Alphabet Meme: Film Titles
Glenn Kenny compells me to do a lot of things. I miss Premiere magazine, a periodical with which he was involved that first introduced me to the idea of Film as compared to Movies, the writing of David Foster Wallace, auteur theory, the realization that entertainment was a business, and that hype was as well. His memories of The Feelies got me to finally watch McCabe & Mrs. Miller, in a charmingly banal coincidence. I don’t know the man, but he’s a writer, and I do like the way he strings words together.
So, when he blogs about being tagged to participate in an internet meme (after having started his own), I’m inclined for reasons passing understanding to jump on board.
The rules are as follows: 1. Pick one film to represent each letter of the alphabet.
And that’s basically it. There are actually more rules than that, but they’re about propagating the meme, and how to do with spelling and title conventions, and blah blah blah. The meme is, Pick 26 movies, one for each letter, put them in order, you have no additional guidelines as to what you should pick. So my limiter, self-imposed, is going to be my DVD collection. Anything in grey is something I don’t actually own. Here we go.
The Apartment (1960), Billy Wilder
Broadcast News (1987), James L. Brooks
Charade (1963), Stanley Donen
Dangerous Liaisons (1989), Stephen Frears
Edward Scissorhands (1990), Tim Burton
The Fisher King (1991), Terry Gilliam
Grosse Pointe Blank (1997), George Armitage
Heist (2001), David Mamet
The Incredibles (2003), Brad Bird
The January Man (1989), Pat O’Connor
Kicking & Screaming (1995), Noah Baumbach
Little Man Tate (1991), Jodie Foster
M*A*S*H (1969), Robert Altman
North By Northwest (1959), Alfred Hitchcock
Out of Sight (1998), Steven Soderbergh
The Philadelphia Story (1940), George Cukor
Quiz Show (1994), Robert Redford
Rushmore (1999), Wes Anderson
Strange Brew (1984), Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis
The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), Norman Jewison
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988), Philip Kaufman
A Very Long Engagement (2004), Jean-Pierre Jeunet
What’s Up, Doc? (1972), Peter Bogdanovich
The X-Files: Fight the Future (1998), Rob Bowman
Young Frankenstein (1974), Mel Brooks
Zodiac (2007), David Fincher
Going through my DVDs for this, I could have easily constructed two more lists, one just for classic films, and one for commercial pleasures. There were more than twce as many films as I listed that I regretted having to leave out. I don’t remember having this much trouble selecting my top twenty films over at YMDB. But the list that remains is still a valid reflection of my tastes over time and my history as an audience… there’s nothing here that I don’t have vivid memories of or a particular connection with. And while I refuse to tag five people to spread this meme, particularly when I know full well there aren’t that many people who read this, I hope someone feels the urge to at least mentally run down one’s own list of twenty-six, with whichever selection criterion feels appropriate…
BATMAN: Apologia
Well, I did not dress up for Hallowe’en this year. The intent was dress up as Trapper John from Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H, complete with Hawaiian shirt and golf umbrella, but I had the devil’s own time finding a red and white tropical shirt in later October. Not entirely sure why — it strikes me as just the time of year that one might need a primary-coloured equatorial pick-me-up in one’s wardrobe, but apparently both department stores and secondhand shops disagreed with me.
This isn’t the first time I haven’t dressed up on Hallowe’en, but it’s the first time in a long time. And this is the result of a rather slippery slope… a few years ago, I decided that it wasn’t worth it to pay upwards of a hundred dollars on pieces and components to make a Hallowe’en costume just perfect, and since then I’ve even stopped planning my costumes months in advance. So this costumeless year is the clear result of eroding standards, and for that I apologize.
By means of recompense, I offer you the following pictures of people dressed up as Batman. The first is my niece, Gabriele, Jokerized through the Dark Knight: Ha Ha Ha application for the iPhone. You know and I know that she’s been Jokerized, but when she sees the picture, she claims that she’s Batman in it. And who’s going to argue that point with a four year-old. The next was just blogged by Kiel Phegley and reblogged by the Comics Reporter, and the third and fourth are something I found and saved back in April: Andy Warhol dressed as Robin, the Boy Wonder. Enjoy.
EDIT: This seemed thematically appropriate, so I’m adding it on: the last image is Ms. Macdonald of Stately Beat Manor dressed up in the clan emblem.
