More Movies Noted and Rated

I've been in San Francisco for the past two weeks, and here's what I've seen recently:

Lucas' Star Wars Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005) (3/10)
Welles' F for Fake (1974) (10/10)
Kazan's A Face in the Crowd (1957) (8/10)
Sturges' Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) (8/10)
Mamet's House of Games (1987) (7/10)
Fuller's White Dog (1982) (8/10)
Brownlow and Mollo's It Happened Here (1966) (8/10)
Kazan's East of Eden (1955) (7/10)
Joe Maggio's Milk and Honey (2003) (6/10)
Demy's Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) (9/10)
Rodriguez' Sin City (2005) (5/10)
Fassbinder's Der Amerikanische Soldat (1970) (6/10)
Martha Colburn's Evil of Dracula (1998) (5/10)
Kenneth Anger's Mouse Heaven (2004) (8/10)
Michael Snow's SSHTOORRTY (2005) (4/10)
Ernie Gehr's Precarious Garden (2004) (5/10)
Jonas Mekas' Williamsburg, Brooklyn (2003) (6/10)
Peter Kubelka's Poetry and Truth (2003) (6/10)
Chan-san Lim's The President's Barber (2004) (7/10)
Dong-seok No's My Generation (2004) (8/10)
Kubrick's Paths of Glory (1957) (9/10)
Elaine May's Mikey and Nickey (1976) (9/10)
Dwan's Silver Lode (1954) (7/10)
Mullick's Box Man (2002) (8/10)
Bill Plympton's 25 Ways to Quit Smoking (1989) (7/10)
David LaChapelle's Rize (2005) (6/10)
John Carpenter's The Fog (1980) (6/10)

The Only Biopic I Can Stand

I've only seen one (well, two, wait for the explanation*) biopics that I've liked. One of them is Peter Watkin's Edvard Munch. Check out Michael Atkinson's discussion of the movie:

http://www.villagevoice.com/film/0524,tracking8,64949,20.html

* The only other biopic I've really admired is Orson Welles' F for Fake, which is not really a biopic at all, but could be seen in that light if you really push the envelope on what "biopic" means.

Hey, here's some books I like - you mean, I'm not illiterate?

Yeah, I actually can read. In fact, I read far too much. The Chicago Public Library has sent a leg-breaker to my house and he's waiting out in front so he can knee-cap me and get some of their books back (hey, this is Chicago). But seriously, here's some of my recent favorites:

1. Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road
2. Seymour Epstein's Leah
3. Richard Yates' The Easter Parade
4. James Salter's The Hunters
5. David Goodis' Of Tender Sin
6. Edward Lewis Wallant's The Tenants of Moonbloom
7. Paula Fox's Desperate Characters
8. Charles Willeford's Pick-Up

Looking back at the novels I've liked the most, almost all of them come from the period 1945-1965, and most of them come from the Fifties and early 60s. Paula Fox's Desperate Characters is a bit of an anomaly, as it was published in 1970 - I think my reason for liking that book is that it utilizes mid-century techniques to explore the late 60s. Richard Yates' The Easter Parade is a later novel as well (published in 1976), of course, but essentially is a throw-back to Yates' sometimes obsessive focus on the Forties through the Sixties.

Check out our discussion of Heaven's Gate

I'm not a huge fan of Heaven's Gate - it's more I'm in awe of the truly prodigious amount of waste that went into the film. Peep my comments on the blog A Girl and a Gun by following this handy link:

http://agirlandagun.typepad.com/a_girl_and_a_gun/2005/05/a_solid_success.html#comments

By the way, A Girl and a Gun is a great blog, highly recommended, that you should read frequently.