on the reviews, though, it seems like the movie just sucked. It was sort of strange to see Naomi Watts. It's not like it's her first film or something, but it was definitely weird.

Valley Girl, Ugetsu, Walk Don't Run, Out of Africa, & Last.fm

Valley Girl has one of the best soundtracks of any 80s films. Yes, I'm, like, totally serious. The Plimsouls, Josie Cotton, and, of course, Modern English, with one of the best songs of the 80s. I Melt with You was outstanding, but the third homage to The Graduate in the film (after Plastics and the entire scene between Skip and Suzi's mom) with that song playing was great. I know the song was great, but I thought it wasn't entirely necessary to play the song so often in the movie. But the music just was very good overall. And Nicolas Cage (in his first appearance as Nicolas Cage) was not too goofy, and there was much gratuitous toplessness, as is the point of a good 80s teen movie. Very few people in the movie really went on to do anything much afterwards besides him, but that's a shame.

Ugetsu, based on reading some reviews when it was released on DVD, was supposed to be a ghost story. After watching it, it still is, but it's much more about the problems with being very greedy, and the ghost story parts just happens to further emphasize that main moral. It feels very much like an early Kurosawa film, and subsequently, it was very good, even though it was more moral than I would have liked. I know that even a movie like Seven Samurai has a very pro-farmer message, but they just didn't feel as if they were morals.

Walk Don't Run is Cary Grant's last film, and it's also a remake of The More the Merrier, about a housing shortage in WWII DC. This time it's 1964 Tokyo during the Olympics. Jim Hutton is a starched shirt, making this film not nearly as good as The More the Merrier, especially as Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea were very good, as was Coburn, and only Grant really stood out in this one. Mainly because he's Cary Grant, and he's always the best thing in the whatever film he's in. This one does have George Takei as a policeman though, so that was a sort of strange thing to see. Then again, it does make sense, considering he's Asian, he was a somewhat famous actor in America, and the movie was set in Japan. Yay for Hollywood having a very small list of non-white actors to choose from in roles. It's clearly gotten better, and, in this case, Takei is at least Japanese, so it's better than others. Back to the movie, it's nothing particularly special.

Out of Africa is long and beautiful. I have a very strange strange mind and I won't say what I was thinking. Of course, Meryl Streep is very good. And the movie is beautifully shot. Robert Redford was British in the movie? Really? Did you know that Kevin Costner was English in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves as well? My, what outstanding accents these men had. If you haven't seen this, block out three hours of time and she it, it's worth watching.

I also added a little bit to know just how awesome my musical tastes are. Look on the bottom right under the Blogger button and the counter. And you'll see the last ten-ish tracks played by me on iTunes and my iPod, and by clicking on it you get to see a lot of info about how much music I listen to and what I do listen to. As it only goes back to March 2005 and doesn't even include a lot of the songs I played on my iPod, it's not entirely accurate, but it'll give you an idea of just how much my musical taste rocks. Note that I don't listen to songs over and over again. So that explains why songs I absolutely love don't get played hundreds of times.

Madagascar

Madagascar is too typically Dreamworks animation. Full of pop culture references in lieu of humor. Sure, it looks ok, even good at some times, but Dreamworks hasn't figured out what Pixar does perfectly. Although I haven't seen Cars, so maybe that's just as bad as it looks. Why exactly did I watch this? I like penguins and I read the penguins were good. Unfortunately, the penguins weren't in enough of the movie, and I had to sit through the annoyance of Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Jada Pinkett Smith, and David Schwimmer. And it's also too bad that Sascha Baron Cohen and Andy Richter have little to work with. Such a stupid movie. Why are Dreamworks animation movies so insistent on being so "likable" rather than being good? Trying to add things for the parents watching by adding in a nod and a wink to a movie doesn't substitute for a good story, likable characters, impressive animation, and heart. Things this movie is sorely lacking. It does have monkeys who like to throw poo, but they're also sorely lacking in both lines and screen time.

Angels in America, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, & Tanner '88

Angels in America is very good. I also very much liked the little Cocteauan touches in the dream and heaven sequences. I really need to see Orpheus. That's in my queue. Of course, almost everyone in it is very good. I'm not sure if Al Pacino is overacting or if Roy Cohn really was that big of a prick. But he just got on my nerves so much. Or maybe it was just that everyone else in the film was outstanding and his mediocreness just looked like crap. I'd have to rewatch it, and devoting six more hours to a strangely uplifting story of gays and AIDS in America in the mid-80s just doesn't fit with how I want to spend my time.

