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I caught Quentin Tarantino's controversial new film Inglourious Basterds yesterday and liked it tremendously. I haven't seen such an exciting, riveting, and outrageous movie in a long time. Plus I was startled by but recognized immediately the borrowed music over the entire end credits: Ennio Morricone's "Rabbia e tarantella" from the Taviani ( Read more... )

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I went to see The Wrestler with my sister on a senior discount Wednesday. I had wanted to see it because I had read good things about Mickey Rourke’s performance. When we first saw the trailer a few weeks ago, my sister said she absolutely didn’t want to go to this one. The subject matter didn’t interest her and she finds Rourke obnoxious. ( Read more... )

These would be among the best new films I saw that opened in 2008 in my area:

Happy-Go-Lucky ( Read more... )

Last night at home I was watching the 1951 version of the science-fiction film The Day the Earth Stood Still, a movie I had first seen at my neighborhood picture show when I was about nine years old. As the space ship landed on a field in Washington D.C., I noticed flashing lights outside my window ( Read more... )

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The lunch I made today was a result of re-watching Bernardo Bertolucci's stunning 1964 film Before the Revolution, completed when he was 22. It is set in Parma, so I got an almost unnatural craving for prosciutto di Parma. I got my butt to the market to buy a half-pound at $17.99 a pound. Got a real juicy canteloupe too. Back home I made ( Read more... )

I just rewatched Ermanno Olmi's profound and sublime film The Tree of Wooden Clogs, this time in the rarely seen original Bergamasco dialect version. Here is cinema that moves me to such a degree that it produces two opposite effects, on the one hand deep respect for its beauty and humanity, on the other hand rage at all the contrasting trash and ( Read more... )