day five brings us a pair of strange bedfellows courtesy of stacey fellers, the paramount's executive marketing director. we begin with rowdy, that's right - rowdy, herrington's road house (1989).
you know those cookbooks where they go into the lab and retroengineer name brand products so you can make them at home? well, i think i have cracked the code so you can whip up your own road house:
1 cup high noon (1952)
2 cups every which way but loose (1978)
10 pounds of explosive charges
6 cans of aquanet
1 throat, ripped
1 truck, monster
3 quarts of dirty dealing
1 teaspoon of dirty dancing (1987)
1 truckload of velveeta
stir together until messy, sprinkle liberally with bone crush'ns and overheat for 114 minutes. voila! don't bother saving ben gazzara any. there's no way he has any room left after all the scenery he chewed. holy cats! this movie is just nuts. it exists in a world where bouncers are spoken of in awed, hushed tones and people routinely spend their saturday nights heaving beer bottles at blind guys. patrick swayze plays a bouncer with advanced degrees in philosophy, hair feathering and kicking ass. he is tapped to clean up a small town beer joint that resembles the thunderdome more than a bar. in doing so, he runs afoul of ben gazzara, who has somehow managed to become incredibly wealthy by extorting a town that seems to have only about half a dozen businesses in it altogether. i guess the feed store does a brisk business. sam elliott shows up as swayze's mentor and is cool in that sam elliott way until gazzara's goons stick a knife in him. swayze is pushed to the breaking point, having watched gazzara and his minions take everything he cares about and stab it, blow it up or run over it with a monster truck, and he goes for the throat. hey-o! we get to the final showdown and, just as swayze is having his zen moment, the downtrodden townsfolk show up and blow gazzara full of holes, leaving swayze and the hot lady doctor, kelly lynch, to bone with clear consciences. did i mention this was BASED ON A TRUE STORY? this madhouse has rightfully slugged its way onto the mount rushmore of modern camp classics. it is a goldmine of lines-that-weren't-meant-to-be-funny and the unintentional(?) homoeroticism is nearly off the charts. it has no regard for its characters and rolls right over everything in its path on its way to valhalla. it really is the last gasp of a certain, very specific type of exploitation film and does it ever put that pedal to the floor. it's like the eighties were dying before their very eyes and everyone involved in this project was bound and determined to squeeze every last explosion and brawl from it before the bitter end. i stand in qualified awe of its dubious merits.
going from one of hollywood's favorite hoofers to another, we follow that, somehow, with vincente minnelli's an american in paris (1951).
it is a lithe and lively musical adaptation of george gershwin's tone poem of the same name from 1928. gene kelly plays the titular expatriate, trying to make a living as a painter in the city of light just after world war two. he is having little success, though, until his work is noticed on the street by a wealthy patron of arts who apparently makes it a habit of falling for artistic types that leave her high and dry. well, she's not breaking that pattern any time soon, as kelly promptly interrupts their first date to fall in love at first sight with leslie caron. he doggedly pursues caron, winning her heart while ignoring his patron's overtures, but there is a fly in the ointment. that fly is one his best friends that caron is going to marry out of a sense of obligation for his protection during the war. don't worry. true love triumphs in the end. it's paris, don't be a maroon. plot-wise, it's standard issue musical melodrama. that's not why we're here. we're here for gershwin's music and the incredible dancing on display. it is among the best ever committed to film. interspersed throughout the movie are a handful of musical interludes featuring all of our principals, each one thoroughly entertaining, capped by an astounding sixteen minute finale. it is a ballet set to the title tune and even for people like me, not typically a fan of musicals, it is impressive, depicting kelly's ardor in a series of technicolor reveries that span the length and breadth of the city and his romantic imagination. kelly has always been my favorite of hollywood's classic musical leading men for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that just underneath the surface he is a bit of a bastard. fred astaire and donald o'connor could have never played the surrogate for h.l. mencken that kelly did in inherit the wind (1960). there's a versatility and darkness there that the others just didn't possess that made him leagues more interesting to me. he also took the grace the others displayed and added an athleticism to his work that they couldn't match. the guy is a powerhouse and incredibly fun to watch. you really should at least see the big finish of this, if nothing else. it is crazily ambitious, a polychromatic burst of rhythm and melody pretty much unmatched by anything in hollywood's golden age. plus, you get your happily ever after. perfect for a summertime saturday matinee.
