pullquote

Not that you asked, but...

Having just read the January-February 2008 Film Comment editor's letter, the cinetrix can safely say that she never wants to think about Gavin Smith asking, "Was it good for you?" again. In any context. DO NOT WANT.

Old age should burn and rave at close of day

This week, the O.G. [Original Geezer] Ed Koch heads uptown with a new sidekick and leaves the cinetrix wondering if there's a word for the opposite of a cougar.

Starting Out in the Evening
I saw this film with PT who said she loved it. As we left the theater, I met a woman who told me that she enjoys reading my movie reviews. I asked her what she thought of "Starting Out in the Evening," and she replied that it was lovely. My immediate conclusion was that I would have to think about it. On reflection, I've decided that it isn't a great picture, but it is good and definitely worth seeing.

Leonard Schiller is a 70-year-old writer who has published two successful novels. His last two books were failures, and he hasn't found a publisher for the fifth book he is working on.When we first meet Leonard's daughter, Ariel (Lili Taylor), she is in a relationship which she ends, returning to an old boyfriend, Casey (Adrian Lester). Ariel is in her 40s and wants to have a child, but Casey does not.

Heather Wolfe (Lauren Ambrose), a young graduate student writing her thesis on Leonard, pursues him for interviews and eventually lures him to bed. Later on Leonard has a stroke, and his physical aging and deterioration in a very short period of time impacted heavily on me while watching the film.  I had a stroke in 1987 and a heart attack in 1999. I have fully recovered from the stroke but walk a little slower because of the heart attack. I am very lucky.

The story line is thin, but it is creative and carried off very well by the brilliant acting of Langella, Taylor and Ambrose, who always give superb performances. I know Frank Langella and saw him not long ago at Orso Restaurant on the West Side after seeing him that evening in the play, "Frost/Nixon." I especially enjoyed watching Taylor and Ambrose in the wonderful HBO television series, "Six Feet Under." Go see this picture. You'll enjoy it.

PT said, "It's a film that comes across with the same immediacy as a drama played out on the stage. The three major players, the writer, the student, and the daughter, are all superbly portrayed by skilled actors who bring their characters to life, each one dealing with his or her own life crisis – aging, the baby clock ticking, and infatuation. The film unfolds slowly, but I was fully involved and wondering where it would go."

Formatted to fit your screen

Another semester got underway as of yesterday, and the cinetrix spent some class time getting to know her new batch of students. To that end, she asked them to name the movies they'd seen in the theaters over break and then those they'd watched on television. As you might imagine, the latter category skewed heavily toward Christmas classics watched en famille. And Die Hard. Kids today.

The cinetrix skittered to a fair number of theatrical releases over break herself, about which more anon. Right now she wants to focus on the fleeting film moments she caught on smaller screens. They included parts of It's A Wonderful Life and the admittedly less Xmas-y 40-Year-Old Virgin with the 'Fesser and her folks, all but the finale of Blades of Glory--MOS--on her neighbor's laptop during a flight, and the 15 minutes of The Best of Youth in which Matteo and Nicola help save the manuscripts from the flood and Nicola first meets Giulia.

And then there was the night she watched Dirty Dancing, in its entirety, for the first time in more than a decade. Everyone else had already gone to sleep when the first drumbeat of "Be My Baby" sounded over the opening credits, and that's all it took. I was hooked: Jennifer Grey's old nose and scuffed Keds. Kenny Ortega's swivel-hipped choreography. Jerry Orbach's doting dad. Sister Lisa's tone-deaf warbling. Freakin' Kellerman's. Even Swayze's blow-dried "rough trade" charms did not leave me unmoved.

Plus, a young woman gets an abortion. [I know, right?]

Granted, it is back alley, botched, and bloody. Overall, the outlook is pretty grim for Penny Johnson, the blonde dance instructor knocked up by a callow law student at the resort, at least until Grey's Baby runs and gets her doctor dad. He adheres to his Hippocratic oath and helps her, even though abortion wasn't legal in 1963 and wouldn't be for another decade. Penny's no round-heels. She tearfully confides that she thought the cad loved her. Still, the film makes it clear that an illicit abortion is much better than the alternative: She doesn't die, keeps her job, and avoids potentially slipping into poverty as a single mother.

The script doesn't punish Baby for "promiscuity," either. In fact, the combination of class privilege and educational opportunity awaiting her at Holyoke makes for quite a prophylactic. Our heroine gets her freak on with Johnny all summer without getting pregnant or even catching an STD.

