jonathan demme!

Literally the only thing about Manchurian that works is casting Robyn Hitchcock as a villain.

naked doesnt fit the bill at all, it's not about a straight/yuppie/uptight dude accidentally cast into urban chaos

yeah, he really is already a part of that world. If it was about the security guard...

always felt that Into The Night was easily the best of the urban/yuppie nightamre sub-genre. actually were After Hours, Something Wild and Into The Night the ONLY films in this sub genre?

miracle mile fits the bill, i think.

outlier

desperately seeking susan, definitely.

and on the margins (different margins) are risky business and romancing the stone, etc.

but the reason why i'm here:

what do y'all think of "philadelphia"? aside from the neil young song, which is beyond criticism IMO.

Well-meaning, some good performances, but clumsy and mawkish? Also seemed like an apologia after Silence of the Lambs. (Agree that "Philadelphia"'s really nice.)

You can't buy Citizen's Band/Handle with Care on DVD--not officially, anyway. I found one place selling a bootleg. That's terrible. This would be perfect for Criterion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS7s6YkVKEI

The Truth About Charlie--which I reflexively want to call The Trouble with Charlie--was worse than I thought it'd be (was hoping for something in the neighborhood of pointless but attractive). Almost felt sorry for Thandie Newton. There is a good Silence of the Lambs joke if you can last past the awful Charles Aznavour end-credit sequence, itself a variation on something Demme did so well in Married to the Mob.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HB__-cQ8LzM

"Out-Of-Print Criterion LaserDisc/DVD audio commentary by Jonathan Demme (director), Jodie Foster (Clarice), Anthony Hopkins (Hannibal), Ted Tally (writer), and FBI agent John Douglas.. "

Did anyone actually see Ricki and the Flash, or was the prospect of Streep + Diabo Cody far too frightening? Only wondering 'cause the clip that Sound Opinions recently played of Streep singing "American Girl" sounded fun.

I'm not really sure about it as a whole but there's a lot to like.

RIP

wow.

I saw him at the movies with his kids a couple times.

I could never tell if his career went off the rails or if Hollywood simply made it too hard for him to work; m I thought Beloved was a stiff at the time, then he followed it with two totally unnecessary remakes. Rachel Getting Married was I guess comeback and people liked Ricki and the Flash, but it often felt like his heart was in documentaries.

aw man :(

Perfect Kiss is one of my all-time favorite music videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3XW6NLILqo

RIP

yesssssssss

and i'm pretty much not a Talking Heads fan save for Stop Making Sense

just watched Stop Making Sense when we were doing the Talking Heads roll out, watched Silence of the Lambs a couple months ago. Films hold up really well, both classics. RIP

RIP director of New Order's the Perfect Kiss video, which is sublime. xpost

sad :( i watch Rachel Getting Married at least three times a year

I can't think of another director with such a cool relationship to cool music. I mean:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_9Vlh1OtB8

Soundtrack to Married to the Mob is super hip, too.

omg i didn't realize he directed that!

My rockcrit friends will immortalize him, deservedly, for Stop Making Sense. But until 1993 Jonathan Demme skipped from strength to strength; he even seemed to learn from Swing Shift; his first mainstream Hollywood debacle. Caged Heat through The Silence of the Lambs is an impressive streak.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z8NSqlaTMM

sister carol in the closing credits of wild thing, quintessential american new wave movie -- need to rewatch

weird I was just talking about Demme cuz I caught Swing Shift (underrated!) and had also happened upon that stupid Documentary Now episode that parodies Stop Making Sense really poorly (fuckin Armisen, so sick of that guy)

Christine Lahti was a joy in SS. Melanie Griffith has never been better than in SW. He knew how to work with actresses.

wow this sucks, he was fucking excellent. and yeah his soundtracks were the bomb; the best use of Bizarre Love Triangle is in
Married To The Mob in the hairdresser's.

YES Alfred

also the alleged use of the fall's hip priest in silence of the lambs -- to this day i have never spotted it

and Colin Newman!

The Feelies in SW

he was a really excellent filmmaker. i always admired the atmosphere he gets from SOtL without going OTT into banal gloomy cinematography or anything. there's a pretty singular creepy vibe to the whole movie from the beginning that is hard to pin down but i think has a lot to do with how he frames actors within the surrounding spaces and a shot as simple as Jodie Foster training or exercising at the beginning or whatever it was is full of dread. it's impressive bc there are a lot of guys who identify as horror filmmakers who are unable to conjure up anything nearly as effective and usually strain hard for effect.

or Foster's defeated walk down the airport terminal at the end

i remember that shot when she gets a call from lecter at the end and while she speaks with him, she looks off towards Scott Glenn's character while he's talking to some other people, and there's this sense that she's looking for help but it's not coming and in fact it's going the other way. it's a quick moment, almost a throwaway, but it really makes the scene for me.

I got the sense that like Lecter the Scott Glenn character had his own sado/voyeur tendencies, thanks to the way he threw Clarice into those awful scenarios

jd someone with a real eye for (gendered) detail when it came to dress, decor, the subtle background you don't always even have time to see clearly -- which is why he was such a good director of sotl, as it's so key to the story, clarice spotting stuff her male colleagues overlook

in the book, she's playing off her two male mentors against one another -- learning different things from each

yeah i think it was p quietly a movie about male figures of power. i think it was discussed a lot at the time actually but i think in the wake of lectermania and that character becoming the most important one, that element was lost a bit in the discourse. i mean i don't have a problem w/Hopkins in the role or the conception of the role but I think Foster does such a great job and Demme is sympathetic to her character's ambition and also what roadblocks she faces.

Swing Shift as is plays just fine, and screening soon in NYC.

https://quadcinema.com/film/swing-shift/

also the alleged use of the fall's hip priest in silence of the lambs -- to this day i have never spotted it

― mark s, Wednesday, April 26, 2017 9:00 AM (twelve minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's the final scene, it's heard for a long time but very faintly. buffalo bill answers the door to clarice and it is playing quietly in his basement in the background, then they end up in the basement and its heard very indistinctly and echoey iirc

yeah i think it was p quietly a movie about male figures of power. i think it was discussed a lot at the time actually but i think in the wake of lectermania and that character becoming the most important one, that element was lost a bit in the discourse. i mean i don't have a problem w/Hopkins in the role or the conception of the role but I think Foster does such a great job and Demme is sympathetic to her character's ambition and also what roadblocks she faces.

― nomar, Wednesday, April 26, 2017

movie very much part of the fabric of the Thomas-Hill hearings; it seemed more obvious when out on video the following spring.

I never completely bought into Lambs bcz of the friggin' Hopkins camping, but it's OK.

yes he's definitely the problem in it -- tho the character is unplayable i think, it's such a device

^^^otm

Brian Cox came close but I can't see him handling the laff lines

it bothers me that it's a good movie w an irritatingly ludicrous character at its center

xp

I'm not sentimental enough to think this increases my odds of watching Justin Timberlake + the Tennessee Kids.