thanks, stacey! that was a weird good time.
tomorrow finds us leaving the cozy confines of paris for a pair of treats from south america.
day four finds us wrung out after yesterday's emotional hurricane. for relief, we turn to brooklyn henson, the paramount's associate director of marketing and PR. will she provide it? well, don't put those hankies away just yet, gang. we start with herbert ross' steel magnolias (1989).
i guess i am the only person in the free world that hasn't seen this before today, but just in case there are others of you living in a magnolia-free bubble for the last two decades, let's synopsize: it is about the lives, loves and bonding experiences of a group of southern women in a time and place that could only ever be the late 1980s. using dolly parton's beauty shop as a sort of base of operations, they gather to exchange wisecracks, plan julia roberts' wedding, exchange wisecracks, ponder the impenetrable male psyche and then exchange wisecracks. not long after the wedding, julia announces that she is with child. it's a mixed blessing, though, as she is severely diabetic and her pregnancy could endanger her life. the baby arrives, and is healthy, but the stress on her body was too much, causing kidney failure. she receives a kidney transplant but it turns out to be a stopgap measure, at best. she collapses at home one afternoon, entering into a coma that she never comes out of. the family eventually removes her from life support and after her funeral, left finally in the company of her other friends, sally field, julia's mother, finally reaches her breaking point. the tight-knit group sees her through it and, as we head toward the credits, daryl hannah announces that she is pregnant and asks to name the baby after roberts' character. the cycle of southern life begins anew.
maybe i have had it wrong all along. maybe this is the old, weird america, this place where god and hairdos reign supreme. they live in a world where traditions are so firmly rooted that no one bothers to check if they even make sense anymore and "what will the neighbors say?" still carries some inexplicable significance. where am i in my life that david lynch's blue velvet (1986) presents a vision of america that is less foreign to me than this? i am at a severe disadvantage with this one. maybe i am just more in the minority than i realize. i would be interested in hearing if the majority of you have/have had this type of dynamic (3-5 same gender friends that you see near constantly) in your lives? if you don't, do you long for it? do you frequently denigrate your significant other for comic purposes? am i missing out on something important here? i frequently think when i watch these things that it must be more prevalent than i realize. why else would it turn up as a storytelling device so often unless it was a near-universal experience? is the lack of it in my life a chicken-or-the-egg thing? is there an absence of it in my life because i have surrounded myself with other people who feel similarly or do they just keep it out of my sphere because they know that i will not participate in it? as soon as i drive away is this what is happening in my friends' houses all over town? that's a lot of questions, i know. i really would be interested in your feedback. feel free to leave it in the comments section here or over at the facebook page. if you read my ramblings very often (or know me well) you know that i just simply refuse to buy into the gender generalizations that people often use to cut their lives into digestible chunks. personally, i know that i do or appreciate enough things typically designated as the province of women to make the designation pointless. if you think about it, i am sure the women in the audience have a similar inventory of things/behaviors commonly understood to be "guy things" that are a regular part of their routines. once you establish and understand that, it just demolishes all these silly notions of "you're one way, we're another". i know why people insist on perpetuating it - it's easy and doesn't require us to think of each other as individuals - but i will never know why they think that is better. when you spend 50% of the time cracking jokes at your opposite gender's expense how silly is it to spend the other 50% of that time wringing your hands over "why don't we get along?!"? with their preoccupations and restlessness, these women are kind of the mature female flip side to the lads in reprise (2006) from day two. all that being said, i would still rather spend time with these women than any number of post/suspended-adolescent bropacks. these women have the advantage of accumulated wisdom on their side. dolly parton is an angel and if you can't find a way to like her then you're just kind of a jerk, shirley maclaine and olympia dukakis have been around long enough to know when to fight and when to retreat and sally field's monologue where she angrily questions the sense of her daughter's death is right on the money. i just wish, and i am well aware that this will most likely never come true, that we could finally stop underlining women and men and just get on with the business of underlining people. maybe if the neighbors did it first...
