if you ever want to understand the debt crisis, ask the "Dude"

There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.
                                                                                                                       ~ Mark Twain

I don't know if I'm "rightly constructed" but I do have a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure. This desire has led me to watch (patiently straining my eyes over the subtitles) cinema from far flung corners of the world and more often than not led to the discovery of an absolute gem of a film (Failan, 101 Reykjavik, Black Cat, White Cat, The Match Factory Girl come to mind) but I have also come to realize that there's one more way to "dig for hidden treasure" - and that is to revisit the same old movies that we know so well and discovering that maybe we don't actually know them as much as we would like to. This post is about two of my favorite films that I have re-seen in the past week or so.

The Big Lebowski (1998) was the first one - I watched this over a 2 week period (10-15 min instalments) and I think this interrupted viewing really helped me in appreciating how significant this film really is. The first time I had watched it, I just came out feeling entertained and remembering the wonderful dialogues, but this viewing has made me see what I didn't earlier - this is an epic (as epic as Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Ben Hur)...I was so bloody keen on knowing what happens next even when I knew what happens next! - can people make more movies like that, please.









 

Buffalo 66 (1998) Vincent Gallo is an eccentric genius and and Christina Ricci is Christina Ricci is Christina Ricci...Christina Ricci is a the second most desirable woman in the world! So then, what does Vincent do? - he makes an intensely funny love story. Intensely funny is like a contradiction of sorts - humor is supposed to dissipate intensity - in this film, black humor provokes in the audience an intense feeling of empathy for the lead characters and Gallo never lets go of this "string of black, black jokes" keeping the story together approach. The camerawork is amazing - infact most of the film consists of one beautiful still after another..this is millions of posters strung together and one of the last ones - of Gallo walking across the street in bright red leather shoes is cinema heaven.

Trivia - Both these films were released in 1998 and for some obscene/obscure/arbitrary reason, the lead characters in both are passionate about BOWLING.