End of Summer Answers

I'm proud to get this done in less than the usual three weeks! Here it is - Dennis Cozzalio's latest quiz - Dr. Smith’s Lost in the Space at the End of Summer Movie Quiz. I'm also posting it there - but I want it here, because some of these questions (as always) might draw me back for more...

And away we go:

1) Your favorite musical moment in a movie
- This is simple - Night and Day in Gay Divorcee. If "musical moment" is meant to mean specifically to exclude "musical number", then I think I might vote for the moment in Something Wild, as Charley and Lulu head for home, when the Feelies song on the soundtrack, Slipping (into Something), slips into something and out of something else - it's after the end of the second verse, the guitars have done their intro and started to intertwine and the drums do a little hitch and the song starts speeding up - the song heads off for the guitar solos, and the film turns into a Ray Liotta picture.

2) Ray Milland or Dana Andrews
- Andrews I think

3) Favorite Sidney Lumet movie
- It turns out that Before the Devil Knows You're Dead was the first I had ever seen. I could not believe that either, and had to look up a bunch of films - Tootsie, say - to prove he did not direct them. It is also possible I have seen Dog Day Afternoon, though I don't remember ever sitting through it start to finish. Though if you add up the clips I might end up having seen the whole thing... I have read 12 Angry Men, though. And - wait! wait! I have seen Fail Safe! way back in college. I don't remember anything about it except that Henry Fonda was in it and New York gets it.

4) Biggest surprise of the just-past summer movie season
- Did anything surprise me? Speed Racer? I certainly enjoyed it, which didn't seem likely before I saw it... The biggest surprise MIGHT be that I have no interest at all in seeing The Dark Knight. Nothing about it seems worth knowing about. I'd rather see Batman and Robin again than see it the first time. I'll probably like it, modestly, when I see it, but I couldn't care less if I do. That attitude does surprise me.

5) Gene Tierney or Rita Hayworth
- Rita

6) What’s the last movie you saw on DVD? In theaters?
- This changes all the time. The answer when I started was King Kong on DVD; The Girl Who Leapt Through Time in a theater. It looks like I am going to finish it with the answers, The Boy With Green Hair on DVD, and (I'm sure Dennis will approve), Once Upon a Time in the West.

7) Irwin Allen’s finest hour?
- No clue. Airplane?

8) What were the films where you would rather see the movie promised by the poster than the one that was actually made?
- This is the kind of question that drives me crazy. I can't think of a good answer - but I will. I se enough posters like that - I just can't think of them on command. I'm completely stumped.

9) Chow Yun-Fat or Tony Leung
- It’s a question of peak vs. longevity - or depth vs. breadth. Chow has a perfect sweet spot - in those John Woo films and most of his films (actioners, a couple comedies, and quite a few in between) from the late 80s early 90s, he is unbeatable. But he hasn't done much since, and less worth caring about, while Leung, who was always a fine actor, has kept on going. He's had a long, varied, downright majestic career when you think about it, covering a much wider range of roles, types of films, everything, than just about anyone, anywhere. Program pictures to Hou Hsiao Hsien, and all the time seeming committed to the work he's doing. So maybe he can't match Chow at his charismatic best, but he's kept his career moving, taken more chances, done more to advance serious and challenging filmmakers, and done all of it well. In this, he's less like Chow Yun Fat than like Leslie Cheung, though Cheung was better than either of the at anything any of the three tried. But that's another matter.

10) Most pretentious movie ever
- This is tough - I would have to define pretentiousness to answer it well. So I will stay obvious - Bertolucci is the grand champion - and The Last Emperor is the worst kind of bloated nothing. Felt like they shot it in real time. Yuck.

11) Favorite Russ Meyer movie
- Boring answer, but, Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill!

12) Name the movie that you feel best reflects yourself, a movie you would recommend to an acquaintance that most accurately says, “This is me.”
- In some moods, Rushmore - though all rather plowed under by the demands of a Paying Job. Or maybe Waking Life - with its sense of a world of consciousness existing alongside the world of the world. In fact - Waking Life is probably about right.

13) Marlene Dietrich or Greta Garbo
- “It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily.” I can't say there's any contest, really.

14) Best movie snack? Most vile movie snack?
- I don’t eat at the movies, so this is not easy. Milk Duds are a vile concoction, I'll say that. A good bucket of popcorn has its place....

15) Current movie star who would be most comfortable in the classic Hollywood studio system.
- George Clooney seems obvious; Tony Leung probably has, as much as anyone - Hong Kong still is (or was, through the 90s) pretty darned close to the old Hollywood system.

16) Fitzcarraldo—yes or no?
- Hell yeah.

