Some fluff and corporate whoring.

By Alison Willmore on 10/24/2006

The 50 Years of Janus Films box set comes out today — we feel dirty and corporate writing this, but it may actually come in handy to someone: The IFC store has 50 or so to sell, priced at $600, which is as far as we can tell the lowest price on the web. So if you're looking for that perfect something to impressively and "accidentally" strew across your coffee table when guests are over and to rest your microwaveable burrito on while watching "CSI: Miami" reruns the rest of the time, that would be the place to get it.

Movie City News reports that both CNN and National Public Radio are refusing to run ads for "Death of a President." The controversy! It's threatening to reach a low simmer!

Jasper Rees interviews Peter O'Toole in the Independent

In the end, he went to the Oscars anyway. “It was all right,” he says. “I enjoyed it, and my children were with me. The only thing that wasn’t enjoyable was in the green room. I said, ‘Can I have a drink?’ ‘We have lemon juice, apple juice, still or sparkling.’ I said, ‘No, I want a drink. No drink?’ I said, ‘All right, I’m f***ing off. I’ll be back.’ A man with earphones said, ‘No! No!’ Eventually, this vodka was smuggled in. I had to turn it in for a while and cut down considerably. I still like a drink.”

That would be 2003, the year he was given an honorary Oscar.

Also in the Independent, though a few days old, is a selection from Paul Wellings' 'Sex, Lines and Videotape: Famous film quotes.' It's a straightforward selection; we've always liked "Grow up Heather, bulimia's so '87" ourselves.

More memorable lines: Edward Copeland at The House Next Door was a carefully composed list of five great movie monologues.

Jacques Perreti at the Guardian:

So, I am lying comatose, Pinot Grigio'd into oblivion, watching the end credits of Richard Curtis's astounding-in-so-many-ways movie Notting Hill, on its 800th successive Film4 retread (and yes, I watched it every night, and no, there isn't anyone black in it, and yes, it does get better with each viewing), and suddenly it hits me. Hits me like a bison. Hits me like a train.

I sit bolt upright, sober. Jesus, I say to myself, this film isn't about Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant at all! It's about Madonna meeting Guy Ritchie.

Dennis Harvey at the San Francisco Bay Guardian revisits the pleasures of Dennis Hopper's "The Last Movie":

Who could make such a movie now? Might stars align again to permit such major-studio strangeness? Hard to imagine: The Fountain is nutty and navel-gazing but sentimental in a way Hopper's auto-excoriating wack-off abhors. All those lysergically and vaginally oversatiated months spent editing The Last Movie make it a stand as memorably bold — if ruinous — as Custer's.

Robert W. Welkos at the LA Times interviews Elisha Shapiro, founder of the Nihilist Film Festival. John Stanley at the San Francisco Chronicle interviews Cassandra Peterson, aka Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.

And Andrew Sarris quote of the week:

Ryan Murphy’s Running with Scissors, from his own screenplay, based on the personal memoir of Augusten Burroughs, struck me as one of the funniest movies I have seen this year—though that may just be me. I have a weakness for crazy people just this side of homicide and suicide...

Who doesn't, we ask you, who doesn't?

+ CNN, NPR Won’t Run Ads for “Death of a President” (MCN)
+ 'There's no one better for a dirty old man' (London Times)
+ Make my day: the best (and worst) lines in the history of film (Independent)
+ 5 for the Day: Monologues (The House Next Door)
+ Notting Hill - a film about Madonna and Guy (Guardian)
+ The Last Movie: Dennis on a plate (SF Bay Guardian)
+ Creating something from nihilism (LA Times)
+ SPEAKING OF DVDS: ELVIRA, MISTRESS OF THE DARK (SF Chronicle)
+ Curiously Timely Flags Is Ego-Lite, Except for Eastwood (NY Observer)