I’m as Mad as Hell & I’m Not Going to Take it Anymore
July 27th – August 2nd
Breathless - I think this is the first Jean-Luc Godard movie I’ve seen. I know. I know. Shameful. I wish there were more hours in the day and more days in the week. I want to start with an Italian neorealism marathon, then a Hollywood Big Studio noir marathon, then a French New Wave marathon.
This was Godard’s first feature-length film. And it kind of blew me away. Jean Seberg was absolutely adorable. I was smitten. And I could see the ties to Italian neorealism–the slow scenes of everyday life. But, the Brechtian influence, moving away from what is real, was decidedly apparent as well. You can certainly see Godard’s influence on more modern filmmakers. Perhaps because I’ve recently had Magnolia on the brain, I could sense a shared sensibility between Godard and Paul Thomas Anderson. Now, I’m not saying that PT Anderson is another Jean-Luc Godard. For one, Godard is prolific. But, the meandering camera paired with the filmic homages and inside jokes that could only come from a serious cineast seemed to indicate a convergence of the two.
Network - What a great movie. Again, I’m ashamed I’ve never seen this before. A truly great script. If I were to ever take a stab at screenwriting, I would first read this screenplay over and over and over again. The actors (William Holden, Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway, Ned Beatty) were all superb. The Ecumenical Liberation Army–Mao Tse-tung Hour–scenes were hilarious. The scene where Max (Holden) confronts his wife about his adultery is powerful and honest. And the “mad as hell…” sequence is just about as good as cinema gets. It is a scene for all times. Network is as old as I am (33-yrs old) but it stands up eerily well. This scene in particular seems fit for this post-George W. Bush era and the uncertainty that we collectively share:
Year of the Dog – I love this movie. It certainly hits really close to home on occasion. I see a lot of myself–both the good and the bad–in Peggy (Molly Shannon). This is a movie to reaffirm your love for whatever it is that you love. While it’s a movie about a dog lover, more to the point it’s a movie about accepting people despite their differences. That sounds horribly trite, I know, but director Mike White does manage to balance the funny with the sad and the emotional for a really nice movie. This movie also makes me want to try and find the time to get back into volunteering at OK Humane (again, if there were only more hours…).
The Third Man - More foreign noir. Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles. God, I love movies. I would be lying if I said that part of my curiosity for seeing this film didn’t come from Jack White (though I did love Citizen Kane before I’d even heard White Blood Cells). And it’s the second movie in two weeks I’ve watched that takes place in Vienna. And like Before Sunrise, this one also featured a Viennese cemetery and the Ferris wheel, although something altogether different is happening on Vienna’s streets in this one. Still, I did have my own Vienna landmark moment. During the cemetery scene at the beginning of the film, I noticed this shot in particular:
Trevor Howard & Joseph Cotten near the Dr. Karl Lueger-Gedächtniskirche at Zentralfriedhof in Carol Reed's The Third Man
When we went to Vienna a few years back, my favorite photograph I shot from the trip was of the same church:
Dr. Karl Lueger-Gedächtniskirche
And, this shot that I took better approximates the angle at which the scene from The Third Man was shot:
Dr. Karl Lueger-Gedächtniskirche (back)
It would seem that the scene was filmed amongst the trees in the middleground. I wish I would have known about The Third Man back then so I could have explored more of the film’s locations (apparently they offer walking tours…though I would have found my own way…I hate group tours).
Wendy & Lucy - What was I saying about not enough hours and days? I could waste hours upon hours on Netflix’s Instant Viewing feature. I needed something (not too long) to watch so I settled on this, which I’d seen first at the Noble Theatre back in March. Michelle Williams. Amazing. I love, love, love this performance. After Year of the Dog earlier in the day, and Umberto D. several days ago, I am truly spent. Luckily for my own dogs, I have a renewed and invigorated love for them.
The Storm (TV) – Wow. This was worse than Meteor. It was as if someone conceived of a weather-based disaster movie without actually putting in any menacing weather, aside from a few “accurate” lightning strikes and moderate to heavy rain. Oooohhhh, scary. I did, however, learn that James Van Der Beek runs like a girl. So, there was that.
Ohhh…I want to go back to Vienna. I could spend days losing myself in that cemetery.