Sunday, January 7, 2018
372 - The In-Laws, United States, 1979. Dir. Arthur Hiller.
Manhattan dentist Sheldon Kornpett's daughter is marrying Vince Ricardo's son.
How wonderful.
Two nice families are coming together to become one big, loving, peaceful family.
Either that or Ricardo is going to get Kornpett killed.
Or imprisoned.
Or lost in the Central American island of Tijada.
Ricardo, played by the one-and-only Peter Falk, seems to have some kind of a problem. He says he works for the CIA, but he entangles his soon-to-be in-law in crazy chases through the streets, breaking into Ricardo's own safe, jumping out a window, running down a fire escape, getting shot at, flying in a private plane, getting shot at again, speeding away in a car with the tire blown out, being thrown to the ground in the hotel lobby, racing through the street of Tijada, crashing into a market of fruit vendors.
The wedding is this Sunday.
Are you looking forward to it?
All of this excitement is over some engravings from the U.S. Treasury Department which were stolen from their truck and given to Ricardo. In an underground sting. To catch the cartel. So he says.
Alan Arkin plays Kornpett. And he and Falk seem to be having a great time engaging in their madcap shenanigans.
If they can just make it to the church in time.
Sunday, January 7, 2018
371 - The Thin Red Line, United States, 1998. Dir. Terrence Malick.
Saturday, January 6, 2018
371 - The Thin Red Line, United States, 1998. Dir. Terrence Malick.
Don't worry about water.
Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Tall is talking to Captain John Gaff. They are in Guadalcanal. In the Solomon Islands. World War 2. Pacific Theater. C Company.
We see the war through the eyes of several soldiers.
Private Witt. Who went AWOL among the Melanesians.
First Sergeant Edward Welsh. Who captures Witt and brings him back.
Sergeant Keck. Who accidentally pulls the pin of his grenade rather than the grenade itself. And dies.
Captain James Bugger Staros. Greek. Who refuses to follow Lt. Col. Tall's order to attack a bunker frontally.
Private Bell, who remembers his wife with tender memories. And then receives a letter from her. Dear John.
Second Lieutenant Whyte. Who is killed outright in battle.
Private Train. Who thinks philosophically.
Captain John Gaff. Who leads his men on a flanking run to spy on and take a bunker.
They do. Captain Gaff will be recommended for medals. Which he does not believe he earned.
Meanwhile, Lt. Col. Toll has told Gaff it is time to move on. Whether the men get water or not.
Toll has waited his whole life for war.
Now he is getting it.
371 - The Thin Red Line, United States, 1998. Dir. Terrence Malick.
Don't worry about water.
Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Tall is talking to Captain John Gaff. They are in Guadalcanal. In the Solomon Islands. World War 2. Pacific Theater. C Company.
We see the war through the eyes of several soldiers.
Private Witt. Who went AWOL among the Melanesians.
First Sergeant Edward Welsh. Who captures Witt and brings him back.
Sergeant Keck. Who accidentally pulls the pin of his grenade rather than the grenade itself. And dies.
Captain James Bugger Staros. Greek. Who refuses to follow Lt. Col. Tall's order to attack a bunker frontally.
Private Bell, who remembers his wife with tender memories. And then receives a letter from her. Dear John.
Second Lieutenant Whyte. Who is killed outright in battle.
Private Train. Who thinks philosophically.
Captain John Gaff. Who leads his men on a flanking run to spy on and take a bunker.
They do. Captain Gaff will be recommended for medals. Which he does not believe he earned.
Meanwhile, Lt. Col. Toll has told Gaff it is time to move on. Whether the men get water or not.
Toll has waited his whole life for war.
Now he is getting it.
Friday, January 5, 2018
370 - Badlands, United States, 1973. Dir. Terrence Malick.
Saturday, January 5, 2018
370 - Badlands, United States, 1973. Dir. Terrence Malick.
Love is on the run.
Out on the prairie. In the Badlands. Across Montana. Being chased by the police, the sheriff, and the National Guard.
Holly Sargis is one-half of love.
She comes from Texas, but started running in Fort Dupree, South Dakota. When she started seeing a boy without telling her father. A single parent. A sign painter.
Kit Carruthers is the other half.
He is from nowhere.
Now they are headed for Saskatchewan. If they can just get across that border. If they get separated they will meet at the Grand Coulee Dam, twelve noon (High Noon), New Year's Day, 1964.
Kit wants to be somebody. To be important. To be remembered. To leave some kind of mark on the world. He takes rocks and leaves rock piles like an Old Testament patriarch. This rock symbolizes where we first made love. (Let me get a smaller one.) This rock pile is the place where I was captured.
He shares his name with an American legend. The other Kit was a frontiersman. A fur trapper. A mountain man. This Kit is a garbage collector. Fired. With no vocational training. And no job skills. Maybe he can work cattle over at the pens. Use a captive bolt pistol to knock them in the head.
But he can talk.
"I got some stuff to say. I guess I'm lucky that way."
And he can shoot. A Hi-Standard Sentinel Revolver. A Savage 99R Rifle. .300 caliber.
Charles Starkweather also shared a name. With Jim Stark. James Dean's character in Rebel Without a Cause (1955).
And in 1958 he shocked the nation when he at 19 went on a shooting spree with his 14-year-old girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate
What also startled the nation was how charming he could be.
Kit Carruthers tries to be charming too. And he charms his way into Holly's heart. We know because she tells us. It is she who tells the story.
This 15-year-old girl.
"He was handsomer than anybody I'd ever met. He looked just like James Dean."
"Little by little we fell in love."
"As I'd never been popular in school and didn't have a lot of personality, I was surprised that he took such a liking to me."
"But I sensed that my destiny now lay with Kit, for better or for worse. And that it was better to spend a week with one who loved me for what I was than years of loneliness."
"I gotta stick by Kit. He feels trapped."
"He dreaded the idea of being shot down alone, he said, without a girl to scream out his name."
That says it all.
Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo) had a girl scream out his name in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (1960). Will Kit be so lucky?
Terrence Malick tells stories in sweeping visual landscapes. Locations mean everything to this film. From the garbage on the streets of Fort Dupree to the Sargis home to the billboard on the side of the road to Cato's isolate farm to the treehouse in the woods to that amazing rich man's mansion, the open prairie, the culvert below the train tracks, the helicopter, the gas station, the long stretches of highway, the setting sun. From South Dakota to North Dakota to Montana on to Canada.
