tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11510294996515042162024-03-13T07:57:28.624-07:00The Rail of Tomorrowby Scott NyeScott Nyehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03972055870633945280noreply@blogger.comBlogger343125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1151029499651504216.post-77233663941004365022015-03-09T09:15:00.000-07:002015-03-09T09:15:35.288-07:00Wild River, in Porches<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">(<i>Wild River, Elia Kazan, 1960)</i></span></div>
<br />Scott Nyehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760694438241951398noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1151029499651504216.post-10767816846156534422015-01-12T09:52:00.001-08:002015-01-12T13:14:43.125-08:00My Favorite Cinematic Discoveries of 2014<div class="p1">
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">Through both assignments and my own leisure, I saw 199 films made prior to 2013 for the very first time in 2014. Couldn’t quite crack the 200 mark, I guess. 40 were on film, 7 on DCP, 58 on Blu-ray, 52 on DVD, 40 on various home digital platforms, and 2 on Beta tape. I’m slightly ashamed by just how many were American (123!), while 6 came from the United Kingdom, another 6 from Japan, 8 from Italy, 16 from Germany, 29 from France, 2 from Czechoslovakia, 2 from Poland, and 1 each from Armenia, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, India, the Netherlands, and Romania.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Cataloguing, and admitting such things publicly, helps bolster resolve to do better in all arenas in the new year - surely I can get up to a film a week in 35mm, right? Isn’t six Japanese films downright pathetic, given that it is by far the most-represented country on Hulu? I’m five films into the new year, though, and already things are looking up. Not a single film is American, for starters.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 1.15;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><a href="http://criterioncast.com/reviews/dvd-reviews/scott-reviews-masters-of-cinemas-lubitsch-in-berlin-box-set-dvd-review">I Don't Want to Be a Man</a> </i></span></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 16.7272720336914px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>(Ernst Lubitsch, 1918)</b></span></span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - By virtue of him being among my favorite filmmakers, and my having seen eleven of his films for the first time this year, Ernst Lubitsch will appear quite a few times on this list. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I Don’t Want to Be a Man</span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> isn’t the best of them, but it may be the most audacious. Ossi Oswalda plays a rebellious young woman who, frustrated with the constraints of femininity (her guardians scold her drinking, gambling, and smoking habits), masquerades as a man for an evening. There, she has a rousing good time with another man, and they fall into a bit of intimacy, all while he is under the impression that she is a he. The story resolves somewhat more conventionally, but that strong queer foundation makes for the sort of complex sexuality that is central to Lubitsch’s cinema for at least the next twenty years (the finale of which will be discussed later in this column). </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[DVD]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Madame Dubarry</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Ernst Lubitsch, 1919)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - Having previously seen his somewhat more dreary costume dramas </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sumurun </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anna Boleyn </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(neither of which are devoid of their virtues, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sumurun</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> especially, it should be noted), I was very uncertain in approaching Lubitsch’s take on the French revolution. But leave it to the man to focus on the bawdy, outrageous elements of the final days of the French monarchy. The film, resultantly, plays like a predecessor to Sofia Coppola’s relatively tamer </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Marie Antoinette</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, investing completely in the frivolity that royalty enjoyed as its privilege, only for the inevitable overthrow to feel all the more violent, chaotic, and righteous. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Blu-ray]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 1.15;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://criterioncast.com/reviews/dvd-reviews/scott-reviews-masters-of-cinemas-lubitsch-in-berlin-box-set-dvd-review"><i>The Oyster Princess</i></a> </span></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 16.7272720336914px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>(Ernst Lubitsch, 1919)</b></span></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 1.15;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - I saw this movie over six months ago, but I’m still racking my brain for ways to explain it. It does, as the above </span></span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 16.7272720336914px; white-space: pre-wrap;">still</span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> indicates, feature a scene in which about two dozen women box each other. It’s perhaps the most perfectly-executed thing of organized madness there is. It’s absolutely mercenary in its characterization of excess, yet totally joyous in watching it unfold. I’ve never seen anything quite like it, and I want to </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">always </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">be seeing it. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[DVD]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 1.15;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://criterioncast.com/reviews/blu-ray-reviews/scott-reviews-j-b-l-noels-epic-everest-blu-ray-review"><i>The Epic of Everest</i></a> </span></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 16.7272720336914px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>(J.B.L. Noel, 1924)</b></span></span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - In 1924, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine mounted the third-ever attempt to climb Mt. Everest. They brought along captain John Noel to film the expedition, and to capture something of the local people there. Mallory and Irvine died from a fall; it remains unknown to this day whether they reached the top. Infused with tragedy, there’s a dark undercurrent to the stunning images that proliferate this picture. Something of the impossibility of their endeavor is embedded in this film, a yearning to reach beyond their capacity - physical, personal, technological - that creates a more imposing and awe-inspiring vision of Everest than has graced the screen since. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Blu-ray]</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUCskPGkTBcAYO6RZFSQqPqY7iPxG2p3EusPTwFWqsio4-eS4rG0E4ykWce08eDgLQy_ZHOnS2YZIpmYLwM7GIAAc99nsLxQZjo7UqJHCWOsx31suEz_xbwr-fPwNJviFjnwj0vtyPSSc/s1600/frau9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUCskPGkTBcAYO6RZFSQqPqY7iPxG2p3EusPTwFWqsio4-eS4rG0E4ykWce08eDgLQy_ZHOnS2YZIpmYLwM7GIAAc99nsLxQZjo7UqJHCWOsx31suEz_xbwr-fPwNJviFjnwj0vtyPSSc/s1600/frau9.jpg" height="360" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 1.15;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://criterioncast.com/reviews/blu-ray-reviews/scott-reviews-fritz-langs-frau-im-mond-masters-of-cinema-blu-ray-review"><i>Frau im Mond</i></a> </span></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 16.7272720336914px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>(Fritz Lang, 1929)</b></span></span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - The thing about </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Frau im Mond</span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (</span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Woman in the Moon</span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) is that, even though it’s about a space-race to gather a stash of gold on the moon, the premise only becomes campy in retrospect. In 1929, the prospect of gold on the moon (or, for that matter, breathing on the moon, as you see above) wasn’t any more outlandish than sea monsters on Jupiter, the premise of a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Report">Very Serious sci-fi movie</a> that came out just two years ago. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Frau im Mond</span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is in many ways the precursor to the modern science fiction film, blending its fantastical elements in an action/adventure plot, and heavily investing in whatever level of realism it can determine (it was the first film to depict multistage rockets, which, forty years later, would actually take </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">us </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to the moon). Its imagination fills in the blanks, finding a concrete form for the dream of space travel. Like so much of pop culture pre-1970, it’s forever looking forward to what we can accomplish. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Blu-ray]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Pandora's Box</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (G.W. Pabst, 1929)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - Every frame a painting. I should have seen this twelve times by now, but I look forward to doing so soon. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[DVD]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>The Three From the Filling Station</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Wilhelm Thiele, 1930)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - After finding themselves completely destitute and literally stranded on the side of the road after their car runs out of gas, three good friends (as the film was sometimes titled) sell the vehicle to build a petrol station on that very spot. They work in three eight-hour shifts, alternating who’s at work, who’s at sleep, and who’s at play. While working the pump, each independently and unknowingly falls in love with the same woman. Add in plenty of songs and a dash of surrealism, and it's easy to see why it was a massive hit. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Digital]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>The Criminal Code</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Howard Hawks, 1931)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - Hawks has ranked among my favorite filmmakers for nearly as long as I've held such a list, and the layers of his films continue to unfold. </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 13.8000001907349px; white-space: pre-wrap;">The first film of his I saw was <i>The Big Sleep</i></span><span style="line-height: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, so his talent with language was always immediately evident to me. It is certainly on display in this early talkie: two detectives have an extended disagreement about the rules of a card game on the way to a crime scene, and Walter Huston's ability to turn "yeah?" into a sort of mantra is something to behold</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. But what has lingered most with me is the physicality of the picture, the way Boris Karloff moves through rooms with a sort of hulking, terrifying grace, and the mix of desperation and skill that accompanies the eventual jailbreak. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[35mm]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>City Streets</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Rouben Mamoulian, 1931)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - Not the deepest picture, and certainly not in the ranks of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Applause </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">or </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Love Me Tonight</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, but Mamoulian's talent in locking onto and exploiting genre elements, never mind the stunning cinematography that seems to accompany each of his pictures (the movement is extraordinary, certainly, but oh, that lighting!), makes this a thrilling adventure. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Digital]</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQuxFoKZBedxjTMpaJ87t9VfMCy6wFmm0WJ5MfWx0dhDA1ZLgxUTZ4r-CPFKwr_P9Ep7YiQAfV6nc4Ec3xGgI1JlJHJFBM9BJ8HpicEDWCF4Ia_gOFbhKLVyfXxDnCJjf-91snkW6B7ZQ/s1600/redhead8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQuxFoKZBedxjTMpaJ87t9VfMCy6wFmm0WJ5MfWx0dhDA1ZLgxUTZ4r-CPFKwr_P9Ep7YiQAfV6nc4Ec3xGgI1JlJHJFBM9BJ8HpicEDWCF4Ia_gOFbhKLVyfXxDnCJjf-91snkW6B7ZQ/s1600/redhead8.jpg" height="298" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Red Headed Woman</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Jack Conway, 1932)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - Now, this </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a Jean Harlow film about a woman who seduces her way to wealth, and the hallmarks of the Pre-Code era hardly end there. And, for that matter, Conway is more than happy to play them up. But his directorial talent is not merely at the service of the story, focusing his camera quite a bit on the victims of the titular character’s excess (just look at that dissolve above!), including the character herself, whose moral corruption is so embedded that she keeps on seducing a man </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">while he beats her</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Anita Loos’s screenplay, too, refuses to judge her, too caught up in the complexity of her desires to reduce her in the way so many Pre-Code films did. And, hell, this may just be Harlow’s finest hour. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[DVD]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>High Pressure </i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(Mervyn LeRoy, 1932)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - A sort of more overtly comedic </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wolf of Wall Street </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for the Depression, William Powell stars as a business promoter who can’t resist a way to fast cash, even if he inevitably finds the cash all dried up by the end. Powell is an expert at playing these guys who are one step ahead of a dozen potentially-deadly hurdles, relying on pure charm and blind luck to see him through the stickiest situations. Packed into a quick 74 minutes, this is as tightly-woven and funny as they come. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[DVD]</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij8dSJYBk_ArLyzqRhBkt6KQ7CVQUuCh3Ts54G9BZEcv5KLIejPxADZ8yRCM4mZNoAqcMHnanZarOPTDELAGibkY3hG5Dfv4iytpzK1EsCQouY09r5iqeJ062iSU29fbcZ-qfm4l-zvC0/s1600/hallalujahimabum-jolson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij8dSJYBk_ArLyzqRhBkt6KQ7CVQUuCh3Ts54G9BZEcv5KLIejPxADZ8yRCM4mZNoAqcMHnanZarOPTDELAGibkY3hG5Dfv4iytpzK1EsCQouY09r5iqeJ062iSU29fbcZ-qfm4l-zvC0/s1600/hallalujahimabum-jolson.jpg" height="490" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Hallelujah I'm a Bum</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Lewis Milestone, 1933)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - You can’t beat the Depression for its depictions of people down on their luck. No culture did it better. “You might as well laugh a little” was the overriding ethos, rarely better expressed than in this Al Jolson vehicle that satirizes the lifestyles and condescension of the rich, with a pep in its step and a light in its eyes. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[DVD]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 1.15;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://battleshippretension.com/tcm-fest-2014-ginger-rogers-warren-william-and-pre-code-pleasures/"><i>The Stranger's Return</i></a> </span></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 16.7272720336914px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>(King Vidor, 1933)</b></span></span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - There aren’t a lot of movies out there (from any era, honestly) like </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Stranger’s Return</span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, where people face difficult moral decisions, make some poor choices, but aren’t overtly punished for it, nor quite rewarded, just left vaguely dissatisfied and perhaps a little wiser. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[35mm]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>The Actress and the Poet</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Mikio Naruse, 1935)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - The gender politics of this are a little rough, especially considering the great work Naruse would go on to do with female protagonists (never mind those he had </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">already </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">done in the silent era), but the comedy works quite well, and there’s a long scene at the end that anticipates Kiarostami in a big way, exploring the programmatic ways people behave within a marriage. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Digital]</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbYsdURvfHh1uifxERbK9mB_21wQW196DRmYqFHD_I751Bii9Gxg14LH4DSuZBWxtrH6rsuRLB7PGEkR4TB6DDChKBfN3hyxQ8AABbcczfhqNADnnUOfYSHSQJNYwSbL0EyM5celq2y1s/s1600/ceilingzero2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbYsdURvfHh1uifxERbK9mB_21wQW196DRmYqFHD_I751Bii9Gxg14LH4DSuZBWxtrH6rsuRLB7PGEkR4TB6DDChKBfN3hyxQ8AABbcczfhqNADnnUOfYSHSQJNYwSbL0EyM5celq2y1s/s1600/ceilingzero2.jpg" height="311" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Ceiling Zero</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Howard Hawks, 1936)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - Ho-ly shit, you guys. This movie. From what I’ve read, Hawks changed none of Frank Wead’s play about a group of former army pilots who now work in the air delivery business in bringing it to the screen, but it would be just about impossible for the resulting film to be any more Hawksian. James Cagney plays Dizzy Davis, the best pilot in the business, but too reckless to be trusted by growing corporate interests; while Dizzy might not care what those bigwigs think of his style, what happens when his carelessness endangers his fellow fliers? And what of the sharp young female pilot, who seems a good match for Dizzy if only he was half as old? Male camaraderie, the body’s relationship to its environment, and gender politics are central themes for Hawks, all outstandingly condensed into a tight 95 minutes that still manages to have the same sort of languid, hangout feel of his roomier </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rio Bravo</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. It’s an astounding film, one of Hawks’s very best. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Digital]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Final Chord</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (</span><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Detlef Sierck</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, 1936)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - This early film from the man better known as Douglas Sirk holds many of his hallmarks, notably in forging a spiritual connection between two people long before they properly meet, and in exploring the difficulty of navigating love than cannot be fulfilled (more, in this instance, between a mother and her child). </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Digital]</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgglT-p1iZuaIadwEp7ov3qswzzF7WSn5AfFxkcep4Qru7gMSsoZgsQvhY5y8RN8WGNO5NMhq8vRUHIqLhUxjy_2mAYLGWGf4OokpAoeupreqlVhp_hsCYVc2pntzjzCtHL_Taf-t9KMas/s1600/angel1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgglT-p1iZuaIadwEp7ov3qswzzF7WSn5AfFxkcep4Qru7gMSsoZgsQvhY5y8RN8WGNO5NMhq8vRUHIqLhUxjy_2mAYLGWGf4OokpAoeupreqlVhp_hsCYVc2pntzjzCtHL_Taf-t9KMas/s1600/angel1.png" height="297" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Angel</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Ernst Lubitsch, 1937)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - This is the previously-mentioned other end of Lubitsch’s fascination with sexuality, which he would have to all but bury in more conventional forms of romance over the next few years. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Angel </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">doesn’t judge Maria (Marlene Dietrich) for cheating on her husband, but explores the difficulties in marriage that would spur a woman to do such a thing. Further, it doesn’t damn the husband for his carelessness - Sir Frederich Barker (Herbert Marshall) is a genuinely good man, doing necessary work to actually, legitimately make the world a better place. He just forgets to make his wife’s world as fulfilling. And for that matter, her lover, Anthony (Melvyn Douglas) isn’t the perfectly-suave ladykiller, but a somewhat shy, authentically romantic sort who, for that matter, admires Frederich quite a bit himself. Lubitsch and his frequent screenwriter, Samuel Raphaelson, were unparalleled in approaching marital strife in an adult manner, acknowledging the base impulses that cause disruption while rendering a solution that rests within forgiveness, generosity, humility, and a bit of sacrifice. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Digital]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Smart Blonde </i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(Frank McDonald, 1937)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - The first in a series of films featuring intrepid reporter Torchy Blane (Glenda Farrell), which, if the second is anything to go by, get repetitive very fast, nevertheless establishes a fascinating central character and her sometimes-lover partner, detective Steve McBride (Barton MacLane). The mystery element is as formulaic as they come, but you can’t beat this one for quick, clever dialogue and odd character details, most notably that Torchy is constantly asking when they’ll have time to eat, an activity most films scarcely have room for but of which she never seems to tire. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[DVD]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 1.15;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><a href="http://battleshippretension.com/tcm-fest-2014-ginger-rogers-warren-william-and-pre-code-pleasures/">Bachelor Mother</a> </i></span></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 16.7272720336914px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>(Garson Kanin, 1939)</b></span></span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - As screwball set-ups go, Ginger Rogers being unable to convince just about anybody that she’s not the mother of the baby she brought into an orphanage is one of the more socially resonant, all the way through to today when women’s opinions about their own bodies’ activity is given lower precedence in the face of a panel of male experts. Rogers could certainly play the indignation, but the real meat of the picture is doubtlessly one many women could and can relate to - suddenly being stuck with this living </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">thing </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and having not a clue in the world how to keep it alive, let alone responsibly raise it. Only in this era could something so topical also be this damn funny without sacrificing an ounce of its heart; a scene in which David Niven and Charles Coburn have to repeatedly stall their argument to not look bad in front of their butler had me laughing harder than nearly anything else this year. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[35mm]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>The Clock</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Vincente Minnelli, 1945)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - A sort of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Before Sunrise </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for the wartime era, with all the heart that implies, and, courtesy of Minnelli, a considerably more daring aesthetic. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[DVD]</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR4WVbr1eXH2MpZNzg7X1RilOIroUVA7sQXXOwqiacp3p-9F8PIty16GDUEeu9NabaaMSdbCigOtrKRMauHfWypy2q3x-T1efc8cRfwm2FSrGyOIC9OqxlAozozUQww9X7JJJfn9f6Qfw/s1600/easterparade1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR4WVbr1eXH2MpZNzg7X1RilOIroUVA7sQXXOwqiacp3p-9F8PIty16GDUEeu9NabaaMSdbCigOtrKRMauHfWypy2q3x-T1efc8cRfwm2FSrGyOIC9OqxlAozozUQww9X7JJJfn9f6Qfw/s1600/easterparade1.jpg" height="467" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 1.15;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://battleshippretension.com/tcm-fest-2014-presentation/"><i>Easter Parade</i></a> </span></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 16.7272720336914px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>(Charles Waters, 1948)</b></span></span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - So besides just having incredible dance scenes and songs, the relationship aspect of this film is vastly more interesting than the musical comedy typically got (and this coming from someone for whom the musical comedy is the greatest film genre there is). Fred Astaire is in love with Ann Miller, who leaves their song-and-dance duo after getting an offer for a solo show. He replaces her with Judy Garland, who has none of the formal chops of Miller, but has a lot of spunk, and, once Astaire becomes willing to change the nature of his show, she emerges as a huge star herself. Yet he still pines for Miller, who is giving hints she’d like to take him back, professionally and otherwise. It’s no spoiler to say who he ends up with, but the film has a very adult approach to feeling torn between two people who satisfy different sides of oneself, how much forgiveness is required in a relationship, and how little that need detract from the love you share. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[35mm]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Tension</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (John Berry, 1949)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - There’s a lot of good stuff in this picture, but you have to give it up for a single small speech Cyd Charisse gives that concludes with a line so simple and beautiful and perfect that it literally caused the audience to cheer. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[35mm]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Born to Be Bad</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Nicholas Ray, 1950)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - All the usual pleasures of Ray, a film full of sin and degradation and the impossibility of true redemption. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[35mm]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>A Streetcar Named Desire</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Elia Kazan, 1951)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - Yeah, well, I’m sure there’s some landmark films you haven’t seen, either! Anyway, this one’s pretty good, who’d have thought. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[35mm]</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjWqmkZkxSFZip3UgByVrcXp6Jw1NjoybpfzPVPRj6n0bEWtFJ7KpQB43WI8jwhZ2UBph0qdtRE7HMrj2qvNNOJGzT-D8KsIop0n9DPEfpsSzxrFy72QQei1S4bMk-RGzxI5wMd4hehwY/s1600/14hours.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjWqmkZkxSFZip3UgByVrcXp6Jw1NjoybpfzPVPRj6n0bEWtFJ7KpQB43WI8jwhZ2UBph0qdtRE7HMrj2qvNNOJGzT-D8KsIop0n9DPEfpsSzxrFy72QQei1S4bMk-RGzxI5wMd4hehwY/s1600/14hours.jpg" height="479" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Fourteen Hours</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Henry Hathaway, 1951)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - Adapted from a magazine article detailing the social and media circus the emerged around a man who stood on a New York window ledge for fourteen hours before jumping, Hathaway’s version uses only the scarcest details - the time frame, the place, and the fact that the man would only speak to a beat cop the whole time - but finds a modern link in the subject’s despondency over the course his life has taken. Notable, too, is the light suggestion of shame over repressed homosexuality, touched on so briefly that the Hays Office (or many audiences, I’m sure) wouldn’t think twice, but implied just enough for those who wish to interpret it as such. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[DVD]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>La Pointe-Courte</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Agnes Varda, 1955)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - Varda’s debut feature, arguably the first of the French New Wave, had, thus, little commercial or industrial precedent. She simply saw something lovely in the titular place, and went about capturing it in a singularly discursive mix of avant-garde and documentary techniques. At once a portrait of the physical reality of a place and a dreamlike exploration of the mind (via a married couple on the rocks), one can see how Alain Resnais (who served as editor on this film) really ran with the aesthetic conceit a few years later, but for Varda, there were other avenues yet to explore. That this has not been forcefully posited as a landmark film in the French cinema is absurd. