I'm wondering - just pondering it now - how a film like this can seem like garden variety, old-timey Disney fare (animal characters that talk, songs sung, eye popping hand drawn animation) and, simultaneously, be a satisfying larf for the drug crowd. Not only do the two audiences seem equally served, but the film itself plays like a safe alternative to hallucinogens (almost as if, as Woody Harrelson once said (about Natural Born Killers) "to do drugs and see this film would be redundant"). Of
course, the flurry of nonsense that Alice hypocritically finds herself irked by (she is reprimanded by her mother for daydreaming prior to the film proper) isn't quite the same as a drug experience (as she is dreaming, and not conscious), but the whole concept - as laid out by many of the characters - is the same: Find your way. Though, by close, the film is kind of a downer - what Alice learns is to "grow up", essentially, and that whiling in silliness is wrong - it isn't necessarily spelled out that her change is for better or worse. As we know nothing of Alice - save for her indignant reaction to her mother's history lesson - we can scarcely make that distinction; By all rights, though, the film saves itself from being challenged: It's ambiguous whether or not it endorses growing up (or, at the very least, it's not as explicit about what kind of "growing up" - - as in Peter Pan, for instance), or whether it condones being lost in independence - even if you have to cut yourself off from your loved ones (hence, Alice's fear and trepidation that she will never see her mother or cat again). For a child, these issues don't matter (they're absorbed, certainly, but they aren't troubling, per se); Ironically, watching the film as an adult, they seem almost crucial.

Elena and her Man rounds out Renoir's Stage and Spectacle Trilogy on pretty much the same note as the previous films (The Golden Coach and French Cancan): Teetering with mixed proficiency between slapstick and social commentary, and rarely finding a pleasing balance between the two. Though Bergman's charm seeps through yet another lazily wrought love triangle, her radiance seems almost misused. Renoir seems less interested in the constantly changing motives behind her advances on a famous general and a wealthy playboy (but the way she changes hands seems meant to underline the Patriotism of France versus the Power of True Love) than in his great, crowded sound stages, shot - as in French Cancan - to look like they leapt out of one his father's paintings. As in the other two films, Renoir excels at using a shimmering technicolor palette, all the while inferring that life is nothing more than the grandest of all stages; The stories are ripe
for this metaphor, yet rarely hold a viewer long enough to meditate on the gravity of it all. (Also, it's been observed that Elena and her Man is meant to reflect an update on and, essentially, a mirror of his 1939 masterpiece The Rules of the Game.)

It's true that Joy Division - with their musical genius dovetailing Tony's humble beginnings as a promoter/record label owner - makes for the better half (it seems that the Happy Mondays - whose music you can't help but pity - exist to placate the story of Tony's personal life, which he casually makes reference to later ["I should have mentioned this earlier, I became a dad..."]); Nevertheless, since Steve Coogan's performance could carry the movie if it were about REO Speedwagon and Foreigner (I'm exaggerating, but you get the idea), it's almost hard to find fault the Mondays' seeming lack of talent and, by extension, our disbelief that Tony would put so much support in them. Nevertheless, the second half serves to celebrate the final moment when he sells out without selling out (pawning the Mondays'
album - sans lyrics - to a hungry London Records executive), and the clearly stretched sense that he ushered in rave culture the moment the crowd started
applauding the DJ at his Hacienda club. Also, it must be known that 24 Hour Party People has finally reached the realm of, to quote myself, "a movie you suspect will be a repeat viewing/light guilty pleasure".

Rich and Strange is a wondrous marriage between silent film techniques (inter titles that sass and inform; coherent, artful montages) and early sound blunders (mismatched background volume during dialogue sequences; anti-ambience in favor of broad sound cues). The borderline narcotic tone - a crime-less fit of light comic romance (and a marriage tested) - wouldn't be repeated by Hitchcock until 1941's Mr. and Mrs. Smith. The film's drop spot is also one of its high points; The second act is a downer, and a repetitious one at that (as the husband overcomes his seasickness just in time to court a fake Princess and the wife settles for a stuffy Commander, neither of them really happy); But when they finally beat the spouse variation blues, Fred and Emily Hill (the sarcastic Henry Kendall and puppy dog Joan Barry) still have plenty of celluloid in which to inhabit. I''ve always enjoyed films that reach their pinnacle of epiphany early enough to demonstrate said epiphany's effect on the protagonist(s). Here, Hitchcock seems to celebrate the oddity of their finding their own commonality in the middle of such a foreign place. By celebrating, of course, I mean he thrusts them into insufferable circumstances and watches as they cling, willingly, to their familiar wits.

