Movie Millisecond: You can kiss me on a …

Se7en (David Fincher, 1995).

Wednesday Wednesday: Marie Antoinette

Lisa Loring as Wednesday Addams (1964).

Perfectly normal, perfectly healthy.

Breaking News: Drop everything and wake the neighbors

Tom Brokaw knows about this, right? Say he knows.

Movie Millisecond: Ignore your instincts

via.

Waiting For Guffman (Christopher Guest, 1996).

According to the figures provided by Castle Rock, this film lost $1,107,418. Meanwhile, in the same summer, Face/Off, which everyone knows is my favorite movie of all time, grossed around $245,676,146.

Movie Millisecond: Just wish I were dead

Gentleman’s Agreement (Elia Kazan*, 1947).

You know. The usual.

Actually, this movie is really excellent and special. It shed light on the prevalent anti-Semitism which proceded the second World War. Everyone is always so busy patting themselves on the back for liberating the concentration camps* during the Allied victory over Hitler & Co. that we tend to forget the Jewish people were still being discriminated against in the countries of their liberators.

via.

Based on a book by Laura Z. Hobson, the film is about a writer who claims to be Jewish in order to write an authentic series on anti-Semitism in America. He quickly learns firsthand how prevalent bigotry against Jewish citizens remained in the post-War years. It was considered a risky film to make, and the anecdotal Hollywood folktale circuit would have it that Jewish heads of other production companies went to producer Darryl Zanuck and asked him not to make the film. I’m not so sure: I think that sounds like marveolous publicity fodder and is more likely a fiction generated by Zanuck to drum up interest in the picture than anything that actually happened — especially since a scene mirroring that situation is included in the film. Inspiration for PR story much? In any case, the buzz paid off: the film was Fox’s top-grossing movie of 1948.

*Kazan himself is of course controversial.
**no question, the liberation of the camps was fantastic and thank God for it, no matter if it was late in the game or for political rather than humanitarian reasons, but I’m just sayin’.

Movie Millisecond: The Godfather

Apollonia = always relevant. The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972).

«Il primo amore non si scorda mia.»

You never forget your first love.

Not ever. That thunderbolt is a killer.

Fight Club Friday: The one you love

Friday night’s all right for fighting.

Movie Millisecond: It’s All Happening

Back in business!

Almost Famous (Cameron Crowe, 2000).

So much going on right now for me, but the best part is getting to bloggety-blog it all again — I missed you, internet. Lord, dudes, you don’t even realize. You guys are rad. Don’t go changin’ to try and please me.

Movie Millisecond: You wanna play psycho killer?

Capped by me.

Scream (Wes Carpenter, 1996). Ghostface Killer: Pussy Magnet. Everyone loves games!

This was the first slasher movie I ever saw. I watched this film sitting at the theater between my father and my boyfriend at the time, the Cappy, and I got all teary and horrified when (SPOILER) Drew Barrymore bit it in the first three minutes, and wanted desperately to go home. Thankfully, they didn’t let me. I was paranoid and jumpy and squirmy for days. Then I got hooked on the paranoia and jumps and squirms and eventually over the next few years watched every cheesey horror movie I could get my hot little virgin hands on, which lead to Troma, which lead to giallo, which lead to wanting a degree in film, which didn’t go the way I expected but lead me to where I am now, which I wouldn’t trade for anything. All because of Scream.

See? Everyone loves games!

Special thanks to my wonderful Miss D for helping me make all my Scream-screencap dreams come true with the gracious loan of her DVD.

Take-two Tuesday and Yesterday’s News — Movie Moment: Une femme est une femme, Zodiac quackery and cock-gobbling Virgos edition

edit: Since this post’s original appearance, I’ve been reclassified as a Leo by … the sometimes-I-tune-in Zodiac powers that be? Not actually sure whom. Fellow fabulously-damaged Virgin Panda tried to explain it to me over soosh bombasticos last week but she is much, much better at understanding this stuff than I am.

This post originally appeared on February 7, 2010 at 9:14 a.m., so practically one year ago. Synchronicity in Yesterday’s News!

Romance, science, and zodiac quackery in Une femme est une femme/A Woman Is A Woman (Godard, 1961).

Virgo is a hard worker, a neglected mother, a quotidian task master, and a selfless martyr. Virgo is also a reality TV train wreck, a drunken psychopath, and a self-abusing anorexic. Virgo is analytical on a good day. Virgo is self-critical, self-loathing, self-deprecating, self-flagellating, and self-defeating on a bad day.

