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ABOUTBlack Lamb was created to offer the discerning reader a stimulating selection of excellent original writing. Published monthly. (more) FREE SAMPLE COPYClick here to receive a free sample issue via U.S. mail. There is absolutely no obligation. SUBSCRIBESupport this independently published journal of fine essays. Annual subscriptions are $15 in the USA, $25 in Canada, $30 in the UK, or $35 elsewhere (all prices in US $). Click here to subscribe online via paypal or send a check to Black Lamb, 1759 View Drive, San Leandro CA 94577. QUESTIONSIf you have questions or comments regarding Black Lamb, please email us. |
Archive for the 'All Movie Issue' CategoryItalians and TurksSeptember 1st, 2003
I read in one of Rome’s new free newspapers a couple of weeks ago that some survey had found that the Italians are the unhappiest people in Western Europe. The article didn’t specify how the institution that conducted the survey chose to measure unhappiness, or how they got around the difficulty of defining unhappiness consistently for speakers of more than a dozen languages, or whether they had considered how willingness to declare oneself unhappy might vary from country to country. It just made this assertion, and left its readers to glow with secret pride. That Italians assess themselves as especially unhappy shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has paid the least attention to what they say about themselves in their films and novels.
Posted by: The Editors Escape from “escape”September 1st, 2003 BY DAN PETERSON Before I address the question of whether or not any movie ever affected my life in any way, I just have to get this down for the record: movies today are absolute crap compared to films of past generations. Examples abound but I would indicate The Mexican as a case in point. I have not paid to see a movie in thirty years but I do reluctantly sit through them on intercontinental flights… or flip them off and sleep. The problem is that there are no good ideas and no good stories. A movie should tell a story — a great story — but that’s not the way it is today. Today it’s “escape.” Of course, that’s more crap. Buildings exploding. Has anyone ever heard of a building exploding in real life — except for 9/11? Cars flipping. Has anyone ever seen a case of this? I watch films of real chases and I have never once seen a car flip over.
Posted by: The Editors Harlow with a “t”September 1st, 2003
I am perhaps the last person to have discovered sex through Jean Harlow. Not the mechanics of coupling, mind you — I was raised on a farm, and so was wise to the routine at a tender age. No, what I gathered from Miss Harlow was an understanding of unbridled passion and an appreciation for sexual aids, courtesy of my poor mother.
Posted by: The Editors The black stallionSeptember 1st, 2003 BY EMILY EMERSON
Posted by: The Editors Hail Caesar!September 1st, 2003 BY JIM PATTON What can I tell you, if you haven’t seen Little Caesar? How about (to paraphrase the inimitable Edward G. Robinson as Rico/Little Caesar, an Al Capone-inspired gangster): Get your butt out and rent it, or my gun’s gonna speak its piece. Grrr.
Posted by: The Editors Absolutely addictedSeptember 1st, 2003 BY REBECCA OWEN I watch several movies a week and make my choices carefully, so it would make sense that there is a movie that shook my world. None comes to mind. There have been shocking movies along the way, beautiful movies, intense, funny, notable, awful movies, but the movies that excited me were usually ones that reinforced my opinions rather than forced me to some sort of change. Film moves me less than books or music or art or the outdoors. I recognize genius, enjoy the art, appreciate the message — or lack thereof — and am utterly, absolutely addicted, but the printed word is my center.
Posted by: The Editors Another Thing is…September 1st, 2003 BY DOUG RENNIE Word was it was scary. Damned scary. Air Force unit hear the North Pole thaws out a Shaq-sized alien, the advance scout for a race of intelligent vegetable-hominoids bent on turning the earth into a fast-food joint. Our blood, their grub. But I didn’t know this when I stood outside Peabody Elementary School looking toward downtown Santa Barbara in 1952, pulling coins and lint from the pockets of my Lee Huskers. My mental map of horror films traced only the familiar terrain of Thirties classics: the lumbering monster in Frankenstein, the unintentional high camp of Bela Lugosi’s Dracula, the curiously bobbing hat atop the Invisible Man — farcical monsters that elicited only squeaks of faux fright and excited fidgeting. But this new film from Howard Hawks, The Thing from Another World, would change all that. “Coldly terrifying,” said the newspaper ad. But hey, I’d cut my teeth on the soon-to-be-outlawed-by-Congress EC horror comics. Bring. It. On.
Posted by: The Editors Wet is beautifulSeptember 1st, 2003 BY LANE BROWNING I watch it every time it’s on TV. Every time. Every single time. The water. The grunge. The laconic, scowling protagonist. The long, dreary silences. THE WATER! It was nominated for a Raspberry Award as 1997’s worst film of the year (Showgirls won; pole dancing beat out water ballet) and was the subject of international ridicule, sometimes touted as “the most awful movie in history.” (Excuse me, but that distinction, indisputably, goes to Disney’s Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend.) It stars an actor for whom I have not a scintilla of respect. But it’s one of my favorite films. Waterworld.
Posted by: The Editors A global embarrassmentSeptember 1st, 2003 BY GREG ROBERTS The film industry has been a global embarrassment for such a long time, it leaves me with one wish: I hope it gets even worse, until it reaches the final degree of worthlessness, at which stage I can forget about it completely, the way I’ve dismissed popular music.
The cardboard characters, the lousy scripts, the moralizing that is so heavy-handed you feel like a stockyard calf getting hit straight between the eyes with a sledge hammer, and the perpetrators — people such as Julia Roberts and Nick Nolte — not only get rich, they get respect for their shameless dreck.
Posted by: The Editors The language of meSeptember 1st, 2003
Man of La Mancha begins with the narrator’s invitation, “Come, enter into my imagination.” And as easily as that, no matter what the film, I am instantly transported into the land of make-believe. Utter fantasy, taking at face value the admonition to suspend my disbelief. I am a complete naïf about movies; whatever appears on the big screen is true within its own universe. It’s rather like the French language, I suppose, which makes exquisite sense only in French. If the Académie Française can dictate a comme il faut for sixty million people’s vocabulary and grammar, then the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences can certainly insist on the same iron-fisted mind control when it comes to cinema.
Posted by: The Editors |
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