All filmed in Colorado. La Junta. Las Animas. Trinidad. Rocky Ford. Pueblo. The Bloom mansion. The Rosemont museum. Breathtaking.
Jack Fisk's art direction matters here. Rosanna Norton's wardrobe costume design matters. The cinematography matters. Three cinematographers are listed. Tak Fujimoto. Steven Larner. Brian Probyn. Who did what? The results are spectacular.
Badlands transcends its own story. It works on a visual level. A visceral level. It is poetic.
And it speaks to the heart of what it means to be human. Even if the individual choices and actions do not make sense to you.
The longing to be important.
The longing to be remembered.
The longing to be loved.
And not to be alone.
* * * * *
Sissy Spacek auditioned for all the plays in high school. She did not get picked for any of them. Not even for a small role.
She says, "I was a theater failure."
Then she went to the Lee Strasburg Institute. She did not advance into Scene Study class.
Then she was told, "If you don't lose that accent, you will never make it." They were referring to her Texas roots.
Would you say that she has done OK?
Meanwhile, Martin Sheen had been acting professionally for a dozen years. Mostly in co-star and guest-star roles on television, but also in a few movies. When he first read this script he thought he was too old. Starkweather had been 19 and Sheen was 31. But Terrence Malick said, No. I'm making the character older. I want you. Sheen was driving into work down the Pacific Coast Highway, on his way to film an episode of Mannix when he realized that he had just been offered the role of his life. He pulled the car off the road, parked it, and wept.
"Someone had finally seen something in me that I knew was there but I couldn't get anyone else to see."
370 - Badlands, United States, 1973. Dir. Terrence Malick.
Love is on the run.
Out on the prairie. In the Badlands. Across Montana. Being chased by the police, the sheriff, and the National Guard.
Holly Sargis is one-half of love.
She comes from Texas, but started running in Fort Dupree, South Dakota. When she started seeing a boy without telling her father. A single parent. A sign painter.
Kit Carruthers is the other half.
He is from nowhere.
Now they are headed for Saskatchewan. If they can just get across that border. If they get separated they will meet at the Grand Coulee Dam, twelve noon (High Noon), New Year's Day, 1964.
Kit wants to be somebody. To be important. To be remembered. To leave some kind of mark on the world. He takes rocks and leaves rock piles like an Old Testament patriarch. This rock symbolizes where we first made love. (Let me get a smaller one.) This rock pile is the place where I was captured.
He shares his name with an American legend. The other Kit was a frontiersman. A fur trapper. A mountain man. This Kit is a garbage collector. Fired. With no vocational training. And no job skills. Maybe he can work cattle over at the pens. Use a captive bolt pistol to knock them in the head.
But he can talk.
"I got some stuff to say. I guess I'm lucky that way."
And he can shoot. A Hi-Standard Sentinel Revolver. A Savage 99R Rifle. .300 caliber.
Charles Starkweather also shared a name. With Jim Stark. James Dean's character in Rebel Without a Cause (1955).
And in 1958 he shocked the nation when he at 19 went on a shooting spree with his 14-year-old girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate
What also startled the nation was how charming he could be.
Kit Carruthers tries to be charming too. And he charms his way into Holly's heart. We know because she tells us. It is she who tells the story.
This 15-year-old girl.
"He was handsomer than anybody I'd ever met. He looked just like James Dean."
"Little by little we fell in love."
"As I'd never been popular in school and didn't have a lot of personality, I was surprised that he took such a liking to me."
"But I sensed that my destiny now lay with Kit, for better or for worse. And that it was better to spend a week with one who loved me for what I was than years of loneliness."
"I gotta stick by Kit. He feels trapped."
"He dreaded the idea of being shot down alone, he said, without a girl to scream out his name."
That says it all.
Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo) had a girl scream out his name in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (1960). Will Kit be so lucky?
Terrence Malick tells stories in sweeping visual landscapes. Locations mean everything to this film. From the garbage on the streets of Fort Dupree to the Sargis home to the billboard on the side of the road to Cato's isolate farm to the treehouse in the woods to that amazing rich man's mansion, the open prairie, the culvert below the train tracks, the helicopter, the gas station, the long stretches of highway, the setting sun. From South Dakota to North Dakota to Montana on to Canada.
All filmed in Colorado. La Junta. Las Animas. Trinidad. Rocky Ford. Pueblo. The Bloom mansion. The Rosemont museum. Breathtaking.
Jack Fisk's art direction matters here. Rosanna Norton's wardrobe costume design matters. The cinematography matters. Three cinematographers are listed. Tak Fujimoto. Steven Larner. Brian Probyn. Who did what? The results are spectacular.
Badlands transcends its own story. It works on a visual level. A visceral level. It is poetic.
And it speaks to the heart of what it means to be human. Even if the individual choices and actions do not make sense to you.
The longing to be important.
The longing to be remembered.
The longing to be loved.
And not to be alone.
* * * * *
Sissy Spacek auditioned for all the plays in high school. She did not get picked for any of them. Not even for a small role.
She says, "I was a theater failure."
Then she went to the Lee Strasburg Institute. She did not advance into Scene Study class.
Then she was told, "If you don't lose that accent, you will never make it." They were referring to her Texas roots.
Would you say that she has done OK?
Meanwhile, Martin Sheen had been acting professionally for a dozen years. Mostly in co-star and guest-star roles on television, but also in a few movies. When he first read this script he thought he was too old. Starkweather had been 19 and Sheen was 31. But Terrence Malick said, No. I'm making the character older. I want you. Sheen was driving into work down the Pacific Coast Highway, on his way to film an episode of Mannix when he realized that he had just been offered the role of his life. He pulled the car off the road, parked it, and wept.
"Someone had finally seen something in me that I knew was there but I couldn't get anyone else to see."
Thursday, January 4, 2018
369 - The Friends of Eddie Coyle, United States, 1973. Dir. Peter Yates.
Thursday, January 4, 2018
369 - The Friends of Eddie Coyle, United States, 1973. Dir. Peter Yates.
Eddie Coyle is tired. He is going to be turning 51 soon, and in his book that is an old man. He lives in a Boston suburb and has a wife and two children.
He also has a friend named Dillon, who runs a lunch counter-style diner in the city and who helps him gets jobs under the table.
And with friends like Dillon . . .
Eddie does odd jobs with criminals when they need him,
He drives a truck, so he has driven for his friends. He helps to run guns. He keeps his mouth shut.
During the last job he got caught. He had his fingers smashed in a drawer. And he was put on trial. He is scheduled to go to New Hampshire soon for sentencing, and he expects to get two years--maybe out in eight months--but no matter how much time, it is not something he is prepared to do.