The Virgin, contrary to what her title may suggest, is the resident cock gobbler of the zodiac — never a topper, always a bottom. If you’re looking for a woman who will abuse herself, party like it’s Greek harvest time and she’s drunk on mead, please you sexually without so much as a nod to her own hungry genitalia, and perform all the humiliating duties you’ve assigned to her as wife and mother, look no further than the drunken Virgin of the zodiac.

And yes, more often than not, this naughty little maiden is getting crunked at the club or downing daiquiris at the Mommy and Me block party, an attempt to drown to death the echoes of self-loathing that usually prevent her from embodying the female charm and charisma she labors to possess.

The Virgo vibratory pattern is restrictive, effective, judgmental, exact, helpful, and neurotic. Virgos are a lot of things, socially charismatic not being one of them.

Usually, when I meet a Virgo, my natural reaction is, ‘this person must have Aspergers.’ They fixate on minutiae like Rainman [and] have more clicks and ticks than a malfunctioning android attempting to process human emotion.

Virgos rule the house of diet, perfectionism, and nourishment. Just glance at a list of famous Virgos and you’ll find more self-flagellating, adulthood suppressing skeletors than you can shake a stick at: Amy Winehouse, Rachel Zoe, Nicole Ritchie, Karl Lagerfeld, Twiggy, Fiona Apple, Aimee Mann, Peggy Guggenheim, etc.

[personally adding Anne Bancroft, Evan Rachel Wood, Lauren Bacall, Ricki Lake, Greta Garbo, and Rose McGowan to that list].

Yes, that is pretty much the way of it.

Virgo is the embodiment of human turmoil.

Insightful and amusing zodiac sign analysis by Carly, whose blog “Do you think I’m smart? Astrology and other Ass Munchery” is right here on the wordpress. Usually I say that I don’t believe in all that large astrological nonsense, but I have to admit that’s the first one I’ve ever read that was right on. Maybe I just needed to read all the horrible things I already know about myself confirmed, instead of the butt-licking backhanded compliments in most horoscopes, in order to start giving it some credence.

Final thought.

How to Spot a Virgo Woman:

They have an eating disorder.

They give rigorous handies.

They have acid reflux.

They’ll do “anything for my man.”

They want your love, but don’t deserve it.

(more, if you’re into that — she is very clever and scathingly funny)

Teevee Time: George Carlin’s pet peeves

via littleredhead on the tumblr.

George Carlin, ‘You Are All Diseased.’ (Rocco Urbisci). February 6, 1999. Beacon Theater, Manhattan.

12 Days of Highly Tolerable Holiday Movies: Elf

Actually, I tolerate this movie at a rate of only medium, rather than “highly,” but I picked it over Gremlins because I had more to say about it, I’d seen it more recently, and I had found better screencaps. Plus there is Zooey Deschanel as a blonde. Singing. In the shower.

Elf (Jon Favreau, 2003).

After inadvertently wreaking havoc on the elf community due to his ungainly size, a man raised as an elf at the North Pole is sent to the U.S. in search of his true identity.

(the imdb)

Please answer the phone that way at least once this week. I plan to but, then, I almost always answer the phone weird, so I won’t have that element of surprise that you will. (My new favorite? Ask the person who’s calling you if they’re there instead of saying hello. Example: it comes up on caller I.D. as “Joe Brown.” Answer the phone, “Is Joe there? Can I speak with Joe Brown, please? Mr. Brown? You’re probably wondering why I’ve called …”)

That’s another thing. (sigh) Buddy, you should know that your father — he’s on the Naughty List.

Nooooo!

I remember thinking when this came out how odd it was that Jon Favreau directed it, but Buddy’s father Walter Hobbs, as interpreted by James Caan, is certainly what I would think of as a Favreauvian creation: a nasty, singleminded piece of work who needs the familiar but lonely high ground of distance from others, and congruent distance from the emotions intimacy might entail, above all else.

(Psst, it is Amy Sedaris. Woo-hoo!)

I think we should call security.

Good idea.

I like to whisper too!

Buddy is a nuisance to his own father not only because of his inconvenient bumblings, but also because he is a deviation from the norm. To confront a person who won’t let you push them away is to confront yourself, and people like Walter Hobbs seek to avoid that at all costs. I believe Favreau is a genius at whipping up these mean little slaves to the system, as an actor and as a director.

That said about a keen and critical eye for slaves to the system, the product placement in this film is almost beyond belief. One of the most blatant things I’ve seen since E.T. I do not count the scene in Wayne’s World II because they did that on purpose (albeit they got paid).

