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Under discussion:

Hairspray  (1988)

Be Kind Rewind  (2008)

Here’s a round-up of a few late-afternoon tidbits from across the film blogosphere:

• At Slackerwood, Jette Kernion has a fully-illustrated review of the Alamo Drafthouse’s Simpsons Feast. “The second course soon followed: Blinky (the three-eyed fish) in a sauce made from tomacco (Homer’s magical crop that resulted from planting tomatoes, tobacco, and uranium from the nuclear power plant)…His eyes were made from white asparagus and caviar. He was a very tasty three-eyed fish.”
• AJ Schnack takes a look at the year thus far in documentary box office. When you see the year’s Top 20 docs laid out by grosses, the discrepancy between the fiction and nonfiction economic systems really hits home: “Looking at the year to date documentary box office, the elephant in the room (there are so many mixed metaphors in that) continues to be SICKO … no other [documentary] film has crossed $1 million at the box office.”
• Like Film Junk, I too got really excited when I heard that a trailer for Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind had leaked onto YouTube. And then I tried to watch it.
• At Edward Copeland On Film, Odienator remembers The Roach, “one dance that blew me away” upon watching John Waters’ Hairspray for the first time. “I laughed so hard that I choked on my popcorn. If you lived in the neighborhood I grew up in, this was an activity with which you could identify. It was pure John Waters, a mix of absurdity and social commentary. Here was the rich snob girl from Baltimore stomping roaches and shaking her ass while the lyrics commanded her to “squish, squash, kill dat roach!”
• My creepy old-lady crush on Michael Cera continues unabated.

Under discussion:

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes  (1953)

Macao  (1952)

My ever-present addiction to Turner Classic Movies always hits a problem point come August, when the channel runs its Summer Under the Stars series. Today they’re running 24 hours worth of Jane Russell, and with Gentlemen Prefer Blondes mysteriously absent from the schedule, the real gem of the line-up is Josef Von Sternberg’s Macao, from which I’ve embedded a clip above.

Despite the fact that I’m both something of a Sternberg devotee AND mildly obsessed with Russell, I hadn’t seen Macao until fairly recently. I Netflixed it a month or so ago and fell in love. On the surface, it’s the story of a group of Americans who may or may not be criminals, who get mixed up in one another’s business whilst hiding out in the Chinese port city. But as with any Sternberg film, it’s really an isolation fantasy, in which two outsiders (Russell and Robert Mitchum) meet in an exotic, alternate universe and bond over their mutual loneliness.

I’d love to be able to show you the scene where a spat between Russell and Mitchum escalates into an unexpectedly violent pillow fight; or maybe the chase scene, which Sternberg shoots through so many layers of netting that it’s nearly impossible to keep track of who’s winning (Sternberg loved to obfuscate action scenes, as if to say, “You might as well not even watch this part — this isn’t what the film is about.”)

Unfortunately, the clip above was the only embeddable portion I could find online from Macao (although there’s also a trailer on TCM’s site). I love Russell’s self-conscious “It’s a living” eye roll at the end, but this is not even my favorite musical number from the film — that would be Russell’s devastatingly depressive take on “One For My Baby.” As a singer, she was never going to steal any work from a Judy Garland, but dear god, could she hold a close-up.

Under discussion:

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask  (1972)

The gang over at IFC News have compiled a list of 10 references to Bergman and Antonioni in popular culture. Of course, everyone remembers the Twister-with-Death scene from Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey, but the IFC list includes a few unusual suspects, such as Haruki Murakami’s L’Avventura-inspired Sputnik Sweetheart. Overall, it’s a great list, although there’s two items I would add.

The IFC list rightly cites Interiors as the apex of Woody Allen’s expression of his passion for Bergman, but Allen also paid tribute to Antonioni. The “Why do some Women have trouble reaching Orgasm?” segment of Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) is a clear homage to Antonioni-style urban decadence and ennui. It’s also shot in black and white in Italian, so the reference is not exactly subtextual. It’s an absolute crime that a clip of this is not available on YouTube.

And in terms of Bergman references, I’d include “Seventh Seal” by Scott Walker, which you can download here. The opening track on Walker’s 1969 solo album Scott 4, “Seventh Seal” is basically a five-minute remake of Bergman’s 1957 film, set to Spanish guitars. In other words, it is to Bergman’s masterpiece what The White Stripes’ “The Union Forever” is to Citizen Kane, except it pre-dates Jack White’s brush with relevancy by about 30 years. Footnote: Last year, when Walker released The Drift, his first record in a decade, a rapturous Pitchfork review compared it to “a painstakingly fine Ingmar Bergman film, moves slowly and deliberately, with an intense focus and refusal to turn away from disturbing ‘images.’”