Weirdly, I just sat down to prep a radio show about songs in PTA movies, and I rememebered that "Diamond Girl" is in LICORICE PIZZA - I think that might have triggered my new appreciation!

I disdained Seals & Crofts in high school, then a few decades later heard "Diamond Girl" and the chord change on "Can you feel the whole world turning" suddenly had me feeling like, yes, I DO feel the whole world turning.

A Week’s Vacation When Nathalie Baye smiles, the movie screen seems to flicker just a little more brightly. She smiles a lot in A Week’s Vacation, which may be a bit surprising, as in it she plays a schoolteac…

Oh, Nathalie Baye has died. Did I like her in the 1980s? "When Nathalie Baye smiles, the movie screen seems to flicker just a little more brightly." Yes, I did. eightiesmovies.wordpress.com/2021/09/30/a...

Just finished leading a 100-minute online conversation about CONTEMPT. The Cine-Club concept is not dead! (By the way, I hope people talk about this movie when Nolan's ODYSSEY comes out - please.)

Julia and Julia If Julia and Julia finds its place as a footnote to film history, it will be more for its technical significance than for anything else. That’s because Julia and Julia is the first major thea…

Some of us were even on the job (as mere youths, of course); from '88: eightiesmovies.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/j...

Jean-Luc Godard's CONTEMPT, or LE MEPRIS if you prefer, under discussion this Sat. 4/18 at 2pm Pacific Time. Part of Scarecrow Video's "The Sixties on Film" year at Scarecrow Academy. I'll lead the free online conversation. Register here/see you there? scarecrowvideo.org/posts/scarec...

Scarecrow Academy goes tomorrow (4/11) at 2pm Pacific Time. I'll lead a conversation about a little film called DR. STRANGELOVE. The free online series is devoted to "The 60s on Film," and this is definitely that. Join us, or you'll answer to the Coca-Cola company. scarecrowvideo.org/posts/scarec...

I say something about Sergei Loznitsa's superb TWO PROSECUTORS, which plays in Seattle at @siffnews.bsky.social Uptown this week. scarecrowvideo.org/posts/the-se...

Sigh No More (feat. Maurissa Tancharoen & Jed Whedon) YouTube video by Joss Whedon - Topic

I found Joss Whedon's MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING to be glib (somebody sign up the screenwriter, though), but this little ditty has been going through my head in the week since I watched it www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_lV...

Having watched PSYCHO so many times I'm not sure how there's another way to appreciate Joseph Stefano's ear for dialogue, but this time I wrote down: "No sense dwelling on our losses" - Norman (who is very good at savoring ironies)

And this week, how PSYCHO and L'AVVENTURA do share that plot point, after all

Last week in Scarecrow Academy I compared the 1/2 hr post-suicide-attempt scene in THE APARTMENT to the 1/2 hr apartment scene in BREATHLESS (both 1960, both set in one apartment location), and hear me out on the way this indicates the way movie-time will evade expectations in 60s cinema ...

Read a Sports Illustrated online piece in which the author said the Seahawks had "lucked out" by missing out on some favored free agents - had bad luck, that is. Will this be a thing now, "lucking out" as a negative term? It was bad enough when "goat" became "GOAT"

Glad to see this just an hour after returning from a nice ramble outside Port Townsend WA and being delighted when Trail L-6 led inexorably to L-7, whereupon I riffed on the squareness of it all to my wife, who tolerates me, sort of

Acknowledging some bewilderment with ALPHA, looking back admiringly to RAW. scarecrowvideo.org/posts/the-se...

I will be convening Year 8 of @scarecrowvideo.bsky.social Academy next Saturday. Online, free, 2pm PST. This year we go crashing through 1960s cinema, kicking off w/Billy Wilder's THE APARTMENT (last 50s film, or first 60s film? Discuss). Join us? scarecrowvideo.org/posts/scarec...

Oh yes, I liked THE BRIDE!, for my Seasoned Ticket column at the @scarecrowvideo.bsky.social website. scarecrowvideo.org/posts/the-se...

Just got back from seeing THE BRIDE! Hard to understand how anybody who loves movies can walk out of this thing without a big fat grin.

co-star Polly Draper, ably directed by the late Gary Winick (13 GOING ON 30/LETTERS TO JULIET). My review called it "a thoughtful story peopled with characters you enjoy spending time with," which sounds soft, but isn't nothing, either.

It seems we can conclude that a lot of people don't know how Tourette's works. Made me recall a movie on the subject, I guess forgotten: THE TIC CODE (1998), about a Tourette's kid (Christopher Marquette, excellent) who bonds with a jazzman (Gregory Hines), similarly afflicted. Nicely written by

any sense, and a general indulgence that includes allowing actors to flap around on their own. Premise might’ve made a snappy sitcom like a fast-talking 1930s picture. But no. Hopelessly Brooksian score by Hans Zimmer. Also Brooksian: As in THE SIMPSONS, the story is set in an unnamed U.S. state.

Had to catch up with ELLA MACCAY because any movie that poorly received must have something going for it. But not this one, it turns out. It plays like a series of discrete sketches, with a few one-liners that sound like one-liners, a central performance that could be something if the character made

There is no stopping it now, but the plague of NPR correspondents greeting each other with "Hey" grows more grating every day. (Does it come from early exposure to TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD? That was the first time I ever heard someone use "hey" for "hello." I tried it myself for a while as a kid.)

Had a movie dream. Somehow involved watching a new Jarmusch film that ended with a low, sweeping shot across a beach. Movie ends and a woman turns to me and says, "He always was good with condiments." Condiments? Jarmusch? Probably true.

I wrote about Satyajit Ray's DAYS AND NIGHTS IN THE FOREST, which plays @siffnews.bsky.social Uptown in Seattle, for the @scarecrowvideo.bsky.social website. What a beauty this film is. scarecrowvideo.org/posts/the-se...

Wish someone had told me how delightful Donald Fagen's EMINIENT HIPSTERS is. Had to stumble upon a slightly water-stained Little Free Library hardback copy to get the gist. Among other things, he claims the first recorded "Yowzah" takes place on a Boswell Sisters record from 1932. Excellent madness.

undoubtedly accounts for how often it pops up randomly in my mind 50 years later. It is pretty catchy. Nastiness with flutes. "Hear me talkin' now" - what the hell, rest in peace, Neil.

Weird that amid all of Neil Sedaka's cheerful pop goodies, the bitchy "Bad Blood" was his best-selling single. The Elton Effect had a lot to do with it (cf. "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night"). Unless you were alive in '75, you can't imagine how frequently the track was spun on Top 40, which

track, "1985," "Let Me Roll It," and the untouchable "Jet" are masterworks. The rest is, well, tuneful. Ho, hey ho.

Listened to "Band on the Run" LP for the first time in ages, having played it a few thousand go-rounds in the past. Really wanted it to defy the conventional wisdom that Macca's albums are a mix of rock-solid masterpieces and fill-in doodling. Nope. Despite fond memories, the title