such a great movie.
― scott seward, Wednesday, 26 August 2009 02:09 (fifteen years ago) link
oh, scott...let's go dancing.
― post-contrarian meta-challop 2009 (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 26 August 2009 02:10 (fifteen years ago) link
i only dance to latin freestyle and hi-nrg. just so you know. but you are in florida, no? that shouldn't be a problem there!
― scott seward, Wednesday, 26 August 2009 02:23 (fifteen years ago) link
Yeah, pretty sure I'll never see a Walt Stillman film.
― irreconcilable aesthetic criteria (Eric H.), Wednesday, 26 August 2009 02:45 (fifteen years ago) link
yeah
― Miss Fitzhenry (s1ocki), Wednesday, 26 August 2009 02:45 (fifteen years ago) link
by far my favorite of his films. Partly bcz there isn't much disco in it.
― Indiana Morbs and the Curse of the Ivy League Chorister (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 26 August 2009 02:54 (fifteen years ago) link
as opposed to his other disco-packed dancefloor romps?
― Miss Fitzhenry (s1ocki), Wednesday, 26 August 2009 02:55 (fifteen years ago) link
Screening at Lincoln Center on Thursday, with Stillman there.
― Poxy Fule Of Kryptonite (The Yellow Kid), Wednesday, 26 August 2009 02:55 (fifteen years ago) link
There's plenty of disco in TLDOD -- he just doesn't have an ear for it or a sense of what to do with the damn tunes.
― post-contrarian meta-challop 2009 (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 26 August 2009 02:59 (fifteen years ago) link
yeah, it's not really about disco. hate to break it to you!
― scott seward, Wednesday, 26 August 2009 03:02 (fifteen years ago) link
― irreconcilable aesthetic criteria (Eric H.), Tuesday, August 25, 2009 9:45 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
― Miss Fitzhenry (s1ocki), Tuesday, August 25, 2009 9:45 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
Yeah, pretty sure I'll never see another film again in my entire life.
― irreconcilable aesthetic criteria (Eric H.), Wednesday, 26 August 2009 03:03 (fifteen years ago) link
i wish there was a last days of disco t.v. show i could watch every week. forever. until i die. gilmore girls was as close as i ever came. (omg i can't wait to get first season of thirtysomething on dvd!!!! i told maria to get it for my birthday. so, i have to wait until october. oh sweet agony of waiting...)
― scott seward, Wednesday, 26 August 2009 03:07 (fifteen years ago) link
just impulse-bought the criterion edition last night. i only have a vhs copy currently...
― horseshoe, Wednesday, 26 August 2009 03:14 (fifteen years ago) link
Huh. Well, Last Days of Disco was the first one I saw (unless you count half of Metropolitan on PBS, which I kind of don't), and I was definitely into it, but it's possible it was just that Halcyon Summer of Indie Films (1998) that found me running to the cinema to see Buffalo 66 and The Opposite of Sex and Love! Valour! Compassion! and Whatever and Pecker and Slums of Beverly Hills and Henry Fool and Your Friends and Neighbors and High Art and The Spanish Prisoner. So, you know...
― jaymc, Wednesday, 26 August 2009 03:57 (fifteen years ago) link
well, he's back and the US and not really doing muchhttp://www.villagevoice.com/2009-08-25/film/whit-stillman-speaks-eleven-years-after-his-last-film/
― velko, Wednesday, 26 August 2009 04:04 (fifteen years ago) link
yeah there's really no disco vibe at all in Last Days, but i like the film. now Barcelona, that one was boring and dissapointing (Metropolitan easily being his best)
― Ludo, Wednesday, 26 August 2009 07:10 (fifteen years ago) link
Really? I like Barcelona much more than Last Days.
― or have I become completely absurd? (kenan), Wednesday, 26 August 2009 07:29 (fifteen years ago) link
barcelona is my favorite, though i could probably stand to watch all three again
― congratulations (n/a), Wednesday, 26 August 2009 12:30 (fifteen years ago) link
metropolitan was the only one i liked, but i've not seen any of them since Last Days came out
― feed them to the (Linden Ave) lions (will), Wednesday, 26 August 2009 12:49 (fifteen years ago) link
Barcelona had this strange violent twist and unlike the other 2 (but I guess mainly Metropolitan) it's trying a little too hard. it reminded me of L'Auberge Espagnole.
― Ludo, Wednesday, 26 August 2009 13:25 (fifteen years ago) link
Well now. Look at who's fancy. :)
― or have I become completely absurd? (kenan), Wednesday, 26 August 2009 13:50 (fifteen years ago) link
i like the first 1/2 of metropolitan
a bit of barcelona
and this was a letdown.
he tends have really nice ideas for... i don't know... let's say, "settings" for films. and a good sense of how to communicate those times and places' vibe, and what actors to populate them with. but i don't think he's really capable of that much more.
― Miss Fitzhenry (s1ocki), Wednesday, 26 August 2009 14:01 (fifteen years ago) link
i'm not being entirely fair there, he does have a pretty good way with dialogue and simple conversation scenes... which is nothing to sneeze at.
― Miss Fitzhenry (s1ocki), Wednesday, 26 August 2009 14:04 (fifteen years ago) link
A friend went to his NYC appearance at screening/Criterion party, said someone in autograph line had a copy of Whit's novelization of Last Days of Disco.
― Indiana Morbs and the Curse of the Ivy League Chorister (Dr Morbius), Friday, 28 August 2009 15:55 (fifteen years ago) link
i would kind of... expect that? at a signing?
― Miss Fitzhenry (s1ocki), Friday, 28 August 2009 15:57 (fifteen years ago) link
i didn't know there was a novelization!