Now, twenty years after the film's theatrical release and thirty-five years after Roe v. Wade, abortion has all but disappeared from the screen as a viable option. How did this happen? Why is a low-budget 1980s romantic fantasy more clear-eyed about class and young women's choices than the stuff crowding the multiplexes this past year? Almost without exclusion, birth is treated as the end of the story in those films, with perhaps a sunny compressed montage gliding over what actually comes next: the rest of these mamas' and babies' lives.

The cinetrix can just imagine the Dirty Dancing remake of today: Penny would keep the baby and Johnny would help raise it and everyone would live happilyeveraftertheend.

Right.

Reel geezers

Ed Koch, you're on notice. The cinetrix would like to introduce you to Reel Geezers,* octogenarian film reviewers Lorenzo Semple and Marcia Nasatir. In this clip, thrill as these two ornery industry vets drop wisdom about "penises" and "period blood" in their review of Superbad. [via] And be sure to watch to the end.

*Thanks to FOC Addison for the tip.

Ars gratia artis

The cinetrix's favorite price is free. Perhaps it is yours, too? Well, fellow cheapskate, if you're a Boston-area filmmaker in the market for free stuff, you're in luck. Harvard Surplus is giving away a Steenbeck and a coupla 16mm projectors, FREE.

SURPLUS AVAILABLE:

FILM EQUIPMENT:  16mm film editing flatbed. Steenbeck 6 plate. Pickup only (bring a truck & some friends - it's large and heavy!) Works but is worn. Army "portable" 16mm film projector with speaker.  Heavy but one person can lift it. Unknown condition. "Portable" 35mm film projector. This will take 2 people to move. Unknown condition. Various used 16mm and 35mm film cans and reels. Please contact us for more information.

If you are interested in seeing any of the items now available, come to our Recycling and Surplus Center at 175 North Harvard Street in Allston any Thursday from 11 to 2 PM. A street map showing our location is here. Everything is free, first-come, first-served and open to everyone.

In the year 2000

The cinetrix is firmly against lists, as you may have gleaned, but while she was drinking with her left-brained co-conspirator Anthony on the third coast in late December, the conversation turned to a list he'd commissioned from me back at the turn of the century: 25 films for the 1990s.

This weekend, while I was readying my study for the coming semester, I serendipitously came across a draft of said list in an old notebook, so I thought I'd give in to the craven list-making urge just this once and post it.

I make no claims for these being the best movies of that decade, mind, but they moved me and stuck with me and I stand by them still because, in aggregate, these films represent a sort of cinematic autobiography of my 90s. Enjoy.

• Irma Vep
• Chungking Express
• The Big Lebowski
• Crumb
• Out of Sight
• Ponette
• Hard Boiled
• Saint Clara
• The Last Days of Disco
• Heavenly Creatures
• The Grifters
• Lone Star
• Bob Roberts
• Proof
• Alchemy
• Run Lola Run
• Living in Oblivion
• Before Sunrise
• Dazed and Confused
• L.A. Confidential
• The Book of Life
• After Life
• Quiz Show
• When We Were Kings
• Rushmore
• The Dreamlife of Angels

Yes, I know there are 26 titles. I did say it was a draft, after all. I wonder which one I cut?

Saints preserve us!

Some Utah saints in Salt Lake City saw fit to dispatch this enticement to the cinetrix's email over the holidays. Remember when that video store got busted for reediting Titanic for Mormons back in the day? It seems someone's figured out a work-around. Here's what they claim:

Your ClearPlay DVD player has the amazing ability to filter content from your DVD movies. Your viewing of the movie is incredibly smooth because we make unique frame-accurate Filters, customized for each movie. ClearPlay is providing a membership which gives you access to Filters for over 2000 movies, as well as all the newest ones as soon as the DVD’s are released.

Amazing! But how does it work? No idea. There are a lot of testimonials on the site like this one

We bought a Clearplay about three months ago. It is amazing. When watching a show with a filter on we can actually enjoy the show instead of worrying about when the next cuss word or bedroom scene will pop up. It definitely doesn't take anything away from the actual movie.

[oy] but no real information about how these "filters" work.

So the cinetrix was wondering, could you hack their Moroni-powered technology? Make dragging movies spritely? Dumb movies smarter? Art house flicks less pretentious? Or is this player really powered by a bunch of LDS types in an editing room somewhere, cross-referencing Mr. Skin to make the relevant cuts?

Copyright-infringing "technology" like this makes Gondry seem like a documentarian. But it did make me wonder, of the 2007 releases you saw, what would you cut if you could? For example, a little less Gere in I'm Not There? Or the last twenty minutes of Sunshine? Get out your bullshit-omitting Steenbecks and leave your nominees in the comments.