Last (x) movies you saw

Watched The Lady Eve (1941), after reading this comment by Robin Wood -
Sturges’s masterpiece, from the long buildup to the most hilarious and brutal payoff in the history of Hollywood comedy - tho' even after screening/enjoying i'm not quite what Wood means by 'brutal payoff'... I was plesantly surprised by how 'modern' the film's take on infidelity and desire is - the script is littered with filthy entendres, and at one point Barbara Stanwyck (falsely) confesses to multiple adulteries while on board a roaring steam train, while Henry Fonda's constant pratfalling and 'innocent' ogling of female body parts acts as kind of displaced priapism. All of the supporting players are wonderful, tho' for sheer out-and-out FUN I still prefer the Palm Beach Story.

Aw, the Lady Eve is one of my all time favorite movies.

I prefer The Palm Beach Story too although The Lady Eve seems to be held in higher esteem generally. I think the fun goes out of the latter a bit once they leave the boat

I want another movie like KEY LARGO or CAPE FEAR (original).

KEY LARGO is one of my all time comfort movies.

It seems like ilx has a low opinion of Miranda July that I've never understood. I loved the Future and enjoyed You and Me. What's the deal?

You don't understand how ILX could be allergic to someone whose work codes (fairly or not) as precious/twee?

Does Miranda July live in Los Angeles? I feel like I saw her at brunch a few weeks ago.

I guess she could theoretically be visiting

WORK CODES

the people living in tent cities near Long Beach sticks in my mind

Yeah, that was a piercing segment. No prior exposure to Sekula.

I took a class with him, he is INtense. It was a globalization class that somehow went from the bailouts to screenings of Rohmer's "Perceval le Gallois" and the like.

Does Miranda July live in Los Angeles? I feel like I saw her at brunch a few weeks ago.

I guess she could theoretically be visiting

― dollar eye twinkling (admrl), Tuesday, 28 February 2012 14:56 (2 hours ago) Permalink

sf, iirc. & i loved the future, focusing on the 'twee' is so missing the ponit; so many really singular, cinematic sequences & otherwise so thoughtful.

I have a DVD of Robert Beavers films on the desk in front of me which I might watch when I finish working

― dollar eye twinkling (admrl), Tuesday, 28 February 2012 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Coming to the BFI. How did you enjoy the DVDs?

My latest lot is unified in its use of music in surprising ways.

Badou Boy - Mambety's featurette from '69. 'About' a boy on the run from a cop. Just uses music and soundtrack in such innovative ways. Sometimes Mambety is content to dub voices, disrupt any action w/music, and its v fkn funny. Need to see Touki Bouki sometime.

Red Psalm - Cracking stuff from Jancso, from '71. Basically a set of long takes of 'peasants' and 'soldiers' and the odd landowner and priest in a field with lots of folk music played and some nudism (its to distract the soldiers, natch, and it signifies FREEDOM). Mesmerizing in almost any mood.

The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach - Finally caught my first screening of a Straub-Huillet. Repeat after me: MATERIAL MATERIAL MATERIAL. The music in the raw. The camera is all emcompassing, absolutely nothing outside the chamber. The myth of the artist is given short shrift: Bach is a man who made great art, but still a man - he is petty, craves favour, only wants to see his art made and children to be raised w/out a fuss (if they make it out of childhood alive, that is, which they sometimes do not). All told by his devoted wife in a fast fwd monologue.

Love the way this ws shot - v questioning of the way music is conveyed via the camera - reminds me of Berger's Ways of Seeing.

The Beavers films were excellent! Go and see them, I'd love to see good prints.

I want to see "Red Psalm" too - Jancso is great.

