The Faithful Hussar

(via If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger. . . )

The Long Good Friday

I just watched this today. It was pretty damn good. And both Helen Mirren and Bob Hoskins haven't aged a fucking day.

Well, maybe a couple of rough days.

As Though I Needed a Reason to Drink More Coffee

If I ever get a tattoo, it'll be a yin-yang with beer on one side and coffee on the other. Also, what ever happened to the yin-yang? I feel like I couldn't got five feet in the mid-90's without seeing one of those things. It's probably for the best.

Anyways, I think I'm gonna buy the fuck outta this mug.
One of the things I want out of this life is a cool coffee mug collection. My favorite mug ever is from the City of Pasadena and reads "Partners for Solutions." When dad dies, that's the first thing I'm making a beeline for. While all the siblings are fighting over cars and shit, I'll be gunning for the mugs.

(via Hark! A Vagrant.)

Go See Bronson

I meant to write about this movie quite some time ago, but for whatever reason (read: laziness), I never did. It isn't a great movie, but it's an interesting one and if you want to see a movie that isn't like anything else-- or if you're just really into the smart ass from Inception being buck-naked and punching dudes HARD in the head-- go and see it.

I think it's still on Instant Watch.

You're welcome.

Makes Me Wanna Twat Geezers in the Loaf

For some reason I've been on a British crime movie jag. There's just something about scary working class folk in suits hitting each other with ice picks and lead pipes that seems charming when they've got an accent. I guess part of it is that even when British crime is shown to be sexy, it's still British, which is to say, not very sexy for long. There's always a kind of underlying seediness and a leery quality that you only get in the best that American crime cinema has to offer.

Anyways, I'm not saying that the movies below are going to be great because of the trailers, I'm just saying I want to see Colin Ferrel act like a sociopath and have Jason Statham tear up England like the Lord Jesus Christ built him to do.

WATCH.

London Boulevard.


Blitz.

The Increasingly Poor Financial Decisions of James Kislingbury: Part 9 in a series of 37

For those of you who didn't get a text from me (because the only people who read this damn blog are people I have direct contact with and can bother to read my blog), Barnes and Noble is having a sale on Criterion Collection DVDs. For the next couple of weeks all DVDs released by Criterion will be 50% off. To say the least, I think I went a little bit loopy at the store today. Maybe it was the huge discount (augmented by my friend giving me access to his Barnes and Noble membership) or maybe it was just the high of cashing my second paycheck in a year or two, but I walked out of the store tonight fifty-five dollars poorer-- or one-hundred ten dollars in DVDs richer, as I'll tell anyone that accuses me of being capricious with my new found non-wealth.

With one exception, everything I bought I've seen before (and I only bought four DVDs, so I guess that isn't such a marked statistic) and of the movies I bought, I only own one of them.

Anyways, here's the list.



The Friends of Eddy Coyle is one of these movies that I find to be inexplicably ignored. It's brilliant. It's really fucking brilliant. Not in a showy, changing cinema kind of a way like a Kubrick or a Godard or Noe or whatever other darling you want to pick out of a hat, but in that it is a wonderfully written movie that is acted with the best possible people you could want. Robert Mitchum and Peter Boyle look like the kind of criminals that might actually exist, and they talk like criminals that might actually exist. They're tired, they're kind of doughy, and they're capable of really shitty things if it will get them out of a jam. I could go on and on about this movie (and someday, maybe I will), though I'll spare you that punishment and leave you with this: The Friends of Eddie Coyle is a really well done crime film, the kind of which couldn't ever be made after 1978.

It's basically the kind of crime movie I don't want anyone to catch me alone with.

Moving on.



Buying The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp was a no brainer. It's one of the best movies I've ever seen and at eight dollars, I couldn't say "No." I've also stolen at least eight dollars worth of characters, story, dialogue, aesthetics, and plot to give the owners of the movie at least some of that back.

I thought about not buying it because it is on Instant Watch, but the quality on that is so shitty, it really is a noticeable step down. Also, I dont' want to ostensibly be renting a film that I'm such a big fan of. It'd be wrong-- WRONG-- of me not to buy it.



