So anyway...

I've only just started to discover Michaelangelo Antonioni's work - I know Bergman, but Antonioni and I are still just passing acquaintances (I've linked to those more qualified to reflect on the filmmaker below). So I don't feel qualified to write a proper rememberance, and so soon after Bergman, it's just too much. I'll simply urge you to watch (or re-watch) The Passenger, easily my favorite Antonioni film. Revel in the famous final shot and all it implies about existence, nonexistence and our relationship to the world around us.

Two of our greatest filmmakers, gone in a day. And here we are.

Jesus, aren't movies wonderful?

Mirrored Lines: RIP Antonioni

GreenCine Daily: Michaelangelo Antonioni, 1912 - 2007

The House Next Door: Michaelangelo Antonioni: September 29, 1912 - July 30, 2007

You with your visions and dreams.

News of the death of Ingmar Bergman naturally conjurs images of Bengt Ekerot leading a party of dead souls as they dance across a starkly beautiful countryside; the late director was responsible for the most unforgettable modern representation of death, and he surely knew images of the chess-playing reaper would accompany his passing. Equally eloquent to me is the chimes that signal various transitions in Cries and Whispers. It's a breathtakingly brilliant device, the passage of time towards an inevitable conclusion stripped of all human speculation and reduced to a single, quiet sound that is at both familiar and alien - it is the sound of the unknown.

Bergman's chime rang today; he leaves behind a wealth of great cinema that returns again and again to his preoccupations - the topography of the human face and the mysteries it conceals, the inexplicable power of our sexual desire and our very need to connect, the transcendence of performance (theater being as important to the director as film), the question of how to live in a universe ruled by an unseen or nonexistent God. And, of course, death, and how the knowledge of our mortality informs our existence. His films are alternately passionate and remote, cynical and nostalgic, unsparing and almost unbearably humane. And while his worldview was unflinchingly bleak, I value most greatly his films' capacity for almost supernatural acts of compassion - the scene in Cries and Whispers where Anna cradles the dying Agnes has a transcendent power that cinema has rarely touched. How beautifully ironic that a man who struggled so greatly with the meaning of his own existence would, in his passing, remind us how much one life can mean to the world. And that, as I'm sure Bergman would reluctantly agree, is its own kind of magic.

Friday Title Card #24

You know, I really hate children.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is the first film in its series to surpass the book upon which it is based (Prisoner of Azkaban is the best movie so far, but the book's pretty perfect too). Like Cuaron's film, this newest entry is a real adaptation, made with a unique approach to the material, rather than a slavish recreation of the source material designed to appase hardcore Potterphiles (so often the worst judges of what makes a good movie). Relative newcomer David Yates never folds under what must be the enormous pressure of delivering a film that is also practically a self-contained corporation; Potter 5 is a dark, thematically rich entry in the recently concluded saga of everyone's favorite Limey occultist.

The Harry Potter books have always had meandering plots - this is part of their charm. But with Order of the Phoenix, the narrative asides and protracted internal monologues are repetitive and often maddening (that said, it's my favorite of the books after Azkaban). I feared that Yates and screenwrite Michael Goldenberg would commit the series' all-too-common error of treating film like literature. Thankfully, Order of the Phoenix is surprisingly kinetic; in translating this chapter of Harry's story, which finds the boy wizard assembling an army of his peers to battle Voldemort and clashing with officious, kitten-loving monster Dolores Umbridge, Yates and Goldenberg make very shrewd choices about what to keep and what to cut from the book (the result is occasionally choppy, but only in retrospect). More importantly, Order of the Phoenix demonstrates an innate understanding of how, just as a book can find a thousand words in a single moment, a film can condense a thousand words into a single image. Order of the Phoenix is filled with indelible images, like a character's sudden, surprised disappearance into the abyss, that honor the shivery undertow that will seemingly draw Harry and his friends to an ending that, if happy, won't be easily earned (I'm halfway through Deathly Hallows, so my apologies if everything ends with an ice cream social).