from there we hit the road with todd phillips' due date (2010).
it's one of the more recent entries in the hollywood canon of films about unlikely traveling companions, a lineage that stretches back practically to the beginning of film itself. robert downey, jr. is a slightly tense architect trying to get home to california in time for the birth of his first child. zach galifianakis is the unsophisticated rube who is on his way to hollywood to follow his dream of being on the t.v., french bulldog and coffee can full of his dad's ashes in tow. the movie wastes no time and i certainly appreciate that about it. in the first few minutes our protagonists are introduced to one another via an accident that rips off one of their car doors and from there on they are inextricably linked, the film continually upping the ante, becoming more and more outrageous and destructive with each passing scene. we are treated to non-lethal projectiles, car crashes, masturbating zach, masturbating french bulldog, drinking a hot cup of zach's dad over breakfast, assault with a wheelchair and collapsible baton, near-lethal projectiles, broken bones and more as the two of them make their way west. of course, they overcome their differences to become friends. that was a given. we've seen it time and time again in variations both romantic, like it happened one night (1934), and platonic, as seen in planes, trains and automobiles (1987). well, platonic except for the pillows scene. we knew the end before it even started. what matters is the getting there. the getting there was interesting to me this time more in terms of how it reflected the journey that american comedy is on. not to say it wasn't funny. it has its moments, though there should be more of them, considering the skill and charm of galifianakis and downey. it made me think a lot about how few places there are left to take this comedy of discomfort that is so prevalent these days. every journey has a terminal point. how soon until we reach it with this style? phiilips' output alone is responsible for taking a branch of comedy that was silly and sophomoric, but mostly good-natured, just a few years ago and raising the edgy awkwardness stakes until it is nearly unrecognizable to its antecedents. one thing downey said keeps ringing in my head while i mull this over. early in the film he is attempting to get galifianakis to improvise a scene as a coach whose job is on the line that needs to inspire his players to a big win. zach tells him it's a stupid idea, that it would never be in a movie. downey replies, "it's in a movie every two years". precisely. this is in a movie every two years. it makes me curious to see what will come in the two years that things can't be taken any further, profitably, and what the american comedic landscape will look like while we are watching the waters of unease recede for a while. i suppose we shall see. for now, we just keep driving. so quit kicking the back of my seat, brooklyn, and stop bugging your brother. i will pull this queue over if i have to.
in all seriousness brooklyn, thanks for those selections. they gave me some laughs and, more importantly, they raised some questions for me that i didn't expect and i always appreciate that.
tomorrow we reach the halfway point in our little experiment.
to celebrate maybe i'll let you guys be my regular saturday night thing.
the selections for day three come to us courtesy of nick barbieri, web marketing associate at the paramount, and he warned me it was going to be somber. he is, quite obviously, a master of understatement. we begin things with fatih akin's fierce and staggering head-on (2004).
it is the story of two turkish immigrants on mutually self-destructive paths living in germany. cahit is in his forties, a whirlwind of furious depression that abuses whatever substance he can afford, who is essentially waiting around to die, as townes van zandt once put it. well, he's not so much waiting around as racing headlong toward it, ultimately driving his car straight into a wall in an intoxicated attempt to put himself out of his considerable misery. he fails at his attempt and while recovering he meets sibel, a beautiful twenty-something prone to implosion as well. in an effort to escape the clutches of her oppressive, traditional family she proposes marriage to cahit who demurs at first but later capitulates and they establish a marriage of convenience in which each is free to lead their own life. in more conventional love stories this would be the beginning of a familiar cycle of grudging affection and growing familiarity until the eventual happy ever after. these two are not that fortunate. faux domesticity isn't enough to eliminate the lesser angels of their natures. it tempers them somewhat, temporarily diverting those energies, but they still indulge in the behaviors that are taking their lives nowhere. the affection does grow, however, but unfortunately results in tragedy. cahit, still explosive, picks a fight one evening with an ex-lover of sibel's and accidentally kills the man. in the shadow of this tragic mistake, cahit and sibel come to the realization that they truly do love one another. it just took this terrible thing to make them understand it. then things get bad. with cahit languishing in prison, sibel returns to