17) Your assignment is to book the ultimate triple bill to inaugurate your own revival theater. What three movies will we see on opening night?
- This is beautiful - this is one of those questions that’s almost worth a post itself. What would I show, if I won the lottery and bought a theater and could show any three films? Rushmore, the Maltese Falcon and It's a Wonderful Life. I might try to resist it, but I doubt I could.

18) What’s the name of your theater? (The all-time greatest answer to this question was once provided by Larry Aydlette, whose repertory cinema, the Demarest, is, I hope, still packing them in…)
- All right - another one I could brood about for a month... probably could do worst than "Playtime"...

19) Favorite Leo McCarey movie
- Duck Soup of course. Though since that is really a Marx Brothers film - Make Way for Tomorrow (or The Awful Truth? this question is a lot harder - after the Marx Brothers - than it used to be, now that I’ve seen bunch of these films.) (Hey! The Awful Truth 24 Times A Second! how's that for a movie theater name?)

20) Most impressive debut performance by an actor/actress.
- James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause? Orson Welles in Citizen Kane? Bruno S in The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser? IMDB ruins my hope that Full Metal Jacket was Vincent D'Onofrio's first film... alas!

21) Biggest disappointment of the just-past summer movie season
- I didn't see any high profile releases, at least since Speed Racer. Smaller films - The Tracey Fragments turned out to be pretty bland, for all the hype and promise, though it's almost too mall to complain about... Maybe Mr. Lonely, which kept promising things and delivering incoherence and sentimentality....

22) Michelle Yeoh or Maggie Cheung
- Cheung Man-yuk. This is even less of a contest than the first actress show down. (Though again - neither one holds up to Brigitte Lin, who’d give Marlene a run for it.)

23) 2008 inductee into the Academy of the Overrated
- Nobody's bugged me this year. And I haven't seen the films that are getting all the (probably) undeserved praise - Batman, etc. So - until someone drags me to see the Batman film, and I am confirmed in my suspicions about it, I have nothing really.

24) 2008 inductee into the Academy of the Underrated
- You know what? I am feeling perverse: the Joel Schumacher Batmans. The scripts probably are as bad as they get credit for, but I'll take that campy overacting and over directing over - well - over Batman Begins, no question. So there.

25) Fritz the Cat—yes or no?
- Haven’t seen the movie, but, yes, in general.

26) Trevor Howard or Richard Todd
- Probably Howard, though I'm rather hot to see the Robin Hood film Todd was in...

27) Antonioni once said, “I began taking liberties a long time ago; now it is standard practice for most directors to ignore the rules.” What filmmaker working today most fruitfully ignores the rules? What does ignoring the rules of cinema mean in 2008?
- I don't know what the rules of cinema are - "rules" sounds so rigid, like it's possible to make mistakes making films. "Conventions" maybe... either way, there probably comes a point in the development of an art form where it ceases to have right and wrong ways of doing things, and just competing sets of rules (or conventions, or whatever.) That point has probably passed for film - anything you do, however strange by the standards of one type of film, will make sense within some other branch of filmmaking.... All that said - I don't know if anyone else really looks like Luc Moullet, to this day. He pays as little attention to the things that do approach being rules - treat the world you make as if it were real; try to either achieve technical competence or hide technical limitations; or make self-conscious art of them - as anyone. So I'll say Luc Moullet.

28) Favorite William Castle movie
- Goodness. I don't think I've even accidentally seen one of his films, unless you count Rosemary's Baby. Probably the kind of director I'll decide to take in a bunch somewhere along the line. Maybe now... in compensation, I'll say that The Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus might be the most underrated LP of all time. Which has nothing to do with Castle that I know of except a reference to a title...

29) Favorite ethnographically oriented movie
- I'm not altogether sure what counts. Killer of Sheep might be the answer - Several Friends might be even better, as it's even more directly focused on a specific group of people just living their lives.

30) What’s the movie coming up in 2008 you’re most looking forward to? Why?
- For wide release, it's probably the Coen brothers film; for more specialized releases - not sure what's coming. There's an Edward Yang retrospective coming to Harvard in September - that's bigger than anything else I know of.

31) What deceased director would you want to resurrect in order that she/he might make one more film?
- Edward Yang is a good bet.

32) What director would you like to see, if not literally entombed, then at least go silent creatively?
- Woody Allen and Whit Stillman should switch career tracks.

33) Your first movie star crush
- This is one I will remember somewhere along the line - I will see something and go - holy cow, I was a wreck for her in 19[redacted]! What I'm coming up with right now are Talia Shire or Debra Winger but that can't be right. Though I certainly felt unwholesome things for Ms. Winger.... TV Star crushes are another matter - Barbara Feldon and, as my brothers continue to mock me for, Lady Elaine Fairchild. Pop culture crushes are something else entirely.