Rob Christopher's Blog, page 44

3 things about Alfred Hitchcock’s THE WRONG MAN

The Wrong Man [1956]

1. Double image. The right man walks towards us until his face is on top of the wrong man’s face, and then he steps away, and now the two men have traded fates.
2. We know what kind of men they are by the condition of their shoes.
3. Vacant stare. “That’s fine for you.”

3 things about Nanfu Wang’s IN THE SAME BREATH

In the Same Breath [2021]

1. New Year’s to New Year’s.
2. Absurdly low figure of 3,000 fatalities.
3. The hospital worker scolds the ambulance crew: quit bringing patients here, we have no beds.

3 things about Richard Fleischer’s THE LAST RUN

The Last Run [1971]

1. Gutpunch in the hallway.
2. He makes sure both bodies are in the car and then he blows up the car.
3. Sideways crash on the edge of the beach.

3 things about Roger Corman’s THE HAUNTED PALACE

The Haunted Palace [1963]

1. Kitchen snake.
2. Blind mutant child.
3. Through a narrow slot in the door he inserts a bloody hunk of raw meat.

3 things about Jules Dassin’s BRUTE FORCE

3 things about Jules Dassin’s Brute Force [1947]

1. Note hidden in a sandwich, which he eats.
2. Wagner as the soundtrack to a beating.
3. “I won’t sign it!” Less than sixty seconds later, he signs it.

3 things about Juel Taylor’s THEY CLONED TYRONE

They Cloned Tyrone [2023]

1. Dranks.
2. Crockpot conversation.
3. Just a voice behind a door.

3 things about Yasujirô Ozu’s THE END OF SUMMER

The End of Summer [1961]

1. He offers to scrub the floor. The girl compliments his technique.
2. “Enjoy your stay,” the bar hostess tells the men.
3. She must give her friend 100 yen every time she calls herself “old.”

The camera never moves. It doesn’t need to.

3 things about John Dahl’s RED ROCK WEST

Red Rock West [1993]

1. He digs out some spare change from a coffee can under the seat.
2. “What should I do?”
“If I were you I’d get a divorce.”
3. Impaled on a monument.

3 things about Kristina Buozyte & Bruno Samper’s VESPER

Vesper [2022]

1. Lightning-bugs.
2. Gyroscope ensconced in a squishy orifice.
3. Veils of rags.

Quotes from J.G. Ballard

I picked up an advance copy of J.G. Ballard: Selected Nonfiction 1962-2007 and found it wonderfully stimulating, provocative, and prescient. It’s well worth reading. There are striking insights on every page but I wanted to jot down a few of them here. Before I forget them.

“Real power has gone, migrating to the shopping malls and hypermarkets where we make the important decisions in our lives. Consumerism controls everything, and the ballet box defers to the cash counter. The only escape from all of this is probably out-and-out madness, and I expect the number of supermarket shootings and meaningless crimes to increase dramatically in the coming years. If anywhere, the future seems to lie with competing systems of psychopathology.”
–J.G. Ballard, 2005

“Somewhere inside [David Lynch’s] head, one senses, Francis Bacon is repainting the Bates Motel.”
–J.G. Ballard, 1997

“Everyone who has strayed even briefly into the film world is bewildered by the titanic self-belief of those involved and their readiness to gamble everything on an impossible dream. Yet without them, no films would ever be made.”
–J.G. Ballard, 2005

“Realism has failed us, and the imagination must take its place. Love may be an illusion, but it is all we have. It must be tested, not against our modest private lives, but in the fiercest fire. We are less important than we think, but our imaginations can transcend everything, even our own deaths.”
–J.G. Ballard, 2005