Seeing as our fair country is in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, I picked the film PAPER MOON, about two con artists grifting during the depression, as my first cinema pick of the week. This 1973 film by Peter Bogdanovich breaks a personal cinema rule I have and gets away with it. I hate when movies are shot in black and white just to give an "old timey" feel. It's so gimmicky and cheesy. I have always felt color equals a specific time and place. So use it in historical films. If filmmaker(s) are making a movie that is symbolic or about another world or unreal place, black and white can work. But in period pieces, it usually is just a gimmick. But Paper Moon gets away with it!
And Tatum O'Neal as Addie Loggins is amazing. I saw this film at age five and instantly fell in love with Tatum. Ever since then, tomboys in overalls do it for me.
This film also seems appropriate because even though it deals with a pair of grifters; their crimes seem less than those bankers who just got almost a TRILLION dollars in bail out "loans" from us taxpayers.
And the grifters in this movie are trying to stick together in hard times, which we need to do in trying times like the ones we face today.
And the last shot in this movie is one of the best last shots in cinema.
Hopefully Mr. Obama can make things better so we all don't have to go out and grift.
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