1. "Hello, Glenn. I am Alain.": Glenn Kenny interviews Alain Resnais.
["The interview was supposed to take place in person, in New York, during last fall's New York Film Festival, which would be screening his latest feature Private Fears in Public Places. But the 84-year-old director Alain Resnais, the constantly inventive creator of such cinematic landmarks as Night and Fog, Hiroshima, Mon Amour, Last Year at Marienbad, Muriel and many others (the great Dave Kehr’s piece on Resnais in April 8's New York Times is a superb primer/update on the master’s career), found himself unable to travel. And so the interview became a phoner."]
2. "Grindhouse aims to resurrect movies, not bury them: Godfrey Cheshire chimes in on the Rodriguez/Tarantino double feature.
["Rodriguez's film, like most of its kind, is about fear and survival. Tarantino's gives us death turned to triumph. Planet Terror, you might say, is the Old Testament; Death Proof (what better title?) the New. If the combined elements of cinematic self-reflexiveness and Christian symbolism have always been present in Tarantino's work, nowhere are they so clear as here. And that's why the elegiac aspects of Grindhouse end up as something of cheerful illusion. Cinema of the '70s may be dead, we sense, but through audacious uses of celluloid (not CGI!) like that in Death Proof, cinema itself is endlessly reborn. And you thought it was mere coincidence that this movie hit theaters at Easter?"]
3. "Black Tight Killers (1966)": By Jeffrey Hill for Liverputty.
["Director Yasuharu Hasebe says in an interview included on the DVD that, although not specifically influenced by western directors, this movie was nevertheless a response to the Bond-mania that was sweeping the world."]
4. "N.W.A. Kid: Personal thoughts on “Fuck tha Police”": By Paul Schrodt for The Stranger Song.
["As a rap geek in elementary school, N.W.A.’s “Fuck tha Police” blasting from the little black boom box inside my suburban bedroom, I could scarcely grasp the political connections of my favorite gangsta rap anthem. I only knew I liked it—a lot."]
5. "Weekly Top 10: Cinema's Greatest No-Sex Sex Scenes", Part 1 & Part 2: The latest Top 10 from Screengrab.
["Old-timers like to decry the prevalence of nudity in film by saying that back in the day, their favorite screen stars could convey more sexiness fully clothed than any of these modern kids can without a stitch on. Personally, we never quite bought that — Kathleen Turner bared all in her sex scenes with William Hurt in Body Heat, and humanity is all the better for it. But there's something to be said for sex scenes that are so subtle that not only don't they contain any nudity, they don't contain any sex. Whether it's because of Hayes Code censorship or the desire to create a specific aesthetic effect, there are numerous examples of films in which something is happening, and we know exactly what it is, Mr. Jones — it's pure sex, even if it's not presented as such. This week, our Weekly Top Ten list takes a look at some of our favorite no-sex sex scenes from cinematic history."]
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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Links for the Day (April 13th, 2007)
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2 comments:
Remains of the Day definitely belongs on the "no-sex sex scenes" list, for the scene where Hopkins and Thompson tug-of-war over the book he's reading. It's subtle and gorgeously erotic at the same time.
I saw Gun Crazy at Film Forum last year, and it's deservingly on the list. But it also would have been one of the best MST3K episodes ever. From the opening courtroom scene straight out of a school film to the odd Armour product placement as the payroll heist victim to the final chase up into the mountains to wind up in a swamp, the 'bots could have had a field day.
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