fine whine

Once recently I was at a loss to come up with any of Stanley Kubrick's films other than The shining and A.I.. 2001 had slipped my mind, as well as A clockwork orange, both of which I've watched. I own Spartacus (and A.I. for that matter) and at one time also owned Eyes wide shut but traded that up for a Criterion Robocop. I even forgot the ones I'd liked, Full metal jacket and Dr. Strangelove. Why should I list them when imdb does it so much better? I hadn't known the guy even had his hand in The spy who loved me, one of the better Bond movies I've endured. Anyway, the whole point of this is that I don't appreciate ol' Stan for the work he's done. Take the film I watched tonight: The killing which he directed in 1956. It's a heist movie but it's so well made and unconventional to be elevated over what even then was already becoming a tired genre. Joe and the gang keep everything at a quick pace and the nonlinearity and narrator lend an original edge or two to the proceedings. I know now that the next Kubrick for me to watch won't be Lolita or Barry Lyndon but 1955's Killer's kiss, at least if I can track it down easily. Gradually I'm changing my opinion of the guy, and enjoying the process.

Without hesitation I'd say The Killing is one of the best movies I've seen this year, and without laughing I'd probably back it up for quite a while. Diner too would be on that list, and the more I think about it the more little things make me grin: the whole idea of holding a vengeance against a baseball team but explaining it only when only one is left to hit, throwaway lines about words like "nuance" and the immature guy banter are just the beginning. The rest of the movies this year are going to have an uphill fight to match these two gems, but that won't stop me from watching a whole bunch of them. Eventually I'll make a short list of the best films I watched last year; expect to see it in February, I'd guess.

This is unrelated to anything, but how cool would it be to have a song with the bass and/or guitar lines played backwards? I think such a thing would sound cool, though it may well have been done. This is something worth looking into, methinks.

You know what I like about Diner? All of the cars are dirty. Even the classic '57 Chevy is filthy. It lends a very authentic look and makes a believable film even more real because, after all, these cars aren't new nor are they well maintained by these teenagers. It's a good movie, too—I'm glad I picked this one up despite its prominence on greatest movies lists. Not to say that I'm going to go out now and rent Singing in the rain but maybe I won't be so jaded about the accepted canon of great movies of which I was not aware. I certainly liked it more than the more well-known American graffiti, one my earliest DVDs from Columbia house namely because it helped maximize my savings or something like that. Needless to say I was not impressed by it so much. I'll revisit it someday, likely before I unwrap my laserdisc of More American graffiti, but I'm not keeping my hopes too high. Setting my expectations too high has ruined more than a couple movies for me and I don't like having my movies ruined.

I had other things planned to write, but unfortunately I spent the afternoon laying in a half-napping state on the couch and forgot them. I wanted to ask people about the plot of a book I vaguely remembered, but now its details are lost to me. I suspect it was part of a Terry Pratchett book, given its zaniness, but I can't remember the details. I may well have dreamed the whole thing. I think I'm almost completely caught up on the Discworld series, having read Pratchett's Monstrous regiments within the last several days. It, like his others I've recently read, was more coherent throughout and didn't have an odd undercurrent building to a whirlwind of activity and confusion like some of his other books; this is about the only complaint I can level against the series.

I wish I could remember this lost plot of mine—I really wanted to know what it was so I could read it again. Not that I don't have enough books to be reading right now, being still in the middles of Michael Moore's Dude, where's my country? and Michel
Houllebecq's Elementary particles. And I still need to watch The omega code with Jessica so that I can complain about or laud it as I see fit.

In the title of this ("the horror, the horror...") I refer not to Apocalypse now but to The omega code that I will likely be watching tomorrow. To be fair I had allowed Jessica to pick out a couple videos this time around, and the latter was her choice, probably more to get out of there more than to see that particular movie. But at least it gives me something to write about, perhaps even as I try to watch it. Or, God willing, it might be good and I'll be so riveted to the screen as to not want to get up and, say, gag myself with a spoon after using it to gouge out my eyeballs—an action which had crossed my mind three fourths of the way through Willard but two days ago.

