28 Film Discussion Threads Later

[MadMan]

So far I've seen 71 films this year. Most of them are actually first time viewings, although some are second viewings. I only count films I've seen once or twice. Third or more viewings disqualifies the film from being listed. Last year I saw 167 films, and I'd say if I continue on my current pace I may finally reach 200. I'm not sure if I want to get to that number though because it means I have way too much free time on my hands.

[Qrazy]

I read everything in The Portable Nietzsche. I really should give him another go though. It was about four years ago on a long and lazy camping trip that I gave him my first go.

One thing that I've found key to an appreciation of philosophy in general is the ability to put aside all preconceptions for the duration of the work you're reading... same thing with a lot of films and literature actually... you may not agree with all of the things he's saying, I certainly don't... but the way in which he expresses himself and the direction and force of ideas is extremely important, both historically and in the grand scope of philosophical debate...

[Qrazy]

I've seen Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors and Color of Pomegranates. I really liked both, especially the former, and would like to see more from him.

Yeah I prefer Shadows to Color as well... Color uses too much 'theater' imagery for my taste... too many images where the characters face out toward the camera which is positioned at eye level to the actors/action and the action plays out in a mostly two-dimensional plane.

[Philosophe_rouge]

So far I've seen 71 films this year. Most of them are actually first time viewings, although some are second viewings. I only count films I've seen once or twice. Third or more viewings disqualifies the film from being listed. Last year I saw 167 films, and I'd say if I continue on my current pace I may finally reach 200. I'm not sure if I want to get to that number though because it means I have way too much free time on my hands.
I've seen 106 counting rewatches, although I'm not big on revisiting films too often. I'm aiming for 350 this year because I'm insane. Some people can do it, I don't think I can.

[Qrazy]

Let's discuss this:

How many of those films have you seen since you feel like you were capable of making reasoned and insightful deductions about the cinema? In other words, in order to have seen that many movies, wouldn't you have to have only a cursory recollection of a good deal of them, having seen them in haste, out of necessity, or simply a long time ago? And if that is the case, what good is this accomplishment?

I'm not trying to cheapen your drive, I think it's admirable and hold a similar ambition myself (or rather, did at one point but have now become a bit less idealistic about the whole thing). I just want to know what you think.

It's a reasonable question but...

I have a fairly quality memory and have probably watched the majority of the films in the last five to seven years so I remember them all relatively equally and well I'd say. There's surprisingly only a small handful I'd like to rewatch because I saw them in less than ideal circumstances (too tired or bad resolution) and then there's the ones I want to rewatch because they're just that good.

There's a lot of over-lap in the 3 1000 lists.

[MadMan]

I've seen 106 counting rewatches, although I'm not big on revisiting films too often. I'm aiming for 350 this year because I'm insane. Some people can do it, I don't think I can.That's a pretty solid number. But 350? Goddamn that's just crazy. I wonder how many films a typical film reviewer sees in a given year.

[Philosophe_rouge]

That's a pretty solid number. But 350? Goddamn that's just crazy. I wonder how many films a typical film reviewer sees in a given year.
Don't worry, I'll never make it :p I don't think I've ever made over 300 a year.

[MadMan]

Don't worry, I'll never make it :p I don't think I've ever made over 300 a year.Well heh I won't worry. 300 is still a lot still. I wonder if I'll see as many films in theaters as I did last year. 2005 and 2006 were pretty high dry spells in that regard.

[Boner M]

Sydney Film Festival next month... and Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky and Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Tokyo Sonata are playing there; the latter fresh off its Cannes premiere. Seems like an even better lineup than last year's, though the full program hasn't been announced yet.

[balmakboor]

I'll typically watch 125 to 150 films a year with about 1/3 of those re-watches.

[Bosco B Thug]

It's a reasonable question but...

I have a fairly quality memory and have probably watched the majority of the films in the last five to seven years so I remember them all relatively equally and well I'd say. There's surprisingly only a small handful I'd like to rewatch because I saw them in less than ideal circumstances (too tired or bad resolution) and then there's the ones I want to rewatch because they're just that good.

There's a lot of over-lap in the 3 1000 lists. Man, it's frickin annoying, but if I haven't seen a film at the least 2 times (and usually I even need 3 or more) - two years max and it's gone from my head.

That's the thing, movies with merit I feel I need to see at least twice to really gradate in the 5-10 star range (you know, whether 5.5 or a 6 or a 6.5, or a 7.5 or an 8, etc.). And then I'm always compelled to think to myself, "Man, the film isn't as good as Notorious, I can't give it a 9/10..." which is why I'd go crazy using the 4 star scale.

4.5 and below, though, whatevah. That's the crap and I don't sweat that too much. :)


Sydney Film Festival next month... and Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky and Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Tokyo Sonata are playing there; the latter fresh off its Cannes premiere. Seems like an even better lineup than last year's, though the full program hasn't been announced yet. Two of my favorite filmmakers right there. I didn't know Leigh had a new film coming out! Right on.

[balmakboor]

I'll typically watch 125 to 150 films a year with about 1/3 of those re-watches.

Heck, I just checked and I watch my two girls swim almost 250 races a year, play about 30 soccer games, play 15 volleyball games, and compete in 8 dance competitions. I wonder if I'm even posting in the right forum.

[Winston*]

California Split is really damn good.

[ledfloyd]

California Split is really damn good.
Altman's second best.

[Rowland]

I can't wait to see Tokyo Sonata. I've read reports that Kurosawa has moved well beyond the initial script and has delivered a really interesting film, which is exciting, especially after the double punch of Loft (mostly inept) and Retribution (formally gorgeous but otherwise merely serviceable).

[Raiders]

Loft (mostly inept)

Wrong.

:P

[Rowland]

Wrong.

:PAn incoherent plot, even more incoherent themes, uncharacteristically bland cinematography, uniformly awkward performances, and a failure to work as horror, drama, or comedy (unless embarrassed laughter counts) all beg to differ, my good man. :)

You should rent Retribution, I'm interested in how you'd respond to it. And damn, do I wish License to Live and his dual yakuza movies would be released over here already, I bet they'd be a big hit with most of you.

[Boner M]

Le Boucher was damned good. A slight disappointment considering how much it had been hyped up for me, and I didn't find the characters as interesting or engaging as Huppert and Bonnaire in Le Ceremonie. Some of the slow zooms in the opening scenes were a bit distracting as well, though I can't fault much else. The elevator scene near the end is a stunner, and the image of the blood dripping on the schoolgirls' sandwich was brilliantly macabre. Might watch it again this weekend in a more appropriate environment (ie, not behind the counter in my video store).

[dreamdead]

So although I don't harbor the vitriolic attitude toward Noah Baumbach's Margot at the Wedding that others here wielded, it still registers as an interesting failure more so than it registers as any kind of neo-Dogme treatise on film aesthetics. Despite the film's many riffs on Rohmer, for instance, Rohmer still treats his characters with dignity, which is something that Baumbach seems diametrically opposed to here. Instead, we're inundated with narcissism from every angle and every character, which just collapses any caring or empathy. And I don't want to pull a "I didn't like anyone," but whereas Rohmer or even Leigh present fascinating stories within that framework, Baumbach becomes too schematic in his narcissistic fetishism.

That said, the moment with Margot at the book reading, where her lover attacks her onstage, has an emotional integrity that rises upon its schematic nature, and Jennifer Jason Leigh is typically fantastic and affecting. The film just never becomes more than a formal excerise that fails...

[balmakboor]

Wow. This thread sure slowed down. Did I talk everyone into going off and posting in swimming forums?

Anyway. Weekend (starting tomorrow):

Teeth
Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Tokyo Chorus (re-watch)

[Kurosawa Fan]

Le Boucher was damned good. A slight disappointment considering how much it had been hyped up for me, and I didn't find the characters as interesting or engaging as Huppert and Bonnaire in Le Ceremonie. Some of the slow zooms in the opening scenes were a bit distracting as well, though I can't fault much else. The elevator scene near the end is a stunner, and the image of the blood dripping on the schoolgirls' sandwich was brilliantly macabre. Might watch it again this weekend in a more appropriate environment (ie, not behind the counter in my video store).

After your second viewing, when you recant all those negative opinions, I'll rep you. Until then I'm holding out.

[Boner M]

After your second viewing, when you recant all those negative opinions, I'll rep you. Until then I'm holding out.
Just rewatched it. The slow zooms made me cum.

[Grouchy]

Le Boucher was damned good. A slight disappointment considering how much it had been hyped up for me, and I didn't find the characters as interesting or engaging as Huppert and Bonnaire in Le Ceremonie. Some of the slow zooms in the opening scenes were a bit distracting as well, though I can't fault much else. The elevator scene near the end is a stunner, and the image of the blood dripping on the schoolgirls' sandwich was brilliantly macabre. Might watch it again this weekend in a more appropriate environment (ie, not behind the counter in my video store).
Huh, at my friendly video store (which specializes in cult and B-movies) the clerks are always watching behind the counter. While I find that's a great job and I envy them for it, I always wonder how much do they register while they're taking orders and charging the rentals. I know I'd keep pausing the movies, like, thirty times each.

Le Boucher is an awesome psych thriller and my favorite Chabrol. How'd you like those closing shots?

I saw Shine a Light yesterday. I don't feel like writing a full-lenght review because, as good as the editing is, it's still a concert movie, and I don't know enough about music to review the actual concert. I had a great time. The Greatest Rock & Roll Band in the World is still kickin' it after 45 years of uninterrupted playing. Marty's contributions are in the comedy editing of old documentaries and interviews with the Stones intercut with the performance and in the funny opening (I'm betting mostly fictionalized) where Mick Jagger keeps undecided about the final list of songs to play until the show is about to start, while Scorsese gives in to despair. Good music movie.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Just rewatched it. The slow zooms made me cum.

Much better.

[Qrazy]

Altman's second best.

Second tier, he has five or so others that are much better.

Long Goodbye, Nashville, Short Cuts, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, MASH and even The Player are all signature works.

[Winston*]

Robert Altman has a lot of really damn good films.

[Watashi]

Anyone looking forward to Redbelt? It has a wide release on Friday. I've enjoyed every Mamet-helmed film I've seen and the cast here is great.

[Raiders]

Anyone looking forward to Redbelt? It has a wide release on Friday. I've enjoyed every Mamet-helmed film I've seen and the cast here is great.

I'm a moderate Mamet fan, but yeah, I am really looking forward to this. Maybe it's the presence of Ejiofor.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Anyone looking forward to Redbelt? It has a wide release on Friday. I've enjoyed every Mamet-helmed film I've seen and the cast here is great.

I'm pretty excited.

[Qrazy]

Not that excited really... House of Games is all I've seen and it was Ok but for me the visual is the most important element of film... and I find Mamet fairly middling in that regard... or maybe it's not even that since I love GlenGary Glenn Ross... maybe I just don't think he's an excellent director... good writer, probably good theater director but mediocre film director... still I have most of his directorial work to see so take that with a grain of salt.

I'll probably check out Spartan at some point.

[megladon8]

I hope the writing's better than The Edge.

[Qrazy]

I found both Strike and The Dead Zone to be fairly boring... I could recognize the craft in each but they didn't hold my attention very well.

[Raiders]

The Dead Zone

It is a bit of a disappointing film, but I still quite liked it. I think what is most disappointing is that Cronenberg made it the same year he made Videodrome.

[megladon8]

I found both Strike and The Dead Zone to be fairly boring... I could recognize the craft in each but they didn't hold my attention very well.


What is Strike?

[Qrazy]

It is a bit of a disappointing film, but I still quite liked it. I think what is most disappointing is that Cronenberg made it the same year he made Videodrome.

Walken's line delivery is so freaking bizarre in the film, even for Walken.

