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March 31 movie: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Why, when we have so many good movies on the DVR and from Netflix just waiting to be viewed, did we sit through this? I loved Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic. Which should have been reason enough to avoid this crap fest. But no, I had to see for myself if it was any good. Well, it wasn't! Now you know.

Georg said he thought it might work better if you didn't know the comic existed. I don't know about that. I can't imagine the movie would have been interesting to people who aren't already at least somewhat familiar with the characters. But people who have the teeny tiniest bit of knowledge of 19th century literature would have to be put off by the ultra-lame exposition from Mina Harker, Dorian Grey and Allan Quartermain, each in turn explaining who they are. Couldn't they have worked the backstories into the movie somehow? Did we have to see Dorian Grey stop the action and give a speech that began with "There's this painting, see..." Does any movie viewer like that kind of condescension? I sure don't.

I could have forgiven the near total departure from the comic, if it had provided an entertaining story in its own right. But instead we got a jumbled mess. All I can say is, now I understand why Moore calls making movies of his work "butchering [his] children."

March 30 movie: Rollerball. I like dystopian sf stories as well as anyone, and probably more than most (heck, I liked Omega Man), and I had heard of Rollerball as an excellent example of the genre. But actually it was a boring, plodding, "tell don't show" sports movie. On roller skates. It made Soylent Green look like classic entertainment. I'm not crazy about sports movies under the best of circumstances, but this was atrocious.

The only bright spots were 1. trying to determine what or who James Caan's mumbling Texas accent reminded me of (never did figure it out), 2. laughing at the "best friend" character, whose cheesy moustache made him look like the old Brawny man, 3. imagining John Houseman saying "They make money the old fashioned way: they earn it" every time he opened his mouth.

Interesting trivia note: According to Robert Osbourne (and by the way, what the hell was this movie doing on TCM? The C stands for "Classic," not "Crappy") the cautionary message about violence in sports was so completely lost on movie audiences that a group of investors actually approached director Norman Jewison about setting up a real Rollerball league. Yikes.

March 28 movie: Peking Opera Blues. Georg, Lisa and I saw this on Duke campus Sunday night. Georg and I had rented it years ago, but the subtitles were totally illegible -- the screen had been cropped, so we could see the subtitles in Mandarin, but only the very tops of the letters in English. It says something about the movie's (dare I say it?) operatic quality that I enjoyed it even though I had no idea what the heck was going on. Ever since then I've wanted to see it again with legible subtitles. This time the subtitles were very poorly written, sometimes nonsensical, but at least we could read them.

The movie was great! Completely lived up to my expectations. The only scenes I really remembered from the first time were the very end, and the hilarious scene early on where two women end up on stage at the opera house in the same costume, and the co-star is trying to find out why there are two Wu's tonight, but they all stay in character, singing and performing acrobatics while arguing it out. My favorite line from the scene is when one of the women forces the other one into a split and she sings "Ouch! That's difficult!" while the supporting cast lift her up, still in the split, and carry her off stage.

There was a lot of drag -- not only the opera company, who of course are all male actors, but also Brigitte Lin's character dresses like an Edwardian dandy, and may I say she looks damn sexy in men's clothes -- and I wondered if that was at all shocking when the movie was made.

We ran into Marty from the station and his fiance Robin before the show, and afterwards Marty commented that he had enjoyed the fantasy fighting style. Which amused me because I had been thinking that the fighting was more realistic than I had expected! There was less wire work than you often get in later HK action movies -- for example The Bride with White Hair, also featuring Brigitte Lin (alas, no men's clothes), is full of flying.

March 28 movie: Unzipped. I know, I know, I already saw this recently. What can I say, I'm lame! I was flipping channels and it was just starting, and I was only going to watch for a minute or two but then Eartha Kitt came on and purred "Are you going to make me gowns?" and then Isaac, imitating her, also purred "Are you going to make me gowns?" and I was hooked. Had to watch the whole thing.

I don't think I mentioned this before but the music in this movie is wonderful too. Really captures Isaac's sense of camp and joy and fun. I ended up playing "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" by Jimmy Somerville of Bronski Beat on my show the next day. Which, unfortunately, was not the same artist as from the movie (the credits were really hard to read, I couldn't tell) but was the right song, so I guess that was close enough.

Sylvia called during the song and asked me if RPM was the new disco. I said "No way, it's the old disco!" She came by the station at the end of my show and we ended up hanging out most of the evening. She showed me some cool scores she'd made recently in vintage patterns and fabric and records.

