film geek wish list, 2005

I’ve been thinking about things I would like to happen in 2005 related to movies, DVDs, etc. I’ve created a little wish list. These are things over which I have very little control, but they would make me very happy. So if any of the deities whose responsibilities include the DVD market or film programming are listening, here’s a list of things I’d love to see this year:

  • Holiday (1938) and A Foreign Affair (1948) released on DVD—Of all the films pending on my twenty gaps list, these are the ones I want the most. I would rush out to buy the DVDs in a heartbeat. I don’t care about special features. Just release them, please.
  • A Terry Gilliam movie released in U.S. theaters (specifically Austin)—And I don’t mean a documentary about one of his films failing, either. The Brothers Grimm is in post-production with a November 2005 release date, and Mr. Gilliam is currently filming Tideland, so the odds are good … but I am still wary.

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where I’ve been lately

I don’t have a Links or a Bookmarks page on this site, although I will occasionally remember to stick a link to a movie-related site in the right-hand sidebar. Probably that list of links to film sites ought to be bigger, and it ought to include some of the sites I’m about to mention.
But I prefer to add a short explanation about why I enjoy reading a particular site, which I think is more useful and interesting than just slapping a bunch of links on the side of the page without telling you why you should visit them. (Obviously, some are self-explanatory, such as links to local movie theaters I like. But not everything is that straightforward.)
It’s only been in the past six months or so that I’ve discovered a number of film-related weblogs, which are great for tracking news about upcoming theatrical and DVD releases as well as other special events and news. I currently use Bloglines to keep track of my favorite sites that have RSS feeds. Fortunately most frequently updated film-related blogs and sites do have RSS feeds now. My account is publicly accessible and if you are a curious person who likes to see what other people read every day, you can view my Bloglines list here.
Here’s a list of some weblogs, articles, and sites I have enjoyed lately, most of which are about movies in one way or another.

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Atlantic City (1980)

Atlantic City: 1980, dir. Louis Malle. Seen on DVD (Jan 2).
For some bizarre reason, I had Atlantic City mixed up with Nashville in my head, and it took me a minute during the credits sequence to realize that this was a Louis Malle movie, not Robert Altman. I know, sometimes I feel like I’m not worthy to be a film geek.
Atlantic City is an odd and interesting little movie, which almost got lost between the other movies I saw last weekend, which were bigger and flashier and sillier and funnier.
For example, it is odd to see Susan Sarandon so young, and Burt Lancaster so old (although I’d recognized him in Local Hero when I saw it last year, so it wasn’t as surprising to me as it was to my boyfriend).

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House of Flying Daggers (2004)

House of Flying Daggers: 2004, dir. Yimou Zhang. Seen at Dobie (Jan. 4).
I am a terrible, cynical person. Some of the first words out of my mouth when this movie ended were, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” Later on, I was heard to say, “Mongo only pawn in game of life.”
You have to take your cynical hat off if you are going to see House of Flying Daggers, which is a terribly sentimental and melodramatic love story disguised as a martial arts movie. I think this movie works only if you view everything in it as an allegory for love.

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The Stepford Wives (2004)

The Stepford Wives: 2004, dir. Frank Oz. Seen on DVD (Jan. 3).
Last year, I bought an old library copy of the novel The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin. I wanted to read the source.
Wait, we need to go back even further. When I was junior-high age, I saw the 1980 made-for-TV movie Revenge of the Stepford Wives one night on TV. I don’t remember much about it except for Julie Kavner (remember when we used to see her as well as hear her? hee) … and the fact that the Stepford women were drugged, not robots. They all had to take little pills. At the end of the movie, the women all go crazy and stomp on the nasty man who’s been behind the whole scheme.

