Movies Of The Year: 1983

It's been a busy week, but it's over for a few days. Now, back to the countdown. I've seen a lot of movies from this year, but not many I'd call great, and a lot of pretty bad ones.

27. Breathless
26. Krull
25. The Big Chill
24. Sudden Impact
23. The High Road To China
22. Never Say Never Again
21. Superman III
20. Never Cry Wolf
19. Mr. Mom
18. Octopussy
17. The Outsiders
16. The Hunger

15. Something Wicked This Way Comes - Watched it again a few years ago, and it wasn't nearly as scary as I remember. But, man, did it freak me out when I was a kid. I attribute my fear of spiders to this movie.

14. Terms Of Endearment - It's a big epic cheeseball melodrama. But as those things go, it's a pretty good one. Not even close to being the best movie about an astronaut in 1983, despite what Oscar may tell you. It's basically Steel Magnolias without the accents.

13. Twilight Zone: The Movie - Not as good as the TV show, of course, but still a pretty fun movie. John Lithgow in the Shatner role as the guy who sees the gremlin on the airplane is the highlight.

12. Monty Python's The Meaning Of Life - More misses than hits, at times even boring. Some very good stuff, but not nearly as inspired as their earlier feature films, or the TV shows, or some of the other comedies of this year. Very disappointing.

11. Risky Business - I might have liked it more if I'd seen it as a kid, but I didn't watch this until I was in college. Still, it's not bad. Too many unintentionally bad 80s cliches to consider it a really good movie, but they do make it pretty fun to watch. Written and directed by Paul Brickman, who is three weeks younger than my mom.

10. Gorky Park - It's been a decade or so since I've seen it, though I've seen it more than once. I remember it as a very solid crime drama. It doesn't seem to have much of a following, but I guess that's what happens to these kinds of movies over time. Stars William Hurt, Brian Dennehy, Lee Marvin, and, apparently, the Emperor himself, Ian McDiarmid. Directed by the hard-working Michael Apted.

9. King Of Comedy - It's become a bit of a darkhorse candidate among Scorsese fans as one of his best movies, but I ain't buying it. DeNiro does give a great performance as the unfunniest man in the world who really really wants to become a comedian, but the movie just doesn't work for me. I don't know if it's too weird, or too misanthropic, or stars too much Sandra Bernhard. Not Scorsese's worst movie.

8. Strange Brew - A Canadian comedy about beer, what's not to love? Co-starring Max Von Sydow, who played chess with Death in The Seventh Seal. Much funnier than The Meaning Of Life.

7. Scarface - I know every pro athlete and rapper in the country loves this movie above all others. But honestly, I watched it once and I'm pretty sure I fell asleep in the middle. What I remember of it is alright. The hyperbole and scenery-chewing is intentional, but that doesn't make it interesting. I recall it as a very ugly looking movie as well, and I don't think that was intentional. I do admit that I need to watch it again.

6. WarGames - Another forgotten little classic from 1983. More than just a museum of ancient technology (check out that modem!), it's actually a veery solid, entertaining thriller. Matthew Broderick stars as the computer "hacker" who mistakenly initiates global thermonuclear war. Ally Sheedy is the girl. Directed by John Badham, who did the classic Short Circuit and the very terrible Nick Of Time.

5. National Lampoon's Vacation - The Griswold family goes to Wallyworld. Much like the next movie on this list, just because a series was run into the ground does not mean that we should forget the truly great films that began the series. The first two vacation movies are indisputable classics. Written by John Hughes and directed by Harold Ramis.

4. Return Of The Jedi - The Ewoks are awful, annoying, and stupid. Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill give two of the worst performances in acting history. That said, this is still a great movie. Just about the only good thing that Lucas did with the special editions was changing the song at the end of this movie from that stupid chirpy Ewok song.

3. Zelig - Like Forrest Gump, if Forrest Gump hadn't been made by someone as dumb as the main character is supposed to be. Woody Allen pioneered the 'inserting the actor into old news footage' technique that Zemekis used much less interestingly in Gump. Allen's first movie with Mia farrow, after Diane Keaton left him to make Reds with Warren Beatty. Perhaps coincidentally, Zelig uses the same style of intercutting interviews with famous people that Beatty used in that movie. Like all of Allen's best movie, it's equally funny and serious. An underrated high point in his career.

2. Trading Places - One of the very few really good political comedies of the 1980s. Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd, at their peaks, star as the victims of an unfortunate practical joke played by Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy. Jamie Lee Curtis and Denholm Elliot also star. Another John Landis classic.

1. The Right Stuff - In a bad year for serious dramas, this is far and away the best, and easily the best film of the year. It's the story of the beginnings of the US space program, but it's the intercutting of the story of Chuck Yeager (the best test pilot in the country at the time the program started (he's the guy who broke the sound barrier), he decided he didn't want to be an astronaut) that really gives the story some emotional depth. It's not just a history of the space program, it's a study of the kind of hyper-masculine craziness it takes to want to fly faster and higher than anyone ever has before. It's a great looking movie, well directed by Phillip Kaufman (Henry & June, Quills, The Unbearable Lightness Of Being). The cast is outstanding, starring Sam Shepherd, Ed Harris, Fred Ward, Dennis Quaid, Scott Glenn, Barbara Hershey, Levon Helm, Harry Shearer, Jeff Goldblum, Kathy Baker and Lance Henrikson. In a memorable performance as John Glenn's wife Annie, is Mary Jo Deschanel, whose daughter Zooey played Trillian in The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy. One of my favorite movies, I can watch it over and over again, despite it's, necessarily, epic length.


I'm sad to say I haven't seen some key movies from 1983. In fact, I may get my film geek membership card revoked for admitting I haven't seen one of them.


The Unseen:

Videodrome
Rumble Fish
The 4th Man
Tender Mercies
The Man With Two Brains
A Christmas Story
Yentl
All The Right Moves
Silkwood
Cujo
Flashdance
Local Hero

Movies Of The Year: 1982

So, to jump right back in with 1982. It's not a particularly great year at the top, but there's some real good depth here.

21. Pink Floyd: The Wall
20. The Dark Crystal
19. Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid
18. First Blood
17. Tron
16. Rocky III

15. Diner - A key film for the Kevin Bacon game, as he costarred with Mickey Rourke Ellen Barkin, Steve Guttenberg, Daniel Stern, Paul Reiser and Tim Daly. I always found it a little forced and boring. Too much of an attempt to create a nostalgia movie.

14. The World According To Garp - A weird little movie based on a weird little book. Robin Williams is pretty good. So are John Lithgow and Glenn Close. Directed by George Roy Hill, who also did Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, The Sting and Funny Farm.

13. 48 Hrs. - Often credited with creating the black/white buddy cops genre, so we should all be thankful for that. This was back when Eddie Murphy was funny, so it's pretty good. Nick Nolte's great. Directed by Walter Hill, who also did The Warriors, Brewster's Millions and Red Heat.

12. Tootsie - One of my picks for Most Overrated Movie Of All-Time. Its got one not especially funny joke (Hey Look! It's Dustin Hoffman in a dress!! guffaw!), Jessica Lange is awful, and it's really just boring. I've seen it a few times and have no idea what all the hubbub is about.

11. An Officer And A Gentleman - Richard Gere actually gives a pretty good performance. It's hard to judge Lou Gossett Jr.'s, though, because he's basically playing Generic Drill Sergeant Guy. It isn't like he invented the character either: there's a GDSG in Stripes just a year earlier. Was Sgt. Hulka the first GDSG? Director Taylor Hackford also directed Ray, Dolores Claiborne and The Devil's Advocate.

10. Sophie's Choice - Worth watching for the good performances by Kevin Kline and Peter MacNicol, and, uh, that Streep woman is OK too. A pretty depressing movie, actually. Kline seems a little too over the top, but then he's supposed to be, I guess. I don't know, the whole Holocaust part of the story never really worked for me. But I'm not a big fan of depressing movies. I wonder if it worked better as a book. . .

9. Conan The Barbarian - A great looking, very violent movie. Probably would have worked better as a silent film, in fact. Though there is one great line. Max von Sydow and James Earl ones star, along with The Governor. Written and directed by John Milius, who wrote a version of Apocalypse Now, wrote and directed Red Dawn and is know working on the HBO series Rome.

