Adam Baran

So I like to keep a big long list of every movie I watch, along with some notes.  This part of the blog is where I hope to regularly add a few lines about what I’m watching.  This is not meant to show how super cineaste-y I am, but just for me to kind of form some thoughts about what I’m watching and why I’m watching what I’m watching.  Some reviews will be short, nothing more than - “I liked it.” others longer, and hopefully, my friends who read this who are always trying to get me to sign up for netflix so’s I can reccomend movies to them, can just check back here for some ideas.  

Now I have to catch you all up on the past four months of movie watching. 

Here’s January.

Pan’s Labyrinth - Not much to say about this one that hasn’t been said already.  I loved it.  I saw it with my Dad and he loved it too.  The Baran seal of approval.  Was only confused by the villain who I kept thinking looked an awful lot like Clive Owen. 

Va Savoir -  I didn’t really get into Jacques Rivette until the big retrospective at the Museum of the Moving Image last December.  I saw Celine and Julie Go Boating and hated it at first, but was so fascinated by how different his language of film is that I kept going back to see more.  Now I’m pissed I didn’t see even more than I did.  This film, one of his most recent, is a strange romantic ensemble piece ostensibly about an actress rehearsing a Luigi Pirandello play who’s involved with her director, who’s searching for an abandoned play, and it sort of goes on from there.  As seems to be always the case with Rivette (and I could very well be wrong) there’s some form of blackmail and intrigue that’s sort of a McGuffin light - the story is never really about these things, but they serve up some form of cinematic intrigue or artifice that pulls the story along.  The lead actress quickly overcame her dramatic resemblence to Amanda Plummer, to our benefit. 

Children of Men - So tense I couldn’t take it.  Really great. 

The Man From Planet X - Cheapie Edgar Ulmer (is there any other kind?) sci-fi picture about a visitor from Outer Space who lands in the moors of a small Scottish Town and predictably works the suspicious townsfolk into a rampage.  I’m sure you could tie an analysis of this film in to a larger essay about Ulmer’s larger themes of outsiders, immigrants, the displaced citizens, etc - also illustrated in Detour, The Black Cat, etc.   But this film was pretty hard to take.  Some nice creative atmospheric B-Movie use of limited space and sets simliar to Jacques Torneur, but that’s about it.  Couldn’t really swallow most of it but maybe it’s just very dated.  The film does have its fans. 

The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane - Was there ever a better child actress than Jodie Foster?  She’s incredible in this creepy thriller about a little girl who lives all alone in a remote house and does away with those who cross her property line.  It’s not a perfect movie by any means, but it’s so strongly anchored by Foster’s performance, and the relationship between her character and Scott Jacoby’s Mario that it’s definitely worth watching.  Apparently Foster’s sister had to be her body double in the nude scene after Foster walked off the set. 

My Tutor - Awful but in a very good way - it’s essentially a T- and A sex comedy from the 80’s about a boy who’s parents hire a French Tutor for their son and don’t seem to mind the fact that she’s ridiculously hot, and skinny dips each evening for what seems like hours.  She tutors him in more than just French obviously, while his sidekick, Crispin Glover in his first role, as creepy as he ever would be, tries to find his own slice of pie.  It’s so off in places it’s hard to believe that the filmmakers bothered with some very serious moments at all.  Features melon-breasted Russ Meyer starlet Kitten Natividad in a small role. 

Bugcrush - Had heard a lot about this short when it screened at Sundance, and the filmmaker Carter Smith has my admiration from me on how much he worked this short into the media at large.  I read about this in Visionaire and i-D - which is unheard of for a short film.  It’s a pretty thoroughly creepy film about a boy who becomes fascinated with an older boy who’s fixated on bugs.   A queer horror film w/ echoes of Gus Van Sant and Clive Barker, all I wanted that I didn’t get was some moment of hope at the end, some closure, instead of an ultimately sad ending for a character who maybe didn’t deserve it.  But otherwise, it’s really well done. 

Wicked Woman - Beverly Michael’s - a sultry leggy blonde who looks like a more slatternly Marilyn Monroe imitator - plays Billie Nash, a brazen hussy who rolls into town in a similar fashion to Constance Towers in The Naked Kiss.  But in this town, the sin is pretty much all on the surface.  Billie moves into a dirty backwater boarding house, across the hall from leering creep Percy Helton.  She gets a job in a local bar run by a buff He-Man frustrated with his alcoholic wife, and sets her eye on him.  It’s more about the degradation and showing the nasty true pulp on the surface of 50’s society and in that it’s very successful.  Beverly Michaels was a true cult star for a minute flash in the pan moment, until director and lover Russell Rouse was through with her. 