While the climactic battle with Voldemort and his cohorts is splendidly creepy, the most engaging conflict in the film is between Harry and Umbridge. Imelda Staunton is perfect in the role, an insipid, smirking bureaucrat who equates inquiry with insubordination; rarely have I so intensely wanted to kick a fictional character in the teeth. Staunton clearly relishes in her character's hatefulness, and she elevates the rest of the cast - the kids do their best work thus far (I didn't even mind Emma Watson this time around), and it's a delight to watch the always-growing roster of great British thespians play off each other. I remain Michael Gambon's biggest fan, and Gary Oldman reminds even in a brief role why he's one of the greatest actors around. After the generic, smutty CGI-riddled mess that was Goblet of Fire, it's a welcome relief to see a film driven by the characters we've come to know and love.

The most exciting aspect of Order of the Phoenix is the breathtaking production design. Yates and DP Slawomir Idziak demonstrate a remarkable understanding of composition that give locations like the Ministry of Magic, with its seemingly endless tiled corridors, a sense of scale that makes the fantastic completely believable. And the details, like the endless purring in Umbridge's office, have an absurdist quality worthy of Gilliam at his best. Hogwarts once again feels like a real, lived-in place, and the entirety of the film is a treat for the imagination. And hough Order of the Phoenix ends with intimations of darkness, it also winds up on a note that honors its youngest, most faithful audience members for the persistence of their dreams.

Friday Title Card #23 (Saturday Morning Edition)

The Game Plan = the next Departed???

I'm beginning to feel like a good luck charm. The first film I worked on as an extra grossed more than $200 million domestic. The second finally got Scorsese the Oscar. And the third, a little picture called The Game Plan, is clearly destined for greatness. Just check out the trailer for all of the "Pacifier meets Any Given Sunday" goodness. Bubbles in the pool? Brilliant! A sequin-studded football? How frightfully piquant! I can practically taste the mirth! Oh, to have been in the presence of such cinematic genius!

And now, I'm going to cry myself to sleep. Enjoy the trailer.

He calls it his "tiny chef."

Ratatouille takes place in the restaurant of a famous, deceased chef known for both his culinary innovations and his emphasis on accessiblity, with his motto "Anyone can cook!" In the chef's absence, small-minded vulture capitalists have co-opted his likeness and ideology for maximum profit, churning out cheap, microwavable bastardizations of his work. I found myself thinking about Walt Disney's legacy during Ratatouille, similarly commodified and cheapened over recent years (not that the guy was a saint, but that's beside the point). Disney's saving grace has been their relationship with Pixar, a company with a deep, prodigious grasp of both animation and storytelling that seems dedicated to preserving everything that fodder like Brother Bear Goes Bananas aims to destroy. This is a company that can understand the story of an ambitious little rat who surreptitiously assumes the role of an interspecies cultural attache; Ratatouille's makers know what it's like to be the little guy, armed only with impeccable taste.

The rat in question is Remy (Patton Oswalt), who spends his days with his extended family picking through compost piles. While his father Django (Brian Dennehy) and his brother Emile (Peter Sohn) are content scarfing down junk for sustenance, Remy regards food as an art form. Inspired by the imaginary apperance of his hero, the late chef Gusteau (Brad Garrett), Remy finds himself hiding in Gusteau's restaurant, now struggling to stay afloat thanks to a vicious review by critic Anton Ego (Peter O'Toole). After a series of wacky misunderstandings (I love writing that), Remy is secretly puppeting a clumsy garbage boy named Linguini (Lou Romano). But the plot isn't the main thing - like Bird's other features, Ratatouille is unusual for a cartoon in that it is decidedly character driven. A film that is largely about taste, Ratatouille is as much about personal moments - the delightful visualization of the emotional experience of eating is a high point - as it is about kiddie-film noise. One of the most impressive things about Pixar is its willingness to go small - even an superhero movie like Bird's The Incredibles is at heart a character study. It's refreshing to find a studio that has that sort of faith in pure story, and in the intelligence of its audience.

