jonathan demme!

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.

the best Lecter is probably Mikkelsen (funnier, smarter, less predictable in his sinister aspects) but I think Hopkins works, most of the time. Some of the lasciviousness is OTT, i think...some of his one liners are basically sick dad jokes.

but Caged Heat, yes

xp

I think of the ceremony in Rachel Getting Married and at the time I read a couple snarky things dismissing its hipster cachet, but it's obvious from the way it follows a sequence of events and from how Demme shot similar scenes in other movies that this kind of temporary bliss constitutes fragments shorn up against his characters' ruins (Debra Winger's last scene confirms this).

Nice post from Robyn H

https://twitter.com/RobynHitchcock/status/857259489510252545

RIP.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BWwchFufu4A/TcOlcalGIqI/AAAAAAAAAkQ/0b8uRpXQ7HM/s1600/Citizens-Band-Paul-Le-Mat-Candy-Clark-Roberts-Blossom.png

Citizens Band comes recommended through the SW!

roundup

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/jonathan-demme-1944-2017

"his final work as director, an episode of Gina Prince-Bythewood’s Fox drama Shots Fired, airs, in an eerie coincidence, tonight.”

http://theplaylist.net/oscar-winning-silence-lambs-director-jonathan-demme-dies-age-73-20170426/

i was just watching clips of "rachel getting married" a couple of days ago

i think it's possible i saw this Sarandon/Walken Vonnegut adap on PBS in '82

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083325/

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/rock/7775266/jonathan-demme-new-order-the-perfect-kiss-video

hip priest is during the cellar scenes of sotl yes -- not even that hard to hear now i'm listening out for it, suspect that i was so on edge at the action i'd stopped listening out for it previous times i watched

fwiw I think Philadelphia (which I otherwise don't get much from) and Manchurian 2.0 (best appreciated as a cover version) are two of the top Denzel Washington performances.

Demme introducing the Timberlake film in February

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuS48xA3T98&feature=youtu.be

what the hey

try Keith Uhlich's Twitter

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

anyone watch his "Shots Fired" episode last night?

not in my region, but i did rewatch lambs and something wild last night -- among other things noticing a whole raft of the same excellent minor character actors used in both

“In lieu of flowers, [Jonathan Demme's] family has asked that donations be made to Americans For Immigrant Justice"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJjxVf7X0kM

Uhlich:

http://www.keithuhlich.com/2017/04/jd-a-wannabe-tennessee-kid.html

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.

I ... actually agree with this.

Howard Shore goes a long way toward making a lot of the movie work too.

I I wrote something.

this 1986 comedy stars Jeff Bridges as Charlie,

Umm

yeah, Bridges not that awkward or big-jawed...

as Kael wrote, young Jeff Daniels "*just* missed out on being handsome."

two-syllable white guy name typo

a thing that occurred me as i was re-watching SW last night -- first time in many years -- was that the opening scene, in the little cafe(where sister carol is a waitress, also contains the seeds of another, very different film, namely "do the right thing"… and of course SW's closing sequence (sister carol toasting wild ting as the credits roll) is recapped and transformed by rosie perez boxing-dancing to "fight the power" in DtRT's opening sequence

demme's film is FULL of black people -- in new york and in virginia -- and if today we can hardly help avoiding noticing that they're backdrop characters and, well, funky colour, to a tale of three* white foax, they're not just that, bcz demme is so generous to his minor characters

i can imagine lee watching SW -- it came out the same year as his first feature, she's gotta have it (filmed in black and white, no white characters at all iirc) (once again a long time since i watched it) and thinking, this is a wrong that needs righting, let's tell another story, of white people in a black space

i was livetweeting watching last night, and couldn't quite get across that i wasn't criticising demme for this -- for from it, tho i can imagine lee criticising him -- but trying to acknowledge that SW was actually also a breakthrough moment, for what i'm describing: its portrait of a multi-ethnic city where people really do move past one another all the time, and really do take some (much, even) of their energy and identity from passersby, and also its portrait of small-town virginia, where there's a social proximity** between white and black (alongside tougher racial aspects he doesn't portray at all, of course) … and yes, sometimes this is tourism and cultural appropriation (thinking a bit of melanie griffith's afro-carib-style bangles and accessories) but nevetheless, this was a film that got a genuine social fact on-screen, even if it's a fact that's been overtaken by subsequent breakthroughs

*four if you include susan martin as irene, a striking if brief funny siren-ish performance which takes her well away from her usual big-hair foofy kooks

**i mean physical oroximity more perhaps than a through-and-through sentimentalied social closeness which would be a bit stephen foster, which i don't think this material is -- there's also aspects of southern life and welcoming kindness and formal friendliness that he sketches in just for the joy of getting it on onscreen, like the little black girl by the church who comes over to charlie rough-looking and sleepy in his car, and asks if he's ok or needs help -- plus the church ceremony that happens as a backdrop as a gentle indication that a certain separation still exists, even if legally enforced segregation doesn't

for from it = far from it

from the NYT obit:

The family moved to Miami, where Jonathan went to high school and worked in a kennel and an animal hospital. Wanting to be a veterinarian, he attended the University of Florida with that in mind until he failed chemistry, at which point he went to the university newspaper, discovered it had no movie critic, and assumed the job himself, he said, so that he could get into movies free.

He also became a critic for a shopping guide in Coral Gables, for which he wrote a glowing notice for “Zulu” (1964), about a bloody 19th-century battle between British soldiers and African warriors, a film whose executive producer was Joseph E. Levine, the founder of Embassy Pictures, the film’s American distributor.

It happened that Mr. Levine was on vacation in Miami Beach, staying at the Fontainebleau Hotel, where he had become acquainted with the hotel’s publicist, Robert Demme. The elder Demme introduced Mr. Levine to his son, whose review of “Zulu” impressed him. Mr. Levine offered him a job.

demme's film is FULL of black people -- in new york and in virginia -- and if today we can hardly help avoiding noticing that they're backdrop characters and, well, funky colour, to a tale of three* white foax, they're not just that, bcz demme is so generous to his minor characters

I remember a Toronto reviewer going after Demme for being patronizing. I didn't agree when that charge was leveled at Boyhood, I didn't agree when Demme was the recipient. Generosity, yes.

S&S republishes some Demme pieces. Is his cut of Swing Shift viewable anywhere?

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/features/swing-shift-making-of-jonathan-demme-directors-cut-comparison