Eddie has seen some of his friends make the big steal, get off, and move to Florida to enjoy perpetual sun. He wants to get his turn.
He has a job coming up getting guns for some bank robbers, and maybe he can use it to get himself a break. He talks to this Fed guy he knows to see if he can put in a good word for him.
If I can get you the info you need, can you get me off?
We'll see.
Eddie keeps his part of the deal. Whatever he can do. He just does not want to see his wife and children go on Welfare. He cares about them.
Eddie Coyle is played by Robert Mitchum.
Robert Mitchum is the kind of actor you could watch sitting in a chair. If he happens to play tired and "old," that is all the better. Here he plays plenty old and he is quite tired.
The film moves back and forth between the logistics of bank robberies and their preparations, and the fatigue of Eddie Croyle.
We care about Eddie. We want him to make it. To take care of his wife and children. To have his turn for a good life.
But then, we would be a different kind of friend to him than the friends he has.
* * * * *
Robert Mitchum is one of the few who can stand next to Humphrey Bogart.
When we watched Robert Montgomery's 1947 film Ride the Pink Horse, we discussed how men in the 1940s suddenly tried to act like Bogie. Montgomery tried it. Dick Powell tried it. Bugs Bunny tried it. The trend continued. In 1960 Jean-Paul Belmondo tried it. And, as we have just been watching Robert Altman films, if Criterion had The Long Goodbye (1973) out yet, then we would have just seen Elliott Gould trying it. Or at least parodying it.
Ride the Pink Horse
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/11/329-ride-pink-horse-united-states-1947.html
Breathless
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/04/110-breathless-1960-france-dir-jean-luc.html
Night of the Hunter
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/01/027-night-of-hunter-1955-united-states.html
369 - The Friends of Eddie Coyle, United States, 1973. Dir. Peter Yates.
Eddie Coyle is tired. He is going to be turning 51 soon, and in his book that is an old man. He lives in a Boston suburb and has a wife and two children.
He also has a friend named Dillon, who runs a lunch counter-style diner in the city and who helps him gets jobs under the table.
And with friends like Dillon . . .
Eddie does odd jobs with criminals when they need him,
He drives a truck, so he has driven for his friends. He helps to run guns. He keeps his mouth shut.
During the last job he got caught. He had his fingers smashed in a drawer. And he was put on trial. He is scheduled to go to New Hampshire soon for sentencing, and he expects to get two years--maybe out in eight months--but no matter how much time, it is not something he is prepared to do.
Eddie has seen some of his friends make the big steal, get off, and move to Florida to enjoy perpetual sun. He wants to get his turn.
He has a job coming up getting guns for some bank robbers, and maybe he can use it to get himself a break. He talks to this Fed guy he knows to see if he can put in a good word for him.
If I can get you the info you need, can you get me off?
We'll see.
Eddie keeps his part of the deal. Whatever he can do. He just does not want to see his wife and children go on Welfare. He cares about them.
Eddie Coyle is played by Robert Mitchum.
Robert Mitchum is the kind of actor you could watch sitting in a chair. If he happens to play tired and "old," that is all the better. Here he plays plenty old and he is quite tired.
The film moves back and forth between the logistics of bank robberies and their preparations, and the fatigue of Eddie Croyle.
We care about Eddie. We want him to make it. To take care of his wife and children. To have his turn for a good life.
But then, we would be a different kind of friend to him than the friends he has.
* * * * *
Robert Mitchum is one of the few who can stand next to Humphrey Bogart.
When we watched Robert Montgomery's 1947 film Ride the Pink Horse, we discussed how men in the 1940s suddenly tried to act like Bogie. Montgomery tried it. Dick Powell tried it. Bugs Bunny tried it. The trend continued. In 1960 Jean-Paul Belmondo tried it. And, as we have just been watching Robert Altman films, if Criterion had The Long Goodbye (1973) out yet, then we would have just seen Elliott Gould trying it. Or at least parodying it.
Ride the Pink Horse
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/11/329-ride-pink-horse-united-states-1947.html
Breathless
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/04/110-breathless-1960-france-dir-jean-luc.html
Night of the Hunter
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/01/027-night-of-hunter-1955-united-states.html
Wednesday, January 3, 2018
368 - Dressed to Kill, United States, 1980. Dir. Brian De Palma.
Wednesday, January 3, 2018
368 - Dressed to Kill, United States, 1980. Dir. Brian De Palma.
In 1998 Gus Van Sant remade Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), with Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates and Anne Heche as Marion Crane.
But Van Sant has nothing on Brian De Palma. De Palma has been remaking Psycho for years.
When we watched his film Blow Out (1981) in February of last year, we talked about the number of his movies that feature shower scenes, and we mentioned that this movie, Dressed to Kill, begins and ends with shower scenes.
To be more precise, Dressed to Kill begins and ends with dreams of shower scenes. And De Palma adds a twist here. The knife murder does not take place in either of the shower scenes but in an elevator in the middle of the movie.
Elevator as shower stall.
And while we are remaking Hitchcock, let us add Vertigo (1958) to the list.
Kate Miller, played by Angie Dickinson, is the blonde with the bob who sits at the art museum, which, we are told is the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but which, we are told, was filmed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia.
She sits with her back to us. In a state of contented repose, gazing at the portrait of a woman. No, there is no spiral on the top of her hair, nor does she resemble the portrait before her. But Kate seems remarkably at peace as she glances sideways into the other galleries, in between looks at the portrait, and observes others in relationship--the man hitting on the woman in one direction, the young couple flirting publicly in another.
Her current frame of mind is in direct contradiction to her feelings this morning, when she was engaged in unsatisfactory love-making with her current husband, which in turn led to the shower fantasy followed by a session of frustrated venting with her therapist.
She talked to her son Peter before leaving the house, informing him that they were going to the museum today, followed by lunch with his step-father and grandmother. And in that moment she displayed her greatest strength in the film. Her maternal love for him. He is a science enthusiast, a science-fair champion, and he has stayed up all night working on his homemade computer. He is dedicated to his work, and she is proud of him. Proud of his mind. Proud of his work ethic.
Keith Gordon as Peter Miller probably resembles the young De Palma more closely than John Travolta, who also played a science enthusiast and science fair winner, does in Blow Out. And his round, thin-rimmed glasses and mop top hairdo predates Harry Potter by twenty years. Perhaps Daniel Radcliffe was Keith Gordon's secret younger brother.
