By Leo Racicot

The Lady from Shanghai - 1947 – dir. Orson Welles

On the list of favorite movies my mind’s Rolodex holds, The Lady from Shanghai has always had a special place. It was a treat seeing it again after all these years, not only because it is a good movie but because the last time I saw it, I was a college student at one of the weekly film viewings our Student Union Association ran in the school cafeteria. Every Friday evening, all tables and chairs would be cleared
from the dining hall, a rickety screen was erected in front of the cafeteria kitchen and we students would be left perfectly content to belly down on the floor or sit Indian-style, sipping Boone’s Apple Farm or Blue Nun from Dixie cups.  The lights would go down, leaving us in the dark with Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Rita Hayworth.  I remember most the girls cuddled up against the walls or each other psyched for a night of nicotine (those were the days when you could still smoke in campus buildings), gossip and movie goddesses from the 30s and 40s.  To me, they were not half-a-sleepy co-eds wrapped in blankets and pillows dragged over from their dorms but secret Rita Hayworths dreaming they were, or could some day be, as steamy and as sultry as she was, as defiant as she was, as immortal as she was. That is what movie stars do for us; they keep us alive and dreaming.  Seeing a movie we have seen before in our long ago past resurrects memories not only of that movie but of who we were and where we were when we first saw it. A movie is a mirror of itself but also a mirror of Time
and of us.  And so it is for me with The Lady from Shanghai...
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By Jack Sinclair

Rango – 2011 – dir. Gore Verbinski

In preparation to play an exaggerated, though realistic, portrayal of Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, Johnny Depp spent several months living in Thompson’s basement looking through the writings and mementos from the drug filled adventure that became the book “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas“. Depp was also studying his mannerisms, he wanted to bring the whole aura of Thompson, with the guns, the drugs, and more, to life. When the film adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas came out, Depp received a lot of positive reviews for the way that he accurately portrayed the larger than life persona of Thompson. In the years since Fear and Loathing, Depp has found various ways to pay tribute to the man that let him into his home. When Thompson died in 2005, Depp paid for the outlandish funeral party. He also narrated the Alex Gibney 2008 documentary, Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Depp has even stated that Thompson was part of his influence for the character of Captain Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean films.  In 2011, Depp ventured into the animated Wild West in the form of a chameleon, in the popular film Rango. Though the character is animated, as well as a reptile, one can see that Depp intended the unnamed chameleon to be a tribute to the author.

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By Adam Shalvey

Drive – 2011 – dir. Nicholas Winding Refn

Driver is a quiet, sometimes menacing, often violent, but ultimately gold-hearted stunt-and-getaway-driver, and we don’t know much else about him in Nicholas Winding Refn’s beautiful 2011 film Drive. But, in James Sallis’ “Drive,” the 2005 novel on which Hossein Amini based his screenplay for Mr. Refn’s film, we are given the shorthand of his genesis, and more depth into the carnage he consistently leaves in his wake.
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By Jack Sinclair

Midnight in Paris – 2011 – dir. Woody Allen

Nostalgia comes from a combination of two Greek words: “nóstos” meaning homecoming and “álgos” meaning pain or ache. Woody Allen must have felt this familiar ache while writing and directing Midnight in Paris, as the film’s lingering shots of the beautiful City of Lights suggest he may too dream of coming home to Paris.

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