― xyzzzz__, you got a lot more out of The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach than I did - can you elaborate a little on v questioning of the way music is conveyed via the camera ? i'm not disagreeing, just that my (rather sleepy) memory of the film is its very very raw quality, an austere record of performance happening in 'real time' w/ minimal edits or close-ups, complicated of course by the actual historical narrative framing/running alongside the musical narrative, which - because of this stylistic 'rigour' - feels like we have to accept as TRUTH abt bach (this truth being the de-mystification of heroic grandeur in favour of the collective sublime - all those choirs singing in unison.) i guess this is minimal cinema, of a sort, though in some ways the music is very very maximalist (or, you say MATERIAL, i say PROCESS :-))

and yeah, the Jancso DVDs issued (in Europe) by Second Run have been a in every sense an eye-opener

Oh look, Jon Jost w/ Angel City, I hope to see that too!

It's an amazing mess, but fun and fascinating. That brief, pre-Sundance '89 'new narrative' moment is really interesting -- the early Jost things, Mark Rappaport, the handful of Benning narrative films, and the first couple Yvonne Rainers. That stuff was a big deal at the time, but it seems like people would rather forget about it now.

Ward - I guess its in the way Straub frames somewhat matches an experience of actual sitting down and watching music in concert/venue: from one specific (most of the time awkward) angle, sometimes a close up or away from you (lean forwards or backwards, and this is done at points where music reaches a point of high emotion, say). It lets you study and contemplate the performance - how you'll see a few of the orchestra/chamber and sometimes others are simply obscured from your POV. This matches their almost obsessive aim to recreate performances by employing instruments that would have been used in the period, musicians that I guess would be willing to recreate an idea of Bach.

Contrast that with how things are done these days when you watch it on TV - for an orchestra its whoever has the meaty part at that moment is the one who has a close-up. Not to criticise, two different aims, but the film got to something v recognisible about watching concerts.

As a portrait of an artist it just seemed spot on as to what I think they are like - I loved the bit where Bach talks about his theory of music - how it must have god-like harmony not devilish droning and yet the music is so continuous and unrelenting that you'd feel Bach would hate this.

Maximalist => heard someone say this represented an arid and mathematical side of Bach. Can't say I know enough, but this film isn't scared to punctuate with pictures of waves crashing against rocks or this gorgeous duet playing against pictures of passing clouds. xp

See (if you can) S&H's Not-Reconciled — pretty much the definitive "difficult art film". The film is almost all ellipses — either to give a sense of time being "out of joint" or to let the viewer fill in the blanks in the action, like a negative space drawing. After seeing it once I'm not sure if I understand it completely, but it is hypnotic.

Pinocchio - hated this as a kid and now I know why. Truly horrifying and barely redeemed by its happy ending. I'm not kidding when I say that I was literally shaken up by watching this film. Wholly earns its reputation through the power of its images, of course; there is a great momentum to the storytelling that feels like a significant leap forward from the occasionally inert Snow White (I'm slowly going through the classic Disney canon, none of which I've seen as an adult beyond these two). But yeah, the common charge against Disney that the sanitize fairy tales has no ground to stand on with this one.

The English Patient - avoided this one for years due to its reputation as an undeserving best pic winner and for a long standing dislike for Michael Ondaatje (to be fair, never read this particular novel by him). Will say that there's a decent 90 minute pulpy 1940s studio b-movie in here somewhere, but the movie is far too stuffy and high minded to give into such pop pleasures. Dialogue is some of the most embarrassingly bad I've heard in recent memory, which I'm perhaps all too willing to attribute to the source material. Willem Dafoe's character by far the most interesting person in the film.

Moneyball - a baseball movie where the bulk of the action takes place in board rooms and on conference calls. Credit the filmmakers and writers (didn't need to be told that Sorkin worked on this) for making unfilmable material watchable and even interesting, but the film eventually feels rather thin and wholly lacking in drama. Pitt was fantastic though, and not having seen any of the other nominees yet I cannot say I would have objected at all to him getting n Oscar for this.

