Smiley Face
Quiet City + Dance Party, USA
Okkervil River: Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe
 
 

Email:

cinephiliac
[at] gmail
[dot] com






This URL
and its
contents
© 2005-2007
Aaron Hillis.
All rights
reserved.

 
Intro to CinephiliacBrowse the Blog ArchiveMedia Whores Inquire Within

In Two Different Ways, His Name is Like "Race Car"

For the Last Day of an Overall Weak Year in Women's Roles, My Favorite Films of 2005 Have Been Depicted Below by Their Female Performers (with Two Justifiable Exceptions) in a Monetizing Measure of My Critical Subjectivity and a Smidge of Hubris How Elmore Leonard Gets Confused with Ronald Reagan

The Last Picture Game Show: Cinephiliac's Contest GIVEAWAY!


The "Who's on Last?" quiz was the most correctly guessed round in several weeks, and honestly, how many movies could there possibly be with the word "last" in the title? Happy new year, and thanks for playing over the holidays:

Methinks this might have been easy because this specific scene was in that IFC adaptation of Peter Biskind's tabloid tell-all Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. Foul-mouthed sailors Jack Nicholson and Otis Young escort their underage prisoner (Randy Quaid) to a watering hole in 1973's The Last Detail. Writer-director Hal Ashby was simply unstoppable that decade.

The inspiration for my now-overused phrase "punishing art-wank," Last Days (Gus Van Zant's ode to Saint Kurt Cobain) is most frustrating because of its contrasting 75% slog to 25% sublime. Casting sonic old-timer Kim Gordon in a cameo is neither good nor bad, however. That's just hipster posturing.

Dedicated to my buddy Brian, who does a mean karoake version of The Band's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," let's finish this up with Martin Scorsese's 1978 rock-doc, The Last Waltz.

GAME 3, ROUND 4:
Cast Party Scrapbook


Congrats on wrapping your latest project, stars! To monumentalize the occasion (beyond the typical wine-vat orgies), the following three film productions have prepared a scrapbook, each featuring pictures of its castmembers. The only issue being, the clippings aren't necessarily on-set photos, nor even of the same filmmaking era! Can you match up each quartet of actors and actresses to the movie they all appeared in together? To help you out, all 3 films have something major in common, and maybe the title of this post is a clue? Check it:






NAME EACH MOVIE. 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, January 8th @ 11:59pm EST.) Three of you are going to win a dynamite DVD from The Last Picture Game Show, so play now or I'll make you watch nothing but Egyptian sex flicks for all of 2006. Although there are worse films you could be watching this year. Good luck!

Click to COMMENT

3 Critics Rave!

I just watched The Last Detail again recently; it's as good as I'd remembered. I'm puzzled, though, how Hal Ashby went from that and Harold and Maude to Shampoo. Ecch.

Tuwa [01:15PM, 01/04/2006]

You no likey the Shampoo? Man, I love that whole '70s Ashby lineup, through Bound for Glory, Coming Home, and the absolute best of the bunch, Being There. I don't know what happened after that, but it was all downhill from 1981's Second-Hand Hearts on.

Aaron! [01:57PM, 01/04/2006]

Oops. No. Sorry. Not fond of Shampoo. I haven't seen the rest, though--just those three and Being There. I'll have to catch up on those two you mentioned.

Tuwa [06:56PM, 01/05/2006]

Join the Conversation:

What kind of victory is it when someone is left defeated?I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!