Watching this scene, one cannot help but feel that De Palma reveals a tenderness for his own mother, and that she must have supported and nurtured him in his academic quests.
But now consider this. Peter has stayed up all night working on his project. Because of that he is too tired to go to the museum with his mother. And because of that she goes alone. Consequently, as she sits alone she engages in the brilliantly filmed, edited, and scored cat-and-mouse game with the man, Warren Lockman, who happens to sit down on the bench next to her. Had her son been sitting next to her on the bench, well, you can draw the conclusions. She would not have gotten into the taxi with Mr. Lockman, would not have had the affair at his apartment, and would not have been brutally murdered in the elevator. The dry shower.
It is not clear if Peter harbors any feelings of guilt over this chain of events, but he certainly misses his mother deeply. And in his grief he vows to do something about it. He, like Dennis Franz's Detective Marino, and like Nancy Allen's high-priced call girl Liz Blake, believes that the killer, another blonde, must have come out of Doctor Robert Elliott's office that morning, must have overheard Kate tell Dr. Elliott that she was going to the museum, must have followed her there, and must have then followed her to Lockman's apartment building.
Maybe Peter can do something about it.
Maybe he can also save Liz's life, as she was standing at the elevator as its doors opened, and witnessed the crime, and saw the woman's face. At least what there was to see beneath all that hair and behind those dark glasses.
Liz is now in grave danger. And she knows it. And Peter knows it. And maybe even Detective Marino knows it to the extent that he does not believe Liz herself did it.
Get ready to ride on this thrilling thriller. Where all the tropes are on full display. Where the homage to the past is on full display. Where the dialogue and acting are sacrificed for the visual and aural. And where the self-referential comes close to the edge of self-parody. And yet. Despite all that. The formula works.
And while your mind knows it. And can see through it. Your heart will be racing. A mile a minute.
368 - Dressed to Kill, United States, 1980. Dir. Brian De Palma.
In 1998 Gus Van Sant remade Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), with Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates and Anne Heche as Marion Crane.
But Van Sant has nothing on Brian De Palma. De Palma has been remaking Psycho for years.
When we watched his film Blow Out (1981) in February of last year, we talked about the number of his movies that feature shower scenes, and we mentioned that this movie, Dressed to Kill, begins and ends with shower scenes.
To be more precise, Dressed to Kill begins and ends with dreams of shower scenes. And De Palma adds a twist here. The knife murder does not take place in either of the shower scenes but in an elevator in the middle of the movie.
Elevator as shower stall.
And while we are remaking Hitchcock, let us add Vertigo (1958) to the list.
Kate Miller, played by Angie Dickinson, is the blonde with the bob who sits at the art museum, which, we are told is the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but which, we are told, was filmed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia.
She sits with her back to us. In a state of contented repose, gazing at the portrait of a woman. No, there is no spiral on the top of her hair, nor does she resemble the portrait before her. But Kate seems remarkably at peace as she glances sideways into the other galleries, in between looks at the portrait, and observes others in relationship--the man hitting on the woman in one direction, the young couple flirting publicly in another.
Her current frame of mind is in direct contradiction to her feelings this morning, when she was engaged in unsatisfactory love-making with her current husband, which in turn led to the shower fantasy followed by a session of frustrated venting with her therapist.
She talked to her son Peter before leaving the house, informing him that they were going to the museum today, followed by lunch with his step-father and grandmother. And in that moment she displayed her greatest strength in the film. Her maternal love for him. He is a science enthusiast, a science-fair champion, and he has stayed up all night working on his homemade computer. He is dedicated to his work, and she is proud of him. Proud of his mind. Proud of his work ethic.
Keith Gordon as Peter Miller probably resembles the young De Palma more closely than John Travolta, who also played a science enthusiast and science fair winner, does in Blow Out. And his round, thin-rimmed glasses and mop top hairdo predates Harry Potter by twenty years. Perhaps Daniel Radcliffe was Keith Gordon's secret younger brother.
Watching this scene, one cannot help but feel that De Palma reveals a tenderness for his own mother, and that she must have supported and nurtured him in his academic quests.
But now consider this. Peter has stayed up all night working on his project. Because of that he is too tired to go to the museum with his mother. And because of that she goes alone. Consequently, as she sits alone she engages in the brilliantly filmed, edited, and scored cat-and-mouse game with the man, Warren Lockman, who happens to sit down on the bench next to her. Had her son been sitting next to her on the bench, well, you can draw the conclusions. She would not have gotten into the taxi with Mr. Lockman, would not have had the affair at his apartment, and would not have been brutally murdered in the elevator. The dry shower.
It is not clear if Peter harbors any feelings of guilt over this chain of events, but he certainly misses his mother deeply. And in his grief he vows to do something about it. He, like Dennis Franz's Detective Marino, and like Nancy Allen's high-priced call girl Liz Blake, believes that the killer, another blonde, must have come out of Doctor Robert Elliott's office that morning, must have overheard Kate tell Dr. Elliott that she was going to the museum, must have followed her there, and must have then followed her to Lockman's apartment building.
Maybe Peter can do something about it.
Maybe he can also save Liz's life, as she was standing at the elevator as its doors opened, and witnessed the crime, and saw the woman's face. At least what there was to see beneath all that hair and behind those dark glasses.
Liz is now in grave danger. And she knows it. And Peter knows it. And maybe even Detective Marino knows it to the extent that he does not believe Liz herself did it.
Get ready to ride on this thrilling thriller. Where all the tropes are on full display. Where the homage to the past is on full display. Where the dialogue and acting are sacrificed for the visual and aural. And where the self-referential comes close to the edge of self-parody. And yet. Despite all that. The formula works.
And while your mind knows it. And can see through it. Your heart will be racing. A mile a minute.
Tuesday, January 2, 2018
367 - Sisters, United States, 1972. Dir. Brian De Palma.
Tuesday, January 2, 2018
367 - Sisters, United States, 1972. Dir. Brian De Palma.
Philip Woode enters a locker room. He turns around. A woman enters. She does not see him. She begins to undress. What should he do? What will he do? Will he watch?
He turns his back to her and looks the other way.
It turns out he was punked. Set up on a hidden camera show. Like Candid Camera. Or Punked. Or Girls Behaving Badly. Only this one is called Peeping Tom. People are put into situations without their knowledge where they may be tempted to spy on others. It is recorded. Then it is shown to a studio audience. Contestants guess which action the person will take. Then they watch the ending to see if they guessed correctly. On this episode both contestants, one man and one woman, guess that he will watch the woman undress. He does not. He is gentleman. Both contestants are wrong and win nothing.