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason is missing just about everything that made the first one good. Mainly any sense of actual goodness or Pride and Prejudice. And why, exactly was there a need for a sequel? Sometimes there are some stories that do just end with the characters riding off together into the sunset. The sequel is just Bridget embarrassing herself constantly. Blargh. So frickin' stupid. V. v. stupid. And you'd think I'd like any movie with a lot of scenes in a Thai woman's prison. But they're just ridiculous, like the rest of the film. And I know it's very shallow of me, particularly considering some of the women I've dated in the past, but Renee Zellweger looked horrendous in the film.

I also finished Tanner '88, which I thought was outstanding. I'm not sure how much I would have liked it without the bits of polling and focus group stuff. There are definite weaknesses, not the least being the horribly dated aspects of it. And it's loose as hell, and occasionally silly, but it's just very interesting and worth watching. Pamela Reed is the best thing, but there are good performances from most of the actors, except Matt Malloy, but the best of the playing themselves was Bruce Babbitt, someone I had pretty much forgotten existed. Which is a damn shame, because he was Interior Secretary under Clinton. And, of course, simply the fact that he wasn't anti-environment like Norton, he was a great Interior Secretary. The Altman and Trudeau influences were somewhat obvious, although Altman's fingerprints were all over it, while Trudeau isn't nearly as clear. Just the sort of political aspects from Doonesbury.

Eyes without a Face

Eyes without a Face is another little late 50s horror film, this time French not English. It's also very good, and pretty creepy. I was pretty impressed with the makeup effects. It's very impressive for a 50s film. Mainly that it was able to be shown in a movie. It was reedited and dubbed for American release, along with a supremely stupid title of "The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus". What the hell ass balls? The supremely freaky surgery footage made me somewhat uncomfortable. When that face got taken off... ewww... And then you notice that it was one take. With no music. And you realize that it was an absolutely outstanding piece of filmmaking. It's definitely creepier when you don't see edits that make it clear when they've made some different makeup or special effects changes.

Fanny and Alexander, Night of the Demon, & A Lion in the House

Fanny and Alexander is definitely a Bergman film, with its evil religious figure, the belief that there is no god, that we're all puppets, but the magic is real aspect is not something that really fits in with most of his other films. I liked it, but it was too long. It felt like it could have been cut a lot. I'm happy I didn't try to sit through the five plus hour long version. I've not enjoyed his later films nearly as much as his earlier ones. After Persona, I just don't like the films as much. His best period, the eleven or so years from Smiles of a Summer Night to Persona has his best films. Later films may be praised, but they just arne't quite as good.

Night of the Demon is Jacques Tourneur's entry into the demon and witchcraft genre. Not as good as Cat People, but still a very good horror film, even if the producers did force him to show the demon. That would have been better than the goofy looking thing they did finally use. The early English horror films all have a good bit of style to them, and this is definitely full of it. Tourneur also did Out of the Past, one of the best film noirs. He's very talented, and it's a shame that he didn't get better films and bigger budgets. I'm not exactly happy with the ending, but a lot of that can be blamed on the fact that the demon was shown. Would have been better if we never really knew if the demon was real or not. I wonder if the estate of Aleister Crowley was pissed about the movie? Or, more accurately, if he himself was pissed from his post-death state. Doctor Karswell is clearly based upon Crowley.

A Lion in the House is for people who want to cry for four hours. Because if you aren't crying very soon into it, you have no heart. I also thought it was nice to see Cincinnati Children's Hospital again. I recognized a lot of the doctors. Not that I knew them all, well, I did watch Dawn of the Dead with one of them, and I definitely have talked with a couple others during my two plus years working there. I had to wander around these halls for various job related things, and seeing these kids, and kids just like them struggling to live would make me happy to be working on improving their care and lives as much or as little as I was. Working there was a very important part of my life, even if I regretted every time I saw the kids in the cystic fibrosis area, knowing about it. I recognize just about everything in the movie, when they're going around Cincinnati. It's very nostalgic for me as well as a powerful film. I cannot recommend this film highly enough.

Missing, The American Friend, Madadayo, & Kids Return

Missing is the based on a true story about the disappearance of an American in Chile. Except that the movie doesn't actually use Chile as that would probably cause some problems. Although it's really freakin' obviously Chile. Well, I guess it is, if you know anything about South American history in the 70s. Man, America really messed up a lot of countries with our desire to involve ourselves in coups and corrupt dictatorships all the time. Now that the information showing the most controversial aspect of the film, that the US knew about the disappearance and death of Charles Horman, is true, the movie actually may not have gone far enough in its denunciation of the American government. The movie itself has a strong performance from Jack Lemmon, but the most important aspect of it is the coming out against American involvement in foreign coups. Which is really the sensible position, all considered.

