Haven't seen this one either. Figure its gotta be better than Big Trouble, though.
― Fetty Wap Is Strong In Here (cryptosicko), Friday, 11 December 2015 18:35 (eight years ago) link
just saw The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and when I was walking out of the theater I heard some guy say "it was great...I gave up on following the plot, though."
...
― flappy bird, Tuesday, 13 June 2017 02:08 (six years ago) link
entirely fair assessment
― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 13 June 2017 02:23 (six years ago) link
sorry, he said "i gave up on trying to follow the plot." dude it's the title of the movie
it was the 108 minute cut... i'd like to see the longer one, what are the differences besides the strip club routines?
― flappy bird, Tuesday, 13 June 2017 02:41 (six years ago) link
i don't know bcz i think i've only seen the extended (original) one.
― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 13 June 2017 02:50 (six years ago) link
Andrew Bujalski seems surrealism in Opening Night
https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/5876-john-cassavetes-underrated-surrealist
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 22 August 2018 19:16 (five years ago) link
i watched "minnie & moskowitz" having never seen another cassevetes(-directed) movie before. i think i enjoyed it but also had one of those "the past is a foreign country" things that i sometimes have with '70s independent movies where not only are the decor and fashion and street scenes so different from how things are now, the people don't behave or talk like any person i've ever met. from what i know about cassavetes movies, the constant yelling and anger and fucked-up relationships seem to be more about him than about actual human behavior, i'm guessing? anyways, the acting was all good, i loved the bit with timothy carey accosting cassel in the diner near the beginning and the monologue by the loser who takes gena on the lunch date, and the scene near the end with the two moms was funny.
― na (NA), Wednesday, 12 May 2021 20:00 (two years ago) link
I think two things are simultaneously true: 1. people talked differently in the '70s and 2. the way people confront each other and the general rhythm of human interactions in Cassavetes films is very much a product of JC's imagination.
That Dick Cavett Show segment when he goes on to promote Husbands with Gazzara and Falk seems to me like JC attempting to bring a little of his movie reality into actual reality (or whatever you call a TV talk show). And the results are kind of awkward.
― Josefa, Wednesday, 12 May 2021 21:29 (two years ago) link
I just noticed Mazursky's Tempest in on Criterion.. I might check it out tonite, it's been years since I've seen it
― Andy the Grasshopper, Wednesday, 12 May 2021 21:35 (two years ago) link
Haven't seen M&M yet (soon), but I did just watch Martin Ritt's Edge of the City, with JC and Sidney Poitier in a mildly homoerotic spin on On the Waterfront. On Criterion til the end of the month, and recommended.
― edited for dog profanity (cryptosicko), Wednesday, 12 May 2021 22:32 (two years ago) link
Tempest is a time capsule, man.
― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 12 May 2021 22:33 (two years ago) link
the constant yelling
That just overwhelmed everything else in Minnie & Moskowitz for me--if there was anything good in there, it was drowned out by the constant yelling.
― clemenza, Thursday, 13 May 2021 00:02 (two years ago) link
The constant yelling in M&M vs the constant laughing in Faces
― Josefa, Thursday, 13 May 2021 00:25 (two years ago) link
Well, Tempest was a bloated, aimless mess but still a pretty fun watch. I thought I'd seen it before and remembered it all being on the Greek island, but at least half of it is in NYC and Atlantic City. Acting is great, but as a romantic comedy it fails on both fronts, so I'm not sure how to classify it. A film that cost $13 million and did $5 million at the box office, and you can see why.
― Andy the Grasshopper, Thursday, 13 May 2021 16:33 (two years ago) link
there was almost as much yelling as laughing in Faces
― Dan S, Wednesday, 9 June 2021 00:51 (two years ago) link
and no acting
― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 9 June 2021 00:52 (two years ago) link
:)
― Dan S, Wednesday, 9 June 2021 00:57 (two years ago) link
I prefer Bugs Bunny’s performance of “I Dream of Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair.”
― edited for dog profanity (cryptosicko), Wednesday, 9 June 2021 01:13 (two years ago) link
Go watch Deathdream if you'd like to see the lead husband + wife play husband + wife in a much better movie.
― Jerome Percival Jesus (Old Lunch), Wednesday, 9 June 2021 01:24 (two years ago) link
I thought Shadows and Too Late Blues were really interesting snapshots of the late 50s-early 60s. but have not been sure I've liked Cassavetes’ films in general
― Dan S, Wednesday, 9 June 2021 01:28 (two years ago) link
thought Husbands was a real improvement in cinematography from his earlier films, but there is just so much toxic masculinity in it that it is repulsive to me
― Dan S, Thursday, 24 June 2021 01:31 (two years ago) link
“You’re inscrutable!”
