Your Favorite Ida Lupino Movie

This film rates pretty high with me (ROAD HOUSE). Lovely crisp cut here.

What about you?

Movies

There are a lot of factors that go into choosing a movie.

We have friends who always go to a Helen Mirren movie, good reviews or bad for instance. My husband is strongly influenced by trailers. Other friends look for a political content. Still others, really demand entertainment: they want to laugh if they're going to lay out $10. Another friend will see almost anything within ten minutes of her house. And I am always amazed at people around me in the theater whose decision seems to have been made on movies available at the time they turned up. Sometimes a strong partnerpal pushes the decision.

I am mostly influenced by reviews. Even if the story doesn't interest me at all, if the reviews are good I am likely to see it. Not any one reviewer but the consensus of reviews you find on rotten tomatoes or metacritic. I see an awful lot of movies--probably more than 75 a year. So that consensus figure can be pretty low for me. Anything over 70% is fair game.

What about you? What is most likely to influence your decision?

Voyeurism in the Movies

Jackie works as a CCTV operator in the 2007 Scottish film RED ROAD. Each day she watches over a housing estate in Glasgow, protecting the people living under her gaze. One day a man appears on her monitor, a man she thought she'd never see again.



This film took its time in explaining itself, but in the end was a good one.



RED ROAD is about watching other people and some great films have dealt with the subject. In this case, she is paid to watch. But in many cases, the watching comes about in other ways.



What is your favorite film about watching? I'm going to pick the obvious choice since it's my favorite movie and go with REAR WINDOW.

Barbara Stanwyck Movies?

I am going to leave her most wonderful performance for someone else to mention and remember THE LADY EVE. I just loved her versatility as an actress. THE LADY EVE is one of the most magnificent screwball comedies ever. Henry Fonda also sparkles in this Preston Sturgis comedy.



Even in her late years on THE BIG VALLEY, she could mop up the floor with anyone else. What a talent!

THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH

Home again, home again, jiggety-jig. What is that from?



This is the movie that contains the line "I used to love trains."

It is uttered poignantly by the character played by Candy Clark.

I put all of the commenters in a hat and came up with Kevin Tipple.



If you email me your address, I will send along the book. Thanks for playing everyone. I know the line was obscure, but I wanted anyone who put something down to have a crack at it.



*********

I saw a new cut of this at the Detroit Film Theater last week and unlike my three companions, I didn't get much out of it. I understood the plot well enough, but it seemed repetitive and nonsensical at points. It seemed to be in love with its own sense of profundity. Long scenes with nothing happening prevail in this film.



After two hours, my mind wanders, my feet turn to cement. I liked the sound track more than the movie, I think.



Any fans of the movie out there? What makes it work for you? My companions felt it was poignant, sexy, and perfectly captured the seventies.



I missed it, I guess. But boy, there was a lot of naked bodies compared to films today. Anyone read the Tevis novel? I think it was set a decade earlier, which in a way makes more sense given the sixties paranoia.

Traverse City Film Festival. 2011

Originally run on Crimespree Cinema.

The Traverse City Film Festival, the brainchild of film maker, Michael Moore, takes place the last week of July. This was its seventh and biggest year with over 90 films being shown. Although there are a handful of more traditional films, the emphasis here is on foreign, art house, and documentary films. There are also free panels on various topics every morning, film lounges to discuss films with fellow viewers, a film school on aspects of film making, and a music stage. There are student films, shorts, everything you would expect to see at an event such as this. The largest outdoor screen in the world shows free films at dusk every night.

You can immediately sense this festival is more about celebrating a love of movies than in making a lot of money. The event is staffed by hundreds of volunteers with free buses transporting guests from one theater to the next every seven minutes. I cannot emphasize how much fun this festival is. Lots of the film makers and stars are there for Q and As after the film.

Traverse City is a lovely city set on miles and miles of beaches of Lake Michigan. Vineyards are minutes away; Interlochen, a community for musicians, a half hour; sand dunes, under an hour.

But let’s talk about the movies.

This year’s special events included a 100^th birthday celebration of Roy Rogers, the 50^th anniversary celebration of To Kill a Mockingbird, a tribute to Iranian film maker Jafar Panahi, and a salute to the public employees of the Great Flint Sit-down Strike.

We were only there for three days but saw four fine films and attended two interesting panels.

Higher Ground, directed by and starring Vera Farmiga, is based on Carolyn S. Briggs memoir of her life as a born-again Christian. The film gave a very balanced look at life in a close- knit religious community. It avoided the clichés that often creep into films like this by giving attention to supporting characters as well as its lead. No one was painted as all good or bad and hence the struggle of Corinne to find a place in the world was very poignant.

Black Butterflies is a biopic about South African poet, Ingrid Jonker. Carive von Hauten gives a mesmerizing performance as Jonker, who is the victim of a repressive father (Rutger Hauer), South African’s cruel apartheid years, and inner demons, which eventually drive away those who love her. I wish the director (Paula van der Oest) had come up with a methods to give the audience more of a taste of her poetry, but that’s always the problem with movies about writers, isn’t it?

Bride Flight was the sudsiest of the films. A period drama, it follows the intersecting lives of three brides who fly from Amsterdam to New Zealand after World War 2. This was another film that profited from its lush landscape. I didn’t mind the soap operatic feel of it—there was enough story, character, and scenery to divert me.

Rid of Me was the sometimes painful and often funny story of new bride (Katie O’Grady) who can’t quite measure up to a past girlfriend when she travels with her husband to Portland to meet his boyhood friends and start their married life. Portland and indie movies is a perfect fit and this film drives that home. The film’s success was largely due to the performance of O’Grady who captured her character perfectly, traipsing winningly through some startling life changes.

We attended two panels. The first was a discussion of the documentary Being Elmo. The panel consisted of the entire team that put together the movie, which really is about the puppeteer who operates Elmo, Kevin Cash. It made me very sorry the documentary was sold out.

The second panel was a gathering of many of the documentary makers with films at the festival and a discussion of their films, the problems they encountered making them, and various issues in the business. It was also terrific. Documentaries, once confined to the smallest of venues, are now some of the most interesting films of the year.

I encourage you to consider making this film festival a destination if you have an interest in films. You can find out more about it at: http://www.traversecityfilmfest.org/

"I used to love trains"

I heard this line in a movie last week and it has resonated in my head ever since. I googled it and it must be the fourth most common sentiment every expressed on blogs because there it's there about 15, 000 times.



I picked up a few autographed copies of THE END OF EVERYTHING by Megan Abbott at the Borders closedown and I am willing to give one away to anyone who can guess where I heard this line. If more than one person (in the U.S.) gets it, I will draw for it.



I am blogging about this movie on the seventeenth, so you have to then to guess.



If no one gets it, I will draw among the wrong guessers. If someone finds another movie with the same line in it, which wouldn't surprise me, they go into the winner's circle too.

From YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU

Your Favorite James Stewart Movie

This was a tough choice for me because damn, he was versatile. But I am going with REAR WINDOW. It may be my favorite movie ever for that matter.

What's your favorite Stewart film?