The cinetrix is trying to push a sizable chunk of a writing/updating project out the door, so naturally the interweb's siren song has grown deafening. Here's another links post in a vain attempt to silence said siren.
First up: Oh, Kermie! Henson & Oz, a video essay tribute to one of the great comedy teams of the 20th century.
Next, when the red, red robin goes bob, bob, bobbin' along. "The second installment of my summer series, “Play it Again (and Again), Sam: The Tape Recorder in Film” continues to unspool chronologically, this time focusing on the recorder’s key role in two films indelibly imprinted by legendary editor Walter Murch."
Grace Kelly, slut! "One of Kelly’s signature moves was to emerge totally naked. I don’t mean at Bergdorf’s or on the street, I mean after she was alone with her date. She would excuse herself into the bathroom and come back naked, or if he went to the bathroom he would come back to find her naked. I can see her doing this but only posing as though she were a store mannequin, one perfectly manicured hand on her hip, the other lifted into the air as if to say, “Why not take a gander at my vagina?”"
Remember the 1989 Oscars? Tom Cruise was still married to Mimi Rodger's jaw, River Phoenix was still alive, Geena Davis was still working, Bruce Willis was still pretending he had hair, Jodie Foster was still in the closet.... Alan Light was there, and he's posted the most amazing Flickr set: "A friend who was working on the Academy Awards production staff got myself and a friend, Rick, into the rehearsals, and also got us all-access photo-i.d. credentials for the show itself. We didn't have seats in the audience - we could roam anywhere we wanted. It got us onto the red carpet as the stars arrived, and we could roam anywhere we wanted inside the theater except actually on stage during the telecast itself." [via]
Yeah, yeah. Everybody has a Kickstarter today, but Matt Porterfield's new flick I Used to Be Darker offers excellent incentives. For example, an original drawing by the cinetrix will be featured as part of the movie's mise-en-scène, all because I donated at a certain hour last night.
Fading lights in Mumbai: "Nestled in the city’s noisy bustle, Mumbai’s single-screen theatres are exotic anachronisms. Many of them have grand English names—Strand, Metro and, most famously, Opera House—which have long been used to identify the surrounding neighbourhoods. In their heyday, these cinemas were mostly playhouses patronised by upper-class Brits. The now-seedy Alfred was originally the Ripon, one of Mumbai’s first playhouses for regional drama."
I keep being astonished by this: In fact, Bergman was a voracious film watcher. Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell, author of the Wallander novels and married to one of Bergman's daughters, was also in Fårö, and he told me about the screenings his father-in-law would host every day at 3pm in the state-of-the-art cinema he had built in a converted farmhouse (I saw a movie there later: Bergman's front-row chair, complete with cushion and foot stool, is left reverentially unoccupied). Mankell remembers the director's special fondness for the remake of Ocean's 11 – "Jesus!" said Bergman as the credits rolled, "we need to see this again next week."
From Looker: "Some people spend their lives trying to relive the joys of youth. Some of us seek out movies that scare the bejesus out of us, hoping to relive the terror. Got a problem with that?"
Finally, the Fug Girls rate Julia Roberts' movies on their grinning, brassy... Julia-ness [a pet peeve of mine].