― Rich Valley Girl, Poor Valley Girl (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 24 June 2021 01:33 (two years ago) link
I think I'd find those characters just as exhausting if they were having an enlightened discussion on The Female Eunuch.
― clemenza, Thursday, 24 June 2021 01:40 (two years ago) link
from the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually still alive:
Saw a Happy Birthday Mom from Zoe Cassavetes on Twitter recently, and lo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gena_Rowlands Didn't know she was active that long, or that she was in 10 of John's movies (or possibly problematic re some of them later)
― dow, Sunday, June 20, 2021 3:33 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink
was thinking of her anyway, having seen her four Alfred Hitchcock performances, one on Presents, three on Hour.
― dow, Sunday, June 20, 2021 Wonder if she did any harm w changes in those JC prints? I always enjoy her acting anyway.
― dow, Thursday, 24 June 2021 03:35 (two years ago) link
even A Woman Under the Influence was hard going
― Dan S, Sunday, 18 July 2021 02:50 (two years ago) link
Minnie and Moskowitz falls a little short of being among my very favourite Cassavetes films, but it may be his funniest.
― edited for dog profanity (cryptosicko), Saturday, 31 July 2021 20:14 (two years ago) link
Machine Gun McCain - Cassavettes, Falk and Rowlands cashing those sweet sweet paychecks for an Italian director (the guy who did Sacco & Vanzetti, so most likely a paycheck job for him as well.) Still, the scenes filmed in Las Vegas have a tourist's eagerness to capture everything - you get to see billboards advertising who was in town at the time - and the Morricone score is reliably excellent.
― Daniel_Rf, Monday, 2 August 2021 12:24 (two years ago) link
from the wiki bio of Gena I linked above---wonder if her alleged interference makes significant difference in those extant editions:Cassavetes era (1963–1984)Rowlands and Cassavetes made ten films together: A Child Is Waiting (1963), Faces (1968), Machine Gun McCain (1969), Minnie and Moskowitz (1971), A Woman Under the Influence (1974; nomination for Academy Award for Best Actress), Two-Minute Warning (1976), Opening Night (1977), Gloria (1980; nomination for Academy Award for Best Actress), Tempest (1982), and Love Streams (1984).[11]
According to Boston University film scholar Ray Carney, Rowlands sought to suppress an early version of Cassavetes's first film, Shadows, that Carney says he rediscovered after decades of searching.[12] Rowlands also became involved in the screenings of Husbands and Love Streams, according to Carney. The UCLA Film and Television Archive mounted a restoration of Husbands, as it was pruned down (without Cassavetes's consent, and in violation of his contract) by Columbia Pictures several months after its release, in an attempt to restore as much of the removed content as possible. At Rowlands's request, UCLA created an alternative print with almost ten minutes of content edited out, as Rowlands felt that these scenes were in poor taste. The alternative print is the only one that has been made available for rental.[13]
― dow, Tuesday, 17 August 2021 00:30 (two years ago) link
even in the alternative print I thought a lot of scenes in Husbands were in poor taste
― Dan S, Tuesday, 17 August 2021 01:38 (two years ago) link
watched The Killing of a Chinese Bookie today
from Pillip Lopate’s Criterion essay 8 years ago:
“In 1976, when The Killing of a Chinese Bookie was first released, it bombed at the box office, much to Cassavetes’s disappointment. Critics found it disorganized, self-indulgent, and unfathomable; audiences took their word for it and stayed away. Today, the film seems a model of narrative clarity and lucidity; either our eyes have caught up to Cassavetes or the reigning aesthetic has evolved steadily in the direction of his personal cinematic style. Now we are more accustomed to hanging out and listening in on the comic banality of low-life small talk; to a semidocumentary, handheld-camera, ambient-sound approach; to morally divided or not entirely sympathetic characters, dollops of “dead time,” and subversions of traditional genre expectations.”
I don’t know about it being a model of narrative clarity and lucidity, and it is very rough and somewhat off-putting like all of his films, but I thought it was interesting.
― Dan S, Tuesday, 17 August 2021 01:45 (two years ago) link
looking back on all of the films of his I've seen in the past year or so, Opening Night had the theatricality and some of the toxic male aura of his other films, but it softened his edges somewhat and was funny and memorable
― Dan S, Saturday, 7 January 2023 00:23 (one year ago) link
My-favorite.
I watched A Child is Waiting on TCM three nights ago. What a stiff, compromised, often affecting film.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 7 January 2023 00:27 (one year ago) link
A Stanley Kramer Production!
― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Saturday, 7 January 2023 01:05 (one year ago) link
A Stanley Kramer Interference!
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 7 January 2023 02:58 (one year ago) link