Youthful Desires UNLEASHED!

That's right: buy now and avoid the rush! (The next thing I'll be unleashing is a host of promotional e-mails, so brace yourself.) I should add that I rated the book "suitable for teens" so that my storefront and the sample pages are accessible to everyone. But I think it's only fair to say the book contains some rather salty material that parents (I hope) would filter or (better yet) discuss with their teens. Exercise your own discretion, or drop me an e-mail of inquiry.

Excerpts:

Footnote To A Bread Recipe

Kissing Einstein

Tar And Feathers

Mike Mentzer, R.I.P.

Youthful Desires

The Spirit of '76

Christian Punk

"Nullus est liber tam malus ut non aliqua parte prosit" -- Pliny The Younger

Ebert's Best: 1976

1976

1. Small Change
2. Taxi Driver
3. The Magic Flute
4. The Clockmaker
5. Network
6. Travolti da un insolito destino nell'azzurro mare d'agosto (Swept Away)
7. Rocky
8. All The President's Men
9. Silent Movie
10. The Shootist

The Shootist -- the Duke's final opportunity to sink his teeth into a character piece. Not many people bother with this film, though, and I think it's due to the by-the-numbers conclusion. This could have been a great movie if the final pages had been run through the typewriter a few more times.

Silent Movie -- love it. The 70s deserved Mel Brooks, and he the 70s. Neither of these two phenomena had the legs to stretch into the 80s, and maybe it's just as well for all of us.

All The President's Men -- only saw this once, and that was many, many years ago. I watched it after reading William Goldman's account of the absurdities of its production. I was surprised at just how engaging it was. I was also impressed with Woodward and Bernstein's dogged legwork. I somehow doubt that standard is being applied to print journalists anymore.

Rocky -- it's easy to forget just how good this movie was. All those sequels ... *sigh*. Stallone was so personally attached to this film and its success, that the story became about him. Now every movie he does is about him, while there's less and less of him that is of interest.

Taxi Driver -- the library in my family's church had numerous autobiographies ("testimonials") that portayed New York City as one huge, seething pit. Some of the details in these books were so sickening (and not a little prurient) that when I finally saw this movie, the experience seemed a little ... tame. Still, it adheres the closest to my childhood picture of NYC, in contrast to, say, Woody Allen's movies.

Brilliant

Searchie draws a parallel between po-mo pyrotechnic linguist Rumy and the esteemed Sufi poet and mystic Rumi, here.

Ebert's Best: 1974 & 1975

1974

1. Scenes from a Marriage
2. Chinatown
3. The Mother and the Whore
4. Amarcord
5. The Last Detail
6. The Mirages
7. Day for Night
8. Mean Streets
9. My Uncle Antoine
10. The Conversation

Word is The Shawshank Redemption is the most popular movie in North America, but I don't understand how that can beat out Chinatown. I guess you just can't beat a happy ending.

The Last Detail -- an interesting throwback of a film, but here's the telling detail: Jack Nicholson is vertically challenged. Just look at that shot with the three sailors walking down the street. I know Randy Quaid is a tall galoot, but that only emphasizes the fact that Jack is short. Now flash forward to his scene on the beach with Diane Keaton in Something's Gotta Give. I figure the only way he gets the height advantage while walking side by side with Keaton is if the director digs a trench for the lady.

The Conversation -- a creepy little film, especially when you consider (as Ebert rightly points out) how inept Harry (Hackman) is at his job. The film's conclusion is a study in paranoia. (Trivial aside: there's a delightful rumour that Francis Ford Coppola wrote the first draft screenplay for The Godfather while enjoying focaccia sandwiches and espresso at Mario's Bohemian Cigar Store in San Francisco. If the big man penned something at Mario's, I'd guess The Conversation was probably that movie -- Mario's seating is comfortable, but not so comfy a guy could pencil a script for a three-hour movie. In any case, North Beach is obviously a locale dear to Coppola's heart; his restaurant is a stone's throw away from Mario's.)

I'm not sure how I missed seeing Mon Oncle Antoine (a Canadian film that had nearly as much local airplay as Goin' Down The Road), but that's just the tip of the ice-berg. Check out:

1975

1. Nashville
2. Night Moves
3. Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
4. Farewell, My Lovely
5. The Phantom of Liberty
6. A Brief Vacation
7. And Now My Love
8. A Woman Under the Influence
9. In Celebration
10. Dog Day Afternoon

It pains me to admit that of all the critically acclaimed movies in this list, the only one I've seen is the Raymond Chandler flick. But what a flick! I remain partial to Bogey's turn as Sam Spade in The Big Sleep, but Mitchum's feet were born to fill those gumshoes.

Battle of the 80s Bands: I Declare The Winner!

"Either you loved U2, or you liked them fine," writes Dan Kois in Slate's R.E.M. vs. U2. "Either you loved R.E.M., or you hated them."

That's a good sentiment to get the e-mails coming, but it doesn't quite capture where I was in the 80s. U2? R.E.M.? I liked 'em both just fine. But I loved, loved, loved Talking Heads.

The closest I ever got to seeing any of these bands perform was in the movies (by the time I was finally in physical proximity to a U2 or R.E.M. concert, they'd lost my interest -- I'd moved on to Lou Reed and T Bone Burnett). In 1982 we had U2 Live at Red Rocks: Under A Blood Red Sky. Having seen the Red Rocks amphitheatre, I was duly impressed by the bonfires on the cliffs. I thought Bono demonstrated a nifty grasp of rock theatrics with his flag-waving, but his little jig with the feathered blonde from the audience struck me as being a bit twee.