turkey, attempting to assuage her grief with more drugs and recklessness. she is raped and, later, viciously beaten. flash forward several years. cahit is released from prison and he travels to istanbul to find sibel, who has started her life over and has a son. she is stable and her sister tells cahit she no longer needs him. he persists and eventually sibel agrees to meet him. they finally consummate the marriage, now several years on, and make plans to leave together the following day. cahit waits for her at the appointed place and time but she does not come and when we last see him he is on the bus, finally returning to his hometown, alone. when you make a film like this you are treading a dangerous line. the slightest misstep and these characters teeter over into completely unsympathetic territory. there is nothing less interesting than one-dimensional reprobates indulging their appetites at everyone's expense. the leads in this, though, are incredibly charismatic and have such chemistry that you will forgive them terrible things. they are not so inhuman as to be irredeemable. birol ünel as cahit was charged with a particularly difficult task. as an actor, i can imagine letting characters inhabit you is difficult enough, but how do you go about the task of thoroughly emptying yourself? when we find him he is a void, a thrashing husk, effectively dead already. to see him raise himself from unimaginable depths for the sake of love is a powerful thing. the difficulty of the turkish immigrant experience in germany only further compounds the difficulty. in the wake of the terrible fatal accident, when sibel returns to turkey, you get the feeling that the isolation and alienation of that experience is now hers to carry forever. no matter where she goes there will never be "home" ever again. appropriately enough for this film, there is no happy ending. while the two of them may have found a more serene existence without one another, they will never find solace. there is a price they will continue to pay for as long as they live. crushingly real, beautifully done.
we move from there even further into reality, love and desperation with peter friedman and tom joslin's silverlake life: the view from here (1993).
it is funny sometimes how the queue reflects/magnifies the world around me, but never so much as this film on this day. north carolina's heinous and hateful legislative blunder followed almost immediately by the first time the leader of the free world has ever spoken up for same sex marriage makes for an unforgettable climate in which to process this devastating and poignant film. it is a documentary that evolved from the video diaries being kept by tom joslin to document the battle he and his lover of twenty-two years, mark massi, were facing with AIDS. originally intended as joslin's project primarily, things took a turn as his health deteriorated much more rapidly than massi's. what follows is a tender and moving record of the ebb and flow of a terrible, unstoppable decay. the camera duties move from joslin to massi to friedman, a longtime friend and former student of joslin's, as the health of the two men enters a more steep decline. i am almost overwhelmed by how important a document this is. it is relentlessly honest and grants us total access to an issue that a good number of americans remain ignorant of some twenty years down the road. it should be required viewing. we watch these two men struggle with their disease, with their families and with their own fears and frustrations as they face what was, in 1993, a death sentence. i don't know that i have ever seen an american film deal so unflinchingly with death, to the point that we almost see the last breath escape joslin's body. massi trains the camera on his lover moments after he passes, singing "you are my sunshine", and it is just gutwrenching. the pain is almost unendurable. it may seem an odd thing to do, having the camera be so ever-present at these moments, but they seemed to innately know how vital it was that people see this. it was vital for them to fulfill these promises to one another and it was essential that someone tell the public at large the unvarnished truth about this disease and the heartbreaking circumstances of dying in america's margins, alienated even from your own family for simply living and loving as you choose. to temper the anguish somewhat, we also get to see the two men in much happier times. intercut with the family interviews and doctor visits, we get to see excerpts of a much older film featuring the two of them when they first met. as they stare into each other's eyes, we are witnessing the beginning of a great true love story. as we stare into tom joslin's eyes where the light has just gone out forever, we are witnessing a crucial and defiantly political piece of filmmaking. though it hurts, we should not look away.
whew. what a thorny, inspiring day. thanks, nick. you know i am happiest when being put through my paces. i appreciate you letting me see those, especially silverlake life, more than i can say.
day two belongs to jesse trussell, the paramount's film programmer extraordinaire, so i knew i would be in for something good. i did not know, however, that i would be in for something transformative. we begin the day with věra chytilová's daisies (1966).
