Email here for additions & corrections.

Ishtar
(May, 1987)
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (OOP)
(Ross, 1976)
The Devils
(Russell, 1974)
The Pirates of Penzance
(Papp/Leach, 1983)
The Fortune
(Nichols, 1975)
-30-
(Webb, 1959)
Betrayal
(Jones, 1983)
Play It As It Lays
(Perry, 1972)
The Outfit
(Flynn, 1973)
Alex in Wonderland
(Mazursky, 1969)
The Legend of Lylah Clare
(Aldrich, 1968)
In The Cool of the Day
(Stevens, 1963)
That Cold Day in the Park
(Altman, 1969)
Thumb Trippin'
(Masters, 1972)
Midas Run
(Kjellin, 1969)
At Long Last Love
(Bogdanovich, 1973)
Brewster McCloud
(Altman, 1972)
Outcast of the Islands
(Reed, 1951)

Reader Submissions
1930's-1950's
The Moon's Our Home
(Seiter, 1936)
Sh! The Octopus
(McGann, 1937)
The Mating Season
(Leisen, 1951)
Bad for Each Other
(Rapper, 1953)
The Phenix City Story
(Karlson, 1955)
Run of the Arrow
(Fuller, 1956)
House of Secrets
(Green, 1956)
Saint Joan
(Preminger, 1957)
Macabre
(Castle, 1958)
The Fiend Who Walked the West
(G. Douglas, 1958
Five Gates to Hell
(Clavell, 1959)
1960's
Key Witness
(Karlson, 1960)
Summer and Smoke
(Glenville, 1961)
The Chapman Report
(Cukor,1962)
Bachelor Flat
(Tashlin, 1962) [on Hulu]
The L Shaped Room
(Forbes, 1963)
The Chalk Garden
(Neame, 1964)
A Thousand Clowns
(Coe, 1965)
You're a Big Boy Now
(Coppola, 1966)
The Whisperers
(Forbes, 1967)
Dark of the Sun
(Cardiff, 1968)
Skidoo
(Preminger, 1968)
Last Summer
(Perry, 1969)
The Comic
(C. Reiner, 1969)
1970-1974
The Revolutionary
(Williams, 1970)
The Landlord
(Ashby, 1970)
Diary of a Mad Housewife
(Perry, 1970)
Tropic of Cancer
(Strick, 1970)
I Never Sang for My Father
(Cates, 1970)
Sometimes a Great Notion
(Newman, 1971)
Marriage of a Young Stockbroker
(Turman, 1971)
The Music Lovers
(Russell, 1971)
Drive, He Said
(Nicholson, 1971)
The Steagle
(Sylbert, 1971)
The Last Movie
(Hopper, 1971)
Made For Each Other
(Bean, 1971)
The Day the Clown Cried
(Lewis, 1972)
Hickey & Boggs (OOP)
(Culp, 1972)
The Carey Treatment
(Edwards, 1972)
Pete 'n' Tillie
(Ritt, 1972)
Slither
(Zieff, 1973)
Man on a Swing
(Perry, 1974)
Open Season
(Collinson, 1974)
The Tamarind Seed
(Edwards, 1974)
Law and Disorder
(Passer, 1974)
Homebodies
(Yust, 1974)
Stardust
(Apted, 1974)
Celine and Julie Go Boating
(Rivette, 1974)
1975-1979
Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins
(Richards, 1975
At Long Last Love
(Bogdanovich, 1975)
Hearts of the West
(Zieff, 1975)
Welcome to L.A.
(Rudolph, 1976)
W.C. Fields and Me
(Hiller, 1976)
Citizens Band
(Demme, 1977)
Twilight's Last Gleaming
(Aldrich, 1977)
Looking for Mr. Goodbar
(Brooks, 1977)
Girlfriends
(Weill, 1978)
Movie Movie
(Donen, 1978)
The Medusa Touch
(Gold, 1978)
American Hot Wax
(Mutrux, 1978)
Hot Stuff
(DeLuise, 1979)
Scavenger Hunt
(Schultz , 1979)
Players
(Harvey, 1979)
Rich Kids
(Young, 1979)
Nightwing
(Hiller, 1979)
Screams of a Winter's Night
(Wilson, 1979
When You Comin' Back Red Ryder?
(Katselas, 1979
1980's
Resurrection
(Petrie, 1980)
The Awakening
(Newell, 1980)
Simon
(Brickman, 1980)
God's Angry Man
(Herzog, 1980)
Fast-Walking
(Harris, 1982)
Twice Upon a Time
(Korty & Swenson, 1983)
Trouble in Mind
(Rudolph, 1985)
When the Wind Blows
(Murikami, 1986)
Housekeeping
(Forsyth, 1987)
The Glass Menagerie
(Newman, 1987)
Patty Hearst
(Schrader, 1988)
Drowning by Numbers
(Greenaway, 1988)
Haunted Summer
(Passer, 1988)
The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years
(Spheeris, 1988)
1990's
Old Times
(Curtis, 1991)
Prospero's Books
(Greenaway, 1991)
City of Hope
(Sayles, 1991)
The Baby of Macon
(Greenaway, 1993)
King of the Hill
(Soderbergh, 1993)
Dadetown
(Hexter, 1995)
SubUrbia
(Linklater, 1997)

