Thursday, August 30, 2012

A True Story

The original title of Howard Hawks's I Was a Male War Bride was: 

I was an Alien Spouse of Female Military Personnel Enroute to the United States Under Public Law 271 of the Congress

The Octopus

"It's your own fault anyway, drinking all that free wine and turning into an octopus with hands."
"You misunderstood. You flatter yourself. I was only trying to be friendly."

I Was a Male War Bride (1949)
written by Henri Rochard, Charles Lederer, Leonard Spigelgass, Hagar Wilde

"Well, you had moments of kind of making like an octopus. I never saw so many hands in all my life."
"All right. All right. Look, my only excuse is that I liked you."
The Thing from Another World (1951)
written by Charles Lederer, Howard Hawks, Ben Hecht

The Foreshadowing (14)


Sweeney 2 (1978)
dir. Tom Clegg

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Hildegard Knef had one hell of a cinematic face.






all from:

Murderers Among Us (1946)
dir. Wolfgang Staudte

The Gravitron


The 400 Blows (1959)
dir. François Truffaut


Ako (1965)
dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara

Monday, August 27, 2012

The Hill

Ran (1985)
dir. Akira Kurosawa


War of the Worlds (2005)
dir. Steven Spielberg



The Monster in the Distance

The Colossus (1812)
artist unknown, probably Asensio Juliá or another follower of Francisco de Goya 


War of the Worlds (2005)
dir. Steven Spielberg


The Mist (2007)
dir. Frank Darabont

Go to Hell Total Film

Total Film, your list of the 50 Most Disappointing Movies Of All-Time is terrible, and time did not begin in 1989.


Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull (2008)
Star Wars: Episode One - The Phantom Menace (2001)
X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
The Godfather Part 3 (1990)
Spider-Man 3 (2007)
The Hangover Part 2 (2011)
Sucker Punch (2011)
Superman Returns (2006)
The Matrix Revolutions (2003)
Ocean's 12 (2004)
Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
Terminator Salvation (2009)
Green Lantern (2011)
Quantum Of Solace (2009)
Fantastic Four (2005)
The Golden Compass (2007)
Planet Of The Apes (2001)
Alien 3 (1992)
Batman and Robin (1997)
Troy (2004)
Kill Bill Part 2 (2004)
Iron Man 2 (2010)
Prometheus (2012)
Jersey Girl (2004)
Southland Tales (2006)
Godzilla (1998)
Miami Vice (2006)
Hulk (2003)
The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse (2005)
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
The Spirit (2008)
Catwoman (2004)
Vanilla Sky (2001)
Alice In Wonderland (2010)
The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End (2007)
Once Upon A Time In Mexico (2004)
Sex And The City 2 (2010)
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)
Jennifer's Body (2009)
Public Enemies (2009)
Alexander (2004)
Ghostbusters 2 (1989)
The Avengers (1998)
The Lady In The Water (2006)
The Lovely Bones (2009)
Speed Racer (2008)
Shrek The Third (2007)
Congo (1995)
The Tourist (2010)


Learn about film if you're going to write about film, you boring weirdos. There's a thousand cool stories you could've told that haven't really been talked much about instead of spinning your wheels over the same "hyuck Catwoman sure was bad" nerd culture shit that's stifling film criticism.

How about when everyone thought Damnation Alley was going to be bigger than Star Wars?



Or David O. Selznick's too-big-to-work adaptation of A Farewell to Arms, or George Cukor's limp-dicked version of the bestselling erotic thriller Justine?


Or Mark of the Vampire, the 1935 reunion of Tod Browning and Bela Lugosi which was sort of an implied sequel to Dracula?




Or how about 1916's The Fall of a Nation, the crass sequel to Birth of a Nation which was basically the Episode 1 of its day, or Scarlett, the Timothy Dalton-led 1994 sequel to Gone with the Wind?

Or Heaven's Gate? For Christ's sake, Total Film, at least get Heaven's Gate. How about Marnie, the still-debated film that brought down Hitchcock?

