Christian Bale’s Beard Doesn’t Put Out

Here is an important lesson I learned from the movie The Fabulous Stains: music is better when no one really knows what they’re doing. Diane Lane doesn’t have to know how to sing, Laura Dern doesn’t even have to know a chord on the guitar (she makes up her own), and that other girl…doesn’t really [...]

Oh Diane…

I’m a fairly awkward person. And like most people (I think) I’m even more awkward added on top of my original awkward when I’m talking to a fella I find attractive. Eventually I get over this, but those initial stages are painful. I thought this might change when I got married since I’m tied down [...]

Month of Terror Part 2

The Month of Terror Continues!
October 4th: The Innocents (Clayton, 1961)

Apparently the inspiration for 2001’s The Others, The Innocents is a lot more creepy and yet a lot more overblown. Deborah Kern had Scott’s head exploding (in a bad way) with old-school My-Fair-Lady style acting, but I thought the imagery of the movie more than made up for it. [...]

The Saddest Music in the World

I’m so wary of Guy Maddin. I think it was because I never heard his name until I got to grad school (probably my fault) and so I immediately associated his films with snobbery. However, after I saw his short Sissy Boy Slap Party at a student screening I started to get excited about Maddin.

Not excited enough to worship [...]

technicolor is magic

the thief of bagdad

how does a movie have three directors? wait, reading online, i found that there may actually have been up to six directors with half of them being uncredited. i guess it was because of the war. and because it’s pre-new wave, so directors had no control or less [...]

what’s my first name?

i’ve seen too many good movies lately and i’ve been too lazy to blog about them.

dark star is the best science fiction movie i have ever seen. i like it more than star wars (which is saying a lot for me). actually, i think this movie had as big a impact on the [...]

The Consumption of Cat Vomit and How it Relates to Film

A lot of interesting people like Sin City. People that I don’t think have anything especially sadistic inherent in their nature, and aren’t even overtly misogynistic. Ebert (who is not one of these interesting people I’m talking about) called it brilliant, giving it a full-star rating. I think what’s going on here is that people [...]

Go ahead, stop fighting it…you’re gay!

Do you think Brokeback Mountain could have been made with two less appealing actors? I’m not saying they had to be Steve Buschemi or Joseph Fiennes ugly (perhaps a personal bias), but to pick the two most attractive up-and-coming young actors in Hollywood to portray such hardcore scenes seems far too obvious. Those were some [...]

Joe Dante Double Feature

Remember how funny Gremlins 2 is? Putting that really catchy main tune aside, I love the idea of a creature whose sole purpose is to create chaos. It’s the anarchist in me, I think.
So Joe Dante was at the Castro theatre today with Veronica Carlson.

Between Matinee and Gremlins 2 they sat up on stage [...]

giving them cars like that is like putting guns in their hands

i hate christmas. a while ago i read that sufjan stevens stopped hating christmas by recording something like one-hundred christmas songs — covers of classics as well as original christmas songs. i listened to some of his christmas songs and realized that i thought sufjan was boring and possibly overrated. but [...]