Everything is closeups and tracking shots and dissolves, voiceovers and fast cuts and fade-outs. Film, in other words. Since 2009 started, I put fiction on hold (for the first time in my life, really) and started reading nothing but screenplays and filmmaker interviews. This means Spielberg, Spike, Woody, Lucas, Scorsese and Tarantino; Pulp Fiction, Magnolia, The Aviator, Eyes Wide Shut, Velvet Goldmine and Storytelling. I’ve got 25 pages of a screenplay done, the trick being to chase THE END down to 100 pages before revising the whole thing from the beginning for a second draft.

Tomorrow is payday, and I’m eyeing some DVD collections from the UK, just so I can get the English subtitles. (I could not finish Akira Kurosawa’s The Idiot weeks ago, almost three hours in black and white, Japanese with French subtitles.) So, this week will either be Viva Pedro – The Almodóvar Collection or The Luis Buñuel Collection. My accountant (a/k/a my darlin wife) informs me that the Canon DCR-HC38 MiniDV camcorder of my dreams will have to wait till May. Until then, I’ll be down at the Cinéma- thèque Française. If you’re around, here’s the best (IMHO) they have to offer:

The Velvet Underground and Nico – April 3
Alphaville – April 17
Rear Window – April 19
The Conversation – April 22
The Terminal – May 4
Carnal Knowledge – May 17
Sleeper – May 24

Catching some of the Spike Lee retrospective going on in Paris has been interesting. The main reason is because Spike’s movies aren’t enjoyable to me like they used to be once upon a time, when I was gung-ho about the black filmmaking wave 20 years ago. (Yes, School Daze was 20 years ago, and it wasn’t even his first film.) A smaller reason is, for someone who doesn’t usually see movies more than once, I’ve seen the majority of Spike’s oeuvre several times and I’m still a little worn out by the repeated viewings. I love Prince too, but I just can’t play Purple Rain again, not in this lifetime. (Okay, maybe once more.) Then again, I can’t well imagine Hollywood without Spike Lee either. I am very glad his body of work exists; still, I’m honestly not in the mood for another three hours of Malcolm X.

Spike spoke tonight at the Cinémathèque Française, after a premiere screening of Miracle at St. Anna. Unfortunately, it turned out to be just for members of the cinémathèque (membership is available to anybody for probably something like 100€ a year), so I didn’t see Spike or his new film. But I did pay for 25th Hour and Clockers so far this month – Summer of Sam is tomorrow – and here’s what I noticed as a 37-year-old seeing these movies for the umpteenth time:

• All the Seal music in Clockers.
• A reminder of how that pre-screening of 25th Hour (I see you, Kenji) made me want to move to Paris. The closing sequence had Ed Norton dodging his prison sentence to start an anonymous life far away from New York, raising a family under an assumed name somewhere in Bumblefuck with his one true love. Something about the idea of disappearing completely and never being found appealed to me even then.
• The DJ Dust party sequence in 25th Hour. “Flava in Your Ear,” “Warm It Up Kane,” “White Lines (Don’t Do It)” and all that Cymande music? Classic sequence.
• The NO MORE PACKING subliminal billboard that pops up everywhere in Clockers. Black people unite and put down the steel.
• Rosario gotdamn Dawson in that silver dress, 25th Hour. Took me back to that time she showed up to the Oneworld office back in the day waiting for the editor, 15 minutes just me and her. (What happens at Oneworld stays at Oneworld, Rosario.)
• Speech comes up in the hardest MC debate between the drug dealers on the benches in Clockers. Why? I’ll mail you a dollar if you’re in your twenties and you even know who Speech is.
• The last lines of 25th Hour put weight in the lump in my throat, reminiscing on the expatriate adventures I’ve had since the movie first dropped: “It all came so close to never happening. This life came so close to never happening.”
  

After shutting down in August (like quite a few French businesses) for vacation, the Cinémathèque Française is open for business again next Monday with a vengence. Let’s start with the Spike Lee retrospective running from September 3-28 (!): kicking off with La 25^e Heure (2002’s 25th Hour to you), the cinémathèque is showing every single Spike Lee Joint, including Miracle at St. Anna, not released in America till the 26th. This special screening on the 12th will feature a Q&A with Shelton Jackson Lee himself, and tickets are up for grabs on the 10th at 3:00 by calling 01 71 19 32 39, or emailing libre-pass@ cinematheque.fr. I won’t run the schedule below (it’s over 15 movies, even the Katrina documentary four hours straight), but click here for the run-down.

