Abel Ferrara - C/D

I have my quota of semen for the week

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12250

hes got some miles on his for being 60

interesting they touch on a project w/ dafoe playing pasolini

cant imagine this 4:44 movie is good tho

the thing about KONY (whoa, makes you think) is not that it's not good but it's got this brutal momentum w/everyone in the film casting everything aside and trying to kill each other w/o regard for anything else and the actors kinda throw themselves into it really well imo and i love the OTTness and how everyone seems to be doing their own version of how to approach the material w/o much guidance. walken owns here, caruso is pretty exceptional, snipes and fishburne are great, victor argo is really good (as probably the only "decent" person in the entire film.) all of ferrara's films have this kind of energy, but i think this distills everything down to the basics nicely.

the graveyard scene is pretty tremendous, you think the film is going to take it from there in one direction but then walken shows up as if anticipating it and just finishes it there. not quite as awesome as the shotgun to the face at the end of 'to live and die in l.a.' but pretty dope regardless.

I really appreciate that you caught the levels of "owning," "great," "pretty exceptional," "pretty dope," "really good" ... the kind of discernment I expect from the minds of Cahiers du ILX.

done with film threads now I think, cept for the Snob ones

jesus spoilers for TL&DILA tho

SPOILER ALERT xxpost

morbs i really hope you don't keep that promise, you would be sorely missed.

by me especially

if i had a dollar for every time morbz stormed out of a thread (or type of thread) in a self-righteous huff, only to reappear to later to kvetch some more, i'd be in the 1% with enough to donate to another random ILXor to put him in the 1% as well.

EXCEPT I'VE NEVER BEEN OLDER and felt more like this board is a hueg waste of time.

quod erat demonstratum

how do you storm out of a thread?

After reading that essay above I am still unconvinced that KONY has anything to say.

Incidentally I just leared who Joseph Kony is today.

Her bad things about 4:44, except from those that think its amazing.

I'd like to see it, even if I've never been fully convinced of Abel Ferrara's talents.

35mm print in NYC Monday

http://www.ifccenter.com/films/ms-45/

oh sweet. obvs i can't see it but still.

i enjoyed his mulberry st doc.

his Depardieu film, taking off from the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case.

http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-abel-ferraras-welcome-to-new-york

it's amazing how ppl have talked themselves into thinking jokey sleaze like Ms. 45 is "great"

which part disqualifies it, the jokiness or the sleaze?

Is Deparnude coming to the U.S.?

it's definitely something, no? it's a mess, and he definitely hasn't developed his talents much yet (not unlike some of cronenberg's earliest stuff in that regard), but i do think it makes an impact that other films don't. the "knowingness" of it isn't very endearing.

i think he's talented and i like a lot of his films (and TV episodes!) but the way that e.g. the french appreciate him gives me pause. that is, as some kind of atavistic modern primitive who represents the soul of urban america or what have you.

As someone who's interviewed Ferrara in person (and likes a lot of his movies—seeing Bad Lieutenant at the Angelika when it was brand new, especially coming in the wake of the comparatively ultra-slick King of New York, was like being punched in the face), I gotta say his public image is exactly that. This Nick Pinkerton column from 2013 kinda sums up how I feel, particularly this bit:

Ferrara’s concern with the relationship between surface and subterranean truths is nothing new. In fact, the director’s greatest creation is a character called “Abel Ferrara,” a shambling, grizzled, reckless, perpetually drugged-up walking staph infection who just happens to have lined up financing for and successfully completed the shooting of twenty-some films since 1976—hardly a likely accomplishment if this persona was the whole truth and nothing but, though Ferrara is careful not to let the mask slip before his public.

he isn't the first director to have a persona that's kind of belied by his films.... i just watched the john milius documentary and the guy comes across as a fabulist and self-mythologizer and asshole. it's hard to take his persona at all seriously. for example, the first thing he says in the film is that he isn't a "pure cinema" guy, that he doesn't care about images, that he just wants to tell a story. which may be true but it doesn't explain the best qualities of his films by a long shot.

I still was not prepared for Ms 45 being a campfest, that's all.

Look at what we have here:

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/sep/04/pasolini-review-abel-ferrara-willem-dafoe-venice-film

got a NYFF ticket for it just now

looking forward to this one, although i worry a little about the "last days" vampirish approach to the biopic (last 24 hrs etc.)

pretty much none of his films have played my little town for over a decade, so this is another i'll probably have to see on DVD

ferrara is one of those dudes who took a while to earn the accolades (or just the scandal) he achieved pretty early (esp from the french)

Morbz look forward to anything you say on this.

Be of some interest to see how much space he gives to the various conspiracies surrounding his death and all.

i kinda don't see him being especially concerned w/ that, and i think interviews suggest same

ah got it, frankly I wondered if the Xan Brooks piece might've said anything but I despise him so didn't make it beyond the headlines.

did you guys like the last days on earth one?

not seen anything since Go Go Tales (and before that -- Mary? i think i saw and disliked?)

mary was pretty terrible

i roundly enjoyed the mulberry street doc, he's a born actor really

upset with IFC Films

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/venice-director-abel-ferrara-attacks-730624

got tickets to the thursday screening of pasolini. now the question is, to what ferrara films should i subject my sensitive and empathetic wife in preparation?

