Reprints of Flop Famly and other Newspaper Strips - George Swanson (1926-1946)

Collected in The Comics Journal #281

Ranma 1/2: Volume One - Rumiko Takahashi (1993)

La Jette - Chris Marker (1962)

Manhattan, Kansas - Tara Wray (2006)

I loved most of this personal journal. The filmmaker, Tara Wray, travels from NYC to the titular town to visit her estranged mother for the first time in six years. Beautiful Ozu-like shots of the landscape and details keep the eye occupied while Wray works out her feelings towards her mother's eccentricities and past behavior. Also, like several of Ozu's films, it explores that nebulous boundary where children become adults and where the parent/child relationship loses its intimacy.

The Best American Comics - Ed. Harvey Pekar & Anne Elizabeth Moore (2007)

Triad Election - Johnnie To (2006)

Convoluted, Godfather-like plot embedded in the darkness. I'm not sure I ever got a sense of real menace from Chairman Lok (Simon Yam) and his 'uncles', but once they started grinding people up for dog food I got the message...

Screened at the Brattle Theater

Desperate Journey - Raoul Walsh (1942)

Raymond Massey terrorizes Errol Flynn and Ronald Reagan in a Nazi-chases-downed-bomber-crew-through Germany chase movie. You can feel the grittiness of the 40s Warner Bros studio at work. They were making the lower-budget, go-for-the-gut films at the time and it shows. Deep shadows hide the minimal sets and locations, German accents are butchered, the airplane models are cheezy and liberal doses of humor help the mishmash go down easy. USA propaganda peeks through in the cartoonish portrayal of the Nazis and snippets of God Bless America in the soundtrack. Ronald Regan spouting double-talk at Massey is priceless. Why can't all presidents be this forthcoming with their charades?

Forty Cartoon Books of Interest - Seth (2006)

This pamphlet (included with Comic Art No. 8) illuminates a portion of Seth's idiosyncratic comics collection. The introduction captures some of the dying pleasures of flea markets and used books stores. His enthusiasm for obscure late 19th century and early 20th century cartoonists is infectious and sent me scrambling onto eBay looking for old books!

Election - Johnnie To (2005)

Screened at the Brattle Theater

Spider - David Cronenberg (2002)

Perhaps the Cronenberg film that I have enjoyed the least. Like A History of Violence it eschews fantastic elements and drops us into the subjective view of Ralphe Fiennes mentally disturbed protagonist. Felt more like it was going for a Twilight Zone type twist ending rather than delving into the psyche/struggles of the main character. The mumbling and bizarre behavior by Fiennes served to distance me more than drawing me in.

The Models of Pickpocket - Babette Mangolte (2003)

The Jack Benny Show - Buck Benny Rides Again (1-3-1937)

The Jack Benny Show - The Gold Rush (9-24-1950)

You Bet Your Life - "Clock" - Groucho Marx (10-19-1949)

Marty - Delbert Mann (1955)

"I dunno, whadda you wanna do?"

Lupin III Vol 3 - Monkey Punch (1968?)

The TokyoPop reprint of the first Lupin III series from the late 1960s. Perhaps because this was created before manga became internationally know, the comics syntax used seems clumsy at times.

There's Always Tomorrow - Douglas Sirk (1956)

Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck come together again to play out this melodrama of mid-life crisis and infidelity. The studio-prescribed happy ending is undermined by the pools of darkness that MacMurray and Joan Bennette walk through at the end of the film as well as the half-hearted attempts at "unconditional love" shown by his children.

Screened at the Brattle Theater

Institute for Contemporary Art - Boston

Core Sample - Teri Rueb (2007)

Audio art installation on Spectacle Island, Boston.

Some Things You Should Know About Captain Rick - 826 Valencia (2005)

A publication of 826 Valencia's Pirate Shop, this pamphlet is a hilarious diatribe against their rival pirate shop owner, Captain Rick. Not only does Captain Rick's firewood not burn, but his white and gold sweatsuit matches his car. Yuck!

Some Things You Should Know About Captain Rick - 826 Valencia (2005)

A publication of 826 Valencia's Pirate Shop, this pamphlet is a hilarious diatribe against their rival pirate shop owner, Captain Rick. Not only does Captain Rick's firewood not burn, but his white and gold sweatsuit matches his car. Yuck!

The Silent World - Louis Malle (1956)

Despite the tanned Frenchmen in Speedos and pom-pommed knit caps molesting various types of sea life, the film shows a beautiful documentary logic helmed my Malle. The scene in the shipwreck follows a diver deeper and deeper inside the wreck, spending moments with various creatures of the deep, then wanders off to follow his exhalations as silvery bubbles trapped in the wreck, escaping from cracks, floating past schools of fish and finally emerging at the surface within sight of the Calypso. Watch also, the spiraling ballet of the opening credits shot as the corally depths are plumbed with torches and end with an entire film crew in 50M of water.

It was a different time in terms of environmental conservation and nature documentary, but moments of elegance shine through.

Screened at the Harvard film Archive

In The Pink: Faded Films

This was a special program put on the the HFA's preservationist. She selected five individual reels from prints in the collection that had faded considerably, leaving only the more resistant red dye. Films screened included

• Imitation of Life - Douglas Sirk (1959)
• Samurai II: Duel at Ichijoji Temple - Hiroshi Inagaki (1955)
• Two Rode Together - John Ford (1961)
• "Afro-Asian Table Tennis" - A Chinese propaganda film from 1971. (They sure spent a lot of time praising the Vietnamese players...)
  
