ALTMAN POLL

never realized how many Altman films I haven't seen. still voting The Player.

picking 1 is silly

Many impressive films, but still: MASH.

the last third of MASH is kinda pathetic.

Nashville & The Long Goodbye lead, followed by Thieves Like Us and Gosford Park, then maybe 3 Women, Short Cuts and McCabe.

mash is way overrated in my book

i went long goodbye

Wow, didn't realise he made so many movies! Have always loved MASH and it's probably the one of his I've seen the most but I recently saw The Long Goodbye and I guess that's gonna get my vote for now.

Dr. M: You're right; the last part of MASH is much weaker. Still, I think it was the best example of Altman's chaotic, "everybody talking at once" style. And that style was perfect for a film about a chaotic, morally confused war.

Yes. And it is really funny too.

Nashville. one of my all time faves.

saw Mash recently and it has aged quite poorly. it's good but not great. xp

Jesus christ, I have no idea how to whittle this one down. Probably my favorite director, and I full-on love too many of his movies to choose just one. M.A.S.H., though, is def. overrated and not among my faves. I might have to say The Long Goodbye, maybe, although Nashville, California Split, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, and Gosford Park rate just as highly. Even a lot of his underrated movies (The Company, Images, Vincent And Theo) are great. The Player, Brewster McCloud, A Prairie Home Companion...all so good. Tanner '88 is one of my all-time faves, although it's a TV miniseries. RIP, BOB.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller

I have only seen very few of these but I'm going with Gosford Park.

yeah i thought abt if i should include tanner '88

and then i didnt include it

are we picking worst film ever made? because there are a few contenders here.

Anybody seen Streamers? I don't even think it's available on DVD.

i had Streamers on my hd for like a year, decided one day to watch it only to realize it was a godawful vhs-rip with distorted sound. so no, still haven't seen it

mccabe and mrs miller

^^^ one of my favorite films

also a big short cuts fan

mccabe, long goodbye, 3 women, california split all amazing

mccabe pretty easily for me. as noted in other threads, i think nashville is a long, shallow sneer.

How does Short Cuts hold up now? I remember enjoying it at the time but it's kind of unwieldy at 3hrs. Some great moments though.

are we picking worst film ever made? because there are a few contenders here.

A bit of an exaggeration, but there are definitely a few clunkers. At least I can say, though, that Altman didn't make any stinkers because he was stuck in a rut or trying to make a quick buck. He was an experimenter and he was always trying something different. So I find even his failures interesting on a certain level. Doesn't mean I really ever want to watch Dr. T & The Women again...

I'm not the hugest fan of Short Cuts. It doesn't really come together in the way that Altman seems to want it to. Definitely some good stuff in it, though (love Lyle Lovett's arc).

yeah short cuts has good segments, but not all of them are good and the coming-together of the different strands feels forced.

otoh, it's better than grand canyon. (i assume it's better than crash too, but i'm not going to watch that to find out.)

Spoiler: It's better than Crash. Which is damning it with the faintest of faint praise.

lol yeah. Crash is pretty insipid and manipulative, especially THE scene.

Short Cuts meant so much to teenaged me, at least in part as a window into what I imagined life would be like in middle age. So, that.

gotta go with Nashville

yah short cuts was ~important~ and ~meaningful~ 2 teenage me also because i thought carver was a prophet 4 lyfe its shambolic and forced but i love like a russian novel

ya i voted shortcuts

real talk, mash is boring and dumb and crappy

so is the show

I saw Streamers when it was released -- his most homoerotic film, bcz of the play. Not a great piece of material, but some good acting from Modine and others.

are we picking worst film ever made? because there are a few contenders here.

Hell no, not even O.C. and Stiggs.

Out of the ones I've seen, which is admittedly less than 1/2, I also had to vote Short Cuts. Like Lamp this is partially due to Carver <3.

Voted for McCabe and Mrs Miller.

You know MASH is really amazing as it's all over the place, no more than Porky's-with-bullets in a few parts, sexist and cruel and all the rest of it and the characters don't make any damn sense (how comes hotlips is suddenly smiling and playing poker at the end with a bunch of people she hated for the last 2 hours?) and yet it's a bloody *brilliant *film despite the flaws.
i can never work it out. is it maybe just that it's dated so badly or is it just .. a mess. in a good way?

The Long Goodbye for me. Makes me want to live in L.A.

prob TLG for me. i love N'ville, but if I were going to give one the business for possibly being overrated...

california split.

3 Women is one of the strangest, most fascinating films I've ever seen.

will Jimmy Dean ever become available on DVD?

The Long Goodbye, just ahead of McCabe & Mrs Miller and Short Cuts. Still haven't seen Nashville though.

Voted A Wedding because nobody else offered.

Pragmatically, I'll be voting for Nashville, to stave off a win by MASH or Gosford Park. Otherwise, I'd vote 3 Women, The Long Goodbye or even The Company.

Or Short Cuts or McCabe.

wtf w/ The Company, Eric? Is it just the dance milieu? is there some open-heart surgery scene I missed?

Vincent and Theo

wtf w/ The Company

OK, yeah, the movie doesn't gel as "properly" as does Gosford, and it doesn't make for a neat, self-aware summation like Prairie Home, but The Company is the only one of his last stretch that fully achieves of-the-moment perspective. Maybe because it doesn't seem to ever aim for the major epiphanies, aside from "My Funny Valentine," which is absolutely one of the most thrilling scenes I've seen all decade (and manages it in spite of Neve's clearly limited skills as a dancer). So yeah, you can keep your Gosford Park.

OK, I will! (as I don't even remember "My Funny Valentine.")

YES. That scene was amazing. It's the outdoor performance, during the lightning storm. I was just agog the first time I watched that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3n37R4o1WTM

Altman had a really terrific final stretch. I love all of his last three movies, and Tanner On Tanner weren't bad, neither.

<3 Deric! But tbh scenes like that are made to be seen in theaters.

I've wanted to see Brewster McCloud for about ten years...unfortunately it's not on DVD.

1. Nashville, 2. California Split, 3. The Long Goodbye, 4. McCabe & Mrs. Miller, 5. Short Cuts. I'm not that big a fan of M.A.S.H., Thieves Like Us, or The Player; Tanner '88 and its more recent follow-up are uneven, but often quite good; Secret Honor seemed much less impressive to me on recent viewing than when it first came out. Gosford Park, bleah, and after that, the morass--very little of which (maybe four or five films) I've seen. One thing I've realized from ongoing Dave Marsh polls over on ILM is that while the offbeat and overlooked stuff generates the commentary, the staples almost always win. So although Nashville should take this going away, it wouldn't shock me if M.A.S.H. comes out on top.

will Jimmy Dean ever become available on DVD?

saw this a couple years ago, it is not good. worse than OC and Stiggs. I don't think Altman was served well by that period where he was just filming plays in the 80s, I pretty much haven't liked any of those.

and yeah still waiting to see Brewster McCloud cuz VHS copy at the store was too fried to watch bah

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBFQg7P5YKw

fuiud

There is a torrent somewhere out there of Brewster McCloud recorded, I believe, off of AMC. The quality is pretty decent.

long goodbye. but i haven't seen california split.

The Long Goodbye (1973)
Thieves Like Us (1974)
California Split (1974)
Nashville (1975)

god, what a run

going with nashville

those aren't the only four i like or anything, just a really remarkable output for a three year period

^^^this

Voted Calisplit

Charlie Waters: "If it takes a watermelon five minutes to water. How long does it take a sweetpea to pee? As long as it takes a pair of dice to crap."

Long Goodbye, just over Short Cuts. I should reveal, tho, that I have yet to see Nashville. It is one of my gaping wtf cinema blind-spots (tho not the biggest..)

I did not realize he was behind The Gingerbread Man. Ouch.

just finished Robert Altman: The Oral Biography and it's pretty much exactly like a Robert Altman film.

My local has Brewster McCloud on vhs. It's in decent shape, too. It's pretty great! Not gonna vote for it, though.

Re: ...Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, yeah, I don't think Altman was terribly well-suited to adapting plays. One, I think he felt compelled to follow the scripts a little more slavishly (which he usually avoided). Two, I think he was a little too hemmed-in by the smaller cast (Secret Honor, in particular, seems like a pretty counterintuitive project for someone who seemed to thrive working with larger ensembles). Three, I just don't think strict adaptations of plays hardly ever work very well as movies.

yeah its the kind of film where I don't really understand what drew him to it (apart from maybe the characters and the overall plot/tone...?) Limiting himself to small casts and confined sets (doesn't this whole movie take place within a single setpiece?) and strict scripts - those all play against his strengths. maybe he thought of it as a challenge, but if so, he didn't rise to it.

the script itself is also decidedly play-like ... lots of monologues, distinct three-act arc, a big "reveal" twist at the end (which is heavily telegraphed from the beginning). its weak all around.

and I like Karen Black.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

thanks s-man

I'm just gonna throw it out there: System is the most boring poster on ILX. Utterly predictable, completely played out. Hey, I'm just sayin' what everyone else is thinking, right?

yo I'm voting for popeye

When I saw Short Cuts, I was sitting next to a guy who had clearly been dragged there with his wife and two teenage kids. About 90 minutes into the movie, I saw that he kept looking at his watch. I told him that the movie was over three hours long. "What?!" he said. And then we went back to watching the movie. And then he said, "What?!"

