movie club 2006

May 27, 2006 - Michel Gondry, Director's Series. Last year's hit, a DVD with many music videos, short films, etc by this french video maker.
LR "We have to watch the short film with that little boy..."
WR - (next day) "The music videos were great but the short film was ehhhh"
LR - (next day) "Why do I like that short film? It's so atmospheric. Like how the sky gets dark when the boy reads the letter..."
MF - (next day) "My favorite was the one where the guy was followed by his own poop - you should show that to everybody!"

May 28, 2006 - Mr. Monk Meets the Candidate. The pilot for the TV show "Monk". Adrian Monk is a former San Francisco police detective who lapsed into serious obsessive compulsive disorder after his wife was killed by a car bomb. After not leaving his house for several years, he now is functional enough to solve the most difficult cases as a police consultant.
RJ - "I think there's more of the obsessive compulsive thing in this first episode"
LR - "Yeah, I would watch more of these..."

June 2, 2006 Mr. Monk Goes to the Theater, Mr. Monk and the Very Very Old Man. From season two.
ST - "Hey, that was good!"

June 4, 2006 - Mr. Monk gets Married, Mr. Monk and the Granny. Two more shows from season two.
JD - (on seeing the character Adrian Monk for the first time) "Hey, I know this guy! He was the best character on the show 'Wings'"
MT - (after the first one) "watch another?"
JD - "sure!"

July 2, 2006 - Mr. Monk and the Very Very Old Man, Mr. Monk and the Red Headed Stranger
JM - (after the first one) "I like it!"
PL - "My brother likes these..."
JM - (after the second one) "We have to watch more of these tomorrow!"

August 5, 2006 - Mr. Monk Goes to the Asylum, Mr. Monk and the Red Headed Stranger
MS - (several hrs after the first one) "I wouldn't mind watching another one"
MT - (who fell asleep during the second) "uh oh, I wonder if I'm over-dosing on Monk "

August 9, 2006 - Richard III. A silent film, originally made in 1912, recently restored with a new film score by Ennio Morricone. Preceded by a music video short "Walkie Talkie Man", suggested by Michelle Schlief!
TR - "Well, the music was awfully good."
JD - "That reminded me of Monty Python. We should dub in words to it as a summer project!"
TR - "The acting was very different in those days"
JD - "Yeah, you had to be good at the cape thing"
TR - "I thought we should watch a Shakespeare film this summer, and I found this on Amazon."
TP - "It was an interesting concept - Shakespeare without words."

September 9, 2006 - Fata Morgana. A Werner Herzog film from the late 1960's. Fata morgana means "mirage". The film was shot in Africa, and is in three parts: Creation, Paradise, and The Golden Age; the first part has no people, the second part includes long shots of dead animals, and the third part includes a very odd piano and drum / singing duo. Preceded by several shorts: "Sherlock, Jr.", "Donald Trump on Citizen Kane", The giant squid mother, and "Sour Death Balls".
MS - (before the film) "I've been watching a lot of Werner Herzog recently"
MT - (after the beginning, which consisted of 20-30 jets landing on a runway one after the other, head on into the camera) "Tom should see this film!"
MS - (after the end of the film) "WHAT did that film mean?? That's why I keep coming back to Herzog!"
DC - "That was a really great film. But it is terribly dated."

September 17, 2006 - Poseidon. The remake of the 70's disaster film "Poseidon Adventure". RN rented this because she saw the original a few weeks ago.
MT - (during film) "This reminds me of working in the lab, one horrible disaster after another and you have to run around like mad to save your experiment"
MT - (at the end) "The experiment worked!"
RN - "Well, they did bring it up to date"

September 18, 2006 - Jackie Brown. The film that Quentin Tarantino made after "Pulp Fiction". Why we watched it: MT was looking for his car in the Falmouth mall parking lot and told RN about this film where one character (Robt De Niro) shot another (Bridget Fonda) because she was ridiculing him for not remembering where he parked in a mall parking lot!
RN - "I liked it a lot but Pulp Fiction made you think more"
MT - "So, did the parking lot scene live up to its billing?"
RN - "Yes"

September 22, 2006 - Brick. A Sundance award-winning film about murder and drugs in a California high school. Written / directed by Rian Johnson
RN - "That was a very strange film"
RJ - "I had no idea what was going on until the very end. In that sense, it was a good mystery"
several - "The bad woman had something in her hair that looked like a hen of the woods!"

Who's Who:
DC - Dan Crocker
JD - Joe DeGiorgis
LR - Linda Runft
MF - Marina Freudzon
MS - Michelle Schlief
MT - Mark Terasaki
PL - Peter Lenart
RJ - Rindy Jaffe
RN - Rachael Norris
ST - Sid Tamm
TP - Tanya Petukhova
TR - Tom Reese
WR - Will Ratzan