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Bigmouth strikes again

This recent letter to Atlanta Journal-Constitution "film columnist" Alan Smithee was too good not to share in its entirety:

Dear Mr. Smithee,

It is high time that a long-standing argument among (initially) friends be settled. And this argument pertains to the greatest scene in any movie of all time. I ask this as a loaded question, of course, because I believe I know the answer to the question. One hint: Jack Lemmon, Alan Arkin, Ed Harris and Kevin Spacey. Oh, do I have your attention now?

This movie is adapted from a David Mamet play and was turned into one of his movies around 1990. It certainly earned its "R" rating. Last clue: Alec Baldwin comes in from the home office for an "inspirational scene." Can you name this movie scene and what makes it so great?

Scott W--------, Cumming

Dear You … Child,

PUT THAT COFFEE DOWN!!

Coffee's for closers only.

You come into my house and then presume to speak for me? "Glengarry Glen Ross" contains the greatest scene in any movie of all time? Says who? You ?

It matters not one whit to me or anyone else how much you like that movie.

Oh, do I have your attention now?

It is a great movie. And a great scene. It's great because the writing and the acting are nearly perfect. And this particular scene was not in David Mamet's original play, but was added to the 1992 film and written specifically for Alec Baldwin. It's the best thing Baldwin’s ever done. He displays brass you-know-whats.

But great doesn't mean greatest.

I can think of several that are as good, if not better. The flight of the helicopters in "Apocalypse Now." The shooting of Vito Corleone in "The Godfather." The trial in "To Kill a Mockingbird." The dinner revelation in "The Celebration." Omar Sharif’s entrance in "Lawrence of Arabia." Tony Curtis running by a moving train and reaching to grasp Sidney Poitier’s hand in "The Defiant Ones." Jack Lemmon announcing his engagement in "Some Like It Hot." David Hemmings studying the park photographs in "Blow-Up." Hitchcock’s shower scene in "Psycho."

I could go on.

And I will. Just one more. Lemmon in "Glengarry Glen Ross." Every scene he's in.

Alan

P.S. You get third prize (you know what that is, don"t you, Scotty?). Plus a "Batman Begins" T-shirt and an "Ask Alan Smithee" T-shirt.

OK, folks, what did he forget? To the comments with you!

[Please, you're not getting any work done today--you just keep checking the weather for this weekend and plotting how early you can leave work tomorrow and still call it a half-day.]

Je t'aime...moi non plus

The cinetrix is busy nursing an yper-crush on Charlotte Gainsbourg's neck today. She suggests you do the same.

This weekend I saw Ms. Gainsbourg in Ils se marièrent et eurent beaucoup d'enfants, which I really enjoyed, particularly--and this will come as a shock to exactly no one--its superlative use of music.

More on this later. I'm still marinating.

The cinephilic civil servant

The indefatigable Ed Koch is at it again, putting all of us self-proclaimed cinemaphiles to shame with his relentless movie-going schedule.

First up, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, an entertainment the cinetrix paid to see on account of its air-conditioned presentation. But just who is the sinister "H.S."?

Mr. and Mrs. Smith
The movie has been universally panned, but H.S. wanted to see it and I acceded. I was properly punished. It is ludicrous.

These two spectacular looking people,  Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, lent their reputations to a film leaving their talents elsewhere. Undoubtedly, they left the soundstage with huge payments, perhaps even enhanced by their public relations efforts following the filming of the movie. Their participation is disappointing. Pitt's interviews always display him as an intelligent person unafraid to be totally honest. Jolie's lifestyle, including her endeavors to assist children worldwide in her capacity as a United Nations ambassador, shows her to be a dedicated person.

A brief description of the plot: It involves two assassins, John Smith (Brad Pitt) and Jane Smith (Angelina Jolie). They are unaware of each others' profession and quickly marry after meeting on a job. A trick-pony aspect in the movie is that they are separately hired to kill one another.  That effort goes on and on, and the film becomes extremely loud and includes more pyrotechnics and car wrecks than ever assembled in one flick. Too much can become boring as it did here, and I nearly fell asleep on one occasion. Jolie and Pitt  have exceptional faces and bodies, and I am sure their movies have given lots of people great pleasure and pleasant fantasies. They rob us of any pleasure in this movie, however, because it is so bad. Fortunate for them, no one will remember it.

The last word is from H.S. "Of course, the plot is ludicrous and there was more shooting than in early Schwarzenegger (Commando), but he was so cool and she was so hot (or vice versa) that you kept your eyes on the screen."

