(no subject)

[malsperanza]

Although I smugly avoid gift exchanges at this time of year, I am apparently not averse to buying a ton of presents for myself. After cutting a swath through eBay this week, I capped the year by buying myself about half the Criterion Collection DVD catalogue of films. And a good thing, too.

Because I spent most of the long weekend nursing a cold, eating leftover Chinese food, and watching all my favorite black-and-white movies.

I wonder if yall in the Younger Generation ever get to see these movies from the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s on a big screen? Do college film societies even show The Seventh Seal and Rashomon and Beauty and the Beast and Blood of a Poet? Breathless and L'Avventura, Rules of the Game? And the best of them all, Children of Paradise?

These movies were old when I hit college, but they were still radical--and they still are. Some of them I hadn't seen in years. And oh! I had forgotten (how could I have forgotten?) how good they are.

How extraordinarily beautiful black-and-white is.

How magical film can really be.

The opening credits of Beauty and the Beast alone are amazing. I watched them 3 times, enchanted.

So, what "vintage" films do they show on campuses these days? If it's Logan's Run and The Godfather, I will just go commit seppuku now.

* * *
The Internet is a marvelous engine of commerce. This weekend I also bought a clutch of new epiphytes, because in these dark days, both literal and metaphorical, one cannot have too many symbols about the house of benign symbiosis. (Benign, I said.) I stoically resisted the urge to buy some live Brown Recluse spiders, though I can think of several people who, were the world a righteous place, would get a little box of them by priority mail.

* * *
Having wandered happily among the online flora and fauna, I offer the following to the several Rats who dwell in LJ (and for the Rat Bastard as well: I know you are reading this, RB):

Fescue

Cactus

Comments

[idlerat.livejournal.com]

They're both so beauteous!

I remember seeing most of those movies on the big screen long ago. I was tempted to say, "watchoo talkin" till I remembered, we live in New York. I bet people do see those ones. I mean Breathless and L'Avventure--those are from the era that's still hip.

What I wonder, in terms of old movies, is if people still watch the old fluff movies, just for fun, on the big screen. They do on the small screen -- hence TCM. But remember that late 60s-70s nostalgia that brough constant festivals of the Marx Bros and Fred and Ginger to local cinemas? *is happy*