8. Airplane II: The Sequel - More of the same. Not as good as the first one, of course, but very funny nonetheless. Written and directed by Ken Finklemen, the man responsible for Grease 2 and Who's That Girl?

7. The Secret Of NIMH - One of my all-time favorite kids movies. Doesn't have any of those dumb songs that the Disney movie does. The comic relief from Dom DeLouise is pretty bad, but everything else in the movie is outstanding. It's dark for a kids movie, but has a terrific ending. I always liked the darker cartoon movies when i was a kid, didn't everyone? Derek Jacobi plays the leader of the Rats, and Wil Wheaten and Shannon Doherty are two of the children.

6. Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan - One of the few movies that's able to be campy and legitimately good at the same time. KHAN! is silly, but Spock's last scene is nonetheless, heartbreaking, I think this must be the best Shatner ever got. the special effects are great. It's got Kirstie Alley, back when she was hot. That guy who played Shatner's son, though, he's terrible. Obviously the best Star Trek movie. It really isn't close.

5. Fast Times At Ridgemont High - It gets bonus points for creating a genre. An amazing cast: Sean Penn, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judge Reinhold, Phoebe Cates, Forest Whitaker, and Ray Walston, with Eric Stoltz Anthony Edwards and Nicholas Cage on-screen briefly. Drags in the middle because the guys who play mark Ratner and Mike Damone, the two main characters through much of the film, are really not very good. All the scenes without them in it, especially Penn's definitional performance as the stoner/surfer guy, are exceptional. Amy Heckerling went on to direct European Vacation, the Look Who's Talking movies and Clueless. The screenplay's by Cameron Crowe, based on his book.

4. Gandhi - I'm not a big fan of biopics in general, or of the ridiculous amount of praise that actors get for impersonating other famous people. But this is a very good biopic, and Ben Kingsley is very good as Gandhi. It leaves out pretty much all of Gandhi's personal life, thank god, an focuses almost exclusively on the politics of India's move toward independence, and then civil war over it's eventual partition into India and Pakistan. Seeing this movie won't do a damn thing for world peace, despite what director Richard Attenborough said at the time, but it is very good. Also appearing are John Gielgud, Martin Sheen, Candace Bergen Trevor Howard and John MIlls, but it's really all about Ben Kingsley.

3. Blade Runner - Alright, I know I've said here, and elsewhere, that I hate Blade Runner, and I still do. But that doesn't mean it isn't a very good movie. It's an amazing looking film, one of the most visually stunning movies of the decade. It basically invented the sci-fi/noir film genre hybrid. Harrison Ford gives a great performance, along with Rutger Hauer. Sean Young and Darryl Hannah aren't particularly annoying, as they tend to be. It's an extremely well-made film, that unfortunately, happens to not make any sense whatsoever. Everything is fine up until the end, basically, when Ridley Scott decides he wants to be philosophical, then he simply turns into a babbling idiot. (Can't really get too specific here, without giving anything away). I've seen Blade Runner a lot, at least three different versions of it. It never works. So here's what I'm a-gonna do: I'll add it to the Netflix queue and give it one more chance. I've said this many times before, and I've always been disappointed. But, what the hell, it's still a great looking movie.

2. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial - Speaking of great looking movies, this might be Spielberg's most visually impressive film. It's a very simple, sentimental story, a pretty thin exploitation of all those kids with divorced parents, in fact (absent parents are a major theme in Spielberg's filmography). But the look and style of the film, and the terrific performance by Henry Thomas, that makes it a classic. I loved this movie when I was a kid, I can't imagine any human child not liking it. I watched it for the first time since I was young a few years ago, and loved it just as much, though with more of an appreciation of the simple prettiness of the images.

1. The Verdict - Tough call among the Top 3 this year, as any one of these movies has a legitimate case to be #1, but The verdict never seems to get any press, and it really is a great movie. Paul Newman is outstanding as a broken down drunk of a lawyer who sues a Catholic Hospital for negligence after the death of a patient. There's a lot of movies about people looking to redeem themselves by winning that one case, or saving that one patient, or winning that one big game, but this is one of the really good ones. Once again, I find I'm constrained by the fact that I know how it ends. . . suffice it to say that you should see it if you haven't. Also stars Charlotte Rampling, who isn't in a lot of movies, but is great in the ones I've seen (this and Stardust Memories, Jack Warden, Milo O'Shea, Lindsay Crouse, and James Mason (Julius Caesar, Lolita, North By Northwest). Directed by Sidney Lumet, one of the great underrated directors of all-time (Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, Network, Night Falls On Manhattan, 12 Angry Men, Long Day's Journey Into Night).


And The Unseen:

Fitzcarraldo
Missing
Night Shift
The Thing
Poltergeist
Personal Best
Come Back To The Five And Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
The Return Of Martin Guerre
The Man From Snowy River
The Year Of Living Dangerously
Victor/Victoria
Annie
Fanny And Alexander
Porky's
The Toy
My Favorite Year
A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy

Baby Got Bach?

So I was talking about Bach to someone who actually knows about this kind of music at work, and he told me that the Yo-Yo Ma album I've got is "infantile". Not knowing what he meant by that, I questioned him for awhile, but he couldn't really explain it such that I could understand it, seeing as how he understands the vocabulary of classical music criticism, and I don't. He did say that his teacher would hate Ma's version of the Cello Suites, that Ma was really bad at interpreting other people's works, but that he liked the stuff he's composed for himself. He mentioned that child prodigies, which I assume Ma was, are often really good technically but had trouble going beyond that (meaning, I assume, that they lack "soul"). He recommended I check out Pablo Casals's version of the Cello Suites instead.

So I got the Casals version tonight, and it's very apparent how different they are. The Ma version is very smooth and polished, very serene, very pretty. The Casals is rough, notes seem to jump in and out all over the place. The hard accents make the songs seem very jumpy and chaotic wherein the Ma versions smooth over most of that and you get a very mellow tune. This extends to the recordings as well. The Casals was recorded in the 30s, so obviously the sound is going to be rougher, you can even hear a hiss in the background throughout the album.

Is this enough to make Ma "infantile"? I wouldn't think so. Not unless you think mellow is infantile, which i suppose some people could. But that seems more like a political opinion than a useful bit of music criticism. So I guess I'll just assume I'm missing something.

So Much To Blog, So Little Time. . .

Been real busy with my fast-paced and exciting life here. Still seething from the New Orleans debacle, and even more, from the apparent willingness of so many people to ignore the obvious about the federal government's reaction to it. argh.


Been listening to more Bach. The Brandenburg Concertos, Toccata and Fugue and now the St. Matthew Passion. It took forever to pick a version of the Passion to buy. I finally settled on the (old, loud) Otto Klemperer one over the (modern, period authentic instruments) John Eliot Gardiner. I've already got a Klemperer version of Beethoven's Eroica that I like. Apparently he's wacky and crazy as far as classical conductors go, not that I can tell the difference or anything. I dig it so far.



In movie news, I still haven't been able to see The Constant Gardner or The 40 Year Old Virgin, though both have gotten great reviews. I've been reading John LeCarré novels off and on for the last couple of years. But I've been going in order so I haven't gotten to this one yet, nor am I likely to anytime in the foreseeable future. So I guess I'm just going to have to watch the movie first. Ah well. It's by the director of City of God, which I loved (like everyone else who's seen it, apparently).


Looks like lots of good movies are starting to finally come out. Scorsese's Dylan documentary played the Toronto Film Festival to rave reviews. The Johnny Cash bio-pic Walk The Line looks real good. Ang Lee's made a movie about gay cowboys. Atom Egoyan's got a new movie that failed to get an R rating. Polanski's done Oliver Twist. David Cronenberg's A History of Violence is supposed to be his best movie, and from the trailer, looks really good. Spielberg's got a movie on the terrorism at the Munich Olympics (lends credibility to the "War of the Worlds as 9/11 allegory" theory, I think), a feature length Wallace and Grommit movie. Peter Jackson's remade) King Kong (surprisingly the trailer looked really cool, not a Lange in sight). New movies from Curtis Hanson and Cameron Crowe. And, finally, the one I'm most excited to see, a new Terrence Malick movie, The New World, about Pocahontas, John Smith and Jamestown. The trailer looks amazing.


