Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel

if someone asked me to a fellini movie i'd decline :(

unless maybe it was i vitteloni

Fellini's films don't leave much time for drinks and fucks afterwards.

Yeah, but during…

That's like fucking after two helpings of lasagna.

i would engineer Nights of Cabiria as your date movie

i think most of the famous ones would work ok, except 8 1/2

ok I have actually gone on a date to see Nights of Cabiria at the Castro

loooong time ago, before I was married

in case any of you are keeping track

How about La Strada?

La Dolce Vita is nice too.

i think some of you wd draw the line at the final one w/ R Benigni

I like Rushmore fine, and its the only one of his films to even sort of understand class instead of drool on it, but everything that I seemed cramped and bored about that film has gotten worse and worse. Moonrise kingdom was so formally constipated and numb it actually sort of me. The plot seems to be advanced by the display of beautiful objects rather than any sort of affective convolution. static and thin. It was exactly the sort of boring film that can only think of tilda swinton as a succession of still images and so she seems to exacerbate the flatness.

The trailer for this was about as much as I could bear I think

Hi plax

I saw a report on another forum that this film is already having issues re: proper projection at screenings.

oh man i can imagine

as a total aspect ratio hardass even that sentence gives me a bit of a panic attack

i wonder, do they have anamorphic files for DCP? does this one switch between anamorphic and non? b/c to assure that the aspect ratios wouldn't be botched, they could have just encoded in one ratio and make the black bars on either side part of the file.

it'd be weird if the different parts of the film were encoded differently, i.e. they actually required the projector/DCP setup to switch between anamorphic and non, 1.33 and 2.25, etc. during projection.

I think that formal patterns, or style if you want me to be less pretentious about it, can be the source of emotions

Sirk, Naruse, Ozu, Hou, Minnelli -- they excelled in formal patterns, as ruthless at times as Anderson. My problem with his work, Rushmore and Fantastic Mr. Fox excepted, is I don't like the particular emotion he stylizes, if that makes sense.

and what ids that singular emotion, do you think?

s1ocki, out of respect to you, honeybunch, i am not changing my dn to 'aspect ratio hardass'

switching between anamorphic and non would be impossible with 35mm platter setups, since you either put an anamorphic lens on the projector or not. (if you had a two-projector set up, which multiplexes never did, you could alternate reels anamorphic/non. i know one experimental film that does this, or rather, it is a dual projection, and one of the projectors is projecting an anamorphic reel and the other in academy ratio. but that's a crazy and awesome exception.)

i'm just talking to myself but whatever

anything that requires the teenager sweeping the floors to periodically change something during projection is doomed to fail.

did he shoot this digitally?

i wonder if there are any 35mm prints of this being struck and if so where they are playing.

imdb sez:

Negative Format 35 mm (Kodak Vision3 200T 5213)

he seems like one of those guys who will shoot on film until he can't anymore. but of course i assume all post production was digital.

Ozu maybe but sirk and especially Minnelli have none of the his fussy stiffness and almost contemptuous disinterest in their characters.

Ozu maybe but sirk and especially Minnelli have none of the his fussy stiffness and almost contemptuous disinterest in their characters.

― plax (ico), Friday, March 7, 2014 2:45 PM (5 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

jeez, have a cuppa tea or something. herbal tea.

you'd think he was the coen brothers or something

fussy stiffness /= formal patterns

An obsession w/a particular moral pattern congeals into fussy stiffness thou.

fussy stiffness /= formal patterns

Oh no I know. But these films are fussy and stiff.

moral = formal but lol it still works

I don't get the 'disinterest' accusation, he was clearly interested in at least 5 primary characters in MK, and I assume he was even in the films that didn't work as well for me.

you'd think he was quintin tarantella or something

re: 35mm prints--I wonder how many, if any, are being struck? Just for ref, here in Houston (where we get the film next week), I'm pretty sure the only remaining theater doing genuine film projection is our MFA (which is old school two-projector).

it's not disinterest for me either. he has a weird kind of respect for his characters, for their reservedness and for the slight embarrassing disjunctions between their self-presentations and reality. I like that he seems to allow them the dignity of holding up appearances, so to speak. feels compassionate, as I said above, and not about exposing or dilineating their inner life.

yeah something like 92% of american screens are now digital-only. and the ones that aren't are most likely to be small mom-and-pop places that--chances are--wouldn't show this film anyhow. but there are a handful of high-profile theaters in major metro areas that are still capable of projecting 35mm. for that reason--and sometimes at a filmmakers' insistence--a few 35mm prints are often, if no longer typically, struck.

I should also add that plenty of overseas markets have still not transitioned fully, or even very extensively, to DCP/digital projection. one example is Greece, who because of their financial situation didn't have the capital to do a major transition during the Great Recession. so that becomes another reason studios still strike prints (though my guess is that such prints would be struck in Europe, or wherever the country may be).

so p.s. if you want to see a movie on 35mm just visit greece!

XPOST

fwiw we have a cinematheque here that shows 90% of films (admittedly over half of which are revivals) in 35mm. but our film festival shows fewer and fewer films on 35m--this year it's maybe just 5%. that's not because we don't have 35mm projection--I think we have four 35mm venues on/near campus (!)--but because distributors just don't bother to strike prints for festival screenings anymore. so it's all a mix of DCP, Blu-Ray, digiBeta...

the jacques demy series going around is all DCP, which is depressing. but I guess that's part for the course.

honestly it makes it easier to make the decision not to attend a screening. esp. when i know those films will be coming out on Blu-Ray later this year.

sorry, thread derail. back to GBH.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LTP0NOojjXM/S4MEuwS0oPI/AAAAAAAAA6M/HqxMxMc1a2w/s320/gbh080223nottma6ob6.jpg

a friend of mine's film was struck on 35mm to capitalize on the smaller theaters that still hadnt converted (in 2011 i think), it was actually a super good strategy as it got a lot of play

They are great for asking people out on dates. Lighthearted but not frivolous, romantic, and an excellent bellwether for music preferences.

this is true, but i wish he didnt strive to turn the frivolousness of his movies into a kind of bathos (eg - the death in darjeeling or what happens to richie in tenenbaums) and just kept them at a light, fluffy level rather than try to engage with something serious. i know some people think his archness/irony-on-my-sleeve is a cover for genuine sincerity and compassion but i think its more like he is naturally arch and twee and ___ (you know all the adjectives for him by now) and always feels he has to throw in something 'serious' or more meaningful when im not sure that really fits his style. the 'richie' incident in tenenbaums just seemed jarring iirc.

*pathos

i thought the stuff in darjeeling was a little bit powerful

I can tell you he's generally better at it than Jerry Lewis was with the bits of bathos he would throw into, say, The Nutty Professor or The Errand Boy.

how is jerry these days?