The Michigan Theater's Summer Classic Film Series, sponsored by Bell's, has an amazing line-up of movies over the next few months. You know, the kind of movie that you always meant to see but never got around to seeing. And rightfully so, as you tend to gravitate toward groundbreaking contemporary works like The Hangover II, and maybe Kung Fu Panda. So here's your chance to figure out why everybody quotes The Godfather in a raspy voice, to discover Liz Taylor before she became mega-famous in National Velvet, and finally to see that movie you think you read the Cliff's Notes for at some point, The Grapes of Wrath.
I went and checked out Godard's Breathless last night, and despite some of the amateurish editing and cheesy violence, I thought it was pretty great. And now when I'm at dinner parties, I can constantly drop words like "Godard" and "French New Wave" and pretend that I know what I'm talking about.
I was kind of bummed out by National Velvet because I thought it was a sequel to Blue Velvet.
ReplyDeleteZOMG. Man, I would be bummed, too. I wish David Lynch would do a girl+horse movie. On second thought, after typing that, maybe not.
ReplyDeleteUh, that wasn't amateurish editing, it was ground-breaking editing. Those jump cuts that we see all the time in movies now were completely novel at the time (although it was more accidental than planned for). If you really want to drop some bon mots about Goddard at your next soiree, here's a good background piece: http://bit.ly/lSk1bT
ReplyDeleteAs for the cheesy violence, well, yeah.
Damn, some of those movies are all time favs. Sad I'm not around until August.
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