I had this post ready to go this morning when suddenly, inexplicably, Blogger glitched. I did nothing wrong or out of the ordinary but suddenly the formatting got screwed up. While just trying to figure out what happened, what button might mistakenly have been hit, etc., the entire post went blank and then auto-saved. Five or six hours of work - more, really - gone in a flash. No explanation, no reason, no appeal, no recovery.
So, back to the drawing board.
An accumulation of spirit-crushing glitches like this can really do a number of a fella's equilibrium. I wish it was just Blogger. Someone fix the goddamn Matrix.
Here is a Table of Contents post for all film-related content here at the Omnibus.
MY FAVORITE FILMS
Pretty straightforward. I’m not capable of answering things like a normal person so one of those “Name your favorite film for every year of your lifetime” viral quiz things crossed my social media path and these were the results.
21st Century (through 2016)
FRIDAY NIGHT FILM NOIR
This was kind of a watch-along-with-me-while-I-screencap-the-movie-and-tell-you-the-plot sort of project, which in retrospect isn't the most satisfying thing to read. But there a gazillion screencaps in there, for cover photos or slideshows or just to admire while you practice your saxophone solos under the blinking argon lights.
FROM NOVEL TO FILM
Full list here. There were so many I wanted to get to and didn’t. I left those inactive links in there, just to get an idea of what the full range of films would have looked like.
RANDOM REVIEWS
AND OVERVIEWS
- The Films of Oliver Stone. I probably wouldn't even make that list now. I did it in 2014, and even by then I wasn't much of a Stone fan anymore. But in the past seven years, I've read this book, which kind of makes it hard to look at some of the things in Stone's movie the same way. It's still great theater, has plenty of fun performances, etc., but now it seems like it's gathering together the kind of Flying Spaghetti Monster strands under one banner. Which at one point wouldn't have mattered to me. Sidenote: the release of the JFK files was postponed once again, which will likely make Kevin Costner's remarkable speech at the end that much more persuasive to some. Maybe they're right.
- The Films of Martin Scorsese. What, did you miss one? Nope, I never did this one. I bring it up because, remarkably, I find myself in the same boat with Scorsese as I just described with Stone. I never would have thought most of his and Stone's work would hit me like a big bag of "meh" here in the far future of 2021, but that's where I'm at. Still think Casino is a masterpiece, and that Personal Journey Through American Movies should be seen by any aspiring filmmakers.
- One Crazy Summer. Seems kind of conspicuous all by itself like this, eh? There’s a very bloated three-parter on Heathers back there somewhere that I’ll leave unlinked. Not to be coy, just not my favorite work. Great movie though. Still holds up.
- The Things I Watched Recentlys. These are fun, and they’re rather habit-forming. Probably good I’m giving up the blog when I am as I could see myself just doing nothing but, year after year to the grave. I mean, hell I’ll be doing that anyway, just as I was doing it beforehand. Anyway I’ve done a few of these:
(a) some Halloween viewing from a few years ago. (Blacula, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Exorcist II, The Exorcist III, Halloween: H20, In the Mouth of Madness, It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, Little Shop of Horrors, Mandy, The Omen III: The Final Conflict, Scream Blacula Scream, Summer of '84, The Watcher in the Woods)
(b) One from earlier this year (Alien, Unhinged, The Hot Rock, The Hot Spot, Lady Cocoa, Lifeforce, Lifeguard, The Lost World: Jurassic Park II, No Escape, The Omega Man, The Pink Panther Strikes Again, TNT Jackson, The Towering Inferno)
(c) One from a few months ago (Bird Box, Chopping Mall, The Edge, The Fog, Freedomland, Invitation to Hell, A Quiet Place, Queen of Outer Space, Tai-Pan, We Can Be Heroes, Wind River)
(d) Another from a few months ago. (Boss Baby 2, Breaker Morant, Carbon Copy, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Crazies, Emma Mae, The In Laws, Pillow Talk, Police Story III: Supercop, Saint Jack, Slap Shot, Slumber Party Massacre, Sparkle, That Touch of Mink)
(e) Still another from a few months ago. (Class of 1984, Cleopatra, Death of Me, The Guilty, Freeway, Halloween II, Land of the Pharaohs, The Mummy, Retreat, The Ten Commandments, WNUF A Halloween Special, Yes Day)
(f) December 2021 viewing pt. 1 (Elf, The Family Man, The Family Stone, Gremlins, The Holiday, Identity, Jingle All the Way, Titanic, Troop Zero) and pt. 2 (The Artist, Beau Geste, Beyond Mombasa, The Block Island Sound, The Dam Busters, Dawn Patrol, Dishonored, King Kong Escapes, Lost Command, Private Resort, Private School, Safari, Shot Caller, Ski School, Summer School, Twelve O'Clock High, White Witch Doctor)
THE SCENIC ROUTE
Full list here. I really pumped a lot of screencaps out into the inter-ether. May you use them in peace, Planet Earth. May a thousand cover photos bloom.
