Apocalypse, Incest, Murder, Bigamy, Christmas: A Week Chez Goatdog

9 looks great; I only wish the screenplay had been as good as the animation.

Precious is earth-shattering; I only wish the direction had been as good as the performances.

The Screwfly Solution is nothing to write home about, but someone needs to make a movie about the lady who wrote it.

The Bigamist is a surprisingly open-minded film given its release date; I only wish Ida Lupino hadn't waited more than a decade before she directed again.

And Scrooge is the best Christmas movie ever made. Or close to it.

A Certain Bank-Owned Cinema III: Return of a Certain Bank-Owned Cinema

Many of you know that I run the Bank of America Cinema, a revival house hidden inside a bank building on Chicago's northwest side. Now the rest of you know that too. Here's our schedule for the January-June 2010 season:

1/2: Pandora's Box (1929, G.W. Pabst) 35mm -- With live electronic theatre organ accompaniment by Jay Warren!

1/9: My Sister Eileen (1955, Richard Quine) 35mm

1/16: The First Legion (1951, Douglas Sirk) 16mm -- not on DVD

1/23: Hellzapoppin' (1941, H.C. Potter) 16mm -- not on DVD

1/30: Amnesiac Noir Double Feature:
My Name Is Julia Ross (1945, Joseph H. Lewis) 35mm
Two O'Clock Courage (1945, Anthony Mann) 16mm -- not on DVD

2/6: Imitation of Life (1934, John M. Stahl) 16mm

2/13: History Is Made at Night (1937, Frank Borzage) 16mm

2/20: Monsieur Verdoux (1947, Charles Chaplin) 35mm

2/27: The Visit (1964, Bernhard Wicki) 16mm CinemaScope! -- not on DVD

3/6: The Deep Blue Sea (1955, Anatole Litvak) 16mm Technicolor CinemaScope! -- not on DVD

3/13: Dragonwyck (1946, Joseph M. Mankiewicz) 35mm

3/20: God's Little Acre (1958, Anthony Mann) 35mm -- not on DVD

3/27: Dead of Night (1945, various) 16mm

4/3: The Big Broadcast (1932, Frank Tuttle) 16mm -- not on DVD

4/10: Radio Days (1987, Woody Allen) 35mm

4/17: The Mark of Zorro (1940, Rouben Mamoulian) 35mm

4/24: I'm No Angel (1933, Wesley Ruggles) 16mm

5/1: A Canterbury Tale (1944, Powell & Pressburger) 35mm

5/8: Ladies in Retirement (1941, Charles Vidor) 35mm -- not on DVD

5/15: Lifeboat (1944, Alfred Hitchcock) 35mm

5/22: Mr. Wu (1927, William Nigh) 35mm -- with live electronic theatre organ accompaniment by Jay Warren! not on DVD

5/29: Brute Force (1947, Jules Dassin) 16mm

6/5: Decision at Sundown (1957, Budd Boetticher) 35mm

6/12: For Me and My Gal (1942, Busby Berkeley) 16mm

6/19: The Enchanted Cottage (1945, John Cromwell) 16mm -- not on DVD

6/26: The Outlaw (1943, Howard Hughes) 35mm

Films start at 8:00 pm on Saturday nights at 4901 W. Irving Park Rd., Chicago, IL 60641. Entrance is in the back. Admission is $5 or $3 if you're over 55 or under 10. Popcorn is a buck, parking is free.

Ten to Go

Having reviewed A Serious Man (I hated it) and Food, Inc. (I merely disliked it), I have ten reviews or articles to write by the end of the year in order to retain my membership in the Online Film Critics Society.

I'll have some positive reviews soon, I promise! I really enjoyed the animated film 9 and the surprisingly great Big Fan, so it's not all gloom and doom around here. Plus, there should be another Best Pictures from the Outside In episode going public soon... right?

Meatballs from the Lord

Yesterday was my last day in Rome before the trip to Florence (we'll be back for a day at the end of my vacation), and MFAH and I spent it the best way possible: seeing Rome. At least the Trastevere part of it. One friend had recommended a shoe store in that neighborhood, and two other friends had recommended the same nearby restaurant.

No luck with the shoes; although there were some really cool ones, the ones that fit weren't comfortable and the ones that looked comfortable didn't fit. Then we had approximately four hours to wait until dinner. In Italy dinner doesn't seem to begin until 8:00 or so, but some restaurants that want to cater to early-rising tourists like us will open around 7:30. We wandered around the neighborhood, looking in shops but not buying anything, stopping once in a while for a coffee or a gelato, ducking into various churches and an art museum.

