Last week's Movie Quiz winners

Some good comments this week about the film and its cast. Regarding the latter: "Damn, is it just me or does Annabella Sciorra look just like Laurie Anderson in that first photo." "Lili Taylor was so good in this that I forgot until now that it had Christopher Walken in it, too!" And regarding the former: "That would be The Addiction, as in, 'I'm addicted to playing the Monday Movie Quiz.'" (Thanks!)

Lili Taylor was very good in Abel Ferrara's 1995 black-and-white philosophical vampire film as a grad student who's infected with "the addiction." (And name another existential vampire movie produced by Russell Simmons!) As reviewer Hal Hinson wrote at the time, "Ferrara uses vampirism as a metaphor for AIDS, drug addiction and all sorts of worldly evils."

(By and large, the critics loved this movie, and in the 2002 Sight and Sound poll, the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw, one of my favorites, named The Addiction as the best movie of all time!)

It's a dark movie in all kinds of ways. The look of it is perfect-- Ferrara made New York look like an urban Transylvania filled with dark alleys. It would have been lost in color, of course, and the richness-- and creepiness-- of the black-and-white cinematography actually makes the bloody scenes even more disturbing.

And speaking of disturbing, of course, there's this guy:

Although Christopher Walken is only in one scene, it's the best part of the movie. It also gives him a great Walken line: "The entire world's a graveyard, and we, the birds of prey picking at the bones." (There is a youtube of his best speech, but alas, it's poor quality.)

Also in small roles were Michael Imperioli (Christopher in The Sopranos), playing a street missionary and his series co-star, Edie Falco as Lili's classmate. Here's Carmella getting introduced to the joys of vampirism:

I thought this quiz would be tougher than most, but apparently not, so congratulations and a meal with Chris Walken to all these astute cinephiles: Wayne Palmer, Letra Minuscula, Nancy Louise Rutherford, TMiss, Michael Mattson, Shannon M. Quinlan, Dave Mallow, Bob Redwing, Christina O'Sullivan, Thomas Miller, Bill Hearne, Denny Lynch, Mojo Marshall, Song-Un Lee, John Middleton, Kevin Musolino, Vince Tuss, E. Yarber, and Paul Rignell.

(Send Steve an email at couchpundit@yahoo.com.)