I found Blog Cabins' alphabet meme on the cinetrix's website at a time when I was feeling out of sorts and wanted a distraction. Could I pick one movie that I enjoyed for each letter of the alphabet? I started making a list, and then I walked over to our DVD bookcase to fill in some of the trickier letters, and then I finally fudged a listing for the letter X because I'm not a big fan of the X-Men or of Xanadu. I remembered ruefully The ABC Project that I started a year or so ago, in which I decided to go through my Netflix queue and pick one movie for each letter of the alphabet. I made it through the letter D. Somehow I never seem to make time to watch Netflix movies unless my husband rents the movie and puts it on the TV and I happen to be around.

Here we go:

A is for Army of Darkness -- I originally had All About Eve in here and realized, no, I should go with the even more quotable film. What can I say, I'm a sucker for Bruce Campbell.

B is for Brazil -- Possibly my favorite movie of all time, beating out other serious "B" contenders Bringing Up Baby and Breaking Away by a hair. (Not to mention The Big Lebowski.) I have the DVD and I have watched it maybe once -- somehow this movie seems made for a theater. My most memorable viewing of Brazil was bittersweet. A month after I started grad school at UT, my then-boyfriend broke up with me. I cried all weekend, and on Sunday night went to Hogg Auditorium and saw Brazil in that big empty classroom-theater hybrid with the bats that flew behind the screen periodically. I felt like Mia Farrow in Purple Rose of Cairo and I didn't care. I felt so much better afterwards.

C is for Clerks 2 -- It's the only Kevin Smith movie we currently own on DVD, and for some reason it is the perfect movie to watch on an airplane. Maybe because I wonder if the guy sitting next to me can see the screen during the donkey scene. Maybe because it's just so damned entertaining. It's sweet and filthy, an irresistable combination. I'm not half as fond of Clerks, but then you know I think the sequel is a stealth remake of The Front Page.

D is for Dick -- Other contenders were Dog Day Afternoon and Dear Zachary but I adore this little comedy about two teenagers who stumble into the Watergate scandal. Best portrayal ever of Woodward and Bernstein.

E is for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind -- I've only seen this movie once, and it's the first movie on this list that we don't own on DVD. I'd like to see it again, as it stuck with me pretty strongly. Beautiful.

F is for A Foreign Affair -- Why isn't this movie on DVD, is what I'd like to know. Marlene Dietrich is fabulous, Jean Arthur is fabulous, the dialogue is amazing, the storyline is edgy even today.

G is for Ghostbusters -- I like this movie even more than when I first saw it in 1982, back when I disliked Bill Murray and thought he was hogging the screen. I liked Harold Ramis a lot better. Hmmm. Maybe G should be for Groundhog Day, too.

H is for Holiday -- Another one of my all-time favorites. I've got an essay kicking around somewhere about this movie and the Philip Barry play. One of my dreams in life is to get to see the 1930 film, which isn't available on DVD and supposedly there's only one print left in the world, at the Library of Congress.

I is for Iron Giant -- I don't usually cry during movies but Iron Giant gets me every time. One afternoon, I walked through the living room and into the kitchen while my husband was watching this movie, got a snack, and walked back to my office. And in that period of time the movie had already made me cry.

J is for Junior Bonner -- This is the first Sam Peckinpah movie I ever saw. I caught it at Alamo Downtown during an AFS series. I was sure someone was going to die at the end -- maybe everyone -- and I watched the last half of the movie feeling completely tense and uptight about it. Don't all 1970s movies end tragically, especially if directed by Peckinpah? There is a death in this movie but it's not the one I would have guessed.

K is for Kiss Me Stupid -- K was actually for Kiss Kiss Bang Bang until I typed out the first word and said to myself, "How could you, of all people, forget Kiss Me Stupid?" Lots of people dislike this Billy Wilder film, which goes for the cheap crude sex gag whenever possible. And we could argue endlessly about how different the movie might have been with its original lead, Peter Sellers, instead of Ray Walston, who replaced him and perhaps looks and acts a little too average-schlub for this movie. I better stop before I rehash the whole essay I wrote about this movie, which I should probably post here at some point so it'll see the light of day.