This sense of intimacy extends to the design of the film. Movies set in France usually rely heavily on repeated shots of the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and baguettes; while Ratatouille's Paris is a digital simulacrum, it somehow evokes the real thing better than many films shot in Paris (certainly better than the suprisingly poor Paris, je t'aime). By giving us a rat's-eye view of the city, Bird and the animators capture a detailed, subjective version of Paris that becomes as tangible as Venice in Don't Look Now. One gets a real sense of the city's cultural history, which gives the lighthearted film an unexpected emotional resonance - Ratatouille is a celebration of taste, not just for food but for any form of creative expression (or appreciation; rarely has a film so loved its audience). Thankfully, Pixar's taste is impeccable, and they spare us poorly cast superstar voices, continuing to cast in delightfully unxpected ways (standouts here are Oswalt, Janeane Garofalo as a fierce sous chef, and O'Toole relishing every quintessentially British putdown). No already-dated pop cultural references, smarmy innuendo or Smash Mouth either; the humor here is smart and understated. And best of all, Ratatouille never condescends to its largely young audience, assuming, as the best children's movies do, that kids are capable of getting the joke.

Ratatouille is a fun, sweet movie, and yet I also found it weirdly inspiring. Its simple, wonderful message - that a life devoted to sharing one's appreciation of culture can help make the world a better place - encouraged me deeply on a particularly discouraging day. It's a great message for kids, urging them gently to chase their passions, and it's delivered with a perfect light touch. The ending of the film reminds of Pixar's assumption of creative control at Disney, the little guy now in control of the giant machine. If Ratatouille is any indication, they're just the right people to restore the Magic Kingdom to its former glory. Mouse, meet rat.

Friday Title Card #22

He was...well, he wasn't a good swimmer.

The following is my contribution to Final Girl's Friday the 13th Blog-a-Thon.

"No, what if there is some boy-beast running around Camp Crystal Lake? Let's try to think beyond the legend, put it in real terms. What would it be like today? Some sort of out-of-control psychopath? A frightened retard? A child trapped in a man's body?" - Amy Steel, Friday the 13th Part 2

It's often forgotten that Jason Voorhees is developmentally disabled; indeed, the above quote is the only direct reference to this fact in the ten-film series. This partly owes to the ways that the character changed over the course of a franchise that has little use for narrative coherence, but it's also indicative of the time that the original Friday the 13th was released. That film, and its immediate sequels, literalize the mindless man-child archetype (Boris Karloff's Frankenstein monster and Gunnar Hansen's Leatherface are two predecessors) by confronting us with a villian whose monstrousness is largely defined by his disability. The original Friday the 13th is about our society's fear of the mentally retarded; this is just as evident in the films that don't reference this fact.

It wasn't until I began working with the developmentally disabled that I realized how negative attitudes towards the mentally challenged can go beyond simple mockery to actual fear and animosity. While some of my co-workers are wonderful, a number warned me in hushed tones to watch out for the ways that our clients would try to "manipulate" us. One day I was in the community with an autistic man who attempted to open the door of a parked car; the man inside the car began yelling at our client and informed me that I should "do something about that guy." Retardation makes people genuinely uncomfortable; this was even more true in 1980, less than 20 years after the concept of equal rights for the mentally disabled was introduced into the mainstream and before the developmentally disabled gained the right to equal health care. Residents of asylums and other demoralizing institutions were being released back into society, and people were suddenly confronted with a problem they had long been instructed to lock up and forget about.

The Goonies' Sloth was an attempt to counter negative stereotypes by presenting a physically deformed, brain-damaged man as a lovable E.T.-like figure; later in the decade, Rain Man and Life Goes On were influential in their positive portrayals of mentally challenged characters. But in 1980, there was still nothing unusual about a studio horror release that had as its villain the vengeful mother of a stereotypical mongoloid who appears at the film's end for one last scare. The killer in Friday the 13th is a woman whose disabled son drowned tragically because of the neglect of horny camp counselors (a character for whom the film extends no empathy). If one chooses to read the film as a morality piece - the dead teens punished for their preoccupation with sex, pot and the band Rush (probably) - then Jason is the dark side of the eternal child, pulling Adrienne King into the depths of Crystal Lake, away from adulthood and back to the womb.

The most potent incarnation of Jason is the John Merrick-esque sack-hooded woodsman we meet in Friday the 13th Part 2, his disguise reminding of the exploitation of the disabled and deformed in carnival freak shows. If Jason is out for revenge after the death of his mother (a scenario that doesn't really make any sense, but we'll ignore that for now), he's also assuming the monstrous role assigned to him. Jason's makeshift shack in the woods is a terrific touch, literalizing the theme of rural horror previously seen in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes. But unlike those films, Jason wasn't born a villain - he was created, like Caliban, shoved to the fringes of society until he becomes the monster he's always been viewed as. It's a great, rich concept that Friday the 13th Part 2 doesn't do nearly enough with. Unfortunately, it's also the last time that the series even pays lip service to the idea of Jason as a flesh-and-blood character.

