Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Ball of Fire (1941)

Garbage Man: I could use a bundle of scratch 

right now on account of I met me a mouse last week.

Prof. Oddly: Mouse?

Garbage Man: What a pair of gams. A little in,

a little out, and a little more out.

Professor Potts: I am still completely mystified.

Garbage Man: Well, with this dish on me hands

and them giving away 25 smackaroos on that quizzola.

Professor Potts: Smackaroos?

Prof. Oddly: Smackaroos? What are smackaroos?

Garbage Man: A smackaroo is a...

Professor Potts: No such word exists.

Garbage Man: Oh, it don't, huh? A smackaroo is a dollar, pal.

Professor Potts: Well, the accepted 

vulgarism for a dollar is a buck.

Garbage Man: The accepted vulgarism 

for a smackaroo is a dollar. 

That goes for a banger, a fish, a buck, or a rug.

Professor Potts: Well, what about the mouse?

Garbage Man: The mouse is the dish. 

That's what I need the moolah for.

Prof. Oddly: Moolah?

Garbage Man: Yeah, the dough. We'll be stepping. 

Me and the smooch - I mean, the dish, I mean, the mouse. 

You know, hit the jiggles for a little drum boogie.

Professor Potts: Please, please, not so fast.

Garbage Man: Brother, we're going to have some hoytoytoy.

All The Profs: Hoytoytoy?

Garbage Man: Yeah, and if you want 

that one explained, you go ask your papas.

The script for Ball of Fire is so much fun (not a surprise given Billy Wilder was one of the writers)  that I had to share this entire lengthy passage of dialogue -- god I love this film. I didn't even need to include a portion involving Barbara Stanwyck here -- that's how you know it's good! But since I tend to give her all of the love for this movie I figured I'd focus in on her stellar leading man Gary Cooper today, given it's Coop's birthday. He was born today, the year 1901. Check out our extensive Gary Cooper Archives for more of him -- he's a forever MNPP fave, he is. One of the greatest faces (et cetera) ever put on screen.

From Mishima to Midnight in 32 Seconds

There is a lot of love about Paul Schrader's film Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters -- the visuals are incredible and the score by Phillip Glass is a world-class one, and it's further proof that Paul Schrader is the gayest "straight" man on Earth -- but I've always been disappointed by it all the same because the real life writer and filmmaker and homosexual fascist Yukio Mishima was actually more fascinating and more deranged and, well, hotter (see up top), than the movie ever is. I'll always recommend Mishima's own film called Patriotism over Schrader's sort-of-biopic any day. (And Criterion has released that movie themselves.) 

But since Criterion is now upgrading their Mishima disc to 4K come June I'll go ahead and admit I cannot wait to see the new restoration -- I sort of wish they'd add Patriotism itself to the special features of this disc if they're not going to upgrade that one from DVD but I guess we can't have (anything) everything. 

That said the June release I'm the most excited about isn't that one -- it's William Friedkin's Sorceror in 4K! I've admitted before that I only saw this movie about five years ago for the first time -- I know I'm not alone in being thrown off by its title; I thought it was a fantasy movie for the longest time a la Krull or Zardoz aka some bargain basement shit from a period and genre that I'm not super interested in. But no it's a remake of Clouzot's 1953 thriller Wages of Fear (which Criterion helpfully just dropped onto 4K earlier this month) and it turns out that it ranks among Friedkin's greatest accomplishments. It's a spectacular film, tense and hypnotic and so much stranger than you're expecting it to be. It haunts me. I got to see it on a big screen last year and man alive does it play like gangbusters that way. Anyway it immediately became one of my favorite Friedkins and I wish I'd seen it earlier. (And speaking of amazing scores the one here from Tangerine Dream is The Shit.) 

And then further on in June we've got The Wiz hitting 4K -- the 1978 reworking of The Wizard of Oz with Diana Ross and Michael Jackson has always creeped me out in a not good way, but I know it's iconic to a lot of people so I'll shut up! -- and then the 1988 documentary Thelonious Monk Straight, No Chaser about the jazz musician, which, yeah, not a jazz person so this isn't for me either. So moving right along...

... because this is a loaded month, there's also the 1939 screwball comedy Midnight starring Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, and John Barrymore -- I have never seen this. Any fans? It was written by Billy Wilder so I'm sure it's crackling and it's got one of those great fake-identity screwball plots where Colbert infiltrates Parisian society pretending to be a Hungarian noblewoman. I'm sure it's fun and thankfully it's on Criterion Channel to watch right now so maybe I'll watch it this weekend to gauge my interest in a hard copy. 

