'A Christmas Story'

I'm watching it as I type.

I'm not going to pretend I'm something that I'm not: I enjoy a good film, but I am a low-down sucker for Christmas movies.

Ridicule all you want. But I'll start plugging in DVDs and watching TV specials right after Thanksgiving and re-watch until the day after Christmas.

"A Christmas Story" is one of my top 15 or so movies of all time, personally. The writing is impeccable. Darren McGavin and Melinda Dillon give underrated performances. The way they shot it with the 1940s "soft" filter just tops it off.

I first watched it when I was nine or so. My Aunt Linda -- who died about a year or so ago -- was in town for Christmas, staying with us, and realizing I had never seen it thought I should and rented it. I enjoyed it, but it probably took another eight or so years before I would watch it again, when TBS plays it 24 hours straight around Christmas Day.

Since, I've probably watched it no less than 100 times. Probably closer to 150 times. That's a good estimate.

Each time, however, I see something new. Some detail like a facial expression, costume, the way a character delivers a line. I also try to nail down the exact year the film is set in. It's clearly the 1940s, but it has to be post-1945 because there would have to be allusions to the war.

Basically, we're chronicling a low- to middle-class family in a smallish city in the Midwest after the nation trudged through the Depression and through a war that basically changed the world.

It's interesting to me to think about these things: Placing a fictional story within some real historical context.

'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'

What was it with filmmakers in the 1950s and their inability to craft a reasonably good science fiction movie?

I got bored about 15 minutes into this movie and it's just the same for "The Day the Earth Stood Still." Just boring, boring, boring.

They're not scary in the least, not disturbing or grotesque. In any art form, there's never been a greater difference of quality between 1950s sci-fi and modern sci-fi. It's night and day. Beatles records still hold up. Paintings from the '50s don't get worse with time.

These sci-fi attempts just stink.

Fun fact: Reading up about this film, many people adopt a theme of socialist paranoia and how it was enveloping the nation due to McCarthyism and whatnot. Producer Walter Mirisch later wrote that any communist sub-themes were all incidental and that there was no intention of taking on such a hot-button issue. Rightfully so.

'Bandwagonesque'

Even as a young fan of rock music, I never took Teenage Fanclub seriously. And why should I? Even at 12 or 13 I realized they didn't even take themselves or the music seriously.

Which, in hindsight, is rather refreshing considering how damn seriously, say, Kurt Cobain took everything.

Even so, the idea of "selling out" was a new idea to me at the time. I thought artists were signed or paid to do their skill because they were good and no matter what kind music or direction they took was just a natural flow from one album (painting, book, film) to another.

Older and wiser, I realize that money talks.

However, this separates the men from the boys. I really don't know how interested Nirvana was in doing the "Unplugged" album and I would bet that it was more of a commercial decision than an artistic one. However, what did they do? Oh, just drugg up a Bowie tune, a couple of Meat Puppets and a Leadbelly tune and just rewrote how bands looked at their songs. It's a magnificent album, Nirvana lost zero cred and Courtney Love is making tons of money off of it.

Teenage Fanclub wasn't telling anyone with any brains anything different than what they already knew or would know. However, you don't have to be all smarmy about it.

'Nine Queens'

Quite a while back I commented on a filmmaker's relative inability to completely throw a savvy, well-watched movie fan off the scent for a big twist in the plot.

This goes back to my synopsis of "The Usual Suspects" when in the first 30 minutes I knew that Kevin Spacey was the big bad guy.

Maybe foreign directors have a leg up in stumping American movie fans. "Nine Queens" got me. Kinda.

I knew the twist was coming. Even when you think the twist was played out, I knew there was something amiss and I kept waiting, but I never figured it out. Maybe smarter people would've figured it out faster.

This is an incredibly smart action/thriller and if you can stand the subtitles it's better than any "Ocean's 11" or any of those spy/crime things Americans eat up with regularity.

'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre'

A really interesting film only because of the plot twist in which the man we'd most like to root for (Bogie) turns out to be a total prick. Not only does the audience turn, but so do the people in the film.

And although they don't necessarily win (say, get the gold), they definitely do not follow in Bogie's footsteps in terms of, you know, dying.

I can't imagine another film like this. Often, the bad guy wins and that's OK. But never does everyone not win and hardly is the audience's allegiance yanked around like a rag doll.

In general, I could take or leave this film.

'Pearl'

It's interesting listening to two Janis Joplin-led albums (this one and "Cheap Thrills") because she basically based her career with bands that just wanted to jam all the time.

Therefore, one of the premiere, unique and identifiable voices in rock history generally associated herself with bands that didn't want any singing in the first place.

Or maybe she knew she couldn't sing (she couldn't) and hooked up with jam bands on purpose.

On the whole, Joplin is pretty unlistenable. No doubt she has appeal but I would want someone to explain that appeal to me. I guess for many, Joplin is as independent as they'll ever get. It's raw, dirty, dissonant, unpolished and rusty in the same way as an early White Stripes album.

