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Mostly, I remember the garage. And the gunfire.

I didn't remember that Jean-Pierre Leaud was there, or Bibendum, or a pinball machine. I'd forgotten the nods--to Aldrich, Preminger, Widmark et al. I wouldn't have appreciated the  humor of secreting a gun inside a hollowed-out Larousse Gastronomique at the time. All I remembered was that garage and the dragonfly-wing makeup gracing Anna Karina's doe eyes.

Which is why, when I read on GreenCine that some kind soul had put the whole of Godard's elusive 1966 flick Made in U.S.A. on YouTube, I dropped everything for a little more than 88 minutes this afternoon and settled in to watch it for the first time in eleven or twelve years. [Better still, I'd borrowed a projector for the weekend.]

If you read a plot synopsis, Made in U.S.A. [allegedly based on Donald E. Westlake/Richard Stark's The Jugger] sounds like a Technicolor precursor to The Bride Wore Black--only with leftist politics and ludic sound design! But watching it, actually surrendering to it, is akin to having a fever dream.* Imagine that Dorothy is whirled away from Kansas and lands, not in Oz, but in a parallel-universe version of The Big Sleep in which a Bacall/Malone hybrid is our investigator and the moment at which one realizes that no one knows who killed the chauffeur lasts forever.

It's that good.

Wake up!

It's happened to us all.

You're watching a DVD and--thud--you crash, hard. When you come to, there's a crease on your cheek, a crick in your neck, and an explanation for the weird, carousel quality of your dreams: The main menu music for the movie has been slowly and deliberately boring a hole through your skull with each jaunty repetition.

The cinetrix's new hero, the mysterious gingeranyhow [at] gmail [dot] com, has done something about this scourge. At the simple, elegant site You Fell Asleep Watching a DVD, you too can recreate the terror of awakening to the main menus of movies as varied [and irritating] as Knocked Up and the third Harry Potter or shows like Arrested Development. It's genius. See for yourself here. [via]

Road movies

Floor it. Set the alarm. Mark your calendars. Cancel all other plans. According to the Boston Globe's Ty Burr, there's hella cinematic action in the Bay State this weekend. [And something for New Yorkers, too.]

• If you're in Boston, stop reading right now and point your car toward Northampton. To kick off a Robert Altman mini-fest at the Academy of Music, the freakin' Feelies are playing a show at 9 p.m. The rest of the weekend's schedule may be found here.
• Or set your alarms for the FREE 11 a.m. screening of Ozu's Good Morning at the Brattle, hosted by Burr himself. Sez the critic: "If you're planning on going, I can't stress this enough: Bring your kids. My own daughters have watched Good Morning countless times; it's one of their all-time favorites. Yes, it's subtitled. Yes, there are fart jokes."
• Kill some time after the Ozu cold lampin' in the pit before heading to the HFA for the beginning of its Lucretia Martel weekend. La Ciénaga plays at 7 p.m. Saturday, and The Holy Girl and The Headless Woman unspool at the same time Sunday and Monday, respectively. Martel herself will be in effect.
• Stuck in New York fighting post-NYFF fatigue? Rally and make your way to Anthology this Monday at 7:30 p.m. for the Flaherty NYC presentation of shorts by one of this year's seminar participants, Oliver Husain. All the fun of Flaherty minus the dorm digs and dining hall food. UnionDocs' Christopher Allen moderates the Q&A with Oliver.
• Tuesday, ricochet back up to Boston for the FREE IFFBoston screening of Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky at the Somerville Theatre at 7:30 p.m. The cantankerous filmmaker will be present for a post-screening Q&A. Download your pass here.

You have your marching orders--be sure to report back.

The spirit of listlessness*

Multitaskers and slackers alike should check out the Ken Jacobs online film festival over at Tank.tv [through November]. Just think of the hours that working one's way assiduously through twenty films could take, if done correctly! [via]

*The cinetrix is still in grading hell, which is why she hasn't had the time to write about the films she's managed to catch here and there over the past couple of weeks. Soon, my pets. Pinky swear.