Monday Morning Diary (August 31)

by Sam Juliano       With August now a memory, the new school year looks the teacher contingent at WitD dead-on, and many must now focus their efforts in different directions. Three threads here at the site got fantastic action, with the Inglourious Basterds review attracting 109 comments, Joel Bocko’s Boston Examiner review of Spielberg’s Jaws nabbing 71 [...]

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This is Spinal Tap (no 30)

(USA 1984 83m) DVD1/2 This goes up to eleven p  Karen Murphy  d  Rob Reiner  w/m/ly  Christopher Guest, Rob Reiner, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer  ph  Peter Smokler  ed  Robert Leighton  art  Dryan Jones Christopher Guest (Nigel Tufnel), Michael McKean (David St Hubbins), Harry Shearer (Derek Smalls), Rob Reiner (Marty DiBergi), R.J.Parnell (Mick Shrimpton), David Kaff [...]

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Review of Mariano Llinas’s ‘Historias Extraordinarias’

by Joel Bocko What comes to mind when you hear the words “extraordinary stories”? An adventurous journey down a long river, pursuing a strange and possibly illicit mission? A mysterious murder, witnessed by a man who flees and hides from his pursuers while unraveling the crime? A journey spanning years and continents, in pursuit of [...]

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Grave of the Fireflies (no 31)

(Japan 1988 94m) DVD1/2 Aka. Hotaru no haka The little red tin p  Tohru Hara  d/w  Isao Takahata  novel  Akiyuki Nosaka  ed  Takeshi Seyama  m  Yoshio Mamiya  art  Ryoichi Sato VOICES BY:- Rhoda Chrosite (Setsuko), J.Robert Spencer (Seito), Amy Jones (aunt), Veronica Taylor (mother), Shannon Conley, Crispin Freeman, Dan Green, For those who do not [...]

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Hannah and Her Sisters (no 32)

(USA 1986 105m) DVD1/2 E.E.Cummings, page 112 p  Robert Greenhut  d/w  Woody Allen  ph  Carlo di Palma  ed  Susan E.Morse  m  various  art  Stuart Wurtzel Woody Allen (Mickey Sachs), Mia Farrow (Hannah), Michael Caine (Elliot), Dianne Wiest (Holly), Carrie Fisher (April), Barbara Hershey (Lee), Lloyd Nolan (Evan), Maureen O’Sullivan (Norma), Max Von Sydow (Frederick), Daniel [...]

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The Big Red One – Reconstruction (no 33)

(USA 1980/2004 163m) DVD1/2 Damned wetnoses! p  Gene Corman  d/w  Samuel Fuller  ph  Adam Greenberg  ed  Morton Tubor  m  Dana Kaproff  art  Peter Jamison Lee Marvin (Sergeant), Mark Hamill (Griff), Robert Carradine (Zab), Kelly Ward (Johnson), Bobby DiCicco (Vinci), Siegfried Rauch (Schroeder), Stéphane Audran (Walloon), Serge Marquand (Ransonnet), Alain Douley (Broban), Charles Macaulay (General), Of [...]

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Jamie Uhler’s take on Tarantino’s latest ‘Inglourious Basterds’

Please follow the ride-as-stream-of-thought. Consider: Now consider other ‘serious’ paintings, with serious subjects. Think Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ perhaps. Maybe an important political Levine (‘The Feast of Pure Reason’ for example) too. What’s the difference? Well many things, but for what we are dealing with here, in relation to Tarantino’s new ‘Inglourious Basterds’, it’s about what surrounds [...]

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Quentin Tarantino’s World War II Epic “Inglourious Basterds”

  by Sam Juliano       Sophomoric.  Sadistic.  Racist.  Long-winded.  Repugnant.  Repetitive.  Lacking in depth. Quentin Tarantino’s two-and-a-half hour epic about a squad of Jewish-American commandos and a French Jew out to avenge the murder of her family at the hands of the Nazis is a serious-minded treatise that gives fleeting concern to black comedy, and showcases some of [...]

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Rouge (no 34)

(Hong Kong 1987 97m) DVD1/3 (Hong Kong only) Twelfth Master, 3811, waiting at the same place p  Jackie Chan  d  Stanley Kwan  w  Lee Bihua, Qiu-Dai Anping  novel  Lee Bihua  ph  Bill Wong  ed  Peter Cheung  m  Michael Lai  art  Piao Ruomu, Horace Ma Anita Mui (Fleur), Leslie Cheung (Chan Chen-Pang, Twelfth Master), Alex Man [...]

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Come and See (no 35)

(USSR 1985 142m) DVD1/2 Aka. Idi i Smotri Ode to Lily of the Valley p/d  Elem Klimov  w  Ales Adamovich, Elem Klimov  book  Ales Adamovich  ph  Alexei Rodionov  ed  Valeriya Belova  m  Oleg Yanchenko  art  Viktor Petrov Aleksei Kravchenko (Florya Gaishun, the boy), Oleg Mironova (Glasha, the girl), Lyubomiris Lautsiavitchus (Kosach), Vladas Bagdonas, Victor Lorentz, [...]

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