Oh, the Humanity….
January 30, 2008
…you can’t make this stuff up:
Clean-film business was front for porn, police say
Just goes to show that the family values crowd actually has a sense of irony after all, eh?
A Follow-Up
January 29, 2008
Unfortunately, Yahoo doesn’t have threaded comments, nor notification that might go with it. So I thought I’d answer some of the responses to my insane movie post from last week on a follow-up posting.
Lorianne comments:
–I miss real movies.”
There aren’t really any types of movies that I won’t watch. Horror movies are my first love, though, so a disproportionate number of them would creep into any list of my “favorite” movies. I sympathize with your dillemma regarding your kids. There ARE great kids movies out there. You might try some of the Ghibli Studios animated films like My Neighbor Totoro or Spirited Away, or Nick Park’s Wallace and Gromit shorts. And there are always Looney Tunes–the DVD box sets of these are nearly inexhaustable. You also get the benefit of Bugs Bunny’s crossdressing, so it puts a positive spin on things.
Nicole comments:
Actually, I don’t keep lists at all. This was culled from the list at They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They, and there are a goodly number of movies that I love unreservedly that don’t make their list.
I had the chance to see Koyannisqatsi with a live orchestra conducted by Phillip Glass himself. It was an amazing experience. I had the chance to see him do a similar show featuring his score for Dracula with the Kronos Quartet, but I passed on that because I don’t much like the way it plays with the movie. C’est la vie.
Moon Baby comments:
Feel free to send me an invite.
Josie comments:
I presume you’re referring to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre? Believe it or not, The Godfather is more violent by a pretty wide margin. The most violent thing about The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is the title. I remember reading an interview with Michael Bay about his recent remake in which he claimed that he wanted to make a movie for the mainstream rather than a bloodbath “like the original,” to which I shouted “Have you even SEEN the original?” Mind you, the overall tone of the movie is profoundly disturbing, more than most movies I can name, but it’s not because of gore. You hardly see any. Halloween is similar. It doesn’t spill a drop of blood on screen.
My favorite line in The Big Sleep is “She tried to sit in my lap while I was standing up.” They don’t write em like that anymore, that’s for sure.
I love Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, though I grouse about the way it’s slanted sometimes. Capra could indulge in some serious corn when he wanted to. I love Meet John Doe even more, but it’s not on the TSP list.
For the record, I love Billy Wilder at his nastiest in movies like Ace in the Hole and Sunset Boulevard. In anything where he shows why William Holden described him as having a “mind full of razor blades,” basically.
I used to work in an office where one of the pastimes of my co-workers was quoting lines from The Holy Grail. It grated after a while. I can’t even watch it anymore. Fortunately, they left Life of Brian untouched.
I’ve always cried at certain movies–hell, I was a wreck the last time I sat through Old Yeller. I’ve not put it to the test since I started monkeying around with my hormones, though. I imagine that something like The Clock or Brief Encounter will work me over but good the next time I watch it.
Finally, Ronnie comments:
” Yeah, I can’t believe the TSP people haven’t put it on the list yet. And I can’t believe they didn’t put The Wizard of Speed and Time on the list, either. What a bunch of tools.
Salut.
The Bride of Christi’s Movie Picks and other ephemera
January 24, 2008
I’m feeling a bit like an absentee landlord these days, so let the following provide whatever surcease of sorrow my loyal readers have been missing…
I was chatting with Nicole Meadows a few nights ago when the subject of movies came up (as it nearly always does when anyone corresponds with me for any length of time). She asked me what my favorites are. I gave her some titles off the top of my head, not having any idea of what she herself likes, and left it at that. A few days later, the subject came up again after I invited Nicole to “friend” my Netflix queue. After much comedy, she noticed that my account hasn’t rated any movies, which is the way Netflix stacks their recommendations.