Upcoming

January 8

Bitch Slap

Waiting for Armageddon

Wonderful World

Youth in Revolt

January 15

January 22

Drool

Extraordinary Measures

The Girl on the Train

In and Out

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I arrived in Memphis yesterday at 1:30 pm. It took me two, two and half hours to find and inspect four tourist spots -- Graceland, the Lorraine Motel (i.e., the site of Martin Luther King's murder on April 4, 1968), Beale Street and Sun Records. I left Memphis at 4 pm, driving south on 55. I arrived in Oxford around 5:30 pm and checked into the Oxford Downtown Inn, courtesy of the Oxford Film Festival. And then the wireless issues began.

Forced to file from the lobby of the Oxford Downtown Inn. Taken at 5:40 am this morning.

It's now just before 6 am and the issues haven't stopped, and I've decided to cut bait as a result. That's right -- I'm outta here, flying back to NYC. Or maybe I'll drive south a bit and cruise around, find an adventure, something. Any place with decent wifi I call home.

The hotel doesn't offer wireless in the rooms, providing instead a late-20th-Century ethernet cable connection for internet access. Except the cable is only eight inches long -- the only time in my life that I've ever seen or heard of a connection cable this short -- and the connection it delivers is erratic and/or not strong enough, the result being that transferring jpegs to my server via FTP software stopped working almost immediately. I resorted to my AT&T Air Card, which worked for a while last night but stopped working this morning for some reason. It's now 5:40 am and my only working connection right now (albeit a "very low" one) is the wireless that the hotel offers in the lobby only.

I can't do this. I won't do this. This is not 1997, and if a regional film festival is unable to provide easy, high-speed wifi to its journalist guests then no offense but it just shouldn't invite them down in the first place. I mean, c'mon.

Bless Oxford, Mississippi in all other respects. It's a soothing, pleasingly upscale, lively, obviously highly cultured college town with a real-deal 19th Century atmosphere. And the Oxford Film Festival has been, for me, a charmer in every respect except for the ridiculous internet situation. If I can't post easily and swiftly, there's really no point in being here.

So I'm packing my bags and heading back to Memphis this morning. I really don't have time for this foolishness. I'm not there to sip moonshine and read Faulkner -- I'm here to work, and it's just too much work, too frustrating and too inconvenient to accomplish this goal.

Memphis and Ole Miss<< previous | next >>History Day

Posted by Jeffrey Wells on February 5, 2009 at 8:00 PM

comment #1

SpinDozer says ...

The fuck you doin in Graceland? Go to Sun Studios.

Posted by SpinDozer at February 5, 2009 8:44 PM

comment #2

corey3rd says ...

The White Haven area around Graceland used to be one of the better neighborhoods in the area. It had the first modern grocery store. After Elvis died, the neighborhood was desegregated and became a major victim of white plights people dumping their houses and moving to Mississippi. The stores that catered to the middle class dried up. It became a major zone for body shops and other rough and tumble trades.

The folks who control Graceland have been buying up the area in hopes of making it pretty.

Posted by corey3rd at February 5, 2009 9:23 PM

comment #3

Rich S. says ...

And so it begins...

I forget. Was Josh Brolin crackin' skulls at the Dew Drop Inn because he was pissed about the lack of WiFi?

Posted by Rich S. at February 6, 2009 4:26 AM

comment #4

YRG says ...

I suggest a mobile broadband PC card. Most providers offer them for free with a plan, usually running around $60 a month. Wifi is so 2004.

Posted by YRG at February 6, 2009 6:35 AM

comment #5

Jeffrey Wells says ...

