It's a sad and beautiful world: the Jim Jarmusch poll.

*takes a caring course*

i'm gonna see the golden compass tonight

i know nothing about it!

something about bears, nicole kidman looking bitchy, and daniel craig ftw in the end probably

nicole kidman in looking bitchy shock

she cant even help it anymore

ALL OTM

Mystery Train - for Screamin' Jay, the Carl Perkins dialogue, Natchez = Matches, that fucking awesome pan shot of the Italian women in the airport with the airplane taking off behind her, and of course, "lost in space".

http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/9940/18830783gl1.jpg

Steve Buscemi is the only actor in that truck cab who's still alive.

Or, as gabbnebb might say: they are all alive except the one on the right and the one on the left.

alex's ranking is otm on all counts.

although ok maybe i'd bump stranger than paradise up to 2nd place. i love that movie unconditionally.

love him for his movies, and also for carving out the career he's had. i'm not really sure how he's done it, since i don't think he's ever made much money for himself or anyone else. although maybe not caring a whole lot about that is a necessary ingredient. (also probably doesn't hurt to be the coolest guy in the room, which he probably often is.)

1) dead man
2) stranger than fiction
2) down by law
2) mystery train
5) the rest
6) except for the ones i haven't seen (permanent vacation, year of the horse)

dead man is like one of my top movies of ... uh ... ever?

Dead Man is amazing from beginning to end, and back round again.

I do have a weak spot for Ghost Dog, I admit

i haven't seen year of the horse, but the neil young score (if you can call it that) to dead man is one of my favorite soundtracks.

i'm with remy, noodle and tipsy. one of my all-time favourites.

Strangerthan Paradise by a ocuntry mile.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

xxxpost: I love Dead Man except for the soundtrack (and I am a Neil Young fan). It's really lazy and boring. I mean, compare it to Ry Cooder's Paris, Texas.

really? that's interesting, because i was never a neil young fan till i saw dead man. but ry cooder's st for paris, texas is fucking awesome.

Everything about Dead Man sets it apart. The entertaining ugly violence, the score, his best-looking black & white film and his best cast: Depp, Robert Mitchum, Gabriel Byrne, John Hurt, Iggy Pop, Crispin Glover, Alfred Molina, Billy Bob Thornton, and Bishop.

dead man is like one of my top movies of ... uh ... ever?

-- remy bean, Wednesday, December 12, 2007 11:56 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Link

that soundtrack

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

i don't get 'dead man'. it's going great guns until he meets the indian guy then it's zzzzzzzzzzz all the way, though the end is nice.

wow me and alex in sf have the same jarmusch preferences

i don't get 'dead man'. it's going great guns until he meets the indian guy then it's zzzzzzzzzzz all the way, though the end is nice.

if you would like more entertainment from your tragedies, i would refer you instead to the film 'ghost dog', which has gunshots

i guess dead man has those too. but it's in black and white. also, ghost dog has, like, dope beats and stuff.

yeah 'ghost dog' is the freshness.

but with 'dead man', you get the feeling the mystical shit is for real.

yes, all those people did die

http://www.ica.org.uk/Jarmusch%20in%20Context+22863.twl

this looks rad, londoners. chance to see the cameraman, they live by night, l'atalante and branded to kill.

Wonder if I voted in this. Would've been Ghost Dog, probably.

if night on earth had a few votes in favour of how much fun it is, the results would be pretty much otm.

I didn't get dead man either. what was the point?

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/acid-western/Content?oid=890861

still don't get it

good read! i like Dead Man, but i haven't seen it years. review will probably prompt a re-watch in the near future.

xpost

Add me to the list of those who didn't get Dead Man when it first came out--I remember drifting and fidgeting through the whole thing--but liked it a lot better tonight. (Saw it right after Imitation of Life...I won't pretend it was a double-bill--two separate theatres.) I wish Iggy Pop's bit of silliness weren't there--he's a needless distraction--and the series of fade-outs right at the start seemed excessive. But the violence and the overall mood registered this time, and there were a number of really beautiful shots. Liked the music fine. I'll have to mull over all the William Blake and millennial undercurrents, but they're evocative.

http://www.salon.com/1999/12/02/deadman/

I love Dead Man but haven't seen it for years. My first viewing was with a friend who didn't really know anything about Jarmusch, and when we came out he said, "That was like a European movie about America." Which I think makes sense in ways he didn't even mean.

And I didn't know Marcus was a fan of My Twentieth Century. There's a movie that deserves its own thread, if there was any way to actually see the thing any more.

I remember being surprised when it showed up fairly high on decade-end polls, somewhere in the 10-20 range on a couple that I remember--it didn't seem to get a lot of attention on release. I can understand that better now; it does capture something. (Never heard of My Twentieth Century.)

Stranger Than Paradise held up well for me. I saw it four or five times in the '80s, but not since then. I was very susceptible to its mood and its look at the time--it seemed like such an emphatic no to where American film was then headed. I was more mindful tonight of certain affectations--the blacking out especially--but I still think it has a kind of small-scale perfection, and probably lots of Reagan-era resonances (intended or not) too. A lot of lines came back to me immediately--when Aunt Lottie walked away in disgust as the three of them headed out for Florida, I said (in my best Hungarian accent) "Son of a bitch" a second before she did. Richard Edson's priceless, and I still have a crush on Eszter Balint. (There was a record store in Toronto in the '80s that had an Eszter lookalike working for them.) I didn't know then who Rammellzee was, so that was nice. Not sure if I'll get around to watching Permanent Vacation, which is included on a second disc.

Permanent Vacation is at least worth watching once. It's interesting to see what Brooklyn looked like a million years ago.

yeah you're off by nine hundred ninety nine thousand nine hundred and sixty seven years.

gabbneb was so unpleasant, glad he hasn't turned back up *knocks on wood*

otm.

i love 'stranger than paradise' a lot, and like-to-love everything else i've seen of his.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_limp7oRAHp1qis5gbo1_500.jpg

Screamin' Jay is still my main man.

Or, as gabbnebb might say: they are all alive except the one on the right and the one on the left.

― roxymuzak, Thursday, December 13, 2007 1:27 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol six years later..

I thought the new one was extremely middling and kind of shallow, but a) I recently developed an aversion to scenes where two people converse while driving so I started off rooting against the film, and b) I acquiesced to my friend's desire to see this, which means I ended up missing out on seeing The Secret Agent while it was in theatres and I'm still mad about that.

Meanwhile I've grown to love movies with two people talking and driving. At any rate the second section's the best.

I did immediately think of several counter examples after posting that :)

However, I found that opening leaden and clunky regardless of the setting, which probably then increased my disinterest in the subsequent driving & talking scenes. I do agree about the second section though -- that would have made a nice stand-alone short