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Posts From the Internet Film Discussion Group, a_film_by
This group is dedicated to discussing film as art
from an auteurist perspective. The index to these files of posts can be found at http://www.fredcamper.com/afilmby/ The purpose of these files is to make our posts more accessible, for downloading and reading and to search engines.
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10101
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat May 22, 2004 7:33pm
Subject: Re: Michael Moore takes Palme D'Or
This makes two years in a row for an Americna film
that "Variety" disapproves of winning the Palme D'Or.
FUCK YOU, PETER BART!!!
--- "Jaime N. Christley"
wrote:
> FAHRENHEIT 9/11 just won the top prize at Cannes.
> The first
> documentary to win since the Jacques-Yves
> Cousteau/Louis Malle film
> THE SILENT WORLD, almost fifty years ago.
>
> Of course, almost everyone has decided what they
> think about the film,
> no matter that they haven't seen it yet.
>
> Other winners:
>
> Grand Prix : Old Boy (Park Chan-Wook/Korea)
>
> Jury Prize :
> - Irma P. Hall in The LadyKillers (USA)
> - Tropical Malady (Apichatpong
> Weerasethakul/Thailand)
>
> Best Director : Tony Gatlif for Exils (France)
>
> Best Screenplay : Agnès Jaoui & Jean-Pierre Bacri
> for Comme une Image
> / Look at Me (France)
>
> Best Actress : Maggie Cheung in Clean (Olivier
> Assayas/France)
> Best Actor : Yuuya Yagira in Nobody Knows
> (Koreeda/Japan)
>
> -Jaime
>
>
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10102
From: Craig Keller
Date: Sat May 22, 2004 8:53pm
Subject: Re: Michael Moore takes Palme D'Or
> This makes two years in a row for an Americna film
> that "Variety" disapproves of winning the Palme D'Or.
>
> FUCK YOU, PETER BART!!!
At 8pm EST tonight (not sure if it will be broadcast on the West Coast
simultaneously, or play at 8pm PST) on IFC runs a broadcast of the
closing ceremonies -- awards, etc. (I could have sworn I saw it on
Bravo last year.) Like always, it will probably be hosted and
commentated by Roger Ebert, who will (like always) talk over each of
the acceptance speeches, to co-host (and on-the-fly translator) Annette
Insdorf's chagrin.
craig.
10103
From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Sat May 22, 2004 8:55pm
Subject: Re: Michael Moore takes Palme D'Or
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> This makes two years in a row for an Americna film
> that "Variety" disapproves of winning the Palme D'Or.
>
> FUCK YOU, PETER BART!!!
High Five David :)
I just won myself a DVD :)
10104
From: Gabe Klinger
Date: Sun May 23, 2004 0:48am
Subject: Re: Michael Moore takes Palme D'Or
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Jaime N. Christley" wrote:
> FAHRENHEIT 9/11 just won the top prize at Cannes.
I'll just shut-up now...
Gabe
10105
From: Elizabeth Anne Nolan
Date: Sun May 23, 2004 1:15am
Subject: IFC showing
IFC showed the CANNES closing ceremony at 10-11:30 am Saturday
morning West Coast time. I watched it before I went to see
RHINOCEROS EYES at Madstone Theaters
and
LA VIE PROMISE at Landmark's Ken
Our local (San Diego) Museum of Photographic Arts film
program (curated by Scott Marks since opening in 1999)
is terminating due to budgetary choices. Unfortunate for Scott
and SD movie-goers.
One of the local critics blamed the demise on the film
program to the availability of non-film media (VCR/DVD).
I thought it was because there was not enough press for
the screenings.
Learned that OASIS will be screening in the SD MADSTONE.
Interesting preview trailer shows only one image of the lead
actress (when she is on the back of the motorcycle.)
Looking forward to see OASIS again
10106
From: J. Mabe
Date: Sun May 23, 2004 2:41am
Subject: gus van sant's music (OT, I suppose)
I guess since this a music question and not really
about Van Sant’s films it might be a little off
topic... Sorry. I was just wondering if anyone knew
about Van Sant’s music. If he ever recorded anything
not available on the golf album of the self titled
retrospective-of-sorts, or if he ever planned/plans to
do more music? I tripped across some albums in my
college radio station library a few years ago and was
a fan of his music before I was a full fledged fan of
his films. “Goodbye,” is one of my all time
favorites.