Zooey Deschanel: I don’t know about elves. I didn’t think much about elves because I was trying to think about the man in charge, the one that was going to bring me presents. I believed in Santa Claus until I was, like, 14. [I believed] if my parents think I do, then they’ll give me two sets of presents. And if Santa Claus really does exist, then he’ll appreciate my support.

(“Zooey Deschanel talks about Elf.” Rebecca Murray. 2003. About.com)

Make work your favorite. That’s your new “favorite.”

When the threads of this project were spun out of the distaff of Hollywood nothingness in 1993, Jim Carrey was originally attached to star as Buddy the Elf. I truly love the guy but I am pretty glad he didn’t get it. He’s got far too much pathos in his eyes and the film would have flopped. Will Ferrell gives Buddy an unblinking, irascible cheerfulness that you get the sense would not flag in the face of finding himself engulfed in flames, like a grip of Terminator robots grimly marching across the ocean floor in pursuit of John Connor. Oh, hey, marriage-made-in-heaven sequel idea? “Come wit’ me if yoo be-leaf in Santa!”

Now what can I get you for Christmas?

Don’t tell him what you want, he’s a liar.

Let the kid talk.

You disgust me! How can you live with yourself?

Just cool it, Zippy.

You sit on a throne of lies!

See? I told you Zooey Deschanel showers in this movie. She also eats top ramen. Tell a friend.

Yeah, pretty much. Where this film succeeds for me is in its treatment of the redemption of characters peripheral to Buddy the Elf: namely, his father, Walter, and Jovie, his would-be girlfriend. Grating as he is, if Buddy had changed to accept the new world in to which he thrusts himself, it would have been a cheap and deflating transformation à la Enchanted.*

To see people rise above themselves and protect a dumb, innocent guy is at least affirming. Buddy doesn’t have to change, because the world will always have burpy rays of sunshine: we need to change enough to take care of them, to share their optimism and deserve their devotion. I can hang with that.

Extra-tolerable bonus: Buddy’s supervisor at the North Pole is Peter Billingsley, of A Christmas Story. “You’re not a cotton-headed ninny-muggins, Buddy. You’re just … different.” Aw. Super-cool!

*Enchanted had nice music but, really, Giselle goes from being a full-throated maiden of the forest to Chi-ironing her hair and operating a dress shop in Manhattan. Conform, little girl! For all the posturing at positioning a new kind of feminist anti-hero that that script threw at us, in the end, it pandered to the same “princess-demographic” ideals it was purporting to rebel against. But, dang, that Amy Adams is cute as a button, yes?

Movie Millisecond: A nice bag of tricks

Newman’s Own Christmas List.

via tocaptureyou on the tumblr.

The Young Philadelphians (Vince Sherman, 1959).

Movie Millisecond: Cancer of the Soul

via.

The Passion of Anna/The Passion/En Passion (Ingmar Bergman, 1969).

Mean Girls Monday: Genesis

Movie Millisecond: Les diaboliques

Les diaboliques (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1955).

I had a friend around a decade ago whose girlfriend was horrified whenever she would catch him having opened his eyes to glance down at their interlocking parts during sex. “Stop looking,” she would say. He was fool enough to tell us this and naturally we all started to say it to him all the time, and it caught on well enough that it became a thing to say it even when he was not around. “Stop looking!” we’d tell each other.

They’re married now so I assume either he stopped looking or she let it go.

Mean Girls Monday: That is just exactly the way of it

This is the kind of thing that happens to me every day of my life.

Movie Millisecond: V for Vendetta

Remember, remember.

V for Vendetta (James McTeigue, 2006). I have not yet seen this movie, but I’ve had the graphic novel* since the Dead Sea was sick.

Have you seen it? Should I download it — super-legally, naturally, wink-wink-nudge-nudge** — and watch it while I work out, or is it not a worthy adaptation?

via.

*Let’s call them graphic novels and hold our pinkies out, mmkay.

**Just kidding, Wachowski Brothers. You know I got your backs; I saw Speed Racer three times in theaters, for crissake. Homies to the grave, dudes. I’d never do you like that. Besides, I can’t get Demonoid to work this week.***

***Anyone know how to get Demonoid to work this week? It’s not Demonoid. It’s me. I updated Mozilla and monkeyed with the proxy and firewall settings, and now I’m facing all manner of sassafrass left and right in the form of peer-to-peer denials, time-outs, and failure to connect. Luckily my sex life has conditioned me to expect this. (rimshot!)

Movie Millisecond: Mouchette

via.

Mouchette (Robert Bresson, 1967).

Movie Millisecond: Langue v. Parole

Sedmikrásky/Daisies (Vera Chytilová, 1966).