March 26 movie: Captain Blood. It's turning into Swashbuckler Weekend for us! This pirate movie was Errol Flynn's breakout hit and has a lot in common with probably his greatest film, The Adventures of Robin Hood: he leads a band of British patriots who are forced into lawlessness by an unworthy king, Olivia de Havilland plays his love interest, and Basil Rathbone plays his swordfighting nemesis. (The only thing missing is Alan Hale as one of the merry men, er, I mean the pirates.)

Basil Rathbone looked so young! He and Flynn both did, but it's most striking on Rathbone who plays Captain Levasseur, a rival pirate captain. After seeing him as the stiff, somewhat prissy nobleman villain in so many movies, it was nice for him to get the chance to loosen up a bit and play a raunchy pirate. He gets to leer a lot and talk with an exaggerated "Pepe le Pew" French accent and then get killed by Flynn when he tries to take advantage of Olivia de Havilland. Flynn, of course, being an upstanding pirate who won't stand for mistreatment of female prisoners.

We had a great time tossing off lines from Pirates of the Caribbean, for example when Flynn accuses Rathbone of violating the articles of their pirate agreement, Georg said "The pirate's code is really more of a guideline."

March 25 movie: The Mark of Zorro. I'm not that up on the whole Zorro mythos, so I don't know how well this movie fits in. Come to think of it, I don't even know where Zorro comes from. Is it a folk legend, like the Mexican Robin Hood? Or just an adventure story that has been used for movies lots of times?

In any case this wonderful swashbuckler stars Tyrone Power as Zorro and Basil Rathbone as his nemesis. Power's Zorro trained as a swordsman in Spain, earning the title "The California Cockerel," which, as double entendres go, is almost as good as "The Gay Blade." Back in California, Zorro decides that the best way to throw off suspicion is to convince everyone that he's a useless "Scarlet Pimpernel" style dandy. So he spends the entire movie doing magic tricks, fanning himself with a lace hankie, and mincing around in extremely tight pants.

Also stars Eugene Pallette, reprising his Friar Tuck role from The Adventures of Robin Hood as Fray Felipe, a warrior monk who wades through fight scenes clubbing people on the head and muttering "God forgive me!" after every clonk. The only thing that would have made it better is Alan Hale among the merry men, er, I mean the caballeros.

March 23 movie: The Women. I love this movie! Norma Shearer and Joan Crawford star in an all-female film about gossiping society women who get a lot of divorces. So much fun and such great clothes! I heard Isaac Mizrahi did the costumes when they revived it on Broadway recently. The ensemble also includes Rosalind Russell, Joan Fontaine, Paulette Goddard, and Mary Boland. The "all female cast" thing is handled pretty well; the first time I saw the movie I didn't even notice the absence of Y chromosomes until halfway through. There are only a couple of scenes where the lack of male cast is a little awkward. Mostly they handle it by having the scenes in places that only women would go to, like a beauty parlor or a fashion show.

The only disappointment of the movie is Virginia Weidler as Shearer's daughter. She was terrific as the little sister in The Philadelphia Story ("it was pret-ty roo-ty too-ty!") but cloying and whiny here. I wonder what happened to her? I looked her up in imdb.com and her last movie was in 1943. I guess she never made the transition from child actor to grownup roles.

Mar. 22 movie: Reign of Fire. Oh. My. God. That was the suckiest suck that ever sucked. Christian Bale, looking scarily pumped up, leads a ragtag post-apocalyptic community living in Northumberland and hiding from dragons, who now rule the world for some bizarre reason. Then Matthew McConaughey shows up, he's some kind of military guy, but really he's a steroid-inflated dickhead. He announces "I lead. You follow," then gets all of his own men and almost every adult in Bale's community killed. But since he's stronger, faster and better than everyone else, it's OK for him to be a jingoistic hotheaded bully with no respect for anyone but his own crew, whose decisions make their problems ten times worse. It was like American foreign policy with dragons. And we wonder why the rest of the world hates us!

As Georg said, we hope that Reign of Fire is the worst movie we see all year. McConaughey's is the only character in the entire movie with a personality, and his personality is revolting. Also, Dr. Bashir from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was in it, but he only has one or two lines and then he dies.

March 18 movie: Lost in Translation. I feel silly writing a review of a movie that everyone in the world besides me had already seen. So I'll just say that I enjoyed it as much as I expected to, which was a lot. The DVD did not have as many fun extras as I might have hoped, although they did have the whole scene of Bill Murray's character on the Japanese variety show.

