Poets' Favorite Movies
John Allman
The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
Blade Runner (1982)
The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
The Hunger (1983)
Jacob's Ladder (1990)
Ride the Pink Horse (1947)
The Seventh Seal (1957)
The Third Man (1949)
Twelve O'Clock High (1949)
Young Frankenstein (1974)
"I taught science fiction for over ten years and
loved it. Mainstream critics, I discovered, do rather poorly in
evaluating most SF movies. They get put off by the slime factor—but
that's what a lot of SF does—it gets real physical. They bombed what is
now a classic, Blade Runner. They couldn't stand the remake of
The Thing, which was truly close to the John W. Campbell's original story,
"Who Goes There?" because the effects were so "disgusting." Get over
it! I'll tell you what's disgusting. The lack of visual press coverage
of the coffins and bags of body parts being sent home from Iraq. Photos
of the disfigured wounded. Bush's grin—now, that's really disgusting.
"If I had to list war movies, I'd certainly list
Platoon.
"I also liked All That Jazz quite a bit. Love
allegory or symbolism when it's well done. Though in this area, the
silliest movie I ever saw must be Incubus (1966), with everyone speaking
in Esperanto, with William Shatner. I laugh at it, but I and Eileen and
her niece and niece's husband were trying to speak Esperanto all the
next day.
"I still remember when I lived in the East Village
in NYC, in 1959, walking in on The Seventh Seal, having no idea what the
movie was. The whole world was in black-and-white for days after."
John Allman’s previous books of poetry
and fiction from New Directions are Curve Away from Stillness:
Science Poems (1989), Scenarios for a Mixed Landscape
(1986), Clio’s Children (1985), and Descending Fire &
Other Stories (1994). His poems have appeared in The Yale
Review, 5 AM, Crazyhorse, North Dakota
Quarterly, Kestrel, Michigan Quarterly Review, and
Full Circle. He has twice been awarded a National Endowment
of the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry. His forthcoming
collection of poems, also from New Directions, is called
Lowcountry.
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