Saturday, January 1, 2000

Cinema

Where can I even begin on a topic as broad as this? Well I'll try and string together the basic structure of how I developed into the cineast that I am today.

Well I would say it started when we got our first (and second) VCR & started renting regularly from the Blockbuster up the road.. but we quickly exhausted the local inventory.  There used to be a Blockbuster phone number for movie nuts (like me) where you could call the number, they'd search their system and find the store where the movie was, and they'd ship it to your local store (free of charge) so you could rent the film.  Before we found out about that number, we'd been driving all over town to find copies of movies we wanted to see.  Sometimes if you were the only person that had rented a film in over a year, they'd let you buy their copy of the VHS for about $20.  That's how I got our copy of Rubin and Ed.


We really started watching movies when we switched to renting from College Park Video up the road from the Blockbuster.  Sadly, the owner of the strip mall that CPV was in got greedy during the RE bubble in '07 & razed the lot in an attempt to sell the pad for boucoup dollars.  The lot is still a concrete pad. I think I rented just about every dusty VHS box CPV had to offer.  They ran an amazing deal of 7 movies for 7 days for 7 dollars.  That's how we got through the lean years. I'd get home from night school (WPT), we'd race to Publix to get dinner before they closed & then the decision of which movie to watch..

I'm not sure where we started.. actors, directors, writers.. this was before I knew about IMDB - we would consult the big book of films at CPV for the next films to rent.

In no particular order - I'll just make a list of films you should see before you die.  All joking aside.

Surviving Desire
Buffalo '66
Palookaville
Rubin and Ed
Leningrad Cowboys Go America
Blazing Saddles
Young Frankenstein
Silver Streak
River's Edge
Blue Velvet
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
2001 A Space Odyssey
A Clockwork Orange
O' Lucky Man!
If....
Shallow Grave
Trainspotting
The Long Goodbye
The Silent Partner
Brewster McCloud
The Apartment
Bell Book and Candle
Irma la Douce
Gambit
Alfie
Night of the Hunter
Cape Fear
The Killers
The Killers
Killer's Kiss
Kiss Me Deadly
The Killing
Kiss of Death
Pickup on South Street
Thieves' Highway
Georgy Girl
Lolita
The Ski Bum
Juggernaut
The Guns of Navarone
This Sporting Life
The Stunt Man
Lawrence of Arabia
Hopscotch
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
Lonely Are the Brave
There Was a Crooked Man
12 Angry Men
The Oxbow Incident
Badlands
Two-Lane Blacktop
The Wild Bunch
Bad Day at Black Rock
Clash by Night
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover
No Country for Old Men *anything by Joel & Ethan Cohen
Children of Men
District 9
High Heels *anything by Pedro Almodovar
Amélie
Delicatessen
The Dinner Game
The Lovers on the Bridge
Mauvais sang
Boy Meets Girl
La Femme Nikita
The Professional
Le samouraï
Purple Noon
Honor Among Thieves
Elevator to the Gallows
Le cercle rouge
The Hidden Fortress
Seven Samurai
High and Low
Onibaba
Woman in the Dunes
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
Fantastic Planet


and as for television? well..