L is for The Lady Eve -- I actually like Ball of Fire a little better, but the B's were a heated competition. I had to get Barbara Stanwyck and Preston Sturges in here somewhere. I once saw this movie at the Texas Union Theatre with Anthony Lane introducing it and talking about how much he loved it. Normally the Anthony Lane columns I read are about movies he's eviscerating, and it was charming to hear him go on about a movie he plainly adores.

M is for MASH -- The first time I saw this movie, I was in high school (barely), I was a naive kid who hadn't seen many R-rated movies, and I loved the TV series. So I kind of hated the film. But it stuck in my mind, and I gave it another chance, and now it's a favorite.

N is for Nothing Sacred -- I saw this movie on Election Night while most of the world was parked in front of TVs and computers watching Presidential election results. Fredric March's hard-boiled, cynical reporter was quite appropriate for the situation. I regret nothing ... besides, I got home in time to watch the best bits of Election Night, anyway.

O is for Office Space -- I almost switched to Ocean's Eleven (the Soderbergh one) but we watch Office Space so often, and it has become such a part of office culture at least in Austin, that including this movie was a no-brainer.

P is for The Producers -- Obviously I am talking about the 1968 film. Definitely on the short list of favorites, if not at the top. Just writing about it makes me want to go watch it again. Did I tell you how sad I was when I went to see the fountain from this film in New York in April and it was gone? Damn.

Q is for Quiet City -- Lovely movie. If you haven't heard of it, go find it and watch it now. I reviewed the DVD for Cinematical earlier this year.

R is for Raising Arizona -- Again, any movie that we pull out once a year and watch, that you can watch with damn near anyone and they will enjoy, and that is so amazingly quotable has to be included on this list. I can do a pretty good Holly Hunter imitation too: "I need a baby, Hi. They got more than they can handle!"

S is for Some Like It Hot -- Okay, this is a toss-up with Brazil for all-time best-beloved movies. I can practically recite the film by heart. "Look at the way she moves, it's like Jello on springs." "We have the same type blood. Type O." "But why would a guy marry a guy?" "Security!" Oh, my.

T is for They Shoot Horses, Don't They? -- I saw this movie for the first time earlier this year (see note above on the only way I ever end up watching Netflix rentals) and it completely bowled me over. I ended up watching the first part of it twice to see exactly how the "flashbacks" worked and when they started.

U is for Unfaithfully Yours -- Not one of my favorite Preston Sturges movies, but you don't get a lot of choice with the letter U. I could have gone with Unforgiven instead, I suppose.

V is for Victor/Victoria -- I dated a guy in college who loved this film, and during that time I must have seen it a dozen times. At least. I've been known to quote lines from this movie at odd moments (no one ever gets the quotes, either), and I can still do a fair imitation of Lesley Ann Warren singing "Chicago, Illinois," although it's not something I'm usually called upon to perform.

W is for The Wild Bunch -- I saw this movie on Thanksgiving Day, 2003, and have loved it ever since. If it's playing locally in a theater, I do my best to be there. Funny story: first time I saw it was on DVD, and it was a double-sided DVD that wasn't properly labeled. I ended up watching about five minutes from the middle of the movie before I paused the film, called up my brother, and asked him if I was watching the beginning or not. He set me straight, I flipped over the DVD, and all was well.

X is for The Great Escape -- Get it? The Great X-scape? Look, I had no choice in the matter. Besides, anything for more Steve McQueen. Even James Coburn's horrible Australian accent doesn't keep me from liking the movie. And one reason that A Streetcar Named Marge is probably my favorite Simpsons episode is because of the Great Escape references.

Y is for Young Frankenstein -- Why didn't I just give you a list instead of typing all these damn explanations? Do I really need to tell you why Young Frankenstein is on this list?

Z is for Zelig -- There aren't a lot of Z titles out there, and I remember liking this little Woody Allen film, although I haven't seen it in ages and ages. Wonder if I should give it another look.

So the final tally includes two Preston Sturges films, three Billy Wilder, two Mel Brooks, two Sam Peckinpah, two starring Steve McQueen, two about cross-dressing. And hey, Jette, how many of those films were directed by women? Okay, how many were written by women? Any fit the Bechdel rule, even? Maybe I should try a separate alphabet of feminist film.