Philip, however, does win something. So does the woman.
The host brings them both out to the stage--Philip and the woman who was in on the joke, the aspiring model Danielle Breton, played by Margot Kidder. Danielle wins a knife set. Philip wins tickets for two to The African Room, a night club.
They leave with their gifts. Danielle likes Philip. She tells him. She offers to go with him to the club. They go that night. Straight from the game show. They enjoy each other. Have a good time.
Until some creepy man shows up. It is her husband. Ugh. No, wait! He is not her husband anymore. He is her ex-husband. He is harassing her. She tells him to leave her alone. He refuses to do so. He causes a scene. Security arrives. Philip stands up to him. They removes him. Philip and Danielle return to their date.
But on the way back to her house, they realize her ex is still hovering. Following them. Watching. Philip goes to some trouble to pretend he is leaving. Driving off. Going around the block. Re-entering the Alexander Hamilton apartments through the back entrance. He shakes him. For now.
They spend the night on the pull-out couch. The next morning she goes into the bathroom to take her pills. She is interrupted by another voice from the other room. Her sister? In the bedroom? He goes to get dressed. He knocks two red pills down the sink drain without seeing them. He overhears the women. The other woman does not seem to approve of Danielle's behavior. Danielle returns. She tells him. She is a twin. Today is their birthday.
She sees that she is out of pills. He offers to run to the drugstore to get her some more. While he is out he stops at a bakery to get her a cake. They write on it. "Happy Birthday, Dominique and Danielle."
When he returns, well, let us just say that he returns to a woman that has not had her pills. She lies asleep on the pull-out couch. He puts candles on the cake and lights them. He takes one of the knives from the new cutlery set she won on the game show yesterday. He enters the living room to surprise her with the cake, to have her blow out the candles, and to cut the cake.
He does not notice that her hair has changed. That her face has changed. He awakens her.
And that starts everything.
What happens next is seen by the newspaper editorial columnist looking out her window from across the way. Grace Collier. When she sees it, immediately she places a phone call and runs over to the apartment.
Grace meets the police at the lobby door. They realize who made the phone call. A woman who writes articles that ridicule them. Calling them pigs. She mocks them in print but calls them when she needs help. And they come running.
Whatever happened up there in that apartment is no longer visible. The police talk to Danielle. They see nothing. They question Grace's sanity.
They will not be the last people to question it.
And now the drama begins.
Brian De Palma launches his career with this film. He made seven short films and six features before this one, but here he finds his voice. The stylish, lush production design. The tightly scripted and precisely choreographed action. The melodramatic situations and heightened acting. The thriller genre tropes. The dramatic score. An interest in how people look and what they see.
And split screens.
The action on the left occurs during the action on the right, but they are shown from different cameras in different locations. Juicy.
Imagine an apartment set up like Alfred Hickcock's Rope (1948), where the camera can roam through every room in one long unbroken take.
Now imagine an apartment across the street, as in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954), where someone with a camera or binoculars can look out the window and watch through our window everything that goes on, including a possible.
Then imagine a narrative structure where ordinary things happen before suddenly, without anticipation, there is a murder by multiple stabbings with a knife, as in Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), followed by a clinical cleaning of the room, and resulting in the transition from one protagonist to another, with the revelation that the nice person and the murderer were actually the same person shifting back and forth between two personalities.
Now top it off with a score composed by Hitchcock's composer himself, Bernard Herrmann.
I wonder if Brian De Palma likes Alfred Hitchcock.
Sisters is his first film where he openly displays his affection for Hitchcock, with visual and technical precision. De Palma tells us that he won science fairs and began college as a physics major. We will see that personality played out tomorrow in a character possibly drawn partially from De Palma's youth, Peter Miller in Dressed To Kill (1980).
But De Palma does more than pay homage to Hitch, and the influence of other directors is clearly on display as well, such as Polanski's use of psychological breakdown in the claustrophobia of confined spaces--a la Knife in the Water (1962) (with boat as apartment), Repulsion (1965), and of course Rosemary's Baby (1968) (all of which we have seen).
De Palma also references Michael Powell's post-Pressburger film Peeping Tom (1960), which we watched earlier last year. The game show that begins this film is called Peeping Tom.
De Palma did not have the money to do everything he wanted here. He did construct the apartment so that he could film in it like Rope, and he constructed a special effect where he could repeatedly return to the couch to show increasing evidence of blood, but he could not get the camera to jib low enough or high enough to pull off the feat.
We have seen several instances of doppelgangers this year.
And personalities switching.
In Chinatown, it is "my sister, my daughter."
In Psycho, it is "my mother, myself."
In Sisters, it is "my sister, myself," when it comes to personality.
But then another layer lands.
It becomes "my neighbor, myself," when it comes to body.
Apparently it takes two women each to become two woman, each sharing the other half with a third woman.
Are you confused?
Make sure you remember to take your medicine.
And stay away from that ex-husband.
He is not who he seems.
But then, neither are you.
367 - Sisters, United States, 1972. Dir. Brian De Palma.
Philip Woode enters a locker room. He turns around. A woman enters. She does not see him. She begins to undress. What should he do? What will he do? Will he watch?
He turns his back to her and looks the other way.
It turns out he was punked. Set up on a hidden camera show. Like Candid Camera. Or Punked. Or Girls Behaving Badly. Only this one is called Peeping Tom. People are put into situations without their knowledge where they may be tempted to spy on others. It is recorded. Then it is shown to a studio audience. Contestants guess which action the person will take. Then they watch the ending to see if they guessed correctly. On this episode both contestants, one man and one woman, guess that he will watch the woman undress. He does not. He is gentleman. Both contestants are wrong and win nothing.
Philip, however, does win something. So does the woman.
The host brings them both out to the stage--Philip and the woman who was in on the joke, the aspiring model Danielle Breton, played by Margot Kidder. Danielle wins a knife set. Philip wins tickets for two to The African Room, a night club.
They leave with their gifts. Danielle likes Philip. She tells him. She offers to go with him to the club. They go that night. Straight from the game show. They enjoy each other. Have a good time.
Until some creepy man shows up. It is her husband. Ugh. No, wait! He is not her husband anymore. He is her ex-husband. He is harassing her. She tells him to leave her alone. He refuses to do so. He causes a scene. Security arrives. Philip stands up to him. They removes him. Philip and Danielle return to their date.