[Qrazy]

What is Strike?

Early Eisenstein.

[Kurious Jorge v3.1]

Watched "The Fountainhead". This film confirms my suspicions that Ayn Rand was a robot. Her characters aren't human beings, all they do is jabber thinly veiled political ideologies and slap each other when they don't agree.

[Raiders]

Watched "The Fountainhead". This film confirms my suspicions that Ayn Rand was a robot. Her characters aren't human beings, all they do is jabber thinly veiled political ideologies and slap each other when they don't agree.

Yeah, I really can't stand that film. Rand matched with Gary Cooper? Yuck.

[Russ]

Not that excited really... House of Games is all I've seen and it was Ok but for me the visual is the most important element of film... and I find Mamet fairly middling in that regard... or maybe it's not even that since I love GlenGary Glenn Ross... maybe I just don't think he's an excellent director... good writer, probably good theater director but mediocre film director... still I have most of his directorial work to see so take that with a grain of salt.

I'll probably check out Spartan at some point.
Have you seen The Spanish Prisoner? Since you rate the visual element so highly, I doubt it would win you over on that aspect, tho it excels in the usual Mamet categories: story, dialog, etc. I enjoyed it a lot more than I was expecting. Your mileage may vary.

[megladon8]

Early Eisenstein.


Oh, OK.

When you paired it with The Dead Zone I assumed there was a link between the two, and thought I had missed some part of Cronenberg's career :)

[megladon8]

I'm really interested in seeing Spartan.

Glengarry, Gen Ross was a brilliantly written but very blandly directed film.

I actually thought Heist was a decent little thriller.


I haven't seen enough of his work to really judge, and similar to what Qrazy said, I think his work is probably much better on stage.

I still have his book, "Bambi vs. Godzilla", to read.

[Qrazy]

Have you seen The Spanish Prisoner? Since you rate the visual element so highly, I doubt it would win you over on that aspect, tho it excels in the usual Mamet categories: story, dialog, etc. I enjoyed it a lot more than I was expecting. Your mileage may vary.

I'll look into it fo sho.

[Qrazy]

Oh, OK.

When you paired it with The Dead Zone I assumed there was a link between the two, and thought I had missed some part of Cronenberg's career :)

It was the alternate UK distribution title for Spider. :)

[Derek]

Early Eisenstein.

That's disappointing. It's high in my queue and I'd heard a couple people mention it as their favorite Eisenstein, but it can't hurt to go in with slightly lowered expectations.

[Sven]

OMG, The Bad Seed... greatest movie ever.

[Raiders]

OMG, The Bad Seed... greatest movie ever.

Um, really? I thought it was just OK.

[Melville]

That's disappointing. It's high in my queue and I'd heard a couple people mention it as their favorite Eisenstein, but it can't hurt to go in with slightly lowered expectations.
I thought it was great fun, flamboyant in its symbology and blatantly propagandistic.

[Qrazy]

That's disappointing. It's high in my queue and I'd heard a couple people mention it as their favorite Eisenstein, but it can't hurt to go in with slightly lowered expectations.

It's certainly worth watching both because it's well crafted and visually inventive (playing with the frame and meta-textuality) but also for historical reasons... it's fun to think about whether or not Lynch's use of little people may have partially stemmed from this film or how heavily it influenced a similar crowd hosing scene in Soy Cuba, tenement housing murders in Schindler's List, cow slaughtering scene juxtaposition in Apocalypse Now, etc. Maybe if I'd seen a better print I would have been more enthused but what I saw was just too raw for me both in terms of composition, editing precision, etc. I found individual set pieces greater than the entire work... which also makes sense structurally since it's broken into six segments.

I don't think it really holds a candle formally to Battleship Potemkin or Ivan the Terrible I and II. But it does have more of a sense of humor and a playful inventiveness.

[Qrazy]

Blatantly propagandistic.

I'm not sure why you seem to enjoy this... I find the propaganda element of propaganda films to be the limiting element which keeps them back from complete greatness... I'm willing to ignore that element in favor of what the film does well... even in something like Soy Cuba.

For instance I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (How do you survive? I steal!)... very precise, memorable middle chain gang section but the degree of didacticism is absolutely stifling. I'm not saying the film shouldn't be didactic but I never think it hurts to be less gleeful in one's caricature and blatant in intent... for instance The Ascent is didactic but it doesn't bludgeon you over the head with it.

[Qrazy]

Glengarry, Gen Ross was a brilliantly written but very blandly directed film.

I completely disagree. The direction was sparse and unintrusive which was exactly what the script needed. The director focused explicitly on the drama and in so doing brought out a plethera of fantastic performances by some of Americas greatest actors. Shelley Levene may be Jack Lemmon's greatest performance ever.

Now Foley isn't a master director but he did exactly what he had to do with this film... keeping it relatively theatrical was a good move because Mamet's scripts are theatrical... but there's enough nuance in camera usage and close ups that the theatrical does become cinematic.

[Winston*]

Did anyone see this other James Foley film Confidence from a few years back? No? Probably for the best then, because it's really bad.

[Sven]

Did anyone see this other James Foley film Confidence from a few years back? No? Probably for the best then, because it's really bad.

I saw that one and it totally sucked, although I will concede that Hoffman's performance was delicious.

[Winston*]

I saw that one and it totally sucked, although I will concede that Hoffman's performance was delicious.
For sure.

The protagonist in that movie's named Jake Vig. Jake Vig.

[Melville]

I'm not sure why you seem to enjoy this
I generally enjoy the absurd and ridiculous, especially when it's as gleeful as Strike! The dissolves between capitalists and animals, the identical toned bodies of the good, honest sailors—gold.

However, Ivan the Terrible Part II >>>>> Strike.

[balmakboor]

First Blu-Rays from Criterion:

The Third Man
Bottle Rocket
Chungking Express
The Man Who Fell to Earth
The Last Emperor
El Norte
The 400 Blows
Gimme Shelter
The Complete Monterey Pop
Contempt
Walkabout
For All Mankind
The Wages of Fear

I knew I was holding off on Gimme Shelter for some reason.

[Qrazy]

The Man Who Fell to Earth


Did this really need a blu-ray release? Especially in the first go around? Jesus wept.

The list reminds me I need to get to Gimme Shelter though after like/loving Salesman and Grey Gardens... also El Norte... and tangentially El Sur.

[Qrazy]

I generally enjoy the absurd and ridiculous, especially when it's as gleeful as Strike! The dissolves between capitalists and animals, the identical toned bodies of the good, honest sailors—gold.

However, Ivan the Terrible Part II >>>>> Strike.

Death in Venice score needs to be lower and Black Orpheus and Blood of a Poet higher.

[balmakboor]

My dream is that a Blu-ray release of Playtime will coincide with my ability to buy a Blu-ray player and a decent HDTV.

[balmakboor]

Did this really need a blu-ray release? Especially in the first go around? Jesus wept.

The list reminds me I need to get to Gimme Shelter though after like/loving Salesman and Grey Gardens... also El Norte... and tangentially El Sur.

I'm not a huge fan of The Man Who Fell (or anything Roeg for that matter). But Chungking Express looks inviting and I love love love Gimme Shelter.

[Sycophant]

Wait? Bottle Rocket? Fucking Bottle Rocket is coming to Criteroin? Finally?! SD DVD, please!

[Bosco B Thug]

So although I don't harbor the vitriolic attitude toward Noah Baumbach's Margot at the Wedding that others here wielded, it still registers as an interesting failure...

That said, the moment with Margot at the book reading, where her lover attacks her onstage, has an emotional integrity that rises upon its schematic nature... Agree, that was a good part. The peripheral scene with the husband was also a good part. When the film wants to be serious with its drama, it begins to go places. And I think I liked it more than you, I found it had that seriousness most of the time. But then I also agree that Baumbach seems complacent with just piling on these people's personality problems without really commenting on them in any way outside the obvious.


OMG, The Bad Seed... greatest movie ever. It's a curiously compelling and dramatically potent flick, but it's pretty much literally a stage play... filmed. It has it's charms, though (the child performance, for sure.)

[MadMan]

For the record I found Spartan to be pretty damn good. The last act has some flaws, but still I enjoyed it and found it to be a really intelligent thriller. Val Kilmer's pretty solid in the flick, and his performance reminded a lot of Steven McQueen in Bullitt . The flick also was in some ways like the show 24. All which mean good things of course.

I believe that's the only Mamet directed film I've seen.

[Sven]

It's a curiously compelling and dramatically potent flick, but it's pretty much literally a stage play... filmed. It has it's charms, though (the child performance, for sure.)

Not a relevant criticism at all. You don't think that LeRoy opened it up with his creepy, ever-gliding camera? You didn't find Rosson's expressive lighting impressive? If you're still unyielding, its thematics of rigidity are perfectly encapsulated in its theatric structure. It's not like Frankenheimer's The Iceman Cometh, here. There's plenty of cinematic tokens a-goin' on.

[Bosco B Thug]

Not a relevant criticism at all. You don't think that LeRoy opened it up with his creepy, ever-gliding camera? You didn't find Rosson's expressive lighting impressive? If you're still unyielding, its thematics of rigidity are perfectly encapsulated in its theatric structure. It's not like Frankenheimer's The Iceman Cometh, here. There's plenty of cinematic tokens a-goin' on. Touche... buuut I haven't seen the film in a while, so I can't comment back. It is a very appealing argument, though, perhaps the film does need a re-evaluation from myself!

The film's an artifact of warm nostalgia for me, which might be one reason I haven't tried to re-watch it with an academic, critical eye (grew up with the film, it was part of that first set of catalytic films I watched when I first started getting into horror films). And I still think back on it as a fascinating film, subject matter-wise, and very solidly entertaining. But I also think back on it as a rather simple and very very melodramatic, very dated 50s horror.

I'm glad you liked it, though, I hope when I rewatch it maybe I'll gain that whole new appreciation for it!

[megladon8]

I completely disagree. The direction was sparse and unintrusive which was exactly what the script needed. The director focused explicitly on the drama and in so doing brought out a plethera of fantastic performances by some of Americas greatest actors. Shelley Levene may be Jack Lemmon's greatest performance ever.

Now this, I agree with.

The acting in the film is brilliant all-round. I don't think there's one bad performance here - even Al Pacino was great, and this was around the beginning of his "yelling=acting" stint.

I just found that the film was quite dull to look at.

Of course, the dialogue takes centre stage here. And maybe I just need a re-watch.

*considers watching it tonight*

[balmakboor]

Just curious. How does one add more than one point to another's reputation at a shot? Every time I do it, it only seems to up them by one point. But I know people have bumped me up by like four or five points at a clip.

[transmogrifier]

Just curious. How does one add more than one point to another's reputation at a shot? Every time I do it, it only seems to up them by one point. But I know people have bumped me up by like four or five points at a clip.

Your rep power dictates how much you can give them. Posting more = more rep power.

[megladon8]

Just curious. How does one add more than one point to another's reputation at a shot? Every time I do it, it only seems to up them by one point. But I know people have bumped me up by like four or five points at a clip.


It depends on your rep power.

Since I have a rep power of 7, if I rep you, you get 7 points.

You have a rep power of 1, so that's 1 rep point (if you give someone rep).

[balmakboor]

Oh yes, that makes sense.

[Qrazy]

I thought of someone else to add to the Fincher, Jonze, Gondry, etc, etc list... Mark Romanek.

[Qrazy]

Now this, I agree with.

The acting in the film is brilliant all-round. I don't think there's one bad performance here - even Al Pacino was great, and this was around the beginning of his "yelling=acting" stint.

I just found that the film was quite dull to look at.

Of course, the dialogue takes centre stage here. And maybe I just need a re-watch.