My first experience with the Hitchcock who staged set pieces with almost as much vigor as he told stories, Murder! has a couple of whoppers. There's the
courtroom sequence where time is marked by the turned heads of the jurors (to be reused at a tennis game in Strangers on a Train, twenty years later) as they hear snippets of testimony. There's the jury room, where eleven rushed guilty verdicts pummel Herbert Marshall's steely Sir John into submission as the camera, restless, tracks endlessly. There's the sequence (acknowledged to be) borrowed from Hamlet, wherein Sir John traps the suspected actor-turned-murderer by restaging the crime as an audition. And there's the fateful final sequence, wherein Hitchcock attaches a camera to a trapeze artist and superimposes stills of characters over crowd shots. But, throughout, the camera moves. Repeatedly. And most of all, the film keeps culling the mantra in our head ("Hitchcock was a genius, Hitchcock was a genius, Hitchcock was a genius..."). Said to be modeled lock, stock and barrel on The Passion of Joan of Arc (as if that could be a bad thing); I proposed that two sequences where, respectively, a baby crying and an out of tune piano drown out dialogue, were inspiration - perhaps second hand - for Alien's use of volume fluctuation to agitate the audience. More on that when I possess, you know, evidence.

A little more proverb than comedy. The way Rohmer turns the tables on his protagonist as she learns her lesson (finally) can be summed up thusly: Tough love.

A little more comedy than proverb. The characters spend so much time justifying every little tic and subtlety in the courting process, you could spot Rohmer's signature a mile away. The film is worth watching for pompous, self-assured Alexandre - - the man no woman could resist.

Victoria Dawn Trout has now seen Jaws. Spread the word. Show me the way to go home. I'm tired and I want to go to bed. I had a little drink about an hour ago and it's gone straight to my head.

The very definition of a crowd pleaser. Nothing particuarly great being said, nothing of any strong value being imparted - - just very, very cool filmmaking. A graand example of what a vehicle really is (and this is, to say the least, Newman's finest hour).

It's still the greatest documentary of all time. This is why Forensic Files exists.

A bizarre side of Hitchcock: He's actually using and showcasing his actors. That O'Casey's play falls apart in the third act (especially viewed almost seventy-five years later) isn't necessarily a fault that implicates the master director. Mostly, what's enjoyable about the film is listening to the characters scheme and play out their slice-of-poor-Irish-life. Just kinda peters off at close, that's all...

With one friend whispering secret subtexts and various wordplay gooferies in one ear, another, two down from me, watched the film for the first time. She hates everything - - but she liked it. That first friend calls it the greatest American comedy ever made. Me? I'm just hoping the Coens run out of ideas and fall back on a John Turturro-starred Jesus spinoff film.

Like nearly every horror film of this age, the premise - a wronged doctor fighting a crazed architect, played by Legosi and Karloff (respectively) - should have payed off big time. As it is, the whole thing mires the story of a couple who arrive at the architect's art deco mansion and, uh, get in between the feud. I keep coming back to a scene where Karloff, inexplicably, turns out to be the head of some devil-worshipping cult; In this scene, there are some close-ups that unite Ulmer with his previous, indie roots (see Detour, a far better film). The rest is cast in the symbolic shadow of its marketing campaign: They use Poe's The Black Cat to reel people in, but the only similiarity between Poe's (arguably) most gruesome story and the film is that of a black cat that Legosi kills - - and which comes back from the dead. Most of the film laughably plods along, exposition spitting from the actors, and a tireless sense that we've either missed a reel and a half, or that the story just doesn't make perfect sense. As the legend has always foretold, Legosi is clearly trying to out-act Karloff in every scene. For all their hamming, though, the whole thing seems like a garish attempt (even in '34) to put asses in seats rather than scare said asses.

Besides the allure of its crispness on DVD, Lucas' film offers a glimpse into the duality of a director we're rarely privy to. A frequently abstract, ceaselessly visual framework (eschewing the elaborate storytelling of his sprawling trilogy-plus), THX 1138 isn't merely the proof that Lucas was once an independent filmmaker, it's also proof that thematic resonance wasn't his only strong point. Here, he taps Orwell, Huxley and Bradbury, borrowing from their definitive visions of the future (with a touch of McGoohan's "The Prisoner"), mashing tightly controlled central characters - who go by serial numbers - into odd job automatons, curiously shifting through a bureaucracy with seemingly no one in charge. However formally perfect the society is, however, it's most chilling moment reveals exactly the kind of social criticism Lucas had postured: Duvall enters the room where a camera is posed on the deity, revealing once and for all that his belief system is based in discipline rather than promise. The new version has a few minor changes (digi-arms for machines, blurry lights on cars, things of that ilk), nothing to detract from the power - or pioneer ambition - of the film.