The dehumanization of Jason begins with the hockey mask, and reaches fruition with Friday the 13th: A New Beginning. After Jason was killed (suppsedly for good) in the previous film, the producers attempted to revive the franchise by replacing Jason with another mask-wearing killer that is revealed in the final minutes to be a completely different character. It was a cynical move (see also: Halloween III), and the filmmakers wisely chose to reinvent Jason as an undead golem for future films. Over the course of the series, Jason has been a demon's host, a genetically enhanced superbeing, and a worthy adversary for Freddy Kreuger - Jason is pure simulacrum, completely detached from his origins as a "frightened retard."

While this happens with most horror franchises - Freddy's wisecracks watering down his child-molesting backstory, for instance - Jason's evolution is particularly drastic. This has everything to do with the advent of political correctness - when Kelly Rowland calls Freddy a "faggot" in Freddy vs. Jason, the joke is her strange use of the word rather than a comment on Freddy's sexuality. Similarly, it's impossible to imagine a sympathetic protagonist calling Jason a "retard" today. An evil ubermensch Jason allows us to laugh and scream without feeling guilty, and I won't argue that it's a good thing that most people understand that, at the very least, there are some things you just don't say. But part of me misses "special" Jason, who could have only existed at a time when our scares were much thornier.

too much information

Boy, these memes are flying all over the place. I've been tagged by Dennis with the 8 Simple Things meme, the rules of which are as follows:

1. I share the rules with you.

2. I share eight random facts about myself that you may not know.
3. I tag eight unsuspecting bloggers, who must then share eight facts about themselves (I believe this is legally binding).

So, here goes:

1. My first professional acting audition was for the role of Bobby in The Brady Bunch Movie. I didn't get it.

2. The first time I got paid to act was in a children's musical called Maggie and the Magic Hat. The play, written by New Hampshire songsmith Brownie Macintosh, was about time travel, talking mannequins, and yes, magical hats. It was terrifying. I played an Irish handyman named Mr. O'Toole (get it?). We performed at the Ivoryton Playhouse, a beautiful summer stock theater where actors ranging from Marlon Brando to Groucho Marx had performed. And I appeared there to sing about hammers. I see from Browie's website that the play is still being staged, but only I can say that I originated Mr. O'Toole.

3. I was fired from my first writing gig - the film critic for my seventh-grade newspaper. It was a Christian school, and I offended the faculty by writing about an R-rated movie (Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion).

4. Yes, I was once a born-again Christian. In the years since I've been a near-atheist, a not-really-Taoist, and a sort-of-agnostic. These days, while I'd comfortably call myself spiritual, the closest thing I have to a religious leader is

5. David Bowie. I'm a bleedin' poof for David Bowie. I celebrate his entire catalog.

6. I once performed a puppet show of the Gom Jabbar scene from Dune.

7. I'm deathly, irrationally afraid of snakes - garter snakes, to be precise. I know they won't hurt me; it's a purely Pavlovian thing.

8. My favorite color is brown.

I tag: Doug, Jack, John, Dr. Insermini, Milena, Steve, Michael and Jess.

Friday Title Card #21

Man, I'm Big Dick Blaque.

Hardcore opens promisingly, with a montage of Rockwellian scenes of wintry Grand Rapids that introduces us to businessman Jake VanDorn (George C. Scott), his family, and his Calvinist friends and countrymen. As Jake and his guests discuss matters of morality over Christmas dinner, their conversation filled with disdain for the permissive culture perceived as a threat to traditional values, it's unclear whether we should take what we are seeing at face value (Scott's best friend is played by Dick Sargent [?!]). By assuming a detached, Bressonian perspective to these early scenes, writer/director Paul Schrader compels us to question our own moral assumptions; if only the rest of Hardcore provoked the same kind of sickly thrilling ambiguity. Instead, any spell these first scenes weave is quickly broken when VanDorn is shown 8mm evidence of his runaway daughter's disapperance into the world of underground porn. Scott, wails, gnashes his teeth, has an aneurysm and nearly eats his own head while bellowing "THAT'S MY DAUGHTER!" and effectively killing any hope of subtlety or wit. Scott is terrible in Hardcore, and he's a perfect fit for a film that, while born from Schrader's life and personal obsessions, is hamhanded sensationalism masquerading as art.

