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May 21 movie: Don. My DVD of Don arrived and Sean and Pam came over last night to watch it with us. They loved it, as I knew they would. Who could not love this movie?

Alas, the subtitles on the new DVD aren't as good as the one from Netflix. If the dialog ran longer than one screen's worth of subtitles, often they just wouldn't show the second screen. Leaving us to fill in the ends of the sentences ourselves. Fortunately we could pretty much always figure out what they were saying.

I've already blathered on about this movie, so how about some screen caps. Cheers, gentlemen!

May 19 movie: Broadway Melody of 1940. I love this movie! Watching Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell dance together is a joy. It's also got George Murphy, Ian Hunter and the wonderful Frank Morgan.

May 18 movie: Jack the Giant Killer. Basically this was a rip-off of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, except with really bad special effects. I mean excruciatingly bad. I guess they couldn't get Harryhausen.

May 18 movie: AV Geeks Television, a Welcome Guest in Your Home. Short, mostly educational, films about television. I have to say that I was a little disappointed with this edition of AV Geeks. From the premise I thought it would be the best ever, but a couple of the movies were kind of lame: a Fat Albert episode in which one of the kids watches too much TV, and an edumacational short explaining to kids that TV violence isn't real and real violence is really bad. Still, there were some good ones: a short hosted by Leonard Nimoy explaining TV terminology, and a short using stop-motion animation in which a reel of videotape attacks and eats a guy.

The best part of the evening was running into our old friend Walt, who has apparently become an AV Geeks aficionado. Walt won both trivia questions scoring the DVDs for "The Modern Housewife" and the Greatest Hits disc with all the catchy songs. I've seen both of those shows and they were both outstanding. The housewife one in particular.

May 18 movie: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Wow. Just, wow.

May 17 movie: Le Mystère Picasso. I've seen this once before and I was excited when it showed up on TCM. It was part of a series of Cannes winners. It's a documentary by Clouzot (who directed Diabolique and The Wages of Fear) that attempts to illuminate Picasso's creative process. There's almost no dialogue; you just watch Picasso paint for ninety minutes.

In the first part of the movie they use special sheer canvases and Picasso works with ink. The camera is set up on the back side of the canvas, making the paintings seem to appear on their own, line by line. About half-way through Picasso says that he'd rather work with oil paints and they switch to aiming the camera at the front of the canvas and using stop-motion as the paintings develop.

The oil paintings have much more depth, and this is the part of the movie I enjoyed the most. On both viewings I've been amazed by how much the paintings change from beginning to end. He might do a face over ten times, then remove the figure entirely, then put it back, only larger and more abstract. With the ink paintings, I often felt like there was a point at which the painting looked done to me, and then he he kept adding stuff and cluttering it up. That didn't happen so much with the oil paintings because he would add a bunch of stuff, then paint it all out and start over.

At the end they said that Clouzot and Picasso intended to destroy the paintings created during the movie, so that the movie would stand on its own as the primary work of art. Which would be a tragedy, except that according to Robert Osbourne it didn't happen. He said that several of the paintings have shown up at auction and are believed to be in private collections. It's too bad they aren't in museums! I would love to see these paintings in real life.

May 16 movie: Capote. I'm really glad I watched this while In Cold Blood was still fresh in my mind. It's "the story behind the story," showing how Truman Capote befriended the killers to get the story, developed genuine feelings for them, and ultimately betrayed them. At first he helps them by getting them a good lawyer, to win their trust and because, I think, he honestly likes them. (In fact he has a major crush on one, the one played by Robert Blake in In Cold Blood. Which explains why Blake's character was so much more sympathetic.) But eventually he realizes that their execution is the only good ending for the story, and so he withholds his friendship and his legal help, and waits for them to die so he can finish his book.

If Capote had been a hack like that guy who wrote the "Acid is groovy, kill the pigs" book, he might have been able to shrug off his duplicity. But he was a brilliant writer, not a hack, and it destroyed him. The main focus of the story is Capote unraveling under the pressure. It's really quite tragic. There's one scene in particular where Smith (the killer Capote is crushing on) finds out the title of the book and realizes that Capote's work is not going to help exonerate him. Capote's lies to placate him and keep the information coming are heartbreaking .

I wonder how close to fact it was. Philip Seymour Hoffman's Oscar was well-deserved. He captures Capote's voice and mannerisms so perfectly, and somehow rises above caricature. Catherine Keener was also excellent as Harper Lee, a grounding force in the movie.

