All Purpose NYC ILX Film Snob Thread

Basically you, RAG, are expressing some kind of fear of an aesthetic elitism and arguing against it with a simplistic arithmetic elitism -"there is only room at the top for a handful of masterpieces, thereby these guys must be overreacting."

Your proposed thread seems interesting however, although I don't know much about that stuff.

Lol, the icecream scene in Manakamana was so amazing to watch at the theater. First, a bit of uncertain laughter - we're supposed to be watching art, you know. Then, as the scene becomes more and more absurd, it slowly spread. And as the two women themselves starts laughing, the whole theater errupts in relief. Such an astonishing masterpiece. Also: goat-butt!

I wouldnt use the M word, but tons better than Leviathan

http://grandoldmovies.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/lorre-agent.jpg

Peter Lorre as anticipatory plagiarist of Biz Markie.

"You say she's just a friend, don't you, Rick?"

Sorry.

Anyway, not in the business of using the M word myself- for one thing, don't want get into those "Is! Is not!" discussions, but I am aware that others use it and try to take it with a grain of salt if I have to.

is RAG secretly Dan Kois attempting to reignite the "cultural vegetable" shitstorm?

Don't know how anyone can watch the Bell sequence in Andrei Rublev and not be overwhelmed.

James Redd and the Blecchs says "Basically you, RAG, are expressing some kind of fear of an aesthetic elitism"

I wouldn't say so at all, the world needs far better aesthetic standards and I'm always complaining about it. I was way more perplexed and frustrated as a teen but now I'm just a bit more curious about how and why other people enjoy this stuff.
Kim Ki Duk does long slow quiet scenes, many characters never speak but I've never found him remotely boring. Everything seems so tight and disciplined.
The general aesthetics of "snobby" films are rarely a problem for me. It's usually the clarity of the story and the tightness of the pacing that I have problems with, but I'm more than happy to be told that I just don't get some films. I generally don't enjoy the social realist approach, I prefer films that are closer to purely visual and don't really have to make much sense.
I really liked Malle's Black Moon but I've got the impression that most of his fans hated it.

I really do love that ending semi-famous scene from Shadows Of Forgotten Ancestors. That is precisely the kind of thing I want from films.

I haven't seen Andrei Rublev yet.

Really? You should give it a try if you have time although be forewarned that you might have problems with the clarity of the story and the tightness of the pacing.

I wouldn't say so at all, the world needs far better aesthetic standards and I'm always complaining about it.

I made the animation thread with an appropriately snobby title.

i'd like to see manakamanamakanmanaana soon

I was just glad IFC Center hasn't put it in one of the 40-seat 'galleries' yet

yeah, shit. i gotta get on that now before that happens.

double dose of '70s Holmes revisionism tomw night

http://www.filmlinc.com/films/on-sale/sherlock-holmes-debunked

Mizoguchi in Astoria

http://www.movingimage.us/films/2014/05/02/detail/mizoguchi/

Mizoguchi Time!

I want to come back to what I was talking about above a bit. This isn't just a thing I get with the art house canon, I feel a similar disillusionment with culture in general, it's kind of like that Absurd Child Sydrome thing that was discussed in another thread, it's kind of a constant way I feel about most culture.
I think sometimes the critical assessment of some things need to be downgraded significantly. Especially when I'll admit even many of my favourite things are severely flawed and need to be recommended with major cautions and reservations.
My problem with hyperbole and words like "master" and "masterpiece" is that it creates totally unreal expectations with people who are unfamiliar with whatever genre/medium the piece of work is in and almost inevitably results in a bad comedown that can leave a sour taste that makes you reluctant to come back.
I think calling creators "a master" is particularly bad one because it suggests to me that a creator does something about as well as it could be done and rarely puts a foot wrong. I can't think of anyone in any medium who can live up to that. Even the very best of creators struggle to get their best results and it usually doesn't work out that well most of the time.

I can see how it might be a necessary evil to overrate things because I could imagine being a critic who thinks a director is extremely promising compared to most of the crap they have to sit through and would like more films like this but doesn't truly feel is the sort of revelation they say but maybe that is a white lie that is needed to push against the blockbuster fluff. But again I think it can turn people away from alternative cinema when you keep promising orgasmic epiphanies.

I'm not sure why films seem to me like more of a minefield than other things. Every now and then I'll be pleased about something like Piano Teacher, Page Turner, Innocence, The Hunt; some bits of directors like Fellini, Maya Deren, Brakhage, Maddin, Parajanov, Wim Wenders and Kim Ki Duk. But most of the time I feel like for the time and money is far more of a risk than music(probably the most rewarding, beautiful medium there is).

