Quotation of the week

"And after all the nice things I've said about that hag. When I get hold of her I'll tear out every hair of her mustache!"
—legendary theater actress/hellraiser/bisexual Tallulah Bankhead, reacting to Bette Davis's implication that the Margo Channing character in All About Eve was based on Bankhead; quoted in Celebrity Feuds by Boze Hadleigh

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100 years...100 lists?

So...revamped AFI Movie list. Thoughts? My immediate thoughts were: about time for The General, Sunrise, and Preston Sturges; and at least now I have less catching up to do if I want to see all 99. (I'm denying the very existence of Forrest Gump.)

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Freakonomics

The other night we watched 24 Hour Party People, a relatively entertaining film about the Manchester music scene of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. I thought the most interesting idea in it was the excuse that raves died out partly because they were a bad economic model. The club (in this case Hacienda) provided the building, sound system, DJs, lighting, and so on, but nobody bought any drinks because they were all high on ecstasy. So the only people making money were the drug dealers. Of course, this theory was from a guy who paid 35,000 pounds sterling for a conference table. An ugly conference table.

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Credit where credit is due

The other night I finally watched the 2006 version of Casino Royale and was impressed by the opening credits . . . stylized, colorful, violent, and just what you'd expect from one of the better Bond films. So I started thinking about my all-time-favorite credit sequences and came up with these:

* Fahrenheit 451, because the no-text portion of the credits fits so perfectly with the ideas in the movie

* Pulp Fiction, because of the enormous title treatment (something like Gone with the Wind) and the use of "Misirlou"

* Ocean's Eleven, the remake, not because of the style or the music but because of the acting credit "And Introducing Julia Roberts," which got a huge laugh in the theater where I saw it

* Black Narcissus, because the final credit explains that the whole jungly, crazy, mountainous, exotic, suffocatingly hot film was MADE IN ENGLAND, which just about blew my mind

And you? Surely you have some favorite credit sequences that I've forgotten or don't know about.

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Is it just me, or was Justin Timberlake good in Alpha Dog?

I watched Alpha Dog last night, and it had good and bad bits. The lead guy, "Johnny Truelove," reminded me too much of Entourage's "Turtle" so I had a tough time taking him seriously. In fact, there were at least three characters played by actors on current HBO and Showtime series, which was an odd coincidence. I guess Nick Cassavetes has been watching a lot of TV.

Anyway, I'm a big fan of Justin Timberlake (Greg, stop laughing!) but I didn't think he could act. Of course, his character is exceedingly annoying at first, but by the end I was buying every word, swagger, tattoo, ass slap... I completely believed him as a total bad boy. Of course, that ruins my fantasy about him romancing me backstage after a concert and whisking me away on his private jet to an isolated European beach house. But that's another blog. Or LiveJournal.

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Holiday from Rules?

Watching Lord of the Flies this week reminded me of the first film I can remember being shown as part of school. Here it is in all its spirit-crushing glory:

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And speaking of pre-show entertainment,

...here's John Waters:

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A memory as vage as Greg's

Seeing Greg's initial post on a theater intro of old, I'll share one that I half-remember as well.

For a few years in the early to mid-1990s, the Showcase Cinema in Revere had an intro involving some guy roughly my age walking through some studio street scene reminding us to not talk, etc. One of the reminders he gave was delivered via a neon sign. A pink neon sign. With a very, uh, male-inspired shape.

The Internets is also silent on this, though I don't know exactly what combination of words would uncover this bit of lost film. Perhaps it's best that I can't figure it out.

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A collaborative movie blog

now, to round up some collaborators.

Why Snack Canyon? "Adventures in Snack Canyon" was a snipe that was near-ubiquitous when I went to movies in my teens. This family of penguins get stuck in the desert when their jeep breaks down. They're rescued by a crow who saves them with...movie snacks.

Info about this bit of film is one of the Intarweb's rare black holes. No Youtube; all the remembrances are about as vague as what I just described. The title may change on someone's whim; we'll see.

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