28 Film Discussion Threads Later

[lovejuice]

i love love love the saddest music in the world.

[Qrazy]

My Girl?

I was thinking of Tank Girl, the initial post was the joke, all the disgusting picture stuff was just a collective freudian slip.

[Yxklyx]

What is Guy Maddin's masterpiece?

I will have to go with the populous and say The Saddest Music in the World primarily for the music. I prefer films which incorporate music when they do it so well.

[dreamdead]

weekend (or today-thursday, which is more likely)

Bringing Up Baby
Green Snake
Lady Chatterley
end of season 1 to Veronica Mars

[baby doll]

Weekend:

The Counterfeiters (Stefan Ruzowitzky)
Lady Chatterley (Pascale Ferran)
A River Called Titus (Ritwik Ghatak)

[Morris Schæffer]

All this made me distrust the film. Plus, I can't completely like anything with Natalie blech Portman in it.

That would be Natalie Portmehn then.

[Yxklyx]

Weekend:

Go Tell the Spartans

maybe:

Equinox Flower
Teorema

[origami_mustache]

R.I.P. Ivan Dixon
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23700118/



I loved him in Nothing But a Man (1964) which is truly an iconic film for African American cinema and will probably soon be watching Spook Who Sat By the Door (1973), which he directed.

[Philosophe_rouge]

Weekend
Catch-22
Les Miserables 35'/52'
Naughty Girl
Triple Agent
Nobody Knows
Paprika

[Ezee E]

The Beach certainly has a blueprint of being a good movie. Whether it be dealing with a utopian society, in which the possibility of it being destroyed leads to a dying man simply being pulled away from earshot, or a young kid going on an Into the Wild-esque journey, it manages to always take a wrong turn. Most of it all having to deal with the French.

What a drag.

[Wryan]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that that's the Dracula movie that monolith94 is referring to.

I was talking about that one too. Just worded it oddly. Replace "myself" with "too." More or less.

[Wryan]

Howl's Moving Castle is not a roaring success, but it has its triumphs. I liked the American voice acting just fine. The castle design is spectacular and some of the film's notions about obsolescence are simple yet striking. The war machines are a wonder but the war itself seems tacked on and the resolution is pat. Howl is a fascinating character to me. He's presented as a petulant, fey young man yet he's ostensibly the love interest for Sophie. Interesting form for one of the film's heroes. Loved the Witch of the Waste and the stair-climbing "competition." Billy Crystal is a bit annoying even though he's appropriate.

[Philosophe_rouge]

Hangmen Also Die (1943) is great, Lang is reminding me why I hold him in such high regard. The film is unabashedly propaganda for the Allies cause but presented in a way only Lang could muster. It's immediate, violent and effecting. The black and white cinematography is particularly stylized and harsh, really lending to the overall mood of the film. While a bit over the top, I thought it was a nice touch that right before "The End" popped up, another caption "Not" was added. Interesting enough, it was actually banned about a decade later for being too "subversive" under McCarthyism's "reign". The writer was even blacklisted... strange world. I also love the title.

[Wryan]

Hangmen Also Die (1943) is great, Lang is reminding me why I hold him in such high regard. The film is unabashedly propaganda for the Allies cause but presented in a way only Lang could muster. It's immediate, violent and effecting. The black and white cinematography is particularly stylized and harsh, really lending to the overall mood of the film. While a bit over the top, I thought it was a nice touch that right before "The End" popped up, another caption "Not" was added. Interesting enough, it was actually banned about a decade later for being too "subversive" under McCarthyism's "reign". The writer was even blacklisted... strange world. I also love the title.

The Naked Spur is a great movie.

[Philosophe_rouge]

The Naked Spur is a great movie.

Agreed. I'm really going to have to watch more Mann. My video store has a ton of his stuff. It was certainly strange to see so much smiling from Robert Ryan.

[Spinal]

Hangmen Also Die (1943) is great, Lang is reminding me why I hold him in such high regard. The film is unabashedly propaganda for the Allies cause but presented in a way only Lang could muster. It's immediate, violent and effecting. The black and white cinematography is particularly stylized and harsh, really lending to the overall mood of the film. While a bit over the top, I thought it was a nice touch that right before "The End" popped up, another caption "Not" was added. Interesting enough, it was actually banned about a decade later for being too "subversive" under McCarthyism's "reign". The writer was even blacklisted... strange world. I also love the title.

Yes! Great film. One of my favorites. Sometimes 'propaganda' isn't a bad thing, particularly when it is anti-Nazi. It's an utterly captivating film from start to finish, I think. It contains enough reason and insight to earn its emotional pleas. And it's got one hell of an ending. The title is even better when you put an exclamation point on it.

[Raiders]

I love watching Hangmen Also Die and This Land is Mine in tandem to see how two different directors manage great wartime propaganda in vastly different ways.

[Philosophe_rouge]

Yes! Great film. One of my favorites. Sometimes 'propaganda' isn't a bad thing, particularly when it is anti-Nazi. It's an utterly captivating film from start to finish, I think. It contains enough reason and insight to earn its emotional pleas. And it's got one hell of an ending. The title is even better when you put an exclamation point on it.

