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Jayne Mansfield and the Girl Who Can't Help It, Part I
I've been having trouble getting into the Jayne Mansfield classic The Girl Can't Help It. First of all, Tom Ewell, whom you probably know better as the star of The Seven Year Itch, is one of my least favorite actors of the 50's. I think he's smug and irritating. The movie is about a tired old agent who gets hired by a mobster to turn his ( Read more... ) -
Immediate Response to Where the Wild Things Are
It was okay. Kind of blah. Too violent for children, it seems geared toward adults with unresolved childhood issues of the playground/broken home varieties. I liked a lot about the visual style but didn't find the movie particularly engaging or insightful. I liked the Karen O music, too, but thought that the pattern of talky adventure interrupted ( Read more... ) -
Lorna's Silence / Anvil / Sunshine Cleaning / Gomorrah
I told myself I'd keep my nascent film journal separate from this journal since the whole reason for putting it on another site was so I could write about the movies I was watching without being self-conscious about it. Nonetheless, here I am whoring for attention or something. The blog is bluefilmjournal.blogspot.com ( Read more... ) -
Attn: Netflix Users
I have, out of my well of benevolence, gone through and ferreted out the movies from my best of the year list that are currently available for viewing online. The following films are among the top 30 I've seen this year so you absolutely should be good little children and watch them all ( Read more... ) -
25 Favorite Films I Saw in/of 2009
There are some things I haven't seen yet which I will probably like, The White Ribbon in particular, but as it stands this is my Top 25 list, roughly ranked with Summer Hours at or near number one ( Read more... ) -
ma vie janvierienne?
I watched The Detective (1968) and Tokyo! (2008) last night via the Netflix. My thoughts on the films are in my nascent film blog but I have to say I'm still pretty amazed by the whole projecting movies onto the wall via the internet phenomenon. I might not leave my apartment again until spring, except of course for work, which is good on account ( Read more... ) -
gifts received / addams extravagance / movie update
My sister came to Chicago yesterday to give me the presents she had for me. A very belated and excessively extravagant birthday present was the centerpiece: blu-ray player with netflix streaming. Also, There Will Be Blood on blu-ray. I haven't watched that yet because I don't have the right kind of cable to hook the machine up to my roommate's ( Read more... ) -
Baby Jane, My Mother, Your Mother, Bashir, J.Lo
This last week my boyfriend has decided to mix things up by going and renting old DVDs of his own choice. Early in the week he rented a bunch of sort of classic films he'd never seen: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, All About My Mother, Waltz with Bashir, and Y tu mama tambien. Then last night he picked up Out of Sight with George Clooney and ( Read more... ) -
This week im Kino?
I amazingly didn't make it to the movies at all last week except the Music Box Theatre's Poseidon Adventure New Year's Eve event ( Read more... ) -
auditing film critic top ten lists
You may remember how last year I went through the end-of-year top-ten-movies lists compiled at Metacrictic.com and broke the nation's leading critics up into the seven rings of hell, primarily based on how atrocious their tastes were in 2008. The shocking result was that JR Jones of The Chicago Reader was the only critic in the outermost ring, ( Read more... )