The Year in Motion

Each year, Sinterklass visits me on Boxing Day to remind me that I have once again failed to see one Normal Person movie in the past year. Quiz: Did you see a movie released in 2010 in 2010? Then you are a Normal Person.

I am not one of those writers who wants to impress you with the obscurity and inscrutability of the movies he views (one of which was in Kazakh, the other pieced together from celluloid found at the bottom of a trunk in an attic in Houghton, Michigan...). Mostly, I just take a long time to see things. I also rely on serendipity, and, more and more, my husband, to fling movies my way.

So here is a list of movies I saw in 2010. Needless to say, they are in no particular order.

Xanadu (1980): Despite the fact that this was the first movie I wanted to rent when we first bought our VCR in the early 1980s, I have only seen this movie once. That, many say, is twice too much. I was cleaning out my pile of media acquired from the book sale cart at the library, and decided to watch my VHS copy one more time before donating it back. You know, despite the lack of plot, crappy dialog, and completely unappealing leading man, it's not a bad movie. It has spunk -- and roller skating, and groovy light affects, and it features the now-demolished Deco Moderne masterpiece Pan-Pacific Auditorium. But I am still donating my tape, as I will wait for the Criterion Collection version.

Stranger than Paradise (1984): Did you know that in 1988 I wanted to study film at New York University? But, unlike everyone else who said the same thing that year, I was not influenced by Jim Jarmusch's first full-length film. No, I wanted to make movies like "Desperately Seeking Susan."

Les Mystères du Château du Dé (The Mysteries of the Château of Dice) (1929): From a collection called Avant Garde - Experimental Cinema of the 1920s & 1930s. A film by the artist Man Ray, who was kind of a proto-surrealist and experimented with photography and film. He projected images on living things (like women), exposed paper with objects on them (now a Photography 101 assignment) and worked with shadows, speed and splicing. Not so avant today, but think of Man Ray when you upload your You Tube of your cat playing the flute.

The House on Haunted Hill (1959): The only time I did venture into an actual movie theater this year was to see grown men make fun of an old movie. The guys at Riff Trax, one of the two spinoffs of Mystery Science Theater 3000, ripped this movie a new blowhole in October in what we used to call a "stereo simulcast" but we now just call "live."

The Films of Tom Palazzolo: My husband found these in the Art Institute of Chicago's Modern Wing, and we watched the whole cycle of four films now on display there. Two document obscure corners of Chicago life, but one, "Love It/Leave It" reminded me very much of Robert Altman's "Nashville." Palazzolo's film came first, and during a lecture in January where he will be featured, I may ask for his reaction to my observation. Palazzolo will be at the AIC, fittingly, on January 6. Epiphany!