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[DVD]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Hollywood or Bust</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Frank Tashlin, 1956)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - Not </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">exactly </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a discovery, as I’d seen it on DVD back in 2010, and thought it pretty, well...corny. But I was younger then! Less experienced in the ways of the world. That was before I’d seen any other Tashlin features, or any Jerry Lewis at all. So the experience of seeing it now, with both Tashlin and Lewis among my favorite filmmakers - certainly of their era, possibly of all time - with a crowd, on 35mm...it might as well have been my first time. This was the last film Dean Martin did with Lewis, and they reportedly didn't say a word to one another on set when the cameras weren't rolling, but you'd never guess it from the finished film. Their rapport is as snappy as ever, their roles so clearly defined that, even if they were more or less on automatic, the result feels as pure as their first film together. And Tashlin, who took an existing screenplay and tailored it for them, has gags to spare to keep them rolling. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[35mm]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><i>King Creole</i></b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Michael Curtiz, 1958)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - This remains the only Elvis film I’ve ever seen, and I gather it is not a terribly representative one, but man, if there is even one more out there like it, I want it. The King plays a high school dropout trying to support his father and sister when he catches a lucky break as a nightclub singer. He gets into more than a little trouble along the way, with local gangs and shady club owners, trying to stay on the righteous path but beset by temptation. The emotional tenor often hits some serious </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Written on the Wind </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">territory, nearly as effectively, and Presley makes for a surprisingly compelling leading man, unmannered and unable to be anything but authentic. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Digital]</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwLAIbbtokzTEPYh_n3NtXQCnxqgj9MrbufIAyzOlnwKoUamwH12hSyPvvlXI5xeKSjIqXboca8ooMH5l29Ys_Oh0O61PU1R1K34-I5irzmMjquN32P0xsygY59vLo_b3pKDrMOnCRiFg/s1600/mononcle1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwLAIbbtokzTEPYh_n3NtXQCnxqgj9MrbufIAyzOlnwKoUamwH12hSyPvvlXI5xeKSjIqXboca8ooMH5l29Ys_Oh0O61PU1R1K34-I5irzmMjquN32P0xsygY59vLo_b3pKDrMOnCRiFg/s1600/mononcle1.jpg" height="356" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Mon Oncle</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Jacques Tati, 1958)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - I must confess, aside from some truly inspired moments, I wasn’t completely feeling this one the way that I had the other Tati films I’ve seen (</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">PlayTime</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jour de fete</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">)...until that ending came. For all his rigidly-constructed comedic set pieces, what sets Tati apart as a vital filmmaker is that those never detract from the central feeling of his pictures, which all have something to do with a sort of yearning. As totally heartbreaking a portrait of loss as they come, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mon Oncle</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> illustrates how the upwardly-mobile middle class assimilates and ruins those who wish to simply exist. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Blu-ray]</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 1.15;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://criterioncast.com/reviews/blu-ray-reviews/scott-reviews-john-cassavetes-too-late-blues-masters-of-cinema-blu-ray-review"><i>Too Late Blues</i></a> </span></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 16.7272720336914px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>(John Cassavetes, 1961)</b></span></span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - As much as I dig </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shadows</span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Faces</span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Killing of a Chinese Bookie</span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (still haven’t seen </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A Woman Under the Influence </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">:-/ ), this was the first Cassavetes drama that really landed with me. And yeah, I know, it’s the big compromised one, where he used “sets” and “studio money” and “a tripod,” but when you can’t get purity, the tension of compromise can go a long way. And here, getting Bobby Darin and Stella Stevens - as these repressed, unsuccessful musicians (he a band leader, she a singer) trapped by some mix of convenience and economics - giving performances that are, yes, somewhat awkward, but reflective of the real, honest resistance most people put up to actual emotional engagement, in the context of a John Cassavetes film that will absolutely test their limits and push them both right up against the wall...baby, that’s the tension of </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">life</span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Blu-ray]</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOVz52ikocRvmSYSI6W-gcx8qdusnSyL2Zi3mja7uUtPNCJotaPJU_ULdbDRJEi0JD0Oy9keYZN5ScB-_dNZhzukh8Ww6ibqptQVJa41Ewpe60T7YKMIkfwC5dLysZg7V0rKK6VaARoxQ/s1600/BayofAngels2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOVz52ikocRvmSYSI6W-gcx8qdusnSyL2Zi3mja7uUtPNCJotaPJU_ULdbDRJEi0JD0Oy9keYZN5ScB-_dNZhzukh8Ww6ibqptQVJa41Ewpe60T7YKMIkfwC5dLysZg7V0rKK6VaARoxQ/s1600/BayofAngels2.jpg" height="380" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Bay of Angels</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Jacques Demy, 1963)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - As those of you who follow me on Twitter are aware, I am all in when it comes to Jacques Demy. I get him, he gets me...it’s love, what can I say. Not everybody feels the same way, and that’s fine. Those people tend to be much more into </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bay of Angels </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">than I am. Far and away his most “normative” feature, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bay of Angels </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">has classical tension, elaborately-detailed characters, restrained performances, and a handful of scenes declaring the film’s themes. Its central story of a man who keeps chasing a woman who’s no good for him has been so extensively played out in narrative cinema, literature, theatre, and music that its familiarity becomes comforting. It often feels imitative of the mainstream French cinema that preceded it (Ophüls, Becker, Malle, and Carné are all up in this thing), refined to a modernist style. But you know what else? It’s also really, really, really freaking good. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Blu-ray]</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh60j1D2fXevCaMsXM0prX8UyVqlmmOQw2iw_BKQFuEbeZqIK7d69oRlgze2ehEpCOa3-rBAvfA-JlyPaZrEcJReaLVOvpBGsXXlU7Tupzc0vyc4pGC0JdJpQSr257tJNFrlA2eeMCUXBU/s1600/850__the_big_city_blu-ray_X08.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh60j1D2fXevCaMsXM0prX8UyVqlmmOQw2iw_BKQFuEbeZqIK7d69oRlgze2ehEpCOa3-rBAvfA-JlyPaZrEcJReaLVOvpBGsXXlU7Tupzc0vyc4pGC0JdJpQSr257tJNFrlA2eeMCUXBU/s1600/850__the_big_city_blu-ray_X08.jpg" height="480" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>The Big City</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Satyajit Ray, 1963)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - I’m still very poorly-versed in Ray (only seen this and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Music Room</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">), but this especially convinced me that I’m hugely missing out. This is a rich, complex, beautiful look at gender dynamics in a repressive society that offers no cheap answers, no easy ways out, and is very honest about how complicit both men and women are in maintaining the status quo. Lovely, moving stuff. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Blu-ray]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Une femme mariée</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Jean-Luc Godard, 1964)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - Viewing this the same year as </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Goodbye to Language </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">points to how little has changed for Godard, and the culture around him. Aesthetically, both employ voiceover; overlapping dialogue; vague and off-putting insinuations about sex, marriage, and sex outside of marriage; affronts to capitalism; and abrasive aesthetic contrasts (in both, via montage; in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Goodbye to Language</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, via the 3D camera). Both were received in some quarters with confusion, in others exaltation, and in not a few with genuine anger. Maybe someday we’ll all learn to get along. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Blu-ray]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Alphaville</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - It’s worth briefly noting that the experience of seeing this thing could not be been more excruciating. When seeing a foreign-language film in theaters, one has to carefully negotiate seating so that no heads block the subtitles. Sometimes this means moving from the first chosen seat if someone suddenly sits in front of you. This time, it meant moving </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">three times</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I eventually ended up near the back of the New Beverly - not a large establishment, not a large screen - for a film that’s often said to benefit most from complete immersion. And wouldn’t you know it, the film was still totally immersive and spellbinding and enthralling, Godard’s delightful small asides jazzing up the ominosity that might have otherwise buried the picture. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[DCP]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Boeing Boeing</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (John Rich, 1965)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - In terms of pure where-the-hell-did-this-come-from, this is far and away the discovery of the year. One day back in April, Quentin Tarantino showed four Jerry Lewis films for free at the New Beverly. Unfortunately, it was during TCM Fest, so I could only reasonably make it to one. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Boeing Boeing</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, incidentally, would have been a distant last pick, if I'd had my druthers - the others he was showing also had Dean Martin, the fact that this costarred Tony Curtis suggested that the clash of egos would get in the way, never mind some of stodginess that often accompanies American films from the 1960s, and who the hell is John Rich, anyway?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I don’t know about all that, but </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Boeing Boeing </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is amazing. Adapted from a razor-sharp play, it’s about an American journalist (Curtis) living in Paris who is maintaining three carefully-scheduled relationships with three unaware stewardesses from three international airlines. His world comes crashing down around him due to a combination of airline schedule changes and the recent arrival of his friend and nemesis (Lewis), who expects to be put up in Curtis’s bachelor pad while he finds his own. The thing is, Lewis isn’t playing the familiar Lewis character; if anything, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">he’s </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the straight man. And how beautifully he does it. The ego clashing is still there, but Rich uses it to further the competition between the two men, which builds and builds and builds until they’ve finally torn down all they have. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[35mm]</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6Eph_Hl1mHBdqOs4xAEIST6kv1Xn4wiyizDgYg13ZWsmm7TKhA1V_yBCXmkIJoEEILptod638yOv3t9DU0A6FPQpSuDBi1gM9_a6QG4jpUvPjz09LX_tqjNsNb6jEJVllJCulPQapBgk/s1600/bonheur6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6Eph_Hl1mHBdqOs4xAEIST6kv1Xn4wiyizDgYg13ZWsmm7TKhA1V_yBCXmkIJoEEILptod638yOv3t9DU0A6FPQpSuDBi1gM9_a6QG4jpUvPjz09LX_tqjNsNb6jEJVllJCulPQapBgk/s1600/bonheur6.jpg" height="385" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Le bonheur</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Agnes Varda, 1965)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - So, I’d had Criterion’s Varda box set on my shelf for, oh, about five years at this point (having fallen in love with </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cleo from 5 to 7 </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in college) when I suddenly decide “hey, maybe I should give the rest of these a shot.” So I idly throw in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Le bonheur</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> thinking I’m in for a rather pleasant French relationship drama. 80 minutes later, I’m utterly speechless and on the verge of tears. This is as incendiary a portrait of a marriage as anything from that era, or anything since for that matter, as provocative and ruthless and heartbreaking as they come. To say more would be to completely wreck the experience, but this needs to be sought out and widely seen. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[DVD]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://criterioncast.com/reviews/blu-ray-reviews/scott-reviews-john-guillermins-rapture-blu-ray-review"><i>Rapture</i></a></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></span><b>(John Guillermin, 1965)</b> <span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- You have to see it to believe it. No film today would go where this film goes, and keep this sort of attitude about it. Beautiful, in and out, through and through. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Blu-ray]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Ride in the Whirlwind</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Monte Hellman, 1966)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - “This was made WHEN?” I kept asking myself. “Nineteen-SIXTY-six!” the answer kept coming. Unbelievable. Outrageously ahead of its time in its aesthetic looseness and deeply-ingrained moral uncertainty, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ride in the Whirlwind </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">boldly establishes a difficult moral conundrum and offers no easy solutions, or even solutions at all. In the mid-1960s, this is something of a revolution, pitched ahead of something like </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Ox-Bow Incident </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(which takes the same basic premise, but flips it so that the audience is always safely removed from doubting themselves), but anticipating a moral trajectory that New Hollywood would pretty much beat into the freaking ground ten years later. Something of that radicalism remains embedded in these images still today. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Blu-ray]</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUltKGHF2PwE1-bmgSH16jtjUUqe_a03myHNtZABvWO5i9FZNQ6DbdA2FTm2U5ejAjjPdvI0VUGcsEc6iTY8IYaGCsVwV3TZRz_L7jB1GxKkQepN9sULkwGEAjN1KaduT7gA-DtU8pl58/s1600/color+of+pomegranates.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUltKGHF2PwE1-bmgSH16jtjUUqe_a03myHNtZABvWO5i9FZNQ6DbdA2FTm2U5ejAjjPdvI0VUGcsEc6iTY8IYaGCsVwV3TZRz_L7jB1GxKkQepN9sULkwGEAjN1KaduT7gA-DtU8pl58/s1600/color+of+pomegranates.jpg" height="480" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>The Color of Pomegranates</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (1968)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - I still don’t really get it in any traditional sense, but that’s a little overrated anyway, don’t you think? The images alone are enough. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[DCP]</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGjl4wXqff68O0RVnJW_13gee_x6ilTUGNdKYlRdLGwh95MW4BI-2qP9UjZixP1BuBuA7x6VjxLbZH_P9vZw0nUFYbgwXaMdS9JTdQgHwdnH_EyRaLJuvIrIy2vn4zEt-yGS0oTXhVKnQ/s1600/kabal3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGjl4wXqff68O0RVnJW_13gee_x6ilTUGNdKYlRdLGwh95MW4BI-2qP9UjZixP1BuBuA7x6VjxLbZH_P9vZw0nUFYbgwXaMdS9JTdQgHwdnH_EyRaLJuvIrIy2vn4zEt-yGS0oTXhVKnQ/s1600/kabal3.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 1.15;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://criterioncast.com/reviews/blu-ray-reviews/scott-reviews-walerian-borowczyks-short-films-mr-and-mrs-kabals-theatre-arrow-films-blu-ray-review">Mr. and Mrs. Kabal's Theatre</a></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 16.7272720336914px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>(Walerian Borowczyk, 1967)</b> </span></span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- Like getting a message of outrageous importance from another planet that disintegrates the moment you receive it. I cannot conceive of the mind that conceived of it, I only understand a little bit of it from the basic context it establishes, but I feel nonetheless transformed, shaken, and revitalized because of it. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Blu-ray]</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirUjZiD0kgRog9B2Sq2TLiqDKpfaPS4xHTcSXXjqOt8aTlUNQrd10KaVp9pwXg75LPj4KCqgnPDn9mEzu4lFMzIOLVpgSA3ZAC22ktQgb3BM-V1cIcH-fwbyHr4g6ZAJZBa663pmaXtvg/s1600/modelshop1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirUjZiD0kgRog9B2Sq2TLiqDKpfaPS4xHTcSXXjqOt8aTlUNQrd10KaVp9pwXg75LPj4KCqgnPDn9mEzu4lFMzIOLVpgSA3ZAC22ktQgb3BM-V1cIcH-fwbyHr4g6ZAJZBa663pmaXtvg/s1600/modelshop1.jpg" height="356" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Model Shop</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Jacques Demy, 1969)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - Due to its reputation, I expected this to be one I’d have to go out of my way to defend, finding little nooks and crannies worth appreciating. But no, this is every bit as masterful as anything else Demy made in the 60s (</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Young Girls of Rochefort </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">aside, which is a transcendent masterpiece that cannot be equalled). Bitterly, but beautifully, capping off the relative optimism of his previous efforts, Demy’s arc in those ten years ends up reflecting the mood of the decade altogether, forcefully suggesting that whatever happiness we might find is only temporary. We’re doomed the moment we fall in love, the moment we open ourselves to the possibility of betterment. It was the only film Demy made in America, and it left me wishing he’d stayed to make more. He picked up on so many specifics about Los Angeles, from the oil drilling to the way people use cars as an extension of themselves to communicate with their world. He really captured the mood of a people just waiting for the next shoe to drop, worn out from the events of 1968 and certain of their eventual annihilation. Viewed now, it’s also a mourning for a certain loss of freedom that would slowly clamp down, the limitation of job opportunities, economic inflation, even personal movement. The roads didn’t have lanes back then - you could move about as much as you want, but you’re still charted for the same course. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[DVD]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://battleshippretension.com/home-video-hovel-two-by-alain-robbe-grillet-by-scott-nye/"><i>Eden and After</i></a> (Alain Robbe-Grillet, 1970) / <a href="http://battleshippretension.com/home-video-hovel-successive-slidings-of-pleasure-by-scott-nye/"><i>Successive Slidings of Pleasure</i></a> (Alain Robbe-Grillet, 1974) </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- I got some rather puzzled looks from friends who saw the rather lurid poster art for these films pop up on my Letterboxd, and believe me, whatever you think goes on in the films, I promise they are almost certainly more sexually troubling than you’re imagining, if only because they don’t quite go about it in the usual way. Robbe-Grillet isn’t even toeing the line between exploration and exploitation; the films are rather confrontational about the fact that he is totally getting off on all of it. But he’s also indicting himself a bit in the process of so doing, if that helps. Whatever the case, if you value honesty as much as I do, these are very honest films. No small amount of mystery and intrigue thrown in for good measure. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Blu-ray]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://criterioncast.com/reviews/blu-ray-reviews/scott-reviews-ted-kotcheffs-wake-fright-masters-cinema-blu-ray-review"><i>Wake in Fright</i></a> (Ted Kotcheff, 1971) </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- We’ve no shortage of films and TV shows exploring masculine angst, but how many of them, really, when you get right down to it - and be honest now - feature a scene in which the protagonist actually kills scores of kangaroos and later has (heavily implied) gay sex? I mean really? How many? </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wake in Fright </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">charts its course quite early on, and drives as fast as it can in that direction for the duration of its running time. My kind of movie. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Blu-ray]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://criterioncast.com/reviews/blu-ray-reviews/scott-reviews-brian-de-palmas-sisters-blu-ray-review"><i>Sisters</i></a> (Brian De Palma, 1973)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - I’m not the biggest De Palma guy, on the whole. Most of what he made in the 1980s feels like a retread of a half-dozen influences, not the least of which, it turns out, is himself. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sisters </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">feels like a vital film that simply had to be made, that emerged from a very pure, twisted place. Sure, there are Hitchcock riffs and the like, but whereas this tendency would later feel like a model he would go back to to figure out how to even make a film, this felt more like a genuine extension of his passions and desires. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Blu-ray]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Sticks and Bones</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Robert Downey, 1973) </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- This has garnered a sort of infamous reputation. Shown exactly one time on TV back in 1973. It played without commercials once advertisers found out the nature of the film, and has never been made available in any other form. I can see why. Taking place almost entirely within one house, it’s about a man who returns from Vietnam, blind, and the family who is glad to have him back, but wants nothing to do with the actual trauma he experienced. It’s a deeply uncomfortable experience even today, as much for its irreverence as its confrontation. If I’d seen it on </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">television </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">back in the early 70s, some mixture of fear and disbelief probably would have cause me to light my set on fire. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Beta]</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY9OptuBl74edfSmCdjzFj3Q1vzCBS4EkeIO4zPTfZD52En0qcWBt4e_eEfDl5Afist6crMc5SwyW0kKF-z9Mc8OaTQC6kH3_BmmThwhQ9BdkKpr1LIXDRf7utvXqVNJaNBqDnEzeMb7Y/s1600/sorcerr77hd_05.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY9OptuBl74edfSmCdjzFj3Q1vzCBS4EkeIO4zPTfZD52En0qcWBt4e_eEfDl5Afist6crMc5SwyW0kKF-z9Mc8OaTQC6kH3_BmmThwhQ9BdkKpr1LIXDRf7utvXqVNJaNBqDnEzeMb7Y/s1600/sorcerr77hd_05.jpg" height="360" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Sorcerer</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (William Friedkin, 1977)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - I’m not the biggest </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wages of Fear</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> guy, but this is a wholly different, unsettling, dreamy beast. Friedkin has noted numerous times that it’s the kind of film he could only make when he was too young to value the project above human life. Like Coppola with </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Apocalypse Now </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">or Herzog with </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fitzcarraldo </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Aguirre</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, that reckless abandon is completely evident onscreen, and while I tend to be on the side of human life...man, you cannot deny these images. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[DCP]</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7dFb7ughkJ9he21HoSu5cJHdIvJHxbmqdu5GO1i9ghddJ-W9JtwoJFYJ5Jeoe-4KxbGDYVJRQ9cuIAyPcA15DsuFJN2YKxLEo4MSTDsjDKBGXrkrsTUvogjVecnZM3KDni2Qp5syp85o/s1600/tess1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7dFb7ughkJ9he21HoSu5cJHdIvJHxbmqdu5GO1i9ghddJ-W9JtwoJFYJ5Jeoe-4KxbGDYVJRQ9cuIAyPcA15DsuFJN2YKxLEo4MSTDsjDKBGXrkrsTUvogjVecnZM3KDni2Qp5syp85o/s1600/tess1.jpg" height="268" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Tess</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Roman Polanski, 1979)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - Fitting loosely into the “English costume drama” genre, this, for many, may seem distinctly apart from Polanski’s “edgier,” more violent and surreal films that came before. Yet it could not fit more perfectly into his filmography. Besides the usual pleasures of his films - the camera always being in precisely the right place, the slightly-heightened performance styles - this is about a woman whose life is determined by forces beyond her control, whose methods of escape become increasingly limited, and who only finds a way to live freely once it’s too late. Just like </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rosemary’s Baby</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Repulsion</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and, on the male side, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chinatown </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Tenant</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. And it’s just as good as any of those. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Blu-ray]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Every Man for Himself</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Jean-Luc Godard, 1980)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - More palatable than many of his post-60s films, yet more overtly emotionally violent than the comparatively friendly efforts upon which he build his reputation. It remains fully Godard, through and through. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Digital]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Robert Altman, 1982)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - It’s a great play </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a great film, and one need not exclude the other, even without “expanding” it in any traditionally “cinematic” way. An odd thing to see on the fourth of July, let me tell you. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[35mm]</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj1IWuqHE8IDBuV2qNFvimQxBIMVtpWR6v6funUEZnHJc-OuM0GYRAwBIiEHfTBN1GiXC5nVqf8396LLf21wCRMKPfFYb9QKSZNfCSrdCD0XIb5V5caHKnH9ycAmztrHLfbDRTrlitFl4/s1600/comet5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj1IWuqHE8IDBuV2qNFvimQxBIMVtpWR6v6funUEZnHJc-OuM0GYRAwBIiEHfTBN1GiXC5nVqf8396LLf21wCRMKPfFYb9QKSZNfCSrdCD0XIb5V5caHKnH9ycAmztrHLfbDRTrlitFl4/s1600/comet5.jpg" height="360" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://criterioncast.com/reviews/blu-ray-reviews/scott-reviews-tom-eberhardts-night-of-the-comet-arrow-films-blu-ray-review"><i>Night of the Comet</i></a> (Thom Eberhardt, 1984)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - The ultimate hangout movie at the end of the world. Two sisters - one cheerleader, the other an aimless movie theater employee - survive the apocalypse. Some others do, too. Then there are zombies. And it’s so great and discursive and has that real Hawksian sense of taking genre for granted and almost immediately discarding it. One or two of the funniest lines I heard all year, too. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Blu-ray]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Akira</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Katsuhiro Otomo, 1988)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - Since I spent a good deal of middle and high school floating around comic book message boards, I’ve known of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Akira</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for nearly the entirety of my culturally-cognizant life. Somehow, the way it was described to me was always as an action movie, and I equated it to something akin to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cowboy Bebop</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, which I enjoy a lot, but am not really in a hurry to go out of my way for, you know? It turns out </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Akira </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is completely unhinged and boundlessly imaginative. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Blu-ray]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://battleshippretension.com/home-video-hovel-la-vie-de-boheme-by-scott-nye/"><i>La vie de boheme</i></a> (Aki Kaurismaki, 1992) </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- Kaurismaki’s adaptation of the classic starving-artist story is certainly wryly funny, absolutely, but really quite moving by the end, too. Oh, and also unfathomably gorgeous - it was shot in black and white, and the behind-the-scenes doc included on the Criterion disc shows that the sets were painted in very bright primary colors and lit very sharply, the effect of which, in color, makes it look sort of like amateur theatre, but which, on celluloid, renders lusciously. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Blu-ray]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Cristian Mungiu, 2007)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - So yeah, this is one suffocating, harrowing experience. It’s also an unusual reflection on communism, insofar as Otilia, our protagonist, is deeply invested in helping her friend, Găbița, get an abortion. Her life is tied to her, the way communism demands and promises. But Găbița is a little flaky, unable to manage even the small tasks for which she is responsible, and one quickly gets the feeling she would not be as willing or able to help Otilia, were their roles reversed. There are a thousand other magnificent things going on in this film, it should also be noted, but our time here is limited. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Digital]</span></span></div>