The American Friend is Wim Wenders doing Tom Ripley. It doesn't actually feel like a Tom Ripley story. Maybe it's that I'm not really familiar with the Patricia Highsmith novels, and he's a secondary character in a lot of them, but this was all about Bruno Ganz coming to terms with his disease and keeping his family well-provided for after his inevitable death. That one character just happened to be Tom Ripley was very much secondary, except for the fact that you just knew the guy was going to be a crazy killer.

Madadayo is Akira Kurosawa's last film, appropriately titled Not Yet and all about growing old. That's appropriate since Akira Kurosawa was very old when he made this film. Is it as good as his earlier films? Of course not. It's very episodic, full of Japanese drinking songs, and an almost fanatical devotion to the pope... I mean a cat. I imagine the cat was a very nice cat. I like cats a lot. I hope, one day, to have someone who likes cats as much as me and then we could have a cat together. I just found it sort of strange about how the cat seemed like the only thing that was keeping the guy sane. Although, really, he was pretty crazy from very early on in the film. Or maybe it's normal for people to be afraid of the dark and lightning. And I'm not sure about the final shot, it seemed sort of a strange thing to end on. It was, as is typical of Kurosawa, well made and interesting, just felt a little more Japanese than I was quite able to handle. If I were more Japanese, I might have liked it more.

Kids Return is Takeshi Kitano's first film after the motorcycle accident that almost killed him, and it's very different from most of his films. It's also, interestingly, one of the better boxing films I've seen lately. Definitely better than that last boxing film, the vastly overrated Million Dollar Baby. Of course, it's not really entirely about boxing. It's more about young people in Japan, and how much they can struggle to find their place in a society that honors conformity above almost all. And there's the typical slapstick scenes as well, because what would a Kitano film be without some humor. I really don't know. It's a very good film, not as good as his best, but certainly worth watching. Especially if you like good movies. And finally, I wanted to mention that Joe Hisaishi, the best film composer in Japan, and probably everywhere, has another great soundtrack, including a few bits that sound like they would fit in perfectly towards the end of Civ III, which has my favorite music in any Civ game.

Amarcord, Vincent & Theo, & Kamikaze Girls

Amarcord just tells me that I need to stop watching Fellini movies until he is responsible for more of his earlier films, and less of his later films. I just don't like them much. I think I'm going to go avoid watching anymore Fellini for a while.

Vincent & Theo has a great performance from Tim Roth. It actually doesn't really feel much like an Altman film. Very strange that, since it is. There're some shots that are clearly Altman, with zooms on tracking shots, but there aren't so many overlapping dialogue heavy scenes. There are some gorgeous shots based on Van Gogh's paintings. So it's generally a great and beautiful film, but it doesn't quite reach past the biopic aspects. It's a little more about the creation of the paintings rather than the biopic, but it still is one.

Kamikaze Girls is a crazy full film. There's some crazy ideas, crazy shots, and it has some really terrible jokes in bad taste. It's also very alive, funny, and covers an interesting and not completely freaky group of fashions in Japan. I really enjoyed it. I'm not sure about the title change, since Kamikaze Girls sort of fits, but it also just sounds like an attempt to create a vaguely Japanese sounding title. It does feel very Japanese, and the Kamikaze aspect sort of describes Momoko's actions near the end of the film, but it also has a connotation for most Americans of Japanese pilots flying planes into ships. Doesn't really fit with a story about two 17 year old girls trying to find their place in a society that seems to ignore them. Well, except when they're not staring at their strangeness. It's strange that I entirely agree with Manohla Dargis's review. It's a movie that's just immensely satisfying. Even being someone who has no experience with either Lolita or Yanki culture, having just seen pictures of some of the Lolitas in Harajuku, linked as examples of how crazy the Japanese are. Then again, this does have Universal-Versach (yes, that is misspelled, and Universal and Versach are bleeped in the film) shirts, jackets and hats, which just adds to the ridiculousness for anyone who finds Engrish silly.

The Purple Rose of Cairo, Margaret Cho: Revolution, & Cross of Iron

The Purple Rose of Cairo is sweet and depressing. And the ending was extremely sad. Farrow was great, as was Jeff Daniels. It's definitely a little out of place with some of his more serious films and out of place with his comedies. I gotta love all the scenes in the film in the film. Very well done, Woody, very well done.