One of the churches, the basilica of Santa Maria, is probably in that top ten list I'll never actually write down. The floor plan dates from the 340s AD, making it one of the oldest churches in Rome, and its collection is distinguished by a bunch of Russian Orthodox art, which in my limited experience you don't usually see in Catholic churches. I'm not wild about religious art from the Renaissance and later, but I really love the two-dimensional icons and other art from earlier periods, especially Russian icons. This one had a seventh-century painting of the Virgin Mary on wood, called the "Madonna della Clemenza." There were also apparently four saints (count 'em!) buried underneath the altar, but I only discovered that after we left.

Eventually it was time for dinner, and although the proprietor of Spirito di Vino seemed miffed at first that we wanted him to open at 7:30, he quickly started to treat us like family. He was happy that Rebecca spoke some Italian and didn't seem to talk down to her; he was kind enough to address me in English and provided an English menu. He made recommendations but didn't insist; he sent his handsome son over to help us pick some wine; the son asked us what we like to drink, gave us a long look, asked "Do you believe in me?" and then came back with a delicious local blend. The highlight of dinner was an appetizer of veal meatballs that have given this post its title, by far the best thing ate while in Rome. Well... until dessert. The pasta course was good, and although I made the mistake of trying something odd for my main course (basically Indian-spiced chicken with rice), dessert made it all up to us. Here the proprietor insisted: he had a creme brulee, but "It's not like any creme brulee you've ever had." And it wasn't—it was the best damned dessert I've ever had, and it didn't even include cheesecake. That is saying a lot.

Oh, did I mention that the restaurant was in the oldest building in Rome currently used as a commercial establishment? And that the wine cellar dated from somewhere between 100 and 200 years before the Colosseum was built? If you find yourself in Rome, make a trip to Trastevere. You might find some good shoes, but you will have the meal of your life.

Now we're in Florence after an uneventful train ride. We tried to get into the Uffizi, but there's a national strike on. We did go into the supremely-ugly-on-the-outside Duomo, which has an interior and crypt that more than make up for the wedding cake 19th-century exterior, and then we wandered through the city museum, which is among the coolest museums I've ever been in. (I'm going to have to come up with a better description than "coolest [blank] I've ever [blank], because it keeps happening on these trips.) It's a great blend of modern museum design and the actual stuff you're there to see—pieces of ancient columns are set into plaster walls at the approximate height that piece would have rested had the column not crumbled, etc. Lots of wonderful statues (Shane, you'd be in photographic heaven!), carvings, and one of Michelangelo's unfinished pietas.

We're staying with Anne, an art historian who has a palatial apartment that I'd never be able to find again after one hell of a winding cab ride. We're going to relax, and although this place will be full of academics tomorrow evening, I think it will still be a wonderful visit for the next four days, until we return to Rome for one last evening before heading back to ungodly cold and snow.

What is the meaning of these uniformed men?

If you think all I've been doing is touring Rome, you're right! But during a layover at Dulles Airport, I managed to knock out another review, this one of the first film in the Lone Wolf and Cub series of samurai films. It was pretty darned good, and I hope to watch the others. Read about it.

Assisi

Yesterday we toured the hell out of Assisi, home of both St. Francis and St. Clare, who apparently were romantically entangled before they became saints. Probably not afterwards. We took the train to Assisi, which required us to get up at 6:30 in the damn morning. But it was worth it!

Assisi was really wonderful, made more wonderful by the very helpful cab driver who turned out to be the very helpful and expensive cab driver. He drove us waaay up the mountain to the monastery/abbey where St. Clare died; it's still a working monastery (or maybe a friary) where smiling friars in their Franciscan robes talked to Japanese tourists and either sang beautiful hymns behind closed doors or listened to CDs of other people singing. The driver then took us even farther up the mountain to the retreat where, almost 800 years ago, St. Francis communed with the animals and mortified his flesh in a cave. We saw the tree where he communed and the cave where he mortified; the whole place seemed very organic, dug into the side of a mountain and constructed of rough-hewn rocks made from that mountain. It was cold, foggy, and windy outside, dark and winding and mysterious inside, which made it seem like a nice place to set a medieval murder mystery.

After a truly terrifying drive at high speeds down narrow roads lined with wandering tourists, Mr. Friendly Cab Driver revealed himself as Mr. Expensive Cab Driver—the meter, which had been running all this time concealed behind an ashtray, revealed that we didn't have enough cash to pay for the trip. He was gracious about taking less than he thought he deserved, but even more gracious when we arranged for him to come back at the end of the day and pick us up. We wanted to see St. Catherine's church, but it was finishing up a mass and then was closing for two hours, so instead we had some really good sandwiches and pasta (good even though it was all mushroomy), then walked up the narrow, winding (really need different adjectives, but those are so well-suited) streets to Chiesa San Francesco, the church that was begun just six or eight years after St. Francis died and was quickly beatified. It's an amazing tri-level construction that bears little evidence of the extensive damage it suffered in an earthquake 15 years ago. On the top level is an enormous, gorgeous sanctuary lined with frescoes designed by Giotto that illustrate scenes from St. Francis's life. They show a grasping, beginning understanding of modern perspective. No pictures; there was a sad security guard whose job it was to hiss "no photo" and "silenzio" into a wireless microphone every few minutes.

