Forgotten Movie Songs #26: "Where Do I Go From Here" from THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT

The other night, I took another look at Michael Cimino's directorial debut Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. I was as astonished at its easygoing but still action-packed pace as I was when I first saw it at a Georgia drive-in circa 1974. The quirky fellowship between the lead, Clint Eastwood (the titular Thunderbolt) and Jeff Bridges (Oscar-nominated as the extremely lovable Lightfoot, who says "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot! That sounds like something, doesn't it?") is radically palpable. The supporting performances from nominal villains George Kennedy and Geoffrey Lewis (who are actually our heros' duplicitous cohorts) are slimy and superb. And the film moves along at a quick and always clever clip (it was cut by Manchurian Candidate editor Ferris Webster). It's a tautly simple heist yarn, but its more lasting effect is as a story of a short but powerful friendship. And I love movies about friendship; to me, this is the most important element in life. If you have friends, you have everything.


The song from Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, "Where Do I Go From Here" is well-used, popping up at the beginning, middle, and end of Cimino's movie as its theme of wanderlust (it matches so well with the film's open-skyed, road-trippy feel). Beautifully orchestrated, it's an unjustly overlooked tune by the great Paul Williams who, in 1974, was reveling in his heyday (that same year, he produced the soundtrack for and co-starred in Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise--a movie which will, despite its cult status, surely make an appearance in this Forgotten Movie Songs series). "Where Do I Go From Here," performed by Williams, hails from a movie that itself deserves much more love and friendship.



If I knew the way, I'd go back home
But the countryside has changed so much
I'd surely end up lost
Half-remembered names and faces
So far in the past
On the other side of bridges
That were burned once they were crossed

Tell me where
Where does a fool go
When there's no one left to listen?
To a story without meaning
That nobody wants to hear
Tell me where
Where does a fool go
When he knows there's something missing?
Tell me where
Where do I go from here?
Where do I go from here?

To get back home
Where my childhood dreams and wishes
Still out number my regrets
Get back to a place where I can figure on the odds
Have a fighting chance to lose the blues
And win my share of bets

Tell me where
Where does a fool go
When there's no one left to listen?
To a story without meaning
That nobody wants to hear
Tell me where
Where does a fool go
When he knows there's something missing?
Tell me where
Where do I go from here?
Where do I go from here?

Tell me where
Where does a fool go
When there's none left to listen?
To a story without meaning
That nobody wants to hear
Tell me where
Where does a fool go
When he knows there's something missing?
Tell me where
Where do I go from here?
Where do I go from here?

Film #146: Shampoo

Released in 1975, Hal Ashby’s Shampoo very well may rank as the great director’s most cynical film. Ashby had previously given us The Landlord, Harold and Maude, and The Last Detail, and would go on to deliver Bound for Glory, Coming Home and Being There before beginning a cocaine-fueled downward 1980s slump that would end in his untimely death in 1988 at age 59. It’s been years since I’ve revisited Shampoo, because it strikes me as a truthful, mildly funny but ugly movie. It hard to watch, but extremely worthwhile. I know I’ll be at Georgia State University's Cinefest on Thursday, July 21 at 7:30 pm to check out what is probably the first 35mm screening of Ashby’s film since the old days of the Rhodes and the Silver Screen, two long-gone Atlanta repertory theaters that closed their doors in the mid-1980s. We’re lucky to have a venue like Cinefest, which seems to be cultivating a desire to expand Atlanta’s repertory movie options these days.

Star Warren Beatty also acted as producer and co-writer, along with Chinatown and Last Detail scribe Robert Towne. As such, he labored for almost a decade to get the film made. When it finally reached screens, it arrived like a bombshell designed to blow apart the sexually revolutionary Me Decade and everything connected to it. Set in 1968, on the eve of Richard Nixon’s election to the White House (which held particular resonance to 1975 viewers, who were still reeling from the Watergate debacle that drummed Nixon out of office), Shampoo tells the story of a philandering self-obsessed hairdresser named George Roundy (Beatty). The beautifier and sexual partner of choice for many of his clients, George is sick of life as a mere employee at a Beverly Hills salon. And so he finally steps up to realize his ambition of opening his own hairdressing business. But he’s broke and the banks won’t lend to such a flighty guy. So he sets his sights on a private investor, an equally self-absorbed, aging millionaire named Lester Karpf (played by Jack Warden, who tellingly has the worst hairstyle in the whole film).