The rest ain’t nothing to sleep on either. A Dennis Hopper retrospective is going on too (hence the healthy helping of his movies below). See as much as you can if you’re here, or just imagine you’re in a Parisian theater watching Basquiat. This is hardly everything at the cinémathèque, just everything I think is dope.

Eyes Wide Shut – October 6
Citizen Kane – October 9
The Last Movie – October 16, 25 (only recently re-released)
Easy Rider – October 19, 30
Monterey Pop – October 23
Cool Hand Luke – October 22, November 8
Tarzan and Jane Regained… Sort Of – October 25 (Warhol, gotta love it)
Apocalypse Now Redux – October 26, November 15
Collateral – October 27
The Mark of Zorro – October 29 (Bruce Wayne’s favorite)
Blue Velvet – November 1
The Parallax View – November 6
Basquiat – November 9
Five Easy Pieces – November 20
La Strada – November 21
Giant– November 22
Jackie Brown – November 24
Chocolat – November 24
Rebel Without a Cause – November 30

I’m a Spielberg fan to death, but hardly an Indiana Jones fan at all. I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark at 10 years old, Temple of Doom at 13 (when I shoulda been seeing Wild Style) and The Last Crusade at 18, with my parents and/or pops every single time. Raidersgot me excited about my fifth grade social studies class for about two days. I’ll get around to seeing Kingdom of the Crystal Skull sometime next week, but part of me hopes it bombs, considering the weak plot and how Spielberg and George Lucas were apparantly asleep at the wheel.

So forget Indy; if you’re in Paris now into the summertime, the following films are interesting over at the Cinémathèque Française over the next three months:

The Graduate – June 1
Last Tango in Paris – June 19
The Dreamers – June 22
Alphaville – July 7
The Wizard of Oz – July 16
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial – July 23
Superman – July 30

Before I get into my quarterly roundup of choice films playing down at the Cinémathèque Française, a little announcement: Furthermucker has made a ranking list of one of the Internet’s most popular blogs for film! Well, I never said this blog isn’t about film. I deal in Paris, pop culture, hiphop and the arts here; cinema is definitely one of those arts, and thinking back, my highest stats ever (like over 5,000 hits in one day) came from my post about Woody Allen’s last joint, Cassandra’s Dream. And so Wikio – a pretty cool site that can serve up all the news on the Internet from media sites and blogs to your specifications – has a Top 100 ranking for different subjects like music, celebrity and politics, and Furthermucker just made #31 in their new ranking for film. (See my spanking new badge at left.)

As far as the Cinémathèque, the next three months are pretty vapid. But judge for yourself:

A Band Apart – March 7
Coffy – March 21
Shaft in Africa – March 27
Blood Diamond – April 18
Star 80 – April 18
And Justice for All – April 24

Slim pickings somewhat at the Cinémathèque Française over the next few months. I copped the schedule a few weeks late this weekend; on the 6th I missed The Last Movie – long out of print, totally wigged out (from what I’ve heard) and directed by Dennis Hopper, who did one of my all-time favorites, Easy Rider. But Woody Allen’s Zelig is a choice flick. And Renaldo and Clara, direted by Bob Dylan, was recently referenced in Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There, which I fuckin loved. (Never seen it though, Renaldo and Clara.) Peggy Sue Got Married makes the list for Francis Ford Coppola alone. And I’d love to get a comment battle going comparing Mick Jagger in Performace to David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth, but this ain’t furthermuckin film school. Anyway, here’s my quarterly list of the upcoming Cinémathèque Française films that I find the most interesting – and R. Kelly:

Peggy Sue Got Married – December 26
Ghostbusters – December 27
Pet Sematary – December 29
Zelig – January 9
Trapped in the Closet, ch. 1-22 – January 25
Taps – February 10
The Addiction – February 16
Performance – February 22
Renaldo and Clara – February 22
Sankofa – March 1

My main aspiring-filmmaker hangout here in Paris is the Cinémathèque Française, kind of a movie theater/museum/film-related library in the 12th arrondissement. I’ve only seen Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket and Dog Day Afternoon there, but I pick up their three-month schedule four times a year just to see what’s on deck. Here’s their most interesting films through the first week of December. (The ones really not to miss are probably Poltergeist and American Graffiti.)

Solaris – October 5
American Graffiti – October 14
The Last Detail – October 14
Tommy – October 22
Psycho – November 2
A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy – November 16
Poltergeist – November 28
Christine – December 2