I have managed to watch a couple of David Mamet movies:

Oleanna is an old one, based on one of his earliest plays. William H. Macy plays a professor who doesn't really do anything wrong, but gets royally screwed over anyway by a truly evil and insidious character: a militantly politically-correct moron. Amazingly prescient, it's still worth seeing and arguing about. He does not, unfortunately, have this awesome mustache.

Spartan is a run of the mill spy movie with Val Kilmer playing, essentially, Jack Bauer. Only without the whole clock-ticking thing. It's entertaining enough, very well-done and professional, but there isn't really anything interesting here. William H. Macy is also in this movie, also without this awesome mustache.


In TV news, we watched the first episode of Rome, the new HBO series, but haven't gotten around to the second one yet. It's gotta be better than the dreadful Empire that ABC spat out earlier this summer. The second season of Entourage just ended. It wasn't as good as the first season, but still a terrific show. All the cool kids are watching it, doncha know? Oh, and the season premiere of the OC was tonight. Maybe I'll get to watch it sometime this weekend. . . .


Anyway, that's it for the update. I'm gonna get back to the Movies Of The Year lists fairly soon. I know there are countless clamoring masses waiting to see just where Blade Runner ends up. . .

Movies Of The Year: 1981

1981 isn't quite as good at the top as some of the previous years, but is the deepest year so far, as I've seen a whopping 25 movies from this year. But since I'm trying to keep these at a reasonable length, I'm only going to write about the top 15.

So here's 16-25:

25. For Your Eyes Only
24. Polyester
23. Dragonslayer
22. My Dinner With Andre
21. The Fox And The Hound
20. Chariots Of Fire
19. Taps
18. Victory
17, Neighbors
16. Escape From New York

15. Body Heat - I like Lawrence Kasdan, and I love film noir, but I'm not a big fan of this movie. Perhaps if I hadn't seen so many real noirs before seeing this, I'd feel differently. But too late for that now. That's the problem with making a classical genre film 25 years after the genre played itself out: it's all been done before. There are some things to like: it looks great and Kathleen Turner and William Hurt are good. But in the end, it's a mildly interesting nostalgia piece. There's just nothing new here. Rated so high on technical merit alone.

14. On Golden Pond - It's a silly melodrama about getting old and being estranged from your kids and grandkids. It's not especially interesting to look at. It's not particularly well-written. But Henry Fonda and Katherine Hepburn are terrific. It's worth watching just to seem them for the last time.

13. Clash Of The Titans - This would be a great movie but for Harry Hamlin. He's just plain awful. Ray Harryhausen's masterpiece, watch it if you've forgotten what special effects were like before computers. Features Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Claire Bloom, Burgess Meredith, Sian Phillips and. . . Ursula Andress.

12. Gallipoli - I was a Mel Gibson fan before he spent the last year offending me as much as any filmmaker ever has. He still was in a lot of great movies though, and this was the first. He's more of a supporting actor here. This is an excellent war movie about the disastrous, British led Australian attack on the Turks. It's also the best film about runners from 1981, much superior to the deadly slow Oscar-winner Chariots Of Fire. The Pogues song "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda" references the same historical events as this film. Peter Weir's one of the great underrated directors of our time; he consistently makes above-average to great movies.

11. An American Werewolf In London - Not scary at all. Not hilariously funny. But in it's own way, it's a perfect weird little horror-comedy. Avoid the remake at all costs, even though it has Julie Delpy in it. The score is the funniest thing about the movie. Life mocks me, even in death.

10. Blow Out - If Carrie isn't Brain DePalma's best movie, then this is. Essentially a dumber version of Coppola's The Conversation, John Travolta plays a much less interesting audio-tech guy than Gene Hackman did in that other movie. Whereas Coppola's film is about the weird little man and how what he overhears drives him over the edge, DePalma just goes for the basic thriller-type movie. Effective and entertaining, but a lot less interesting.

9. Pennies From Heaven - Perhaps the most depressing musical of all time. Stars Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters, though they lip-sync all the songs. Beautifully unrealistic sets, like what Scorsese did in New York New York only more obviously fake. Christopher Walken also stars, and dances. Directed by Herbert Ross, who also did Play It Again, Sam, Steel Magnolias and Footloose.

8. The Evil Dead - Not as good as it's sequels, but tremendously important. Weird, hilarious, and oh so cheap. One of the pioneers of independent film. I don't quite get the Bruce Campbell worship I encounter fairly regularly. Joel Coen was the assistant film editor.

7. Excalibur - Odd, uneven, King Arthur movie by John Boorman, the director of Deliverance and the great Point Blank. Liam Neeson, Patrick Stewart and Gabriel Byrne all play supporting roles. Arthur is played by the guy who played Prince John in The Lion In Winter (hey, he was also in Troy and The Devil's Advocate). There's never been a truly great Arthur movie, as far as I've seen. This is about as good as it gets.

6. Time Bandits - The perfect kid movie if your kid happens to be a huge geek. That was me and I loved it. Still do, in fact. Little kid kidnapped by dwarves and hurtled through history? What's not to love? An amazing cast: Sean Connery, John Cleese, Ralph Richardson, Ian Holm, Michael Palin, Shelly Duvall, Katherine Helmond, David Warner and Kenny Baker. One of my all-time favorite lines: the kid asks God why there is evil. God says "I think it has something to do with Free Will. . ."

5. Stripes - The only truly classic comedy of 1981, as the SNL and Second City guys started to run out of energy and die off. But Ramis and Murray are still going strong. I don't know if Bill Murray ever made a movie quite this anarchic and subversive again. It exists solely to make fun of the establishment and its military. Of my 20 favorite comedies of all-time, I wouldn't be surprised if half of them were made between Animal House in '78 and Ghostbusters in '84. This would definitely be one of them. I want to party with you, cowboy.

4. Reds - Ah, why so high a rating for such a flawed movie? I don't know, frankly. It's such a great looking movie, about such interesting people, with such a great cast (Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson). I think a better movie could be made out of Jack Reed's book. I've read half of it and it is truly amazing to read a day-by-day, you-are-there account of the Bolshevik Revolution. These were such interesting people, if Beatty had just resisted the temptation to make it into a conventional Hollywood Love Triangle Movie, this could have been a classic. As it is, it's just very good.

3. The Road Warrior - The second Mel Gibson movie on this list. Don't let the horrendous Beyond Thunderdome bias you against this legitimately great action movie. A post-apocalyptic Spaghetti Western, with very real Kurosawa influences. A near-perfect genre film, there wouldn't be anything like it until John Woo's great Hong Kong movies 15 years later. George Miller went on to direct Lorenzo's Oil and Babe: Pig In The City.

2. Das Boot - Another great action movie, though it has hardly any "action". Certainly the best submarine movie ever, and in the running for best war movie. Certainly no other film so effectively conveys as palpable a sense of the claustrophobia of submarine life. I've only seen the Director's Cut version that came out 10 years ago or so. I hear there's an even longer version that aired as a miniseries on German television. I'd love to see that. Wolfgang Peterson, after going Hollywood, is still one of the top high-quality action directors around. He did In The Line Of Fire, Outbreak, Troy, Air Force One, Enemy Mine and The Perfect Storm.

1. Raiders Of The Lost Ark - If you haven't seen this movie, why are you reading this? I saw it dozens of times before I could do long division. I don't think I've ever met anyone who didn't like an Indiana Jones movie. I suspect it's not really possible. My pick for the best Steven Spielberg movie ever. I'm trying real hard to think of a flaw in this movie. . . I guess Karen Allen's a pretty mediocre actress. . . . That's all I've got.


I didn't do too badly covering this year, I'd be surprised if any of these Unseen Movies would make my top 15:

Heavy Metal
Thief
The French Lieutenant's Woman
Scanners
Arthur
History Of The World, Part 1
Diva
The Postman Always Rings Twice
Mommie Dearest
The Woman Next Door
American Pop

Movies Of The Year: 1980

The 80s kick off with the best year yet.

15. American Gigolo - How did Paul Schrader go from Taxi Driver to this? What a freak. Richard Gere still isn't awful, but he's well on his way.

