But last night’s double feature, followed by a Q&A with Tarantino himself, was by far the most anticipated.  Not to sound completely lame and sooo cliche (I am completely lame and sooo cliche but shh) but Pulp Fiction is the reason I went to film school.  I don’t like writing it down or sharing it.  I feel pretty fucking lame about it, but that shit blew my mind when I was finally allowed to see it — I must have been, I dunno, 13 or 14? To this day (that is, to yesterday), despite all my viewings of it on DVD in various stages of stupor, I had never seen it on film, in a theatre full of people.  So the prospect of that was very exciting.

I’m not going to review Pulp Fiction.  I have no desire to and I never have.  I’m sure it has flaws but I don’t see them.  I just like it.

Inglourious Basterds was easily one of the best — if not the best — movies that I saw last year.  It’s epic and funny and creative and beautiful.  I don’t just mean, technically beautiful (which it is) but Diane Kruger and Melanie Laurent are possibly two of the most classically, not quirkily gorgeous women, like, ever.  Maybe that’s not true, but both of them are captivating.

So, between the two screenings (well, actually right after Inglourious Basterds started — I don’t understand how so many people showed up at 6PM and stayed straight through until it ended after 1AM — don’t they have jobs?), a friend and I snuck out to grab a bite at the Pig & Whistle next door to the Egyptian.  No sooner had we ordered a drink from the bitchiest of waitresses (seriously, everyone that works at that place is a cunt, sorry, but it’s true) than Quentin himself walked in, looking lost.  He doesn’t wander though, he walks with purpose.  He was wearing weird dark blue pants, a hoodie with a bright green hood and greed Adidas with no socks.  Basically he looked like a homeless person.  He found the woman he was meeting, a thin blonde with wavy hair and proceeded to drink what looked like a Greyhound (good choice) while she interviewed him.  Maybe 10 minutes later, in walked another familiar looking face who walked over and shook his hand.  It was none other than Max Cherry himself.  It was a surreal Hollywood moment.  Then Max and his wife(?) sat down across from us, my friend grabbed a couple of snapshots and we left to watch the end of the movie.

Max Cherry Decides What To Eat

A Q&A followed at which I think Tarantino was kind of drunk.  I don’t know, it was interesting hearing him talk but I was so fucking exhausted by that point it was kind of like “ummm…ok, I need to go to bed.”  Still, it was slightly more interesting than the other time I had seen him when I just stared at him from across the room at Good Luck Bar.

God, the wheels really fell off of this post at some point didn’t they?  Oh well, at least I wrote.

Dean Martin throws himself into his drunk and shockingly horny persona as lounge singer Dino who ends up stranded in Climax, Nevada on his way home from Vegas. But his misfortune is an opportunity of a lifetime for piano teacher and amateur songwriter Orville (Ray Walston — you will recognize him, but I still can’t figure out from what). With some scheming, Orville friend and lyricist Barney (Cliff Osmond) gets Dino to agree to shack up with Orville for the night. But the plan hits a snag because Orville, an already obsessively jealous husband, doesn’t want Dino and his brand of charm anywhere near his lovely and demure (and utterly devoted) wife, Zelda (Felicia Farr).

So what would you do in this situation? Be forthright? Or trusting? No, no, no. You’re in a Billy Wilder farce, remember? So what you do is go down to the local bar/brothel and pick up the sluttiest (but ultimately sweetest) girl there, Polly the Pistol (Kim Novak). Bring Polly back to your house while Dino is sleeping. Start a huge fight with your wife (on your anniversary!) to the point where she actually LEAVES YOU for at least the night and maybe forever, tell Dino that Polly is your wife and try to get him to seduce her anyway while you play him your songs in the hopes that he’ll buy one.

Believe it or not, the plan does not go off without a hitch. But along the way there are plenty of really dirty jokes, some really fun and catchy tunes and a heart. Kiss Me, Stupid definitely has a real heart with lessons about sex, loyalty, ambition, forgiveness and the triumph of love. No, really.

The Last Picture Show is really beautiful – not just the cinematography which is clean and expressive, but the story and the characters are really made beautiful by their flaws.

There are also lots of boobs.

Something that struck me about the people in this movie is they are all very classic looking.  Even though, yes, that is Jeff Bridges, and that’s Randy Quaid and those are Cybill Shepherd’s tits, so maybe that’s why everything seems so familiar, but everyone in this movie seems to have very classic, timeless features.  They could have come from any decade and still wound up in movies or sprawled on chaises for Impressionists or something like that.

Random notes I made during my viewing:

Jacy (Shepherd) = JC = Jesus Christ?

Jacy has the same hair as Claire Danes in Shopgirl.  Hm.

Tall, Dark, Hottie: Are you a virgin?

Jacy: Guess I am

TDH: Too bad

Jacy: I don’t wanna be though!

TDH: I don’t blame you. Come and see me when you’re not.

Did you want to know what this movie is about?  Basically a shitty town in Texas in the 1950s and there are these 2 guy friends played by Timothy Bottoms and The Dude and both of them really want to fuck Cybill Shepherd, only one of them gets to and the other one has to settle for Cloris Leachman.  There is also a pool hall, a retarded kid, a hooker, a MILF, a naked swimming party, an alleged molestation and a movie theatre that (spoiler in the title!) shuts down eventually.

It’s great.

