Sorry ladies, as much as you beg me, that look is not coming back....TIFF - Classic Midnight Madness # 1
TIFF - Classic Midnight Madness # 2
TIFF - Classic Dario Argento Interview - Part 1
Sunday, September 23, 2007
what pulled me away
Every year I get whisked away from our fleabag cinema to chat up and shmooze with folks in the international film scene and this year I had to look after a blog dedicated to this little sidejob. You can check it here, but if you want highlights, check these snippets out below. There will be more to come on the blog like a Q&A with George A. Romero and Stuart Gordon, but in the meantime, you can watch a never before seen, 4 part interview with Dario Argento from 1990 (check the user page for the other 3 parts), and Dario and Brian Yuzna introducing films that they had in the Toronto Festival of Festivals' Midnight Madness selection from 1990. The Bloor Cinema is no longer used by the Fest, but still runs rep and specialty fest programming. Just saw NIGHT OF THE CREEPS there on Thursday with director Fred Decker in person! And in these flashback clips, keep your eyes peeled for this dude:
Sorry ladies, as much as you beg me, that look is not coming back....
Sorry ladies, as much as you beg me, that look is not coming back....
L.A.scivious
I just finished a viewing of 1971's, 'Refinements In Love' with Rene Bond and narrated/hostessed by the lovely Liz Renay. Ostensibly, I guess it's a quasi-documentary type Mondo film studying the changing morals of the late 60s and early 70s sexual revolution but really it's just an excuse to show some hardcore inserts to prop-up timeless sexual psychology stories and whatnot. There was quite a bit more explicit (it was porno, people) lewdness than I was expecting but the faux doctors and expert opinioners were as great as the examples of problems they brought forward for examination. The french kissing seemed awkward.
One 'soon to be married' couple consisted of a prudish girl of Victorian strongmindedness and a self-described normal, red-blooded American who just couldn't handle it anymore. She calms his raging animal and then tries to get the subject changed.
Near Wife: Tell me what you did today.
Near Husband: I suffered.
Me: big laughs
*Spoiler* Apparently they later separated and he moved to the East Coast while she retained custody of their child. *End spoiler*
All the while, there is this intermittent yet interesting folky score that outlines some of the activity on the screen and clearly inspired later acts such as Arthur & Yu. The waterbed song is pure enchantment.
Anyway, enough of my cold and congested rambling, the real reason I am here is to show that the marquees of sleazy California are as good (not quite so, though) as Times Square. As usual, these Mondo films have a great batch of footage with vast historical significance to some people. And there's a nice montage of what appears to be Las Vegas' land of topless establishments in there as well.
And, curiously, we have Times Square for a second in there too. Meduim Cool across the street!
One 'soon to be married' couple consisted of a prudish girl of Victorian strongmindedness and a self-described normal, red-blooded American who just couldn't handle it anymore. She calms his raging animal and then tries to get the subject changed.
Near Wife: Tell me what you did today.
Near Husband: I suffered.
Me: big laughs
*Spoiler* Apparently they later separated and he moved to the East Coast while she retained custody of their child. *End spoiler*
All the while, there is this intermittent yet interesting folky score that outlines some of the activity on the screen and clearly inspired later acts such as Arthur & Yu. The waterbed song is pure enchantment.
Anyway, enough of my cold and congested rambling, the real reason I am here is to show that the marquees of sleazy California are as good (not quite so, though) as Times Square. As usual, these Mondo films have a great batch of footage with vast historical significance to some people. And there's a nice montage of what appears to be Las Vegas' land of topless establishments in there as well.
And, curiously, we have Times Square for a second in there too. Meduim Cool across the street!
God Told Me To
Tony Lo Bianco takes on Evil in this 1976 Larry Cohen joint. Might be time to finally run that God Told Me To/Q: The Winged Serpent double bill!
Saturday, September 22, 2007
The Blue Wire or The White Wire?
This is the kind of film secret sinema societies were made for... Juggernaut!Parental Guidance Suggested
I have never seen It's Alive - how can it be scarier than this traumatizing commercial for it?
Monday, September 17, 2007
Thursday, September 13, 2007
The grand shadows of fallen giants
Dear CN Tower
Hi. How are you? Are you sad today? I'm sorry if this is the case but try to remember that no matter what happens, you'll always be the coolest freestanding structure in the world. You got that covered easy and nobody can ever take it away from you or you from us.
I'll never forget the high thrills you provided me with and the dizzying fun it is to look up when I'm down there beside you. Remember when Mlle. Moore gave me such trouble for climbing past the bars and into one of those little round window well things? Ha! Screw her! We knew what we were doing. To spit off of your breezy heights is to be alive.
I love you.