14. Breaker Morant - I've got to rate this movie this low because I don't remember too much about it. It's a Paths Of Glory-esque war movie set in Australia, starring Bryan Brown, from Cocktail, among others. I do recall thinking it was very good. I should see it again.

13. Flash Gordon - One of the few A sci-fi films to follow in the tradition of the great Barbarellla, only without all the sex. By the director of Croupier and the original Get Carter. I wonder if people understand that it's camp is intentional. . . .how could it not be? Max Von Sydow, Tomothy Dalton and Brian Blessed are the famous people. The girl who plays Dale Arden went on to star in the TV series 'Manimal'.

12. The Gods Must Be Crazy - One of those movies my family is obsessed with. Surprisingly, other people seem to like it too. It's a very strange movie, I don't know that there's been any American film quite like it since World War II. Just a straight forward slapstick comedy, mixed with dry British humor. I could be wrong, but I think this is only only movie by a South African director I've ever seen.

11. Superman II - I've actually seen this more often than the fist one, and I always liked it better as a kid. But I haven't seen either in years and years. Terrence Stamp gives an iconic performance as General Zod. Gene Hackman is still inexplicably in a Superman movie. The Fortress Of Solitude is awesome. Directed by Richard Lester, the guy who directed A Hard Day's Night, Help! and the richard Chamberlin version of The Three Musketeers.

10. Stardust Memories - One of Woody Allen's strangest films, it doesn't quite work, but is still pretty interesting. It is to Fellini what Interiors was to Bergman, and it's much more successful than that other film. A great performance by Charlotte Rampling.

9. Ordinary People - I feel bad rating this so low, but every film in the top 8 this year is a indisputable classic. Tremendous acting all around here, as Timothy Hutton, Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore are all award worthy. It's the first film Robert Redford directed, and he'd get a lot better at it as time went on. The direction here mainly serves to highlight the terrific performances. A profoundly depressing movie.

8. The Big Red One - Samuel Fuller's autobiographical masterpiece follows five guys through the course of World War II, based on his own experiences there. It's the movie Saving Private Ryan wants you to think it is. A really great war movie, dragged down by some poor non-Lee Marvin performances, notably the woefully inadequate Mark Hamill.

7. Kagemusha - Though it is largely overshadowed by and seen as merely a test-run for Ran, this is still a terrific movie. One of the most static films Kurosawa ever made, there are long stretches where the camera never moves. I wonder how influential these two films were on the Chinese films of the 90s. Seems to me Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige are also notable for very composed, colorful, static shots. Tough to say, after all, it isn't like Kurosawa invented this style, though he does it exceptionally well. Tatsuya Nakadai gives a terrific performance, though Toshiro Mifune probably would have been better. If you ever played Nobunaga's Ambition on the Nintendo, this movie's for you.

6. The Blues Brothers - Great music, great car chases, Carrie Fisher with many many guns, nuns, rednecks, Nazis, this movie has it all. John Belushi gives his best performance. Not only the best musical of the 80s, but the best car chase movie of all-time.

5. The Shining - The best haunted house movie ever made, maybe the best horror movie ever, period. Jack Nicholson and Shelly Duvall give wonderful, appropriately over-the-top performances, and Kubrick provides suitably over-the-top direction. Brilliantly weird and disturbing.

4. Caddyshack - One of the most quotable movies ever, 25 years later it's still hilarious. Chevy Chase and Rodney Dangerfield get all the best lines. The nobodies who played the caddies could have really dragged the movie down, as it is they're unremarkable, which is great because it allows the comic geniuses (Dangerfield, Chase, Murray and the guys who wrote the script: Harold Ramis, Brian Doyle-Murray and Dougls Kenney) to be the real stars of the movie. And the gopher. the gopher's alright too. In contention for greatest comedy ever.

3. Raging Bull - A great looking movie, but it's never grabbed me the way it seemingly has so many others. Jake LaMotta just isn't sympathetic enough for me to become very concerned with his downfall. Don't get me wrong, I don't think Scorsese expects us to feel sorry for him, it's just that tragedies with wholly unsympathetic heroes aren't particularly interesting. The Age Of Innocence has the same problem. It is also an amazing looking film that is nonetheless relentlessly dull. Perhaps I'm missing something. . . .Anyway, still the best boxing movie ever.

2. Airplane! - Wow, was 1980 a great year for comedies or what? Do not let the string of god awful early 90s parody movies prejudice you: the original is a nearly perfect comedy. A worthy inheritor of the Marx Brothers tradition of putting the jokes first, and the plot 512th or so. A relentless barrage of jokes, the film never slows down and remains consistently rewatchable as a result: every time you see it, you catch another joke you'd never noticed before. career altering performance by Lloyd Bridges, Leslie Nielson and Robert Stack are the acting highlights, along with a classic cameo by June Cleaver. My pick for the funniest movie of all-time.

1. The Empire Strikes Back - The Out Of The Past podcast for this week is on Blade Runner, and in the course of the conversation about noir influence in sci-fi, one of the profs mentions that one of the main reasons people think Empire is the best Star Wars film is because of the noirish dialogue Lawrence Kasdan and Leigh Brackett brought to the screenplay. Its a great point, I'd never though of it before, but it makes total sense. its not just the events of the film that make it seem so dark (though they are dark), it's the script. Being called the best written Star Wars film is about like being the best utility infielder for the Kansas City Royals, but still, Empire is a tremendously well-written action movie. Added to that great screenplay is the very good direction by Irvin Kershner, every bit as good as Lucas's in the first movie (which I think was very good as well). There's a neat twist at the end, too, but I promise I won't give anything away.


Some decent movies in the unseen list for this year, though I doubt any would finish above #9:

Heaven's Gate
The Elephant Man
Friday The 13th
Gates Of Heaven
The Big Brawl
Melvin And Howard
Gloria
The Last Metro
Coal Miner's Daughter
Atlantic City
Xanadu
The Final Countdown
Fame
Dressed To Kill
Somewhere In Time
Nine To Five
Popeye

Movies Of The Year: 1979

Another great year in 1979.

10. Kramer Vs. Kramer - Divorce is bad. The kids are the real victims. Yeah yeah yeah. Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep are great, as always.

9. The Black Stallion - I haven't seen this since I was a kid, but I really loved it then. I don't remember any of the dialogue, just sequences of amazing images and vibrant colors. I need to see it again to see if it's as great looking as I remember.

8. Being There - A clever movie, but not as smart as people seem to think it is. Peter Sellers is great. It's one joke gets a little tiresome after awhile.

7. The Great Train Robbery - Very energetic, entertaining Sean Connery film written and directed by Michael Crichton.

6. The China Syndrome - One of the great "social problem" films of all-time. Stars Jack Lemmon as a whistle-blower at a nuclear power plant. Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas play the journalists to whom he blows the whistle. By the director of the Paper Chase.

5. The Jerk - Just as classic as Animal House, but it slows down too much in the second half and wasn't nearly as influential. Still one of the funniest movies of all-time, the first half hour or so can't be topped.

4. Alien - Ridley Scott's best movie. Possibly the best horror movie of all-time. Great performance by Sigourney Weaver as one of the all-time great badass women. Enormously influential, yet it's lost none of it's effectiveness over time.

3. The Life Of Brian - My personal favorite of the Monty Python movies. It's the combination of absurdist comedy and actual historical-political critique that makes it so much more resonant than The Holy Grail or Meaning Of Life. Unfortunately, it's only become more relevant over the last 26 years. I'm not the Messiah, really I'm not!

2. Apocalypse Now - Wow, was this a tough call for #1. I really do love this movie, every bit of it. I know it doesn't make any sense, and that Coppola had no real idea what he was doing, but that doesn't make it any less effective. the chaos and bizarre primitive lunacy of this totally unrealistic film does a far better job of explaining Vietnam than any realistic treatment could hope to. it's reality that's screwed up, not the film. Someday, this war's gonna end.

1. Manhattan - Has held the default position of My Favorite Movie for over a decade now. Not Best, Favorite. A important distinction, I guess. Just as funny as Annie Hall, but less fantastical. It's a Woody Allen movie that scathingly critiques the type of people who watch, and the characters who appear in, Woody Allen movies. As depressing and critical as it is though, it still manages to have a totally effective and believable happy ending. The best looking of Allen's films (it really isn't close). Tremendous integration of an all-Gershwin score. Allen's best acting, Diane Keaton is excellent as an anti-Annie Hall, Mariel Hemingway brings a lot of humanity to an essentially symbolic role. You have to have a little faith in people.


