smilingzipper

Why did I go see this? The only thing subtle about this movie was the fridge in the kid's bedroom, right beside her bed no less. When I first saw that I thought "that's unbelievable, ugh, what a spoiled brat, and what a lousy set decorator" but then later as things unfolded I got the picture loud and clear - ah ha! - and I became quite enamoured with the fridge.

I liked the mom/daughter thing above anything else in the movie, not enough of that these days and those were my favourite parts in the movie. So if I were the KING OF HOLLYWOOD I would have decreed the script to include more of that mom/kid stuff (I'm a sentimentalist, why not?)and exclude...if I had a bottle or 2 of white out handy I'd blot out the villains, dab a few drops on the whole panic room idea itself. OK, maybe not get rid of it altogether, I'd keep it as the focus but shrink it down to something more compact...how about "Panic Refrigerator" (did I tell you that I thought the kid's fridge was a nice touch? The kid has a fridge in her bedroom, mom has a panic room, hmmm...anyone care enough about this movie to take this further?) I'd change the three robbers into a trio of Japanese concert pianists who sleepwalked into rich people's fridges to dip their fingers into tubs of cavier and whatnot the night before the big recital because this was their way of purging themselves of their pre-concert panic and post-concert anxiety over reviews. Critics these day can be so brutal y'know...whoops, that would have made this into a more interesting film, my mistake.

David Fincher made Aliens 3 so maybe he wanted to do HOME ALONE 3 or something, because the girl does look like Macaulay Culkin (well maybe only for that scene where she raised her hands to her ears to block out a loud noise) but casting dept definitely should have gotten Joe Pesci to play one of the robbers. It would have been hilarious if it were Pesci who got his hand stuck in the door. I'd be rolling in the aisles to this day as they say. Bring in the Home Alone gang I say, bring in stunt co-ordinators too, to make the action sequences more like gags, more zany. Poke-you-in-the-eyes-if-I-don't-punch-you-in-the-belly. That kind of thing is pure gold. Keep it simple, smartguy.

I try to watch movies differently from other people. I will rate them good or bad like everyone else but for me that is probably the least important reason to watch a movie. I'll say that that sucked or that was awesome but I don't stop there.

Recently I am increasing unable to watch a movie as a thing in itself.

Watching Mulholland drive is like gazing hypnotically at contents overflowing the container or the container imploding into the contents - in either case your willpower is trying to stuff everything back in but nothing ever goes back to the way it was. You wind up with a movie that has a different ending and beginning everytime because the middle self-destructs. Is that what happens? I don't know, I haven't watched every movie that has ever been made in the world, but in Mulholland Drive I have watched a movie that unmakes itself and is therefore constantly reinventing itself into anything, even becoming something contrary to what it started out being, there are a multitude of Mulhollands.

Well, originally I wanted to make something like:

Mulholland Drive made me think of Crime Wave - which I recommend you look up if you like Lynch's films - because that is where I think Lynch got the idea for that scene with the cowboy.

But, ach, I don't watch movies anymore, it's all ONE BIG MOVIE to me with a million directors and the credits fill up a multilingual telephone book, everybody in the book working on the same film.

I only saw this movie once on CBC years ago so it's fuzzy, but the scene with the cowboy and the main character has stuck with me because it has the kind of creepiness that leaves the mouth dry.

Okay, Lynch may not have "ripped" the scene from this movie but when I saw the scene in Mulholland Drive with the cowboy I only took me a fraction of a second to drag out this little scene from Crime Wave which was lost somewhere in my memory banks. I think this is a good thing, because how else could I have reclaimed my interest in Piazs' film, introducing it to you now and maybe even getting you to be interested in it too?

Both scenes have similar settings, a failing light from above, and both involve a meeting with a menacing character in a cowboy hat. When I saw Mulholland Dr. I just KNEW Lynch had to have seen this movie too.

Anyways, you all inspire me: Maddin, Paizs, Lynch, Georges Melies, Miranda July, Godard...