I’m “actually” doing this … my way

I can’t stand internet memes. I think they’re dumb. I hate reading entries that are nothing but list after list with no explanation or story attached. I became particularly annoyed with them during Holidailies because so many participants relied on that kind of entry on slow days.
Having said that, Pooks tagged me for a meme for screenwriters, and I fear that if I refuse, she might stop blogging entirely. And I’m quite enjoying her site. Also, it’s related to movies and movie writing in some way, so it does fit in with the general theme of this site.
Therefore, I will attempt this here meme thing, but I’m doing it my way, with my rules. I will not resort to single-word lists. Also, do not think that the rest of you can tag me with your little memes. I do not intend to do these things more than once every six months, so this is it until July.

Continue reading I’m “actually” doing this … my way

now I get it

When Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was released earlier this year, a lot of people were unhappy before they even saw the film. My baby brother was one of these people. He said it could not possibly be the same without Gene Wilder. He thought it was wrong to see someone portraying a role that Wilder had characterized so perfectly. I disagreed because I never liked Wilder in that role; his performance always made me feel weirdly embarrassed. And I like the re-adaptation better than the earlier film. So I didn’t quite understand.
That is, until two nights ago, when I watched a clip from the new version of The Producers, in which Matthew Broderick (as Leo Bloom) launched into blue blanket-related hysterics in the scene where he meets Nathan Lane (as Max Bialystock) for the first time.
It’s just wrong. He’s nowhere near as believable as Gene Wilder. Gene Wilder had wonderful hysterics, and he was believable as a mousy accountant even though Wilder (like Broderick) is instantly recognizable. I think that the three good Mel Brooks movies (The Producers, Blazing Saddles, and Young Frankenstein) were also Wilder’s finest hours, and I love The Producers best of all.
Who are these people imitating Wilder and Zero Mostel, and doing it wrong? Wrong!
I may or may not see the movie. Part of me wants to see what they did with it, and part of me knows I’m not going to like it. I grew up watching The Producers, and the 1968 film has great sentimental meaning to me, and I get the impression that this movie just isn’t going to match it, not in any way. I want to see the dancing number with the little old ladies and their walkers, but can it possibly top Estelle Winwood? The only real improvement I can see so far appears to be Uma Thurman’s legs.
So I feel like I should go apologize to my little brother for not taking him seriously. When someone remakes the favorite movie of your childhood, and recasts the actors who seem irreplaceable, you can’t get past that no matter how good the movie might be. In the case of The Producers, I hear the remake is not that good. Maybe I’ll just watch the 1968 film again.

Hildy checks out the Coyote sale

I found a ad for a film-production garage sale last week on the Austin Film Society site. Austin being the filmarific town it is, these sales seem to happen regularly on the Austin Studios stages. A film wraps production and Austin Studios holds a garage sale to get rid of all the props. A few weeks ago, it was for The Wendell Baker Story, which Luke Wilson has written and co-directed. The ad I saw last week was for a movie I didn’t recognize, Coyote. The ad said nothing about the movie at all other than the title, which was unusual, so I figured it was an ultra-low-budget film.
I wanted to post info about the garage sale in my weekly News from Slackerwood column for Cinematical, so I looked up Coyote on IMDb. No info found at all. Even for ultra-low-budget films, that was unusual. But on a whim, I ran a search on the Cinematical site itself … the name was ringing a distant bell in the back of my head and I wasn’t sure why.
Sure enough, there was the info, plain as day on Cinematical: “Coyote” was rumored to be an alias for Richard Linklater’s adaptation of Fast Food Nation. Linklater wanted to shoot in locations where the reputation of the book Fast Food Nation might present problems (like restaurants, perhaps) so he created an alternate title, a coverup title that no one would find suspicious.

Continue reading Hildy checks out the Coyote sale

I’ve always wanted to see Paris …

I’ve never been to Paris, or anywhere in France for that matter. I’d love to tour the country. And now I have one more good reason to go.
A Foreign Affair, one of my favorite Billy Wilder movies, has never been released on DVD anywhere until now. Universal finally decided to release a dozen Marlene Dietrich films on DVD, many for the first time: Blonde Venus (the one where she dances in a gorilla suit), The Devil is a Woman, and Morocco. Their new transfer of The Scarlett Empress is said to be better than the Criterion DVD (Universal probably had access to a better master print).
I love watching Marlene Dietrich, so you can imagine how excited I am. Except … the DVDs weren’t released in the United States. They were only released in France.

