Night and Fog

IMDB Devastating.

Three Kings

IMDB Quip about a war in Iraq with a president named Bush telling lies? Not on your life.

Down and Dirty Pictures (Peter Biskind)

AMAZON I think two things when I read books like this--nasty, dirty, tell-all gossip-spreaders. Thing #1: Boy, this guy likes to dish, but he never really mentions the fact that his dishing career would be nothing without those he's dishing about. It's the symbiotic relationship of the gossip columnist, which, when understood, leads to: Thing #2: Boy, gossip sure is fun and funny. It reinforces all of those Hollywood stereotypes we love to love, while carefully neglecting all those normal relationships that don't make good reading. From what I understand, Biskind tends to build his hypothesis and then bend the interviews to match it, rather than the decidedly more scientific way. But hey, he's no scientist. He's a gossip columnist, right? Well, at least one subject (Ben Affleck) has complained that he was asked to interview under the impression he adding to balanced journalistic look at the rise of Independent Film, instead of a manual on why Harvey Weinstein and Robert Redford are bad, bad people with questionable personal habits. Actually, a website has sprung up (which I'm sure Miramax had nothing to do with) speaking out against him, with the sparky name of http://www.biskindblows.com, although not all the links are good. Three things annoyed me: 1. Biskind's hateful movie reviews, which he'd tack in on the end of a sentence as if his few words explain the reason these films didn't do so well (most of the reviews were for films that tanked). He'd just throw them in off the cuff, as if these opinions were not only common knoweledge (nobody disagrees over film, after all), but that the common knoweledge is just something he plucked of the tree of opinion to color his sentence, instead of making the book partly about his opinions instead of the "facts." 2. Early on he calls to task all those people "too afraid" to speak out against the characters he's set his sights on. Well, it's never good business to talk turkey against people you still want to do business with, but more than that, isn't this a case of the light drinker who tells the alcoholic that he doesn't have a problem? If you tell Biskind you'd rather not comment, suddenly you're a coward and must be suffering under the heavy weight of oppression from those you won't speak out against. 3. The index sucks. I found two or three mistakes and non-entries without even trying. Speilberg said his previous book was all lies, and maybe this one is too, but if you love movie gossip then you'll enjoy reading these lies as much as you enjoy the lies of the people they lie about. You know, those grandiose expensive lies they project onto those big sparkly screens. Personally, I love 'em to death.

Kill Bill: Vol. 2

IMDB

I had a friend who went to elementary school with Uma Thurman, and remembers her as a pencil-thin, geeky, unpopular and slightly dirty hippy kid who one day wore a Carter for President bumper sticker across her skinny butt. What's not to love?

Once Were Warriors

IMDB I can't believe Janga Fett was a wife beater. I guess I know know why Boba is so tough...lonely...hard.

Jesus' Son

IMDB Oh, I get it. He's an unreliable narrator. That must be why he chose the most boring parts of his life to show us.

Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid

IMDB Can anybody please explain to me why Burt Bacharach didn't get more opportunities to score Westerns after this?

Withnail and I

IMDB GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN!

Lucky Jim

AMAZON "He disliked this girl and her boy-friend so much that he couldn't understand why they didn't dislike each other." Kingsley Amis's first novel. Wickedly funny indictment of haughty academia, and those in pursuit of things in which their hearts cannot be found. The pranks and misadventures of the (what was then) every-man Jim Dixon may seem familiar to the sit-com aesthetes of the late 20th century, but expressed in Amis's thorough and explicit prose, the payoff is quite different and all the better than in the visual form. I guessed the ending before I reached it, but it's a journey-not-the-destination sort of novel (this no murder mystery, after all), so I took my time to get there, and was glad for the time I spent in the sentances.

Ben-Hur

IMDB

Jews and Arabs join together to battle the metrosexuals in the Circus. Meanwhile, Jesus uses his godly powers to plot the overthrow of the Republican party.

Ernie Kovacs

When doing some online reading about IAMMMMW I came across the factoid that Ernie Kovacs was contracted to play the Sid Caesar character opposite his wife Edie Adams. Before shooting, though, Kovacs died in a car accident. Two factoids about Kovacs that made me laugh: 1. (taken verbatim from his IMDB listing): "Ernie Kovacs, California-bound on jet 707, was told he could smoke one of those formidable cigars of his - if he didn't annoy the lady passengers. 'So I decided not to smoke,' concludes Ernie. 'It was more fun to annoy the lady passengers.' " - Bennet Cerf 2. His epitaph.

Traffic

IMDB "What do you do with a drunken sailor", updated for the year 2000.

It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

IMDB It's a long long long long movie, but Ethel owned it.

Citizen Ruth

IMDB Maybe I didn't watch carefully, but I totally missed the scene where he points to the right field wall before knocking it out of the park.

Hellboy

IMDB I got one letter wrong and thought I was going to see the movie adaptation of this website.

The Ninth Gate

IMDB The Eyes Wide Shut Gate.