he could have been molly ringwald’s loser dad too xD

but no, look, danny devito became a star already in the 80s. i mean the whole new hollywood business was built on people who didn’t look that glamorous. joe pesci owning goodfellas.

but yeah i could imagine him in the 90s working with jim jarmusch or van zant or someone like that.

—

anyway i watched a movie that i’d rather not name in view of the dom’s recent events but it invoved a cat named “church” which probably everyone already knew but not me. first time i saw it! involuntarily campy perhaps, but i liked it, and the ramones soundtrack made me laugh.

started also watching the stoning of soraya m. which is a proper tragedy and you know it from the title— watched only the first hour. why this happened is this: it was obvious from the start what would happen. so then i watched the plot inexorably unfold. soraya is abused, exploited, frame, then she gets hit the mob the first time. i stopped right there. then i read that the actual stoning would take 20 minutes of film time, and with another hour to go, i decided to not continue. i’m already a misanthropist, i don’t need any more excuses to hate humanity. people suck.

He would've found work, as all of them did, but the kind of role he excelled in (weak but strangely sympathetic) pretty much disappeared during the 80s, or else got turned into one-note lovable rogue-style comedy characters (Pesci's and Devito's forte).

weak but sympathetic was molly ringwald’s dad— 80’s classics

i think he was more than sympathetic though— he could be outright weird and would have done well in comedies

let me think (i’m 2 rum & cokes into the evening...)

e.g. he would have done so much better in scorsese’s “after hours” FOR SURE

after hours is a great movie but the reason it’s not a classic is we can’t (i can’t) remember the face of the protagonist. i do remember rosanna arquette though.

Yeah, After Hours is a good call. Like I said, though, he would've found work. For the most part, though, it would've been Hollywood making hamburgers out of Kobe beef.

All this talk of Cazale made me want to pick Dog Day Afternoon as my choice for film night. As it is I chose Battle Of Algiers which overlaps into what I'd been reading



I saw about 20 minutes of it at an ATP festival one year and we all could see that it was gonna be a good watch. Hwoever, you don't go to a festival to watch a film, so we turned it off and made a mental note to watch it at some point. It's only now years later have I FINALLY gotten round to watching it.

As expected it's a great film. Although, as with the Days Of Rage book I've realised that I can't imagine myself ever having that much passion for a cause or movement. And I envy people who do, even if the cause is ultimately futile.

Cruising

This caused a stink at the time for its alleged homophobia and seems to have fallen into obscurity, but whatever its politics it's a GREAT film. And while the Pacino v DeNiro debates will probably go on forever there can be no doubt that, with films like this, Pacino was far braver in his choice of roles.



Spider-Man 2

My favourite superhero movie. It's maybe seen as too lightweight by more hardcore comicbook fans but it gets everything just right for me.

Born to Win

Just when I think I've run out of sleazy 70s skid row movies to feed my addiction, another one comes my way. The real star here is the location, with lots of great footage of Times Square, but I suppose its main selling point now is a small role for a very young Robert De Niro.

I enjoyed Cruising. It reflected the mores of the time. Another good Pacino movie from the 70's is Serpico

One of the last movies I saw was Wonder Woman, which was like a B-movie dolled up in CGI and slow-mo. Completely silly.

if you're into sleazy 70's stuff, Across 110th St is great. Soundtrack is fantastic, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0s6WRaEmQM

Yeah big fan of that one. Sort of Mean Streets/blaxploitation hybrid. I wonder if Tarantino used the title song in Jackie Brown as a nod to that movie.

Two Westerns lately:

McCabe & Mrs. Miller- Fucking excellent. Great use of those Cohen songs, they never get in the way and it is never an example of the music carrying what's on screen. Only complaint is how shitty the sound was recorded but A+ film. Very poetic and I felt a lot of mixed emotions after watching. Bleak but dreamlike.

The Ox-Bow Incident - Underrated and dark. Great Henry Fonda performance and character. I love how sub plots are finished with nothing but a glance. It's about a lynching and a town's motives and evidence that goes into the lynching. A lot of characters exposed. Great great film with much depth.

i finally watched "falling down" where michael douglas goes rampage on l.a. i had seen a bit on tv back in the 90s. highly recommended!

This is definitely a great movie if I remember correctly. Haven’t seen it in YEARS, but it made quite an impression back in “the day.”

I haven't seen it in years either. I do remember a feeling at the time of wanting to like it more than I actually did, but I can see it getting a bit of a revival in the current political climate.

I've always liked Michael Douglas. Around that time he seemed to have a real instinct for films that, however mainstream, would touch on some quite controversial ideas. The kinds of films people argued about in newspaper columns and around dinner tables, not so much about whether they were good or not, but what they might be saying in a broader sense. Besides Falling Down, I'm obviously talking about stuff like Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct, Disclosure and Wall Street. A much more interesting figure in Hollywood than I think he gets credit for. Even before becoming a star he was producing films like One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and then later on, when he could've easily taken things easier, taking on risky films like Traffic and Behind the Candelabra. Obviously not just your average A-List mega star.

Oh yeah..so much is owed and unattributed to that movie..

one of altman’s best

yet seriously underrated and hard to find for a long time

but now it’s got the criterion treatment!

https://www.criterion.com/films/28712-mccabe-mrs-miller

Hey, did you guys know Terry Glilliam is making a “Don Quixote” movie?

I know, I know... most of his movies are like ½ Don Quixote, but this one’s going to actually be based on the book.

that sounds like fun. didn’t he try making it already years ago?

Yeah, if I remember rightly it was a complete farce. Sets getting washed away by flooding and I think the investors pulled out literally the day before they were due to start.

I know this has been his baby for a LONG time so just hope that he has the budget needed for it and pulls it off.

riiight! like it was cursed or something.

he should just do it with puppets. CHEEP!