Michael
Hi. How are you? Are you sad today? I'm sorry if this is the case but try to remember that no matter what happens, you'll always be the coolest freestanding structure in the world. You got that covered easy and nobody can ever take it away from you or you from us.
I'll never forget the high thrills you provided me with and the dizzying fun it is to look up when I'm down there beside you. Remember when Mlle. Moore gave me such trouble for climbing past the bars and into one of those little round window well things? Ha! Screw her! We knew what we were doing. To spit off of your breezy heights is to be alive.
I love you.
Michael
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Free reign
It's so nice when the brains behind the blog are all off busying themselves for the Toronto International Film Festival and us rural bumpkins can just kinda say, "Whu?," as we drag a broom around the empty place and sort of dwell on whatever we fancy and push the accepatable boundaries of run-on sentences while doing it, man. That's nice.
Last weekend while seated even slightly more into 'the sticks' for a spell, we returned to the warm chest of one of our all time favourite screen bounders, George Sanders, and re-watched his near final farewell to celluloid, 1971's Psychomania. I've got a dismal old dupe-y VHS around that was recorded at 24 hour speed but I've been itching to get a nicer copy to revisit so I got this cheap DVD under poor advice only to later find that it has a scene trimmed where our man George is introduced and something else that sounds wonderful also happens but I've forgotten what that one is. So, either we go for a UK cut of the film on DVD or find a special someone who has the nice, widescreen version that is OOP and too much at $100 or so but apparently is fully intact. Such decisions.
If you've never seen the film, I suggest you seek it out and bathe in the remarkably fun nonsense that it is. Basically, due to some family witchcraft history and a particular fondness of frogs, this young chap who is the head boy of a motorcycle gang (they're called 'The Living Dead'!) decides it would be terrific fun to willingly kill themselves in order to come back as indestructible immortals and continue their unique brand of childish mayhem and kill a few people who disapprove and tut tut too! So, they do, damned kids! And it's a joy to behold and there is a rather plaintive (and head-shakingly awesome) song sang at this young man's funeral party where he is in a hole and on his bike in full gear and a ton more of golden moments that make it all so worthwhile and enjoyable if you're in for a goof of a good time. I guarantee your smiles and good times, people.
And Sanders plays a butler and even though he is near his low moment of eventual suicide and acting in dregs clearly beneath him, the man is a true actor and professional to the finish and delivers a fine performance all around. A class act always.
Here is the type of awful, no-good goings on that these young and leathered limeys get up to. For shame!
And here we see the country of origin, UK quad for this treasure of cinema.
Last weekend while seated even slightly more into 'the sticks' for a spell, we returned to the warm chest of one of our all time favourite screen bounders, George Sanders, and re-watched his near final farewell to celluloid, 1971's Psychomania. I've got a dismal old dupe-y VHS around that was recorded at 24 hour speed but I've been itching to get a nicer copy to revisit so I got this cheap DVD under poor advice only to later find that it has a scene trimmed where our man George is introduced and something else that sounds wonderful also happens but I've forgotten what that one is. So, either we go for a UK cut of the film on DVD or find a special someone who has the nice, widescreen version that is OOP and too much at $100 or so but apparently is fully intact. Such decisions.
If you've never seen the film, I suggest you seek it out and bathe in the remarkably fun nonsense that it is. Basically, due to some family witchcraft history and a particular fondness of frogs, this young chap who is the head boy of a motorcycle gang (they're called 'The Living Dead'!) decides it would be terrific fun to willingly kill themselves in order to come back as indestructible immortals and continue their unique brand of childish mayhem and kill a few people who disapprove and tut tut too! So, they do, damned kids! And it's a joy to behold and there is a rather plaintive (and head-shakingly awesome) song sang at this young man's funeral party where he is in a hole and on his bike in full gear and a ton more of golden moments that make it all so worthwhile and enjoyable if you're in for a goof of a good time. I guarantee your smiles and good times, people.
And Sanders plays a butler and even though he is near his low moment of eventual suicide and acting in dregs clearly beneath him, the man is a true actor and professional to the finish and delivers a fine performance all around. A class act always.
Here is the type of awful, no-good goings on that these young and leathered limeys get up to. For shame!
And here we see the country of origin, UK quad for this treasure of cinema.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Pinks
Still one of my favourite films and the trailer is very exciting too. I just had a Hellman craving but I don't have the time to sit and watch the film right now so this clip will do just perfectly as a taste. Usually, a simple viewing of the opening moments of the film has me hooked in and I'm there for the duration and all the Oatesy goodness but I have avoided that here and now for us all. It's such a meditative film for me that I can't expain why it's so attractive. Like Barbi Benton, it's something entirely personal.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Friday, August 10, 2007
Fairy stories!