STAR TREK MOVIES
The definitive McBreakdown! Pts. 1 and 2.
STEPHEN KING MOVIES
Likewise. Pts. 1 and 2. Someday someone will make a film of Duma Key and it will hopefully top that list, as it does my list of favorite King books.
TEN WESTERNS
Well this list feels incomplete or askew to me now, even if it was really only meant to be a list of hey-here's-some-good-westerns not an attempt to nail down the definitive grouping or anything. Still, I'd add or subtract a few now. That's horse races.
~
(1) "I had this post ready to go this morning when suddenly, inexplicably, Blogger glitched." -- This sort of shit worries me. I've had only occasional bad luck with Blogger, mostly of the why-won't-this-image-go-where-I'm-telling-it-to variety, but when I read something like this it makes me fret that a disaster is still somewhere on the horizon. The most recent post I put up was an unforgivable 25,000+ words. I'd hate to have lost 'em, even though 17,895 of them were either "rules" or "sucks."
ReplyDelete(2) That My Favorite Films series was great.
(3) I instinctively think I would enjoy that Fred Litwin book. I doubt I'll ever make time to actually read it, but it sounds cool.
(4) I would say I'm a bigger Scorsese fan in theory than in practice. I've missed a number of his recent films, and there are some of the classics I've never seen as well ("The Last Waltz" and "The Last Temptation of Christ" being the most prominent, so I guess I'm not too bad off the mark). Few of his movies really call to me in any way; "Taxi Driver" does (need to get that one on Blu-ray someday), but that's kind of the only one.
That said, I had a dream last night in which I had been transformed into a beefcake badass and was about to fight Robert DeNiro from, I assume, "Raging Bull." Right as the fight was about to begin, the landscapers outside my apartment woke me up, so I'll never know what was going to happen. I was pissed OFF to not get more of whatever weirdness this was in my brain.
(4) Ha! That is fantastic. Don't you hate/ love that?
DeleteMy dream life is incredibly boring. I have literally had dreams where I'm folding laundry. More often than not. But occasionally - like once a decade - I'll have one like that. I wish I knew how to trigger it. I used to be able to lucid dream every so often but it's one of those things I never know what I do to do it or not do it.
Anyway, Scorsese. Yeah it's surprising to me, here's an impromptu list of least to most faves followed by ones I haven't seen:
The 60s/70s. (6) Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. (I mean, it's fine, just nothing I ever need to see again) (5) Boxcar Bertha. (Ditto, though interesting history to be sure.) (4) Who's That Knocking At My Door (a very Scorsese effort; I used to watch this a lot back when I first discovered it.) (3) Mean Streets (Ditto.) (2) New York New York (I actually have seen this only once and I liked it a lot more than I expected, so I look fwd to seeing it again.) and (1) Taxi Driver. (Very weird and disturbing film, brilliantly filmed, not my favorite script. Someone says 'it's a masterpiece,' you can't argue.)