A year later Talking Heads gave us Stop Making Sense. It's just grossly unfair of me to even begin to compare the two performances. One movie caught a glimpse of a very young band on the rise, the other demonstrated a journeyman band's absolute mastery of music and theatrics. A more even-handed compare and contrast would be SMS with U2's Zoo TV. Tina Weymouth reportedly came backstage during a Zoo TV concert and told the Irish rock stars this was what she'd hoped her little band would amount to. She was there, she's entitled to that opinion. I still think U2 comes off looking like bunch of copycats and hucksters. Bono's "sincere" set, when he takes off the shades and sings the obligatory numbers from Joshua Tree, *really* kicks me in the gonads. And lest we somehow misconstrue his "message", he skips backstage and reappears as MacPhisto. Eef -- Stop Making Sense is looking better and better all the time.

These days my CD collections of both U2 and R.E.M. have been shoved to the back of a dusty closet. As for Talking Heads ... it's just not Friday night without at least one or two songs from their still-impressive body of work.

Ebert's Best: 1972 & 1973

1972

1. The Godfather
2. Chloe in the Afternoon
3. Le Boucher
4. Murmur of the Heart
5. The Green Wall
6. The Sorrow and the Pity
7. The Garden of Finzi-Continis
8. Minnie and Moskowitz
9. Sounder
10. The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid

The Godfather -- I remember a babysitter reading the book and telling me the movie was the biggest moneymaker ever (I read the book as an adolescent, and wondered what my former babysitter had made of the three-page sex scene). Also in '72, my father came back from playing hockey and said a number of his team-mates had seen the movie the night before. Their favourite scenes? The knife through the hand, the bullet in the head and, of course, Mr. Ed in the bed. You'd think these hosers had tripped across a time machine and watched Robocop. When I finally saw it, I was surprised to see it was such an incomparable improvement on a book that had been (sex scene aside) a truly tedious read.

1973

1. Cries and Whispers
2. Last Tango in Paris
3. The Emigrants/The New Land
4. Blume in Love
5. The Iceman Cometh
6. The Exorcist
7. The Day of the Jackal
8. American Graffiti
9. Fellini's Roma
10. The Friends of Eddie Coyl

Last Tango In Paris seemed a little over-the-top and not particularly erotic when I finally saw it, but then I'd already seen Body Heat which drips with a carnal sweat that LTIP only begins to muster. LTIP paved the way, I suppose, so I'll give it that. And Brando's -- sorry: "Paul's" -- meltdown at his dead wife's viewing is harrowing, visceral stuff.

The Emigrants/The New Land -- I attended a Mennonite high school, and had a grade 11 teacher determined to impress upon his class of horny would-be punk rockers exactly what their ancestors put up with to get us this far. We spent a day watching these films. Wow. Mission accomplished. The scene where a little girl dies after eating dough that hand't yet risen is particularly heart-rending. And that's just the beginning.

The Exorcist -- speaking of harrowing, visceral stuff, this movie still has it in spades. (Hm -- a good year for Max Von Sydow.)

The Day of the Jackal -- we know how the story ends, and yet the movie's tension is strung to a fine pitch. "Intelligent thriller" need not be an oxymoron.

American Graffiti -- it's hard to believe this movie, which kicked off Happy Days and innumerable other Boomer nostalgia-fests, nearly died in post-production. But then I suppose that remains the occupational hazard of just about any movie (excepting anything under the "Star Wars" rubric after 1977). A deceptively sweet movie with a bitter aftertaste. And I second Yahmdallah's tie-in: be sure to watch Dazed And Confused as a companion movie.

Ebert's Best: 1971

1971

1. The Last Picture Show
2. McCabe and Mrs. Miller
3. Claire's Knee
4. The French Connection
5. Sunday, Bloody Sunday
6. Taking Off
7. Carnal Knowledge
8. Tristana
9. Goin' Down The Road
10. Bed and Board

Of the four I've seen, Goin' Down The Road is the most familiar -- and anyone who lived in 70s small-town Canada could tell you why. Cable television was a privilege reserved for people in fancy-pants cities. With a decent antenna on our roof we could pick up four channels (including the all-French one); with a pair of rabbit ears, we could get two, maybe three. The only channel we received with any clarity was the Corp., and if they weren't broadcasting Hockey Night In Canada, they were showing Goin' Down The Road. When SCTV cooked up and served Garth and Gord and Fiona and Alice (Part 1, Part 2), you can be sure the nation laughed -- with relief. The CBC also put GDTR on hiatus. When I caught up with it ten years later, I was surprised to see how affecting it actually was. If you can't Netflix this, then I suppose you could settle for The Last Picture Show (sheesh -- what a downer year!).

I think Carnal Knowledge is a strange and very uneven movie. The sexual tension in the early scenes between Jack Nicholson and Candice Bergen is as finely tuned as any of the famous Bogey/Bacall exchanges, and communicates precisely that sickly thrill that takes over two people who realize they are about to do something very, very bad. But the Bogey/Bacall movies were finally about people rediscovering and holding true to a standard, while this movie is about establishing hurtful behavior as a personal norm. Guess which of these templates makes for the sort of movie you'd like to see again and again?

These days, when The French Connection is referred to it's for the car-chase. A revolutionary use of storyboarding, stunts and editing to be sure, but let me just evoke the "ripple effect" clause: if that's all this film is going to be remembered for, I'd say we've left the grocery store with the wrong parcel of goodies. This flick has several memorable "movie moments", but the best of them is Popeye Doyle's distracted indifference when Cloudy tells him he's just blown away another cop. When I first saw that, it took me a while to realize that my point of view had become completely in sync with Popeye's. Now that's a movie moment, and you ain't gonna pull it off with just a car-chase!