The plot of Hardcore, Schrader's most thorough appropriation of The Searchers, hinges on the preposterous notion of VanDorn's virginal teenage daughter Kristen (Ilah Davis) disappearing from a youth group trip to L.A. and, within days, found in a hardcore loop by a private investigator (Peter Boyle). Jake takes off to L.A. to save his daughter, and soon finds himself caught in an increasingly sordid sex industry, ranging from storefront sex shops to snuff. There's admittedly a kinky sort of fun to be had in noting the way that Schrader recreates the day-glo, semen-stained surfaces of the porn world, and cinematographer Michael Chapman (who also shot Taxi Driver) gives these scenes the right plastic quality. But Schrader gets in his own way - he pushes us towards identifying with Jake's repulsion, yet he also condescends to the character's middle-American naievete throughout. The result is that while the images may shock us, they're never affecting in a meaningful way. This conflict can make Hardcore seem more exploitative than it was probably intended to be; the women in the film, for instance, are underage-looking, and the camera lingers on their flat chests and skinny bodies in a way that, in the absence of meaningful context, comes off as leering and gratuitous. Schrader tries for horror and only succeeds at gross-out.

The most compelling character in the film is Niki (Season Hubley), a more jaded version of Taxi Driver's Iris. In one of Niki's early scenes, she enters a peepshow booth, naked, planting her feet against the glass in a confident spread-eagle. It's the strongest image in the film, Niki's unapologetic sluttiness confronting our own unspoken voyeurism. As Niki helps Jake find his daughter, the two develop a peculiarly honest relationship, each confessing to the ways they are products of their respective backgrounds - the God-fearing and the godless find they have more in common than they might suspect, and Schrader's obsession with predestination (a holdover from his own Calvinist upbringing) becomes a metaphor for social and economic imprisonment.

These ideas would have resonated more deeply had Schrader pushed his character further; many of the film's problems would immediately be solved if Jake had sex with Niki. But the character remains firmly one-dimensional, a stranger in a strange land immune to temptation, and Schrader cannot seem to take his own protagonist seriously, let alone fully humanize him. And the provocative suggestion that Jake's daughter was seriously kinky to begin with (a porn actor tells Jake, "I don't know what kind of shit she was into, but my dick was red and swollen and chewed up for a week") is quickly brushed aside in favor of a slam-bang ending and a forced resolution. One can feel in Hardcore Schrader's desire to make a movie that would genuinely offend his fundamentalist family; unfortunately, the themes he touches upon but never really explores are far more incendiary than gratuitous T&A (he would return to the central concerns of Hardcore with much greater success in films like American Gigolo, Cat People and Auto Focus).

If there's an element of Hardcore that really works, it's the examination of the Calvinist equivalency of popular culture with sin. Visual references to Star Wars are littered throughout the film, culminating in a nudie lightsabre battle set to "Star Wars Disco." Schrader is not only equating the emerging mainstream cinema of sensation with porn, he's also anticipating the 1980s' borderline-narcotic obsession with pretty surfaces. It's a shaky position to take, and also a hypocritical one in view of Hardcore's own tendency towards titillation, but it's still an effective eulogy for the decade when filmmakers were given free reign to be as audacious and self-indulgent as they wanted to be. If Hardcore is a failure, it's at least a fond reminder of a time when filmmakers were able to fail this big.

Friday Title Card #20

The Trim Bin #59

- There are two trailers I can't stop thinking about lately. The first, No Country For Old Men, is the Coen Brothers' adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel, looks to be a return to form after the bland, disappointing one-two punch of Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers. I can't wait to see what the Coens do with McCarthy's stark prose - the trailer suggests their creepiest film since Blood Simple. The second is for another adaptation, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (based on the Upton Sinclair novel Oil!). The pronounced similarity to Terrence Malick has been pointed out repeatedly, and the trailer is certainly filled with echoes of Days of Heaven (McCabe and Mrs. Miller, too). I'm intrigued that Anderson, who has always been a wiz with sound (few directors would hire Gary Rydstrom to mix a small-scale romantic comedy), has replaced bombast with silence. It's this stripped-down approach that connects the two trailers in my mind, as both suggest drastically new approaches for their respective makers. If the films are as powerful as their trailers, we're in for a memorable fall.