A lot of Unseen Movies from this year as well:

The Warriors
1941
Escape from Alcatraz
The Muppet Movie
Mad Max
Woyzeck
Zulu Dawn
North Dallas Forty
The Castle Of Cagliostro
Quadrophenia
Nosferatu The Vampyre
Meatballs
All That Jazz
The Tin Drum
. . .And Justice for All

Movies Of The Year: 1978

The best year for movies yet is 1978. And the first time all of my top films are actually good.

13. Coming Home - I don't generally like depressing movies, and this is a Depressing Movie. It's redeemed by the great performances by Jon Voight, Jane Fonda and Bruce Dern.

12. Interiors - Woody Allen follows up the best romantic comedy ever with. . .his most boring movie ever. Like Coming Home, this is Depressing, but there is also some terrific acting. But if you wanted to watch a Bergman movie, you should just watch a Bergman movie. Allen would get better at serious movies. This has the same relation to, say, Crimes And Misdemeanors as Hollywood Ending has to Sleeper.

11. Game Of Death - Bruce Lee only made half of this before he died, but they released it anyway, with a different actor pretending to be Lee through much of the movie. Really, you're better off just skipping ahead to the climax, wherein the actual Lee has to fight his way up a tower (including a tremendous scene with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) to get to the bad guy.

10. The Five Deadly Venoms - A Shaw Brothers genre film, built around a fairly tedious mystery plot. Really picks up towards the end when the fighting starts.

9. Grease - A very strange film. I've only seen it once, unlike, apparently, everyone else. More interesting than funny. There's some catchy songs, but I like dancing in my musicals and none of the sequences here stick in my memory.

8. Halloween - The best film of its genre, not counting Alien. But I'm not a real fan of the genre. It towers above its competition, really. Genuinely scary.

7. Dawn Of The Dead - Zombies invade a shopping mall: pure genius. The best of Romero's Zombie Quartet and the one where his anti-capitalist metaphor works the best. Watch the long version.

6. Superman - What are Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman doing in this movie? A really great looking movie, made believable by the work of actors who should be above this sort of thing. After almost 20 years of post-Batman, post-modern superheroes, I'l admit a little nostalgia for a movie that plays the superhero thing totally straight.

5. The 36th Chamber Of Shaolin - Apparently the Shaw Brothers masterpiece, though I've only seen the two films on this list. A great epic martial arts film. Remember the funky logo at the beginning of Kill Bill Vol. 1? That's the Shaw Brothers. Gordon Liu stars in this movie, and plays one role in each of the Kill Bill movies.

4. The Last Waltz - The Band's last concert, chock full of guest appearances. My favorites are Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, and, I guess just for the hell of it, Neil Diamond. The concert's great, but it's the way Scorsese cuts between the songs and the interviews to always keep the movie moving forward, that makes this one of the few great music documentaries.

3. The Deer Hunter - Quite the year for depressing movies. The scope and weight of this film is unmatched in Vietnam films. But it is so dark and depressing. The cast is truly amazing: DeNiro, Walken, Cazale, Savage and Streep are all outstanding. Two things keep this from being #1. First, I've never found what happens to Walken's character to be realistic. Not just the going nuts and playing Russian Roulette part, but DeNiro going back and finding him and what happens then. . . .it's just too much for me to believe in a film that seems so relentlessly realistic in every other aspect. Second is the relationship between Streep and DeNiro. I'm not sure exactly why, but it never worked for me. A great movie, the third best Vietnam movie ever, but not the best of 1978.

2. Days Of Heaven - Terrence Malik's never failed to make a Great Movie. Of course, he's only made three movies (the fourth is coming out this fall, oh yeah, I'm excited). This one stars Richard Gere (before he became a star, and therefore when he was good) and Brooke Adams as Depression Era wanderers who end up working on the always great Sam Shepard's farm. Shepard falls in love with Adams and bad things start to happen in incredibly beautiful ways. One of the very best looking movies ever made.

1. Animal House - How can I put this #1 ahead of Serious Movies like The Deer Hunter and Interiors and Coming Home? Because it's my list, dammit. And also because Animal House is a better, more innovative, more important movie than any of those others. Ask yourself honestly which you'd rather watch: John Belushi being fat, drunk and stupid, or Jon Voight as a paraplegic trying to steal Bruce Dern's wife because Vietnam sucked? That's what I thought. Animal House created a genre that has had way more than its share of crappy movies, but it also spawned some classics (Caddyhack, Stripes, Ghostbusters, etc). Interiors spawned, um, er, nothing. Just because it's funny, doesn't mean it isn't respectable. And Animal House might be the funniest movie ever made.


Some pretty good movies I haven't seen from this year, but I'd be surprised if any made my top 8:

Drunken Master
I Spit On Your Grave
La Cage Aux Folles
Foul Play
Heaven Can Wait
Up In Smoke
Midnight Express

Movies Of The Year: 1977

I'm missing more from 1977 than 76, but I really doubt any of them would break into my top 5.

Here's the list:

11. Saturday Night Fever - Yeah the dancing is kinda cool, but this is a truly terrible movie. Painfully bad.

10. Pete's Dragon - The first of several kid's movies this year. Mediocre live action, partly animated Disney movie. Mickey Rooney's in it.

9. Herbie Goes To Monte Carlo - I loved the Herbie movies when I was a kid. This is a Herbie movie. Ignore the Lindsey Lohan version.

8. Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown - Never one of my favorite Peanuts films, but it's alright.

7. The Rescuers - A lesser Disney cartoon, but it does star Bob Newhart. So that's cool.

6. The Many Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh - A much better Disney cartoon. One of the best, in fact. There's a big gap between 6 and 7 here.

5. New York, New York - A great, underrated Scorsese movie, it's a very dark musical with the unlikely cast of Robert DeNiro and Liza Minelli. Basically the same story as A Star Is Born, but elevated by some of Scorsese's best looking scenes. The opening set-piece on VE day is amazing.




4. A Bridge Too Far - More than the epitome of the Caine-Hackman Theory, it's a great war movie in it's own right. Really the last great classical war movie. All-star cast (Caine, Hackman, Connery, Caan, Redford, Ryan O'Neal, Olivier, Anthony Hopkins, Liv Ullman, maximillian Schell, Denholm Elliott, Elliott Gould, etc) epic scope, complex action sequences, interesting story, it's got it all.


3. Close Encounters Of The Third Kind - Possibly Spielberg's best movie. Great performance from Richard Dreyfuss. Chock full of visually stunning sequences. Francois Truffaut co-stars as a scientist. Classic That Guy Bob Balaban plays Truffaut's assistant. This means something.

2. Star Wars - Very tough call between 1 and 2. Ask me ten minutes from now and I might reverse them. It's fashionable to prefer Empire, but it's Star Wars that is the truly revolutionary film. I refuse to blame it for the crap that came after it, or the effect it had on industry strategy (the creation of the blockbuster-event film).

1. Annie Hall - The best romantic comedy of all-time. Iconic performances by Woody Allen and Diane Keaton. One of my 5 favorite movies ever. Christopher Walken and Jeff Goldblum have cameos. We need the eggs.


The Unseen:

That Obscure Object Of Desire
Eraserhead
Slap Shot
Smokey And TheBandit
The Kentucky Fried Movie
The Goodbye Girl
Oh, God!
Looking For Mr. Goodbar
Pumping Iron
Black Sunday
3 Women
Stroszek

Movies Of The Year: 1976

Starting a new feature here on TINAB, I'm going to countdown the top movies of the year for every year for as long as I can. I'm going to start with 1976, because that's the year I was born and it's as good a year as any. Each year will rank the top ten or so films from that year, along with some mentions of films I haven't seen yet. What year a film is categorized as will be determined by IMDB.

So here we go, the top films of 1976:

12. The Omen - A truly awful movie, though it was a big hit and is interesting as a cultural relic.

11. The Song Remains The Same - A mediocre Led Zeppelin concert film. The introductions of the band members before the show are pretty cool, especially the devilish Jimmy Page. Robert Plant is really bad as he manages to butcher his own songs.

