my last movies

The last movies I saw in a theater, before Covid hit, were on January 25, 2020.

Made myself a weird double-feature (easy to do at Film Forum) of Alphaville and Citizen K. When I get off the #1 at Houston St I find myself behind a gaggle of young people, tall and raucous, each of them wearing some absurd wig like you’d find in a store catering to the sex worker trade around Times Square circa 1981. Headed to Houston Hall. Apparently to raise money for “cancer”.

Two things they had in common? Early on, in Alphaville, Lemmy Caution refers to Boulevard Heisenberg and Rue Enrico Fermi; Citizen K’s Khodorkovsky grows up on Cosmonauts Street and builds and launches his own rocket.

Also,  Hot War/Cold War

Also,  I always read Anna Karina’s name as Karenina and think she’s Russian though I know she’s Danish. That’s not her real name and apparently it was made up (by Coco Chanel! a well-known Nazi lover) to sound like Anna Karenina so I’m just falling for it

In the movie her name is Natacha Von Braun. Speaking of…

My mother couldn’t understand why my imaginary friends had Russian names but she was the one who plunked me down in front of Rocky and Bullwinkle every Saturday morning

Subtitles. The end when she says I love you, but each word picked out like needlepoint except in French it’s Je vous aime, so you actually end with love but as each word appears on the screen the sound and text don’t match up

Je (I)

vous (love)

aime (you)

the computer sounds like his vocal cords have been cut

Someone on the other side of the theater screams - we all turn and wait for the follow-up (“get your hand off my ass” “my god there’s a rat” “my friend’s had a heart attack”) but there’s nothing so we decide, collectively, to ignore the outburst

There’s always some sort of commotion at Film Forum. God how I miss it. There was a tweet going around recently: “what’s the first thing you’ll do” and my first thought was going there, to the movies, alone, and eavesdropping on the ridiculous conversations. Running into someone in the bathroom I haven’t seen in twenty years (true story! multiple occasions!)

18 november 2020