*considers watching it tonight*

You're right the visuals aren't especially potent but I think that's in the film's favor in this case... which is why I slightly re-evaluated my visual as focal point for me in my initial post a page or so ago... the individual images don't have to be 'beautiful' for me but the confluence of image with editing has to have potency.

[balmakboor]

I thought of someone else to add to the Fincher, Jonze, Gondry, etc, etc list... Mark Romanek.

Is that the too flashy for their own good list?

[Kurious Jorge v3.1]

the Criterion/Blu news is HUGE and frustrating since I have more than a few of those titles. There is no way I'm scrapping my Doinel Box for a Blu 400 Blows, especially since I dig Stolen Kisses the most.

I'll definitely pick up Chunking and possibly trade out my Contempt and Wages of Fear DVD's for Blu-Rays.

now, my PS3 thats collecting dust looks like a smart investment.

[balmakboor]

Rally Round the Flag Boys! (McCarey -'58) 51

I'm curious if you checked this out for the same reason I've be thinking about it. It's on Robin Wood's (one of my favorite critics') top ten list.

[megladon8]

You're right the visuals aren't especially potent but I think that's in the film's favor in this case... which is why I slightly re-evaluated my visual as focal point for me in my initial post a page or so ago... the individual images don't have to be 'beautiful' for me but the confluence of image with editing has to have potency.


This is something I often struggle with as well.

Like you, I think visuals are probably my favorite part of the film world - I enjoy watching a film with gorgeous compositions and strong use of colour. That being said, something having lots of colours or pretty landscapes doesn't automatically mean it has great visuals. The trailers for Speed Racer show more colours per image than I've seen in any movie in a long time, but I actually think it looks quite ugly.

But at the same time, there are some films that have very simple visuals, but I consider them very beautiful because of that - due to, as is the case here, a strong script taking the driver's seat.

This is all making me really anxious to see Glengarry, Glen Ross again. I think I will tonight, for sure.

[Kurious Jorge v3.1]

I'm curious if you checked this out for the same reason I've be thinking about it. It's on Robin Wood's (one of my favorite critics') top ten list.

yep. I thought Paul Newman was really out of place in the film and it was very underwhelming (even though it had a young Tuesday Weld in it, rahhhrrrr...)

[Qrazy]

Is that the too flashy for their own good list?

No value judgments in particular just a music video background/new gen filmmaker list.

[balmakboor]

yep. I thought Paul Newman was really out of place in the film and it was very underwhelming (even though it had a young Tuesday Weld in it, rahhhrrrr...)

Wood does have a way of over-praising films because he likes what they have to say -- or at least what he interprets them as saying. He doesn't give enough weight to how they say what they have to say. Still, I find his work passionate and well written and always full of insight.

His top 10:

Rio Bravo (Hawks)
Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (Demy)
Heaven's Gate (Cimino)
I Walked with a Zombie (Tourneur)
Late Spring (Ozu)
Marnie (Hitchcock)
Rally 'round the Flag, Boys! (McCarey)
The Reckless Moment (Ophuls)
La Règle du jeu (Renoir)
Ugetsu Monogatari (Mizoguchi)

I've seen Rio Bravo, Heaven's Gate, Late Spring, Marnie, The Rules of the Game, and Ugetsu and find them all worthy of being included though none would make my own personal list. I especially think Heaven's Gate is worthy of far more respect.

[Qrazy]

This is something I often struggle with as well.

Like you, I think visuals are probably my favorite part of the film world - I enjoy watching a film with gorgeous compositions and strong use of colour. That being said, something having lots of colours or pretty landscapes doesn't automatically mean it has great visuals. The trailers for Speed Racer show more colours per image than I've seen in any movie in a long time, but I actually think it looks quite ugly.

But at the same time, there are some films that have very simple visuals, but I consider them very beautiful because of that - due to, as is the case here, a strong script taking the driver's seat.

This is all making me really anxious to see Glengarry, Glen Ross again. I think I will tonight, for sure.

My advice for the rewatch... which is counter-thetical to my usual advice when watching films (which recommends looking everywhere in the frame)... keep your eyes on the actor's faces. Sometimes the depth of emotion great actors can express with their facial expressions are enough to carry an entire film... of course the way they hold themselves is interesting and important as well but for some reason for this film, I think the most potent viewing experience would be focusing on faces.

[Qrazy]

Wood does have a way of over-praising films because he likes what they have to say -- or at least what he interprets them as saying. He doesn't give enough weight to how they say what they have to say. Still, I find his work passionate and well written and always full of insight.

His top 10:

Rio Bravo (Hawks)
Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (Demy)
Heaven's Gate (Cimino)
I Walked with a Zombie (Tourneur)
Late Spring (Ozu)
Marnie (Hitchcock)
Rally 'round the Flag, Boys! (McCarey)
The Reckless Moment (Ophuls)
La Règle du jeu (Renoir)
Ugetsu Monogatari (Mizoguchi)

I've seen Rio Bravo, Heaven's Gate, Late Spring, Marnie, The Rules of the Game, and Ugetsu and find them all worthy of being included though none would make my own personal list. I especially think Heaven's Gate is worthy of far more respect.

Rules and Ugetsu are especially worthy... Les Demoiselles is worthy... I don't think Marnie or Rio Bravo are worthy though... particularly in relation to the other more interesting output of those two directors.

[Winston*]

I vote for the immediate abolishment of the rep system. Who's with me?

[balmakboor]

Rules and Ugetsu are especially worthy... Les Demoiselles is worthy... I don't think Marnie or Rio Bravo are worthy though... particularly in relation to the other more interesting output of those two directors.

I've always found the Marnie inclusion interesting. I like the film a lot, but so many other Hitchcocks seem more worthy. And all the more interesting coming from a man who wrote one of the more esteemed books about Hitchcock's films.

I should go back and re-read what he wrote about Marnie.

[Kurious Jorge v3.1]

I especially think Heaven's Gate is worthy of far more respect.

repped.

[MadMan]

I will be chugging caffeine in an effort to not only finish a paper that's my final (its due tomorrow) but also in an effort to stay awake and watch Modern Times at 5 am CST on TCM Thursday morning. It'll hopefully be worth the loss of sleep; I unfortunately had to return The Great Dictator to the public library due to it being due the next day, and I didn't get to it. I think next to Hitchcock and Romero, Chaplin is the director who's work I most want to see (I've seen plenty from the other two but I much left to view).

[number8]

The journalism on MTV baffles me sometime. How is this (http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2008/05/07/you-know-whats-interesting-about-matthew-fox-this/) in any way relevant to report? This is how gossip starts. "OMG Jack hates Judd Apatow!!! CRAZY!"

I don't even remember the Knocked Up scene.

[MadMan]

I vote for the immediate abolishment of the rep system. Who's with me?But you have 200 some rep points man. I for one like it, and I think it helps keep certain people in check. And rewards people as well. Don't rock the boat Winston. THE MAN will put you down if you do...:eek:

[megladon8]

My advice for the rewatch... which is counter-thetical to my usual advice when watching films (which recommends looking everywhere in the frame)... keep your eyes on the actor's faces. Sometimes the depth of emotion great actors can express with their facial expressions are enough to carry an entire film... of course the way they hold themselves is interesting and important as well but for some reason for this film, I think the most potent viewing experience would be focusing on faces.


Cool. Duely noted.

[Melville]

I vote for the immediate abolishment of the rep system. Who's with me?
Repped.

[Winston*]

Repped.
See, this is the what I'm talking about. 98% of my rep points are for stupid shit like this. Fuck you, Melville.

[transmogrifier]

72% of my rep points come from my alias.

[dreamdead]

Finally got around to Mike Leigh's Topsy-Turvy. As a Leigh aficionado, this one is simultaneously more and no more than the sum of its parts. It's deliriously adolescent in its celebration of theater and performance, and there's a real thrill to watching Gilbert and Sullivan demand inhabiting the Japanese way rather than mimicry and artifice, even if that same inhabitation is hopelessly circular in its logic. Broadbent is great fun in this, and Leigh concocts some great set-pieces.

Yet the moment that most resonates is when Gilbert and his wife are sitting on the bed after the Mikado has been performed for the first evening. Whereas Sullivan seems stagnant emotionally with his mistress, Gilbert is nearly to a personal epiphany between he and his wife, and it's this sequence that I'll likely remember later.

[Sven]

It's deliriously adolescent in its celebration of theater and performance

What does this mean?

[Derek]

I will be chugging caffeine in an effort to not only finish a paper that's my final (its due tomorrow) but also in an effort to stay awake and watch Modern Times at 5 am CST on TCM Thursday morning. It'll hopefully be worth the loss of sleep; I unfortunately had to return The Great Dictator to the public library due to it being due the next day, and I didn't get to it. I think next to Hitchcock and Romero, Chaplin is the director who's work I most want to see (I've seen plenty from the other two but I much left to view).

I'd like to inform you of an amazing new piece of technology called the DVD (Dee-Vee-Dee) player. You rent disks called DVDs that allow you to watch movies on your television. This way you can watch a lot of great films (Modern Times included!) on your television at your leisure and not have to stay up all night waiting for it to play on TCM. :)

[Ezee E]

-I will see Redbelt despite not really liking anything that David Mamet has directed. Glengarry being the only good film out of Spartan, Heist, the card one, and probably one other I'm missing. His movie with Stuart Gordon was disturbingly good though.

-Mark Romanek has the eye to be a potentially good director. But he's as old as my mom and he hasn't stayed on an entire project since One Hour Photo. Not good. Put him with Chris Cunningham as Talented Music Video Directors that never showed true potential.

-I like Rep.

[Winston*]

His movie with Stuart Gordon was disturbingly good though.



Edmond? I thought it was kind of terrible.

[dreamdead]

What does this mean?

That Topsy-Turvy is distinct from Leigh's typical ideology, especially in terms of Leigh's usual themes of contemporary society and the estrangement that individuals feel towards one another. This one feels far more hopeful and youthful in its embrace of the creative arts; hence, adolescent. It's not meant as a criticism so much as a notation that the film feels less vitriolic or laden with contempt than his other signature work This absence of estrangement, at least in terms of a societal alienation, is disorienting in terms of his oeuvre, yet it wonderfully complicates more simplistic portraitures of Leigh's art.

[Sven]

That Topsy-Turvy is distinct from Leigh's typical ideology, especially in terms of Leigh's usual themes of contemporary society and the estrangement that individuals feel towards one another. This one feels far more hopeful and youthful in its embrace of the creative arts; hence, adolescent. It's not meant as a criticism so much as a notation that the film feels less vitriolic or laden with contempt than his other signature work This absence of estrangement, at least in terms of a societal alienation, is disorienting in terms of his oeuvre, yet it wonderfully complicates more simplistic portraitures of Leigh's art.

I see. I figured you were using that wording negatively, because the blurb that you wrote doesn't seem to adequately describe your relatively meager rating for it and that was the only segment I could construe as a possible "minus".

At any rate, have you seen Life is Sweet?

[Winston*]

I'm probably misinterpreting you but that seems kind of a weird characterisation of Leigh's other work. His work in general's on the hopeful side of things.

[Sven]

I'm probably misinterpreting you but that seems kind of a weird characterisation of Leigh's other work. His work in general's on the hopeful side of things.

It does. This was going to be my next line of questioning to dd.

[dreamdead]

I see. I figured you were using that wording negatively, because the blurb that you wrote doesn't seem to adequately describe your relatively meager rating for it and that was the only segment I could construe as a possible "minus".

At any rate, have you seen Life is Sweet?

Meager rating is largely because Topsy-Turvy doesn't quite feel like it needed the length of the film (160) to convey its meaning. The length allows for events to be more natural and less contrived, but the drama of the first hour doesn't resonate like the remainder of the film, so it takes a little too long (IMO) to build up to its first crest. Some of that is of course intentional, but this was the first Leigh film where I wasn't enthralled for stretches. I rather like the literalness of the falling sword as lightbulb moment, though, and Broadbent's face is wonderfully expressive throughout.