Freedom’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left To Choose
At work this year, I have been making a point of rotating through a number of pins worn on my lapel. Most have been those small three-quarter inch badges that hipsters use to adorn the flaps on their messenger bags, and which are just the right size to cover the boutoniere hole of my suit jackets. Because I have a limited number of these, I was pleased to find that due to my habit of dutifully filling out surveys for National Public Radio about my listening habits and my lack of donor generosity, they are kindly sending me three pins in gratitude for my efforts.
The e-mail that thanks me also invites me to e-mail my friends, and encourage them to send their mailing address to NPR to possibly receive three random buttons as well (supplies, naturally, are limited). I don’t have any friends, so I hope that NPR won’t begrudge me posting this out in the wild, instead.
My suspicion is that this, like Obama’s offer to send a text-message to his supporters in advance of the national announcement, is actually a moderately clever way of gathering more addresses of likely donors, despite the fact that the NPR Listens website says that it will not share your name with the fundraising arm of their organization. So, be advised of my unfounded suspicion that you may be trading a cool Carl Kasell badge for future mailings asking for your financial support. Personally, I think it’s worth it. If you agree, send your name and address to the e-mail link above, and you to can wear your liberal media bias on your sleeve, lapel, or messenger bag.
Teeny Tiny Letters
This Week’s Small-Print Round-Up:
“As a direct result of all the terror and bad things post 9/11 and as a mark of respect, it has been decided NOT to release this cd in Dolby 5.1 surround.”
—Trellis, Green Wing original television soundtrack, 2007
“SHIRT CLUB IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR HOW SEXY, HANDSOME, DEBONAIR, FETCHING, LOVELY, SPORTY, BECOMING, SUAVE, CAREFREE, BREEZY, GLAMOROUS, PRETTY, ENTICING, ENCHANTING, BEWITCHING, ENGAGING, GORGEOUS, RAVISHING, STUNNING, BONNY, BEAUTEOUS, HOMELY, COMELY, FAIR, AFFECTED, PRECOCIOUS, LIBERAL, CONSERVATIVE, OLD-SCHOOL, OR NEW-SCHOOL YOU MAY OR MAY NOT APPEAR. PLEASE NOTE THAT YOUR SHIRT CLUB T-SHIRT SHOULD BE WASHED PRIOR TO ITS 11TH WEARING.”
—Astro-Base Go, The Amazing Shirt of the Week Club, 2008
“This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, swapped for food, placed in a canoe, flown in the manner of a kite, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent…”
—Julian Gough, Jude: Level 1, 2007
This was all prompted due to the four — four! — hidden jokes in the indicia of Julian Gough’s Jude. The indicia is all I’ve read so far, as I have such high expectations for this book, I’m reading all sorts of other things first to try and slake my anticipation, which would otherwise be bound to ruin a perfectly good read. I’ll write more about Jude later, perhaps in a time-shifted incomplete blog entry from earlier that I really need to finish up so I can write that follow-up e-mail to McLaren. Let me merely finish by saying that while David Mamet shamefully didn’t put his wife’s one-word review of his novel on the dust jacket (as mentioned earlier), I am inutterably pleased that Jude contains the following enigmatic pull-quote: “Julian Gough is not a novelist” —New York Times.
Brilliant! And, oddly, not in their comprehensive internet search archive…
Pop Consciousness
A couple of days ago I read an article on the BBC entertaiment feed that The Banana Splits show was being reinvigorated for a contemporary audience. I don’t have much of a particular connection with the Splits, and can’t really distinguish them in my memory from The Great Space Coaster, as they were all very occasional Saturday morning re-runs to me, despite being a decade apart in production. The only thing that really interested me was that the BBC website has undergone a streamline change of appearance recently (that I hadn’t previously registered), and had a nice embedded Flash player version of the “classic” Tra La La song which was their theme.
And this is where my memory grabs hold of the whole retro shtick. Y’see, there’s a great scene in Noah Baumbach’s Kicking & Screaming (no, not that K&S) where Grover (no, not that Grover) is lounging awkwardly in a dorm room party, whilst in the background the Liz Phair cover of the Splits theme from the alternative band Saturday Morning compilation plays. Or so I thought, when I first watched the film. It turns out that they were actually listening to Bob Marley’s “Buffalo Soldier“, something I would have caught, were I just a little more hip.
But that was okay. I still liked the subtext of the scene. It’s one of those odd pop culture connections that take place in one’s head out of almost sheer desperation when one is wallflowering at a party. “Buffalo Soldier” reminds Grover of the Banana Splits which in turn makes him wonder about the Josie and the Pussycats episode that he calls up Max about. It’s not delineated, step-by-step, but it makes sense. An audience member can fill in the blanks.
