Mark Cousins' The History of film: An Odyssey

"das is mein mann"

fassbinder, you should have him the centre, he really really is

"sneered at its lies" <-- you are such a dildo

"performance" <-- it is quite a giveaway you dimwit dick

god i love fassbinder

all the right films, all the wrong justification

anthony easton art thou living yet

can't decide whether m. cousins or c. nolan's dreams are duller

of course cousins thinks herzog is germany's wild man. not fassbinder

"a dangerous idea that people tried to make safer" -- THOSE STUPID "PEOPLE" eh, thank god we are not that stupid

haha, no cousins is diligent -- he is a careful student of bredth, this is no bad thing (except in his own hippy head)

this is a fabulous range and spread of films and ideas, cousins's panic comes with the narrative summary, he always reaches for the dreary USP, his instincts are good and then he markets them out of sight and mind

trust his eye and his instinct, not his words -- he is a crap writer

"influential" <-- not a word a a "radical" has intelligiible access to

KEN RUSSELL

haha

chas is a mod

"the most imginative shooting in the story of film" = oh wow it is powys square

i am drunk but cousins is dim

"clean middle class kitchen"

real working class kitchens are dirty and amazing

i love roeg (+early funny roeg) but cousins is so his target not his approved explicator

cousins is the screamy fat girl

this is ep totallty reminds me of my first three years in london, when my sister was at film school

"a bloke's film" -- oh sampaws

radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical radical

MINIMATA, why not actually say the NAME, cousins you slippery coward

i am drunk and cross and suspicious

the shot he called the most imaginative in the history of film (mick jagger shot through the brain) now a throwaway bit of CSI...

haha ok cousins not in fact a coward for not saying the word minimata, just a sloppy critic

i am hungover and contrite and forgiving

the shot he called the most imaginative in the history of film (mick jagger shot through the brain) now a throwaway bit of CSI...

― koogs, Sunday, 6 November 2011 Bookmark

A lot of it has been adapted by TV (and vice-versa). There was another clip on this that reminded me of another TV program as well. I guess in years to come that will be seen as a big gap.

Where did you get your film listings from, btw? Need to look up a few of these.

This was an excellent ep, the usual failings blah blah are there. I see he is covering the blockbuster and the minefield that is bollywood on the next one.

Yes, I'm quite sad I saw it backwards (tho needs must when x-factor drives obv): I wanted more on everyone he featured, and his "cool team (RADICAL) vs lame team (BAUBLE)" does him no favours as an explanatory set-up, but the first is a function of his ambitious exhaustiveness, which is the opposite of a failing, and the second you can override by just not listening to the content of his voice, just its lyrical rise and fall haha. I find his "europeans discover sex! africans discover themselves!" a wee bit troubling as a connective concept (he's used it more than once now), but I actually do think there's a potentially fruitful argument to be made there, if only as a critique of the unexamined shapes and habits 60s utopianism fell into -- cf the way lindsay anderson used the missa luba in if...., of course <--- LA being very sceptical indeed about 60s utopianism! cf my book on same ---:D

personally i wanted more critical -- as opposed to uncritically celebratory -- exploration of third cinema, but tbf this is a hard act to pull off: introducing something hardly anyone watching knows much about, then including all the things that are wrong with it alongside what's great... you really don't want the newbie's takeaway to be "don't think i'll bother"

You can't trust anything he says, is what's frustrating. Even w/Europeans his differentiation between Italian and German cinema seemed wrong. But he is trying to cover so much, must have been a nightmare to write any of it.

Fine w/him being uncritially celebratory. I strongly suspect that you couldn't get him to be anything else.

> Where did you get your film listings from, btw?

transcribed from the tv, finger on pause button (and made infinitely harder because the progress bar that pops up is usually slap bang over the text i want to copy). i am several episodes behind (so much so that i've lost count of episode numbers, was #10 according to website) but here's last night's

The Story Of Film Episode 10

Fox And His Friends (1975)
All That Heaven Allows (1955)
Fear Eats The Soul (1974)
The Bitter Tears Of Petra Von Kant (1972)
All About Eve (1950)
Alice in the Cities (1975)
An Affair To Remember (1957)
Gods Of The Plague (1970)
The Second Awakening Of Christa Klages (1978)

Burden Of Dreams (Fitzcaraldo) (1982)
Arabian Nights (1974)
The Spider's Stratagem (1970)
The Conformist (1970)
Taxi Driver (1976)
A Woman In Love (1969)
Performance (1970)
Mean Streets (1973)
Persona (1966)

