Yeah that scene really elevated the movie from interesting to oh my god this is incredible status. I bet it's better on rewatch.

All the other stuff is greatly elevated when rewatched too. It's a movie that's easily worth rewatching every few years.

I figured as much. Will wait a while and check it out again. Some movies I like to check out again immediately, over and over, but this is one that needs some time.

That's it, putting Paris, Texas in my queue ASAP.

I've been to the west bank in the actual Paris, TX. Cashed a check there.

I saw Paris, Texas and Betty Blue on the same day, right around 1986 or '87.

That was a fine day of film for me.

Paris, Texas is Wenders' best film, hands-down. It goes way past sad to something else. Maybe sad isn't right.

American?

The thing is, a lot of what explains Stanton's character and actions and appearance comes out in the final scene. So when you watch it the second time, understanding better what it's all about, all the earlier scenes make more sense and take on a lot more resonance.

It's a difficult way to emotionally structure a movie, and demands a fair amount of the viewer's sympathies and willingness to let a mystery ride and trust the movie's emotions right up front. That's not something we are typically asked to do, especially not for long, so it's a difficult movie that might seem a bit scattershot at first. But that last bit brings it all together and validates everything that came before it really well. Then if you watch it again, the earlier parts will have gained some dimension and overall power that it might have been common to miss the first time around.

Wim Wenders has always had an interesting relationship with America, from American Friend, to Paris, Texas, to Kings of the Road. Then again, America has always been powerfully symbolic to the rest of the world. Some of the most popular books in the late 19th and early 20th century in Germany and the rest of Europe were westerns written by Germans and other Europeans, the most popular of which was a fellow who never even visited the Arizona he wrote of. A land that still had frontiers is a powerful metaphor, and even more so to peoples that had run out of frontiers long ago and whose next frontiers seemed to lie only in more futile and devastatingly self-destructive wars as their civilizations consumed themselves. Yet, a frontier is a hard answer that can be all promise and no delivery. People die on frontiers. America is a land where people are free to dream themselves to death. Yet in that very hollowness at the core of American life is the possibility of redemption. And even in those worst and most lonely possibilities lies the chance that death will not follow its usual patterns, mutely and patiently waited for. If you walk into the sun and never come back, at least you are making the choice. No king is making it for you. In the history of the world, that is a rare freedom as well as a peculiarly compelling terror. Wenders can't seem to take his eyes off America, but I think he understands its costs.

Watched The Lost Paradise, the movie about the West Memphis Three that got life sentences for a crime they (may not have) committed.

It's our film club film this month for the high school. I am definitely going to the discussion tomorrow (even though I'm not running it) to see what the kids thought.

I really wanted to punch the one kid in the face that testified against the others. He just seethed of being full of ****. I mean, I don't know if the kids did it or not, but that guy is a p.o.s.

AHhhh, I wish I knew that before. Hopefully they re-air it.

How was it?

I've watched two parts and it's damn good

Watched this one tonight. Wow. This one really impressed me. I think it's because of how ridiculously villainous Sharpe Jones comes off. Between Sharpe Jones and Billy Mitchell, I am getting some amazing baddies from these documentaries.

I have really enjoyed:

Street Fight
King of Kong
Maxed Out
Paradise Lost

I was okay on:

This Film is not yet Rated

Preeeeetty sure the five docs I've watched in like a week is more than I'd watched in my life.

Looking forward to others recommended. I might try Man on Wire next.

There aren't many docs I consider truly great cinema. And all of them that are basically directed by Herzog.

Watched 2/3 of the Nat Geo doc of Guns, Germs and Steel. Extremely repetitive. The first episode was good, but they kept repeating the damn title like a goddamn mantra and it got grating as hell. By the time I got through the 2nd of the 3 episodes I couldn't take it anymore. Also, there were long and not very productive digressions. I didn't see the 3rd one, but watch the first one and you're done, IMO.

I'm watching Almost Famous on TCM right now, finding it cloying as ever. And I want to stab Kate Hudson.

It's got a good spirit behind the crap though. It's not worthless. It does a good job of capturing the excitement of youthful discovery, but it paints it all with a sick treacly patina of goo than ruins too much.