• Peeping Tom - Michael Powell (1960)

Screened at the Harvard Film Archive

The Bourne Ultimatum - Paul Greengrass (2007)

Kinda silly and a little too earnest.

If Bourne is supposed to be the new Bond, he needs a dash of sex and humor shaken into the mix to make the "war on terror" medicine go down a little smoother.

Screened at the Somerville Theater

Jack Buys a Maxwell - Jack Benny Show (1937)

The Jack Benny Show must have been one of the major inspirations for Seinfeld...

Jack Benny at Livermore Naval Air Station (1944)

Bob Hope at Carswell Air Force Base (1950)

"Texas is claustrophobia spelled backwards..."

Pickpocket - Robert Bresson (1959)

with commentary by James Quandt

Hairspray - Adam Shankman (2007)

Musicals always make me cry and this was no exception...

Screened at the Mendon Twin Drive-In!!!

Infrastructure: A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape - Brian Hayes (2005)

I read this one cover to cover. Chapters on mining, water, food, oil, electricity, waste and more help you decipher all of the industrial stuff you see while cruising our country. Learn why large electrical transmission lines come in groups of three with a fourth wire above. Learn the true (negative) value of trash. Understand rail switching yards. Get to know your highway system. This book really makes clear all of the effort and infrastructure required to get us through our daily lives...

Equinox Flower - Yasujiro Ozu (1958)

From a synopsis, one would think that the central conflict of this film is about a father who disapproves of his daughter's fiancee. Three-quarters of the way through the film, the wedding occurs and the father finally decides that he will attend this wedding that he never approves of. However, Ozu elides both the wedding ceremony and we only see a few snippets of the fiancee he disapproves of. Why?

The reason is that Ozu is much more interested in the father's internal conflict and the gap between one generation and the next. We see a father who is consistently inconsistent on his feelings about arranged marriage (a Japanese cultural tradition) and romantic marriage. He approves of a friend's daughter who chooses her own mate then alienates his own daughter who does the same.

A key moment comes at the father's high school reunion where a poem about the emperor's armies is recited: "Warriors enter battle for the emperor/cowards suffer everlasting shame". One question is whether the brave thing to do is march into the future and accept the new societal norms or stand-fast with age-old tradition. But the underlying concern is how to maintain contact with children as they built their own families and lives away from their parents.

Early clues to a change in the air include a storm warning at the train station and multiple images of washing (windows, floor waxing). Watch for red objects that appear in the lower right corner of the frame throughout Ozu's coda segments.

Bloch Building - Nelson- Atkins Museum of Art - Kansas City, MO

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - David Yates (2007)

At the B & B Lake West Cinema, Gravois Mills, MO,

The Simpsons Movie - David Silverman (2007)

At the Wehrenberg Osage Village 5 Cine, Osage Beach, MO

Canyon Passage - Jacques Tourneur (1946)

Unlike most Westerns that depict a conquering of the wilderness, all of the man-made elements ends in flames and destruction at the end of the film. But the viewer is brought to realize that the building of a town isn't what will establish civilization, it is a new type of entrepreneurial spirit. Logan realizes transforming the environment isn't just a physical adaptation. It's underlying cause is physical will and moral vision.

You see some of the same stylings that Tourneur brought to Val Lewton's films in a darkened hotel room at the beginning of the film and the almost fairy-tale setting. Shades of the searchers as Logan looks into a cabin from the outside early in the film while Caroline looks out from the inside later.

Ward Bond's character, Bragg, reminded me more than a little of Jud in _Oklahoma_. A force of pure malice housed in a hovel deep in primeval forest, inhabiting empty saloons and slinking off when threatened. A mirror image of Dana Andrew's Logan character.

Fantastic songs written and sung by Hoagy Charmichael.

Tokyo Story - Yasujiro Ozu (1953)

Conflict presented by generational differences, not by any sense of maliciousness or competition. When the grown children sent their parents away on holiday it isn't because they don't love them, but because city life doesn't mesh with country life, because older people don't mesh with younger people, because the gap of identification is too large. Each generation seems to realize this gap and their complete inability to bridge it. A universal theme that Ozu returned to again and again.

Ozu leaves room in his film for this quiet realization because he tones down realism to its bare minimum. The camera does not move, actors are almost stoic, important events (e.g., the mother's death) are removed through ellipsis. Noriko's weeping at the end of the film is a heightened moment because of this restraint throughout the rest of the film.

Ozu uses rhythmic audio (a chugging riverboat, the drone of insects), especially at the end, to indicate a continuation despite the separate between parent and child.

The National World War One Museum - Kansas City, MO

A stunning work of architecture and design. The museum uses flow, graphics and technology to walk visitors through the events leading up to the United States' entering WWI in 1917 and the aftermath. A circular floor plan places audio at the center, interactive exhibits and a timeline near the middle and more detailed collections/interpretation on the outside surrounded by a diorama depicting trench warfare and the daily life of the soldiers.

King Aroo - Jack Kent (1953)

As collected in Nemo: The Classic Comics Library No. 21