"Hit Me With Your Best Shot" Summer Schedule

An exciting special episode of this series is coming up on Wednesday night! But until then, let's look ahead. If you're a new reader the concept of this series is that we choose a movie and anyone with a web home can post their choice for "best shot" with or without explanation and we link up. Complete List of Previous Episodes. It's like a tightly focused mini blog-a-thon. Some of the titles readers have been  suggesting we'll get to eventually, some never and some I'm purposefully saving for later for various anniversary or other project reasons. [Please note: Somewhere (2010), previously announced, was cancelled due to highly annoying studio contract finagling spoiling our group play experiment. Studios have just started this one-month delay thing where certain titles are only available for purchases for the first 30 days, making for confusing DVD release calendars. If you've already written something up let me know...]

Summer Schedule 

May 4th Eraserhead (1977) David Lynch
Netflix, Quickflix, Blockbuster, GreenCine, LoveFilm

May 11th Matador (1986) AND/OR Law of Desire (1987) [Pedro & Antonio Double Feature]
The Cannes film festival kicks off on this day. Let's celebrate by honoring the reunion of Pedro Almodóvar and his only true male muse Antonio Banderas in The Skin I Live In. For this edition you can do a double feature or choose either of Antonio's first two leading roles for Pedro. I'm watching both since the former is the only Pedro I've disliked and the latter is one of my all time favorite films; a revisit/reconsider seems in order.
Matador: Netflix, Quickflix, Blockbuster, Green Cine, LoveFilm
Law of Desire: Netflix, Quickflix, Blockbuster, Green Cine, LoveFilm

May 18th Tarzan the Ape Man (1932) Maureen O' Sullivan Centennial. She Jane!
Netflix, Quickflix, Blockbuster, Green Cine, LoveFilm

May 25th Star Wars (1977) The Ultimate Summer Blockbuster on its 34th anniversary.
Counter-Programming: The Hidden Fortress (1958) If you're feeling opressed by Emperor LucasFilms, join the Rebellion and cover the Akira Kurosawa swashbuckler that inspired it instead.
Star Wars: Netflix, Quickflix, Blockbuster, Green Cine, LoveFilm
Hidden Fortress: Netflix, Quickflix, Blockbuster, Green Cine, LoveFilm

June 1st Moulin Rouge! (2001) Insanity! 10th anniversary
Netflix, Quickflix, Blockbuster, GreenCine, LoveFilm

 

June 8th The Woman in the Window (1944) Several people suggested "M" or "Metropolis" which would be totally amazing but I need to step outside of my personal Fritz Lang comfort zone. Let's do this noir.
Netflix, Quickflix, Blockbuster, GreenCine, LoveFilm

June 15th Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) Francis Ford Coppola
Netflix, Quickflix, Blockbuster, GreenCine, LoveFilm

June 22nd Rocco and His Brothers (1960) Luchino Visconti
Netflix, Quickflix, Blockbuster, GreenCine, LoveFilm

Closing titles for Season 2 will be announced in June.

50th Anniversary: "Judy Judy Judy"

10|25|50|75|100 -anniversary specials

In the annals of showbiz history few one night events are as seismic as "Judy Judy Judy" the night Judy Garland hit Carnegie Hall, 50 years ago at this very moment, for her comeback performance. She was called many things during her legendary career: Hurricane Judy, The World's Greatest Entertainer, Ms. Showbiz and a lot of those titles coincide or funnel right into or through this big night. There's not really any concert footage of this event though it was famously recorded live to fulfill her record contract and eventually became her most important album.

I can't for the life of me remember how that Garland miniseries with Judy Davis covered the event but they must have done so given that it was one of those 'from cradle to grave' bios. Garland died just 8 years after this concert at the age of 47. Do you think the proposed Anne Hathaway as Judy Garland film will stretch this far into Judy's career? Or maybe it will never get made?

Hathaway is 28 years old at the moment, just ten years younger than Judy was on this big night...

Lots more after the jump including four melodic videos because I couldn't help myself. I do get carried away with the mythic actresses, don't I?

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Mix Tape: "Perfect Day" in Trainspotting

Andreas from Pussy Goes Grrr here, with the scene that served as my introduction to Lou Reed.

At his best, Danny Boyle knows how to mix memorable visuals, dynamic editing, and pop music into one striking, powerful package. The overdose scene in Trainspotting, his saga of Edinburgh heroin addicts, has all this and more set to the morose tune of Reed's "Perfect Day" (an ironic song title if there ever was one). Anti-hero Mark Renton, eager for "one fucking hit," returns to the desolate apartment of a sleazy dealer, where he shoots up... only to fall into a catatonic stupor, which Boyle represents by having him sink into a hole in the carpet, as if into a grave.

This is when Reed's flatly casual voice breaks in, singing the lyrics ("Just a perfect day, drink sangria in the park...") in a subdued tone that belies their supposed cheerfulness. As the dealer deposits Renton's immobile body on the street to wait for a taxi, Reed bursts into the chorus, and already the irony is palpable: clearly, Renton is having anything but a perfect day. But the irony goes far beyond that simple "happy song, sad scene" incongruity—because the song is self-contradictory to begin with, and the scene isn't merely sad.