Just curious....
Josh Mabe
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10107
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sun May 23, 2004 3:02am
Subject: Re: Drums and Canons
> Perhaps most cinephile-cultures agree that VERTIGO is Hitch's
> greatest - but almost no two Welles fans can agree on his best!!
I used to think that the canonical Welles film varied by group: KANE for
the old school, AMBERSONS for the first-generation auteurists, CHIMES
for the second generation, TOUCH OF EVIL for the film-school crowd.
Maybe those categories have broken down a bit by now. - Dan
10108
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sun May 23, 2004 3:11am
Subject: Re: Oasis - now this is a Korean movie I can get behind!
> You raise a really
> interesting point about Moon So-ri's performance, which the second
> time I watched the film kind of grated on me, it seemed too mannered
> for its own good... and it made me wonder if I was being challenged
> to accept it on its own terms much in the way that the film
> challenges people both on and off-screen to accept the two lead
> characters as dignified human beings.
I love the performance, but much of its impact comes from the way it's
filmed. It's hard to perceive her transformation in the fantasy
sequences, even though it happens right before our eyes, because the
accumulation of detail and motion in the shots naturally tends to divert
us so that we miss the key moment.
> Still, I prefer this, as well as Park Chan-wook's SYMPATHY FOR MR.
> VENGEANCE, Bong Joon-ho's BARKING DOGS NEVER BITE
I've never seen this, but on the basis of Bong's next film MEMORIES OF
MURDER, I'm prepared to acknowledge him as a major talent.
> over
> Kim Ki-Duk's SPRING, SUMMER, CRAP, CRAP... AND CRAP.
I have sworn off Kim after suffering through THE ISLE and BAD GUY. He
has a lot of articulate admirers, though. - Dan
10109
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sun May 23, 2004 3:18am
Subject: Vecchiali, A. Argento
Anyone notice that Paul Vecchiali had a film in this year's Quinzaine
des Realizateurs at Cannes? Has anyone seen A VOT' BON COEUR?
Or, for that matter, how about Asia Argento's THE HEART IS
DECEITFUL...ABOVE ALL THINGS, also in the Quinzaine? On the basis of
SCARLET DIVA, I'd say she's a filmmaker to reckon with. - Dan
10110
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun May 23, 2004 4:22am
Subject: Re: gus van sant's music (OT, I suppose)
Gus' band was called "Destroy All Blondes." I don't
know if they ever recorded. There may be things of
their's lurking about on the 'net.
As his new film deals with the grunge rock scene --
and Gus was there at the birth -- I would imagine
there's a good chance he's going to perform in it in
some fashion.
--- "J. Mabe" wrote:
> I guess since this a music question and not really
> about Van Sant’s films it might be a little off
> topic... Sorry. I was just wondering if anyone knew
> about Van Sant’s music. If he ever recorded
> anything
> not available on the golf album of the self titled
> retrospective-of-sorts, or if he ever planned/plans
> to
> do more music? I tripped across some albums in my
> college radio station library a few years ago and
> was
> a fan of his music before I was a full fledged fan
> of
> his films. “Goodbye,” is one of my all time
> favorites.
>
> Just curious....
> Josh Mabe
>
>
>
>
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10111
From: Craig Keller
Date: Sun May 23, 2004 4:08pm
Subject: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
I know almost nothing about romanization from the Chinese dialects, but
it strikes me as odd that for two or three straight dispatches he alone
has insisted on referring to Wong Kar-wai as "Wong Kar-wei." (Isn't
this antithetical to his policy of "No Idiosyncrasy"?)
Anyway (and apologies for cross-posting) --
========
The Wong Kar-Wei film, "2046," was raced to Cannes still wet from the
lab in Paris; the great director of "In the Mood for Love" was editing
until the last moment, and I recommend he recommence editing
immediately. What he has at this point is a monotonous story narrated
by a sad sack (Tony Leung) who has affairs with three women who live in
Room 2046 of the same hotel. All his affairs are doomed, but they never
seem to be anything but doomed; in the film's view, all love is
destined to lead to heartbreak, true communication is impossible, we
are the victims of our miserable natures, etc.
