Another gem from the PFA series Tea and Larceny: Classic British Crime Films, IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY (1947), a deliciously dreary and multi-faceted account of a wet Sunday in Bethnall Green, London.
Three thugs having a spot of tea at a cart in the rain.
The bratty daughter removing her transparent mac in her parents’ grotty kitchen.
So—how stunning was this print of FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH (1982)? Not a scratch on it, super-duper color, wowoweee! And, let’s face it, the film holds up to multiple viewings. Glad to finally have seen it on the big screen. Jesse Hawthorne Ficks of Midnites for Maniacs treated us to some choice trivia: there was a sequel to this movie, called The Wild Life, with Sean Penn’s brother, Chris Penn, playing the role of Spicoli. What?!
And another question: whatever happened to Judge Reinhold?
Is it just me? Or is the typography for THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN (1982) apt for the film’s “penetrating” dissection of teenage lust?
The best part of this double feature—esp. for a night devoted to “Cocky White Guys”? Both films depict abortion frankly, realistically, and with nary a batted eyelash. As Jesse pointed out, would that Knocked Up and Juno were so cool.
By the by: had a terrible experience taking the all-night BART home (due to the Bay Bridge closure). Picture the scene:
2 a.m.
Hundreds of drunk people.
Hundreds of drunk people who never used BART before.
Hundreds of drunk people who had never used BART before stampeding through the doors of the car X and I had ambled into at 24th Street.
I won’t go into any more detail than to tell you that the below cocky white guy STOOD ON MY REAR BICYCLE WHEEL, with all his weight. Yes, he was that drunk and that much of a mischievous monkey. I did get him to give me 20 bucks in exchange for my having to true my back wheel.
By the way, his name is Robert Harris—or so he claimed—and he builds and races bikes, and works at Mike’s Bikes, and lives somewhere in the East Bay.
You have been warned.
No, Jimmy, your butt certainly does NOT look fat in those swim trunks.
I MET A MURDERER (1939) barely made it out of the silent era, with all those dramatic close-ups, overwrought orchestral crescendoes, and awkward edits. Plus, the leading lady’s eyebrows were about tweezed out of existence. (I know, I’m overly obsessed with eyebrow fashion through the ages.) But she did call their car “Auntie” and James Mason’s character shot his wife because she shot his border collie. Fair enough.
Oh, yeah, there was another movie in this double bill:
Even three-strip Technicolor couldn’t save this. When the lights went up, one of the PFA regulars loudly pronounced it a “stinker.”
FOOTSTEPS IN THE FOG (1955).
Hello? Yes, this is Clive.
Oh, how lovely to hear from you!
Yes. It was quite a film, in fact, it is a bit of an OBSESSION (1949) of mine.
Uh-huh.
Yes, Monty the dog saves the day, but it is in fact the cat that alerts the police.
Um-hm. Oh, yes, I did see Lucy at the screening. She didn’t take her usual seat, even when one of the regulars offered to scootch over.
No, she’s not that particular. I know.
Um-hm.
Oh, then the other regular mentioned that she’d like to have her ashes buried in the theater!
I know! I almost cannot believe it either!
Yes, the Tea and Larceny series at the PFA is a must-see all around.
See ya, pal!
Oh?
American slang, you say?
Well, Mr. MacGuffin, I have to ring off now.
All right. Good-bye.
As they say on the interwebs: “meh.” UP (2009) in 3D whelmed me. I only went so I could get a taste of this new digital 3D business—quite a clever tribute that Pixar started off the film in the age of the dirigible and the newsreel, watched by a transfixed little spectator who wears his own special (not 3D) goggles in tribute to his favorite explorer.
The 21st-century goggles of RealD, with their circular polarizing lenses, aren’t meant for people like me who already need specs. Though they have a nice Poindexter quality, wearing them over frames puts too much pressure on the bridge of my nose, lower down. Uncomfortable. They shoulda told us to bring our contact lenses.
The RealD people say “While ‘your grandfather’s 3D’ was known for mediocre visuals viewed through flimsy colored paper glasses, RealD’s digital technology not only looks a quantum leap better than old fashioned 3D, it creates an exceptional visual with no flicker, no need to hold your head upright and no silly paper glasses, replacing them with lightweight, recyclable plastic shades.” And if the above screen capture reminds us of anything, it’s that an audience will mutely bear any indignity to drink in the magnificent images on a big screen, even “flimsy colored paper glasses,” or dressing as a geek (though I guess that’s chic now) in recyclable plastic shades, or sitting through interminable previews (now) and newsreels (then), or a $3 3D surcharge and the mall-bound, ghost-towned, Century Theater in San Francisco.
Joseph Losey’s opening sequence makes the audience feel complicit in Van Heflin’s crimes in THE PROWLER (1950).
Death by nitrate fire is too good a one for Hitler, methinks. Here, the projectionist eyes the funeral pyre behind the screen—one lit cigarette and whoosh!
How could I not love that Quentin got almost everything right about the film screening scenes in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (2009): from an omniscient narrator stepping in to explain the special qualities of a nitrate fire, to depicting the bell, the mark, the douser lever of a perfect reel changeover. So what didn’t he get right? The insurgent’s reel (#4) went straight from the shipping case (above) onto the projector. Not to get into technicalities, but that probably wouldn’t have happened. Oh, yeah, and each reel does NOT get its own shipping case, as is suggested above. Yes, I may be as geeky as Q.T.
But first, some driver’s ed simulator films to put you into a trance…
And then…Gene Kelly in the making-of featurette for VIVA KNIEVEL (1977)?
Oh, sad day, Gene, that you were reduced to greasemonkey status in a film starring a stuntman.
And Dorothy Malone is wondering how the hell she got roped into THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS (1954). Her character was trapped in an abandoned shack and got the bright idea to light it on fire to attract attention WHILE SHE WAS LOCKED INSIDE IT!
Director George A. Romero as a priest in MARTIN (1977)…
…and John Sayles as one of the Men in Black in THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET (1984). Okay, this is Joe Morton below, of course, not John Sayles; I didn’t get a picture of the latter. But: <squeeeeeee>, that high-pitched noise he and David Straithairn made—ooh, I just about peed my pants with laughter.
How much of a coincidence is it that both directors of tonight’s films had amazingly well-acted cameos in their own films? Romero played a practical, sweet-liqueur-loving priest not about to put up with a lot of mystical guff. And Sayles? I didn’t even recognize him as the taller twin of the alien “slave”-hunters.
And, just ‘cos I’m a sentimental twit, a lovely dawn picture of the other twins:
Filmmaker Britta Sjogren was present at this screening of JO-JO AT THE GATE OF LIONS (1992), the culmination of the “Into the Vortex: Female Voice in Film” series at PFA. She gave an interesting talk about the different ways voice operates in this and the other films in the series; how voice is “slippery” and difficult to pin down, both in its origin and purpose; and how voice-over, diegetic, and mediated voices blur point of view, position, boundary, and subjectivity. A disembodied, omniscient voice, from a woman without a larynx, is associated with the crone’s hands on Jo-Jo’s face, above.
The female protagonist in this film—and most of the others in the series—waits: for the “right” man, the “right” time, an answer, her close-up.
