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My Movies 2009

Originally posted at Facebook

Notes

Because I revisit good movies, many of the titles here also appeared on last year's list.

I settled myself into an actual movie theater seat only five times in 2009. Most views were on disk. A few were downloaded. Two (Home and Sita) came straight through YouTube (hurrah!)

I seem to have gotten over my IMAX motion-sickness thingy.

3-D is good fun … 3-D IMAX even more ... and I'm glad that District 9 was not in it.

I've been watching sets (Capra, Lombard, Pre-Code, Noir, Westerns ...)

India is cool … from Slumdog Millionaire through The Apu Trilogy to Sita Sings the Blues. Have yet to meet Bollywood.

Shining Stars: James Stewart, Anthony Mann, Carole Lombard, Andrei Tarkovsky, Satyajit Ray, Heath Ledger, Michelangelo Antonioni, Jane Campion, Ingmar Bergman, The Criterion Collection

Best Viewing of 2009: Andrei Rublev, The Apu Trilogy, Bright Star, The Class, Fanny and Alexander, Hands Across the Table, Home, Lars and the Real Girl, La Strada, Leonard Cohen Live in London, Man of the West, Sita Sings the Blues, Tension, Waterloo Bridge, Winchester '73

Two very pleasant surprises: L'Auberge Espagnole and Lars and the Real Girl

Best movie about which I'm trying hard not to have an opinion because everybody has one and how could I be sure it was mine after all: Avatar

My most powerful movie experience of the year (and possibly of my life, no kidding): Andrei Rublev. You may not like it.

Non … je ne regrette rien.

13 Ghosts (1960)
The Amazing Quest of Ernest Bliss (1936)
Andrei Rublev (1966)
Aparajito (1956)
Ashes and Diamonds (1958)
The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
Avatar (2009)
Babe (1995)
Babe: Pig in the City (1998)
Baby Face (1933)
Barry Lyndon (1975)
Beauty and the Beast (1946)
Border Incident (1949)
Bright Star (2009)
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Changeling (2008)
A Christmas Carol (2009)
The Class (Entre les Murs) 2008
The Conformist (1970)
Contempt (1963)
The Dark Knight (2008)
Dead Man (1995)
Dillinger (1945)
District 9 (2009)
The Divorcee (1930)
Don't Look Back (1967)
Fanny and Alexander (1982)
Female (1933)
A Free Soul (1931)
Garden of Evil (1954)
Gran Torino (2009)
The Gunfighter (1950)
Hands Across the Table (1935)
His Kind of Woman (1951)
Home (2009)
I Confess (1953)
I'm Not There (2007)
Into the Wild (2007)
It Happened One Night (1933)
Lady in the Lake (1946)
Lars and the Real Girl (2007)
L'Auberge Espagnole (2003)
L'Avventura (1960)
La Strada (1954)
Leonard Cohen Live at the Isle of Wight 1970 (2009)
Leonard Cohen Live in London (2009)
The Leopard (1963)
The Man from Laramie (1955)
Man of the West (1958)
Man of the World (1931)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
Night on Earth (1991)
The Ox-Bow Incident (1942)
The Palm Beach Story (1942)
The Passenger (1975)
Pather Panchali (1955)
The Racket (1951)
Rawhide (1951)
Red-Headed Woman (1933)
Richard III (1955)
Rio Bravo (1959)
The Rules of the Game (1939)
Sita Sings the Blues (2008)
Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
Smoke (1995)
Spirited Away (2002)
Synecdoche, New York (2008)
Tension (1948)
Three on a Match (1932)
The Thin Red Line (1998)
Touki Bouki (1973)
Umberto D. (1952)
Volver (2007)
The Wackness (2008)
WALL-E (2008)
Waterloo Bridge (1931)
We're Not Dressing (1934)
Winchester '73 (1950)
Wise Blood (1979)
Woman in the Window (1944)
The World of Apu (1959)
You Can't Take It With You (1938)
Zelig (1983)

from Andrei Rublev

congrats to brad & ashley & co.

