I just learned from my friends Bryan Hilson and Brian Saur that the video store we used to work at, Laser Blazer, will shut its doors permanently on December 25th after 23 years of business. When I read this news last night, it felt like an old friend had died – one you sort of knew was really quite, quite sick – but still, you truly hoped they’d pull through and surprise you by, well, never dying. Alas, it was not meant to be. This big, friendly, family-owned video store will now only exist online as they continue to sell inventory and collectibles.

My friends and I worked together at ‘the Blaze’ in the late 90s/early aughts. I was at UCLA working on a Masters in Film Snootiness (”Critical Studies”) and getting a job at the video store was not just about earning a little pocket cash, but it was also an added bonus for school – a whole separate DVD (*and* laserdisc) library to plunder and raid and over-analyze and worship and love. Most of us working there were cinephiles, turning our paychecks back over to the store in exchange for first crack at the DVDs, right out of the box, right off the UPS truck – like fresh green movie apples. Seriously.

My sadness is definitely cut through with a sense of GUILT – after all, I now work for Netflix, the corporation that smashed the video store once and for all, from the lovable mom & pop places like Laser Blazer, to the soulless hellholes that were Blockbuster stores. As penance, allow me to ramble on semi-coherently about my video store days – the salad days.

1. The Famous People
Yes, it’s L.A. so YES, I am going to start here. Matt Groening and Benecio Del Toro were regulars. Ex-Tapper Michael McKean would come in with his son to rent movies. John Woo perused our foreign section and Wes Anderson visited – just once – to buy some DVDs; his receipt with the list of films was circulated amongst us film geeks for intense study. (Brian Saur, do you remember what he bought?) Snippy Hollywood blogger Jeffrey Wells used to come in all the time but I never wanted to ring him up, as he wasn’t the most pleasant customer and bitterly anti-chit chat with us. Randomly enough, Ray Manzarek of the Doors came a LOT. It felt strange to rent movies to someone whose music played incessantly on Arrow 93.1 at the time. I’m sure I’m forgetting other famous customers. Wasn’t Martin Short in the store once? Janet Jackson came in and asked Saur where she could buy a blank VHS tape. But the sighting that caused the most ‘whoahs’ from us all was when Joel Hodgson of MST3K fame was spotted in our aisles. That time, we just STARED.

2. The Laserdiscs!
Laserdiscs were firmly on their way out by the time I was working at Laser Blazer but owner Ron Dassa never changed the name of the store because hey – they were still there, taking up bins. Only hardcore movie collectors on Ebay were snatching up this bulky media form. Sometimes rare gems would surface – and by ‘gems’ I mean, very early Traci Lords’ “films” on laserdisc. Every so once in a while, we’d box up 30 Criterion laserdiscs and ship them to a faraway movie geek bidder in Australia. Once we sold a copy of The River’s Edge on laserdisc TO Crispin Glover himself. Best yet, once we sold a random laserdisc to Arch Hall Jr., the teenage star of Eegah!, a terrible drive-in turd that was lampooned with its own MST3K episode.

3. Airport ‘77
These were the days before you could get an HD flat-screen TV for $200 on a pepper-spray-laden Black Friday. The big, flat TVs were thousands of dollars and took up one nook of the store, along with combo DVD/laserdisc players – and we used to fight over what to play on these monitors. Ron, the store’s owner, always wanted Pixar. Pixar movies made the new TVs look extremely impressive and worth the investment. Once Ron came in and caught us watching Dragonball Z on the monitors (hey, I didn’t choose it) and declared the anime series too shitty looking to be on such nice TVs. Instead, we got stuck watching Airport ‘77 quite a few times, because one of our most beloved coworkers had a *major* Karen Black fixation. We also saw a lot of Logan’s Run, his other favorite movie. We all loved Mick and his joyous embracing of not-all-that-great 70s cinema.

4. That Golden Criterion Section
Laser Blazer always, always kept the Criterions separate from the other DVDs, AS THEY SHOULD BE. It’s not a DVD, it’s a CRITERION.

