Frederick Wiseman

Law & Order is my fav of the half-dozen ive seen so far. all criminals are beautiful

If you guys have library cards, join Kanopy for a bunch of Wiseman.

Um...

...did he die?

DON'T DO THAT

I’m sorry guys

Go on, James...

Meant to say my libraries stopped doing Kanopy years ago.

okay, was fearing the obit!

saw Primate, thought the statement "after a time watching it is possible to wonder which ones of these two sets of primates is the more strange" made sense

I just watched Meat, which I found several degrees less disturbing/difficult to watch than Primate. Really, really tough.

City Hall is on Kanopy now. I still haven't watched Monrovia...I was just telling a friend that I have so much movie access at home--Kanopy, Criterion, Prime, Netflix, Tubi, Hollywood Suite (not to mention the hundreds and hundreds of DVDs I've bought and filed away unseen)--that I often find I'm paralyzed; I end up rewatching some bit of fluff instead of the thousand films I should be watching. But I am going to make a concerted effort in the next couple of weeks to watch the two Wisemans.

I wonder if the Kanopy selection is different depending on your library, but all 43 Wiseman films are available in mine. I've been going through them chronologically and recently saw Meat, which was another gruesome one in the vein of Primate

yea kanopy varies dramatically by library

Canal Zone (1977) was interesting, mostly visually, but I thought Sinai Field Mission (1978) and Manoeuvre (1979) were both kind of dull

Wiseman’s four-part film series on disability - Deaf (1986), Multi-Handicapped (1986), Adjustment and Work (1986) and Blind (1987) - were all interesting.

I thought they expressed really well that communication is not just about speech or writing but also touch, sound, gesture, comportment

Apologies for recycling social media posts, but I've been thinking about Sinai Field Mission a lot.

But what it’s really portraying is a group who have fenced themselves off in the desert and (in the name of trying to maintain peace between Israel & Egypt) can’t even make peace among themselves. pic.twitter.com/v0aDfw21c2

— Chris Barrus (@quartzcity) October 29, 2021

It opens with a near wordless scene of a guy driving out in the middle of the desert to brush sand. Legit thought that Wiseman was making an Antonioni movie. pic.twitter.com/nXXvrh8Xcu

— Chris Barrus (@quartzcity) October 29, 2021

Some of the best depictions of boredom. pic.twitter.com/2feH2ypj3M

— Chris Barrus (@quartzcity) October 29, 2021

thought that film was inscrutable

I like that he moves methodically from subject to subject

going through them chronologically, the next one for me is Missile (1988)

"Frederick Wiseman Goes Fictional for the First Time - After nearly 60 years of non-fiction filmmaking, Wiseman tells IndieWire why he picked "A Couple" as his first fiction film."
https://www.indiewire.com/2022/08/frederick-wiseman-interview-a-couple-1234747847/

I am about halfway through a VHS rip of The Garden, his doc about Madison Square Garden filmed from '97-98 that is apparently his only currently suppressed film. James Dolan apparently withdrew legal permission to release it due to scenes of MSG execs plotting labor negotiation strategy (more info here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/04/25/secret-garden). It would no doubt have been up there as one of his most colorful and accessible films were it released, and Stone Cold Steve Austin and Mary J. Blige among others would officially be considered Wiseman vets.

A couple months back I asked one of the hosts of Wiseman Podcast (big, big recommendation for this BTW - better than all film podcasts) if they were going to cover The Garden - they will and apparently the film will get an official release next year.

Whoa, cool; thanks! I think I follow the Wiseman podcast guy on Twitter but have not checked it out yet.

If you check out any episode, listen to their interview with Wiseman himself. It's good and covers a lot of subjects that I haven't heard in any other interviews with him.

I'm in the middle of Belfast, Maine right now. Heavy, miasmic, rough road of American gothic but some of the scenes are among Wiseman's best.

(I love that he's into Down By Law)

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

Love that clip. Going to guess he and Jarmusch know each other, but if not, can you imagine sitting there and watching this and hearing Frederick Wiseman say he loves your film and he's seen it six times?

Watching “Central Park” over the last few days.

Early takeaway: I would like to visit this park, but, um, not in the late 1980s.

We watched City Hall over the weekend and I sorta think it should have been called Mayor??

Early takeaway: I would like to visit this park, but, um, not in the late 1980s.

The Midnight Oil show wasn't that bad!

It was nice to see LeVar Burton!

And yeah, the Midnight Oil performance is great!

Damn, people seemed to love Ed Koch.

Happy 93rd birthday today Fred!

La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet (2009), the last Wiseman joint shot on film and the first in a wide format (though interestingly 5:3 rather than 16:9 or 1.85 like the films that follow) is a good deal weirder than you might expect going into it. pic.twitter.com/Py1RQQUIBO

— arlin golden (@cerealburrito) May 13, 2023

Watching “Missile”.

worth turning on the subtitles on that just for the “bland music “ cues

Kinda electric to encounter “Planet Claire” and “Pop Music” in Model.

And … there’s Andy Warhol!

We had to pause Crazy Horse midway through because I outbursted with "this is Fredrick Wiseman's verison of the James Bond opening credits!" and then we wondered what a Wiseman James Bond movie would even be like - we made up more and more preposterous and funnier scenes. Frederick Wiseman's UNIVERSAL EXPORTS: Endless meetings with photo-interpreters, do we/do we not burn fuel on the spy satellite to get a better photo? Lots of one sided telephone calls, many pained looks into screens, others repetetively cleaning up audio transcriptions. A janitor empties the paper shredders and burn bags and night, Bond himself is never direcly on camera, we only see him through drone overheads and surveillance video.

Will never forget the critic who dubbed that movie Tittie-butt Follies.

The restaurant movie gets a title: Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros and a premiere at TIFF this year. It's 4 hours long too - stoked!

I hope it gets a decent run in the U.S.

sounds really good

going through all of his films in order by year I have still only made it up to High School II from 1994

There are a couple of reviews of Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros out - this one maybe the most considered?
https://outskirtsmag.com/Menus-Plaisirs

Tonight: Essene.