Continue reading I’ve always wanted to see Paris …

risking a numb butt at Alamo

“The lining up will take place at 10 am stretching towards the parking lot – south of the Drafthouse. There’s no need to arrive earlier than that. You’ll need your sleep and your rest. … Each person in the line will be given a raffle ticket. They will then be drawn beginning (estimation) around 11:30-11:40 am – giving you plenty of time to purchase your ticket, go through security and get your goodies and seat. You folks may want to bring an ass cushion as the folks drawn later in the process will most likely end up in folding chairs. Which can get a bit brutal on da buttocks.”
—Ain’t It Cool News article on standby procedures for the seventh annual Butt-Numb-A-Thon, Dec. 10-11, 2005
The Butt-Numb-A-Thon (aka BNAT) is an annual Austin 24-hour film festival run by Harry Knowles. I remember hearing about the first one and considered going. Back then, anyone could sign up online, although it sold out quickly. It was billed as the ultimate filmgoer test of stamina, and in fact you had to pay to leave the theater if you left before the 24 hours were over. I wasn’t sure I could make it through all 24 hours, wasn’t sure I’d like the films (they all appeared to be B-movies or even Z-movies), and didn’t think I could afford to leave early. Also, I knew it would screw up my sleeping schedule and my Christmas shopping-and-stress schedule, which is important when you are working a full-time-plus office job.

Continue reading risking a numb butt at Alamo

happy DVD! happy Jette! part two

Fan site MarsDust has published excerpts from an interview with Bruce Campbell in which he asserts that The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. will finally, finally be available on DVD in the spring of 2006. (Thanks to Twitch for the news.)
I have most if not all the episodes of the single season of Brisco County on videotape; years ago, when I lived in a house with roomies who could not exist without cable, I taped the show off TNT. I am sure my boyfriend will be pleased to hear that we can throw out the stack of videotapes sometime next year and replace them with a tidy little boxed set.
I hope this news is true and not just smoke and mirrors … news about Bruce Campbell-related projects often appears to be dubious, and even Campbell’s own interviews should sometimes be taken with a grain of salt. However, he’s surely had to do some sort of work related to the Brisco County DVD release (commentaries or featurettes or whatnot … even a bare-bones release might necessitate something), so I tend to think he’s right this time.
I liked Brisco County a lot, and not simply because it had Bruce Campbell in it. It’s funny and odd and has a really cool horse. The supporting cast was good—I particularly liked Julius Carry—and while I normally find guest-star cameos annoying, I liked seeing R. Lee Ermey and Tracey Walter and John Astin.
But I know some of you are thinking, “Yeah, you’re not excited about this because you get to see Comet the horse in clear, crisp DVD glory with no commercials. You still have that little thing for Bruce, don’t you?” Of course not. I have outgrown childish infatuations. If I were a drooling Bruce Campbell fan I’d be complaining that Jack of All Trades isn’t out on DVD, and let me tell you, that is one TV show we can afford to live without.
And I don’t have Xena or Hercules episodes on DVD either, but that’s more of a budget thing: those boxed sets are rather expensive. I can get maybe three Simpsons seasons for the price of one Xena season. Someday maybe I’ll get cable and record the few episodes I liked. Yes, most of the episodes happened to have Bruce Campbell or Ted Raimi in them. That’s incidental; I feel the shows were at their best when they were funny. Honestly.
Woo hoo, Cary Grant and Bruce Campbell for Christmas!

happy holiday! happy Jette!

