All Purpose NYC ILX Film Snob Thread

Walsh/Scorsese kicks off tonight at BAM with Regeneration, shot on the Bowery a century ago.

http://www.bam.org/film/2014/under-the-influence-scorsese-walsh

German version of Murder! on Sunday.

A highly perceptive critic on FB:

Film Forum should put the words YOU ARE NOT SUPERIOR TO THE MOVIE onscreen between shows, in gigantic text, and occasionally have some voice of authority read it aloud. Maybe Morgan Freeman.

having just joined film forum, i am kinda bemused at how louche and luxuriant the culture in the theater is
Titus is hella crusty and IFC is very brusque; FForum was about nobody leaving the theater because everyone wanted to explain the movie to their circle of friends
i am all about egg creams and chocolate orange bundt cake while watching previews tho

You going to Meet The Programmers Brunch this Saturday?

i am kinda bemused at how louche and luxuriant the culture in the theater is

I miss the old days on Watts Street: NO POPCORN. Always sitting near fuckers now who crunch on one kernel at a time.

what's Titus?

oh right MoMA. I've seen old folx munching on plums there.

Ha. Couldn't figure out what Titus was either. Never heard it referred to that way except on ticket stub.

oh man, when i first came to NYC as a couch surfer moma was showing films starting at 10am and going until around 10pm in the titus and they were doing a history of film series. I basically lived there and was by far the youngest regular. saw probably a hundred films amongst the elderly. pretty great experience; i have a deep fondness for that theater and its antics... at a showing of birth of a nation there was at least a good hour of heavy snoring from different parts of the room. it was a unique soundtrack

I'm sure I've mentioned I saw Berlin Alexanderplatz in one weekend there in '96. "Shut up!" "You shut up!"

ha, yeah that's the titus
SHHHH
NO YOU SHHHH

anyway, likely heading to Reade at 6:15 for this acclaimed Japanese film:

http://www.littlewhitelies.co.uk/theatrical-reviews/himizu-20645

Once a man at the Film Forum complained to me about people complaining to him about his loud popcorn eating. I didn't say anything. They were probably right.
I dislike the people loudly discussing the ending of one part of a double feature as others are just entering to begin with the other.
Love the crazy olds at MOMA. I am not an aggressive shusher so I appreciate those who are. Those same people used to be at AMMI or MOMI or whatever they're calling it now.

there's a higher degree of "MY VOICE SHOULD BE HEARD" at film forum than at any place i've been at since college

at IFC the main interaction comes if someone has to find the cell phone they dropped last show

for something like Auteurs Gone Wild, you can always find someone who writes “Perhaps Countess (from Hong Kong) really is Chaplin’s greatest work, his most personal and poetic.”

http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-auteurs-gone-wild

http://anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/series/42271

Yup.

Enjoyed that Kent Jones piece you posted upthread about similar thing. Also recently read some interesting stuff by this guy who was in the Vulgar Boatmen, Robert B. Ray. He is a bit of a gadfly, with lots of interesting ideas, although he thinks the entire Douglas Sirk revival was a case of Auteurism Gone WIld- now that's going to far.

In other news, saw the opening night feature at the NDNF- it's a hit! Rode up on the train next to a top critic (hint he was once accused of "freaking out on arthouse acid".) Introduced myself and talked to him a little bit, he was very nice.

prob my only NDNF tonight -- black metal content!

http://www.filmlinc.com/films/on-sale/a-spell-to-ward-off-the-darkness

Ernest and Celestine was charming and loads of fun.
Trying Jodorowsky's Dune tonight. nerdfest.

and not just on the screen. "It aaaaaalll comes beeacck to Jodoroooowsky man"... aieeee fuckoff.

did you see it already morbs?

Not a chance! I've never seen any of the films he's actually made, either.

I will admit to LOLing at the trailer when he said he didn't read the book but his friend said it was great.

well i'm excited.

I always miss the Fritz Lang/Kurt Weill You and Me whenever it screens, so I shd go to Anthology tonight at 7, over Hitchcock's Manxman at FF, right? (There'll be more chances, presumably, to see the restored Hitch, and I have a PD copy at home that I've never watched.)

Yes
/thread_starter

My favorite underseen Truffaut, The Green Room, is playing at FF tonight. I thought about making it a traveling double feature w/ Scorpio (Lancaster and Delon as spies) at MoMA, but no one seems to like it much.

Thinking about going to see The Raid 2 tonight which may not be very snobby but maybe should be

Crossposted with ILM,
Punk/new wave doc & concert stuff showing Thursdays and Fridays 6pm (starting this week) at the Museum of Art & Design, and girl punk movies at BAM (in May):

http://www.madmuseum.org/series/go-nightclubbing-archive

http://www.bam.org/film/2014/punk-rock-girls

raid 2 not very snobbish btw but WAAAAAAAAAY too long and full of itself. great fight scenes tho

hey i liked strange little cat, frederik

made me effusive for digital, too

i'm off to see waterface
i mean watermark

x-post: Oh, cool! Is that festival going on right now? I saw Story of my Death today, it's... long... and different. But also beautiful and with images I can't get out of my head. But my god it's long.

