The Last Romantic, Again

I just watched the trailer to The Last Romantic again. Damn, how I love that movie.

The Puffy Chair

It seems that my favorite films at the Independent Film Festival of Boston were made by brothers. Besides the Nee Brothers’ The Last Romantic, there was Jay and Mark Duplass’s The Puffy Chair. On the surface it's about a Lazy-Boy recliner, but like all great movies, it's all about love and the crazy things we do (or don't do) to get it, keep it, and how we try like hell to make it work.

The Last Romantic

I attended the Independent Film Festival of Boston with the hope of possibly seeing a film like The Last Romantic. Aaron and Adam Nee made the film that I hoped I would someday make, only they did it first and made a better film than I ever could. They are smarter, funnier, much more technically adept, and far better looking than I ever was or will be. And I hate them for that. But boy, I loved their film.

Street Fight

For me the Independent Film Festival of Boston started with a film I heard a lot about, Street Fight. By the time I arrived, the small room at the Somerville Theater where it was playing was nearly full. So, I wound up sitting in the front row for a movie for the first time since an opening weekend midnight showing of Return of the Jedi back in 1983. From there, the screen was big, no one was in front of me, and I could stretch out my legs. I don’t know why I don’t sit in the front row more often.
Street Fight lived up to its excellent reputation. It was funny, sad and thought provoking. My one issue with the film is that there are a couple scenes where filmmaker Marshall Curry filmed subjects surreptitiously. While people do talk more openly and honestly when they do not know that their words are being recorded, I personally could never do that and even felt a bit uncomfortable watching those scenes.
That said, the one big impression that the film left me with was how people will vote for someone because of the feeling that he is “one of us.” What a person does in office seems almost irrelevant. What does matter is that voters feel a candidate is “their guy.”

Independent Film Festival of Boston

Tonight is opening night for the Independent Film Festival of Boston. Half Nelson plays tonight, but for me the festival doesn't start until Friday. It's going to be a good weekend.

Peter Falk

I’m thinking a lot about the career of Peter Falk. To most people he’ll always be Columbo, but even if he never played Columbo, he had one heck of a career. There’s Mikey and Nicky, A Woman Under the Influence (both made during his Columbo years) and the original (and far superior) The In-Laws ("Serpentine, Shel."), with Alan Arkin. He even plays himself as a fallen angel in Wings of Desire. Not too shabby.
The Columbo season one disk brought memories of watching the NBC Sunday Mystery Movie as a little kid. Disk one had two early Columbo made for TV movies, Prescription: Murder (1968) and Ransom for a Dead Man (1971). The basics were there in 1968, but he was a bit edgier then. (In one scene he brow beats a young actress!) But by 1971, he was the Columbo I remember. I’m looking forward to disk two.

I figured it out

For some reason Blogger doesn't like it when I cut and paste HTML links from AppleWorks or the text editor. If I type in the HTML by hand and cut and paste the URL from Safari, everything works swimmingly.

Arrrgghh!!!!

I'm having some problems creating links on my postings. Maybe I need to switch from Safari for posting. Hopefully I'll work it out and get my links added to the posting below soon!

Code Unknown

Well, it looks like I won’t be posting daily. After a run and some food at the Picantte Mexican Grill, I went home and immediately put on Michael Haneke’s Code Unknown. I saw Haneke’s Cache (Hidden) in the theater a month or two ago, and it really stuck with me. So, I decided to go back and see whatelse he’s done. I started with Code Unknown. It’s plot is very loose and unstructured, as it’s subtitle “Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys” would indicate. Still it kept my attention. I’m looking forward to Kino’s release of four more of Heneke’s titiles on May 16.

Bad

I was very bad. I promised myself that I would put something new on my blog everyday. I lasted three days. I missed yesterday. I was out having fun at the newly remodeled Plough & Stars .

The Joy of Homestar Runner

Many of you already know Homestar Runner. Many do not. If you do not, it's time to get acquainted.
http://www.homestarrunner.com/
This is what the internet was made for. (Thanks, Brenda!)

The Science of Sleep

A week ago today, Michel Gondry bought his new film, The Science of Sleep, to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a sneak preview and Q & A session. (Gondry was an artist-in-residence at MIT in 2005.) People will inevitably draw comparisons between The Science of Sleep and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; they are both essentially love stories that deal with the inner-workings of the human mind. And if you liked Eternal Sunshine... you’ll probably like The Science of Sleep as well. But that said, The Science of Sleep is unlike any movie I've seen before. The dream sequences were, well, incredibly dreamlike. The relatively low-tech effects used by Gondry made the dreams seem more like real dreams, and not at all like Hollywood effects. You can see a bit for yourself here: http://www.partizan.com/partizan/films/.
I can't wait for the film to open this August, so I can see it again.

Christopher Walken

To start this blog off right, here is a link to Christopher Walken falling through space:
http://mightyillusions.blogspot.com/2006/04/christopher-walken-illusion.html
Enjoy!