Identificazione di il bagno

Tuesday night, the American Cinemateque screened Michelangelo Antonioni's seldom exhibited jewel, Identification of a Woman. I'd seen the film only once before, during the LACMA retrospective in 2005, after which I ranked it amongst the director's most erotic, mysterious best.
Aside from another eerie fog-scape, and it's science fiction epilogue, I remembered absolutely the bathroom in the protagonist's Roman flat.
Clawfoot tub with tankless toilet and bidet. Magnificent marble wainscotting. Despite shower riser, and interesting wall mount configuration, no apparent shower curtain. The sink, visible in another scene, is of the incredible four-legged serpentine variety.

Antonioni's last full fledged feature was paired with Valerio Zurlini's Black Jesus, a thinly disguised homage to Congo rebel leader Patrice Lalumba. That feature, unsurprisingly, didn't showcase any beautiful plumbing. Here's another still from Identificazione, and a sadly faded print.

Another Ali Biopic, I Fretted

I'm an admitted cinema goer. Despite the wonderful service that is NetFlix, and freely circulating academy screeners, I struggle to consume things at home, distracted by work, little ones, and the tamale stash. So I go, often, but seldom to new releases. Sunday night, I gorged on the Andrzej Wajda films at the Aero.

I'm probably a bit of a film snob, but also just disinterested in computer aided and generated animation, and stories culled from children's books, and theme park rides. Yet, there's one new release that has my attention: I Am Legend. Mostly, on account of its star. No not Will Smith, rather his canine companion--a German Shepherd. Tired am I of Dalmatians, Goldens, and Terriers (Cairn, Jack Russell, Fox, Yorkshire, etc, etc). Sure the Shepherd was celebrated in Rin Tin Tin, but nowdays even Great Danes and Rottweilers show up more often on the big screen.

Where's the urban mix? The pit-chow-mastiffs, the dober-rottis? I see a heck of a lot more of those than I do Sulukis or Pomeranians, Poodles or Collies. Matter of fact, one of the last new releases I really dug was the hard-boiled anthology film directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Amores Perros. The movie's third story, "El Chivo and Maru", features a man living mostly on the streets, caring for a large collection of mongrels. Hollywood dogs they were not. The animals didn't perform cute tricks, carry out extraordinary acts, or upstage their human masters. None was trained to use a toilet.

LA Movies

Play it As it Lays

Director Frank Perry's fearless adaptation of Joan Didion's LA opus, stars Tuesday Weld as model-cum-actress-cum-brutalized has been. Often described as a scathing show biz indictment, the numbing monotony of desert landscapes and freeway drivescapes are stunningly juxtaposed in this rich textural work, magnificently photographed by Jordan Cronenweth (previously noted for the Nickel Ride and most celebrated for another dystopian LA flix Blade Runner).

Sidenote: I realized after watching Play it As it Lays, that in just 35 years, L.A. looks utterly different from its freeways: sound walls have been built, connections have been added or altered (like the 105 or the 110 carpool fly lanes), and in some places (along the 405 for example) massive development has taken place.

This Thursday, the Egyptian theatre is screening a good L.A. cop film, The New Centurions (1972, director Richard Fleischer). Chinatown screens at the Aero Saturday night.

LA Movies

711 Ocean Drive

Helmed by Joseph Newman, this 1950 "noir-syndicate" film starring Edmond O'Brien, is packed with location footage: Gilmore Field (then home to the Pacific Coast League Hollywood Stars), beaches, local racetracks, a drive-in restaurant, and driving footage (rear projection plates?) of Santa Barbara (now King Boulevard)! Lastly, the rousing climactic chase/holdout/shoot 'em up is shot--in fine style by Franz Planer--at the Hoover Dam.

Favorite LA Movies 3

The Driver

Director Walter Hill's The Driver is the veritable A to Z of downtown Los Angeles, a back drop to impossibly long car chases, expertly lensed by d.p. Phil Lathrop. Ryan O'Neal plays a nameless get-away driver, single-mindedly pursued by a conniving detective (actor Bruce Dern). The Bonaventure Hotel and Union Station receive especially long cameos along with some, probably long gone, SRO hotel. Despite the abundance of night driving sequences, Lathrop's photography, while sufficiently source motivated, is always permeable and coherent. Hill's second directorial effort (after 1975's Hard Times), the minimal, neo-noir Driver was released in 1978, a year before Hill's break-out success, the street gang picture The Warriors.

Favorite LA Movies 2

The Late Show, produced by Robert Altman, written and directed by Robert Benton, pairs nostalgia and whimsy, Art Carney and Lily Tomlin. Released in 1977, the film dressed down classic potboiler elements, interjecting Tomlin's scatter-brained wit and moments of gentle comedy.

The Late Show contains plenty of down home L.A. streetscapes and practical interiors. Carney's character, a wizened P.I., even lives in a West Adams area boarding house (note the Denker street signs). Ah, the bad old days.

Favorite L.A. Movies

Saturday night, the American Cinemateque screened director Robert Mulligan's The Nickel Ride. In the Cinemateque's schedule the film was described thusly: (1974, 20th Century Fox, 99 min.) Superb neo-noir with Jason Miller as a downtown LA stolen good manager. When his boss, John Hillerman, bids him to buy more warehouses, problems snowball for Miller, threatending his 'career' and his life. Beautifully realized, from the low-key performances to the evocation of a dying downtown. With Bo Hopkins.

Gloomily photographed by Jordan Cronenweth, the Nickel Ride, counts Skid Row, Echo Park, the Biltmore, and the Olympic Auditorium amongst its many unburnished L.A. locations. Mulligan's film is a choice example of under-revered 1970's urban American cinema, torpid and dissolute.

Reportedly, Turner Movie Classics intends to schedule the Nickel Ride, which is not currently available on DVD.