An excellent discourse from an even more excellent movie that I need to revisit very soon. You get it all in Jack and the Beanstalk and you get a good dose of Poitier's cool calm and Vic Morrow's classically dour delinquent. Does it come any finer? And then at the end, you see the squareness of the teachers still jiving Glenn Ford for trying and you can taste his frustration when he so presciently talks about thinking for yourself in the face of everything. It's boss.
Monday, August 06, 2007
have chair will travel
Suspect Video used to have a copy of this on VHS. Wonder if it is still available for rent...If you can't have the real thing-- you do all kinds of unreal things
http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
Somehow after watching an Elliot Gould clip that Jesse sent me, I found this clip from DEEP END which I remember seeing at the B-Fest at the Bloor years ago. How it fit into a "B" category I will never know, but I am grateful for seeing it on the big screen. What a great poster! For more pics, visit this Russian film fan blog.Sunday, August 05, 2007
Orgone accumulation
Well, it's been a little spell since I've come across a nice marquee scene but there it was, smack dab in the middle of the excellent WR:Mysteries of the Organism as Jackie Curtis licks an ice cream on a NYC stroll through heaven.
And I totally love Milena Dravic's character (and her friend too!) for the sharp decorating choices she makes.
And I totally love Milena Dravic's character (and her friend too!) for the sharp decorating choices she makes.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Monday, July 30, 2007
Ingmar Bergman: 1918 - 2007
Trailer for Last House on the Left (1972) - Wes Craven's (implausible but true!) remake of Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring!
Best I could do on short notice.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Friday, July 27, 2007
Travel by blog
I think you should probably grab this mp3 file and listen while you immerse yourselves in this quick and painless study of one of our favourite fantasy places (but it's real!) where all the people look so beautiful that it aches and you can't keep count of how many times you fall in love on a speedy jaunt to grab a coffee without dropping your handful of funny change and currency. It's that good. It's Sweden!
First, it's a kingdom and it's in Scandinavia. These two things are really all that need to be said to get your blood rushing like mine does.
Let's not forget the important brouhaha that came about during the American exhibition of their famous dirty/art movie, 'I Am Curious Yellow', in the late 60s. The 'free' state of Massachusetts didn't see the kissing of certain things to be so conducive to how they lived their lives at the time but the courts were wise and its obscenity charges were turned over and we have all gained so much from those types of accomplishments and it was the frankness and bravery of Sweden that helped us. Thank you! Or should I say, tack själv!
Christina Lindberg is from there and she is super fine and so much so that I named my car after her and it is a Volvo station wagon and the Volvo brand automobile is from Sweden. For real!
Here is an example of a Swedish movie poster for a Swedish film called Thriller that starred Christina as well as a sex double for the raunchy bits. It's so cool that their posters look just like ours! We're not so different at all!
Abba, Turbonegro, Robyn and Bathory all come from Sweden and all are wonderful but especially Robyn. Definitely her. Wait! Edit! Turbonegro are from Norway which is also excellent.
Stockholm has a syndrome named after it and it's a pretty cool one too! I'm not kidding and you can look it up if you think I'm lying but you'll see I'm right and soon come to believe everything I say.
Because of all these (and there are many, many more, I promise you!) interesting facts, we here in North America are rightly fascinated by this charming country so steeped in pagan/nordic lore and full of righteous people and places. We can't get over them or how sexually advanced and licentious they are, it seems.
Now, as we've said before, we (I) would not be here if it wasn't for the sage advice of my Swedish friend, Lars Erik, and now I am proud to announce and direct you to the blog that he has just started that will celebrate the film posters that he fancies (Swedish! And others! And he can tell you what Farg means!) as well as whatever he damn well feels like expressing. And we will read it with rapt attention and we will soak in his words and we will grow because of it because Lars is Swedish and lives in Sweden and that is pretty goddamned cool!
They invented the zipper, people!
First, it's a kingdom and it's in Scandinavia. These two things are really all that need to be said to get your blood rushing like mine does.
Let's not forget the important brouhaha that came about during the American exhibition of their famous dirty/art movie, 'I Am Curious Yellow', in the late 60s. The 'free' state of Massachusetts didn't see the kissing of certain things to be so conducive to how they lived their lives at the time but the courts were wise and its obscenity charges were turned over and we have all gained so much from those types of accomplishments and it was the frankness and bravery of Sweden that helped us. Thank you! Or should I say, tack själv!
Christina Lindberg is from there and she is super fine and so much so that I named my car after her and it is a Volvo station wagon and the Volvo brand automobile is from Sweden. For real!
Here is an example of a Swedish movie poster for a Swedish film called Thriller that starred Christina as well as a sex double for the raunchy bits. It's so cool that their posters look just like ours! We're not so different at all!