May 15 movie: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I've heard that a lot of fans of the series hate this movie. I don't, and I don't really understand their hatred. Sure, the movie doesn't have the depth of the series. So what? It's silly, campy good fun. Even if nothing else, it would be worth it for Paul Reubens' death scene. At many points I sort of felt like I could see the missing moments, where Joss would have taken it further if he had been in control of the movie.

May 12 movie: Drunken Master. I'm going to cheat and link to Georg's write up because he said everything I would like to say. It's an early Jackie Chan movie, amazing fight scenes, no wire work because they hadn't developed the whole wire fu thing yet, and Jackie's character is a total dick. Still somehow basically likeable, I think because I'm so used to Jackie playing likeable good guys that I superimposed that persona on this character.

In both this movie and the sequel Drunken Master 2, Jackie has to get literally drunk to do the "drunken fighting" style. I don't think that's what drunken fighting really meant; I think it was a fluid, off-kilter style of movement that seemed discoordinated or unpredictable, and that's why people called it "drunken" fighting. Georg said that these movies were a radical departure in depictions of Wong Fei Hung, who had previously always been portrayed as a very serious, heroic figure. It's sort of like if Hollywood made a movie in which young Abraham Lincoln was a drunken lout.

May 10 movie: Umrao Jaan. Sylvia and I got together for another Bollywood night. No Amitabh this time; instead the movie starred luminous Bollywood superstar Rekha. We had seen her before in Muqaddar ka Sikandar, playing the courtesan who loved Amitabh in vain. Rekha was so beautiful that at times, in close up she almost didn't look human. I found a couple of photos from that time, but neither one really does her justice. She's still incredibly beautiful today, though now she plays matriarchs instead of courtesans.

Apparently "courtesan with a heart of gold" was her specialty, and that's what she played in Umrao Jaan. It's a tragic melodrama based on the true story of a girl who is kidnapped, sold into slavery, trained to be a courtesan, and becomes a famous poet, singer and dancer. Kind of a downer, good movie though. It's all about Rekha's character, and her acting was strong enough to sustain it. It was a change of pace from the hip Amitabh movies we've been watching. Set in the 1840s, with traditional costumes and music.

And also, my god, I could look at that woman all day. She could read the phone book and I'd watch it.

I often use Amazon customer reviews to help me make purchasing decisions, and they have never yet led me wrong. Unfortunately Netflix customer reviews seem to be written by idiots. I've never read one that told me something interesting or useful that I didn't already know about the movie. And I just now read a review criticizing The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari for being silent! The reviewer accused them of forgoing sound for budget reasons and said it detracted from the movie! I give up.

(by the way, I decided that if I wanted to watch a crazy scary German expressionist horror movie, I should go to the source. Too bad it won't arrive until next week. This is the only downside to Netflix, I find: if you have an urge to watch a movie right now, you can't indulge that urge the way you can with a video store. You have to put it in your queue, send another movie back and wait for it to arrive. That could take days! Dr. Caligari won't wait!)

May 8 movie: The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. This wasn't quite what I was expecting. I thought it was going to be a crazy scary German expressionist horror movie. Actually it was sort of a creepy German expressionist gangster movie. That's not a criticism; the movie was was really really good. It seems like it must have been about fascism at least to some degree. At first glance the criminals seem like ordinary gangsters, but really they're terrorists led by an absolute dictator trying to destabilize the entire population through fear and establish an "empire of crime." Hmm, sound familiar? I read that it was Fritz Lang's last movie before he fled Nazi Germany, so these issues had to have been on his mind. The movie is complex and I'd like to see it again and think more on this theme.

I love that incredible art style prevalent in Germany in the 20s and early 30s. It pervades this movie, most overtly in the credits and in the titular testament (i.e. notes) of Dr. Mabuse. And also there's one evocative scene with a man in an insane asylum who imagines himself sitting at a desk where everything is made of glass -- glass telephone, glass desk lamp, etc.

There were a few scenes that were exactly what I was expecting. Every time Dr. Mabuse shows up the movie heads into horror territory. That scene where he whispers his philosophy to Dr. Baum, brrr! I think that might give me nightmares. I tried to catch screen shots of a couple of these scenes, but the sheer weirdness didn't translate to a still. The sound and the movement is essential I guess.

Georg said that when he watched this movie, he got to the end and was like, "what the hell?" I got to the end and was like, "okay! this is the movie I thought I was going to be watching!"

So, can anyone recommend a crazy scary German expressionist horror movie? I'm kind of in the mood for one.