Idiocracy - A fascinating mess by Mike Judge.  It’s more interesting to think of how this actually got greenlighted by so many people, when it probably would have made a better cartoon or TV show similar to Futurama.  Luke Wilson is never totally engaging or likable as the lead, an everyman from the past who wakes up five hundred years later in a society founded on white-trash principles.  There’s some pretty funny stuff, but mostly I was just puzzled at why the studio didn’t push it into more theaters.  It surely could have done more business than it was given the chance to, even though it’s got all the trademarks of a classic bomb.  Maya Rudolph is great as always though.

The Unholy Three - Classic Tod Browning creepfest about a trio of Freak Show killers - a strong man, a little person who looks like a baby, and a Ventriloquist who form a crime ring.  They run a store selling exotic birds, but at night break into their customers houses and make off with the loot.  They’re aided in their efforts by a very large, very vicious Gorilla.  Not perfect, but worth seeing if you like Browning as I do. 

L’Magnifique - Phillipe deBroca comedy about Jean Paul Belmondo, who plays an Ian Fleming-esque author of spy novels who falls in love with upstairs neighbor Jacqueline Bisset, who’s only in love with the hero of Belmondo’s novels.  Didn’t totally work, but Bisset shows her star power.  Belmondo’s not totally suited for this comedy, it seems. 

The Italian - Thriller about an underhanded Russian orphanage and a boy who sets off to find his mother before he’s adopted by another family.  It’s sort of a bleaker Russian Annie, but with the same happy ending, unfortunately.  Some beautiful stuff here though, mostly the lead’s performance. 

Last Man on Earth - Vincent Price does I am Legend.  Predates Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead in it’s bleak views of a zombie infested society.  It’s all about Vincent Price in this one, not much else in the way of real scares or anything. 

Brewster McCloud - If you told me I’d ever find Bud Cort hot, I never would have believed you.  But he’s super hot here, in his briefs doing chin ups, pre-Harold and Maude.  This is a really strange surrealistic Robert Altman early 70’s film - his brand of humor is readily apparent and would carry over into Nashville.  Cort is Brewster McCloud, a birdlike boy who lives in the Houston Astrodome and slowly builds a set of wings for himself, aided by guardian angel Sally Kellerman, who somehow masterminds the accidental deaths of all those who cross Brewster.  If you ever wanted to hear Wicked Witch of the West Margaret Hamilton calling a crow a “Nigger-Bird,” this is the film for you!  I know that moment shocked me more than the entire movie.  Also features oddball Shelly Duvall in what was I believe her first role as a race car driving woman who Brewster loses his virginity to. 

The Toy Box - One of the most bizarre exploitation films I’ve ever seen.  It’s essentially about a group of swingers who gather in an old house to perform sexual acts and role-playing scenarios for a creepy old man named UNCLE, who as we learn once the guests have arrived, is now dead.  But the shows must go on, with the couples competing for some sort of monetary prizes through excessive copulation.  In one sequence the lead Ann Myers finds a vibrator in a box and her inner monologue while she’s using it is one of the most hilariously awful things ever committed to celluloid.  Highly recommended, but it will hurt your brain and fuck you up by the end.

Whatever Happened To Aunt Alice? - Terrific film in the often title “horror-hag” or “Grand Dames Guignol” genre.  Oscar winner Geraldine Page stars as Mrs. Marraballe, a dotty bat who loses it when her husband doesn’t leave her a dime and starts murdering off her maids for their money.  Ruth Gordan comes in as Mrs. Dimmick, a maid who’s up to Page’s tricks.  Grand camp, in the best sense of the word. 

Down to the Bone - Vaguely interesting melodrama about a woman addicted to cocaine, who tries to kick, goes clean, and then goes back again.  Blah.

The Conquerer Worm - Wow, January really wasn’t a good movie watching month was it?  Vincent Price is great, but the film is overlong and lacks the bite and elegance of some of Price’s Poe - Roger Corman collaborations.

Tears of the Black Tiger - Dreamy, color saturated Thai cowboy melodrama exists in what seems like an alternate universe.  For me it didn’t go far enough. 

