Aw shucks, & some "#inadequatemovies"

See below...

Like any modern media semi-professional worth his salt nowadays, I am active certain other "social" media. I wouldn't touch Foursquare with whatever it is they're touching it with nowadays, but who knows if I'll ever try Mindsquat or Formspring or whatever that ask-me-questions scheme is—depends on how far I wanna go with my anything-for-a-laugh ethos. Oh, and my available time, too. Any how, I've fixed it so that my blog posts feed directly into my Facebook news stream, or again, whatever, and just a little while ago, apropos my Scott Pilgrim notice, one of my FB friends said one of the nicest things anybody's ever, at least as far as my film writing is concerned. That is: "I appreciate that although you have and continue to share your prejudices and pet peeves, obliquely or otherwise, in your writing, you seem to approach every film with an open mind. The fact that you're a little difficult to peg regarding what you'll like makes your opinion seem both earned and genuine, rather than the result of a collection of predispositions and intellectual/social posturing."

I'm blushing. 

Also, as I've mentioned in a comment, I have, once again, returned to Twitter, this time for good, such as it is. Not to make trouble (and not that I can help that) but out of a perceived need to be "part of the conversation," as I think they say in that hilariously dinky New York Times TV ad. Being Twitter, it's still Twitter, but sometimes fun things happen there. Just the other day, my virtual pal The Futurist! sucked me into a fun meme, "#inadequatemovies." I recognized the idea right away; it's an only slight variant of the old New York Magazine Competition theme of "near-miss nomers," collected in the great book Thanks For The Giant Sea Tortoise in the chapter "From Poland, With Love". (Some of my favorites from that include Man and Batman, The Agony and the Fun, One Of The Greatest Stories Ever Told, and Good Ole Gatsby. One nobody gets anymore: Nicholas and Alexander's.) Many of my own contributions were responses to his, which included Vague References About Eve, Misunderstanding on the Bounty, Baseball Pennants Of Our Fathers (this, for instance, inspired my own Instant Messages From Iwo Jima) and Willie Wonka And The Breath MInt Factory. Gregory Hess, the proprietor of a good blog whose name I like a lot, Blue Collar Film Scholar, tickled me with I Corresponded With A Zombie and The Man Who Scolded Liberty Valance, among others. As for myself, the other day I had a lot of bus-waiting and sitting-around-waiting-for-my-iPod-to-be-pronounced-dead-at-the-Mac-Support-Store to do, so I was just reeling the things off. Here are some I though were pretty good: L'annee derniere a Secaucus; Fan Fiction; Boudu Relieved From Cramping; The Mild Imprecation of the Cat People; The Seventh Inconvenienced Party; Aggravated Assault, My Sweet; Force of Mediocrity; Kiss of Lingering Illness; The Battle of the Slight Protuberance; Chantal Akerman's Ma and Pa Kettle at Home; Abbott and Costello Meet The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit; Varnish Your Wagon; Hercules and the Musty World; and, speaking of making trouble, My Dinner With Eric Kohn.

I do feel my personal best was Pat Garrett and Governer Lew Wallace. BTW, my Twitter handle is ExtAngel if you're interested.

Comments

[Chris H]

You had time to kill that day? Gee, I never noticed. My own best (as I see it of course): A Few Fingers Full of Change. Yea or nay?

[Kent Jones]

Glenn, years ago when I was working at New Video, a nice lady came in and asked me for ACROPOLIS NOW. Does that count?

Your FB friend is right on target, about you in particular and criticism in general. There's such an obsession with judgments and ratings and rankings. I understand the lure, but ultimately it just evaporates, and all that's left is the writing. In The Weight of the World, there's a passage where Handke is in the hospital recovering from minor surgery, and he starts reading Elective Affinities, I think it was. And he remarks on how nice it is to have something in front of him that compels him to read "every word." As opposed to a magazine or newspaper article, which compel you to scan, skim, and skip over words. There's so much stuff, in print and elsewhere, that compels you to just glance - Maureen Dowd columns, for instance, or the collected works of Karina Longworth. You, I want to read.

But we're old (I guess), and we should be embracing the new. And Peter Handke's old and he liked Milosevic, so he gets an F minus. He did like vag, though.

[RodneyOz]

Kent, was it possible that lady was from Australia? There was a television show here in the early 90s called Acropolis Now. Anyhoo...

[Stephen Bowie]

Oh, man, you don't need Twitter for this nonsense; I used to do it with a friend of mine for years -- every e-mail subject line was a movie or song or album title riff. All incredibly puerile, and I wish I had them handy. Or maybe not. I do remember RICHARD DEACON BLUES, and Uri Geller in SPOON BENDER ANTHOLOGY. Oh: STORCH SCHLONG TRILOGY. Starring Larry, Arthur, and ... uh ... well, maybe it's a diptych.

[Tom Russell]

tomandmary (but mostly tomand) didn't do particularly well with that meme; the best I came up with, I think, were Gus Van Sant's SILK, THE -ENDING STORY, and THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE, none of which were particularly inspired. I also did TYLER PERRY'S ., which is an #inadequatemovie title in an entirely different way.

I think I did better with the meme that was popular a couple days before it-- #spoilermovietitles or some-such; it gave me the opportunity to coin JESUS DIES, THEN HE GETS BETTER, which I'm still (perhaps inordinately) proud of.