- The updated AFI list is no better or worse than the last one - it's nice to see Blade Runner and Nashville in there, and it's laughable that The Sixth Sense is apparently the greatest film of 1999 (the best moviegoing year in my lifetime thus far). There's nothing really wrong with the list itself - about a third of the films listed appear on my own top 100 - but it paints an extremely narrow picture of film history and culture. The AFI list is inherently less interesting than the Sight and Sound Top 10 or other lists, mostly because voters must choose from a preliminary list of 400 films that are at least partly chosen for their popularity. Where other lists are meant to provoke discussion, this one is meant to generate nostalgia and boost DVD sales. Add to this the AFI's stupid insistence on an American-only list because the word "American" appears in their name, and you have a list that is purposefully anti-eclectic. It sucked in 1998, it sucks now, and it will suck ten years from now (or nine, as the AFI apparently cannot count to ten). Case closed.

- A while back I was speculating about casting Peter Jackson's adaptation of The Lovely Bones. The parents have been cast, and I'm split. On the one hand, Rachel Weisz is a great choice for Abigail - her ability to be emotionally open without sacrificing subtlety perfectly fits the story's delicate tone. On the other hand, the casting of Ryan Gosling as the patriarch doesn't work for me, and not just because he's far too young to play a father of three. A confession: I just don't get Ryan Gosling. Where others see precocious brilliance, I see a joyless, mannered assembly of self-conscious method tics in search of a performance with soul. I find his tendency towards "important" material contrived. I didn't buy him for a second as a crackhead in Half Nelson. And his pretentiously unpretentious normal guy routine is infuriating, because any normal guy wouldn't be able to say things like "I've always hated the complacency which comes from good looks" with a straight face. I'll give Peter Jackson the benefit of the doubt - I didn't think much of Viggo before The Fellowship of the Ring - but seriously, am I missing something?

- CHUD has an interesting article about the evolution of the 4th of July as a blockbuster weekend/crap depository. I can't wait to see Transformers, even though I'm pretty sure it's going to unleash a plague of snakes and flesh-eating bugs that will kill all of America's children, unleashing an army of Druid cyborgs that not even Tom Atkins can stop from conquering the world. Either way, the robots look cool.

Friday Title Card #19

Top 100: Pop Music in Film

For my contribution to the Filmmusic Blog-a-Thon, I've assembled what started as a top ten list before ballooning to a 100 list - there was just no way to whittle it down. This list is ranked not only by the greatness of a song, but how perfectly it is used in a scene or moment from a film. Source music allows directors another form of total control, and directors like Kubrick and Scorsese that helped popularlize the concept of pop soundtracks are notorious perfectionists. In the hands of the right filmmaker, a great song (or even a not-so-great one) can become an extension of a characters' emotions, an ironic comment on a scene, or a distinct shade of meaning.

There are some original songs here, but the emphasis is on source music. Straight musicals and performance aren't on this list (with the borderline exception of, ironically, Performance), as they belong on another list completely. Also, I've limited myself to one cue per film - otherwise, half the list would be Goodfellas. Links to the corresponding scenes are provided when available. I hope you enjoy this more than another recent 100 list.

