Tonight I saw The Foot Fight Way, an independent film about a Tae Kwon Do teacher in a North Carolina town who discovers that his wife has been cheating on him.  He's a sincere teacher, sweet guy, and dedicated to teacher people the art of self-defense.  The movie explores how this discovery affects him in his job and his life.  The charm of this film lies in the main character's role and the superb acting.   All the characters are written quite real and believable.  It's one of those films that make one believe that goodness still exists in some people and that not everyone is cynical.

I saw The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) when it first came out and did not think too much of it.  To me, at that time, it was just another western (and I really was not a big fan of westerns then).  Over the years, since its first release, the movie has grown in reputation and is now considered by film historians to be one of the best westerns ever made.  I watched it last night and I now have now acquired a great admiration for the film.  Directed by the legendary John Ford and starring the legendary John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart the movie is about the struggle of a small town as it deals with the territory's bad guy and bully, Liberty Valence.  It seems no one in town wants to tackle him and bring him down.  The town's sheriff is inept and the rest of the townsfolk are scared of him.  Jimmy Stewart plays a young lawyer who wants to throw him into jail using law.  However, John Wayne, always a good guy, tells the lawyer he needs more than just law---he needs a gun.  This age-old conflict of non-violence vs. violence gets hashed out during the film, culminating in a climax that sorts things out.  This film is definitely a classic! 

As a male, I am almost embarrassed to say I went to see Sex and the City.  I wanted to see it because it has been getting a lot of attention and I did not want to be left out!  I have not watched the TV series (I knew it existed but wasn't interested) so almost everything in the movie was new to me.  It seemed that this film was the equivalent to women as Starwars is to young guys.  The theater I saw it in had an audience of young women brimming with excitement.  When the picture began, there were cheers from the audience.  When the HBO logo came up there was applause.  They loved every part of this movie and applauded several times during it!!

I liked the movie quite a bit.  Although it seemed like four TV episodes strung together, the movie never got boring and kept my interest.  The prominent story is about how the main characterl (I forgot her name) gets jilted at the alter.  There are lots of other little stories also going on and they all tie together at the end. 

Not knowing much about the TV series, I had always thought it was a show where the female was celebrated and the male lambasted. Much to my amazement, the movie's male characters were all basically good people.  It was the women who were doing stupid things!

Today I saw a film that I never did plan on seeing, Made of Honor.  It sounds like a real "woman's picture" and I had no intention of seeing it.  However, my daughter saw it and told us that immediately after seeing it, she decided to dump her current boyfriend!  I had no problems with that!  Thus, I had to see the film that woke my daughter up in regards to finding the right relationship.

The movie turned out to be quite entertaining with fine relationship messages.  The movie is about a man who proudly engages in one-night stands only.  He has a female friend who is his best buddy.  He won't sleep with her again because of a rule he has about that.  He doesn't realize that this is the girl for him until she announces to him that she's getting married.  Well, he has to figure out a way to get her back.  When she asks him to be his maid of honor (because he is HER best friend), he then thinks up a plan to somehow convince her she should marry him instead.  The whole movie is quite charming and funny and I highly recommend it.

Manhattan Melodrama is a 1934 film starring Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, and William Powell.  I had originally rented it because I had read that the movie opens with a depiction of the General Slucum disaster which took place in New York in 1904.  The General Slucum was a excursion steamship which caught on fire and 1021 people died.  The victims were mainly woman (which drowned because of the heavy clothing they wore back then) and children (who did not know how to swim).  Once again, the boat did not have enough life boats or life preservers on it..  It was the worst New York disaster, in terms of deaths, until the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The movie turned out to be quite good.  It involves two young boys who are friends and survive the disaster.  One grows up to be an outstanding citizen and the other grows up to be a no-goodnik who runs gambling halls in New York.  Their paths cross when they are grown and a woman gets between them.  The movie results in an excellent morality tale about the "right thing to do."  It's a very good film that holds up today.

Thursday night  is my favorite night of television.  I will miss it when the current season ends in about four weeks.  First up is Ugly Betty, a show I really enjoy.  This is a show that could easily "jump the shark" but so far has stayed fairly close to its roots.  The characters stay constant.  (It's when characters change suddenly without reason, like they did on Desperate Housewives, that ruins the show.)  At 8:30 is Scrubs, a show I marginally like. I enjoy it the most when the stories touch upon surrealism.  It's a hit or miss show---some weeks it's very funny, and then other weeks it's way off.

At 9:00 it's The Office, as funny as always. The show is getting better each week as one gets to know each of the office workers.  Then at 9:30 it's 30 Rock, which I think is the funniest show on TV now.  The writing is clever and the humor very subtle at times.  Jokes are all over the place and I think that a lot people don't even get most of them (especially the ones about the TV industry and what's going on in politics right now)

At 10:00 there's Lost---the best show on television.  The show is intense.  I actually feel sorry for all the people that have not watched it and don't know what's going on---they are missing a lot of fun.  I was almost one of those people, but fortunately a friend recommended it to me when it first went on and I listened to him and started watching almost from the beginning.

