So both Ingmar Bergman and Michaelangelo Antonioni have passed away. As is so often the case, The AV Club expresses my own feelings (and even experiences this time) better than I ever could.

When I was an 18-year-old Film student, I tried to force myself to appreciate the works of Antonioni and Bergman because they were clearly Great Works of Art. Their ponderousness and inscrutability was surely evidence of that, wasn’t it? Around the time I dropped out a couple of years later, though, I started to read Pauline Kael, and it was a revelation to find somebody vastly smarter, funnier, and more sophisticated than me… and who didn’t care for them either.

More recently I re-watched Smiles Of A Summer Night and Winter Light, and found a lot to admire, even though they still aren’t great favourites of mine. Maybe one day I’ll even understand why The Seventh Seal is regarded so highly.

Antonioni, though, I still think was a pretentious phony.

I’ve praised Dennis Cozzalio’s Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule before, but probably my favourite part is his semi-regular film geek quizzes. I’ve never managed to actually find the time to fill one out before, though (hey, I have important Battlestar Galactica and The Wire to watch!). But this time, finally, I did. I’m so proud!

Anyway, here are my answers. And if you’re in any way reading this because you’re a film nerd, go take the quiz (and then let me know: I always like evidence I’m not shouting into the great interweb void). Or you can just read other people’s responses: always interesting and enlightening. I avoided reading any of the responses until I wrote my own, so I’m gonna go read them right now and envy all the people who came up with cooler answers than I could think of.

1) Favorite quote from a filmmaker

“Film is not the art of scholars, but of illiterates.” — Werner Herzog

runner-up:

“Filmmaking is not about the tiny details. It’s about the big picture.” — Ed Wood

2) A good movie from a bad director

Kevin Smith is pretty much a wash as a director, but I still like Chasing Amy a whole lot. (I like Clerks and Clerks II a lot, too, but I’m not sure I’d say they’re good movies.)

3) Favorite Laurence Olivier performance

I’ve seen maybe four or five Olivier movies in my life, but I don’t remember his performances in any of them well enough to compare.

4) Describe a famous location from a movie that you have visited (Bodega Bay, California, where the action in The Birds took place, for example). Was it anything like the way it was in the film? Why or why not?

My first trip to New York was a eye-opener. I couldn’t get over how “New York” it all looked. In retrospect I should have maybe expected that.

5) Carlo Ponti or Dino De Laurentiis (Producer)?

Dino. He not only produced Conan, Barbarella, Death Wish and Army of Darkness, but he had the brains not to get involved with Zabriski Point or the overrated Blowup.

6) Best movie about baseball

Mr Baseball.

7) Favorite Barbara Stanwyck performance

Double Indemnity, of course. Bad wig, bad make-up, and she looks downright feral in some scenes, but I still believe Fred MacMurray would kill a man to tap that.

8.) Fast Times at Ridgemont High or Dazed and Confused?

Dazed and Confused. I have no nostalgic attachment to Fast Times, Though Phoebe Cates in that bikini is pretty memorable.

9) What was the last movie you saw, and why? (We’ve used this one before, but your answer is presumably always going to be different, so…)

Sholay. I’ve been getting into Bollywood movies lately, and it’s a classic “curry western”.

10) Whether or not you have actually procreated or not, is there a movie you can think of that seriously affected the way you think about having kids of your own?

While it wasn’t part of my own childhood (which was essentially movie-free), various friends and relatives let their kids watch the same children’s movie over and over again. Being in such a house seems a special kind of hell to me.

On the other hand, there are all kinds of really great films I look forward to watching with my own kids: Iron Giant, Star Wars, The Princess Bride, and, of course, a pre-adolescent Jaws and The Exorcist double-bill. I often think about how different my life might have been if I’d first seen Jaws at age 12 instead of 26.

Maybe I shouldn’t reproduce.

11) Favorite Katharine Hepburn performance

Bringing up Baby. Back when she was still young and cute and trying to play a character rather than “the immortal Katherine Hepburn as…”.

12) A bad movie from a good director

Gangs of New York. Sometimes great artists follow their dreams where nobody can really be expected to follow.

13) Salo: The 120 Days of Sodom– yes or no?