No, but seriously, this movie is kind of adorable (blackface aside).  Jim (Crosby), Ted (Fred Astaire - who’s IMDB url is 0000001!  cool! And who is also, turns out, an awesome dancer!) and Lila (Virginia Dale) are all starring in a stage show, with lots of singing and dancing.  Jim wants Lila to marry him and move to Connecticut to get out of show business and she keeps saying she will right up until she says “Um, no thanks, I’m going to stay here with Ted.”  So poor Jim goes up to CT all by his lonesome and finds out being a farmer kind of blows.  He decides to turn his farmhouse into an Inn that has stage shows, but is only open on Holidays (get it?  Holiday Inn?).  There is lots of singing and dancing and a hot blonde and some more conniving and threats to marry a millionaire, more dancing, Ted shows up, Ted steals the blonde, takes her to Hollywood, Jim realizes the blonde loves him, but she needs to be wooed so he goes to Hollywood and brings her back to CT and happily ever after.  Then some more singing and some dancing.  Hooray!

Joy House: In English.  More Alain Delon.  Jane Fonda is crazy and super horny.  Some seriously funny parts. 

Jane Fonda to Alain Delon: I like you cause you’re poor!  I’m poor too!

• Meryl Streep is not only a really super great actress, she also is really gorgeous.  And really good at Polish accents.
• The Holocaust was really shitty.
• Peter MacNicol isn’t just that creepy guy from Ghostbusters II who was on Numb3rs and is now on 24.
• Kevin Kline.  Drama Queen.  (I already knew this).

This movie is really good and I’m going to be haunted by the Meryl Streep close up that they use while she is telling her concentration camp story for a long time.  I bet it was really awesome to see in the theatre before you knew the big secret about what ‘Sophie’s choice’ actually was.

Honestly, Up in Smoke was kind of boring. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by the decades of stoner comedies that have come since 1978 but I was just not excited by this movie.

So, “Man” (that’s his character’s name(even though IMDb says his name is Anthony “Man” Stoner), he’s played by Tommy Chong) apparently has really rich parents and we meet him while they are telling him that he has to get a job or he’s going to military school. And I was thinking WTF, they can send him to military school? He’s like 40! Anyway, so he runs away in his VW but it breaks down on PCH and he is picked up by Pedro (Cheech Marin). They smoke a huge joint and sort of go to jail but then they are magically at home again and have to go out searching for weed. They don’t find any, so they come home. They are also in some sort of band with a couple of black guys. Hey, did you know Tommy Chong was white? I don’t think I knew that. I guess because he always looks tan and/or dirty. Then they get ‘deported’ (this is a little funny – Pedro’s family has called INS on themselves so that they can get a free ride to Mexico). In Mexico they meet up with Pedro’s cousin who has a van that needs to be driven back to L.A. except they don’t know that the van is made of pot. So, they drive back to L.A., pick up some skanks and are chased by some inept cops and never suffer any consequences. Oh and they have to get back to L.A. for a battle of the bands at the Roxy. Which they win because the van starts to burn and everyone in the place gets high and for some reason Pedro is wearing a tutu. I think it ends with Pedro getting beer dumped on his crotch.

I think I would have to say, maybe this movie should only be watched when the viewer is preposterously high themselves because, while some of the sight gags elicited a smile, I don’t think I actually laughed through the whole thing. But maybe I would have if I had been high. I should try a second viewing tomorrow around 4:20.

I once read a quote about Audrey Hepburn that said something like “She’s a woman that every woman wants to be like and every man forgets about.” I don’t know who said it and I couldn’t find in anywhere, but I am very curious as to the context of it because I can’t fathom how anyone could forget her.

I just finished watching Two for the Road. I don’t think I’d ever heard of this movie until Netflix told me I might like it. They were totally right. The gist of the plot is: a struggling architect named Mark (a young and strapping Albert Finney) meets a charming choir girl named Joanna (Audrey Hepburn), they get married, have a baby and have lots of problems. Usually while traveling. Wikipedia tells me that the film was considered experimental because the plot is revealed non-linearly “leaving the viewer to extrapolate what has intervened.” I guess I must be jaded by modern movies, because I didn’t think it took a lot of extrapolating.

I did find it particularly interesting how director Stanley Donen (of Singin’ in the Rain fame) used Hepburn’s fashion and hair to help guide the viewer along to which period of the marriage they were in: the youngest Audrey has long hair and skinny mom-jeans (the only woman who has ever looked sexy in skinny mom-jeans is Audrey Hepburn) while the oldest Audrey has a short Posh-style bob (minus the horrendous bleaching). The best parts are in the middle years when Hepburn’s Joanna seems to have had a brief obsession with vinyl. I couldn’t even find a good picture to link to but imagine an entire outfit that is yellow and shiny. Even Audrey couldn’t pull that off. Well, she almost did.

The movie is also very road oriented (hence the title). Mark and Joanna are constantly on the road and the style of the car they are in represents difference phases of their marriage. Though this motif may be the tiniest bit obvious, it does well at making a statement about relationships moving and traveling and changing and all of that. It also makes tense and intimate moments more tense and intimate because when you are traveling along a highway with someone, there’s really no escaping them.

Decidedly a drama, there are many light moments throughout (Benny Hill, anyone?). However, these can also be the most heartbreaking because they are usually overshadowed by a fight in the present where the couple almost or actually does break up. It’s all very dramatic and weepy and I cried buckets. But, spoiler alert, Love Conquers All. Aww.

Even if you completely hate Audrey Hepburn (WHO ARE YOU??) or relationship melodrama, there is also a really awesome party scene where everyone in their mod clothes is dancing. I wish I could describe it. I think at least one couple was doing The Monkey. Anyway, it’s very funny and probably worth fast forwarding to. Or just ask me later and I will show you the dances.