odd bookstores, odder movies
Aug. 18th, 2009 05:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacWhat the bookstores may be like actually in Dallas and Little Rock, I don't know, as I didn't have time to look in either. But in between I found three used book stores, two in Shreveport and one in Hot Springs. Each was 99% paperbacks, 90% romance novels.
Evenings without much to do, no computer, and little to read, I might have considered going out to a movie, assuming there were any new films I wanted to see. (Julie and Julia sounds promising; I avoided an opportunity to see that at home, thinking I might want it while away.)
But there aren't many theatres around in those parts, either. I'm not just talking about the disappearance of downtown cinemas and their replacement by suburban multiplexes. If the Shreveport phone book is to be believed, there is but one multiplex in the whole urban area, and it was 15 miles away on the other side of the metropolis from where I was staying.
Instead, I stayed in and watched movies on cable tv, this being the one thing that motel rooms have more of than we have at home. Most of them fairly old films. Some of them I turned on in the middle and didn't find out their titles until I looked up their recognizable stars on IMDB after getting home. In order of increasing age, I saw parts or all of the following:
The Deal (2008). One of those movies about the making of a bad movie. Usually turn out to be self-fulfilling prophecies. This one not as bad as most. William H. Macy plays a flaky independent producer who is evidently intended to be funny, but is mostly annoying. Meg Ryan is the one who inexplicably falls for him.
The Empire Strikes Back (1980). I saw this when it first came out, of course, but I think this may be the first time I'd laid eyes on it since. I'd remembered it as being a pretty good film. It isn't. Knowing Harrison Ford's subsequent work, I could grasp the spectacle of a good actor struggling with impossible material, especially his romantic scenes with Carrie Fisher. Gaah. (Also, I'm more convinced than ever that Vader and Anakin are not, repeat NOT, the same person. Otherwise nothing Vader and the Emperor say to each other makes any sense.)
Paris Blues (1961). Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier are two American jazz musicians living in Paris. Consequently the two visiting American girls* they fall in love with simply have to be played by Joanne Woodward and Diahann Carroll. In that order, of course. (This film was made the year Barack Obama was born, but he's not going to get born in this movie.) Watch Poitier and Carroll blither on about how happy they are to love each other, and then quickly discover they have absolutely nothing in common. Then watch the pained expressions on their faces, as if either of them could achieve one.
*As they would have been called at the time.
Love in the Afternoon (1957). Audrey Hepburn is an ingenue who pretends to be a femme fatale to woo man-of-the-world Gary Cooper. Wearing a borrowed (stolen, really) mink coat, she saunters into his hotel room (where he has a band of musicians ready to play background music for her, good grief) and is so thrilled to have it on that she refuses to take it off. At this point I decided there had to be something better to watch.
The Big Heat (1953). So this is what they call "film noir." Glenn Ford is a righteous cop determined to clean up a rotten city. His technique is to get in the faces of the bad guys and talk real big, without any authority to back him up. The bad guys promptly go out and kill all the sources whom Ford has imprudently revealed, plus any innocent bystanders who get in the way. (Among them, Ford's wife, who is played by - get this - Marlon Brando's sister. I hadn't known Marlon Brando had a sister.) It is Ford's character's complete inability to even contemplate a subtler, craftier technique that might achieve better results without getting everyone he knows killed in the process that reminds me of the similarly blunt-headed, "full speed ahead at any cost" approach of our recent ex-president. Lee Marvin does pretty well as a thug (and Gloria Grahame is even better as his long-suffering girlfriend) who keeps telling Mr. Big that they ought to just off Ford. Having tried it once already, they have nothing to lose, and they're certainly ruthless enough. But Mr. Big keeps saying, "No, no, we can't do that," not giving any reason, that being because it would be too easy, and then there would be no movie.
The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). By the greatest showman on earth, "Ready when you are" C.B. DeMille. I only watched the beginning of this. James Stewart is a clown. James Stewart is a clown. James Stewart IS ... a CLOWN. OMFG.
Evenings without much to do, no computer, and little to read, I might have considered going out to a movie, assuming there were any new films I wanted to see. (Julie and Julia sounds promising; I avoided an opportunity to see that at home, thinking I might want it while away.)
But there aren't many theatres around in those parts, either. I'm not just talking about the disappearance of downtown cinemas and their replacement by suburban multiplexes. If the Shreveport phone book is to be believed, there is but one multiplex in the whole urban area, and it was 15 miles away on the other side of the metropolis from where I was staying.
Instead, I stayed in and watched movies on cable tv, this being the one thing that motel rooms have more of than we have at home. Most of them fairly old films. Some of them I turned on in the middle and didn't find out their titles until I looked up their recognizable stars on IMDB after getting home. In order of increasing age, I saw parts or all of the following:
The Deal (2008). One of those movies about the making of a bad movie. Usually turn out to be self-fulfilling prophecies. This one not as bad as most. William H. Macy plays a flaky independent producer who is evidently intended to be funny, but is mostly annoying. Meg Ryan is the one who inexplicably falls for him.
The Empire Strikes Back (1980). I saw this when it first came out, of course, but I think this may be the first time I'd laid eyes on it since. I'd remembered it as being a pretty good film. It isn't. Knowing Harrison Ford's subsequent work, I could grasp the spectacle of a good actor struggling with impossible material, especially his romantic scenes with Carrie Fisher. Gaah. (Also, I'm more convinced than ever that Vader and Anakin are not, repeat NOT, the same person. Otherwise nothing Vader and the Emperor say to each other makes any sense.)