Was Life is Sweet the one with Spall semi-autistic in those red glasses? That performance felt too much like tics and mannerisms, and, despite a good deal of heart in other characters, lacked the overwhelming sense of humanity that I later found in Secrets and Lies and the latter half of All or Nothing.

I should get around to Vera Drake soon...

[dreamdead]

I'm probably misinterpreting you but that seems kind of a weird characterisation of Leigh's other work. His work in general's on the hopeful side of things.

What if I just really love his general assault against Thatcherism in Naked and let it cloud my impressions of his otherwise largely sympathetic work? ;)


It does. This was going to be my next line of questioning to dd.

Yeah, sorry. I know you and Winston value Leigh's other work over Naked (because it's the one so often singled out or because it just doesn't feel as full as others?), so I'm letting my own interests take over the actual consensus of Leigh's oeuvre.

[Grouchy]

The journalism on MTV baffles me sometime. How is this (http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2008/05/07/you-know-whats-interesting-about-matthew-fox-this/) in any way relevant to report? This is how gossip starts. "OMG Jack hates Judd Apatow!!! CRAZY!"

I don't even remember the Knocked Up scene.
That's hilarious. All the guy said is the movie didn't look like his cup of tea, and the bulk of the so-called artice is that he's somehow "against" Judd Appatow.

It's called slow news day.

[Winston*]

Naked's actually probably my favourite Leigh but if you're going to single a film out as being divergent from his typical ideology, that'd be the one.

[Sven]

(because it's the one so often singled out or because it just doesn't feel as full as others?)

I like Naked a great deal, but just like I said right after Derek included it in our top 100 thread, I think it's anomalous. What I prefer most about Leigh is his compassion and ability to create lucid enactments of the shared experiences of the middle class.

[Qrazy]

-Mark Romanek has the eye to be a potentially good director. But he's as old as my mom and he hasn't stayed on an entire project since One Hour Photo. Not good. Put him with Chris Cunningham as Talented Music Video Directors that never showed true potential.


He has one in production now though... could be ok... Cunningham should really make a feature.

[DrewG]

Should I watch [Rec] or Paranoid Park?

[baby doll]

Should I watch [Rec] or Paranoid Park?Is this a one-or-the-other scenerio, because I know nothing about [Rec]. As for Paranoid Park, it's worth a watch but not one of the great Gus Van Sant films.

[Boner M]

I was about to see [Rec] this weekend, but then I found out it was by the guy who made The Nameless and opted not to.

As for my weekend, I'll be watching a few more Chabrols, Kaurismaki's I Hired a Contract Killer and The Match Factory Girl and might finally catch The Edge of Heaven.

[Kurious Jorge v3.1]

I Hired a Contract Killer

love this film.

[Raiders]

Edmond? I thought it was kind of terrible.

Indeed it was.

[dreamdead]

Weekend:

Speed Racer (more for the IMAX than for the quality)
La Commare Secca
more of the first season of Buffy

[Ezee E]

Weekend:
Considering Speed Racer

The Big Red One
Lust, Caution
The Agony & The Ecstasy

[Sycophant]

Weekend:
Speed Racer

And I should get within a couple episodes of the end of The Sopranos, if all goes well. Once that's done, I'm going to watch The Passion of Joan of Arc and as much Rohmer as I can take to atone for being away from the movies for so long.

[Grouchy]

Bedlam is a Val Lewton historical drama which gets the label of Horror because of Boris Karloff and its mental asylum setting. In a very intelligent script, filled with witticisms, we're shown the hypocrisy of the 1700s nobility and monarchy and, particularly, the situation where people who go from rags to riches martirize the lower classes as everyone else does, sometimes in fear not to lose their new position. Splendid cinematography and very clever details, like one asylum inmate who has been placed there for inventing a primitive form of cartoons. The campy-funny part is the forced love story, which I just didn't see as necessary and which involves a quaker basically doing a lot of un-quaker stuff just for sex. Nevertheless, Lewton and his team of collaborators are kings of classic cinema - I look forward to more from them.

[balmakboor]

Holy crap! I hadn't even been paying attention. Those reviews for Speed Racer are terrible. Color me definitely disappointed. (Not too disappointed though I guess. I didn't even know it opened tomorrow until I read the last few posts.)

[Qrazy]

Holy crap! I hadn't even been paying attention. Those reviews for Speed Racer are terrible. Color me definitely disappointed. (Not too disappointed though I guess. I didn't even know it opened tomorrow until I read the last few posts.)

Color me not surprised. I honestly don't know how someone could watch that trailer and not expect a shitfest. I'm more upset about the fact that Indy's getting poor initial buzz hopefully it's just a couple reviews.

[Watashi]

Weekend:

Speed Racer
Kikujiro

I totally expect to love Speed Racer no matter what the critics say.

[Sycophant]

Kikujiro
First viewing? You're in for something special, that should serve as great balance to the bombastic Speed Racer.

[Watashi]

Everything I put in my weekend list is usually a first viewing.

[Qrazy]

Time to add Do You Remember Dolly Bell (Kusturica) to the list of high quality European coming of age films... such as Schlesinger's Billy Liar, Forman's Loves a Blond and Black Peter, Truffaut's 400 Blows, etc.

The film is more restrained than later Kusturica but still bears his penchant for earthy sensuality and his unique absurdity meets alcoholism sense of humor... the film also aptly demonstrates Kusturica's particular talent for staging and composition... the ability to create compelling imagery and dynamic scenarios without forcing the action.

The film's story is relatively simple. It's about a boy, his prostitute, his rabbit, hypnosis, communism and becoming a man... although not necessarily in that order. Not to be missed for fans of coming of age stories or of Kusturica's later larger scale efforts... I'll be checking out When Father Was Away on Business soon.

---

Morvern Callar (Ramsay) was also fairly well made... a mood film in the vein of films such as Tony Takitani and Millenium Mambo... nothing about it particularly stood out for me but it's exactly the film it wants to be and perhaps it would prove more compelling for someone who connected more deeply either with the film's protagonist or with the film's take on grief.

[Philosophe_rouge]

Weekend
Veronica Voss
Straw Dogs

[origami_mustache]

I decided to buy this for rather than a ticket to the film.

http://www.got2haveit.com/pics/speedairbobble.jpg

[Watashi]

Octopus 2: River of Fear (Yossi Wein, 2001) - Octacular!

Tell me more.

[origami_mustache]

Tell me more.

haha it's really bad...one of the most formulaic things I've seen. The dvd also contained trailers for Spiders 2 and Crocodile 2. I honestly don't see how these movies get made. We basically went into Blockbuster and picked out the absolute worst thing we could find. I was disappointed with the selection though. I think next time I will try to find something on Cinemageddon. They reuse footage of the octopus from the original, ( I only know this by watching the trailer for the original) and all kinds of stock footage. The final explosion was a montage of about 7 different stock footage explosions that didn't eve match. I watched it with some friends, and we are planning on cutting together about 5 minutes of the best parts and then doing a fake directors commentaries for this and other lame movies.

[Qrazy]

You know how in old films the woman fights the kiss for a few seconds, cries a bit and then yields completely? So did women actually used to do that back in the day or is that just Hollywood misogyny shining through?

Because when I see it in Renoir and Ford films etc it kind of makes me want to vomit.

[Philosophe_rouge]

You know how in old films the woman fights the kiss for a few seconds, cries a bit and then yields completely? So did women actually used to do that back in the day or is that just Hollywood misogyny shining through?

Because when I see it in Renoir and Ford films etc it kind of makes me want to vomit.
Heh, the Quiet Man doesn't do it for you then :P I think it's a misoginistic slant for sure, but it doesn't really bother me. If someone tried it on me, then it probably would. Cinematic double standard!

[Philosophe_rouge]

I love a Day in the Country though! Probably my favourite Renoir, although I love La Grande Illusion... I just haven't seen it in a while.

[Raiders]

You know how in old films the woman fights the kiss for a few seconds, cries a bit and then yields completely? So did women actually used to do that back in the day or is that just Hollywood misogyny shining through?

My wife still does that. Is it not normal?

[Qrazy]

My wife still does that. Is it not normal?

Depends really... are there whips and chains involved?

[megladon8]

Watched Glengarry, Glen Ross last night.

The acting and dialogue are brilliant. It's really a fantastic script, and it is quite inspiring from a writer's standpoint.

But I still just find the movie very dull and lifeless to look at.

[Qrazy]

Heh, the Quiet Man doesn't do it for you then :P I think it's a misoginistic slant for sure, but it doesn't really bother me. If someone tried it on me, then it probably would. Cinematic double standard!

Haven't seen it yet but based on your comparison I'm guessing it won't, heh. See I dunno, when I see that kind of thing I'm always left wondering how I should feel about the film's central romance... am I supposed to think this is a healthy relationship? I guess I'm supposed to (usually) but I always feel really uncomfortable about it.

Fat Girl is a good example of counterpoint to that particular approach to romance in classic cinema.

[Philosophe_rouge]

Haven't seen it yet but based on your comparison I'm guessing it won't, heh. See I dunno, when I see that kind of thing I'm always left wondering how I should feel about the film's central romance... am I supposed to think this is a healthy relationship? I guess I'm supposed to (usually) but I always feel really uncomfortable about it.

Fat Girl is a good example of counterpoint to that particular approach to romance in classic cinema.
I think you'd hate it honestly, it's probably the worst example of it. I see what you mean, and unfortunately I have a hard time thinking of examples aside from this and GWTW at the moment. I think for the most part I'm so used to it I don't give it a second thought honestly. I'll have to pay more attention now.

I haven't seen it. I've been meaning to see some Breillat for a while though. Despite the marginal reception, the one I want to see most is Une vraie jeune fille.

[DrewG]

Well, [Rec] was terrifying...dragged at points but the ending was STELLAR use of setting and atmosphere...increidbly claustrophobic and uncomfortable, really stressful. Then it's now wonder than America has already remade it for an October release. Pathetic.

[Sven]

You know how in old films the woman fights the kiss for a few seconds, cries a bit and then yields completely? So did women actually used to do that back in the day or is that just Hollywood misogyny shining through?

Because when I see it in Renoir and Ford films etc it kind of makes me want to vomit.

I am fully prepared to take up a 3000 word analysis of that phenomenon, as I've been immersed this semester in feminist theory and feel that I could make a defense of both Renoir's and Ford's depictions of women as a whole, as well as contextualize this submission-objectification within the confines of fundamental narrative and cinematic structure.

But I've got two papers due next week, so I'm gonna work on those instead.

[Qrazy]

I am fully prepared to take up a 3000 word analysis of that phenomenon, as I've been immersed this semester in feminist theory and feel that I could make a defense of both Renoir's and Ford's depictions of women as a whole, as well as contextualize this submission-objectification within the confines of fundamental narrative and cinematic structure.

But I've got two papers due next week, so I'm gonna work on those instead.

If you want to rationalize prejudice be my guest. Just don't expect me to read it.

[number8]

The misogyny is in the reaction.

[Qrazy]

The misogyny is in the reaction.

The reaction of?

[MadMan]

I'd like to inform you of an amazing new piece of technology called the DVD (Dee-Vee-Dee) player. You rent disks called DVDs that allow you to watch movies on your television. This way you can watch a lot of great films (Modern Times included!) on your television at your leisure and not have to stay up all night waiting for it to play on TCM. :)Yeah yeah, I know (and I fell asleep anyways and missed it). But I like TCM, and sometimes renting is a pain in the ass since I have to return it by a certain date.

