It seems that with just about every Coen brothers film, it takes me two attempts to really fall in love with the film. Such was the case with A Serious Man. I saw it the first time, said “eh…”, and walked away. Then I saw it a second time and thought, “oh yeah, that’s brilliant.” With the film up for the best-picture award at the Oscars, Slate also takes a second look at the film.
Winnie the Pooh + Apocalypse Now
(Via)
Herzog’s 3 Films a Year
I feel like you learn something new and interesting about Werner Herzog everyday. “When you look at Quentin Tarantino or Martin Scorsese, they are obsessed by viewing films. They see one film after the other. And it’s the joy of their lives and their points of reference. In my case, it’s kind of different. I see maybe three or four films a year. Probably less than the average moviegoer.” The admission seemed genuine, and one imagines that this approach accounts […]
Is John Hughes the J.D. Salinger of Chicago?
Over at Vanity Fair, we learn that even after his time directing some of the most iconic films of the last 30 years, John Hughes kept writing and writing. Reading these stories, and having seen all of his films a few times each, I can’t think of another writer or artist that understood the teenage mind like Hughes other than possibly J.D. Salinger.
Sontag Goes to Israel
Promised Lands, Susan Sontag’s 1974 look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict just after the Yom Kippur War of 1973, is playing at Anthology until the 10th. In anticipation, both L Magazine and The Village Voice have dedicated some space in their publications (or at the very least, their websites) to looking at the film. One thing that Voice writer Michael Atkinson said in particular sticks out to me: “today, the movie seems more remarkable as a Sontag artifact than as political […]
Taking Another Stab at Gatsby
My experiences with Baz Luhrmann films: 1996: took my high school girlfriend to see Romeo + Juliet, hated the movie, and got no play. 2002: got drunk and fell asleep watching Moulin Rouge, but had “Lady Marmalade” stuck in my head for days. Today, 2010: It was announced last month that Luhrmann acquired the rites to The Great Gatsby and I’m just now reading about this??? Tomorrow, 2010: I will wake up the same bitter and jaded bastard that I […]
S.J. Perelman’s Birthday and Catch-22
It was sort of a coincidence that I stumbled upon the fact that S.J. Perelman was born today in 1904 (he died in 1979), but going and checking out his Wikipedia page wasn’t — it’s something I usually do when I find out it’s the anniversary of someones birth or death. With all this talk about “comic novels“, I’ve been getting more and more interested in reading older humor pieces, and have taken a serious interest in Perelman’s work. Considering […]
Literary Buzzword of the Day: “Tolstoy Virgins”
“We Tolstoy virgins know that the bearded one justly perches near the top of our lifelong reading list, yet somehow the right time is never quite right to rise to the occasion.” Here’s to you, Stephen Emms of the Guardian, for not only hipping me to this wonderful phrase that by all means should not exist, but also reminding me that there was a film version of Anna Karenina starring Gretta Garbo put out in the 30’s.