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Queue Tips: Twisted Romance

By Rob Christopher in Arts & Entertainment on Feb 14, 2008 3:50PM

Valentine's Day is nothing but a pre-fab holiday designed to get consumers to spend money on crap for each other ... especially if you're single. Instead of battling the hordes for a good table at a restaurant this evening, why not just order out from Art of Pizza, rent a movie and enjoy a few hours of twisted romance with one of these:

2008_2vdaymovies.jpg 1. Rear Window [directed by Alfred Hitchcock]
"Every man's ready for marriage when the right girl comes along. And Lisa Fremont is the right girl for any man with half a brain who can get one eye open." Grace Kelly, as Lisa, has never been lovelier and Jimmy Stewart has never been sharper. They make an awesome team; and with insurance company nurse Thelma Ritter around to crack wise, you've got a movie with more sparks than your average diesel engine. A little neighborhood murder, courtesy of sinister traveling salesman Raymond Burr, only heightens the romance.

2. That Obscure Object of Desire [directed by Luis Buñuel]
"Don’t celebrate your victory too soon!" Think you've got problems? How about being infatuated with a woman who seems to be two different people, one a flirtatious Latin dancer and the other a coldhearted French beauty? In fact Buñuel used two different actresses to play the role, alternating them from scene to scene. Allegedly after a screening at an American college several students were heard to comment, "There was something very strange about that girl." Highly recommended for V-Day viewing if you're single.

3. Wild At Heart [directed by David Lynch]
"Love is wild at heart and weird on top." From that brief moment when Nicholas Cage was still making interesting movies, this wacked-out Lynch road trip through hell features plenty of sex, a ton of violence, and obsessively references The Wizard of Oz every chance it gets. We've always been partial to the soundtrack. Metal band Powermad shares space with Glenn Miller, Chicago blues queen Koko Taylor and Nicolas Cage himself doing Elvis songs.