Even watching Repossessed yesterday wasn't that bad, and in fact it had a couple genuinely funny jokes. The two that I remember were the naming of the girl as Nancy (in the Exorcist she was Regan, get it? ha ha ha) and the other involved exercise bikes. You see the two priests were doing a training bit in a gym and just about outside the frame was a kid on an exercise bike wearing turn of the (last) century clothes and throwing newspapers. I laughed and it tided me over at least the next twenty jokes. Why, you may ask, did I watch this "gem", temporary insanity or perhaps a little demonic possession? Neither. I had stumbled across a laserdisc of said movie in the store for a cool twenty bucks and though I had passed it up (the supposed authentic signature of Linda Blair wasn't enough of a draw for the price—and it wasn't widescreen) the temptation to subject my wife to it remained long after I'd left the store. Oddly enough it wasn't available at the library in DVD form but they had a VHS copy that probably hasn't been checked out since the last Bush was in office, and we watched it yesterday. So it goes.

Speaking of the Bushes, I've been paging through the early sections of Dude, where's my country? by Michael Moore, and I can't help but think the same thing I always think about Michael Moore: I don't agree with everything he says nor all his logical leaps and bounds, but dammit I can't help but think that this country would be better off if there were more guys like him running around. He's just looking for the truth, and to reveal some of the insanity behind the curtains of the powers that gosh darn are gonna be whether we like it or not. Joe Conrad and Frank Coppola knew it too and that's partly how the engaging mishmash of Apocalypse now ever came about, though I cannot imagine an even longer version of it though I know that someday I will be watching that very "redux" edition, and probably soon. I already knew war was hell; now I know it's insanity too.

So now it's 2004. If I were a check-writin' kind of guy I think it would matter a little more to me. Now that I have posted this, though, the calendar rolls over to 2004 and all we are left with on the left side is a linked calendar of the last month of 2003, which coincidently saw me typing something every day but three or four. I wasn't even that diligent on my novel. Sometimes things just need a second shot, I guess.

Second chances are something I occasionally grant something or somebody that initially had rubbed me the wrong way. Last year (ha ha ha it was less than half an hour ago) I watched Reindeer games for the second time, albeit this time in the form of the "Exclusive Director's Cut". The first time I watched it I wasn't too impressed, though I tagged the blame for my disdain on the overly twisted bits at the end. I think I was just looking for an excuse to dislike the movie, which on second glance, isn't so horrible. Maybe the scenes Frankenheimer reinserted helped, but overall it wasn't nearly as bad as I had remembered. Everybody does what they're there to do, and overall it works pretty well. I had only a couple niggling questions but to ask them would all but give the whole thing away, and I'd like to leave the surprises for the rest of everybody. Then again, there are enough of them in there to go around, I'd say. Unlike a Sixth sense, though, there aren't really any clues or knowing winks thrown in to reward a second viewing. So go out, rent it and watch it sometime this year—once.

That title doesn't really make any sense, but it's slightly catchy and fits in with the DVDs I've been watching lately. Namely, MASH and C.S.I.: the first season. Interspersed in there too is Full metal jacket, on a strong recommendation from skippy. So what can I say now? Crime doesn't pay and war is hell.

Seriously, though ,they were all pretty good. Full metal jacket I'd be willing to watch again, but probably just that. C.S.I. was decent but I don't think I need to watch this particular season again, though I am looking forward to watching the next one—once as well. I remember enough and it wasn't a classic, just pretty good. About the only shows I'd go back to for a second and subsequent viewing are The prisoner and The Sopranos, though there could well be more that I just can't recall at the moment. As for TV shows, I think I'll stick with the small screen version of M.A.S.H., not just because I watched it first but because it just works better to stretch out the ideas they're working at over so many years, not just two hours. That and they don't sing the lyrics to the theme song on the show. Altman's film was pretty good, but I have yet to find an Altman that really impressed me. His Player rubbed me the wrong way (several wrong ways, actually) and I haven't really loved anything I've seen of his since. Though the idea of including more football than war in a war movie is an interesting idea and if it was as allegorical as it could be that is by itself brilliant. But the movie overall was scattershot and dragged.

Now Full metal jacket definitely didn't drag. I'm sure somebody out there will clobber me for saying so, but it was his warmest film that I've watched so far. Vague as that statement is, I cannot elaborate on it without lots of hand-waving and "you know..."s so I guess I'm still on the outs with the armchair film school. 'Course I watch my films from a couch, anyway.

Finally, something good. Pirates of the Caribbean was great! I'll be less concise tomorrow.