YouTubing-To-Obscure-Shameless-Self-Promotion Wednesdays: Still Totally Busy

I'm about halfway done with the Philadelphia Film Festival screeners, and thus can barely muster the required energy to write even a lazy shameless plug and accompanying YouTube post. So here's ODB:



Now, da Weekly!! In which you'll find:

* Two Editor Picks
* Two reviews (of The Lookout and Reign Over Me)
* An interview with Lance Weiler, director of the low-budget psych-horror pic Head Trauma
* Rep!

BY THE WAY Cinephiles have long known that some noble soul threw Week End up on YT. (Albeit in 10 minute segments. I believe one of the divisions comes halfway through the traffic jam shot. For shame!) But did you know that an even nobler soul put up South Korean minimalist master Hong Sang-soo's Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors? Only drawback: hope you speak Korean. Here's the link (with the other segments clicks away), anyway, just in case you do.

YouTubing-To-Obscure-Shameless-Self-Promotion Wednesdays: brb

Totally swamped. Writing articles. Eyes otherwise glued to whatever screen is showing Philly Film Fest screeners. Also for some reason decided to brush up on '90s Tsai Ming-liang, none of which I'd seen before. Yeah, save your taunts for another time. Will update Films Seen list and such when finally get the chance. And hot damn it will be lengthy.

For now, here's an owl.



And now, the Weekly!! Including:
* Pride!
* A Dead Girl!
* A list chronicling six films movies about black people revolving around white people!
* A somethingorother about Secret Cinema's tenth anniversary spectacular!
* Rep!

YouTubing-To-Obscure-Shameless-Self-Promotion Wednesdays: Ce n'est plus Mercredi

Sorry I'm late and no, I have not watched The Ritches, the new FX show where Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver play the parental wing of a family of con artists. Perhaps that's because I'm all but broken-hearted that the Yemen-born Brit has been forced to wield an American accent. (That said, it seems to have worked for Hugh Laurie.) In honor/instead, here's one of the best parts of his stand-up show Dress to Kill -- a tough call, to be sure. This hails from the encore, and it's totally mostly in French.



THIS! IS! THE WEEEEEEEEEKLYYYYYY!! (Just saw 300.) Thanks to a slow week, I wound up doing the lead review for Mira Nair's The Namesake. Nair is interviewed right here. I also capsulized Starter for Ten, an Editor's Pick (bottom) on weekend showings of Gun Grazy and Christmas in July, and, in addition, also Rep.

YouTubing-To-Obscure-Shameless-Self-Promotion Wednesdays: Money Spines Paper Lung Kidney Bingos Organ Fun

Few love random word-spewing more than I -- note the blog title* -- so I'm not entirely sure why I've never thought to post Word Movie, Paul Sharits' 1966 short of rapid fire wordplay, which comes off for all the world like one of the films made by Infinite Jest's James O. Incandenza. (The descriptions of his films were parodies, after all.) Sharits is mostly known for the flicker-heavy avant garde classics T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G and N.O.T.H.I.N.G., sections of which, but not the whole, are available on YouTube. I won't link to them, as I know I'm not the only person who thinks it's funky seeing only portions of short films. Nor will I link to his IMDb profile, which features only 3 or 4 of his works. Instead, I'll direct the interested to this presumably complete resumé.

Hope you're not epileptic.



The Weekly Weekly!! Two reviews (second and third down) of the "Lost Boys of Sudan" doc God Grew Tired of Us and the reissue of Alberto Lattuada's so-so 1964 comedy Mafioso. Also, Rep.

* Plucked from Wire's awesome '80s semi-hit "Kidney Bingos," wherein a bunch of random words -- this post's title features the chorus -- are set to what sounds like a dreamy love song, but is, in fact, pure nonsense.

Mixed reviews that inadvertently describe what's so great about the movie in question

Plucked from the Metacritic page for David Fincher's (brilliant) Zodiac (which, by the way, currently stands at a lofty 77):

"Bits of the picture are fascinating to look at, but eventually, exhaustion kicks in, to the point where we're not sure what we're looking at, or why." - Stephanie Zacharek, Salon

"At times, it becomes frustrating -- for example, about 30 minutes are spent pursuing a lead that goes nowhere." - Mike LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle (heh)

"The film feels self-obsessed, an intriguing drama that slowly devolves into a bleak meditation on the absence of dramatics." - Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal

"In some ways, for better and for worse, this is even more about Graysmith (Jake Gyllehaal)--who became obsessed with solving the Zodiac killings that terrorized northern California in the late 60s--than about the murderer." - Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

"That's exactly the problem with this movie: It's not about a killer, or his victims, or the manhunt or the cops. They're all in it, of course, more or less. But it's about a writer." - Stephen Hunter, Washington Post

(For the record, I'll later be writing my own thang about Zodiac, so don't think I'm just taking a piss at those with a deadline.)