Southland Tales (2006)is the second feature directed by Richard Kelly whose first feature Donnie Darko became quite a cult film and was adored by many critics.  I enjoyed that first film, especially his type of direction.  He likes to use longer shots  where action is not cut -up into segments.  In my opinion, that type of direction is far more difficult to achieve than directors which cut up a scene into many little pieces.   However, Southland Tales didn't work.  It was hardly released anywhere despite Kelly's reputation and the number of Hollywood stars that appeared in the film.  It was an overly ambitious attempt.  The story is about Los Angeles just after a nuclear attack on Texas.  The government has taken control of everything.  There is also an underground terrorists group that wants to end our government.   And there's more...but too much for me to write about.  One watches the film, not out of interest, but mostly because one can't believe what he's seeing story-wise and must stick to it to find out the ending.  Almost a truly abysmal picture!

Tonight at the Egyptian Theater the American Cinematheque presented a double feature of Edward G.. Robinson films.  Both were supposed to be film noir movies but they seemed more like just well-done "B" movies from the forties.  The first one was The Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948), a story about a vaudeville performer whose act was mind reading and predicting events.  However, suddenly he discovers he really can see the future.  Is this a blessing or a curse???!!!!  The picture examines how it affects him and his relationships.  Quite a good film.

The second film was The Red House (1947).  It's a story of a farmer, living with his sister and an adopted daughter.  He tells his adopted daughter never to go into the woods and never neverto go to the Red House that's in the woods.  It's a rather drawn out story which basically just deals with "What is the reason she can't go into the woods"  The film should have been much shorter.  Very disappointing.

Kitty Foyle turned out to be a great film from 1940.  It is an excellent example of great film making from that era.  The story of a woman living in a man's world (with hints of the coming of woman's liberation) Betty Grable plays Kitty, a woman who first falls in love with a very rich young man who is a player in high society and then later falls in love with a poor doctor.  Who will she marry?  The movie also examines her problem of having an illegitimate baby--something that movies of that time seldom discussed.  The picture moves along at a nice pace with no extraneous story lines and unnecessary scenes.  And once again---the ending!  Movies today simply have forgotten the end of ending a movie---whether on a high note or a low note, the movie should end and not just whimper out with a protracted ending like films do now.

It was another double feature film noir at the Egyptian tonight.  The first movie was Wicked Woman (1954), a very exciting film about a single sexy woman who goes from town to town looking for work and, somehow, always winds up causing trouble.  This time, in the new town, she hooks up with the owner of the bar she works for, and they both hatch a scheme to sell the bar (illegally because the owner's wife has the deed to the property). The film turned out to be pretty exciting.  (being under 90 minutes also helped!)

The second film was rather a disappointment.  Starring June Havoc, sister of Gypsy Rose Lee, The Story of Molly X (1949) was described as a woman's prison movie.  Thus, I expected to see female prison gangs, fights (with hair being pulled out, of course), and sadistic guards.  However, it turned out to be a story of how prisons have changed and how they try to rehabilitate criminals.  The prison turned out to be very much like a country club with no cells and no sadistic guards!   The movie seemed a little like liberal propaganda celebrating the concept of real rehabilitation---there are no bad people---just people that had bad luck.  The film was rather boring and I was glad when it ended.  It had one of those endings where when it ends---IT ENDS---I almost got whiplash from the quick ending.

It's the opening night at the Egyptian Theater of the annual Film Noir Festival.  Each year the American Cinematheque show a few classics and many over-looked and forgotten films that are prime examples of film noir. 

Tonight we attended a double feature.  The first was 1947's Desert Fury starring Lizabeth Scott and a new actor called Burt Lancaster.  Scott was a gorgeous woman, much like a Lauren Bacall---very sexy and sultry with a deep voice.  The movie was in color, which is unusual for film noir.   Another unusual thing about this movie that there was very little real action in it---it was mostly about relationships between four people who had mysterious backgrounds.  Lizabeth Scott plays a woman who returns to her hometown to work for her mother in a gambling establishment---at the same time a gangster moves to the town and a relationship starts between the two.  Of course, there are problems, the sheriff likes the girl, the girl likes the gangster, and the gangster's partner doesn't want a woman breaking up their partnership.  Trouble follows!

The second film, 1947's Dead Reckoning, starred Humphrey Bogart.  It's the story of a World War II hero who personally investigates the strange death of his buddy, also a hero.  Bogart plays Bogart really well in this film---he's one tough guy who knows how to handle women and bad guys.  The film is told in flashback, which gives Bogart lots of opportunity to narrate the film and to tell us his opinion of everything.  Although this narration is fun for awhile, it wears thin halfway through the film.  Also starring Lizaeth Scott, I found this film a little slow.

The TV Set is a parody of the TV sitcom creation process.  Perhaps to the average person not involved with the television business, this 2006 film will not play well.  However, to those of us who have to deal with network executives who are wannabe producers, the film hits home pretty hard.  David Duchovny plays a writer who is about to get his show produced as a pilot.  However, in order to get it on the air as a series, he has to listen a lot to the TV executives who have suggestions (not really suggestions but more like commands) to make it "better."  He stresses out because he knows he eventually has to give in but it really hurts him.   The film is quite a bit of fun.