There is quite a lot of stuff I'm still curious about but I'm always tempted to spend the time/money on books instead. It's really daunting.

Can anyone recommend directors closer to pure visual pleasure without story concerns? Does Kenneth Anger fit that?

Who cares about your hypothetical straweveryman, doesn't he already have enough incoherent but easy to follow junk to gorge on?

manakamana was superb
it shifted to one of the shoeboxes btw

Sorry, not saying The Enterprise should be hauling garbage that everything out there is incoherent junk, some stuff might be coherent junk, some incoherent non-junk, some neither. Maybe I should ask, which exact masterpiece mavens are causing this alleged problem? Name names. Gavin Smith? Kent Jones?

RAG, you like Apichatpong Weeraseethakul?

Or more rambunctiously, Stephen Chow?

Gavin Smith is at p much every movie i've gone to this week

Ellen Burstyn did a v nice pre-film interview at Resurrection last night.

Ha, I used to see him all the time at screenings too.

The plentiful junk isn't something I enjoy and I don't know how I gave the impression I ever wanted that.
Name critics? Whoever's quotes cover the disc boxes. Obviously all sorts of films and books have unreasonably high praise covering them but I thought that better film labels would resist that.

Boonme and Tropical Malady are on my list.

The only Chow film I've seen is Kung Fu Hustle(some lovely moments but too much fakey special effects), but I didn't think he would be considered non-mainstream.

If you don't see a name you recognize who cares what the blurb says?

I know very few critics. Many of the people picking up these boxes won't know either. I think it's just kind of a natural assumption that a label that deals with higher quality films would want to be more fair and sensible about the quotes they use.
When you know more about the stuff you are buying, you tend to not even look at the blurbs.

I refer you to the thread title- this is the official NYC Film Snob thread, not the random timid seeker of challenging but not too challenging cinematic fare - challoptics.

But then the problem really isn't with critics but with marketing.

Boonme is the biggest masterpiece of the decade. Apichatbong Weeresethakul is a master who never puts a foot wrong. Well, except for Mekong Hotel. And Blissfully Yours is a bit long as well, though it's obviously a masterpiece.

True (actually I never noticed the NYC part before) but I'm fairly sure the the type of films I want to see are in this area and this might be a fine place to ask for recommendations. My favourite films are stuff like Inland Empire and Possession, so it isn't too far removed.

If you are looking for recs you've come to the right place and Morbius is your man.

I request recommendations for lush visuals and aesthetic power with the story/characters taking back seat. That's the sort of stuff I talked up in the animation snob thread because I love the expressive visuals and ambiguity that you can lose yourself in. Please.

Well have you tried Sweetgrass / Leviathan / Manakamana?

let me know when this guy's gone

Thanks Forksclovetofu, they look pretty good.

Morbius recommends I fuck off. I'll be quiet but I welcome any more recommendations.

Anything I may have recommended upthread I rerecommend.

this may have been posted here before but i'm happy to be on their mailing list now
http://www.screenslate.com/category/whats-showing-today
sort of a brooklyn vegan for film

I wish their updates were more regularly posted 3-4 days in advance, but that's life.

kicking whoever programmed China is Near at MoMA only during Ky Derby and 4:30 today.

https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/anti-art-extra-film-non-para-pseudo-semi-video-cinema-at-the-60th-international-short-film-festival-oberhausen

John Hubley animation the next 2 Tuesdays

http://www.filmforum.org/movies/more/john_hubley_two_centennial_tri

late-period Jerry Lewis this weekend, incl the amazing/trying WW2 comedy Which Way to the Front?

http://anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/series/42577

do we have a cannes 2014 thread?

http://ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=40&threadid=99591

Nick Pinkerton on Marcel Hanoun, subject of an Anthology retro

http://artforum.com/film/id=46996

caught the last night of M de Oliveira's most recent, quite splendid.

NY Asian fest lineup, featuring a 3-hr Taiwanese baseball epic:

http://www.filmlinc.com/daily/entry/new-york-asian-film-festival-film-society-of-lincoln-center-lineup

Gebo and the Shadow? Yeah, that one is good, though also pretty extreme in a way. Really not that much variation.

oh I liked the visual 'minimalism' (like the setup that's 90% of the first half hour) plus a lot of the dialogue about "Good fortune is when nothing changes" struck me close given my ongoing life event.

People seem most divided about whether Ricardo Trepa is a bad actor or that's just the character.