ALTMAN POLL

it has its moments. probably should revisit once I read that 2010 Altman oral history that went out of print. (it's really long--at least 150 pages before it gets to the 1970s)

watched The James Dean Story recently and man is it good. Some wack interview photography but at 80 minutes it zips along using mostly photos and voiceover and film clips and newsreels. It really felt like Jimmy Dean Mon Amour, but 2 years before the fact!

Watched Rich Kids, which he produced in 1979, for the second time last night, and it's marvellous. Strong proto-Baumbach vibes, down to the new york yuppie interiors, but a really sweet movie about kids growing up within divorce that is absolutely bewitching. Recommend me more movies like this, anyone who knows of any.

sounds like Paul Mazursky

I rarely feel compelled to go off on a film. I try to avoid stuff I don't think I'll like; I know I end up missing films I would like because of that, but with films I'm the guy who wants to let 100 guilty people go free rather than convict one innocent person. (If that analogy even works.)

God, I hated Prêt-à-Porter. I saw it when it came out, hated it then, assumed that would be tempered by 20 years and lowered expectations, possibly hated it even more today. Took me almost a week of how-much-can-I-stand? to get through it. Anouk Aimée, Julia Roberts, Tim Robbins, and maybe a couple of others managed to keep their dignity. At least two throwbacks to previous Altman films: Sally Kellerman humiliated like in MASH, Danny Aiello as Bert Remsen in California Split--like those jokes would improve with age. Very glad he got to make a few more films and go out on A Prairie Home Companion rather than this.

I was 17 when this came out and I rented it on VHS. I had seen and enjoyed The Player and Short Cuts and a few of the Altman classics so I was receptive. I recall it being one of the worst movies I had ever seen up to that point. Am I remembering correctly that characters kept stepping in dog poop every few minutes and that was supposed to be really funny? Maybe it's still one of the worst films I've seen! I'll never rewatch it to find out, though.

I haven't tried many of the reputed 80s stinkers but among them, HealtH is more enjoyable than this.

I was thinking about him the other day. I think 3 Women, California Split and The Long Goodbye are nigh (heh-heh) unimpeachable. Granted, McCabe is impressive in a stunt-filmmaking Herzog kinda way, and is good/great but I think is (affects cineaste voice) ultimately overrated, as is Nashville. And I love leonard cohen and country music! And america! And maybe even canada

Thieves Like Us is very good, but too depressing on balance for me to re-visit. It... could use more cohen brothers style levity. Which, it has some of, but not in large enough doeses to offset the overall subj matter and narrative. Brewster McCloud is great, if a tad too light, farcical.

His best films do life in just the right measure. Damn, california split is so good, tho it undoubtedly fails every variation of the bechdel test ever. But... i am not a big film person -- music has much more of a lasting impact on me. Even novelty songs about valley girls. But CS is one of those films that I couldn't stop thinking about for a long time after I watch(ed) it. The whole gambling thing is obv very fruitful metaphor on its own, w long long legs, but add in male friendships and i guess relationships in general, and damn. The ending is at once depressing, triumphant, and transcendent. There's a lot of ground covered there.

HH: you remember that running gag correctly--four or five times. Absolutely a low point for Altman. It's not just how awful the joke is, it's that I think he thinks he's making a statement on the film's subject matter. As I've said many times, I'm the rare person who isn't convinced that Altman is contemptuous of country music in Nashville; or at the very least, even if he is, he loves the characters so much it's a draw. Prêt-à-Porter feels like a work of contempt from start to finish, capped off by Kim Basinger's befuddled speech at the end. But not interesting contempt--just puzzling, like why would you fell compelled to make this film? (I think Basinger's supposed to be some version of Geraldine Chaplin in Nashville...not anywhere near as funny.)

I think his segment in Aria is his worst work ever, but he's definitely a great filmmaker whose career is pockmarked with cavernous abysses of terribleness. Not liking his previous two that much, I steered clear of Ready to Wear (which didn't even get the good reviews those two got).

clemenza how did you see Pret a Porter? it was on prime for a bit over a year ago, but no more, and the only DVD that's out there has some really bad tracking errors (not even windowboxed--the frame is misaligned on modern TV's, top 1/8th showing up on the bottom 1/8th of the screen, etc)

There's a group of stations here called Hollywood Suite that shows old stuff--one for the '70s/'80s/'90s/'00s.

https://hollywoodsuite.ca/

They go free for a few weeks around Christmas, so I was PVR'ing a few things.

Prêt-à-Porter was the second new Altman I'd seen in a theatre, and after The Player and Short Cuts I expected another triumph or near-triumph.

One thing I found weird, and annoying, was that whatever French dialogue there was--and a couple of scenes between Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren seemed important; I literally had no idea who either one of them was--didn't have subtitles. (Checked, and you're right--that was his very next film. I thought a couple of others were in there, but no.)

I have an unwatched copy of Pret (part of a fashion-related three-pack that also includes the Mizrahi and Wintour docs, FYI, no idea what the scan is like) that I feel perversely compelled to put on now. Are we talking Dr. T levels of bad? Or even worse?

1994: bad year for baseball, bad year for Altman.