The problem is that Roundy has slept with almost every woman that Karpf knows--his wife (Lee Grant, in a bitchy, Oscar-winning role), his daughter (a young, pre-Star Wars Carrie Fisher, in her film debut) and his mistress (the always fetching Julie Christie, in the movie’s most engaging performance). All this indiscriminate screwing makes asking Lester for money pretty difficult. The film--which takes place over 48 hours--is really an dissection of the directionless, serially unattached George as he lurches towards the realization that his stance as a person unworthy of trust has left him with a pretty messy, and lonely, bed in which to sleep.

Cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs captures Beverly Hills in all its grim tackiness (side note: Shampoo contains one of my favorite final shots in all of film history.), and production designer Richard Sylbert was nominated for an Oscar for his glittering sets. Lee Grant is good in the film, but her role is minor at best (she probably won the Academy Award that year for being a survivor of the 1950s blacklist--there’s no way she was better than fellow nominee Ronne Blakely, who was superb as a country singer experiencing a nervous breakdown in Robert Altman’s Nashville). Goldie Hawn, while beautiful, sort of gets lost in the background as George’s increasingly angry girlfriend (though she never had a role as deadly serious as this one). Christie, as Roundy’s ex-girlfriend and best friend, gets some of the best lines and scenes from this award-winning screenplay, particularly the one in which she confesses to an amorous fatcat her one true desire (I won’t spoil the scene for you, but it’s a hoot). And Beatty is quite excellent in a role that, I suspect, may be closer to the real Beatty than he would like to admit.

Scored quite minimally by Paul Simon (whose song “Silent Eyes” serves as a plaintive refrain for the characters’ embalmed emotions), Shampoo is an important film but one that’s not very easy to love. Still, it’s always worthwhile to see any movie from the golden era of the 1970s on the big screen (in a newly restored 35mm print). I’ll certainly be giving Ashby’s terribly harsh picture another shot on Thursday at Cinefest, and I encourage everyone to join me in supporting the new and inventive programming staff at Georgia State University’s cozy little movie house.

Forgotten Movie Songs #25: "Little April Shower" from BAMBI

Walt Disney's Bambi is, officially, the only movie I ever saw alone with my father. It must have been re-released the theaters when I was ten or eleven. Even though my parents had been taking me to adult movies--rated PG, or M, or R--for years, I found myself drawn to the G-rated Bambi, probably due to TV commercials for the re-release. Back then, my family used to go to the drive-in a lot. We always went as a team--my mother, my father and I. And I, at least, ALWAYS had a good time.

I remember begging to go see Bambi back then, but somehow we missed the weekend it was playing at the Northeast Expressway Drive-In. Going to the drive-in was a strictly Friday/Saturday thing for my parents and I. So it looked like I was going to miss seeing Bambi. And--I clearly remember this--I cried. I cried about not seeing Bambi at the drive-in. So to calm me down, my father--on a Thursday night--took me, on his own, to go see it.

Absolutely starstruck, I was, by the film, from beginning to end. I believe that, though it was an imposition on his time, my father was glad we saw it together, and I like to think the memory of seeing this film together stayed with him until he passed away. As a result of the film's powerful intrinsic quality, and of my very personal relationship with it, I still that it is, nearly 70 years after its release, the single best animated feature that has ever been made, and probably the best that will ever BE made.

I base this conclusion on the quality of its animation, surely. But, most of all, I base it on the intense emotional reactions Bambi engenders in everyone who sees it. No other film in history has dramatized the beauties and harshness of the wild, and the life within it, better than this one.

It was released in 1942, and was based on the book Bambi, A Life in the Woods by Austrian author Felix Salten. It's biography at its most exacting: it tells the story of a doe, Bambi, who is born into royalty as the Great Prince of The Forest. His father is a majestic, many-horned buck--the King of the Forest--and his mother is a tender, nurturing queen. The film follows him from his birth to his ascendance to his father's mantle.