I realize it's completely missing the point to try and figure out what Murray whispered to Johansson at the end, but I felt like I could hear it well enough to more or less puzzle out what he had said. Went online and discovered many people who insisted they heard him perfectly clearly (either by turning up the volume or reading lips or whatever). Each of them heard something totally different (none of which matched what I thought I heard). I'm pretty sure that means I did not hear him at all. Which makes me feel much better about the ending.

Mar. 13 movie: Throne of Blood. I guess to make up for the last few movies being so light and fun, today I watched this, Kurosawa's version of Macbeth. Whoo-ee, a laugh riot! Toshiro Mifune is always great, and the movie also costarred Takashi Shimura (featured in almost every Kurosawa movie for 20 years, including the leader of the samurai in The Seven Samurai). Good stuff.

Last night and this morning I also re-watched The Italian Job and Keep the River on Your Right with Georg, as he hadn't seen them. I had already decided to include re-viewings in the movie list, even if a movie ends up on the list twice. I wasn't expecting to watch the same movie twice in a week, but on the list it goes. I don't have anything new to say about either movie, except that they're both excellent and everyone should see both of them.

Mar. 7 movie: Unzipped. Considering how much I enjoy fashion, I had to love this documentary about Isaac Mizrahi. The movie begins the day after his spring 1994 show, anxiously reading the (negative) reviews, and follows him through the creation of the fall 1994 collection. The movie follows the highs (a press conference with Eartha Kitt) and lows (being scooped by Gaultier, who bizarrely has the exact same idea to inspire his collection, but showed his first), and ends as it began, with Mizrahi reading the reviews the day after the show.

I didn't learn a whole lot about the fashion industry, but I did feel like I learned a lot about Mizrahi. I read that the director was Mizrahi's lover at the time, which explains the access (they filmed Mizrahi in the tub, and in bed watching movies) that you wouldn't normally expect in a film like this.

My favorite quote from Mizrahi: "Everything is frustrating except designing clothes. That's beautiful and liberating." Seeing this movie again reminded me how wonderful his ready to wear designs were. His clothes were so fun, and still so pretty. Not freakish or hideous which often passes for "fun" in the fashion press (John Galliano and Betsey Johnson, I'm looking at you.) I've been wondering if the goal of his Target label is to raise money towards reviving his ready to wear line. I hope so.

Mar. 6 movie: Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Oh, lordie! Speaking of trashy good fun, this was the trashiest trash that ever trashed. My goal for the evening was to shut my brain off, settle back and enjoy a couple hours of mindless entertainment. I don't think any other movie could have done better.

Between the crazed, depraved story ("over the top" doesn't begin to describe it) and the wide-eyed, utterly sincere performances, I found myself wondering at times whether the movie was a parody or not. Apparently that was intentional: according to screenwriter Roger Ebert (!), director Russ Meyer thought the satire would work better if the actors weren't winking at the camera. So he spent so much time talking to them about their motivations that even they got confused about whether the movie was serious or parody.

I can't even describe the freaky fun of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. If you have any appreciation for camp, you have to see it.

Mar. 6 movie: Escape from New York. I think this is one of the all-time great B-movies. I'm not a big Kurt Russell fan, but with Donald Pleasance, Harry Dean Stanton, Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Adrienne Barbeau and Isaac Hayes, how can you go wrong? Trashy good fun of the highest order.

I've seen this before of course, but I don't think I had ever been in the actual New York at that point. Not that the sets were triumphs of realism, but still it was interesting to see them with a frame of reference. Rather than the first time, when the "post apocalyptic New York" visuals were meaningless to me.

(I gather that accuracy in movie location shots, or sets based on actual places, is pretty rare. When we watched Night on Earth Georg expressed surprise when the characters looked out the cab window and saw the view from the George Washington Bridge, and then the camera pulled back to show the taxi actually was on the George Washington Bridge. Apparently most directors just go for the best looking shot without concern for such niceties.)

Mar. 5 movie: The Italian Job. "You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!" Michael Caine, Noel Coward, and three Mini Coopers star in a fabulous 1969 crime caper. I don't know what else to say about the movie, except that you haven't seen stunt driving until you've seen this.

The DVD comes with a "Making Of" documentary with some interesting tidbits. For instance: Recognizing a product placement opportunity when they saw one, Fiat offered the filmmakers a sweet deal (all the cars they could destroy, $50,000 cash, and a free Ferrari) if they would use Fiat 500s instead of Mini Coopers. I think they made the right call not taking the offer, because (as the producer put it) the whole point of the movie was "our lads vs. their lads." Also, they managed to get permission to film those chase scenes by basically lying to the people of Turin. They said they were going to bring several "machines" into the church, palaces and arcades, without specifying that the machines would be moving cars. And finally, that "what the ???" ending came about because the writer had provided four endings, none of which they liked. They came up with the literal cliffhanger in hopes of spawning a sequel. No word on why the sequel never happened.

