28 Film Discussion Threads Later

[Rowland]

I have problems with his film and those types of (food) stunts in general but I agree that the figures being thrown around here about the relatively 'harmless' fast-food industry are entirely arbitrary. Even regardless of the nutrition issues here, the industry is absolutely terrible for the environment.

Ahh! I didn't say the industry was harmless. I said the occasional hamburger and fries within the context of the average diet is relatively harmless. Extrapolation! :frustrated: :lol:

[Barty]

If only all fast food was like In-N-Out ritch:

[Qrazy]

You say this like it doesn't describe the majority of our population.

That's why I host my own parties.

[Rowland]

Kurosawa's Loft is more or less another Doppelganger. What starts out as a serious, creepy horror film quickly becomes a series of anti-horror film gestures that are ridiculous and absurd, none moreso than the wonderful shot of a man turning face to face with a ghost, and casually walking right by it. The ending was also hilarious.

Doppelganger works straight as well though, in the sense that the narrative, characters, and subtext have a certain grounding to them. Loft just thrashes about all willy-nilly into baffling, increasingly awkward absurdity.

[Qrazy]

I edited my post to make my point clearer. The movie just strikes me as toothless. He's too busy goofing around, when the subject deserves a beared-fangs approach.

Disagree, comedy is a better way to get a point across.

[Rowland]

Disagree, comedy is a better way to get a point across.

Not when the comedy is too prevalent over so many points that are missed. The movie panders by too-often shooting fish in a barrel, all under the veneer of easily digestible comedy and everyman affability, when it should be tearing down and inspiring.

[Sycophant]

Kurosawa's Loft is more or less another Doppelganger. What starts out as a serious, creepy horror film quickly becomes a series of anti-horror film gestures that are ridiculous and absurd, none moreso than the wonderful shot of a man turning face to face with a ghost, and casually walking right by it. The ending was also hilarious.

By the way, did you find a copy that was actually decent (widescreen, etc.), as opposed to what Rowland watched a while back?

[Qrazy]

Ahh! I didn't say the industry was harmless. I said the occasional hamburger and fries within the context of the average diet is relatively harmless. Extrapolation! :frustrated: :lol:

No, you didn't but I'm just saying that even if people go there once a month there still funding an exploitive institution that has little to no, perhaps negative, social value.

Anyway, I think I more or less agree with you about the film technique... although he did contextualize the experiment in with the lawsuits. But Spurlock and Moore films are more about attention seeking and pushing their political agenda than about saying anything particularly contemplative.

I think Fasozupow was on to something earlier when he hinted that we really ought to be discussing whether or not rhetoric and band-standing has a place in cinema, and if it has a place than to what degree and in what sense can it be compared to other documentaries. Also, is it disingenuous to push a particular piece of deliberately (but perhaps not overly so) manipulative rhetoric on an audience, or only when you cloak it in the veil of objectivity. What should the goal of documentary film be? Should there be a goal?

I would venture that there should not be a goal per se but that filmmakers and artists in general ought to approach craftsmanship with a certain level of integrity... in the sense that their aim is to expose the truth without (m)any preconceived notions as to what that truth actually is... i.e. Let the film document speak for itself in order to effect change (if it has political goals)... versus pushing an agenda deliberately though-out, often resorting to manipulative or misleading tactics in order to do so.

[Spinal]

I hope I haven't come across as a fast-food apologist with all of this. Trust me, as exploitative corporate institutions, I think the industry is absolutely abhorrent. I've just been trying to fashion an argument around why I believe the movie to be less effective than I wish it was, which has inadvertently resulted in all these tangents. If anything, I believe the movie should have been so much more vicious, and more thoughtful in its approach as such.

Understood. You've made me think twice about places like Applebee's and Red Robin, etc.

[Watashi]

Is it just me or these last few pages making me really really hungry?

[Spinal]

Is it just me or these last few pages making me really really hungry?

Totally. I've been craving some chicken fajitas.

[Grouchy]

Speaking of longer cuts, anyone have any rough cut viewing stories? My only one was an on campus screening of an early 3+ hour cut of the ZAZ film Top Secret. It was interesting. Zucker, Abrams, and Zucker were in the audience taking notes. Basically, if the crowd laughed, they kept it in. I'd say the final runtime of 90 minutes was about right.