And now that I'm finally done with finals I'm going to do that lengthy write up on QT that I agreed to do in that one director's thread. I already mapped out some points I plan to touch on.

This weekend I actually hope to see something in theaters I haven't had time to see. Like Harold and Kumar 2 and Iron Man. Maybe even Speed Racer. Or not.

[Sven]

If you want to rationalize prejudice be my guest. Just don't expect me to read it.

Oh, come now. A well versed fella like yourself should certainly be open to all kinds of subtextual, industrial, psychological, and political nuances. Prejudice? Really? You're gonna jerk your knees just like that? Rouge's comment itself is but a single facet problematizing such a reading.

[balmakboor]

Speaking of women who fight the kiss for a few seconds, cry a bit, and then yield completely -- and then ...

I just watched Teeth. I liked it a lot.

[Qrazy]

Oh, come now. A well versed fella like yourself should certainly be open to all kinds of subtextual, industrial, psychological, and political nuances. Prejudice? Really? You're gonna jerk your knees just like that? Rouge's comment itself is but a single facet problematizing such a reading.

http://www.captioncards.com.au/images/blackface_nocap.jpg

Youse rightsa!

[Grouchy]

Yeah, because we all know in this evolved utopian bubble we live in, women are not supposed to feel lust or play hard-to-get. They should stick with being lawyers and nuclear scientists.

[Qrazy]

Yeah, because we all know in this evolved utopian bubble we live in, women are not supposed to feel lust or play hard-to-get. They should stick with being lawyers and nuclear scientists.

Yes this post makes sense, what with the crying and the forced sex. Right.

Do all you defenders treat your women like this? Really? Something doesn't have to outright say Fuck Niggers and Women to be prejudiced.

[Qrazy]

Ford is renowned for his racist portrayal of natives. I don't think it's that 'reductionistic' or 'leftist' to question his portrayal of women... did I stumble into the Fox news forum?

[Grouchy]

Ford is renowned for his racist portrayal of natives.
Ever heard of a movie called The Searchers? Or Cheyenne Autumn?

[Qrazy]

Ever heard of a movie called The Searchers? Or Cheyenne Autumn?

Yeah I've heard of The Searchers and seen it and I'm surprised you don't/can't recognize Ford and the film's racist (although not overt racism) overtones.

------

The Searchers has largely been seen from a critical standpoint as a ‘revisionist’ Western, especially in terms of its treatment of Native Americans. However, racism is so deeply embedded within the generic codes of the Western, dealing as it does with white encroachment and appropriation of Indian land, that, as Nolley puts it, ‘Ford could never quite rescue his own work from the racist social discourse in which it was enmeshed’ (88). Pye argues that the film’s

representation of a deeply racist and obsessive Western hero and of the vicious attitudes to miscegenation located at the heart of White civilisation is disturbing... [and] probably goes further than any other Western in implicating us in the neurosis of racism. But in wrestling as a Western with the ideological and psycho-sexual complex that underlies attitudes to race, it is working within almost intractable traditions of representation. (229)

Or, as Neale puts it, The Searchers ‘... seek[s] to interrogate... racism and... racist tropes of the Western itself from within the limits of its ethnocentric framework’ (21).

Ford, by all accounts, was true auteur, especially towards the end of his career. So, in considering how The Searchers constructs race, it may be worthwhile to briefly consider Ford’s personal views, for the film surely reflects them to some extent. In a 1964 profile in Cosmopolitan magazine, Ford discussed his interest in Native Americans and their portrayal in both his films and in Westerns generally. In it, he reveals the inherently patriarchal nature of his racism[2]. This suggests that although The Searchers may well be his ‘... first attempt to straighten out the distorted portrayal [of Native Americans] he had helped create,’ (Kilpatrick 60), in racial terms, it remains a profoundly problematic text.

The Indian is very close to my heart... [they are] wonderful people... they actually still live as they always have, simply and close to the land. They’re not greatly different than they were, particularly not at heart.

There’s some merit to the charge that the Indian hasn’t been portrayed accurately or fairly in the Western, but again, this charge has been a broad generalisation and often unfair. The Indian didn’t welcome the white man... and he wasn’t diplomatic... If he has been treated unfairly by whites in films, that, unfortunately, was often the case in real life. There was much racial prejudice in the West. (My italics - John Ford, quoted in Libby 286)

------

http://www.brentonpriestley.com/writing/searchers.htm


The native comic relief is painful to watch.

[Sven]

Ford is renowned for his racist portrayal of natives. I don't think it's that 'reductionistic' or 'leftist' to question his portrayal of women... did I stumble into the Fox news forum?

Of course you can question. But your "Don't expect me to read it." response is anti-intellectual in its refusal to listen to other theories of spectatorship, gender identification (and ego ideal), and counter-Freudian psychology. You're being surprisingly obtuse.

[Qrazy]

Like Rouge I can't think of many examples of the women resist/cry thing off the top of my head although I know I've seen it in dozens (if anyone can offer any other examples be my guest) of films... but the one I was talking about was Renoir's A Day in the Country, so if there's going to be an argument about it there's the film text in this case around which we can have such an argument.

[Qrazy]

Of course you can question. But your "Don't expect me to read it." response is anti-intellectual in its refusal to listen to other theories of spectatorship, gender identification (and ego ideal), and counter-Freudian psychology. You're being surprisingly obtuse.

Your initial post was surprisingly empty in content so I just assumed any follow up would be more of the same hand waving nonsense... "all kinds of subtextual, industrial, psychological, and political nuances", "a single facet problematizing such a reading", and now "theories of spectatorship, gender identification (and ego ideal), and counter-Freudian psychology"... all sounds like a bunch of empty bullshit to me.

So if you have something of actual value to respond with then by all means say it. Anti-intellectual to me is relying on empty vague phrases to communicate nothing.

Don't expect me to read it because nothing you'll say will convince me Gone with the Wind isn't racist or that Day in the Country isn't sexist (perhaps that would be the better word than misogynistic... which suggests something more extreme)... none of which negates the artistic value of the films or the artistic value of Birth of a Nation etc... a film can be prejudiced without being worthless.

I'm not like some on RT who shat bricks over the racist-ness of Indiana Jones and the like... but I do see racism in GWTW, The Searchers, etc... and sexism in A Day in the Country.

[Sven]

Like Rouge I can't think of many examples of the women resist/cry thing off the top of my head although I know I've seen it in dozens (if anyone can offer any other examples be my guest) of films... but the one I was talking about was Renoir's A Day in the Country, so if there's going to be an argument about it there's the film text in this case around which we can have such an argument.

The one that stands out the most to me is the one in Kazan's On the Waterfront. At any rate, why choose a specific example? Why can't we discuss it broadly, as your complaint is a broad one?

[Qrazy]

The one that stands out the most to me is the one in Kazan's On the Waterfront. At any rate, why choose a specific example? Why can't we discuss it broadly, as your complaint is a broad one?

We can I just wanted to ground it in something concrete as well.

The example being... where the girl says she doesn't want to go on shore (fearing physical advances), is cajoled into going on shore, starts getting grabbed at, pushes him away, starts to cry... and then yields... next scene 'I'll never forget that time on the shore, I'll always love you!'

[Philosophe_rouge]

I don't like On the Waterfront. Just throwing that out there since I have no other contribution to this conversation. What about grapefruits to the face? I can think of at least one example of that.

[Sven]

Your initial post was surprisingly empty in content so I just assumed any follow up would be more of the same hand waving nonsense... "all kinds of subtextual, industrial, psychological, and political nuances", "a single facet problematizing such a reading", and now "theories of spectatorship, gender identification (and ego ideal), and counter-Freudian psychology"... all sounds like a bunch of empty bullshit to me.

So if you have something of actual value to respond with then by all means say it. Anti-intellectual to me is relying on empty vague phrases to communicate nothing.

The response "Don't expect me to read it." is the definition of anti-intellectual, which is a phrase defined as the extermination of potential for intellectual growth. Your comparison of blackface to sexual submission is specious at best. Your questioning is commendable, but I am irked at your response. It is not your specific line of query that I was responding to with my broad theory-based quips. I was responding to your lack of a reasonable purchase. It is only once you feel that a counter-reading can be applied that attempting to describe one would even be worth it.

Word of advice: next time you try to start a discussion, don't respond with "don't expect me to acknowledge your retort"

[Sven]

What about grapefruits to the face? I can think of at least one example of that.

And a couple of empty threats of it: One, Two, Three, and Kiss Me, Stupid.

[Philosophe_rouge]

And a couple of empty threats of it: One, Two, Three, and Kiss Me, Stupid.
Tru dat. And a lots of grapefruit eating as well. A popular fruit.

[number8]

Speaking of women who fight the kiss for a few seconds, cry a bit, and then yield completely -- and then ...

I just watched Teeth. I liked it a lot.

Isn't it great? I freakin love that movie.

"IT'S TRUEEEE! VAGINA DENTATAAAAAAAA!"

[Grouchy]

The Indian is very close to my heart... [they are] wonderful people... they actually still live as they always have, simply and close to the land. They’re not greatly different than they were, particularly not at heart.

There’s some merit to the charge that the Indian hasn’t been portrayed accurately or fairly in the Western, but again, this charge has been a broad generalisation and often unfair. The Indian didn’t welcome the white man... and he wasn’t diplomatic... If he has been treated unfairly by whites in films, that, unfortunately, was often the case in real life. There was much racial prejudice in the West. (My italics - John Ford, quoted in Libby 286)
All of this is very sensible and not patronizing or racist at all.

You know, Ford didn't make that up about Indians kidnapping women for negative raping purposes. But he did offer a heartbreaking portrait of a racist anti-hero fueled by hate in The Searchers. Hell, even Fort Apache showed Custer as an idiot who didn't understand that the Indian could not conform to a European-based lifestyle and tried to force it into them with rotten results. Some of his early films are patronizing, true, but at the height of his career, Ford always had a very humanistic worldview on display.

[Philosophe_rouge]

I'm engaged in a huge debate about the searchers on another site, I have to take a break to rewatch it before I can continue. I don't think the film is innately racist, although I think it participates somewhat in what it's condemning.

[Qrazy]

The one that stands out the most to me is the one in Kazan's On the Waterfront. At any rate, why choose a specific example? Why can't we discuss it broadly, as your complaint is a broad one?

It's more effective and less cringe worthy there because at least they know each other... in the other example the guy is basically a stranger and is groping not just kissing... still the central conceit of a man forcing himself on a woman and then the woman melting in response to a kiss usually makes me fairly uncomfortable both because of what it says about the female character and because I know a number of women who have been molested, raped or otherwise experienced unwanted sexual advances and more often than not it leaves a scar on their psyches.

[Qrazy]

The response "Don't expect me to read it." is the definition of anti-intellectual, which is a phrase defined as the extermination of potential for intellectual growth. Your comparison of blackface to sexual submission is specious at best. Your questioning is commendable, but I am irked at your response. It is not your specific line of query that I was responding to with my broad theory-based quips. I was responding to your lack of a reasonable purchase. It is only once you feel that a counter-reading can be applied that attempting to describe one would even be worth it.

Word of advice: next time you try to start a discussion, don't respond with "don't expect me to acknowledge your retort"

There was no retort, there was verbal hand waving and I wasn't trying to start a discussion, that was you. I was stating this is something that disgusts me.

[Sven]

You know how in old films the woman fights the kiss for a few seconds, cries a bit and then yields completely? So did women actually used to do that back in the day or is that just Hollywood misogyny shining through?

Sounds like a certain someone is trying to start a discussion.

Obviously, we got off on the wrong foot here. Who was leading this tempestuous dance? I don't know. The main point being, are you ready to listen to a defense of submissive pleasure? Will you read it or should I not expect you to?

