Do The Right Thing -- Stand Up For Excellence
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I Would Have Preferred A More Challenging...Okay, A More Insulting Tone
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Opposite Peas in Polish Travel Pod
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Chloe Okuno's Watcher (IFC Midnight, 6.3.22) is a quietly unnerving Polanski-like thriller. Filmed on a modest budget in Bucharest in the early spring of '21, it has creepy undercurrents running beneath the standard urban-stalker plot. A meditation about feelings of isolation in an Eastern European city, about a cis relationship in trouble due to a lack of empathy on the man's part.
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I was walking back to the car after visiting a shoerepairplace on Van Sant Street in East Norwalk when all of a sudden this ruddy-faced, shaved-head guy wearing long baggy shorts is right next to me and saying the following in quick succession, like a Gatling gun: (1) “Whassup, Elvis? “, (2) “I like your shoes” and “put it there.”
A voice told me not to shake his hand, and I knew I’d made the right call when he said a second later, “Don’t wanna be friends, huh?”
I’ll shake hands with a stranger over a point of mutual agreement (i.e., “You don’t want a trans person with monster elephant boobs teaching your five-year-old? Put it there, pardner”) but I’ll never shake hands just to shake hands, especially with a skeezy guy.
This really actually happened around 3:15 pm today.
** He didn’t actually say what I said he said. He actually said “whass goin’ on there, Elvis?” I didn’t like how that looked as a headline so I shortened it. Then the lie began to burn through my soul.
Since glimpsing this college film-course chart, I’ve been reading about the influential DzigaVertov. who was very close to VladimirLenin. But before this morning I had never heard of the guy. At least I’m willing to admit it.
Eric Clapton and Van Morrison earned their disrepute for Covid-ignoring, mask-refusing obstinacy. But Roger Waters has outdone them by becoming a Putin admirer, or at least a supporter of Russki slaughter in Ukraine.
To me the Nuart has always been the West Los Angeles version of the CinemaVillage — a certain storied, neon-marquee, down-at-the-heels atmosphere but never a theatre to get excited about attending, much less write home about.
If you ask me it peaked in the ‘70s and ‘80s, which many regard as the summit of L.A.’s arthouse era (Fox Venice, Beverly Canon, LACMA’s Bing, the varied Laemmle westside showplaces).
From a presentational or impressionistic viewpoint, the Nuart has always been a bowling alley-slash-quonset hut with a smallish screen.
My last viewing at the Nuart was the restored Becket (Glenville + O’Toole + Burton). The quality difference between that subdued, somewhat murky-sounding presentation and what this 1964 film undoubtedly looked and sounded like in big-city, first-run bookings, not to mention the first-rate Bluray….forget it, man.
The best aspect of the vaguely grubby Nuart is still the pinkish-red neon marquee, and even that isn’t what anyone would call spectacular. Okay, maybe I’m being too harsh.
…posted by Mad Magazine in a June1969issue. I’ve never written about the flophouse “hit” scene in PeterYates’ Bullitt (‘68). A professional assassin, armed with a pump shotgun, nonsensically fails to do the job. Written by AlJaffee, drawn by MortDrucker .
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The Ankler‘s Tatiana Siegel is reporting that Apple is seriously thinking about “crashing the Oscars” with Ridley Scott‘s Napoleon, if and when it opens in December. World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy has repeated the story sans paywall. If Scott brings the same intense historical realism to Napoleon that be brought to The Last Duel and especially The Duellists, his forthcoming Apple-distributed drama will almost certainly be a keeper.
Chloe Okuno's Watcher (IFC Midnight, 6.3.22) is a quietly unnerving Polanski-like thriller. Filmed on a modest budget in Bucharest in the early spring of '21, it has creepy undercurrents running beneath the standard urban-stalker plot. A meditation about feelings of isolation in an Eastern European city, about a cis relationship in trouble due to a lack of empathy on the man's part.
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