May 7 movie: Mr. and Mrs. Smith. This was okay. It was fun, the stars have good on-screen chemistry (not always true for real-life lovers), and there's one extremely funny line: "I knew I saw your dad on Fantasy Island!" That was enough for me. Although, if I watch Mr. and Mrs. Smith again, it will be the one starring Robert Montgomery and Carole Lombarde.

May 6 movie: In Cold Blood. Another one of those "can't believe I hadn't seen it yet" movies. I don't think I need to describe the plot or worry about spoilers, as anyone who's interested has probably either seen this movie or Capote or read the book, or all three. So I can just say that it's excellent. Well worth seeing. The best parts I think are the music (Quincy Jones), the performances of Robert Blake and Scott Wilson as the killers, and especially the cinematography (Conrad Hall). I found the flat, documentary style extremely effective. The story hung together so well that at the time, I wondered how factual it was. According to reviews I read, it was very much so -- even down to filming in the actual house where the family was killed, and the actual gallows where the killers were executed. That's kind of creepy when you think about it.

I get the impression that an anti-death penalty statement intended in the movie. And I must say, if that was its aim, it failed. I'm strongly against the death penalty, and while watching this movie I was almost for it. If anyone in the world deserved to be executed, it was those guys. Their crime was so thuggish, cruel, and stupid. The movie made me feel sympathy for the killers, but it didn't make me feel much regret that they were put to death. Having Blake's character be the more likeable and more sympathetic of the two, and also be the actual killer, made the movie that much creepier. I wonder if that part was true.

My only quarrel with the movie was the reporter who shows up at the end and pontificates about the death penalty. Every time the character spoke, he pulled me out of the moment. I suppose he was intended as a stand-in for Capote, though of course he looked and sounded nothing like Capote. I think the movie would have been better off without him.

Speaking of Capote, I put Capote in my Netflix queue as soon as I was done watching this movie. It should be here tomorrow, yay!

May 5 movie: Not As a Stranger. Melodrama starring Robert Mitchum and Frank Sinatra as medical students, and Olivia de Havilland as the nurse Mitchum marries to pay for his education. Also features Charles Bickford as Mitchum's mentor, Gloria Grahame as the chick with whom he gets some on the side, Lee Marvin as another student and Harry Morgan as a pal.

Mitchum is badly miscast. It's hard to imagine how anyone could have seen him as a driven, ambitious young doctor. Sinatra is fun and convincing, however, as a wise-acre who's mainly in it for the money. And De Havilland is predictably excellent.

May 5 movie: The Sailor Takes a Wife. A sweet little movie from late in the war. A sailor (Robert Walker) and a canteen girl (June Allyson) get married the night they meet, right before he ships out. Allyson seems to see the marriage as a patriotic gesture and an excuse to move into her own apartment. Ruh-roh, Walker is 4F! Now they have to actually live together, as, like, man and wife! Hilarity ensues.

This movie wasn't great, but it was worth the time. Allyson's sexless girl-child schtick is the object of comedy here, instead of being portrayed as some kind of model of pure womanhood. Which made it much easier to take. Walker even tells her she looks like "a cute little bunny" on their wedding night. Ha! Also, I've never seen a wartime movie before where the male lead was 4F.

May 4 movie: Mansfield Park. Finishing up the Mansfield Park miniseries, disc 2 covers Henry Crawfor's attempt to win Fanny, Fanny's trip to Portsmouth, and the scandal that brings everything about at the end.

Funny thing about this miniseries. I've never before understood the people who think that Fanny made the wrong choice. Apparently there are a lot of them among Austen fans, who think that Fanny should have chosen Henry Crawford, the ostensible villain of the piece, instead of Edmund. Watching this, I finally get it. I was rooting for Henry too! What's that about? Somehow they made Henry seem sincere in his affection for Fanny, and in his desire to become a better person for her.

By the end of course, it's clear that Henry was play-acting at reform, and that if he were truly sincere he wouldn't have gotten entangled with Mrs. Rushworth. But then again, maybe he was sincere, just weak. Maybe if Fanny had accepted him he would have continued to improve himself, and wouldn't have thrown himself into the path of temptation.

I finally get Henry Crawford! This miniseries is great.

May 3 movie: Serenity. Lisa, Shayne and I talked about going to the "Can't Stop the Serenity" benefit. But we couldn't figure out how to buy tickets, and it became kind of annoying, so we decided to just rent the movie and watch it together.

