Singin' in the Dog Day Afternoon

As I type this I am slick with sweat and praying for rain, glorious thunderstorm born heavy-pellet rain. (In the interim I will crank up the air conditioner --f*** that gargantuan electricity bill! -- and stay inside until I'm forced to scurry off to the next movie theater.) So it strikes me as perfect that the last two episodes of "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" this season are Singin' in the Rain (Wednesday night) and Dog Day Afternoon (Wednesday night August 22nd... the day of the actual events in the film!). Won't you join us?

This is the last hard sell for this series but I'm all keyed up because I'm so heartened by the response these past few weeks and I feel like I learn so much just by reading other people's takes on the same movie I'm looking at; 48 eyeballs are better than 2! 

Once Season 3 is wrapped we're entering  fall film season, Oscar's pre-season and with only 156 days to go until Oscar nominations we know that that familiar naked gold man will consume more and more of our thoughts. OSCAR CHART UPDATES COMING VERY SOON...

And the LINK said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the Blog

<-- Look it's Russell Crowe as Noah in Darren Aronofsky's hopefully insane biblical epic. I hope he's nicer to the CGI tigers than he was in Gladiator.

Links
Vulture Will now middle age Bill & Ted have another excellent adventure?
Pajiba whoa. Darlene Cates, the nearly immobile obese mama from What's Eating Gilbert Grape (the movie that brought us baby Oscar nominee Leo DiCaprio) has lost 244 lbs.
MNPP Shia Labeouf joins Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac
Towleroad Lady Gaga vs. RuPaul. Fierce x 2? 
Cinema Blend looks at the rumors and facts about Warner Bros plans for a Justice League movie. Warner Bros still doesn't get it though, since so many Green Lantern people are still involved. Wake up WB. Green Lantern was terrible. The Avengers would not have become a beloved mega hit if everyone hated the movies that led to it.
Coming Soon Oooh, track listing for Tim Burton's Frankenweenie remake. Karen O has an original song (will Oscar notice this time? They so screwed up with Where The Wild Things Are and Winona Ryder is on the CD too.  

Just 4 Fun
3 things that made me LOL this morning when I most needed to.
Olympic Booty Appreciation I ♥ the titles so much
Call Me Maybe ♫ Chatroulette version
"Pile of PeeWees" from the Crazy 4 Cult show. Scotty C. is the best

Ruby Sparks and The Case of The Unintelligible Scribblings

Behold ~ my favorite piece of movie swag thus far this year.

Movie swag -- It isn't just for clutter anymore!

Nothing beats useful movie swag. When the notebook first arrived I thought, 'What a thematically appropriate gift and how perfect for the movie blogger. I can't wait to take notes on her about her own movie.' But then Magic Mike broke her hymen and strangely the invite to her own screening never came. Now even Total Recall has had its way with this formerly pristine book and I still haven't seen Ruby Sparks (!) despite really wanting to. 

Last night I saw The Odd Life of Timothy Green and its plot, like Ruby Sparks's own, involves a real human life springing from fantasized words on the page. If my own notes, scribbled in the dark of movie theaters, ever took human shape, the inky actressy monstrosity that emerged would not be pretty. She would sport bizarre squiggly features which occassionally reshaped themselves into rectangular recreations of movie frames. The ink monster would be weirdly silent but for Tourettes-like outbursts wherein she would shout out only half-remembered movie quotes or long unintelligible sounds (I cannot read these notes). Once every half hour or so she would achieve a moment of lucidity and, without so much as a 'spoiler alert,' she'd calmly reveal a major plot point of a movie she'd just seen.

It's the weekend.What are your movie plans?

What's on your cinematic mind? Movie theater outing? If so will it be the Bourne Sequel, Meryl Marital Mania or "other"?

Personal Canon #99: XANADU (1980)

From now until the end of August we'll be celebrating Gene Kelly for his Centennial (August 23rd to be exact) so let's revisit Xanadu, which opened 32 years ago last night! It's a member of my Personal Canon... also known as "The movies I think about when I think about the movies"

"A Movie That Nobody Dares To Love"

A Broadway version of this 1980 classic opened on Broadway a few years back marking yet another jokey acknowledgement of Xanadu's kitsch value. It was high timeto rediscover the film in all of its enduring time-capsule glory. For Xanadu, you see, is not the tongue-in-cheek comedy that it was reworked as. It's a completely sincere endeavor and, I'd argue, endearingly so. It's not one of those films that are so intentionally bad that it's subversively excellent (see: Showgirls). No, Xanadu is the real deal: a straight-faced musical. It just had the terrible misfortune to celebrate a number of things that would be out of style almost immediately thereafter: roller rinks, disco, legwarmers, greek mythology, album covers … and Olivia Newton-John.

The album art within "Xanadu" though not the movie's soundtrack album coverIt's easy to dismiss Xanadu for the very things it shamelessly loves but it's a shame to dismiss the shameless if they're also compulsively watchable. What other movie gives you a glimpse into the lost profession of album cover illustration? None that I know of. In what other movie will you see Greek muses come to life from a painting on a brick wall? Even Clash of the Titans didn't have that. What other movie has the wacky chutzpah to give you a pop star as A list as Olivia Newton-John (she is strangely disregarded now but don't be fooled: she was an enormous star with dozens of hit songs) and put her on rollerskates and in only one outfit for almost an entire film?

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