Fans of NBC's The Office have perhaps already seen this most excellent parody mashup of Billy Joel's song and perfectly chosen Office moments. Non-fans may get a chuckle (or a gross-out ... beware). This is very hot on YouTube right now and has been Twittered by Office's Rainn Wilson ... which is like ... uh ... really cool. And it's being passed around among The Cast.

Ryan Started the Fire

The Link

movies seen 08

What I Can Remember Having Watched or Watched Again ... and Again

 

The dearth of many very recent movies on this list tells the tale of a guy who entered an actual movie theater only once in the past twelve months. As for the best among them, well ... they're all worth a shot. You can tell that I like old stuff ... tested by time and my willingness to watch again. There are none that I'm sorry I saw ...

10 Questions for the Dalai Lama
The 400 Blows
8 1/2
The Age of Innocence
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Atonement
An Autumn Afternoon
Babel
Bend of the River
The Big Red One
Bob Dylan: The Other Side of the Mirror
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Broadway Danny Rose
Charlie Wilson's War
Children of Paradise
A Clockwork Orange
CSA: Confederate States of America
Destry Rides Again
The Far Country
Gosford Park
The Gospel of John
The Great McGinty
Hannah and Her Sisters
Hellboy
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Helvetica
The History Boys
I'm Not There
Into Great Silence
Into the Wild
The Man from Laramie
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Michael Clayton
A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy
The Miracle of Morgan's Creek
My Man Godfrey
My Voyage to Italy
The Naked Spur
No Country for Old Men
One, Two, Three
The Ox-Bow Incident
Paranoid Park
Persepolis
The Philadelphia Story
The Purple Rose of Cairo
Radio Days
Raging Bull
Ratatouille
Rio Bravo
The River
Robots
The Searchers
The Seven Year Itch
The Seventh Seal
The Shop Around the Corner
The Simpsons Movie
Smiles of a Summer's Night
Superbad
Sweeney Todd
There Will Be Blood
The Thin Red Line
To Be or Not To Be
Tokyo Story
Traffic
The Trollenberg Terror (aka The Crawling Eye)
The Verdict
Virgin Spring
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
Wild Strawberries
Winchester 73
Zelig

and then there were the noirs:

Ace in the Hole
Act of Violence
Asphalt Jungle
The Big Steal
Born to Kill
Clash by Night
Crime Wave
Crossfire
Decoy
Dillinger
Gun Crazy
Illegal
Laura
Murder My Sweet
Mystery Street
The Narrow Margin
Nightmare Alley
Out of the Past
Raw Deal
Rififi
The Set Up
Shoot the Piano Player
Side Street
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
Strangers on a Train
Sunset Boulevard
Sweet Smell of Success
T-Men
Tension
They Live by Night
Thieves Like Us
Touch of Evil
Vertigo
Where Danger Lives
The Woman in the Window

so long, dassin

Jules Dassin, 96; blacklisted director of film noir - Los Angeles Times

Jules Dassin, the blacklisted American filmmaker who was a master of film noir, directing such classics as "Brute Force," "The Naked City" and "Rififi," died Monday in an Athens hospital. He was 96.

It's time to re-view Rififi.

a great slow movie

This afternoon I rented and watched The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. And don't know what to say. K. Silem Mohammad nails most of it at his Lost in the Frame, where Pitt's James is "a cypher on the order of Jay Gatsby". I'd just nod to Roger Deakins' cinematography and the Nick Cave/Warren Ellis score for making the most of space and time (2.35:1 and 160, respectively). The iTunes rental runs out at 3:34 pm tomorrow so it looks like I'm going to have to invest more. To repeat.

long time coming

Things worth thinking over at Jane Dark's Sugarhigh! on the current matter of narrative duration in television:

For a long time it was the case that movies were long and television was a short form. The TV show had 23 or 46 minutes for a narrative to complete itself; a movie had 90 minutes, two hours, three! Movies haven't changed (indeed, uncoincidentally, the Hollywood length creep of late-century seems to have begun to reverse itself), but The Wire is about 65 hours long, divided graciously into five location-based chapters.