La Collectioneuse - Classic Eric Rohmer Moral Tale w/ Patrick Bachau.  I liked it a bit, I’ve never seen any Rohmer and this seemed like a fine place to start. 

The Set Up - Robert Wise and Robert Ryan teamed up for this B-Noir about a prize fighter ordered to throw a fight, and what happens after he doesn’t comply with the mobs wishes.  Wonderfully atmospheric, with beautiful fight sequences. Obviously Tarantino borrowed the plot for the Bruce Willis sequences in Pulp Fiction. 

That was January.  More to come later. 

Maybe this is too soon for this post but I have address something.  Obviously the Virginia Tech Shootings were absolutely horrible and very tragic.  But that doesn’t mean I can’t find my own selfish way to react to the tragedy.  

I guess what really bothers me is the confusion after the tragedy.  For instance the papers have been writing about Cho Seung-Hui, the gunman in the shootings nonstop since last week.  Articles like “Cho was accused of stalking” or “State laws should have prevented Cho from buying a gun.” or “Cho served time in a mental institution.”  The problem really is that every time I see these headlines, I get confused for a few moments, thinking it’s about comedienne Margaret Cho. 

I know it’s a brain fart, but it’s not easy to shake.  I wonder what happened to Margaret Cho that made her crazy, or why she purchased a gun?  Was it so she could finally hunt down her Republican enemies who do probably have a lot of members on the Virginia Tech Campus? 

And surprisingly, there are a lot of similarities between the two.  Both hated the beauracracy of the simple minded authorities, in Margaret’s case, the Republicans and homo-phobes, in Seng-Hui’s case, the pedophile teachers and parents.  They were also both Asian.  And there’s something else similiar about them that I couldn’t put my finger on until I found these two pictures. 

They’re the same person!  Paging Michael and Janet Jackson:  You’ve been out-done!  I bet Cho escaped Hannibal Lecter style by putting on his Margaret Cho wig and flying to San Francisco for a night of scathing queer comedy!  Call Jodie Foster y’all! 

Just to illustrate how strange and odd both New York, and in a larger sense, the world works, here’s what happened to me yesterday.  In the morning I posted the previous blog about Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, the TV Version coming to DVD next week.  I mentioned actor John Glover - oh just read it - there’s only three posts after all.

So being unemployed, with little to do, I go over to Central Park West and decide to drop by a friends’ place.  So I get to the elevator and who is standing there, waiting for the elevator, but John Glover!!!  How weird is that??? 

Anyway, I’m so totally weirded out by this coincidence that I can’t even speak or say anything.  I mean, what do you say?  “Uh, this is weird but I just totally wrote a blog about you this morning.”  I mean, come on.  I guess I shoulda, but I was just too nervous.  And also there was someone else in the elevator.  And also John Glover was giving me major bedroom eyes/cruising face! 

Apparently, he’s also on Smallville as Lex Luthor’s dad, and he’s gonna be in the Drowsy Chaperone starting April 17th.  As a tribute, here’s a gallery of pictures from his afforementioned appearance in Baby Jane! 

 Childhood memories! Flooding back!  Does anyone think I should email him?

For more info about John Glover, go to www.johnglover.info. 

Support your gay actor brothers!

Checking out Amazon.com, I see that next Tuesday sees the DVD release of one of my favorite TV movies from my childhood:

 http://www.amazon.com/What-Ever-Happened-Baby-Jane/dp/B000O785XI/ref=sr_1_6/102-6596561-2872957?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1176733409&sr=1-6

“Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” starring Lynn and Vanessa Redgrave as Baby Jane and Blanche! 

I remember seeing this one Sunday night, very early 90’s.  Imdb says it was February 17th, 1991.  I hadn’t seen the original yet, that was a year later, but I strongly remember one element to it - which is, that in the original, Hollywood homo Victor Buono, (aka King Tut from the old Batman show) portrays a creepy fey musician who plays on Baby Jane’s affections.  In the updated version, however, character actor John Glover portrays a creepy homosexual who meets Baby Jane when she’s looking for someone to help her revive her own act.  Glover’s character’s motives are unclear, but we get the clear sense that he’s a gay.  And in a pivotal scene, Baby Jane is at a nightclub, ready to do her act for a crowd, only to be upstaged by Glover who’s in full Baby Jane Hudson drag.  Humiliated, this sends her over the edge, and she runs back home where all the ensuing chaos and horror occurs.  I remember someone getting stabbed with a pointy award statuette. 