In truth, I don’t really have “favorite” movies. I’ve seen so many movies that what I might claim as a favorite today might not be the same movie that I’ve claimed in the past or might claim tomorrow. But that’s not to say I don’t have opinions. So I thought of a counter-solution. They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? is a website that aggregates critics lists and director’s lists into a mega-list of 1000 great movies. It’s not terribly different from the Sight and Sound poll that runs once a decade. Like that poll, there’s a lot good and a lot bad about it, but to someone just getting into film, or just moving beyond the multiplex for movies, it’s a good resource. I’ve seen roughly 750 of the movies on the They Shoot Pictures list. I like a lot of them, I REALLY like a lot of them, but I love about 192 of them. Which is to say, unashamed love. And here they are, in the order in which they appear on the TSPDT list:
|
Citizen Kane (Welles, Orson; 1941; US) |
El (Buñuel, Luis; 1952; Mexico) Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Capra, Frank; 1939; US) The Cameraman (Keaton, Buster/Edward Sedgwick; 1928; US) The Empire Strikes Back (Kershner, Irvin; 1980; US) Top Hat (Sandrich, Mark; 1935; US) Yojimbo (Kurosawa, Akira; 1961; Japan) Frankenstein (Whale, James; 1931; US) Eyes Without a Face (Franju, Georges; 1959; France-Italy) That Obscure Object of Desire (Buñuel, Luis; 1977; France-Spain) Our Hospitality (Keaton, Buster/John Blystone; 1923; US) They Were Expendable (Ford, John; 1945; US) Dawn of the Dead (Romero, George A.; 1978; US) How Green Was My Valley (Ford, John; 1941; US) The King of Comedy (Scorsese, Martin; 1983; US) Closely Watched Trains (Menzel, Jirí; 1966; Czechoslovakia) I Walked with a Zombie (Tourneur, Jacques; 1943; US) I Know Where I’m Going! (Powell, Michael/Emeric Pressburger; 1945; UK) Halloween (Carpenter, John; 1978; US) Forbidden Games (Clément, René; 1951; France) Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Peckinpah, Sam; 1974; US) Odd Man Out (Reed, Carol; 1947; UK) Mad Max 2 (Miller, George; 1981; Australia) Point Blank (Boorman, John; 1967; US) Pinocchio (Sharpsteen, Ben & Hamilton Luske; 1940; US) The Lady from Shanghai (Welles, Orson; 1948; US) She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (Ford, John; 1949; US) Dead Ringers (Cronenberg, David; 1988; Canada) Monty Python’s Life of Brian (Jones, Terry; 1979; UK) Faust (Murnau, F.W.; 1926; Germany) Detour (Ulmer, Edgar G.; 1945; US) 42nd Street (Bacon, Lloyd; 1933; US) A Canterbury Tale (Powell, Michael/Emeric Pressburger; 1944; UK) The Adventures of Robin Hood (Curtiz, Michael/William Keighley; 1938; US) Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Siegel, Don; 1956; US) I Was Born, But… (Ozu, Yasujiro; 1932; Japan) Cleo from 5 to 7 (Varda, Agnès; 1961; France) The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (Herzog, Werner; 1974; West Germany) A Touch of Zen (Hu, King; 1968; Taiwan) Cat People (Tourneur, Jacques; 1942; US) Killer of Sheep (Burnett, Charles; 1977; US) Die Hard (McTiernan, John; 1988; US) The Tenant (Polanski, Roman; 1976; France-US) Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (Meyer, Russ; 1966; US) Gun Crazy (Lewis, Joseph H.; 1949; US) Ivan’s Childhood (Tarkovsky, Andrei; 1962; Russia) The Killer (Woo, John; 1989; Hong Kong) Scarface (Hawks, Howard; 1932; US) Land Without Bread (Buñuel, Luis; 1932; Spain) The Innocents (Clayton, Jack; 1961; UK) Ride the High Country (Peckinpah, Sam; 1962; US) Farewell, My Concubine (Chen Kaige; 1993; Hong Kong-China) If… (Anderson, Lindsay; 1968; UK) Holiday (Cukor, George; 1938; US) Rififi (Dassin, Jules; 1955; France) Ace in the Hole (Wilder, Billy; 1951; US) The Lady Vanishes (Hitchcock, Alfred; 1938; UK) Flowers of Shanghai (Hou Hsiao-Hsien; 1998; Taiwan) The Outlaw Josey Wales (Eastwood, Clint; 1976; US) Dersu Uzala (Kurosawa, Akira; 1975; Japan-Russia) The Thing from Another World (Nyby, Christian/Howard Hawks; 1951; US) Man of