Monday, January 15, 2007

Now Out on DVD...

Desire of Wings [Ausfahrt über Frankfort] (1990). 322 mins. Director: Wim Wenders. Cast: Harry Dean Stanton, Nastassja Kinski, Hunter Carson, Nel Carter, MC Hammer.

Widely-panned sequel to Wenders's masterpiece, Paris Texas. Stanton and his now-fully-grown son embark on a transcontinental odyssey in search of the perfect recipe for Buffalo wings. The real-time performance of Hammer, captured in his prime at a gig at a Kentucky barbecueria, is not to be missed. Rated NC17 for a highly graphic, Tabasco-saturated defecation scene.


Mr. Washington Goes to Smith (1968).

A male, afro-sporting incendiary matriculates at a notoriously androphobic girls' college and proceeds to convert the student body--or, rather, bodies--to the twin causes of heterosexuality and Black Power at one go. Somewhat understandably overshadowed by Guess Who's Coming to Dinner in the light of post-Stonewall-era backlash.


Black-Tie Breakfast (1991).

Huggable family flick often mentioned in the same breath as A Christmas Story. On retiring to 1930s Peoria, Illinois "for tax reasons," writer/junkie Guillermo Vilages is delighted to discover in the town's wholesome whitebread Stadtsgeist an-unhoped-for opportunity to shake off his jones once and for all. Nominated for an Oscar in the Best Special Effects category, chiefly on account of its exploitation of the then-novel digital morphing technology; as exemplified by such transformations as that of an ulcerated-anused cockroach into a typewriter, and an eight-foot-tall anthropomorphic maggot into a local schoolboy selling tickets to an apple-pie raffle.


Little Lamms Eat I. V. (1954).

Criminally neglected noir classic. Nuff said.