I like San Soleil too, but, honestly, isn't it obvious that it could polarize people? Anything that has a free-associative character is going to be susceptible to people not finding it in themselves to be very charitable to it on a particular occasion, to just finding that every transition is kind of painful and…

Lovefilm.com in the UK seems to have it to rent and stream (so if you figure out a proxy service you can probably get that to work). And there's a visually pretty immaculate but ruined-with-Russian-audio version of the film out on the internets if you use your google-fu properly (the only English subtitles file that's…

@avclub-1982161d0fe636d1caabd47a2ac23e12:disqus @avclub-53e4db6f596904f154b5efa09193e3ab:disqus Thanks for the semi-recommendation nonetheless. I'll definitely try to track down On Connait la Chanson. Maybe 'Old Songs' which strongly reminds English speakers of 'Old Friends' (who aren't necessarily old) might capture…

Mon Oncle D'Amerique (1980) is pretty great (maybe Resnais's last great film).

Tony Butler was born in England, but if being in a predominanlly Scottish band or a band based in Scotland is enough to make you a 'Scottish black guy' then, well, both Orange Juice and Simple Minds had black drummers at various times.

A couple more: Comsat Angels' Land and (pre-Underworld) Freur's Doot-doot w/ this song: http://www.dailymotion.com/… (and the 12" mix is lots better).

And The Go-Betweens'  debut, Before Hollywood w/ contender for greatest track o' all time 'Cattle and Cane'.

This song does not blow: honestly the bass alone just kills. It's so in the pocket at the beginning it's crazy - from that base groove that song just builds often in surprising ways. Just plain excellent - a consensus monster I would have thought.

Two words: Shirley Bassey. *Of course* Moonraker has some redeeming features.

Thanks to everyone for all the suggestions: I haven't seen Much Ado, Mud, Spectacular Now, or Fruitvale Station yet but look forward to doing so. My sense from reviews is that is that none is completely commanding, but maybe one or two of them is a genuine 4-star type film. Still, almost every calendar year ends up…

I like Austen, Dickens, and the Brontes, but George Eliot's where it's at (the others are just where it's more fun).

From a recent review essay, Orwell was on it:

Clement is one of the most intrinsically funny individuals since John Cleese (even if they do nothing, you're nearly laughing). He damn near made MIB 3 and Rio bearable.

Woo hoo, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, And 2 Days (2007) up next. There'll be blood if Dowd doesn't like that one.

Do you know the way to San Jose?

It's just been a relatively awful movie year so far. *Lots* of critics have scored *nothing* higher than a B, 3.5 stars, etc.. Checking metacritic (except for films like the Coens' that haven't gone into wide release yet - talk about a missed opportunity over summer!) only a few documentaries (Blackfish, The Act of…

And the endings of both Pi and Requiem for a Dream borrow/steal lots from Seconds' great ending. So if people thought those freak-out endings were good, be sure to see the original.

Ugh, I bought some (relatively rare) Abba stuff off iTunes recently and it was all remastered, compressed to hell, and ridiculously loud (bricklined above -9.5 dB - I didn't even know recordings could be pushed that high). Even the tinseliest pop music can be ruined, made a charmless eardrum endurance test by…

Stranger On The Third Floor (1940) is strongly noir-like, but it's so indebted to German Expressionism, that, as Craig Clark suggests, it seems right to call its intermediate form 'pre-noir' or 'proto-noir'. Above all, one does come to appreciate that Double Indemnity is the watershed that snapped a whole genre into…

I think I know what you're getting at; a lot of '30s films do feel a little heavy-handed/preachy notwithstanding their virtues (Dead End (1937) struck me that way recently). But the idea that there weren't tons of excellent films essential to any film education in the '30s, or even that 1941 is qualitatively different…