Ah, flowery June, when brooks send up a cheerful tune. The Muckdogs won their home opener last night before the largest Opening Day crowd in years. The sun has chased away, or at least agreed to coexist with, the clouds. And herewith a piece by yours truly from the Daily Caller about a certain movie that begins its long march across the nation’s Cineplex complex next Friday.
Yikes! So soon, yet. Looks like I’ll have to go scouring around for the novella (I like to be prepared) and start preparing myself to do something I rarely do and dread worse than the piles, AIDS, gout, GIRD, and hangnails all rolled up in one ball of contusion–see a new American movie during its first run. Only for you, Bill.
(“from 1969 until the latter part of the ’70s” was the “heyday”, “the golden age” of American movies?????!!!!!! Surely you jest. I was reviewing the things back then, and they almost invariably stuuuuuhhhhhnnnnk! They’re even worse–unwatchable, unbearable–now. OK, Little Big Man . . . Zabriskie Point [done by a furriner, though] . . . McCabe and Mrs. Miller. But I take your point, We DID yack about ’em.)
I’m with you on McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Ray, but–I hesitate to confess this, but didn’t Thoreau say any truth is better than a lie?–I like Zabriskie Point.
Actually, I didn’t like Zabriskie Point when it came out. It took a retrospective of Antonioni at the Film Center of the Art Institute of Chicago to open it up for me. Antonioni radically–radically!–changed his style for Zabriskie Point but had his reasons for doing so that I appreciated after seeing his previous work. I just love his films. If you haven’t seen it, try his first feature, The Story of a Love Affair (Cronica di un amore), which I think of as the best James M. Cain roman noir that Cain never wrote and Hollywood never concocted.
Oh, wait!–I mentioned the three movies I did in my first post as exceptions to the doldrumish tenor of the American films of those times. I know the era is supposed to have been a renaissance for American film, but I just don’t see it. Maybe it’s the ugly fashions of the time, exceeded in emetic hideousness only by those of the rest of the 70s, that makes most of those movies so repulsive to me. I had to wear jeans and blue workshirts near-exclusively for the duration to be able to get through it. Do I exaggerate? Well, yeah.
Reading the novel this week, even though I don’t know if the movie will play Pittsburgh or not, or when. But just in case…
A good recent American film: Jeff Nichols’ Mud. The first run is past, but is very much worth seeing nevertheless.
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