"What do you think of this one, have you seen it?" he asks. I look at the DVD. It's Southland Tales. I grin.

"Well, obviously --" I reply, still grinning, and point at the pullquote on the bottom of the box.

He reads the quote. "'Fascinating and extraordinary.' So you agree with that?"

And this is the best moment ...

"Yeah," I tell him, "because that's my quote. I said that." And I pick up the box and show him the pullquote again, more closely, so he can read the whole thing:

"Fascinating and extraordinary!"
--Jette Kernion, Cinematical

"Oh! That's you! I didn't realize. Wow!"

And then he had to tell everyone in the office and show them the DVD box.

He may come back into the office on Monday and want to kick my butt after actually watching Southland Tales ... or if he's like my little brother, rant about how this is the Best Movie Ever and other critics are just plain insane. That's all right.

I may never see my name on a DVD box again, or if I'm super-lucky, it'll happen more often and I'll get jaded about it. But today, showing someone who wanted to know what I thought about the film that my opinion (or a truncated version that does not quite reflect the full review) was actually on the DVD box? Can't top that.

I could reprint the text of the amendment here, as a way to commemorate the anniversary, but instead I cannot resist the urge to share with you one of my favorite songs, ever ever ever. I've been known to sing it aloud on occasion, because who could resist? And of course this is a film blog so I have to tie everything into movies. So I give you "Sister Suffragette" from the movie Mary Poppins. You're welcome.

We are in a state of disbelief and hilarity. If this is true, it's the best "life imitates film" moment since Brawndo, the sports drink from Idiocracy, became a real beverage. Obviously I need to investigate this matter further and keep you posted. Or better yet, someone else will investigate it and post the results, and I'll happily link to their findings. That's what bloggers do, after all.

And it does seem only fair -- the "K" in the "Clerks II" logo on the film's poster is from the KFC logo, so why shouldn't KFC snag Mooby's logo from Clerks II for their own?

One more photo, after the jump, because I couldn't resist.

Redbelt is about martial-arts instructor Mike Terry (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who is content to run a small school and not worry about money or competitions. A string of events one night changes everything -- Mike has to ask his brother-in-law for money to fix some damage to his school, and while in his brother-in-law's bar he ends up protecting action-hero movie star Chet Frank (Tim Allen) from a potentially nasty fight. Next thing you know, Mike is lured into unfamiliar scenes and deals and commitments and faces the possibility he'll have to do the one thing he finds truly repellant: competing in a fight for money.

Fortunately, Ejiofor's strong performance helps make the film seem less scattered. I've enjoyed his performances in Children of Men and Dirty Pretty Things and he's a pleasure to watch onscreen. Other actors have more trouble with the non-naturalistic Mamet dialogue and make it sound almost like a parody of itself: during one scene, my husband started laughing and I guessed correctly it was because the lines were too over-the-top, too stereotypical of the writer to be taken at all seriously. Supporting actors Joe Mantegna, Ricky Jay and David Paymer also fit comfortably into the Mamet world, but Tim Allen is jarring, too familiar, too much a fish out of water. However, that may have been the desired result.

Redbelt contains some fun-to-watch fight scenes, which provide some respite from the dialogue. I especially liked a scene on a movie set where a friend of Mike's is training stuntmen in how to stage a knife fight, and Mike gets drawn into the action. And I've seen a second trailer for the film that is a lot less obviously Mamet-ish, which focuses on the fighting and on Mike's relationship with Emily Mortimer's character. The movie looks much more mainstream and commercial in this trailer. Is Redbelt Mamet's attempt at a traditional Hollywood film? If so, it doesn't succeed -- the story is too fragmented to keep audiences engaged and interested.

The focus of this documentary is fairly straightforward: Young At Heart, a choral group of senior citizens, has changed their repertoire in recent years to rock music, with new arrangements of a variety of songs like "I Feel Good," "Forever Young," and so forth. The filmmakers follow a few of the group's members in their daily lives, getting to know them and understanding how important Young At Heart is to them in terms of friendship and so forth. We see rehearsals in which the group struggles with some songs and arrangements, like a tongue-twisting Allen Toussaint tune. These sequences are interspersed with music videos of the group, showing us that older people can be feisty musicians too. Inevitable tragedies occur, but the show must go on.

