Sam’s Place

Pieces of April

Emma: ***

• The parts without Tom Cruise’s wife were good.

Sam: ****

• And a good soundtrack by Stephin Merritt.

The Seagull’s Laughter (Icelandic)

Sam: ****

Emma: ***

• It was nice to see Iceland — & Heino Ferch, who was excellent in the German films Downfall & The Tunnel.

49 Up

Sam: ****

• Every 7 years since 1963 Michael Apted has interviewed the same dozen or so Brits.

Emma: ****

• It’s nice to see that at 49 everyone seems more content with their lives.

Stolen

Sam: ****

• Kinda like a real The Departed. You probably have to care about Boston to like this.

Emma: **

• I wasn’t really interested in this & didn’t think it was very good.

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Also, November 20 Backtalk

And Peta, The Peculiar Longevity of Things Not So Bad, Foreign Capital, & Growing Forests

Black Books: Series 2

Sam: ****

• Not as original as (the real) The Office but good fun.

Emma: ****

• Funny

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Plus The Ultimatum Game, Instrumental Variables, Eyes of Cooperation, & Luck & Movies

And November 6 and November 13 Backtalk.

Mad Hot Ballroom

Sam: ****

• When I saw the previews for this I thought it was just a low-budget knockoff of the excellent Spellbound, so I didn’t want to see it, but I was wrong.

Emma: ****

No Way to Treat a Lady

Sam: **

• I thought this would be a weird 60s movie but it was just bad. It reminded me of one of those low-budget 70s tv shows, like Welcome Back Kotter or something.

Emma: *

The Devil and Daniel Johnston

Emma: *

Disturbing & depressing. And I don’t get his music; it just sounds like whining.

 Sam: ***

It’s not that depressing. The guy’s mentally ill & still has been able to have a music & art career.

 Maltese Falcon 

Emma: ****

Sam: ***

• We saw Casablanca on a double bill with the original War of the Worlds a few years ago at the Stanford Theater. WotWs was terrible but I was surprised how great Casablanca was on the big screen. Well, we just saw a fuzzy Maltese Falcon on TV, admittedly while I was also surfing the Internet, & I had the opposite reaction.

Seconds

Sam: ***

• Bad & slow in a lot of ways but weird at least: Rock Hudson at an orgy in 1966!

Emma: *

• OK technically but I don’t like this kind of movie — and depressing too.

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Plus Practice, Unselfish Genes, & Exponential Growth

And November 1 Backtalk.

Oh! What a Lovely War

Sam: ****

• Top-notch cast. 4 stars if you’re interested in songs from the war to end all wars, & don’t mind theatrical British movies. Otherwise deduct a star.

Emma: ****

• One of the best antiwar movies.

Sopranos: Season 6, Disc 1

Emma: ***

• I’m not a big Sopranos fan. It’s too violent & they’ve fallen into the usual trap of series that run on for years of getting every character involved in the plot — in this case making almost every character evil &/or doomed. I can’t keep up my suspension of disbelief anymore.

Sam: ****

• I agree w/ Emma but still like the show: good acting & good attention to detail (wallpaper pattern, plastic on furniture, Dunkin Donuts, Tom Petty, etc.). Also, I’m interested in the Mafia, & am caught up in the Sopranos soap opera.

The Rat Pack: The True Stories of the Original Kings of Cool

Sam: ****

• Disc 2 talks about how the mob funded & elected JFK. (And who knew Keely Smith was such a gangster’s moll?) Watch this with the fascinating The Last Mogul: The Life and Times of Lew Wasserman, which briefly mentions Reagan’s mob links.

Emma: ****

Cinemania 

Sam: ***

• A cautionary tale for us all.

Emma: *

• I didn’t see the point of this documentary. It seemed more like a study of obsessive-compulsive disorder than of cinema aficionados. The latter would have been more interesting; these people could have been obsessed with spoons as far as I was concerned.