I still have not brought myself to watch it, and having recently read Matthew Dessem’s review on The Criterion Contraption (”This film literally made me vomit.”), it’s not high on my list. But I suspect I will watch it one day. So, yes.

14) Ben Hecht or Billy Wilder (Screenwriter)?

Ben Hecht probably has more funny lines, but Billy Wilder’s characters are much more fully-realized. Advantage: Wilder.

15) Name the film festival you’d most want to attend, or your favorite festival that you actually have attended

I attended the Toronto film festival every year when I lived there and always saw a few movies that blew me away. I can’t say that about other festivals I’ve attended.

16) Head or 200 Motels?

I’ve only seen Head, but I suspect I might like 200 Motels more.

17) Favorite cameo appearance

Bill Murray in Wild Things. To quote Roger Ebert: “Bill Murray lands in the middle of this pie like a plum from heaven.”

18) Favorite Rosalind Russell performance

I’d have to go with His Girl Friday. It’s the only one of her films I’ve seen, but I liked her a whole lot.

19) What movie, either currently available on DVD or not, has never received the splashy collector’s edition treatment you think it deserves? What would such an edition include?

Is Kill Bill too obvious? Even if it is: Kill Bill. It would include the two-film version and the original one-film cut, and a long doc showing scenes from Kill Bill alongside the ones that inspired them. Plus, a commentary by a random Tarantino-hating film geek bragging about how he was into Lady Snowblood way before QT. Just to get the full experience.

20) Name a performance that everyone needs to be reminded of, for whatever reason

Bill Murray (again) in Groundhog Day. Even now, I don’t think Murray gets enough respect as an actor, and he sure didn’t then because he’s “funny”. In Groundhog Day, he goes through pretty much every emotion one can have but still stays identifiable as the same character.

21) Louis B. Mayer or Harry Cohn (Studio Head)?

Gonna have to pass.

22) Favorite John Wayne performance

His portrayal of Genghis Khan in The Conqueror is endlessly entertaining. “Dance for me, Tartar woman!”

23) Naked Lunch or Barton Fink?

Naked Lunch is less successful, but more ambitious and therefore more interesting. Advantage: Cronenberg.

24) Your Ray Harryhausen movie of choice

Is this a trick question? Jason and the Argonauts, of course! The skeleton scene is one of the greatest things ever committed to celluloid.

25) Is there a movie you can think of that you feel like the world would be better off without, one that should have never been made?

Leaving aside political films like Birth of a Nation and Triumph of the Will, I could cite The Jazz Singer and Heaven’s Gate for helping to kill off really pretty awesome periods of cinema. Though you could easily argue that if they hadn’t, another would have. So maybe I’ll just go with Matrix Reloaded, which was not only awful, but destroyed my ability to enjoy the original Matrix movie.

24) Favorite Dub Taylor performance

Given that I had to look on IMDB to even learn who the guy was, I’m gonna have to pass on this one, too.

25) If you had the choice of seeing three final movies, to go with your three last meals, before shuffling off this mortal coil, what would they be?

An Adam Sandler marathon would doubtless put me in the right frame of mind to welcome death.

26) And what movie theater would you choose to see them in?

One full of screaming babies.

EXTRA CREDIT!!!

Your proposed entry in the Atheist Film Festival

Microcosmos

What advice on day-to-day living have you learned from the movies?

Beautiful, vivacious, quirky women are irresistibly attracted to moody, scruffy, brainy introverts. This knowledge is sure to pay off any day now.

A trailer is available for the upcoming Wes Anderson film, The Darjeeling Limited! This is, alongside the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men, my most anticipated movie right now.

I do love Wes Anderson. Rushmore and The Royal Tenebaums both made my top 100, but I think Bottle Rocket and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou are almost as brilliant. Merely having a favourite Wes Anderson film pretty much ensures I’ll be well-disposed to you. (For the record, most people prefer The Royal Tenebaums, but my favourite is still Rushmore. Though Tyson makes a strong case for Bottle Rocket and Nando, my supervisor, loves The Life Aquatic.)

Based on the trailer to Darjeeling, I’m bracing myself for the inevitable complaints like the ones that followed The Life Aquatic: he’s repeating himself, he won’t move past his interest in talented-but-quirky families, he hasn’t “grown as an artist”, blah blah blah. Man, do I find that a lame criticism. As though the cineplexes of Canada are so saturated with smart, moving, bittersweet comedies that Anderson can hang up his camera and move on. They aren’t. I checked.

alone in the lab, originally uploaded by Mister Wind-Up Bird.