5. The Porn
Why would a feminist young lady of relatively good breeding actually miss the porn section? Because it was funny. It used to make me laugh my bits off. We’d have to make sure we were giving customers THE SOPRANOS and not the SOPORNOS because they were right next to each other in the bin. Schlubby male customers used to ask me why they had late fees and I’d have to tell them it’s because they kept Anal Gangbang Academy Volume 12 out for 3 extra days last week. 3 extra days, huh? You couldn’t just move on to Anal Gangbang Academy Volume 13 and save yourself both the late fees AND the embarrassment? The porn corner of the store was right next to the foreign section too, so it was awfully convenient if you wanted to fake like you were renting La Strada with the newest Chunky Chicks outing.

6. SIMON PEGG
Those of you who personally know me know I worship a zombie-killing English deity named Simon Pegg. YEARS after I worked at Laser Blazer I found myself lining up outside for hours to get my Spaced DVD signed there by El Pegg, Edgar Wright and Jessica Stevenson. I was hoping my former status as a clerk would help me jump the line but I should have known the unspoken rules of the nerd queue would be upheld by my former employer. That day I asked Jessica Hynes what it was like to snog the Doctor and Simon Pegg lightly rested his hand on my shoulder while I had my photo taken with him. Laser Blazer is not just the earthly home of my academic cinema lusts but my…womanly ones as well.

7. The People
No matter how hard you squint and how many drugs you do, Netflix will never be your friend. Sometimes Netflix acts like it knows you (”Violent Foreign Thrillers featuring a Strong Female Lead”) but it won’t ever laugh at your jokes. The friends I made as a clerk at Laser Blazer in 1999 are still my friends today, mucking up my Facebook and Twitter streams with sarcasm and plenty of film discussion to this very day. We used to actually help people find movies, we’d have long, rambling nerdy conversations with customers about favorite films and the newest underrated film that finally got a DVD release. It was like movie blogging – but with your mouth – and in person — remember that?

May we never forget the age of the video store – for all its pros and cons those little businesses represent a special age of browsing and movie discovery that can never be replicated in the over-lit aisles of Best Buy, or in the cold interfaces of the internet. So let us bow our heads for a moment, and pour a little Mountain Dew* on the ground for the Blaze.

*special shout-out for one Dave Lewis who drank epic amounts of this particular beverage as a Laser Blazer clerk

Drive also happens to be one of the best Los Angeles movies made in a long time. The city glitters like an empty gem at night, the Valley stretches out in swathes, the L.A. river still remains a fun place to go for a drive, and like in many L.A. movies, the always-churning Pacific ocean is definitely going to put in an appearance.

The rest of the cast is stellar as well, proving that solid casting can really make a film come to life. Ron Perlman is always a solid villain, but Albert Brooks proves that he can be (hilariously) nasty too. Carey Mulligan is good at playing sad, and I mean that as a compliment, and we all know Christina Hendricks is great at being perfectly petulant.

In a funny way, this film reminded me of Crank – but not in a direct comparison way, so just follow me here. I loved Crank, a very different film set in a very different Los Angeles with very DIFFERENT rhythm and sense of pacing. Whether anyone wants to admit it or not, Crank was a game-changer. Crank showed that even as frenetic as things have gotten in the action genre, they can go even FASTER. Drive – for a movie that also only has one word for a title – refuses to go as fast. Paying attention is rewarded – clues are littered throughout the frame, and the languid 80s synth-heavy soundtrack will even lull you back to a time when movies didn’t break their necks to set your pulse racing. No, in this film, all it takes is a steely young man carrying a hammer to give you a sense of dread.

A+ SEE IT NOW

You should cleanse your palate and spend a long afternoon at your nearest purveyor of artier cinema to catch Richard Ayoade’s Submarine and Mike Mills’s Beginners back to back. Wistful, sad, beautiful, heart-breaking, lyrical, and quite often hilarious – those are all good words, right? They describe both movies but each is its own creature, one a book adaptation about a clever, sometimes self-defeating Welsh teenager, and the second, a poignant autobiographical remembrance of love and loss and one scruffy Jack Russell terrier. (It’s to Mills’s credit that this dog’s presence in this movie never falls into Hollywood treacle-y nonsense. Cutting to an animal for a “reaction shot” should be a crime punishable by law, but Mills manages to do it very well.)

