Is There Such a Thing as an Octuple Feature? On This Day in 1725, Casanova was born. Have you seen the Fellini movie Casanova with Donald Sutherland? It�s . . . well . . . very . . . Fellini. Fellini uses this mechanical bird-owl thing to represent, oh, I don�t know. Casanova�s passion, his ejaculation, who knows, and the damn bird is so annoying. Annoying like the damn mechanical owl in Clash of the Titans. As well as annoying as Tweaky or whatever the hell name of that damn little dwarf robot in the Buck Rogers TV show with Gil Gerard. bee-deep-bee-deep-bee-deep. That�s a bad touch, Buck. If only. Anyway, le Cinema la Valkyrie has been awash, awash, I tell you, of celluloid both good and bad. Days of Wine and Roses: Oh, my heavens, this is a wonderful movie! Wonderful! You watch this and think to yourself, �This is directed by the same guy who brought us The Pink Panther and 10??� But this is also the guy who brought us Breakfast at Tiffany�s and SOB and Victor, Victoria. And Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick (long before she falls from a banister in The Omen) are simply amazing. And the ending . . . well, it�s not happy. It�s real. It�s hopeful. And it�s real. Billy Jack: Oh, my heavens, this movie was a pretentious stinker! Tom Laughlin plays Billy Jack, a former Green Beret � current self-titled �half breed� who doles out vigilante justice like it was going out of style. He is the protector of the �Freedom School�, a alternative school for ne�er-do-wells, drop-outs, and other denizens of the fringe culture, including a very very young Howard Hesseman. Yes, I know this movie has a cult following. Cool Hand Luke is a much better film. Dark Water: This was the Japanese original, directed by Hideo Nakata, who also brought us Ringu. Yoshimi is a mother of a five-year-old girl named Ikuko, and Yoshimi is in the middle of a terrible divorce and custody battle. It doesn�t help that Yoshimi has had a history of mental imbalance. . . and it also doesn�t help that their new apartment building is inhabited by the ghost of a young drowned girl who is intent on taking Ikuko away! Or is she? Nice and creepy. And terribly sad, in the way that Japanese horror tends to be, as well as being subject to supernatural forces beyond both our ken and control. Hey I used the word ken. Neener! Girl in Lover�s Lane: MST3K fans will recognize this title, but this was the actual theatrical version. Danny, a young fella who is not so street-smart, makes pals with Bix, who is not so smart about anything but the streets, and they both end up in a backwater town containing one quite lovely sweet girl by the name of Carrie, who works in her Pa�s diner. This burg doesn�t cotton to �strangers� in town, and Danny becaome especially vulnerable because he�s carrying lots of cash � it turns out he�s a rich runaway with parents in a divorce battle. Sob! Bix gets involved with Carrie, but Carrie has another would-be suitor � the creepy eyes of a young Jack Elam. Madness, murder, and a lynch mob ensue. The Wicker Man: Yes, the 1973 version, natch. I didn�t realize it going to be a pseudo-musical! I squealed in utter delight through this entire film. They don�t make them like this anymore. When they try, they get execrable pieces of stench-laden backwash like the remake with Nicolas Cage. I am going to learn every single verse of �The Landlord�s Daughter� I can find. My only question was, if Christopher Lee is supposed to be the star of this, why doesn�t he show up any sooner than 45 minutes into the feature? I love me some Christopher Lee. He could read the yellow pages and I�d be drooling. Margaret Cho: Revolution: This movie has more jokes and less anger than Assassin, but the highlight, the utter best part of this disc is to listen to the commentary. I nearly wet my pants. For Your Consideration: This is another mockumentary by Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy, and darn it if it doesn�t miss the mark. It goes in a slightly different style � the �interviews� are not present, as if we are watching only footage of �the making of� the movie that is being made at the time of filming. One problem I have is that the movie within the movie, �Home for Purim� has very little interest in itself. I didn�t want to see that movie instead of what I was watching. And I wasn�t terribly interested in the mockumentary either. I think Guest and Levy may have run out of material, and the bite (no pun intended) of Best in Show is completely absent. I was sadly disappointed. I really wanted to like this. Little Miss Sunshine: Amazing. And why I didn�t go see this in the movie theatre is even more amazing to me. It should have won more awards. Perhaps if it hadn�t up against The Departed and Marty Scorsese, it might have. Gah! Isn�t that enough for now? There�s a couple more in there, but I�m done now. Unfortunately, I don�t even have the energy to post a weird sign for you, so you�re going to have to make your own.
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