The film is an astonishingly short 70 minutes long, but it packs an amazing punch. Bambi's childhood days, with his exuberant best friend, the rabbit Thumper (memorably voiced by the uncredited Peter Behn) and the shy skunk Flower, are vividly dramatized; we get Bambi's first steps, his first words, and his first friendships. And, in the film's greatest sequence, the "Little April Showers" number, his introduction to the more benign, but nonetheless scary, cruelties of nature.

Upon this opening sequence's emotional climax--of which scads of humans have confessed is their most scarring moviegoing experience (and of which, for the benefit of the many whom I'm sure haven't seen it, I won't talk about now, except to say that it is devastating enough to have proven a problem for Disney, in the 1930s, to ever get made)--we jump to Bambi's adulthood. This part of the film is a bit less charming but, in its portrayal of "the circle of life," is ultimately as moving and makes the story blossom into one that acts a perfect template for another, arguably more popular Disney animated epic called The Lion King (which owes a ridiculous debt to Bambi). Just to keep the record straight, the supervising director was David Hand, and he had six other sequence directors, as well as Disney himself, to help; this puts it on an even plane with the largely more ambitious Fantasia, which had eleven animators working as directors. But it remains that Bambi is the more resplendent picture.

I can still recall experiencing the "Little April Shower" sequence for the first time. I remember thinking that it reminded me of being at the drive-in when the rain begins to fall, so I immediately experienced a soul-deep connection to it. Now when I watch it again, it astonishes me on so many levels. The animation of the droplets' movements, in all their infinite permutations, hits me first. Then the lyrics, vocal and instrumental arrangement, and music for the sequence--scored by Frank Churchill and worded by Larry Morey--takes me aback me with its gorgeous power. Finally, I am hit on a subliminal level with a wave of empathy for animals of all species, who are forced to endure the callousness of nature and yet almost always emerge ready to face the challenges of a new day of life. I have always been an animal lover, but Bambi made me into more of one, I think, and chiefly because of "Little April Shower." Bookended by cheekily austere clarinet solos, the sequence steps up into, at first, a sweet look at the cooling benefits of a nice rain. But then, in its middle, it balloons into a genuinely frightening examination of a storm, and how it affects life in the forest, and how it traumatizes Bambi in particular, and strengthens his bond with his brave mother--an issue that comes into desperate play later in this extraordinary film.


The song is called "Little April Shower." The music is by Frank Churchill (who composed the film's exuberant score--one of the best in film history), and the lyrics are by Larry Morey. These two artists were nominated for Oscars in 1942, but for another excellent Bambi number, called "Love is a Song." But, still, when I think of Bambi, I think of this sequence, and this song, primarily.



Drip, drip, drop
Little April shower
Beating a tune
As you fall all around

Drip, drip, drop
Little April shower
What can compare
To your beautiful sound
Beautiful sound, beautiful sound
Drip, drop, drip, drop

Drip, drip, drop
When the sky is cloudy
Your pretty music
Will brighten the day

Drip, drip, drop
When the sky is cloudy
You'll come along
With a song right away

Come with your beautiful music

Drip, drip drop
Little April shower
Beating a tune
As you fall all around

Drip, drip, drop
Little April shower
What can compare
To the beautiful sound

Drip, drip, drop
When the sky is cloudy
You come along
Come along with your pretty little song
Drip, drip, drop
When the sky is cloudy
You come along
Come along with your pretty little song

Gay little roundelay
Gay little roundelay
Song of the rainy day
Song of the rainy day
How I love to hear your patter
Pretty little pitter patter
Helter skelter when you pelter
Troubles always seem to scatter

Drip, drip drop
Little April shower
Beating a tune
As you fall all around

Drip, drip, drop
Little April shower
What can compare
To the beautiful sound

(Break)

Drip, drip drop
Little April shower
Beating a tune
As you fall all around

Drip, drip, drop
Little April shower
What can compare
To the beautiful sound
Beautiful sound