CHO Revolution or Margaret Cho: Revolution or whatever was funny, although it really does go over the same ground as a lot of her other comedy routines. It was funny, but just didn't work as well as her earlier ones. Although I guess I should just say I'm the One That I Want, since I haven't seen Notorious C.H.O. That's in the future, along with Assassin.

Cross of Iron is Sam Peckinpah doing the Eastern front, the most violent and deadly front in the war. Well, at least it was much worse than the Western front. As it's a typical Peckinpah film, there're needless slow motion shots, gratuitous violence and ummm, a "de-penis-tration"... I only wish I had come up with that word. It's a brilliant word. And a horrible thing to see. Teeth shouldn't be used. And, of course, the entire movie is really freakin' anti-war. I am very happy that I saw the full version rather than the bastardized one from the DVD released here. What's up with that? You're supposed to have a longer cut on the DVD not a shorter one. What the hell?

Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic

Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic would have been better had it been longer and had new jokes I really hadn't heard before. It's a problem that she doesn't seem to have new material. Shock only works for humor the first time. Over and over again just ruins any humor that existed in the first place. The new stuff was sort of funny, but there was too little. 70 minutes of film was short. Longer longer longer. And funnier. Which hurts, because I really like Sarah's humor. Too bad the music wasn't all that good, and there were some completely unfunny things in it, because she's talented. What the hell was she thinking? If only we could have just had a straight comedy show, it would have been enough. If only there had been new material, dayenu.

Tess & Debbie Does Dallas Uncovered

Tess is another of Polanski's films that are very much influenced by Sharon Tate, although in this case it's a direct influence rather than a sense of violence. No that there isn't in the movie, but that's from the book, at least what I remember from reading it in high school. I didn't particularly care for it then, and I'm not sure I particularly wanted to see an almost three hour long version of it now. That said, it's a gorgeous film, and Nastassja Kinski's very good in it. I'm not sure how closely this all follows the book, as really, I've forgotten almost everything except for the basic plot.

Debbie Does Dallas Uncovered goes behind the scenes of one of the most notorious porn movies. But one thing I wanted to know is will Debbie ever actually get to Dallas. Apparently, she never did, since she disappeared before they could do that movie. It's very different from a normal documentary, but fairly similar to Inside Deep Throat, although it's a little less involved with the history of porn and the effect of the movie on the industry, as opposed to the effect of the movie on the actors in it. It's really not that impressive of a film. I love the FBI agent in the film, especially his list of of things he hates, because I'm basically there with him, as he's anti-scat, bestiality, vomit, and child porn. All of which are disgusting. I guess violent porn should also be added. It's interesting, but not a really good film. And it's more of a mystery of trying to find Bambi Woods rather than looking at the movie. It gets a little better and more interesting, but never too fascinating. Although it's crazy that one of the stars of the film actually was in Cannibal Holocaust, the most notorious of the Italian cannibal movies. That's just insane. I didn't know that at all. Pretty damn cool. He was also in Eaten Alive and Concorde: Airport '79 and No Way Out and Spider-Man. Wow.

One year anniversary & iTunes meme revisited

Since it's the one year anniversary of this version of my blog, I felt I'd go back and redo the iTunes meme from last June, although I'm adding in some new words this time and a new sort. And note that I'm now at 3035 movies, meaning that in the last year I saw 400 movies. Yeah, that's right. I watch lots of movies. And yesterday was again the gay pride parade and I was annoyed by craptacular music played way too loud when I was busy not listening to craptacular music. And Comcast still hasn't really been on time yet. It's always been either almost late, late, or not at all. Saved me some money though.

How many total songs?
14846, that's 37 days, 12 hours, 41 minutes and 17 seconds. Or 55.11 GB. That's 4368 more songs than last year. Although if you go by when I added songs to my iTunes now, there are only 10226 or 4620 fewer songs. Since I deleted songs and replaced mp3s with rips from CDs purchased since then, that explains a lot of the difference.

Sort by Song Title - first and last?
'Round Springfield from the Simpsons' Songs in the Key of Springfield
Zürich Is Stained from Pavement's Slanted & Enchanted: Luxe & Deluxe
Interestingly, it's exactly the same.

Sort by Artist - first and last?
!!!
Zoot Sims
Last year was 13th Floor Elevators and Zoot Sims. I have a feeling I had a !!! song last year, but I probably deleted it.