― Indiana Morbs and the Curse of the Ivy League Chorister (Dr Morbius), Friday, 28 August 2009 15:58 (fifteen years ago) link
"I find that a good novelization is more effective. That way you get to enjoy the writer's prose without watching the film."
http://ellenandjim.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/90metaudreytomeveryonedislikesfanny.jpg
― post-contrarian meta-challop 2009 (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 28 August 2009 15:59 (fifteen years ago) link
ha.
― Miss Fitzhenry (s1ocki), Friday, 28 August 2009 16:00 (fifteen years ago) link
only seen Metropolitan but it made me want to murder everyone involved. do not want
― go Nick go! Scrub that paint! Scrub it!! Yeah!! (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 28 August 2009 16:00 (fifteen years ago) link
are you sure you weren't just in a murdery mood?
― Miss Fitzhenry (s1ocki), Friday, 28 August 2009 16:01 (fifteen years ago) link
there's an interview in gothamist where he says that he hangs out in dunkin donuts, writing. i didnt expect that.
― just sayin, Friday, 28 August 2009 16:02 (fifteen years ago) link
Oh so YOU'RE one of those public transportation snobs!
― post-contrarian meta-challop 2009 (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 28 August 2009 16:02 (fifteen years ago) link
Shakey, you don't have to like the characters in films, just like ILX
― Indiana Morbs and the Curse of the Ivy League Chorister (Dr Morbius), Friday, 28 August 2009 16:04 (fifteen years ago) link
Shakey was a great enemy of that response when I said similar stuff about Sopranos and Calvin & Hobbes!
Anyway one thing that's sort of interesting (but maybe not entirely brought out) about the amount of disco in the movie is that, kinda unusually, it's basically looking at a club culture from the POV of some of its squarer participants -- not really wealthy enough to be catered to, but prim and upscale and uncool enough that they're barely tolerated (and definitely discouraged from bringing more of their kind). But that is the experience of the thing, for them. (This is a pretty weird POV, and I really appreciate that Stillman has this way of unselfconsciously looking at the experience of a social class that's rarefied and privileged and in a lot of quarters found pretty hateable.) I sorta think that it is, in some ways, about disco, and about the club; it just happens to be about the social experience of those things by people who participated in them in a specific way.
― nabisco, Friday, 28 August 2009 17:55 (fifteen years ago) link
unselfconscious is not a word I would use to describe Stillman's ouevre
― go Nick go! Scrub that paint! Scrub it!! Yeah!! (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 28 August 2009 17:58 (fifteen years ago) link
(also sorry nabisco yr dislike of C&H will always be inexplicable to me)
spaceman spiff storylines were sooooo tired. in fact, it was too much like what a little kid would come up with. thus, completely boring.
― scott seward, Friday, 28 August 2009 18:02 (fifteen years ago) link
sorry, i've been waiting YEARS to get that off my chest.
― scott seward, Friday, 28 August 2009 18:03 (fifteen years ago) link
I don't believe I used the word "unselfconscious" to describe Stillman's oeuvre!
― nabisco, Friday, 28 August 2009 18:07 (fifteen years ago) link
I think his characters and writing are conscious (and occasionally self-conscious) about class, but I like that he as a filmmaker seems pretty honest and straightforward and non-vexed about telling stories from within this world of "urban haute bourgeoisie"; he's not all sweaty or weird or apologetic about it, he's not interested in glamorizing it or using it in an aspirational way nor is he interested in lambasting it or making huge social points out of it; he seems pretty comfortable and confident about that just being his territory, the thing he knows and writes about, you know?
― nabisco, Friday, 28 August 2009 18:14 (fifteen years ago) link
he strikes me as being very defensive about it
― go Nick go! Scrub that paint! Scrub it!! Yeah!! (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 28 August 2009 18:15 (fifteen years ago) link
ya isn't metropolitan as much an elaborate defense of that class as a stinging pisstake on it?
― Miss Fitzhenry (s1ocki), Friday, 28 August 2009 18:16 (fifteen years ago) link
i think that anxiety actually makes the film more interesting
hmmm, i don't remember it being either, really, but it's been a while. i think i see him pretty much as nabisco doesxpost
― velko, Friday, 28 August 2009 18:17 (fifteen years ago) link
i mean there is some "i'm not going to feel guilty about being in this class" but it's sort of matter-of-fact, not overtly defensive
― velko, Friday, 28 August 2009 18:19 (fifteen years ago) link
Yeah, I see a difference between class being something the characters/film deal with (at length) and class as something the filmmaker is defensive about or trying to evade. I mean, I guess I find it hard to imagine a guy who's all that defensive about class making a film about upper-class kids sitting around talking about their own class position, or two other films about markedly upper-class people just being markedly upper-class. You know? He seems casually/curiously interested in it, and then at other points just unstressed about presenting this particular world -- this seems like a guy who just knows his own experience and doesn't feel weird about just speaking what he knows.
― nabisco, Friday, 28 August 2009 18:24 (fifteen years ago) link
He seems casually/curiously interested in it,
seeing as it is his SOLE topic I think he's more obsessed with it than casual/curious
― go Nick go! Scrub that paint! Scrub it!! Yeah!! (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 28 August 2009 18:39 (fifteen years ago) link
dude you just said you'd only seen Metropolitan, so I have no idea what you're talking about with "sole topic"
― nabisco, Friday, 28 August 2009 18:49 (fifteen years ago) link
busted!!!
― Miss Fitzhenry (s1ocki), Friday, 28 August 2009 18:50 (fifteen years ago) link
I am aware of what his other movies are about. I've seen bits of the last days of disco (sucker for Chloe Sevigny *sigh*). Haven't seen Barcelona.
― go Nick go! Scrub that paint! Scrub it!! Yeah!! (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 28 August 2009 18:50 (fifteen years ago) link