Obviously the original is one of my favorite films of all time.  I created an homage to it in my recent short film “Jinx!” 

I’m not saying that one must see the updated version, in fact it’s probably only really interesting if you’re a die hard Redgrave fan, but I like it and I’m happy it’s getting re-released, mostly because it’s a non-painful childhood memory I can swim around in. 

And anyway, it’s cheap - only $5.99!  To paraphrase the woman in the Focus Forward late night commercials - “If they’re selling it for that cheap, it must be good!”  Early stocking stuffer idea! 

Yesterday I took in an advance screening of the new film “Perfect Stranger,” starring Halle Berry, Bruce Willis, and Giovanni Ribisi.  As I sat in the theater I took a notepad and started scribbling notes, just so I could keep an emotional diary of how I was feeling. 

Background :  In my opinion, Halle Berry is one of the absolute worst actresses on not just the Earth, but the entire Universe.  I should say though, that ever since I saw Halle in the film Monster’s Ball, I’ve been utterly smitten with her rottenness.  One of my favorite scenes to do an impersonation of is the scene between Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thorton right before they first make love.  This dialogue features Halle’s character talking about her newly deceased son.  She talks about him being so fat, and how he loved to go up to the Super K-Mart and put the quarters in the machine, because he had to get the red gumball.  This begins a 3 minute sequence of Halle saying the words, “had to get the red, had to get the red gumball, had to put the quarter in the machine, had to get the red, had to get the red,” over and over.  It’s utter genius as is my impression.  Please, call me, I’ll be glad to do it. 

So back to me scribbling notes.  First I write, “Anticipation..is making me wait.”  It’s not just a Carly Simon quote, it was how I really felt.  Then I wrote, “When will Halle appear?”  Then I wrote, “Halle should do some sort of merchandising tie-in with Boo Berry cereal.”  Boo Berry cereal of course, is the sort of red-headed stepchild in the Holy Trinity of scary cartoon cereals, the others being of course Count Chocula and FrankenBerry.  Then I wrote, “the music is creepy.”  Then I wrote, “Ahhh, the titles!  It was an eye.”  I wrote this because the title sequence is over these veiny abstract images that are then revealed to be an extreme close up of veins in an eye.  This is a foreshadowing of the plot, in which Halle Berry investigates the murder of her friend Grace O’Shea, who is brutally murdered by someone who puts Belladonna (a poison which I think was only ever seriously used on the Addams Family show) in her eyes. 

The film begins with Halle Berry checking her bag through a metal detector at some sort of congressional hall.  Halle looks nervous.  In fact, that’s what I wrote, “Halle is nervous.  Don’t be nervous girl.  You won an Oscar!  You can do this!”  Halle arrives at the office of Congressman Sachs (and yes, what his name sounds like is a total foreshadowing).  Halle, who’s name in the film is Rowena Price (!!!) tells him that she’s writing captions for an article, and she wants to show him some pictures so he can tell her what they’re of.  Now why any Congressman would agree to meet with someone to go over captions for an article is beyond me.  Isn’t this the type of thing that I don’t know - any intern can do?  Anyway, if I nitpick all those kind of things we’ll be here all night.  So Halle starts showing Sachs all these pictures and he fills in the captions.  Then she reveals a picture of Sachs with one of his interns.  Mmmmhmmm.  You know where this is going.  She confronts him for being basically a knock-off Mark Foley who fucks his male interns(even the writers of Law and Order would have been less literal in this ripped from the headlines business) and the energy with which she confronts him for being a gay-bashing hypocrite who fucks young boys makes me write down, “WERK!  Halle loves the gays!” 

Cut to the newspaper office where Halle is delivering her story to the editor of what’s essentially the New York Post.  Next scene, Halle and Giovanni Ribisi playing Miles, the tech guy, who bugs her laptop so they can get the goods on Sachs, celebrate in a bar.  Uh-oh.  Here comes the editor.  Halle’s story has been pulled.  Sachs used his influence to squash the piece.  Halle lets loose a hailstorm of expletives and quits the paper. 

Later, Halle’s on the subway.  Girl you know she woulda took a cab.  Oscar winners don’t take the subway!!!  Uh oh, here comes some blond girl.  That’s Grace O’Shea, Halle’s friend who tells her this long drawn out story about Harrison Hill (Bruce Willis) who Grace was apparently screwing and stalking because he wouldn’t return her phone calls.  Halle looks like she’s barely paying attention to this story, but that’s just her guile, as we’ll find out later. 

