So….some rather sad news here in Moviecycle. Our beloved manager Jeremy is no longer working here. We will miss him so much! As will MANY of our customers who grew to love Mr. Crankypants. We wish him the best of luck in his future endeavors and hope he knows how much he was valued as a boss and as a super cool person.

In other news, the owner Tom has stepped in to fill some shifts and see how his little business works from the front lines.  Welcome Tom to the neighborhood and let him and the rest of us know how we can make Moviecycle become a Market street must-stop-in-and-buy kind of place! Suggestions are welcome!

Here’s to the future!

It was time to change up a couple of shelves on the great Wall O’ Cool, so I began to wander the store and see what movies popped out at me. I hoped that through this process a theme would form.

The first title that caught my eye was Wonder Boys. One of my favorite movies, it stars Michael Douglas as Professor Grady Tripp, a college professor and has-been writer who is having a very bad weekend. His third wife leaves him, his crazy editor wants his long-awaited but still unfinished novel, his married mistress finds out she’s pregnant, and two students with their own issues add into the mix. The movie co-stars Robert Downey, Jr., Tobey Maguire, Frances McDormand and Katie Holmes. Brilliant writing.

So I found my first film….what is the theme?

Crazy teachers.

So I grabbed Dead Poet’s Society, with Robin Williams daring to have individual thought at a boy’s prep school in the 1950’s. He is manic, strange and pisses off all the stuffed shirts by teaching everyone to “seize the day.”

Half Nelson stars Ryan Gosling as an inner city high school history teacher who befriends one of his students after she catches him doing drugs. The story is dark and strange, but the acting is excellent.

Since I didn’t want to much seriousness with this crazy teacher bit, I grabbed Art School Confidential with John Malkovich playing Professor Sandiford, a pompous art teacher who starts his class by telling everyone they should have become bankers.

Charlie Bartlett is about a boy who learns to fit in to public school after being booted by a bunch of private schools. His principal is Mr. Gardner (Robert Downey, Jr.), an educator who has lost faith in the system.

Also in the humorous department, we have Orange County, a film that has quite a few psycho educators. Lily Tomlin, Chevy Chase, Harold Ramis, Kevin Kline and my favorite, Mike White, who has some great insight on Shakespeare.

Notes on a Scandal stars Judi Dench as a teacher whose whacked out mind decides she needs to punish the new art teacher (Cate Blanchett) because of a tiny indiscretion involving an affair with a student. Don’t cross the scary old lady…

Lastly is Kinsey, the story of Alfred Kinsey, a biology professor who decides to investigate human sexuality and write the definitive study on it. I can’t decide whether he would be a cool science teacher whose honesty would be refreshing, or just a skeevy old guy who wants to know what’s going on behind closed doors. Good film though!

So that is my theme. I am sure we have a bunch more films that have super bizarre teachers, but 5000 titles is a lot to look through!

Boy oh Boy! Nothing says “Beautiful Saturday in Ballard” like murder and suspense! But that’s what you get when tasteless punks like Alfred Hitchcock enter the game, making their slimy, filthy no good trashy, you know… It’s almost like he’s trying to get the audience on the edge of their seats… Who would do such a thing!? Well, we’re going to put some of Hitchcock’s most famous films on our Wall O’ Cool so we can get such horrors out of our store before it’s… too late…. muahahahahaha

The Birds This 1963 classic has Tippi Hedren playing Melanie Daniels, a blonde with nothing much going on until a gagillion birds flock into town and attack the townspeople. What else needs to be said about The Birds?

Frenzy This later Hitchcock from 1972 takes place in London, where the Necktie Murderer is taking victims left and right. Sounds pretty bad, until you realize the police also have an innocent suspect in jail, who now must find a way to elude the law and prove his innocence!

The Man Who Knew Too Much Released in 1965, big Brass Actors James Stewart and Doris Day play innocent Americans vacay-ing in Morocco with their son, Hank, who gets kidnapped and taken to England. How they gonna get him back!?

Psycho Not many people have heard of this 1960 flick starring everyone’s favorite, Anthony Perkins, as crazy son Norman Bates. Somethings up with his mom, too…

Rope Released in 1948 and starring James Stewart, Rope deals with two young men who up and decide to strangle their classmate, hide his body in the closet, and have a dinner party. Crazy kids…

Torn Curtain This 1966 flick stars Paul Newman and Julie Andrews as a couple dealing with international espionage and deception after a trip to Copenhagen leads to Paul’s mysterious defection to East Germany. What’s up with that?

The Trouble with Harry Hitchy dives into some comedy with this 1955 film, but dont worry, it still has plenty of death. Basically, a bunch of people keep running into a corpse and don’t know what to do. Hilarity ensues.

Vertigo James Stewart is back in this 1958 romper which deals with an acnophobic detective hired to investigate a friend’s apparently suicidal wife. Doesn’t he have enough on his plate as it is!?