Reminder! HTMLGIANT Meetup: “Two-Lane Blacktop” (Chicago)
Warren Oates, Dennis Wilson, Laurie Bird, and James Taylor in "Two-Lane Blacktop."
This weekend (October 8th & 9th), Chicago’s Music Box Theatre is screening Monte Hellman and Rudy Wurlitzer‘s 1971 masterpiece Two-Lane Blacktop. Long overlooked, Two-Lane has for the past five years or so been enjoying a critical renaissance, and is increasingly regarded as one of the greatest films of the ’70s. (Click here to read some of my own thoughts on it.) And right now is an especially opportune time to see it, what with its grandchild Drive currently killing things in theaters.
There are two screenings, one Saturday, one Sunday, each at 11:30 AM. I’ll be attending the Saturday 11:30 AM show. Anyone care to join me? The movie is 102 minutes long and I was thinking we could grab a coffee afterward, before peeling out onto our nation’s highways.
(Yes, Two-Lane Blacktop really does star James Taylor and Dennis Wilson—in their only film roles! No, they don’t sing, nor is any of their music used in the movie. Yes, they’re both incredible—though it’s Oates who really steals the show.)
… And here’s Chicago Reader contributor Ben Sachs’s Cine-File write-up:
HTMLGIANT Meetup: “Two-Lane Blacktop” (Chicago)
Warren Oates, Dennis Wilson, Laurie Bird, and James Taylor in "Two-Lane Blacktop."
This coming weekend (October 8th & 9th), Chicago’s Music Box Theatre is screening Monte Hellman and Rudy Wurlitzer‘s 1971 masterpiece Two-Lane Blacktop. Long overlooked, Two-Lane has for the past five years or so been enjoying a critical renaissance, and is increasingly regarded as one of the greatest films of the ’70s. (Click here to read some of my own thoughts on it.) And right now is an especially opportune time to see it, what with its grandchild Drive currently killing things in theaters.
There are two screenings, one Saturday, one Sunday, each at 11:30 AM. I’ll be attending the Saturday 11:30 AM show. Anyone care to join me? The movie is 102 minutes long and I was thinking we could grab a coffee afterward, before peeling off onto our nation’s highways.
(Yes, Two-Lane Blacktop really does star James Taylor and Dennis Wilson—in their only film roles! No, they don’t sing, nor is any of their music used in the movie. Yes, they’re both incredible—though it’s Oates who really steals the show.)
DRIVE
You’ve probably heard by now that Drive is very, very good. That’s because Drive is very, very good. Indeed, it’s about as good as a Hollywood film can be these days—it even bears comparison with the great B-movies of the late ’70s / early ’80s, which supposedly went extinct when Hollywood transformed itself into a industry of nothing but A-movies. (Box Office Mojo lists Drive’s production budget as $15 million, which is half as much as Woody Allen’s most recent film.)
After the jump is a spoiler-free list of ten things that I loved about the film.
Ken Baumann—
Monte Hellman, the brilliant director of Two-Lane Blacktop, has made a new movie. He says: “While I love making things as realistic as possible, I’m interested in stories that are a little more surreal. I’ve always been drawn to, say, what Alain Resnais did in ‘Last Year at Marienbad,’ where there’s a kind of puzzle going on. I love to play with the idea of complex reality and mixing memory with present time and the whole idea of reality versus fantasy. So this is a dream project for me.” If you haven’t seen Monte’s movies, do. And in the book world: Richard Nash, ex-kingpin of Soft Skull and current seer, gives some details on his new startup publishing community, Cursor. Read up on how he’s going to bust things up & build them better.
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