Joly Good Show!

Smokler on August 27, 2002

The first screening of my new monthly film series, Monday Night at (S)Moklers, went off like gang busters. The film I choose, 1961’s The Misfits, which Clark Gable and Marylin Monroe both starred in right before they died, may have landed like a led balloon but the company (Laura, Kristin, Wendy, Jane, Scott, and Joe) was exquisite.

Just the first five minutes…

Smokler on August 17, 2002

Anyone know a way to download movie trailers and save them on your hard drive? I’d like to have my favorite trailers (yes, I have favorites. Quit giggling) saved somewhere for posterity.

Let me know.

Ira, as you never seen him before…

Smokler on August 15, 2002

My favorite public radio program, This American Life, has signed a two-year “first look” deal with Warner Bros. Pictures. This means that Warners gets the first shot at adopting TAL stories into film.

That faint whiff of snobbery in the air says that a public radio program should not be climbing into bed with the world’s largest media conglomerate. Bollocks to that. WB isn’t dictating the content of This American’s Life’s program nor does the show (one of public radio’s most successful) need this deal to stay afloat. Plus, perhaps this means the show doesn’t need to fundraise to the extent it has which frees up grant money for other deserving parties.

Does this mean that shows ostensibly “in the public interest” will now start targetting their content towards mass market consumption? Unlikely. What Warner Bros wants from TAL is great stories. What I’ve always liked about the show is it’s dedication to non-topical narrative instead a humorless, slavish interest in “important news.” And really, who is interested in a movie about corporate accounting reform (via Travelin’ Dave)?

Null Set:

Smokler on August 5, 2002

Met Christopher Null, founder of Film Critic.com for coffee today. We’d been trying to set something up for a few days now after Mighty Girl Maggie told him to get in touch with me about his first book, Half Mast. I’m going to give it a read and see if I can do a few reviews for his site. Insert “Full Circle” graphic here. My very first review gig was as a 15 year-old intern for the Ann Arbor News. The movie was Pump Up the Volume which I believe I called “Whitmanesque.” That makes no more sense to me now than it did then.

Back to the Screen:

Smokler on July 5, 2002

After hearing Roger Ebert pitch his new book, The Great Movies on City Arts & Lectures, I’ve decided I must make it mine, even though it’s still in hardcover. It’s a collection of the essays Ebert has been doing bi-monthly for the Chicago Sun-Times, re-examining Great Movies of the past. It’s not a Great Movies of All Time list per se but more movies that have moved Ebert significantly over his 30 year career and giving them another look.

There’s also a mission at work here: Ebert claims that, with the demise of late shows on TV, repatory movie theatres and the proliferation of Blockbuster Video, many young film fans think cinematic history began with Star Wars. A valid point perhaps, but it also discounts the growing influence of DVDs and Netflix and the boon I believe obsessing over the minutae of film will be for classic cinema, the success of Turner Classic Movies and American Movie Classics on cable TV and, as uninspired as they are, the extent to which those AFI Top 100 lists have movie fans making lists of movies they “should see.”

In the end, really, Roger Eberts is just another advocate, albeit a powerful one, for concerted, intelligent, arms-wide-open movie-watching. And I’m all about that. So on my wall his list goes, along with several others.

I have a lot of watching to do. And I couldn’t be happier about it.

OUT NOW: Break The Frame: Conversations with Women Filmmakers
LEARN MORE
NOW AVAILABLE
Learn more