And then we'll all be happy again, and YOU more than anybody (yes, you who has hid his head under a bushel for twenty months like a bloody spineless WIMP!)

Revenge of the Sith
War of the Worlds

But I'm still game, so...

I've seen so much stuff lately I can't remember it all let alone discuss it:

Seen plenty since January, mostly old stuff. Things like Hitch's STRANGERS ON A TRAIN for instance. I didn't think it was really that great. Too many mechanical suspense scenes which are meant to get you sweating but just made me wonder more about the lack of character motivation. Never really liked the final reel with Robert Walker trying to plant the key back on the island (and dropping it down a drain en route, ho hum). Walker WAS great in it though.

Saw FIGHT CLUB again last night. I like Fincher, and this is a smart, clever (perhaps too clever clever) companion piece to THE GAME. Again though, I wonder how much he dazzled us with smart-assedness to the detriment of the story, which may be a tad ridiculous in the cold light of day. Still great, audacious entertainment, and vastly enjoyable.

Little Otik (Jan Svankmajer, 2001) - A woman has been driven into deep depression by her infertility, so one day her husband, half-jokingly and with the intention of lightening things up, carves a "baby" out of a recently uprooted tree stump. His wife takes to it instantly, all too passionately, and starts treating it as if it were an actual child, dressing it up, bathing it, changing its diapers. She's so excited, she tells her neighbors she's pregnant, and for the next eight months goes through an elaborate ruse to fake pregnancy. On the night of Otik's official "birth," the husband comes home to find his wife nursing little Otik - the tree stump has actually come to life, and pretty soon his appetite becomes much more than they can bear. Despite being often extremely funny, this is also one of the most seriously disturbing films I've ever seen. The first half-hour, before the "horror" aspects of the story have even begun, is probably the most disturbing part of the film, watching how passionately this woman devotes herself to a dead, varnished tree stump. Of course, seeing how devoted she remains even after she sees what Otik has become is also pretty disturbing. That, and the old pedophile with the stop-motion hand that emerges from his trousers whenever he sees the local 10-year-old girl. It loses a few points for me because the last 20 minutes or so feel more like the beginning of another movie that never happens, but I don't think it ruins anything. Yeah, this movie is pretty disturbing (but funny, too). Anyone with strong maternal instincts will probably be kept awake for days. And anyone who doesn't want kids will really not want them after this.

And Lou, I swear to Jeebus you'll get Red Sky at Morning sooner or later.

CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF (USA 1958)

Directed by Richard Brooks
Screenplay by Richard Brooks and James Poe, from the play by Tennessee Williams
Photography by William Daniels

Main Cast: Paul Newman, Elizabeth Taylor, Burl Ives, Judith Anderson, Jack Carson, Madeleine Sherwood, Larry Gates

Lies, greed, love and hate all come to a head when Big Daddy makes a visit.

I was pretty engrossed throughout by this typically turbulent Tennessee Williams brew. The author wasn't happy with the toned-down big screen treatment (virtually non-existent homosexuality, unless you choose to see it that way), but I found the film got by well enough, in fact crackingly well. Sharp dialogues, and excellent performances form all, especially Ives.

A shade unconvincing in the rather pat final scenes perhaps. There's no real sense of catharsis when all the opposites and extremes finally boil over and are "reborn" (in a way) for the vaguely hopeful ending, and it seems just a little theatrically forced, but all in all it's still a fine movie.

Directed by Victor Halperin
Screenplay by Garnett Weston
Photography by Arthur Martinelli

Main Cast: Bela Lugosi, Madge Bellamy, Robert Frazer, John Harron, Joseph Cawthorn

In Haiti, a devious zombie master turns the tables on an equally devious schemer he's supposed to be doing a favour for, and zombifies a hapless young girl on her wedding night.

Which I suppose means she becomes his sex slave, implicitly at least. This primitive old horror may be haphazardly plotted, frequently absurd, and sluggish when Lugosi isn't on screen, but it's also strikingly photographed and genuinely atmospheric. The necrophilic undertones and eerie staginess distance it from the more straightforward Universal horrors, but it's not in the Val Lewton literary camp either. Quite a unique movie in many ways, and it's all presided over by Bela Lugosi in a performance of magnificent bizareness.

Directed by Blake Edwards
Screenplay by JP Miller
Photography by Philip Lathrop
Music by Henry Mancini

Main Cast: Jack Lemmon, Lee Remick, Charles Bickford, Jack Klugman

The ups and increasing downs of a boozy couple.