A Prairie Home Companion, btw.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Well, I certainly can't argue with that top three. M*A*S*H, as I said before, is overrated, and I'm not the biggest fan of 3 Women.

Top four is pretty unimpeachable. Good work, ILX.

well the winner's okay with me.

lol @ popeye beating the player

BTW, Brewster, The Company, and Images are all v. good, despite receiving no votes.

Yes. Opening credits of Brewster alone deserved at least one vote.

streamers coming out on dvd next week

i watched HealtH, it was bad

was unaware 'a perfect couple' is essentially a musical ugh

weird period of altman around then, seems like he was p. into hippie/bohemian culture

think it was where the hot chix were

the tie result so perfect for me

jesus popeye got 4 votes ? it's worse than oc & stiggs imo (watched both this wkend)

Nillson vs. King Sunny Ade ennit

(personally I'll stick w Nilsson - barely made it through OC & Stiggs myself)

Welcome to L.A. yesterday, Three Women today. I've had a home-taped VHS for years that I never watched, figuring it would show up at the Cinematheque sooner or later; it never did, and I wouldn't be surprised if it hasn't played here since its release. I'd read enough about it to know there'd be some Persona in there, and there is, but what it really reminded me of was Lynch--generally, for the first hour, and then towards the end it felt like Mulholland Dr. (Which I was a little more receptive to when I watched it again last week.) I recognized Liberty Bell from The Paper Chase right away--he plays the doctor (or whatever he is) at the spa. Eight votes in this poll seems very generous, but I was ready to really dislike it, and I didn't.

I don't know if there are prints of 3 Women available. I first saw it at a museum retro of Altman 70s films back in '03. IIRC, Fox supplied the print and it was absolutely beat to hell, with missing frames, audio drop-outs, specs and lines galore. At the time it looked like this was the best you could get to see the film properly. When the Criterion disc dropped the next year, the quality was a revelation.

If you're still around, I'd be very interested in hearing from the person who voted for That Cold Day in the Park. Took me almost a week to get through it. It went somewhere I didn't expect towards the end, so that was interesting, but if you love Altman for his mid-'70s run, you'd have a hard time finding that guy anywhere here. Or maybe not: between Cold Day and Three Women, plus what I know of two others I haven't seen (Images and Quintet), Altman seems to have had this side of him that wanted to make cold, cerebral films that denied you all the pleasures of his mid-'70s run. Maybe Persona was his inspiration--Cold Day and Three Women both have one lead character who never shuts up while the other lead listens passively. Stuff like The Collector and Bunny Lake Is Missing also seem to be precedents for Cold Day. Can't say I liked it much, but I found Michael Burns' ("the Boy") story interesting--he went on to be a history professor at Holyoke, and wrote a couple of books about the Dreyfus case.

yeah i also watched that recently & didnt think it was v successful. none of the characters motivations > actions ring particularly true or believable. i think it was adapated from a play? def felt stagey

Adapted from a dream iirc

Watched A Wedding for (I think) the first time ever. I'm not sure--I taped it off TV years ago, but I think I was holding out for a theatre screening.

The reviews were only middling at the time, but it's probably more the end of the beginning than the other way around--it and the two before (Buffalo Bill and 3 Women) were sort of a holding pattern until he really got hammered for Quintet. I thought it was pretty good. Took a while to get going, and it doesn't have anything even approaching the sweep of Nashville, but some of the performances are good, and Altman still directs with more or less a sure hand. My favourite character was the doddering old bishop--reminded me a lot of Mayor Milford in Twin Peaks. Carol Burnett and Howard Duff and Vittorio Gassman are good, and there are lots of just-getting-started people to look out for: Dennis Franz, Pam Dawber, Dennis Christopher, and a few I completely missed--John Malkovich, George Wendt, Joan Allen, Laurie Metcalf, Gary Sinese. I don't know what Altman thought Desi Arnaz Jr. brought to his role; he didn't do much besides smile. I liked seeing Mia Farrow play somebody less than wholesome, before Woody Allen turned her into a saint. The Anchor Bay CD I watched wasn't cleaned up much, so the color in some scenes was faded, in others garishly saturated. I feel like I should know Dina Merrill from something, but looking at her credits I don't.

I like the part where the bridesmaids get stoned to "Bird On A Wire"--oh ho, and Mia's "counting"! I agree w/it being closer to the "End of The Beginning". According to "Altman On Altman", Dawber & Mia were replacements for (respectively) Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek. Duvall was with Paul Simon at the time, and he'd gotten locked into a lease on a summerhouse, so she dropped out and Spacek then used her friend's exit to leave as well.

BTW, speaking of late '70s Fox Altman: Any opinions out there on A Perfect Couple?

Interesting. Mia felt like she belonged in an Altman film, but Dawber seemed out of left field (not sure if Mork and Mindy was on the air by the time the film came out). Not that she wasn't fine for the 10 minutes she was there. My first thought was that Arnaz was forced onto Altman by a studio, but at that point--maybe for his whole career, but definitely before Quintet--you couldn't have forced anything onto Altman. I started to watch A Perfect Couple one night and stopped after 15 minutes or so.

A Wedding was the first one I saw in a theater. Haven't RESCREENED in at least 20 years.

Dina Merrill was known for being married to Cliff Robertson. The big guy with the mustache who plays her husband, Pat McCormick, was a writer for Johnny Carson for years.

I knew I knew McCormick, couldn't remember why. He did sketches on the show too, right?

Kael's pretty tough on the film, which makes sense--mildly enjoying it in 2013 is one thing, writing about it a couple of years removed from Nashville is another. Agree with a couple of things she wrote. "It takes most of the movie to spot the actors who are listed and to figure out who they're playing and what their relationships to each other are"--for much of the film, I didn't know who was related to who or how. "There's no way into the movie"--yeah, it's just a lot of stuff, some of which works and some of which doesn't, but if felt mostly like I was just keeping score on that count.

I really liked A Wedding the couple times I saw it, but I'd have to watch it again to remember exactly why.

yes, McCormick was occasionally in the Mighty Carson Art Players. He also played Grover Cleveland in Buffalo Bill and the Indians, was in the Smokey and the Bandit series, etc.

The kid in the movie running around taking the photos and talking about monster movies was Mark Deming, who grew up to be an online critic for Allmovie and Yahoo. He wrote a nice obit for the former (which appears to have been taken down) talking about the experience.

thinking about running a McCabe/Long Goodbye runoff poll years later

How about the top 3? I just want Nashville to win--even though my sense, from reading Altman commentary on here, is that The Long Goodbye would win any kind of a follow-up configuration.

(xpost) Kael singled out Deming as one of the things she liked about the movie. Can't find an image--he had a great look.

Long Goodbye would come in third for me in a runoff against Nashville and McCabe, but it's all win-win-win up there.

yah that's probably true for me too, plus I probably like Brewster more than McCabe (though not like much more).

for me it's like Nashville>Brewster>McCabe>Long Goodbye>Thieves>3 Women. Hate MASH, and I haven't yet seen any of the 90s ones (let alone the 80s). I'd have to watch California Split again before I could decide on it, it's been ages...

I highly recommend Short Cuts, also the entirety of Tanner '88. (Not as big on The Player, although you should see that too.)

my short list to a tyro:

McCabe...
The Long Goodbye
Thieves Like Us
3 Women
Vincent and Theo
The Gingerbread Man

Gingerbread Man?!

Might have to take another look at this one, as I remember hating it when it was new.

I didn't care much for The Player when it came out. I recognized that it was well done, but I didn't connect with it at all, not on any level (i.e., even conceding that it aims for chilly acerbity, and is supposed to be off-putting).

I go back to it every few years, and it gets better and better every time. I'd almost put it up on my shortlist of favorites--it's at the top of the second tier, at the very least. The thing that most impressed me last night was Tim Robbins--what a great performance. Sometimes he's as coolly venal as J.J. Hunsecker, elsewhere he's like a hapless noir patsy. The cameos are almost uniformly perfect. (I'm looking at Wikipedia's list, and some of them--Martin Mull, Brad Davis--I missed.) Weirdest: Rod Steiger. Lots of just-starting-out people to look for, too.

vhs of kansas city in my living room, i think it's my roommates. worth watching?

Never seen it. Belafonte has one of the most prominent cameos in The Player.

Don't know if I'd go as far as calling The Player my favourite Altman, but it is the one I find the most purely pleasurable. And yeah, Robbins' best performance without question.

some of them--Martin Mull, Brad Davis--I missed.

You didn't miss Brad Davis. He was in an advanced stage of AIDS when his cameo was filmed, and he passed away shortly after. Altman elected to leave the scene out of the film.

I go back to it every few years, and it gets better and better every time. I'd almost put it up on my shortlist of favorites--it's at the top of the second tier, at the very least. The thing that most impressed me last night was Tim Robbins--what a great performance.

You nailed it. The Player was the first ROBERT ALTMAN movie I was aware of. It got a decent ad push, so much so that my local paper devoted Sunday arts coverage to "The Master is Back!" type story. A weird release iirc -- late spring or early summer? I didn't get to it until its video release in early spring the following year. Because so many of his films were unavailable in the early nineties I rated it high; the casual acerbic tone, matched by the gliding camera and the odd bits of punctuation (those shots of movie posters) were unlike anything I'd seen. I went into Short Cuts expecting a masterpiece, and it took somethign to get a group of non-film friends into the theater. I sat rapt while they fidgeted. I didn't want to admit then what I would a few months later: not only doesn't the "Carver soup" cohere, you can't assemble short stories into a pattern and have them make sense; besides, what Altman movie follows a pattern anyway?

