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This is. A Public. Service. Announcement

Friends,

The cinetrix doesn't usually get into the PBS-style pledge drive business, but I can assure you that if you read Pullquote, the following is definitely in your wheelhouse.

For the Love of Movies needs completion monies. What's that? Well, were you first on your block to buy Philip Lopate's American Movie Critics? Yes? Then read on.

Today, film criticism is everywhere, whether composed for newspapers, debated on TV, written up for magazines, typed up for blogs and websites. There are university courses in film criticism, and summer boot camps where children are tutored on how to write reviews. There's even a star for a film critics, Roger Ebert, on Hollywood's "Walk of Fame."

Surprisingly, despite its ubiquity, American film criticism has been unexplored as a subject for film. Until now. For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism is the first documentary to dramatize the rich, sociologically fascinating history of American film criticism. From the raw beginnings of criticism before The Birth of a Nation to Bosley Crowther's 27-year reign at The New York Times, from the incendiary Kael-Sarris debates of the 1960s and 1970s to the current battle for audience between youthful website populists and the aging print establishment, this documentary tells all.

Produced by Amy Geller, written and directed by veteran film critic Gerald Peary, For the Love of Movies offers a unique insider's view of the film critics' profession with commentary from many of America's best-regarded reviewers, including Roger Ebert (Ebert & Roeper), A.O. Scott (The New York Times), Lisa Schwarzbaum (Entertainment Weekly), Andrew Sarris (The New York Observer), Kenneth Turan (The Los Angeles Times), Elvis Mitchell (National Public Radio) and the late Pauline Kael (The New Yorker).

To make a tax-deductible donation via PayPal, go here and click the yellow star in the top-right corner. Perhaps together we can bring camera-shy Manohla Dargis to the silver screen at long last.

Thanks.

Welcome to my nightmare

The cinetrix was super creeped out by this Betty Boop short when, as a wee thing, she saw it on some UHF channel. She was no less alarmed when Tom Gunning dropped it during a screening this March at a U of C party celebrating the publication of The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded. I figured the Friday of this hiccup-y interrupted week was a perfect time to share its sinister goodness with you.

Enjoy the weekend.

Ceci n'est pas une madeleine

More like an ookie cookie. Ed Koch manages only one movie this week, which fails to leave him hot and bothered. Oh, yeah, and he overshares a little.

Lady Chatterley
When I was in high school, the pornographic novel that was supposed to be a sex manual was "Lady Chatterley's Lover" by D. H. Lawrence. But the book was not available to us, because the post office would not allow it to enter the country. So we just thought about it and imagined the carnal scenes.  A boy's imagination is incredible, especially when his hormones are surging.

D. H. Lawrence was a name in those days that every high school student knew. Later in life, I became reacquainted with him through his novels and the movies based on them. His best work was "Sons and Lovers," on which a 1960 movie was based. If you haven't seen it, you should. So when "Lady Chatterley" which has been the subject of different film versions, appeared on the local scene, this time in French, I decided to see it. Regrettably, like so many boyhood fantasies, the real thing was disappointing.

There is lots of sex and female and male full frontal nudity, but the film is so static, so innocent, so lacking decadence, it was a huge disappointment. After all, beginning with "Last Tango In Paris" starring Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider, many lesser films devoted to sex on the screen have become the coin of the realm. The post office and the Hayes office no longer interfere.

The plot is simple: Lady Constance (Marina Hands) is married to Lord Clifford Chatterley (Hippollyte Girardot), a World War I veteran who is crippled as a result of a war injury and confined to a wheelchair. They are a rich English couple. He is a director of a mine whose workers go on strike. She is young and sex starved, but her gentility precludes an affair. That is until she sees the gamekeeper, Oliver Parkin (Jean-Louis Coulloc’h), washing himself in front of his hut. Inevitably, they have an affair which is so tame compared with other celluloid depictions of similar romances.

The movie, nearly three hours long, is deadly.  I left the theater at 11 p.m.  Since it was too late for dinner, I went home to sleep.  (In French, with English subtitles.)

HS said: "We knew the story before we saw the film.  The cast spoke French, but naked French looks just like naked English.  There were protracted, artistic shots of birds, leaves and rainfall.  This was as innocent as Chatterley can be.  A lovely lady and a hunky gamekeeper doing the deed sometimes out of doors and once in the rain.  Even Clifford was a good sport."