Next up there's François Girard's 1993 pianist bio-pic Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould which is one that's been on my to-watch list for decades now but I've never gotten around to. 1993 was right around when I was beginning to turn into a movie dork properly so I remember hearing a lot about this one at the time, but we've never crossed paths. Its pastiche approach to its story, which tells Gould's life in 32 separate chunks that range from animation to interview -- always sounded like a treat so I'll definitely be seeking this one out at last, for sure, now that I have been re-reminded. Oh and the final June drop is Terry Gilliam's masterpiece Brazil in 4K. Certainly no slouch to end with there!

Yura To Warhol & Everything Criterion Between

I was just literally thinking, "Hey I get paid today," when an email arrived in my inbox (not a euphimism) that reminded me the smackdab middle of the month also indicates something even better -- it's Criterion Announcement Day! And it turns out that the drop for the forthcoming April is a hefty one -- seven titles strong! The big one being Sean Baker's extremely popular 2024 film Anora, which will assuredly get a bank of Oscar nominations come Oscar nomination morning (whenever that happens, since they keep moving it due to the wildfires). I have my issues with Anora (which I've mostly gotten into on social media) but I think it's a fun, fine piece of entertainment for the most part, and the three leads (Madison, Eydelshteyn, and especially our boy Yura Borisov) are all pretty excellent. Anora hits 4K on April 239th and the disc is loaded with special features, check them all at that link. Also being released from Criterion that same day -- Baker's 2008 film Prince of Broadway, which I've never seen. Any fans of that one? It's actually streaming on Criterion Channel right now so maybe I'll watch it this weekend.

The other big titles from the April releases that I haven't seen are Claude Berri's 1986 double-feature Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring, which adapts Marcel Pagnol's book into two grand and grandly expensive movies starring an incredible French cast including Gérard Depardieu, Yves Montand, Daniel Auteuil, and Emmanuelle Béart. Nor have I somehow ever seen Kenji Mizoguchi's 1953 film Ugetsu, a wartime-set ghost story that stars  Masayuki Mori and Machiko Kyō (this one's also on Criterion Channel right now which I know because I've had it on my list for years and never yet gotten to it -- sighhhh). 

Then there are the usual 4K upgrades, which include Won Kar-Wei's masterful Chungking Express -- I have the WKW box-set already so I don't know if I'll get this but it is a masterpiece so we'll see. Tony Leung and Takeshi Kaneshiro in 4K is awful hard to resist! Also getting the 4K upgrade is Billy Wilder's comic classic Some Like It Hot. Which, like,  what can I say about Some Like It Hot? It doesn't get better. It's, like, hot.

But wait -- there is one more! And this is my number one pick for the month. We're talking Julian Schnabel's 1996 film Basquiat, starring a maybe-never-better Jeffrey Wright as the famed painter making his way through the NYC art scene in the 1980s. I haven't seen this in literal decades but I remember really loving it, and it's been a difficult movie to get one's hands on for a good long while, making this upgrade extremely overdue. I mean -- David Bowie playing Andy Warhol! Come on now!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from: 

Love in the Afternoon (1957)

Frank: He who loves and runs away, 

lives to love another day.

The great Billy Wilder was born on this day in 1906.

I have never seen this movie before! Have you?

Criterion Says It's Gonna Be May

How does time even work anymore? I have no idea how a month has passed since the last time I did one of these Criterion announcement posts -- it feels like I was just telling you about The Girl Can't Help It yesterday, but that was four full weeks into the past. So here we are today, with the films that Criterion will be releasing onto blu-ray in the month of May! Okay, sure, great, let's do it. The big title, the one they're giving the 4K treatment, is Billy Wilder's classic noir Double Indemnity, which stars a spectacular Barbara Stanwyck, ice blonde as we ever got her as perhaps the greatest femme fatale of all time, stomping the heart and soul out of the sucker Fred MacMurray. And man do we love to watch her do it. This is one of the movies that lives up to its perfect reputation -- they don't get any better. And the extras on the disc look pretty special, so make sure you check out all that on Criterion's site. 

Also pretty damned exciting is the 4K restoration of Mira Nair's romance Mississippi Masala, which stars Denzel Washington and Sarita Choudhury and which has long been sought by collectors as the DVD's been out of print for awhile. I think I saw this back in the 90s around the time it came out but not since, and have been dying to revisit -- especially with Choudhury being the only good thing happening on the Sex and the City reboot (yes I watched that thing, I have no idea why). Also this is Prime Denzel Time...