Previous Entry :: TOP :: Next Entry

Cinephiliac cannot be found in any English dictionary, as only a "cinephile" (film enthusiast) would suffer from "cinephilia" (obsessive love of cinema). To better understand, "Cinephiliac" suffers to the bone from "cinephilia." Cinephiliac is the not-so-secret codename for what will inevitably become the Greatest Film Rental Library (read: "video store") in Brooklyn, NY. We will endorse the preservation of film culture and provide the best in cinema, renting DVDs not often available from larger chains and smaller "mom-and-pop" stores; We will specialize in film festival award winners, independent releases, avant-garde and cult classics, foreign films, documentaries, special interest, arthouse favorites and other critically acclaimed titles, new and old. Large scale studio releases will be only be made lightly available to secondary markets of less discriminating tastes. Cinephiliac exists to attract, entertain, enrich and maintain customers. When we adhere to this maxim, everything else will fall into place. Our services will exceed the expectations of our customers. Cinephiliac is the brainchild of entrepreneuer (and professional film critic) Aaron Hillis, who is still offering Phase I investment opportunities throughout 2005 and 2006. To request online access to Aaron's business plan, address all inquiries here. Aaron Hillis vividly remembers the first R-rated movie his parents ever allowed him to watch, the 1986 sci-fi/action epic Aliens, which features a myriad of gory "chest-bursting" effects that aren't exactly Mom's idea of family entertainment. "My folks weren't worried about the violence having a negative effect on me," Aaron recalls, "because even as a fourth grader, I was basically explaining to them how the filmmakers created these fantastic illusions that existed outside of reality!" Growing up with this undeterrable passion for the cinema led Aaron to study Motion Picture Production and Film Theory at Arizona State Univsity and U.T. Austin (University of Texas), but it wasn't until the summer of 2002, while living in Carroll Gardens (Brooklyn, NY), that he began to make his living through the movies: "It was pretty wild. Not only did I stumble onto a regular gig writing DVD and film reviews for Premiere Magazine, but I was concurrently being asked to take full reign as manager of an indie video store in my neighborhood." After 16 months of managing the Hole-in-the-Wall Video store, where he increased annual profits from 7% to 31% through creative marketing and unique innovations, Aaron finally got the gumption to reap the rewards of opening his own store. Cinephiliac will build upon prototype business strategies already proven successful for Aaron, such as concentrating on quality movies instead of simply mainstream commercial releases, a previously unmet demand in the area. "The most important thing for me is enlightening people to the vast diversities of film culture they might not even know about. Most filmgoers would rent better titles if they simply knew they existed, things you won't find at Blockbuster, Netflix or an 'In-Demand' cable service. When customers come into my store, I want them to experience the happy medium between film school and their favorite hangout." When he isn't dissecting the works of Jean-Luc Godard or Russ Meyer, Aaron used to take the form of an illustrator, a part-time DJ, a full-blown coffee addict and a doting boyfriend. His latest Premiere reviews are available to read here. CLICK the titles below for pop-up reviews of Aaron's Top Ten Films of 2003: 1. Lost in Translation 2. Spider 3. Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King 4. Pistol Opera 5. Finding Nemo 6. Kill Bill: Volume 1 7. The Man Without a Past 8. Capturing the Friedmans 9. Irreversible 10. Hukkle - Honorable Mention (11-20, alphabetically): All the Real Girls . Bad Santa . Friday Night . Girlhood . The Good Thief . Raising Victor Vargas . The Revolution Will Not Be Televised . School of Rock . Swimming Pool . 28 Days Later If only I had seen them during 2003: American Splendor . Big Fish . Bus 174 . City of God . Cold Mountain . demonlover . Dracula: Pages From a Virgin's Diary . The Fog of War . In America . The Son . The Station Agent . Ten . The Triplets of Belleville . 