Abba, Turbonegro, Robyn and Bathory all come from Sweden and all are wonderful but especially Robyn. Definitely her. Wait! Edit! Turbonegro are from Norway which is also excellent.
Stockholm has a syndrome named after it and it's a pretty cool one too! I'm not kidding and you can look it up if you think I'm lying but you'll see I'm right and soon come to believe everything I say.
Because of all these (and there are many, many more, I promise you!) interesting facts, we here in North America are rightly fascinated by this charming country so steeped in pagan/nordic lore and full of righteous people and places. We can't get over them or how sexually advanced and licentious they are, it seems.
Now, as we've said before, we (I) would not be here if it wasn't for the sage advice of my Swedish friend, Lars Erik, and now I am proud to announce and direct you to the blog that he has just started that will celebrate the film posters that he fancies (Swedish! And others! And he can tell you what Farg means!) as well as whatever he damn well feels like expressing. And we will read it with rapt attention and we will soak in his words and we will grow because of it because Lars is Swedish and lives in Sweden and that is pretty goddamned cool!
They invented the zipper, people!
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Two Inmates Brawl Over Woody Allen!
From the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel... "According to a criminal complaint filed Monday in Ozaukee County Circuit Court, the fight began about 5:30 p.m. July 9 during mealtime when James F. Lala, 31, of Grafton asked fellow inmate Corey T. Wilson, 36, of Menomonee Falls what he thought of Allen's marriage in 1997 to Soon-Yi Previn, an adopted daughter of Allen's longtime companion, Mia Farrow.
"Wilson told Lala that he thought that was perverted," the complaint says. "Wilson stated he continued to eat his meal when Lala came up to him and punched him in the face," and the two began to fight.
The fight lasted several minutes, with other inmates looking on until deputies restrained the two men with the help of pepper spray."
Okay, bring on the punchlines.
László Kovács R.I.P.
We're dimming the marquee and the lights at the concession stand this evening in honour of the great László Kovács, one of the two great Hungarian cinematographers who were central to the great look of seventies American films (the other being his lifelong friend Vilmos Zsigmond).We could do a week of solid double-bills comprised purely of films shot by Kovács - Shampoo & Psych-Out, Five Easy Pieces & The King of Marvin Gardens, Easy Rider & The Last Movie (!), The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies & Ghostbusters, Freebie and the Bean & Targets! Plus he did additional photography on The Last Waltz, Close Encounters and Blow Out!
On top of this, Kovács and Zsigmond were in their graduate year of film school in Budapest when the 1956 uprising took place - together they shot footage of the attacks with borrowed equipment and escaped with the footage to Austria! This footage is incorporated into a recent documentary about Hungary in '56, Kovács' final DP credit.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
excuse me, but you have a spy in your ear...
Been taking after dinner walks the past few evenings as the weather is so great and the experience has been enhanced by plugging into my ipod and listening to THE PSYCHEDELIC SPY, this great 5 part BBC radio play that I found over at the ever mysterious GreyLodge (avail on bit torrent). Its a great throw back to tough guy spy pop culture and features the late Ed Bishop (from the UK tv show UFO and 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY), Joanna Lumley (THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA and ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE), Charles Gray (THE DEVIL RIDES OUT and and Ernst Stavro Blofeld in DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER), James Aubrey (Ralph from LORD OF THE FLIES!). Highly recommended
“I set it in the ’sixties because that was quintessentially the decade of the spy film and I chose specifically the year 1968 because by then the whole thing had turned sour. After the Charles Manson murders and the My Lai massacre, the whole notion of killing for kicks ceased to be funny ….” (writer Andrew Rissik interviewed in The Times)
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
listen to the eyebrows...
What a find! I stumbled upon these pics of David Hemmings and his CRAZY eyebrows by accident and then found a link to Waxidermy where they have an MP3 from Hemmings LP "happens"! Can anyone get me the full album! I'll put it beside my Richard Harris LPs!
meanwhile in China...
Lets play spot the difference! Personally, I like the addition of the condom...
Monday, July 09, 2007
A Chilling Vision of 1995
Turkey Shoot! Too bad The Island bombed - This bit of eighties Ozploitation is crying out for a remake, with Viggo Mortensen instead of Railsback.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
the Klubbsuper8 Kids
Booted off of youtube, they've come back! Recently scored a number of their dvds (remember that package I mentioned that I have for you Mr. Greenwood?) and was very impressed. Expect to see some more postings about Klubb Super 8 soon!
EU sex flick rubs right the wrong way
The right hates the sexy trailer made to promo the film industry. Read why at The Guardian. Personally, I wonder why there is no Tinto Brass included in it...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)