Movies I Love, Part VI: “Galaxy Quest”

I ran into my buddy Will Russell the other day at Heine Brothers.

You gotta love a guy who, along with a pal or two, turned obsession with the Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski into a reasonably lucrative cottage industry. Annual festivals across the country, paraphernalia, a book for heavens’ sakes. Such Achievers, those boys.

So while we were each waiting for our actual coffee companions to arrive, we shot the shit. I asked if any actors from the film have actually showed up at any of these festivals. Yes, several. And Will explained as how Jeff Bridges, who played The Dude himself,posted at a festival in L A. Brought his band too. “Really nice guy,” advises Will.

Which conversation got me to thinking about these types of gatherings which attract myriads of obsessed aficionados from hither and yon. I guess the biggest cult of these sorts involves Star Trek. But, given that Lebowski Fests are centered on bowling and White Russians, they’re obvious looser and more fun.

JazzFest ‘08 — It’s Too Late To Stop Now

It is the quietest day of the year around here, isn’t it? The first Monday after the first Saturday in May. All the hoopla, juleps, bed races, hair coifs, visit to the milliner’s shoppe, hair appointments, celebrity sightings, last minute alterations to that apparel you must wear to the Derby or Oaks or both, discarded tickets . . . all gone to bed until we arise to Thunder again in ‘09.

Well, it’s about the same in New Orleans. JazzFest, the world’s premier music festival, always ends the day after Derby, and the tired, somewhat empty feeling in the Crescent City is similar to that here in Derbyplace USA. (Okay I know that Ash Wednesday at Mardi Gras epicenter also invokes a major sigh of relief, but work with me here. I’m trying a new segue on my annual New Orleans during JazzFest update and the metaphors aren’t coming through cleanly.)

Matzogate ‘08 — An Unleavened Conspiracy

What I am about to discuss regards a conspiracy, I am so sure, of the highest order. Egypt, ironically, isn’t the only place where the citizenry is inclined to riot over the lack of bread. That what I’m about to discuss deals with the unleavened variety makes it that much more important.

Read on.

My sweetie — you know her as The Film Babe — doesn’t panic in emergency situations. She is stalwart. So when, in a palpable tizzy, she called while out running errands last Saturday afternoon, it was obvious there was an exigency of consequence at hand.

There were but a few hours left before sundown, when Passover commenced. She was gathering the last necessary items for the Seder. Normally unflappable, she was beside herself.

“There’s no matzo to be had in this town.”

The Best Film You’ve Never Seen

I thought I read the words of my title — The Best Film You’ve Never Seen — in a review somewhere of Romance & Cigarettes.

But, after watching this incredible and incredibly unique masterpiece on DVD which the Film Babe got from NetFlix, I went back and read the reviews where I thought I’d viewed the line. Ebert perhaps. Stephen Holden in the New York Times. Salon maybe.

But no. They weren’t there. Though those salient film observers all agreed with each other. And me. That this film never got a serious studio release, that you’ve probably never heard of it, is a major travesty.

Vanilla Fudge - A Welcome Blast From The Past

The song blasted from the box in my car like a welcome punch to the solar plexus. God bless those New Albany High School deejays for continually foisting such chestnuts on us. A gem a day keeps the doc away. I couldn’t stop smiling during the entire seven-and-a-half minutes.

At the bombastic faux seriosity.

At the simplistic yet soaring riffs from the Hammond B-3. It’s rock’s greatest instrument, you know?

At the sitaresque guitar licks, Bronx Italoharmonies and Carmine Appice’s thunderdrumming.

At the stolen moments from The Supremes, Berry Gordy’s signature Motown girl group.

At the band’s telling yet effective moniker, Vanilla Fudge.

“You Keep Me Hanging On.” Indeed.

Be Wise, Cards Fans. Be Insured.

It’s season ticket insurance time for Cardinal fans.

The U of L is resurgent. Be wise. Be insured. Pay the premium now.

This perhaps confusing concept has been a running stream of consciousness for a cadre of inveterate Cards fans for decades now. It started when the program became a national player, when the school kicked it up a notch during the invigorating uptick of the 1970s.

Super Bowl Is A Chip Shot Away

We will gather. Yes, of course, we will.

It is our annual rite. Our right inalienable.

We will eat chips. Tons of chips. Corn. Potato. And dips. Guacamole, lots of guacamole. So much that one of us, the guy in the corner with green dribbles down his sweater, will mention how there’s more avocados sold this weekend than the rest of the year combined. Or something like that.

“The L Word” — Lame or Loser or Both?

It is easy to understand the popularity of “The L Word.” Theoretically, of course.

A healthy segment of the American populace adores looking at attractive women without their clothes on, watching them making love, making sex, making eyes at their girlfriends’ girlfriends and generally carrying on as people love their soap opera stars to do.

Movies I Love, Part V: “Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”

Stanley Kubrick is not especially known for his sense of humor. In fact, his resume is replete with ponderous works delving into the BIG issues without much dimming perspective. All of which makes Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb more remarkable.

It is at once one of the great films ever made, one of the funniest comedies ever made, one of the most incisive political indictments ever made, a satire most incisive and one of the more visually compelling films ever made. Black and white has never been more resonant.

Review of “I’m Not There”

Even having lived it, it’s hard to describe the genesis of the Bob Dylan mythos in a way that could explain such obsessive observations as Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There.

I first heard Dylan — literally — while hauling my foot locker down the hall as I entered my freshman dorm in the fall of ‘63. My dorm counselor in the next room had that first eponymous album on the box. Being young, impressionable, inclined toward rebellion, ready to break out of my prepster malaise, I grabbed hold of the guy who was to be the bard of my generation.

I wasn’t alone. Far from it.

B. Young Lesson For Cards In Vegas

It is the nature of the place, Las Vegas. With arid desert sprawling in all directions and a grand canyon in one of such magnificence it’s hard to fathom it was created in just one day, the area was discovered to be an oasis centuries ago by Spaniards traveling north from Tejas. The area has always been about survive and advance.

The Vegas of dumbfounding excess, the Vegas that turned the seven deadly sins into a design for glitzkrieg business success, that Vegas the world has come to know is but 50 years old.

Movies I Love, Part I: “Diva”

One guy’s opinion is that the character Gorodish (Richard Bohringer) is the coolest guy in all of film. His self-stated satori is the “art of toast.” He lives in a way cool, sparely furnished Paris loft with a bathtub in the middle, plenty of room for his muse — fetching Vietnamese ingenue/ kleptomaniac Alba (Thuy An Luu) — to blithely rollerskate about. He spends his days in a state of sublime existential sangfroid, piecing together an oversized crossword puzzle of a crashing wave. Or waxing on about the art of cutting a baguette. When he steps out of self-contained serenity, he drives a classic cream Citroen. He has more than one, a necessity you will discover near the end of the movie.

Gorodish is but one of the reasons why the film Diva is the first in a new regular series here — called “Movies I Love.” –heralding older films I, uh, well, uh, love. And you might too.