Wesley: And how does your kind define love? Demon: Same as all bodies. Same as everywheres. Love is sacrifice.

'The Girl in Question'


Buffista Movies 5: Development Hell  

A place to talk about movies--old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.


Hayden - Sep 15, 2006 9:13:09 am PDT #4257 of 10001
aka "The artist formerly known as Corwood Industries."

What do the French call all other kinds of kissing? Freedom kissing?


JZ - Sep 15, 2006 9:15:42 am PDT #4258 of 10001
See? I gave everybody here an opportunity to tell me what a bad person I am and nobody did, because I fuckin' rule.

What do the French call all other kinds of kissing?

Bother that; I want to know what the French call French kissing. (Tangentially, I once asked my grandmother what Greeks say when they want to say "It's Greek to me;" turns out the answer is "By me it's Chinese.")


Sue - Sep 15, 2006 9:16:30 am PDT #4259 of 10001
hip deep in pie

French Kissing was really invented in Belgium.


erikaj - Sep 15, 2006 9:17:57 am PDT #4260 of 10001
Always Anti-fascist!

I had to laugh at the queue description, but I don't think I'm that bad about it. My queue is kind of schizy, though. I'm thinking it would be less revealing about me and more "Who the fuck were we chasing?" I'd see the Black Dahlia...pretend you're surprised. Yeah, I've always wondered if it was, say, French kissing and English kissing.


megan walker - Sep 15, 2006 9:19:55 am PDT #4261 of 10001
"What kind of magical sunshine and lollipop world do you live in? Because you need to be medicated."-SFist

Given that the same verb is used for kissing and fucking, do you think they bothered with what's in the middle?


Scrappy - Sep 15, 2006 9:34:33 am PDT #4262 of 10001
Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

Sacre bleu, I hope so. The middle is some of my favorite stuff.


Kathy A - Sep 15, 2006 9:38:37 am PDT #4263 of 10001
We're very stretchy. - Connie Neil

The Flick Filosopher has a rather negative review of Black Dahlia that is well-written in her usual clever way. (Read her review of Memento for more clever reviewing.) I like the end:

I could see that he might have the right moves, that he had a spark of something classy and classic in this De Palma disaster, too, but he just wasn’t man enough yet to finagle the disaster around to his own benefit. This Hartnett kid, he let himself play the victim, walked right into a slaughterhouse of bad, seduced by the De Palma name, maybe, did okay for a bit before the knives came out at the laugh riot of the ending -- where the shouting ramps up even more and De Palma goes nuts -- and he got chewed up and spit out...

He stared at me like the white light coming out of a projector with the tail end of celluloid on the reel flapping around.

“Okay, look: you know that dead Dahlia girl?” I said.

“Sure,” he said.

“You get how it’s supposed to be sad that she was so desperate for fame and fortune that she’d do anything?” I said.

“Sure,” he said. And then the paparazzi bulb flashed over his head. “Oh.”

I waived my fee. He seemed like a nice kid. But I made him buy me another popcorn on the way out.


Nutty - Sep 15, 2006 9:54:30 am PDT #4264 of 10001
"Mister Spock is on his fanny, sir. Reports heavy damage."

Bob le Flambeur is very enjoyable. Le Samourai is colder and more severe, but beautiful in its way and a fascinating late noir.

I've seen both of these, and found Le Samourai to be visually interesting, and an historical document on Asian influences in western film, but ultimately it's a big pile of stylish nonsense. Pretty nonsense, but.

(If you want hot Alain Delon, where he actually speaks more than 3 lines of dialogue, go see Purple Noon -- in French, it was called Plein Soleil, but I am pretty sure that neither of those words is "purple" -- it is an early adaptation of i The Talented Mr. Ripley, of all things, adapted to a very French worldview.)

Bob le Flambeur is a little less ridiculously in love with itself, and it's got a sense of play (and a great sense of postwar Paris), and has the enthusiasm of amateurism on its side.


Hayden - Sep 15, 2006 9:55:46 am PDT #4265 of 10001
aka "The artist formerly known as Corwood Industries."

Upon checking my Netflix queue, I can assure y'all that there is one French film in my top ten (Band of Outsiders, which my wife has inexplicably never seen), another in the next ten (Rififi, same reason), another in the 20-30 range, two in the 30-40 range, three in the 40-50 range, and that's as far as I ever organize the list. I suspect that one of the problems with the Slate article is that the joker who wrote it doesn't have great taste. Why else would he consider Deliverance a movie unworthy of a good rating? Or balk at the equivalence of Casablanca and Chicken Run, both of which seem to be similar in scope and seriousness (albeit, the former has a better reputation, but we're talking a five-point rating system, so there's not much room for nuance)?


Hayden - Sep 15, 2006 9:57:25 am PDT #4266 of 10001
aka "The artist formerly known as Corwood Industries."

I've seen both of these, and found Le Samourai to be visually interesting, and an historical document on Asian influences in western film, but ultimately it's a big pile of stylish nonsense. Pretty nonsense, but.

Yeah, definitely. A lot of the images stick with me, but the plot itself has long since evaporated from my brain.