RW Fassbinder: C/D, S/D, Y/DA-Y/DA

"5x2" is really not worth the bother -- my local library stocks this for some reason! By coincidence I caught a screening of Cassavetes' "Faces" today, which does the whole marriage is blah with about, I dunno, 10 billion times more style, etc.

Only seen 3 or 4 of his but you should see "Fear eats the Soul", jed.

with fassbinder, the work is almost justification for the life. people are mannequins so it's okay to push them around.

none of the people in the fassbinder films i've seen (admittedly only about 5) seemed like mannequins. a lot of them are unpleasant, or do unpleasant things, but they're at least complicated unpleasant people. and of course not all of them are unpleasant, and also there's a huge amount of life and color in the movies that you seem to be denying. but anyway. to each his own and all that.

The Index of ILX Film Snobs

I shouldn't really talk That One Guy Who etc (I'm sure I knew who you were at some point but can't keep track of nu-handles), I was a Fassbinder fan when I was a teenager but haven't seen anything in years & years - I remember liking Herr R., Satan's Brew & 13 Moons precisely because they were dire empty difficult and in the case of the last one coked beyond reason = I liked them for personal reasons

I imagine what you're saying about the audience goes hand-in-hand with pretty much any arthouse director though no?

saw The Third Generation last night. I've been saving up the 10 or so I haven't seen yet for special occasions like the good wine, but then when I get to something as amazing as that one, it makes me want to make a run on the video store, take two days off from work and batten down

the scene where Eddie Constantine as the corrupt CEO chides the police chief for not having a sense of humor, and the police chief responds by saying 'I had a dream last night... that Capitalism invented Terrorism to force the State to protect it better... isn't that funny?' and they break out into hysterical laughter

and the opening credit sequence with the flashing credits & Peer Raben's kosmische score is one of the most psychedelic things I've seen in months, where the hell are the complete Peer Raben soundtracks? a CD with all the atmospheric pieces in these Fassbinder films would go head to head with all my favorite Cluster & Conrad Schnitzler albums, why can't it be real

http://images.kino.de/flbilder/max02/mbiz02/mbiz19/z0219513/m135.jpg

http://images.kino.de/newspics/655/6655_1/m80.jpg

yeah wish i could find a single jpg of udo's shock wig in this film

leaving work early to stop by home & record the music of the opening sequence into pro tools before returning the dvd

Berlin Alexanderplatz is in my house right now, it is due back in 4 or 5 days. Probably not gonna happen. There's always summer I guess.

http://www.artecapital.net/uploads/39_1.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9jGFSY3wnw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TBuCNvVPI4

http://www.sendspace.com/file/cckwug

Third Generation was awesome agree. Wouldn't say no to a listen to every bit of soundtrack Raben composed from around '76-'79 (Fassbinder's or otherwise, Ottinger 'Ticket of No Return' had some great stuff in it).

The sound design (?) was marvelous -- e.g. all that muffled sound coming off the TV, and so on.

Chinese Roulette was no good tho'.

Elementary school children's Q&A w/ RWF:

http://orpheusfx.blogspot.com/2009/03/fassbinders-q.html

What do you think is needed for a perfect Sunday morning?

Caviar, champagne, the Eight Symphony of Mahler, 'radio activity' by Kraftwerk, the Sunday Bild paper, a book so exciting you don't want it to end, a friend, a good friend, and the possibility of unplugging the phone.

thanks fo rthe link. classic stuff, although I find it hard to believe that elementary school kids designed this Q&A

World on a Wire restored and playing NYC MoMA week after next.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/movies/04wire.html

G. Kenny on WoaW:

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2010/04/out-in-the-real-world-in-real-time-fassbinders-welt-am-draht-world-on-wire.html

The film is simultaneously constantly piss-taking and deadly earnest, a labyrinthian riot of scenes seen solely via reflective surfaces, set in an only vaguely futuristic world where characters do their expository walk-and-talks around a small indoor swimming pool whilst a Marlene Dietrich impersonator swoons about. the film, the riches of which include an extended scene that pays snarky homage to both 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange, sometimes resembles a mind-meld of Kubrick and Alfred Jarry, Fassbinder and lensers Michael Ballhaus and Ulrich Prinz running the show on screen with wildly anarchic creativity while the characters in it are in near-constant torment over who's running their show. Characters in zombie makeup out of Carnival of Souls pop in and out of the film's two (at least at first) depicted "worlds," one ostensibly "upper" and the other "lower," and while one realm is not ever depicted as more materially desirable than the other, those who "know" that they are "simulations" become desperate to transfer to the upper world, because then they will have the assurance of being "real." That individuals in the upper world are discovering that they themselves might lack "realness," well, you can imagine the problems this can create.

Got the two boxsets over Xmas/New Year (Praise be to FOPP/ Twenty quid a popp). Took me until now to see "Love Is Colder Than Death", which I'd always assumed must be a load of old tosh, but is great, it looks beautiful and Ulli Lommel is very handsome, the scene on the train between him and the girl is hilarious, "Are you thinking about sex?" "No, the revolution". Only in the 60s eh? Also I now love "Gods of the Plague", I'd seen it before but hadn't appreciated it much, general consensus is that "The American Soldier" is the best of his 'gangster' films but I think this is, this time round it's Harry Baer who is handsome, I love the ludicrous last lines RWF gives characters as they lay a-dying, love the soundtrack to this film too. One word of warning don't watch "Fear of Fear" if you're feeling ill, as I was on Saturday night, the wobbly screen bit will make you vomit, as I did on Saturday night...

