Cinephiliac :: THE LAST PICTURE GAME SHOW: Game 2, Round 7

Years Later, We Dined on Alfredo Garcia

I wish this movie existed. Lee Van Cleef 4-Ever! More than a few tryptophan junkies were able to pull themselves away from the dinner table (then the subsequent fridge full of leftovers) to check out the Brooklyn Academy of Music's pithy "Spaghetti for Thanksgiving" series, a collection of undervalued, hard-to-find spaghetti westerns. Of the four pictures that played through Sunday, this cinephiliac was lucky enough to catch the half starring High Noon villain and Sergio Leone regular Lee Van Cleef, including Giuliani Petroni's 1968 Death Rides a Horse (the more consistent and clever) and Sergio Sollima's 1966 The Big Gundown (the more political and goofy). While neither quite touch Leone's gold standards -- or even such compellingly nasty classics as Sergio Corbucci's Django, The Great Silence (my personal non-Leone fave), and Damiano Damiani's A Bullet for the General -- both of these new finds have me thirstin' to squeeze more subversive bandito action into my Netflix queue. As if it weren't surprising, Ennio Morricone composed amazing scores for both, which leads me to ask you all a couple questions:

1. Why is Morricone's best work heard in second-tier Italian westerns and third-rate giallos?

2. Inspired by my beloved, who refused to attend either night: Would more women be inclined to like this genre if it weren't for the fact that every single spaghetti western features at least one (if not multiple occasions of) rape?

Film quizzers, to your stations! "The Palestinian Version of Stripes Got Flagged at My Video Store" was the name of last week's contest, as well as the major clue. Tied together by the colors in their titles, the three films specifically featured the colors of the stripes in the Palestinian flag:

As easily as he ripped off visuals and music from the aforementioned Death Rides a Horse, Tarantino blatantly stole Kill Bill's eyepatch-wearing death nurse from director John Frankenheimer's Black Sunday (1977). In the scene shown, terrorists Bruce Dern and Marthe Keller celebrate over the success of their doomsday dart-gun test, before they attach it to a blimp and aim for the U.S. President-attended Superbowl. Think that's a gonzo premise? It's based on a novel by Thomas "The Silence of the Lambs" Harris. Also of note, wouldn't yesterday's post-Thanksgiving deadline be considered Black Sunday?

Even if you didn't recognize that metallic orb-and-cone, the clue and researchable DVD cover art should have been enough for you to decipher: it's a model of the titular aircraft in Werner Herzog's second best (non-grizzly) documentary released this year, 2004's The White Diamond. Look, I never claimed I wouldn't make you work for those DVD prizes!

Allow me to cheat and blurb a bit from my own DVD review of 2003's Save the Green Planet!: "Outrageously and often simultaneously smudging the lines between alien-conspiracy eco-horror, sober police procedural and Grand Guignol psycho-slapstick, South Korean auteur Jang Jun-Hwan's amazing freakout of a first feature follows the kidnap and subsequent torture of a chemical-corp CEO, believed to be a malevolent space-monster by a sensitive, beekeeping wacko."

GAME 2, ROUND 7:
Bride of Double Feature Mash-Ups

Cheaper by the Dirty Dozen? Deconstructing Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire? As seen here and here, let's stuff our stuffing-overstuffed faces with a third helping of mashed movies. Please check out one of those two links for instructions on how to play, and remember: ALL THE WORDS FROM BOTH TITLES represented must be included and spelled correctly, not including piddly little prepositions. Rock it:

NAME EACH MOVIE MASH-UP. Earn (1) point for every correct answer, and don't forget to include your name when you send your entry to lastpicturegameshow@gmail.com. (Entries must be received by Sunday, December 4th @ 11:59pm EST.) It's not too late to win luxurious DVDs from The Last Picture Game Show, so enter now, and pray that -- after your eventual demise -- you'll be remembered for something more meritorious than "wax on, wax off." (I kid, because I love.) Good luck!