Then in the next couple years I saw McCabe, The Long Goodbye and the rest. But, yes, The Player is top of the second tier.

The Player was my first Altman as well, at least if we don't count Popeye (nothing to do with the quality of the film, but I would have had no idea who Altman was when I watched it), and I was similarly made excited by a bunch of coverage that touted the triumphant return of a figure whose work I didn't know but now knew that I should. Saw it in a shopping mall in Detroit one afternoon with my dad while my mom and sister shopped, where I sat rapt while he fidgeted. I even got the Criterion laserdisc (!) for Christmas either that year or the one after--like my Criterion disc of Tootsie, its one of those things I hang on to even though I have no way to watch it anymore.

The Player really fell out of favour didn't it? it was a Big Deal when it came out but you never hear anyone mention it these days. i wonder if it's because gossip and insider-stuff about The Industry is now commonplace. also it feels like its attitude/sensibility has been ripped off by a bunch of TV shows.

my favorite Altman film:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3V-7DEAgdc

Now, after years in the making, Robert Altman brings to the big screen the long-awaited Liberian Girl, with 24 -- count 'em -- 24 of your very favorite stars!

born 90 years ago today; strange to think of him as just under 10 years Welles' junior, when he had his breakthrough just as OW had only one completed feaature to go.

Film Comment video on the Altman TV years:

https://vimeo.com/116894504

CA Split is not worth going out into Hoth for, right?

I'm about the only person who would agree with that.

i was never hugely impressed by it either

(so there)

Its 2nd tier imo. Which is still p good.

CA Split is not worth going out into Hoth for, right?

the ion cannon will protect you

I really love CA Split. Love Segal and Gould together (70s sublime combo). But my high regard may have to do with my fondness for movies/ fiction about gambling-- more specifically, the psychology of gambler. NB I'm not a gambler and personally feel no inclination toward gambling, but despite that (or because of that) am all the more fascinated, and on that particular theme IMO CA Split is among the best ever. Also love The Gambler (1974, with amazing James Caan), Bob le flambeur, The Story of a Cheat (not long ago caught for the first time on TCM), Owning Mahoney (great PSH performance), Lost in America (inexhaustible LOLs), etc. (and of course the Dostoevsky short story; offhand not as well versed in literature on the theme). California Split and The Gambler may be top two for me in films about gamblers.

I'd throw in Rounders as one of the three best. (I love California Split too. Last year I posted on the some thread that it had become my second favourite Altman film.)

Half-distracted half-saw Rounders on cable, but liked what I saw; will get around to a good watch, thanks for the recommendation.

Was really enjoying HBO's Luck too, for the brief time it lasted, alas.

I'm interested in film about all kinds of gambling (or all kinds of its aspects). But (maybe because I'm not a gambler) I'm less interested in depictions of gamblers who really just want to "win," or gamblers as skilled experts in a competitive sport (as it were), and more interested in "existential" gamblers, so to speak. (Is this a more pathological form of gambling? Or something like a drive, something like-- but more complicated than-- a death drive, which underlies all gambling, primordial part of the compulsion and thrill?)

There's something mysterious there which The Gambler and California Split (and Dostoevsky's novel) et al get at.

But that makes it sounds like my interest/ fondness is theoretical. I love hanging out with those two characters-- two gamblers, but ultimately very different-- to be immersed in the non-plot-driven idiosyncratic details of their time together, and such a complicated male friendship (so much more shaded and complicated and dark along with light than, say, the buddies in MASH).

HBO's Luck had some of that feeling too.

let's talk about Combat! instead

Saw Nashville for the first time last week - p good film!

The sound production was very trebly though, is that an issue w the blu-ray or a 70s sound thing? if so: why is the background noise so trebly? dark side of the moon is '73 so I know hifi mixing equipment was available...

What a filmography...

I can definitely get with your ranking. You captured pretty much everything I'd include except for Images, PHC, and Brewster McCloud. And Tanner '88 is an absolutely essential work so it's only natural that you'd include it.

Actually just watched The Gingerbread Man for the first time last week. Relatively minor Altman but definitely the best Grisham film I've seen (faint praise, yes).

The sound production was very trebly though, is that an issue w the blu-ray or a 70s sound thing? if so: why is the background noise so trebly? dark side of the moon is '73 so I know hifi mixing equipment was available...

― niels, Monday, November 2, 2015 6:45 AM (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Late w/this, but feel I can address the matter. tl;dr--it's a 70s sound thing.

Longer version: This is an apples and oranges thing. The tech--from microphones to consoles--involved in recording studios in the 70s was a bit more advanced than what was being used on films of the time, particularly heavy on location productions like Altman's works. That said, in this case the disparity isn't as much as it could have been. The direct sound was recorded on a 24 track remote console, not unlike what would be used for a live album or concert film, that Altman had purchased to get more wide-ranging and true stereo location sound on his films, which--as in the case with Nashville--were becoming total on location productions with little if any filming being done on soundstages. (Before I go further, all of this is covered in greater and definitely more accurate detail in the Nashville Chronicles book).

The problem was, even with the big board, due to restrictions caused by the small omnidirectional lavaliere microphones hidden on actors (instead of the tradition over/under head boom mic), they couldn't use all the tracks at once because of frequency issues. Usually only a couple of actors would be mic-ed, even in big scenes (Allen Nichols recalls in the book having to speak in the direction of Keith Carradine's shoulder in their scenes together so he'd get picked up into the mic sewn into the latter's costume).

Mixing in post-production presented another problem. Despite the studio tech available to them, most theatres at the time were not equipped to handle surround or even plain stereo. Generally the only films exhibited with such mixes were musicals, concert films, or event films like Irwin Allen's 'Disaster' films & their ilk, which played in specially equipped theatres (hence the somewhat infamous story about the distribution of Ladies & Gentlemen, The Rolling Stones, wherein exhibitors were supplied with portable PA equipment with the film print for a proper aural experience). Therefore background noise--particularly location sounds like in Nashville--didn't have much thought put into its recording since it wouldn't have a prominent place in the mono presentation many would hear the film in upon release.

Now that we are fully ensconced in the surround era, a lot of older films are being remixed for 5.1 & beyond (such as the Criterion edition of Nashville, which is 5.1 only), so these flaws are becoming more apparent.

thanks, that's a lot of interesting facts!

I guess the alternative would have been to dub it all, and that would ofc not have suited the style

California Split. saw a gorgeous 35mm print of this in my favorite theater in the world the other day. amazing experience. i'm completely obsessed with Altman's constantly moving, roving camera. i liked the movie as it went on but wasn't first tier, reminded me of Cassavetes' Husbands and Faces, grown men getting drunk and silly. Really cruel playing that prank on the cross-dressing man, that sucked. anyway like i said for most of it i was just enjoying seeing thru Altman's wandering eyes, was slight otherwise, until that shot of George Segal sitting at an empty bar looking completely dejected in the background, the camera slowly pushing in on him as Elliot Gould hoots and hollers in the foreground. a stunning shot, and of course what follows- "this doesn't mean anything" - but that shot made the movie. feel lucky I got to see this movie for the first time under ideal circumstances. i can't believe it's out of print.

Like it much better than Husbands, but yes, they come from the same place.

Oh yeah for sure

I haven’t seen Husbands in ages but Altman’s roving camera automatically makes his so much better

man, Images. what a boring dull dud

It's certainly no The Emoji Movie, I'll give you that.

Hocus pocus wasn't his strength.

But imagine his version of Hocus Pocus w/Shelly Duvall, Sally Kellerman, and Sissy Spaceman!

SPACEK. Stupid phone.

her nickname iirc

Pronounced spah-CHEH-mun

and Buffalo Bill, oh boy. imdb says it was shot in 2:35 but the DVD I watched looked like How the West Was Won. it's a total mess, boring but not as much as Images. waste of a decent ensemble and a good idea. but one of the last scenes really struck me: Newman is up at night raving drunk in his pajamas talking at Sitting Bull, going on about how he "was born to be white. God meant it" and that "I'm white and you're red so we can tell the difference." cut to a wide shot where Sitting Bull has vanished, Newman has been screaming at no one, and he just sits there completely dejected. Sitting Bull reappears but that shot is remarkable - too bad it's buried at the end of a lousy movie.

It's certainly no The Emoji Movie, I'll give you that.

― But people get sick on earth in their human form (Old Lunch)

I mean, what is?

I'm loving that Sissy Spaceman autocorrect

So I was looking at the new 'Movie Issue' of Airbnb Magazine at Walmart yesterday and they had an article on this: https://popeyemalta.com

https://popeyemalta.com/assets/galleries/13/weddings-malta-popeye-village-3.jpg

running low now, so......

Cookie's Fortune or Dr. T and the Women?

I have yet to see the former but I'd definitely recommend the former.

Realizing that, although I own the lot, Gingerbread Man is the only Altman I've seen from that run between Short Cuts and Dr. T. Really need to get on that and see what all the vociferous hype for Prêt-à-Porter is about already. So much hype!

