Ken Russell's 9+1 and a book.

"Metropolis, Citizen Kane, La Belle et la Bête, Gone with the Wind, La Strada, Fantasia, The Red Shoes, A Night at the Opera, The 39 Steps and a surprise last choice." That's Ken Russell reeling off his top 9-plus-one in front of the class he teaches at Southampton University. He recounts his amusing justifications for each choice in the London Times, and of course, there's a nice twist at the end.

For the City Beat, Tim Lucas reviews Phallic Frenzy: Ken Russell and His Films: "The problem with [Joseph] Lanza's snaky approach to Russell's oeuvre is not that it's homosexual - a serious gay reading of such flamboyant and gay-friendly films would indeed be valuable - but that the buck generally stops there. This means that Lanza's discussion of the famous male nude wrestling scene from Women in Love (between Alan Bates and Oliver Reed) largely concerns gay love and willies and off-camera wanking to maintain continuity, though the real theme of the novel and film is the need felt by early 20th-century man, at the dawn of a dehumanizing Industrial Age, to balance one's increasingly 'mental' lifestyle with the sanity of sweat, exertion and oneness with all living things."

Posted by dwhudson at August 10, 2007 2:09 PM