Category: Cinematically Speaking…

Preserve Me a Seat (2005): "The Old Fashioned movie house, as a talisman of another, must somehow justify its existence beyond nostalgia and memory."

Notes: This lovely little documentary is about the old fashioned movie house and its gradual extinction across the American landscape. I read about it on Cinema Treasures devoted to such things.

Perhaps you were lucky enough to grow up in a community with an old fashioned movie palace as I was. To me these places are holy ground, where the movies grow up and planted themselves in our shared consciousness.

So few are left but the places I’ve lived have been fortunate enough to maintain theirs. I consider myself very lucky in this regard.

Miracle on 34th St. (1947): "Belief in the goodness of others is a sign of courage, not fear."

Seen: As part of Smokler’s Sunday Cinema’s holiday addition.

The TV Set (2006): "Movies about projects should not have projects more interesting than the characters working on the project."

American Gangster (2007): "The American Dream does not distinguish between honest work and ill-gotten gains."

Seen: At the incomperable Grand Lake Theater on a beautiful Friday afternoon.

This recent interview with film director Julian Temple has me convinced I must see Absolute Beginners, a 1986-musical about youth culture in 1950s London. It’s been compared to Streets of Fire in its size, nostalgia and lousy box office take.

Which means I should have rented it. Yesterday.

Blood In, Blood Out (1993): "It is rarely a good sign when the Wikipedia entry for a movie is more compelling than the movie itself."

Notes: A classic case of eyes bigger than stomach. An over-three hour biography of 3 friends from East Los Angeles in the 1970s and the prison gang warfare of the period, where apparently, racially identified squadrons of convicts waged bloody mayhem throughout California correctional facilities to gain control of the system’s drug trade. Although BIBO claims the conflict is over (which I believe to a certain extent), the 2004 New Yorker profile of Aryan Brotherhood, tells me it has simply changed form. The FBI estimates that also Aryan Brotherhood makes up less than 1% of the prison population, it’s responsible for 26% of the murders in prison.

I’m fascinated by the topic and didn’t realize how emblematic the war was of the chaos of the era. American Me, a much better movie about the period, focuses on the Mexican Mafia and the historical links between the Zoot Suit Riots, the gang’s formation and the identity of the East Los Angeles community. In the east, the early 1970s was the time of the Attica Prison Riots, one of the darkest incidents in American law enforcement.

I don’t know the history well enough to say but I wonder if the modern prison reform movement came out of this messy time. It’s got me thinking, which I suppose makes Blood In, Blood Out a useful if sloppy,  movie, a great topic handled with thumbs instead of care.

Dan in Real Life (2007): "Family is a shifting idea that nonetheless never leaves you"

Notes: I was all set to hate this as Steve Carell isn’t one of my favorites. A good review on Ebert & Roeper and favorably short running time convinced me otherwise. Really a sweat little film about family and moving on. I liked it a lot.

Prom Night in Kansas City (2002): "Proms are the first institutionalized attempts we get in live to mythologize ourselves."

Notes: Documentary about a Kansas City filmmaker who returns to her hometown and follow a roup of high school students as they prepare for their proms. Short but well executed and exquisitely researched (who knew the prom was created as a Debutante Ball for the common folk?). Accomplishes a lot in 60 minutes.

The New York Times’s Holiday Movie guide got me thinking:

I haven’t seen nearly enough movies in the theater, nearly often enough.

So I’ve got half a mind to see a movie every day in the month of December. Crazy, perhaps, but I just might.

This is the trailer for the movie Vantage Point, in theaters February 15. The screenwriter is Barry L. Levy, a close friend of mine from high school whom I am amazingly proud of.