STL #130.2: Analysis and Reconsiderations, Pt. II

 To re-orient: a list is a self-portrait disguised as a map.

50. Cleo from 5 to 7. It's not a lie that this is one film that comes to light when you notice all your favorite movies are directed by men. (Is Jeanne Dielman anywhere here? It really should be.) But it's true that this is a fantastic film in the way it handles the surface of the screen and the passing of time. Confident this belongs. 49. I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang. I haven't seen it in decades, but the ending is indelible. 48. Hoop Dreams I really need to see this again. 47. Freaks Like with a lot of these, the initial impact is important. The worm-man, "one of us," etc. 
46. Psycho. Pretty obvious pick. Lots of other choices: Rope, Rear Window, Strangers on a Train, 39 Steps, Lady Vanishes. 45. Philadelphia Story. With two f's? Maybe doesn't retain the standing. 44. Out of Sight. For so many reasons. Could go higher. 43. Almost Famous. Could go way higher. Reminds me of Dazed and Confused, which I recently saw again and might fit in here. 42. Third Man. Imperfect as a film, perfect couple. Maybe a bit high. 41. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Time for a rewatch.

Of this set, I feel like I should rewatch Hoop Dreams  and ESofSM. The latter and Psycho may be in trouble. 

40. Elevator to the Gallows. The epitome of cool, really only as a New Wave film could be. 39. Alice, Sweet Alice. A perfect giallo, apparently created in ignorance of the existence of giallo. 38. Dumbo. The one great tear-jerker, perhaps. 37. Citizen Kane. I remember walking around campus, looking at things as if framed for the camera. 36. Big Sleep. A bit on the nose, but my choice for favorite noir. 35. The Big Lebowski. And my favorite pseudo-noir 34. Rear Window. Ok, there it is. Maybe Psycho should go? 33. My Dinner with Andre. The charm of a an enrapturing conversation. Too high? 32. It's a Wonderful Life A sentimental favorite 31. Shogun Assassin. It was a bad time for the empire. Seems low.

Is IaWL a "sentimental favorite"? It's sentimental and I like, it, but other movies (including a certain Jean Arthur feature we'll see below) would be better fits.

30. Jaws. A perfect movie. 29. Jules and Jim. I'd like to see it again, but no doubt still charming. 28. Days of Heaven. Visually beautiful. 27. Eyes Wide Shut. Utterly compelling. 26. The Long Goodbye. That's alright with me. 25. McCabe and Mrs. Miller. Beautiful in its own way, but the world is hard and ugly despite it. A bit high.
24. Annie Hall I watched it again recently, and am wondering if maybe it just doesn't have the eggs anymore. 23. My Best Friend's Wedding. This stands up. 22. Royal Tennenbaums. Perfection of Anderson aesthetic. 21. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Because of Jean Arthur.

I think AH needs to go. I'm not sure it would be a top five Allen movie, if I were to do a systematic rewatch (hmm...)

20. Mandy. The audaciousness of this movie is epitomized by the "Mandy" logo at approximately halfway through. 19. Godfather II. I could include this with part one. I'd like to watch it again. 18. Gimme Shelter. The scene where Mick is listening, but can't make out what it is. 17. Don't Look Now. Lovely ghost story (of sorts), but perhaps a little high. 16. Double Indemnity. There's a speed limit in this two, Mr. Neff. 15. Hard Boiled. It's been a long time, but the canonic HK heroic bloodshed film for putting the human body in extremis. 14. Battle Royal. The moment where the deranged girl killer becomes sympathetic. 13. Deep Red. Emblematic of horror's devotion to formalism. 12. Carrie. So much so, that it's why DePalma went into the field. 11. Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Not to mention Tobe Hooper, who launched so many gore-laden ships. But this should be top 10.

Not sure about that horror run, though they're all great movies.

10. Manhattan. Likely still my favorite Allen, for the beauty and the self-knowledge (as a shit). 9. Jackie Brown. Need to rewatch, but several scenes stay in my memory. 8. Halloween. I mean, what can be said about the Laurie/Michael dynamic than can be seen in the film? 7. Lost in Translation. I'd love to rewatch, but that scene where he whispers in her ear. 6. All That Jazz. The pinnacle of 70s auteur cinema? Deeply felt and self-indulgent. 5. In the Mood for Love. For sheer beauty, must be the peak. 4. Kill Bill. For sheer kineticism, must be the peak. I think I'm thinking of parts one and two together here. 3. Goodfellas. And I'll live the rest of my life like a schnook. 2. His Girl Friday. Feminine strength, rapid fire banter, and that touching and beautiful interview with the prisoner. 1. The Godfather. Also a perfect movie.

