Major Dundee (1965).

Although I'd have paid folding money to see Sam Peckinpah's CROCODILE DUNDEE. And I think I'm not alone on that one.

Just watched The Iron Giant finally.

Brad Bird can completely and totally have my babies. Or vice versa. I'm flexible.

JZ and I saw Sin City tonight. She was disturbed that I was laughing as one of the bad guys came to his gory and gibbety end. She thought the movie's world was sorrowful.

I had to leave the theater during the torture scene in Reservoir Dogs. Nothing in this movie (which had scenes which were far more gruesome but far less humanly scaled) even tweaked me mildly.

First of all let me note that his movie is not Noir. This movie is a big Catholic passion play. It's a meditation on how much fleshly suffering you are willing to endure to be good. And not good in the eyes of the world, but to die justified. That is not Noir. Noir is Calvinist, fated. You don't die redeemed. You die because you fucked the wrong girl. You die because you made some stupid little half-assed mistake.

How many wounds to the male genitals were there in this movie? Six or seven at least. Because dicks are evil. Again...Catholic. Wounding the flesh again and again.

Anyway, it was gorgeous and fancifully badass. Bruce Willis is right about at the point where people are going to look at the whole of his career and start talking about him the way they talk about Harrison Ford. Except Willis is a better actor. But he's got that kind of resume now.

Big long Hitchhiker's article from the Guardian.

Uh-oh. If they think the existing H2G2 fandom is enough to sustain a Hollywood movie, as that piece implies, they're fucked.

Yes. This:

Best of all, the film stays true to the essential spirit of Adams' writing - almost to a fault. With its whimsical musings, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a sci-fi blockbuster only insofar that Slaughterhouse Five might be described as a sci-fi novel, or Citizen Kane as a film about newspapers. It left me wondering what today's all-important youth demographic will make of it.

...doesn't necessarily bode too well.

The previews I saw was that I fear they're going to replace the drollness and dry absurdity of the book with stuff that's more slapstick. Not that there isn't some elements of broad humor there, but it's the smart humor that made me fall in love with the book.

Also, too many American actors.

(I had never heard of Major Dundee before it came up in this thread.)

I had to leave the theater during the torture scene in Reservoir Dogs. Nothing in this movie (which had scenes which were far more gruesome but far less humanly scaled) even tweaked me mildly.

I didn't get grossed out in that way, but I had to leave the theater about 3/4 of the way through the Marv saga. He just disturbed me and I couldn't watch the character any longer. (The only other movie character I've reacted to this way was the drug dealer in The Rules of Attraction.)

Which probably means Mickey Rourke did a really good job.

Bruce Willis is right about at the point where people are going to look at the whole of his career and start talking about him the way they talk about Harrison Ford.

I would love to think that, but I suspect Bruced Willis is always going to have the "started on TV/married Demi Moore" stigma attached to him, which will make people think of him as a lightweight until he's, like, 70 and due for an honorary Oscar.

Also, re: Hitchhiker's Guide -- I don't know what their budget was, but judging by the trailers it doesn't look like they spent a fortune on the thing. It'll probably appeal to the people who saw Galaxy Quest, and that didn't do too badly, did it?

Fans of '30s screwball comedy -- wanted to bring your attention to what may be the most unjustly forgotten comedy of the era -- It's Love I'm After.

Leslie Howard and Bette Davis play Shakespearean actors who loathe each other when they're not planning to marry each other. Olivia deHavilland plays a young woman who becomes infatuated with Howard after seeing him on the stage. deHavilland's fiance, who just happens to know Howard from some time back (his father helped out Howard financially when Howard needed it desperately), invites Howard to a weekend house party at the home of deHavilland's parents -- so Howard can act like a cad and disillusion deHavilland. Comedy ensues.

I first saw this on TV back in the '80s and have long cherished memories of it. I TiVo'd it from TCM the other day and, while I haven't finished it yet, so far it's as good as I remember it. Davis throws some of the best tantrums this side of Jean Harlow. Howard nails the ham actor part brilliantly, and takes much of his dialogue from Shakespeare's plays (yes, Angel fans, including "Angels and ministers of grace defend us"). deHavilland is delightful as the ingenue. Eric Blore provides some great moments as Howard's dresser and partner-in-mischief. With the added bonuses of Spring Byington (as deHavilland's aunt) and Patric Knowles (as the fiance).