Lists of movies within movies are fairly common on the internet, enough that I now realize I need to finally see Bowfinger simply because I’ve counted about a million list makers in love with something titled “Chubby Rain.” And the lists are likely to keep on coming thanks to this week’s hot release, Tropic Thunder, which actually features two movies within (the Vietnam War film “Tropic Thunder” and the festival-winning making-of documentary “Rain of Madness”), as well as the upcoming How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, which has spawned a popular fake movie trailer for an NC-17 film titled “Mother Theresa: The Making of a Saint” (previewed above). Yet until someone makes a Wikipedia page for “List of Fictional Films,” these blogged and forumed lists are necessary to keep us movie fans remembering those non-existent movies we wish existed.
Narrowing down to ten seemed to be difficult — fictional films have been at least nominally been created for tons of films about filmmaking, otherwise reflexive films, sketch comedies, spoofs, etc. — until I realized that a lot of these films within films are appropriately nominal or trailer- or clip-sized gags and would in reality be terrible (imagine actually watching the entirety of“Asses of Fire” from South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut). Even “Je Vous Présente Paméla” (”Meet Pamela”) from Day for Night and the sci-fi film being made in 8½would probably be major disappointments in actuality if you expected from them the work of Truffaut and Fellini, respectively.
So, I went mostly with fictional films that would probably be bad, but would at least be amusingly bad — though I purposefully avoided fictional porns, including those from Boogie Nightsand The Big Lebowski, of which there are literally thousands:
Lady Wakasa makes a strong case in defense of Lust, Caution. “It’s true that there are elements in the story that won’t be clear to some Western audiences…There are universalities that can be picked up: about the effects of environment and upbringing, about the nature of love, about what in relationships is and isn’t an act, how war is hell with a twist. But these universalities are filtered through a Chinese lens. As such, I think it’s up to the Westerners to go the extra mile and fill in blanks they find. The shoe on the other foot, to a certain degree.”
The Shamus thought Contempt was “about nothing more than the pneumatic perfection of Brigitte Bardot’s ass,” but a later Godard film went over much better. “Masculin-Feminin strikes me as a Warhol-esque montage of the ’60s as we wanted them to truly be, with more going on under the surface than we might want to admit.”
A holdover from the heady days immediately following Dumbledore’s outing … you know, last week: Joe Leydon writes that he’s “occasionally had students ask me — earnestly, not snickeringly — if certain movie characters are intended to be interpreted as gay…The two names that pop up most often during these “Is he or isn’t he?” queries: Jedediah Leland (Joseph Cotten) of Citizen Kane and Cosmo Brown (Donald O’Connor) of Singin’ in the Rain.”
For the record, I would like to note that I recorded my segment of this week’s episode of Film Couch, about actresses who have played Joan of Arc, way back on Tuesday. At the time, I had no idea Jeff Wells would use multiple Saint Joan references to mock Tom O’Neill’s unflappable faith that Sweeney Todd has a chance in hell of winning multiple Oscars.
A massive fire broke out last night at Rome’s Cinecitta Studios, the mega-complex that has hosted hundreds of productions, from La Dolce Vita to The Life Aquatic. Ironically, the only set damaged beyond repair by the blaze was that in use by the HBO drama Rome. Above, you’ll find an English-language news report about the fire; click through the jump to watch the trailer for one of my favorite films shot in and around Cinecitta, Godard’s Contempt. …Read more
Some movies are violent, some are disturbing, and others are just plain wrong. Paul W. S. Anderson’s Death Race is a fun ride with some gnarly crashes, but it can’t hold a candle to its demented predecessor, Roger Corman’s Death Race 2000 (1975).
Cinema’s favorite weirdo, Cripsin Glover, is taking his film across the country, personally [...]
Lady Wakasa makes a strong case in defense of Lust, Caution. “It’s true that there are elements in the story that won’t be clear to some Western audiences…There are universalities that can be picked up: about the effects of environment and upbringing, about the nature of love, about what in relationships is and isn’t an act, how war is hell with a twist. But these universalities are filtered through a Chinese lens. As such, I think it’s up to the Westerners to go the extra mile and fill in blanks they find. The shoe on the other foot, to a certain degree.”