[MadMan]

When I recently wrote a short, two-three paragraph review of The Proposition a while back (it got lost when my computer's hard drive had to be wiped) I noted that even though the film was not a standard western it still divided into the fact that many westerns feature the white man coming to tame the savage land and defeat the hostile natives. Of course in that flick the hostile natives also include the Burns gang, which in the film made many of the natives seem rather civilized by comparison.

As for The Searchers, I think its a great film because it does touch on and discuss racism as filtered through the Indian hating Ethan Edwards in what is John Wayne's best performance onscreen. Well that and the fact that the film is incredibly well shot, well acted and well made of course. The film's most powerful and chilling moment is when Edwards sees the white girls who act like Indians, turning towards them with a glance that is icy cold hate in its most basic and harshest form. That shot is simply brilliant.

[Winston*]

Have you seen Duel in the Sun, iosos?

[Qrazy]

All of this is very sensible and not patronizing or racist at all.

Uhh...


You know, Ford didn't make that up about Indians kidnapping women for negative raping purposes.

When you're being mercilessly slaughtered you might fight back (see: Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States).


But he did offer a heartbreaking portrait of a racist anti-hero fueled by hate in The Searchers. Hell, even Fort Apache showed Custer as an idiot who didn't understand that the Indian could not conform to a European-based lifestyle and tried to force it into them with rotten results. Some of his early films are patronizing, true, but at the height of his career, Ford always had a very humanistic worldview on display.

An artist can be a 'humanist' and still demonstrate racist (usually condescending) tendencies. There's what a film is about and how it's about it... The Searchers attempts to condemn the blind hatred of racism while engaging in racist condescension. The natives are basically caricatures of human beings... played for fear or comic relief.

[Qrazy]

Sounds like a certain someone is trying to start a discussion.

Obviously, we got off on the wrong foot here. Who was leading this tempestuous dance? I don't know. The main point being, are you ready to listen to a defense of submissive pleasure? Will you read it or should I not expect you to?

Well I was mainly just interested if anyone has seen someone or heard of their grandmother doing such a thing or if it's purely Hollywood. I'll read it if you particularly feel like writing it but I'm not overly interested in having a lengthy discussion about submissive pleasure so I may or may not respond (probably may since I have a terrifying compulsion to respond to all posts directed at/towards me)... if you feel it's worth your time to defend, it's up to you.

[Sven]

Have you seen Duel in the Sun, iosos?

Years ago. I quite liked it. Why?

[Philosophe_rouge]

Well I was mainly just interested if anyone has seen someone or heard of their grandmother doing such a thing or if it's purely Hollywood. I'll read it if you particularly feel like writing it but I'm not overly interested in having a lengthy discussion about submissive pleasure so I may or may not respond (probably may since I have a terrifying compulsion to respond to all posts directed at/towards me)... if you feel it's worth your time to defend, it's up to you.
The best I have is one of my teachers telling us that he tried it a few times, but it never worked. This was the 70s though, not 30s/40s. And I think he was joking.

[Winston*]

Years ago. I quite liked it. Why?

Because it's awesomely racist and sexist. You liked in like a non-ironic way?

[Sven]

Well I was mainly just interested if anyone has seen someone or heard of their grandmother doing such a thing or if it's purely Hollywood. I'll read it if you particularly feel like writing it but I'm not overly interested in having a lengthy discussion about submissive pleasure so I may or may not respond (probably may since I have a terrifying compulsion to respond to all posts directed at/towards me)... if you feel it's worth your time to defend, it's up to you.

Like I said before, I've got a couple of pretty massive papers I'm working on, so I think I'll spare the board (and you) this time. I still find it curious that you were so willing to broadly condemn the cliche (on sexism grounds) and now express disinterest in an explanation (submissive pleasure). But whatever. The end...

...???

[Sven]

Because it's awesomely racist and sexist. You liked in like a non-ironic way?

Like Qrazy said before, I'm not one to automatically dismiss a film for ideological questionability. I love The Birth of a Nation. I think it's exciting. Captivating. Excellent cinema, narratively and (some) thematically. Does that excuse it? Hardly. It's one of the most difficult things in the world to reconcile one's visceral appreciation with one's cerebral dismay.

As for Vidor's film, I'd have to see it again. My recollection is hazy. We're talking, like, 8 years ago here.

[MadMan]

While yes I acknowledge that the white man almost wiped out the Native American Indian and that it was practically a genocidal campaign, I have read Zinn and I find him to be almost like Michael Moore in book form. Biased to the hilt, and thus while credible should just like Moore be taken with some grain of salt (in this case in terms of actual historians she Zinn is one). And also very liberal....note I'm not saying that being liberal is a bad thing. But a good historian is neither liberal nor conservative. Objectivity is key.

[soitgoes...]

Why pick on Ford, when most of pre-1960 cinema was guilty of this? I watched A Ship Bound for India (Bergman) last night. It wasn't even the forced kiss you brought up. Rather attempted rape giving way to consensual sex the next day. The same could be said for Daisy Kenyon. If you want racism, watch some Harold Lloyd films, Red Dust, or perhaps some Looney Tunes cartoons. Pretty much the entirety of early Hollywood films paints the black man as the lazy servant, the Indian as the rapist of white women/killer of the gentle white settler, the Asian as the buck-toothed bespectacled "snake" who'll run away when the white protagonist gets in trouble, the Jew as the greedy merchant, and the white man master over them all, even his women. Ford was hardly atypical when it came to his portrayal of racism/misogyny.

[Dead & Messed Up]

After watching Smiley Face, I'm somewhat appreciative of Gregg Araki's approach to the material, and I'm very happy that he tabbed Anna Faris for the main role. With this film, she proves once again that she's a terrific comedienne. The film requires her to be in a constant state of paranoia and good humor, and she navigates it well.

That said, I wouldn't really recommend the film. It's uneven, and it duplicates the odyssey approach of many other "pot" films, and most of the side characters lack interest.

[Qrazy]

The best I have is one of my teachers telling us that he tried it a few times, but it never worked. This was the 70s though, not 30s/40s. And I think he was joking.

Well these days it's pretty borderline lawsuit.

[Qrazy]

Why pick on Ford, when most of pre-1960 cinema was guilty of this? I watched A Ship Bound for India (Bergman) last night. It wasn't even the forced kiss you brought up. Rather attempted rape giving way to consensual sex the next day. The same could be said for Daisy Kenyon. If you want racism, watch some Harold Lloyd films, Red Dust, or perhaps some Looney Tunes cartoons. Pretty much the entirety of early Hollywood films paints the black man as the lazy servant, the Indian as the rapist of white women/killer of the gentle white settler, the Asian as the buck-toothed bespectacled "snake" who'll run away when the white protagonist gets in trouble, the Jew as the greedy merchant, and the white man master over them all, even his women. Ford was hardly atypical when it came to his portrayal of racism/misogyny.

I hardly know how we got onto Ford, a passing reference I made... the original issue stemmed from a Renoir. I wouldn't say most pre 1960's cinema though that seems like an extreme over generalization and certainly hasn't been the case for the majority of films I"ve seen from early cinema.

Oh yeah and speaking of Lloyd the portrayal of the money grubbing Jew in Safety Last was just awful.

[Qrazy]

Why pick on Ford, when most of pre-1960 cinema was guilty of this? I watched A Ship Bound for India (Bergman) last night. It wasn't even the forced kiss you brought up. Rather attempted rape giving way to consensual sex the next day.

Well yeah after the kiss awkwardness it's implied that they proceeded to hump like rabbits... in A Day in the Country.

[soitgoes...]

Jesus, Naruse is amazing. I just watched Floating Clouds and wow. Not perfect, but combined with the other 5 films of his I've seen he's definitely a pimp. Think Ozu, only with a punch to the stomach and more movement. I can't wait to see another by him.

[Yxklyx]

Weekend:

Early Spring
Warning Shadows

[Raiders]

Weekend:

Gymkata
Troll 2
Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2

[Winston*]

Weekend:

Gymkata
Troll 2
Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2

Really?

[Raiders]

Really?

That's the current plan.

[Kurious Jorge v3.1]

Weekend:

A Man Escaped (2nd viewing (of the new Artifical Eye disc!))
Fresh
Head On
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

[Kurosawa Fan]

That's the current plan.

You need Samurai Cop.

[Sven]

It is clear that her work with Lynch and Maddin have rubbed off on her:

http://www.sundancechannel.com/greenporno

[Derek]

You need Samurai Cop.

Indeed. That one trumps all three overall, although the first 30-40 minutes of Gymkata might be the most hilarious/ridiculous stretch in any of them.

[Russ]

It is clear that her work with Lynch and Maddin have rubbed off on her:

http://www.sundancechannel.com/greenporno
My penis will break off! It will get stuck in her vagina like a cork in a bottle.

Fabulous.

[Qrazy]

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Early Nichols is fantastic.

[Bosco B Thug]

My penis will break off! It will get stuck in her vagina like a cork in a bottle.

Fabulous. I'm partial to: "I will dig my paraphilie (?) in her epigine (?)... and run off!" Heheh, I very much enjoyed those.


Watched Tobe Hooper's Invaders From Mars. Impeccable direction, of course, but unfortunately, I wasn't blown away by the film. It gradually loses steam after an excellently creepy first half, and in the end, it just isn't very interesting thematically. It's all nicely tongue-in-cheek, homage-driven, and sprinkled with moments of social irony, but no grand subtext is really reached and yeah, it's just not that interesting or provocative in the end.

Great cast, too. Karen Black, James Karen, Louise Fletcher... Hunter Carson is impressive as the kid and Timothy Bottoms gives a most effective and creepy performance in the film.

[Sven]

Derek, it's time for the weekly "Tell me more about that movie you rated in your signature" episode. Tonite's tale: Suicide Club. Iosos has never been one lured by Asian Extreme cinema, but his cursory knowledge about that particular Sono film has always nagged at him. Most of that curiosity is due to the presence of Ryo Ishibashi, whom iosos admires greatly. Still, understanding the nature of the film, and having seen the notorious clip of the girls jumping in front of the train, he cannot bear the thought of sitting through the film itself.

Tell me more.

[Rowland]

I liked Suicide Club a lot, but I can understand how someone would feel strongly otherwise. I suppose I could explain why I like it, but I suspect that Iosos is more interested in the opinion that corresponds with his preconceived take on the movie.

[transmogrifier]

Early Nichols is fantastic.

Pity about the late Nichols. Charlie Wilson's War is one of the most ineptly-directed movies I've seen in a long, long time.

[megladon8]

I still adore The Graduate.

[MacGuffin]

Pity about the late Nichols. Charlie Wilson's War is one of the most ineptly-directed movies I've seen in a long, long time.

Closer was not much different it seems.

[Qrazy]

I still adore The Graduate.

Who's Afraid, The Graduate, Catch 22 and Carnal Knowledge are all good to excellent.... I feel the same way about Nichols as I do about Truffaut... the rest of their careers after their first couple films just doesn't interest me much... still talent on display in some of their pictures but doesn't touch their early work.

[Bosco B Thug]

Derek, it's time for the weekly "Tell me more about that movie you rated in your signature" episode. Tonite's tale: Suicide Club. Iosos has never been one lured by Asian Extreme cinema, but his cursory knowledge about that particular Sono film has always nagged at him. Most of that curiosity is due to the presence of Ryo Ishibashi, whom iosos admires greatly. Still, understanding the nature of the film, and having seen the notorious clip of the girls jumping in front of the train, he cannot bear the thought of sitting through the film itself.

Tell me more. Eh, yeah, I don't think you would like it. It's been a few years since I've seen it, but it has the allegorical "non-logic" and ambiguity of Pulse (and you're one of those people, right? :P ) and amps it up with lots and lots of gratuitous gore that crosses into excessive (i.e. Battle Royale... don't know where you stand on that one). It also gets goofy a lot, yet mixes that with some really overwrought and/or emo dramatic passages and thematic sledge-hammering. I didn't hate it, though, the suicide scenes are rather chilling and adult and it's all rather creepy and tantalizing.