Looking at the website for the Popeye village in Malta posted upthread , really tickled by this paragraph:

Later, be part of a cast and become movie stars for one day by staring in an actual movie. From plotting the scenes, to rehearsals, to costume-picking and the actual filming, you and your friends will have a blast and taste the life of your Hollywood idols. At the end of the stay, you will visit our cinema to experience the Premier of your very own movie. Copies of this epic thriller can be purchased after the preview! Please be aware that ample chuckles and numerous shots are a guarantee

Sounds like making an Altman movie.

Been a long time, and I was probably still going to them with "new Altman film!" in mind, but I don't remember liking any of Dr. T, Prêt-à-Porter, or Cookie's Fortune. Gingerbread Man was better, I think.

Kansas City?

I feel like I've never heard anything more laudatory about that stretch of films than 'it was okay'. Gingerbread Man was okay. Dr. T has the rare distinction of featuring a close-up scene of childbirth in a mainstream movie, so that's something.

I remember Cookie's Fortune being okay

hahaha everyone I've talked to about Dr. T and the Women totally hated it, I'm more curious now, I might rent both tmrw

watched Kansas City recently and was pretty bored, I think maybe even Images is better

I don't remember hating Dr. T. In point of fact, I don't remember much of anything about Dr. T.

But it's okay, everything he did after was very good-to-great so he went out on a high note, at least.

A Perfect Couple is the obvious template for PTA's Punch-Drunk Love, better in some ways, still half-baked

Quintet... ugh

The band Marta Heflin's a part of in APC is such a peculiar invention.

I have fond-adjacent memories of Quintet the one time I screened it. And of knowing even then I never had to watch it again.

Jack Tanner returns in Scorsese's new Dylan doc!

I was into the first ~half hour of Quintet, but it lost me when the wife was blown up. Before that I thought well, the problem is the ridiculous costumes, too baroque and fantasy inspired compared to the stark sets. Newman's outfit makes sense. But then once the game got going I was totally out of it and confused. The staging reminded me of his play films, not in a good way, it feels totally artificial. And the sets are cool, I feel like if he didn't use so many wide shots the atmosphere wouldn't have evaporated.

I liked seeing the comedic but also somewhat realistic medical emergencies in M*A*S*H and its acknowledgement of the performers over the loudspeaker at the end, but it was such a straight guy film

It kind of invented the Gross-Out Comedy.

Really? I think of it more as a slacker comedy

seems much more cynical than that to me

It’s a good thing you have a nice body otherwise we would get rid of you quick

Don’t stick me

Keep it clean

I can tie that for you

Ok let’s have the big stitches for closing up the chest

Larger needle, knocko

does anybody know if this is an officer or an enlisted man?

he’s an enlisted man

make the stitches big

oh come off it major! You put me right off my fresh fried lobster, do:you realize that?

Really? I think of it more as a slacker comedy

― Its big ball chunky time (Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved), Saturday, April 25, 2020 11:20 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Actually you're right. I was mixing up Gross-Out and Slob Comedy, the latter of which eventually became Slacker Comedy. The Gross-Out elements of M*A*S*H are there, but not exactly played for laughs.

I've probably brought this up a ton of times here, but it's really interesting watching the first several episodes of the TV series, because they were really biting the Altman's style--lots of underlit scenes, tracking zooms, overlapping dialog, I think they were doing more location stuff too--before finding their own groove.

M*A*S*H isn't even Altman's best film of 1970.

Correct

Since we're all quarantined and Brewster McCloud has come up, might I interest you in the insane story of the guy who played the fat security guard in said film?: https://www.houstonpress.com/news/houston-babylon-dean-goss-houstons-jackie-gleason-houstons-bluebeard-or-both-6743586

saw McCabe & Mrs. Miller again, one of my favorite films ever, it still seems perfect to me, a beautiful recreation of frontier life

I liked the way it intertwined the events of the story with the lyrics of the Leonard Cohen songs

Julie Christie was acknowledged as great in it, but Warren Beatty was too. he plays an overconfident, wily, sweet doofus really well

The Long Goodbye is good and it is one of those films I think will like better after contemplating and watching again

I could watch it forever.

on first viewing I don't think it is as beautifully imagined visually as McCabe & Mrs. Miller, and its interpretation of Marlowe is more cynical and less interesting to me than Chandler’s, but it has the same interest in milieu and casual approach to filmed conversation as Altman’s previous films, which I really like

Get thee to a California Split if you haven't already.

after decades since seeing them I'm watching his films again in order (as much as I can)

California Split's on Amazon Prime, and it's friskier than I remembered.

was planning on watching Thieves Like Us next, although I think maybe I shouldn't bother but should just skip to California Split

Thieves Like Us is good!

ok, I will go ahead and watch it!

California Split is barely a movie. I mean this mostly as a compliment

The Theatrical Cut of California Split was recently added to Prime.

^whoa. is it cropped? the one on iTunes is not in 2:35:1

California Split is barely a movie. I mean this mostly as a compliment

― k*r*n koltrane (Simon H.)

it's a movie of grace notes and small moments. George Segal's character is fascinating, half in half out, the way he gets in bed with that girl and jumps up when her roommate comes home, or when he leaves the craps table after that girl comes up and says "it's my birthday!!"... and that all comes to a head in that final scene, and in that one long slow zoom of Segal sitting far away after winning everything. Gambling is a much easier addiction to externalize than most drugs and California Split leans more into AA/NA (or Synanon) territory, compared to something like The Hustler.

This Says It Is in 2.35:1 https://theplaylist.net/california-split-robert-altman-amazon-prime-20200512/

Rumor mill says this is in advance of Indictor releasing an uncut R2 BluRay.

INDICATOR

I will be giving California Split another shot someday.

whats the deal with the different cuts of California Split? Any drastic differences?

Watched California Split, loved it

"It didn't mean a fucking thing, did it?"

XP Some Altman Stans consider the shorter DVD cut a mutilation. Having seen both edits, I don't feel the same way. Altman had to re-edit out and around some live music (most of the film's soundtrack is standards performed by a lounge singer off & on-screen). Since, as Flappy notes, the film is all grace notes and small moments, this wasn't the same as, say, losing all the flashbacks in The Wild Bunch, and some other legendary edit difference. The flavor of the film remains.

However, it's exciting that the original is out there again in the OAR.

"...or some other..."

CS reminds me of that line hurled at Peter Fonda in The Limey: "You're more like a vibe than a person."

Thieves Like Us is the better film, yeah. I bought the DVD upon its release in the late '00s.

I should just do a full-blown Altman rewatch while I'm stuck at home. I have pretty much the whole kit and caboodle (save some of the minor '80s stuff and my copy of Quintet which seems to have evaporated into the ether).

I’ve been doing it and it’s great. McCabe? Overrated !

I kind of hate Nashville.

I got through 20 minutes of Quintet once.

That's a flag post, a flag post and a flag post. Thanks friends!

(OK, I stretched on the last one. Quintet really is about as tough to get through as any Altman.)

I bailed on A Perfect Couple too. I think I have a digital file of Health lifted off YouTube that I haven't yet looked at.

I like Nashville and McCabe a lot but sometimes I think they both might be subject to the A Love Supreme thing, where at some point it became convenient to elevate them for canonization as unimpeachable masterpieces as a shorthand for the whole sprawling body of work

I had never heard of Quintet until I got that big Altman coffeetable book a few years ago, and just from the photos and brief descriptions of it boy oh boy does it look rough

Quintet sucks. it didn't have to--he shot it very plainly and lots of wide and medium shots, which make the shitty sets stand out. could've worked as a more obscure mood piece like Images

You can make a great sci-fi movie with almost no money. Godard and Fassbinder did it in Paris w/ very few or no sets. and you can make a great sci-fi movie with only a few people, like Solaris.

Quintet, they obviously had some budget, but it is all so ponderous and visually BORING.

I like A Perfect Couple but it could've been better. Feels more like an Alan Rudolph movie honestly

I like Nashville and McCabe a lot but sometimes I think they both might be subject to the A Love Supreme thing, where at some point it became convenient to elevate them for canonization as unimpeachable masterpieces as a shorthand for the whole sprawling body of work

Maybe ... you add 3 Women, which has arguably emerged as the default "rediscovered" Altman pick, to Nashville and McCabe and you have my list of the no-contest top three Altman movies.

(OK, I stretched on the last one. Quintet really is about as tough to get through as any Altman.)

― Vegemite Is My Grrl (Eric H.), Thursday, May 21, 2020 10:17 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

*cougho.c.andstiggscoughcough*

is Images any good? It's on Shudder(!).

I like it but opinions vary. It's 3 Women-esque.

It's 3 Women without its fluency, although 3 Women is often aqueous and opaque in oft-putting ways.

With Images, I imagine Altman finishing Mrs. Dalloway and thinking, "I can do this."

I only saw 3 Women in film class so maybe I was extra receptive, but I LOVED it.

Yeah. Anytime I think of this thread I think of Shelly Duvall's recipes:

Completely disgusting foods our parents ate

I love 3 Women but Images left me cold. Same style, and as someone pointed out upthread (or in another Altman thread), he seemed drawn to these cold, European influenced existential identity films that he is not known for at all... Images is just kind of boring imo bc it's just Susannah York losing her mind alone in a castle.