Wow! I just came back from seeing Doomsday.  It's extremely hard to characterize what I just saw.  The film was an exhilarating ride providing sights I had never before seen in a movie.  It's about a lethal virus that hits Scotland.  The government seals off Scotland by quarantining the country.  People are left to die there and the land is left alone for 25 years.  The government has reason to believe a doctor is in there still alive that might have a cure for the virus.  They send in a small army crew headed by what seems to be one tough cookie of a woman.  What they find in Scotland comprises the main part of the picture.  I don't think I should give anything away her.  Except I will reveal that there is a lot of gruesome visual stuff along with lots of exciting action scenes.  Not for the squeamish!

Later in the day we rented Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation starring Jimmy Stewart as a man who takes a vacation with his family at the beach.  Of course, nothing goes smoothly, as each member of his family has some type of problem which interferes with his supposedly restful vacation.  It was rather funny een though the situtions were typical.  Since it was made back in 1962 the movie was refreshingly clean with no bad language or compromising situations. 

Horton Hears a Who turned out to be a very pleasant picture---a wonderful way to spend an afternoon.  The producers took Dr. Sues' book and expanded it just enough to carry the story through a full-length feature.   I usually don't like celebrities doing the voices of animated characters (the celebrity's character seems to overtake the cartoon's personality), however, Jim Carrey did a awesome job of bringing Horton to life.  The movie is written on two levels----one for kids and one for adults.  Many of the lines provided by Horton (such as him doing an imitation of JFK) will bring chuckles and smiles to us older kids!

Later that day, I watched Death at a Funeral.  Directed by Frank Oz, the movie plays like an old-fashioned English drawing room comedy.  The movie is about family and friends coming together for a funeral.  Suddenly, at the funeral, a man comes forward who claims to be the dead man's gay lover.  He feels entitled to part of the inheritance and of course, all hell breaks loose!  It's a cute film that brought smiles to my face, however, I kept thinking why did Frank Oz decided to do this film which tried to be so British in nature.  What did he want to prove?

This morning we watched John Ford's The Lost Patrol.  Made in 1934, the picture does not seem to hold up well due to the fact that many of the characters used in this film, later became cliches in the films that followed (e.g., Boris Karloff plays a bible-thumping crazed soldier).  Thus, because of the cliche characters we have seen over and over again, the film seemed badly written.  The movie is about a British regiment who find themselves lost in the mideast while fighting Arabs during the first World War.  The interesting part of this film, is that the enemy, the Arabs, are not seen at all until the end of the film.  Their presence, however, is felt during the entire film from bi ginning to end.

Later, in the day, we went to the Egyptian Theater to see two films by Otto Preminger.  The first one, Bunny Lake is Missing, made in 1965, is about a woman who claims her child has been kidnapped.  However, there is no trace that her child existed!   Does she really have a child?  Laurence Olivier puts on one of his best performances ever as the detective who is in charge of the case..  Carol Lynley plays the mother.  Taking place in England, the film creates a interesting ominous feeling about what the heck is going on.

The other film by Preminger was The 13th Letter, a very rare film.  The movie is about a small town in Canada where residents have been getting poison pen letters.  This, of course, causes turmoil and suspicion amongst the townsfolk to such a horrible degree that people make false accusations against innocent people.  The audience is kept in the dark until the very end when the writer of these letters is revealed.  Overall, the film is slow and a little uninvolving

Otto Preminger is one of those wonderful directors who did not believe in the close-up (unless it was absolutely needed).  He felt that the audience should see the whole picture and decide for themselves what to look at.  Thus, most of his films have longer than average tracking shots and actors who are who are called upon to react to someone else's dialogue.  This kind of film pulls in the viewer because one is not noticing all the "directing" that is going on.

I went to a double feature tonight at the Egyptian Theater.  I saw Secret Ceremony and Boom!, two movies starring Elizabeth Taylor.  Both films bombed at the box office and neither is available on DVD, so it was a real opportunity to see these films.  Secret Ceremony, a film that also starred Robert Mitchem, is about a prostitute and a young mentally disturbed girl who form a strange relationship.  The young girl thinks the prostitute (Taylor) is her mother (she isn't).  The film delves into many strange subjects including incest.  Overall, the film revealed why is bombed at the box office---it was just plain badly written, acted, and directed.

I only watched half of 1968's Boom!  I was getting sleepy and the movie was extremely weird.  Based on a Tennessee Williams play, it also starred Richard Burton and Noel Coward.  The movie is about a wealthy recluse (Taylor) who lives in a villa over-looking the Mediterranean Sea.  She is visited by a poet (Burton) who somehow symbolizes the Angel of Death.  There are a lot of speeches about life and death, and lots of strange goings-on.  Again, as in the other picture, it is obvious why this picture also bombed---it just didn't make too much sense.  In both films, Elizabeth Taylor put on the most awful performance of over-acting.  None of her acting during the sixties was good.  Her best performances were in the fifties.