I feel strangely imprinted after seeing both these movies, as though I will be judging all the other touching indie dramedies of the year against these two films. Did you see either of them? How about back to back? I will tell you this much post-Beginners. After 34 years on this planet I have mastered crying quietly and non-dramatically in a movie theater.

Auteur Werner Herzog was in a pleasant & talkative mood before and after the Hollywood Forever Cemetery/Cinespia screening of the Treasure of Sierra Madre. Here’s a few things Herzog name-checked during his presentation & Q/A session plus a few quotes & facts. I had to write down these notes in the dark on the back of a menu from The Gorbals, I’m only sorry I ran out of paper!

- Herzog expressed his love of some other classics: Elia Kazan’s Viva Zapata & Fred Astaire in Swing Time BUT he also said he only sees 3-4 films a year. Perhaps he was only talking about NEW films?

- John Huston is the only director to guide his father (Walter Huston – Treasure of the Sierra Madre) AND his daughter (Angelica Huston  Prizzi’s Honor)  to Academy Award wins. Herzog expressed his admiration for Huston by saying he was “phenomenally intense with actors” and a “loose gun – boozing, travelling, reading.”

- READING was brought up multiple times by Herzog, he expressed his admiration for the Hemingway short story “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” as well as Virgil’s Georgix. He also thought the Warren Commission report on the JFK assassination was required reading. Here’s his entire required reading list from his Rogue Film School website:

Required reading: Virgil’s “Georgics” and Ernest Hemingway’s “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”. Suggested reading: The Warren Commission Report, Rabelais’ “Gargantua and Pantagruel”, “The Poetic Edda”, translated by Lee M. Hollander (in particular The Prophecy of the Seeress), Bernal Diaz del Castillo “True History of the Conquest of New Spain”.

- Herzog’s longest anecdote was centered around the man who wrote the novel TOTSM was based on, a mysterious writer named B. Traven who managed to write and work for years without ever giving any employer or publisher any biographical information.  Some people believe him to be an anarchist named Ret Marut who was involved a very short lived Soviet Republic founded in Bavaria. During this story full of Herzogian mysteries and twists and turns, someone in the crowd shouted out, “ARE YOU FOR REAL?”

And here is the most amazing thing he said during the post-movie wrap-up:

“People think I’m this brooding Teutonic person. I’m more Bavarian. My wife will testify, I am a fluffy husband.”

Here we go, starting again, as I always like to start, with the most obvious one:

Casablanca

An American in Paris

Arizona Dreams (check the vintage Vincent Gallo!)

Berlin Alexanderplatz
(Nah, I ain’t seent this yet. I’d need a whole weekend to set aside.)

Brazil

In Bruges – “I’ll have one gay beer for m’ friend, and one normal beer for me because I’m normal.”

Chinatown

I Am Cuba

The Darjeeling Limited

Death in Venice

Fargo

Kansas City

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Manhattan

Palm Beach Story

Fellini’s Roma

Salaam Bombay!

Shanghai Express

Sunset Boulevard

Synecdoche, New York

Tokyo Story

Saved the best for last.

Bleu

Blanc

Rouge

Raise the Red Lantern

Red Desert

The Thin Red Line

The Lavender Hill Mob

Pink Flamingos

The Pink Panther

Grey Gardens

Golddiggers of 1933

The Scent of Green Papayas

The Blue Angel

Blue Velvet

Yellow Submarine

The Brown Bunny (HA! I just like to antagonize you)

The Bride Wore Black – and my favorite movie on this list.

White Heat

And the sneakiest one of all, Eric Rohmer’s Summer – in French, Le Rayon Vert. Ha! I fooled you all! A little!