No, and this is only tangentially related to what you were asking, but a friend of mine rented a movie (El Fondo del Mar [The Bottom of the Sea], from here in Argentina) in VHS and for some reason it was the working copy. That means the sound wasn't properly equalized yet, there was still foley to be done and, in one blue screen shot (the man hanging from the building), well, huh, the screen was there. Raving bongo. I happened to be on his house while he was still holding it and he showed me the best parts.

What I don't get - regarding all this fast food talk - are those fat backwards mongoloids that sue McDonald's because they're sick or obese. Well, actually, they aren't so fucking stupid, because they must make some money in settlements out of their weaknesses, but still... I haven't seen Spurlock's movie, but I don't have anything against its existence despite the fact that most people already know McDonald's isn't too healthy to eat everyday. But those shitnecks suing companies because they're addicted to something absolutely EVERYONE knows is dangerous to consume in excess bug the living hell out of me.

I saw Amazon Women on the Moon today. It's a sketch movie aiming its darts mostly at TV and B-class science fiction, and with good directors like Joe Dante and John Landis involved. It's also clearly inspired by the craziness of Monty Python's Meaning of Life, which was released four years earlier. Still, Cleese and Co. this is not. Some of the sketchs are awesome (Silly Paté, Blacks without Soul, Son of the Invisible Man, Bullshit or Not?, Titan Condoms and well, a couple more), while others are either too stupid or go on for too long, something which the Pythons often did, but they spiced it up by increasing the nonsense. It's worth seeing once, though, and it has many star cameos from Michelle Pfeiffer, Griffin Dune, Arsenio Hall, B.B. King and other cool people. One of the final sketches, Video Pirates, is similar to one I thought of a while ago, only in reverse - the one in the movie is about real pirates stealing VHS as booty, and mine was about a "pirate" video store that doesn't actually sell bootlegs, it's just being run by pirates.

[Mysterious Dude]

Just watched Hiroshi Teshigahara's Pitfall. It seemed very surreal and artistic at first, but once you get past the dead guy walking around, it was a pretty standard murder mystery. Still, it was entertaining, and I like the ending. I think I should rewatch Woman in the Dunes.

I didn't like When a Woman Ascends the Stairs one bit. I found it very soap operatic and false.

[origami_mustache]

I know what it means. I think it's incorrect, though. I don't believe he had anything to do with Fail-Safe. If he did, I'd like to see it from a non-IMDB source.

Looks like you're right...
This is what Wikipedia had to say:

Red Alert is a 1958 novel by Peter George about nuclear war. The book was the basis for Stanley Kubrick's film, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. It differs significantly from Kubrick's movie in that it is not a comedy.

Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler's later bestseller Fail-Safe so closely resembled Red Alert in its premise that George sued on the charge of plagiarism, resulting in an out-of-court settlement. Both novels would inspire very different films that would both be released in 1964.

[Li Lili]

Again, your criticism begins with genre expectations and how Moore's film do not conform to those expectations.

I believe Moore's documentaries are only worth for the US, and can mainly, or even only, interest US or Anglo-Saxon countries, as an art form (cinema), there isn't much value.
Ok, it may sound a bit direct and harsh, but considering the amount of documentaries that are made in the world, his works are rather weak.
I apologize in advance for my acerbity.

[origami_mustache]

I believe Moore's documentaries are only worth for the US, and can mainly, or even only, interest US or Anglo-Saxon countries, as an art form (cinema), there isn't much value.
Ok, it may sound a bit direct and harsh, but considering the amount of documentaries that are made in the world, his works are rather weak.
I apologize in advance for my acerbity.

Completely agree.

[Mysterious Dude]

I do think Roger & Me is an excellent film, and a far better documentary than his other films.

[Li Lili]

Just watched Hiroshi Teshigahara's Pitfall. It seemed very surreal and artistic at first, but once you get past the dead guy walking around, it was a pretty standard murder mystery. Still, it was entertaining, and I like the ending. I think I should rewatch Woman in the Dunes.

I didn't like When a Woman Ascends the Stairs one bit. I found it very soap operatic and false.

Yes, I felt the same with Pitfall. The Face of Another and Woman in the Dune are masterpieces. I loved The Face of Another, highly recommended if you haven't seen it yet, very haunting and astonishing.
I still ahven't seen When a Woman Ascends the Stairs but Floating Clouds is a favourite film of mine.