I mean look how gorgeous those two are! Damn. I bet this movie is gonna play like a revelation all these years later. The other three films hitting disc in May are "Wayne Wang's Chan Is Missing, a mistaken identity in World War II–era Paris in Joseph Losey's Mr. Klein, and... the maker of Tampopo, Juzo Itami, takes on the Japanese way of death in The Funeral." I haven't seen any of these but per usual can't wait for the chance to change that now. I mean any excuse for Alain Delon, after all...

My Name, It's Being Called

I didn't really expect to burst into tears at some movie news this morning, but so it goes with anything Call Me By Your Name related yes even here four years on -- and if you missed MNPP's thorough CMBYN coverage well here's a good place to get started. Anyway no it's not news about the film's once-rumored sequel, which, well, I can't imagine that happening any time soon. It's something much simpler and much much more selfish, with regards to me in particular -- the movie is going to be screening here in New York again next month. And not just any ol' place -- it's going to be screening at The Paris Theater, where I saw it definitely more than half the 20 times I saw the film in the theater during its run.

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Yes one of those times Timmy was there in person, totally swamped by groupies (which I suppose I was one of) -- you can read my account of that night along with video from the Q&A, right here. Aaaaanyway back to my point The Paris was screening the film right in the thick of Moviepass being a thing so it cost me nothing to go see the film there a dozen times, and a dozen times give or take I went, straight to my prime seat in the front row center. The Paris closed up last year when its lease expired, which was very sad, but then Netflix bought it, which was the opposite. The first movie I saw in the theater once things started re-opening this year was I got to see my number one movie of 2020, Charlie Kaufman's I'm Thinking of Ending Things, thanks to the Paris. (I posted about that here.) 

Anyway Netflix bought the theater but they're turning it into a real repertory theater now -- it won't just be Netflix movies, and today they announced their official plans for the next month or so, which marks their official official reopening. The first week is programmed by The Forty-Year-Old Version creator Radha Blank and is absolutely stellar, including The Apartment, Dog Day Afternoon, Fish Tank, Waiting For Guffman -- just a stunning and killer line-up. And then after that they have a month-long series called "Paris is For Lovers" which will showcase films that had their premiere at the Paris Theater and also were love stories...

... which is where Call Me By Your Name rears its luscious head. But it's not just that fave of mine -- oh no. Other titles include Maurice, Carol, Metropolitan, Amelie, Belle du Jour, Howard's End, The House of Mirth... I could keep listing and listing, but how about I just put the theater's press release here on the site and let them do their own talking. Hit the jump for it...

5 Off My Head: Siri Says 1948

I'm just gonna say this right off the bat -- I have a terrible batting average with the year that Siri gave me for this week's edition of our "Siri Says" game. Just terrible. I've seen so little! It would make sense if we were talking about the early 1920s here, but today when I asked Siri for a number between 1 and 100 she gave me the number "48" and so we're talking about The Movies of 1948. I have no excuse for seeing so few movies from 1948. I suppose my indifference to Noir, which has come up before, is part of it, as we're in the thick of that genre in 1948. But some of my favorite movie stars are working -- Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck... 

... well okay I've seen both of Stanwyck's films from this year; I'm not a total sociopath. (They both made the "runner-up" list below.) But otherwise it's just a poor, poor showing on my part., so you'll all have to work overtime in the comments to tell me what I should prioritize. (Not that that's unique, exactly.) But first...

My 5 Favorite Movies of 1948

The Red Shoes

(dir. Powell & Pressburger)

-- released on September 6th 1948 --

Rope

(dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

-- released on September 25th 1948 --

Red River

(dir. Howard Hawks)

-- released on September 17th 1948 --

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

(dir. John Huston)

-- released on January 24th 1948 --

Bicycle Thieves

(dir. Vittorio De Sica)

-- released on November 21st 1948 --

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Runners-up: The Big Clock (dir. John Farrow), The Search (dir. Fred Zinnemann), Key Largo (dir. Huston), They Live By Night (dir. Nicholas Ray), BF's Daughter (dir. Robert Z. Leonard), Sorry Wrong Number (dir. Anatole Litvak)

Never seen: The Snake Pit (dir. Litvak), Johnny Belinda (dir. Jean Negulesco), Joan of Arc (dir. Victor Fleming), I Remember Mama (dir. George Stevens), Drunken Angel (dir. Kurosawa), Moonrise (dir. Borzage), Hamlet (dir. Laurence Olivier)...

... La Terra Trema (dir. Visconti), The Naked City (dir. Jules Dassin), The Pirate (dir. Vincente Minnelli), A Foreign Affair (dir. Billy Wilder), Macbeth (dir. Welles), Letter From an Unknown Woman (dir. Max Ophüls), Oliver Twist (dir. David Lean)

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What are your favorites from 1948?

