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Monthly Archives: July 2014
A REMBRANDT FOR TODAY
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A MOVIE STILL FOR TODAY
Molière, 2007.
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A VIVIAN MAIER FOR TODAY
Chicago, 1966.
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AN ARTHUR SARON SARNOFF FOR TODAY
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AN LP COVER FOR TODAY
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PLAYMATE WITH LPs AND RECORD PLAYER
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THE UNDEAD
Hipster irony is dead but it doesn’t know it — it still stalks the land like a vampire, sucking the sweetness out of life the way vampires suck blood.
Playing the above song once a week can ward off hipster irony from your home, just as a string of garlic hung over your bed can ward off vampires.
Prepare, beware . . . of the undead!
LOTS AVAILABLE
Around 1899 . . .
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A PAPERBACK COVER FOR TODAY
ON THE SET
Moulin Rouge, 1952.
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WHO’LL STOP THE RAIN (DOG SOLDIERS)
This movie starts off as a pulse-pounding thriller, morphs into a desperate and genuinely touching love story about two doomed misfits on the run, devolves into a trippy shoot-’em-up and concludes as a tragic valedictory to the men who sacrificed their youth for their country in Vietnam. All these aspects of the movie work wonderfully on their own terms — but they don’t work together, they work serially.
There’s tremendous craft at work in the writing here, episode by episode, just no unifying vision. Were the filmmakers confused, trying to pack too much thematic freight into one story, or experimenting with a new-found freedom to mess around with conventional ideas of narrative and genre?
Perhaps we should just say, “Forget it, Jake, it was the 1970s.”
Still, a fun movie, with a typically brilliant performance by Tuesday Weld, which alone makes it worth seeing.
With special thanks to Scott Bradley for making it possible for me to see it . . .
A WESTERN MOVIE POSTER FOR TODAY
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SKINNER AND DANIELS
In my youth in Wilmington, North Carolina, where I was born, this was the place to go for bar-b-q. It was where your grandparents took you for a special night out — grandparents who were just a generation removed from the farm, for whom the country cooking at Skinner and Daniels was an occasion for nostalgia. The sign with the pig in fancy dress seemed magical to me as a child.
The place is gone, the grandparents are gone, the sign is gone, the 23 year-old youth in the baseball cap is gone — but not really . . .
[Photograph © 1973 Langdon Clay]
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A MOVIE MAGAZINE COVER FOR TODAY
With thanks to Bryan Castañeda . . .
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