I'm pretty satisfied with the top 10, though it's been so long since I've seen LiT and I feel funny about two QT's (and also by the fact that I consider JB my favorite QT, but rank KB higher). 

So where does that leave us? Find out in STL #130.3!!! Coming later this year!!! Probably?!?

December '25 Reading

 After two months of sloppy record keeping (and few books finished), I aim to do better this month. 

1. Claudius the God. "[T]he God who inflicted the vengeance on him was not one of the urbane Olympian community: he was perhaps the oddest deity that you could find anywhere in my extensive dominions, or out of them, for that matter, a God of whom no image is in existence, whose name his devout worshippers are forbidden to pronounce (though in his honour they clip their foreskins and practise many other curious and barbarous rites) and who is said to live alone, at Jerusalem, in an ancient cedar chest lined with badger-skins dyed blue and to refuse to have anything to do with any other deities in the world or even to acknowledge the existence of such."
2. Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock. Great God Pan redux. 
3. I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman. Why that? Narrator calls herself "I who" many things, including "I who never speakbecause there is no one to hear me."
4. Clown Town  by Mick Herron. Extended action scene in which all agents,  including those doomed to meet their end, converge on the action. Cuts from person to person, each taking a different route. Louisa Guy's route follows continuing ellipses, each passage trailing off and picking back up, until she is shot and after much hand-wringing, revives. 
5. Heavy Metal Movies:Guitar Barbarians, Mutant Bimbos, and Cult Zombies Amok in the 666 Most Ear- and Eye-Ripping Big Scream Films Ever by Mike "McBreardo" McPadden. 
6. Why Bob Dylan Matters by Richard F. Thomas. Is the fact that late period BD songs interpolate ancient Roman texts the reason he matters? Or even that he was broadly intertextual all along, going so far as to quote (without attribution, of course) the same yakuza novel twice in every song on Modern Times? I don't think so, but still an interesting read focusing on lesser covered work of an artist who definitely does matter. 
7. NYer of 12/22/25. Puzzle issue. Most NYer article of the year was a review of Stephen Sondheim's work as a puzzle-master (he solved crosswords in his head and was rumored to do solid white jigsaw puzzles). 
8. NYer of 10/20/25. Internet millionaire goes all in to discover to discover brother's killer in Australia. Did his millions drum up a conviction of a mentally ill man?

November '25 Reading

 This is an after-the-fact attempt at capture. 

1. I, Claudius by Robert Graves. "I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles), who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as 'Claudius the Idiot', or 'That Claudius', or 'Claudius the Stammerer', or 'Clau-Clau-Claudius', or at best as 'Poor Uncle Claudius', am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the 'golden predicament' from which I have never since become disentangled. "
2. October Country by Ray Bradbury. Standouts: "The Emissary," "Homecoming," The Cistern," "Next in Line," "The Wind."
3. A Haunting on the Hill by Elizabeth Hand. An adequate haunted house story set in Hill House which I rather regret reading.   
4. Good Dog by Graham Chaffee. Good dog drawings. 
5. Picture This: The Near Sighted Monkey Book by Lynda Barry. I think the monkey is Lynda!
6. The Coming Wave by Mustapha Suleyman. Could have been written by AI. 
7. NYer of 8/11/25. "Breeze,/blow for one/I love, stretch/his muscles as/he needs and wants." (James Schuyler). 

October '25 Reading

A busy month in general, and filling in a lot of free time with pickleball and horror movies. 

1. Meditations Marcus Aurelius. I can't get beyond this text as a illustration of the massive privilege (a word I avoid as much as possible). 
2. Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon. Trope of the petit patriarch assuming superiority over everyone only to fall hard
3. Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden. "On and off, all that hot French August, we made ourselves ill from eating the greengages."
4. Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay. A mid riff on the "cursed film" trope. Kind of ok in parts, like the method acting=descent into psychosis idea. 

September '25 Reading

 Back to work full-time, so who knows.

