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April 08, 2005
The Day of the Locust
I guess this film got on my NetFlix list because I saw it mentioned as a classic Los Angeles film, and, having just more or less moved to the Los Angeles area, felt I needed to see it. (I have started a list of L.A. films somewhere...where? my palm pilot? my wiki? Christ, I'm lost in my own technologies....Some of the films on my "movies to see" list have been there so long that I don't remember why I wanted to see them.)
This film has a surprisingly disturbing ending after an often very funny two-hour lead-up. Looks very much like other favorite mid-seventies films: Five Easy Pieces, Chinatown, etc. Also Midnight Cowboy, obviously. I enjoyed it a lot. It is a classic Hollywood story. Reminds me of Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, for different reasons. Watched it at home tonight with Alvaro and Philo. This film will do, for me, for "Jeepers Creepers, Where'd You Get Those Peepers?" what Blue Velvet did for the song of the title!
<Nostalgic reminiscence>Blue Velvet was the first movie I ever walked out of thinking, man, I need a drink. I saw it in 1986 with Andrea in Seattle's U-Distric, and we walked to whatever bar was on the corner there. I had scotch. After a childhood viewing of Song of the South when I derided my sister's tears as a way of suppressing my own, this is the next most powerful experience of being knocked on my ass by a film. Also the first time an emotion was linked with alcohol? Maybe a therapy topic for ten years from now...:-) </Nostalgic reminiscence>
Noticing that Day of the Locust has an R rating, which makes a certain sense, makes me wonder whether DVD releases of films this old go through a review process again or use the same rating as when they were released. In this case, the rating would be no different, I think.
Posted by John at April 8, 2005 11:21 PM
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