Forgotten Movie Songs #24: "My Rifle, My Pony and Me" from RIO BRAVO

The first time I ever saw Howard Hawks' exciting, funny and wholly entertaining 1959 western Rio Bravo, I was immediately enchanted by the relationships between almost everyone in the picture. John Wayne is a staunch town sheriff trying to enforce the rule of law on to a murderous gang member (Claude Akins) who's about to be transported to another city for trial. Dean Martin is his drunken deputy who's trying to dry out while rededicating himself to his duty. Ricky Nelson is a greenhorn kid with a crackerjack aim who offers his assistance to Wayne, Angie Dickinson is a voluptuous lady passing through town, and Walter Brennen is the cantankerous jailer who watches over the prisoner as the sheriff's office is beset upon by Akins' fellow gang members, who're bent on breaking him out of the clink.

It's a brilliant movie, written by Leigh Brackett (who would go on to co-write, of all things, The Empire Strikes Back). It's consistently clever, well-edited, and just a whole lot of fun. One of my favorite scenes in Rio Bravo, though, occurs in a moment of downtime between gunfights. Wayne, Martin, Nelson and Brennen are holed up in the jailhouse, bored and yet on edge. So Martin and Nelson begin warbling a sweet duet on a song called "My Rifle, My Pony and Me." The song was written by the score's composer, the legendary Dimitri Tiompkin; the lyrics were written by Oscar-winner Paul Francis Webster. It's a beautifully recorded, sweet little ditty that, surprisingly, doesn't feel forced into Hawks' film.



The sun is sinking in the west
The cattle go down to the stream
The redwing settles in the nest
It's time for a cowboy to dream

Purple light in the canyon
That is where I long to be
With my three good companions
Just my rifle, pony and me

Gonna hang my sombrero
On the limb of a tree
Coming home, sweet my darling
Just my rifle, pony and me

Whippoorwill in the willow
Sings a sweet melody
Riding to Amarillo
Just my rifle, pony and me

No more cows to be ropin'
No more strays will I see
'Round the bend she'll be waitin'
For my rifle, pony and me
For my rifle, my pony and me

Film #146: Heartbeats (Les Amours Imaginaires)

Earlier today, I was embroiled in a Facebook mini-controversy when I posted this:

I hope this happens to Harry Potter at the end of that movie. I'm so tired of seeing this character's name I could puke my guts out. Never before has the public been hoodwinked into loving something so worthless.

I had people telling me to just "chill out," and I had others telling me basically that I needed to screw off, get some therapy, and go out to take a walk. I replied:

What I REALLY need is a sense of taste to re-enter the culture. Every-fucking-one is so freakin' nerded out, it's pathetic. Get out of the tachyon collider and fucking pay attention to real life and real people in art. That's all I'm asking for. Enough with the witches, monsters, robots, zombies, aliens, spaceships, warriors, hit men, hot mamas, dick jokes, samarai, animated cars, Smurfs and superheroes. ENOUGH ALREADY! I'm just asking for some movies about some real people with real problems and real loves. Is that too much to ask?

Keyed up by facing a world that thinks I'm crazy for wanting something authentic in the movie realm (even though I admitted to loving the biggest danged American box-office hit of the year, Bridesmaids starring and co-written by the astounding Kristen Wiig), I decided to leave my comfortable but boxed-in post at the computer and venture out into the world. I visited an old friend, Floyd the Warlock, and when our time was done, I didn't want to go home.

So I called the extraordinary crew at Georgia State University's movie theater, Cinefest, and asked what was playing today. Heartbeats, they answered. And, though I had seen the trailer and been underwhelmed, I stopped off at the GSU campus and decided to take a look at Heartbeats. I now think, given my day on Facebook earlier, that the universe stoutly directed me to GSU's Cinefest for some real-time soul healin'.

Boy, am I glad I visited this tiny but glorious theater today. Nothing--NOTHING--is more extraordinary than seeing a truly great film when you're not expecting it. And Xavier Dolan's Heartbeats (or, as the Canadian film's original title more accurately calls it, Les Amours Imaginaires--The Imaginary Lovers) is a resolutely magnificent film.