Thanks to a combination of conferences, vacations and nice weather, I’m the only person to show up in my lab. For the second day in a row.

While it makes it somewhat easier to work, it does make me feel like a bit of a sucker for showing up.

On the plus side, I get to listen to music on the speakers.

Andrew Gellman posts a link on his blog to a great talk by Dick De Veaux about teaching Statistics, making the point that unlike math and music, but like literature, doing stats requires life experience.

Like a lot of math/science geeks, I went through a phase of my undergrad where I was caught up in the beauty and elegance of “pure” math. Now, though, I find statistics much more interesting. Not that I read myself to sleep with stats textbooks, and the more esoteric it gets the less interesting I find it, but I do find myself more and more looking at the world using the tools of statistics (and its dark cousin, economics). Pure math, like programming, creates a perfect, orderly universe that can be mechanically understood, but statistics gives us tools to make sense of a messy, anarchic universe without taming it. But in order to use stats, you have to first pay attention to its world and try to understand it. And then stats will show you how wrong you are.

And David Cross is a decidedly ironic Allen Ginsberg.

From the upcoming Todd Haynes film I’m Not There, which will feature an assortment of actors (including Christian Bale and Richard Gere) as the talented Mr Zimmerman.

‘Honest’ Ed Mirvish passed away yesterday at the ripe old age of 92.

I’d never heard of Ed Mirvish before I moved to Toronto, but once there, stories of Honest Ed’s department store drew me like a magnet. A gigantic kitch bargain emporium of a decidedly old-school bent, I found it a welcome, tacky respite from a city that prides itself on professionalism and good taste. And that was just one part of the Mirvish discount-store/restaurant/theatre empire.

The guy lived a colourful life, made lots of money, gave generously and made Toronto a slightly weirder place in the process. What’s not to like about a guy who is made Commander of the British Empire and interprets it as “Creates Bargains Everywhere”?

• Globe & Mail obit
• pics of Honest Ed’s, for non-Torontonians

Oh sure, the iPhone will change your shorts, change your life, change into a nine-year-old Hindu boy and get rid of your wife, but… will it blend?

It started innocently enough.

My friend Jan asked me to make a list of a few movies I’d recommend that she might not otherwise see. Unfotunately, the list quickly exploded into the dozens. Now, it’s not exactly news at this point, but the American Film Institute recently put out its updated list of the 100 greatest American movies. And this got me thiking: if they can do it, well…

And so, taking a page from Dennis Cozzalio and others, and having a long weekend last week to assemble the list, I decided to simply put together my own Top 100. I may be a small man, but I’m a huge geek.

These are 100 movies that are my favourites — they’re movies I enjoy, and that I enjoy because they’re genuinely great films. Some are masterfully made, some simply hit a powerful personal chord, and few have a single element so brilliant they make up for other flaws. Following the critical concensus is not even an option for me, but I tried to avoid simply being contrarian, and I didn’t consciously try to reach any sort of balance — it’s not a mix of classics and new films, or obscure and well-known, or English-language and subtitled. If there’s a bias toward Asian cinema and 1990s indie films over European classics and Academy Award winners, that’s simply because my aesthetic tilts that way, not because I thought there should be more Kurosawa movies. If there aren’t many movies from the thirties, well, it’s because I liked what came before and after a whole lot better. At the same time, I have no problem putting classics like Citizen Kane and Singin’ in the Rain and Jaws on there, too.

Also, this is obviously not set in stone. I whittled down my original list from about 200 to 125 pretty easily, but of the last 25 I cut, pretty much any of them could have bumped something from this list off if I was in a slightly different mood.

Finally, I arbitrarily cut the list off at 2005. There were a few movies from after that I was considering, but I think I need a chance to see them again to judge how well they hold up.

Now that that’s out of the way, here’s the list, in the best order ever: chronological order. This list may well be all you ever need to know about me.