Downstairs was another phenomenal sanctuary, its groin vaulting supporting the edifice upstairs. It was lined with 700-year-old stained glass windows, which is pretty amazing to think about, especially considering however many earthquakes it's probably endured. And below that is a small room containing St. Francis's tomb, along with the tombs of four of his closest followers. It's apparently pretty rare that class and rank were disregarded so that a saint could share his final resting place with ordinary mortals. I'm pretty immune to religion, but at this point I found myself wishing that I could share the rapt adoration I saw on the faces of the kneeling Catholics in this room. My admiration was for a monument of architectural ingenuity constructed in honor of a monument of human goodness.

Then it was back on the train, then an immorally delicious meal at a Sicilian restaurant, then almost twelve hours of sleep. Today is poking around in vintage shops, bookstores, and maybe a museum or two. (Maybe, ha! You can't take two steps here without wandering into a museum or two.)

Yo! Bum Rush the Raphael Room!

So very tired. We did the Vatican today, which, in retrospect, was a bad idea. It was closed yesterday, and there's some kind of religious holiday tomorrow, so today was the day when everyone and their kids flocked to the big V on their extra-long weekend. Add to that the fact that the guys in charge (you know, the pope and his cardinals) plotted a perverse, winding/upstairs/downstairs/tunnelsandbridges route we HAD to follow, stuffed in with hundreds of other people, and you get sore legs and a touch of agoraphobia even in the most stable of people. I was a wee bit weirded out by the experience. Worst was the entrance to the Raphael rooms, which prompted this post's title, which really says it all. I don't mean to disparage it; it's really wonderful. But it's too much to do in one chunk, and the way the tour is set up, you can't break it down into manageable pieces.

Later on we journeyed to some remote corner of Rome for a small-press book fair, which would have been nice except I was utterly exhausted and all the books were in Italian. I tried to relax in a cafe, but I couldn't figure out how to order, and then when I did figure it out, I realized that they didn't take credit cards and I had no euros. Alas. Now I'm going to bed by 10 because we leave for Assisi at 7:00 tomorrow morning. I hope to meet St. Francis; I'll keep you posted.

When in Rome, Eat at Cafes Like the Romans Do

So I'm in Rome, staying in Prati near piazza Mazzini. MFAH's been here teaching wealthy American university students about the Renaissance; back in Chicago, she shows slides of St. Peter's and lectures about it, but here, she takes the students to St. Peter's. But that's done now, and I'm the last in the parade of relations. Her mom Debbie, MFMIL, is here for a couple days, and we're staying in the cute little musician-owned apartment with its own huge veranda with a great view of one of the seven hills of Rome. Not sure which hill. There's a veranda cat named Luna, a doddering ancient thing that likes to have her face scratched and is covered with matted fur.

Calling the trip "eventful" is an understatement, because of the screaming old woman. She was suffering from some form of dementia and wouldn't take her medication despite the pleas of her son. She alternated between (1) screaming fits in Italian punctuated by vicious slaps to his face; (2) raging up and down the aisles insisting (I'm told) that she won't sit anywhere near him; and (3) napping to gather her strength for the next outburst. No sleep for me on that flight.

But I arrived in one piece. MFAH picked me up at the airport and we came back to the apartment, ran off for a quick visit to the Chiesa Sant Ivo Sapienza (pictured above), with a facade by some dude and the rest by crackpot genius Boromini. The interior is dazzling, surprisingly small, stark white (most Baroque stuff is more, well, baroque), and incredibly tall. We ate wonderful pizza at La Monteccarlo, Debbie dashed off to see an exhibit, and I quickly crashed. I vaguely remember the trip back to the apartment; I think at one point I walked for a block with my eyes closed. Took a much-needed nap, then we went and sat at the sidewalk cafe on the corner, drinking cappuccino, eating pastries, and listening to old Italian men argue. MFAH cooked a wonderful pasta with basil picked fresh from the veranda, and now she and Deb are trying to figure out how to get pictures off the camera, onto the thumb drive, and onto Facebook. I had more cappuccino so I can stay awake until a reasonable hour, then it's dreamland for me. The Sistine Chapel awaits us tomorrow.

Fox, Box, Truck

I loved Fantastic Mr. Fox! I did not love The Box or Trucker!