Shelley duvall and sissy Spacek is the perfect cast

Is this the only film they starred in together?

Weird Texan actresses of the '70s supergroup

"don't call me Millie, because I HAYTE it"

Love her

it's just Susannah York losing her mind alone in a castle

this might sound more appealing if she weren't by far the worst thing about one of my most-watched movies of late, The Silent Partner

Is there a way to tell which cut of California Split is the theatrical cut on Prime? There are two versions available, the one link in the playlist piece has the 2004 DVD cover. That the one? I can't remember

Ohh this one is definitely restored, cool

I watched the restoration last weekend and it looks great. Last time I saw the theatrical cut was a print almost 2 years ago. Most significant difference are the show tunes, which are all awful lol

Rewatched California Split, I didn't remember much about it from years ago except lots of patter. The patter is there and good, but what I really loved this time was friendship of the Gould and Segal characters, the way it springs up around this thing they both love — gambling — but then comes apart in the end because it turns out that thing means different things to them.

Also, Gould's lightness in the movie is remarkable, it's like he's floating through it all, including his beatdowns. Nothing really fazes him, he's just there for the love of the chase.

yeah he's amazing, and you're right, Charlie is all in on this lifestyle, but Bill clearly has one fit in one fit out back in the 'real world,' which we barely see. that's another thing that's so powerful about this movie: we never see Bill's ex-wife or any mention of it beyond one reference, like I said upthread everything is implied but illustrated perfectly with such a light touch.

and that final shot/reverse zoom shot of Charlie collecting their winnings and Bill sitting at the table alone in the other room, where there is daylight and reality is hitting him- what can I say? pure cinema

Yeah, Bill's looking for some kind of meaning, and Charlie's like, "Of course it's a shuck, man. Let's do it some more!"

haven't seen it yet, but I read that Altman hired members of Synanon as extras in the gambling scenes

watched this for the first time, it was great. gould is excellent but so exhausting, he's talking nonstop in every scene he's in. even when he's supposedly going to bed, you see him lying there trying to remember the rest of the seven dwarves.

the synanon thing is in the credits!

i was looking at altman's imdb and he has so many movies i've never even heard of. his '80s run seems pretty odd in particular.

yeah all those play adaptations, only a couple of which are watchable

sorry by "this" in my original post i obviously meant california split

I think the batting average is a bit higher for 80s Altman, I'd keep Secret Honor, Come Back to the 5 and Dime, certainly Tanner '88... honestly forgot about Streamers but it's not bad. I haven't seen the infamous O.C. & Stiggs but I know people who really like Fool for Love and Beyond Therapy. Still feel like I missed some

I'm not as won over by Secret Honor, but Come Back to the 5 and Dime and Tanner '88 are solid.

Tanner '88 is one of my favorite Altman projects, do not sleep on.

Tanner '88 is one of my favorites, too (the 2004 one as well). I just remembered Vincent & Theo, which is toooooo long (maybe was filmed as a miniseries and cut for theaters? I can't remember). I'd take the play movies over that one. Sandy Dennis is GREAT in Come Back to the 5 and Dime...

OC & Stiggs is enjoyable in a "Let's See Altman Do A National Lampoon Film" way (which I guess it was, minus NL's branding, as iirc the characters came from the mag).

maybe was filmed as a miniseries and cut for theaters? I can't remember

This is true. I don't think the miniseries has been other than maybe on video?

"Has been out"

secret honor is much better than just "watchable" tho i was a bit underwhelmed when i finally rewatched it on DVD after 30-odd yrs of remembering it as amazing (i think at the 1984 london film festival?)

casting is Altman's great genius (Shelley Duvall as olive oyl!) but come back to the five and dime is one that really pushes the boat out (Karen black and sandy Dennis!). it's by far the most affecting of his films I've seen (it's usually the technical aspects that most impress)and loved how intact the staginess is left. but yeah, I had the same experience v recently reading his IMDb and realising how little i knew (I had presumed I'd seen a good chunk but I was way off)

Always had a film in production, never had any stretches without working. a couple years between movies toward the end, but still

I never much liked Five & Dime except for that moment where Cher viciously imitated Sandy Dennis

watched Thieves Like Us. Like McCabe, it feels convincing for the period it represents but also like a film that could only have been made in the 70s

didn’t think it was nearly as great as McCabe & Mrs. Miller though

It's the one acclaimed film of his in his McCabe-Nashville run I never quite connected with. I've tried three or four times. (It's been a while since I saw the first two versions.)

I've been trying to remember them as young actors, so it was interesting watching Keith Carradine, Shelley Duvall and Louise Fletcher

John Schuck is freakin' scary in Thieves...

he was menacing. he also had a good role in M*A*S*H

I find the romanticism of McCabe corny and overdone, prefer Thieves.

watched them again both and don't agree with that at all

I watched 'health' last night and it was hilarious

challopsy, but Glenda Jackson yes

sort of a sketch-show Nashville

Jackson is hilarious in it but really demonstrates why she was so difficult to cast. Bacall as Reagan was hilarious, Wikipedia says that he mentions it being the worst movie ever in his published diaries.

I'm genuinely shocked that no one picked the astounding BREWSTER MCCLOUD.

anyway, here are 3 phenomenal Altman television rarities:

Killer App, a pilot from 1998 that was written by Garry Trudeau. It's like SILICON VALLEY 20 years earlier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fesJbkZjH84&disable_polymer=true

Rattlesnake in a Cooler: soliloquy produced for television in 1982-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8q-7LHEZ3Y

The Laundromat-incredible adaptation of Marsha Norman's play that was made for HBO in 1985---https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVB7dsuboQo&disable_polymer=true

Wow, thanks!!!

Nightmare in Chicago remains the holy grail for me (lucky enough to have seen it once, on TV, 30-35 years ago). I check YouTube periodically, but nothing.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BzLS-J2wF58/V3VKr1iNuOI/AAAAAAAABdA/xU7-NGJjWPonV1HE_4avtEhNISNckFevgCKgB/s1600/Nightmare%2Bin%2BChicago%2B5.jpg

clemenza I have a link for that if u want it

Wow--absolutely! I'm hoping you mean a file...I did find a DVD bootleg place that'd end up costing some ridiculous amount after postage and exchange.

(My user profile/homepage will take you to my e-mail address if you don't want to post it here.)

Yeah it's a file, 930mb so not amazing quality but probably watchable. I'll email ya

The Holy Grail located; thank you, Simon.

beyond therapy or fool for love?

which one are you?

I need to know which to rent today 😞
xp Both 😭

when I first saw Nashville I thought Carradine's performance of "I'm Easy" and the simultaneous look around the bar was the culmination, and seeing again I still think so

“you may say that I ain’t free but it don’t worry me” from Nashville is prophetic

echoing my thoughts exactly, altho when I rewatched it in March (2 days after pandemic declared), the finale with Barbara Harris really hit hard. yes, exactly, that ending is just a perfect demonstration of America in miniature: a horrible, motiveless tragedy occurs, complete chaos for a few minutes, and then it's a singalong. Nothing ever changes, but throw those flowers into the crowd and tilt up to the cloudy, grey sky. CLOROX PRODUCTS! WITH RED DOTS ON 'EM! thats right

For a heavy psychological drama (and despite its dysphoric 1970s score) 3 Women seemed almost light in a really appealing way until the end. It was very strange and unlike any other Altman film I’ve seen. Shelley Duvall won the Cannes best actress award for it but Sissy Spacek was equally amazing

I liked Altman’s comment about “empty vessels in an empty landscape”, and also the idea that the California desert represents "a space of death but also one of creation"

A Wedding was an interesting follow-up to Nashville and 3 Women

marriage celebrations (and marriages) are messy and chaotic and relationships are often unequal, charged, and fraught with peril, but we can always decide to move ahead

saw on the cast list that Joan Allen, John Malcovich, Laurie Metcalf, and Gary Sinise were extras, but the scenes were so complex that I didn’t even notice them

*Malkovich

I love that throwaway line, "You can get cancer from smoking pot?"

I only spotted Metcalf (I think)

Popeye is so broad and dumb, it's hard to believe this is the same director who made McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Nashville

think his next film Come Back to the 5 & Dime will be better

Saw Popeye when it came out, immediately erased everything from my mind. Come Back I saw years after the fact--some positives, I think.

Come Back is too long but good

revisited a couple of his movies yesterday.... Brewster McCloud, good lord, so bad... so much worse than I remember... just stupid and not funny and so boring...

but Nashville was even more of a masterpiece last night... there's that incredible match cut of the old man crying at the hospital after his wife's died right to Michael Murphy and Ned Beatty laughing in the club.

I also think it's worth noting the final three shots: there's the zoom out from the stage, and then right as the lens is pulled completely back, there's a cut to one last shot of the crowd: two cops walking around wearing aviators. Cut back to the wide shot, tilt up to the gray sky. Maybe it's an arbitrary shot, but going back into the crowd after that relatively long zoom out to show two cops who look like they're looking for trouble, it feels absolutely intentional--a brief reminder of reality, that the dream is almost over

Crisp description, flappy. Every time I wanna knock Nashville to a second tire I remember that match cut.

I still prefer Brewster McCloud to M*A*S*H*, but yeah--Nashville, McCabe and Mrs. Miller--he got better as the 70s went along.