The General (1927; Clyde Bruckman and Buster Keaton) Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927; F.W. Murnau) Pandora’s Box (1929; Georg Wilhelm Pabst) Freaks (1932; Tod Browning) Duck Soup (1933; Leo McCarey) Bride of Frankenstein (1935; James Whale) Citizen Kane (1941; Orson Welles) The Maltese Falcon (1941; John Huston) The Big Sleep (1946; Howard Hawks) The Third Man (1949; Carol Reed) Sunset Blvd. (1950; Billy Wilder) Singin’ in the Rain (1952; Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly) Ikiru (1952; Akira Kurosawa) The Seven Samurai (1954; Akira Kurosawa) Rear Window (1954; Alfred Hitchcock) The Night of the Hunter (1955; Charles Laughton and Robert Mitchum) The Killing (1956; Stanley Kubrick) Touch of Evil (1958; Orson Welles) Some Like It Hot (1959; Billy Wilder) North by Northwest (1959; Alfred Hitchcock) The Apartment (1960; Billy Wilder) Psycho (1960; Alfred Hitchcock) Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964; Stanley Kubrick) The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966; Sergio Leone) Point Blank (1967; John Boorman) In Cold Blood (1967; Richard Brooks) Night of the Living Dead (1968; George A. Romero) 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968; Stanley Kubrick) The Wild Bunch (1969; Sam Peckinpah) Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970; Werner Herzog) El Topo (1970; Alejandro Jodorowsky) Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972; Werner Herzog) The Godfather (1972; Francis Ford Coppola) The Long Goodbye (1973; Robert Altman) The Wicker Man (1973; Robin Hardy) The Parallax View (1974; Alan J. Pakula) The Godfather: Part II (1974; Francis Ford Coppola) Thieves Like Us (1974; Robert Altman) The Conversation (1974; Francis Ford Coppola) Chinatown (1974; Roman Polanski) Jaws (1975; Steven Spielberg) Love and Death (1975; Woody Allen) Nashville (1975; Robert Altman) Taxi Driver (1976; Martin Scorsese) Network (1976; Sidney Lumet) Annie Hall (1977; Woody Allen) Dawn of the Dead (1978; George A. Romero) The Warriors (1979; Walter Hill) Stalker (1979; Andrei Tarkovsky) Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980; Irvin Kershner) Polyester (1981; John Waters) Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981; Steven Spielberg) Vernon, Florida (1982; Errol Morris) Videodrome (1983; David Cronenberg) This Is Spinal Tap (1984; Rob Reiner) Repo Man (1984; Alex Cox) Paris, Texas (1984; Wim Wenders) Blue Velvet (1986; David Lynch) The Princess Bride (1987; Rob Reiner) Wings of Desire (1987; Wim Wenders) Die Hard (1988; John McTiernan) The Killer (1989; John Woo) Trust (1990; Hal Hartley) Goodfellas (1990; Martin Scorsese) Miller’s Crossing (1990; Joel Coen and Ethan Coen) Slacker (1991; Richard Linklater) Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991; James Cameron) Careful (1992; Guy Maddin) Hard Boiled (1992; John Woo) Dazed and Confused (1993; Richard Linklater) Naked (1993; Mike Leigh) Groundhog Day (1993; Harold Ramis) Pulp Fiction (1994; Quentin Tarantino) Clerks. (1994; Kevin Smith) Hoop Dreams (1994; Steve James) The Legend of Drunken Master (1994; Chia-Liang Liu and Jackie Chan) Fargo (1996; Joel Coen and Ethan Coen) Chasing Amy (1997; Kevin Smith) Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997; Werner Herzog) Buffalo ‘66 (1998; Vincent Gallo) Pi (1998; Darren Aronofsky) Rushmore (1998; Wes Anderson) The Thin Red Line (1998; Terrence Malick) The Matrix (1999; Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski) Being John Malkovich (1999; Spike Jonze) Audition (1999; Takashi Miike) American Psycho (2000; Mary Harron) Ghost World (2001; Terry Zwigoff) The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001; Peter Jackson) The Royal Tenenbaums (2001; Wes Anderson) Donnie Darko (2001; Richard Kelly) Spirited Away (2001; Hayao Miyazaki) The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002; Peter Jackson) Lost in Translation (2003; Sofia Coppola) Oldboy (2003; Chan-wook Park) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004; Michel Gondry) Shaun of the Dead (2004; Edgar Wright) The Incredibles (2004; Brad Bird) 3-Iron (2004; Ki-duk Kim) Grizzly Man (2005; Werner Herzog)

Notably absent: French cinema (The Wages of Fear came very close); “traditional” Westerns (only High Noon even made my initial list); Fellini; Ozu; Soderbergh; Godard; Ford; Eisenstein; Lean; Renoir; The Wizard of Oz; Casablaca (that was a hard one to cut); Bonnie and Clyde. Only four of my picks won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Only three of the AFI top-ten made even my top 100: The Godfather, Citizen Kane and Singin’ in the Rain.

