Film Focus

LA Diary: California Sweet
It's time to say goodbye to my LA Diary but if the past 21 months have taught me anything, it's to believe in myself. And to always carry a spare roll of quarters.

Clip joint: the senses

I was once went to a screening of William Castle's 1959 chiller The Tingler, hoping to finally smash the fourth wall by braving "Percepto", the electric device the director famously installed under the audience's seats to better transmit the jolts of Pure Terror felt by the characters on screen. Unfortunately, the budget of my trusty Cardiff arthouse cinema didn't stretch this far — and despite the late appearance of fellow hopeful gimmick Emergo! during the screening of House On Haunted Hill — I left disappointed; surer than ever that cinema will always be a two-sense, sound-and-vision experience. Disabling either one, as in this week's Blindness, can focus a story purposefully; but if touch, taste or smell come into play, then film-makers have a fight on their hands to achieve tangible close contact.

1) It's easy to write off 1975's Deafula — apparently the only full-length film wholly acted in American sign language — off as another gimmick, but this clip does bizarrely have some of the weird gestural power of the silent horror greats. The 'tache is pure 70s, though.

2) As glimpsed through Buffalo Bill's night-vision goggles (4mins 50secs), Clarice Starling's terrified fumbling, the fluttering moths, and his hovering, deathly fingertips do a great deal to convey an agonising sense of touch in the superb finale to Silence of the Lambs.

3) Flying fish, the shroud of Turin and multi-eyed goat demons — good to know that when you're subjected to sensory deprivation, as in 1980's Altered States — the theatre of the mind is apparently scripted by David Icke.

4) Hollywood would just have gone for kick-down-the-door, followed by the "machine-gun dance"; Antonioni is far smarter, not allowing us to see anything directly and using sound in genius existential fashion in the long shot at the end (spoilers!) of The Passenger. Understanding the outcome hangs on very careful listening.

5) "This is no man – this is an angel!" Funnily enough, downwind from nacho-fuelled flatulence engines at the multiplex, I've witnessed scenes diametrically opposite to the reaction Ben Whishaw gets when he uncorks his "perfect scent" in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.

For anyone new to Clip joint, we'd love it if you posted your own suggestions - ideally with a video link - in the comments section below. The best one will win a prize straight off the back of the guardian.co.uk/film lorry. Interesting suggestions backed up with a specific clip from the work in question, illustrating the theme most clearly, will always stand the best chance of winning; it's not always possible to find key scenes online, so posting the trailer is the next best option.

A firm handshake to everyone who turned out presentable for last week's introductory scenes special. These really got the party started in style:

1) Repeat requests for the perfunctory, jumpy, brutal intro to Goodfellas – an almost minimalist taster for Martin Scorsese's epic.

2) "Well, the food here was excellent. I'm going to recommend it to my sisters. How many stars did it get?" "Three and a half." Todd Solondz sets us adrift on a sea of patheticness with the restaurant breakup at the start of Happiness.

3) Citizen Kane's an easy pick any week, but the opening scene-setting is worthy of the Greatest Film of All Time: ambient, stealthy, beautifully framed and paced, with the gothic and the surreal lurking just on the edge of shot. Damn you, Welles!

4) The zany dial is stuck on 11 for the warmup to Hellzapoppin' — great exuberance, and I loved the devils canning the newly arrived souls in hell.

5) And the winner is … Kibuchi, for nominating the escaped balloon sequence at the start of Roger Michell's Enduring Love adaptation. I know I criticised films that overload their first scenes at the expense of the rest — and Michell's opener certainly is so memorable it overshadows everything. But it's an outstanding piece of action, with spare seconds of runaway poetry: like when Daniel Craig and the rest of the would-be rescuers let go of the ropes and jump down to the green fields, as if from the heavens, and give their consent to the tragedy in the sky. Kibuchi, please send your full name and address to catherine.shoard@guardian.co.uk to claim your prize.

Thanks to AdamRutherford, MsSauerkraut, StevieBee and steenbeck for the rest of this week's picks

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