Seeing Brewster McCloud at 18 and reading Robert Kolker's A Cinema of Loneliness (about the New American Cinema) was the first real spur to my becoming a cinephile, and conscious of auteurism and the role of a director. The film is completely chaotic and doesn't really have a centre other than Altman's whims, but I would rank it above such vote-getters in this poll as M*A*S*H, The Player and Short Cuts.

Paul Schrader, on Facebook today:

3 WOMEN. Several FB friends have been harrumphing for years about the greatness of Altman's 1977 film to the extent I felt psychologically arm twisted to watch it again. Which I just did. I disliked it when it came out, I disliked it ever more on belated viewing. The corona of condescension, superficiality and self importance which exudes from Altman and his films like a marijuana haze is in full display. And that score? Could it be the worst serious score ever? Nice prod design, though.

classic schrade shade

there's a cut to one last shot of the crowd: two cops walking around wearing aviators.

Is one of them the female cop? I think she gets the frame to herself.

Seeing Brewster McCloud at 18 and reading Robert Kolker's A Cinema of Loneliness (about the New American Cinema) was the first real spur to my becoming a cinephile

Me too, although I'd swap a few dozen films in for BM (which I didn't see for years and didn't like). Excellent book

I should say Brewster is only bad relatively imo, it has plenty going for it. Watching it with a couple other people, and none of us laughed... well, it looked good as most Altman movies do, and there's great stuff here and there. I should say that if I found more of the leads attractive it would work. Bud Cort is too close to the 2001 baby for me to get interested, much less excited.

That Paul Schrader writeup is INSANE. Hilarious, his opinion can only be taken so seriously since he was a competitor with Altman at the time. All one has to do is counter with is Cat People.

Schrader bagging on another filmmaker for "self importance" is pretty rich

there's that incredible match cut of the old man crying at the hospital after his wife's died right to Michael Murphy and Ned Beatty laughing in the club

otm, altho it’s murphy and geraldine chaplin, not beatty— the most evil char and the dumbest char. you can work out that what they’re laughing at is barbara baxley’s kennedy monologue. chaplin says the assassination’s her fault for owning a gun. lol

Whoa! Great catch

(the monologue happens earlier to be clear but p sure opal from the bbc has just been telling advance man tripple about it when we cut to them in that moment.)

whole last scene is such a symphony. otm about the ominous dissonance of that cut into the angelus-novus-pov pullback. oh, man, i can’t stop that blood, man!

lmao. Somebody sing.. SING!

I've been filling in the Altman I haven't seen yet and I got to O.C. & Stiggs and holy shit it's bad. Like hateful terrible bad. What the hell?

Thieves Like Us has been the big why-didn't-i-watch-this-sooner surprise. Keith Carradine & Shelley Duvall should have played Tom Verlaine & Patti Smith.

saw Streamers the other night, I liked it more than the other 80s stuff of his I've seen recently

but it did have that 'stage play turned into a movie' quality, like Come Back To the 5 & Dime and Secret Honor

Found this the other day, uploaded only 2 months ago, short making of on California Split

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDgCM-V41_A

Altman's hat is awesome

Vincent and Theo as a film adapted from a miniseries didn't have to be as long as it was, but I liked it

Saw 5&dime for the first time last month and I kinda loved it. It’s very ‘for hire’ even if he did the OG play but as a bottle movie is really moves

The Player and Short Cuts seem like a comeback for Altman after his non-commercial play-based films of the 80s

I was wondering about Short Cuts as I hadn’t seen it again since it came out. The missed connections between the characters and the earnestness of their trying to connect made the film for me, even if it didn't all come together

short cuts is my favorite altman even though, yeah, it doesn't quite all come together. i rewatched the player recently and it remains an excellent movie.

I think they're both pretty great--took me two or three times with The Player, Short Cuts right away.

My favourite latter-day Altman is Gosford Park; I found The Player really smug, and Short Cuts was laying on irony with a trowel. I haven't seen anything else post-87, in fact I get a strong aversion when scanning those titles because I remember not wanting to see them when they first came out.

He hit the trifecta on the way out imo (Gosford, The Company, Prairie Home Companion). I'm planning to watch all three over the winter.

I’ve never been quite as big on Gosford as most, but I did rewatch it in the last year and it’s had to argue against it being in the upper tiers of Altman’s career.

Watch remains of the day wings of a dove and room with a view THEN watch gosford and its like a coens movie

Kansas City was ok. I wasn’t that interested in the plot but I really loved the big band concert with the sword-fighting saxophones about an hour in

it has its moments. probably should revisit once I read that 2010 Altman oral history that went out of print. (it's really long--at least 150 pages before it gets to the 1970s)

watched The James Dean Story recently and man is it good. Some wack interview photography but at 80 minutes it zips along using mostly photos and voiceover and film clips and newsreels. It really felt like Jimmy Dean Mon Amour, but 2 years before the fact!

Watched Rich Kids, which he produced in 1979, for the second time last night, and it's marvellous. Strong proto-Baumbach vibes, down to the new york yuppie interiors, but a really sweet movie about kids growing up within divorce that is absolutely bewitching. Recommend me more movies like this, anyone who knows of any.

sounds like Paul Mazursky

I rarely feel compelled to go off on a film. I try to avoid stuff I don't think I'll like; I know I end up missing films I would like because of that, but with films I'm the guy who wants to let 100 guilty people go free rather than convict one innocent person. (If that analogy even works.)

God, I hated Prêt-à-Porter. I saw it when it came out, hated it then, assumed that would be tempered by 20 years and lowered expectations, possibly hated it even more today. Took me almost a week of how-much-can-I-stand? to get through it. Anouk Aimée, Julia Roberts, Tim Robbins, and maybe a couple of others managed to keep their dignity. At least two throwbacks to previous Altman films: Sally Kellerman humiliated like in MASH, Danny Aiello as Bert Remsen in California Split--like those jokes would improve with age. Very glad he got to make a few more films and go out on A Prairie Home Companion rather than this.

I was 17 when this came out and I rented it on VHS. I had seen and enjoyed The Player and Short Cuts and a few of the Altman classics so I was receptive. I recall it being one of the worst movies I had ever seen up to that point. Am I remembering correctly that characters kept stepping in dog poop every few minutes and that was supposed to be really funny? Maybe it's still one of the worst films I've seen! I'll never rewatch it to find out, though.

I haven't tried many of the reputed 80s stinkers but among them, HealtH is more enjoyable than this.

I was thinking about him the other day. I think 3 Women, California Split and The Long Goodbye are nigh (heh-heh) unimpeachable. Granted, McCabe is impressive in a stunt-filmmaking Herzog kinda way, and is good/great but I think is (affects cineaste voice) ultimately overrated, as is Nashville. And I love leonard cohen and country music! And america! And maybe even canada

Thieves Like Us is very good, but too depressing on balance for me to re-visit. It... could use more cohen brothers style levity. Which, it has some of, but not in large enough doeses to offset the overall subj matter and narrative. Brewster McCloud is great, if a tad too light, farcical.

His best films do life in just the right measure. Damn, california split is so good, tho it undoubtedly fails every variation of the bechdel test ever. But... i am not a big film person -- music has much more of a lasting impact on me. Even novelty songs about valley girls. But CS is one of those films that I couldn't stop thinking about for a long time after I watch(ed) it. The whole gambling thing is obv very fruitful metaphor on its own, w long long legs, but add in male friendships and i guess relationships in general, and damn. The ending is at once depressing, triumphant, and transcendent. There's a lot of ground covered there.

HH: you remember that running gag correctly--four or five times. Absolutely a low point for Altman. It's not just how awful the joke is, it's that I think he thinks he's making a statement on the film's subject matter. As I've said many times, I'm the rare person who isn't convinced that Altman is contemptuous of country music in Nashville; or at the very least, even if he is, he loves the characters so much it's a draw. Prêt-à-Porter feels like a work of contempt from start to finish, capped off by Kim Basinger's befuddled speech at the end. But not interesting contempt--just puzzling, like why would you fell compelled to make this film? (I think Basinger's supposed to be some version of Geraldine Chaplin in Nashville...not anywhere near as funny.)

I think his segment in Aria is his worst work ever, but he's definitely a great filmmaker whose career is pockmarked with cavernous abysses of terribleness. Not liking his previous two that much, I steered clear of Ready to Wear (which didn't even get the good reviews those two got).

clemenza how did you see Pret a Porter? it was on prime for a bit over a year ago, but no more, and the only DVD that's out there has some really bad tracking errors (not even windowboxed--the frame is misaligned on modern TV's, top 1/8th showing up on the bottom 1/8th of the screen, etc)

There's a group of stations here called Hollywood Suite that shows old stuff--one for the '70s/'80s/'90s/'00s.

https://hollywoodsuite.ca/

They go free for a few weeks around Christmas, so I was PVR'ing a few things.

Prêt-à-Porter was the second new Altman I'd seen in a theatre, and after The Player and Short Cuts I expected another triumph or near-triumph.

One thing I found weird, and annoying, was that whatever French dialogue there was--and a couple of scenes between Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren seemed important; I literally had no idea who either one of them was--didn't have subtitles. (Checked, and you're right--that was his very next film. I thought a couple of others were in there, but no.)