When I watched it the night before I was planning to go to work the next day. When I changed my mind, I realized - in the tradition of fairness - that I'd have no trouble sitting through it again so Summer could see it. It's just that brilliant.

Maybe the most revelatory DVD viewing experience to date: I can say that a film I've seen more times than any other (truly) looks better than it ever has. (Now, if we could only jettison that preposterously counterproductive "Jabba" sequence, we'd be on our way...)

Every time I've watched Spielberg's paean to the starry, glistening eyes of alien obsessed children - as seen through a story of adults - I wish more and more that I could have seen it in 1977, in a movie theater, before I saw a good chunk of the rest of Speilberg's oeuvre. I've never quite been on board, and certainly haven't been bowled over quite the way my parents seemed to have been (or random people I've met, those who saw it at just the right time, etc.) So, I suppose each subsequent viewing - the first time when I was a teen, the second after I had a child (hoping that might bolster the response I was hoping for) and now, two yard monsters in tow - I've never quite been able to feel about it the way I think I should feel about it. It's a fine film: All Spielberg storytelling cues in order, a
grand Dreyfuss performance at the center of the thing, special effects that are used to greater ends (and therefore don't look garish or out of place), and the overall message of peaceful reception - - which is, perhaps, the most resoundingg and important thing about the film. It's never quite hit me in that ton of bricks way, but it's still a magnificent piece of work.

Ditto (from the 9/21 viewing of Star Wars) on the beatific quality of it, ditto also on a special edition addition (Emperor Palpatine's now floating hologram telling Darth Vader - inexplicably - that he's almost sure that Luke is Anakiin Skywalker's son.) Here comes a nerd rant: If this scene was added in order to plot some sort of symbiotic path between this film and the first three (to tie the information together, that is), why is the information so completely and utterly redundant? I feel stupid even pointing out that Palpatine telling Vader that Luke is Anakin's kid is like telling my dad that I'm his kid. Mindless tinkering. Not that it takes away from how breathtaking the downturn feels as this one plugs along.

Settling once and for all whether or not the saga was intended one way or the other (though the answer, to me anyhow, was obvious from the get-go), I decided to throw them back to back, lop of the closing credits to the one formerly titled Vol. 1 and the opening credits of the one formerly titled Vol. 2 and eat the whole meal without waiting a ludicrous six months between bites. The verdict is a mixed blessing - but not because of the full ingestion, as you're thinking; It will be impossible - short of hypnosis or amnesia - to see the thing as one sprawling, Leone-esque epic. Period. It doesn't help that the two volumes behave very differently (Vol. 1 being the quick draw lightning round with Vol. 2 picking up all the talky, contextual slack) - - but having seen both in their bastardizeed forms, I can barely comprehend them together without first consulting them as separate entities. That said, watching the characters for four hours - as they debate, grow, fight, kill and die - is an exercise in the true nature of Tarantino (He's really a genius). What he invests in his characters, even in those who occupy the very badlands of the frame, is a humanity and enthusiasm that's - without hyperbole - a peerless venture. Having seen Vol. 2 in the theater only once - it's frame of reference as a counterpart to Vol. 1 merely a fading memory - it was impossible for me to recognize The Bride's mythic claim to fame: That she was truly more vicious than Bill. David Carradine's speech at the end - flawlessly delivered, I might add - tying Superman's born-with-it nature to hers is the cincher (and it makes for a more bittersweet ending when the whole rampage is still fresh in your mind.) She's the ultimate baddie (see the title for proof).

Bottom line: This is worth doing.

[Because Carradine deserves Oscar consideration (nerd alert!), I want to point out that his big scene - fighting off four dudes in a village - was relegated to Vol. 2's deleted scene vault. If the scene had been put in the picture, it would merely have leveled the playing field betwixt Bill and the DiVAS; It doesn't belong in the film, but it's still badass.]

Why is Hayden Christensen in this film?

What it lacks in artistry, it makes up for in narrative appeal and entertainment value (it's about pirates on the Cornish coast and the mad nobleman who undersigns them). It's not Hitch's most Hitchcock-y movie, but - for the post silent, pre-war era of the master -  it's definitely one of his most puurely fun. Charles Laughton's squire is memorably wacky.

I know it seems silly to log something like this (although, at over two and a half hours, it really seems like more than just DVD garnish), but I don't care.