5 Off My Head: Siri Says 1945

With Sundance now behind us we can reignite some projects set to simmer, like our "Siri Says" series -- here I ask the lady who lives inside of my telephone to give me a number between 1 and 100, and then with whatever number she chooses I pick my favorite films from the movie corresponding to that year. I've done a lot of these posts by now and the remaining numbers at this point are getting slimmer and slimmer -- this translates to I usually have to ask Siri for a number about a dozen times before she gives me one I can work with. But today twas meant to be I guess, because she struck gold on first pick -- she gave me "45" right off the bat, and so today we'll talk our favorite out of The Movies of 1945.

I'd say my batting average for 1945 is decent -- scanning the list of movies out that year I'd probably seen about a quarter of them, although there are several big titles I've yet to see (Noir is a real weak-spot for me). Two of my favorite films of all-time were released this year, but beyond that I had a hard time picking getting my list up to 5 that I fully adore; a list of 4 would've been more honest, but I like the 5th one well enough it's not an absolute cheat. Meanwhile there's one you'd think I'd like better than I do (that'd be Hitchcock's Spellbound, which I've always had mixed feelings about) and there is one movie that I'm sure y'all love (that'd be Blithe Spirit) that I positively cannot stand. (Rex Harrison gives me hives.) All that said onto the list...

My 5 Favorite Movies of 1945

Brief Encounter

(dir. David Lean)

-- released on November 19th 1945 --

Mildred Pierce

(dir. Michael Curtiz)

-- released on October 20th 1945 --

Leave Her To Heaven

(dir. John M Stahl)

-- released on December 25th 1945 --

Christmas in Connecticut

(dir. Peter Godfrey)

-- released on August 11th 1945 --

My Name is Julia Ross 

(dir. Joseph H. Lewis)

-- released on November 27th 1945 --

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Runners-up: Dead of Night (various directors), The Body Snatcher (dir. Robert Wise), The Picture of Dorian Gray (dir. Albert Lewin), Spellbound (dir. Hitchcock), Isle of the Dead (dir. Mark Robson), Rome Open City (dir. Roberto Rossellini), Along Came Jones (dir. Stuart Heisler)

Never seen: The Lost Weekend (dir. Billy Wilder), The Bells of St Mary's (dir. Leo McCarey), Anchors Aweigh (dir. George Sidney), National Velvet (dir. Clarence Brown), The Clock (dir. Vincente Minnelli), Detour (dir. Edgar G. Ulmer), Children of Paradise (dir. Marcel Carné), A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (dir. Elia Kazan), Scarlet Street (dir. Fritz Lang), House of Dracula (dir. Erle C. Kenton) 

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What are your favorite movies of 1945?

Quotes of the Day

"I’m now writing on fire. The Red Sky is the name of the next movie, but I will realize the movie when the pandemic is gone, not before,” revealed the director, who was stricken by COVID-19 earlier this year. “It’s also something to do with love and kissing and homosexual love too. I want to see bodies, and so on. I can’t do it with masks and so I want to do it for real.”

-- That is German director and MNPP Saint Christian Petzold talking about his next project to the NYFF's Dennis Lim (via); Petzold's latest movie Undine is playing at NYFF tonight -- you can watch a trailer here -- and I will be watching it this weekend! I had to rent it like a common person because they weren't giving press screeners, the nerve. But rent it I did because I'm officially a Petzold fanboy after his previous trilogy of films -- Barbara, Phoenix, and Transit. 

Anyway back to the content of that quote -- his next movie is going to be a gay love story! And elsewhere in this chat he also mentions X-rated dreams making their way into his script. And, uhh, this obviously made me wonder if Petzold himself is gay, but he is on the record (in a 2019 interview on Roger Ebert's website) that he is "totally heterosexual" -- and here I feel as if I must include the entire exchange because the whole of it interests me, since it gets into Sirk and Fassbinder and Guadagnino:

You frequently work within melodrama. How do you view that genre in a contemporary context? How do you see its vitality in the 21st century? 

Petzold: At the end of 70s, at the beginning of the 80s, when I started going to cinemas, you have two directions in Germany: the Wim Wenders direction and the Fassbinder direction. For me, as someone who loved American cinema, I was on the Wim Wenders side. It changed some years later. Harun Farocki, his magazine “Filmkritik,” they never talked about Fassbinder. Never. I am really sure it had something to do with his homosexuality because these are men who make the film magazine. They are haters of sexual men. They like police movies and westerns. So they don’t want to talk about the music of George Clinton and the movies by Fassbinder. The melodramatic has always something to do with homosexuality. I don’t know why, perhaps it’s a little strange to say it like this, but, I think, I’ll try it in English: melodramas are filled up with empathy and also they’re very, very sad. They’re telling their stories from a position of empathy and distance at the same moment.

