ILX Film Club, The (1924-2019)

Reasoning?

Putting professors above projectionists!

Ah!

96/100 and only because I accidentally put Jacques Rivette when I meant François Truffaut

Check out the big brain on Brad!

77/100 -- a couple of dumb mistakes on movies I've seen, a couple of lucky guesses on movies I haven't seen

71, though at least half were guesses.

(Some of them informed guesses, though.)

76. About five films I did see and couldn't place grr

88. Nailed every one I knew, every guess I guessed wrong

Oh and messed up Spike Lee . Just couldn't place that image in that film somehow

84/100!

I guessed on most of the contemporary Asian stuff, which rarely payed off. And I got the Black female directors all switched around. The only film I've seen that I miscredited was Death of Mr. Lazarescu.

I just exchanged texts with my friend who actually is a projectionist but did not mention this quiz.

I got 89. several of them were guesses based on what I know about the filmmakers’ visual aesthetics or the time periods from the images. I got several directors mixed up - Mizoguchi and Kobayashi, Kazan and Wyler, Etrice and Saura and others. I guessed Larisa Shepitko’s The Ascent correctly only because I have recently seen stills from it on twitter, but I haven’t watched it. Also still have yet to watch Djibril Diop Mambéty’s films, a few of which are on Kanopy, or Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman

My projectionist friend told me about this yesterday:
https://framed.wtf

oh, it's a one-per-day thing, like wordle

Yes. I only started doing it yesterday.

But I like, I like.

I love Framed but I get annoyed every time a Marvel movie zilches my overall record

Will we be using this thread for discussion of films that are not on your list but are still, say, Morbius favorites?

Just the ones on the list, think there are several which wouldn't be there without his influence.

just downloaded sherlock jr, which i think just sneaks in as public domain. only i seem to have an entirely silent one and i can her neighbours clanking around

Looking through the list, some of my favourite directors, Louis Malle, Miloš Forman, Roy Andersson, Sidney Lumet, are either missing entirely or have a single entry, think this is probably A Good Thing on a personal level, more to explore, less so to those whose favourites are more well-represented I suppose, though otoh everyone likes talking about their favourites.

xp There are many different options for watching Sherlock Jr on YouTube with different soundtracks.

To your last post: that is sort of the whole good and bad of lists in a nutshell.

I've watched the first hundred.

For those who have MUBI, try to catch The General over the next 3 days before it gets yanked

I really am going to be forced to watch Holiday on the Buses huh

Whose first place vote was that?

Is Holiday on the Buses the same as Mexican Bus Ride?

Man those MUBI Leaving Soons are torture. I rewatched THE GENERAL recently and maybe still have it saved on my cable box so I think I will pass on that and watch a few others.

i never her.

finished Sherlock Jr as it was only 44 minutes long. (this was an archive.org download rather than youtube. ogg video in fact, only 100MB, 400x300 but perfectly watchable)

is that a recognised meaning of the work sheik?

yes -

2 usually sheik : a man supposed to be irresistibly attractive to romantic young women

lots of things that are now cliches, probably a lot different back in 1924. the suitcase jump kinda spoilt it - everything else was at least possible

THE GENERAL also avaiable in several other places, Amazon Prime, Criterion and... wait for it... Tubi. https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/the-general

Actually I have to be careful here as I have been fooled before. Oftentimes something will show up there as being on Amazon Prime but in fact it is only there with a subscription, a subscription to MUBI.

Is Holiday on the Buses the same as Mexican Bus Ride?

― The Windows of the URL (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 12 February 2023 17:27 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I like to think so.

As Mark S likes to tell me, the first On The Buses film was the highest grossing film at the box office that year.

Pfunkboy was Holiday on the Bus's #1 vote

I knew it would be him, that wacky pfunkboy.

hes a menace

> I knew it would be him, that wacky pfunkboy.
> ― Toshirō Nofune (The Seventh ILXorai)

letterboxd, the vexing and sometimes OK film logging website

Ok, close enough to Monday.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Sherlock_jr_poster.jpg

Sherlock, Jr., Buster Keaton 1924
Morbies #480 Sight & Sound Critics #54
Youtube link

First time I'd seen this, I do have a complete Buster Keaton box set but am only halfway through it. Had to watch it twice as the story only made sense with the final scene (to be fair the fact that I had about 20 acupuncture needles stuck in me probably didn't help) - second viewing I found I could appreciate the whole thing, not just the astounding set-piece stunt scenes. Suppose the reason that this is the Keaton film of choice is not just the intricate plotting, the metafictionality of having the action take place on a cinema screen as a projection of the character's own life, represented as this grand, escapist drama is a brilliant conceit, and the final scene where he learns how to propose to his girlfriend by watching the couple on screen is just a great bit of cinema. Also recognised a few scenes from the 1980 documentary series "Hollywood" - including the water tower shot which broke Keaton's neck.

I loved it when I saw it in my 20s, just kind of drifted away.

On the Keaton thread, I posted about how perplexing Bogdanovich's Keaton documentary was.

What about it?

Buster Keaton

I kind of liked that but fair enough.

THE GENERAL also avaiable in several other places, Amazon Prime, Criterion and... wait for it... Tubi. https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/the-general

― The Windows of the URL (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, February 12, 2023 11:34 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Also Wikipedia (it entered the public domain last year): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_General_(1926_film)

Oh wait, actually, it's been in the public domain for decades. But anyway, yeah, it's widely available.

That's happened to me more than once, seeing multiple versions of the same film, sometimes on the same platform, many in terrible shape, wondering why this is so and then... d'oh!

Holiday is now available in full on YouTube

So is Ugetsu Monogatari

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Ugetsu_monogatari_poster.jpg

Ugetsu Monogatari, Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953

Morbsies #462
Sight & Sound Critics #90

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNPfl1dcTkI

Now that most of his great films have become available in the last 20 years, I have less time for Ugetsu, but it's a landmark of creepiness and erotic sorrow.

Not my favourite Mizoguchi but still devastating, timeless

Brilliant

The phrase I see a lot is “first among equals.” I submit that there should be a similar and near-equally laudable “second among equals,” which UGETSU probably is, alongside Mizoguchi’s late run

I don't want to do "better than" arguments, so I'll try very hard not to do that, but what a movie, what magic he crafted throughout his career but the 50s especially, fuiud

I've dug thru the source material cos it fascinates me and I'd confidently argue that - like Hitchcock for example - he made his sources his own and made them better. Ugetsu taps a bunch of veins at once, political personal, but the big point is it sticks with you, it transcends what it might be "about"

It's strange that the most memorable scene from this for me is where the "samurai" brags about his non-existent virtues to his young cronies. The ghost story stuff is a little vague by comparison, though it obviously made a big impression on Tarkovsky.

So this was wild. Don't think I've ever seen anything like it.

Watched with my wife who knows a decent amount about Japanese ghost culture, my idea was that the story followed a dreamlike narrative, but she pointed out that it was a standard, fairly simple morality play if you are familiar with Japanese ghost stories. It was the atmosphere, especially the sound, that made it work for me.

yeah, there are quite a few like it. i think i prefer Kuroneko. i need to rewatch Ghost of Yotsuya (it's on youtube). Kwaidan has similar bits too. Onibaba...

useful list here, including more modern j-horror
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hnica240Wq4

the kiln aspect was interesting as well - there was a bbc4 japanese traditional arts programme on just before i saw Ugetsu for the first time and the same kilns are still in use (although not universally)