Movies You're Dying to See

This is a quick in-and-out.

Ha! You thought I was dead. Unless, of course, you follow me on Flickr. I'm still putting up pictures. I haven't been doing much writing of late, but that may change as a publisher has come sniffing. In the meantime, a resumption of a couple columns I did in the past listing movies containing cemetery scenes. This edition of the list starts a little over two years ago and is in the order of seeing them, oldest at the top. The most recent movie on the list, The Sicilian Girl, has an extensive night scene in a cemetery beautifully lit by candles.

Transsiberian
The Woodsman
The Edge of Heaven
Moving Midway
Twilight Samurai
Genghis Blues
Tailor of Panama
Walt with Bashur
Sin Nombre
The Last Enemy
Cherry Blossoms
Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Unstrung Heroes
Bus 174
The Bad Lieutenant: New Orleans
Eyes without a Face
Young and the Dead
Never Forever
Cloud Nine
Lilian's Story
Paris
Shutter Island
Amores Perros
On a Clear Day
Common Ground
Lars and the Real Girl
Winter's Bones
Metal: A Headbanger's Journey
As In Heaven
Thin Red Line
Welcome
Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia
The Parking Lot Movie
The Girl Who Played with Fire
Lomax: The Song Hunter
Jar City
Welcome to the Rileys
The Tillman Story
Which Way Home
The Sicilian Girl

Break out the popcorn!

Hollywood Forever Redux

A little over a year ago, April 9, 2008 to be exact, I ran a column—regulars will remember it well, I'm sure—listing movies I'd seen the previous year that contained at least one cemetery scene. It was so easy, I did it again: kept another list.

Who said dying wasn't chic?

The List

Brave One
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
The Real Dirt on Farmer John
Harold and Maude
Gates of Heaven
Down by Law
I'm Not There
Charlie Wilson's War
The Prestige
The Kite Runner
Things We Lost in the Fire
Under the Sand
When the Levees Broke
Simple Life of Noah Dearborn
I am David
Goodnight, Mr. Tom
Lemony Snicket's a Series of Unfortunate Events
Wag the Dog
Taxi to the Dark Side
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
King Corn
Sounder
Ocean's Twelve
The Reader
Kinky Boot Factory

Go now to a cinema and ponder.

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