Translator: Artifice, too. The artifice in the feeling. 

Petzold: The artificial! The clothes. The gestures. I saw “Suspiria” five days ago. 

How did you like it? 

Petzold: I like it! I like it! Many people don’t like it, but for me, the dancing scenes are really great. I’m totally heterosexual, I must say. But I’m really sure this position [of being homosexual], you’re a little bit on the outside of society. You have to find your own stages. Through Fassbinder, I saw the movies of Douglas Sirk for the first time in my life, and I thought it was some great cinema. The heterosexuality of Billy Wilder and Edgar Ulmer, they came from the same group. Douglas Sirk and Billy Wilder have made movies together. The melodramas and the crime stories and the hard western stories of the genre movie, they are together for me. This is real cinema. 

Quote of the Day

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"And it hit me then that one of the reasons why some people cling to what has vintage status is not because they like things old or marginally dated, which allows them to feel that their personal time and vintage time are magically in sync; rather it’s because the word vintage is just a figure of speech, a metaphor for saying that so many of us don’t really belong here, not in the present, or the past, or the future, but that all of us seek a life that exists simply elsewhere in time, or elsewhere on-screen, and that, not being able to find it, we have all learned to make do with what life throws our way."

What a glorious, glorious gift I've been gifted with today -- Criterion has begun a new series of essays on their website called "First Person" where they invite writers to discuss some of their most memorable film-going experiences, and their very first entry is Call me By Your Name author Andre Aciman talking about the second time he saw Billy Wilder's film The Apartment, in the early 1980s in NYC, and how it inspired him to go for a long walk around the ever-changing city afterwards. The Apartment is one of my favorite movies (and maybe you've heard me talk about Call Me By Your Name once or twice) -- I've even previously written about looking for The Apartment's locations here in this city, and about their disappearance! Anyway Aciman's piece is lovely and made me tear up, go read it.

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City en Scène #2

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The Apartment (1960)

--- The Emerald Inn at 205 Columbus Ave -- 

This fall I've have been here in NYC for 20 years -- hence this series you're reading right this second! -- and that means some things have changed since I moved here. The one that makes me the saddest is the closing in 2013 of the Emerald Inn, the bar that Billy Wilder and Jack Lemmon immortalized in their 1960 masterpiece. 

The bar itself actually just moved over a few blocks to 250 West 72nd and if you're in the neighborhood I recommend going since there sadly isn't much in the way of old fashioned Irish pubs around there anymore, and I love that sort of thing. But it's not the same. They couldn't pick up that history, that air that Jack Lemmon and Billy Wilder breathed, and move it over several blocks. The original location of 205 Columbus Avenue is a Kate Spade store now -- I'm not saying you should buy several pints at the corner bodega and then go barf in a pricey handbag, but I'm not not...

5 Off My Head: Siri Says 1950

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It's been a few weeks since our last dalliance with the little lady who lives inside of our phone and she's feeling neglected - my bad, baby. So let's see... gimme a number between one and one hundred... and the number is 50. Meaning today we'll give you a list of our favorite top five from The Movies of 1950. This is a year that saw some of the greatest movies of all-time come out and then... a lot of movies that weren't the greatest of all time come out. Oh but I'm sure y'all will let me on to what I'm missing in the comments - there are an awful lot I haven't seen. But for now I give you...

My 5 Favorite Movies of 1950

Sunset Boulevard

(dir. Billy Wilder)

-- released on August 10th 1950 --

Stromboli

(dir. Roberto Rossellini)

-- released on February 15th 1950 --

Rashomon

(dir. Akira Kurosawa)

-- released on December 26th 1950 --
.

Orpheus

(dir. Jean Cocteau)

-- released on November 29th 1950 --
.

All About Eve

(dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz)

-- released on October 27th 1950 --

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Runners-up: Cinderella (dir. Clyde Geronimi),
Harvey (dir. Henry Koster),

Stage Fright (dir. Hitchcock),
Born Yesterday (dir. George Cukor)

Never seen: Annie Get Your Gun (dir. Vincent J. Donehue), Cyrano de Bergerac (dir. Stanley Kramer), The Men (dir. Fred Zinneman), To Please a Lady (dir. Clarence Brown), The Asphalt Jungle (dir. John Huston), Caged! (dir. John Cromwell), Rio Grande (dir. John Ford), La Ronde (dir. Max Ophüls)

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What are your favorite movies of 1950?

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