the West (Mann, Anthony; 1958; US) The Man Who Would Be King (Huston, John; 1975; US) Gregory’s Girl (Forsyth, Bill; 1981; UK) All About My Mother (Almodóvar, Pedro; 1999; Spain-France) Wagon Master (Ford, John; 1950; US) Red Beard (Kurosawa, Akira; 1965; Japan) Blood Simple (Coen, Joel and Ethan Coen; 1984; US) An Actor’s Revenge (Ichikawa, Kon; 1962; Japan) Miller’s Crossing (Coen, Joel and Ethan Coen; 1990; US) Dumbo (Sharpsteen, Ben; 1941; US) Branded to Kill (Suzuki, Seijun; 1966; Japan) Gold Diggers of 1933 (LeRoy, Mervyn; 1933; US) Night of the Demon (Tourneur, Jacques; 1957; UK) Blow Out (De Palma, Brian; 1981; US) Stray Dog (Kurosawa, Akira; 1949; Japan) Diary of a Lost Girl (Pabst, G.W.; 1929; Germany) The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (Mankiewicz, Joseph L.; 1947; US) Pickup on South Street (Fuller, Sam; 1953; US) Gimme Shelter (Maysles, Albert/David Maysles/Charlotte Zwerin; 1970; US) Duel (Spielberg, Steven; 1971; US) Awaara (Kapoor, Raj; 1951; India) Seventh Heaven (Borzage, Frank; 1927; US) To Live (Zhang Yimou; 1994; Hong Kong) The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (Buñuel, Luis; 1955; Mexico) The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (Wilder, Billy; 1970; US) El Cid (Mann, Anthony; 1961; US) Land of Silence and Darkness (Herzog, Werner; 1971; West Germany) Harakiri (Kobayashi, Masaki; 1962; Japan) The Man in the White Suit (Mackendrick, Alexander; 1951; UK) Ballad of Narayama (Imamura, Shohei; 1983; Japan) The Unknown (Browning, Tod; 1927; US) One, Two, Three (Wilder, Billy; 1961; US) |
You can take these as recommendations if you like, but I have very specific and idiosyncratic tastes in movies, so your mileage may vary. Caveat emptor. The films that are in bold face type are films that I own in one form or another.
I’ve been on hormones for about a month and a half and for the longest time, I felt no real changes. That time has passed. This past weekend, about five weeks into the process, my breasts became sore. I had been experiencing fleeting, phantom sensations for weeks that may or may not have been real, but this is the real deal. There’s no imagination involved in this. Additionally, my sex drive has noticeably diminished, though it’s still there, and my beard appears to have slowed its rate of growth. Which is good, because I’ve had to take an unforseen break from my electrolysis schedule this month. I haven’t felt any emotional changes yet. A (fe
male) friend of mine told me that I won’t really know what it’s like to be a woman until I break down into an uncontrolable crying fit for no good reason. So I have that to look forward too…
For all of that, I’m in total guy mode right now, which I hate. I don’t have an electro session on the day of my next therapy appointment, so I might show up to that as a girl. My therapist hasn’t seen me that way yet. The downside is that I’ll be leaving the house at 6:30 AM. I may not be in any shape to create the persona, especially if I hit the snooze bar a couple of times.
Miscellaneous
January 16, 2008
Totally stolen from Bad Astronomy: Astrology Magazine has ceased publishing for….wait for it…unforeseen circumstances. Priceless
Top Gear solves the energy crisis with a car made in 1963:
This remains my favorite web comic. It’s the existentialist in me, I think.
So far, I’ve watched 13 of the planned 366 movies I want to watch this year, so I’m beginning to lag. Fortunately, I have a three day weekend ahead. I’ve finally started to remember to mail my Netflix in the morning, too, which will help. I can finally resume buying movies again next month. Woot.
Enjoy.
One Nation Under a Groove
January 2, 2008
Nicole left this nugget of wisdom on my previous blog:
I suspect that I’ve become inured to this, because there’s nothing on The Bang Masters that sends me screaming into the street. Perhaps I’ve built up musical calluses by listening to the likes of the Ethel Merman Disco Album
But that’s not what I want to talk about today.
