Shadow Ranch (1930)
By admin | September 28, 2011
Buck Jones in his second talking film. Buck’s friend (Frank Price) asks him to come to Shadow Ranch where he is trying to help the owner (Marguerite De La Motte). But he arrives too late, just as his murdered friend is being buried. Buck avenges his friend’s death and aids the ranch owner who has been fighting a losing battle against vicious land-grabbing, cattle rustling Al Smith. Read the rest of this entry »
Funny Ha Ha: It’s, Um, Uh, A Pretty Great Movie
By admin | July 10, 2011
Part of the reason I like the movie Funny Ha Ha so much is because of my personal history with it. I feel toward it that proprietary affection you feel toward movies that seem to pop up out of nowhere and seek you out, especially if you see them alone; it’s as if they’re something you discovered, or perhaps even imagined, yourself. Read the rest of this entry »
The Eisenberg Principle
By admin | July 10, 2011
Two weeks ago, having a glass of wine with a friend I seldom see, I found myself summarizing the past year of my life in one of those oversimplifying thumbnail sketches that make you feel like a bad Hollywood pitchman for yourself. As I compared and contrasted my various writing gigs, trying to keep it short and snappy, I concluded by saying, “So I guess the High Sign is probably where I let the most of myself show through.” “Yeah, maybe a little too much,” my probably-ought-to-be-ex-friend replied cryptically. This is the kind of vaguely hostile, Underminer-y comment that tends to make me laugh uncomfortably in the moment and change the subject, only to sit bolt upright in bed later that night and demand of thin air, “What exactly did you mean by that, my good man? Because you must have meant something, and I’d very much like to know what it is you did, in fact, mean!” Read the rest of this entry »
Urban Harvest
By admin | July 10, 2011
If wishes were horses, I’d have seen both Holy Girl and Revenge of the Sith by now, not to mention the new Miyazaki, Ozon and Hou Hsiao-Hsien movies. And don’t think I’m skipping Mr. and Mrs. Smith, either, though I have the feeling I’ll prefer the Alfred Hitchcock version, which TCM is cannily re-airing tonight. But this has been another week of the working, always the working, so very much working. So all I have to offer for now is a harvest — an urban harvest, if you will — of shows and films reviewed elsewhere. Read the rest of this entry »
Howl’s Moving Castle: Mapless in Dreamland
By admin | July 9, 2011
Two weeks after seeing Howl’s Moving Castle, I’m still not sure what to make of this strange, magical, ultimately maddening film. I would never say, like the Washington Post guy (and unlike nearly every other rapt critic) that I disliked the movie; it was fiercely gorgeous, as intricate as an opium dream, and there was something deeply pleasurable about being carried along by its febrile, imperious momentum. But what in hell was it about? This question began to occur to me about halfway through the movie’s two-hour running time, as I roused myself from the drugged stupor the images had put me in and started to chastise myself for not even trying to follow the plot. How was I going to write about this later, I asked myself, if I couldn’t even summarize the story? Surely the rest of the audience, all the cool anime-liking denizens of the Sunshine Theater, were grooving on every filigreed plot twist, every sudden shift from one alternate reality to the next. Read the rest of this entry »