Monday, January 29, 2007

Regurgitated movie quiz

In recent years, before New Times Media lately began gutting them, the Village Voice would run the aptly named "World's Hardest Film Quiz" in its pages. I doubt anyone will get upset if I repost one section of the 2004 quiz here for my readers, who I'm guessing haven't seen - or won't remember - this portion, and who I'm putting on the honor system (no googling). Name the film in which these final lines of dialogue are spoken:

1. "She wouldn't even harm a fly."
2. "The day I left, it was written in the almanac: 'The Fire forces the Goldto move. Extremely favorable for going west.' "
3. "Don't shoot—they're in Switzerland." "Good for them."
4. "Its origin, and purpose, still a total mystery."
5. "If not today, then tomorrow, I will have told someone. I can think about escaping after that."
6. "He was a credit to the fight game, to the very end."
7. "Yeah, maybe our fucking orders will come through."
8. " . . . Cannibal."
9. "Won't you leave me a souvenir. Only a small souvenir."
SPECIAL BONUS QUESTION provided by ME:
10. "Alright, Chief, take'em away. I'm gonna go home and sleep with my wife."


Please note that I changed #8 from what originally appeared in print ("...Animal") as I'm certain they were incorrect. Truthfully, I only got #s 3 and 4 right at the time but felt afterward like I definitely should have known 1 & 7. I'll post the answers in the comment section later this week, if anyone actually tries to answer any of these.

Friday, January 26, 2007

Here it is.

The greatest thing that has ever happened to me. And until it hits the marketplace, here is my message for this invention.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

The DVD Box Set of the Year

...will be released May 1. I don't think Criterion could top this if they put out a Magnificent Ambersons box with the original ending and free Orson Welles capes and hats.



From The Digital Bits:

Boy have we got some great DVD news for you film geeks today! ABKCO Films and Anchor Bay Entertainment have just announced a pair of titles that we've been waiting for on DVD since Day One of this format... El Topo and The Holy Mountain! No kidding! Anchor Bay will release a special limited edition collector's box set, The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky, on DVD on 5/1 (SRP $49.98). The set will contain El Topo, The Holy Mountain and Fando Y Lis on DVD, fully restored and remastered from new HD transfers in anamorphic widescreen video, with Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 audio. The box set will also include 2 music CDs containing the soundtracks for El Topo and The Holy Mountain, as well as a DVD of Jodorowsky's never-before-released first film, La Cravate. El Topo and The Holy Mountain will also be available separately (SRP $24.98 each). The El Topo DVD will contain audio commentary by the director, the original theatrical trailer (with English voice-over), a 2006 on-camera interview with the director as well as an exclusive new interview, a photo gallery and original script excerpts. The Holy Mountain DVD will include audio commentary with the director, deleted scenes with commentary, the original theatrical trailer (with English voice-over), the Tarot short with commentary, a restoration process short, restoration credits, a photo gallery and original script excerpts. Fando Y Lis will include audio commentary with the director and the La Constellation Jodorowsky documentary. Subtitles on the discs will be available in English, French, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. Awesome news indeed!


Soundtrack cds! Commentaries! And more! All for under $50! I'm going to put on a loincloth, paint my genitalia and run around the desert in honor of Jodorowsky... AGAIN!

If you've always wanted to see Rip Torn attack Norman Mailer with a hammer...

today's your lucky day. More info here.

Monday, January 15, 2007

Inland Empire

Saw it, don't know what to make of it yet. Mulholland Drive and Eraserhead make intuitive sense if not coherent sense, but I would need another viewing or two (no small commitment) to see if any of the three hours worth of loose threads here coalesce into anything at all. I will say that Lynch would seem to be seriously running out of gas with some of these themes - shifting identities, Hollywood - if he still didn't mine them so vividly. I attended the sold-out screening at the AFI Theater in Silver Spring last night w/ Lynch in attendence. Nothing particularly new came out of the audience Q & A (except for the story of Georgia the cow), although someone asked Lynch what music he was listening to and he mentioned Au Revoir Simone, which led to him describing the scene from Pee-Wee's Big Adventure from which the band got their name. That was surreal.

Friday, January 12, 2007

Bees. I Hate Those Guys.

The "best" scenes from the Wicker Man remake. Swiped from here and here.

Monday, January 08, 2007

I promise copying and pasting will not replace my usual brand of mediocrity

Huh. Robert Downey Jr. is going to play Iron Man. No, not that one. This one. I'm completely over superhero movies but this casting tells me A) they probably won't shy away from the alcoholsim angle and B) there may be some company crossover potential:

The police, who had been prepared to go in with a SWAT team, chose a more relaxed approach. "We decided to just do a 'knock and talk,' " says Anderson, who had learned from the hotel's security director that Downey spent the day in his room with a female companion, who has not been identified, but who, according to police, left behind a Wonder Woman costume.

Elsewhere, from this past Sunday's Washington Post, comedian Jonathan Carlos says that being Stephen Colbert's Black Friend doesn't come w/ many perks:

How did I get to be Colbert's on-air compadre of color? Simple. One day a friend of mine who happened to be a producer for the show called and asked me to come and have my picture taken with Colbert. He explained that it was for a segment they'd be airing that night in which I would play Colbert's black friend. With zero prospects and a gnawing fear that they'd find a replacement, I streaked over to the studios on New York City's West Side, where I was quickly introduced to the man himself, Stephen Colbert. We took the picture and my producer friend showed me out. The joke has since become a running gag. I had hoped to parlay it into a job; instead I got a lot of MySpace "friends." These experiences didn't leave me feeling good, but they did make me think more about being black. Better late than never, I guess.

That's unfortunate, although not quite as painful-sounding as watching Stephen suck up to Henry Kissinger a couple weeks ago, but I wouldn't be too quick to slag off MySpace friend status. I'm hoping that when Gilbert Arenas approves my friend request I'll get invited to his next Diddy-hosted B-day bash in DC, a terrifying/fascinating account of which was recently posted over at the amazing Wizznutzz.

Speaking of terrifying (but not fascinating), I hope you're ready for Bush's big Iraq strategy announcement this Wednesday. He thought it over really, really hard in Crawford over the holidays, and I'm sure he's been mostly consulting the same neo-cons who've been so on the money about everything that's happened so far, so things should start turning right around any day now. Hell, Iraqis already have reason to be cheerful, as they won't have to worry about controling their oil fields for the next 30 years! The build-up to this announcement (which will apparently be a troop increase) in the media reminds me of the hoopla surrounding the mysterious "It" a few years back. Remember? There were stories and rumours circulating about a mysterious invention referred to as "It" which would likely change all of our lives once "It" was revealed. A few months later, there was a 60 Minutes segment in which "It" was unveiled and "It" turned out to be the fucking Segway scooter, which to this point has been chiefly notable in my mind as a badge of assholism and as the main mode of transportation of GOB on Arrested Development. I'm betting the best thing we'll soon be able to say about Bush's new Iraq plan is that it'll be "sub-Segway," a very lowly ranking indeed.