It’s a new year this week, and it’s not just any year. It’s an election year. A year when politics becomes a full-contact sport, a train-wreck, and a spectacle that’s not necessarily fit for family audiences. In honor of our quadrennial blood sport, I thought I’d start off the year with my own political raving.
There’s a billboard on I-70 just past Wright City as you head west from St. Louis towards Columbia that features a big-as-life picture of the ten commandments with an American flag waving behind it. The text on this particular billboard says two things. At the top of the thing, it says “One Nation Under God…” and at the bottom it says “The Ten Commandments.” You don’t have to be a genius to figure out the intent of this particular message. Ten years ago, there was a big movement to have the ten commandments posted in schoolrooms and other public spaces. It’s been replaced, somewhat, by gay marriage as the wedge issue for social conservatives, but I remember it vividly, because it may have indirectly cost me my job at the time.
Let me explain:
I used to work in the gun industry. I have no problems with gun ownership. If I did, I certainly wouldn’t have worked in the industry for six years. But I have big problems with the attendant politics. I’m what you might call a Bill of Rights absolutist, which means there are more amendments to the constitution of the United States than just the one guarantee-ing the right to bear arms. And the encroachment of religion into the public sphere is a big no-no, as far as I was concerned. My former employer was hell-bent for leather to have all of their employees join the NRA, and for the first five years of my employment, I played along. There was a financial incentive involved: non-members didn’t get year-end bonuses. In my sixth year, I let my membership lapse, because I was getting tired of the NRA endorsing candidates who were theocrats. When asked by one of the owners of the company why I had let my membership lapse, I made the mistake of telling her that I didn’t want even one penny of my money filling the coffers of a candidate who would work to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms and public spaces. This was, perhaps, a bad move on my part, but so be it.
In any event, this billboard both amuses me and appalls me. It amuses me because it demonstrates that the Christian right flunked civics when they were in high school, have no idea of the history of the Pledge of Allegiance, and are ignorant of comparative religion. Their grasp of basic civics is self-evident in the First Amendment. They might be forgiven for their ignorance on the other two points, I guess. The outrage obviously comes from the courts briefly ruling that the “under God” clause is unconstitutional. Ironically, it was never part of the pledge until the 1950s, when it was included as anti-communist propaganda. But it’s the last part that really interests me and that validates the genius of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.
Let’s assume that it actually IS desirable for the state to endorse The Ten Commandments as the foundation of American law–It’s not (either the foundation or a desirable place to start), but if it were, it begs the question of “whose Ten Commandments” gets the nod. Y’see, there’s more than one version, depending on which branch of Judeo-Christian dogma one follows. The largest individual denomination in the United States is Catholicism. Do we use their version of The Ten Commandments? It’s different than the version in protestant Bibles, and both of them are different from the version in Jewish scriptures. I haven’t looked to see whether or not the version in the Koran is different. Fine, fine. So we pick the protestant version (given that it’s the protestants who complain about this the loudest). Does this mean, then, that we are shutting out other religions? Never mind the godless atheists and the fringe-dwelling pagans: the first commandment in all three Judeo-Christian versions declares “I am the lord thy God, thou shalt have no other gods before me,” followed shortly by “Thou shalt not worship graven images.” How do you suppose endorsing THAT as the basis for law is going to sit with a Hindu or a Buddhist? This is no country for pantheists, I suppose. Hell, wars have been fought for less.
In any event, driving by this billboard every weekend on my way home from St. Louis has started making my blood boil a little. Not just because I’m an atheist, though that has a little bit to do with it, but because there are adult voters out there who vote for this crap, and lately, they aren’t satisfied to be a voter sink for the broader Republican party. The ascendancy of Mike Huckabee as a front-runner in the Iowa caucuses is evidence enough. To an extent, I’d like to see Huckabee get the nomination, because I’d like to see just how many of my fellow Americans buy into theocracy. Not many I think. I hope. The election I envision with Huckabee as the nominee would be a resounding defeat for theocracy, but there is that niggling little fear in my head that says that I would be wise to move to Europe before such a thing ever came to a vote. “When facism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross,” wrote Sinclair Lewis. In years past, I wouldn’t have believed that I would ever live to see such a thing. It bothers me that I now think that I might.
Enjoy.
(note: edited for slight, inconsequential facutal errors)