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Scott Nyehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760694438241951398noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1151029499651504216.post-47926312074689618452014-12-16T10:14:00.002-08:002014-12-16T10:17:59.277-08:00Open Set<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When discussing Jerry Lewis’s </span><span style="font-style: italic; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Ladies Man</span><span style="line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, you almost have to get the dollhouse set out of the way before getting to anything else. It is quite a sight, both for its expanse - it took up two stages of the Paramount lot, and it shows - and its versatility. The film is about a recent college grad who, in an effort to get over the girl who broke his heart, swears off women forever, a pronouncement instantly challenged by his first job - handyman and caretaker at a women’s boarding house. Every wall in the house seems movable, as the action moves from space to space, an effect that at once gives us the opportunity to explore while challenging our sense of spatial relation in a way Kubrick would nearly twenty years later in </span><span style="font-style: italic; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Shining</span><span style="line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></div>
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<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lewis seems to at once use this shot as a point of pride - “look at what we built!” - and a method of constraint - “That’s all there is!” The entire rest of the film will play out in this seemingly-sealed world.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But Lewis isn’t exactly one to play by the rules. Just because he’s established a space doesn’t mean he can’t challenge himself. Most of the action is comprised of a series of sketches jumping off from the basic outline (though, thankfully, the sexual repression angle is more an undercurrent than a constant motivator). The longest of these involves a television program visiting the house and interviewing its owner, former opera star Helen Welenmelon (singer Helen Traubel). Once the TV cameras move in, the set (or at least our conception of it) expands, past the point of “reality,” showing the point at which the hardwood floor ends and the actual Paramount sound stage ends.</span></div>
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<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In a more aesthetics-based sense, this explosion of the film’s boundaries makes it perfectly natural to get to the scene’s most surreal portion, when Lewis enters the room from which he has been forbidden, only to find a mysterious world full of big band musicians, oddly-dressed dancers, and a flying wall that reveals a terrace looking out into the sky.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now, Lewis was never one for trying to use the cinema to merely document a representation of what already exists, so this acknowledgement of the pure artifice of his films is hardly uncharacteristic. Rather, this precise method of doing so points to his larger working ethos. When I saw Lewis speak in a two-hour conversation at Cinefamily in early 2013, Executive Director Hadrian Belove pulled out a sign bearing a caricature of Lewis that read, “This is not a closed set. Come on in, you are most welcome.” Lewis seemed surprised to see the sign, and explained that he never understood all the restrictions surrounding movie sets, insisting that he would benefit from having a crowd to play to. With this one simple shot in </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Ladies Man</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Lewis almost literally breaks down the fourth wall, inviting the audience in to see how movies are made.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you want to see a possible instance of this at play, look to the scene in which frequent Lewis player Kathleen Freeman feeds Lewis baby food (it starts around the 1:19 mark in this video).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Throughout the bit, Lewis seems to indicate to a presence just off stage right, looking at them, breaking ever so slightly, and even yelling at them at one point, “This woman is out of her mind!” The whole scene consists of a shot of just the two of them playing off a simple premise, much in the way Lewis would have performed live comedy as he was coming up as an entertainer. A live audience fuels this sort of stuff, letting the actors know which buttons to keep pushing, how long to pause, and how to keep the laughter rolling. The result works as perfectly for the film's audience as it would for those present, never seeming tired or over-rehearsed, nor underdeveloped, all too often a presence in comedy filmmaking. It helps keep the overdetermined sets and camerawork fresh, lived-in, and spontaneous.</span></div>
</span>Scott Nyehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760694438241951398noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1151029499651504216.post-52064964844993627522014-03-07T10:23:00.001-08:002014-03-07T10:23:31.015-08:00Animal ResnaisThe first frame here caught my eye upon watching, for the first time, the first half of Alain Resnais's two-part <i>Smoking/No Smoking</i> earlier this week, and spurred on a general reflection of the many times Resnais has merged people with animals, using the transformation to reach a higher truth, be it emotional, intellectual, or spiritual. These are the instances I recalled - any I missed?<div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[From top to bottom: <i>Smoking </i>(first half of <i>Smoking/No Smoking</i>, 1993); <i>Je t'aime, je t'aime </i>(1968); <i>Mon oncle d'Amerique </i>(1980); <i>I Want to Go Home </i>(1989); <i>Wild Grass </i>(2009)]</span></div>
Scott Nyehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760694438241951398noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1151029499651504216.post-86785871652068733912014-03-02T10:58:00.001-08:002014-03-02T11:13:48.488-08:00Resnais x 3Especially with the current revival of his beautiful <i>Je T'Aime, Je T'Aime </i>(currently playing here in Los Angeles at Cinefamily, via a gorgeous new 35mm print), and the recent premiere of his latest (and last) film, <i>Life of Riley</i>, I've had Alain Resnais on the mind even more than usual as of late. Suffice to say he was one of the greatest filmmakers who ever lived, a man whose work has completely absorbed and transformed me. His death, reported today, is a monumental loss. Few filmmakers - hell, few <i>people</i> - remain so vital so late in life.<br />
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Among other things, the man knew how to film two people walking away together, towards a future both rapturous and grim (see also <i>Love Unto Death</i>, the finale of which relates while also challenging this pattern).<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">From top to bottom: <i>Last Year at Marienbad </i>(1961); <i>You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet </i>(2012); <i>Wild Grass </i>(2009)</span>Scott Nyehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760694438241951398noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1151029499651504216.post-26757547796450111652014-02-07T12:02:00.000-08:002014-02-07T12:02:13.080-08:00The Pretty One<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I must say, I was faintly surprised to find that, in addition to starring in <strong>The Pretty One</strong>, Zoe Kazan did not contribute to the screenplay, so marked it is by the same wishy-washy sensibility that dragged the premise of her 2012 feature <strong>Ruby Sparks</strong><em> </em>down from the mountain of its spectacularly dark premise (a writer's fictional creation, the embodiment of everything he wants in a woman, suddenly comes to life) and into the valley of forceful reassurance and tonally deaf endings. LaMarque's film, her first feature, also has one hell of a premise (though familiar to those who saw, or at least saw ads for, the Sarah Michelle Gellar TV show <strong>Ringer</strong>) - following a deadly car accident, Laurel assumes the identity of her more-successful-and-popular twin sister Audrey (both played, skillfully, by Zoe Kazan).</div>
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At first, Laurel is merely mistaken for Audrey, but once she recovers her own memories, she can't help but continue the charade (fantasy?). After all, Audrey lives in her own spectacular apartment, while Laurel has remained at home, caring for her father, since their mother passed; Audrey has a successful career as a real estate agent, while Laurel helps their father create forgeries of famous paintings to sell to collectors (get it, because copies); Audrey has been immensely successful with men, while Laurel only just lost her virginity to a high school boy she used to babysit. And worse, she's far more into he than vice-versa. Moreover, assuming Audrey's identity becomes a way for her to still feel connected to her sister. There's plenty that LaMarque and Kazan suggest about the grieving process that is, or at least could be, incredibly rich material for a film.</div>
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Unfortunately, LaMarque sticks instead with letting the entire dramatic tension hinge on whether or not Laurel will eventually reveal who she is, and when that's your dramatic premise, she can't just not say anything. The film is so eager to please and reassure its audience that by the time the chips are down, not a word is left unsaid. The rest of the film becomes a series of declarative statements, some of which are fairly affecting (John Carroll Lynch is especially good as her father), many of which are just way too desperate to appear vulnerable that they feel false an manufactured. Kazan hits some very spectacular notes early on, but there's something about LaMarque's compositions (sometimes wide, sometimes shoving her subject into a corner of the frame) that distances us from the immediacy of the emotion without offering an intellectual consideration to embolden it. It seems at once somewhat reaching to be haunting and dreamlike but also super-likable. The cast comes close to grasping that goal, but the confused direction and tame screenplay keep it forever bound to mediocrity.</div>
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It doesn't help that it exists in one of those worlds in which no one has an actual job that they actually have to report to five (or even <em>two</em>) actual days each week, yet never seem to struggle or have to make compromises in their made-up careers. It's great that Laurel's father can just fake paintings all day, so successfully that he doesn't even have to sell any of Laurel's shortcoming efforts, or that Laurel's new boyfriend (Jake Johnson) sells used books from his house, but they're more excuses than explanations for how they can just do whatever they want, whenever they want. This is one of those sort of stock complaints about the cinema in general (Roger Ebert wrote, of Billy Wilder's 1960 classic, "In many movies, the characters hardly even seem to have jobs, but in <strong>The Apartment</strong> they have to be reminded that they have anything else), but seems exacerbated here by the simple fact that so little seems to truly affect these people in a permanent way (even the grieving process is more alluded to than invested in), at least give them a stressful job or something.</div>
Scott Nyehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760694438241951398noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1151029499651504216.post-55399029285064390692014-01-17T15:31:00.003-08:002014-01-17T15:31:57.297-08:00Her Limitations<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I've been thinking a lot about <i>Her </i>over the past week or so. I've only seen it once, at the end of November, and I liked it a lot, but something kept me from embracing it entirely. As I started to put my top ten list together, I knew I'd be considering it, but as soon as I prioritized other films, I quickly let it slip and kind of put it out of my mind. And now it's come rushing back, and, unlike what usually happens when I turn over films of which I am quite fond again and again, it has diminished somewhat in my estimation (mind, it's a very fine film, just not a great one), and I think I've figured out why.<br />
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Beyond Joaquin Phoenix's involvement, I thought a lot about <i>The Master</i>, my favorite film of last year. Both films are in some way about loneliness, about desiring to make meaningful connections at a time in one's life when such a thing seems very difficult, if not impossible. They're both very melancholic, very sad, sometimes elusive. But where <i>Her </i>falters for me is in speaking directly to it, in getting very plotty with its dissection of loneliness and isolation. Theodore (Phoenix) will directly state everything that's wrong with him. His ex-wife (Rooney Mara) will point out that he's always wanted a relationship that he can control entirely, so dating a computer is all too perfect for him. In response, Theodore will begin to doubt the legitimacy of his emotions. It's the kind of very connective, A happens, then B happens, so thus C happens, tissue that works well in a more dramatically-motivated structure (crime films and romantic comedies, especially), but feels out of place in something that's so concerned with feelings we have a hard time classifying or understanding, which, at its best, is <i>Her</i>'s primary concern.<br />
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The main reason I've come to value Paul Thomas Anderson so much is his willingness to go with an absolute gut instinct, and run all the way with it without stopping, no matter how weird or seemingly out-of-place the moment may seem on paper, and still manage to make it cohere emotionally. <i>Her </i>is dealing with a very unusual relationship, but plays it quite safe in its plotting, too timid to strike a note that may seem discordant, yet still resonate (the surrogate scene comes very close, but take the easy way out). It can't chase a feeling on an uncharted path, moving resolutely instead towards its inevitable (yet still quite affecting) conclusion, and thus it cannot truly represent the experience of the emotions it's exploring. Loneliness and frustration and jealousy do not follow straightforward trajectories; the films that represent them best will be wild, unpredictable, deeply uncomfortable, often hurtful, and outlandishly daring.Scott Nyehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760694438241951398noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1151029499651504216.post-40444407069884505052014-01-10T11:16:00.001-08:002014-01-10T12:37:02.011-08:00The Top Ten Films of 2013<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 1.3em;">
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">I always like to say, first of all, that there's no such thing as a bad year for film, and I mean it. I saw 150 new-release films last year; there were a lot of bad ones, but when I started to assemble this list, I was once again struck by just how many were really quite good. This was a year in which many a director really went all-out, aimed for something truly grand, and hit varying degrees of success along the way. That there were people willing to finance and/or distribute films like </span><em style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Twixt</em><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">, </span><em style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Passion</em><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">, </span><em style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">The Canyons</em><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">, </span><em style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">The Wolf of Wall Street</em><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">, </span><em style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">The Bling Ring</em><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">, </span><em style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Spring Breakers</em><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">, </span><em style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Stoker</em><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">, </span><em style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">The Act of Killing</em><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">, </span><em style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">A Touch of Sin</em><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">, </span><em style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Blancanieves</em><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">, </span><em style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Beyond the Hills</em><em style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">, </em><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">and </span><em style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Leviathan </em><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">is nothing short of astounding, even if none of them made the list below. Add to that </span><em style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Upstream Color</em><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">, which its filmmaker distributed himself, and more perhaps normative, but still exceptional, films like </span><em style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Frances Ha</em><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">, </span><em style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Nobody's Daughter Haewon</em><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">, </span><i style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">The Place Beyond the Pines</i><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">, </span><em style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">White House Down</em><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">, </span><em style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Furious 6</em><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">, </span><em style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Captain Phillips</em><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">, </span><em style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">About Time</em><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">, and </span><em style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Before Midnight</em><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">, and it's hard to really complain at all. That said, in all fairness, I should note that my pick for the year's best film, one I find absolutely wonderful, singular, vital, and so deeply moving, would have only barely cracked my top five in 2011. That isn't to diminish this year's achievements - as you can already gather, they were considerable - just to place it all in context.</span></div>
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And so, onward we go.</div>
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<b style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">10. <i>Star Trek Into Darkness</i></b></div>
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You know, I’m not big on the idea that the best movies are the ones you want to pop in on a rainy day and watch over and over again, but I certainly understand the mindset, and do think there’s quite a lot of merit to those films that spark such interest and passion. And so we have <i>Star Trek Into Darkness</i>, a film I was amazed to love so much (I am not a big <i>Trek </i>guy, but have an operational understanding of, and occasional appreciation for, its most popular incarnations) that I saw three times in theaters and now own, very happily, on Blu-ray. J.J. Abrams has built, as he did with <i>Mission: Impossible III</i>, a freaking machine, moving briskly from conflict to conflict, doing away with all the squabbling that made the first film so relentlessly dull and sticking us instead with a group of people who are very good at what they do, genuinely respect and like one another, but have different ideas on how their collective job should be done. The aesthetics of the conversations - the vocal patterns, physical stances, quickly-dispelled dialogue - are as rousing as they are reliable (never mind more traditional aesthetic pleasures - Dan Mindel’s genuinely anamorphic, boldly-lit celluloid images are breathtaking). That it also has the two best action set pieces (the ship-to-ship space jump and the Enterprise falling) I’ve seen all summer, and probably in many years, is no small bonus.</div>
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There is the matter of the plot, which is, it must be said, kind of a chore, but even as it simply, repeatedly rips off the beats and often direct actions of an earlier beloved entry in the <i>Star Trek </i>franchise, doing so actually has the (probably accidental) effect of justifying the absurd decision they made in the last film to make this universe a parallel timeline to that which we are most accustomed. By regurgitating so much of <i>The Wrath of Khan</i>, <i>Star Trek Into Darkness</i> suggests that all of this was fated to happen in various configurations, and there’s only so much one can do to change the course of history, which, for a reboot said to be dreadfully low on such things, is a pretty Trekkian concern. <i>(Available on DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant, iTunes, Google Play, Vudu, YouTube, and Redbox Instant)</i></div>
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<b style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">9. <i>12 Years a Slave</i></b></div>
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This is not a film about slavery. Granted, it takes the system as its subject, but what makes the film so powerful is the way in which director Steve McQueen and writer John Ridley use it as a means of exploring the very idea of institutional evil, the way it can develop and, more damningly, the way it can flourish. They take for granted that you know that slavery was a bad thing, that the people who profited from it were bad people, and then show the kind of delusion required for someone to convince themselves that they are in the right. For some it’s religion, others the law, others a sense of power, and many simply the supposed morality of the free market - it’s good because it works. Those are themes not at all bound only to 19th century America. They then go a step further and show the complicity required not only of the profiteers, but of all of us, in order for such an evil system to thrive; no, this is not only a story of one man’s suffering, but how we all, constantly, every day, then and now, tacitly allow these things to happen for any number of reasons. Maybe because the problems seem too vast, or too entrenched. We’ve grown up with them, so they must be a fact of existence. Maybe we have turned away from them so much that they hardly seem like problems at all. Maybe the punishment for opposing it would be too great. Or maybe we simply avoid them for fear that the total acknowledgement of how much suffering results from the systems that bring us life’s most essential ingredients - food, clothing, shelter - seems almost too much to bear, or even comprehend, and we cope with them for our basic sanity.</div>
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That’s what <i>12 Years a Slave </i>is about - being forced to look at something so bizarre and inhuman and awful from which we, as so many characters (including its protagonist - the flashback to him in the shop isn't there merely to establish the shopkeeper) do throughout the film, so often turn away. <i>(Currently in theaters)</i></div>
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<b style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">8. <i>Trance</i></b></div>
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As films about the desire to uncover something horrible buried in oneself goes, I understand why many value Shane Carruth’s spectacular <i>Upstream Color </i>more, but for me, Danny Boyle’s truly nasty, lurid thriller resonates much more palpably, in no small part for refocusing that horror as a true part of the protagonist, and not something foisted upon him. Simon (James McAvoy) is an art auctioneer who teamed with a gang of thieves, lead by Vincent Cassel’s Franck, to steal an incredibly valuable painting; when a whack on the head renders Simon unable to recall where he stashed the damn thing, he goes to a hypnotist (played, hauntingly, by Rosario Dawson) to try to recover the memory, and thus the painting. And that’s just the surface of how truly ludicrous and silly the plot is. As one might guess from my set-up, however, she and Simon uncover a great deal more than that, about each other and about a very real, honest desire we all have to forget our worst traits and actions, and the horror that comes about in being forced to face them. Boyle layers the film with the ache of memory, familiarity, sub- or unconscious passion, with so many frames (Anthony Dod Mantle’s cinematography is extraordinary) echoing elements palpable and yet unnameable. <i>(Available on DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant, iTunes, Google Play, Vudu, and YouTube)</i><br />
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<b>7. <i>Museum Hours</i></b></div>
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My high school drama teacher used to say that there were really only basically two stories - boy meets girl, and new guy comes to town. I don't agree, but it’s still interesting to consider just how many stories more or less fall into these two fields. <i>Museum Hours </i>has both, but not with the usual connotations. Johann (Bobby Sommer), a security guard at Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Art Museum, befriends Anne (Mary Margaret O’Hara), a visiting Canadian, but they’re hardly on the path to romance. Moreover, she’s not in town on pleasure or to escape her sordid past or whatever; she was the only family member available to visit her cousin, whose illness has sent her into a coma, and they were never terribly close. Jem Cohen crafts an air of melancholy, yes, and the emotional effect of the film is considerable, but it’s the way he interweaves very personal conflict and intimate relationships with the museum’s art that really makes this an exceptional work. By showing so much of the painting so prominently and intercutting it with Johann and Anne’s trips around the city, along with a museum guide or two along the way to explicate the innumerable approaches and interpretations of the original art, we begin to pick up on the connections this art, hundreds of years old, has to our contemporary lives, and how little separation there is not only between classical art and our everyday experiences, but by extension, our lives and those who lived hundreds of years ago. We are all part of the same continuum; their art expresses something of us as much as it did theirs. It may not be a gigantic revelation to those who think about artistic expression on a regular basis, but Cohen has found a very emotional, personal way to express it that lifts the supposition out of its academic nature and into the streets, as it were; to our economic hardships, our losses, our joy, our momentary elation and our everlasting satisfaction and despair. <i>(Available on DVD, Blu-ray, iTunes, and Vudu)</i><br />
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<b style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">6. <i>To the Wonder</i></b></div>
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Describing this as a “minor” film by Terrence Malick is both informative and revelatory, in that it is not perhaps as fully-formed an idea or piece as his previous films, and yet is so staggering and wholly felt that it just goes to show how gifted an artist he truly is. Forty years after his debut film, Malick has found a team of collaborators that allows him to use the cinema as another type of artist might sketch, expressing the urgency of certain feelings that would be stifled under further refinement. His familiar traits are present as always, bringing out the beauty and grace in the most everyday and ordinary (a laundromat, a drive-thru), never mind those things theoretically earthbound but quite actually fantastical (the breathtaking Mont Saint-Michel). But he hasn’t dwelled with such specificity on this film’s inner themes, of the way people pull intensely together only to almost unconsciously drift apart, since 1978’s <i>Days of Heaven</i>, but whereas that broken relationship came from poverty and greed, this comes merely from incompatibility and an inner, unquenchable desire and yearning. Malick directs his cast not to any sense of realism, but to using their bodies as means of expression, so that every element is truly felt rather than said. <i>(Available on DVD, Blu-ray, Netflix Instant, iTunes, Google Play, Vudu, YouTube, and Amazon Instant)</i></div>
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<b style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">5. <i>Enough Said</i></b></div>