I have an unwatched copy of Pret (part of a fashion-related three-pack that also includes the Mizrahi and Wintour docs, FYI, no idea what the scan is like) that I feel perversely compelled to put on now. Are we talking Dr. T levels of bad? Or even worse?

1994: bad year for baseball, bad year for Altman.

I hated Dr. T, too, but remember nothing, so I can't compare. I would love to hear from the person who voted for Prêt-à-Porter in this poll. Even giving great leeway for subjectivity, it's hard to get my mind around that.

That I can recall the "Vie en rose"-scored naked fashion show at the end of Prêt-à-Porter is the only evidence that I have that I even saw the film.

Are we talking Dr. T levels of bad? Or even worse?

P-a-P is not good, but it's just an inert failure rather than mindbogglingly disastrous. Altman plainly wanted to do a light, frothy, inconsequential flick in the style of Player and Short Cuts; it just turned out that himself and the film critic of the San Francisco Examiner, who had not previously (and did not subsequently) written a film, were not as gifted at writing a bubbly comedy about humans with no depth as literary titan Raymond Carver was at sketching regular lives in a short story, or successful novelist Michael Tolkin was at turning his encounters with Hollywood scummery into a black satire.

I'll endorse disastrous--perhaps not mind-boggling, I don't know. I'm still walking and thinking.

(xpost) When you really hate something, you start inferring things that may or may not be true. With that ending, it really felt like Altman thought he was saying something profound about the emptiness of fashion, and that he (or the writer) chose to do so in the most obvious way possible. Then you start scanning the faces of all the characters watching, and it's clear they're impressed and provoked to the point of being dumbfounded, and that makes the scene even worse. And then, the standing ovation.

I saw it on a multiplex on release and not since, it might be much worse than I recall.

Found it interesting to read the "Reception" summary on Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pr%C3%AAt-%C3%A0-Porter_(film)

Wrong link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prêt-à-Porter_(film)

that scene in The Company with the couple dancing on an outdoor stage to My Funny Valentine in a thunderstorm with just cello and piano accompaniment was spectacular

I really liked seeing the dance performances in that film, and the deliberately unfocused story about the dancers seemed appropriate

have been thinking about Altman’s eras

!) MASH, Brewster McCloud, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye, Thieves Like Us, California Split, Nashville - the 70s classics
2) Three Women - unlike any of his other films
3) A Wedding, Quintet, A Perfect Couple, Health, Popeye
4) The 80s films based on plays - Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Streamers, Secret Honor
5) The Player, Short Cuts
6) Gosford Park, The Company, Prairie Home Companion

It’s been a while since I saw either, but Images might belong in the same category. Different eras, though, I suppose.

Same category as Three Women, I meant to say.

haven't seen Images

It’s probably underrated due to the classics that surround it in his filmography. Maybe it’s actually the same era as three women - I had it in my mind that it was pre-MASH but it’s actually 1972, between McCabe and Long Goodbye.

Your categorization is pretty much dead-on, I'd say. At first I thought Gosford Park might belong with The Player and Short Cuts--his last three widely acclaimed films--but there's eight years and six films separating them. The only thing I'd add is a period covering his pre-MASH work; primarily That Cold Day in the Park, but there's a bit more than that.

I don't consider Three Women a masterpiece--an increasingly minority viewpoint--but it does stand alone, hard to slot into either what comes before or after.

It didn't help that Images wasn't available for ages; seldom revived, rumor had it the elements had been destroyed in a fire, but DVDs and Blu-Rays of quality started appearing in the mid 2000s.

Images and Three Women both have unique Stoner-Bergman thing going on.

watching Three Women I do think of Bergman's Persona, but it's different

but also maybe the same

Images was an early try for the mystery of Three Women, but (as Kael pointed out) the dialogue is terrible and it is a lot more heavy-handed. I waited years to see it on the big screen and was terribly disappointed. Actually, That Cold Day in the Park, though inconsistent, is somewhat similar to both films, and probably superior to Images.

that scene in The Company with the couple dancing on an outdoor stage to My Funny Valentine in a thunderstorm with just cello and piano accompaniment was spectacular

Same. It may be the peak of his powers.

i love images

pic.twitter.com/CPrRI7pObJ

— Nicky Smith (@nickyotissmith) March 24, 2021

Not sure if I ever shared this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDgCM-V41_A

So great...

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/california-split-40-years-later-interview-elliott-gould-george-segal-joseph-walsh-three-parts/

Joseph Walsh shared a California Split sequel script on his website: http://josephrwalsh.com/jrw/

Very important update: In the course of doing my all-time movie ballot, I reversed my Altman 1-2 from McCabe/Goodbye to Goodbye/McCabe. Since I'm on record upthread as a McCabe voter in this poll, I would like to change my vote and finally break this tie.

Still impressed ILX picked the right four as the top four, whatever order they came in.

I've still not seen 3 Women. Surprised A Wedding only got one vote, that's great.

A Wedding is the first of his '70s run that I remember basically nothing about (although Buffalo Bill is a little fuzzy).

I'm generally the one arguing that later films don't equal earlier ones, but with Nashville to one side, I'd now include Player and Short Cuts in the mix with the best (and maybe Tanner, although I liked it a little less on second viewing).

The Player...

Buffalo Bill is if Reg Dunlop from slapshot started a medicine show.

On the plus side, no hockey.

A Wedding is the first of his '70s run that I remember basically nothing about (although Buffalo Bill is a little fuzzy).

― Slime Goobody (Old Lunch), Friday, May 21, 2021 6:53 AM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

"You can get cancer from smoking pot?"

It's a very sloppy movie, 48 actors each with a single tic to individualize them. I remember Carol Burnett and Lillian Gish best.

I feel like I need to rewatch Nashville. On first viewing something about the satire fell really flat for me.

Honestly, a lot of the humour in Nashville is pretty ham-handed.

Example(s)? I may or may not agree.

This is going off memory since it's been a while, but my feeling at the time was that it didn't have much of a soul, that it was just one long, cold, cynical snicker.

You'll probably find me arguing this above: I don't experience the film that way at all. Yes, there's some condescension here and there, but from my vantage point, Altman loves the characters, and that's why it's a great film. I'd call something like Bob Roberts a better example of the reputation that has attached to Nashville (from people who don't like it).

I wouldn't actually say there's a lot of humour in Nashville, but any scene involving Geraldine Chaplin falls flat. A lot of the jokes in the dialogue are corny people saying corny things. That may be real but not necessarily funny, but as I say, I don't judge it primarily as a comedy (or a musical).

I have warmed up to the Chaplin stuff in Nashville in that I think it's totally fair to say that much of the rest of the world depicts that area with more than just a little condescension.

Which is fine. It's obv he doesn't understand country.

If you think that, no problem. What I've never understood is thinking that while saying you love the film. How could anyone love a condescending film?

Disagree about Chaplin. Besides getting maybe the film's single funniest line (I'm listening to you, but look what's over there...), I find much of her gibberish priceless.

And disagree about the soundtrack to the degree that I wouldn't assume Altman claims that these country songs have anything to do with Hank Williams or the Carter Family or lots of country music, any more than the people who made Spinal Tap would claim that their movie is a comment on Bob Dylan or the Beatles or all rock music. Does Spinal Tap have anything to say about some rock music? Yes, it does.

How could anyone love a condescending film?

The same way I can love didactic films; it's getting used to their ethos and tone of voice.

I'd have to think about it, but I think we part ways there; I put condescension right next to sarcasm in the toxic department.

For clarification, what's an example of a didactic film? Makes me think of Kael on Siegfried Kracauer. Something like Godard's Letter to Jane?

To be clear, I think that Chaplin's character's condescension is absolutely a fair characterization of that role in the film. I don't think it's condescension on Altman's part. Nashville is basically unimpeachable AFAIC.

And disagree about the soundtrack to the degree that I wouldn't assume Altman claims that these country songs have anything to do with Hank Williams or the Carter Family or lots of country music, any more than the people who made Spinal Tap would claim that their movie is a comment on Bob Dylan or the Beatles or all rock music. Does Spinal Tap have anything to say about some rock music? Yes, it does.

― clemenza, Friday, May 21, 2021 3:13 PM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Spinal Tap is absolutely condescending to hair metal dudes though, it's just also affectionate and funny and come on it's hair metal we're talking about, and I don't really feel like Spinal Tap is trying to make a POINT about anything other than maybe ego and lack of self-awareness. Whereas Nashville felt like it might as well have been titled Nashville is Fake, because that's about all I felt like the film had to say. And that's just not that interesting a point to make.

It's utterly insane to me that someone would think Spinal Tap is more affectionate toward its characters than Nashville but shrug.gif

it's just also affectionate and funny

I agree with that--courtesy of the performers; not Rob Reiner, I don't think--and that's what makes Spinal Tap great; if were it were flat-out ridicule, it'd be a bad TV sketch.

I just don't see the line that you do where Spinal Tap is this but Nashville is that.

I don't remember much from Prairie Home Companion, beyond that I liked it and thought it was a nice way to sign off. Isn't there fake country music in that? Is the hostility and condescension people attribute to Nashville still there? I don't remember anything like that.

Personally, I thought of one thing that undermines my claim that I could never love anything condescending: Tina Fey's Sarah Palin. Pretty sure that emerged from a place of deep contempt, but I can never watch that creation and not be filled with joy. So maybe I'm wrong, or maybe my contempt lines up perfectly with Fey's in that instance, or maybe Fey was able to connect with something about Palin at some deeper level that allowed her to mask the contempt.

