PAUL CLARK IS THANKFUL FOR:

BETTY BLUE (1986)



It would be a mistake for me to trace the birth of my love for movies to one film, and if I was foolish enough to do so, a better candidate would be something like Pulp Fiction. But while Tarantino pushed me down the road of cinephilia, I was still a sheltered suburban high schooler for whom subtitled movies were still, well, foreign. So I suppose it makes sense that my first experience with French cinema was motivated by the same factor that has led generations of curious moviegoers to the arthouses and dusty “foreign” shelves at the video store: sex. “Check this one out,” said the pierced twentysomething guy behind the counter to me and my pack of renting buds. “It’s French -- you know what that means.” And in the course of the evening, if anyone didn’t know what that meant, they would soon be educated. It wasn’t just the subtitles or the sexuality though -- Betty Blue introduced me to the sort of woman I’d never seen before in a movie. As played by Beatrice Dalle, Betty was a stark contrast to the teenage girls who mostly snubbed me throughout my high school years -- she was a feral life force, fiercely carnal, both sexy and more than a little scary. But even more than that, Betty Blue was the gateway drug that got me hooked on French cinema, leading me to Truffaut, Renoir, Godard, and all my auteurial pals. Not bad for a movie I watched primarily to see some tits.

BELLE DU JOUR (1967)



Every movie lover has that one movie that speaks to him in ways that defy explanation, and that causes him to cling to it and defend it like a lioness defends her cubs. For me, it’s Luis Bunuel’s late-period masterpiece. Why, you ask? Part of it is no doubt the eternal allure of Catherine Deneuve -- still my favorite actress and movie star -- in the role that practically defined her on- and offscreen persona from that point forward. But Deneuve aside, there’s the film itself, an enigmatic puzzle-box of dreams, fantasies and fetishes that refuses to let itself be pinned down. I must have watched Belle de Jour at least fifty times over the years, and each time something new pops out at me. For one thing, it gets a whole lot funnier the more you watch it, especially the scenes involving Deneuve and the ever-lecherous Michel Piccoli. But most of all, I guess I love how slippery the character of Severine is -- unlike most filmmakers, who boil down their characters to a handful of defining events and motivations, it’s never quite clear what drives Severine, and the extensive flashbacks and fantasy sequences bait us with the possibility of an answer before pushing us away again, confounding us. In the end, it’s nothing but a tease, but as any successful tease can tell you, that’s what keeps ‘em coming back for more.

THE SCARECROW (1920)

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If I have a favorite filmmaker, it’s Buster Keaton, whose films have brought me more pure pleasure than any other director’s. Of course, his features are magnificent -- especially The General, Sherlock Jr. and Seven Chances -- and the feature form allowed him to sustain his filmmaking brilliance in a way that has set an impossibly high bar for future generations (so far, only Tati has managed to vault it, though Jerry Lewis came close once or twice). However, for pure laughs, give me his short films any day. The lunacy of One Week and the athleticism of Neighbors have their defenders, but for me, it doesn’t get any better than The Scarecrow, which begins with an uproarious scene in a house filled with sight gags and just gets more blissfully inspired from there, wrapping up in a scant twenty minutes. There’s a reason why The Scarecrow has become my most dependable cinematic cure-all -- for me, no other movie can turn around a crappy day faster or more reliably than this one. But don’t take my word for it -- thanks to the magic of YouTube, the entire short can be viewed above.

THE FILMS OF DON HERTZFELDT



It was back in 2005 that I had my first Don Hertzfeldt experience. I headed to the local theatre to watch the first installment of The Animation Show, and sometime during the Hertzfeldt-directed introductory short -- probably around the “Egg!” “Egg!” “Flower!” “Egg!” bit -- it hit me like a slap in the face. “This guy is a stone cold genius,” I thought. And nothing I’ve seen since has dissuaded me from that opinion. Naturally, I love his early work -- the twisted angst of Ah, L’Amour, the tentative dating saga Lily and Jim, the gloriously sick joke of Billy’s Balloon. But Hertzfeldt, to his credit, has never rested on his laurels. Rejected is a blast to be sure -- nominating it for Best Animated Short has to be one of the coolest things the Academy has ever done -- but the incendiary chaos of its final minutes pointed the way to the more experimental films that were to come. And Hertzfeldt hasn’t looked back, first tackling The Meaning of Life, then turning inward with the profound, Raymond Carver-esque Everything Will Be OK. After seeing the latter film, I wrote, “against all odds, Hertzfeldt just gets deeper and better with every film. I'm almost afraid of his next movie.” I only hope that his latest, I Am So Proud of You, makes it to Columbus sooner rather than later to scare the proverbial pants off me.

THE COLUMBUS MOVIEGOING SCENE



For most Columbus residents, Ohio State football casts a long shadow over the local scene. Yet growing up in the suburbs has made me better-equipped to appreciate the city’s more cultured side. For one thing, where I grew up I had to drive for over an hour to attend a movie theatre that played subtitled films. So I’m thankful that I have several in town now, presenting me with a number of tantalizing cinematic possibilities. All right, so maybe we don’t get the artsy stuff until weeks or even months after it opens in New York City. And fine, our local arthouse situation has become somewhat tenuous of late (here’s hoping that the Grandview Theatre can re-emerge better than ever next spring). But by gum, there’s still a lot to love about going to movies in Columbus. There’s the Horror and Sci-Fi Marathons which I’ve written about on innumerable occasions, giving geeks from miles around a chance to converge on Cowtown twice a year. But most of all, there’s the Wexner Center, an invaluable resource to the artistically-minded moviegoer. Not only can I catch up on the latest works from the masters of world cinema, but the Wex also plays plenty of classics, both in its theatre (equipped with the city’s only working 70mm projector) and occasionally in the galleries, where I’ve recently been haunting the Warhol exhibition. I’m still waiting for the day when Columbus takes its rightful place as the Austin of the North, but until that happens, what we’ve got now will do quite nicely, thank you very much.

Click Here For More Thanks From Andrew Osborne, Scott Von Doviak, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce & Sarah Clyne Sundberg

Contributor: Paul Clark