Ever heard people throw around famous directors’ names and think “What if there was a way to make short, pithy references to their cinematic masterpieces without actually having to sit through Battleship Potemkin? Fortunately, now there is! We’ve dispatched Intern Anastasia to brave the subtitles—and the pretentious clerks at Kim’s Video—so you can sound cultured at dinner parties.
Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal is about a 14th century knight who returns to Sweden after the Crusades only to find it ravaged by the plague. F, right? It’s all about existential angst and questioning God’s existence, topics so weighty only clove-smoking, 15-year-olds with a thing for Joy Division could possibly understand them. CONTINUED »
Ever heard people throw around famous directors’ names and think “What if there was a way to make short, pithy references to their cinematic masterpieces without actually having to sit through “Battleship Potemkin?” Fortunately, now there is! We’ve dispatched Intern Anastasia to brave the subtitles—and the pretentious clerks at Kim’s Video—so you can sound cultured at dinner parties.
Jules and Jim, directed by Francois Truffaut, is considered one of the most important films of the French New Wave. You might have heard of Truffaut—he’s often contrasted with Jean-Luc Godard (not to be confused with Captain Jean-Luc Picard). Anyhow, the big difference? Godard is more cynical, Truffaut is more sentimental.
Ever heard people throw around famous directors’ names and think “What if there was a way to make short, pithy references to their cinematic masterpieces without actually having to sit through “Battleship Potemkin?” Fortunately, now there is! We’ve dispatched Intern Anastasia to brave the subtitles—and the pretentious clerks at Kim’s Video—so you can sound cultured at dinner parties.
Missed last Saturday’s Lindsay Lohan retrospective at BAM? Console yourself with this guide to Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (which was not included in the retrospective, though we can’t imagine why).
Anyways, COATDQ (or Confessions, as I like to call it) opens with an homage to another classic film, Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Lohan, dressed like Holly Golightly, waves goodbye to her mother and then jumps up and down, saying “Yay! I’m free! I can live on my own in New York and do whatever I want!”
Ever heard people throw around famous directors’ names and think “What if there was a way to make short, pithy references to their cinematic masterpieces without actually having to sit through “Battleship Potemkin?” Fortunately, now there is! We’ve dispatched Intern Anastasia to brave the subtitles—and the pretentious clerks at Kim’s Video—so you can sound cultured at dinner parties.
It’s 6 A.M. You’re hunched over some dude’s coffee table in Bushwick, finishing the last of the Bolivian marching powder. The sunlight coming through the loft windows is burning your eyes. Something lower, physiologically, is also burning. Looking at the pile of spandex and gold lamé on the floor, you cringe. You reach for your vintage Ray-Bans, and wonder how you got here.
You think it started at that roof party, when you made a well-timed reference to Blue Velvet…
Ever heard people throw around famous directors’ names and think “What if there was a way to make short, pithy references to their cinematic masterpieces without actually having to sit through “Battleship Potemkin?” Fortunately, now there is! We’ve dispatched Intern Anastasia to brave the subtitles—and the pretentious clerks at Kim’s Video—so you can sound cultured at dinner parties.
Un Chien Andalou is a surrealist short film from 1928, directed by Luis Bunuel and written by Bunuel and Salvador Dali. It’s definitely the best-known surrealist short film there is [Ed: Which, admittedly, doesn’t say very much] having been referenced on both an episode of The Simpsons and in a Pixies song.*
Ever heard people throw around famous directors’ names and think “What if there was a way to make short, pithy references to their cinematic masterpieces without actually having to sit through “Battleship Potemkin?” Fortunately, now there is! We’ve dispatched Intern Anastasia to brave the subtitles—and the pretentious clerks at Kim’s Video—so you can sound cultured at dinner parties.
Woody Allen’s Manhattan stars Woody himself as Isaac Davis, a neurotic TV writer-cum-novelist with a lot of neurotic friends. It’s often said to be a “love letter to New York,” with its panoramic black-and-white shots of the skyline, and George Gershwin soundtrack. But sadly, not all of New York gets the love. If you want to play the least-effective drinking game ever, drink for every time you see a black person in this film.
(Ed: If you want to get trashed, drink whenever someone mentions their book deal, or their “analyst.”)
Ever heard people throw around famous directors’ names and think “What if there was a way to make short, pithy references to their cinematic masterpieces without actually having to sit through “Battleship Potemkin?” Fortunately, now there is! We’ve dispatched Intern Anastasia to brave the subtitles—and the pretentious clerks at Kim’s Video—so you can sound cultured at dinner parties.
This week, Intern Anastasia reviews semi-obscure Western flick The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, best known today as the movie where Clint Eastwood made cowboy hats look (sort-of) hot. Why? She’s not really sure, actually. But she gives it her best shot anyhow (or at least half-asses it) by delivering her unfiltered thoughts over that crazy, newfangled medium called instant message.
Ever heard people throw around famous directors’ names and think “What if there was a way to make short, pithy references to their cinematic masterpieces without actually having to sit through “Battleship Potemkin?” Fortunately, now there is! We’ve dispatched Intern Anastasia to brave the subtitles—and the pretentious clerks at Kim’s Video—so you can sound cultured at dinner parties.
Citizen Kane is not obscure, and certainly not subtitled, but it frequently tops the lists of best films. It’s the veritable “Great Gatsby” of movies, which is to say it’s not anyone’s favorite, but everyone pretends to know what it’s about.
CK was directed by Orson Welles, who rose to stardom at age 23 as the lead in H.G. Wells’ 1938 radio play, “War of the Worlds.” Charles Foster Kane, the eponymous main character, is based on William Randolph Hearst, the yellow journalism tycoon—and the “Rupert Murdoch of his day,” if you will.
Ever heard people throw around famous directors’ names and think “What if there was a way to make short, pithy references to their cinematic masterpieces without actually having to sit through “Battleship Potemkin?” Fortunately, now there is! We’ve dispatched Intern Anastasia to brave the subtitles—and the pretentious clerks at Kim’s Video—so you can sound cultured at dinner parties.
A Woman Is A Woman is part of the ’60s French New Wave, directed by Jean-Luc Godard. It’s like a fractured, cartoonish version of an American musical. Godard preferred to call it a “neo-realist musical.” (How pretentieuse!)
It’s “neo-realist” because Godard does things like start a song in the background and abruptly stop it, or have the lighting rigs visible in some shots—supposedly to show how fake film is by breaking its conventions. Either that, or he got lazy and then decided to tell everyone, “That microphone hanging down? Yeah, that’s totally neo-realist.”
Ever heard people throw around famous directors’ names and think “What if there was a way to make short, pithy references to their cinematic masterpieces without actually having to sit through “Battleship Potemkin?” Fortunately, now there is! We’ve dispatched Intern Anastasia to brave the subtitles—and the pretentious clerks at Kim’s Video—so you can sound cultured at dinner parties.
So, La Dolce Vita is all about Rome’s jet-set in the early ‘60s. This not only means it’s black-and-white, but also that the men are always wearing suits, the women are always wearing wasp-waisted cocktail dresses, and everyone smokes and wears sunglasses at night. The main character is Marcello, a journalist/aspiring novelist. Like most “aspiring novelists,” he never actually finishes his novel but rather spends most of the movie telling friends he’s “working on it.” Oh, and he’s played by Marcello (So meta!) Mastroianni, who is a pretty, pretty man.
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