Apartment

150 Best Apartment Ideas
$29.99
Packed full of beautiful photography and great ideas, this is the book I keep coming back to when I get the itch to redo a room or simply dream of future places. I seem to discover new things every time I look through it.

The Apartment
$14.98
The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960)

When the subject of the greatest director in American history comes up, the usual suspects come out of their holes with the usual assertions. When you look at thousand-best-movie lists and narrow them down to movies made in America, the same two names pop up over and over again: Alfred Hitchcock and Woody Allen. While Hitch, obviously, was British, most of his films were made in America, and so I hope I can be forgiven for calling him American when it comes to his movies. As with Hitch, then, obviously, with the German director Billy Wilder. Wilder, despite having made some of the best-loved films in American history, always seems to get overlooked when this debate comes up. I have no idea why; pretty much everything that the man did is a classic. I have yet to see the Wilder film that isn't brilliant, and The Apartment is no exception.

C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) is a hack at an insurance agency, a bachelor who works long hours simply because he has nothing better to do. One evening, he allows a work colleague to use his apartment for a tryst with a woman who is not his wife. Word gets out, and soon Baxter's apartment is the place of choice for colleagues in the same situation. Things get a bit complicated when his boss (Fred MacMurray) finds out about the arrangement and starts using the apartment as well. Meanwhile, Baxter has struck up a friendship with attractive elevator girl Fran (Shirley MacLaine), and he hopes to take it farther. Then he finds out that his boss' girlfriend is none other than Fran. How many more ways can his job be in jeopardy?

It's a nasty topic, and in 1960 it was positively scandalous. Wilder offsets the outrage of the thing by turning the material into a comedy, and a very funny one it is. When, of course, it's not playing your heartstrings. Baxter, as the film begins, is a truly pathetic individual, and Wilder and his longtime collaborator, screenwriter IAL Diamond, initially play this for all the comedic value they can. But as Baxter runs into conflict after conflict, basically forcing him to grow a spine, his character's pathos is played more and more seriously. After all, such a tenuous situation is bound to induce some serious incidents. When they occur, they never feel forced, and more impressively they never feel out of place. Everything here grows organically out of what's come before. Nothing is too convenient or too precious; it all hangs together perfectly.

And then there is the acting. Wilder was a genius at taking the A-list actors of his day and managing to coax them into giving performances that were just that little bit better than they'd ever managed to come up with before. MacLaine was still, relatively, the new kid on the block, and no one really knew what to expect from her, especially when put up against such heavyweights as Lemmon and MacMurray (both of whom had teamed successfully with Wilder in the past, Lemmon the year before in Some Like it Hot and MacMurray, of course, in Double Indemnity). To say she held her own would be quite the understatement; she was nominated for Best Actress, losing to Elizabeth Taylor. (The movie did take home five Oscars, including Best Picture of 1960; it was nominated for ten.) As well, aside from the three leads was a wealth of talent in the supporting roles, including Ray Walston, Jack Kruschen, and Edie Adams, among others, all of whom turn in performances as impressive as one would expect in a Billy Wilder movie.

As with every Billy Wilder movie I've seen (save The Lost Weekend), I simply can't say enough good things about this movie. Want a romantic comedy with real bite? Skip whatever's playing at your local cinemaplex and rent The Apartment instead. It is a superlative example of the genre, arguably the best romantic comedy ever made in America. **** ?

L'Auberge Espagnole (The Spanish Apartment)
$9.98
.. or should I say young adult matures his attitude about what is important in life. I really liked this movie. If Amelie is a 99 and Tall Blond Man is a 98 then I give this a 97, almost perfect. Film buffs will see where the director has used things he learned from others but nothing is distracting and it's a great little story.

Investing in Apartment Buildings: Create a Reliable Stream of Income and Build Long-Term Wealth
$24.95
I bought this book anticipating a reasonably sophisticated treatment of apartment building buying/selling/operating. What I got was a book that couldn't have taken more than a month to write. Blah Blah Blah, why apartments are great/risky/worth it. About 3 pages of number crunching in the entire book. Save your money for something else.