sergio leone etc

1) Your favorite opening shot (Here are some ideas to jog your memory, if you need ‘em.)

Fight Club

2) Tuesday Weld or Mia Farrow?

For all of her obsessive child collecting, and the codependent incestuous mess that was woody allen, people keep forgetting that the woman could act--plus her first real role was peyton place, which seems prophetic.

3) Name a comedy you’re embarrassed to admit made you laugh

American Pie 4.

4) Best Movie of 1947

The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer, Cary Grant and Jail Bait

5) Burt Reynolds was the Bandit. Jerry Reed was the Snowman. Paul LeMat was Spider. Candy Clark was Electra. What’s your movie handle?

The Moose

6) Robert Vaughn or David McCallum?
Robert Vaughn did a clutch of fantastic teen deliquent movies in the 50s, and some great cowboy tv, David McCallum is brilliant on NCIS, plus a few early 60s war films, finishing with the great escape--but both were on MAn From UNCLE so its a draw.

7) Most exotic/unusual place/location in which you've seen a movie

i saw pulp fiction in a time square grind house, in 1994, just before disney got a hold of it

8) Favorite Errol Morris movie

for aesthetics, his beer commericals, for politics, dr death--which has more to say about faith, eveidence, and the difficulty of history then almost anything else

9) Best Movie of 1967

a time for burning, barbara connells earnest and problemetic discussion of how religion intersects with race in midwestern america, the failure of the social expriement seems to be a metaphor for america, but in a way taht is too slippery to be more specific.

10) Describe a profoundly (or not-so-profoundly) disturbing moment you’ve had courtesy of the movies

watching early de palma after reading rape and reverance, and trying to sort out the differences between the violence i enjoyed watching on screen and the violence that i felt an aboherence to in real life.

11) Anne Francis or Julie Newmar?

julie newmar

12) Describe your favorite one sheet (include a link if possible)

its a lousy movie, but the optimism and madness found in the one sheet of the billy bob thorton astrounaut film, with the perfect twilight sky, his striding foreward in that suit, and the farm receding, about the technological, science and hope--says more then the movie ever does, in fact. the fact that he is on the horse, just seems to be the pulp surrealism that the movie lacks http://www.britfilms.tv/images/news/astronaut%20farmer.jpg

13) Best Movie of 1987

Withnail and I

14) Favorite movie about obsession
F is for Fake

15) Your ideal Christmas movie triple feature
silent night, deadly night; don't open until xmas, black christmas

16) Montgomery Clift or James Dean?
Clift (he took his shirt off more)

17) Favorite Les Blank Movie
i dont have one

18) This past summer food critic Anton Ego made the following statement: “In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. Last night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize that only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.” Your thoughts?

hes right, and in the age of the net, of the dvd revoultion, where everything is available, the ability to f ind culture, to remix it, to make it new, to connect it to the expereicnes of yr patricualr place, is so easy, that to do it well seems a miracle

19) The last movie you watched on DVD? In a theater?

marie antoinette, lars and the real girl

20) Best Movie of 2007
lars and the real girl

21) Worst Movie of 2007
bobby

22) Describe the stages of your cinephilia
i dont think im a cinephile

23) What is the one film you’ve had more difficulty than any other in convincing people to see or appreciate?
Crossroads--the britney vehichle, which was more honest about family and about teenage sex then anything john hughes could have come up with

24) Gene Tierney or Rita Hayworth?
Rita Hayworth singing put teh blame on mame when she removes that glove, in teh piano scene in Gilda, is so wonderfully iconicly fetishy, that no matter how good GEne Tierney is (and i think she has had more films that were interesting than Hayworth), she cannot be beat---let me put it this way, those five minutes encompass almost anything that Tireney tried to do.

25) The Japanese word wabi denotes simplicity and quietude, but it can also mean an accidental or happenstance element (or perhaps even a small flaw) which gives elegance and uniqueness to the whole. What film or moment from a film best represents wabi to you?
Bresson, Diary of A County Priest

26) Favorite Documentary
Harlan County War

27) Favorite opening credit sequence
Anatomy of a Murder

28) Is there a film that has influenced your lifestyle in a significant or notable way? If so, what was it and how did it do so?
too many to name.

29) Glenn Ford or Dana Andrews?

30) Make a single prediction, cynical or hopeful, regarding the upcoming Academy Awards
w/ the writers strike, it wont happen

31) Best Actor of 2007
Patton Oswalt, Rattouie

32) Best Actress of 2007
Patricia Clarkson, Lars and the REal Girl; Amy Adams, Enchanted

33) Best Director of 2007
paul greengrass

34) Best Screenplay of 2007
Portal

35) Favorite single movie moment of 2007
the ending sequence in rattatoie

36) What’s your wish/hope for the movies in 2008?
i see more of tehm