The news is that Sony/MGM is releasing a Cary Grant DVD boxed set on Feb. 7, 2006. The set will include four movies already available on DVD: Only Angels Have Wings, Talk of the Town, His Girl Friday, and The Awful Truth. That’s nice.
The boxed set will also include the 1938 movie Holiday, which has not yet been released on DVD in this country, and which is one of my all-time favorite films. Y’all know that for years, I have been dying for this movie on DVD, and have bribed people to record it when it plays on cable TV. I wore out one videotape already. No news yet on whether the DVD will be available individually, but I’ll buy the whole boxed set if necessary.
No news yet on special features either, but I suspect a bare-bones release. In an ideal universe, the DVD would also include the 1930 version of Holiday, which I have never seen. However, only one print of the 1930 movie remains, and the Library of Congress has it. So the odds of our seeing it anytime soon are pretty slim.
This is Christmas a month early for me. This is what I intended to ask Santa to bring (along with a DVD release for A Foreign Affair). This is a wonderful holiday treat. I cannot wait for Feb. 7. I may have to schedule a movie-night party to inflict this fine film upon all my friends. It is a great holiday season movie and I wish it were available right now, but February is fine too.
I will now go dance around the room some more. Holiday on DVD! Finally! Yay!

I survived the Turkey Marathon

So no one wanted to go with me to the Turkey Marathon of films at Alamo Downtown last Saturday night (and well into Sunday morning)? Well, fine. Wimps. I went anyway. I decided it would be a mini-adventure, that parking downtown would not be too terrible on a holiday weekend, and that I would enjoy seeing films in genres about which I am not very knowledgeable. Also, I told myself I didn’t have to stay for all four films if I got too tired, although I ended up remaining there for the whole marathon.
I did have a great time, although I wish more people had been in the audience. Maybe 30 people turned up for the first movie; by the time the fourth one ended, the number was down to 10. The Turkey Marathon movies were the kind that improve with a large audience. Still, the people who were there all seemed to be having fun. Tim League introduced the movies and then sat and watched the first two or three—he ran the projector for the final film.
I took advantage of the small audience to nab a sofa. Alamo Downtown has these nice squishy sofas in the back row. I’m not sure if I’d ever seen a movie from the sofas before. I’m not very tall and it’s difficult to see if you’re in the sofa row and the row in front of it is occupied. But no one sat in front of me, so I had a perfect view. I think I should pick the sofas more often, especially if I have someone with me like my boyfriend who can sit on the other half, as opposed to a stranger. (The other half of the sofa I picked had a crack in the seat, so no one wanted to sit there, luckily for me.) Let me tell you, if it weren’t for the comfy sofa I might not have lasted through all four films. I don’t know how those Butt-Numb-a-Thon people last through 24 hours.

Continue reading I survived the Turkey Marathon

the other side of the little window

I realize that this may sound shocking for a 36-year-old film geek, but I had never seen a modern movie theater projection room until this morning.
I don’t know what I expected; some part of me had retained an image of an old-fashioned projection booth, a small and musty cube containing a big projector with reels of film on it. I knew about the platters used instead of reels nowadays, I’ve seen photos of platters, but I guess I didn’t put it all together. My brain was still stuck in Cinema Paradiso or Sherlock Jr.
I signed up for some volunteer shifts for aGLIFF to monitor the digital projection setup; most of the festival’s movies will be digitally projected this year. A bunch of us met in the theater this morning to learn what we would be doing. We walked upstairs and I found myself in a much larger room than I expected. It looked like the engineering room in a television station where I used to work.

Continue reading the other side of the little window

more Alamo love

The big news is that Entertainment Weekly named Alamo Drafthouse as the top movie theater in the country. I wish I could read the article myself, but I haven’t had time to pick up the printed magazine and it isn’t available online. (I can’t even tell whether they’re referring to Alamo Downtown or to the chain as a whole.)
So go read Matt Dentler’s post, which includes excerpts from the article, including the other theaters on the top 10 list.
I feel really lucky to live in walking distance (although we always drive) of one Alamo Drafthouse and an easy drive from several more. As Matt mentions, Alamo’s Rolling Roadshow is touring around the country this month. Check the listings to see if they’ll be in your neighborhood. I wish I could follow them like the sad little Alamo groupie that I am.
I wonder if Alamo felt any effects from this alleged “box office slump” everyone’s been complaining about. Somehow I suspect not. They don’t treat audiences like cattle or captive prey.
I’ll try to pick up an Entertainment Weekly in the next couple of days; if the article includes anything else notable, I’ll post that info here.