10. Rocky - I've tried to watch it many times, but I've only made it all the way through once. It's a good movie. Stallone really isn't that bad. And the story is terrific. The problem is that it is BORING. I put it in all-caps, so you know it must be true. Not even the best sports movie of the year.

9. Network - One of those movies that you're supposed to like, so you watch it, think it's alright, and then can never remember anything about it. I've seen Network 4 times at least, yet I can remember hardly any of it.

8. The Seven Percent Solution - A terrific cast (Alan Arkin, Laurence Oivier, Robert Duvall, Joel Grey, Nicol Williamson) stars in this Sherlock Holmes meets Sigmund Freud movie. I remember liking it quite a bit, but don't remember enough to rank it any higher than this.

7. Bound For Glory - Hal Ashby's biopic of Woody Guthrie,starring David Carradine, who's very good in the role. Ashby's a great underrated director, this isn't his best movie, but is still pretty good. The biggest problem is that there just isn't enough there. The film stops just as Guthrie's career gets going.

6. Carrie - Perhaps the only good Brian DePalma movie. A dark version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, wherein adolescence = freaky demonism. Great horror movie performances from Piper Laurie and Sissy Spacek.

5. All The President's Men - Another film that just isn't long enough. Very slick, efficient film. Redford, Hoffman and Robards are great. Great script by William Goldman. But you only get the beginnings of the Watergate story. Maybe that's where Woodward and Bernstein's story ends, but it doesn't make for a wholly satisfying film.

4. The Bad News Bears - A classic sports movie. The vicious anti-establishment humor still works. One of the great last scenes in movie history. I plan to avoid the remake at all costs. I recommend you do the same.

3. Marathon Man - The second Goldman/Hoffman pairing of the year is a near-perfect suspense thriller. It shares the lean efficiency of All the President's Men, but manages to tell a complete story. One of Laurence Olivier's last great performances as the Evil Nazi Dentist.

2. Taxi Driver - Please don't take away my Film Geek Merit Badge. It's a great movie, but the ending never really worked for me. After two hours of angry misanthropy, with a horrifically violent climax, the even more misanthropic satire of the coda is just too much. For a long time I just ignored it. Now I understand it's supposed to be funny. I guess I'm just not demented enough to agree. DeNiro though, he's good.

1. The Outlaw Josey Wales- Clint Eastwood's second-best film as a director. A great revisonist Western, it makes the Western as chronicle of the development of civilization theme quite explict. But it does so with much more respect to Indians than any other Western I know of (especially Dances With Wolves). It's the yin to Unforgiven's yang.

Now the ones I haven't seen:

Logan's Run
Small Change
The Front
1900
The Shootist
Family Plot
Assault On Precinct 13
Car Wash
Midway
Silver Streak

I'll Know My Song Well Before I Start Singin'

There were two new Dylan albums released today. The soundtrack for the upcoming Scorsese documentary (on DVD Sept. 20th, on PBS the week after that). "No Direction Home" and a Starbucks CD "Live At The Gaslight 1962". On first listen, both are worth picking up for Dylanphiles (if you aren't one, you should be).


No Direction Home is the 7th Bootleg Series, the first 5 of which are essential for any Dylan fan. It's 2 discs cover 1959-1966, just like the movie will. Disc 1 highlights include fantastic covers of This Land Is Your Land and Dink's Song, very good live versions of A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall, When The Ship Comes In, Blowin' In The Wind and It's All Over Now, Baby Blue.

Disc 2 is mostly alternate version of songs from Highway 61 Revisted and Blonde On Blonde, some of which are substantially different than the album versions. Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues, She Belongs To Me, Desolation Row, Leopard Skin Pill-Box Hat and Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again are the highlights. The album closes with Like A Rolling Stone from the 'Royal Albert Hall' concert, previously available in its entirety as Bootleg Series Volume 4. If you don't already have it, you need to: probably my favorite live performance by anyone, ever.



The Live at the Gaslight album is actually 2 concerts spliced together. Only 3 of the songs are Dylan originals (Hard Rain, Don't Think Twice It's Alright, and the previously unreleased Rocks and Gravel). The last 7 are all covers of folk songs. All are interesting, but the best are John Brown (previously available only on the Dylan Unplugged album), Cocaine and Barbara Allen. definitely worth going into Starbucks to buy it.

New Age Girl

On Air America this week, Al Franken is on vacation. Filling in for him is Rachel Maddow, the best news broadcaster I've seen or heard in a long time. I've been addicted to her daily one hour show (5 - 6 AM eastern) for months now. It's informative and entertaining and very efficient. Should be an interesting week on AA as Maddow's backup does her show, she does Franken's show, and interns or something do Morning Sedition while Mark and Marc are on vacation. All these shows can either be podcast through iTunes or downloaded from http://www.airamericaplace.com. Highly recommended.

Sunday Olio (Not Oleo, That's A Butter Substitute)

Watched Brothers Grimm last night. I was disappointed. It's well down. The actors are good. The story is fairly interesting. There just isn't anything more there. It reminded me quite a bit of Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow, another well-made, good-looking movie that I felt just didn't have any reason to exist. It feels like important parts of this film are missing, which is very possible. Terry Gilliam's set a very high standard for his films, and this is easily the worst one I've seen.


A couple days ago, I watched Spider-Man 2. It was good, but not as good as the first one. Just about what you'd expect I guess. I'm annoyed that they basically just recycled the conflicts of the first movie. Peter has issues with the responsibility of being a superhero, and committing to the hot girl. A scientist he likes and admires is twisted into a supervillain against his will. If they make a third one, it could potentially be the best of the three, what with a villain with a different motive (Peter's friend chooses to become the Hobgoblin in order to get revenge), and with (hopefully) the resolution of the inane Mary Jane-Peter conflict.




Felix Herndandez finally gave up an extra-base hit. Three of them in fact. But 8 Ks and 1 walk over seven innings, with only 3 runs allowed is nothing to sneeze at.

36 IP 23 H 8 R 7 ER 2 HR 5 BB 38 K 1.75 ERA

Wednesday night, The King takes on The Big Unit at Safeco. If you watch one Mariner games this year, this should be it.


And this is hilarious.

When Someone Asks You If You Are A God, You Say "Yes!"

Watched that Ghostbusters DVD tonight. Haven't seen the movie in years, because I've only been able to get it panned-and-scanned. That didn't bother me when I was a kid and didn't know what it was, I must have watched it dozens of times on VHS (it pretty much defines the way I remember the 1980s). But now, thanks to the miracle of DVD, I'm able to watch it widescreen for the first time since seeing it in the theatre when I was eight years old.

I can't imagine a person not liking Ghostbusters, I bet even Pat Robertson likes it. It's pretty much a perfect movie comedy. Murray, Ackroyd and Ramis at their peak. A great supporting cast (Rick Moranis, Sigourney Weaver, Annie Potts, William Atherton). Tremendously quotable movie (the biggest 'Memorable Quotes' page I've ever seen at IMDB is in the link in the title).

The odd thing about it, seeing it now, is that there's absolutely no cynicism in it. Not that its sappy or cheesy, because it isn't at all. But there's a kind of wide-eyed optimism to the film. Maybe that's just a residue of my having watched it so much as a kid, but I really think that's why it was such the hit that it was. These guys have done funnier movies (Stripes, Vacation) and better movies (Trading Places, The Blues Brothers, Animal House, Groundhog Day) but I don't think they've ever done anything that is so appealing to so many people.

Chavez And Castro Offer Welfare To Poor Americans

HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, popular with the poor at home, offered on Tuesday to help needy Americans with cheap supplies of gasoline.

"We want to sell gasoline and heating fuel directly to poor communities in the United States," the populist leader told reporters at the end of a visit to Communist-run Cuba.

. . . .

Chavez said Venezuela could supply gasoline to Americans at half the price they now pay if intermediaries who "speculated ... and exploited consumers" were cut out.

Venezuela supplies Cuba with generously financed oil and plans to help Caribbean nations foot their oil bills.

Chavez, in Cuba to attend the graduation of Cuban-trained doctors from 28 countries, was seen off at the airport by Cuban President Fidel Castro. Washington has accused the two leaders of being a destabilizing influence in South America.