Walkabout (1971)
Picnic At Hanging Rock (1975)
My Brilliant Career (1979)
Minimata, The Victims and their World (1971)
The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On (1987)
The Black Girl (1969)
Tarzan's Secret Treasure (1941)
La Nouba (1979)
Xala (1975)
Sinemaabi a Dialogue With Djibril Diop Mambety (1997)
Badou Boy (1970)
Hyenes (1992)
Kaddu Beykat (1974)
Harvest 3000 Years (1976)

Hope (1970)
Yol (1982)
The Battle Of Chile (1978)
The Holy Mountain (1973)

koogs didn't realise -- thought you got it from some website. Thank you :-)

"his differentiation between Italian and German cinema seemed wrong" -- no doubt correct, but he has kindled my interest in italian cinema, which (for some peculiar prejudiced reason) wasn;'t there before (prejudiced because i hadn't exactly seen much to "know" i wouldn't be interested)... so score for the man talking rubbish, really!

(i am increasingly wondering what he would feel if he read this thread, because -- despite there obviously being quite a lot of dismissive or scornful cineasmic hostility -- the fact of its existence is a compliment, and even an achievement, sorta kinda) (at least it is if he wants discussion to be more like "cinema! it's amazing, there's so much i don't know about!" rather than "mark cousins! he's amazing, everything he says is wise and knowledgeable and genuinely challenging!")

MC shows off his Eisenstein tattoo

http://vimeo.com/28058048

Latest ep -- can't help to be impressed that he is giving action films this serious a look as he gives 'art' cinema, but I think his take on them as a set of innovative action sequences is something to be reserved about. There is a narrative on a lot of those about the interaction w/the imperialist west. Its background to the action but it does accumulate when you see it across a number of those films.

(talking about Hong Kong cinema)

(x-factor again for me -- delayed by technical problems) (and i'm not waiting up either, till all hours, too much to do here in shropshire tomorrow) :(

tought times in shrops, huh?

haha no i'm having a very productive time but i have to crack on

Interview w/the screenwriter from Sholay (he's an Urdu poet) is kinda fascinating. xp = j/k

From Bachan "Indian cinema gives poetic justice in three hours". Well you get that in 90 mins in a Bronson flick you know.

Michael Haneke might want to have a word with you sometime.

Although he does carry on w/"you might not get that in a lifetime", which changes the tone but i was selfishly thinking about my crappy joke.

Chahine is hilarious, angriest talking head so far!

Amazing prediction of the Arab revolt here. Not sure how he's going to go on from this to Star Wars.

Well he'll just drop it and walk away and let us all chew on it -- that's fine.

Now I don't care for Star Wars but I don't buy this 'people wanted to switch off from activism, politics, new types of art' when those art films weren't selling the amount of tickets. Nowehere near, so people had nothing to switch off from! And Lucas might have been thinking of Kurosawa, but also surely of earlier blockbuster/epic types of cinema. There is a story of that kind of filmaking that employs huge amounts of labour and infrastructure. Good that he included it, but with a lot of that stuff you can still read a theme, an anxiety (oh i dunno be creative) that gets through the cracks when its trying to comfort or thrill (or is it?). Was he listening to that screewriter he ws talking to earlier or what? This stuff runs in parallel.

Really good for the talking heads but it ws mostly a bit like The bit on The Exorcist. I don't know enough about horror cinema, not sure Mark does either.

In other news this has had a v positive effect. Never thought I wd ever really get into silent films but -- partly as its also now available on youtube -- I have started watching them: Man With a Movie Camera is so witty, not just as a techie demonstration as to what film can do, even if it is quite exciting as demonstratins go. Also I hadn't quite realised that there is always some musical accompaniment to these (doh!).

Gonna watch Passion of Joan of Arc later.

And Haxan is screening on the 11th Dec, might go along...

the silent film thread

pash in particular has done sterling work on this for years

there's a huge number of silents available on DVD and elsewhere that are essential viewing if you care about "cinema" imo

Also there's this, run by ppl only a couple of degrees of separation from ilx

http://silentlondon.co.uk/

Great, thanks - such a cool blog, haven't actually read one in a while...

Will revive that thread later

I never see this thread title without thinking it is
Mark S's Cousin's The History of film: An Odyssey

Random comments after skimming:
Really wanted to like Häxan but it didn't do it for me.
Was present at the NYFF once when Youssef Chahine harangued the audience- well, our national viewing public, really- for our ignorance.

actually my cousin once-removed AND my second cousin both make films and documentaries, and i'd REALLY like to see their respective history of films -- i should talk to them about it

I just youtubed Mizoguchi's Osaka Elegy from '36. The austere style is harder on me than someone like Ozu but the anger seeps through in this story of a woman who tried to do the right thing and got caught.