If you give it a shot, let me know, tweet it at me, yo. @citizenrobot

A is for Auntie Mame

B is for The Big Lebowski

C is for Chungking Express

D is for Dead Man

E is for L’eclisse

F is for Female Trouble

G is for the God of Cookery

H is for Hard Day’s Night

I is for It’s a Gift
(List overlap with Rupert Pupkin Speaks! Deal with it. This movie is hi-larious.)

J is for Johnny Guitar

K is for Kiss Me Deadly

L is for Léon, the Professional

M is for Mulholland Drive

N is for Nashville

O is for O Brother Where Art Thou?

P is for Paris is Burning

Q is for Queen Christina
(Q was the second hardest letter, by the way.)

R is for Rome, Open City
(100% chosen for Anna Magnani)

S is for Shaun of the Dead

T is for Tokyo Drifter

U is for Up in Smoke

V is for Valley of the Dolls

W is for Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

X is for Xanadu
And slightly against my will. Hollywood needs to make more movies starting with the letter X.

Y is for Young Frankenstein

Z is for Zatoichi VS. the Blind Swordsman

If you join in the movie list fun, please tweet at me! @citizenrobot

Also yes, I know there’s more than 10 Crazy Jumbled Thoughts about Inception here. I lied, in order to gain your confidence, so I can deeper infiltrate your thoughts while you dream.

WHAT IFS
1. What if Charlie Kaufman wrote this movie? Would it be funnier, warmer? Messier? What if Inception had a baby with Synchedoche, New York? Wow, that made my head hurt.

1B. What if Michel Gondry directed it? (Answer: It would be waaaay more twee.)

1C. …and what if Christopher Nolan made a James Bond film? (Oooh.)

DON’T DO DRUGS AND SEE THIS MOVIE?
2. The BF feels there’s a relation between the slipperiness of film’s core concepts and the things you think/dream up while on hallucinogenics. I think the film is too workman-like, runs too much like a clock, to be terribly related to the wild worlds one encounters on psychedelics… although it paradoxically manages to be both surreal AND real.

SNOBBY REFERENCES
3. There is an insane amount of art and architecture references rippling through this film. A few minutes into this movie they make a Francis Bacon reference? What!? This is a summer blockbuster! Crazy!

M.C. Escher certainly makes an appearance. Los Angeles’ DWP building (pictured above) is quoted. Cobb & Ariadne walk across Paris’ Bir-Hakeim bridge. Cobb’s home looks and feels like a classic Greene & Greene California bungalow. Huge portions of the film’s surface are covered in those most modern of materials, glass, cold steel, and lots of mirrors.

OTHER FILMMAKERS
4. (Slightly spoiler-y) There’s something downright Citizen Kane-esque about Cillian Murphy’s big cathartic moment. This film’s Rosebud is again a simple object from childhood that grows grandiose in stature, fully imbued with serious emotional meaning.

4B. The Pont de Bir-Hakeim bridge sequence feels like another Welles’ reference, when Ariadne locks herself and Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) in a Lady from Shanghai-esque hall of mirrors.

4C. Kubrick’s ghost also slips through the film – everything that waits for Fischer behind the safe’s door is a big visual reference to 2001. Whenever Kubrick’s influence pops up in a movie, it gives me the chills (imagine my fan girl glee sitting through There Will Be Blood).

THE LITTLE SPARROW
5. There’s a double dose of Piaf in this puppy – Piaf’s “Non, je ne regrette rien” echoes throughout the film, and Cotillard herself won her Oscar for bringing Piaf to life. Cotillard’s character Mal manages to be even more hysterical and frightening than the often volatile and larger than life Piaf herself. Mal is pure femme fatale, actually – her manipulative neediness has plenty in common with the spider women of film noir past. (And yes, I know that Malmeans bad in French. We get it, Christopher Nolan! She’s a bad lady!)

YES, VIDEO GAMES
6. Come on, you can’t tell me that 3rd level in the dream state (”the snow level”) wasn’t like something out of the Call of Duty video game franchise? Hell, the whole idea that there are “levels” to progress through, layered one on top of another, is a big reference to video game architecture itself. They could make a video game out of this movie, it would be a lot like Heavy Rain with action sequences. Although, it would be really frustrating to get stuck in one of those repeating stair-loops. (Press B! I *AM* pressing B. Keep pressing B, I guess.)