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If there are two cinematic mainstays from which I have come to expect very little in this day and age, it’s the romantic comedy and the mid-level, character-based, quasi-indie “dramedy.” That Nicole Holofcener could combine the two and create something so potent as this seems nothing shy of a miracle. Or at least a massive creative accomplishment. Taking a premise as built for screwball as any - middle-aged divorcee (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), finds out that the man she’s dating (James Gandolfini) is actually the ex-husband about whom her new close friend (Catherine Keener) has been complaining for weeks on end - and downplaying it at every turn, Holofcener has built a film that speaks to the way we protect ourselves in romantic endeavors, all within the form of a frequently hilarious, densely-but-not-suffocatingly-structured 90-minute comedy. Louis-Dreyfus and Gandolfini are in peak form, doing all the complex work that it takes to just play regular people, with all their foibles and faults, none of which diminish their humanity, or, if you like, “likability,” but rather enhance it tenfold. It’s been years since a film carried itself so well by just giving us two characters worth caring about. And getting quite a few laughs along the way, at that. Louis-Dreyfus’s expression of confused disgust at herself when she says “Yeah, I got real boobs” on their first date will forever make me laugh. <i>(Available on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Google Play, and Vudu; on DVD and Blu-ray January 13th)</i></div>
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<b style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">4. <i>The Strange Little Cat</i></b></div>
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One small apartment. A seemingly-ever-expanding family gathering for a meal. A number of small machines on the fritz. And a cat perhaps not as odd or diminutive as the title would suggest. Ramon Zürcher’s debut film combines all of these, with healthy doses of Jacques Tati, Robert Bresson, and Alain Resnais for good measure, yet emerges the most singular and undefinable cinematic experience experience I’ve had all year, one so enrapturing I restarted it the moment the credits had finished (its 65-minute running time was certainly complicit in this instinct). I can guess at its themes, if it has any, but I’d rather not. I’d rather just mention that nothing else this year provided such sheer delight. Zürcher, by dispensing with any requirement to reveal even the barest of plot concerns, uses every minute for invention, for controlled bits of chaos, for quiet observation and the surprising abnormality of everyday life. <i>(Currently without distribution)</i></div>
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<b style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">3. <i>Pain & Gain</i></b></div>
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Michael Bay has made several very good films in the past. This is his first masterpiece, the kind that makes even his fans reexamine those that came before, and his talents altogether. Following three bodybuilders (Mark Wahlberg, Anthony Mackie, and Dwayne Johnson) who hatch a scheme to steal everything from one rich asshole (Tony Shalhoub), <i>Pain & Gain </i>so thoroughly eviscerates the commercialized portrait of the American Dream that it’s a wonder there was anything left of it for a half-dozen other films to tackle this year. The bodybuilders aren’t just looking to become successful - they want the fame, the glory, the women, the drugs, the boats, the LIFE. And they want it now. And Bay gives it to them on their terms, framing them the way they see their lives, on the edge of desert cliffs, against American flags and churches and neon lights, more than a little complicit in their sociopathy. Where Martin Scorsese couldn’t help but judge his <i>Wolf of Wall Street </i>protagonists, Bay is just enough a degenerate director to completely soak you in the psyches of his, leaving you questioning your own complicity in even viewing the damn thing. But by contrasting that with their actual behavior and complete stupidity, he more forcefully undermines his entire aesthetic than ever before. The result isn’t just ideologically invigorating, but wildly entertaining and by far the funniest I’ve seen all year. Wahlberg hasn’t been this good since <i>Boogie Nights</i>, completely unafraid to warp his natural earnestness into total moral corruption, but somehow, Dwayne Johnson still steals the show as a drug-addict-turned-evangelical-Christian-turned-drug-addict who’s never able to totally square the warring factions of his own psyche, even when they seem to be quite clear. I could not have possibly loved this film more. <i>(Available on DVD, Blu-ray, iTunes, Google Play, YouTube, and Redbox Instant)</i></div>
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<b style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">2. <i>Inside Llewyn Davis</i></b></div>
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Joel and Ethan Coen have made so many great films that each new one causes me to wonder if they’ve ever done anything better, and so it is with <i>Inside Llewyn Davis</i>. It feels like their best, but that can’t possibly be true...or can it? Ah, well, it’s a good problem to have. Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) is a folk singer in New York in 1961. He plays gigs, sleeps on friends' couches, accidentally impregnates women, insults damn near everyone sooner or later, and lives by intense principles to guard his ability to continue to play other people’s songs independently. We can mourn Llewyn’s difficulty in making a living, but one must ask oneself, what, really, does he have to contribute? Among its many other noteworthy points, the last scene cleverly suggests that it is not simple exposure he lacks, but inability to stand out from a flock of others doing the same thing just as well. Yet he remains a deeply sympathetic character, an outlet for so many of our worst impulses, and as potent a figure in mourning as the cinema has ever seen. The Coens and Isaac craft dozens of small moments that belie years of struggle and hardship; the film takes place over a single week, but seems to encapsulate a year. Who would have the best attitude after all that?</div>
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Isaac, so good in so many unremarkable films over the past few years, gives the best male performance of the year, deeply in tune with precisely what film he is in and how he can contribute, able to convey depths of regret, uncertainty, and misplaced aggression with the line reading of a single word. His relationships with the few characters given more than one scene seem to constantly deepen; what stands out first as contemptuousness later feels more like jealousy, then like compassion, then like mutual understanding of respectful differences. Llewyn, like the Coens, looks at first glance like a guy who snobbishly insists that he has it all figured out; the closer you get, the more you see the doubt, the fear, the longing, and the despair. <i>(Currently in theaters)</i></div>
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<b style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">1) <i>You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet</i></b></div>
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Like Francis Ford Coppola (whose beautiful <i>Twixt</i> finally came to Blu-ray this year), Alain Resnais is making old man films with a young man’s vitality. Perhaps that has contributed to neither being terribly fashionable anymore, and I guess I just have to square whatever that says about me with the fact that I adore the work both have done in recent years, most of all this new wondrous film by its 91-year-old auteur. Such a promise as the one contained in its title would be tantalizing from anyone; from Resnais, who has given us such singular and undefinable experiences as <i>Last Year at Marienbad</i>, <i>Mon oncle d’Amerique</i>, <i>Je t’aime je t’aime</i>, <i>Providence</i>, and <i>Wild Grass</i>, it seems downright impossible. And yet, I do believe it to be true. In it, a group of actors, all playing themselves (they include Sabine Azema, Mathieu Almaric, Pierre Arditi, Anne Consigny, Lambert Wilson, and Michel Piccoli), assemble to watch a recording of a new production of the play <i>Eurydice</i>, in which they all starred many years ago in various incarnations. As they view the film (which was made separately from the production of <i>YASNY</i>, and directed by Bruno Podalydès), they begin to casually recite their lines along with the actors, before finally standing up and gradually performing the play themselves, sometimes interacting directly with the film they are viewing, with Resnais infusing CGI backgrounds to fill the imagined space of a black box theater.</div>
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So the film is at once a straight adaptation of Jean Anouilh’s play, and an expression of longing for one’s youth, giving these older actors a chance to dig into emotions they’ve perhaps long left behind. Azema in particular is extraordinary, and those who have seen the work she did with Resnais in the 1980s will certainly find much to celebrate; those who have not will doubtlessly seek it out. Anouilh used the legend of Orpheus as a jumping-off point to explore the intense selfishness of young romance, and there’s something about Eurydice that seems almost unhinged in how totally committed she becomes to Orpheus, especially given the past she gradually reveals, and Azema plays right into Eurydice’s wild-eyed amazement at the tiny joys and unacknowledged tragedies that we quietly accept every day. As the title indicates, Resnais has a playful streak within him, but never at the expense of the drama, either inherent to the play or the extratextual themes he’s exploring, making for a tragic melodrama that’s a lot more fun to watch than one might expect. Approaching his 70th year of filmmaking, Resnais continues to find new ways to reinvent his chosen medium, and I couldn’t be happier to be here experiencing it. <i>(Available on DVD, Netflix, iTunes, Google Play, and YouTube)</i></div>
Scott Nyehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760694438241951398noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1151029499651504216.post-48523392727163837352013-12-19T19:45:00.004-08:002013-12-19T19:56:13.305-08:00Strike Anywhere<div class="p1">
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<i>I wrote this piece for a class in college, with a prompt from Christian Keathley's wonderful book</i>, Cinephilia and History, or The Wind in the Trees<i>, which asked participants to focus on a specific, seemingly meaningless moment to speculate on and draw from it larger, probably unintended meaning. To coincide with the recent release of </i>Red River <i>on Blu-ray, I thought it'd be a fitting time to revisit it. It has been modestly revised over the years.</i></div>
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In his review of the film as part of his Great Movies series, Roger Ebert declares:</div>
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<i>Red River </i>is one of the greatest of all Westerns when it stays with its central story about an older man and a younger one, and the first cattle drive down the Chisholm Trail. It is only in its few scenes involving women that it goes wrong…The three scenes with Tess (Joanne Dru) are the movie’s low points, in part because of her prattle (listen to how she chats distractingly with Matt during an Indian attack), in part because she is all too obviously the deus ex machina the plot needs to avoid an unhappy ending.</blockquote>
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Essentially, Ebert is right. Tess’ purpose is to make two people – Matthew Garth (Montgomery Clift) and Tom Dunson (John Wayne), suddenly get along after a bitter feud arose between them. I disagree, however, with Ebert’s assertion that Tess’ scenes are the low points. She provides the film’s most magical little moment. In her first conversation with Dunson, she swings her arm down and strikes a match on her table. It’s the swing of her arm and the instant ignition of the match that has me mesmerized. The swing itself suggests a casual nonchalance, and firmly establishes that she is in control of the scene; despite his cultural image, John Wayne appears quite small here, even weak. A lot is done with simple staging – she is standing and he is sitting – but it’s the match strike that instantly and naturally commands our attention.</div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>First, the means by which director Howard Hawks accomplished the shot is a minor miracle unto itself. He cuts quickly after the match is lit, but not right away – the shot lingers just long enough to show the match catch fire. The first thought that might roll through an audience member’s mind is that Tess had a strike anywhere match, a very common item today. However, this sequence takes place in 1866, but strike anywhere matches wouldn’t be developed until the early twentieth century.</div>
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Matches have been around for centuries in one form or another, but it wasn’t until 1827 that they became anything close to what they resemble today; that is, based on friction, designed to ignite only when run against a specially prepared surface. Beyond that, the safety match wasn’t developed until 1844. Prior to this, matches shot sparks around and had pretty uncontrollable flames. Given that no sparks emitted and the flame was relatively under control, Tess was probably using a safety match. The striking surface required to ignite a match, however, was typically composed of 25% powdered glass, 50% red phosphorus, 5% neutralizer, 4% carbon black and 16% binder – probably not the rough makeup of Tess' table, which looks like it was coated with leather. Whatever it was covered with, it would be absurd for a table in a wagon train to be covered with a material that only really exists to strike matches on.</div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>So what happened? Does Tess have some cunning skill with a match? I propose instead that this sets Tess up as a force in the film. Roger Ebert noted that Tess is there basically as a plot device, and that’s true. But the film continuously tells us she has some sort of otherworldly quality. In her introduction, she’s receives an arrow to the shoulder and scarcely has a reaction; if it has any effect, her expression indicates it’s one of heightened sexual attraction. This, combined with her mastery of fire, tells us that Tess is more than just a person, but a force, which she proves to be when she somehow makes everything okay between Matt and Tom at the end. She’s capable of controlling the world around her.</div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Besides, Tess is a “strike anywhere” girl. The strike-anywhere/safety dichotomy runs throughout Hawks’ work, and echoes into cinema today. This dichotomy typically comes in the form of two potential mates one of the protagonists must choose between. The clearest example comes in <i>Bringing Up Baby -</i> David (Cary Grant) is all set to marry the safest of all possible women, Miss Swallow (Virginia Walker), who wants nothing more than to support David in his work, even though that means denying him all of life’s pleasures. That is, until he meets one of the wackiest women in the history of film in Susan Vance (Katherine Hepburn), who grabs every chance life throws at her and lives every moment as though it were her last, a true “strike anywhere” woman if ever there were one.</div>
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That’s not all, folks. <i>Only Angels Have Wings</i> shows a less immediately conflicted Cary Grant stuck between a woman who understands his love of flying, and one who wishes he’d just stay on the ground. <i>His Girl Friday</i> flips the gender roles, with Rosalind Russell torn between the very safe, secure Ralph Bellamy and the wild, unpredictable, fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants Cary Grant. In <i>The Big Sleep</i>, Philip Marlowe seems to only run into “strike anywhere” types, from Vivian’s younger sister sleeping with every guy in town, to a bookstore employee who closes early to secure some private time with Bogart. <i>Gentlemen Prefer Blondes </i>takes this to the extreme, as we see Lorelei constantly pulled away from her obedient, soft-spoken fiancée towards a life of debauchery and extravagance, Dorothy somehow emerging as the stable one in the twosome, only looking for a man to truly love.</div>
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Again and again, Hawks seems drawn to these dynamics, and regardless of where the script draws its ideological line (and it sometimes lands on “safe”), Hawks is always sure to posit the “strike anywhere” as by far the more interesting, more fulfilling possibility. Even when Cary Grant settles on the safe choice in <i>Only Angels Have Wings</i>, he does so as he rushes out the door, eager to get in the air again, and all the way up to that point, Jean Arthur, the “safe” one, is painted as too hysteric and anxiety-ridden to grasp what makes these men shoot up into the air. </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>This strike-anywhere/safety dichotomy lives on today, albeit in the much less interesting Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Now a staple of all things quirky, one need only watch films such as <i>Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Garden State, Elizabethtown, Superbad, Clerks II, </i>or<i> The Last Kiss </i>to catch at least traces of girls who really have nothing else to do in their lives except be completely unpredictable and rescue the guy from his bland, boring life. What separates the modern trend from the one Hawks presented is that there is no second thought given to the modern “strike anywhere” girl. She is so obviously the right choice from the start, not just to the audience, but to the protagonist as well. In Hawks, <i>Bringing Up Baby</i> in particular, we see the natural, destructive end such behavior would no doubt bring about, not just to the protagonist’s personal life, but also to his or her job and everyone they come into contact with. Like Tess in <i>Red River</i>, Susan Vance seems to make the world around her conform to her whims, as David suddenly starts living the life Susan creates for him. This makes David’s decision all the more interesting and satisfying, as we know he’s attracted to her for her faults, not in spite of whatever faults she may one day reveal. And if that isn’t love, I don’t know what is.</div>
Scott Nyehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760694438241951398noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1151029499651504216.post-75181148985608535652013-11-18T11:19:00.001-08:002013-11-18T11:19:38.977-08:00He Flies Through the Air With the Greatest of Ease<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The above still comes from <i>My Favorite Wife</i>, a film slightly more fun in point of fact than in point of watching. The central drive of the screwball comedy comes from Cary Grant's presumed-dead wife (Irene Dunne) suddenly returning on, wouldn't you know it, the very day he has finally remarried (to a none-too-pleased Gail Patrick). The film gets probably a little too much mileage out of Grant figuring out just how to explain the whole damn thing to Patrick, as Dunne manipulates any number of awkward interactions between the three of them (even when she's not in the room) to her eternal advantage, but the picture really turns into something upon the discovery that the circumstances of her survival - she was shipwrecked and stranded on an island for seven years - were greatly aided by the presence of another man.<br />
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Even as Grant is playing down his desirability (he's a little more David Huxley than Walter Burns, though not as extreme as either), eclipsing this trait is no small feat, but one ably attained by one Randolph Scott, here the very paragon of exaggerated masculinity. The above still comes as Grant reflects on some athletic feats he just saw Scott perform at the local club, and indicates some of the finer points in the film, and of screwball comedy in general, in its ability to reflect marital anxieties without being, well, so damn reflective about the whole thing.<br />
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It's impossible to imagine such a picture being made today, in which a wife more or less comes back from the dead just as a husband has remarried, and getting away with it as comedy. The picture is not without sentiment (there are more than mere tonal similarities with the prior Grant/Dunne hit <i>The Awful Truth</i>, it must be noted), but those moments are inextricably bound with the comedy, and neither diminishes the other. Furthermore, that the wife character could have clearly carried on a romantic and sexual relationship, as difficult a sell as it must have been then (the censors' attempts to get RKO tone down such implications appears to have been completely unsuccessful), would be almost unheard of now. Modern sympathies would be automatically reversed, and, well, it's just a shame the way women get treated in movies these days, that's all.<br />
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And furthermore, just what <i>was </i>Randolph Scott doing with those two women at the Pacific Club when Cary Grant starts spying on him?<br />
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The film is credited to Garson Kanin, a more accomplished screenwriter than director (he wrote <i>Born Yesterday</i>, <i>The Girl Can't Help It</i>, and <i>Adam's Rib</i>, for starters), who stepped in for Leo McCarey (he of the great <i>The Awful Truth</i>) after the latter's near-fatal car accident. McCarey produced and co-concocted the story with screenwriters Bella and Sam Spewack, a husband-and-wife team who themselves apparently knew something of marital strife. I can't speak to the extent of McCarey's involvement on set (<a href="http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/1148/My-Favorite-Wife/notes.html">TCM's notes on the film</a> say Kanin directed "portions"), but his brand of cleverly-framed sentimentality is more than a little informative here.Scott Nyehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760694438241951398noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1151029499651504216.post-6680276283294940102013-09-17T09:24:00.001-07:002013-09-17T13:38:29.729-07:00Thunder Road<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>"When I'm driving, I got a guy on the radio who talks to me…I can't see him, but he talks to me."</i><br />
<i>- </i>Cole Trickle (Tom Cruise)</div>
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Like his dynamic, rhythmically beautiful <i>The Fan</i>, Tony Scott's <i>Days of Thunder </i>does not have the greatest reputation, even among his admirers. Obviously made to capitalize on the success of <i>Top Gun</i>, reuniting director (Scott), star (Cruise), and producers (Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer) to, what would appear from the outside, lesser commercial effect (though the film was far from the failure many predicted, more than doubling its budget at the worldwide box office).<i> Top Gun </i>was never a critics' darling, but its monumental popularity has ensured it a permanent place in the conversation, while <i>Days of Thunder</i> - so much weirder and more esoteric, nearly the film many perceive <i>Drive </i>to be - has practically been left behind, forever in the shadow of the iconic fighter jet.</div>
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Throughout much of the first half, the film lives up to that perception. Dawn-set shots of racetracks anticipate the arrival of Cole Trickle, as if summoned by another character's question, "Who is this driver?" <i>Vrrrroooooommmm</i> and up pulls Cruise in full Movie Star mode, seemingly a lifetime removed from his eager young cadet in <i>Top Gun. </i>This guy had just been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor, worked with Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Dustin Hoffman, and Paul Newman. And he knows it.</div>
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<i>Days of Thunder</i> was not, however, as <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_dilettante/2012/08/tony_scott_s_days_of_thunder_did_it_rescue_hollywood_from_the_grips_of_producers_like_don_simpson_.single.html">has been suggested</a>, something Tom Cruise was trapped in. His "Story By" credit (alongside Robert Towne, who wrote the screenplay from there), the only one in his entire career, was not, at least according to Scott, purely a matter of a star managing someone else's idea. "Cruise and Jerry and Don went to a school where you learn to race Porsches," he told <i><a href="http://popwatch.ew.com/2010/07/02/20-years-ago-days-of-thunder-hits-theaters/">Entertainment Weekly</a>. </i>"That's where it all began. They said, 'Fuck, yeah! Let's do a motor-racing movie!" That buoyant spirit carries that first half, as we're left to marvel at Cole's seemingly boundless ambition ("There's nothing I can't do with a race car" is the film's signature line for a reason), his manager, Harry's (Robert Duvall), eternal patience and wisdom, and the entire spectacle that is Nascar, the actual sport of which has perhaps never been depicted better. While television struggles to show it as anything more than cars gradually moving in a circle, Scott gets his camera right down on the racetrack, right up in his drivers' faces, right alongside the cars as they move upwards of 200 mph. And you believe it.</div>
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That sense of speed takes on a deadlier meaning once Cole nearly gets killed in a race. He's then transferred to the medical care of one Dr. Claire Lewicki (Nicole Kidman), a neurosurgeon who also happens to be beautiful enough to sleep with Tom Cruise. This element of the film has received its share of guffaws and ridicule from those who tend to believe beautiful women rarely amount to anything substantial, which, even if this particularly sexist view held any water, is actually directly mocked when Cole embarrasses himself by mistaking Claire for a stripper. You could condescendingly say the film knows what it is, and that'd be true, but it doesn't make excuses for it - it just lays it all out there without a care or second-guess in the world. "That's right," it might as well be saying, "this young, beautiful woman is a brain surgeon, and you'd be a fool to question it."</div>
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Moreover, their romance contains a heft usually left on the table in these types of pictures. In addition to not considering Claire at all when he puts himself in danger, Cole nearly kills her when he decides to race an annoying taxi driver in the populated city streets, a feat for which she justly rebukes him. Aside from a rather lovely and teasing sex-y scene, Cole and Claire are rarely satisfied with one another. <i>Top Gun</i>'s Charlie might have disliked the <i>type </i>of guy Cruise's Maverick was, but Claire is completely opposed to the man Cole <i>is</i>. He only becomes more difficult and more determined. His idea of dates are to go to race tracks and visit fellow drivers. She wonders if he wants anything more in life; he wonders who she's really asking for. Even in their bedroom scene, the most affection she can lend him is physical curiosity - "'How can I be in bed with this guy?'" Cruise asks for her. "I know the answer to that one," she replies. Her brief cheers in the final showdown are less those of a converted fan, and more of someone genuinely concerned for his safety. Before he steps out on the track, they seem to be telling one another, "I love you, but I can't accept you," even as they're withholding even that much. People in Tony Scott movies don't always explain themselves so well, but they do understand one another.</div>
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Ignatiy Vishnevetsky's essential piece on Scott, <a href="http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/smearing-the-senses-tony-scott-action-painter">"Smearing the Senses,"</a> addresses just this, and provides a window through which all of the filmmaker's work can be viewed and appreciated. An excerpt, describing <i>Spy Game</i>:</div>
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The images cut [Redford and Pitt] apart and then the editing glues them back together until it becomes clear that their camaraderie isn't just a question of professionalism, but is in fact an emotional bond existing on some kind of more subtle level. Sure, this is the usual male weepie hokum - but it's in movies more than anywhere else that hokum finds its greatest opportunity to be profound....</blockquote>
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Scott's late period is rich with this sort of form-theme-plot unity. His hyperactive, impressionistic style made no attempt to accurately represent physical reality - and the movies, in turn, are about people who establish relationships that transcend physical presence while dealing with some concrete, physical threat which the relationship ultimately allows them to overcome. These are movies about the denial of physical reality made in a style that denies physical reality - and, occasionally, common sense - at every opportunity.</blockquote>
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A more fitting description of <i>Days of Thunder</i>, there may not be. Cole, and every other race car driver, forcefully deny themselves the potential physical consequences of their lifestyle. "The only time a driver goes to a funeral is when he's actually dead," Harry says. Scott abstracts the race sequences, never letting us know the context for the race outside of what is immediately surrounding Cole, and relying on Harry to let us know his immediate goals. Yet its physicality is striking; the fragility of the cars, and their drivers, is never forgotten. They are shaken and thrown every which way as their vehicles seem on the edge of exploding at any second. The image above is at once a striking illustration of danger, and a manifestation of Cole's worst fears. Below, Scott throws in light patterns to indicate either nirvana or panic - in both cases, flirting with death, brushing up against the edges of this mortal coil.<br />
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While Cole's bond with Claire is more physically manifested, literally (in their sexual contact) and figuratively (by how often Scott places them in the same frame), Cole's with Harry is an ethereal one, lending that very quality that would come to define Scott's later work. Much of their relationship is cemented with Cole in the car, and Harry speaking to him a mile away. Look at that quote at the top of this post - "I can't see him, but he talks to me." Cole is laying in an MRI machine, desperate for someone to say <i>something </i>to him, so accustomed has he become to being alone in a metal box, yet accompanied by a friendly, reassuring voice.<br />