I also felt Stephen Walker's direction was too intrusive. His narration often gets in the way, and he adds a tone that I've encountered on other British films and articles about the U.S. (America Unchained, for example): that sense of surprise at the antics and crazy politics in this country that just isn't quite as wonderful as theirs. I'm sure we do the same thing in American-made films about the UK, but that's no excuse for this irritating style.

In addition -- and I know I just made the same complaint about Forgetting Sarah Marshall -- Young@Heart is too damn long. The last third drags terribly. Throughout the film we've seen the group rehearsing several songs that are important to them, and some suspense is built on how well these songs will do in performance. So in the final concert sequence, every single one of these songs is performed in full. You'd have to love this group madly to want to sit through all these songs one final time, and I didn't feel that invested. (The exception was a moving rendition of the Coldplay song "Fix You.") I kept thinking, "Oh no. Not that song again. Can't they just show us the one relevant passage that kept getting messed up in rehearsal?" But no. It seemed to drag on for hours -- the movie is an hour and 50 minutes long, but a nice round 85 minutes would have kept me more engaged.

I feel like a heel for not liking an upbeat documentary like Young@Heart, which is currently pulling an 86 percent positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But the movie takes the obvious sentimental route and yanks heartstrings in the most blatantly manipulative ways. I also feel like an elitist -- the movie is obviously targeted for as mainstream an audience as possible, and is that one reason why I don't like it? Because it seems too simple and dumbed-down, and has no real message other than the great powers of music for people of any age, or the great and complex spirit of the elderly.

That brings up another question: does a documentary need to send us a message, or can we simply enjoy watching other human beings and their lives? I rail about some docs being too propaganda-y, so it's perhaps surprising that I wouldn't enjoy a movie entirely in the other direction. But the combination of a long and repetitive third act, heavy-handed direction, and lack of depth meant that Young@Heart simply didn't click for me.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a little difficult to review because I enjoyed the experience of watching the film at a packed Paramount theater, and it made me laugh a whole lot, but it wasn't very good. If a film makes you laugh that much, shouldn't it be "good" even if the plot is lame? On the other hand, if I'd seen this movie at a sparsely attended press screening, or watched it alone on DVD, would I have enjoyed it nearly as much? Judging by the fact that I have absolutely no desire whatsoever to see it again, I think the experience itself contributed greatly to my enjoyment.

The humor in this movie isn't in the plot, however, it's in the gags that fly thick and fast and just keep hitting you until some of them stick. Peter has been working sporadically on a puppet rock opera about Dracula, which sounds like one of those quirks stuck in a movie in lieu of any kind of character depth or distinction, but the excerpts from the rock opera had the audience howling. They were unbelievable. We also see more male nudity than you usually get in a film, all in the name of comedy.

The problem is that Forgetting Sarah Marshall is at least 20 minutes too long and the plot, such as it is, starts to feel tired and forced. Even the funniest gags cannot compensate for the fact that you sit there wanting these people to decide already what they're going to do, which you already know what it is, because every romantic comedy in the universe does the same damn thing. In addition, it was mighty difficult for me to empathize with Peter, whom I felt needed a good smack in the head. I had more of a tendency to sympathize with the title character, who gets treated a bit shabbily as the film progresses. Mila Kunis plays the other love interest, who's one of those free-spirited wage slaves who turns out to have intellectual ambitions underneath, so it's okay for the hero to like her (like in Sideways).

Paul Rudd, one of my big crushes, has a delightful small role as a surfing instructor. But I was also very much taken by Russell Brand, who plays the sex-crazed rockstar, and is funnier than the other three leads combined. The other actors were unable to overcome the thinly and inconsistently drawn characterizations. I need to see him in more movies, immediately.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a funny movie, especially if you watch it with a lively crowd that gets into the humor. And you know, it's hard enough to find movies playing in theaters that make you laugh. So maybe it doesn't matter that the movie is overlong and the story is eyerollingly dumb. See it with a bunch of friends, maybe have a beer first (or during, if you go to the right kind of theater), don't expect a lot, and you'll have a good time.