(6) New York Stories. (If it counts. It's okay. It's no Tales From the Darkside: The Movie, as far as anthology flicks. Or The Twilight Zone.) (5) The Last Temptation of Christ. (I don't understand the point of this movie at all. I read the book, too. The book feels a bit more like an exploration of some kind. I'm not offended by the movie, just very unimpressed. It's kind of dumb.) (4) Raging Bull (I kinda never unerstood the big deal about this one. It's an unpleasant movie about unpleasant people; I just never cared for it. It's filmed well - again, I blame Shrader.) (3) The King of Comedy (Like it, don't love it.) (2) After Hours. (Scorsese talked about this one as his rediscovering film movie. There's an energy to it that I like. There's not much to it, though. I like it fine.) (1) The Color of Money (I like this one better than the "Hustler." A mature film. I saw it in the theater and was baffled; saw it as an adult and thought oh wow, this film totally only makes sense as an adult. Good flick but not as exciting as it might be.)
The 80s.
The 90s:
ReplyDelete(6) Bringing Out the Dead. (I kinda hate this movie. Again I blame Shrader. It's just such a pointlessly brutal, pointlessly pointless movie, that's un-fun to watch to boot.) (5) The Age of Innocence. Beautiful to look at, but kind of all dressed up with nowhere to go. Not a bad movie, I used to love it as a 20 year old. (4) Kundun. (It's not bad. I appreciate its overall message, but it's hampered by a studio who didn't want to offend China. I read a lot about the Dalai Lama around the time this came out and was really into the whole thing. The book Violence and Compassion, a book-length interview between the DL and Jean-Claude Carriere, is worth checking out.) (3) Cape Fear. (This film would be a masterpiece if it was just a bit more restrained, if DeNiro's accent wasn't so woefully inconsistent, and if there was less jailbait-Juliette-Lewis-leering-and-drooling. Or if the latter was integrated more skillfully into the script. Has not aged well. Parts of it are brilliant, and I'll always love the houseboat-in-the-rapids metaphor for the whole American family. Even if his conclusions on such things are often somewhat boilerplate. (2) Goodfellas. (Masterpiece. Endlessly watchable. Perfect movie.) (1) Casino. (Ditto - I never understood "it's just like Goodfellas!" argument. a) it's not, b) it's better, c) it's a masterpiece about America that few films "about America" ever pull off. An "A" with a dozen plusses after it.
I also prefer "Casino" to the admittedly-great "Goodfellas."
Delete(8) The Wolf of Wall Street. (This movie is stupid. Bad performances, bad script, bad message, and overbloated as hell.) (7) The Irishman. (Inoffensive but pointless/ the fx don't work.) (6) Gangs of New York. (Fascinating history here, a bloated mess of a movie, Leo and Cameron were miscast). (5) Shutter Island. (What a strange movie. An unrealistic scenario, a rather underwhelming bag of metaphors, kinda pointless. Trucks in a feeling of dread it does not earn and aspires to... what? A baffling exercise.) (4) Hugo. (Boring. I have never finished this one. Pointless CGI - the whole thing is weird. I kept reading "Scorsese's love letter to so-and-so." If this is a love letter, there's a break-up coming. (2) The Departed. (Doesn't hold up after multiple viewings, suffers from the "LA Confidential" problem, i.e. the murders/ twists just don't seem realistic after awhile. Would've been better to just follow the real Whitey Bulger story without all the overacting. Leonardo's f-bombs-into-the-cellphone-style at full BS here. (1) The Aviator. (I love this movie, though.)
ReplyDeleteDidn't see "Silence."
Oh, man, I thought "Hugo" was excellent. Granted, I saw it in 3D, and it was one of the better films to be released in that format when that was a thing they were trying to really make happen.
DeleteI wish me too. To me it was about as interesting as 'Leap" or 'Monster House' or one of those. Totally emotionally uninvolved. But I've heard your reaction from more than a few folks, so I'm glad it hits someone like that.
Delete