I’m not totally sure why I bought this movie… it might be because I quite liked Crossing Delancey (by the same director).

Because it can’t be because of this tweet from March, because I didn’t follow Hazel Flagg back then.

This Blu-ray has been over-restored, perhaps, by the Cohen Film Group. It kinda feels like everything is a bit too sharp? Sharper than it should be?

All the sound is flown in. That is, it doesn’t seem like Micklin Silver had any microphones while filming, so all the voices are dubbed in, and the other sounds a foley. Over-foleyed, really — you can just picture the guys in the sound dept crunching things and moving shoes around.

Man, immigration those days was lax.

Well, that explains the wig; I was wondering. Did they really have wigs that big in those days? (I mean, I know about the Orthodox thing…)

Oh… is that Carol Kane!?

Oh yeah! I guess it is!?

She’s great here. The other actors, though… very variable.

Wise words.

But… er… I’m not really feeling this movie? There’s too many hokey performances and while the plot seems pretty interesting, really, the execution just isn’t that riveting.

I mean, I love Carol Kane here, and it’s kinda interesting. But it’s just hard to keep paying attention, because it’s just … altogether successful.

Hester Street. Joan Micklin Silver. 1975. ⚂

This is very dark… I just upgraded the TV computer, and it’s now using the nouveau driver instead of the proprietary Nvidia driver. And this is a 4K movie. Is it doing the mapping wrong?

It looks OK when it’s lighter…

That definitely has more colour than what I’m watching… Let’s try to go back to the Nvidia driver…

YES! COLOURS!!!

Geez; it’s really the year of Linux on the TV, isn’t it?

I’ve missed Goldie Hawn without knowing it.

I guess I don’t watch many, er, more commercial movies from the 70s? I’m born in 1968, so I didn’t see movies like this the first time around, and by the time I was old enough, I guess they seemed kinda outdated and slightly embarrassing? (While 50s movies were cool.)

And I’ve never really fixed that… I mean, I’ve seen all the “serious” 70s movies, but I don’t think I’ve ever watched this, for instance. And Hazel Flagg is big on 70s, so that’s fun — I’m catching up on things I didn’t even know I wanted to watch.

Because this is a really fun movie.

See? She agrees with me, too!

That’s the 70s, alright!

NOO A BATHROOM MIRROR

Heh heh, as teenagers while watching movies, we’d always start holding our hands in front of our faces whenever a bathroom mirror showed up, because we knew that there’d be a jump scare.

And there was one here, too!

I’m glad I had my hands up in time.

Oh, villains!

Oh, the director has only done three movies. There were all really successful commercially, I think? OK, the last one didn’t do fantastic, but…

This was very funny for the first half, but then it get a bit more bogged down into the plot and goes for a romance thing between Hawn and Chase, and I’m not sure that’s totally convincing?

But I mean, it’s still fun.

I tried out my new LLM-powered actor identification thing… I guess that’s right?

That looks correct, too! Wow.

Hey! No engravings! No “Anti-POPE”?!

OK, I didn’t watch this in the most optimal way — I was distracted by testing out various technical things here…

But I enjoyed watching this a lot. But I’m guessing this will never have a revival — it relies on clichés (both overt and not) to an unprecedented degree. Sure, the albino evil guy — that’s them having fun with clichés. But then there’s the strident feminist, the small person abuse played for laughs only, the (admittedly very exciting) car chase in San Francisco, the blonde being extremely ditzy… Every little thing.

But it’s funny.

Foul Play. Colin Higgins. 1978. ⚄

So this is the sequel to The Last Picture show, and I’m watching the extended black and white version (from Criterion).

Eh… this looks like a colour movie that somebody has removed the colour from. Which I guess it is.

Uhm… I think I’m gonna watch the colour version instead, because this just looks odd.

Yeah, this looks like it was intended to be shot in colour.

Hey, isn’t that… Eileen Brennan?

So, this film was done 20 years after The Last Picture Show, but is set 33 years later. That’s pretty unique?

So the actors were playing characters younger than themselves in the first movie, and now they’re playing characters older themselves…

Well, the cinematographer on the first movie was better.

Those are very actory toes.

Those are very fertile tomato plants. I can totally see why she’s digging a hole right next to one of them. It’s because of… er… because… I DON”T OWE YOU AN ANSWER11!

Advanced cinematography.

OK, you may infer from these things I’m typing that I’m not totally riveted by this movie.

The problem with this movie is that it assumes that we were so totally into the first movie that any information we’re getting about these characters 33 years later is supposed to be fascinating.

But I don’t really care, so it’s like eh? Eh?

Cybill Shepherd apparently only had three days to spare to film this, so her scenes are kinda brief.

Speaking of, she has had a strange career. She was hot shit in the 70s in a bunch of big movies (Taxi Driver, etc), and then was a phenomenon with the Die Hard guy in the 80s with Moonlighting, and then… sorta… faded? The final bigger thing I can remember seeing her in was in the Cybill sitcom, which was an American version of Absolutely Fabulous (only very very mild). And I like her a lot, but it does seem like the world didn’t. (I mean, she’s continued to work (and a lot) but nothing that’s making an impression, I think?)

I just couldn’t get into this movie. I was sitting here watching it, but nothing seemed to be of interest. But I guess it’s not awful or anything?

Texasville. Peter Bogdanovich. 1990. ⚂

I bought a Texasville bluray, but I already had two versions of the movie — included as extras on the Criterion Last Picture Show release, but I didn’t know that. I ended up watching the version from the latter release…