The Thin Red Line is another movie I've written about ad nauseum. I don't think there's much that I can say about it that I haven't already said (or has been said by other, wiser individuals), but I am glad that it has finally received a proper DVD release (complete with Criterion's new marketing gimmick, a sicker proclaiming the DVD to be the "Director Approved Edition). I already own The Thin Red Line, but its previously release left me somewhat wanting. While it did allow me to rediscover the film, it came with no features to speak of and was packaged in a two-DVD set with Platoon, which is a fine film, but being crammed in with another movie like that is not exactly befitting a movie such as this one.



Lastly, I bought W.C. Fields 6 Short Films (which actually ran me a few bucks more than Colonel Blimp), and is made entirely up of shorts I have no seen before. It was a gamble, but it was the kind of gamble that reminded me of less lean years, back when I would buy three disc versions of Orson Welles flops or lesser Kurosawa movies just to see what they were all about. In reality it can't be that much of a gamble, though, since it's W.C. Fields, one of the greatest drunks/film-makers of all time. We should be so lucky as to gamble on Mr. Fields.

Side Note: It needs to be stated that the Criterion Collection not only has some of the best movies of all time in its line-up, but it also has some real top-notch graphic designers putting out their products. The men and women at Criterion obviously give a fuck about presentation and succeed in delivering all of the boutiquey goodness that you expect from a company that sells all of Godard's good movies. The covers and the booklets included are all rather beautiful and distinct. What's interesting with the covers of most of the DVD is that they're original works of art or pieces of design. They're rarely just reprinted posters of movie stills with the title thrown over it.

On the occasions where the interior booklet supplies little more than just the obligatory chapter listing, it at least includes that little bit more that makes these DVDs stand out.

Even the back of the DVD slip has images printed on it. Now that is paying attention to details. That's pretty damn cool.

Or at least that's what I'm going to tell myself that when I look at my bank statement this week.

Sub-Sub Note: Apparently "The Essential Art House" imprint of Criterion DVDs also means "We Took Out all of the Good Criterion Collection Features, Sucker." Damn. And Colonel Blimp had a Martin Scorsese commentary.

So It Goes

(via Pajiba.)

VIGGO THE CARPATHIAN

I kind of don't give a shit about this movie (unless it's got way more Karl Jung than I think there is), but just look at this still. It's crazy. That's Aragorn right there.

(via Pajiba.)

My Future Home

Home of art director John Holmes (not that John Holmes), designed by William Kirsch, is made entirely from used parts incl. 85 stained glass windows.

I think a lot about what my compound in Montana is going to look like when I strike it big as a successful comic writer/gun-for-hire/explorer/gigolo. I imagine it'll probably have a pool, an armory, and, if I can manage it, something to hold my biplane collection. Basically it'd look like the inside of Wes Anderson's head, except that you wouldn't get annoyed with it after going there for longer than seven hours. It'll also have a tabletop Ms. Pac-Man game. I have to think this way, because I've been spoiled about my living situation since birth.

I come from a rather unusual living situation, which isn't so much that every place I will ever move to is a step down, but that the house I grew up with is the Addam's Family Manor. It's covered from top to bottom with taxidermied animals and has more ancient wood in it than the Playboy Mansion (Hi-yo!). There are few places that measure up to it, especially when you're as weird as I happen to be.

I want my future home to be lousy with decapitated animals and muzzle-loaded weaponry. That's just who I am.

I'd love this house a lot more if it wasn't for my folks. If only there was a way to live there without having to deal with them-- I know! Murder! Thank you, internet, you always know what I need to hear.

Words From the Maestro

"Feel the prophecy of a woman being sexy. . ."

Le Cine De Lahore

We aren't ever going to beat these people in a war. We airbrush photos of Katherine Heigel, they paint up pictures of over-weight, middle aged men covered in blood.
(via Jhalal Drut.)

I Found Out What I Want to Do In Life

This. This is it.

Jeb Corliss wing-suit demo from Jeb Corliss on Vimeo.

Whatever I'm doing with my life, I'm clearly doing wrong.