I had read about the wunderind Xavier Dolan in the pages of Film Comment. But it took me seeing one of his films to say that, not only is he a unique voice in modern cinema, he very well might be the first great gay filmmaker out there (Gus Van Sant might best him, but Van Sant has buried his homosexuality in all of his films excepting My Own Private Idaho; I haven't seen Mala Noche yet; Ang Lee also places for Brokeback Mountain, particularly).

I'm heterosexual (sorry that I need to say that), but I've always been waiting for the first great openly gay filmmaker. There are a lot of gay films out there, but most of them are crappy, or campy, or preachy, or boring, or a damning combination of all four. I love Hettie MacDonald's Beautiful Thing--the single best gay movie ever made--but he hasn't followed it up with anything of note theatrically, and seems to have moved on to the more lucrative field of television direction. And I wanted to love Rose Troche's Go Fish and Lisa Cholodenko's High Art, but both left me wanting (Chodolenko's The Kids Are All Right was a home run, but not necessarily a gay movie per se).

With Canada's ridiculously young and vastly talented Xavier Dolan, I think that the film world has finally caught a glimpse of a savior of gay film. Of course, I'm only basing this on Les Amours Imaginaires, but I know a good thing when I see it.

Les Amours Imaginaires is a hilarious and moving comedy, but I didn't know it was a comedy going in; I only came to this conclusion after I found myself cackling mightily throughout the entire film. It tells the story of two best friends, Francis (played by Dolan in an appearance that smacks of personal experience) and Marie (Monia Chokri, fetchingly delivering a nuanced, energetic performance). At the beginning of the film, they are hosting a party, and as they are working away together in the kitchen, it becomes clear that both have set their sights upon one of their guests: a shaggy, blonde-haired, "self-satisfied Adonis" names Nicolas (the charismatic Niels Schneider).

The story is simple. It's not clear that Francis is gay, but it's obvious he's feeling some rumblings in that direction when he spots, and experiences, the crafty Nicolas. Meanwhile, Marie has much heat for Nicolas, too. We expect than when we actually get to meet the affected Nicolas that he's going to be a dumbbell. But he drops all the right names and seems intelligent enough. So all the lights are green...

The viewer is convinced that Nicolas might not be a bad guy at all. But as we see these two friends' relationship being torn asunder by Nicolas' later obvious manipulations, we realize we, too, have been hoodwinked by his surface charm. Hell, he's even made these two people try their best to be Audrey Hepburn and James Dean, and he ends up laughing at them for their efforts.

So the movie is about how these two friends are pitted against one another by a person that has no real scruples (there's an epilogue to this story that's perhaps the single best sequence I've seen all year, beginning with two people and an umbrella--itself, the best single shot I've seen in 2011). Throughout, there are peppery, and slightly pretentious but still likable punctuations to this story in the form of barely seen supporting players telling nakedly honest tales of love and loss. These scenes help to thicken this morality tale. But the sodden brilliance of Dolan's movie lies in that, at times, it feels like a tortured Wong Kar-Wei film that's been blended with the game ghost of John Hughes--what a heady combo of flavors this is! The movie is, like the best Hughes films, constantly funny (especially when it focuses in on Francis and Marie's lonely self-criticisms, and particularly Francis's frantic masturbations), but it's also dramatically surprising and, with its deft use of back-of-the-body super-slo-mo (a la Kar-Wei), it's also visually striking (the adept cinematographer, Stéphanie Weber-Biron, has a authentically valuable future in cinema, just as Dolan has).

Dolan is a superman. He acts as actor, director, producer, writer, costume designer, and editor. He is a solid talent. His Les Amours Imaginaires (or, in America, Heartbeats) is a colorful, frothy, substantial, funny, shocking, smart main course masked as a bountiful confection. I understand that, in Canada, where his film was nominated for four Genie awards (their Oscars), he's considered a self-absorbed hipster. Well, if self-absorbed hipsters can make films as well-acted, impeccably-filmed and smartly scored (what a soundtrack this film has!) as this, then damn! bring on the self-absorbed hipsters. Certainly none of that cabal in America has produced a movie as lovable, as enchanting, and as well-performed (seriously, all three leads are perfection) as Les Amours Imaginaires. I cannot wait to see Dolan's future work, and his past work as well.

