Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Hollywood Forever: Cemeteries in the Cinema

Willamette National


We’re going with a lagniappe here. Last week in a two-day binge I visited twenty-one cemeteries in Southwestern Washington. It was a somewhat unsettling experience.

Think of it this way. You’ve lived next-door to this girl forever. Decades. You always thought of her as a bit frumpy, didn’t put her best foot forward, and didn’t go out of her way to be friendly. You’d wave when you saw her in her yard and you’d say “Hi” at block parties, but let’s face it, you ran with different crowds.

Until once you were stuck with her for a couple days volunteering to work a table at the neighborhood fair. You ended out going out for pizza together and — bingo — you fell in love. Holy Christmas, how did that happen?

That’s me and Washington. You can’t say anything nice about Washington, if you live in Oregon. Same goes for California, but more so. So, to discover after a two day run along the shore and through the coastal mountains of our neighboring state that I was in love with her was, indeed, unsettling. Don’t tell my friends, eh?

What it means is that I’m stuck in data entry land for the next week or more until I get all my pictures (543) uploaded and sorted. Blogging will just have to wait.

That’s where the lagniappe comes in: a little something to tide you over.

Lone Fir (Portland)


DeadManTalking Goes to the Movies


Almost a year ago I began making a list of movies with cemetery scenes in them. Kay and I had long since come to the conclusion that half the movies we saw had such scenes, so I stuck a card next to the video machine and started jotting down titles every time I saw a movie with a cemetery in it. That was last May. I’m not a movie fanatic, but I probably see one a week on average, maybe a bit more. Here’s what I came up with. I’d be delighted if you’d pad the list.

El Alamein
Little Miss Sunshine
Volver
Babel
Les choristes
Innocence
Enter the Dragon
800 Bullets
Pan’s Labyrinth
Cross My Heart and Hope to Die
The Wicker Man
Piñero
Hot Fuzz
The Contract
Shaka Zulu
Thoth
The Lives of Others
A Time to Kill
Under Suspicion
Eastern Promises
Déja vu
Paris, je t’aime
Lonely Hearts
No Country for Old Men
After The Wedding
Mr. Brooks
Sweet Land
3:10 to Yuma
Across the Universe
Texas Rangers
Ratatouille
We Own the Night
Magnificent Seven
Gone, Baby, Gone

Gethsemani Catholic

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