I used to re-watch movies all the time. I'd come home from school, probably in the middle-school era, and watch one of the Star Wars saga. Or later, as a teen, my best friend and I would have to see Pride and Prejudice or Anne of Green Gables every six months or so. I think, at that time, it was about recapturing a feeling or wanting to live in ( Read more... )

I just finished watching Limelight, and a few days ago did Monsieur Verdoux, which means in the past few months I've seen The Kid, City Lights, Modern Times, The Great Dictator and Unknown Chaplin as well as the last two. And I'm trying to get my thoughts on Chaplin in order, because I'm fascinated by him and by my reaction to him. What's ( Read more... )

Just watched Josef von Sternberg's Morocco and I understand why I've only ever seen the bit at the beginning where Dietrich is in tails and a top hat. The scene is brilliant, and more on that in a bit, but the movie is sluggish, lacks the depth and point of Der Blaue Engel, and Gary Cooper is both the least interesting playboy and the most wooden ( Read more... )

So in the past two days, I've watched F.W. Murnau's Sunrise twice. I've been hearing about it since school, but sort of half-avoiding it because I had heard so much about how "beautiful" it was with a sense of "don't really bother about the story." A lot of the time, that doesn't work for me. I'm not very visually-oriented, though it's more ( Read more... )

( Cut for Errol Flynn's awesomeness and intimations of slash )

This weekend,
( Read more... )

As you may have noticed, I've been absent lately. Between the show and a week-long family vacation on the Oregon coast, I haven't been able to check my f-list or update or anything--which is too bad, since I wish I'd recorded my thoughts about the show while they were still fresh. Anyway, here's a little round-up of things I've been thinking about ( Read more... )

Last night on All Things Considered, I heard a story called Heroine Chic: When Star Power Trumps Gender. It was about how certain film roles, even iconic ones, were originally written for men but became vehicles for female stars: Weaver in Alien, Jodie Foster in Flight Plan, Jane Lynch in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, to name a few. It mentions that ( Read more... )

I have a confession to make: Until about two weeks ago, I'd never seen a Charlie Chaplin film all the way through ( Read more... )

Film/Music: Leonard Cohen: Live at the Isle of Wight 1970

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to see this concert documentary at the Northwest Film Forum at an 11 pm show. Sitting in the dark theater, the 16mm footage close up on a rumpled Leonard Cohen, I realized two things: Leonard Cohen was hot, and more importantly, sitting there was the ( Read more... )