1. “Sister Christian,” Night Ranger – Boogie Nights
2. “The End,” The Doors – Apocalypse Now
3. “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” The Rolling Stones – Mean Streets
4. “In Dreams,” Roy Orbison – Blue Velvet
5. “Singin’ In the Rain,” Gene Kelly – A Clockwork Orange
6. “Memo From Turner,” Mick Jagger – Performance
7. “Stuck In The Middle With You,” Stealer’s Wheel – Reservoir Dogs
8. “I Think I See The Light,” Cat Stevens – Harold and Maude
9. “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door,” Bob Dylan – Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid
10. “In Your Eyes,” Peter Gabriel – Say Anything
11. “These Days,” Nico – The Royal Tenenbaums
12. “Layla,” Derek and the Dominos - Goodfellas
13. “I Put a Spell On You,” Screamin’ Jay Hawkins – Stranger Than Paradise
14. “The Stranger Song,” Leonard Cohen – McCabe and Mrs. Miller
15. “Didn’t I Blow Your Mind This Time,” The Delfonics – Jackie Brown
16. “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)”, Kenny Rogers and the First Edition – The Big Lebowski
17. “Mrs. Robinson,” Simon and Garfunkel – The Graduate
18. “Tiny Dancer,” Elton John – Almost Famous
19. “Hurdy Gurdy Man,” Donovan – Zodiac
20. “Fight the Power,” Public Enemy – Do the Right Thing
21. “Late for the Sky,” Jackson Browne – Taxi Driver
22. “Relax,” Frankie Goes to Hollywood – Body Double
23. “Theme From Shaft,” Issac Hayes – Shaft
24. “Wise Up,” Aimee Mann - Magnolia
25. “A Quick One While He’s Away,” The Who - Rushmore
26. “Nobody But Me," Human Beinz – Kill Bill vol. 1
27. “Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing,” Chris Issak – Eyes Wide Shut
28. "Everybody's Talkin'," Harry Nilsson - Midnight Cowboy
29. “Moving In Stereo,” The Cars – Fast Times at Ridgemont High
30. “Sussudio,” Phil Collins – American Psycho
31. “An Invitation to the Blues,” Tom Waits – Bad Timing
32. “Amoreena,” Elton John – Dog Day Afternoon
33. "I'm Shipping Up To Boston," Dropkick Murphys - The Departed
34. “A Change is Gonna Come,” Sam Cooke – Malcolm X
35. “The Court of the Crimson King,” King Crimson – Children of Men
36. "Like a Rolling Stone," Bob Dylan and The Band - New York Stories
37. “Staggolee,” Pacific Gas & Electric - Grindhouse
38. “Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime,” Beck – Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
39. "Careful With That Axe Eugene," Pink Floyd - Zabriskie Point
40. "Goldfinger," Shirley Bassey - Goldfinger
41. “Staying Alive,” The Bee Gees – Saturday Night Fever
42. “Life on Mars,” David Bowie – The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
43. “The Killing Moon,” Echo and the Bunnymen – Donnie Darko
44. “Natural’s Not In It,” Gang of Four – Marie Antoinette
45. “This Magic Moment,” Lou Reed – Lost Highway
46. “Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon,” Urge Overkill – Pulp Fiction
47. "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head," B.J. Thomas - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
48. “Blue Moon,” Sam Cooke – An American Werewolf in London
49. “Don’t You (Forget About Me),” Simple Minds – The Breakfast Club
50. “Hurricane,” Bob Dylan – Dazed and Confused
51. "We'll Meet Again," Vera Lynn - Dr. Strangelove
52. “Janie Jones,” The Clash – Bringing Out the Dead
53. “The Old Main Drag,” The Pogues – My Own Private Idaho
54. “If You Wanna Be a Bird,” The Holy Modal Rounders – Easy Rider
55. "Surfin' Bird," The Trashmen – Full Metal Jacket
56. "Sinnerman," Nina Simone – Inland Empire
57. "From Her To Eternity," Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Wings of Desire
58. "Old Time Rock and Roll," Bob Seger - Risky Business
59. “Banana Boat Song,” Harry Belafonte - Beetlejuice
60. “Louie Louie,” The Kingsmen – Animal House
61. "Can We Still Be Friends," Todd Rundgren - Vanilla Sky
62. "Twist and Shout," The Beatles - Ferris Bueller's Day Off
63. “Freebird,” Lynyrd Skynyrd – The Devil’s Rejects
64. “Tequila,” The Champs – Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure
65. "No One Lives Forever," Oingo Boingo - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
66. “Waterloo,” Abba – Muriel’s Wedding
67. "Let's Misbehave," Irving Aaronson and His Commanders - Pennies From Heaven
68. “I Want You Around,” The Ramones – Rock ‘n’ Roll High School
69. “Numb/Encore” Jay-Z and Linkin Park, Miami Vice
70. “Daniel,” Elton John – Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
71. "Magic Man," Heart - The Virgin Suicides
72. “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” Bauhaus – The Hunger
73. “All Out of Love,” Air Supply - Happiness
74. “Girls,” Death in Vegas – Lost in Translation
75. "The Seeker," The Who - American Beauty
76. “Goodbye Horses,” Q. Lazzarus – The Silence of the Lambs
77. “I’m Your Man,” Leonard Cohen - Secretary
78. “The Blower’s Daughter,” Damien Rice - Closer
79. “There Is An End,” The Greenhornes with Holly Golightly – Broken Flowers
80. “Who Made Who,” AC/DC – Maximum Overdrive
81. "Philadelphia," Neil Young – Philadelphia
82. "Hey You," Pink Floyd - The Squid and the Whale
83. "Venus in Furs," Velvet Underground - Last Days
84. "Just in Time," Nina Simone - Before Sunset
85. "Bad To The Bone," George Thorogood and The Destroyers – Christine
86. "Without You," Harry Nilsson - The Rules of Attraction
87. "Devil Got My Woman," Skip James - Ghost World
88. "Suzanne," Leonard Cohen - Breaking the Waves
89. "Everybody Wants Some," Van Halen - Better Off Dead
90. "Partyman,” Prince – Batman
91. "Midnight, the Stars and You," Roy Noble Orchestra - The Shining
92. "Young Americans," David Bowie – Dogville
93. "2000 Man," The Rolling Stones - Bottle Rocket
94. "Anthem," Leonard Cohen - Natural Born Killers
95. "Sax and Violins," Talking Heads - Until the End of the World
96. "Rock Around the Clock," Bill Haley and the Comets - Blackboard Jungle
97. "Tonight (We'll Make Love Until We Die)" - The Return of the Living Dead
98. "Stardust," Louis Armstrong - Stardust Memories
99. "Que Sera Sera," Doris Day - The Man Who Knew Too Much
100. "Eye of the Tiger," Survivor - Rocky III

