The interim between Christmas and New Year’s is always, at least as far as my own creative/communicative impulses are concerned, a deliberately less-than-fecund time. I’m torn between trying to relax and fully enjoy my circumstances (which are extremely cozy this year) and doing some stock-taking and trying to figure out how to be something resembling a better and more productive person over the next year. Now that the period’s almost over, I’m contemplating my big-splash return to the blog (my best DVDs of 2009 feature, I think it shall be)…but not too hard. In the meantime, my friends at The Auteurs’ have put up part two of its year-end survey, in which contributors concoct fantasy double features using one film screened in 2009 and another screened at any old time in the history of cinema. Check it out. It’s actually a really fun exercise, and the most surreal-yet-apt pairing I could think of was Assayas’ great Summer Hours with John McTiernan’s latter-day version of The Thomas Crown Affair. Think about it! I have a bunch more, and so do many of the always-estimable Auteurs’ contributors. Meanwhile, in a complete coincidence, and in the midst of a debate on Elia Kazan, Kent Jones, commenting at Dave Kehr’s site, suggests a double feature of Zodiac and Kurosawa’s High and Low, a corker of an idea, I think.
Concocting, and then watching, such exemplary pairings seems to me an ideal way to spend the time leading up to a full-bore return to the workaday world. What 2009 films would you pair with particular pictures from the past?
UP with BRINGING UP BABY
AVATAR and DUNE
BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS and THE LONG GOODBYE
BROKEN EMBRACES and BLOW OUT
THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE and THE APARTMENT
THE INFORMANT! and THE CONVERSATION
INVICTUS and VICTORY
THE MAID and THE HAND THAT ROCKED THE CRADLE
THE ROAD and OPEN RANGE and RED RIVER
THE ROAD and THE SEVENTH SEAL
SHERLOCK HOLMES and FROM HELL
A much harder task than I’d originally thought. Although I couldn’t quite keep it within the 2009 releases, here are a few I came up with:
The Road (Hillcoat) double billed with Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Peckinpah)
Mulholland Drive (Lynch) double billed with Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (Meyer)
The Devil’s Backbone (del Toro) double billed with The Innocents (Clayton)
The Claim (Winterbottom) double billed with McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Altman)
ANTICHRIST and SEASON OF THE WITCH.
More than providing an excuse (always welcome) to revisit THE LONG GOODBYE, I think the Herzog BAD LIEUTENANT would go nicely with any number of films by Takashi Miike. I thought this film–alternately silly and brutal, generic and strange, lazy and controlled–is the closest American cinema has gotten to a Miike concoction like DETECTIVE STORY or THE NEGOTIATOR.
ANTICHRIST & HOUR OF THE WOLF. Although this might be too easy a comparison.
“Revanche” and “Le Samourai”
“Antichrist” and “Suspiria”
Up and Gran Torino: you know, retired curmudgeon is widowed in the opening reel, then unexpectedly regains his humanity after becoming an unlikely mentor to a fatherless Asian boy …
“Antichrist” and “Don’t Look Now”
“Where The Wild Things Are” and “The Tin Drum”
“A Serious Man” and “Funny Girl”
DISTRICT 9 and ROBOCOP
DRAG ME TO HELL and JIGOKU
FANTASTIC MR. FOX and WATCHMEN
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS and HARAKIRI
Completely ignoring the one 2009 film and one older film requirement, I’ve always felt that FIGHT CLUB and FIGHTING ELEGY would make a great double feature.
If made-for-HBO pictures counted, I’d pair IN THE LOOP with MASTERGATE. Both are about the hilarity, and the consequences, of government doublespeak.
Summer Hours and Thomas Crown Affair…where the hell did that come from? It works on an obvious level, but there’s somethnig compelling about the connection besides the art-world. Well done, sir (espcially seeing as I’m a big fan of both movies).
One I think I’ll be trying at home is There Will Be Blood and The Red Shoes – both epics based around tiny casts, both dealing in overarching spectacle and abrupt, absurdly violent death. Both beautiful.
INGLOURIOUS BASTEDS and DR. STRANGELOVE. I’ve had that feature in my head since I first saw QT’s latest. Gonna have to do it one of these days.
WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE and A.I. would make a pretty good damaged childhood double bill.
Oh, and GAMER And MR. FREEDOM.
Let the Right One In and A Short Film About Love.
I think it’s all this damn snow.
“Inglourious Basterds” and “Nickelodeon”
“If You are the One” and “It Happened One Night”.
“GS Wonderland” and “A Hard Day’s Night”.
“Inglorious Basterds” and “Safe Conduct”.
“GS Wonderland” is a Japanese film that has yet to get any kind of release in the U.S., but did get festival play, so I hope that counts. GS means Group Sounds. The film is about rock bands in mid-Sixties Japan, with a running gag about a secret visit by two of The Beatles.
Michael: Somebody beat you to the Up/Gran Torino insight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TuRbk-00Sw
🙂
Thanks for that link. I KNEW I couldn’t have been the only one to notice.
Since I actually did manage to see them in the same week, owing to some strange Netflix-queue magic, I’d have to go with Inglorious Basterds and Le Courbeu. But it does seem too obvious.
How could I forget this one? UP and FITZCARRALDO.