That Little Band of Gold (1915)

 

THAT LITTLE BAND OF GOLD  (1915)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle

    Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, Mabel Normand, 

    Ford Sterling, Alice Davenport, May Emory, 

    Minta Durfee, Charley Chase

Fatty and Mabel tie the knot, but can the marriage survive his philandering? Slapstick off the Keystone assembly line. Artistry trumped by speed.

The 2023 Covie Awards

 

    The Covie Awards were created three years ago to 

    recognize cinematic achievement in various categories 

    during the pandemic. Since then, the virus hasn't 

    entirely gone away, and it looks like the Covies, with 

    ever-evolving variants, will be sticking around, too.

Picture: "The Quiet Girl" (2022)

Director: Emerald Fennell, "Saltburn" (2023)

Actress: Emma Stone in "Poor Things" (2023)

Actor: Barry Keoghan in "Saltburn" (2023)

Supporting Actress: America Ferrera in "Barbie" (2023)

Supporting Actor: Dominic Sessa in "The Holdovers" (2023)

Cameo: Hanna Schygulla in "The Mystery of Henri Pick" (2019) and "Poor Things" (2023)

Ensemble: "That Championship Season" (1982)

Couple: Dale Dickey and Wes Studi in "A Love Song" (2022)

Juvenile Performance: Lola Campbell in "Scrapper" (2023)

Foreign Language Film: "Fallen Leaves" (2023)

Short Film: "Time Traveling Through Time" (2022)

Better With Age: Judy Davis in "Mystery Road" (2018)

Cinematography: Lloyd Ahern  II, "Dead For a Dollar" (2022)

Musical Score: Jeff Grace, "In a Valley of Violence" (2016)

Production Design: "Poor things" (2023)

Title Sequence: "The Lost King" (2023)

Best Title For an Exploitation Movie: "Schoolgirls In Chains" (1973)

Best Musical Performance: "Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind" (2019)

Best Use of a Kinks Song: "LOLA" (2022)

Beat Mad Scene: Iwona Petry in "Szamanka" (1996)

Best Argument For Sequels: "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" (2023)

Beat the Devil: "The Pope's Exorcist" (2023)

Top Hat & Tails: Mary Pickford in "Kiki" (1931)

Back To the Future: "A Time of Roses" (1969)

The World Turned Pink: "Barbie" (2023)

Gone With the Wind: "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948)

Wake of the Flood: "Noah's Ark" (1928)

Play Ball: "It Happens Every Spring" (1949)

Blood and Bikinis: "Slaughter Island" (2008)

Once Upon a Time In the West: "Dead For a Dollar" (2022)

Larger Than Life: Peter Dinklage in "Avengers: Infinity War" (2018)

Still Crazy After All These Years: Brent Spiner in "Independence Day: Resurgence" (2016)

End of the Line: "Neville Brand in "Evils of the Night" (1985)

Strangers In a Strange Land: Paula Luna and Elina Lowensohn in "After Blue" (20021)

The Eyes Have It: Paul Giamatti in "The Holdovers" (2023)

Drink Up: "Prohibition" (2011)

Bon Appetit: Divine in "Pink Flamingos" (1972)

The Bible On a Budget: "Sins of Jezebel" (1953)

Games People Play: "Cheap Thrills" (2014)

Earth Girls Are Uneasy: Gloria Talbot in "I Married a Monster From Outer Space" (1958)

She Sees Dead People: Shirley Henderson in "Life During Wartime" (2009)

If Only It Was Only a Dream: "Tag" (2015)

Just a Gigolo: William Powell in "Ladies' Man" (1931)

On the Road Again: Clint Eastwood in "Cry Macho" (2021)

Best Performance By a Somnambulist: Sondra Locke in "The Second Coming of Suzanne" (1974)

Grinning From Ear To Ear: Mia Goth in "Pearl" (2022)

Catching a Few Rays: "The Hideous Sun Demon" (1958)

Still Cracking the Whip: Harrison Ford in "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" (2023)

Building the Bomb: "Oppenheimer" (2023)

Dropping the Soap In the Shower: Anne Heche in "Girls In Prison" (1994)

That Witch Looks Familiar: Donald Sutherland in "The Castle of the Living Dead" (1964)

Dracula Dead and Loving It: Nicolas Cage in "Renfield" (2023)

The Devil Made Her Do It: Madison Stone in "Evil Toons" (1992)

Maynard G. Krebs Award For Beatnik Slang: Peter Brown in "Kitten With a Whip" (1964)

All In the Family: "Byleth: Demon of Incest" (1972)

Most Eye-Catching Nude Scene: Eva Green in "The Dreamers" (2003)

Most Discreet Nude Scene: Charlotte Gainsbourg in "My Dog Stupid" (2019)

Best Performance By an Actor Playing a Walrus: Justin Long in "Tusk" (2014)

Wickedest Lipstick: Jodie Foster in "The Mauritanian" (2021) and Scarlett Johansson in "Asteroid city" (2023)

Scariest Teeth: Morgana Ignis in "Moon Garden" (2022)

Most Depressing Nightclub Routine: "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" (1976)

Monsters' Ball: "House of the Wolf Man" (2009)

Scream and Scream Again: Judee Morton in "The Slime People" (1963)