always a day away

My great-grandmother died this weekend. At 98, she had sidestepped all forms of disease, injury and senility until the only thing she had left to face was biological law. Her name was Mary Elizabeth Jacquard, but to me, she was Nana Baa. Nana Baa used to be called Nana Wolf because she would read me the story of Peter and the Wolf when I was a toddler. When I was a bit older, I overheard someone use the phrase "a wolf in sheep's clothing"; thus, Nana Wolf became Nana Baa.

Nana Baa used to read to me all the time; in recent years she would joke about sitting at the kitchen table at six in the morning, drinking coffee, and suddenly hearing small footsteps as I descended the stairs carrying a stack of books. And I must have made the poor woman watch Annie a hundred times. But she was always totally enthusiastic - she was a great listener, and she cared about the things that mattered to me. Nana Baa was a pretty perfect great-grandmother.

Nana Baa and my great-grandfather (who I never met, but who I once mistook for President Reagan) came to America via Canada; she lived in Massachusetts for most of her life, raising eight children, dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and even living to see a few great-great-grandchildren. A faithful Catholic, the walls of her home were covered with images of Christ and a bearded, smiling God watching over the earth. She was what all Christians should be - loving, faithful, and deeply appreciative of her life. Her worst fear was losing her ability to be self-sufficient, and she never did; even in her last years, she was still cooking and cleaning for herself. And in the past few months, as it became clear the end was near, my family was able to arrange for her to spend her last days at home.

I visited her in April, when it looked like she might be gone at any moment. Her eyesight and hearing were fading, but she held me for a long, good time. Too often we don't have the chance to say goodbye to the people we love, so I'll always be greatful that I saw her smile once more. She asked about my filmmaking plans, and I told her about the work I've gotten here and there.

"It's a tough business," she said.

"But there's no pressure," my mom said, to which Nana Baa responded, "Oh yes, there is."

She touched my wife's stomach, feeling the baby still resting inside. Her eyes widened in awe. We talked some more and held hands, then I kissed her and said goodbye. We were going to see her this weekend and bring Luna to meet her, but it wasn't meant to be. Perhaps it's better to die with something to look forward to.

I hope Nana Baa is in the heaven she so strongly believed in. I hope I'll see her again someday.

Happy Father's Day

Friday Title Card #18