largely ignored » 2007

The Hollywood Saloon, a film podcast that I listen to far less often than I should (mainly because their episodes tend to run over two hours) recently put out an episode dedicated entirely to car chases inspired by the amazing, breathtaking, pitstain-creating chase sequence from Death Proof.

I’ve set up my Netflix queue and I’ll be following along with their recommendations. Here’s what I’m looking at:

1) Bullitt (1968)
2-5) Duel (1971), Vanishing Point (1971), Smokey and the Bandit (1977), Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974)- these are not included in their definitive list because they are entire movies about the chase scene. Their criteria was that the chase scene be exactly that, a scene. I have not seen any of these movies and since both Vanishing Point and Dirty Mary Crazy Larry were mentioned in Death Proof, I’ll be including them.
6) The French Connection (1971) - I’ve seen it, but I think I’ll watch it again because I don’t think I was in the right mindset for it. I ended up not very impressed. Hopefully this will be corrected.
7) The Seven-Ups (1973)- never even heard of this one
8) Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)
9) The Driver (1978)
10) Blues Brothers - of course I’ve seen it. Won’t mind seeing it again.
11-12) Mad Max & Mad Max: The Road Warrior - Seen both, won’t mind seeing them again.
13) To Live and Die in LA (1985)
14) Running Scared (1986)
15) Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995)
16) Ronin - rented this and fell asleep within the first 10 minutes. I’ll give it another try.

Notes:
-Short Time (1990) is unavailable on Netflix.
-The Italian Job (1969) is mentioned. I saw this very recently and don’t feel the need to watch it again. They note correctly that, although the setpieces are great, there’s no real jeopardy to the chase.
-In a darker time in my life, I saw The Rock (1996) in theaters. I don’t think I can do it again.
-Matrix Reloaded (2003). I hated The Matrix (1999) so much that unless someone tells me the car chase is so amazing it’s worth the pain and suffering, I’ll take a pass on this one.
-Bad Boys II (2003) - maybe I’m more forgiving of old, bad movies but I don’t think I can make it through this either.
-The Bourne Identity (2002) and The Bourne Supremacy - I’ve seen both very recently.
-I’m undecided about the order in which I’ll be watching these, but I’m leaning toward the chronological order that these were presented in the podcast. I’ll obviously have to rearrange the list to account for the asides that are included.

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Mission: Impossible III

April 17, 2007 at 7:43 pm · Filed under Movies

Philip Seymour Hoffman is the only reason I saw this film. I wanted to see him playing a villain and he did not disappoint. He took what he was given and made something amazing out of it. He was criminally underused. They had no idea what to do with him and the end he meets is anticlimactic in the bad way, so much so that as soon as he was dispatched I turned on the movie counter so I knew how much time was left.

The rest of it was big and dumb.

There’s an odd cut toward the end where Julia, Ethan Hunt’s wife, is shown cracking a smile when she hears that Ethan will be killed in front of her. There doesn’t seem to be any mention of this anywhere else, so I must’ve read into it wrong. I hate the fact that I still have to think about a movie that thought it was a good idea to give a hamming-it-up performance by Laurence Fishburn more screen time than Hoffman.

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A Prarie Home Companion

April 16, 2007 at 9:46 pm · Filed under Movies

I liked it a lot. Sweet, emotional, simple, complex and left me yearning for some Powdermilk Biscuits.

Both IMDB and Wikipedia note in their trivia for the movie that Paul Thomas Anderson was on set at all times observing so he could take over from Robert Altman in case he fell ill or died. I wonder if Anderson has wrote anything on that experience.

Update: Apparently Rex from Fimoculous was reporting that Anderson essentially directed the film while an infirm Altman drifted in and out of consciousness. I’m taking this with a grain of salt as Rex and Garrison Keillor have a history of not getting along.

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Requiem for a Dream

April 15, 2007 at 2:00 pm · Filed under Movies

Lisa called me “a pussy magnified”, but I was terrified for the first half of the movie. Aranofsky was channeling Lynch so effectively that my palms were sweaty in anticipation of what it all was building to. Ellen Burstyn’s segments especially got my heart racing with its nightmare quality. Unfortunately, I think he didn’t know what to do with the tension he had built up and instead of one final release it descended into a farce. Instead of haunting my dreams like Lynch, I’m just left kinda disappointed at the lack of a payoff.

Lisa, of course, loved it and was laughing at the parts that I was terrified of. She frightens me sometimes.

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