[Bosco B Thug]

Kurosawa's Loft is more or less another Doppelganger. What starts out as a serious, creepy horror film quickly becomes a series of anti-horror film gestures that are ridiculous and absurd, none moreso than the wonderful shot of a man turning face to face with a ghost, and casually walking right by it. The ending was also hilarious.

Does it have merits as such?!

[Melville]

Despite the negative reactions around here, I still had high hopes for Control. Unfortunately, it just wasn't very good. Scenes like that with the record company guy fainting after signing the contract with his own blood, or the earlier scene with Ian Curtis and his buddy visiting Curtis' future wife while high, were intolerably cute. The scene where Curtis laments in voice-over about the burdens of public performance seemed to come out of nowhere, and was never really tied into Curtis' general malaise. But the major problem was that the central love triangle was so poorly developed; Curtis' downward spiral entirely depended on one scene where he first meets and is smitten by his mistress, but the scene was completely unconvincing, and his mistress seemed like a perpetual nonentity. Without really evoking Curtis passion for his mistress, or his bitterness toward the bondage of his family life and fame, all the tragic scenes toward the end seemed like unearned tear-jerking. There was so much potential in this story that the end product is still worth watching, but I kept thinking that the story would have been better served by Peter Watkins in his Edvard Munch mode: Curtis' various obsessions should have been constantly hanging over the narrative, rather than just being perfunctorily introduced to show the tragedy of his downfall.

[origami_mustache]

Despite the negative reactions around here, I still had high hopes for Control. Unfortunately, it just wasn't very good. Scenes like that with the record company guy fainting after signing the contract with his own blood, or the earlier scene with Ian Curtis and his buddy visiting Curtis' future wife while high, were intolerably cute. The scene where Curtis laments in voice-over about the burdens of public performance seemed to come out of nowhere, and was never really tied into Curtis' general malaise. But the major problem was that the central love triangle was so poorly developed; Curtis' downward spiral entirely depended on one scene where he first meets and is smitten by his mistress, but the scene was completely unconvincing, and his mistress seemed like a perpetual nonentity. Without really evoking Curtis passion for his mistress, or his bitterness toward the bondage of his family life and fame, all the tragic scenes toward the end seemed like unearned tear-jerking. There was so much potential in this story that the end product is still worth watching, but I kept thinking that the story would have been better served by Peter Watkins in his Edvard Munch mode: Curtis' various obsessions should have been constantly hanging over the narrative, rather than just being perfunctorily introduced to show the tragedy of his downfall.

Disappointing to hear this...AGAIN. I too have been holding on to the hopes that Control isn't as meh as everyone has been saying. I guess I'll just wait to rent it then.

[Yxklyx]

Watched Mr. Hulot's Holiday again. There are so many subtleties in this little gem. For instance, during the card game mishap - the guy who plays the card sees the table and thinks that the card he played has been picked up so he folds all his cards together - the lady to his left who is expecting him to play a card takes this to mean that he doesn't want to play anymore so she gets all displeased and folds her cards too. All this is told in just a few frames of film without any dialogue. Another example, the English woman is searching around for Hulot who's gone missing and we hear the dogs barking off in the distance as she enters the hotel.

[BirdsAteMyFace]

Yay!

Uh, indeed.

[balmakboor]

Watched Mr. Hulot's Holiday again. There are so many subtleties in this little gem. For instance, during the card game mishap - the guy who plays the card sees the table and thinks that the card he played has been picked up so he folds all his cards together - the lady to his left who is expecting him to play a card takes this to mean that he doesn't want to play anymore so she gets all displeased and folds her cards too. All this is told in just a few frames of film without any dialogue. Another example, the English woman is searching around for Hulot who's gone missing and we hear the dogs barking off in the distance as she enters the hotel.

Tati's films seem to have been designed to teach one how to be observant. No matter how closely I watch his films, I always find things I missed on subsequent viewings.

[Philosophe_rouge]

I rewatched the Man Who Planted Trees, still an awe-inspiring film that champions the redemptive side of the human spirit. The narration, in English or French is pitch perfect and the flickering animation style suits the content and is just so damn beautiful. It's not manipulative in the least but always manages to reduce me to tears. I think everyone should have to see this film.