Sight and Sound 2022 Top 20

The best Michael-before-the-fall moment might be the coda to II, where he announces his enlistment (to the befuddlement of Sonny).

Which is a big part of why I've always said it's better to the see the two original films back-to-back, rather than the chronologically reordered TV version. The extra scenes are nice to have, but you lose those present-past transitions.

Agreed.

When Michael visits Kay at the school, he already looks sunken and hunched.

The best part of Michael's arc might just be Brando's expression when he gets out of hospital and they explain to him what Michael's done

I can visualize that perfectly: Tom tells him (hesistantly) "It was Michael who shot Sollozzo," then Brando weakly waves him away.

I get that it's beautiful to look at on the big screen (and the soundtrack is the best thing about it for me; I couldn't not see it after looking at the music choices). But I don't see anything very profound in HAL, and what engages your intellect in this?
― xyzzzz__, Monday, January 9, 2023

I'm probably not going to express my ideas here very well, but:

besides the overwhelming visual impact of viewing it on a big screen and the soundtrack, what engages me most is its story about leaps in evolution that seem almost impossible, its vision of the past, and its stunning imagination of the future. HAL's dysfunction is focused on a moment in the middle of the film - possibly predicting something we as humans are going to be facing in the not too distant future - but the span of time in the movie is so vast

xp Cazale's great in that scene too. Fredo knows that he's dead weight, and that the family's had to make a deal to ensure his protection, and there's that hint of embarrassment as he repeats the line that they're using to save face. "I'm going to learn the casino business." "Yeah..."

If Fredo has driven to that toll booth instead, and saw the fedoraed men with Tommy guns, he'd have probably waved and said "hey guys!"

I love Dan S's posts.

Xpost His handling of the gun probably an accurate depiction of what would happen if most inexperienced people tried to quickly pull and shoot

his anguished PAP! PAP!!! when Vito's shot is masterful acting.

Very visceral

Have you all spent the entire day talking about The Godfather?

A little bit. Mostly I puttered around in the kitchen in honour of my favourite film.

You never know, you might have to cook for 20 guys someday

what engages me most is its story about leaps in evolution that seem almost impossible, its vision of the past, and its stunning imagination of the future. HAL's dysfunction is focused on a moment in the middle of the film - possibly predicting something we as humans are going to be facing in the not too distant future - but the span of time in the movie is so vast

― Dan S, Tuesday, 10 January 2023 bookmarkflaglink

I find the dystopian aspect of it pretty poor and really divorced from politics into something really nihilistic and teenage. Technology -- whether it's a book or a computer -- has always been with us and it's always breaking and sorta dysfunctional when it's mass produced. It's a lot more banal and everyday relationship with tech.

OTOH I only watched it once and spent time rolling my eyes at it. I didn't see it at an impressionable age. Vast ranges of time is an ok idea though I think I wasn't interested by then.

Always remember Mark S saying somewhere on here that in Kubrick's future they still hadn't sorted the Visible Panty Line.

I could read Dielman as someone -- very slowly and eventually -- worn down by time and technology (household appliances used to cook, for example).

You see time as vast and terrifying too, an emptiness to fill xp

It should be noted that 2001 came out in 1968 and huffing about "hmm, unsophisticated portrayal of dystopia" is kind of laughable considering the multiplex films it existed next to and the fact that dystopia is hardly the first thing on its mind.

x-post

I saw JD as mechanically powering through the responsibilities of a good housewife (and taking the same determined More Work For Mother attitude to...servicing her johns). Then something--perhaps the letter from her sister in Canada, perhaps the conversation with her son about his early ideas about sex and his ensuing Oedipus Complex phase--throws her out of gear.

xposts: plenty of published 60s (and before) SF is already grappling with what I am talking about in a more sophisticated way than what Arthur C Clarke is doing. Maybe Kurbrick could've absorbed some of it and not been so lazy.