IIRC, the Country songs in PHC were provided by Keillor himself, and they were meant to be funny.

One of the key things to remember about the Nashville songs that many of them predate the movie: Ronee Blakley recycled stuff from her debut album; Karen Black had been recording demos in private for years; Carradine wrote "I'm Easy" for Shelley Plimpton when they were both in HAIR; and Henry Gibson had been doing "Keep-A-Goin'" as a poem going back to the mid-'60s at least.

So it wasn't like 'let's get some jokey songs because Country sucks'.

On that last point, though, was how the Nashville establishment took the songs and the film.

Good point. Blakley and Gibson I knew about, didn't know about Black and Carradine.

Also remembered--I think I have this right--Robert Duvall was originally supposed to play Haven Hamilton.

Duvall was indeed the original choice.

Clem, you really need to check Jan Stuart's The Nashville Chronicles. It's a fantastic deep-dive book from the early '00s written with cooperation from Altman and most of then still-surviving cast members.

Posted this over on the Karen Black thread, but an album of her music is coming: https://shop.mexicansummer.com/product/karen-black-dreaming-of-you

Had to make a quick trip downstairs to confirm, but I've read the Stuart book--that and Harlan Lebo's Godfather book were the first making-of books I read.

I think I gleaned the Duvall casting from a Playboy interview Altman did just before Buffalo Bill came out; he said they broke over money.

team clemenza/eric: afaict nashville isn't contemptuous of anyone except geraldine chaplin (idiot) and michael murphy (liar). first runners-up are shelley duvall (selfish), who has flown in from california; and, admittedly, ned beatty (doesn't appreciate kids or being married to 70s lily tomlin).

what i get from it isn't "nashville is fake" but (cornily enough) "where do we go from here". now that the answer is known it has become a grimmer movie, but not a cruel one.

Duvall is, for me, the least successful, most dated character in the film: she isn't given a single moment that shades her vacuity.

Murphy is a political flunky right out of The Candidate, but I find his dumbstruck attraction to Christina Raines sweet. I don't feel Altman has contempt for Beatty at all. Chaplin, I guess you either hate her or find her amusingly spacey and pretentious.

"team clemenza/eric"--someone just died several thousand deaths.

Same top 4, albeit in different order: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/jun/17/robert-altmans-20-best-films-ranked

That list is borderline insane. The top four is clearly inarguable but...Popeye at seven?! The Company near the bottom!? And The Player not much higher than that?!? GTFO

Yeah but Popeye is great.

Def need to see Kansas City now

yeah popeye wld be top 10 for me

(tbf i am borderline insane)

extremely weird to do a top 20 list for a guy who directed 35-ish movies. Why not just rank them all as in the clickbait trend these days?

Anyway, this is my confession that I spent the whole time getting increasingly mad that they had ranked Dr. T and the Women so high before realizing it wasn't even on the list at all. Also, Popeye rules.

there are several great Altman films, and a lot of good ones, but I thought Popeye was mediocre.

I haven't seen a lot of what might be regarded as second-string Altman. There's something laborious about watching his movies that means that if they are not actively enjoyable, it's hard for me to step back and take the good with the bad.
The odd exception for me is Quintet, usually seen as the bottom-of-the-barrel, which I actually found quite watchable. Literally watchable, because the sets, costumes and cinematography outclass the script so completely.

Best film not on that Guardian list is Buffalo Bill and the Indians, it is an semi-interesting semi-failure.

it was a very odd film but I enjoyed it

I hated Popeye and never looked at it a second time; thought Buffalo Bill was pretty good, better than some of the films on that list.

extremely weird to do a top 20 list for a guy who directed 35-ish movies. Why not just rank them all as in the clickbait trend these days?

they do these top 20 lists every week, this one is presumably to tie in with the Altman season at the BFI

I saw Popeye at the cinema when I was about 7 and can barely remember anything about it other than it seemed visually quite unusual to me at the time and for some reason I have a much clearer memory of seeing trashy but extremely fun sci-fi b-movies of that era like The Black Hole and Battle Beyond The Stars.

I was probably the same age when I saw Popeye and my main memory of it was my dad complaining about it as we were leaving the theater.

Bad news for fans with multi-region players:

Some followers of the INDICATOR label may be aware that, some years back, we teased Robert Altman’s CALIFORNIA SPLIT for a future release. Sadly, and despite a great deal of time and effort, legal complications have proven too much of a hurdle and we can now confirm that this release will not be happening. We are, of course, as upset with this news as you are, but hope to make up for it with many exciting releases of other great films to come.

For all its raging misogyny, MASH still holds up well.

XP Some good chat about that with a poster who works with the label over at criterionforum (starts at post #32)

https://www.criterionforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=752664#p752645

TL;DR version is it came down to budgetary reasons that weren't obvious when Indicator initially licensed the title, and they can't fulfill now.

A friend was telling me about Ann Prentiss from California Split (and Paula's younger sister--you'd swear they were identical twins). God, what a story.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Prentiss

Prentiss was convicted in a California court of a 1996 assault against her father, and a subsequent threat against members of her family. The district attorney claimed that Prentiss, while incarcerated on the assault charge, had attempted to hire another inmate to kill three people, including her father and actor-director Richard Benjamin, her brother-in-law. On July 23, 1997, the court sentenced her to 19 years in prison.

She was still there when she died in 2010.

For some reason the second sentence of that wikipedia article is: "Her father was of Sicilian descent." hmmm.

It was between the sisters, Aimless. He had nothing to do with it.

Whoa, that story's a trip. We watched The Out of Towners over the holidays and were like 'why is Paula Prentiss in this tiny little walk-on role?' which is when we learned of the wholly separate existence of Ann Prentiss.

They have the same voice too, which is freaky

Very much so. I saw the Out of Towners a few times as a kid--no recollection of her in that (she plays a stewardess).

Bad news for fans with multi-region players:

Some followers of the INDICATOR label may be aware that, some years back, we teased Robert Altman’s CALIFORNIA SPLIT for a future release. Sadly, and despite a great deal of time and effort, legal complications have proven too much of a hurdle and we can now confirm that this release will not be happening. We are, of course, as upset with this news as you are, but hope to make up for it with many exciting releases of other great films to come.
― Max Hamburgers (Eric H.), Thursday, 17 February 2022 14:59 (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Just noticed last night that Amazon Prime (in the UK) have California Split in the correct aspect ratio and with all music cues intact, no cuts. It's leaving in 30 days. Even by Altman's standards, it's a wonderfully woozy film - sometimes the camera seems to just drift away from the action and there are whole scenes where the main actors are shot virtually out of frame. Laughed at the Aaron Spelling producer credit - he must have been DELIGHTED when he saw the finished film.

Aaron Spelling also has a producing credit on another favourite of mine, Three O’Clock High (1987).

I’m amazed that JAZZ ‘34 want included in the original poll

That's a favorite of mine, and I didn't even like Kansas City very much.

Not the best visual quality but here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48gZLCft9ak

Aaron spelling produced house of yes; i had forgotten this due to being enamored w parker

Happy birthday, Bob!

The only filmmaker I can think of whose death made me actually tear up, although others made me proudly sad (Nagisa Oshima, Seijun Suzuki, Bigas Luna, Suzan Pitt, etc.)

One anecdote about Altman, I was unaware of how much the man loved marijuana. Generally not surprising, but apparently the guy loved to smoke really, REALLY strong weed and more than a few collaborators have recalled others warning them not to smoke anything he offered them because if you do, you wouldn't be able to work or think straight for the rest of the day.

A short that he made in the mid-60’s, POT-AU-FOU, is about his love of reefer

Re: California Split & streaming & the cancelled Indicator Blu...This was just posted over at the Criterion Forum by a user who works with many UK labels, including Indicator:

I'm often told that "surely [insert title] must be available because there's clearly an HD master out there" - but that master may have been created primarily for TV/streaming, which means that certain rights won't necessarily have been cleared. A good example being California Split, which exists in two versions: the full version as signed off by Robert Altman, whose theatrical and broadcast rights were cleared at the time but whose home video rights weren't (since this wasn't an issue in 1974), and a shorter version created by Sony in the mid-2000s for DVD release that removed a couple of tracks after they turned out to be too expensive to license the home video rights for retrospectively.

It appears that broadcasting rights automatically encompass streaming rights, hence the uncut version of California Split being made available for streaming - but, as Indicator found out the hard way, releasing the full version on home video requires shelling out what turned out to be an unrealistically huge sum (and unrealistically huge for Sony, never mind a small British boutique label). And while they could have released the shorter version, they reckoned - no doubt wholly accurately - that people would loudly protest not only because it was a cut version but also because the uncut version is easy enough to see on other platforms, so surely the label must be full of utter blithering incompetents who don't know what they're doing (and so on for several more ranty paragraphs).

And there's no easy way round this, which is why so many wishlists are full of titles that, realistically, are very unlikely ever to be made available on home video.

This goes before the first paragraph:

Part of the problem is that people think that sub-licensing is simply a case of the rightsholder handing over a master and wishing the project well - but in fact in order to get that master into a commercially releasable state there may be a ton of legal work involved, especially if the film dates from before the home video era when third-party rights may not have been fully cleared.