Or so I thought. Yesterday Mr. Wheeler linked to the Beeb’s follow-up article that analyzes the similarities between “Buffalo Soldier” and “The Tra La La song” and finds them lacking in key essential similarity. I think this is like the case of the Nokia ringtone and it’s origin from “Gran Vals“, by Francisco Tarrega… there is a key tonal difference between the two (fast forward two minutes in), but one would never dispute the obvious commonalities.
Related Links:
+ Kicking and Screaming: DVD by the Criterion Collection
+ Kicking and Screaming: Analysis by Chronological Snobbery
+ Liz Phair, “The Tra La La song“, Saturday Morning
Funny Face, Funny Books
I’m not going to work more often than I can help it, so my exposure to my traditional Audrey Hepburn calendar is considerably less than daily. I’ve purchased a number of these calendars over the years — although this is the first year I’ve noticed that the name Audrey Hepburn is followed by a ™ symbol… has the estate of the late Ms. Hepburn really trademarked her likeness in this age of mass copyright infringement? — and enjoy the mild cheesiness of the almost total absence of cheesecake in the images.
I watch for repetition of images over the years, and notice that certain promotional headshots tend to make frequent reappearances. This is a pity. With appearances in twenty-nine films, surely Audrey Hepburn™ LLC must be able to license stills from her films or photos from her magazine appearances. I mean, it’s probably not possible to reproduce stuff by, say, Philippe Halsman, but there’s only some many years that I can stare for a month at that particular black and white coquette by Bud Fraker from 1953. The recent “Remembering Audrey” by Bob Willoughby for Life magazine had a number of photos that were new to me, so we shouldn’t be hitting the end of variety just yet.
So I am particularly pleased to submit the following for consideration: Audrey reading a reprint album of Captain America with her son. Audrey and Comics: two great obsessionsinterests in my life, together in one grainy image. Now that’s something I’d like to see for a month in some future wall-hanging. May I suggest November 2009?
BRIEFLY: Age of Solitude
I wrote, some while ago, about the mild frisson of joy and surreality that came from being mistaken for a high school student whilst in grad school.
All of which leads me to ask: why is it that I’m carded one out of every five times I buy some gourmet microbrew root beer, but never, ever, not once when I buy pure vanilla extract (35% alcohol)?
SKETCH: An Explanation
I now have over a year of draft posts saved on various places around my computer. Folders of browser tabs and bookmarks, evocative images on my desktop, and anecdotes from events now well past their shelf date of relevance.
I wasn’t entirely certain what to do with this digital scrapbook, and considered a simple purge, a mass deletion. Because if I looked upon these stray thoughts and thought, “Was this really worth sharing?” then what would other people think? But I was inspired by the twin sources of Nalyn and OAA, the former who encouraged me to embrace my quikjot origins of electronic communication, without needing to expound at length or significance; and the latter of whom has seriously updated her blogging by at least 600% since she threw her lot in with the shortform communication style of Tumblr.
I don’t like the lack of comment ability on Tumblr, or else I’d just divest myself of these stray scrips and scraps there, but that’s the model I’ll be working with. So if you see a post — particularly a post that suddenly appears with an old date on it — tagged or prefixed with “Sketch”, then you know it’s part of my clearinghouse, and it may just sit there, context- and commentary-free. Tell me if you like them, and I may also find myself updating this blog more than my typical twice a month.
Dedicated to Rahul Kolhatkar
I don’t have a particular thing for George Clooney. I like him, but I would like any person who is cast in the role as this generation’s Cary Grant, because I adore Cary Grant. More people should be trying and vying and jockeying for the position of this generation’s Cary Grant, as far as I’m concerned, but if we’re only going to have one, then, by god, I’m going to have some low level adulation for him.
But I respect any man who is successful and who is able to balance glamour and self-depreciation. It’s a winning strategy, as it leads me to infer humanism and frailty upon a person who has clearly had to, at some point, step over the bodies of others in order to reach the vaunted levels of success that make anyone a household name. And it’s hard not to like anyone who had something to do with Out of Sight, a masterful piece of charm.
But yeah, it’s not as as George is the final part of my Five and Switch. But because he prefigures prominently in other people’s estimation, I was interested in his profile in the New Yorker. And I was glad I read all ten pages of it, because I now feel closer to George Clooney than I have any other celebrity in my life:
“He hit his head on a concrete floor; not long afterward, cerebrospinal fluid began to leak out of his nose.”
Anyone who’s heard me tell “the cranial fluid story” will understand.
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