[Kent Jones]

Rodney, this was in the early 80s and she was born and bred in New York City.

[N. Beery]

Visibly Perturbed Max.
A Statistically Significant Sampling of the President's Men.
The Diving Bell and the Moth.
Guess Who's Coming for Coffee.
Lawrence of Aruba.
Rosemary's Toddler.

[James Russell]

Intern Zhivago
Ryan's Stepdaughter
Schindler's Blank Bit of Paper
Ironpyritesfinger
Cubic Zirconias Are Forever
Clean Harry
The Man Who Knew Just Enough
The American Acquaintance
Frankenstein Meets the Crocodile Hunter
Late Afternoon Cowboy
The French-Canadian Connection

[joel_gordon]

The Vicar of Greenwich Village. Being inadequate, it would still star Eric Roberts.

[Paul]

My lazy effort, which got me more retweets than I think anything else I have ever, um, twittered, was Casa_____a. Whoop, there it is.

[Oliver C]

I forget who it was who once pointed out that any movie with "American" in the title can be emasculated by replacing the word with "Belgian".

[Dan Coyle]

Transformers: Filed Complaint Of the Fallen
Indiana Jones and the Principality of the Crystal Skull
The Slighty Warm State
The X-Files: I'm Pretty Sure I Already Believe, I've Been Doing This For 15 Years, For Fuck's Sake

[lazarus]

The Orson Welles Collection:

Anchor Baby Kane
The Nifty Ambersons
The Acquaintance
The Lady Who Had A Layover in Shanghai
Graze of Evil
The Deposition
Chimes At 11:45
The Mortal Story
E for Ersatz

Bonus: The Same Side of the Wind

[Oliver C]

Unfinished: 'At Least Some of it is True'

[Dan Coyle]

Change Bots: The Short Film

[Fabian W.]

There Might Be Some Pus.

[www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=528496376]

http://handke-magazin.blogspot.com/2010/06/handke-magazine-is-over-arching-site.html

http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name

[Stephen Bowie]

THE SUSPENDED STEP OF THE DORK ... which I'd use for my own Twitter handle, if I were so inclined, which I'm not, so I guess it's all yours, gang.

[jbryant]

Slap Fight in the North Atlantic
Cutie and the Beast
Tussle of Algiers
Casually Noticed Trains
Lukewarm Hand Luke
In the Mood for Canoodling
The English Out-Patient
Pleasant Enough: Based on the Novel Nudge by Turquoise

[Pete Segall]

Night of the Living People in a Persistent Vegetative State

[DUH]

Lotta good ones in here, but I think "The French-Canadian Connection" and "In the Mood for Canoodling" are the top contributions so far.

[Dan Coyle]

All Coens Edition:

Shelve After Skimming
Raising Rhode Island
Moderate Irritance
Albany
Miller's Crick
The Tiny Haversham
Hey, Bro! There you are!
The Man Who's Already Here
The Hudsucker Acquaintance
A Fine Province For the Elderly
The Womanbotherers
A Somewhat Concerned Man

[James Russell]

The Belgianisation of Emily
A Belgian Werewolf in London
Team Belgium: EU Police
Belgium, Belgium
The Belgian Friend
Belgian Pie
Belgian Splendour
Belgian Beauty
Once Upon a Time in Belgium
The Quiet Belgian
Belgian Graffiti
Belgian Psycho
Air Belgium
Belgian History X
Mr Smith Goes to Brussels

...Oliver's point is well taken.

[Kent Jones]

THE OKAY, THE UNSEEMLY AND THE HOMELY
THE MAN WHO KNEW JUST ENOUGH
CLEAN STREETS

[Matt Miller]

Sweet Sweetback's Kinda Catchyyyyy Song
I Glare Disapprovingly At Your Grave
Ghostmediators
A Fistful of Promissory Notes

[Dan Coyle]

All DePalma Edition

Figure That Looks Somewhat Alike
Dressed to Pester
Apparition of the Kinda Good Place
Zitface
Mission Simply Accomplished
Half-Erased
The Easily Gotten To
Rolled a 20
Mission to Mars, Pennsylvania
Slight Puncture
Heroes of War

[Dan Coyle]

Alex Cox Edition

Guy Who Steals Your Car
Edward and Courtney
Marceaux
Crossing Guard
Brief Illness and the Street Sign
Waldo's Weekend in Wasilla
The Guy Who Broke Even
Revengers Dance Party
Two Businessmen
Hondo 2.0

[Dennis Cozzalio]

I've been feeling kinda down for two days now, but this, I think, may have kick-started my emotional renaissance: "Boudu Relieved From Cramping." Thanks, GK.

[preston]

Satyajit Ray Edition

Ditty of the Gravel Driveway
The Not Quite Left Yet
The Class M Planet of Apu
Squawk Box
Two, I mean, One Daughter
The Wife
Earthly Rotations in the Wood

[Jeff McMahon]

Okay, in honor of the Hitchcock thread:

The 3 or 4 Steps
The Lady Goes Into The Powder Room For A Bit
Spellbemused
Vague Acquaintances on a Train
Dial M for Mellow
Mental Disturbance Managed by Medication
The Chicks
Irritation