it is a film that steadfastly resists easy summation. basically, it follows the exploits of two oddly beautiful young girls who have decided, since the world itself is going bad, that they have nothing to lose by doing the same. what follows is a series of cacophonous, kaleidoscopic, anarchic vignettes in which they deflate and subvert every social norm that crosses their path. mirroring their exploration, the film itself is not bound by the rules of filmmaking as we know them. spastic cuts and a rainbow of filters make sure that form follows function. it's almost like children's programming, if the exclusive goal of children's programming was to raise a generation intent on smashing the state. filmmakers in eastern europe walked a fine line during this time. they had to be fluent in a carefully coded dual language that could be highly critical of the oppression they suffered while being sly enough to not make the obtuse ruling powers suspicious. chytilová pushes that to the extreme here, making something that, to the unimaginative bureaucrat, looks artless and inane. all the while, she is using these two manic avatars to shake all their societal constraints until they come crashing down hilariously around their ears. did i mention she did it using state-sanctioned funds and resources? brilliant. the key to the film's success on that front, i think, is an absolute lack of overt political malice on the part of our protagonists. these girls move through their world as complete innocents, intent only on devouring every experience. the fact that they find your rules of little use is but a happy coincidence. it is a dizzying, pioneering and fearless bit of work, notable as well for the significant strength of female characters. even in considerably more free cultures in 1966 you would be have been hard pressed to find two female characters who so fully dictated their own terms. even now, their freewheeling explosiveness and anarchic glee make thelma and louise (1991) look about as exciting as a couple of mail sorters. i know this is not going to be everyone's idea of a good time but i feel like i have just opened my eyes for the first time in years. this was one of those experiences that i chase the cinematic dragon in search of. i have never seen anything like it before, an experience in itself that is valuable, but it's more than that. it's a reminder that art is powerful and chaotic and fun and important. and it only took a forty-six year old film to do it. i can't believe i haven't seen it before now. actually, maybe it is coming to me just at the right time. if you would like to take a trip through this czech new wave looking glass, some kind soul has made it very simple to do so. for those of you in the mood for a funny, frenetic lightning bolt of subversive surrealism, here is the film in its entirety:
charged with the herculean task of following that, we have a norwegian import, joachim trier's reprise (2006).
the film chronicles the intertwined lives and fortunes of phillip and erik, a pair of aspiring young novelists. we start with them together at a mailbox, dropping their manuscripts in together which kicks off a clever montage of imagined events for which these manuscripts are the catalyst. it is a striking way to begin the film because it makes you hyper-aware that every action we undertake, every decision we make is a junction. each one is the starting point for an infinite number of new universes, each working for, against and beside everyone else's. boldly underlining this theme, the film then settles into a more subtle exploration of the idea as we see the reality of the boys' efforts play out. phillip's novel is actually published and is moderately successful. erik's is rejected, as it should be, for it seems to me he lacks gravitas. success does not insure happiness however, as the next time we see phillip he is being picked up from the hospital after recovering from a suicide attempt. we follow the boys as they engage in the pursuit of women, literary success and contentment. it's a coming of age story of sorts, which, if you're a regular around here, you know doesn't do a lot for me in most cases. this one suffers from some of those pitfalls. the biggest impediment to me (always) is the amount of bullshit masculine energy that is expended by almost every pack of twenty-something males put on screen that i am supposed to relate to. granted, these guys are mostly more erudite than average, but that still doesn't stop the group dynamic from occasionally veering dangerously close to swingers (1996), just with guys that have better libraries. i would assume, unfortunately, based on how much i see it portrayed in popular culture, that this is standard operating procedure for men/dudes hanging out? i have never been part of a pack of "bros", so i don't know. didn't want it then, don't want it now, will never understand why someone does. god help you if you try to pitch it to me as some sort of universal touchstone. fortunately, there is much more to the film than that. anders danielsen lie really shines as phillip, the odd one out of the group, truly talented and honestly pained. where erik would adopt a tortured artist persona because he read somewhere that writers are supposed to do that, phillip is truly mildly mentally ill. it's manageable, yes, but there is an imbalance there that makes his suffering very real, rather than a shopworn cliche to be put on, and lie imparts a real believability to the highs and lows that beset the struggling kid. it is him that you come to care about the most and it is his arc that comes to the most satisfying conclusion, finding love with a girl who learns to manage, and assist with, his instability, devoted but wary enough to not kid herself. they are worth watching for and they close it down with just the right note of resignation mixed with hope. with all their friends getting married, getting jobs, having kids or having careers all around them, they are the two who are actually quietly growing up.