How about Accatone? Was just in Rome and hanging out at Bar Necci, which is now somewhat of a shrine.

I thought Last Days on Earth was terrible.

I will be at Thursday screening too if you want to meet, Adam. Are you there Thurs as well, Dr. M.?

he wants Ferrara films, not Pasolini films.

Thurs 10/2, yes

Well, I cant suggest any of those.

Let's all meet for a post-show cocktail.

i'm down.

king of new york is the "safest" ferrara i can think of but i haven't seen the more recent films. keep in mind this is a young lady thought the herzog bad lieutenant was too brutal.

obv the OG for her, then. She knows Pasolini meets an unhappy end, yes?

(VP, u know that BASEBALL PLAYOFFS will be running all days & nights that week)

don't shoot any car radios!

omg did u just spoil the end of pasolini

i'm trying to toughen her up anyway, it's a cold world

Go Go Tales is pretty innocuous Ferrara, it's Runyonesque.

In that case, let's have a beer at a sports bar of your choosing, Dr. M.

new rose hotel is kinda awesome.

Pleasantly surprised by Pasolini... many touches of the poetic, solid portrayal of a man of ideas by Dafoe. It doesn't all work, but Ninetto Davoli is instantly recognizable as a lead character in PPP's unmade film, same elfin face and presence. Of the ten films I've seen by Ferrara, only the third I've liked a lot.

Ferrara was pretty funny and direct in the Q&A, gently mocking Amy Taubin for speechifying and getting into it with a guy who wanted a more politicized slant on the murder.

i thought it looked great too. and the tony joe white music cue was fantastic.

i also liked it when ferrara and another gentleman got into an aging hipster-off over who saw _salo_ first and where.

yeah, yeah... the clips of Salo in this are the most I've ever seen of it. (I've only seen six Pasolinis i think)

Interesting that the screenwriter credit was the guy who wrote Gomorrah, wish someone had asked about that.

interview w/ Nick Pinkerton:

Well, me and Willem and the Americans—our native tongue is English, we read Pasolini in English. Willem speaks better Italian than me, but even he’s not gonna attempt to relate certain ideas—you’re talking philosophy, you’re talking poetry… And we’ve barely got it together in the language that we have. So we’re not gonna do those scenes—the Furio Colombo interview, the other interview—we’re gonna do those in English, man. But when he’s with the kid [Pino “The Frog” Pelosi, played by Damiano Tamilia], and the kid is speaking Italian, that language that that kid is speaking, you’re not gonna get that speaking English. You can’t translate that. You can’t drop that into American. What’d he be, a rapper or something? I don’t know what the fuck he’d be speaking. He’s a street kid, y’know? Thank God Willem speaks enough Italian, and can speak Italian well enough, that he can get that kid’s talking back, which to me is more important at that moment. It’s a stretch, but the audience has to stretch to the imagination of the filmmakers. I’m not gonna reduce our imagination, you gotta come up to the plate when you wanna watch a movie.

Is Welcome to New York going to see the light of day in the U.S.?

In the U.S.? Right now it’s a war with these people, these guys think they can just cavalierly take our film and do what they want with it just because they bought it. Just because you buy the Mona Lisa doesn’t mean you can put a moustache on it. It’s my job to protect that film, so we’ll see what’s gonna happen. But it’s out, it’s on the Internet, steal it, man.

http://filmcomment.com/entry/interview-abel-ferrara-pasolini-ifc-lieutenant

I posted the Driller Killer commentary video on the old horror thread and it's funny too

He did a documentary called Napoli Napoli Napoli which I saw in Porto at, like, the only edition of some weird film festival. I remember little of it, except a scene where Ferrara puts on a show in a female prison and there's all these middle aged ladies from Naples looking bemused as he goes through a punk rock cover of "King Of New York".

― Daniel_Rf, Sunday, July 16, 2017 6:34 AM (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink

heres that scene btw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2GeLEhfUqo

Was rewatching some Entourage as a pandemic balm, and there’s a great moment when a Herzog-type director has been fired from a major film and Johnny Drama says he could call up Abel Ferrara.

This is one of those threads that makes me worry it's a death revive when it pops up.

A critic I love on a movie I love, even if he misnames her “Thanta.”

https://www.artforum.com/film/howard-hampton-on-abel-ferrara-s-ms-45-45920

They should screen KONY twice - once as is, and once with the DVD commentary track running. Listen to Ferrara call his own work fascist!

― grawlix (unperson), Tuesday, 2 April 2019

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQRzH9BAzks

Handy supercut but it leaves out the last few minutes of this commentary which is um... a vibe?

Not understanding how Keitel found those guys in Bad Lieutenant, I assumed he just picked up two guys and blamed it on them (because he's out of his mind) but wiki plot synopsis says they were the actual rapists

New Rose Hotel was great! Unusual structure; total rethinking of the cyberpunk aesthetic (which turned out to be more prophetic); Walken letting 'er rip. Was uncomfortable w/ A. Argento's presence but the trail of destruction her character eventually leaves has unforeseen connotations now. Glad I finally got around to this one.