But on the way back to her house, they realize her ex is still hovering. Following them. Watching. Philip goes to some trouble to pretend he is leaving. Driving off. Going around the block. Re-entering the Alexander Hamilton apartments through the back entrance. He shakes him. For now.
They spend the night on the pull-out couch. The next morning she goes into the bathroom to take her pills. She is interrupted by another voice from the other room. Her sister? In the bedroom? He goes to get dressed. He knocks two red pills down the sink drain without seeing them. He overhears the women. The other woman does not seem to approve of Danielle's behavior. Danielle returns. She tells him. She is a twin. Today is their birthday.
She sees that she is out of pills. He offers to run to the drugstore to get her some more. While he is out he stops at a bakery to get her a cake. They write on it. "Happy Birthday, Dominique and Danielle."
When he returns, well, let us just say that he returns to a woman that has not had her pills. She lies asleep on the pull-out couch. He puts candles on the cake and lights them. He takes one of the knives from the new cutlery set she won on the game show yesterday. He enters the living room to surprise her with the cake, to have her blow out the candles, and to cut the cake.
He does not notice that her hair has changed. That her face has changed. He awakens her.
And that starts everything.
What happens next is seen by the newspaper editorial columnist looking out her window from across the way. Grace Collier. When she sees it, immediately she places a phone call and runs over to the apartment.
Grace meets the police at the lobby door. They realize who made the phone call. A woman who writes articles that ridicule them. Calling them pigs. She mocks them in print but calls them when she needs help. And they come running.
Whatever happened up there in that apartment is no longer visible. The police talk to Danielle. They see nothing. They question Grace's sanity.
They will not be the last people to question it.
And now the drama begins.
Brian De Palma launches his career with this film. He made seven short films and six features before this one, but here he finds his voice. The stylish, lush production design. The tightly scripted and precisely choreographed action. The melodramatic situations and heightened acting. The thriller genre tropes. The dramatic score. An interest in how people look and what they see.
And split screens.
The action on the left occurs during the action on the right, but they are shown from different cameras in different locations. Juicy.
Imagine an apartment set up like Alfred Hickcock's Rope (1948), where the camera can roam through every room in one long unbroken take.
Now imagine an apartment across the street, as in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954), where someone with a camera or binoculars can look out the window and watch through our window everything that goes on, including a possible.
Then imagine a narrative structure where ordinary things happen before suddenly, without anticipation, there is a murder by multiple stabbings with a knife, as in Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), followed by a clinical cleaning of the room, and resulting in the transition from one protagonist to another, with the revelation that the nice person and the murderer were actually the same person shifting back and forth between two personalities.
Now top it off with a score composed by Hitchcock's composer himself, Bernard Herrmann.
I wonder if Brian De Palma likes Alfred Hitchcock.
Sisters is his first film where he openly displays his affection for Hitchcock, with visual and technical precision. De Palma tells us that he won science fairs and began college as a physics major. We will see that personality played out tomorrow in a character possibly drawn partially from De Palma's youth, Peter Miller in Dressed To Kill (1980).
But De Palma does more than pay homage to Hitch, and the influence of other directors is clearly on display as well, such as Polanski's use of psychological breakdown in the claustrophobia of confined spaces--a la Knife in the Water (1962) (with boat as apartment), Repulsion (1965), and of course Rosemary's Baby (1968) (all of which we have seen).
De Palma also references Michael Powell's post-Pressburger film Peeping Tom (1960), which we watched earlier last year. The game show that begins this film is called Peeping Tom.
De Palma did not have the money to do everything he wanted here. He did construct the apartment so that he could film in it like Rope, and he constructed a special effect where he could repeatedly return to the couch to show increasing evidence of blood, but he could not get the camera to jib low enough or high enough to pull off the feat.
We have seen several instances of doppelgangers this year.
And personalities switching.
In Chinatown, it is "my sister, my daughter."
In Psycho, it is "my mother, myself."
In Sisters, it is "my sister, myself," when it comes to personality.
But then another layer lands.
It becomes "my neighbor, myself," when it comes to body.
Apparently it takes two women each to become two woman, each sharing the other half with a third woman.
Are you confused?
Make sure you remember to take your medicine.
And stay away from that ex-husband.
He is not who he seems.
But then, neither are you.
Monday, January 1, 2018
366 - Short Cuts, United States, 1993. Dir. Robert Altman.
Monday, January 1, 2018
366 - Short Cuts, United States, 1993. Dir. Robert Altman.
It is 1992 and fruit flies are on the loose.
Or medflies. A type of fruit flies.
News helicopters buzz over Los Angeles as if they were the flies. Medflights are on the loose. Heliflies.
So many people live in the City of Angels. Sometimes their lives cross paths. Sometimes they just miss each other.
Human life is messy. Disorganized. Desperate. Lonely.
People have needs. They have desires. Sometimes their needs are not met. Sometimes when they pursue their desires, they hurt others. The person you are angry at for hurting you is angry at someone for hurting him. The person who hurt him is angry at someone for hurting her. Et cetera. Ad infinitum.
Matthew Modine and Julianne Moore play Dr. Ralph and Marian Wyman. Marian is a painter. She paints her sister. Her husband Ralph enters the room while she is painting her. Her sister is nude. He pays no attention. He is a doctor. His wife is a painter. Nothing to see here.
Fred Ward and Anne Archer play Stuart and Claire Kane. Claire works as a clown for hire at children's birthday parties. They meet Ralph and Marian Wyman at a classical music concert where Zoe Trainer plays the cello. Alex Trebek is sitting in the audience.
Tim Robbins and Madeleine Stowe play Gene and Sherri Shepard. Sherri is Marian's sister. Gene is a motorcycle police officer who cheats on Sherri. He is having an affair with Betty Weathers. He pulls over Claire when she is dressed as a clown to ask for her phone number. He gets rid of the family dog. When his children beg for it back, he goes and takes it away from the family who found it and tells his children that he found the dog again.
Cassie, Dustin, and Austin Friel play the children, Sandy, Will, and Austin Shepard.
Gene is not so happy when he learns his wife posed for her sister. That her sister's husband entered the room. And that she could possibly sell the painting to Alex Trebeck.
Peter Gallagher and Frances McDormand play Stormy and Betty Weathers. Stormy is a helicopter pilot and weather reporter. Betty is divorcing him. He comes over to the house pretending to retrieve his mother's clock. But while she is out he takes a chain saw to the furniture and cuts it all to pieces.
