Last Chance Filmstruck: Unzipped, High Noon, Metropolis, Etc...

by Nathaniel R

Are you going to wait for the train downstairs? Why don't you wait here?"
     -Katy Jurado to Grace Kelly in High Noon (leaves Filmstruck May 31st)

Y'all. I have a really really hard time with how quickly titles come and go on so many different streaming services. Ugh! I do not like other people curating my movies for me. I'm too much of my own cinephile for that. I want to see what I want to see when I want to see it and usually for highly specific reasons that don't go well with the timetables of corporations! Nevertheless the world is not made to cater to my personal whims (imagine that!?) so I've had to adapt. I have ponied up for FilmStruck and its Criterion Channel entirely because they have more classics than other streaming services. This still hasn't remotely solved all the "where to find things" woes. Though Hulu, Prime, and Netflix are okay for the majority of movies that aren't more than 5-10 years old, everything else remains super-patchy at best and you're stuck with whatever any of these services feel like streaming for you in a given month. This is ESPECIALLY true of movie musicals which literally no service does a good job with. The lack of musicals has always been my primary beef with the Criterion Collection

Enough complaining! Filmstruck/Criterion does have plenty of goodies. As with all the other streaming services they play peek-a-boo with the titles, though. So let's play Streaming Roulette for everything that's LEAVING the service shortly...

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Doc Corner: 'House of Z'

Fashion documentaries have been going downhill ever since Unzipped. Douglas Keeve’s 1995 portrait of Isaac Mizrahi, a box office smash and critical hit, remains the pinnacle of what so many since have attempted. Like Madonna: Truth or Dare, from which it took much inspiration, that riotously funny glimpse into Mizrahi’s world full of design, famous friends, creativity and wickedly self-depreciating neurosis was a perfect storm of sorts between personality, fashion and celebrity that a film about this sort of person ought to be.  

Every year brings us several of these sorts of documentaries. Like the majority of them, Sandy Chronopoulos’ debut feature, House of Z, is easily digestible and barely raises a sweat; a work of celebrity portraiture that fans won’t regret watching, but which offers little beyond what is promised on the tin. Taking the same narrative hook as Unzipped of a talented young designer’s comeback from the precipice of total failure, House of Z is an act of personality redemption for a man whose career nearly fell apart because of his outlandishness and brattish behaviour. This makes it a humble film in many ways, one that deliberately chooses to show its subject as one appreciative of his position.

That also means that it is a humourless one, too; sapped of the fun and the outrageousness and the glamour that should be natural.I can only imagine how fun this film may have been half a decade ago.

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Today's 5: Hulk out with Joan Crawford, ol' sport!

Good morning film fans. Make today a good one. We'll help with suggestions as to mental memes and mood boosters for the day.

Five showbiz anniversaries of note today (May 10th) and how to honor each of them 

2013 The Great Gatsby opens in movie theaters. It's yet another hit for Baz Luhrmann and yet another Oscar-winning moment for his wife/collaborator Catherine Martin. It's also, to date, your only chance to see Leonardo DiCaprio in a pink suit.

In its honor today: Listen to that great soundtrack and annoy your friends by calling them "ol' sport" all day!

1977 Joan Crawford dies (as just dramatized on Feud's finale). But like all of the great film stars, she's immortal...

with Clark Gable in CHAINED (1934)

People have been trying to reduce her or count her out since she first became famous but she held on for decades with an iron grip...

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