(Xavier Dolan's Heartbeats (Les Amours Imaginaires), an award-winner at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, is playing at Atlanta's Cinefest until Sunday, July 17th! If you're an Atlanta movie nut, do yourself a favor and check this movie out!)

Forgotten Movie Songs #23: "Nights Are Forever" from TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE

1983's Twilight Zone: The Movie was, like most anthology movies, a hit-and-miss affair. The first two segments, from John Landis and Steven Spielberg, didn't really make a mark. But the Dan Ackroyd/Albert Brooks wraparound (by Landis), and the final segments from Joe Dante and George Miller were real fun (especially the latter, an adaptation of Richard Matheson's "Horror at 37,000 Feet," with John Lithgow perfect as a freaked-out airplane passenger). My favorite feature about the movie, though, was Jerry Goldsmith's diverse score. The first part is all military-drumbeats, to go along with the stark Vic Morrow story. The second is lush and flowery, to match the gushy Spielberg episode. The third episode is filled with wacked-out cartoon-inspired orchestrations, as the Joe Dante episode required. And the fourth bit is a straight-out horror score, with a screechy violin as its scary lead.

And then, somewhere in that first episode, we hear the song "Nights Are Forever" being played over the jukebox. It's just buried in the mix there, but it became the centerpiece of the Twilight Zone soundtrack when I bought it on vinyl in the early 80s. I just couldn't get enough of the song that summer, and played it constantly. It somehow never became a hit, even though it featured Jennifer Warnes, who'd just scored a #1 hit with another movie song "Up Where We Belong" (from An Officer and a Gentleman). Hearing it now, I still like the song, even if its sparkly 80s orchestration is quite dated.

The song is called "Nights Are Forever." The music is by Jerry Goldsmith and the lyrics are by John Bettis. It's sung by the sultry Jennifer Warnes.



Faceless voices talking
Smoky rings of seared lives
Strangers telling stories
No one really buys

Through the neon starlight
Women watch the men move
Through the broken music
Of what they need to prove

Nights are forever
When you have no one.
Well, nights are forever
When you're just trying to hang on.

Standing in the shadows
Staring holes in my clothes
We both know what's coming
This is how the game goes

Nights are forever
When you have no one.
Nights are forever
When you're just trying to hang on.

All is all I want
You to give.
Love me like
We only have this night to live.

Dancing makes me hungry
Lying bores me to tears
Let's just take each other
The way we appear.

Nights are forever
When you have no one.
Well, nights are forever
When you're just trying to hang on.

Nights are forever
When you have no one.
Nights are forever
When you're just trying to hang on.

Forgotten Movie Songs #22: "Hooked On Your Love" from SPARKLE

I've never seen the 1976 film Sparkle, directed by longtime Mike Nichols editor Sam O'Steen. But I just read that it's about to be remade, and I came across this great clip that instantly makes me wanna see it. It basically tells the same story as Dreamgirls--a barely disguised quasi-bio of the Supremes. This can be predictable stuff, I have to admit. But I've always been a Lonnette McKee fan (she's a knockout in both The Cotton Club and Round Midnight), and I have a little crush on Irene Cara, too. Dwan Smith rounds out the trio, and the film co-stars Dorian Harewood, DeWayne Jessie (aka Otis Day), Tony King, and Philip Michael Thomas.

The music, too, is much more tuneful than that tin-eared Dreamgirls stuff. The song I was introduced to earlier today is called "Hooked on Your Love" and, like most of the soundtrack's original songs, it's written by Superfly mastermind and legendary soul man Curtis Mayfield. That explains why it's so bitchin'. Plus, having the camera trained on a particularly sexy Lonnette McKee goes a long way, too! Awesome little number here!