I've been offagain-onagain with The Wire, since I've generally been just OFF when it comes to tv viewing; but whenever I find The Wire on, I'm rivetted, as they say. Wish I hadn't missed almost all of the past season.

another tech second

Yes, I downloaded another film from the very slender iTunes catalogue. This time it was Ratatouille. Another animated film. From Pixar this time.

What a hoot. One wants to hate Pixar for being such a giant and for being so Disney, but how can one hate a company that produces a film so beautiful? a film that is able to punch those father/son-issue buttons without falling into the usual sentimental stereotypical stew.

It is technically and visually splendid. When we freeze a shot, we get the same kind of action blur we find in live-action.

It's astonishing to realize that every frame (especially those blurs) had to be conceptualized before it could be realized. Where have you gone, Clutch Cargo? But I'm sure Pixar has a whole building full of folks who specialize in the action-blur, no? Or they don't need a building because they've got just the right program ... on a very powerful computer ... ?

But the characters, via the writing and voicing, are just rich. It's a human story. The movie presents us with any number of "morals," but it's never really very preachy ... "Don't steal" ... "Be yourself" ... "Follow your bliss" ... "Stand by your friends" ... blah blah ... Nevermind. It's really funny and truly scary ... in all the right spots.

Good stuff. Go out of your way to see it. (Or am I, the last person in the world to see it, just raving to myself?)

another tech first

Laid low by a nasty headache yesterday (tension not sinus ... for you who need such distinctions) ... was good for nothing. I could describe the banal circumstances that brought it on, but let's just chalk it up to Life in America.

In the midst of what has been a very weird week, I was able - couple days ago - to download my first-ever movie from iTunes ... 900-some mb in about 18 minutes ... while I was talking to Mom on the phone. So it was not a vacant 18 minutes but a very pleasant bit of time well-spent. And this is a lesson I should take to heart for all future downloads: do something pleasant and/or useful with that time. DO NOT let your eyes and brain be sucked dry by that little loading bar that moves e v e r s o s l o w l y toward its goal. In other words, don't be Homer Simpson, who just happened to be the star of the film:

It was a hoot ... many hoots ... well worth the four bucks rental. But iTunes isn't offering much to my liking yet. They need to goose up their repertoire ... and I'm sure that's easier said than done.

gothic

So it seems I have discovered Guillermo del Toro ... in a roundabout way ... because I've come to really hate horror movies ... as made in the past ten or fifteen years (slasher/gross-out/boogieman films with no style & truly hateful or thoughtless violence in the mind of the maker). So I was tricked back into it by Pan's Labyrinth, which led me to check out The Devil's Backbone. Yes, there's violence in these ... but it's beyond the others.

These movies can stand on their own & do ... but what convinced me of the intelligence behind them were the director's commentaries on both ... del Toro does it right in his "rambles" ... So if you've seen either movie without listening to the commentary track, go back & do it again. It's an education. Good stuff. Smart stuff with enough reference to the literary gothic to make an English major do a little dance.

"I cannot make a war movie and then celebrate violence and say this is cool violence ... I am fascinated by cool violence as evidenced by Blade II, for example, but this movie does not contain any violence meant to be cool."

audrey t

all day today has been Audrey Totter's birthday ... born in my own hometown a year or so after my own dad was born ... he used to tell us how he rode on the bus to the can company with her ... this would've had to be in the late thirties before she started doing radio work ... that limbo of uncertain futures called "just out of high school" ... in the days when college wasn't for everybody ...

most famous for her noir "bad girl" roles, here she is playing a good girl ... in The Set-Up ... boxer robert ryan's weary wife who can't bear to see him fight anymore ...

all the data points to ms. totter's (mrs. fred's) continued presence among the living ... she's 89 today and imdb says that as of june 04 she was Living at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital, Woodland Hills, Califonia.