Mar. 4 movie: The Talented Mr. Ripley. Just saw Purple Noon a few days ago, but even though they're based on the same book and have the same basic plot, the details and how it all plays out were different enough to really engage me and yes, keep up the suspense even though I knew the ending.

Due to my loathing for The English Patient I previously regarded Anthony Minghella as a director to be avoided at all costs. But now, having seen two good movies by him in the past month (this and Cold Mountain) I guess I have to cut him a break. There was something a little English Patient-y in the grand sweeping visuals all over the place, but they didn't overwhelm the story. What I really hated about The English Patient was the bloated "I'm an EPIC! I'm GRAND! And so IMPORTANT!" tone that crushed the life out of the movie. There was a touch of that in Cold Mountain but I didn't notice it here.

[major spoilers] Tom Ripley is a fairly different character in this movie. In Purple Noon he's pretty much a cold psychopath from the get go, calmly telling Phillipe his plan to kill him and assume his identity just before doing so. He's even seen eating his roast chicken with Freddie's body still in the apartment (and I'm embarrassed to admit, my first reaction on seeing that scene was "Ew! That chicken fell on the floor when he killed Freddie!") In The Talented Mr. Ripley, he's more tragic: an ordinary guy, albeit a "have-not" with an extraordinary level of envy towards the "haves," who more or less stumbles into the crimes. I don't recall any indication that he seriously intended to steal Dickie's (same character as Phillipe in Purple Noon) identity before the fight between them set it all into motion, and he's clearly tortured by what he's done. [end spoilers]

I haven't read Highsmith's novel so I don't know which interpretation is more true to the source, but I must say I appreciated the Purple Noon version more. Minghella places the sympathy squarely with Ripley; there's really no question of who you're supposed to root for. I had much more complicated feelings while watching Purple Noon. Because he's so cold and amoral and self-assured, I wanted him to get caught -- and also wanted him to get away with it. Ironically, Jude Law (who played Dickie) would have been really good at the Clement version of Tom Ripley. He has that coldness in his eyes.

Last comment: Phillip Seymour Hoffman is brilliant as Freddie. I can't think of a single movie I've seen with Phillip Seymour Hoffman in which he was not brilliant. It's tragic that Matt Damon, around whom Hoffman can act circles with one hand tied behind his back, is a superstar while Hoffman is a character actor. I hate to think that it's just because of the way they look, but that's probably it. I actually find Hoffman better looking, because Damon's looks remind me of the asshole frat boys who populated Duke. Hoffman looks like a handsome normal guy.

Mar. 3 movie: You Can't Take It With You. For me Frank Capra is the Steven Speilberg of his time. By which I mean Capra has flashes of brilliance (It Happened One Night) but most of his work is saturated with treacly sentiment that I find off-putting, and mostly I don't get why people think him such a great director. You Can't Take It With You is a perfect example. Jimmy Stewart, son of a stuffy banker, falls for the daughter of an eccentric extended family led by patriarch Lionel Barrymore. Wacky hijinks ensue. In other hands it could have been as funny as My Man Godfrey or Bringing Up Baby, but Capra, lacking the edge of Sturges or Hawks, ends up suffusing the family with a sentimental glow every moment they're on camera. Bleh.

That said, either Jimmy Stewart or Lionel Barrymore make almost any movie worth the time, and there were some fun moments. I'm not sorry I saw it, though I probably wouldn't see it again. Sad trivia note: Barrymore's character has a cast on his leg to explain the use of two canes when he walked, which his failing health required.

Mar. 1 movie: Purple Noon. I expected to enjoy this, and I did. It's Rene Clement's (Diabolique and The Wages of Fear) take on The Talented Mr. Ripley. Ripley is does some very-not-nice things, but for me probably the most chilling scene was one near the beginning where he puts on Phillipe's clothes, looks in the mirror and talks like Phillipe while kissing his reflection. Brrr! [spoiler alert!] My only quarrel was with the ending, which is from what I understand radically different from Patricia Highsmith's novel and the recent Hollywood movie. Maybe Clement couldn't deal with letting Ripley get away with it. I did like the fact that he let the story play all the way out & then snatched victory away from Ripley in the very final moments. The last shot is Ripley's triumphant face, just before he finds out that he's lost. So you never see him defeated. That made it easier for me to treat this movie like Suspicion and pretend it has the ending that it should. [end spoiler] I added The Talented Mr. Ripley to my Netflix queue & am looking forward to comparing the two movies.