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Ocean’s Twelve (2004)

Ocean’s Twelve: 2004, dir. Steven Soderbergh. Seen at Galaxy Highland (Jan. 1).
If I hadn’t seen the SpongeBob movie recently, I might well say that Ocean’s Twelve is the silliest movie I’ve seen in a very long time. So that’s my verdict: this movie is not as silly as an animated singing sponge. But it’s pretty close.
I liked Ocean’s Eleven (the 2001 one, not the 1960 one) quite a lot. I thought it was a very smart movie with a good cast. I was particularly fond of George Clooney, although I liked just about everyone except Julia Roberts, and at least she didn’t annoy me. I own the DVD of Ocean’s Eleven, because I like watching a clever caper movie, and you know it just about broke my heart when I found out that the Bellagio doesn’t really look anything like it did in the movie.
Ocean’s Twelve is fun, and it’s entertaining, and we had a good time watching it. But it is more like the original Rat Pack Ocean’s 11 than it is like the remake. It’s a bunch of guys (and a couple of chicks) all having a whole lot of fun making a movie together, without much worry about details like the storyline. The dialogue is often quite good, the acting is fine, the direction is stylish and fun. But the story is a mess.

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significant, but not available

In case you hadn’t heard, the U.S. National Film Preservation Board selected 25 films to add to the National Film Registry. You can read the full press release here, which includes a list of all the films chosen for 2004. This means there are now 400 films in the National Film Registry.
These films are chosen not because they’re the best films ever, but because they are “culturally, historically, or aesthetically” significant to Americans. That would explain why the list includes a variety of films that might not be top quality but include cinematic and cultural icons, such as Jailhouse Rock, Ben-Hur, Swing Time, Enter the Dragon, The Nutty Professor, Eraserhead, and Popeye the Sailor Meets Sinbad the Sailor.
It was interesting to see Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers on the list since Alamo is showing the Les Blank documentary next week.
I told my boyfriend about the list and he asked me, “What happens to these films?”
The Library of Congress restores prints of these films to archival quality, so that they can be preserved in the best state possible. That’s very nice, isn’t it?
But he persisted. “Does this mean we get to see them?”

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movies this week: ring in the new? what new?

Ring in the new, indeed. There are hardly any new movies opening this week, at least not in Austin. Most everything opened Christmas Day or right beforehand.
So this is a good week to catch up on all the movies you missed while you were out shopping for gifts, or wrapping gifts, or stressing about relatives, or travelling, or eating, or eating more, or doing other typical holiday things. Check out the Movies This Week from last week or the week before if you need to refresh your memory about what’s out there. Alamo Downtown is showing all kinds of crazy and fun stuff, too.

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the family historian

Sometimes I think about giving my parents the URL to this Web site. What the hell. These days I mostly write movie reviews anyway, and when I don’t, I am very careful about what I write. I tend to assume that my coworkers might be reading (some are … hi!), and that various family members might be reading. I don’t assume my grandparents are reading, because that’s going a bit too far, but you never know when my brothers or sister might run a Google search on something and stumble onto this site. For all I know, they did find the site, skimmed a boring movie-related entry, didn’t realize it was me, and left without remembering anything about the experience.
But then I think about it some more, and I imagine my mother calling me up after reading an entry about family conversations and saying, “I thought it was very funny, but would you please take out the part about farting? People will think we’re crude.” I am sure I would hear, “Do you have to use that kind of language?” And I can bet she’d tell me that “It’s a very nice page but I think that story about your grandmother was a little too personal. If she died tomorrow, you’d feel really sorry that you wrote that about her.”

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what I watched on my vacation

I did not get to see one single movie while I was visiting my family. Not one. I wrapped all my presents before I got to town, so I didn’t even get to enjoy a little private movie-watching while wrapping gifts.
Well, that’s not entirely true. I didn’t see any single movie from beginning to end. However, thanks to the joys of family channel-surfing on cable TV, I was subjected to many bits of movies. We never made it through more than 10 minutes of any one movie, but I sampled some films I might not ordinarily watch. I don’t have any desire to see more of them, either.
Here’s what I watched (barely) on my Christmas vacation:

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