... and by the way, this might belong on the football thread but:

Rainer Werner Fassbinder's favourite footballers of all time:

1. Helmut Haller
2. Paul Breitner
3. Garrincha
4. Gerd Müller
5. Gento
6. Didi
7. Harald Konopka
8. Peter Grosser
9. Vava
10. Ferenc Puszkas

... I admit I had no idea who Peter Grosser was and only vaguely knew the name, Harald Konopka. Overall seems to be a marked fondness for podgy, slightly unhealthy looking, individuals with various substance abuse problems ... wonder why? (Maradona was surely made for RWF!)

Yeah he would've stalked Maradona.

never really understood the appeal of this guy. he seems like an endurance test. which I can appreciate fro ma campy John Waters-esque POV but it's not like I actually want to sit through any of it

Although both no doubt share a love for melodrama I doubt John Waters would enjoy any Fassbinder (they use that aspect very differently).

There is an appeal to Fassbinder but it isn't wide (much of it rooted in German history).

Some of his films have really knocked me out and others were just impenetrable.
Really like Love Is Colder Than Death fwiw.

um Waters LOVES Fassbinder

http://www.fassbinderfoundation.de/node.php/en/newyork

he's on the fucking Board of Directors!

haha! Ah well, doesn't scan.

Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven tomorrow. Thoughts?

She could pull through.

the other place has better seats

Saw a trailer for World on a Wire the other night--it opens here shortly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URq7m3-SOtA&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1&safe=active

Morbius had a couple of posts on it last year. There are some famous sci-fi films that I don't get as much out of as most people--2001, Solaris--but it looks like it could be excellent.

I think you will like this one, Phil.

It's kind of sci-fi, crime thriller, mad-as-a-TV-miniseries European art film rolled into one.

There are a handful of Fassbinders I love, and a handful I find boring, so I'm hoping for the best. The one thing that struck me immediately was that it had a great look.

World on a Wire is great, definitely one of my favourite fassbinder films actually.

He has so many films that of course he's got a few rubber donuts. I can't finish Berlin Alexanderplatz.

There's a restored R1 dvd of Despair out today!

ooh i want to see world on a wire. i took a fassbinder class in college that was pretty much total immersion -- a great/scary body of work to be immersed in!

It's like being up his ass.

Lord Sotosyn, when you finally get to the last episode / coda of Berline Alexanderplatz, you'll be happy

World On A Wire is one of the made-for-television films; it has almost zero budget, most of which they spent on tinfoil to wrap around the walls of the simulacron's control room. But very stylized and looks great. It's a little long, was originally a two episode series, and it's all talk no effects so sci-fi fans who are not Fassbinder fans might be advised to gauge expectations, but the basic concept is razor sharp and yes it definitely does anticipate all of the better ideas in the The Matrix by about three decades. I loved it. Wouldn't make my top 5 Fassbinder, maybe my top 15.

Saw Satan's Brew for the first time last week! Good lord. I thought Third Generation was slapstick, but that was highbrow compared to the pacing / density of this one where every line of dialogue seems to be trying to be playing it up for yuks. It was a little exhausting how hard it tries, actually, but it was still funny and Margit Christensen doing straight up comedy -- amazing!

xp yucko!

hmm haven't seen satan's brew, though i like funny fassbinder. one of my faves is beware of a holy whore. the ray charles sequence is amazing.

Board should add a Suggest Banish to TMI button over on the side.

So WOAW is getting a theatrical release in the US? Or is a region 1 dvd coming out? I can't wait, looks like total bait for me.

There's an Elvis hit that pops up on the soundtrack of WoaW, and I remember thinking that today it would cost more than the entire 1973 budget.

It's good, but very much him, more than much other s.f. with similar themes. His mother has a particularly thankless role, even for her.

Kamikaze 89 is one of my favorites. Fassbinder stars but didn't direct

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_6m7808n5Y

His mother has a particularly thankless role, even for her.
that one short film with fassbinder and his mom playing themselves (autumn in germany) is wild. weird relationship to say the least.

or rather germany in autumn

xp

Beware is one the very best ones. But it's funny for different reasons. Satan's Brew is like a sitcom, it almost feels like it should have a laugh track, very uncharacteristic.

I remember watching Beware at the Castro towards the end of a RWF festival. About 50 people, all spread out through the theatre, many people alone, including me (as my friend Anne who was working the booth told me as she sold me the ticket: 'Ha ha, one for Fassbinder, how many times have I heard that this week'). Everyone was mostly silent for about the first 40 minutes, and then some lines in the film started causing individual audience members to crack up and lose it, one at a time -- until, gradually, every line was causing different people to laugh, so the laughter was travelling in pockets across the theatre. It was bizarre. It was less like the lines were funny, and more like people were reaching their individual limits of how much they could take and being forced to vent.

yeah, that's sort of how i remember seeing it too. it didn't seem very funny at first but the cumulative effect just kicked the whole film into hilariousness. i can't really think of any other movie quite like it.