Pic of the Day: “Mark, we as a nation have failed to honor you. And that’s a problem. Not just for you, but for our society. When we fail to honor that which should be honored, it’s a problem. It’s a canary in a coal mine.”
Pic of the Day: “You’re an agent?” “I reiterate, yes.” “If I went down there, would you be my agent?” “No.” “Why not?” “I ain’t interested. I’m satisfied with the list of clients I got now.” “You’re makin’ a mistake, but okay, you know.” “I made a lot of mistakes. So I’ll make another one. This one’s on me.”
Pic of the Day: “If you must blink, do it now. Pay careful attention to everything you see and hear, no matter how unusual it may seem. And please be warned: If you fidget, if you look away, if you forget any part of what I tell you – even for an instant – then our hero will surely perish.”
Pic of the Day: “Elias was full of shit. Elias was a crusader. Now, I got no fight with any man who does what he’s told, but when he don’t, the machine breaks down. And when the machine breaks down, we break down. And I ain’t gonna allow that in any of you. Not one.”
Pic of the Day: “All the animals come out at night – whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets. I go all over. I take people to the Bronx, Brooklyn, I take ’em to Harlem. I don’t care. Don’t make no difference to me. It does to some. Some won’t even take spooks. Don’t make no difference to me.”
Pic of the Day: “Pic of the Day: “How do you say in French my sister has a yellow pencil?” “Ma soeur a un crayon jaune.” “How do you say my brother has a lovely girl?” “Mon frère a une gentille petite amie.” “And how do you say I wish I were my brother?””
Pic of the Day: “What’s the ending of the ice fishing story?” “I’m not telling you the end of the ice fishing story!” “I’m going to call your fuckin’ brother to find out the end.” “My brother’s dead!” “That’s how it ends! He fell through the fuckin’ ice!” “No, that’s not… He died a different way, many years later!”
Pic of the Day: “What business do you have with Elektra King?” “I thought it was you who was giving her the business.”
Mike’s Top Ten of 1959
This is a cool year. There’s a lot of amazing stuff on this top ten. Just about every film in the top ten can be describes as being a “classic” in its respective genre. And the other one… well, we’ll get to the other one. It’s amazing.
The French New Wave began this year, and it marks a major upturn (which had been coming over the past couple years) of European cinema. International film industries had been growing since the war, but the 60s were the time when the films greatly started making their way over to America in a big way.
Otherwise, you look at this year — Billy Wilder, William Wyler, George Stevens, Otto Preminger, Douglas Sirk, Howard Hawks — it’s one of those years with all the auteurs making some of the absolute most classic films.
Pound for pound, this is legitimately one of the best years of the decade. (more…)
Pic of the Day: “What kind of sheriff’s office was that?” “Saloon girls? Gambling? How does he ever get any work done?” “If that’s the sheriff’s office, this town rocks!”
Mike’s Top Ten of 1958
1958’s just a cool year. There’s nothing hugely specific that will define the year, but there are important things to talk about in terms of films. The noir genre basically ended this year, for example. Also, a film is now generally considered one of the actual two or three greatest films ever made was released. And there’s just a lot of cool shit about vikings, too.
What I like about this list is that it’s all over the map. Classic foreign film, suspense, campy horror, epic western, musical, classy drama, classic race film, ensemble, classic noir, and vikings.
Can you guys tell I’m really excited about the vikings? (more…)
Pic of the Day: “C’mon buddy. After a long day of Turing tests you gotta unwind.” “What were you doing with Ava?” “What” “You tore up her picture.” “I’m gonna tear up the fucking dance floor, dude. Check it out.”
Mike’s Top Ten of 1957
The single best year of the 50s. My personal favorite is 1953, for sentimental reasons, but in terms of having the absolute strongest films, 1957 is your year. You’ll see what I mean below.
This top ten list goes 8 deep. The first 8 films on this list are generally considered among the greatest films ever made. And then the other two are just some great hidden gems that I love that generally aren’t very widely known among film buffs.
Really what makes me happy about this year is my #1 film, which is one of my twenty favorite films of all time. The rest is just icing on the cake.
Pay attention to this year in particular. It’s so deep that there are a larger number of true hidden gems out there for people to see and enjoy. (more…)
Mike’s Top Ten of 1956
What we need to talk about for 1956 is the biggest thing in popular culture — rock ‘n’ roll. Music changed forever in the 50s, and this feels like the signature year to bring it up. Elvis’s first movie — Love Me Tender — came out this year, and there was a proliferation of films with rock ‘n’ roll stars in them performing their hits. This goes back to what I brought up in a previous year — teenagers were now the target audience. So they put all their favorite stars in the films. It’s actually a great time capsule, watching those films. You actually get to see these stars perform their hits.
The other thing — at least for me — about 1956 is the amount of straight up hidden gems that are in it. Sure, the big films are represented, as they should be. But my top ten has at least two films that most people haven’t heard of and another film that most people haven’t seen. And there’s also amazing stuff below that as well.
This is one of those years where just about every single movie going down to tier two is something I really enjoy. (more…)
Pic of the Day: “I don’t know if there is anything wrong because I don’t know how other people are.”
Mike’s Top Ten of 1955
Well, I guess there’s really only one thing to discuss for 1955 — James Dean.
Not necessarily Dean himself, though he did have an amazing, brief career, with three all-time classics as his only features in which he starred. We need to talk about both what he represents — method acting, the teen culture of the 50s — and also how it relates to the big cultural film of the year: Rebel Without a Cause.
The 50s started to represent a societal disconnect between adults and teenagers. This was the first time the term generational gap became a thing. Here you have adults that were raised on wholesomeness and here are these teens that are listening to rock ‘n’ roll, smoking cigarettes and all this other stuff. The disconnect between parents and children would be a major theme of the next few years. You can’t discuss 1955 without James Dean and the generational gap being front and center.
Outside of that, there are some real classics we’re gonna talk about here. There are heavy hitters all over the board, across every genre. (more…)
Pic of the Day: “The new guy was asking about you.” “It’s too bad he’s in a match now. I’ll probably never meet him.” “You might. There’s something different about him.”
Mike’s Top Ten of 1954
1954 is notable for having three of the absolute greatest films ever made in it. Straight up, when people rank the best of the best — these movies will show up within the first 150.
Now’s also a good time to talk about the big elephant in the room as it relates to the 50s — television. The rise of television, coupled with studios having to give up ownership of their theaters meant they were increasingly nervous about the future of their product. (That’s right, this has been going on for years.) So they started making these gimmicks to get people into the theater. First, it was CinemaScope. And Cinerama. And all the different variants. Then it was 3D. There are a bunch of movies that were originally released in 3D spread around the 50s.
The other thing they did was find things TV couldn’t offer, like exotic locations. There was an increasing trend in the 50s of “runaway production,” which was essentially going off and shooting films entirely in other countries. The big one in this era was Italy. A lot of movies were shot on location in Italy in the 50s. (more…)
Pic of the Day: “You know why I like plants?” “Nuh uh.” “Because they’re so mutable. Adaptation is a profound process. Means you figure out how to thrive in the world.” “Yeah but it’s easier for plants. I mean they have no memory. They just move on to whatever’s next. With a person though, adapting is almost shameful. It’s like running away.”
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