Jarrett Lennon plays their son Chad Weathers. He comes home with his mother to find the house destroyed. The television is set to his favorite show and a single toy sits in the middle of the empty floor. Chopped-up debris surrounds the perimeter of the room.
Tom Waits and Lily Tomlin play Earl and Doreen Piggot. Earl is a limousine driver. Doreen is a waitress. Earl is a great husband when he is sober. Earl is often not sober.
Robert Downey Jr. and Lili Taylor play Bill and Honey Piggot Bush. Honey is the daughter of Earl and Doreen Bush. Bill is a make-up artist. They play a game where he makes up Honey as if she is beaten and bruised, and then he takes pictures of her lying on the bed with a knife under her armpit. They laugh at their game.
Lori Singer plays Zoe Trainer. Zoe plays the cello. Zoe wraps her legs around her cello when she plays. When she plays on the stage, things go well. When she plays in the garage, with her car running, well . . .
Annie Ross plays Zoe's mother, Tess Trainer. Tess is a cabaret singer. Tess is an alcoholic. Zoe has already threatened Tess by trying to drown herself in the pool. Tess finds Zoe in the garage.
Bruce Davison and Andie MacDowell play Howard and Ann Finnigan. Howard is a news anchor.
Zane Cassidy plays their son Casey Finnigan.
Doreen Piggot bumps into Casey Finnigan with her car the day before his eighth birthday. He falls to the pavement. She tries to help him, but he refuses, stating that his parents do not allow him to talk to strangers. She could get him immediate help, but instead he walks home alone. She loses contact with him. He loses consciousness until his mother comes home to find him.
Jack Lemmon plays Paul Finnigan, Howard's estranged father. Paul comes to the hospital to check on his grandson Casey. While there, he tries to make up with his son Howard. He explains that Howard's aunt, Paul's wife's sister seduced him by getting him drunk and wearing a bathrobe. Howard's mother found Paul with her sister and left him. Then she kept him away from their son. Paul loves Howard and wanted to be there for him. He appeals to Howard to understand.
Lyle Lovett plays Andy Bitkower, a baker. Howard and Ann Finnigan order a birthday cake from him for Casey's birthday. When he calls to tell them the cake is ready, Howard hangs up on him to keep the line open for news of Casey's status. Andy is offended and calls back. He loses his temper and keeps calling, not realizing the situation the Finnigans are in. He thinks it was a prank call. He is going to lose money.
Chris Penn and Jennifer Jason Leigh play Jerry and Lois Kaiser. Jerry is a pool cleaner. Lois is a phone sex performer. She does her job without caring, changing her children's diapers, reading magazines. Her husband wishes he would talk to her like that. She never thought about it. It means nothing to her.
Joseph C. Hopkins and Josette Maccario play Jerry and Lois' children, Joe and Josette Kaiser.
Buck Henry plays Gordon Johnson.
Huey Lewis plays Vern Miller.
Gordon Johnson and Vern Miller are friends with Stuart Kaiser (Fred Ward). The three men have breakfast at the diner and ogle Doreen Bush. Then they go on a three-day fishing trip.
While on their fishing trip, the three men find the body of a dead woman under water. They ask each other what they should do. They decide that since she is already dead, they will report it to the authorities on their way home. Then they resume their fishing. The men are drinking, so they take pictures.
Honey Bush and Gordon Johnson go to pick up their pictures at the same time. The photo developer clerk accidentally switches them while handing them out. Honey gets Gordon's pictures and Gordon gets Honey's. Gordon sees the pictures of Honey appearing to be beaten, battered, and bruised with a knife in her. Honey sees pictures of a naked dead woman under water.
Oops.
They look at each other.
They approach each other.
They trade the pictures back.
Awkward.
Bill Bush and Jerry Kaiser go on a hike. They run into two women and start following them. They meet up with them. Flirt with them. Split up into pairs.
Deborah Falconer plays Barbara. Susie Cusack plays Nancy. Yes, she is John and Joan Cusack's (and Bill and Ann Cusack's) sister.
Hey, you know what's a hundred yards away? You know the Bat Caves? You ever watch Batman? Remember the show Batman?
Bill takes Barbara to see the Bat Caves. As they approach, thousands of bats come flying out of the cave. As they start to enter, they hear a scream. What? They return running. Jerry has hit Nancy. What! She is lying on the ground with blood on her face. Why? What happened?
Earthquake.
Everybody everywhere feels the shaking. Responds to the shaking. In a city where earthquakes are a part of life, where The Big One is eminently imminent, where images of falling off the continent into the ocean have been prevalent for decades, this is nothing new.
In fact, it is pretty much how their lives go from day to day anyway.
Falling. Unbalanced. Rumbling.
The wise man built his house upon a rock.
The foolish man built his house upon the sand.
The Angeleno built his house upon tectonic plates.
And the continent drifted. And the lithosphere shifted. And the plates subducted. And, well, their lives just got messed up.
This is bigger than the one in '71.
Robert Altman loosely bases his film on nine short stories and one poem by Raymond Carver.
It runs for three hours and nine minutes. Follows the lives of twenty-two principal players. And leaves the audience wanting more. More time with the people. More involvement with their lives. That is the mark of a storyteller. An artist.
And as the earth quakes and people clutch their loved ones, grasping for life, the man who destroyed his ex-wife's home gives comfort from his helicopter on TV. Comfort that transcends the irony on which it is based.
Every Angeleno says to himself or herself
just how lucky he or she is
to be living in L.A.
366 - Short Cuts, United States, 1993. Dir. Robert Altman.
It is 1992 and fruit flies are on the loose.
Or medflies. A type of fruit flies.
News helicopters buzz over Los Angeles as if they were the flies. Medflights are on the loose. Heliflies.
So many people live in the City of Angels. Sometimes their lives cross paths. Sometimes they just miss each other.
Human life is messy. Disorganized. Desperate. Lonely.
People have needs. They have desires. Sometimes their needs are not met. Sometimes when they pursue their desires, they hurt others. The person you are angry at for hurting you is angry at someone for hurting him. The person who hurt him is angry at someone for hurting her. Et cetera. Ad infinitum.
Matthew Modine and Julianne Moore play Dr. Ralph and Marian Wyman. Marian is a painter. She paints her sister. Her husband Ralph enters the room while she is painting her. Her sister is nude. He pays no attention. He is a doctor. His wife is a painter. Nothing to see here.
Fred Ward and Anne Archer play Stuart and Claire Kane. Claire works as a clown for hire at children's birthday parties. They meet Ralph and Marian Wyman at a classical music concert where Zoe Trainer plays the cello. Alex Trebek is sitting in the audience.
