I’m a bit distracted right now by, and not only by presidential polls, etc., but also by some new DVDs I’ve got in of three of Alfred Hitchcock’s best and/or most popular films. Psycho (which I’ll only be covering the extras on for my Bullz-Eye.com gig) has never been anywhere even close to being my favorite Hitchcock film. Still, that’s not a slam at all. I’ve always been a huge fan of Hitch, so the competition is heavy, and there’s no denying the sheer genius of the first half that ends with the shower scene, or the greatness of Janet Leigh’s and Anthony Perkins’ performances.

Still, in a way, my very favorite thing about Psycho is this…..

Okay, so good ol’ Brian Doan tagged me in the viral “12 Films” meme more than a week or so back. The idea of this meme, which thanks to Dennis Cozzalio (who reminded me of a couple of films I want to add to my own list) has morphed from naming twelve films that you’d love to see, but are virtually impossible to find, to twelve films one simply hasn’t gotten around to.  In a way, that makes it even more intimidating seeing as I have some 300+ films films in my Netflix queue and another twenty or so films sitting on a couple of DVRs where I live. So, I’m going to kind of split the difference and kind of favor films that are at least somewhat tricky to see — with a few where my only excuse is filmic fecklessness.

The first is on loan from Dennis, but I come by it honestly….

1. Ulzana’s Raid –  This ultra-tough western from Robert Aldrich has the “virtue” of actually being almost impossible to find either in revival or, even more so, on DVD, it’s a movie I’ve vaguely wanted to see since I first took up a special interest in westerns some fifteen or more years back. That interest became greatly intensified, however, when Joss Whedon cited it repeatedly as a major influence (along with Michael Shaara’s novel, The Killer Angels) on his great, short-lived TV horse opera/space opera series Firefly, which I liked with a level of enthusiasm so strong that I can hear certain friends sighing even as they read this.  In any case, Robert Aldrich’s film is said to be of one of the very few action westerns to really attempt to deal honestly with the Indian wars following the Civil War. As much as I dearly love John Ford’s tales of sacrifice and frontier chivalry, Fort Apache and Rio Grande, I clearly need — I actually want — to be cinematically disillusioned about those vicious times.

2. Captain Kronos — Vampire Hunter. I’ve wanted to see this Hammer film since about age 15. Why? A vampire fighting swashbuckler written and directed by Brian Clemens of The Avengers. I mean, vampires, swordfights, presumably witty dialogue. I mean, seriously, what else do you need to know?

3. Chimes at Midnight. I actually blew numerous opportunities to see this one  at the Nuart and the long-gone Fox Venice as a kid. That was because I hadn’t yet read Shakespeare’s history plays featuring Prince Hal and Falstaff — which probably remain my favorite works by the by Bard. Putting together the Falstaff sections of the four plays featuring the iconic and beloved character appears in, this film is frequently talked about as perhaps Welles’ second great film after Citizen Kane. I am not a part of the giant-sized Welles cinephile cult when it comes to his later output, with something of an exception for Touch of Evil (I’m currently working on a review of the new DVD for this, btw) but I’ll basically watch any Welles film once – and with Welles, a great ham, playing one of my favorite ham characters, I can’t see not loving this one at least a little bit. According to Wikipedia because of legal difficulties this one remains viewable only as a DVD import from Brazil. Another reason to say that first, we really should kill all the lawyers. (Well, not the nice ones. You know who you are.)

4. Bunny Lake is Missing. I definitely love a mystery and this one just looks cool. I also think I was freaked out as a toddler by a scene involving…something…a baby doll? I have no clue, so that’s another mystery. So why has it been on my DVR for six months? (BTW — That’s my kind of movie poster — who says you have to see the actors?)

5. The President’s Analyst. Another DVR sitter that I’ve only seen a moment or two, here or there. I love political thrillers; I love spy films — I love them even more when you add in a little black comedy, or a whole lot. And throw in some late sixties pinache/weirdness, the fact that it’s written by a great TV comedy writer named Theodore J. Flicker (was that his real name?), and you’ve got a psychedelic martini I can’t wait to sip. But, yet, I do.

6. Kagemusha: The  Shadow Warrior. I went to see this lesser known, but highly regarded, late period Kurosawa samurai tale (actually kind of a spy film, when you think of it), right after finals in college with two buddies. I think I was nodding off within a quarter of an hour and woke up just in time to be baffled by some kind of ironic (?) conclusion. I missed seeing a new print of it a week ago today. Damn. It looks good.

Unfortunately, Jean-Luc Godard’s Week End is a mere runner-up and will not be among the films discussed starting Monday and on through the next ten days at the Britannica Blog by writer Raymond Benson, who’ll be taking us through his ten favorite films from the epic year. Benson is best known as a successful writer of thrillers, including being the author of a passel of officially sanctioned post-Fleming James Bond novels, and the person who guesses his #1 film from 1968 gets a free signed copy of his appropriately titled rock and roll thriller, A Hard Day’s Death. [Update: As Brian Doan reminded me in comments just now, Mr. Benson is even better known as the author of the hightly acclaimed reference, The James Bond Bedside Companion. Oops.]

