Dear Diary

I am off my regular rhythm of film viewing and reviewing, but I wouldn’t want you to think my commitment to Cinema Salon was waning, so I’m going to offer a quick round-up of what I’ve been watching this week in the absence of worthwhile movies.

With my beloved Tribe falling just short of the baseball playoffs, I take only a distant interest in the postseason proceedings. I can’t love the White Sox who ousted my guys, but I am rooting for the end of another near-century-long Sox curse. And as it happens, I will be in Chicago while games 6 & 7 of the World Series may be transpiring. That didn’t work out so well in ’86, when I happened to be staying at the Sheraton in Boston and watching on tv as the Red Sox tried to close out the Mets. I was getting ready to go out and join the insanely joyful midnight crowds in Kenmore Square, when that dribbler rolled through Buckner’s legs.

For my winter film series at the Clark, I will be offering “Triple Feature: 3 Colors, 3 Painters, 3 Studios.” The last part will be a marathon of animation from three different studios: the National Film Board of Canada, Aardman Animation (of Wallace & Gromit fame) and the Hubley Studios. I’ve been surveying all available films by the last, to put together a program of Academy Award-winning shorts and others by John, Faith, and Emily Hubley. I will write up my findings in some detail soon.

As for my current film series, “Architectural Dreams,” it has been meeting a better response than I ever dreamed possible for a special interest series of documentaries on architects. I selected the films to survey documentary styles as much as architectural styles, and each is a good movie in its own right. If you’ve missed them, check out the program notes in my Archives of September 2005, and catch up with these excellent films from Netflix, or from the Milne Public Library in Williamstown, where the DVDs are available to borrow after they’ve been shown at the Clark.

While I was holding on to the Hubley disks from Netflix, my other viewing turned to daily TiVo maintenance. I am quite enjoying the current HBO series, Rome, which is sexed up but historically accurate as far as I have checked. It’s not The Wire or The Sopranos, but does maintain an HBO tradition of quality original series. This week I’ve been getting double doses of the Daily Show, as Jon Stewart has cloned off The Colbert Report. Stephen Colbert is as talented and funny as good old Jon, but his one-note persona, as hilarious as it is, may wear thin after a while. Also, with a satellite upgrade I can now get a regular PBS station, so I’ve programmed a “season pass” to Jim Lehrer’s Newshour, to go with my daily Charlie Rose. I have to check the latter every day, since my good old friend Tom Krens is supposed to show up there sometime soon. Rose consistently has the most interesting talkers on tv, and is it just me getting more tolerant or is he gradually learning to shut up and let his guests answer questions without excess interruption? I tended to tune out the news after last year’s election, but as the dismantling of the disastrous Bush Administration proceeds apace, my interest is renewed and I’ve even started reading political blogs again.

Trying to clear out items that have been on my “now playing” list for months, I finally got around to watching the Luis Bunuel short film, Simon of the Desert. I’ve never been a Bunuel fan, immune as I am to the appeal of surrealism, not even Viridiana or Belle de Jour or other presumed classics. But I had fond memories of seeing Simon thirty-odd years ago at the Weston Language Center of Williams College. The story of the eccentric ascetic perched on his pillar in the desert, and repeatedly tempted by the devil in the shape of a voluptuous woman, is amusing if slight.

Another Spanish language film offered no such pleasure. Jamon Jamon is, as its title announces, a piece of ham, a diluted-Bunuel, sub-Almodovar sex farce that wishes it were a Spanish Tampopo. Despite the presence of Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz, director Bigas Luna accomplishes the remarkable feat of making sex tedious, farce unfunny, and food tasteless. I’d say you couldn’t pay me to watch it, but that’s exactly what the Clark did. I wouldn’t give it a number grade, but will say that it vies with Lethal Weapon for the title of worst film I’ve ever watched all the way through, but loses because I don’t find kinky sex as offensive as supposedly funny violence.

In a completely different vein is the silly but not stupid Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. The title had come up when I was researching 1955 films for a possible Clark 50th anniversary tie-in; then there were some favorable reviews when the anniversary DVD came out. So I TiVo’d the recent TCM presentation. I’m definitely not an aficionado of MGM musicals in Cinemascope and eye-poppin’ color, but this was watchable. Howard Keel and Jane Powell don’t radiate star power, but this adaptation of a S. V. Benet story about the “Sobbin’ (i.e. Sabine) Women,” makes something of its 1850 Oregon setting, even if studio-bound. Stanley Donen can be a lively director, and Michael Kidd contributes some notable choreography. None of the songs were familiar to my ears, but none grated on them either. But it's a little hard to take how women are treated as chattel, either in the 1850s or the 1950s.

I’m going to be traveling a bit over the next ten days, but after that I will be back with more serious film reviewing, so please keep Cinema Salon bookmarked and come back again.