SALACIOUS THOUGHTS ABOUT BOYS
7. Oh I like that Tom Hardy fellow. I have a very woozy weakness for British action heroes. I hope I get a chance to see him shoot a gun again. I’ll have to check out his appearance as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights in the meantime. Oh, that sounds just lovely.

7B. Nobody will ever remember that Fred Astaire walked on the ceiling first, now that Joseph Gordon Levitt has done it. The next time someone does ANYTHING on the ceiling, people will shout “poseur!” until their throats are sore.

7C. This is the first time I think I’ve taken DiCaprio seriously as a man-MAN. I know he’s considered quite the sex symbol, but for example, in the Aviator, I just didn’t think he felt old/experienced enough to play a character like Howard Hughes. I thought he still felt a bit baby-faced even in The Departed, or perhaps Matt Damon just made him seem younger in that film. But in Inception, I fully bought it that he was a man old enough to be haunted by his past.

MAYBE IT’S JUST ME, BUT –
8. I don’t like Hans Zimmer! The score was the most distracting part of this movie for me. The score was doing it’s Zimmer-y thing of going, HEY, don’t forget ABOUT ME back HERE with all these DRAMATIC! BOOMING! MOMENTS! It’s too much. Something more subtle could have worked just as well, but that’s just my taste preference.

MY FRIEND DAVE LEWIS WILL WANT ME TO SAY SOMETHING ABOUT ELLEN PAGE
9. Dave loves Ellen Page. When confronted with the choice, Cotillard or Page, DL doesn’t think it’s an easy question to answer. Page’s character in the movie was not as fleshed out as the others, so it’s not entirely her fault that I don’t find her appearance in this film extremely memorable. Still, she does manage to hold her own against the veterans and…um, her complexion is quite dewy in places. There, Dave, are you happy now?

WHO TAKES A KID TO INCEPTION?
10. After our screening, we watched a 10 year old little girl emerge from the theater with her father and brother. Right in front of us, with an anguished look on her face, she asked “WHAT HAPPENED?!” I feel like this movie could give a kid nightmares.

“Mommy…are we real?”

If you have crazy jumbled thoughts about Inception too, hit the Comments box.

How many female filmmakers can you name off the top of your head?

Well, here’s my answer in no particular order:

Ida Lupino, Agnes Varda, Chantal Akerman, Lina Wurtmuller, Sofia Coppola, Catherine Breillat, Julie Dash, Penny Marshall, Claire Denis, Nora Ephron, Nancy Meyers, Deepa Mehta, Barbra Streisand, Mira Nair, Allison Anders — and now the only Best Director Oscar winner, Kathryn Bigelow.

We now officially live in a world where our little girls can aspire to grow up to win statues shaped like naked men!  But in all seriousness, Bigelow is now a stellar role model to a horde the next generation of female filmmakers who can now learn that being married to someone (and then not married) is not your sole definition, that you can indeed grow older and still be a powerful, beautiful woman that inspires crushes in your fellow directors, making potent works of art.

Happy International Women’s Day Everybody!

Saw this in Munky King on Melrose and HAD to have it.  We walked over after a show at the Groundlings because there was a little group congregated to see an exhibition by Martin Hsu and Andrew Brandou, riffing on the theme of the Year of the Tiger.  I re-watched Reservoir Dogs recently and it still stands up, every moment of it, from Quentin’s ponderous Madonna analysis, to every sashay in Michael Madsen’s ear-slicing dance routine.

Wanna see something else ludicrous I own relating to Reservoir Dogs?

Look at the size of that cabeza. And yes, it is sitting in my garage, near a faded reproduction poster of a Street Car Named Desire, a croquet set, and my fondue pot.  And yeah, we do have a food dehydrator, and no we haven’t used it recently.  What’s funny is people ran off with the lovely visages of Steve Buschemi and Harvey Keitel.  Nobody wanted dear old Q so now he live in my garage.  The Qee, however, lives inside with my other vinyl toys.