movies...

[buffcoat]

I just saw Shine a Light. Not quite as good as the first night of the 1981 Tattoo You tour at the Spectrum - available soon on WaWa Records! - but pretty solid nonetheless. And I'm no Stones fan, but I definitely enjoyed it.

I almost went to go see that this weekend. I've never seen a concert film in a theater before, so I figured it'd be an interesting movie to see, but then I remembered that I'd be plunking down the better part of ten bucks to see a group of 65-year-olds play "She Was Hot". In the end, I stayed in and watched Christopher Walken on SNL, which was equally depressing in its own right.

I like the everybody-does-Walken-impersonation sketch.

[ben]

The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism / Death Smiles on a Murderer (featuring Klaus Kinski!) - available April 29th on Netflix. 

Anyone seen these?  I have not and wondering if their worth queuing up, they seem quite Straussian which is INTIRGUING TO ME?

[Chris L]

Oh man, Criterion really unearthed a gem here.  BLAST OF SILENCE is a 1961 microbudget noir that's as misanthropic as the genre gets for the period.  The plot about a New York hitman ("Baby Boy" Frankie Bono) returning home from Cleveland for one last job is standard stuff.  What distinguishes BLAST right away is how it attempts to place the viewer in the mindset of its sullen, brutal loner of a protagonist, which writer/director/star Allen Baron primarily and surprisingly accomplishes through the use of second-person narration.  The shrapnel-voiced narrator constantly reminds Frankie of his beefs with the world, in terms both existential ("Remembering, out of the black silence, you were born in pain") and trivial ("You HATE parites!").   The on-location shooting during Christmastime in NY ("Christmas gives you the creeps!") also adds immeasurably to the atmosphere. 

This unique one-off features just the kind of black-hearted themes that neo-noir revisionists heighten when they revisit the genre, and Patton Oswalt and others consider it to be something like the CARNIVAL OF SOULS of noir. A sadly missed opportunity:  Peter Falk was supposed to play the lead but dropped out for a better-paying gig.  Definitely a must-see if you like this kind of stuff. 

[Martin]

Wow, that sounds amazing.

[VampireWeekday]

Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa, I cannot stand idly by and let you people slander the amazing ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA.  To those who haven't seen it, do not pay attention to the haters -- it's easily one of the most beautiful films ever made.  Okay, it's 4 hours long, but if that's automatically a problem for you I suggest you see your doctor to get your attention span checked.  It is not boring for a minute.  Challenging, yeah; it doesn't coddle its audience.  Mysterious, evocative, sumptuous, moving.  These adjectives ain't even doing it justice.  Come on people.  If nothing else, at least watch the first part of the film when the De Niro and Woods characters are young boys growing up in the hood life...that stuff is perfectly accessible and probably the stuff that stayed with me the most.

[andrew in philadelphia]

Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa, I cannot stand idly by and let you people slander the amazing ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA.  To those who haven't seen it, do not pay attention to the haters -- it's easily one of the most beautiful films ever made.  Okay, it's 4 hours long, but if that's automatically a problem for you I suggest you see your doctor to get your attention span checked.  It is not boring for a minute.  Challenging, yeah; it doesn't coddle its audience.  Mysterious, evocative, sumptuous, moving.  These adjectives ain't even doing it justice.  Come on people.  If nothing else, at least watch the first part of the film when the De Niro and Woods characters are young boys growing up in the hood life...that stuff is perfectly accessible and probably the stuff that stayed with me the most.

it is pretty terrific - a great bookend to leone's career. not something i'd watch everyday - or even more than once probably - but i'm glad i put the time in as it's one of the best crime epics ever put on film. a little overly-ambitious maybe - but well worth a viewing.

[A.M. Thomas]

Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa, I cannot stand idly by and let you people slander the amazing ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA.  To those who haven't seen it, do not pay attention to the haters -- it's easily one of the most beautiful films ever made.  Okay, it's 4 hours long, but if that's automatically a problem for you I suggest you see your doctor to get your attention span checked.  It is not boring for a minute.  Challenging, yeah; it doesn't coddle its audience.  Mysterious, evocative, sumptuous, moving.  These adjectives ain't even doing it justice.  Come on people.  If nothing else, at least watch the first part of the film when the De Niro and Woods characters are young boys growing up in the hood life...that stuff is perfectly accessible and probably the stuff that stayed with me the most.

I didn't mean to totally trash it.  I'm glad I watched it, but, as Andrew said, I found it a little overly-ambitious.  Leone is still one of my top ten directors of all time, though; and he's not even number ten!