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The excitement of the race is gradually whittled away, as we see the addiction to racing and, more generally, to one's ability to survive, erode Cole's relationship with Claire and his rival Rowdy's relationship with everyone. Rowdy's deterministic, "I'll only see a doctor when I'm dying" philosophy nearly kills him. He can't remember winning the Winston Cup; even his own name seems to be slipping. We, too, question Cole's need to get back into the car for one more race. It was one thing for Maverick to funnel that "need for speed" into flying. Theoretically, he'd end up fighting for his country and all that (this isn't really the space to debate military ethics, mind). Cole gets a gold cup. <i>Days of Thunder </i>never really makes some larger moral justification for its sport, the way dozens of basketball, baseball, and football films do - racing brings glory, at most, and not even lasting glory. Racing is cheap, and drivers are disposable, easily replaced or moved between the cars, the real stars. In Scott's opening montage, he gives us a shot of a huge American flag, then a small Confederate one, then a whole line of corporate flags. Racing is deteriorating the type of desire that once fueled American ideology, funneling a hunger for greatness towards outmoded values and commercial exploitation.<br />
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Cole is perfect for this world, something of a blank slate, almost purely a bundle of instincts and ambitions. He's like Robert Stack in <i>The Tarnished Angels</i>, the kind of guy who could win the war if he had a war to win. Without one, he's nothing, just a guy with a lot of talent that needs an outlet. "Harry, where'd you say your driver's from?" he's asked, in anticipation of Cole's seemingly heroic arrival. "Eagle Rock," his partner replies. "That's up around Wilkesboro, isn't it?" "No, Glendale. California." "He's a Yankee?" Harry asks. "Not exactly. If you're from California, you're not a Yankee. You're not really anything." It's an easy way to appeal to people predisposed against the very town that produces the entertainment of which they cannot get enough, but it also violently subverts Cruise's archetype before he even gets onscreen. What appears to be a nearly mythological figure is actually just a shell. And he'll have to grapple with that for the rest of the picture.<br />
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As a final aside, Quentin Tarantino claims to likened Tony Scott to Douglas Sirk back in the early 90s, and it's one of those things that's stuck with me. Both are obviously marvelous visual directors, and Tarantino mentioned it as a way of saying that cinephiles would only realize later what they had with Scott, but the more I think on it, the deeper that tunnel runs. They're both fascinated with exploring illusions of happiness and archetypes (intense melancholy runs through many of their films), presenting characters at once the way they perceive themselves, and how they're perceived by others, and the slippery bits that fall between each side. Anyway, beyond the comparison to Stack in <i>Angels</i>, <i>Days of Thunder</i> has one of the more Sirkian titles in Scott's filmography (which also makes it one of the better ones); you could line that up alongside many of Sirk's most famous - <i>Written on the Wind</i>, <i>All That Heaven Allows</i>, <i>The Tarnished Angels</i> - and it'd fit right in.<br />
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<i>Days of Thunder </i>is far from the most exciting entry in Scott's filmography, let alone his best, but I was really struck by just how strong and affecting it is, and how it really signaled the way for everything he was about to unleash on the world over the next twenty years. It's not just the boldness of his style, his willingness to embrace a certain otherworldly quality in his images - it's the repression, the sincerity, the subversion, the true embrace of that great Ernst Lubitsch maxim, "Every shot is the most important shot." No matter how many of them there are.<br />
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Scott Nyehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760694438241951398noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1151029499651504216.post-15752412453201897272013-09-11T12:05:00.000-07:002013-09-11T12:37:11.226-07:00Performance<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Last weekend, I pulled up Brian De Palma's<i>Passion </i>on VOD, largely because it was a new release I wanted to get under my belt eventually <span class="s1">(</span>and I didn't have nearly enough time to pack in <i>Marketa Lazarova</i>, which I've been dying to see in the month or so since buying the Criterion Blu-ray <span class="s1">-</span> but, you know, 165 minutes<span class="s1">)</span>. I was surprised to find just how much I liked the film, as De Palma is not one of "my guys" by any stretch.</div>
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With <i>Passion</i>, De Palma's most melodramatic streak is, if not as perversely indulged as in<i> The Black Dahlia</i>, then certainly presenting a sort of aged exhibitionism, and his aesthetic is beautifully wrought with a thoroughness of form-is-content rigor that is better discussed in <a href="http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie-critic-reviews/passion.15/">Glenn Kenny's review</a> than I could manage here. The key passage is thus:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
De Palma's style has always used split-screen, and his compositions often manipulate backgrounds and foregrounds so that one tells an almost completely different story that the other does, simultaneously. Our ways of looking at the world have caught up with De Palma's way of presenting information on a cinema screen. And as I said, it's all pretty exhilarating if you're turned in on that level.</blockquote>
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No disagreement from me. Where I sometimes felt De Palma was being...if not excessive, then certainly extra-expressive with such split-screen virtuosities, they did make the kind of wild, inventive use of the frame that one longs for. With <i>Passion</i>, beyond the totally thrilling aesthetic experience they create, there's also a real narrative/emotional/thematic hook to them, as we question just what is being watched, by whom, and where each person in this arrangement is. The eventual payoff these questions anticipate is perhaps predictable (perhaps not), but is at least a cohesive viewpoint, the kind of thing that makes it frustrating when people say it's "got style, no substance," as though the two are so inextricable.<br />
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Some of that perceived lack of substance has been said to have come from the performances, namely from the two leads, Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace. <a href="http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2012/09/nyff-2012-passion.html">Kenny again</a>, setting the stage:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
...the ridiculously flat dialogue and almost pantomime performance styles on display in <i>Passion </i>will not come as any surprise to a longtime De Palma watcher, although they are likely to elicit some sort of "That was stupid" reflex in non-adepts.</blockquote>
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And then, a series of critics dancing on it...<br />
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<a href="http://entertainment.time.com/2012/09/15/postcards-from-the-festivals-seven-films-at-toronto-and-venice/">Richard Corliss</a>, in TIME:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
McAdams, usually a winning personality, seems embarrassed by her presence here; and Rapace, who invested a Mensa fury into her Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish <i>Girl with the Dragon Tattoo </i>trilogy, looks frightened, as if assaulted by the camera's glare. </blockquote>
<a href="http://www.screendaily.com/reviews/the-latest/passion/5046262.article?blocktitle=The-Latest&contentID=598">Lee Marshall</a>, at Screen Daily:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
[T]he high-profile casting of Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace in the two main roles works a lot better on paper than it does in practice.... Whereas Kristen Scott-Thomas and Ledivine Sagnier fully inhabited their roles as domineering boss and sexy ambitious but fragile underling [<i>in 2010's </i>Love Crimes<i>, of which this is a remake</i>], McAdams and Rapace never really convince as rich, manipulative and self-assured advertising executive Christine and talented but rather innocent and insecure junior manager Isabelle. McAdams is better though at catching the playful, parody element in her role, something that Rapace, who is all intensity, seems to struggle with.</blockquote>
<a href="http://www.hitfix.com/in-contention/review-the-devil-wears-la-perla-in-de-palmas-disappointing-passion">Guy Lodge</a>, at HitFix, after describing Rapace as "utterly at sea":<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
No less strangely cast is McAdams, years too young to possess this dragon-in-heels role with the coolly unimpressed swagger of Kristin Scott Thomas. Still, if she seems to be playing dress-up in several scenes, at least she's playing: she deserves a more responsive scene partner when she sweetly bares her teeth and says, "You have talent. I just made the best use of it." </blockquote>
<a href="http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/venice-passion-has-flashes-of-classic-brian-de-palma-but-often-feels-lackluster-20120907">Jamie Dunn</a>, at The Playlist:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The characters are little more than noir cyphers, but both actors are game and have fun taking turns at playing femme fatale as they cross and doublecross each other throughout the increasingly convoluted narrative.</blockquote>
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Review after review, critics are at least rising above Kenny's "This was stupid" prediction, but rarely giving anyone involved more credit than "it looked like they had some fun." Look at the word choices - they "never really convince," McAdams is "too young to possess." These are startlingly normative approaches to cinema, acting, and representation, demanding verisimilitude from a film, and filmmaker, who giddily laughs at the very notion. I would argue that what De Palma and his actresses are up to is far more intriguing, nefarious, and layered than many are recognizing, or what they're asking for. Further, I would submit instead that McAdams' and Rapace's (possible) shortcomings are to De Palma's tremendous advantage.</div>
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<a href="http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/tiff-2012-correspondences-4">Danny Kasman's</a> assessment at Mubi is far more attuned to De Palma's wavelength:<br />
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Remember how Rebecca Romijn watches Stanwyck in <i>Double Indemnity </i>at the beginning of <i>Femme Fatale</i>, as if taking notes? The characters in <i>Passion </i>have taken notes from <i>Femme Fatale</i>: an abstraction based on a fiction based on a fantasy. It is complex, dextrous, and awkward: Rachel McAdams plays and acts the seductive, power hungry blonde in a performance that is like a kabuki imitation of the type; Noomi Rapace is her underling, friend, object of love and obsession, our heroine and, therefore, at first, directed to act “normally.” (This film's skewering of cinematic female friendship is twisted, sinister, cynical and terribly interesting.) Like in Paul Thomas Anderson's <i>The Master</i>, but far more knowingly, cleverly, the director is here forcing a confrontation between two entirely different acting styles and kinds of characters. In <i>Passion</i>, one is ostensibly a hollow signifier, the other our, the audience's, psychological subject, person of empathy. Except the film, lurchingly structured in three fascinating sections, with the middle one styled radically differently, introduces a third character, another woman (which brings the collection to: a blonde, a brunette and a redhead), who begins to appear more normal as Rapace's character enters deeper into the story and begins to be abstracted by the movements and conventions of her plot. </div>
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De Palma has no problem <a href="http://collider.com/brian-de-palma-passion-untouchables-prequel-capone-rising/">outright</a> <a href="http://www.avclub.com/articles/brian-de-palma-talks-about-his-stylish-new-remake,102271/">saying</a> he felt he could improve upon <i>Love Crimes </i>immediately after seeing it. And yes, Kristen Scott Thomas might be better suited to Christine, an exploitative, manipulative business executive from a casting director's perspective. Thomas is nearly twenty years McAdams' senior, and is perhaps (I've not seen the film) a little bit more believable in the role of someone who has risen to such a position.<br />
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De Palma's never been about "believability." McAdams' relative youth actually gives him more to play with, not less, and the extent to which she is posturing as an actress capable of a certain heightened, just-this-side-of-camp performance mirrors the way her character is, in a sense, performing as an executive, as a manipulator, as a sexual deviant, etc. Every stilted, "awkward," pronounced line delivery of hers is the sign of a woman whose construct of herself is inseparable from the real thing. Christine's (and perhaps McAdams') inability to convince us mirrors, and feeds into, the contempt her staff has for her. People have a certain level of respect for somebody who has worked long and hard to get where they are, even if they are unpleasant - Christine commands nothing of the sort.<br />
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But she keeps acting the part, down to her costume, or lack thereof. In a film consumed with sex and sexuality, we see Rapace naked, but not McAdams. Let's suppose that she would have been willing - how much does it say about her character that she insists upon covering herself up in the midst of otherwise rather outlandish sexual predilections? "Even the sexual decadence is of the clichéd lace and carnival-mark variety," Marshall writes, noting that Christine "lives in an apartment that comes across as a tad too brash and flashy for her character."<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.727272033691406px; line-height: 18.99147605895996px;"> </span></span>Which, again, might just be the whole point.<strong style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"> </strong>As with everything De Palma, style is content. Christine's blonde-blonde hair, pale (sometimes sickly) white skin, red-red lipstick (and sweaters, dresses, and high heels), and black, elaborately-strung lingerie are as much a character-born formation of Powerful Woman as De Palma's inclination towards what he wants to see onscreen. In a recent interview with Film.com, he had <a href="http://www.film.com/movies/brian-de-palma-interview-passion">this to say about that</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Men have been undressing women in various art forms since the beginning of visual art. You could make this film with two men, but, I mean, all you have to do is look on your television screen or go Googling or pick up a magazine, and what do you see? Women, dressed and undressed. That's what people are interested in.</blockquote>
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Of course, De Palma trying to insist that he's just giving the people what they want is sort of laughable in considering a film as weird and alienating as <i>Passion. </i>Since it's also concerned with the recording and representation of oneself through images, though, it's not an unfair place to begin. In fact, the MacGuffin of sorts that sets the entire plot in motion is an ad Isabelle (Rapace) creates, centered around a smartphone, placed in the rear pocket of a shapely pair of jeans, capturing images of guys ogling a woman's derriere. That <i>is </i>what people are interested in. Christine is a reflection of our desires, or what she (and De Palma) perceive them to be. One character says of her that "she gets what she wants," and that may largely come about just as much from giving everybody the image they want.<br />
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Isabelle, by contrast, fashions herself a more removed, down-to-Earth, "authentic" "cool boss" type, forever the victim of Christine (until, you know, she's not), and that formation has largely consumed her outward persona. She doesn't know how to land a client at a party, doesn't know how to speak up when Christine steals her idea for an ad, doesn't even know quite how to behave when Christine shares an extended kiss with Dirk, her lover. It's only in private - to her assistant, or to her lover - that we see the truth. She certainly knows what to do and say around a man, and not just any man. Her relationship with Dirk is barely sketched and never described, but it's a whole other dimension to a woman who is apparently too shy to speak to someone at a social gathering. In bed, she's more rawly sexual than Christine's constructed lust, and will slowly unleash a cruelty more personal and pointed than Christine's cold calculations.<br />
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The way those two personalities play off one another are key to the film's rather evolved and considered notions of...certainly not good and evil; some reversal of sympathies. Christine may be more outwardly repugnant, unpleasant, and motivated purely by selfishness and greed, but she's never doing any real harm, and is able to view all her actions through the lens of "business." Isabelle, meanwhile, has our sympathies, and we can identify with her more personal motivations, but her ends are drastic and horrific. She's playing the victim just as much as Christine is playing the villain, and her commitment to that role goes down far darker paths.<br />
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It's a dicey proposition to try to deduce how much of this is intentional, to what extent the actresses are playing into it, but since when has intent mattered anyway? Christine and Isabelle are playing something they know themselves not to be, and their uncertainties and hesitations are ultimately their undoing. Perhaps that goes for the actresses as well. Part of the challenge of directing is channeling everything an actor has to give - which might include accounting for their weaknesses - towards some artistic effect. However De Palma tuned his instruments, the result is indeed electrifying and playful, but also intriguing, layered, and resonant.Scott Nyehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760694438241951398noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1151029499651504216.post-36505937866826916822013-06-06T11:04:00.002-07:002013-06-06T11:04:59.118-07:00Bayhem<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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If you're not already listening to Rudie Obias and West Anthony's <a href="http://auteurcast.com/">AuteurCast</a>, well, you ought to do that. Every few weeks, they pick a filmmaker, discuss all of their films chronologically, with an episode dedicated to each film (they release two or three episodes a week, typically), in the hopes of analyzing, in Rudie's words that open each episodes, "what makes them an auteur, or at the very least, what makes them worth watching."<br />
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They've been gracious enough to let me blab about on their show before, but they really went insane by inviting me onto four episodes in their <a href="http://auteurcast.com/?s=michael+bay">series on Michael Bay</a>. If you want to find those specifically, just check out <i><a href="http://auteurcast.com/2013/04/26/episode-185-michael-bays-armageddon/">Armageddon</a></i>, <i><a href="http://auteurcast.com/2013/05/04/episode-187-michael-bays-bad-boys-ii/">Bad Boys II</a></i>, <i><a href="http://auteurcast.com/2013/05/18/episode-191-michael-bays-transformers-dark-of-the-moon/">Transformers: Dark of the Moon</a></i>, and <i><a href="http://ec.libsyn.com/p/4/0/d/40dc4252dea7e845/paingain.m4a?d13a76d516d9dec20c3d276ce028ed5089ab1ce3dae902ea1d01ce8e3fd7cd5d455e&c_id=5706997">Pain & Gain</a></i>, but again, highly recommend checking out all the films in the series, and any other episodes they've released in general. It's good stuff.<br />
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It is fortuitous that this series should conclude right around the time the discussion surrounding the whole practice of "Vulgar Auteurism" has reached its fever pitch, although for I know it may rage on for years to come (this is the Internet; it will not). It's a movement which I could be said to be a part of, but, chiefly because it has a separatist tendency to which I object (by saying Tony Scott is a "vulgar auteur," it's at least saying he's different, if not outright inferior to, someone like Wes Anderson, to which I would strongly object). Anyway, if you're not familiar with that whole thing, head on over to <a href="http://www.labuzamovies.com/">Peter Labuza's excellent blog</a>, where <a href="http://www.labuzamovies.com/2013/06/expressive-esoterica-in-21st-centuryor.html">a discussion</a> is raging on about this very topic, to which I contributed the bulk of my concerns in the comments section.Scott Nyehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760694438241951398noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1151029499651504216.post-13268450210815103112013-05-31T08:32:00.002-07:002013-05-31T08:32:25.835-07:00Constantly Revised and Remembered<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><i>This post contains spoilers for </i>Trance.</b><br />
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Danny Boyle's <i>Trance</i> speeds past the super-narrative trend of modern cinema and television into a kind of total narrative, one in which the plot is being reconfigured or reframed not over a series of acts, but almost moment to moment. Joe Ahearne and John Hodge's absolutely batty screenplay is responsible for much of this, setting up a basic series of rules before discarding with any allegiance to reality, never mind the inherent question as to what that would even constitute. Boyle's familiarly hyperkinetic style is both tempered (no more three-way splitscreens showing one action) and intensified, accomplishing much more within each shot to the point that any traditional definitions of structure are obliterated. The basic plot, about art auctioneer Simon (James McAvoy), who sets up the theft of an especially valuable painting, only to steal the thing for himself, take a blow to the head, totally forget where he left it, and seek out the help of hypnotist Elizabeth (Rosario Dawson) to delve back into his memories, is already pretty wild stuff, but about halfway through the picture, the possibilities for this set-up have been completely exhausted, and indeed, Ahearne and Hodge seem to have come to a similar realization.<br />
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So there are double-crosses, and triple-crosses, and lots and lots of people explaining "what's really going on" only for that, too, to be total hogwash, until finally, we're left with something that must be the truth because seriously how much crazier could it get? It's all a bit much, admittedly, and perhaps the film would have been better to deliver its exposition in less didactic terms (though my screening had the benefit(?) of the sound cutting out during an entire section of revelation, so hey, who's to say), but by the point it really reaches overload, <i>Trance </i>has already accomplished so much that it hardly mattered.<br />
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Chiefly, the film is about the effort to bury one's inner (and outer) demons, to restrain the absolute horror show that exists beneath the cool, calm, collected surface. But where the film really pulls out the rug is in illustrating that Simon's surface is far from the only one worth examining. We're given plenty of reason to doubt him throughout the film, and the gradual revelation of his violent nature, while heartbreaking, seems almost inevitable. He claims he's never fired a gun before, and perhaps that's true, but he also takes to it extremely easily. Elizabeth provides a perfect counterbalance - speaking in a totally collected manner, we assume her to be a sort of standard female role in a genre picture, one which Dawson has played many times before, operating as little more than a device.<br />
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And then things get weird.<br />
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The discovery of Simon and Elizabeth's dark past is at once the film's defining moment, and yet its most obvious - there's a look of recognition in her eyes the moment we see them meet. It becomes a truth we'd known without ever quite stating, and this late confession ends up operating more as confirmation than a real revelation, not dissimilar to how the end of <i>Shutter Island </i>operated. We'd been seeing the story through this window the whole time, but now we know what the house looks like.<br />
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James McAvoy has a sort of naturally broken, almost animalistic quality to him; that he became violent with her is a natural progression, retrospectively. But the ways and extent to which we come to find that Elizabeth, too, is absolutely nuts is pretty great. Women in these pictures are usually victims or total aggressors, if they're entities at all, but <i>Trance </i>complicates these simple roles by having both Simon and Elizabeth be mutually destructive. You can identify where she's coming from, while at the same time thinking she's definitely in the wrong, while feeling sorry Simon, given the torture she puts him through, while also knowing that Simon kind of has it coming. Never mind the audacity of the scheme as it's unraveled, which, yes, is completely silly, but is also completely secondary to the emotional tenor of the film.<br />
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Boyle never strays too far from the pulpy fun of the piece, teasing out information in the most delectable of ways (Elizabeth communicating with Simon via notecards is a great cinematic scene, but the precise way it plays out suggests she already knows what he'll say), and providing the sort of pulsating aural and visual experience for which we've come to know him, but he hardly ignores the true depravity of it all. Quite the contrary. The sexual overtones quickly reach explosive levels, culminating in the kind of nudity that one very rarely sees onscreen, all at once alluring, filthy, and - best of all - haunting. It doesn't take much to make sex look either great or pitiful, but it's quite another to suggest some degradation of the soul.<br />
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As Elizabeth walks towards us in a distorted reflection on the floor as the camera pans up, revealing, as if out of his unspoken fantasies and desires, her completely nude, the pit into which Simon (and we) sink is at once a pleasure garden and an abyss. He's almost shuddering as she stands before him, but this is not a moment of complete agency for her, either; there's trepidation in her voice as she answers his questions. "How did you know?" he asks, regarding a particular, fetishistic indulgence. "You told me," she says, vaguely afraid of what either of them might do. To this point, we're to believe had only met her a couple of days ago, and the total unbalance that's created from her knowing something so intimate and personal makes it abundantly clear that we've only glimpsed whatever power she holds in this relationship, and whatever's going on beneath, she is equally afraid of its outcome.<br />
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This is hardly the first, nor the last, time reflections will be used to suggest emotional undercurrents. Almost too numerous to list, refractions are a recurring motif, suggesting the usual stuff about broken psyches, but also the feeling of being torn five different ways, or having one's mind in an area apart from one's body. Elizabeth floats around inside Simon's head as he looks at her through a window. She emerges in places she does not belong, invading dreams, hallucinations, and everyone's imagination, an object of obsession and a haunting spirit, as much a creation as a reality. It's a very common mistake to assume that the person to whom you're attracted can solve all your problems, and <i>Trance </i>makes literal this blunder by Elizabeth's position in the story. Dawson gives an astounding performance, perhaps the best of her career, constantly suggesting something is amiss while quietly reaffirming what we're supposed to believe about her. Her sexuality has been both exploited (<i>Sin City</i>, <i>Clerks II</i>, <i>Death Proof</i>) and almost insistently downplayed (<i>Eagle Eye</i>, <i>Unstoppable</i>) throughout her career, and <i>Trance </i>offers a real merging of the two, introducing her as an almost asexual professional before unveiling her to be just as kinky and depraved as the men who constantly lust after her. As with everything else, Dawson toes the line beautifully, happily deluding herself as thoroughly as she is everyone else.<br />
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The resolution <i>Trance</i> offers feels at first far too pat, but upon further reflection, the illusory aspect of that may, too, be a cover-up. It's easy to present only one side of yourself when you're not personally delivering a message (the way someone can effect a situation without being physically present is another recurring motif), and it'd be difficult to surmise that, given everything that's transpired, Elizabeth is truly as content as all that. At least until she finds the next set of lives to burn to the ground. She remains, at best, an enigma, one which the men, even after everything she's put them through, are helpless before, gazing into even the idea of her presence when she's really far, far away.Scott Nyehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760694438241951398noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1151029499651504216.post-57048945891563274332013-05-08T14:14:00.001-07:002013-05-08T14:14:52.029-07:00Happy 100th Birthday, Bob Clampett!<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;"><i>Patient Porky </i>(1940)</td></tr>