81 of the films are in English. 4 are in Japanese, 3 in Cantonese, 3 in German, 2 in Korean, 1 in Russian and 1 in Spanish. 2 were made with multiple languages. 3 are silent. 24 films are from the 1990s. 20 are from the 1970s. I actually do think those decades are the two high points of English-language cinema, so that wasn’t a surpize.

Two Canadian films made the list. I had several other short-listed, but I was forced to ask myself if I they were really my favourites, or if there wasn’t some national pride in there. The two that made it (Videodrome and Careful) really are among my favourites.

Four documentaries made the final cut, and two were by Werner Herzog, who also got two non-docs on the list. There are two animated films, and they are both from the 2000s, which either says something about me, or something about animation.

Directors with more than one film on the list: Werner Herzog (4); Akira Kurosawa (2); Billy Wilder (3); Alfred Hitchcock (3); Stanley Kubrick (3); Francis Ford Coppola (3); Robert Altman (3); Woody Allen (2); Martin Scorsese (2); Orson Welles (2); George A Romero (2); Rob Reiner (2); Wim Wenders (2); John Woo (2); Joel and Ethan Coen (2); Kevin Smith (2); Wes Anderson (2); Richard Linklater (2); Peter Jackson (2).

Only two films on the list were directed by women. Hey, at least it’s better than the AFI tally of zilch.

bonus! left off the list

As I said above, there were about two dozen films that could just as easily have made the cut. In no particular order, they are: Ran; Manhattan; Return of the King; Star Wars; Aguirre; Yi Yi; Kundun; Dead Man; Gates of Heaven; The Taking of Pelham One Two Three; McCabe & Mrs. Miller; Patton; Bonnie and Clyde; The Wages of Fear; Seconds; Yojimbo; Casablanca; A History of Violence; Amateur; Silence of the Lambs; Dead Alive; Blood Simple; The Tenant; Kill Bill; Last Life in the Universe; Psycho; Aliens; Unforgiven; Reservoir Dogs.

And then there are a few films from the past couple of years that might one day make it onto the list, but I need to rewatch them first: Death Proof; Knocked Up; Children of Men; Spring Summer Fall Winter… and Spring; Once; The Proposition.

Oh my, yes. Mark your calendars, boys and girls: August 25, 2007, at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

The original 2005 Zombie Walk was a blast: 200 zombies shuffling through Pacific Center mall and taking the Skytrain to Main Street. Last year, I skipped it to go the the Flugtag, which was kind of disappointing, especially when afterward, I could see zombies trickling home on the Skytrain. But this year, I’m back, and more putrefied than ever.

Spread the word. (Also, you can all stop emailing me about this now!)

Damned. You are newly dead. Perhaps by my bite or by something more natural — maybe something airborne. The how is not so much as important as the why. What matters is that YOU have been chosen. You are one of ours. One of us. The awakening sleep. The living dead. Vancouver zombies, I call upon you to unite. And to walk.

Birthed from the underground, our movement is slowly stumbling forward. Each year our numbers double and hundreds more Vancouverites fall in our wake. They are paying attention now, and they fear us. Aberrations — they call us freaks. Famished, we seek not fame, just brains. We are oh so hungry.

Damned! We are unorganized. We are organic. And yet, this summer we stand as one. On August 25th we will limp forward, mobilized as a solid rambling mob. In our torn clothing and with blood spilling from our open wounds we will take Vancouver’s West End by surprise. From the Vancouver Art Gallery we will march.

Spread the word, however you like. Bring your zombie friends.

On Saturday, August 25th we feed.

update: If anybody knows what time the walk starts, email me or leave a message and I’ll post it.