I suspect I will go see this low-budget '64 comedy by Theodore J Flicker and Buck Henry at Anthology at 7:30 bcz Letterboxd reports "No one has seen this film."

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058690/

Some stathound at 538 should whip up year by year analysis of IMDB ratings and Rotten Tomatoes scores and such to determine the greatest year in film, worldwide.

(post inspired by What’s The Greatest Year In Film? - http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/04/14/freedom-to-fail/ )

Linklater's Boyhood opens BAMCinemafest on June 18

http://www.bam.org/film/2014/bamcinemafest2014

http://www.indiewire.com/article/richard-linklaters-much-loved-boyhood-will-open-bamcinemafest

I can't skip any '30s (or '20s) John Barrymore film I haven't seen, so Reunion in Vienna tonight:

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/film_screenings/20463

I just saw Morgiana last week and liked it quite a bit. The only other Juraj Herz film I can find on dvd is Cremator but I heard mixed things about that. I think he might have some short films on YouTube. Anyone seen his films much?

Keep an eye out for the Obergammergau players, Morbs.

I should know that quote, but don't. The middle act of RiV is hilarious tho.

First of 2-part Fassbinder (plus) retro at FSLC in May:

http://www.filmlinc.com/daily/entry/rainer-werner-fassbinder-retrospective-film-society-of-lincoln-center

MARKETA LAZAROVA looked and sounded really good but somehow I didn't manage to understand what was going on for two and a half hours.

SZINDBAD. A guy walks around talking to women (and one guy, if I remember correctly) about his relationships with women across his life. I'm not sure if his observations are supposed to be particularly good but the film has some nice sequences. Constant close-ups on food, flowers and anything with nice colours and textures. I liked the general approach of this film in terms of the non-linear structure and how the camera seeks out pretty things.

LEGEND OF THE SURAMI FORTRESS. I really love Parajanov's style and approaches but I never love the films as a whole. Some really great shots in there with the repetitive rhythmic movements and dances. Obviously great costumes.

I have to say that I don't understand the ejaculatory praises for most of the arthouse canon I've seen. I vastly prefer the style of these directors to most films but I often think that critics overrate films because they want to encourage the more interesting things (even if they aren't totally great) because they have to see so much slush, so they cultivate the approaches they prefer.
Does anyone really watch Bergman, Tarkovsky etc.. saying to themselves "this is fucking amazing!"?

yes

Lucky them (you?)

Very much so.

But even then, I think it's completely right for critics to talk up interesting and different things even if they aren't totally great. Film - and culture in general - should be seen more like a stream, rather than as a collection of separated entities. Criticism should be a companion to film, a way to follow up after people have left the cinema, rather than just saying 'this is great' / 'this is a bit less than great'. IMO. Otherwise, you end up with nit-picking ridiculousness, such as critics arguing over whether that penultimate shot in Stray Dogs would have been better at 11 min rather than 13, etc.

Does anyone really watch Bergman, Tarkovsky etc.. saying to themselves "this is fucking amazing!"?

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Sunday, April 27, 2014 8:18 AM (17 minutes ago)

I consider myself a very poor "reader" of films -- I pretty much have to have my hand held through any level beyond the most basic narrative/textual level -- and I definitely do. Especially Bergman and Ozu.

But the dvd boxes are always covered in words like "astonishing masterpiece!", "an overwhelmingly emotional revelation!" and to be honest, I'm not sure I've seen more than a small handful of films that merit that kind of praise. Even when I enjoy them, I sit wondering where all this pleasure comes from.

I think nitpicking can be constructive.

I am a big fan of alternative animation sometimes. A lot of it from Russia, Hungary and Belarus in 60s-early 90s. Last year I discovered Gyorgy Kovasznai and I was hugely impressed but I can imagine it boring some people.

Would anyone be interested in a animation for snobs thread? No Disney, Pixar, mainstream anime; Stuff like Quay Bros, Svankmajer, Russian guys?

Another vote for "amazing!" And Frederik B. otm.

Can't speak to what goes on in the bemused poster's mind but I seem to remember what went in on in my own when I first started to watch this stuff and was feeling uncomfortable, felt like it might be a con, or that it was attacking the classic Hollywood style or questioning my existence or something. Eventually came to think- if there are boring moments in the film-there are plenty of boring moments in life, and without those you wouldn't get the epiphanies, such as they are. The existence that it is being challenged, if that is what is going on, is not necessarily mine, but that of the characters or the director or his proxy. Finally I don't view it as a threat to the Classic Hollywood Style but the other side of the same coin, one which needs to be flipped over every now and then.

also, Manakamana has ice cream

Basically you, RAG, are expressing some kind of fear of an aesthetic elitism and arguing against it with a simplistic arithmetic elitism -"there is only room at the top for a handful of masterpieces, thereby these guys must be overreacting."

Your proposed thread seems interesting however, although I don't know much about that stuff.