Golden Meat Cleaver Award For Gratuitous Carnage: "The Untold Story" (1993)

Best Animal Performance: The elephant in "Zenobia" (1939)

Weirdest Nicolas Cage Movie: "Prisoners of the Ghostland" (2021)

It Came From Beneath the Sea: "Godzilla Minus One" (2023)

Why Closeups Were Invented: Sally Hawkins in "The Lost King" (2023) and Léa Seydoux in "France" (2021)

Playin' In the Band: "The Other One: The Long, Strange Trip of Bob Weir" (2014)

Doin' the Vatican Rag: Jude Law in "The Young Pope" (2016)

Beyond the Green Door: Marilyn Chambers in "Angel of H.E.A.T" (1982)

Herman Scobie Award For Career Achievement: Peter Coyote

Tentacles (1977)

 

TENTACLES  (1977)  ¢ 1/2

    D: Oliver Hellman (Ovidio Assonitis)

    John Huston, Shelley Winters, Bo Hopkins,

    Claude Akins, Henry Fonda, Cesare Danova

"Jaws" with a giant octopus instead of a shark. "Tentacles", get it?

Shadow In the Cloud (2020)

 

SHADOW IN THE CLOUD  (2020)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Roseanne Liang

    Chloë Grace Moretz, Nick Robinson, Beulah Koale,

    Taylor John Smith, Callan Mulvey, Benedict Wall

This starts out with a clip from an instructional cartoon about gremlins on an airplane, and goes on to be . . . a live-action movie about gremlins on an airplane. It stars Chloë Grace Moretz as a World War Two aviator who boards a B-17 just before takeoff, carrying a highly classified package that she insists is top priority. The crew - all men - give her shit and confine her to the gun turret under the fuselage, which turns out to be a good thing when they're attacked by a Japanese fighter and she shoots it down. Eventually you find out what's in the package and the movie loses its tenuous grip on anything resembling reality. If the story's not based on a comic book, it should be. Moretz makes an appealing action-figure heroine. 

A Funny Thing Happened On the Way To the Forum (1966)

 

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY 

TO THE FORUM  (1966)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Richard Lester

    Zero Mostel, Phil Silvers, Jack Gilford, Buster Keaton,

    Michael Crawford, Michael Hordern, Annette Andre,

    Leon Greene, Roy Kinnear, Peter Butterworth, Alfie Bass

A frantically paced musical farce based on a hit Broadway play based on a comedy by Plautus, about slaves and slave girls, senators and soldiers, virgins and courtesans, all chasing each other around ancient Rome. Farce almost always works better on the stage, where the split-second timing it requires can't be faked. Lester keeps everything moving real fast, but speed alone isn't enough, and gags that might've had a theater audience roaring can seem too broad on the screen, even in something as raucous as this. (The only key player who doesn't overact is Buster Keaton.) Filmed in Spain, on sets left over from "The Fall of the Roman Empire".

Who'll Stop the Rain? (1978)

 

WHO'LL STOP THE RAIN?  (1978)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Karel Reisz

    Nick Nolte, Tuesday Weld, Michael Moriarty,

    Anthony Zerbe, Richard Masur, Ray Sharkey,

    Charles Haid, Gail Strickland, David Opatoshu

Three desperate characters, two of them rank amateurs, get in over their heads when they try to move two kilos of uncut heroin. This can't go well for anybody, and guess what? It doesn't. Robert Stone cowrote the script from his novel "Dog Soldiers", a morally shifty reflection on the American psyche in the last years of the Vietnam War. Viewers who are up on their counterculture history can watch for the references to Ken Kesey and Neal Cassady. The ending echoes "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre".

The 10 Best Movies of 2023

 

The following list was scraped together from the movies I saw last year, either for the first time ever, or for the first time in years. Some I managed to see on a big screen. Others were on Kanopy, YouTube, or TCM. Some were rentals from Scarecrow, Seattle's only remaining video store.

MOVIES I LIKED A LOT:

"The Quiet Girl" (2022)

"Poor Things" (2023)

"LOLA" (2022)

"Scrapper" (2023)

Saltburn" (2023)

"Oppenheimer" (2023)

"Killers of the Flower Moon" (2023)

"Fallen Leaves" (2o23)

"Pearl" (2022)

"Dead For a Dollar" (2022)

SECRET TREASURES:

"Tag" (2015)

"Breaking Surface" (2020)

"Moon Garden" (2022)

"The Ballad of Lefty Brown" (2017)

GUILTY PLEASURES:

"Renfield" (2023)

"The Pope's Exorcist" (2023)

"Loaded Weapon 1" (1993)

"Lobster Man From Mars" (1989)

MOVIES I MIGHT WATCH AGAIN SOMETIME:

"A Love Song" (2o22)

"Full Time" (2021)

"In a Valley of Violence" (2016)

"The Holdovers" (2023)

"Godzilla Minus One" (2023)

"Asteroid City" (2023)

"Tár" (2022)

"Mystery Road" (2018)

"Living" (2022)

"The Lost King" (2022)

FOUR FROM THE VAULT:

"Blast of Silence" (1961)

"The Last Picture Show" (1971)

"Pink Flamingos"(1972)

"The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948)

TOXIC WASTE:

"Wet Wilderness" (1975)