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There's no real overstating the effect Bob Clampett's work has had on me. Far and away my favorite director of animation, Clampett's cartoons were truly looney, unafraid to push gags to their most extreme, or characters to their most unlikeable. His were the first cartoons in which I really sat up and paid attention to whose name the title card bore, and in this way, was as instrumental to me understanding the role of the director as seeing <i>O Brother, Where Art Thou? </i>or <i>The Royal Tenenbaums </i>for the first time when they were released. Like the Coens or Wes Anderson, Clampett's style was so distinct that, try as I might, it was difficult to find others like it. Before these guys, I assumed - as, I think, most people do - that there are a set number of styles and genres in which a filmmaker could work. Especially looking at a set of Looney Tunes, one sort of understands the rules of the game, as it were.<br />
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There were no rules for Clampett. No barriers. Tex Avery or Frank Tashlin could sometimes be just as wild, sure, but there were territories only Clampett could chart. He brought surrealism to the cartoons, not just his (justly) famous <i>Porky in Wackyland</i>, but through the smallest touches - Daffy Duck whacking himself on the head to create two other Daffy's with whom he could consult in <i>The Daffy Doc</i>, The Little Man From the Draft Board mirroring Daffy's improvised disguise in <i>Draftee Daffy</i>, Daffy looking through a magnifying glass, only to stick his head through it for a closer look in <i>The Great Piggy Bank Robbery</i>, singing cheese and disappearing milk in <i>Porky's Poppa</i>, a falling plane stopping just before it hits the ground because, whadya know, it ran out of gas in <i>Falling Hare</i>. Always a set-up that seemed funny enough on its own, until Clampett shot it into the stratosphere, making it funnier, you could swear, than anything you'd ever seen. No element of reality was off-limits, from the rubbery objects that surrounded the characters to those characters themselves. They could bend, stretch, mold, shrink, multiply, or be removed into several pieces, all with a matter of frames, and somehow it all gelled together in motion. Look at these frames from <i>Falling Hare </i>(1943), after Bugs has just been whacked on the head! Most directors would have his head shake from side to side in rapid succession, <i>maybe </i>with some ghosting elements...<br />
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...but <i>this</i>? This is the kind of license only Clampett gave his animators. Kristen Thompson <a href="http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2008/02/28/pausing-and-chortling-a-tribute-to-bob-clampett/">explained it thusly</a>:<br />
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Some of the character movements in Clampett's films are so fast and brief that they come across as a flurry of images too fleeting to register. Frozen, they reveal some of the extraordinary means that the director and his animators used to achieve those effects of speed. Clampett was also adept at highly exaggerated reactions and hilarious distortions of the animal body. Watching these cartoons with a finger on the pause button can yield hilarity and teach you a lot about the normally hidden aspects of the art of animation.</blockquote>
I won't say too much about <i>Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs</i>, as it's...undeniably uncomfortable in so many respects, but it is such an incredible, absolutely stunning piece of animation, completely out of control and desperate to keep up with its own rhythm. Even amongst Clampett's work, there's nothing like it, and while I might still prefer <i>Draftee Daffy</i> or <i>The Great Piggy Bank Robbery</i>, it's very, very easy to see why many consider it his masterpiece.<br />
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And as much as most Looney Tunes prey some way on violence, jealousy, and general bad manners, there was something especially depraved about his work that I sensed on some level even as a kid. I mean, you watch something like <i>The Wacky Wabbit</i>, which ends with Elmer Fudd attempting to physically extract a gold tooth from Bugs Bunny's mouth, that leaves a mark. <i>Draftee Daffy</i>, perhaps his most subversive work, has Daffy cheering on the U.S.A. from the comfort of his own home, but when Uncle Sam comes calling in the form of the Little Man From the Draft Board, he does everything in his power to escape, eventually flying away on a rocket that crashes into the ground and sends him straight to Hell. <i>Old Grey Hare</i>, which imagines Bugs and Elmer Fudd in the future, ends with Bugs digging him own grave, only to shove Elmer into it and bury him alive.<br />
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Somehow, the way he extended these gags let them sit a little longer than the onslaught of violence to which we're accustomed in most Looney Tunes. We'd have time to actually wrestle with these, so while the dynamite or getting-whacked-on-the-head gags could still be brushed off, he'd still work in these sort of uncomfortable, extended acts of cruelty that made his versions of these even-then-iconic characters much less than simple mascots. They were our Id, unleashed in spectacularly wild form onscreen. His colors (when he had colors) were a little more washed out, a little grimier, than the bold-color house style of Chuck Jones or Friz Freleng or Robert McKimson, lending his later work an earthy, can't-quite-wash-off-the-dirt feeling. I remember as a kid finding what I now know to be his Bugs uniquely uncomfortable. Whereas Jones' version was sly and sort of reassuring, Clampett's Bugs was dastardly in a decidedly unsafe way.<br />
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As for his Daffy, well, to me there is no other version. He still possessed much of the selfishness and bitterness that would come to define him during Jones' reign and, sadly, forever since, but, in addition to lending him the spirit of a real prankster, the expression of this was much looser, more unwieldy, more unpredictable. <i>Draftee Daffy</i> is one of the funniest films I've ever seen, so much so that it's almost impossible to highlight individual moments, but the one that always, always, always get me are when Daffy, certain he is finally rid of the Little Man From the Draft Board (having stuffed him in a safe and put a brick wall around it), yells "so long, Dracula!", jumps on a rocket (atop a sign that says "Use In Case of Induction Only"), and flies away. Some who knew Clampett personally said he really was Daffy Duck in real life, prone to wackiness himself and given to dispatch with problems in bizarre manners - he'd have a meeting with a boss, and if he sensed trouble coming, he might excuse himself to make a phone call and never come back. Perhaps he wished for a similar escape to the one he granted Daffy, but knew, like in his creation, that trouble would rear its ugly head again.<br />
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But more than anything, he just makes me laugh, so hard, no matter how many times I've seen a given cartoon. They're so fast-paced, so packed to the brim with seemingly-spontaneous bits of humor, you'd think they were crafted precisely at the pace they play out. How someone could plan these bits out over such a long time (the cartoons usually took about a month to make), yet still make them feel spur-of-the-moment never fails to astound me. There are throwaway gags in his work funnier than most feature films. Elmer Fudd drawing and X, winding up, and then proceeding to dig in an entirely different spot; Daffy answering an especially tall telephone marked for long distance calls; Humphrey Bogart tossing Lauren Bacall an <i>enormous</i> cigarette lighter in a scene played totally seriously; Daffy carrying an entire stretcher by only holding one end, then flipping a coin with one hand; ink spilling from and then refilling a bottle as a ship rocks back and forth...there's no end to it.<br />
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Today would've been Bob Clampett's 100th birthday, had he not died in 1984. He lived not without controversy, and was alternately revered and despised by those who worked with him at what would come to be dubbed Termite Terrace. I certainly don't know the truth of the accusations lobbied against him - maybe nobody still living does - but as far as I'm concerned, the work speaks for itself. Whatever favoritism was granted him seems wholly earned. If he stole others' ideas, he either stole all of them or twisted them to such an extent that they were unrecognizable. He left everything else in the dust, and in the process, showed what this form was really capable of - not having a laugh at reality, but having a laugh at complete unreality.<br />
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So celebrate his birthday with me by watching a few. Many are available online, or through the excellent Looney Tunes Golden Collections (you can buy <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Looney-Tunes-Golden-Collection-1-6/dp/B005NFJAQC/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1368043795&sr=1-1&keywords=looney+tunes+golden+collection">the whole lot (six in total)</a> for a mere $100), which remain among my prized DVDs. For now, I leave you with more images from Clampett's work. It should be noted that, according to Bill Melendez (the great animator who went on to bring <i>Peanuts </i>to film, and who worked in Clampett's division), Clampett rarely did the drawing himself, but gave the animators free reign to play on the gags and stories he outlined. He inspired then, and he inspires now.<br />
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<br />Scott Nyehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760694438241951398noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1151029499651504216.post-58988728243254635702013-05-02T10:02:00.000-07:002013-05-02T10:02:00.974-07:00Super Suits, Molotov Cocktails, and Nude Demons<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Depending on whereabouts you live, there are three films of varying quality opening tomorrow. <i>Iron Man Three </i>(I still can't believe that's how the title is presented onscreen) will, of course, be everywhere, and provides a good example of why using reviews as a consumer report is a bad idea. I thought it was just okay, didn't especially care for it, but I totally get why so many others are flipping out over it, and suspect many of you will as well. But I'm pretty up front in my <a href="http://battleshippretension.com/?p=11054">review</a> for <a href="http://battleshippretension.com/">Battleship Pretension</a> about loving <i>Iron Man 2</i>, so that should be enough for many to totally write off my opinion, perhaps with good reason.<br />
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Much better, however, is Olivier Assayas' <i>Something in the Air </i>(a.k.a. <i>Après mai</i>, which translates to <i>After May</i>, and, given the late-60s French setting, is a much more informative title), which should also be available in some sort of Video-On-Demand capacity for those who don't have a local art house theater. Well worth seeing in either format, for reasons one could explore in my <a href="http://battleshippretension.com/?p=10669">review</a> of that, also at BP.<br />
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The best of all of them is both by far the most challenging, and, not coincidentally, the most difficult to see. I'm pretty sure <i>Post Tenebras Lux </i>is only playing at Film Forum in New York, but will be opening at the beginning of June in Los Angeles , and will presumably come someplace else throughout the year. It was in my <a href="http://battleshippretension.com/?p=9710">top ten</a> for last year, and my <a href="http://battleshippretension.com/?p=9238">review</a>, written soon after seeing it, is about as close as I could get to expressing how deeply I loved it while acknowledging that my attempts to understand it were pretty distant at best. I still couldn't explain it, but I've come to understand it deeply, and personally, and I highly recommend it on the very uncertain possibility that you might, too.Scott Nyehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760694438241951398noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1151029499651504216.post-2223445573802986282013-04-16T10:52:00.000-07:002013-04-16T10:52:46.462-07:00Alien's Great-Great-Great-Grandfather?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Sprang brayk forever, y'all.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Le Plaisir</i> (Max Ophüls, 1952)</span>Scott Nyehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760694438241951398noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1151029499651504216.post-50541091986405669862013-03-27T11:28:00.001-07:002013-03-27T11:28:18.472-07:00That Certain Female<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Last night I watched Joseph Pevney's 1955 film <i>Female on the Beach</i>, based entirely, I don't mind saying, on a short piece Richard Brody <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2012/06/joseph-pevney-female-on-the-beach.html">wrote on his blog</a>. Noting that Pevney's "work in film ranges from the ferociously expressive to ridiculous, sometimes in the same sequences," he goes on to write:<br />
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<i>Female on the Beach </i>reveals Pevney to have been a good bad director whose way with images ranges from the stodgily conventional to the weirdly idiosyncratic. He has a single tone to offer, one that stretches to fit all but is, nonetheless, alluringly negative. ...</blockquote>
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He may have been, at times, deliciously incompetent, but his impulsive or uncontrolled failures came closer to art - and are certainly likelier to spark the imagination of artists - than the calculated successes of those whose greater skill masks lesser inspiration. Such found objects of cinematic wonder converge with a wonder at existence itself.</blockquote>
I certainly agree with Brody's conclusion, as <i>Female on the Beach</i> is, I suppose, nothing special in the overall, but wondrous in a million tiny details. Take, for instance, this image below. Joan Crawford plays a widow who's moving into her late husband's beach house until she and her real estate agent can find a buyer. She's actually never been to the house before, so the agent is showing her around, mentioning, "It's too bad you never lived here. Mr. Markham was very fond of this house, before you were married." And then Crawford throws her this glance, which lasts just a little longer than perhaps a more polite woman would allow...<br />
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...as if to say, "what did you know about my husband's fondnesses before we were married?" Brody's point about the fiercely expressive converging with the ridiculous is well taken in just how wide, and how long, Crawford holds this precise expression, which boils over just as Pevney cuts the shot, and the heat.<br />
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Where I'm not sure I agree with Brody is when he says, "The essence of [Pevney's] art is, to a great extent, his lack of authority." While he unquestionably is more than open to a certain wildfire element of cinema, there's a passage in <i>Female on the Beach </i>that's as beautifully, and specifically, executed as something out of Hitchcock (<i>Vertigo</i> and the Master of Suspense's own abandonment of emotional control, <i>Marnie</i>, sprang to mind immediately). Mrs. Markham has become friendly, on her own icy terms, with beach bum Drummy (Jeff Chandler), whose relationship with an elderly couple (Cecil Kellaway and Natalie Schafer) is a great deal more sinister than the familial terms on which they present themselves, the nature of which is unmistakable given the way the film opens, but which is explicated a great deal more when Mrs. Markham finds the diary of her former tenant, Mrs. Crandall.<br />
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Here, Pevney really shows us what he's made of, using double- and triple-exposure to show intersecting memories (or are they imaginations?). Sometimes they're stately and lyrical, almost something that might be framed at the very sort of beach house around which the film takes place...<br />
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...other times they're wildly claustrophobic and sinister, as characters begin to exist on, we acknowledge, two separate planes, but because of the crushing nature of two-dimensional photography, seem to sit side-by-side. In one moment that doesn't quite translate into stills but is boldly evident in motion, Mrs. Crandall comes in and comforts herself. Here, she seems actively concerned over her own well-being (and the eye peering out, just pass us, through the page is certainly cause for concern), even though the two Mrs. Crandalls in this image are far apart, temporally and emotionally.<br />
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The extent to which Pevney planned how these images would interact is, of course, impossible to say, but also represents its own kind of authority - the certainty that the total sequence would yield a particular effect, regardless of the particulars, and that it does. Crawford's manner upon arrival is pretty distinctly standoffish, though she rarely descends into outright rudeness; it's a sort of polite contempt, rigid and unrelenting. She has to make a very definite departure from here, and while Crawford is a skilled (and unpredictable) enough performer to sell that transition, Pevney does her, and us, a great service in using such a bold and terrifying sequence to set her off.<br />
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That it, coming so early, is perhaps the highlight of the film should not indicate that the film is somehow lesser for peaking early, as the thematic and dramatic waters it then enters are more than vicious and lurid enough to engage. For whatever tameness to which the story may succumb, it always navigates towards some strange, sideways, and (thus?) all the more effective means of expression, often in the images but, not to be discounted, also in the dialogue ("He's very tall, isn't he?" a detective asks Crawford of Drummy, in a manner that makes clear he's talking about everything except the man's height). As straightforward women-in-danger thrillers go (and its placement in a <a href="http://shop.tcm.com/women-in-danger-1950s-thrillers-dvd/detail.php?p=369635&ecid=PRF-TCM-100188&pa=PRF-TCM-100188">TCM boxset</a> of the same name is not unreasonable), this one is anything but.<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px;"></span>Scott Nyehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760694438241951398noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1151029499651504216.post-85830822360687917302013-03-11T12:18:00.005-07:002013-03-11T12:18:56.748-07:00Funny Facileness<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I've sort of been ducking and dodging discussing the relative "offensiveness" of various comedians (or comic news establishments, as the case may be) over the last few weeks, knowing essentially that there's an issue of context that is often overlooked, but not feeling enthused to the point that, frankly, it'd be worth the possibility that a minor miscommunication could derail the conversation. And I'm fragile. So, so fragile.<br />
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But I still think the basic idea is interesting, so it was a welcome surprise to find, while watching Stanley Donen's marvelous <i>Funny Face </i>for the first time last night, an avenue to explore how a piece (be it a stand-up routine, film, comic strip, awards show hosting, tweet, whatever) presents its world view, in spite of what it may be more obviously stating. In the film, bookworm Jo (Audrey Hepburn) is recruited to be a model for a fashion magazine by Dick Avery (Fred Astaire), the outfit's photographer. She has any number of moral and philosophical objections to the whole enterprise, but can't turn down a free trip to Paris, home of her favorite philosopher, Emile Flostre (Michel Auclair), whom she hopes to meet.<br />
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While Jo is delighted by the company she quickly discovers (mostly in a place referred to only as "the cafe"), Dick is less impressed, considering them largely to be easily-fooled phonies, not too different from the customer base with which he's more familiar. The parallel, not explicitly stated in the film, is a worthy one to draw, as it's not unusual for someone to take up intellectual pursuits as little more than a fashion statement, though, as someone who likes to think his interest in such matters extends beyond that, I will admit to getting a little touchy when Dick and the magazine's editor-in-chief, Maggie (Kay Thompson), infiltrate Flostre's home in the kind of bohemian disguises that one of the particularly square partners at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce would imagine and proceed to mock even the appearance of honest expression.<br />
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Which, in turn, brings me around to the point. <i>Funny Face </i>is pretty relentless in its portrayal of the culture of intellectualism, but that's not our introduction to philosophical theory - that comes through Audrey Hepburn. Sure, by the end, she heads off into the wide world of modeling so that she and Dick can be together forever, but she doesn't abandon her interest in the fictional "empathicalism" movement, noting with joy in one climactic moment that Maggie finally understands it, cementing a slow-forming bond between the two. The ideas succeed, even when their champions fail, even in something as simple as making those ideas understood. The film is not, in my view, making fun of those who honestly pursue deeper issues, but those who reject one contemporary fashions for another, or who, in the case of Flostre, wield intellectualism as a cheap way to get some ladies.<br />
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This is a discussion that's probably been going on as long as someone has tried to speak one way while intoning something else (perhaps even the opposite), and I don't expect it to be settled here and now, but suffice to say that it's worth looking past any initial offense you may take, and consider the context in which something is being presented - what has been established, and what will come to be crafted.Scott Nyehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760694438241951398noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1151029499651504216.post-30842255277907255532013-02-20T12:06:00.001-08:002013-02-20T12:06:32.260-08:00Seeking Consensus<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I've long expressed frustration towards people who make a big show out of how much they do not care about the Oscars, largely because it seems that if they truly didn't care, they wouldn't say anything at all. For instance, I really do not care about, say...whale watching. Never talk about it. On the other hand, I really, honestly do love and care about the Oscars, so I talk about them all the time. But of the many, many statements made against the Oscars, the most pervasive one seems to be that many of the films that get nominated, and certainly those that win, won't be the ones we'll be talking about in twenty, thirty years. The speaker then lists whatever his or her pet causes are that year, because certainly <i>those </i>will be the ones we'll all remember, and thus these films are more valuable.<br />
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Aside from the false premise of a person assuming that even he/she will still be into a given film by then, let alone a large portion of cinephile culture, it's essentially using one consensus to justify the lack of attention by another. It's saying, "man, this group of 6,000 people don't <i>get it</i>, but this group totally does, so there!" Furthermore, neither really reflect the value of the film(s) at hand, and each discount the other's ability to even talk about the right films. The Academy might not highlight the greatest films of its generation, but every list henceforth will in some way overlook films from that same generation.<br />
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The history of cinema, and especially its representation, is too varied and esoteric to depend on "the conversation" to dictate the best there is, whether that conversation is happening now or in fifty years. For example, everybody can talk about <i>Gone with the Wind</i> at the drop of a hat, but <a href="http://explore.bfi.org.uk/sightandsoundpolls/2012/film/4ce2b6ab5808b">increasingly few</a> truly consider it to be among the best films ever made. Conversely, I've seen a couple of films on Turner Classic Movies that are now among my favorites ever made, but try to find more than a handful of people who are talking about <i>It's Love I'm After </i>or <i>The Devil and Miss Jones </i>(the former is available from the Warner Archive, the latter is coming out from Olive this year). They're still great films. The amount of conversation generated around any movie doesn't make it any better or worse, and is just as absurd a barometer to use to justify a film's value as any award, let alone the Academy Award (which, as it happens, has ensured we still talk about <i>Around the World in 80 Days</i> in some capacity).<br />
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So in the meantime, talk about the films that matter to you. Don't rely on others to pick up the slack.Scott Nyehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760694438241951398noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1151029499651504216.post-35614479513694649652013-02-15T08:57:00.002-08:002013-02-15T08:57:29.276-08:00Like Someone in Love (dir. Abbas Kiarostami)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi60pM8P7S6Nmz0eF4W8TJNqKStaM9-AT5_EBQBqffsJROHB30Lr-9skKzqazrkJEmUPxsOiUbYRsmP3-P7O3u0rnmuFOa0WNHbmOPVvt_hJkIGfS-lcUhnaVLuloEFWeI9vDCba7hN-lA/s1600/like-someone-in-love.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="383" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi60pM8P7S6Nmz0eF4W8TJNqKStaM9-AT5_EBQBqffsJROHB30Lr-9skKzqazrkJEmUPxsOiUbYRsmP3-P7O3u0rnmuFOa0WNHbmOPVvt_hJkIGfS-lcUhnaVLuloEFWeI9vDCba7hN-lA/s640/like-someone-in-love.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<b id="internal-source-marker_0.2360748399514705" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The disparity between a person’s public face and their private self is not one that many filmmakers even acknowledge, let alone let entire films spring from that, but then, Abbas Kiarostami is not a typical filmmaker. Feeling no obligation to hold his audience’s attention - he’s said that he prefers films that put people to sleep - the Iranian filmmaker has given himself an artistic license to catch his characters at their least guarded, drawing a sharp disparity between how they interact with one another and what they do when they’re “alone.” His latest film, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Like Someone in Love</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, opens with a long sequence in which Akiko (Rin Takanashi), who we come to discover is a prostitute, cycling through several confrontations across space and time, as she speaks with her domineering boyfriend over the phone, her boss and coworker face-to-face, listens to message left by her grandmother, who had hoped to meet up with her during a day-trip to Tokyo, and finally her elderly customer, who gets a little less from their arrangement than perhaps he expected, but who the next morning seems no less pleased.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Akiko’s profession automatically leads one to a sort of comfort with the meaning of the film’s title - the hiring of a prostitute allows a person to behave “like someone in love” - but the allusion is more directly to the pop song written by Jimmy van Heusen and Johnny Burke, the Ella Fitzgerald version of which plays a couple of times in the film. The song is in most ways like any other 1940s standard, with its melancholy tune and romantic lyrics, but it expresses these things by equating the narrator’s actions to those he/she understands to be most commonly associated with love, as though those actions in and of themselves dictate his/her emotional state. “I find myself gazing at stars / Hearing guitars like someone in love / Lately, the things I do astound me / Mostly whenever you’re around me,” thus we must be in love. It’s reverse-engineering emotion - if action is most often dictated by emotion, then my actions must allow me to determine my emotion.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But Akiko doesn’t stop to at least say “hi” to her grandmother, even though she’s been waiting at the train station all day, updating Akiko as to her latest specific whereabouts and impending departure, and even when - most heartbreakingly - Akiko passes by the station and sees her standing, looking hopefully, she simply continues on her route. The way Akiko speaks of her grandmother, and her expression in seeing her stand alone, tells us how she really feels, but she simply continues on her way to see her client, appearing more than happy to be there upon arrival. If anything, Akiko’s actions reveal the exact opposite of her interior state. And that’s just the first twenty, twenty-five minutes of the film. She, like many people, is also in a relationship with a man she seems to hate, and who shows her little affection in return, and who assumes Takashi (Tadashi Okuno), the aforementioned customer, is Akiko’s grandfather, an illusion he is more than willing to uphold. This might seem a more blatant form of the public face/private self divide, but it’s one that’s complicated by the fact that him knowing Akiko’s secret - her profession - allows him to be much closer to her than her “real” grandparents, while their relationship has remained, apparently, uncompromised by the sexual interaction on which it was supposed to be based.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For all of Kiarostami’s talk of putting people to sleep, and the appearance of a “nothing happens” plot, it’s a sign of his mastery over the form that this was one of the more engaging films I saw at AFI Fest, even though, afterwards, I was very much ambivalent about my response. I was hardly swept away by it, but was carried along, gently, at every turn, never feeling as though things were particularly dragging. The film had since lived on, and in the ensuing months, scarcely a day went by that I didn’t consider it on some level, and getting the chance to see it again a few weeks ago very much hardened it in my mind and heart. It is in this way a more rewarding film than some with more outwardly appealing qualities, as it has seemed to last for months instead of the hour-forty-something of its running time.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">See, Kiarostami’s preference for films that put their audience to sleep isn’t just a fun bit of baiting. In the rest of the quote, he states, “I think those films are kind enough to allow you a nice nap and not leave you disturbed when you leave the theater. Some films have made me doze off in the theater, but the same films have made me stay up at night, wake up thinking about them in the morning, and keep on thinking about them for weeks.” The unsettling qualities - the hints at subjects of alienation, emotional exile, and, to some extent, self-abuse - might not be immediately evident, so shrewdly are they disguised and so unadorned are they in their presentation, until one thinks back, or revisits it, and sees that the way the film culminates is not so unexpected, not so jarring, and not purely the result of a dramatic imperative to “do something” with a premise. Using the sound design as the foundation for this climax might seem at first to be a grand formal bargain to excuse a small budget, until one notices how thorough and considered the auroral environment has been all along. Like the actions the characters take, it’s just an outward expression of what’s been going on the whole time.</span></b>Scott Nyehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760694438241951398noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1151029499651504216.post-52824017441699929952013-02-04T17:20:00.000-08:002013-02-04T17:27:36.970-08:00Hey, They're New to Me - My Favorite Discoveries of 2012<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7ApW2K1cHJM5YIz1ujj73j1fHJx1cUlnoqI9MC9pV9S824_aypx23T670XobLgwY4KQ5kviOhJ2ax1YvNCR1-ZLQAvUAbeXxp_Yvz-0BRgLUeJXZ_M8erDA2c92BOBMQc__WqXQ37kwQ/s1600/ArtistsAndModels1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7ApW2K1cHJM5YIz1ujj73j1fHJx1cUlnoqI9MC9pV9S824_aypx23T670XobLgwY4KQ5kviOhJ2ax1YvNCR1-ZLQAvUAbeXxp_Yvz-0BRgLUeJXZ_M8erDA2c92BOBMQc__WqXQ37kwQ/s640/ArtistsAndModels1.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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This is a list I awaited assembling with no small amount of anticipation. Every year, if one is a persistent and dedicated cinephile, will reveal a whole new set of favorite films, directors, movements, and aesthetics, and this was certainly no exception. While it is inevitably born somewhat from my own particular tastes (that the 1950s are the best represented here doesn't come as much of a surprise), there are at least a dozen that were the result of what happened to be playing at TCM Fest earlier this year, or Noir Fest that same month, or assigned to me to review on DVD, or something that was selected by my girlfriend or one of my friends during our weekly movie night, or something that just happened to be playing at Cinefamily or the New Beverly or any of the wonderful institutions in Los Angeles. Cinephilia is as much an investigation towards one's own objects of affection as it is a revelation, one that is haphazardly curated by professionals, novices, and total blind luck. So while it's little surprise that <i>Rumble Fish</i> was probably my favorite film I saw all year, there's one film on here I might've put off forever had a girl my friend was dating not selected it one evening. And so it goes.</div>
