Terence Davies, C/D. S/D

i have to say i don't think he'll ever make a film nearly as good a distant voices/long day closes again. he seems to be on shakier ground when he's not writing about his own life (or some version thereof). i think deep blue sea was his best since those days (though the sharks looked kind fake IMO), and i was not impressed with the formless documentary about liverpool.

the sunset song thing is something he's been trying to get funding for since (at least) the early 1990s, so I'm glad he's making it. i guess i'll just have to trust him on the dickinson biopic which looks horrible on paper.

anyway this dude still made one of the two or three best british movies ever so he's got a lifetime of good will from me.

house of mirth had a lot of amazing stuff but i would point to it as an example of the dangers of miscasting. anderson was fine, but the rest of the cast was kind of a mess.

i thought eric stotz was good although not exactly sheldon as i see him but anderson is not the lily bart i see either, or that anyone saw other than davis.

Dan Akroyd threw me out of the movie when he talked like his character in My Stepmother is an Alien.

The Long Day Closes is coming out on Criterion

http://www.criterion.com/films/27984-the-long-day-closes

good to see that the 1992 episode of The South Bank Show is included in this. hopefully Distant Voices, Still Lives will be next.

FINALLY

and he very likely has 2 new films coming out in the next 2 years....

excerpt from Michael Koresky's imminent book:

“Being gay has ruined my life. I hate it. I’ll go to my grave hating it.”

http://brooklynrail.org/2014/09/film/queerness-and-melancholia-an-excerpt-from-terence-davies

you can watch TLDC on YouTube for those who can't wait:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w12UaW6sqI

don't do it!

Its his best film.

The appearance of the book explains why this is being shown at the ICA, with a Q&A too:

https://www.ica.org.uk/whats-on/long-day-closes-qa

signing w/ DV,SL in NY on Sept 28

http://www.movingimage.us/visit/calendar/2014/09/28/detail/distant-voices-still-lives

The actress who plays the big-boned, jokey friend of the older sister in DV,SL is brilliant, yet she seems to have no other film credits.

That's Debi Jones, she's a bit of a local celeb in Liverpool, had a radio show, column for the local paper, does a bit of panto. Oh and stood as a Conservative candidate in a local election. I had a moment of cognitive dissonance when I saw her in the film.

wasn't she in brookie for a good while though?

Honestly don't remember her on It? Wasn't an avid fan tbf, only watched it round my nan's, my dad wouldn't have it on in ours.

well a quick google says i'm wrong. could have sworn...

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/reviews-recommendations/toronto-2015/sunset-song-first-look

cautiously optimistic

Same. He's the director whose star has fallen furthest I think. Actually it's fallen so far that it makes me wonder if the towering greatness of DV,SL (all time top 5, for me) was an accident.

Nah. I watched The Long Day Closes Blu-ray a few months ago and fell in love again.

last one was his best in awhile

So was the documentary, in which that querulous voice craps on pop culture since the Beatles.

Yeah I've seen them both. I've seen everything.

makes me wonder if the towering greatness of DV,SL (all time top 5, for me) was an accident.

Bcz he followed it with The Long Day Closes its no accident, and Deep Blue Sea had its moments.

Following Deyn with Weisz is pretty exciting.

Friend of mine read that book by Lewis Grassic Gibbon earlier this year. She hasn't been doing great and I really hope to take her to this.

Watched this w/her and she says only one of the three Gibbon bks were filmed.

Anyway this was a disappointment. Slow-cinema over-used (especially in the switchover to WWI France sequence, but also the one in the church), Deyn stretched at some points but that face has potential. I think its equally true the film stretched the material and everybody involved.

Looked great but one for ppl who recognise all the themes - working-class life and song, the woman's lot, brutal patriarchs, and I liked Davies' re-use of these themes in a new setting.