Excellent excellent excellent! My mind hardly wandered at all during this. What for me really holds it together is the truly amazing performance of Jack Lemmon. He's painful to watch, and I mean that in a good way.But the film is full of good performances. Lee Remick and Charles Bickford are excellent too, and only Jack Klugman teeters on the edge of preachiness as the over-earnest AA man.

Now I think about it, I could complain that the Remick character seemed to me to be a shade underwritten - I never quite believed her slide down the slippery slope, but in this case it makes me feel like a miserable old git to be so churlish as to point out a (possible) weakness in something so good.

To finish on a high note - gleaming black and white photography by the great Philip Lathrop.

Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (Robert Bresson, 1945)
Not quite what I was expecting. Ravishing to look at despite the poor state it's in, and the dialogue by Cocteau is pretty great. But it just didn't feel very special to me. The ending is a little too neat and easy to be convincing, and María Casares's performance really got on my nerves. She injects her character with one-dimensional venom that the text doesn't call for at all, and I think it would have helped things a lot if I wasn't so compelled to completely hate her, or if I could at least gain some empathy to share her hatred. All the other actors do a great job. I also consider Casares the sole squeaky wheel in the only other film I've seen her in, Children of Paradise (which in every single other aspect I love to death), so maybe I just don't like her.

Az prijde kocour <"Cassandra Cat" or "When the Cat Comes"> (Vojtech Jasny, 1963)
This film desperately needs to be rescued from the oblivion of obscurity! A traveling magic show arrives in a small Czech village, and with it comes a cat wearing sunglasses. When the glasses are removed, the cat sees people for what they really are, and everyone turns a different color. Violet for liars and hypocrites, yellow for traitors, gray for thieves and cheats, and red for those in love. The scene in which the cat's glasses are first removed is beautiful and intoxicating, an orgy of color with mad music and breathless cutting. Moreover, the film has some great things to say about the innocence of children (who, with the exception of one young couple already in love, don't change color) and the importance of moral rebellion, and how little the values we are taught as children hold up in the world we enter as adults. Unfortunately the only version available (from what I've been able to gather) is an unthinkably bad English dub on pan-and-scan VHS (judging from the way the frame was cut, I'm guessing it should be 1.85). It desperately needs restoration and a good DVD release; the use of color in this film was already beyond great on the crappy copy I watched, so I imagine it would be downright staggering in a good transfer.

The World, the Flesh, and the Devil (Ranald Macdougall, 1959)
Harry Belafonte seems to be the only person left in New York after some sort of nuclear holocaust. Later he finds a girl and race issues come into play. Interesting stuff that sputters a bit in the second act and takes a complete nose dive in the third. It gets props for trying, but there are much better examinations of the same ideas and much better films about post-apocalyptic events. Still, the first third, with Belafonte on his own, is really great, and if this shows up on TCM again or makes its way to DVD I wouldn't advise anyone to stay away from it. Good music by Miklos Rozsa that demonstrates a lost (or declining) art: providing a "non-intrusive", "functional" score that still manages to be much more than mere "wallpaper."

News from Home (Chantal Akerman, 1974)
Incredibly beautiful considering how little there seems to be to it on the surface (letters from Akerman's mother being read over images of New York). Of course there's the added bonus of New York being filmed by someone who hasn't grown up looking at it, so it has a very different feel from the New York that Americans shoot. In complete defiance of boredom, there were several moments where I found myself praying that the shot I was looking at would never end. May become an all-time favorite later on if I see it again in the right mood.

Chats perchés (Chris Marker, 2004)
I don't feel comfortable passing judgment on this film when I have so little knowledge of what has gone on in France in the past five years and such a crude understanding of the language (as there were no subtitles). A lot of it dealt with global issues, of course, and that I could get into. It seems like a very clever and enjoyable satirical documentary, though I would be sort of lost as to how to explain it to someone. I'll come back to it once I've learned French.

Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1967)
Another notch of excellence from Bergman, one of a select few directors who renders the word "masterpiece" hopelessly redundant. I can't understand what could have possibly taken me so long to see this. I've read and heard people endlessly talking about its greatness and its mystery for ages, and I still wasn't even remotely prepared for it. Bergman consistently leaves me with no idea what to say (and I'm tired of using vaguely laudatory adjectives).

Kirk
NP - Styx (a viola concerto by Giya Kancheli)

Kirk--I saw LE BONHEUR projected. I have yet to pick up all the Godard the English have just put on DVD but I hope to soon. Yeah, just where is RED SKY??!! Hmmm. I rather like LES DAMES DU BOIS. I have yet to see CASSANDRA CAT but know of it. The Czech New Wave films are amazing. I showed a few people VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS and they were just stunned by it. Where on earth did you see the Chris Marker film?!