Sort by Time - first and last?
Bonus Track from Ani DiFranco's Not a Pretty Girl
Symphony no. 9 from the BBC Philharmonic's Beethoven's Symphonies
Last year was Symphony no. 3, because they hadn't released Symphony no. 9 yet.

Sort by Album - first and last?
! from Dismemberment Plan
Zooropa from U2
Last year was Zen Arcade from Hüsker Dü.

Top Five Played Songs:
Some Small History from Portastatic on Old Enough To Know Better
Kicks in the Schoolyard from the Rosebuds' The Rosebuds Make Out
Art Class (Song for Yayoi Kusama) from Superchunk's Here's to Shutting Up
I Summon You from Spoon's Gimme Fiction
Galang from M.I.A.'s Arular
That's pretty different from last year, although it did have Spoon (I Turn My Camera On, which is still near the top), and Art Class. Since I don't play songs all that often, it sort of screws with my ability to figure out which are the most popular songs, so I had to sort of combine tracks and use my Last.fm account to figure it out.

Ten Last Played
Do You Still Hate Me? from Jawbreaker's 24 Hour Revenge Therapy
I Will Follow from U2's Under a Blood Red Sky
Game of Pricks from Guided by Voices's Alien Lanes
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da from the Beatles's Anthology 3
Candy from the Magnetic Fields's Distant Plastic Trees
This Is Just a Modern Rock Song from Belle & Sebastian's Push Barman To Open Old Wounds
Blinded by the Light from Bruce Springsteen's Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.
I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone from Sleater-Kinney's Call the Doctor
Just like Heaven from Dinosaur Jr.'s You're Living All over Me
Dollars & Cents from Radiohead's Amnesiac
None the same as last year, although that would have been pretty strange.

Find "sex," how many songs show up? 69 (by track is 36, and Song against Sex and You Sexy Thing tie with 5)
Find "death," how many songs show up? 98 (by track is 36 as well, and no song has more than 2, meaning I deleted one copy of Death & Destruction from last year)
Find "love," how many songs show up? 752 (by track is 481, with 12 Love Will Tear Us Apart's winning, well ahead of the 8 (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding?'s, meaning that it doubled it's lead from last year)
Find "peace," how many songs show up? 21, with the same amount by track, WSFBPL&U? winning this one (16 last year and WSFBPL&U? having 5)
Find "rain," how many songs show up? 253, with 128 by track, having Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head winning with 5, although these numbers include things like train and brain (last year was 92 by track and 181 by all, which means that It Takes a Lot To Laugh, It Takes a Train To Cry ties with RKFOMH with four)
Find "sun," how many songs show up? 211. with 139 by track, and Island in the Sun winning with 5 (last year was 119 and 92 by track, with IITS still having 5)
Find "you," how many songs show up? 1690, with 1165 by track and I Wanna Be Your Dog, Here Comes Your Man, I Summon You, and Anything You Want with 6 (last year was 1123 and 798 with IWBYD and HCYM having 6)
Find "home," how many songs show up? 88, with 65 by track and Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) with 4 (last year was 65 and 46 by track with When Will You Come Home having 3)
Find "boy," how many songs show up? 433, with 141 by track and Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone? with 8 (last year was 354, and 86 by track with This Boy and I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend having 3)
Find "girl," how many songs show up? 300, with 185 by track and I Wanna Know Girls with 5 (last year was 220, and 120 by track and Girl with 4, but all different songs, so it should be Another Girl, Another Planet with 3)
Find "hate," how many songs show up? 68, with 35 by track and no track having more than 2 (last year was 43, and 27 by track)
Find "wish," how many songs show up? 48, with 31 by track and I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine and Blown a Wish for 3 (last year was 30 and only 13 by track, so none had more than one)

Deathtrap

Deathtrap is a very good twisty mystery. Although you just know that some of the twists are coming. But you won't get all of the twists, because that's insane. Too bad the DVD was full screen, which really annoyed me. Why do people ever want to fullscreen a movie? It sucks so hard. As for the movie, Caine and Reeve are very good. Dyan Cannon on the other hand was horrendously bad. So bad that you're happy she dies. So horrendously annoying. And that sort of twist isn't still in the first of two acts. There are so many other twists, both reasonable and unreasonable, that it does devolve into self-parody. But it is all intentional. That it's intentional is clear just from the fact that the people plotting it are mystery playwrights. It felt very play-ish, as the attempts to expand it from a play to a movie failed pretty much. It feels like a five-person play, and the other characters and scenes just felt tacked on.