Next scene, Halle turns up at the morgue a week later and pukes Kool-Aid when she sees the body of Grace lying on a slab.  Grossness!  At this point I write down, “Why is Halle’s hair so terrible in this movie?  Who did her hair?  According to IMDB it was this man http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0379762/ who apparently did the hair for lots of movies I liked like Flirting with Disaster.  What went wrong this time? 

At this point I’m so wrapped up in the movie that I sort of lose myself in it.  It’s so fascinatingly bad, I can’t stop pondering how something as second-rate as this made it into theaters.  Remember when Halle Berry did Catwoman the year after Monster’s Ball?  And remember how she won a Razzie for Worst Actress?  And how she tried to be funny by going to the awards to accept?  And how she gave her acceptance speech by saying something to the effect of “To my agent, next time - Read the Script!!!”  Well I mean did she keep that agent?  Clearly it’s not the agent’s fault?  Clearly she either has no taste in scripts,  is so bad that nobody knows what to do with her, or she just picks whatever projects are going to pay her the most money.  If it was just for the money, I’d say mad props to her.  Do it, fine, whatever.  Be a hustler like Marky Mark.  But I think it’s a combo of four things:  she sucks hard, all she’s got going for her is her body, she doesn’t really have a good eye for projects, and she wants to make her money.  Is it any secret that her most honest and truthful performance was in B.A.P.S???  I think not. 

So okay to get to the point, Halle starts investigating Bruce Willis because she thinks he murdered her friend Grace.  Or is she?  Halle signs up as a temp, renames herself Catherine Pogue, the name clearly an homage to her favorite Irish punk band, The Pogues.  Halle entices Bruce Willis to a predictable degree, he starts wining and dining her and we find out that Bruce’s wife Mia is a nutter who makes art using Belladonna and eyeballs (RED FLAG, HELLO???) and follows him around spying on him because she’s so insanely jealous. 

Meanwhile back at Halle’s house, she goes out on a date with her ex-boyfriend and when she brings him back for some lovin, who’s standing in her kitchen in the dark listening to her lovemaking?  Giovanni Ribisi - oh no he’s crazy too!  Maybe he was the murderer!  Giovanni Ribisi later sets Halle Berry up with a Chat Room identity so she can start IM-ing with Bruce Willis whose IM name is ADEX (”It makes sense!  He’s one of the biggest ‘ad-exec-utives” in New York!”)  The way Halle (and the audience) is supposed to be getting excited about the thrill of talking dirty in an internet chat room makes me think this movie is actually a period piece set in 1994. 

Halle is almost caught a few times by Bruce Willis, who I must say - and this is a sign of how bad the film is - is the best one in the movie.   Anyway he starts wining and dining her like I said, and there’s a big fight when he discovers her trying to break into his computer.  She lies and says she was leaving him a list of all the places in New York where you could get daquiri’s.  Don’t ask.  For no other reason than that the movie would be over if he didn’t, which no normal person would, Bruce Willis buys it.  Gay!  (in the second grader use of the word)

So alright, then Halle goes over to Giovanni Ribisi’s house.  By this point we as an audience know he’s crazy for Halle, and we know that the person Halle’s been chatting with this whole time was not Bruce Willis, but Giovanni Ribisi.  So of course it’s time for the obligatory reveal, where Halle finds Ribisi’s secret porno room with a built in shrine to Halle.  It seems to me that the first clue that someone is going to be a serial killer is if they start cutting out pictures from a magazine and placing them collage style around their room.  I think schools should stop doing those collage projects where you have to cut out pictures and paste them onto construction paper for show and tell.  The art of collage is the pastime of serial killers!  So Halle sees the shrine and finds pictures of Ribisi and Grace (the murdered girl) fucking kinky style with belts and chains.  Ribisi comes in and we’re scared for a second, because Ribisi is doing a convincing DeNiro impression.  But since he lets Halle go, he’s obviously not the killer.  It makes no sense after this sequence why Halle doesn’t go to the police and turn Ribisi in - it would seem that he’s the most likely candidate.  But she presses on and convinces cops that it’s Bruce Willis who killed her friend. 

Montage sequence begins showing the trial of Bruce Willis, who gets convicted of murdering Grace O’Shea, even though there’s clearly no evidence other than circumstantial evidence that Willis had access to the Belladonna that his wife uses in her artwork to create those dilated eye paintings.   

