The Moviegoer, Part III: May - June 2009

This is Part 3 in our 6-part series of documenting the entertainments I have consumed in 2009! Here's what I have watched over the last two months:

63. Rached Getting Married: A
64. Torn Curtain: B
65. Real Life: A+
66. Forbidden Planet: A-
67. Star Trek: B+
68. My Neighbor Totoro: A+
69. Mon Oncle Antoine: B+
70. Salesman: A
71. Milk: B+
72. Role Models: B+
73. Fast, Cheap & Out Of Control: A-
74. Up: A
75. She Wore A Yellow Ribbon: B+
76. Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey: B+
77. Hour Of The Wolf: B
78. Directed By John Ford: B
79. Castle In The Sky: A
80. Fury: B+
81. After The Thin Man: B+

I also finished reading Rick Perlstein's Nixonland, a book that I started last fall and had to return to its owner just as Nixon was elected President at the halfway point. I found a copy used and put all else on hold while I read it. And read it. And read it. Either I've gotten to be a much slower reader or that was a seriously long book. But it didn't read like a seriously long book. In fact, time seemed to breeze away while I was reading it. It has the breathlessness of a political thriller, which, in some ways, it is. Highly recommended.

Having finished Nixonland, I turned my reading attention back to Faulkner's The Hamlet, which I was enjoying before I interrupted to re-read and finish Nixonland. I'd never read this one before (well, bits and pieces that showed up as short stories in some classes), but it's quickly becoming a favorite. Faulkner's clearly having a lot of fun. The subject matter isn't as weighty as any of the Compson books or Go Down, Moses, but the writing is gorgeous, and Faulkner's intellect and keen sense of story keeps it humming along at a good clip.

After this, I have a few other books piled up to read, but I'm especially looking forward to Jeff Roesgen's 33 1/3 book on the Pogues' Rum, Sodomy, and The Lash and William Bolitho's Murder For Profit, an out-of-print book from the 20s about serial killers that came highly recommended by Leonard Pierce.