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The Castro Theatre, Ryan O’Neal and Other Film-Watching Exploits In August
Posted by Marya E. Gates
So I managed to watch a little bit less new-to-me films in August than I did in July. That’s okay, though, because I saw so many great films at the Castro theatre (I’m quite the regular there now). I saw The Big Sleep, Key Largo, Moulin Rouge!, Meek’s Cutoff (new-to-me), Limbo (new-to-me), Bad Education, Law of Desire (new-to-me), Talk To Her, All About My Mother, The Flower of My Secret (new-to-me), Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (new-to-me), 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2010: The Year We Make Contact (new-to-me), Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Days of Heaven, Badlands, The Philadelphia Story and Holiday. All of those were double features except Moulin Rouge! and all of them were well worth the admission price. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: nothing beats seeing a great film on the big screen. I’m just glad all these great films were showing in the month between the summer semester and the fall semester so I had time to see them. I also read a handful of screenplays (hey, I’m studying to get an MFA in screenwriting, I better be reading screenplays!) So far I’ve read L.A. Confidential, The Piano, Good Will Hunting, American Beauty, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, The English Patient, The Last Detail and Chinatown. It sure is interesting to see how a story starts out on the page and winds up the same, but different, on the big screen. As for my new-to-me list, most of the films I saw I loved (this was another month were it was hard to come up with just five featured films), but I also saw a few I really hated. Today is the first day of the fall semester and I’m taking three classes, so I have no idea what my free time is going to be like or how many new-to-me films I’ll manage to watch. Gonna shoot for at least one new-to-me a day though. As always, the full list of my August new-to-me films is after the cut.
Movie Quote of the Day – The Blue Gardenia, 1953 (dir. Fritz Lang)
Posted by Marya E. Gates
Sally Ellis: I didn’t like Prebble when he was alive. [beat] But now that he’s been murdered, that always makes a man so romantic.
Posted in Movie Quote of the Day
Tags: 1953, Charles Hoffman, Fritz Lang, Jeff Donnell, The Blue Gardenia, Vera Caspary