The Lineup - an early Don Siegal noir with Eli Wallach as the lead villain. Was apparently a spinoff from some 50s cop show that I couldn't tell you nothing about (the cops in the film are the least interesting thing about it). Not a helluva lot of weight, but fast moving and suspenseful with Wallach as a truly nasty bad guy; a scene where he destroys a little girl's doll while looking for drugs is hilarious and mean. Hardly a masterpiece, but I could watch this kinda thing all day.

Thanks tanuki -- I'll try and seek that out.

re: Red Psalm: there is this lenghty but more than worthwhile essay by Raymond Durgnat

Never on Sunday

Zooey Dechanel seems more precious/twee to me but she doesn't create films.

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (Fritz Lang) - biggest lol in ages when Austin gets killed. That's about all I have. Oh, and I was thinking someone should program this in a dbl bill w/Oshima's Death by Hanging

Arrebato - this ws made by one time Almodovar collaborator Ivan Zuluetta. About a teen film-maker - and his relationship w/a director (he seems to be in the middle of a horror movie and at the end of a destructive relationship w/Cecilia Roth) he gets to know through his cousin. Really all about how things - movies, drugs, relatioships - can consume you.

He never made another film, which is a shame but understandable.

Tony Manero - I guess almost any Chilean film that gets in the West will be about the '73 coup in some way, huh? But this is artfully done - a film about a Saturday Night Fever obsessive getting by (w/murder and living in a 'subsersive' commune-like arrangement) in post-Allende Chile. The central performance is great, has a 70s Pacino like intensity.

Almost every film I see now has me thinking about double bills, even though they hardly ever exist nowdays.

i watched nobody's business by alan berliner last night. i can't remember where i heard about it. so good! what else is good by him? i'm searching ilx for previous mentions of the guy.

xyzzzz:I do the same thing! They do a classic movie thing at the Paramount in Austin over he summer and double bill, but yeah, that's it.
Double Billing Thread, teehee...so my mind can suddenly go blank.

tera - actually you reminded me that Riverside cinema in London often do dbl bills, its just that a lot of them are sorta dull and obvious.

Fox and His Friends - one of Fassbinber's best at times (the trip to Morocco). I can think of half a dozen I like more though. Impressive how every type of prejudice seems to have been inserted throughout the script. Which is part of the problem, its so damn obvious.

Secret Beyond the Door - another Fritz Lang. Psychoanalysis so cuckoo.

Shadows of a Hot Summer - Frantisek Vlacil film from '78.

Three Resurrected Drunkards (Nagisa Ōshima, 1968) 4/5
Make Way for Tomorrow (Leo McCarey, 1937) 4/5
Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989) 4.5/5
Onibaba (Kaneto Shindo, 1964) 4/5
Far From Heaven (Todd Haynes, 2002) 4/5
Lola Montès (Max Ophüls, 1955) 5/5
The Thief of Bagdad (Michael Powell et al, 1940) 4/5
Sukiyaki Western Django (Takashi Miike, 2007) 2/5
Dogville (Lars von Trier, 2003) 5/5
Shadows (John Cassavetes, 1959) 3/5

Knuckle (Ian Palmer, 2011) 3/5
Whale Rider (Niki Caro, 2002) 4/5
More Than Just A Game (Junnaid Ahmed, 2007) 3/5
The rocky Road To Dublin (Peter Lennon, 1968) 5/5
Page One: Inside The New York Times (Andrew Rossi, 2011) 3/5
Scum (Alan Clarke, 1979) 4/5
Elephant (Alan Clarke, 1988) 4/5
Road (Alan Clarke, 1987) 3.5/5
Mean Streets (Martin Scorsese, 1973) 4/5
Frida (Julie Taymor, 2002) 3/5
101 Reyjkavik (Baltasar Kormakur, 2000) 3.5/5

obsessed with alan clarke movies of late. im going to write my FYP on him.

Kelly's Heroes at the weekend. Think I've seen it several times but only rarely from the beginning, this might be 2nd or 3rd time.
Like the film. Just looked it up and it was written by the same guy as the Italian Job. Had assumed it would be somebody to do with MASH or something similar. But same writer also went onto do Red Heat maybe that says more about it?

ive had that on my dvr to watch for like 6 months. how was rickles in it?