Chavez and Castro offered to give poor Americans free health care and train doctors free of charge.

Masters Of War

American Legion Declares War on Protestors -- Media Next?

By E&P Staff

Published: August 24, 2005 4:20 PM ET
NEW YORK The American Legion, which has 2.7 million members, has declared war on antiwar protestors, and the media could be next. Speaking at its national convention in Honolulu, the group's national commander called for an end to all “public protests” and “media events” against the war, even though they are protected by the Bill of Rights.

"The American Legion will stand against anyone and any group that would demoralize our troops, or worse, endanger their lives by encouraging terrorists to continue their cowardly attacks against freedom-loving peoples," Thomas Cadmus, national commander, told delegates at the group's national convention in Honolulu.

The delegates voted to use whatever means necessary to "ensure the united backing of the American people to support our troops and the global war on terrorism."

In his speech, Cadmus declared: "It would be tragic if the freedoms our veterans fought so valiantly to protect would be used against their successors today as they battle terrorists bent on our destruction.”

He explained, "No one respects the right to protest more than one who has fought for it, but we hope that Americans will present their views in correspondence to their elected officials rather than by public media events guaranteed to be picked up and used as tools of encouragement by our enemies." This might suggest to some, however, that American freedoms are worth dying for but not exercising.

Without mentioning any current protestor, such as Cindy Sheehan, by name, Cadmus recalled: "For many of us, the visions of Jane Fonda glibly spouting anti-American messages with the North Vietnamese and protestors denouncing our own forces four decades ago is forever etched in our memories. We must never let that happen again….

"We had hoped that the lessons learned from the Vietnam War would be clear to our fellow citizens. Public protests against the war here at home while our young men and women are in harm's way on the other side of the globe only provide aid and comfort to our enemies."

Resolution 3, which was passed unanimously by 4,000 delegates to the annual event, states: "The American Legion fully supports the president of the United States, the United States Congress and the men, women and leadership of our armed forces as they are engaged in the global war on terrorism and the troops who are engaged in protecting our values and way of life."

Cadmus advised: "Let's not repeat the mistakes of our past. I urge all Americans to rally around our armed forces and remember our fellow Americans who were viciously murdered on Sept. 11, 2001."

Pat Apologizes, Says Chavez = Hitler

(CNN) -- After two days of criticism, Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson apologized for his controversial suggestion that the United States should assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

"Is it right to call for assassination? No, and I apologize for that statement," Robertson said. "I spoke in frustration that we should accommodate the man who thinks the U.S. is out to kill him."

But he compared Chavez to Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Adolph Hitler and quoted German Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "[That if a madman were] driving a car into a group of innocent bystanders, then I can't, as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe and then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver."

Bonhoeffer was hanged by the Nazis for his involvement in a 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler.

Robertson's rationale for his statement remained unchanged.

"I said before the war in Iraq began that the wisest course would be to wage war against Saddam Hussein, not the whole nation of Iraq," Robertson said. "When faced with the threat of a comparable dictator in our own hemisphere, would it not be wiser to wage war against one person rather than finding ourselves down the road locked in a bitter struggle with a whole nation?"

So far there has been no reaction from Venezuela to Robertson's apology.

Earlier Wednesday, on his "The 700 Club" program, Robertson said the media had taken his remarks out of context.

"I didn't say 'assassination.' I said our special forces should 'take him out.' And 'take him out' can be a number of things, including kidnapping; there are a number of ways to take out a dictator from power besides killing him. I was misinterpreted by the AP [Associated Press], but that happens all the time," Robertson said on "The 700 Club." (Watch video)

The controversy began Monday when Robertson called Chavez "a terrific danger" bent on exporting Communism and Islamic extremism across the Americas. (Full story)

"If he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think we really ought to go ahead and do it," said Robertson Monday. "It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war." (Watch Robertson's comments)

"We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability," he said. "We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."

Chavez, a close ally of Cuban President Fidel Castro, has said in the past he believes the United States is trying to kill him and vowed that Venezuela, which accounts for more than 10 percent of U.S. oil imports, would shut off the flow of oil if that happened.

Tuesday, the Venezuelan leader shrugged off Robertson's comments during a trip to Cuba.

"I don't know who that person is," he said. "I don't know him, and as far as his opinion of me goes, I couldn't care less."

. . . . .

His opponents, largely drawn from the country's middle and upper classes, accuse him of undermining democratic institutions.

Chavez was re-elected under a new constitution in 2000. In 2004, he won a recall referendum with the support of 58 percent of voters.

He has become an increasingly outspoken critic of the United States, which he accuses of having been behind a 2002 coup attempt that forced him from office for two days.

The Bush administration denied involvement but refused to condemn the attempted coup.

. . . . .

Controversial statements are not new to the 75-year-old Robertson.

He has suggested in the past that a meteor could strike Florida because of unofficial "Gay Days" at Disney World and that feminism caused women to kill their children, practice witchcraft and become lesbians.

Deeper Into Movies

Watched Destry Rides Again a few days ago. Stars Jimmy Stewart, in one of his first starring roles and Marlene Dietrich. Advertised as a comedy, it isn't really, though it does have funny moments. It's a lot like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a film Stewart made 20 years later, in that it makes explicit the underlying theme of every Western: the transition from anarchy to civilization. Like Shenandoah, the movie is remarkable mostly for Stewart's performance. He's terrific as a zen genius of a deputy sherriff who doesn't believe in guns, essentially the same character he played in Harvey, only without the delusions.

Disappointing, though, was Marlene Dietrich. Her acting's fine, and her scenes with Stewart are terrific, but her songs are awful and she looks as bad as I've ever seen her. Which is weird, considering she was electric in Josef von Sternberg's The Devil Is A Woman just four years earlier, and she looked great in films through the 40s and into the 50s. Must be the excessive make-up and ridiculous Western costumes.


Watched Kill Bill Vol. 2 last night. While I liked it better than the first time I saw it, I still prefer the first part. Volume 1 is overflowing with manic energy and joy of making movies fun. The second is much more controlled, more static. The first is inspired by Kung-Fu and exploitation movies but it transcends its genre models, takes them to new artistic heights. Vol. 2, however, simply does not match up to the Films Noir and Spaghetti Westerns it is modeled after.

It might be the soundtrack. The reason those Sergio Leone movies never seem slow, despite the long takes where not much happens, is Ennio Morricone's scores. While the soundtrack to Kill Bill Vol. 1 is perfect, there's hardly anything memorable about the sound in Vol. 2.

There are great parts of the film though: the whole Pai Mei chapter, a great performance by Michael Madsen, the fight with Darryl Hannah. It's just never as exciting or innovative as Volume 1. It is Jackie Brown to Volume 1's Pulp Fiction.


Just finished, literally, watching Captain Blood. Released in 1935, it's Errol Flynn's first starring role. Basically the same team got together a few years later and made the Adventures of Robin Hood, a much superior film. Flynn, Basil Rathbone, and Olivia de Havilland star in and Michael Curtiz directs both films. The whole first hour of the movie as devoid of action, as Flynn is arrested and sold into slavery and slowly, very slowly, works his way into becoming a pirate. Once that happens, the film picks up pace and becomes interesting. Rathbone is criminally underused as an evil pirate, he really only gets two scenes, one of which is a good fight scene with Flynn, but not as good as the ones in Robin Hood. The ship to ship battles are also very good, but it just isn't enough to save the film. Doomed by a boring first half and a second half dotted with sanctimonious speech-making.

I Need Japanese Steel

Went DVD shopping today and picked up Ghostbusters and a trio of Tarantino films (Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill Vol. 2). Which leads me to a question John posed below in the comments. He writes:

I thought "Kill Bill, Vol. 1" was too violent and had a lot of pointless running around. I must be missing something, especially considering I haven't seen many samurai movies at all.

Why on earth do you think it's easily the best movie of 2003?

Well, first of all, these things are subjective. Some people don't like violent movies, that's OK. I'm not gonna tell you you should like it, just try to explain why I do.