I have a mobile AT&T Air Card. I pay $60 a month in order to ostensibly hook up anywhere. Except when it doesn't work. It' s a little air device that pops into the USB port.

Posted by Jeffrey Wells at February 6, 2009 6:42 AM

comment #6

TheCahuengaKid says ...

Hey Rich S - I heard Brolin called the Dew Drop Inn rednecks a "bunch of dial-up monkeys!"

Posted by TheCahuengaKid at February 6, 2009 6:51 AM

comment #7

maxfm says ...

WTF? What a stand-up guy, Wells. The nice folks in Oxford think enough of your work to kindly invite you to participate in their fest, and your computer set-up isn't as fast as it should be, Graceland is in a poor part of town (horrors!), and a "middle-aged goon" doesn't have a table set up for your camera. So, harrumph, "I'm going back to NYC." Waaaah.

I love reading your work and thoughts on film, Wells. I have for years. But lately, it's as if you're going through male menopause, and you think you're God's gift to the world. Anyone with a differing opinion can stuff it, huh?

The cowboy hat incident; the Jack in the Box incident (not to mention the fact that you noted you were wearing "tight jeans" -- again, wtf?); "Philly;" your penchant for calling out Hispanics who bug you and skating figure eights around anyone who disagrees with you; low thread count; maybe hoping for Josh Brolin showdown; and now this.

(And you're in Memphis -- one of the world's best places for BBQ -- and you ate at a Checkers?!?)

It's comical and somewhat sad how odd, out of touch and condescending you've become.

Posted by maxfm at February 6, 2009 8:12 AM

comment #8

Big Black says ...

maxfm, Jeff's site is basically a one-man show. He needs a reliable internet connection; one that allows him to upload images etc, and basically make any updates he wants, when he wants. I could go on to discuss the reasons why I don't visit sites which have no new content, but that's not really necessary.. is it?

Posted by Big Black at February 6, 2009 9:57 AM

comment #9

robbiefantastic says ...

where's the hat in that photo? i thought you were bringing it along.....

Posted by robbiefantastic at February 6, 2009 10:18 AM

comment #10

maxfm says ...

Big Black: I'm well aware his site is a one-man show. More power to him. His site is his bread and butter -- not a silly hobby (like mine).

The purpose of my post goes beyond the fact he doesn't have a fast internet connection.

Cheers.

Posted by maxfm at February 6, 2009 10:25 AM

comment #11

rr3333 says ...

Jeff:

Maybe you should look into switching service providers for your Air Card.

Verizon is much more reliable in NY than At&T is.

Posted by rr3333 at February 6, 2009 12:15 PM

comment #12

Jeffrey Wells says ...

Wells to maxfm: I've got a travelling road show going here and there can't be any messing around as far as the wifi is concerned. If it doesn't work, there's going to be trouble -- no ifs, ands or buts. And there's NO REASON AT ALL why good wifi can't exist in most urban and suburban areas of the country these days.

I hate barbeque because of the heavy sauces and syrup, and because I hate dealing with those tangy beef shreds stuck between my teeth. No thanks. I've eaten barbeque maybe five or six times in my life. Hated it then, hate it now.

Posted by Jeffrey Wells at February 7, 2009 7:33 AM

comment #13

maxfm says ...

I appreciate the fact you need decent internet service, and I'm sorry you don't dig some BBQ. That's cool.

But as I noted in my post to Big Black: that wasn't my point.

As many of the comments to your "Uncool" post will attest, regular HE readers (inc. me) usually enjoy your thoughts on film, but man, lately you're just coming across as a big prima donna.

Faye Dunaway in tight jeans and a cowboy hat.

Posted by maxfm at February 7, 2009 12:56 PM

comment #14

jones190 says ...

Oh My God, you had to file from a comfy-looking sofa in a hotel lobby with a coffee at your side. I'd hate to see the implosion that would happen if you ever ventured abroad (ie. out of the USA).

Frustrating, sure. But did it warrant a diva-esque blog post and photo? Stick to films please!

Posted by jones190 at February 8, 2009 11:05 AM

comment #15

RustysaGoodDog says ...

"Bless Oxford, Mississippi in all other respects. It's a soothing, pleasingly upscale, lively, obviously highly cultured college town with a real-deal 19th Century atmosphere."

Imagine the disappointment in Oxford now that JW has left their building.

Posted by RustysaGoodDog at February 8, 2009 11:26 AM

comment #16

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Posted by jinnlost5 at January 27, 2010 7:15 AM

comment #17