Anyhow, your esteemed proprietor has been asked to participate by way of comments on a daily basis as Mr. Benson reveals his choices. I’ll be just part of a whole gang of, no doubt, painstakingly selected folk, including two friends of this here blog: David Hudson of the completely essential and utterly invaluble Greencine blog (syndicated over on the right of your screen), and the ever-amusing wordsmith, Alan Lopuszynski of Burbanked, one of the first movies bloggers to comment here and link to me. Also on board is sixties/seventies-specialist Kimberly Lindbergs of the rightfully acclaimed Cinebeats blog (which I really need to start reading a lot more often and probably should add to the blog roll if I haven’t already), Ray “Flickhead” Young, autodidact Steven Carlson and many other fine folk — including one guy actually associated with a print venue who has perhaps even met Jonathan Rosenbaum. (Other film bloggers are also invited to jump in.)

So, head over to Raymond Benson’s first post right now and take a look at his runners-up list, and start the speculation. Then return with me next week and see what we think.

Until then, use your time wisely. Prepare.

Without a doubt, the strangest thing about this lavish, six-year-old international cult hit, an eccentric blend of Hammer-style period horror and chop socky à la Française, is that it’s — yes — “inspired by true events.” Really.

As “Brotherhood” gets under way, it’s the late 1760s and Grégoire de Fronsac (Samuel Le Bihan), an emotionally scarred ex-soldier and macho-man action-guy naturalist, and his faithful Iroquois companion, Mani (Mark Dacascos), a cross between John Redcorn of “King of the Hill” and Bruce Lee, arrive from the court of King Louis in the redneck mountain province of Gevaudan to track down a mysterious beast who has been slaughtering local peasants. While a young nobleman hep to the ways of the Enlightenment (Jérémie Renier) assists Fronsac, most of the locals are far less accommodating. Most notably, there is Jean-François de Morangias (Vincent Cassel), a one-armed young count whom, among other psychological issues, is somewhat overly protective of his gorgeous younger sister, Marianne (Émilie Dequenne). Naturally, Fronsac has instantly fallen for the beauteous, virtuous redhead, but since “Brotherhood” is French and not American, that doesn’t prevent him from keeping sexy company with Sylvia (Monica Belluci), a brilliant and bounteous super-prostie with an agenda of her own.

Find out whether or not I liked it at Bullz-Eye.com

Howdy folks. What I really should be doing this week is blogging about the big Democon happening in Denver right now. (I wonder how many Andrew Jacksons there’ll be there at this year’s Masquerade….and if I see one more joker in an Adlai Stevenson costume….) But if you want some quality political thoughts from another liberal movie geek, Brian Doan is offering plenty — along with lots of good video for those who might have missed the highlights. Short version of my reaction — pretty much the usual one: media silliness notwithstanding, very proud and very happy.

For myself, I’m finishing up another big retrospective feature for Bullz-Eye (more on that later, but this time it’s ten movies each from two sexagenarian superstars you all know and probably imitate on a regular basis), dealing with minor dental issues (a temporary filing popped out last night — a first for me…weird having a hole in a tooth), and glorying in my motion-picture trailer debut.

Yes, below is the official trailer for my friend Cody Jarrett’s highly awaited Sugar Boxx, an austere psychodrama in the tradition of Bresson and Dreyer….if they made women-in-prison films and their names were Russ Meyer and Jack Hill. See if you can spot me. (I’m the shorter male chauvinist pig on the left hand side of the screen for about 1/2 a second at the end!)

More on this to come, to be sure.

This post is my entry at William Speruzzi’s Ambitious Failure Blogathon at This Savage Art.

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If satire is what closes on Saturday night, how much courage did the creators of the stage musical Reefer Madness need to go ahead with their off-Broadway debut on September 15, 2001?

It must have felt a bit like the final moments of The Wild Bunch to attempt a take-no-prisoners satire, complete with orgies, murder, a little light cannibalism, and a Vegas-style Jesus Christ, within four days and a few miles of the disaster “that changed everything” — and it couldn’t have helped that pundits across the nation were busy declaring the end of irony, and good riddance to it. Jerry Falwell might have been declaring that gays, pagans and the ACLU shared responsibility for 9/11 with Osama and Mohamed Atta, but to read many writers you’d have thought the tragedy was God’s judgment for the success of Seinfeld. The musical Reefer Madness had run for a year in a half in Los Angeles, but it didn’t last long beyond Saturday night in New York.

With that background, it shouldn’t be any surprise that the 2005 Showtime film of the play, Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical refers far more starkly to the War on Terrorism than the War on Drugs. Made by the original team behind the stage productions, writer-composers Kevin Murphy and Dan Studney along with director Andy Fickman, the film takes aims at some big targets including red-baiting and political intolerance, racial hysteria, and, of course, sexual panic (both homo- and hetero-). All in all, just about all of the favorite social evils of most social liberals are ridiculed….with the odd exception of U.S. drug laws. For that, you’ll have to go back to Traffic.

Still, it’s definitely ambitious in terms of its political targets, and also ambitious in the sense that doing a traditional break-out-in-song style musical always risks ridicule — and doing one on a modest budget is a challenge on every level. As for it being a “failure,” as a made-for-cable film it’s hard to judge Reefer Madness commercially, but it seems to have met with a mixed critical reaction, though it also clearly has its share of fans on IMDb. It’s probably safe to say that if it had the festival reaction had been stronger (it premiered at Sundance) a limited U.S. theatrical release might have been planned. The made-for-cable label can be a face-saving fall-back position for a film deemed to have limited appeal — it sounds a whole lot better than “direct-to-DVD.”

As far as it’s artistic success or failure, it seems to me that as social satire it’s not very potent and as comedy it’s less than consistently brilliant, at least as written. So, then why does it make me laugh and why have I enjoyed watching certain scenes over and over?

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