1. El Topo (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1970): We saw a print of this that the distributor was touring around to promote the new DVD at the Cinematheque, and it was glorious. El Topo is, for those of you not in the know, basically the first midnight movie. I have had a thing about bizarre cult films lately, so Alex and I knew we had to go. There are cowboy archetypes, a river of blood, lots of dead animals, some weird sex, a ton of sacrilegious imagery, and corpses being eaten by bees.
  2. The Holy Mountain (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1973): I think I liked this even better than El Topo: it went further in terms of visual and ideological audacity. You can totally see how stoners would love it, but there are some pretty incredible scenes. Alex read me this quote where Jodorowsky said that he had Godard’s intellect, but more testicles. I think this sums up his aesthetic pretty well.
  3. Spider-Man 3 (Sam Raimi, 2007): This…wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be. There was a little too much exposition for my taste, and I would have liked to see more hilarious evil Peter Parker and NEVER HEAR KIRSTEN DUNST SING AGAIN. Nonetheless, I had a pretty good time overall. I like my superhero melodramas with a huge side of self-awareness, and Sam Raimi gets that: the disco stuff, the Stan Lee cameo, the moment Spidey poses against a glorious American flag. Good times. Also, it was nice to see Topher Grace doing well.
  4. Piccadilly (Ewald André Dupont, 1929): I just watched this on Turner Classic Movies because it was on and it was supposed to be all jazzy and scandalous. You can see how it would have been in 1929, what with the interracial romance and apparently unmarried lovers and all. The thing about these late-era silents is, they are often really nice to look at. For some reason, when sound came in, they stopped tinting (probably it was harder somehow?), so you lost all those golds and blues that they used to reflect day and night. Also, film language was pretty highly developed by then: there were some gorgeous compositions and some really impressive deep focus shots. The two lead actresses were also really good: Anna May Wong was surprisingly natural when she wasn’t being all dangerously Chinese, and Gilda Gray was really stunning: she did a lot with her eyes, it’s a shame she didn’t make more movies. Not that much happened given that it was a full two hours long, though, which made me focus even more on the cinematography, which was, as a I said, mightily impressive. This one shot, the nightclub owner is asking Anna May Wong, the poor scullery maid, to dance in the nightclub. She tells him she’s danced in public before, in Limehouse, and there was some trouble between some men. She looks at him, and the camera does a full 180 to his knowing reaction shot. Gorgeous.

On my agenda for this week: get a job. Also, see 28 Weeks Later: most of the reviews have been good, and I freaking loved the first one.