First off, some background. Kill Bill is an homage to a certain genre of film. The Martial Arts, Samurai/Yakuza and Blaxploitation films of the 70s, to be specific. What these films all have in common is violence. Not just plain old Die Hard style violence, but crush your head like a melon, spray the screen with fake blood level violence. The violence is not meant to be realistic, nor do people look at it that way. Usually, in these films, its all in fun: people like to see blood geysering out of a severed head. Well. . .some people do. There is that element of playfulness and jokiness to the violence in Kill Bill, but there's more to it than just that.

Take, for example, the sequence near the end of the big fight scene between the Bride and the Crazy 88s. Someone (for no apparent reason) shuts off the power in the Inn. The Bride and her combatant are only visible as black silhouettes on a blue background. The fight is abstracted to it's essence: bodies moving through space. This is what people mean when they compare kung fu movies to ballet: both art forms are primarily concerned with the image of the human body as it moves and interacts with other bodies. In ballet, you have toe shoes and a tutu. In Kill Bill, a motorcycle suit and a badass sword. The point is the same: it looks pretty, and it looks cool.

Another, non-violent yet terrific thing about Kill Bill is the way it's written. Not just the catchy dialogue, of which there's less of than in any other Tarantino film, but in the structure and economy of the narrative.

It may be cliche now to start a movie in the middle and jumble up it's timeline (Tarantino's done it in three of his four films) but it still works as a way of keeping the audience on edge and guessing and involved with the plot. In fact, that might be one of the reasons I prefer Vol. 1 to Vol. 2: aside from the long flashback sequence, the narrative in Vol. 2 is strictly A to B.

But it's the economy of the script that really stands out to me. The way Tarantino can create wholly unique, interesting and memorable characters with just a few lines of dialogue is amazing. For a film with so little dialogue, there are a remarkable number of fascinating characters in Kill Bill: Hattori Hanzo, GoGo Yubari, O-Ren Ishii, Buck, The Sherriff, not to mention The Bride herself.

And there's more: terrific acting by Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, and, especially, Sonny Chiba, the best use of music of any Tarantino film, and any film at all since Boogie Nights, the great, long steadycam tracking shot setting the scene for the House of The Blue Leaves sequence, the absurd, yet beautiful, snowscape for the final battle between The Bride and O-Ren, the audacity of putting a long (violent) anime sequence right in the middle of the film, and on and on.

There isn't a filmmaker alive who loves movies more than Quentin Tarantino, and that shows in every frame of this movie. It's a movie for people who love movies by people who love movies. It isn't surprising, then, that film geeks tend to like it a lot more than normal people.

If We Don't Try, We Don't Do. And If We Don't Do, Why Are We Here On This Earth?

Caught Shenandoah as part of James Stewart Day on TCM. Small-scale Civil War movie with Stewart as the head of an anti-war Southern clan. Really more of an anti-war movie than anything else. It came out in 1965, which seems a little early for such an obvious Vietnam commentary, but there it is nonetheless. Great performance by Stewart in his angry, depressed old man period. The story is awfully dark, but you never get the full effect of depression you'd get if such a film were made today. I blame Technicolor: the movie's way to bright and colorful for it's subject matter. It looks like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, but could have been The Deer Hunter. And the terrible supporting cast Stewart has to work with (outside of Katherine Ross), certainly doesn't help. Recommended for Stewart's performance though. He really is very good.



Also saw Once Upon A Time In China 2 dubbed, panned, and scanned on the Encore Action channel. There are a lot Once Upon movies, 4 of which star Jet Li. The fourth (or sixth) one, Once Upon A Time In China And America, in fact was ripped off by Jackie Chan and turned into Shanghai Noon.

Li plays Wong Fei-Hung, who is to China what Robin Hood would be to England if he lived in the early 20th Century. He was a real person, a legend in his own time, so to speak. In fact, he was the first martial arts movie star, acting in a number of pre-war Chinese films (with his umbrella). He's been adapted into a lot of films, either keeping his name (like in Jackie Chan's Drunken Master movies, though Chan came up with the 'drunken' part as a joke) or being the basic mold for another character (as in Jet Li's Fong Sai-Yuk films, which are really similar plot-wise to the Once Upon movies, though set hundreds of years earlier).

Anyway, in this movie, Wong has to help protect Sun Yat-Sen and his group of revolutionaries from the anti-Western White Lotus Clan and corrupt members of the Chinese government who appear to have sold out to the Japanese. As in many films of this genre, the hero is out to defend ordinary Chinese from foreign invaders (usually either the Manchu or the Japanese). The twist of the Once Upon movies is that, while Wong fights the Eastern foreigners, he's curious about, and very fond of, the West (mainly British and Americans and their inventions and weird customs).

It's well-directed by Tsui Hark, one of the best Hong Kong directors of the 90s: his Swordsman 2, also starring Jet Li, is highly recommended as possibly the best film in this genre. The martial arts are choreographed by Yuen Wo-Ping, the guy who's choreographed every martial arts sequence in every film made in the last 10 years, and with good reason. Donnie Yen (Hero, Shanghai Knights) is the only recognizable co-star, though I didn't recognize him at all. All the Once Upon movies are recommended, though they probably aren't the best way to start in the genre.

King Felix Update

8 IP, 5 H, 2 ER, 1 BB, 9 K

29 IP, 16 H, 4 BB, 30 K, 1.24 ERA

and still no extra-base hits allowed.

After only 4 starts, he is now the Mariners' second most valuable pitcher by Runs Saved Above Average, tied with Julio Mateo at 10, behind Eddie Guardado's 14. He's fourth among the team's pitchers with 13.9 VORP, behind Jamie Moyer, Mateo and Guardado. After 4 starts.

Hail to the King.

Silly Caucasian Girl Likes To Play With Samurai Swords

Watched Kill Bill Vol. 1 again tonight. Easily the best film of 2003. I really need to get the DVD of Volume 2 so I can see it again: I didn't like it nearly as much as the first part the only time I saw it. . . .I wonder when Tarantino's gonna release those special editions. . . .

In other news, Felix Hernandez pitches tonight at 4:30 in Minnesota. Be there or be square.

Reality Is That Which, When You Stop Believing In It, Doesn't Go Away

Went used book shopping yesterday and bought a bunch of Phillip K. Dick books because I've been hearing how great he is for a long time and have never gotten around to actually reading any of his stuff. Also, apparently the 'King Felix' nickname may or may not be a PKD reference. I'm starting with The Man In The High Castle. So far, so good.

I Like American Music

What's On The iPod This Week:
Bach's Cello Suites by Yo-Yo Ma.

Been trying to educate myself on Bach, this is my latest purchase. I'd say i like it better than the Well-Tempered Clavier, but not as much as The Art of Fugue. Ma played one of these on The West Wing, I believe.






Kind Of Blue by Miles Davis.

I don't know much about Jazz, but I know this is great.





Exile On Coldharbour Lane by A3.

You know them as the theme song from The Sopranos. Radical left-wing country-blues-gospel-acid house-fusion. Good stuff. I think they may have been mildly famous when I wasn't paying attention, but I'm not sure.






Bitches Brew by Miles Davis.

More Miles, more awesome.

Long Live The King!

8 IP 3 H 1 R 1 ER 1 BB 11 K

21 IP 11 H 3 R 2 ER 3 BB 21 K 0.86 ERA

I Don't Know Where You Pixies Came From, But I Like Your Pixie Drink

Baseball teams as Simpsons characters at the above link.

Here's a few:

Seattle Mariners - Barney Gumble - Struggling against their personal demons. Just when you thought they were going to clean themselves up and they were looking bulletproof, they suffered an unfortunate relapse.


New York Yankees - C. Montgomery Burns - Driven to success by an almost unimaginable wealth of resources, which they use to ruthlessly crush their enemies, although typically not by the most efficient means possible (blocking out the sun, Bernie Williams). Seemingly unaware of the (obvious) reasons why they are hated. They seem to have been a key actor in pretty much everything important that happened before 1970.

Boston Red Sox - Lisa Simpson - Beloved by all. Used to being overlooked and trod upon, so that when they finally get a day in the sun, they don't really know what to do with it. Unfortunate tendency to get a little self-righteous. Antagonistic relationship with those in positions of power.

Baltimore Orioles - Maggie Simpson - Never says or does much of anything, but constantly brought up in discussions by virtue of their close associates. Stubbornly hanging onto something disgusting despite other people's well-meaning efforts to take it away (pacifier, Sidney Ponson).