Your tender smile gives me happy thoughts of you
You got me so close to my dreams now they have to come true
Ooo baby, nothing to be shy about
Nothing we got to lie about
Hope lovin' you don't confuse you
Ooo baby baby, I don't want to lose ya

And when we touch our hearts move at a steady pace
I'm tryin' hard not to show the blushin' over my face
Ooo baby, you bring out the woman in me
What can I see that you can't see?
I like the way we carry on
Hope you understand my feelings got me just a-reeling

What can I do...with this feeling?
Hooked on your love, sweet love love
(What can I do, oh yeah)
What can I do...with this feeling?
Hooked on your love, sweet love love

Your eyes within me
They send me, just a-starin' me down
I'm so turned on in time, and child, I got to move around
Over and over you astound me
I take pleasure to have you around me
My lovin' arms would love to squeeze ya
Oh baby take it, I don't want to tease you

What can I do...with this feeling?
Hooked on your love sweet love love
(What can I do...oh yeah)
What can I do...with this feeling?
Hooked on your love sweet love love

Nothing to be shy about
Nothing we got to lie about
Hope lovin' you don't confuse you
Hope you understand these feelings got me just a-reeling

What can I do...with this feeling?
Hooked on your love sweet love love
(What can I do, oh yeah)
What can I do...with this feeling?
Hooked on your love sweet love love
(What can I do?)
What can I do...with this feeling?
Hooked on your love sweet love love

CINEMA GALLERY--July 2011: 50 New Frames

See if you can guess the movies these 50 images hail from. Answers at the end. And, as always in the Cinema Gallery, click on the images you want to see big-time:

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1. Requiem for a Dream (Darren Aronofsky, 2000)
2. The Hustler (Robert Rossen, 61)
3. The Endless Summer (Bruce Brown, 66)
4. La Baquet De Mesmer (Georges Méliès, 05)
5. To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan, 62)
6. Birth (Jonathan Glazer, 2004)
7. The Brink's Job (William Friedkin, 78)
8. The World of Henry Orient (George Roy Hill, 64)
9. A Town Called Panic (Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar, 2009)
10. Magic (Richard Attenbourough, 78)
11. The Heiress (William Wyler, 49)
12. The Onion Field (Harold Becker, 79)
13. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Frank Capra, 39)
14. Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 67)
15. H.O.T.S. (Gerald Seth Sindell, 79)
16. Marie Antoinette (Sophia Coppola, 2006)
17. All or Nothing (Mike Leigh, 2002)
18. The Big Heat (Fritz Lang, 53)
19. Sling Blade (Billy Bob Thornton, 96)
20. The Hidden Fortress (Akira Kurosawa, 58)
21. Falling Down (Joel Schumacher, 93)
22. Monster (Patty Jenkins, 2003)
23. The Naked Kiss (Samuel Fuller, 64)
24. Porky in Wackyland (Robert Clampett, 38)
25. Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, 77)
26. The Abominable Dr. Phibes (Robert Fuest, 71)
27. The Lost World (Harry O. Hoyt, 25)
28. Mirrormask (Dave McKean, 2005)
29. Waking the Dead (Keith Gordon, 2000)
30. Nothing But a Man (Michael Roemer, 64)
31. Harold and Maude (Hal Ashby, 71)
32. A Night to Remember (Roy Ward Baker, 58)
33. Breaking Away (Peter Yates, 79)
34. Shock Waves (Ken Wiederhorn, 77)
35. What Lies Beneath (Robert Zemeckis, 2000)
36. Ace in the Hole (Billy Wilder, 51)
37. The Boys from Brazil (Franklin J. Schaffner, 78)
38. Mother and Son (Aleksandr Sokurov, 97)
39. Fargo (Joel and Ethan Coen, 96)
40. The Untouchables (Brian De Palma, 87)
41. Dogville (Lars Von Trier, 2003)
42. The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, 98)
43. WALL-E (Andrew Stanton, 2008)
44. Creator (Ivan Passer, 85)
45. The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky, 2008)
46. Motion Painting #1 (Oskar Fischinger, 47)
47. Head (Bob Rafelson, 68)
48. Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger, 69)
49. A Movie (Bruce Conner, 58)
50. My Bodyguard (Tony Bill, 80)