"How come when a kid is trying to travel from Mexico to California, it's a heartwarming story ... but when a kid is trying to travel from California to Mexico, it's a party movie?"

We got to Midnight, Easy Living and The Major and the Minor and I read out the titles to my husband to look up on Amazon, although I noted it was futile because who knows when those movies might ever get to be on DVD.

April 22, 2008, as it turns out. I was stunned. Midnight is getting a DVD release! I wondered if someone might remember it, since it's supposedly being remade (please let the remake be a victim of the writers' strike, please please). And the other two movies will be released too, all as part of something called the Universal Classics Collection. No details are available yet on extras and so forth, and I suspect the DVDs might be bare-bones, but I don't care because I would just like to see the movies. All I want is a pretty good transfer -- all three videotapes were taped from AMC or TCM in the distant past, so a DVD can only be an improvement.

The thing about these three movies is that I don't think any of them are especially great, but they're charming Thirties/early Forties light comedies with witty dialogue, wonderful actresses in the lead roles, and familiar, funny supporting character actors. More details about the movies are after the jump, in case you have no idea what I'm talking about.

Now, can we have A Foreign Affair next? That's the comedy I really want to see on DVD, and my videotape is barely watchable. It was one of the few videotapes I didn't throw/give away on Sunday, but I'd like to toss that TCM-recorded, noisy tape in the trash by the end of 2008. I'd also like to cross it off the still-populated 20 Gaps on DVD list, which incidentally I've updated with the info about the three upcoming DVDs.

Easy Living was made a couple of years before Midnight and it's always being held up as a fine example of Depression-era comedy: a young woman's life changes drastically when a mink coat falls out of a building and onto her head. She's fired for "loose morals" but along the same lines, because she's suspected of being the mistress of the guy who threw the mink coat, she ends up with a fancy hotel suite. Jean Arthur is the poor working girl who gets the coat, and you know she's probably going to get the rich man's son by the end of the movie. This is another Mitchell Leisen film, but the script was from Preston Sturges ... another writer who decided he'd rather direct his own films. A couple of character actors who were later regulars in Sturges films, Franklin Pangborn and William Demarest, are in Easy Living as well.

The Major and the Minor is a strange film -- it flirts with pedophilia and you can't imagine this film would ever, ever be remade. It's also Wilder's directorial debut. Ginger Rogers decides she's had enough of sexual harassment (by Robert Benchley!) in NYC so she decides to take a train home to her mom, but she can't afford full fare. So she disguises herself as a 12-year-old to get the child's fare, and ends up befriended by Ray Milland, who at least has the excuse of poor eyesight in one eye. Because otherwise it's impossible to believe she gets away with it. My favorite scene is the dance with the girls' school in which every single student and all the teachers have the Veronica Lake "flip" hairdo, but otherwise it's more bizarre than genuinely funny. I think it's a movie you should see once if you like Thirties comedies or Billy Wilder, but the froth of the 1930s is giving way here to a pre-WWII patriotism, and that doesn't help matters much.

Update: We had more than 300 sites last year. Wow. We're not promoting it as heavily this year, so we'll see what happens.

I felt guilty about liking such a violent and sexist movie, but fortunately Roger Ebert liked it too (and wrote a much better review than I did, natch), so that helped a little.

Finally, my little brother the film geek called me this morning* to tell me he saw Shoot 'Em Up last night, and he may have summarized the movie better in one line than I did in an entire review:

"More grindhouse than Grindhouse."

He has a point. If you're into this kind of film, I suggest seeing Shoot 'Em Up this weekend at night in as crowded a theater as you can ... audience reaction won't keep you from missing anything and can only improve the experience of watching this cheesy but fun film.

*My little brother only ever calls me to talk about the movies he's seen. I have no idea what's going on in his life, but I can tell you which movies he's enjoyed lately.

I was looking at the new Bardot collection on DVD at Amazon (I wanted to see the cover after Dave Kehr referred to it in his article on the films) and noticed an Amazon link to "Save 60% on Celebrity DVD Boxed Sets." I certainly like saving money, even though I am not really supposed to be buying new DVDs until I watch the ones I have, so I took a look.

