Coincidentally to the list, I have The Parallax View out from Netflix. I just watched it, and can duly report that it's murky, abrupt, and completely ridiculous. I suspect deeply that it would have gotten a much more favorable review from people to whom Watergate was a life-changing event; it requires that you not have a skeptical bone in your body.

Also, wow have airline rules changed. Not only does some Evil Dude put a bomb into checked luggage without (a) it being inspected or (b) getting on the plane himself, but Our Hero just runs right on out to the tarmac, gets on the plane, and buys his one-way ticket from the stewardess. No kidding. In cash. After the airplane has taken off. She asks him his name, but not for ID.

Hello!!

Well, I didn't propose that because JZ's anecdote seemed to suggest that he didn't make it in good faith. Though, in saying that, I gave what JZ said a fairly ill reading and I shouldn't have suggested that Huston was either obtuse or subversive (in the ways I outlined) since he seemed to be only inconsistent.

I think Huston's motive was what Sean said; he was very aware of the text and the author and what she was aiming at, and despite his fundamental disagreement with her he liked the story, the characters, the dry Southern snark of the whole thing, and he wanted to try that intellectual exercise. He just felt, looking back, that he'd had some baggage he hadn't been willing to acknowledge at the time, that got in the way between him and the text.

Of the list, I've seen Millions, Save the Last Dance and Robin Hood. I enjoyed StLD, but I don't see how it could be called a classic, either.

Sadly, my uncultured heathen-hood has been confirmed by the fact I haven't even seen 90% of the movies that are used as a reference point for the items on the list.

I notice The Beaver Trilogy is on the Lost Movie Classics list. I'd love to see it but it's not available on any format. I wonder how many other movies on that list are also unavailable.

I'm telling you, Two-Lane Blacktop is the way to go. James Taylor and Dennis Wilson are wooden as hell, and it's alright. Warren Oates is crazy as hell, and it's alright. It's a movie about car racing that hardly ever seems to move past cruising speed, almost as if the source material were a poem by Robert Creeley. It's has a Roger Corman budget, but Monte Hellman is behind the wheel, so it's smart and philosophical and quicksilver where a lesser director would have made lead.

I'm curious about Let's Scare Jessica To Death. Anyone seen it? Good? Bad?

Very very creepy movie. Logic is not it's strong suit, but since the movie feels like a really bad nightmare (in that CARNIVAL OF SOULS kinda way), it really doesn't matter. You can tell it's totally no budget, and a couple of the actors aren't very good, but over all it's definitely worth a rent.

Is that the one where the lead finds her husband drowned in the bathtub with his eyes rolled up into his head, and then later he's up out of the water zombie-shuffling towqard her? My dad traumatized me as a child during a movie with that scene in it.

That sounds like LES DIABOLIQUES, Matt. Was it B&W and French?

JESSICA was more like a mash-up of a vampire movie, a ghost movie and REPULSION, all on a budget that looks about as much as the original NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.

By this point most directors would have their hands full, but Mr. Zhang piles on the intrigue, adding a forbidden love affair, a vengeful first wife and two varieties of incest. His actors respond in kind, straining their facial muscles with silent-movie enthusiasm and doing everything but shooting flames from their eye sockets.

Teh awesome! (Review of The Curse of the Golden Flower, at NYT) There is also mention of Liberace and Jacqueline Susann as inspiration.

(Does China have telenovelas? If they don't, they really really should.)