That train sequence is also just the appetizer of the film, too, so... (it begins it)

[Sven]

(i.e. Battle Royale... don't know where you stand on that one)

Loathed it. Retarded film.

[Qrazy]

Loathed it. Retarded film.

Don't watch the second. It gets worse.

[Bosco B Thug]

Loathed it. Retarded film. Haha. Alright then! That's nice and tidy then.

[Derek]

Eh, yeah, I don't think you would like it. It's been a few years since I've seen it, but it has the allegorical "non-logic" and ambiguity of Pulse (and you're one of those people, right? :P ) and amps it up with lots and lots of gratuitous gore that crosses into excessive (i.e. Battle Royale... don't know where you stand on that one). It also gets goofy a lot, yet mixes that with some really overwrought and/or emo dramatic passages and thematic sledge-hammering. I didn't hate it, though, the suicide scenes are rather chilling and adult and it's all rather creepy and tantalizing.

That train sequence is also just the appetizer of the film, too, so... (it begins it)

Sure, it has the ambiguity of Pulse (which I love), but where Kurosawa explores the nature of the disconnection responsible for the suicides, it's at best a peripheral concern in Suicide Club. Sono uses the epidemic as a starting point for a fairly dull detective story and the suicides themselves purely for suspense and stylized gore. The characters are two-dimensional, coming off as little more than pawns which makes it hard to find much of interest once it starts veering towards the absurd subplots involving the girl group and emo/glam-rock baddies. I dunno, the borderline offensive exploitation of the suicide trend could have been forgiven to a certain degree had the result not been so uneven and surprisingly bland.

EDIT: Has anyone seen Noriko's Dinner Table? It sounds fascinating and I know MSZ and a few other critics liked it a good deal. It was the only reason I watched Suicide Club, so now my expectations are significantly lower.

[number8]

Loathed it. Retarded film.

And we've been agreeing so much lately...

[Sven]

Hmmm... let's see... the last two films I saw:

Lovely & Amazing, which I thought was neither.

Enemies: A Love Story, which was exquisitely acted (even by Ron Silver, imagine!) and quite possibly my favorite Mazursky film.

Anybody see either?

[Grouchy]

When you're being mercilessly slaughtered you might fight back (see: Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States).
Heh, that's a four year old's answer. Of course there was violence in both sides, that's not the issue.

[Boner M]

Lovely & Amazing, which I thought was neither.

Enemies: A Love Story, which was exquisitely acted (even by Ron Silver, imagine!) and quite possibly my favorite Mazursky film.

Anybody see either?
Agree with you on L&A, though I loved Emily Mortimer in it.

[Sven]

Agree with you on L&A, though I loved Emily Mortimer in it.

She was cute, but her character was pretty unbelievable. The whole damn film was.

[Boner M]

She was cute, but her character was pretty unbelievable. The whole damn film was.
I really don't remember it well at all. It's kinda disappeared into the 'Sundance anonymity' part of my film memory, where it and The Good Girl, Personal Velocity, Thirteen Conversations et al have joined forces into one gooey mass.

[Sven]

I really don't remember it well at all. It's kinda disappeared into the 'Sundance anonymity' part of my film memory, where it and The Good Girl, Personal Velocity, Thirteen Conversations et al have joined forces into one gooey mass.

Word. I think of it as the autumn era of my Blockbuster years.

It's a pretty bad movie, though I was never bored. Basically, I don't think a slice-of-life picture should rely on as many dramatic contrivances as this one did. The casting of Blethyn couldn't help but remind me of Leigh and how he does everything this film was trying to do with ten times as much warmth, wit, and purpose.

[Winston*]

I need a film that will undoubtedly rekindle my love for cinema, lest it be extinguished for good. Go!

[Philosophe_rouge]

I need a film that will undoubtedly rekindle my love for cinema, lest it be extinguished for good. Go!
How About these 3?
Odd Man Out
The Man Who Planted Trees
Cluny Brown

[number8]

I need a film that will undoubtedly rekindle my love for cinema, lest it be extinguished for good. Go!

Speed Racer.

[Winston*]

The Man Who Planted Trees

I saw this film earlier this year. I don't think it rekindled my love for cinema, but it did rekindle my love for trees, for about 5 minutes until I realised I never really cared about trees.

[Watashi]

Winston = Clipper Ship Captain?

[Winston*]

Winston = Clipper Ship Captain?
I have enough of your victimising of me.

[Winston*]

When I say cinema, I actually mean Cinema.

[Winston*]

You ever have that experience where you think you're watching an Alexander Sokurov but you're actually watching an Eldar Ryazanov? Hahaha...oh my god.

[Winston*]

People are always asking "What is cinema?" but I think the more pertinent question is "where is cinema"? Doe it exist up on the screen? Or does it exist in our hearts?

[Winston*]

And isn't a life lived by the beat of it's own drum really the truest form of auterism?

[Watashi]

My favorite cinema rekindler is porn.

[Sycophant]

I'm going to cry, I'm laughing so hard.

[dreamdead]

I really don't remember it well at all. It's kinda disappeared into the 'Sundance anonymity' part of my film memory, where it and The Good Girl, Personal Velocity, Thirteen Conversations et al have joined forces into one gooey mass.

Yeah, Lovely & Amazing isn't all that noteworthy, and I've struggled to understand the praise that Nicole Holofcener has garnered, though I tip my hat to a female director trying to articulate and center stories around issues of female sexuality and life. Yet her work often feels overly sitcom-y and contrived, especially in this film and in Friends with Money. Walking and Talking remains her best film and even that one is only slightly above average. She seems very much a byproduct of a male system that then goes out of its way to acknowledge female directors, albeit female ones who don't attack the system with any real venom or critique.

In that respect, her films are very much like the thoroughly mediocre Kissing Jessica Stein....

[monolith94]

People are always asking "What is cinema?" but I think the more pertinent question is "where is cinema"? Doe it exist up on the screen? Or does it exist in our hearts?
God, we spent two very painful weeks on this very question in my college film criticism and culture class. Ugh. DIE WALTER BENJAMIN, DIE!

[lovejuice]

In that respect, her films are very much like the thoroughly mediocre Kissing Jessica Stein....

you are too kind calling that movie mediocre.

[megladon8]

A friend on another forum said this recently...


There need to be more steampunk sort of movies.


...and I am inclined to agree.

[Winston*]

God, we spent two very painful weeks on this very question in my college film criticism and culture class. Ugh. DIE WALTER BENJAMIN, DIE!
That reminds me of the time I was walking to down the street talking to my friend Jean-Luc Godard, or JL as he lets me call him because he lives in my head, and he was like "You see Winston Asterisk, film is truth at 24 frames a second". So I was like "Shut the fuck up JL" and punched myself in the face.

[origami_mustache]

A Quiet Place in the Country (Elio Petri, 1969)

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1228/940803064_f3edb0e38e.jpg?v=0


IMDB keywords for the film include:
Necrophilia
Fetishism
Sadomasochism
Asylum
Ghost
Seance

If this hasn't already peaked your interest, the film also boasts a pretty incredible list of talent including an original avant-garde score by Ennio Morricone, actress Vanessa Redgrave, and a story provided by the legendary Italian screenwriter Tonino Guerra who has an extraordinary laundry list of writing credits including films for Antonioni (L'Avventura, L'Eclisse, Blowup, The Red Desert), Andy Warhol's Frankenstein, Tarkovsky's Nostalghia, as well as films for Angelopoulos (Voyage to Cythera, The Beekeeper, Landscape in the Mist, Ulysses' Gaze, Eternity and a Day, The Weeping Meadow), and many more. A Quiet Place in the Country is the story of an artist who purchases a country villa in order to escape the city and focus on his work. The film is very atmospheric and in many ways very similar to The Shining. It is also very psychedelic (film is actually very colorful despite the black and white still) and surreal and even plays with dualistic ideas between realism and surrealism; Redgrave's character is labeled as the practical realist, whereas Leonardo (Franco Nero) is an eccentric painter on the brink of insanity.

[transmogrifier]

It's good to see iosos is as wrong as he ever was about Battle Royale.

[Qrazy]

Heh, that's a four year old's answer. Of course there was violence in both sides, that's not the issue.

Heh, that's a biggot's response. See what I did there? It's called baselessly demeaning the person you're talking to in order to 'win' an argument. It's completely worthless in the scope of the actual discussion.

However, it is a fucking tragedy that you think the natives and the 'whites' were equally responsible for harm done to one another.

Indian Removal Act.
Trail of Tears.
Extinction of the bison (Andrew Jackson).
Sand Creek Massacre.
Wounded Knee.

I guess driving groups of human beings to the brink or past the brink of extinction (in some cases - Arawaks) is just all in the cards for Whity though.

[Qrazy]

I saw this film earlier this year. I don't think it rekindled my love for cinema, but it did rekindle my love for trees, for about 5 minutes until I realised I never really cared about trees.

So then it started your love of trees, good enough, better even.

[Qrazy]

It's good to see iosos is as wrong as he ever was about Battle Royale.

He does enjoy being wrong about things. This is objective fact.

[Qrazy]

That reminds me of the time I was walking to down the street talking to my friend Jean-Luc Godard, or JL as he lets me call him because he lives in my head, and he was like "You see Winston Asterisk, film is truth at 24 frames a second". So I was like "Shut the fuck up JL" and punched myself in the face.

If I gave out rep I'd give you some for this... but I don't really... so I won't... but it's the thought that counts.

[balmakboor]

The recent talk (bashing of?) recent Mike Nichols reminded me that I need to catch up on his work. I've seen Who's Afraid and The Graduate (both brilliant of course), Catch-22 (okay but not as good for me as it is for some), and Carnal Knowledge (it's been too long to evaluate). I've also seen Working Girl, Silkwood, and Postcards From the Edge -- all of which I thought were very skillfully directed and thoroughly a cut above the norm for Hollywood films of their ilk. His direction isn't as flashy as it was in The Graduate, but he has settled into a solid maturity of invisibly serving the material (sometimes not great material) with great intelligence.

I just queued up Closer and Angels in America among other things.

[megladon8]

I actually quite liked Closer.

For a movie about four loathesome people who should all have been castrated and put on an ice flow, it was very good.

[Sven]

I liked Primary Colors a good deal, though that was back when I didn't have the same aversion to Hollywood liberal pandering that I do now. But it was entertaining.

Closer is wretched.

[Grouchy]

Heh, that's a biggot's response. See what I did there? It's called baselessly demeaning the person you're talking to in order to 'win' an argument. It's completely worthless in the scope of the actual discussion.

However, it is a fucking tragedy that you think the natives and the 'whites' were equally responsible for harm done to one another.

Indian Removal Act.
Trail of Tears.
Extinction of the bison (Andrew Jackson).
Sand Creek Massacre.
Wounded Knee.

I guess driving groups of human beings to the brink or past the brink of extinction (in some cases - Arawaks) is just all in the cards for Whity though.
Honestly, I don't need you to teach me about how "America" was really won, since the same thing happened in Argentina and in all of the American continent.

I'm getting bored. This is all very far away from your initial and very wrong statements.

[Qrazy]

The recent talk (bashing of?) recent Mike Nichols reminded me that I need to catch up on his work. I've seen Who's Afraid and The Graduate (both brilliant of course), Catch-22 (okay but not as good for me as it is for some), and Carnal Knowledge (it's been too long to evaluate). I've also seen Working Girl, Silkwood, and Postcards From the Edge -- all of which I thought were very skillfully directed and thoroughly a cut above the norm for Hollywood films of their ilk. His direction isn't as flashy as it was in The Graduate, but he has settled into a solid maturity of invisibly serving the material (sometimes not great material) with great intelligence.

