Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Rating Game Redux (25): I Heart These 3

Just in time for that most romantic day of the year--that's right, February 12, the birthday of not only Abraham Lincoln but Cotton Mather, Lorne Greene, and Forrest Tucker--yet another "top" three list submitted to our local paper. A quick Tom Waits quote: "Life is a path lit only by / The light of those you've loved."



Lost in Translation (2003)

John Keats gets it right:
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
For an audio version, check out the Trembling Blue Stars’ song, “The Ghost of an Unkissed Kiss.”

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)

Despite its aggressively UN-romantic title, Fassbinder’s remake of two Douglas Sirk movies quietly submerges us into the ecstasy and agony of romance, as a late-middle-aged German woman and her younger Arab boyfriend face race and class antagonisms—and their own weaknesses—in their struggle to hold on to each other.

“The May-Erwin Kiss” (1896)

Eighteen seconds of kissing, at the dawn of projected motion pictures. “An osculatory performance” that has been repeated thousands of times, but you can see it here first.

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