lists

So, I’ve re-thought the whole “Lists page” thing. Perhaps once I’ve really composed that many lists, then it’ll seem more appropriate to gather them all together on their own page. On top of that, my second list is of my favorite movies, which presents me with a two-part dilemma: 1) I can’t bring myself to just list movie titles without writing anything about why I love them so much, and 2) this being the age of YouTube, I can’t resist including choice clips from the films. Chalk it up to the “because it’s there” syndrome.

You’ll notice that I’m listing them in alphabetical order - no way am I going to get hierarchical with this set of movies. It could only lead to hurt feelings between them, and we don’t want that. Thus, we’ll start with the letter “A”:

All That Jazz
(1979) With Roy Scheider, Jessica Lange, Ann Reinking, and Ben Vereen; written by Robert Alan Arthur and Bob Fosse; directed by Bob Fosse

Bob Fosse’s masterpiece isn’t merely a self-portrait: it’s a self-referendum, so revealing that it feels like an act of penance. One imagines that by surviving for another eight years after the film’s release, Fosse surprised himself. All That Jazz is fraught with an confessional urgency, as though his eventual death of a heart attack at age 60 were actually right around the corner - or indeed, already past. The film establishes a netherworld meeting between Fosse alter ego Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider) and a dulcet-voiced Angel of Death (Jessica Lange), and from there refers back to Gideon’s earthly life of deeds and misdeeds.

In this clip, Joe Gideon’s latest movie has just flopped disastrously at its first screening, so his girlfriend (Ann Reinking) and his daughter (real-life daughter Nicole FosseErzsebet Foldi) have put together a dance number to cheer him up. Notice the subsequent montage of Joe’s “getting ready in the morning” routine, which we’ve seen earlier in the film once or twice - but this time the cracks are showing, particularly in Joe’s rendition of his formerly jaunty motto “It’s showtime, folks!”

Bob Fosse’s early triumphs (The Pajama Game, Damn Yankees, etc) contained little of the somber cynicism would characterize his mature works (Cabaret, Pippin, Lenny, et al.). Significantly, it is the opening number of Fosse’s 1975 show Chicago - the cheeky vaudevillian tale of nihilism and murder - that is echoed in this film’s title. The “jazz” of Fosse parlance doesn’t simply refer to the so-named genre of American music, but rather to a broader type of expressive distortion. Jazz is the spiky prism through which the plain nature of things is twisted and refracted. Through the Fosse oeuvre, “jazz” variously is used as a euphemism for sex, greed, dance, music, alcohol, drugs, and so on. Jazz is everything fun, naughty and a bit dangerous, the stuff we all like a little more than we’re willing to admit. All of us, that is, except for Bob Fosse, who was perfectly willing to admit just how jazzy he was.

When I was a kid I would read and re-read the two or three volumes then in circulation of The Book of Lists, a repository of trivia compiled by the producers of The People’s Almanac. Thus began my career as a walking archive of mostly useless information. The books did, however, establish in me an early appreciation for lists which may now finally pay off: many respected authorities in the field of blogging have advised that lists are a device which tends to enhance blog readership.

I’ve started a new category here at C&B, cryptically titled “Lists.” Some of the lists will be ordered, some will be unordered, and some will be not what you ordered. Maybe at some point if I get really fancy with it, some of them may even have items AND sub-items! If you want to see all of the lists together on one page… well, for the moment just click on the “Lists” category (or tag, once I either get UTW to work again or switch plugins… if you have no idea what I’m talking about, just ignore this). My grand visions of this blog’s future will have a much cooler solution, but for now yadda yadda yadda. Without further ado, here’s my inaugural list:

They’ve actually had these in the seasonal candy display at Ralph’s for the last couple of Easters, and every year I still can’t believe it.

I only know one way to process something like this, which is to see how many one-liners I can come up with about it. This time, it turns out that I can come up with ten:

• “Passion of the Christ action figures sold separately.”
• “Because eating a chocolate bunny just feels so pagan.”
• “Yeah, I want my money back - I hung it from my rear view mirror, and the damn thing melted.”
• “You can’t have the feast of the Resurrection without dessert!”
• “It’s most valuable if you leave it in the original packaging.”
• “Again I turn to the wisdom of Homer Simpson, who said: ‘Mmm… sacrelicious.’”
• “I’m gonna shoulder up that cross and bear it all the way to my tummy.”
• “Where’s the little marzipan Jesus?”
• “Never before has religious iconography been so tasty!”
• “Sean, this is not an acceptable alternative for a communion wafer.”