All of that, plus per Akerman she has her first orgasm with the second john — indicated only by the mussed hair — which makes her late and throws after her routine. Then it happens again with the third John, which represents a level of threat to her whole careful order and emotional repression that she can’t process.

Throws OFF her routine I mean

it's true, Kubrick famously hated reading and researching. xxp

About the only film I haven't seen on the hundred, Daisies, will get a viewing tonight. Can't wait.

xx-post

Useful information. I assume JD has been studied as a retort to Belle de Jour's fantasy of a proper bourgeoise housewife/part-time whore?

Kubrick was a compulsive collector and hoarder, since when is that researching?

lol oh ok.

theres plenty of sophisticated politics to be found in 2001 imho, especially (but not exclusively) if you can put yourself in the headspace & concerns of a 1968 viewer, beyond simplistic dystopian allegories. but per ryan upthread if you truly get no pleasure out of the images & music & editing theres not much else to be said.

best parts of JD for me are those moments she seems lost in thought, those moments she's not working. waiting for the store to open, the cafe, arguably even the closing shot--she withdraws into herself, seems alive in a new way. it's possible the ending removes any ambiguity from what's going on these moments, but not necessarily and I prefer to think not.

one cool thing about 2001 is Kubrick's sensibility clashing with Clarke's way more optimistic technological humanism.

BdJ surely needs no such retort, predicated as it is upon being just that fantasy, that impossibility

in the absence of Bunuel, Tarkovsky, a few others, will go for 2001 over Jeu cos wheeee space wheeeeee

"Kubrick was lazy and didn't do research;" an amazing starchild of a take is born this day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aGnuLXCruc

in the absence of Bunuel, Tarkovsky, a few others, will go for 2001 over Jeu cos wheeee space wheeeeee

― imago, Tuesday, 10 January 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Space isn't fun at all in 2001 or in Solaris.

Space, where no one can hear you snore

(I like 2001)

me too, but I did fall asleep during a screening of it once

Where no one can hear you meme, iirc

It's okay to fall asleep during movies -- I have watching Tsai or even Jeanne Dielman (sorry, Morbs, wherever you are).

Heh. I have fallen asleep in many movies. At first I felt guilty but eventually I started to liken to the old days of "walking in in the middle" and enjoyed the challenge of filling in the blanks when I woke back up. I also witnessed my erstwhile friend the big shot director fall asleep on several occasions so there's that too.

Once during Vengeance Is Mine iirc.

Technology -- whether it's a book or a computer -- has always been with us and it's always breaking and sorta dysfunctional when it's mass produced.

hal's madness isn't about a hippie distaste for technology. (also he is not mass-produced but bespoke, but maybe this is part of yr complaint.) it's about taking the nsc-68 values of the conference room scene, where everyone is reminded of the necessity of lying to their families, to their logical terminus. same as dr strangelove.

There's an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show where his alibi for some situation depends on him having fallen asleep during a film. Every time he tells another person- Buddy, Sally, eventually Laura, I guess- they inevitably say "You fell asleep during The Guns of Navarone?!"

(and like, indeed the thing in hal has always been with us, hence the monkey part, xps)

I'm sure you-know-who would have remembered that one.

i nodded off a few times during inland empire in the theater last year

waking up at any point in that movie is a horrible experience

falling deeply asleep in the theater and waking up without having any sense of where you are in the runtime is really fun, i highly recommend it. downside is you might get robbed, but thats the magic of cinema for you.

Back in my drinking days, I fell asleep in the theater and missed most of Inglorious Basterds. I have yet to re-watch it.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul's films always seem like an invitation to sleep - "I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours"

Carpenter's Dark Star in particular comes across like a working stiff riposte to the sleekness and sterility of Kubrickian space travel. 2001 elides questions of ownership - who's funding all this? - although you'd think Kubrick, if not Clarke, might have better anticipated the rise of the despotic billionaire spaceship owner/controller. No need for Hal (at a narrative level) when someone like Musk is far more unpredictably petty and vengeful.