1. Letters from a Stoic by Seneca. Quotes Epicurus, his rival, frequently: "I...make a practice of going over the the enemy's camp--by way of reconnaissance, not as a deserter!"
2. NYer of 7/21/25. "[S]tories of family trauma are not communicated directly to children but mentioned in passing and half forgotten, ore overheard out of context. The information lodges somewhere in our unconscious. Children...  absorb their parents' history subliminally, “before there are words, and thus before a narrative can be told."
3. The Bog Wife by Kay Chronister. Could be good, if everything about it was different. Pointless references to Jessie Weston (coded) and Grail myth (explicit) throughout. 
4. The Amateur by Robert Littell. "I'm Colonel Henderson. Henderson isn't my real name, Colonel isn't my real rank. My friends call me Hank. You will call me Colonel Henderson."
5. GI Joe: Real American Hero by Larry Hama and others. Major Bludd such a bad poet, he thinks Proust rhymes with Faust!
6. City of Illusions by U.K.LeG. Cool story of alien who loses memory, develops identity on Earth, then restored to original memories while secretly maintaining others. 

August '25 Reading

 

1. The Last Good Kiss by James Crumely. "When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon."
2. The NYer of July 7&14 "Cake sounds good,/and after cake, being older/and missing cake. If the dead/could speak, they'd tell us to start/with the dessert menu. The best thing/about my mother's apple pie:/she was here to make it." ("The Eulogy I Didn't Give (XXXVII)" by Bob Hicok)
3. The Wrong Case by James Crumley. First Milo, and my favorite.
4. Dancing Bear by James Crumley. Second Milo. "We had been blessed with a long, easy fall for western Montana. The two light snowfalls had melted before noon, and in November we had three weeks of Indian Summer so warm and seductive that even we natives seemed to forget about winter." 
5. The Mexican Tree Duck Second Sughrue. ("Sugh as in sugar and rue as in rue the day.") "When the 3:12 through freight to Spokane hit the East Meriwether crossing, the engineer touched his horm and released a long, mournful wail into the wet, snowy air of our second early fall storm in western Montana. It sounded a hell of a lot like the first note of a Hank Snow ballad."
6. Bordersnakes by James Crumley. Where Milo and Sughrue work together (Milo showed up at the end of Tree Duck.) "Maybe it was the goddamned suit. Tailor-made Italian silk, as light and flimsy as shed snakeskin."
7. Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy by Walter C. Willet. So... avoid unsaturated fat. 
8. Silver Surfer: Requiem by JMS & Esad Ribic. There is no definitive SS story because he is by definition peripheral. 
9. LSH: Teenage Revolution by Waid and Kitson. The premise, of intergalactic teens who are obsessed with mid-20th century pop culture and band together to stick it to the man, is delightfully absurd. 
10. Secret Wars by Shooter et. al. Doom in this is just great.
11. The NYer of 8/4/25. The black/white wealth gap in was 6:1 at the dawn of the Civil Rights era. It is now 6:1, meaning... what exactly?
12. NYer of 7/28/25. Head of CIA's office on Soviet analysis, on looming fall of the USSR: "There are not many homes for old wizards of Armageddon."

July '25 Reading

 Goals for this month: more Vinge, Roman history, and finally catch up with magazine backlog. 

1. NYer of 6/16/25. Gertrude Berg, "Mother of the Sitcom."
2. The Nation of July/August 2025. Your pain, "She has nothing to eat but story" (from "Nothing Survives Without Food," a poem by Leah Naomi Green)
3. NYer of 5/30/22. “There are some who claim the automobile will replace the bicycle, but this is rank nonsense,” a Maine magazine reported in 1899. “Those who have become attached to their bicycles—there are several millions of bicycle riders—will not easily give up the pleasure of skimming along the country like a bird...  for the more doubtful delight of riding in the cumbersome, ill-smelling automobile.”
4. The Annals of Imperial Rome by Tacitus. "The enemies lined the shore in a dense armed mass. Among them were black-robed women with dishevelled hair like Furies, brandishing torches. Close by stood Druids, raising their hands to heaven and screaming dreadful curses." 
5. NYer of 6/9/25. Fascinating piece on Nutella's Algerian competitor, El Mordjene. 
6. NYer of 4/3/23. One fifth of respondents who want the U.S. to be a "Christian nation" identify as secular. 
7. The Two Towers by JRRT.  But which towers? I suppose it's Saruman's and Sauron's, but the only direct reference is the gate into Mordor that the hobbits don't take.
8. First Dawn by Mike Moscoe. Absurd premise (the U.S. government orders a mission to go back in time and stop the first instance of militarized violence, thus preserving the matriarchy), but a real page-turner. 
9. My Death by Lisa Tuttle. A quick, captivating read. 
10. Queen of Air and Darkness by T.H. White. Magic is a mixture of feminine allure and animal abuse, it seems. 
11. NYer of 5/26/25. "Her mother had misread something about the Property Brothers on the internet and was insisting that they were being persecuted for being Christian" (Fairy Pools by Patricia Lockwood)

Didn't get to Vinge, but some progress on magazines.