Paris Blues (1961). Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier are two American jazz musicians living in Paris. Consequently the two visiting American girls* they fall in love with simply have to be played by Joanne Woodward and Diahann Carroll. In that order, of course. (This film was made the year Barack Obama was born, but he's not going to get born in this movie.) Watch Poitier and Carroll blither on about how happy they are to love each other, and then quickly discover they have absolutely nothing in common. Then watch the pained expressions on their faces, as if either of them could achieve one.
*As they would have been called at the time.
Love in the Afternoon (1957). Audrey Hepburn is an ingenue who pretends to be a femme fatale to woo man-of-the-world Gary Cooper. Wearing a borrowed (stolen, really) mink coat, she saunters into his hotel room (where he has a band of musicians ready to play background music for her, good grief) and is so thrilled to have it on that she refuses to take it off. At this point I decided there had to be something better to watch.
The Big Heat (1953). So this is what they call "film noir." Glenn Ford is a righteous cop determined to clean up a rotten city. His technique is to get in the faces of the bad guys and talk real big, without any authority to back him up. The bad guys promptly go out and kill all the sources whom Ford has imprudently revealed, plus any innocent bystanders who get in the way. (Among them, Ford's wife, who is played by - get this - Marlon Brando's sister. I hadn't known Marlon Brando had a sister.) It is Ford's character's complete inability to even contemplate a subtler, craftier technique that might achieve better results without getting everyone he knows killed in the process that reminds me of the similarly blunt-headed, "full speed ahead at any cost" approach of our recent ex-president. Lee Marvin does pretty well as a thug (and Gloria Grahame is even better as his long-suffering girlfriend) who keeps telling Mr. Big that they ought to just off Ford. Having tried it once already, they have nothing to lose, and they're certainly ruthless enough. But Mr. Big keeps saying, "No, no, we can't do that," not giving any reason, that being because it would be too easy, and then there would be no movie.
The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). By the greatest showman on earth, "Ready when you are" C.B. DeMille. I only watched the beginning of this. James Stewart is a clown. James Stewart is a clown. James Stewart IS ... a CLOWN. OMFG.
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no subject
Date: 2009-08-19 02:32 am (UTC)Just wrong.
Spoilers for The Greatest Show on Earth
Date: 2009-08-19 02:36 am (UTC)Re: Spoilers for The Greatest Show on Earth
Date: 2009-08-19 04:12 am (UTC)I see your icon and ask, WTF does "Only Connect" actually mean? I've seen this phrase around for years, and I know it comes from EM Forster, but context has never enabled me to make sense of it.
Only connect!
Date: 2009-08-19 06:49 pm (UTC)<< It did not seem so difficult. She need trouble him with no gift of her own. She would only point out the salvation that was latent in his own soul, and in the soul of every man. Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die. >>
It's a very good book, and in 1992 was made into what I think is a fine movie --James Ivory's best work-- but our tastes in film are clearly much opposed, given that I think John Huston's adaptation of The Maltese Falcon is a well-written and wonderfully-acted masterpiece.
-MTD / NEB
no subject
Date: 2009-08-19 03:19 am (UTC)You should have watched LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON. You could learn how a nineteen year old seduces an old rake into marriage by continuously lying to him, and wearing a slave bracelet that coyly refers to her "experience." Yep, that relationship is sure going to last, yessiree!
no subject
Date: 2009-08-19 04:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-19 11:22 am (UTC)I've seen all the Star Wars movies once, when they came out. I've seen bits of the first one (ie Ep 4), since it was used to sell big screen tvs during the 80s, and was on in the store downtown all the time, but that's it. I've been meaning to flix the series, but have been held back because I generally watch in order and don't really want to see the prequels again. Still, it would be interesting to see the prequels, the animated interim, then the movies, followed by the Christmas Special. Okay, "interesting" isn't the word.
I'm not a huge fan of Noir, and wouldn't have chosen The Big Heat to introduce the genre. Try The Maltese Falcon or even the Kenneth Braunaugh/Emma Thompson Dead Again.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-19 02:55 pm (UTC)It didn't occur to me to classify either as noir because, when I've read discussions of the genre, it's always seemed an essential characteristic that I had never heard of the film before.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-20 08:22 pm (UTC)Film Noir: The Stanford Theater did a film noir series a few years back, and after careful analysis I've determined that to be called noir a film must have at least 3 of the following:
-Robert Mitchum
-trenchcoats, especially on the male lead
-at least one femme fatale, preferably blonde
-a nightclub scene
-rain
Being set in LA and having a cynical, world-weary but honest hero help.
Out of the Past is probably the definitive film noir. IMHO, The Big Sleep in noir but The Maltese Falcon isn't, even though Bogart essentially plays the same character in both, since Sam Spade has a streak of basis dishonesty in him that disqualifies him as a noir hero in my book. I prefer Ricardo Cortez's Sam Spade in the 1931 Maltese Falcon: he's a lot closer to Hammett's private eye.
Casablanca, Wikipedia to the contrary, is not film noir: it has a happy ending.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-20 11:18 pm (UTC)Casablanca is not only not noir, it's much better-acted. Everyone except that cardboard cutout of a husband is good.