Boyle's depiction of the overdose traffics in the same dark, sometimes satirical humor as the rest of Trainspotting, and it's shot in the same kinetic, self-conscious style. For example, the burgundy carpet, which blinkers Renton's POV shots while he's unconscious, functions as both a metaphor for his isolation in the depths of his overdose, and as a bleak visual joke. Similarly, the grim way he's passed along from dealer to cabbie to hospital orderlies borders on kafkaesque. This is no self-serious afterschool special; Boyle has an eye for the funny side of excessive drug use.

This clash between tragic subject matter and flashy style could come across as ridiculous or tasteless, but any such tonal ruffles are smoothed out by the faultless use of "Perfect Day." Despite occasional dips into ironic enthusiasm on one end and melancholy on the other, Reed's voice is stable throughout the song, almost to the point of monotone; this makes it the ideal song to accompany Renton's comatose journey to the emergency room. Even in its loudest, most climactic moments, "Perfect Day" is still as steady and patient as an elevator ride, and balances out the bounciness of Boyle's camera.

And throughout the scene, it offers a bittersweet lyrical counterpoint to Renton's current predicament, with the line "You just keep me hanging on..." ringing out just as the dealer shoves Renton into the back of the taxi, and the closing refrain, "You're going to reap just what you sow," as a dire reminder that he brought this miserable situation upon himself. It's also starkly appropriate that a song partially about self-delusion and ignoring one's problems should arrive in the center of a film about drug addicts.

According to rumor, "Perfect Day" is actually about heroin, and that may be case, but its usage here isn't just a matter of finding a song whose topic matches the film. (Had that been the case, Lou Reed wrote a song called "Heroin" that could've been used instead.) The scene derives much of its sticking power from the very precise interplay between the song's unique tone, the editing, and the camerawork, which together sustain a forlorn mood laced with many ironies. This seamless integration of visuals and music brings a light touch to the protagonist's near-death and rebirth, and forever entangles "Perfect Day" with the image of Ewan McGregor dying in a carpet.

Unsung Heroes: The Character Design of 'The Iron Giant'

Michael C here for an episode of Unsung Heroes dear to my heart. It took years for today's film to be elevated to something approaching its proper status. I feel like it's my duty to heap on it some of the praise it deserved when it first hit screens twelve years ago.

There are some elements to our favorite movies that our so beloved, so much a part of our imagination, that it’s tough to think of them as the result of a creative process. Like when you hear how the time machine in Back to the Future was originally written to be a refrigerator or how Errol Flynn was the second choice to play Robin Hood after James Cagney. The way we know it is so perfect, so unavoidably the way it should be that it’s difficult to get your mind around the fact that it didn’t spring from the script to the screen fully formed. 

The design of the Giant from Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant (1999) is that way for me. The Giant is beautifully designed down to the smallest detail that reading Ted Hughes’ original children’s book I was a bit shocked to discover how little of it is there on the page. The most detailed the description of the Giant comes on page one when his head is described as being “the shape of a dustbin”. Every other description is limited to it being “giant” or “iron” or both. The book’s illustrations by Andrew Davidson not surprisingly depict him as an eighty foot tall Tin Man, with maybe a little Gort mixed in.  

This makes the achievement of the film’s animation team all the more impressive. With his hollow eyes, bucket head, and immobile grimace it is astonishing just how expressive the Giant is. I was reminded of Gromit from Wallace and Gromit. The Aardman animators got around Gromit’s lack of facial feature by giving him one extremely expressive brow. The Iron Giant team manages a similar trick with mechanical shutters that act as eyelids. These, combined with body language (I love the way he clenches his fists in determination before blasting into space the final time) are incredibly effective at giving the simple Giant a full range of emotions.

Apart from expressing character there is also the basic beauty of the Giant’s design. The title character’s sleek 1950’s B-movie–flavored look is more visually arresting than an army of garish, cluttered Transformers. Part of the wonder of the character is that he seems plausibly functional.

Its ability to put itself back together is present in the book, but Hughes has him stumbling around sticking in limbs like a Mr. Potato Head, nothing like the movie Giant ‘s wonderfully intricate systems of moving parts. 

All that attention to detail pays off in spectacular fashion during the climax when the filmmakers reveal an amazing series of surprises about the Giant’s design, including rocket feet and an increasingly terrifying series of hidden weapons. You get the feeling the film’s artists, notably Steve Markowski, head animator for the Giant, could take him apart and put him back together again. It’s that depth of knowledge that makes a character, animated or otherwise, one for the ages.

April Showers: Angelina's Power Cleanse

Kurt here again. How do you like your Angelina Jolie? Hacking the Gibson under the name of Acid Burn? Wailing about her lost son in a cloche hat? Wooing the Hollywood Foreign Press opposite Johnny Depp in Venice? Please. You like her kicking ass, and with respect to fans of Wanted, she's really never done it better than in Tomb Raider, the underrated video game adap that houses what we can probably call her signature performance.

All of 24 when she shot the movie, Angie wasn't yet Salt skeletal, and still had some of those Gia curves to flaunt. She gets her chance when director Simon West shoots her in a post-training shower scene, where she washes off the sweat worked up from emptying clips into a killer robot.

I love this scene because it's so freaking gratuitous. West might argue that he included it to help humanize Lara Croft (tomb raiders need showers, too!), but we all know it has the same objective as a Maxim cover shoot. And who's arguing, anyway?

I'm still of the mind that Angie is the most perfectly put together female on the globe, and this scene might just mark the peak of that perfectly-put-togetherness.

More More More after the jump.

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