I remain apprehensive of Sunset Song, mainly cus of its regional relevance to me, I went to The Other primary school but I have slept with eh Persons from Redmyre school, which is across the main road from me, and is where the Lewis Grassic Gibbon Centre is (no thread on him? For shame...) I think they filmed parts of the 70's TV version in this village, slightly before I was borned, the old dudes still talk of the dirt they laid up the High Street for it. I heard they got the accents all wrong, no Doric? Still, I will no doubt catch this eventually, on DVD or whatever. But really I'm just looking for reassuarance that this isn't a travesty, cus I love Terrence Davies, albeit from a 2 generation remove from Liverpool, which may make all the difference. But (in the absence of a LGG thread) y'all should read A Scot's Quair. That's as close as my people come to A Great Work Of Literature, and objectively I think it may be. It's like Ulysses to us, and while the ILB people (who intimidate me) might find that comparison offensive I'll throw down for that.

i feel pretty confident that this movie will be a travesty. davies just seems plum out of inspriation and has fallen back on the 'heritage cinema' model. none of films since 'long day closes' have had more than a fraction of the power of that or the ones before it. 'the neon bible,' which davies considers a complete failure, at least retained his unusual, striking, planimetric composition sense. 'the house of mirth' was, by contrast, just a middling --and greivously (sp?) miscast--prestige literary adaptation.

We'll have to disagree really HOM.

That's as close as my people come to A Great Work Of Literature, and objectively I think it may be. It's like Ulysses to us, and while the ILB people (who intimidate me) might find that comparison offensive I'll throw down for that.

― Jonathan Hellion Mumble

I would contend that there are a number of Scottish works that rank highly in the history of letters but of course I would.

The best Scottish comparison to Ulysses is a A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle by Hugh McDiarmid imo.

-Thread derail ends-

Absence of Doric consistent with the book in a way surely? Seem to remember Grassic-Gibbon mainly renders the dialogue in Standard English orthography. Though I may be mistaken.

"HOM"?

Autocorrect, "Re: The House of Mirth", I guess.

I like the House of Mirth. think it has a few amazing moments and is v interestingly cast, fwiw.

i didn't think Gillian Anderson was as miscast as a Wharton 'heroine' as Michelle Pfeiffer was in Age of Innocence... still, it didn't quite work. Deep Blue Sea is the best one since '92 imho.

anderson wasn't the worst bit of casting in that film by any means. actually, i think she was fine. it was the secondary and tertiary parts that were dreadfully miscast: eric stoltz, dan aykroyd (!)... even anthony lapaglia and laura linney seemed off (i'm not a huge linney fan anyhow). i think jodhi may in her brief role probably came across most convincingly.

Selden is a callow lawyer, and Stolz is a callow actor, so

didn't mind Linney; she's good at assholery (and she wasn't in it long enough to bother me). Akyroyd though stumbles out of a Carol Burnett skit.

hm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI5HhhpidD8

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/reviews-recommendations/berlinale-2016/quiet-passion-first-look?utm_content=bufferaafbc&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Arguably Terence Davies’ most profoundly personal film since Of Time and the City

:-|

since the film he made two films ago.

which is terrible.

I would honestly love this to be good but that clip...

And that review!

"...tableaux-like compositions (at times reminiscent of American painting)"

Sunset Song feels too long and foreshortened at the same time. I preferred the squalor and rural violence of the first act, although New Film Boy Crush Kevin Guthrie is adorable and believable as Chris' husband in the second.

xyzzzz otm more or less

New Film Boy Crush Kevin Guthrie

hands off!

old bastard has made his best film in 25 years, i think!

a pleasant antidote to US Memorial Day

pleasant in quotes, of course

did not recognize Peter Mullan as the nightmare dad (which was TD's way in to the story i suppose)

yes, especially when he sings

This is the sort of film whose annoyances may recede when recollecting the thing in tranquility in December. I have no problem with his wanting to adapt works of lit when they're this lived in; on this one he chewed on the project too long.