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I didn't rank them. Aside from a few, it hardly matters. I'm pretty sure there are fifty films here, the fifty that meant the most to me, were the most resonant, or perhaps just the ones to which I most wanted to call attention. Who knows. I've placed them in reverse chronological order, largely out of a personal preference for the distant past, though it became interesting to see established modes of operation echo in achievements sometimes only a few years, and sometimes decades earlier. So there's no better place to start than...<br />
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<b><i>Khrustalyov, My Car!</i> (</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; line-height: 18px;"><b><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Aleksei German;</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"> </span></b></span><b>1998)</b></div>
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When I <a href="http://www.railoftomorrow.com/2012/05/khrustalyov-my-car-superficial.html">wrote about</a> the film shortly after seeing it, I concentrated on the more thrillingly stylistic elements therein, because really, what the hell do I know of Russian history, let alone an obscure "Doctor's Plot" to kill Joseph Stalin. But if one ever needed proof that the plot is immaterial in appreciating a film, boy this is it, because I adored every confounding second. With a nearly cartoonish sense of humor and the patience of Bela Tarr, it's at least a singular experience I will not soon forget.</div>
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<b><i>Sátántangó</i> (Bela Tarr; 1994)</b></div>
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There are certain films, and I'm sure some of you out there can relate, that seem to exist with you long before you see them, to the point that the actual viewing is almost obligatory. Well, when you're faced with a seven-and-a-half-hour, very slow Hungarian film, one must endeavor to make the viewing something far more. I was immensely pleased when Cinefamily hosted such an event, with a potluck to boot, so much so that I bought the requisite membership purely because of it (that purchase has since paid out exponentially). The film itself is inevitably less than when I'd built it up to be over the past ten years (yep), but to say that diminishes its greatness would be an act of pure selfishness. All I've thought since was how I long to revisit it.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggXbbQ9sPZWDnKwI-ZlWiJzJCtjzryLiyLVHmpFesVc5KlTf73ptx8Cdwg5GY9uOlCDx7I_pArKZgLlGDvK9Rvramaqr8FqAWlDOtD-zlvWIKrn7RAeLnJI4UpVlz1QApOVvHKjYv-zuk/s1600/blue1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggXbbQ9sPZWDnKwI-ZlWiJzJCtjzryLiyLVHmpFesVc5KlTf73ptx8Cdwg5GY9uOlCDx7I_pArKZgLlGDvK9Rvramaqr8FqAWlDOtD-zlvWIKrn7RAeLnJI4UpVlz1QApOVvHKjYv-zuk/s640/blue1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<b><i>Three Colors</i> - Blue (Krzyztof Kieslowski; 1993)</b></div>
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My adoration of Krzyztof Kieslowski starts with <i>The Double Life of Veronique</i>, and as yet to be matched, but man, <i>Blue </i>comes awfully close.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_mgwDvh_zKMc_RBiGPc2rBx8piuMpjLqaH98uGWHu4yGV9JO2gUQrkEZ5fad8vgIfSJLiSxrsHYWMa9ApQSYFrZlXdzB_nDPmmr6fxSdZrJiZgpEuiUKD14GUirCHwCqYLb3tqV6toQk/s1600/tremors8.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_mgwDvh_zKMc_RBiGPc2rBx8piuMpjLqaH98uGWHu4yGV9JO2gUQrkEZ5fad8vgIfSJLiSxrsHYWMa9ApQSYFrZlXdzB_nDPmmr6fxSdZrJiZgpEuiUKD14GUirCHwCqYLb3tqV6toQk/s640/tremors8.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<b><i>Tremors</i> (Ron Underwood; 1990)</b></div>
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One would have to struggle mightily to find a piece of low-rent genre filmmaking as pleasurable as this. As simple and inexplicable a premise as they come - underground monster terrorize a tiny town - results in several beautifully imaginative set pieces, a collection of quickly-, but determinedly-sketched characters, and as simply delightful a 90-some minutes as the cinema is likely to provide.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglhg-yXf_1La3GuKAZfzCEL9BVSb1Xg7BAd5xM78JJe-yVBkPkPy0ikwO43VtlMpUJdo3GiasyPAOCSA_oE4oct-TWcDLQE7Zn5gRzvbL70I0w4D3Gr4PVDUt_5gvHWuUSFIPEiHsB7ZQ/s1600/miame1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="356" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglhg-yXf_1La3GuKAZfzCEL9BVSb1Xg7BAd5xM78JJe-yVBkPkPy0ikwO43VtlMpUJdo3GiasyPAOCSA_oE4oct-TWcDLQE7Zn5gRzvbL70I0w4D3Gr4PVDUt_5gvHWuUSFIPEiHsB7ZQ/s640/miame1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<b><i>Miami Connection</i> (Y.K. Kim, Woo-sang Park; 1987)</b></div>
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Separating the experience of <i>Miami Connection </i>from the crowd with which one watches it is futile - the movie IS the crowd, and vice-versa. The stakes are so low, the action scenes so false, but the spirit so buoyant that it can withstand anything. Even your uncontrollable laughter. I don't believe in "so bad it's good," but something happened in the creation of this film that simply does not happen on many other sets. Something akin to magic.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsLJeVologbRDk1HGSoCf-4I2gWI7Mqd1W19TsxioRHu4wmYnm7-se4Hb_LacWsIozGiTBX3Yf3Mo8-2choLgHS-P2t-9JhbyO4Iqw96DW0bM_uO3_01nfs9sM3pArLRb6T6RdGg5uE4Y/s1600/rumble1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="346" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsLJeVologbRDk1HGSoCf-4I2gWI7Mqd1W19TsxioRHu4wmYnm7-se4Hb_LacWsIozGiTBX3Yf3Mo8-2choLgHS-P2t-9JhbyO4Iqw96DW0bM_uO3_01nfs9sM3pArLRb6T6RdGg5uE4Y/s640/rumble1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<b><i>Rumble Fish</i> (Francis Ford Coppola; 1983)</b></div>
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This was a big deal for me. I've always loved the formal rigor of Coppola's 1970s films, but it's the naked emotionalism of what came after that really made him one of my favorite filmmakers, and certainly among the best of those still living. Yet I hadn't seen one that totally married the two, until <i><a href="http://criterioncast.com/reviews/scott-reviews-francis-ford-coppolas-rumble-fish-masters-of-cinema-blu-ray-review/">Rumble Fish</a></i>, a film so relentlessly vulnerable it could reduce you to tears with a blink, but so formally audacious that its closest kin exists only decades prior. I could've watched it for days, so desperately did I want to live in Coppola's totally singular world of mourning bikers, too-cool hipsters, prophetic deli clerks, and the agony with which some exit their youth. I've never seen anything quite like it, and I hesitate to say the cinema could withstand much more of it, but viewing it for the first time was one of those total realizations of a cinema of which I had only dreamed.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmX7YxlJRL-lHlnOaJgQIayb-Ynpm-0KC017Dv9kCGxxMMwpehaIv2JeKeYgUhhYnNtKjIJqXrEo5bkBNN8aZS0coBe8-_R288fL5mUTLTTGhKyGTSUA9O_vURXJiI_7IjinfIvSuNREM/s1600/andre1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="391" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmX7YxlJRL-lHlnOaJgQIayb-Ynpm-0KC017Dv9kCGxxMMwpehaIv2JeKeYgUhhYnNtKjIJqXrEo5bkBNN8aZS0coBe8-_R288fL5mUTLTTGhKyGTSUA9O_vURXJiI_7IjinfIvSuNREM/s640/andre1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<b><i>My Dinner with Andre</i> (Louis Malle; 1981)</b></div>
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That most infamous of pretentious art films is also one of the most joyous, as interesting for the ideas proposed during the conversation as it is for the fact of their presentation. Further proof that Louis Malle could do anything.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEn48zy5NBaNSpjIXOTlAV5-j9bnKVnvhXXtktcP7ttJzJaokYoC84sGq2FwX922saIUYT4aYNEz6L1r6p1cDe79dSJsjYQEkvJJ4fQ44rlijI5W5sAH1ZmSurHb48hd_U1IAMSk68qtY/s1600/CM+Capture+5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="378" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEn48zy5NBaNSpjIXOTlAV5-j9bnKVnvhXXtktcP7ttJzJaokYoC84sGq2FwX922saIUYT4aYNEz6L1r6p1cDe79dSJsjYQEkvJJ4fQ44rlijI5W5sAH1ZmSurHb48hd_U1IAMSk68qtY/s640/CM+Capture+5.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<b><i>Mon Oncle d'Amerique</i> (Alain Resnais; 1980)</b></div>
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I <a href="http://www.railoftomorrow.com/2012/02/criterion-on-hulu-turtles-rats-islands.html">wrote at length</a> about this film when I saw it all the way back in February, so any particular observations are best left to that. Suffice to say that I consider Resnais an absolute genius, and I wouldn't trade one bizarre second of this, now among my most beloved of his works, for the world.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga7wuqs2Iam8Vo4VXs9zw2s4xzKTHYN0NNT61W80I9799chT0K7gg4s3mQtd1XrMl0C-VcUk7pK9OG9ltQReP5yALIHH-LFoAkEL3fNmETmTjOwSwNcPp5ccijiMaT7uqgQmQ4P6obV5M/s1600/kramer1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="348" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga7wuqs2Iam8Vo4VXs9zw2s4xzKTHYN0NNT61W80I9799chT0K7gg4s3mQtd1XrMl0C-VcUk7pK9OG9ltQReP5yALIHH-LFoAkEL3fNmETmTjOwSwNcPp5ccijiMaT7uqgQmQ4P6obV5M/s640/kramer1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<b><i>Kramer vs. Kramer</i> (Robert Benton; 1979)</b></div>
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The American cinema, if such an outrageous industry as this could be said to serve a single artistic purpose, is rarely better than when it buckles down and commits to a particular mode of storytelling. I hesitate to say <i>Kramer vs. Kramer </i>is the height of a particular form of dramatic storytelling, but it's such a pleasure to sit through and so effective in its particular brand of manipulation, never mind the perfect exhibition for Dustin Hoffman, at as close to the height of his abilities as one could ask for, and this film asks him to do quite a bit.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8qOyfckb4GhElxKkFzVvYR-UtIHlqV7x8x1Q0vBgaSRDr62PneBxE7I5kinT9e3eeITVg-DWKMK9Zb8qdvhwVP-e3ITbBE92kVTKbLlUJoBgA7WdzG4FETugZMnK41tTRYHBdwrbVH0M/s1600/celine1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8qOyfckb4GhElxKkFzVvYR-UtIHlqV7x8x1Q0vBgaSRDr62PneBxE7I5kinT9e3eeITVg-DWKMK9Zb8qdvhwVP-e3ITbBE92kVTKbLlUJoBgA7WdzG4FETugZMnK41tTRYHBdwrbVH0M/s400/celine1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b><i>Celine and Julie Go Boating</i> (Jacque Rivette; 1974)</b></div>
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Another film that seemed to exist with me long before I actually saw it. I'd been curious about this film since high school, when I can distinctly remember writing its title (along with films like <i>The Conversation </i>and <i>The Deer Hunter</i>) in a little notebook, the kind I used to carry with me everywhere before the smartphone eliminated its need (once, while waiting for a movie to start, a man several seats down asked if I had a pen he could borrow; when I said that I did and handed it to him, he replied, "you look like the kind of guy who has a pen on him"). But I digress, and so too does the film, a three-hour experience I could never fully account for, let alone here, but which creates the kind of cinematic space one longs for, in which truly bizarre ideas can coexist with a range of performances one rarely encounters. It wasn't until I saw <i>Girl Walk // All Day</i> that I could even think of a film from the past decade that lets its actresses do this much.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAGULTE8trsaQjPQ8WKCMuIIKQbqW9RNsQh3ek5sM4WR9b4P53284y8L5MEQrKahYiT8q0Z4c3wHz48bXESrWWOguZJsWEPr0yQKSVDglJEbLH5UXjluRCDJmabvuEfSTBsc46Y1RxzMk/s1600/phantom1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAGULTE8trsaQjPQ8WKCMuIIKQbqW9RNsQh3ek5sM4WR9b4P53284y8L5MEQrKahYiT8q0Z4c3wHz48bXESrWWOguZJsWEPr0yQKSVDglJEbLH5UXjluRCDJmabvuEfSTBsc46Y1RxzMk/s640/phantom1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<b><i>Phantom of the Paradise</i> (Brian De Palma; 1974)</b></div>
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If someone were to describe the cinema of Brian De Palma to me, I would inevitably exclaim him to be among my favorite filmmakers, and yet my actual encounter with that cinema has left me considerably less certain. I adore elements, movements, and moments, but rarely the whole - except <i>Phantom of the Paradise. </i>The true outlet for all his gonzo sensibilities, <i>Phantom </i>is a lifetime of cinema packed into 90 minutes, a total flushing of the narrative prerogative in favor the the performative, the exhibitive, and truly unhinged.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQCeTcIrjZJvIth_YFzgodg7uiOvpbYIKsc8wr53_JSIkhtm-GKOpwPAQNPqqEAiiY_r-9pWYNMtu7xI80JRiQpzpNk_oD3h8o6iOUdV7V19vd9l9bKLOlMwC6Dcz4g_rTzbj5GH47gYQ/s1600/minnie-and-moskowitzPDVD_01301.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="363" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQCeTcIrjZJvIth_YFzgodg7uiOvpbYIKsc8wr53_JSIkhtm-GKOpwPAQNPqqEAiiY_r-9pWYNMtu7xI80JRiQpzpNk_oD3h8o6iOUdV7V19vd9l9bKLOlMwC6Dcz4g_rTzbj5GH47gYQ/s640/minnie-and-moskowitzPDVD_01301.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<b><i>Minnie and Moskowitz</i> (John Cassavetes; 1971)</b></div>
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I'm coming around on Cassavetes, and this was a major turning point. Not only an apt showcase for his particular brand of improvised drama, but the rare film that made me laugh uncontrollably for a solid five minutes, or however long Minnie's date with Zelmo lasts. It's also just a great portrait of Los Angeles during a particular time of which I never tire in the cinema (see also: Altman's great <i>California Split</i>, or <i>The Long Goodbye</i> for that matter). And if Seymour Cassel gives a better performance in some other film, please let me know.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEv6IazeArfK7omNXSo_sDFoqdkQWl1qZrE2TV9YkR9bHkxOr_7t5AmttuIp3NBUv4Q0n6ZhtNoob6JDsNeUG_v3Co0rRs4f05OEsUb4yixFP60BPZNf109yeAreQ6H23qZNf-zzLER2A/s1600/fournights1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEv6IazeArfK7omNXSo_sDFoqdkQWl1qZrE2TV9YkR9bHkxOr_7t5AmttuIp3NBUv4Q0n6ZhtNoob6JDsNeUG_v3Co0rRs4f05OEsUb4yixFP60BPZNf109yeAreQ6H23qZNf-zzLER2A/s640/fournights1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<b><i>Four Nights of a Dreamer</i> (Robert Bresson; 1971)</b></div>
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Achingly romantic and genuinely ironic; for people like me who often see life through both lenses, this is a deeply affective, yet surprisingly agreeable film.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUMmiiFeEUW0Wwc4A4qcpm5ZFNfJuCewjFnJiAIIcg1kk9tazw0d-UiTDgHFNPblb6BZOClveqNy3b0wTwJNlQQqN3Tlxxi4ealqBEH3N74oN9dBCm3RuwGKFzxQTVQQ7oWDTxtD0nDT4/s1600/canterburytales1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUMmiiFeEUW0Wwc4A4qcpm5ZFNfJuCewjFnJiAIIcg1kk9tazw0d-UiTDgHFNPblb6BZOClveqNy3b0wTwJNlQQqN3Tlxxi4ealqBEH3N74oN9dBCm3RuwGKFzxQTVQQ7oWDTxtD0nDT4/s640/canterburytales1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<b><i>The Trilogy of Life</i> (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1971-1974)</b></div>
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I have <a href="http://battleshippretension.com/?p=9385">written</a> and <a href="http://criterioncast.com/podcast/criterioncast-episodes/episode-135/">spoken</a> about this far more than I could've anticipated, and oh how I wish common decency did not prevent me from posting some of the more outrageous imagery present herein, but one must simply encounter all three of these for oneself. Far more spiritually in-tune than their bawdy reputation may suggest, they represent the joy that only total expression can yield. This year provided me with a major introduction to Pasolini, and now I can hardly get enough.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQAxD7vnuvF2PPF0qTGeViQqyzD44kNrwnM9tVLkR5N7ZkVLDE0j2U-M6BsXn1HHyCUN5Rlo6lrCJf0_CQmUmJ45rXdiFu8hRaEYe2wF2x_V-ySLm1XWsmYKSU2Z_bV5wLT-YBW55OV0o/s1600/conformist1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="385" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQAxD7vnuvF2PPF0qTGeViQqyzD44kNrwnM9tVLkR5N7ZkVLDE0j2U-M6BsXn1HHyCUN5Rlo6lrCJf0_CQmUmJ45rXdiFu8hRaEYe2wF2x_V-ySLm1XWsmYKSU2Z_bV5wLT-YBW55OV0o/s640/conformist1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<b><i>The Conformist</i> (Bernardo Bertolluci; 1970)</b></div>
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You know...<i>The Conformist</i>! Opulence at its very best.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1AjoZGAaT4Uyi1zP6vX_yi45thHVMc2aW_RQldyFXENF88xMzsNwX51g9jE7NXmY_vvxSo2t4Tl49zYa7am0LjvBxJ82ohdLiMtbBKzXUNf4jR0V4Lr_vDaeZtvUu16lwCjQZooVvmVk/s1600/faces2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="380" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1AjoZGAaT4Uyi1zP6vX_yi45thHVMc2aW_RQldyFXENF88xMzsNwX51g9jE7NXmY_vvxSo2t4Tl49zYa7am0LjvBxJ82ohdLiMtbBKzXUNf4jR0V4Lr_vDaeZtvUu16lwCjQZooVvmVk/s640/faces2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<b><i>Faces</i> (John Cassavetes; 1968)</b></div>
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Not the kind of leveling experience you want to take a date to, but a grand exploration of the human effect that results in staring into the abyss. I admit a fault of mine to not be terribly overwhelmed by character-centric pieces, but this...this is something else.</div>
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<b><i>Seconds</i> (John Frankenheimer; 1966)</b></div>
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James Wong Howe, still kicking cinematography ass forty years into his career, is but one reason to watch this truly unusual slice of welcome-to-the-counterculture cinema. John Frankenheimer can do <i>anything</i>.</div>
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<b><i>The Hawks and the Sparrows</i> (Pier Paolo Pasolini; 1966)</b><br />
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This was indeed a big year for Pasolini and myself, and <a href="http://criterioncast.com/reviews/dvd-reviews/scott-reviews-hawks-and-sparrows-masters-of-cinema-dvd-review/">this really kicked things off</a>. Wonderfully blending Pasolini's amateurish approach to filmmaking with his undeniable visual prowess, the result is a sort of formally off-kilter religious icon. There are passages in this film as spiritually elating as anything you'll find in church, and with a wit to boot, but when we take a detour to meet a woman so destitute, she's kept her children thinking it's nighttime for four days because she can't feed them, Pasolini opens up a whole other world. There are a handful of films to which I forever indebted, and this - for reasons I still can't entirely classify or quantify - is now among them.</div>
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<b><i>Daisies</i> (</b><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Věra Chytilová; </b></span></span><b>1966)</b><br />
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I have the pleasure of <a href="http://battleshippretension.com/?p=7046">investigating</a> several films from the Czech New Wave thanks to a very cool Eclipse set that Criterion put out, and it should come as little surprise to anyone with a passing understanding of the movement that this is the one that stood out. Sure, you've got all those grand feminist overpinnings with which I am very much taken, but it's the blow-out-the-doors formal daring of the film that's made it a classic. Marie I and Marie II, as they're known, announce immediately at the opening of the film that they're going to go on a romp, disrupting all that is good and proper at every turn, and proceed to do just that for ninety-odd minutes. We're just lucky enough to be along for the ride.</div>
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<b><i>Yearning</i> (Mikio Naruse; 1964)</b><br />
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My time spent watching and reviewing (roughly) a film every week for CriterionCast has been mighty fruitful, and of all the wonderful films I've <a href="http://criterioncast.com/category/column/on-the-hulu-channel/">talked about over there</a>, Mikio Naruse's <i><a href="http://criterioncast.com/column/on-the-hulu-channel/mikio-naruses-yearning/">Yearning</a> </i>was by far the standout. Naruse really had the melodrama nailed down as a particular genre, with its own set of storytelling conventions, and he had a way of turning the barest of scenarios into a very engaging story - in this case, setting the tale of a widow who falls in love with her brother-in-law amidst the rapidly-modernizing postwar era. Naruse rarely lets go of the effects of the war, and even in 1964, they're still being felt, as a generation coming into adulthood has to live up to the memory of their older family members who died bravely in a war in which they were too young to take part. Add to that a small family business struggling against the arrival of a gigantic, westernized supermarket, and tension bears down from all sides; where else to turn but love, however taboo? It's a fascinating film, one of the best Naruse ever made, and one I truly wish got more attention.</div>
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<b><i>La Jetée</i>/<i>Sans Soleil</i> (Chis Marker; 1962, 1983)</b><br />
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It's perhaps absurd to place these together, as, aside from their filmmaker and some subsequent thematic concerns, they share little in common. <i>La Jetée</i> is a short sci-fi film made up (nearly) entirely of stills, while <i>Sans Soleil</i> is a free-ranging travelogue spanning five countries and innumerable philosophies. But since Criterion put them together in a <a href="http://battleshippretension.com/?p=6016">Blu-ray set</a>, they are somewhat inseparable to me, and while their ideas and aesthetic daring are what tends to jump out, I just want to throw some love and say that I found both incredibly moving experiences. In some ways their formal devices - stills in <i>La Jetée</i>, an omniscient narrator in <i>Sans Soleil</i> - make them alienating, but the moment-to-moment pleasures are so elemental, so immediately accessible, that I found them very easy to drown in.</div>
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<b><i>West Side Story</i> (Robert Wise; 1961)</b><br />
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While I tend to bemoan Stephen Sondheim for his love of falsely invoking tragedy (no exception here), when <i>West Side Story</i> is cooking, it's ablaze. I continue to swoon over everything Robert Wise was capable of as a director (if you've never seen <i>The Set-Up</i>, do yourself the biggest favor), and he brings all the artificiality to this that a musical could ask for, and all the formal rigor for which he'd already been known. I knew from the opening number, full of tracking shots and sharply-angled widescreen portraits, that this was a real love-at-first-sight situation, and I only fell deeper and deeper. And I will say, seeing it in 70mm did not hurt one bit.</div>
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<b><i>Letter Never Sent</i> (</b><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.59375px;"><b><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Mikhail Kalatozov;</span><span style="color: #353535; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> </span></b></span><b>1959)</b><br />
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A discovery for many thanks to Criterion issuing it on a <a href="http://battleshippretension.com/?p=6503">stunning Blu-ray edition</a>, this - like <i>The Cranes Are Flying</i> - is so forceful a piece of Soviet filmmaking you'll be ready to make a five-year plan of your own. Mostly revolving around watching this film again and again. Its out-of-control camerawork and conflicts (a forest fire really makes you question the extent of the illusion) serve to aptly express the racing emotions within our protagonists, torn by a conflict that's been explored in everything from 1934's <i>L'Atalante </i>to this year's <i>The Loneliest Planet</i>, filtered through a lens of nationalist pride it'd be difficult to find anywhere else. As much a portrait of yearning as the so-titled film discussed above, its bitter-fight-for-survival narrative grounds these emotions firmly in the elemental dirt, at once accentuating and diminishing them.</div>
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<b><i>Anatomy of a Murder</i> (Otto Preminger; 1959)</b><br />
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<i>This </i>is the American cinema, man. Preminger uses its narrative to direct our sympathies, because the moral compass has almost no presence here. There is absolutely no doubt that Paul Biegler (James Stewart, in perhaps his greatest performance) is defending a guilty man (Ben Gazzara as Lt. Frederick Manion); even if the fact that he killed the man who raped his wife makes it somewhat justified in our eyes ("the unwritten law," as Manion calls it), we recognize that the legal hoops they'll have to jump through are just that - hoops. And even if we think what he did was justified, it doesn't change the fact that maybe Manion is a bit of a rat, maybe his wife is a bit of a floozy, and maybe their marriage was far from perfect. And maybe it was jealousy motivating him more than righteous fury. Like I said, this is not the black-and-white morality to court, or the cinema of the time, demands, but it's the one we live with everyday, and it is beautifully rendered here at every turn.</div>
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<b><i>The Music Room</i> (</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; line-height: 17.77777862548828px;"><b><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Satyajit Ray; </span></b></span><b>1958)</b><br />
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The pleasures of this film are so elementally cinematic, one can easily lose track of the blatant moralizing going on, as Ray's protagonist, Roy (Chhabi Biswa, in a performance that spans everything), spends himself silly to make himself sillier, and is eventually (or in the cinematic space, immediately) left in ruin. The King of a castle gone completely to ruin, the film opens on him atop a mighty house that's hardly appointed at all, just loosely tended to by a handful of servants as Roy reflects on, essentially, his own worthlessness, both to himself and to society at large. I saw this film exactly once, much earlier last year, and still cannot shake the main theme, nor would I particularly want to.<br />
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<b><i>The Lovers</i> (Louis Malle; 1958)</b><br />