It was fun to get together! It reminded me of the Buffy nights we used to have. Back when Buffy was a great show and we enjoyed watching it together. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed Serenity. Too much speechifying though. Joss sure was fond of the speeches. At the end of the movie Mal gives a particularly egregious speech to River about how love is the first rule of flying. Lisa and I were like, "I thought for sure the first rule of flying was 'don't crash'! Or 'check your equipment,' or 'have enough fuel'!"

That's just a quibble, and I really do love this movie. Gina Torres has to be one of the most beautiful people on the planet. No wonder Joss cast her as a goddess on Angel.

May 3 movie: Rain. My god this movie was sordid. Well acted, and I'm glad I saw it, but sheesh! I felt like I needed a shower by the end.

Joan Crawford plays a prostitute who goes to Pago Pago (in Samoa) to try and start a new life. Unfortunately she falls in with an evil missionary (Walter Huston) who punishes Crawford for triggering his own moral bankruptcy. In other words, he wants to have sex with her, and he hates her for it. [major spoilers] Huston bullies and brainwashes Crawford into believing she's a dirty bad icky girl, and that she has to go back to the US and do time for a crime she didn't commit, as repentance for her sins. Huston makes Crawford totally dependant on him, then gives into his own lust and seduces her. Crawford is crushed by this and starts acting like a hooker again. Then she finds out that Huston killed himself after screwing her (off camera so I'm not entirely sure that's what really happened, I maybe was supposed to read between the lines that she killed him? I would rather it ended that way) and then she snaps out of it and runs off with another guy who wants to marry her.

Cree-pee. It's based on a play called Miss Sadie Thompson and I think Rita Hayworth did a version of it too.

May 2 movie: Beat the Devil. I heard this movie was a hysterically funny send-up of caper movies. Unfortunately I had it on while buried deep in the Massive Archiving Project and I didn't give it nearly the attention it deserved, and don't have much of a clear memory of it. I do remember Georg and I laughing at a number of things so it must have been as funny as advertised. It starred Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Peter Lorre, Gina Lollabrigida and Robert Morley, and was written by Truman Capote. Rent it for that reason, despite my being too lame to write a decent review.

April 30 movie: Mansfield Park. In the early 80s the BBC apparently did miniseries versions of Jane Austen's entire body of work. This one is from 1983 and it's pretty good. Well, it's excellent compared to the "loosely inspired" 1999 version directed by Patricia Rozema. Simply because Rozema's version was not Mansfield Park, and this one is.

Mansfield Park is one of my less favorite Austen novels, though it has grown on me over the years. I think it helps to try and understand Fanny Price in the context of her time. She translates to the modern era the least well of any Austen heroine I think. The book tends towards that sadistic piling-on I mentioned in the write-up of The Little Princess, where the heroine proves her worthiness by suffering over and over and fer-crying-out-loud-over again.

They handle this pretty well in the miniseries. Fanny is kind of nervous and jumpy, which doesn't really reflect how she was described in the book, but I think this is a good change. It helps explain why she puts up with it all, helps make her seem more sympathetic, less of a dishrag. Also helps bring her forward, since in the book she's completely passive, & her emotions are almost totally internal & therefore difficult to convey on film. I think also the actress playing Fanny is very good. There's one scene where Edmund, her close friend and secret crush/love, confides that he doesn't think Mary Crawford will marry him. With the tiniest, barely noticeable smile Fanny conveys relief and hope. Then her smile fades to (sincere) concern for her friend when Edmund turns his eyes to her. It's a beautiful little scene done in extreme close-up.

I'm not sure I would recommend this to someone who hadn't read Mansfield Park. It's pretty long, 312 minutes total, and I don't know that it has the broad appeal of the Jennifer Ehle Pride and Prejudice or the Emma Thompson Sense and Sensibility. I do highly recommend it for anyone who has read the book or has an interest in Austen. Especially for anyone who was disappointed in the Rozema movie. Which may be a perfect fine regency romance in its own right, but as an adaptation of Mansfield Park it sucked.

April 28 movie: The Adventures of Robin Hood. I'm on the fence as to which is the better Errol Flynn movie: this or Captain Blood. I think this one maybe is a tiny bit better. They're both great though.

A few months ago Mythbusters did a movie myths episode where they tried to split an arrow all the way down the middle with another arrow, like Flynn does in this movie. They weren't able to do it. They could hit one arrow with another, and even partially split it. Then the piercing arrow would always follow the grain of the other arrow and pop out the side after a few inches. During the episode they showed some footage of the archer who had been Flynn's archery stunt man. That was cool.