Flotsam & Jestsam XIV
After getting the lovely new Kubrick box set with all the lovely new documentaries and commentaries, I stumbled across this entertaining film discussion programme from I’m guessing 1971, the year that ‘A Clockwork Orange’ was released. Watching Anthony Burgess and Malcolm McDowell smoke like troopers is quite amusing, as is the host William Everson’s observation that the soundtrack and nadsat language (which for some elusive reason makes me think about lolcats language now) give the film a timeless quality which will ‘make it stand up to viewings in say, the year 2000.’ 2000 was the year that the film was re-released in the UK, oooooh, spooky eh? No, er, well OK, moving on…
EDIT – Looks like I missed a trick here, this week was the 40th anniversary of the release of 2001 and here is a nice link to all sorts of stuff about it. Enjoy.
I’ve caught a few of the old Marx Brothers movies recently, the less famous ones such as ‘Horse Feathers’ as opposed to ‘A Day at the Races’ or ‘A Night At The Opera’ which I all caught years ago. My favourite repeated sequence that they included in most of their films were the brief musical interludes, specifically Chico playing the piano which never fails to delight, as well as Groucho’s wisecracks of course.
Lying in bed, plagued by my perennial insomnia recently my mind turned to inappropriate film double bills, prompted by a recent discussion on the Mark Kermode Radio 5 film podcast and a conversation I had with my brother’s girlfriend. She explained that when she was a teenager and had sleepovers with her friends, one of the rules was that you had to watch a ‘girly’ film and a ‘scary’ film. ‘Ah, you mean like ‘Dirty Dancing‘ and ‘Make Them Die Slowly?’ I enquired. Or ‘Ghost‘ and ‘SS Experimentation Camp‘? my brother chipped in. London cinema legend ‘The Scala‘ apparently used to host amusing double bills for the pleasure of the dubious patrons and residents of Kings Cross so I thought what would I suggest curating were I in the enviable position of managing my own independent and financially secure cinema. So here goes:
Can you think of any more?
Well, good question – what did happen to John Hughes? Anyone growing up in the eighties loves at least one of his teenage epics. I will always remember one Christmas at school when our entire year was filed into the Assembly Hall and shown ‘Ferris Buller’s Day Off’ which on reflection is a ridiculous thing to do – hey, let’s show kids how cool it is to ditch school and skive off? I reckon it was a way to get all the kids together whilst the teachers had their own Christmas ‘party’ in the staff room whilst a couple of teachers who took the short straw had to chaperone us. I’m sure Mr. Bardrick was uncharacteristically friendly when he passed me at the school gates later on and he was weaving from side to side on the pavement – strange…..
One of my all time favourite film makers is the great John Carpenter. He is probably more responsible for my love of cinema than anyone else (Kubrick included) as I’m sure he was the first director I actually recognised as having a identifiable style which lead to me actively seek out his other films. I think the first video I ever bought was either ‘Escape from New York’ (check out the deleted opening sequence here) or ‘The Fog‘ (Spoliers) and I recall very clearly the very first DVD I got – ‘The Thing‘ (Spoliers again) which had that most remarkable of things, a directors commentary. It’s a shame he quite honestly lost the plot after ‘They Live‘ although I can actually see qualities I like in ‘In The Mouth of Madness‘ and at the very strong risk to any credability I may have acquired over the past 18 months, ‘Escape from LA‘. I did have a reason to bang on about Carpenter but you know what – I’m fucked if I can remember what is was. Oh well, sweet dreams….
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