it could be that i am being too harsh about it. that might not have been the case if i had reversed the order of the two films. it's just that daisies was so wildly inventive and so aggressively, smartly feminine that reprise probably didn't stand a chance today. again, not that reprise is bad. it is very good. but even very good pales next to revolutionary. it was a nice, clever bit of programming, though. i would expect no less from jesse. it is his job, after all. it was a deft blend of personal/political, social/temporal, literary/visual and male/female. chalk one up for the girls today. daisies really undid me in the best way. it confounded my every expectation. it was a true gift. thanks, jesse!
if you guys want to keep up with what jesse has in store for paramount film fans year 'round, you should check out film at the paramount. all the news that's fit to print.
rumor has it that tomorrow things may get a little dark.
we kick off this special expanded edition of queue de grâce, appropriately enough, with a double feature of iconic films. jim ritts, executive director at the paramount theatre, starts us off in fine fashion with roman polanski's chinatown (1974).
polanski's nod to noir just gets better every time i see it. jack nicholson is jake gittes, a gumshoe who has built a tawdry, tiny empire on the backs of untold cases of infidelity. into his office strolls one more wealthy dame whose husband has gone astray. this time, though, that husband is the chief engineer of los angeles water and power. he conducts surveillance, snaps a few pictures of his quarry meeting with a young lady and before you can say "hooray for hollywood" the news hits the papers. enter faye dunaway, the actual wife of the philanderer in question. turns out, jack and the husband were set up. in short order, the husband turns up drowned and jack finds himself trying to tread water, racing to untangle a labyrinthine, multi-million dollar scheme to control los angeles' water supply that could prove fatal for him as well. complicating matters, he finds himself involved with dunaway, who knows more than she lets on and who practically has to shout for the bones rattling in her closet. ultimately, all paths lead to john huston, dunaway's father and water kingpin from way back, and jake learns that there are some fights you cannot win, a lesson you get the feeling he is not unfamiliar with. it's one of the best screenplays ever committed to film - lean, efficient, teasing out just enough information to keep pulling you forward. textbook stuff and yet no one has been able to replicate its blunt grace since. i think the reason for that is that polanski plays it absolutely straight. there are no winks, no gimmicks to make what is basically a forties-era movie more palatable for a contemporary audience. nicholson is great as a detective whose primary motivation, regardless of what he might say, is his wounded pride. no private eye worth his salt could sit idly by after being played for such a sap and he and his bruised ego are determined to keep running until he finally catches up with the forces that have been two steps ahead of him from the beginning. there's always going to be a part of a private eye (especially one who's an ex-cop) that questions whether or not he's nothing but a two-bit transom peeper. that bitter sting and sour dissatisfaction might as well be a fedora, nicholson wears it so well. dunaway is perfectly lost, broken by a horrible secret that has been her burden for perhaps as long as she can remember and only seems to be getting heavier geometrically. she's like a ghost haunting her own life. huston is the towering performance here, though. one of cinema's greatest villains. i am lucky my skin is so well attached or he would make it crawl right off. you can practically smell the sickly mixture of witch hazel and baby powder that i just know he smells like coming right off of the screen. he is truly lawless, accepting no blame nor expressing any true regret for what must be a lifetime of violating everything and everyone in his path to satisfy his desires. he is an abomination. all these disparate threads are pulled taut by such a nerve jangling conclusion that you're just left feeling sick and powerless in the face of its inevitability. all that running, all that work, any good intentions, all made completely void in the space it takes for a scream to pierce the los angeles night. "forget it, jake. it's chinatown" - perhaps the best and most impossible to follow advice ever given in the movies. some things you can never forget.
from the seamy, sepia-toned past we leap into an equally unsetlling future with stanley kubrick's a clockwork orange (1971).