'Haxan' & 'Rosemary's Baby'

So, are witches real?

On one hand, you'd think I would know a witch. Like a witch from Hogwarts. By the way, in "The Goblet of Fire," Hogwarts has the British Isles witches. And the French girl's school visits along with the school of boys from Eastern Europe.

Where is the American school? African? Asian? South American? I would think the American delegation would've given the French and British a good run for their money.

However, I digress.

At some point, if witches were indeed real, I would have met one. I knew some Wiccans in college, but to my knowledge they're not witches. Not even close.

The thing is, there are so many references in various pieces of pop cultures, at some point it becomes feasible in my brain. I don't doubt witches don't exist, I just don't know any and at 29 years old, you'd think I would have.

"Rosemary's Baby" is creeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeppppppppyyyyyyy.

'White Heat'

I've been fascinated with a certain archetype in film, TV and books, but I've never been able to define it.

I think of James Cagney's characters from "Public Enemy" and "White Heat." Or Tony Soprano, Joe Pesci's "Tommy" from Goodfellas.

Unironically, "White Heat" was a common pop culture reference on HBO's "The Sopranos," as it was referred to as Tony's favorite film. Appropriate since Cagney's character and Soprano had a lot of similarities including the nutty mother and the scheming partners in crime.

In a biography of music producer Phil Spector, author Mick Brown quoted critic Kenneth Tynan in regards to a type of person that fits this description: The Imposer.

Tynan defines these individuals as "One about whom one worriesw whether his repsone to one's next remark will be a smile or snarl."

Perfect.

I watch these films and TV shows just waiting for them to explode. Their fuses are perpetually lit and ready to blow due to years of always looking for the bullet in the back of the head or generally being crapped on their entire lives.

Poor Cagney. So old and fat at this point. Almost looks like a different person than the energetic and happy George Cohan from "Yankee Doodle Dandy," filmed just seven years earlier.

'The Seventh Seal'

A mesmerizing film. Haunting and memorable. I can't find any better adjectives for a film.

Ingmar Bergman is a superior director and storyteller. I really can't say enough about this film. It's so good that I'm apt to purchase it at some point.

I would if I wasn't so scared to death of death. It's probably my biggest insecurity and I really can't imagine getting over it any time soon.

Often, while trying to sleep, I lay in the dark and think about death, eternity and it drives me nuts. Really. If I'm in a asylum in 20 years, that's why. I try to wrap my small brain around the idea of God, eternity and death (which could happen at any moment and it's so unfair that life should end just whenever). It's really maddening. I can't explain it. I don't know why I do it. I grew up learning about God and eternity, but the biggest question I ever had was why dinosaurs weren't included in the Bible. A question that was never properly explained, still, it didn't shake my faith.

Damn Bergman for that haunting shot, hundreds of yards away, of the company doing "death's dance."

Anyway, I might not buy "The Seventh Seal" after all.

'Yankee Doodle Dandy'

I like that the real George Cohan -- portrayed by James Cagney -- watched the film and called it a good movie, but asked who it was about.

That's what drives me crazy about modern "historical" films like the Disney films that try to replicate some experience of some apparently fantastic person that overcame something. Everything based on a true story of course.

It's the "based" that skews everything. That basically tells me that writers got a hold of someone's story and wrote some dramatic version in order to sell tickets and DVDs.

"Yankee Doodle Dandy" is actually a really good film no matter if writers and directors change things to make it something that it isn't.

Cagney alone is worth the price of admission. What a fucking talent. Known as the rough criminal gangster, the guy was a terrific dancer and a sparkling personality.

'Umberto D'

A cute little movie. If you want to delve into modern European film, "Umberto D" is a great place to start.

It's short and extremely easy to sink your teeth into. Very well acted, an accessible story and a cute dog.

Watch "Umberto D" and then attack Fellini, Bergman, Lang and Godard.

'Yi Yi'

This movie is three long hours and I frankly don't remember a minutes. I typically don't mind subtitles. I actually enjoy them more than not.

However, three hours of subtitles with a going-nowhere plot, inane conversations and a bunch of characters that do not require any buy-in nor do they deserve any real investment from the viewer.

If I was Taiwanese, this would probably be my "Godfather."

'All Quiet on the Western Front'

Can you believe we used to fight wars like that? That was just a little under 100 years ago. In a civilized land.

Horses? Clubs? Bayonets? Trenches?

How ineffective and inefficient!

Not that war today is anymore awesome and not that wars still aren't waged with such barbaric weapons as gas, chemicals, machetes and land mines. They are. What movies like this just reinforce time and again -- no matter what century -- is war, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing.

Speaking of the trenches, how were they dug? Was war enacted and people from that country went as far east as they could and started digging? If they had used their resources for, say, fighting instead of digging trenches, would we look at this war differently?

And how do you remain a head of state during this travesty and think, "Hey! I think things are going pretty well!"? Clueless.