I hated Dr. T, too, but remember nothing, so I can't compare. I would love to hear from the person who voted for Prêt-à-Porter in this poll. Even giving great leeway for subjectivity, it's hard to get my mind around that.

That I can recall the "Vie en rose"-scored naked fashion show at the end of Prêt-à-Porter is the only evidence that I have that I even saw the film.

Are we talking Dr. T levels of bad? Or even worse?

P-a-P is not good, but it's just an inert failure rather than mindbogglingly disastrous. Altman plainly wanted to do a light, frothy, inconsequential flick in the style of Player and Short Cuts; it just turned out that himself and the film critic of the San Francisco Examiner, who had not previously (and did not subsequently) written a film, were not as gifted at writing a bubbly comedy about humans with no depth as literary titan Raymond Carver was at sketching regular lives in a short story, or successful novelist Michael Tolkin was at turning his encounters with Hollywood scummery into a black satire.

I'll endorse disastrous--perhaps not mind-boggling, I don't know. I'm still walking and thinking.

(xpost) When you really hate something, you start inferring things that may or may not be true. With that ending, it really felt like Altman thought he was saying something profound about the emptiness of fashion, and that he (or the writer) chose to do so in the most obvious way possible. Then you start scanning the faces of all the characters watching, and it's clear they're impressed and provoked to the point of being dumbfounded, and that makes the scene even worse. And then, the standing ovation.

I saw it on a multiplex on release and not since, it might be much worse than I recall.

Found it interesting to read the "Reception" summary on Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pr%C3%AAt-%C3%A0-Porter_(film)

Wrong link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prêt-à-Porter_(film)

that scene in The Company with the couple dancing on an outdoor stage to My Funny Valentine in a thunderstorm with just cello and piano accompaniment was spectacular

I really liked seeing the dance performances in that film, and the deliberately unfocused story about the dancers seemed appropriate

have been thinking about Altman’s eras

!) MASH, Brewster McCloud, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye, Thieves Like Us, California Split, Nashville - the 70s classics
2) Three Women - unlike any of his other films
3) A Wedding, Quintet, A Perfect Couple, Health, Popeye
4) The 80s films based on plays - Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Streamers, Secret Honor
5) The Player, Short Cuts
6) Gosford Park, The Company, Prairie Home Companion

It’s been a while since I saw either, but Images might belong in the same category. Different eras, though, I suppose.

Same category as Three Women, I meant to say.

haven't seen Images

It’s probably underrated due to the classics that surround it in his filmography. Maybe it’s actually the same era as three women - I had it in my mind that it was pre-MASH but it’s actually 1972, between McCabe and Long Goodbye.

Your categorization is pretty much dead-on, I'd say. At first I thought Gosford Park might belong with The Player and Short Cuts--his last three widely acclaimed films--but there's eight years and six films separating them. The only thing I'd add is a period covering his pre-MASH work; primarily That Cold Day in the Park, but there's a bit more than that.

I don't consider Three Women a masterpiece--an increasingly minority viewpoint--but it does stand alone, hard to slot into either what comes before or after.

It didn't help that Images wasn't available for ages; seldom revived, rumor had it the elements had been destroyed in a fire, but DVDs and Blu-Rays of quality started appearing in the mid 2000s.

Images and Three Women both have unique Stoner-Bergman thing going on.

watching Three Women I do think of Bergman's Persona, but it's different

but also maybe the same

Images was an early try for the mystery of Three Women, but (as Kael pointed out) the dialogue is terrible and it is a lot more heavy-handed. I waited years to see it on the big screen and was terribly disappointed. Actually, That Cold Day in the Park, though inconsistent, is somewhat similar to both films, and probably superior to Images.

that scene in The Company with the couple dancing on an outdoor stage to My Funny Valentine in a thunderstorm with just cello and piano accompaniment was spectacular

Same. It may be the peak of his powers.

i love images

pic.twitter.com/CPrRI7pObJ

— Nicky Smith (@nickyotissmith) March 24, 2021

Not sure if I ever shared this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDgCM-V41_A

So great...

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/california-split-40-years-later-interview-elliott-gould-george-segal-joseph-walsh-three-parts/

Joseph Walsh shared a California Split sequel script on his website: http://josephrwalsh.com/jrw/

Very important update: In the course of doing my all-time movie ballot, I reversed my Altman 1-2 from McCabe/Goodbye to Goodbye/McCabe. Since I'm on record upthread as a McCabe voter in this poll, I would like to change my vote and finally break this tie.

Still impressed ILX picked the right four as the top four, whatever order they came in.

I've still not seen 3 Women. Surprised A Wedding only got one vote, that's great.

A Wedding is the first of his '70s run that I remember basically nothing about (although Buffalo Bill is a little fuzzy).

I'm generally the one arguing that later films don't equal earlier ones, but with Nashville to one side, I'd now include Player and Short Cuts in the mix with the best (and maybe Tanner, although I liked it a little less on second viewing).

The Player...

Buffalo Bill is if Reg Dunlop from slapshot started a medicine show.

On the plus side, no hockey.

A Wedding is the first of his '70s run that I remember basically nothing about (although Buffalo Bill is a little fuzzy).

― Slime Goobody (Old Lunch), Friday, May 21, 2021 6:53 AM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

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