Case closed, Bruce Willis goes to jail.  The end.  If only.  In the next scene we find Halle Berry in her kitchen waiting for some sort of closure.  Here comes nutbag Giovanni Ribisi - did I mention how miscast he is for this role?  He’s here to wrap up the story - and boy, it’s a doozy! 

So get this - the person who murdered Grace O’Shea was not really Bruce Willis, obviously.  No the person who committed the murder was…HALLE BERRY!!! That’s right, Halle Berry spent the whole movie investigating Bruce Willis for a crime that she committed!!  She went to all the trouble to try and get the goods on him so that she could actually plant the dirt on him that would send him to jail.  Meanwhile, she never would have been found out in the first place!!  Oh why did Halle kill Grace?  Easy, as we flash back to Halle Berry’s mom killing her abusive husband as he attempted to molest Halle Berry’s younger self.  Yeah, it’s basically the plot of Dolores Claiborne, but whatever.  They bury (Berry?  Halle Bury? See the subtle ways this movie works?) the husband in the backyard and Grace sees.  She then blackmails Halle Berry her whole life and when Berry sees her opportunity to get rid of Grace and blame it on someone else she takes it.  She researches Bruce Willis and finds out about his wife and her Belladonna art, uses that, kills Grace in that way, and then spends an inordinate amount of time setting Bruce Willis up. 

Does it sounds like it makes no sense?  You’re right!  It’s completely and utterly ridiculous.  Apparently according to IMDB, the filmmakers filmed 3 separate endings, and I don’t know, threw a dart at random to pick this one? 

Finally, after Ribisi has revealed this retardedness, he turns the tables on Halle Berry, saying that he’s not going to reveal her crime as long as she like, becomes his love slave or something.  He gets up close to her and she stabs him with a kitchen knife.  Then she messes up her apartment, puts a jar of Belladonna in his pocket, and calls the police and tells them they’ve got the wrong guy.  Oh no she didn’t!   But it’s going to be curtains for Halle, as the camera pans across the windows where, uh oh - some random stranger - the PERFECT STRANGER the title suggests, has seen her murder, and will undoubtedly tell police.   The final shot has the man across the street staring into Halle’s window.  Sorta like this :

But not smiling.  So basically this entire movie was a giant waste of any reasonable audience’s time.  My brain hurt trying to think of all the people who read this script and said, “Sure, why not?”  And Halle Berry, I salute you.  This movie is the apotheosis of your talent.  Brava!  

It is always so wonderful when I get to display my wit, but always dissapointing when you’re with people who don’t get the joke you’re making. 

Case in point: I ran into my friend, we’ll call him P, at a party this past weekend.  P works at an abortion clinic in the IS department, setting up computers and managing that sort of techy stuff.  Anyway he always tells me great stories about the weirdness of the place. 

This time he told me about this lady who came into the clinic for an abortion.  Pretty normal right?  Well this lady was different because she was only 30 years old, and this was her 28th abortion.  P told me how the doctors were trying to tell her not to have any more abortions and go on the birth control pill because having so many surgeries isn’t exactly healthy for the body.  

Anyway, so he tells me that this lady was 30 and she’d had 28 abortions, so I go, “Wow, she’s like the Fassbinder of abortions.” 

Now that shit is funny!  But I guess not everyone knows about New German Cinema’s patron saint Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who was 36 when he died in 1982 after having made 41 films. 

Anyway the point of all that is that A.  I’m a witty motherfucker, and B. it’s a segueway to mention that I’m gearing up this week to watch Fassbinder’s classic Berlin Alexanderplatz, newly restored and premiering at the Museum of Modern Art next week.  I’ve always had a hard time watching his films on home video and so I’m very excited to see the 16 hour tv miniseries on the big screen, along with some of his other classic films like Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven, and one of my favorites - Fear of Fear, starring skeletal Margit Carstensen as a bored housewife who starts to go bonkers and alcoholic after the birth of her child. 

My favorite quote about Fassbinder comes from Andy Warhol who said, after hearing of his death, “… he was reeeaally strange.  And when I say somebody’s strange, you know they’re strange.”

PS how hot does Rainer look in that picture above?  The huge phallic camera?  I love it!  Oh and yeah, it’s pretty fucked up to have gotten 28 abortions when you’re only thirty, but whatever -  I got to make that awesome joke!