Staring Contest

Very nice. For Criterion, I see.

The ever-approaching girl with glasses at 0:25 is even scarier than Norman Bates.

Never could get on with Psycho (or Vertigo for that matter). The music for the shower scene was the most impressive thing about it, for me. The psychological explanation at the end was too silly.
But Rear Window is really splendid – loved the reconstruction!

David – “am I alone in thinking the first half of Psycho is its best part?”
Nope. So say we all.
And the less said about the sequels (and the gratuitous remake with Vince Vaughn) the better. I think they only bothered making sequels so the betamax copies of C.H.U.D. and Ghoulies 2 wouldn’t feel so lonely in their dusty corner of the video shop.
Rear Window is brilliant.
I liked Jimmy Stewart a lot, but I could never figure out how his character got a girl like Grace Kelly. She seemed to glide into that film from another movie, one where everyone is eternally young and effortlessly beautiful. Perhaps the land of the Eloi from The Time Machine.
Stewart, with his stammering drawl, greying hair and bombardier’s eyes, looked like he should be playing her uncle.
Raymond Burr was wonderfully cast. He doesn’t get much screen time, but he doesn’t need to – his meaty frame casts a shadow and a threat over the rest of the picture. When you see his blank, remorseless stare, you feel no doubt that this man could kill you.
And he wouldn’t need to dress up as his mother and catch you off guard to do it.

Kids today won’t believe that there were once video stores neatly divided into VHS on one side and Betamax on the other. Then one day, it changed. The VHS side magically began to grow and as walls don’t expand much, the Betamax side shrank away.
Some people I know who had been given a Betamax player were mortified, but increasingly were alone.