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It's worth saying - Louis Malle can do <i>anything</i>. Perhaps now most famous for sparking the Supreme Court's definition of pornography - "I know it when I see it" - I cannot <a href="http://www.railoftomorrow.com/2012/04/directing-anamorphic-widescreen-with.html">possibly overstate</a> the elegance of its direction nor the potency of its emotions, which are so delicately hinted at that their eventual explosion comes as much as a jarring interlude as a welcome return. It's not hard to see just what the Court found so obscene, but given the benefit of time and a thousand perfume commercial rip-offs, it now appears downright poetic and moving even as it is undoubtedly erotic.</div>
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<b><i>Bonjour Tristesse</i> (Otto Preminger; 1958)</b></div>
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Like <i>The Lovers</i>, this is a film of remarkable intelligence, in some ways in spite of and in others because of the manner with which its melodrama is executed. Jean Seberg's performance is pointedly theatric, expressing the false sense of worldliness all teenagers inevitably feel. It makes her terribly charming company, but it also makes the downfall she inevitably causes (the emotional tenor of which is communicated immediately) all the more tragic. Shot in both black-and-white (for the "present") and color (for the recent past), Preminger is being pretty up-front about the way this will all turn out, but tragedy never was rooted in unexpected sadness - the tragedy, as always, is in knowing what's coming and being unable to stop it.</div>
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<b><i>The Cranes Are Flying</i> (</b><b style="line-height: 19.59375px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Mikhail Kalatozov; </span></b><b>1957)</b><br />
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One of the pleasures of Hulu Plus is putting on a film such as this that you really know very little about and being instantly, totally swept away. Kalatozov is really owed a more legendary status than he deserves, and his sweeping, swirling, speedy camerawork here is yet more evidence of that, but there's little question that he was gifted enormously by the presence of one of the most cinematic faces of all time. Tatyana Samoylova, twenty-three at the time of the film's release, is given a prominence here that is not similarly afforded her in <i>Letter Never Sent</i>, and rightfully established her as a world star, even though she would only go on to make fourteen more films over fifty years (she turned 78 last year). Representing, in many ways, everyone who remained home while Russia was embroiled in World War II, the path of waiting for one's loved one to return from war is far from easy, and Kalatozov walks a very fascinating line between the nationalism that guided Russian cinema of the time and the doubts anyone would feel when embroiled in such a conflict. That he conveys a scope of time and emotion rarely explored in films twice as long (this runs only 97 minutes) is but one part of the film's success.<br />
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<b><i>Lola Montès</i> (Max Ophuls; 1955)</b><br />
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Wow, so this is everything, right? There's nothing harder than making a framing device really cook, but Ophuls, screenwriter Annette Wademant, and lead actress Martine Carol weave Lola's life together beautifully, introducing a hefty touch of tension into the "present" via her crumbling health as she performs a circus act based on her own life. There's really nothing else like it. Ophuls pulls out all the stops for what would ultimately, sadly become his last film (he died of a heart attack two years later) - his first in widescreen, and first in color, and what extravagant use of both.</div>
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<b>Artists and Models (Frank Tashlin; 1955)</b><br />
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I know, right? How much freaking fun is this? I'll tell you how much freaking fun this is - there's an entire subplot about Soviet spies that doesn't even get introduced until the last act, and there is still enough insanity in the first two for it all to keep pace. This was some of the most fun I had in a theater all year.</div>
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<b><i>Casque d'Or</i> (Jacques Becker; 1952)</b><br />
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When you can't get Marcel Carné... But seriously, Becker on his own whole plane here, commonalities though he may share with his contemporaries. Real paradise found and lost stuff, with a hefty dose of crime and some character design so strong it could be a comic book.</div>
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<b><i>Park Row</i> (Samuel Fuller; 1952)</b><br />
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Did anyone ever call Sam Fuller "Two-Fisted Sam"? I totally would, if I didn't think he'd punch me with both of them. <a href="http://criterioncast.com/reviews/dvd-reviews/samuel-fullers-park-row-masters-of-cinema/">This</a> is a two-fisted newspaper movie, as pure as folklore comes, from the stories young Fuller was told when he served his time as a newspaperman, and made with the total clarity of someone who refused to answer to anyone (he produced this with his own cash, losing everything in the process, after 20th Century Fox head Darryl Zanuck suggested it be made as a Technicolor musical). The result might be a little too pure for some, leaving you grasping for a chaser, but I'll take ten of these larger-than-life tales any day.</div>
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<b><i>Early Summer</i> (Yasujiro Ozu; 1951)</b><br />
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Because why watch one Ozu film when you can see them all? Honestly, I still have much Ozu to go, but this sort of beautifully blends all the elements I love of those I have seen, maintains the formal rigor and patience, and plays beautifully - funny at times, deeply melancholy at others, and totally memorable. A scene in which the grandparents recognize that they're living through the last truly joyous time in their life pretty much sums it all up.</div>
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<b><i>Caged</i> (John Cromwell; 1950)</b><br />
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The nice thing about <i>Caged </i>is that, while it is quite a bit better-produced and more finely-honed than its trashy premise might suggest (taglines include "Will She Come Out a Woman or a Wildcat?" and "You Don't Know Women Until You Know Them Without Men!"), it's still trashy enough to make you feel the dirt and grime of the prison experience.</div>
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<b><i>The Black Book</i> (Anthony Mann; 1949)</b><br />
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French Revolution noir, you say? I'm not kidding with that, either. Usually that kind of gimmick would be, well, gimmicky, all terribly knowing and arch and all that, but being made in 1949, Anthony Mann didn't have the perspective to make a film that way (well, at least not in this regard; there's some French Revolution humor towards the end that goes down a little sour); this is just the way they were making pictures. And what a picture this is. Centering around the search for the titular book, this has everything you'd want from a <i>film noir</i> - dangerous dames, too-tough men, wild set pieces, and deep, black shadows - wrapped in a very unfamiliar, but much more deadly, environment. A gorgeous, ripping yarn.</div>
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<b><i>The Great Gatsby</i> (Elliot Nugent; 1949)</b><br />
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Okay, so here's the thing about the 1949 version of <i>The Great Gatsby </i>(which is now up on YouTube but about which I'm gonna be an ass and make a point of saying that I saw in a theater, on a 35mm print) - it's not particularly "good" in that way that you want any film to be "cohesive" and this film to "represent something of the novel." Much of Fitzgerald's thematic concerns, and certainly the aesthetics of his prose, are pretty quickly discarded with. But I'll be damned if this wasn't as perfectly-cast as they come, with Alan Ladd making an amazing Gatsby all the way down to Howard Da Silva representing George Wilson so perfectly I dare say not another performer should touch him. I was mostly unfamiliar with the rest of the cast, but it's kind of beautiful that at least that aspect of the film came together this perfectly, and that, in this way at least, it represents something of the novel that few films ever could.</div>
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<b><i>Letter From an Unknown Woman</i> (Max Ophuls; 1948)</b><br />
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Ophuls strikes again! When I saw this during TCM Fest back in April, there were still no signs that it would be released on DVD or Blu-ray, but I'm happy to say that's no longer the case, as anyone with $25 can <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Letter-From-Unknown-Woman-Blu-ray/dp/B008NNSDBY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1360020698&sr=8-2&keywords=letter+from+an+unknown+woman">pick up</a> their very own copy. As well they should. It isn't easy to pull off this level of extremely heightened tragic melodrama, but I was totally devastated by the end of this.</div>
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<b><i>The Macomber Affair</i> (Zoltan Korda; 1947)</b><br />
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Sadly, this one remains unavailable on any sort of home viewing format, but should it turn up at some movie house somewhere, man, do yourself a favor. Zoltan Korda is a tremendously underrated director, and this is the best of the few films of his I've seen, one that brings his love of wildlife into a more immediate, psychological, and emotionally resonant piece of work. Adapted from, and expanding on, an Ernest Hemingway short story, it tells the story of a rich man who's killed under suspicious circumstances while out on an African hunt, the wife who detested him, and the hunter who led their expedition. Gregory Peck plays the hunter, and is far from the stand-up guy we know from <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i>, and Joan Bennett firmly leaves her wisecracking blonde phase behind for good as the wife at the center of the unspoken love triangle. As Leonard Maltin said in his introduction, the picture runs 89 minutes, but it'd be astounding if one were to emerge feeling they were cheated in any way.</div>
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<b><i>Scarlet Street</i> (Fritz Lang; 1945)</b><br />
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I hope nobody will doubt my love for Fritz Lang when I say that I prefer his American work to the films he made in Germany, and while I can champion <i>Fury </i>and <i>The Big Heat </i>all day (and all of the night), this will be my new exhibit A. Edward G. Robinson plays Christopher "Chris" Cross(!), a mild-mannered cashier at a retailer who spends his free time developing his work as a painter(!). He soon becomes entangled with a prostitute (Joan Bennett again) and her truly scummy boyfriend (Dan Duryea, of course), who...to say they take advantage of his talent would be putting it far too lightly for where this film goes. This is the blackest of black <i>films noir</i>, a film bereft of any of the distancing devices other films of the era employed, leaving you stuck only in the regret and misery and inescapable pit of despair.</div>
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<b><i>Cover Girl</i> (Charles Vidor; 1944)</b><br />
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I don't know if there's been a sufficient account made of this small, but very potent, group of films I call "melancholy musicals" (I'd include also <i>It's Always Fair Weather </i>and <i>Meet Me in St. Louis</i>). They're not outright despairing, but they touch on themes surrounding impermanence with such a light, graceful touch that they may end up leveling you, all the while remaining all-singing, all-dancing extravaganzas. <i>Cover Girl </i>is maybe a little sillier that those aforementioned films, as it's about a chorus girl's (Rita Hayworth) rise to stardom via becoming a magazine's cover girl, but the handling of this transition is so exquisite and grounded. The nightclub owner (Gene Kelly) wants her to stay, but doesn't want to stand in her way, even though she would love to stay if only he did ask, and needless to say their feelings for each other are not strictly professional. It very carefully manages the subtext of the way we treat each other, while allowing the musical numbers (particularly one knockout in which Kelly dances with himself) to express everything the characters do not. Kelly must be given co-credit as the auteur - on loan from MGM, Columbia gave him nearly free reign, particularly in the dancing, and this is a great display for a Kelly who was full of ideas and hungry to make an impact.</div>
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<b><i>The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp</i> (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger; 1943)</b><br />
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In her introduction to the screening of this (in its new restoration) at the Academy, Thelma Schoonmaker said that Powell used to introduce this film simply by saying, "oh, you lucky people," and I'm at something of a loss to expound on his input. This isn't even my favorite Powell/Pressburger film (that'd be <i>The Red Shoes</i>), or even my second-favorite (that'd be <i>Black Narcissus</i>), but are you kidding me with this? Nothing has a right to be this good.</div>
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<b><i>The Gang's All Here</i> (Busby Berkeley; 1943)</b><br />
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Mostly a display for Berkeley's insane sense of...I was going to say "choreography," but really, "life" would more sufficiently cover it, there's really, really nothing like <i>The Gang's All Here. </i>Even though the camp-fanatics have mostly claimed Berkeley as their own, I adore the purity and abandon of his expression, and, yes dammit, his <a href="http://www.railoftomorrow.com/2012/09/busby-berkeleys-spectacular-humanism.html">humanism</a>. On a sheer you-get-what-you-pay-for level, <i>The Gang's All Here </i>is full of sights you simply will not get anywhere else, and mix that with an eager sort of we're-all-in-this-together post-Depression wartime mentality, it's an unbeatably sincere bit of spectacle.</div>
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<b><i>Who Done It?</i> (Erle C. Kenton; 1942)</b><br />
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I don't know if I laughed more in a theater this year, but this is about as much fun as the movies get. Abbot and Costello play soda jerks who dream of writing radio mysteries, who then - get this - get embroiled in a murder mystery at their favorite radio station! That premise alone is the best thing ever, and that the movie doesn't simply coast on the genius of this device is reason alone to recommend it, never mind its continually-inventive, always entertaining, and seriously funny execution. Never mind the genuinely tense direction courtesy of Kenton (best known these days for 1932's <i>Island of Lost Souls</i>), which provides the perfect ballast that makes the jokes land even better, as they serve not only themselves but a release for the audience. Just about perfect.</div>
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<b><i>Hellzapoppin'</i> (H.C. Potter; 1941)</b><br />
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If <i>Who Done It? </i>and <i>The Gang's All Here </i>are studies in well-tuned, perfectly-executed bits of comedy and musical, <i>Hellzapoppin'</i> is a let's-throw-it-all-at-the-wall effort in seeing what sticks, and taking a joy in the mess we've made in the process. There's really no accounting for the film - the first ten minutes alone offer more inspired insanity than the sum total of most entire years of cinema - but given the difficulty in even seeing the thing, I feel little remorse in encouraging you all check out this clip from about midway through the film.<br />
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<b><i>Cleopatra</i> (Cecil B. DeMille; 1934)</b><br />
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DeMille is one of those guys, at least for me, who seems from a distance to be so satisfied with the spectacle he's capturing that the way in which he captures it could seem secondary. That's my failure as a viewer, I recognize (I'm not an "epics" guy by any stretch), but <i><a href="http://criterioncast.com/reviews/blu-ray-reviews/scott-reviews-cecil-b-demilles-cleopatra/">Cleopatra</a> </i>at least couldn't be more different. Well, I guess it <i>could</i>, it's just that the spectacle is so genuinely spectacular and almost poetic in its own way, and the human drama on display is as modern, knowing, and genuinely sexy as anything in the Pre-Code era (this barely made it in before the hammer came down). Claudette Colbert is, of course, ridiculously alluring, and who knew Warren William, best known as everyone's favorite amoral gangster/businessman/guy-in-suit would make such a damn good Julius Caesar?<br />
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<b><i>Taxi!</i> (Roy Del Ruth; 1932)</b><br />
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So now then, <a href="http://www.railoftomorrow.com/2013/02/lady-killer-roy-del-ruth-1933.html">what was I saying</a> about the 1930s and its vast wealth of entertainment and James Cagney being the best and that Roy Del Ruth fella ain't so bad himself? <i>Taxi! </i>is more evidence of this, because in addition to Cagney playing a smarmy cabbie who organizes a sort of union to oppose the mob muscling their way into the industry (awesome), this is the first time Cagney danced onscreen and a bit that lasts all of a few seconds in which Cagney and his pal enter the room tap-dancing is about as great as the cinema gets.<br />
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<b><i>Okay, America!</i> (Tay Garnett; 1932)</b><br />
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Before <i>Sweet Smell of Success</i>, when people were totally onboard with Walter Winchell and more than willing to make a film that was pretty obviously about him and in which he was the hero, there was <i>Okay, America! </i>The film ends up getting a little too big for its britches when the kidnapping plot that drives the film somehow ends up putting Larry Wayne (the Winchell stand-in, played wonderfully by Lew Ayres) in the office of the President (yes, of the United States), but up 'til that point it's a gas. Full of double-crosses, backroom deals, and the business of reporting the news, it also has one surreal touch that may very well have informed the entire aesthetic for the Coen Brothers.<br />
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<b><i>Diary of a Lost Girl</i> (G.W. Pabst; 1929)</b><br />
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I still haven't seen <i>Pandora's Box</i> (I know), but based on this alone, I am totally in the Pabst camp (well, as an artist anyway). And the Louise Brooks camp, for that matter, too. One of those fable-esque films that the silent era did so well, <i>Diary of a Lost Girl</i> is a revelation for any era, a total, unassailable masterpiece.<br />
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<b><i>Wings</i> (William A. Wellman; 1927)
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There is very little about this film that isn't awesome, from its crazy production to the degree of its success to the very experience of watching it. Hardcore cinephiles are taught that the first Academy Awards marked a firm division that would guide it in the decades to come when they awarded (the better film) <i>Sunrise</i> the award for "Unique and Artistic Production" while <i>Wings </i>received the "real" Best Picture trophy for "Outstanding Production." Thus, <i>Wings </i>is the big crowd-pleasing picture while <i>Sunrise </i>is the "real" masterpiece. Except <i>Wings </i>is a real crowd-pleaser, so immensely satisfying to see, and representative of everything you could want from a night at the movies - humor, action, dancing, drunkenness, Clara Bow...seriously, this movie's got it all. And for a silent film that's 141 minutes long to remain this engaging over eighty years after it was made...man, this is a movie.<br />
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<b><i>Lonesome</i> (Pál Fejös; 1928)</b><br />
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And so, rightfully, though in a somewhat contrived manner, we end with Pál Fejös' masterpiece, that film of films, <i>Lonesome</i>. Even with its awkwardly-inserted talking sequences, even with the mystery as to how much this represents Fejös' intentions (there are suggestions that it was originally shown with more color), and even though its discovery and newfound celebration is happening perhaps too late, it is fitting that it should have happened at all. This is a titanic achievement, as beautiful and moving as anything I've seen put to film, and quite a bit more so than many, many other efforts. That this came at the end of the silent era is perhaps fitting, as it takes advantage of every innovation that had come before it, and even though it being perched on the edge of the sound era resulted in those unfortunate talkie bits, it also gave Fejös a level of control over his soundtrack that previous filmmakers could have only dreamed of. That the barrage of imagery and sound is not an all-out assault is perhaps the best testament to the grace with which he executes his vision, and the result is one of the most purely romantic portraits ever given to a medium that thrives on that very emotion.</div>
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I'm already thirty-two films into my "discoveries of 2013" adventure, and I can already tell next year's list will be another grand adventure.</div>
Scott Nyehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760694438241951398noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1151029499651504216.post-35916332544675926412013-02-01T11:59:00.001-08:002013-02-01T11:59:08.247-08:00Lady Killer (Roy Del Ruth, 1933)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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When people like me say that the American cinema was never better than it was in the 1930s, this is exactly the kind of thing we're talking about. I mean, when you get that image above, what more could you ask for, really? But this is a movie that combines the low-class working-man picture with the gangster genre with the Hollywood satire, throwing in animal anarchy (seen above), car chases, shootouts, car crashes (and not the kind where they cut away!), and more star charm, via Cagney, in 76 minutes than most films give you in 120. The 1930s were really Hollywood running wild with a machine that refused to stop making money, and gave them license to do just about anything, especially in the Pre-Code heyday. So when the Film Forum in New York, upon announcing an entire <a href="http://www.filmforum.org/pdf/ff2_cal98_FINAL.pdf">four-week series dedicated to the films of 1933</a> (anyone want to put me up for a month?), calls it "Hollywood's naughtiest, bawdiest year," they aren't kidding.<br />
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Recapping the particulars of the plot would give away too much of the fun, but this is Cagney at his purest, giving the kind of slack only a recently-crowned star could have earned to totally cut loose, with all the bravado in the world. While he could play self-doubt with the best of them, there's nothing like seeing him on top of the world (so to speak), and this picture gives him at least two kingdoms over which to reign, never mind his overarching charm with the ladies. Immediately following his self-made jungle, we get a scene in which he takes the lady pictured above out to dinner, which is in turn followed by him taking her back to his place, and even them finding another woman in his bed isn't enough to turn the first lady off completely. At every turn, Cagney comes out on top, and even when he slips up, he can't stop laughing at the absurdity of it all. After all, he's a hustler, and he's hustled his way out of worse jams.<br />
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<i>Lady Killer </i>will indeed play at the Film Forum during its series, which is just welcome happenstance as I knew after seeing this picture last night that I'd write about it, and only happened to wake up to the Forum's announcement. It's on a <i>triple</i>-bill of Cagney flicks, including the also-enjoyable <i>Picture Snatcher</i> and the has-yet-to-be-seen-by-me-but-sounds-like-a-blast <i>Hard to Handle</i>. The three actually also represent a great opportunity to acquaint oneself with three of the best directors Warner Brothers had in its stable in those years - Lloyd Bacon (whose <i>Footlight Parade</i>, also playing there, is a joy), Mervyn LeRoy (whose <i>Gold Diggers of 1933</i>, ALSO playing, is one of my twenty favorite films of all time), and Del Ruth himself (who, in addition to this, directed Cagney in <i>Taxi!</i>, one of my favorite discoveries from last year). Like I said...anyone want to put me up for a month?Scott Nyehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760694438241951398noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1151029499651504216.post-90690255075016687452013-01-11T13:55:00.001-08:002013-01-11T13:55:21.938-08:00Oh What Heights We'll Hit<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Because it's just that time of year, I wrote two pieces surrounding the Oscars. The <a href="http://battleshippretension.com/?p=9801">first</a> is a consideration of the term "Oscar bait," which I find totally meaningless for a variety of historical and aesthetic reasons.<br />
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The <a href="http://battleshippretension.com/?p=9814">second</a> is a standard reaction piece to the nominations, but I like to think I gave it a little extra punch. Please?<br />
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<a href="http://battleshippretension.com/">Battleship Pretension</a>, where you'll find a variety of top ten lists in the weeks ahead, was kind enough to host and encourage each.Scott Nyehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760694438241951398noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1151029499651504216.post-67453569454517811852013-01-11T13:49:00.000-08:002013-01-11T13:49:08.376-08:00Broadway (Pál Fejös, 1929)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The glut of 1930s dramas and comedies that take place partially or entirely in the backstage of some song-and-dance show can get a little overwhelming, in a which-one-was-that kind of way, but I have to say it takes a lot for me to really dislike them (a statement that will be tested once my Busby Berkeley set arrives this week). So while Pál Fejös' 1929 musical is, yes, a little stodgy and awkward in that way only early sound films could be, and it's definitely far too long (104 minutes at a time when most ran around 90, often much shorter), and the story is familiar to probably even those who have never seen a single film made before 1990, I gotta say, there's a lot to like.<br />
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Let's start from the outside, so to speak. The film never ventures beyond the walls of the Paradise Nightclub, and even the auditorium area is reserved only for the musical numbers, which are themselves pretty staid affairs, but which produce a reaction in their audience like a tent revival. Nightclubs in other such films are usually portrayed as fairly refined affairs, where someone is inevitably thrown out for behaving a little too bawdily after several too many drinks. At the Paradise, that behavior seems to get you in the door! There are people dancing on tables, throwing things onstage (in a congratulatory manner, it would appear), and the level of rabble-rousing far exceeds anything I've seen in any other film. Baz Luhrmann's <i>Great Gatsby</i> looks restrained by comparison. Fejös' camera, which he stuck on a crane uniquely developed for this film, swirls up and down and around the massive performance space, nearly as unrestrained as the attending audience.<br />
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Backstage, things are hardly more civil. Like any respectable nightclub of the era, there's heavy gangster involvement at the Paradise, but the sin hardly stops when bootlegger Steve Crandall leaves the room. One girl's spying for a competing mobster, good-girl Billie Moore is frequently seen with Steve himself, and our hero, Roy Lane, is no gentleman in trying to tear her away. He's trying to put together a routine for the she and him, give them a name of their own to put up in lights and some extra money along with it, possibly enough to get married on. Though she's more than eager, and goes to every rehearsal he sets, it's not enough as long as she's out with Steve every chance she gets. So he does what so many guys do - takes petty, selfish actions to try to separate them and win her over, treating her pretty poorly in the process, and never really telling her how he feels.<br />
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This might not make for the most nuanced story, but it's a hell of a lot more than the usual bit where the guy and girl, way too nice for anyone's good, are separated by unconvincingly-stretched misunderstandings and -communications. I've certainly lost out on girls because of that, but more often than not, the trick is just treating her decently and being halfway attractive, and while the film cuts these future lovers some breaks along the way (especially with an offscreen mother serving as the Deus ex Machina), it's sweet enough on its own terms. Tack on some fine personality courtesy of star Glenn Tryon (familiar to all good cinephiles as the star of Fejös' <i>Lonesome</i>), some passable musical numbers (Tryon's pretty clearly relying on a double in all arenas), lavish production values, plenty of gangsters-and-showgirls banter, and a Technicolor ending, I've certainly had less desirable evenings at the movies.Scott Nyehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760694438241951398noreply@blogger.com1