For the most part, the page of sale DVD sets was what you'd expect -- a combination of old and new stars, all of which you'd probably recognize on sight. You could get Gary Cooper or George Clooney, Pam Grier or Cameron Diaz, Steve McQueen or Chuck Norris. You get the idea. But smack in the middle of the page, surrounded by Drew Barrymore and Natalie Portman's boxed sets --

The Errol Morris DVD Collection.

I was so tickled by this that I almost bought the boxed set right then and there. (I may still ... after all, it's on sale.) I had never thought about Morris as having the same type of celebrity following as Sandra Bullock or Nicolas Cage, but I'm glad to see that someone at Amazon thought so. Next time I hope to see Barbara Kopple on the page too.

While everyone else in America was watching the movie adaptation of the Broadway adaptation of the John Waters film Hairspray last weekend, we decided to watch some unadulterated Waters. I rented Pecker awhile ago and enjoyed it more than I thought I would, and hoped that Cecil B. Demented would be the same way. It's not as good a movie as Pecker -- in fact, it's not really a very good movie at all. But it made me laugh, and it was so much different than the cookie-cutter movies I've been watching in theaters that I'm willing to overlook its flaws.

I didn't know anything about this movie going into it except that my editor at Cinematical Indie has frequently quoted one of its lines, "Power to the people who punish bad cinema!" From that and the title, I expected the movie to be about movies, but I didn't even know it starred Melanie Griffith. I am still wondering how Waters convinced Griffith to take this role -- we may have to watch the commentary track later today to try to find out. (The commentary track on Pecker was excellent.) I didn't realize the actress had the type of sense of humor to play a self-mocking character like this. Her character Honey Whitlock starts the movie as a petulant, mean-spirited star ... who is kidnapped by a ground of rebellious teenage filmmakers (led by the title character) who want to use her in their "new cinema."

The teenage filmmakers are all unusual characters that fit right in with the John Waters universe. Everyone has a tattoo of a filmmaker's name on his or herself (my only carp: what, no female directors? Couldn't someone have had Ida Lupino or Penelope Spheeris tattooed on herself?). The tattoos range from William Castle to Pedro Almodovar to Herschell Gordon Lewis, so you know these are not your average teens. The group includes a drug addict gone to extremes, a Satan worshipper (played by Maggie Gyllenhaal), an ex-porn star who specialized in anal scenes, and a hairdresser who hates being straight. The plot reminds one, in an amusing way, of the Patty Hearst kidnapping, and this being a John Waters film, naturally Hearst herself shows up in a role as the mom of one of the teenagers.

Cecil B. Demented has a lot of in-jokes for film buffs; the coded messages for the kidnapping are lines like "Hey, hey, MPAA, how many movies did you censor today?" When the filmmakers run into trouble, they run into specialty movie theaters where the audiences help them out. The teens are determined to eradicate multiplexes and the kinds of movies that play there; they attack a theater that is showing Patch Adams: The Director's Cut, face a crowd full of angry moms at a theater that refuses to show R or unrated films, and sabotage a Maryland Film Commission luncheon full of Hollywood execs. I liked the opening credits, which showed the marquees of what I assume were a number of Baltimore-area theaters, over a song that spoofed overwrought cliched movie music.

Cecil B. Demented is a fun movie for people who like to see movies in theaters, especially older theaters -- it was a treat to see all of the theaters in the movie, including the drive-in. It's not a great movie -- the plot doesn't make much sense, some of the acting is flat, and the teen characters' quirks sometimes become tiresome (Gyllenhaal's Satanic devotions get old fast, although I did like her makeup). Summertime is the perfect time to see this movie, because if you have been watching nothing but multiplex fare, especially summer blockbusters, this movie does prove its point: the latest "tentpole" film seems bland, dull, and annoyingly predictable compared to the glorious chaos of Cecil B. Demented.

My last night at Alamo was ... last night, and well into morning, at the Half-Ass-a-Thon. I'm still half-asleep, but I had a wonderful time and am missing the old theater already. I'm looking forward to reading lots of Alamo-related entries tonight, so please indulge me by writing/sending yours.