Screening Log

This new site feature is a collective effort to summarize our viewing habits. Occasionally, you will find titles here that are coming to a theater near you, in addition to films viewed on television, and even films viewed in piecemeal. The screening log is archived each month; to view past entries select a month in the menu below.


May 2006 activity

Total Log Entries: 54

Total Comments: 16


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The Long Goodbye / USA / 1973

I recently dropped a bomb amongst some friends of mine from “MoMI” (which is apparently what we’re calling it now) by saying that, while I like a lot of Altman films, I don’t really love any of them. After some browbeating, I decided I had better revisit this, a favorite among many Altmaniacs, only to find my opinion unaltered.

As much as any of his other films, The Long Goodbye is essentially a pretty good record of what it looks like to get stoned and shoot a film with Robert Altman, with the technicality that Bob and his crew aren’t in the final product.

Of course, considering that I am, first, an enormous devotee of Raymond Chandler and, second, not a fan of Elliott Gould, this is probably not the film for me. Altman largely squanders the beautifully elegaic tone of this, Chandler’s most personal novel, and while Gould is not as bad as I had expected, his coy retake on the Marlowe character retains none of the subversiveness it had in 1973.

For all of this, the film has more than a few euphoric moments: Henry Gibson’s freakishness; Vilmos Zsigmond’s pallid, langorous color cinematography (which itself quite single-handedly holds the film together); and the unique pleasure of watching Sterling Hayden bluster about hilariously.

by Leo Goldsmith | Source: MGM/UA DVD
23 May 2006 5:19 PM | Submit Comment


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