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Your Vote Counts This November
It's that time again... as always, we'd appreciate your vote over at
PodcastAlley this month. Thanks everyone!
Vote Now
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Looking For Borat
 From Chicago/Milwaukee, this is The Dope Sheet... I'm Sam Van Hallgren
So it turns out that "Borat" isn't playing in Wausau,
Wisconsin... which is too bad because that's exactly where Adam and I
were all weekend for our friend Kevin Rich's wedding. We even stood
next to each other during the ceremony and somehow managed not to
come to blows over "The Last King of Scotland."
Since the wedding kept me from catching "Borat" (Adam saw it a
few weeks ago at a screening), we won't be reviewing it on this
week's show. Instead, we'll have reviews of "Flags of Our Fathers,"
"The Queen" and John Cameron Mitchell's "Shortbus." In honor of
Mitchell's second film (his first was "Hedwig and the Angry Inch"),
we're going to share our Top 5 "Sophomore Efforts."
Also, we'll play Adam's recent interview with "Flags" co-star
Barry Pepper -- one of our favorite young actors.
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Overlooked DVD Pick: Bus 174
 Available on Peerflix - Long Wait
I think fully half of my overlooked DVD picks have been
documentaries, which makes sense because documentaries are virtually
by definition "overlooked" relative to narrative films. They can also
be a harder sell. But I make this recommendation without any
reservation.
I caught "Bus 174" about a month ago when it aired on IFC. The
film documents a 2000 incident that saw a homeless man, apparently
high on drugs, hijack a Rio De Janeiro city bus and take its
passengers hostage. The stand-off with police lasted four hours.
And the entire thing was captured live on videotape by countless news
reporters.
But instead of making a long and grisly episode of COPS, "Bus
174" director Jose Padhila uses the event as a means of investigating
the street culture of Rio.
I exchanged an email with listener Michael Cummins in early
October about the film (Michael hosts the Cinebanter podcast with
fellow listener Tassoula Kokkoris), and here's what he had to say
about it:
"It was amazing and scary, and really, really tense for a
documentary. And how unique is it that an event like that had ten
different camera angles shooting live footage to an eager public?
And speaking of the public, for all my 'we need transparency in the
media' soapboxing, I was horrified to see just how close unarmed
cops, the media, and common citizens could get to a lunatic holding
hostages on a bus. The inherent problem with a doc like that is you
can ascertain who survives and who doesn't by the talking heads. But
I still had to find out how they died.
I think CITY OF GOD is a bit better in showing the plight of
street children in Rio, but BUS 174 had me riveted."
"Riveted" is exactly the right word. And it's hard not to think
of "City of God" when you're watching "Bus 174," but as incredible as
"City of God" is, "Bus" surprised me in ways I could never have
anticipated. I kept thinking that I had the film figured out -- its
politics and its perspective. But nothing about the film is simple.
And as eye-opening as so many of the films in our Documentaries
Marathon have been, none of those films engaged me the way "Bus 174"
did.
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Don't Be Afraid
 Because of the interview and review-heavy show next week, we're not
going to have time for listener feedback, including some of the great
feedback we got about last week's Top 5 Scary Moments. On the show,
I mentioned my bad experience with "The Shining" -- when, as a kid of
9 or 10, I happened to catch the disturbing scene when the girls
invite Danny to play with them "forever and ever." I decided not to
return to my own bed, but thought it would be better to sleep with my
younger brother instead -- you know, to keep him safe -- and he
totally denied me. Sent me back to my own room, alone. Well, Dave
from South Jersey wrote in to share his own "Shining" anecdote:
"Never has a top 5 list from the show resounded so much with me
than with your scary moments list. [S]peaking of The Shining, my
hallway scene experience with the two girls trumps yours to the
extreme. Picture this: a young boy (myself) age 10-11 at home with my
younger brother. Our parents are out and we have no babysitter for
one of the first times in our young lives, and we're sitting down in
the dark watching TV. A thunderstorm is raging outside, but we're
watching a happy, fun comedy (I believe in the Adam Sandler vein).
However, a big flash of lightning strikes, and the TV screen changes.
On the screen is the hallway scene from The Shining with the two
girls saying 'come play with us.' Horrifying. Turns out the cable
affiliate had its box hit, so our TV reverted to basic cable, and the
channel we were tuned to was running The Shining, but never in my
life was I more glad to have a younger brother than at that moment."
Dave, I honestly don't know how you ever recovered.
And this one from Scott Rosenberg in Washington, DC:
"My scariest movie moment doesn't come from a horror film, but
rather from a mediocre superhero movie, 'Superman 3.'
I must have seen this movie on TV when I was 7 or 8. My memory of
this film has been so repressed that I no longer remember any of the
supporting characters names anymore, but the scene where the woman
gets plated in metal and attacks Superman with some sort of
electrical attack, has haunted me to this day -- 20 years later. I'm
not sure what upset me so much about that scene, but just thinking
about it now is making me a bit nervous.
If I watched the movie tomorrow, I'd probably be totally fine,
but I'll never know for sure because, I can't chance causing myself
to hide under the covers of my bed again. It's understandable at 7,
but embarrassing at 27."
I think someone out there is going to have to confirm this memory
for Scott. I don't remember anything like this happening in Superman
III. Wasn't it Superman II with Sarah Douglas as Ursa, the female
member of General Zod's Kryptonian gang of evil-doers? [Adam's note:
I don't recall Ursa doing anything like this in Superman II, but
yeah, I'm drawing a blank on Scott's scene as well. Superman IV,
perhaps? Oh wait, that never happened. Sorry.]
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The 1,000 Greatest Films of All-Time
"Yes, that's 1,000." Thanks, Jeff Huston.
Here's the link:
http://www.theyshootpictures.com/gf1000_ranking1-100.htm
A lot of mathematics seemed to be employed in the assembly of
this list. And I'm not very good at math, so I can't say that I
entirely understand how they did it. But the site claims to have
assembled the list using the best-of lists from "1,193 critics,
reviewers, scholars, filmmakers and other likely film types" and
admits to using "some rather tricky formulas" to arrive at their
final list.
They revise the list every six months or so, as they acquire new
best-of lists. So the top 1000 are always changing - between August
2005 and March 2006, for example, 70 films were dropped from the list
and 70 new films added.
The top and the bottom as of March 2006:
1 Citizen Kane
2 Rules of the Game
3 Vertigo
4 2001: A Space Odyssey
5 8½
6 The Seven Samurai
7 The Godfather
8 The Searchers
9 Tokyo Story
10 Singin' in the Rain
991 Port of Shadows
992 Arsenal
993 Before the Revolution
994 Night Moves
995 The End of St. Petersburg
996 Rope
997 The Royal Tenenbaums
998 What's Opera, Doc?
999 The Petrified Forest
1000 The Docks of New York
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