Not bad. He's in it for most of the film I guess, not quite central but in the main group. Don't remember him being overly funny. He's the wheeler dealer quatermaster guy that Kelly enrols.

The Bad And The Beautiful 5/5 - Kirk Douglas was so great in this. Him and Turner together were great. Loved the structure of the story too. That final scene when they're all crowding to hear him talk on the phone was so perfect.

A Star Is Born 5/5 - cannot believe I never saw this movie til now. Beautiful and so sad.

The Right Stuff 3/5 - the flight sequences were beautiful and thrilling, and Sam Shepard was a perfect Yeager, so steely and handsome and just right on the money...but I didn't like the way the Mercury astronauts/NASA were played for comedy, the Goldblum/Shearer bits were actually kind of annoying to me. And I *hated*, HATED the handling of Grissom's splashdown. I want to give the movie 5 just for handling the adrenalin of flying/space travel, but I just can't. But I wish I had seen it as a kid, I know I would have loved it.

I need to see A Star Is Born.

stevolende, if you're on a troy kennedy martin kick, check out the original bbc edge of darkness tv series, its p amazing (prob best to avoid the american remake w/ mel gibson)

xpost tanuki, you should! It's so captivating.

I may actually have that on file somewhere from a couple of years back. Seem to remember downloading it. May have even burnt it to disc but somehow not watched it. TV series that is.

A Star Is Born 5/5 - cannot believe I never saw this movie til now. Beautiful and so sad.

'37 or '54? James Mason is great and Judy brings the songs, but Gaynor-March is a better film (and also has many of the remake's good lines).

54. James Mason was fantastic.

Can I ask a dumb question? Why did they make the same movie with Judy twice?

oh wait never mind, lol I thought Judy was in both. DUH

Deep End on Film4 last night - good damn that was beautiful. And how many films will have Cat Stevens AND Can on the soundtrack.

El Anachoreta - Spanish man locks himself in the toilet for 11 years (its a huge toilet, so its cheating as far as I'm concerned). Yeah you know why he's there so its not like the film needs to spend time pretending there is something special about it. The girl who tries to tempt him out is v beautiful tho', so that kept me watching.

Kanal - Wadja smash hit, from '57, detailing the Polish resistance's flight to Warsaw's sewers. Really brutal and to the gut.

The Fall of the House of Usher - Jean Epstein's adaptation, just saw this at the NFT with piano/accordion accompainment. Awesome, such a strong visual language (read about some of his theories beforehand and glad I did). French cinema from the 20s through to the end of the war is my 'biggest gap' and I need to correct this.

Decasia by Bill Morrison followed. Bunch of found silent films that have decayed, now strung together. There is no structure to discern and the score totally gave it away: there is an eletric guitar, but its like it wasn't plugged in. Certainly not worth an hour.

she did a radio play version of the first movie around 1940, when she was "the right age"

xp

Decasia is nearly great.

seven samurai - great great great, rewatching it makes 13 assassins seem that much more disappointing in retrospect
the rum diary - a river of shit
pom poko - non-myazaki studio ghibli flick about balls animals, odd & kind of sad
knife in the water - maybe my favorite polanski, certainly one of his best

also:

the wicker man (2006) - huh

Bottle Rocket 3/5: You can tell it's his first film and it'll get better, but all the things I love about WE (composition, pace, character) are half-formed imo.
To Kill A Mockingbird 4/5: Gregory Peck gives a authoritative performance and I think the two main kids are sweet and fun, but it's got serious POV issues, I think. And I don't get the central theme - is it that justice is universal to all, or that bad people can go without justice? I don't get it. I suppose "sometimes we gotta do bad things for the best" is a very cold war opinion.

haha I like julio's takedown of Decasia

dont avntgrd film bros generally poop on decasia