21 Grams . Unknown Pleasures . Whale Rider - (Dobson High School in Mesa, Arizona [AZ] class of 1995) - the investment opportunities here are a sure thing for investors looking for either small-risk, mid-risk, large-risk vestings, tax-deductible, high interest rates compound (compounded) monthly (that's every month, unless we're The Da Vinci Code cracked by Connie Chung), and GreenCine Daily (GreenCine.com), David Hudson aka D W Hudson is simply the bomb, but Court Street, Smith Street, Columbia Street, and Union Street near Cobble Hill, Red Hook, and Boerum Hill is the place to be for this venture capitalists or should I say venture capital or even venture capitalism! VHS is dead to us rare DVD fanatics, but we will carry all titles by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Terry Gilliam, Samuel Fuller, Emeric Pressburger, Michael Powell (and Pressburger), Jan Kadar Elmar Klos, film theory and criticism, Robert Flaharty, Cristi Puiu and the Death of Mr. Lazarescu, Werner Herzog World Cup, ecstacy of truth (like the ecstasy of truth), Wim Wenders, Aleksandr Sokurov into Robert Altman, Hal Hartley, Carl Theodor Dreyer (Carl Th. Dreyer), Akira Kurosawa, Takashi Miike, Woody Allen, George W. Bush's favorite aspect ratio, Dorota Kedzierzawska, Francis Ford Coppola, Milos Forman, Home Vision and Image, Cinemascope in 2007, El Topo vs. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (brothers Dardennes), Larry Cohen, Philippe Garrel stars Louis Garrel, Julien Duvivier, Cult Epics, Hiroshi Inagaki vs. The Chronicles of Narnia (Prince Caspian!), Herk Harvey, David Gordon Green by way of Gaspar Noe, Luis Bunuel, Sergio Leone noir, Bernardo Bertolucci, Michael Haneke is and isn't Hidden (Caché), Nicholas Roeg, Karl Rove, Terry Jones (Monty Python), Philip Kaufman, Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch, IRA terrorism via DV filmmaking, Neil Jordan, Paul Morrissey, Peter Jackson's King Kong meets Andy Warhol in Technicolor (Superman Returns), Spike Lee, David Lean, Jiri Menzel, Peter Medak, Film Bloggers Explode, Mario Monicelli, John Lurie, Tom Waits on YouTube, Jim Jarmusch, Patrice Chéreau, Federico Fellini (they're all naked!), Merchant Ivory, Bill Murray, Allison Anders, 43rd New York Film Festival, Steven Soderbergh or the lovely Coleman Hough, Quentin Tarantino, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Andrei Tarkovsky, Shohei Imamura, Uncle Alfred Hitchcock destroys Lucio Fulci, World Trade Center, Marcel Camus, Robert Bresson, Peter Brook, when little-known Fernando Arrabal returns, Wes Anderson and the Phallic Vagina imagery, Mario Bava, Kevin Smith, director George Clooney, 2006: The Puppet Theater of Paul Thomas Anderson, Cannes Film Festival, Fishkill documentary entitled Fish Kill Flea (coming soon), Ingmar Bergman, Yasujiro Ozu, Shohei Imamura, Noah Baumbach, Aki Kaurismaki, Francois Ozon, grips and gaffters, 9 Songs: Franz Ferdinand, Beat Takeshi Kitano, Marie Antoinette over Satantango: Bela Tarr, Christopher Guest, Asia Argento (completely nude in a blockbuster documentary?), then we ask Albert Maysles, film projectors of 1920, Mitsuo Yanagimachi reads Albert Camus, Peter Weir, Agnes Varda, Jacques Demy in North Korea, Bertrand Tavernier, Heath Ledger in my neighborhood (Douglass Street), Seijun Suzuki, Francois Truffaut, Gregory La Cava, Laurence Olivier, D. A. Pennebaker, Remy Belvaux, Jean Renoir, Sundance devours the South Korean New Wave, Michelangelo Antonioni, every single Japanese Shochiku, Kurt Momberger is M.I.A., Rene Clair, Henri-Georges Clouzot clips, Jean Cocteau, Joe D'Amato meets Rob Reiner, Jean-Paul Civeyrac goes Through the Forest, Carol Reed, Alain Resnais, Bohdan Sláma (Slama), DVD Beaver, Lynne Ramsay (hot sex on the inside), Brian De Palma (Brian DePalma), Sergei Eisenstein, Red State vs. Blue State, Lars von Trier eats Dogville's Manderlay, Osama bin Laden visits Jonathan Demme, Peter Davis, Alex Cox, David Cronenberg, Wong Kar-Wai, Michael Winterbottom, Harry Potter, Jacques Tati portrait of international awards, the nunsploitation of Neil Jordan, Stanley Kubrick, Roger Corman and Funny Ha Ha, Michael Almereyda, Stan Brakhage, Ronald Neame, not from Spider-Man 3: Stanley Donen, The Criterion Collection, Jules Dassin, Jean-Pierre Melville, Aldo Lado is no Dario Argento, Mai Zetterling (Loving Couples), Dobson High School's Merritt Corless, after Ken Pringle tracked me down, Barbet Schroeder, Sam Peckinpah, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Vilgot Sjoman, Douglas Sirk, a drunken Hong Sang-soo fights a sober Im Sang-soo, Mike Judge goes Blue Underground, Cannes Film Festival videos, Paul Verhoeven, Kankuro Kudo eats John Woo (do you remember Elvis Woo?), Park Chanwook over Preston Sturges and more auteur theory than you Fantoma can shake an F-train--Fahrenheit 9/11, Howard Dean or at. Sooner or later, everyone pictures Michael Moore goes Sexplastic! Well hello, New Video Group or simply New Video (Docurama, A"E, A&E, New Video NYC, Scholastic) Glenn Kenny and Filmbrain and Cinetrix and Christian Parkess and Rob Karimi (Bobby Karimi, sike9!) and Peter Debruge and the cutest, Jennifer Loeber aka Jennifer Exit. Download: http://www.archive.org/download/George_Bush_Doesnt_Like_Black_People/GeorgeBushDoesntCareAboutBlackPeople.mp3 (George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People)