Monday, June 25, 2007

thief's theme


Been a minute since my last post. Late Spring has not proved fruitful for the TCP. Speaking of fruit, one of my favorites is green apples. Thieves' Highway (not to be confused with Lost Highway) shares my produce preference.

Had to see this one dolo, cuz Kapil is allergic to black and white and I admittedly bailed on Jim.

TH is a simple crowd-pleaser with a simple demand: accept the lazy eyes of both leads.
The script is smart and the acting goes down easy. Like all movies set before 1985, much of your attention will be spent laughing to yourself (unless you're watching with other people, for some reason) how different things were then. The rest of your attention will be paid to how much maintenance driving a truck back in 1949 required.

Also, TH has what must be the origin of the ol' embarrassed-male-reluctant-to-say-'I love you'-on-the-phone-in-front-of-the-guys scenario.
And, Jack Oakie, on the right, was deaf during the entire shoot. Though he looks a bit off up there in the pic, his performance gives off no indication of his impairment.

go for the apples. stay for the acting.

Sunday, June 3, 2007

(Instru)mentally Ill

Going into Marco Bellochio's I Pugni in Tasca (Fists in the Pocket), we knew little more than that the DVD cover art was ill. Right off the bat, we were drawn by the score, by Ennio Morricone, who Kiki acutely pointed out was an ill dude (and recipient of a 2007 Honorary Academy Award for Acheivement in music). He then promptly fell asleep.

He missed an old Italian masterpiece about a mentally ill dude (above) who believes that he'd be doing a great service to the world and his eldest brother, the only well adjusted member of a dysfunctional family, by killing his mother and younger siblings. In the meantime, he crushes on his own sister (dimepiece Paola Pitagora), takes a driving test, and hatches a plan to invest money in a chinchilla farm. Complicating things are his own conscience, a nondescript cranial malady, and the fact that chinchilla farms cost a guap.

Almost sounds kind of like a dark comedy right? It's not. It's definitely not.

Friday, June 1, 2007

Juan Apagado Spends a Lot of Time Wandering Around Town

We inadvertently kept it real Texas on Memorial Day by hitting up the local Tex-Mex spot and then hitting up the surprisingly thorough DVD section at Barnes and Noble where we decided on copping "Slacker," Richard Linklater's chronicle of a day in Austin.

Don't get it twisted. "Slacker" isn't "Dazed and Confused," despite the fact that both document generations of disaffected youth. It's also not to be confused with "Slackers," the Devon Sawa star-making vehicle. For better or worse, the film that put Linklater on the map (sort of) is still regarded as the OG "indie" flick. But for me, it's cool because it's like a time capsule to the early 90's. One of the dudes was sporting a dope Batman T-shirt that I used to rock ca. '89. Dunkin' Donuts cereal makes a brief cameo. And then there's the drummer from the Butthole Surfers showing off her newly acquired (and above pictured) Madonna Pap Smear. But it's probably not for everybody. Linklater's intent here was to structure the plot around loosely connected ideas interwoven by creative transitions. In short, it's something of an experiment and you'll probably get more out of it if you view it as such. If you like plot, don't come around here. But if you like stories, Linklater's got a chair and a beer coozie with your name on it.