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Recommended reading

The cinetrix got this email from the proprietress of the Invisible Cinema today:

Hey Cinetrix, When are you getting back on the net?  Please get your ass online asap! Over at Girish's they wanted to do a blog-a-thon on the mysterious near extinct "woman filmmaker" as they like to call it....*

Which excuse do you want to hear? That I've been playing basketball with my new, all-spam team: Baptiste E. Numbers, Glutinous M. Gasket, Factory S. Appointee, and our star forward, Harrassed T. Nippled?

Not buying that? What about Typepad ate my beautiful post about Miami Vice last week, and I've been discouraged ever since?

No?

OK, here's the deal. Having started the summer with a funeral, the cinetrix ended it at a cousin's wedding on Cape Cod, where they have no Interweb but mostly make up for it by keeping the beach there and feeding folks vast quantities of overpriced, breaded-and-fried seafood.

Now I need to get my act together, return to my lair, and pull together my syllabus for the fall. While I sloooowly, gently reintroduce myself to routine after a summer adrift, why don't you check out these nice people:

• Every last word of Not Coming to a Theater Near You's pretty new Chick Flicks feature
• ScreenGrab's latest ode to Forgotten Films: 1988's The Chocolate War
• Issue 4 of the Journal of Short Film
• FOC Paul Young's fancy new book The Cinema Dreams Its Rivals

NB: The cinetrix is abusing using her pedogogical powers for awesome and "recommending" The Film Snob*s Dictionary to her students. If you don't have it yet, pick up a copy for those dangerous Web-free moments, like, oh, weddings and long road trips.

*Boys, if what jmac says is true, we need to have a little talk.

Accessorize your dissent II

Talk about strange bedfellows. Between August 10 and October 4, cinephiles in metropolises gentrified enough to support a Design Within Reach store can pull up some over-architected chaises at the misnomered furniture stores and kick back for an evening of Charles and Ray Eames short films. [Shut-ins living in the sticks are advised to check out the DVDs offered at the Eames online store while sitting on something uncomfortable.]

It's true. In conjunction with the design duo's grandson, Eames Demetrios, DWR will be screening the following seven Eames films at its "studios" across the country:

• Design Q&A (1972, 6 minutes)
• Tops (1969, 8 minutes)
• Toccata for Toy Trains (1957, 14 minutes)
• Powers of Ten (1977, 9 minutes)
• Blacktop (1952, 11 minutes)
• House: After Five Years of Living (1955, 10 minutes)
• Goods (1981, 10 minutes)

Dates and locations may be found here. Remember: If you go, try not to punch anyone--we need to lead by example, people. Also, unless you break some gewgaw, it's the cinetrix's favorite price: FREE.

Accessorize your dissent I

Dissaffected thirtysomething hipsters rejoice: Kicking and Screaming is on tap to make its Criterion Collection debut on August 22 [from Renoir and Gabin to Baumbach and Stoltz--what a long, strange trip, indeed]. But don't worry about the wait. You needn't squander the hours between now and then not, you know, spending.

See, Criterion has also rolled out its own line of American Apparel t-shirts. Rock the minimalist Criterion "C" logo or else kick the old skool Janus two-faced look. Either one says, "I'm down with Langlois, oui. Yeah, you know me."

[The cinetrix kids because she loves. Plus, she's so excited about the 50 Years of Janus Films program at this fall's New York Film Festival, she's already got her shirt bookmarked.]

Let the sunshine in

The cinetrix took herself to see Little Miss Sunshine on Friday afternoon, and while I delighted in the swaths of cheery yellow festooning the lobby and even the underpaid Cuban drone employees, I left just under two hours later feeling kinda... grey.

Yes, the performances and performers are all top-notch. Steve Carell is a marvel. Paul Dano rocks my world. And if at this late stage in the game you need me to single out the unstoppable Toni Collette for praise, there's no helping you. Really, my only complaint is not enough Alan Arkin, but then the same could be said of life in general.

It's just that, well, I have a suspicion that this is a soulless Sundance darling masquerading as something soulful. Could be the relentless advertising campaign has me digging in my heels.

Or maybe I just liked this road-trip dysfunctional family comedy better when it was called The Daytrippers.

Or maybe I liked this youth beauty pageants are fuuuucked up social satire better when it was called Drop Dead Gorgeous.

Either way, meh.

Two Dantes; One Inferno

The cinetrix has been playing hide and seek from the heat these past two days. It will surprise no one to learn that she's had a lot of company in those dark, cool theatres she haunts.

It's still too hot to formulate anything even remotely cogent to say, so here are a few glancing impressions until the mercury falls.

Who Killed the Electric Car is a solid documentary, marshalling its data, talking heads, and telling archival footage as predictably as a pop song: verse, chorus, repeat.

What sets it apart from its nonfiction peers? Just how attractive those talking heads are. Big Auto marketed electric cars to celebrities, and California legislated them into its solution for the state's smog problems, so there are a lot of good-looking people for such a wonky subject. Just saying.

Oh, and Mad Mel Gibson, with full-on Saddam beard. When we weren't puzzling over people's curious pronunciation of "vehicular" as "vee-hic-yoo-lar," my pal Gerry and I tried to figured out what the hell the guy was saying. We think he had an electric car, but he also mentioned Batman, so, really, it's anyone's guess.

We followed Car with the singularly depressing The Death of Mr. Lazarescu. What a fucking great movie. At 150 minutes, it's just as long as Dead Man's Chest but seems to speed by.

Funny story. Alexander Payne chaired the jury when this Romanian flick screened in competition at Cannes a couple years back. He walked out. An Argentinian journalist stayed, fucking loved the story of Dante Remus Lazarescu's final hours, and button-holed Payne until he went back and saw the whole thing. And he loved it, too. So, if you were wondering why some obscure Romanian movie is storming these shores, that's why.

Today, hotter than the day before, promises I Vitelloni in less than an hour, so I should jet. But first the cinetrix should confess she beguiled the afternoon in the company of the other Dante, Hicks, and Randal Graves, vitelloni both.

Is Clerks II sublime? Hardly. But it's Smith's birthday today and, did I mention, hotter than balls out. What're ya gonna do?

And I have to admit I teared up--which is no mean trick given how much fluid I've lost to sweat today--when Randal defended his stretch at the Quick Stop thusly: "I got to watch movies, fuck with assholes, and hang out with my best friend all day."

Say amen, somebody.