kubrick's adaptation of anthony burgess' novel is a picture of a grim dystopia. malcolm mcdowell plays alex, the beethoven-loving leader of a group of delinquents delighting in ultra-violence, rape and a tall glass of milk. tensions within his gang erupt in the wake of a crime spree gone too far and he finds himself incarcerated. seizing upon what he thinks is an easy way out, he volunteers for a rehabilitation program which could be construed as destructive and dehumanizing as the vicious crimes he once perpetrated upon others when he was on the outside. this is a hard film to get a foothold in. i first saw this when i was eleven years old, staying up late watching cable when everyone else was asleep. i didn't know what hit me. it has only since become more perplexing as i have grown. there is no single character that can be described as sympathetic. the ideological forces on the left and right ends of this argument are both equally repugnant. the totalitarian administration that favors this method of rehabilitation are essentially sanctioning a form of chemical castration that not only demolishes your libido, but your very soul. the liberals who are advocating for alex turn out to be nothing more than vile, self-serving grotesques, content to manipulate alex when he serves their needs and torture him when he doesn't. before we get all weepy for alex, though, we mustn't forget that he is a complete sociopath, a vicious rapist and callous murderer. true, he is terribly charismatic - a huge triumph for mcdowell - but a stain of a human being. he turns the tables, the snake that charms you, and as a result you are left with a perilous internal struggle. you cast about, looking for something you can recognize as human to relate to, but kubrick is not about to let you off the hook that easy. the exaggerated wide angle compositions lend a slightly freakish air to the proceedings, wendy/walter carlos' score punctures the film like kubrick is milking venom from it and the trademark kubrick alienating sterility is in full effect. i get a certain, very specific feeling when i watch his films, but never more so than when i watch this one. it's like watching kubrick reacting against something the rest of us cannot see, something he has to defeat, and the process is a clinical, deadly serious one. it leaves me feeling numb and agitated simultaneously. it's fascinating, real horrorshow.
you will have the opportunity to find out just how it affects you and see it the way it was meant to be seen, on the big screen, later this summer. a clockwork orange is scheduled to be part of the paramount's summer film series during the weekend of 8.18.12 and 8.19.12. look for me in row q, we can compare notes. the milk is on me.
well, that was great! day one gets us off to a rousing, morally complicated start. thanks, jim! excellent choices! tune in tomorrow. i have it on good authority that we will be swinging from the chandeliers.
hot on the heels of last month's excellent queue de grâce experience, i have a special surprise for you guys.
that's right. this month's queue is coming to us courtesy of the fine folks at my home away from home, the paramount theatre. it is coming up on my favorite time of year - the commencement of the paramount's summer film series - and i couldn't think of a better way to celebrate than to have them program something especially for me.
i know there will probably be quite a few of you that are new to our experiment here, so here's how it works: for one straight week i turn over complete control of my netflix queue to one of you fine folks. for the duration of that week, excluding screenings i host or trips to actual theaters, i watch only what you select for me. no other movies, no other television, no escape! i then report in daily, telling the rest of the gang here about my experience, recording my impressions and giving a sort of guided tour of my cinematic ups and downs (and sometimes sideways) during the week.
for this special edition of queue de grâce we are actually going to make it even bigger and bolder! it is set to run from 5.7.12 through 5.16.12 and there are going to be a whole lot of cooks in this kitchen. in honor of the summer series, we are having ten paramount staffers each program a double feature for me for ten straight days. from what i have heard, this one is going to be all over the map and i cannot wait to open it up and see what is inside. it is going to be great.
and while we are on the subject of great, you know who else is great? these guys.
hometown heroes, and my favorite video store, vulcan video are generously providing us a few of the harder to come by titles for this project and we certainly appreciate them. support your local video store!
so drop what you're doing next week and tune in for the mayhem and majesty that is queue de grâce. it is sure to be a good time and we may even have a few surprises for you along the way (is that a summer schedule i see in the distance?). if you want to keep up with our extracurricular activity and interact more, feel free to like the ol' facebook page. see you here on the 7th!
this week's entry is for robbie pickering's excellent natural selection (2011).
tomorrow at 7 p.m. is its only austin screening. here are more details. i highly recommend it. rachael harris is fantastic in it. it didn't sweep sxsw last year by accident. go see it.
Posts