And if you need to include Stanley Kubrick, 2001 was much more of an upset than Eyes Wide Shut. Man, people hated that movie in '68. (Also FYI if you live in the year 2012 and you're disappointed by Eyes Wide Shut you're too stupid to write about movies.)

Remember Righteous Kill, the first pairing of De Niro and Pacino since Godfather 2 and Heat?  Super Mario Bros.? Caddyshack 2? Rocky 5? Wild Wild goddamn West? You don't even need to leave your weird little self-imposed 20 year timeframe.

Grow up, Total Film. Cinema didn't start with Ghostbusters. You're a film journal, you should be pointing people to new film experiences, not locking them in a death spiral of superheroes and SNL comedies.

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Friday, August 24, 2012

The Malkovich

Being John Malkovich (1998)
dir. Spike Jonze


Burn After Reading (2008)
dir. Joel Coen


iPhone commercial (2012)


from Discount Viscount

The Candy Bar

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)
dir.  Mel Stuart


Caddyshack (1980)
dir. Harold Ramis


from Discount Viscount

The Hanging


Secrets (1933)
dir. Frank Borzage


Moonrise (1948)
dir. Frank Borzage

The Subplot

Things look good for a new political candidate:

"Oh, mother, do you think they'll make daddy governor?"
Secrets (1933)
dir. Frank Borzage


"Mother, is Pop governor yet?"
Citizen Kane (1942)
dir. Orson Welles


But a classic confrontation ensues, with the wife in white and the mistress in black. 

Secrets (1933)
dir. Frank Borzage


Citizen Kane (1942)
dir. Orson Welles

And the paper tells us the rest:


Secrets (1933)
dir. Frank Borzage



Citizen Kane (1942)
dir. Orson Welles

The Fire

Secrets (1933)
dir. Frank Borzage


Ran (1985)
dir. Akira Kurosawa

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Y'all should know:

Henry Walthall, who plays this dick in Birth of a Nation:


made his living pre-Hollywood by capturing and selling black prisoners in the Neoslavery peonage system. He also moonlighted as a theater teacher!

Sometimes it's important to remember that the Original Sin of cinema was really, really racist.

Ironically Walthall also shows up in Griffith's Abraham Lincoln, the last of his "apology" films for BoaN. He's also the priest in the wonderful The Sin of Nora Moran, which I'm trying not to let ruin the movie, and the bad guy in Ride Him Cowboy, John Wayne's best B-movie. So if you want to see a crazy war-hawk right winger who despite his reputation probably wasn't a racist kill one who definitely was, that's your movie.

Walthall's standard biography sort of overlooks the part of his life spent kidnapping innocent, disenfranchised black Americans into slavery through a blackmailing juggernaut prison-for-profit system that fed into the nauseatingly dangerous and unsanitary coal mines that stripped and poisoned Alabama.


Tuesday, August 21, 2012

The Water on the Leaves

Carol (1970)
dir. Ed Emshwiller


Saving Private Ryan (1998)
dir. Steven Spielberg

The Faulknerian Sense of Time

It was Grandfather's [watch] and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire [...] I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.
The Sound and the Fury (1929)
written by William Faulkner


If you could just ravel out into time. That would be nice. It would be nice if you could just ravel out into time.
As I Lay Dying (1930)
written by William Faulker


Time’s not such a bad thing after all. Use it right, and you can stretch anything out, like a rubberband, until it busts somewhere, and there you are, with all tragedy and despair in two little knots between thumb and finger of each hand.
Sanctuary (1931)
written by William Faulker

Monday, August 20, 2012

The Zombie Girl


The Walking Dead "Pretty Much Dead Already" (2011)
dir. Michelle MacLaren



Cabin in the Woods (2012)
dir. Drew Goddard

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Enjoy my new TV label, y'all. Sure was a bitch to add all those tags, but it's worth it to collate my Hank Hill and Homer Simpson images.

The Handcuffed Man

Breaking Bad "Cat's in the Bag..." (2008)
dir. Adam Bernstein


Breaking Bad "Buyout" (2012)
dir. Colin Bucksey


Full circle, Walt.