I just watched The Machinist. Nobody told me Michael Ironside was in it! I enjoyed it up until the point when I realized that I wasn't supposed to know what was going on. I thought they were being obvious deliberately. So then it was annoying, because they were explaining and revealing and I was all, "Dude, I know already." Overall it was disappointing.

Prairie Home Companion was sold out last night. Good for Altman & Co., but bad for us, as we had to settle for Click.

Don't anyone else make that mistake. Really not funny (except for Christopher Walken who seems to be having a blast).

I watched Hoodwinked today. Cute little movie, and pretty clever with the old Rashomon business (you get the basic "Little Red Riding Hood" plot from four different perspectives). It's peppered with lots of really funny jokes. Aside from that, though, it's nothing special. After the stories are over, it becomes kind of typical, and the attempts to be a serious story about character development don't fit in with the general sensibility of the humor. They should have just gone all-out parodic. As much as I think Shrek is overrated, it walked that line better.

Huh. I saw Hoodwinked on the plane recently, and as I hadn't heard of it I didn't bother turning the sound on...so I probably missed the jokes, as it looked pretty much like an old Looney Tunes sequence. The weird combination of Bavaria and the Olde West made my head hurt (but that may have just been a factor of way too many plane trips).

And I had no idea who Anne Hathaway was (except Shakespeare's wife), so now when I see the clips from The Devil Wears Prada I keep trying to map the Little Red Riding Hood avatar onto her.

We watched The Unknown last night. It's a silent about an armless knifethrower (yes, you read that correctly) played by Lon Chaney who is in love with a sweet young thing played by Joan Crawford. Directed by Tod Browning of Freaks fame. It was disturbing and brilliant. Next up is another Chaney/Browning production called London After Midnight.

We watched The Unknown last night.

It is disturbing and brilliant isn't it? There's a great book about the Browning/Chaney collaborations (and other early, pre-code horror) called The Horror Show by David Skaal that I love a lot, and highly recommend. Browning was a fascinating character who worked the carnies before he got into film, including doing a Buried Alive act. Skaal goes into the weird psychosexual masochism of Chaney's performances, and what a huge box office star he was (equal to Fairbanks and Chaplin).

Chaney is a really great fucking actor. I'd seen Phantom of the Opera but his performance in that one is kind of over the top. Don't get me wrong - I love the movie. It's just that I got more of a sense of him as an actor in The Unknown. I'll have to check out that book. Chaney has definitely drawn me in.

Oop, it's actually called The Monster Show by David Skal

First sentence: "Tod Browning lay in his grave, eating malted milk balls."

Tod Browning is a hero to my people. I wonder what he would think of that.

I wonder what he would think of that.

He'd dig it. He was all Crip Power! before that was a notion.