Keeping us guessing, ol' Ed loved Sally Potter's latest.

Yes
This is a gossamer film and unique in that the dialogue is delivered totally in verse -- iambic pentameter. It has neither a sing-song quality often present when actors haven't mastered the delivery, nor is it the anarchistic, difficult to understand English of Shakespeare.

We are privy to the lives of She (Joan Allen), He (Simon Abkarian) and Anthony (Sam Neill). She, a scientist, is married to Anthony, a wealthy British diplomat. At a dinner where She is looking very sad and distracted, she meets He, who is a Lebanese Muslim refugee, former surgeon, and currently a chef at a major catering establishment. He picks her up in a wonderful, adroit way and a torrid affair begins which is lovely to behold.

Adding to the uniqueness of the movie is the presence of a Greek chorus in the form of a housekeeper (Shirley Henderson) who discusses her clients and comments on the state of the world. The use of slow-motion and scenes in Tripoli, Lebanon, and Havana, Cuba, add to the luster and uniqueness of the film. An especially delicious monologue is delivered when a dying aunt talks to She, who is sitting at her hospital bedside.

The writer and director, Sally Potter, has brought something new to the art of filmmaking just as Dennis Potter did in his screenplays "The Singing Detective" and "Pennies from Heaven." (I don't know if the two are related.) The movie is a treat.

Hmmmm, do you think Koch knows about Lipstick on Your Collar?

I enjoy being a girl: My Summer of Love

Young Mona, who lives above the Swan with her ex-con, now Christian older brother Phil, has never known the luxury of fantasy. That is, until she meets haughty Tamsin, who canters into her life on a white horse one lazy summer afternoon, for all the world like an apparition Mona has summoned from the depths of her boredom.

There is nothing quite like the hothouse fever of falling in love with a new friend. Better still when said friend is high-handed and impossibly pretentious, as only the young and well-to-do can be. Imperious Tamsin takes Mona into her family's frequently empty summer estate, recommends she read Nietzsche and Freud, dresses her in her dead sister Sadie's clothes, and swills heroic quanitities of red wine, all to the strains of Edith Piaf.

The sob-caught-in-the-throat quality of the Little Sparrow should have been Mona's first clue that Tamsin is a bit melodramatic, but being on the receiving end of such intense attention is itself so intoxicating and novel that she falls in love with everything about Tamsin.

Both actresses are beautiful, with pellucid, poreless, dewy skin, and their summer idylls are gorgeously shot to a languid score by Goldfrapp. The film shares DNA with other intense female friendship movies--particularly Les Biches, Heavenly Creatures, and The Dreamlife of Angels, but also, to a lesser extent, 3 Women, Morvern Callar [imagine Mona as a brighter Lana], and Picnic at Hanging Rock--but ultimately My Summer of Love lacks sand. Like its lead fantasist, Tamsin, the film doesn't concern itself with consequences as much as affect. There's no sense of the lasting repercussions of this amour feu, no "after that summer I was forever changed" closure. It's simply an updated Radley Metzger provocation masquerading as sophistication.

The film's tagline poses this slightly naughty, oh yes we do have beautiful girls kissing, thanks for noticing, premise: "The most dangerous thing to want is more." I'll say. Unfortunately, there's no there there. My Summer of Love glistens like morning dew on grass and, just as insubstantial, quickly dissipates into vapor.

Good news for people who like film news

FOC Andy points out what passes for news on the Criterion Collection home page. It is so droll that I will--nay, I must--reproduce it here in its entirety. Please remember, this is the lead item, people.

Stevie Nicks Celebrates Beauty and the Beast

Singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks is such an ardent admirer of Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast that she has taken to incorporating it into her live performances. On her current tour, the mystical chanteuse is delighting audiences by accompanying her song "Beauty and the Beast"—inspired by the 1946 surrealist classic—with footage from the film. For more information on Nicks and her current tour, click here.

And for a gypsytastic portrait of yourself with Stevie, click here. [Do be sure to check out the tambourines.]

One if by land, two if by sea

A nice array of cinematic amusements for Bostonians this weekend. Over at the Coolidge Corner, leading AV Geek and Internet Archive hero Skip Elsheimer returns with more educational and training film goodness:

Friday - BLACKBOARD BUNGLE  An evening of old school 16mm films about - interestingly enough - the hazards of going to school in the 1960s and 70s. Films include - Our Obligation, Lunchroom Manners, How Quiet Helps at School, And Then It Happened and more!