I find most cinematic propaganda at the very least fascinating, and in some cases (this included) it can be completely enriching. I especially like the British filmmakers work during WW2, Powell/Pressburger, Humphrey Jennings and the like. Most work on two levels. I forgot the exclamation point!

I love watching Hangmen Also Die and This Land is Mine in tandem to see how two different directors manage great wartime propaganda in vastly different ways.

I haven't seen This Land is Mine yet, I will get to it though!

[eternity]

No Country was my #13 of 2007, now it's my #2.

[Philosophe_rouge]

No Country was my #13 of 2007, now it's my #2.

It was my #1, and then after seeing it again I loved it more... and it's still there. Great film, and I can only see it getting better the more I think/watch it

[Yxklyx]

Go Tell the Spartans (1978, Ted Post) starts off very inauspiciously - so badly in fact that I didn't think I'd be able to finish it. At first appearance it looks like the pilot to a failed 70s TV show - and is actually directed by a TV man. The score is very low TV quality and some of the acting is as well - but it has a good (though somewhat predictable) story and Burt Lancaster as a very old but believable remnant from WWII. The writing starts off poorly as well but it does pick up and finds its groove quite nicely - with many of the lines actually being quite shocking. There are some great memorable one-liners here and Burt gets most of them. The day shots look a lot like from MASH the TV show - but things improve greatly at night and that's when most of the firefights occur. If you can get over the TV aspects it plays more like a good quality B movie reminding one of Fuller's films. Eventually, it pulls itself up and ends very well. A very surprising work. 8/10

P.S. Unfortunately, the DVD version is Pan and Scan.

[origami_mustache]

Sazen Tange and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo (Sadao Yamanaka, 1935)

In his film Humanity and Paper Balloons, director Sadao Yamanaka deconstructs the jidai-geki genre, taking a more psychologically oriented approach. Here he does the same, but in a much different manner. Humanity and Paper Balloons explores the deeply tragic life of a masterless samurai. Sazen Tange and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo instead utilizes a genre based around reversal of expectations to do exactly that. The film begins with a classic setup for a traditional moral tale about greed vs. honor as we are quickly told of a pot that contains a map to the whereabouts of a hidden fortune. We soon discover that the pot is more of a mcguffin than anything else, as the characters have other concerns and we are in fact watching a comedy. The original owner of the pot pretends to be in search of it while spending his days away from his wife shooting arrows and flirting with girls which is where he meets the ex-samurai Sazen Tange with one arm and one eye, who now works for the mistress for food and shelter (the dynamic relationships between the men and women are also worth noting.)

Sazen Tange was a popular figure who made many appearances in Japanese popular culture during this period, so it was a pretty bold choice for Yamanaka to alter his character, although now it is the most widely recognized portrayal. Sazen Tange was originally characterized as a ruthless swordsman, but Yamanaka humanizes his character as he cares for an orphaned child who just so happens to own the pot worth one million ryo. Yamanaka's direction is almost flawless and the script is wonderful. The score and music pieces the mistress plays within the film are quite enjoyable. I was also impressed with how effectively editing is used to enhance the narrative and the comedy without any detrimental stylization. Throughout Yamanaka uses elliptical cuts for comic effect where character's say one thing and then do or allow the opposite to occur. This old comic device as well as the use of callbacks are expertly done. There are also several brief montage transitional scenes, sound bridges, and other technical and formal devices that work very well. I found the film to be quite funny without resorting to slapstick and still maintaining the tradition of Japanese humanism and offering social commentary.

[Qrazy]

Thelma and Louise was idiotic. Why is this a classic?

[dreamdead]

Thelma and Louise was idiotic. Why is this a classic?

It came along when film studies had been granted legitimacy as a film of study, and the fact that a woman wrote it allowed a lesser film to be hailed by critics as the definitive hard-hitting account of women's oppression by men?

[Bosco B Thug]

Watched Singin' in the Rain. The directing is amazingly stupendous, the dancing plain fantastic, the first half = gold, but once Gene Kelly wins over Debbie Reynolds and the conflict switches to the half-assed lampoon of the transition to sound, the film loses some of its "edgy"-steam (Reynolds's character especially becomes boring real quick and is brought nowhere) and you realize the story's complete bokum. Also, I found great irritation in the notion that, okay, he's overcome by euphoria and the urge to sing in the rain the same night his career is severely threatened, why? Presumably because they came up with this idea that might very well completely not work and not solve anything? Or because he's high on love for a girl he's already been happily dating for an extended amount of time now?

But the directing/choreography/musical numbers are dynamite, and it is strangely subversive how evasive the film is. Watched the film in a class, so we were alerted to the undercurrents of theft, credit, and the film as a subconscious response to the promulgation of African American performance and the fringe-area place it had in American performance culture, and it certainly is striking and fascinating, but I don't think the film is compelling enough to truly support those ideas. Plus, the film feels a bit overlong, I suppose partly due to the fact I personally can only take so much dancing and frothy musical numbers ("Good Morning, Good Morning" I'm looking at you), but then again I'd rather have that enticing 15-minute musical digression with Cyd Charrise than some of the film's more sluggish non-musical stretches (I really was not very impressed with the sound technology/transition parodying).

And... The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is still unadultered awesomeness.

WEEKEND: Starship Troopers, North By Northwest, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie