28 Film Discussion Threads Later

[Grouchy]

Are your sure this isn't something Almodovar has done? Could be related to bull fights.

Well, I've done a bit of googling and, although there's not a clear answer, the most accurate is indeed related to Spain and toreadores.

In the 1920s movie The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse Rodolfo Valentino dances tango. He's actually good at it, even.

In another movie, Blood and Sand, he dances flamenco and bites a rose. Unfortunately, I can't find a video with just this scene or a picture, but the whole movie is on YouTube. It appears yanks just got the two mixed together and went from there.

[Mysterious Dude]

I believe there is some rose-biting tango in Some Like It Hot.

I never thought of it as something you have to do when dancing the tango, but something you can do for fun, if you want.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Just finished Solaris, and while it'll probably years before I can give a fair appraisal of the film, here's my initial gut reaction to the film: it's so assured and conceptually intriguing that it's impossible to dismiss, so relaxed that it often threatens to infuriate. Certain scenes achieve a meditative rhythm, others have an ominous haunted house feel, the final image raises some cool questions about what's been seen before...and there were quite a few times where I observed this with distant admiration, used the clicker to see the time remaining, and sighed.

[Rowland]

Burn After Reading is on cable right now, so I have it on as background noise, and it's even better than I remembered. But more importantly, remember the dildo chair? The dildo is digitally removed for broadcast, so the big reveal is just a chair rocking back and forth, which almost makes the scene funnier. The more you know.

[Derek]

Burn After Reading is on cable right now, so I have it on as background noise, and it's even better than I remembered. But more importantly, remember the dildo chair? The dildo is digitally removed for broadcast, so the big reveal is just a chair rocking back and forth, which almost makes the scene funnier. The more you know.

:lol:

TV just doesn't know what to do with the Coens.

[youtube]LCcKBcZzGdA[/youtube]

[Dukefrukem]

Trey Parker and Matt Stone have wooed investors and raised money to form their own production studio which they plan to announce today.

[ThePlashyBubbler]

Dogtooth and ALPS director Yiorgos Lanthimos's next film is a futuristic romance called The Lobster.

No. NO. NO.

No.

Yes.

[StanleyK]

I'd go with one the last two or Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?

Save In a Year of 13 Moons til later once you've seen a couple of his films. Ali is a good introduction to his style, especially once his Sirk influence starts to take shape, but I don't think it's one of his best films. I'd vote for The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant which boasts one of the all-time great performances as well as most of the Fassbinderesque eccentricities you find throughout his work. For the love of god, don't start with Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?. It's one of my favorite of his earliest films, but it's not a good introduction to his work (it's more of an early prototype for the Dogme films) especially if you're trying to see if you're on his wavelength or not.

Okay, so I'm between Ali: Fear Eats the Soul and The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. I'll flip a coin or something (actually no, Ali is shorter so that's good for me). Hopefully I'll get to it within the month.

[MadMan]

Burn After Reading is on cable right now, so I have it on as background noise, and it's even better than I remembered. But more importantly, remember the dildo chair? The dildo is digitally removed for broadcast, so the big reveal is just a chair rocking back and forth, which almost makes the scene funnier. The more you know.

I wonder what other famous comedies with raunchy moments would be made funnier if those parts were edited out on TV. Huh. And I have never watched a Coens Brothers movie on TV, unless its on a movie channel such as Encore that doesn't edit anything out.

[Dukefrukem]

[Spinal]

Okay, so I'm between Ali: Fear Eats the Soul and The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. I'll flip a coin or something (actually no, Ali is shorter so that's good for me). Hopefully I'll get to it within the month.

I would definitely go with Ali out of these two.

[Spinal]

Dogtooth and ALPS director Yiorgos Lanthimos's next film is a futuristic romance called The Lobster.

That sounds great.

[MadMan]

Why does Jones seem so annoyed/upset? I didn't bother to watch the Golden Globes last night since I haven't seen most of if not all of the nominees.

[Mr. McGibblets]

And I have never watched a Coens Brothers movie on TV

Then you've missed out on this greatness.

[MadMan]

Then you've missed out on this greatness.