I just queued up Closer and Angels in America among other things.

As little love as I have for his later work (The Birdcage), Angels in America is still very good.

[Sven]

Angels in America is still very good.

I liked the first half of that one, but the second half lost me. Also, Kushner's take on Mormonism is pretty off-the-mark in my estimation.

[origami_mustache]

I liked the first half of that one, but the second half lost me. Also, Kushner's take on Mormonism is pretty off-the-mark in my estimation.

I didn't care for it much...it's just too melodramatic and televisiony for me.

[Qrazy]

Honestly, I don't need you to teach me about how "America" was really won, since the same thing happened in Argentina and in all of the American continent.

I'm getting bored. This is all very far away from your initial and very wrong statements.

Clearly you do since for all intents and purposes you seem to equate slaughter with 'fighting on both sides'. You seem to believe John Ford is some sort of angelic lover of people of all creeds. That's what's clearly wrong. His attitude towards natives is very apparent in all of his work both early and otherwise.

"The Indian didn’t welcome the white man... and he wasn’t diplomatic..."

Actually many tribes did welcome the white man and experienced utter misery and destruction as a result. He speaks of generalization and then generalizes himself in a much more worrisome way a sentence or two afterwards.

"If he has been treated unfairly by whites in films, that, unfortunately, was often the case in real life."

Is this some kind of half-assed justification for his portrayal of Natives (primarily in his early work... the manner of condescension changed over time) as savages? Because they were thought of back then as savages... I can/ought to portray them as such in my films? How are these remarks 'sensible'? Please do tell.

[Raiders]

Paddy Considine is so awesome. After Last Resort, I very much want to see Pawlikowski's My Summer of Love. Anyone seen that?

[Qrazy]

I liked the first half of that one, but the second half lost me. Also, Kushner's take on Mormonism is pretty off-the-mark in my estimation.

I just really liked Emma Thompson's turn as a crazy homeless woman. Awesome sauce.

[balmakboor]

I've never thought of the indians in westerns as being accurate depictions of Native Americans in any sense -- nor were they intended as such. I thought, much like Nazis and "Japs" in WWII films and Vietnamese in Vietnam War films, they are shadow projections of the heroes. Look at Scar for instance and you are really seeing a survey of Ethan's repressed psyche. Kubrick made this all really explicit in Full Metal Jacket with all the comparisons between Ameican soldiers in Vietnam and cowboys and indians (not to mention Jungian psychology).

Maybe -- probably -- Ford was racist, but at the same time the depictions of indians in his westerns stems from a dramatic/psychological need. Revisionist westerns from Little Big Man to Dances with Wolves and beyond seem to be trying to right this situation by attempting to draw realistic depictions of Native Americans that are divorced from this classical hero/villian baggage.

[Qrazy]

I've never thought of the indians in westerns as being accurate depictions of Native Americans in any sense -- nor were they intended as such. I thought, much like Nazis and "Japs" in WWII films and Vietnamese in Vietnam War films, they are shadow projections of the heroes. Look at Scar for instance and you are really seeing a survey of Ethan's repressed psyche. Kubrick made this all really explicit in Full Metal Jacket with all the comparisons between Ameican soldiers in Vietnam and cowboys and indians (not to mention Jungian psychology).

Maybe -- probably -- Ford was racist, but at the same time the depictions of indians in his westerns stems from a dramatic/psychological need. Revisionist westerns from Little Big Man to Dances with Wolves and beyond seem to be trying to right this situation by attempting to draw realistic depictions of Native Americans that are divorced from this classical hero/villian baggage.

(gettting on something broader than Ford for a minute)

Yeah some good points and I like to think about it that way too, but one has to be careful I think not to let psychological interpretation go past interpretation and serve as justification for sociopolitical archetypes. Although casting Nazis as 'the other' and 'the bad guys' is certainly a shallow and simplistic way of interpreting human nature, at least it's primarily ideological... the danger with casting 'the other' and the bad guy as someone with a different skin color in this day and age I think is fairly apparent (viz 300: whites vs yellows). Hero/villian archetypal stories can still be told... I for one enjoy them although I find them very psychologically and socio-politically limited... but we need to hold artists accountable for their portrayals and choice of villians. If the hero is always whitey and the villian is always the big black beast... maybe something needs to be adjusted.

[Sven]

The problem of seeing films through such a pointedly political prism is that most any counter-cinematic movement would operate through the same prism. The point is not response (ie, let's make a film where the black guy is the good guy and the white guy is the bad guy), for that is just as guilty of submission to the dominant ideology. Rather, we should encourage a process of destruction/reconstruction (ie, re-locating audience awareness through the diegetic manufacturing of a new political language).

*shoots self*

[Duncan]

Paddy Considine is so awesome. After Last Resort, I very much want to see Pawlikowski's My Summer of Love. Anyone seen that?

I've seen it. It's alright. Sort of devolves into exactly what you expect it to be. That is, religion and rich people are creepy. Considine isn't the main player, but he's still got a hefty part.

[Qrazy]

The problem of seeing films through such a pointedly political prism is that most any counter-cinematic movement would operate through the same prism.

Don't agree, in fact I see zero evidence for such a claim.


The point is not response (ie, let's make a film where the black guy is the good guy and the white guy is the bad guy), for that is just as guilty of submission to the dominant ideology.

Of course, no one is arguing that.


Rather, we should encourage a process of destruction/reconstruction (ie, re-locating audience awareness through the diegetic manufacturing of a new political language).

*shoots self*

If you refrained from using terms like pointedly and diegetic you would probably be less inclined to shoot yourself.

[Sven]

Don't agree, in fact I see zero evidence for such a claim.

What I'm saying is that by holding artists accountable for their choices, we are asking them to defend their art through the ideology of the inquisitor, most frequently embodied as an entity of the dominating ideology. In this case, that would be the principle of political correctness. And when we try to develop a counter-movement in response to the supposed racism of Ford as unearthed through our PC-inquisition, we are operating within the same linear system, just in the opposite direction.

What I'm saying is that we should try to maneuver outside the system. How? By asking artists to account for their choices rather than holding them accountable is a start. The distance of inquiry/action is necessary. Surely if their account is of an offensive nature, or lacking significant consideration, from there we can observe ideological weakness and begin to topple it. How one spots this "offense" or "lack" is entirely dependent on the individual's thoroughness of education, I suppose, and their complete devotion to revolution. To respond without question to a presupposed ideal is potentially destructive to the cause of establishing the foundation of a new language. This is something my favorite critic Armond does poorly.

Edit: also, the evidence is right in front of us. Tell me how the feminist revolution has altered the face of contemporary cinema. The answer, in my estimation, is the amount is entirely negligible. Because most feminist cinema is built on the visual language of a patriarchal foundation. There has yet to be a substantial collective of work that has radicalized visual language to the point of significance for the feminist movement because of this.

[Sven]

Of course, there is the chance that I may not know what I'm talking about. But hear me out... I think I'm onto something major. I've been studying this intensively all semester.

[Qrazy]

What I'm saying is that by holding artists accountable for their choices, we are asking them to defend their art through the ideology of the inquisitor, most frequently embodied as an entity of the dominating ideology. In this case, that would be the principle of political correctness. And when we try to develop a counter-movement in response to the supposed racism of Ford as unearthed through our PC-inquisition, we are operating within the same linear system, just in the opposite direction.

I don't go in for absolute moral relativism in art or otherwise... not even quasi-realists such as Blackburn and Gibbard who question the basis of our moral foundations go in for absolute relativism... and you'll certainly find no support from the quietists, moral naturalists, realists and the like.

Your argument would have merit if the issue were dismissing the entire film as a result of it's political incorrectness, but that is not the issue at all. The elements of the film that could and should be held accountable are being held accountable for choices the artist has made, and this is entirely reasonable. Tell me what is gained by the portrayal of blacks in Birth of a Nation versus what is lost. Do you truly believe that it wouldn't be a much better movie with a more nuanced examination of racial issues?


What I'm saying is that we should try to maneuver outside the system. How? By asking artists to account for their choices rather than holding them accountable is a start. The distance of inquiry/action is necessary. Surely if their account is of an offensive nature, or lacking significant consideration, from there we can observe ideological weakness and begin to topple it. How one spots this "offense" or "lack" is entirely dependent on the individual's thoroughness of education, I suppose, and their complete devotion to revolution. To respond without question to a presupposed ideal is potentially destructive to the cause of establishing the foundation of a new language. This is something my favorite critic Armond does poorly.

Maneuver outside what system, one of moral and artistic integrity?

Again accountability is not complete dismissal. This is key.

Armond White doesn't fail at criticism because of his ideals. He fails at criticism because he insults artists and fans for supporting a work rather than critiquing the work itself. And when he does critique his critiques are usually poor (for a variety of reasons) and involve a lot of ranting about films which he thinks 'do a better job'.

Anti-racism is not unquestioning idealism, nor is it identical to 'political correctness'. You'll have to work harder to earn the right to label it as such. No one either can or should approach a piece of art completely as a blank slate. Art should have the capacity to alter belief systems but it should also be filtered through one's belief systems. It's perfectly reasonable to find certain artists work thematically reductionistic or ideological problematic but to respect them formally. And the relativist has no right to assume a position of condescension, invoking relativism as the only logically valid outlook... and disdaining those who dislike a work of art on ideological grounds... viewing them as individuals in possession of the herd mentality who have blindly accepted their base ideals.

What saves the aesthetic for the relativist from the same demise they believe they've given to ideological concerns? To what aesthetic standards can a work of art be held? If the goal has become to abolish all standards because the relativist cannot pinpoint the foundation of such standards.


Edit: also, the evidence is right in front of us. Tell me how the feminist revolution has altered the face of contemporary cinema. The answer, in my estimation, is the amount is entirely negligible. Because most feminist cinema is built on the visual language of a patriarchal foundation. There has yet to be a substantial collective of work that has radicalized visual language to the point of significance for the feminist movement because of this.

What do you even mean by this? Patriarchal visual language? Are all compositions phallic in nature? What are you talking about? Neither female directors nor other female artists have to re-invent the wheel to make exceptional contributions to the art-form. They (like all directors) build on the visual contributions of the artists that proceeded them. That doesn't mean they're adopting a patriarchal visual language. Anyway... Breillat, Akerman, Kopple, Anderson, Deren, etc are all visual innovators... and there are many others.

The cinematic revolution for the feminist is still very much in it's infancy because the woman has had to fight so hard to even get a voice with which to decry inequality... because films cost money and in a male driven industry it's harder for the woman to find work... and in a Hollywood system it's especially hard for anyone who has anything of interest to say to find work.

[Grouchy]

I don't think Birth of a Nation would be a better movie without the racism. I think it would be a more morally correct movie, which is not the same.

And I'm guessing that by patriarchal visual language iosos just means that everyone is drawing from the same sources of film innovators - Griffith, Eisenstein, Vertov, etc. and they're all male. If you mean anything different, sorry.

Nice discussion, by the way, even if it started off like shit. I disagree with Qrazy's prejudiced way of reading those John Ford quotes, but I'm dropping the ball in favor of a more worthy conversation.

[Grouchy]

Oh, and Southland Tales. Fuck. How does a movie like this ever get made? It's a clear homage to David Lynch, but a lot more pop culture savvy. I might track down the graphic novels. I'm not saying I loved it, and I still think Kelly has a very poor way of framing shots and sequences. Liked it a lot more than Donnie Darko. Also found most of it (and above all The Rock's performance) hilarious, so that helped.

[monolith94]

I find it hard to imagine things that could be done to Birth of a Nation that would make the actual thing worse...