Saturday - KIDS AND KRITTERS  "Anyone who hates children and animals can't be all bad." These school films feature children interacting with animals, including: Skipper Learns a Lesson, Frances and Her Rabbit, Safety with Animals, Kitty Cleans Up, Ro-Revus and more!

As always, a group film strip reading kicks off each show. Beeeep.

Closer to downtown, the ICA cues up a Friday Reel Rush at 8 p.m., including the Boston premiere of Tracey Moffat's latest film, Love.

In Love, internationally acclaimed photographer and filmmaker Tracey Moffat takes the viewer on a fast-paced journey through the cinema's most exploited theme with hundreds of clips from classic films. Exploring the notion of passion, Moffat takes the audience on an emotional roller coaster ride from the first embrace of new love to the vengeance of a jilted lover.

Earlier Moffat films Night Cries and Nice Colored Girls also screen, as does Israeli feature documentary Keep Not Silent.

This is my happening and it freaks me out!

That's right, kiddies. This morning at 11:30 a.m. Pacific time the screenwriter of the Russ Meyer classic, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, gets his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. If you'd like to join him, here's the address.

Congratulations, big guy.

UPDATE: Trust the Sun-Times to point out that this is the first time a critic has been given a star.

Heaven, I'm in heaven

The FOC [that's father of the cinetrix] reminds me that on this day in 1987, Fred Astaire shuffled off this mortal coil. As my dad so irreverently put it in his email, "He won't dance, don't ask him!"

Soon after Astaire's death, TBS mounted a week-long tribute, airing all of his old RKO Radio Pictures with Ginger Rogers--an event dubbed "Dead Fred Week" chez nous--which we taped and still have to this day.

Folks forget that above those fancy feet was quite an accomplished song stylist, one who introduced many of the Tin Pan Alley standards--the big 'uns. [We're talking Gershwin, Berlin, Porter.] Listen to Astaire's version of "They Can't Take That Away from Me" and forget all about Sinatra et al.--the yearning in his reedy tenor gets me every time.

Are you ready for the summer?

While Dave and Joe slowly, lugubriously bat the whole "Did George and Steve ruin the movies" subject back and forth over at Slate, why not cleanse your palate with a little blockbuster quiz, Canadian style?

Are you Canuck enough to make the grade? Here's a sample question:

2. What comedy — barely a blockbuster, having totalled $105.5 million US in U.S. box office sales — is the highest-grossing film ever made in Canada?

• The Adventures of Bob & Doug MacKenzie: Strange Brew
• Ding et Dong, le film
• Meatballs
• Porky’s
• Nuit de Noces

Please note, the cinetrix tanked on this, scoring a measly 4 out of 10. Underneath my ignoble grade it said, "What do you mean you only saw Titanic once?! James Cameron hates you." Hah. Joke's on him. I've never seen Titanic!

Chicken wire?

Good news! The Chicago Sun-Times is two days into "a five day tour of the greatest movie ever made about Chicago." That's right, it's the 25th anniversary of The Blues Brothers this year, and the paper is observing the occasion with appropriate pomp--and soul.

Here's what fellow Chicago institution Roger Ebert had to say back in 1980:

The Blues Brothers is the Sherman tank of musicals. When it was being filmed in Chicago in 1979--with dozens of cars piling up in intersections, caroming down Lake Shore Drive and crashing through the Daley Center--it seemed less like a film than a war. The movie feels the same way. It's a big, raucous powerhouse that proves against all the odds that if you're loud enough, vulgar enough, and have enough raw energy, you can make a steamroller into a musical, and vice versa.

This is some weird movie. There's never been anything that looked quite like it; was it dreamed up in a junkyard?

So far, the paper has revisited the Plymouth Hotel (the SRO where Jake and Elwood bunked until Carrie Fisher blew it up) and the Pilgrim Baptist Church of South Chicago, which so ably played the Triple Rock under James Brown's electric pastorship. What's next? An appreciation of Chez Paul? One can only hope.

Plus, there's trivia.

Disclaimer: The Blues Brothers made the Third Coast loom so large in the cinematic imagination of the cinetrix that she actually moved there for a time. It is also the favorite movie of both my dad and the Fesser's dad. The Fesser and I even watched it the first weekend we ever hung out together, back in the Pleistocene era. Also, my father would call me at college whenever it was going to play, all swears dubbed out, on some shitty VHS station. This means I may have seen The Blues Brothers more times than almost any other film. Make of that what you will.