Hah nah I'm very aware of that entire butchering of one of the funniest scenes in movie history. "THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU FIGHT A STRANGER IN THE ALPS!" :lol:

[kopello]

April Criterion titles announced. Excited about the Pierre Etaix set, I've heard good things. Also more Kobayashi is always welcomed.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Umberto D didn't hit me as hard as De Sica's The Bicycle Thief (that's the best title for it, dagnabbit), and I think that's because Umberto is less desperate than Antonio. I mean, sure, he's desperate to make rent, but by the end, he's more concerned with dignity. Which is fine! That's his story, that fits his personality. But it makes the cumulative emotional impact a little weaker, since dignity is more abstract a goal. I also felt like the twenty-odd minutes devoted to Umberto

[

Show Spoiler

working his way up to suicide

]

felt a little too belabored to become devastating. It's almost darkly comic, the way fate consistently denies Umberto's grasps for dignity.

All the same, a magnificent look at Italy in that time and place, and I admire how De Sica's camera style is quiet but significant nonetheless. The slow-moving camera that rotates around Maria the maid. The snap-zoom when Umberto looks at the tire tracks. The way the opening has a news-reel quality. The actors are fantastic. And how about that dog? I thought its reactions felt plausible. It never seemed like the dog was begging.

[

Show Spoiler

]

[D_Davis]

Bones Brigade: An Autobiography

Stacy Peralta delivers another amazing documentary, tailor made for a dude my age. I grew up with the Bones Brigade. They were my first idols. Tony Hawk and Lance Mountain are only a few years older than I am, and their antics and skills were something to be admired. The first deck I ever wanted was Lance Mountain's, and his story in this film is amazing. The emotion he pours out during the final moments is one of the most honest displays of gratitude I've ever seen in a documentary. The other star is, of course, Rodney Mullen, without whom skateboarding as we know it today would probably not exist. Mullen wrote the language of street skating, and his troubled persona drove him to become completely obsessed with the art of skateboarding, giving us so many amazing tricks, a one-of-a-kind style, and a lasting legacy that is the very foundation of an entire sport. There really is no other comparison; to understand Mullen's impact one would have to look at something like basketball, and combine Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and a dozen other great stars. That's how instrumental he is to the sport.

It's pretty amazing to have been alive while these guys were developing their art and skill - it's not too often that people get to see the creation and evolution of something captured in this much detail. I don't know if Peralta is a great filmmaker, because I can't really give an honest opinion; his subjects are too close to my heart. I can say that he is a very personal filmmaker, and knows his audience, and he consistently and expertly delivers on these two things.

[Stay Puft]

The Bicycle Thief (that's the best title for it, dagnabbit)

Yup, The Bicycle Thief is a great title. Bicycle Thieves is total nonsense.

[Lucky]

Yup, The Bicycle Thief is a great title. Bicycle Thieves is total nonsense.

But it's the intended title.

[Stay Puft]

What can I say, I'm a sucker for definite articles.

[Sycophant]

There is basically nothing we need in the English language home video market more than more Kobayashi. I can't wait to see these. This is the best news.

Also, Kinoshita's Ballad of Narayama is an amazing film, best viewed within a few days of Imamura's The Ballad of Narayama. I wish Criterion were releasing them together/at the same time.

[Spun Lepton]

I caught John Dies at the End while Match-Cut was on hiatus and really enjoyed it. Is there an entry for it in either the 2012 or 2013 databases? Where are we gonna put this thing?

[Stay Puft]

Now I'm just waiting for Qrazy to stumble back in here so I can gloat about the Aleksey German retrospective happening in Toronto atm. I saw My Friend Ivan Lapshin while we were on break, and I can see why he's such a fan; German's mise-en-scene is incredibly robust and with some impressive dynamic lighting changes in some sequences, like when Ivan and the detectives are pursuing a criminal and busting down doors, and one of the characters smashes a light source to the ground, and the primary light source for the remainder of the scene is the flash from Ivan discharging his pistol. It was a great action scene, particularly when taken with the two follow-up scenes (the criminal escaping and stabbing one of the detectives, and Ivan confronting him behind a barn).

A mark of a great filmmaker, for me, has always been someone who can direct a great action scene. I know it sounds like a bizarre criteria, particularly for arthouse cinema, but it holds true. The above fits that criteria, which again owes to German's evidently strong command of film langauge. I also think of Tarkovsky as a great action director (the raid in Andrei Rublev, crossing into the Zone in Stalker). And guys like Terrence Malick, too (taking the hill in The Thin Red Line, Captain Smith being captured in The New World).

[Yxklyx]

Is anyone still watching DVDs or are they all streaming? I got psyched yesterday when I saw that my local mom and pop video store just got a copy of Hartley's Trust - which has been unavailable on Netflix for years.