Tim Robbins and Madeleine Stowe play Gene and Sherri Shepard. Sherri is Marian's sister. Gene is a motorcycle police officer who cheats on Sherri. He is having an affair with Betty Weathers. He pulls over Claire when she is dressed as a clown to ask for her phone number. He gets rid of the family dog. When his children beg for it back, he goes and takes it away from the family who found it and tells his children that he found the dog again.
Cassie, Dustin, and Austin Friel play the children, Sandy, Will, and Austin Shepard.
Gene is not so happy when he learns his wife posed for her sister. That her sister's husband entered the room. And that she could possibly sell the painting to Alex Trebeck.
Peter Gallagher and Frances McDormand play Stormy and Betty Weathers. Stormy is a helicopter pilot and weather reporter. Betty is divorcing him. He comes over to the house pretending to retrieve his mother's clock. But while she is out he takes a chain saw to the furniture and cuts it all to pieces.
Jarrett Lennon plays their son Chad Weathers. He comes home with his mother to find the house destroyed. The television is set to his favorite show and a single toy sits in the middle of the empty floor. Chopped-up debris surrounds the perimeter of the room.
Tom Waits and Lily Tomlin play Earl and Doreen Piggot. Earl is a limousine driver. Doreen is a waitress. Earl is a great husband when he is sober. Earl is often not sober.
Robert Downey Jr. and Lili Taylor play Bill and Honey Piggot Bush. Honey is the daughter of Earl and Doreen Bush. Bill is a make-up artist. They play a game where he makes up Honey as if she is beaten and bruised, and then he takes pictures of her lying on the bed with a knife under her armpit. They laugh at their game.
Lori Singer plays Zoe Trainer. Zoe plays the cello. Zoe wraps her legs around her cello when she plays. When she plays on the stage, things go well. When she plays in the garage, with her car running, well . . .
Annie Ross plays Zoe's mother, Tess Trainer. Tess is a cabaret singer. Tess is an alcoholic. Zoe has already threatened Tess by trying to drown herself in the pool. Tess finds Zoe in the garage.
Bruce Davison and Andie MacDowell play Howard and Ann Finnigan. Howard is a news anchor.
Zane Cassidy plays their son Casey Finnigan.
Doreen Piggot bumps into Casey Finnigan with her car the day before his eighth birthday. He falls to the pavement. She tries to help him, but he refuses, stating that his parents do not allow him to talk to strangers. She could get him immediate help, but instead he walks home alone. She loses contact with him. He loses consciousness until his mother comes home to find him.
Jack Lemmon plays Paul Finnigan, Howard's estranged father. Paul comes to the hospital to check on his grandson Casey. While there, he tries to make up with his son Howard. He explains that Howard's aunt, Paul's wife's sister seduced him by getting him drunk and wearing a bathrobe. Howard's mother found Paul with her sister and left him. Then she kept him away from their son. Paul loves Howard and wanted to be there for him. He appeals to Howard to understand.
Lyle Lovett plays Andy Bitkower, a baker. Howard and Ann Finnigan order a birthday cake from him for Casey's birthday. When he calls to tell them the cake is ready, Howard hangs up on him to keep the line open for news of Casey's status. Andy is offended and calls back. He loses his temper and keeps calling, not realizing the situation the Finnigans are in. He thinks it was a prank call. He is going to lose money.
Chris Penn and Jennifer Jason Leigh play Jerry and Lois Kaiser. Jerry is a pool cleaner. Lois is a phone sex performer. She does her job without caring, changing her children's diapers, reading magazines. Her husband wishes he would talk to her like that. She never thought about it. It means nothing to her.
Joseph C. Hopkins and Josette Maccario play Jerry and Lois' children, Joe and Josette Kaiser.
Buck Henry plays Gordon Johnson.
Huey Lewis plays Vern Miller.
Gordon Johnson and Vern Miller are friends with Stuart Kaiser (Fred Ward). The three men have breakfast at the diner and ogle Doreen Bush. Then they go on a three-day fishing trip.
While on their fishing trip, the three men find the body of a dead woman under water. They ask each other what they should do. They decide that since she is already dead, they will report it to the authorities on their way home. Then they resume their fishing. The men are drinking, so they take pictures.
Honey Bush and Gordon Johnson go to pick up their pictures at the same time. The photo developer clerk accidentally switches them while handing them out. Honey gets Gordon's pictures and Gordon gets Honey's. Gordon sees the pictures of Honey appearing to be beaten, battered, and bruised with a knife in her. Honey sees pictures of a naked dead woman under water.
Oops.
They look at each other.
They approach each other.
They trade the pictures back.
Awkward.
Bill Bush and Jerry Kaiser go on a hike. They run into two women and start following them. They meet up with them. Flirt with them. Split up into pairs.
Deborah Falconer plays Barbara. Susie Cusack plays Nancy. Yes, she is John and Joan Cusack's (and Bill and Ann Cusack's) sister.
Hey, you know what's a hundred yards away? You know the Bat Caves? You ever watch Batman? Remember the show Batman?
Bill takes Barbara to see the Bat Caves. As they approach, thousands of bats come flying out of the cave. As they start to enter, they hear a scream. What? They return running. Jerry has hit Nancy. What! She is lying on the ground with blood on her face. Why? What happened?
Earthquake.
Everybody everywhere feels the shaking. Responds to the shaking. In a city where earthquakes are a part of life, where The Big One is eminently imminent, where images of falling off the continent into the ocean have been prevalent for decades, this is nothing new.
In fact, it is pretty much how their lives go from day to day anyway.
Falling. Unbalanced. Rumbling.
The wise man built his house upon a rock.
The foolish man built his house upon the sand.
The Angeleno built his house upon tectonic plates.
And the continent drifted. And the lithosphere shifted. And the plates subducted. And, well, their lives just got messed up.
This is bigger than the one in '71.
Robert Altman loosely bases his film on nine short stories and one poem by Raymond Carver.
It runs for three hours and nine minutes. Follows the lives of twenty-two principal players. And leaves the audience wanting more. More time with the people. More involvement with their lives. That is the mark of a storyteller. An artist.
And as the earth quakes and people clutch their loved ones, grasping for life, the man who destroyed his ex-wife's home gives comfort from his helicopter on TV. Comfort that transcends the irony on which it is based.
Every Angeleno says to himself or herself
just how lucky he or she is
to be living in L.A.
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