I’ve always felt Jackie Brown is highly under-appreciated. To me it ranks with Tarantino’s best work, Pulp Fiction and Basterds and to a lesser extent Kill Bill Vol 2, and is far superior to the cult favorite Reservoir Dogs . It’s the only Tarantino movie that one could describe as ‘touching’, the dialogue is superb, and most of all the entire cast is brilliant, particularly Robert Forster and Pam Grier, but going all the way down the line to Keaton’s FBI agent and De Niro’s understated aging gangster (his last real good performance?). Here Karina Longworth of L.A. Weekly seems to share my sentiments in an interesting take on Jackie Brown, which for some reason is playing at the L.A. mall where the climax of the film takes place.
Horlick, Alabama – Yesterday, the watchdog group “Clean Earth Now” made public the existence of a recently discovered videotape revealing past environmental negligence by the London based multinational oil company BP Plc in the small town of Horlick, Alabama. As the value of stock in BP Plc continues to plummet in the wake of the disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil leak, many industry insiders speculate that the tape’s shocking footage will be the final nail in the 101-year-old global energy company’s coffin. Reporters given early access to the videotape described sordid details such as, “catastrophic environmental damage that will have lasting consequences on the local ecosystem for the next 50-75 years, graphic scenes of human misery and despair, and clips of a tight yellow speedo bulging with male genitalia.” The assistant deputy of Mudflat County, Wilbur Rickshaw, stated, ‘this whole here problem here could have been avoided if those goddamn city kids would stop smokin’ the wacky tobacky and woul’ keep their ger’damn hormones in check for even a few seconds longer than it takes a pig to shit in a sty.” BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward was unavailable for comment.
When Ned Tanen, the head of motion pictures for Universal Studios showed up to talk business at director Dennis Hopper’s house, Hopper was supposed to be putting the finishing touches on The Last Movie, his followup to the revolutionary Easy Rider. A lot was expected from him, it was a major investment by Universal. However what Tanen found was a massive, drugged out orgy. “I was wearing my MCA suit, there on business to talk to him about this movie… I walked in, and this enormous orgy was going on- I mean full-blown. My God, I couldn’t even imagine how many people. Buttocks and boobs going in all directions. I Went to Dennis and said, ‘Can I talk to you?’ Dennis was out of his bird, totally gone. In the corner of my eye, I saw this guy pointing a camera at us. I said to him,’Would you please not do that?’ He kept going. I said, ‘Listen, I don’t want to have to ask you again.’ He ignored me. I said ‘Please, I’m going to ask you one more time.’ He e was still doing it, so I grabbed the camera, threw it through the window and grabbed him, this enormous fat man, and said, “You fuck, I’ll kill you, fucker!’ Dennis said, ‘Man, get me a camera! I want to shoot this!’” (quote taken from the book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex Drugs and Rock’n'Roll Generation Saved Hollywood) Read more…
I read two very exciting things on the good ol’ internet today. One is quite immediate. Fritz Lang’s classic Metropolis, which has recently been restored and completed with 25 extra minutes that have been lost for many decades, will get an American theatrical release. Metropolis is one of the treasures of German expressionism and was about 60 years ahead of its time. I for one can’t wait to see it the way it was meant to be seen. From the official press release: Read more…
It is a pathetic and disgusting fact that a majority of young Americans would watch Goodbye Solo, and all the films of Ramin Bahrani, and be bored to tears. I’m talking about my own sad generation; people in their 20s, college students and young professionals, supposedly ‘educated’ people. In the age of attention deficit disorder where friends will order a piece of garbage like Transformers off On Demand and watch it while simultaneously texting away on their Blackberry’s and surfing the web, there isn’t much of an audience for an opaque character study about the relationship between a severely depressed elderly man and an ebullient Senegalese taxi cab driver in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Read more…