The visual style is elegant and lush, yes, until it becomes elegant and
lush to a fault. The camera tracks endlessly past beautiful faces, with
foreground objects obediently obscuring the view from time to time, and
there are love scenes pitched at various degrees of energy but always
leading to bittersweet regret.
A great many of the scenes take place on Christmas Eve, and Nat King
Cole's version of "The Christmas Song," with its chestnuts roasting on
an open fire, is played from beginning to end not once but three
different times (some claim to have counted four). Is this an ironic
touch, or simply wretched excess? And how popular were English-language
Christmas songs in China in 1966?
Some of the same colleagues who hated "De-Lovely" loved "2046," which
shows they have cast adrift from the pleasures of traditional
craftsmanship and signed on to the cinematic fashion of the day at
whatever cost. Wong Kar-Wei has made great films, but "2046" is a
colossal failure. "De-Lovely" is the kind of film you love in your
heart; "2046" is the kind of film you build a tortured defense for,
lest you seem uncool.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
10112
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun May 23, 2004 4:10pm
Subject: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
--- Craig Keller wrote:
Ebert: "De-Lovely" is the kind of film
> you love in your
> heart; "2046" is the kind of film you build a
> tortured defense for,
> lest you seem uncool.
>
Downright Goldwateresque.
"In your heart you know that Kevin Kline was exactly
like Cole Porter."
My Message to Roger --
"You don't sing enough,
You don't dance enough,
You don't drink the great wines of France enough
You're not wild enough you're not gay enough --"
Full Stop.
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10113
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Sun May 23, 2004 5:24pm
Subject: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
> "2046" is the kind of film you build a tortured defense for,
> lest you seem uncool.
I don't know how tortured it is, but Le Monde's review ("Palme d'or en puissance, le sublime film de Wong Kar-wai vient de hausser d'un cran le niveau du
Festival") seems to be worth a look at
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3488,36-365724,0.html . (So far I've only tried perusing it in Google's unquestionably tortured English
translation.)
10114
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sun May 23, 2004 6:31pm
Subject: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jess_l_amortell"
wrote:
> > "2046" is the kind of film you build a tortured defense for,
> > lest you seem uncool.
>
>
> I don't know how tortured it is, but Le Monde's review ("Palme d'or
en puissance, le sublime film de Wong Kar-wai vient de hausser d'un
cran le niveau du Festival") seems to be worth a look at
> http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3488,36-365724,0.html .
(So far I've only tried perusing it in Google's unquestionably
tortured English translation.)
Doin's article is a thoughtful, lyrical rave (forget about
Google's "translation"!) and really made me want to see the film.
Forget ebert too...
10115
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sun May 23, 2004 6:33pm
Subject: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> "In your heart you know that Kevin Kline was exactly
> like Cole Porter."
>
> My Message to Roger --
>
> "You don't sing enough,
>
> You don't dance enough,
>
> You don't drink the great wines of France enough
>
> You're not wild enough you're not gay enough --"
>
> Full Stop.
>
> OK, David, I give up. Sounds like Porter, but what the hell is it
from???
>
>
> __________________________________
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10116
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sun May 23, 2004 6:39pm
Subject: Re: Drums and Canons
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> > Perhaps most cinephile-cultures agree that VERTIGO is Hitch's
> > greatest - but almost no two Welles fans can agree on his best!!
>
> I used to think that the canonical Welles film varied by group:
KANE for
> the old school, AMBERSONS for the first-generation auteurists,
CHIMES
> for the second generation, TOUCH OF EVIL for the film-school crowd.
> Maybe those categories have broken down a bit by now. - Dan
Sounds quite perceptive, but what if you (like me) straddle all
generations?
I can't single out any of those five and put it above the
others, and I don't think it can be done except as the expression of
a thoroughly subjective personal preference. Which is why I'm leery
of canonical hierarchies.
JPC
10117
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Sun May 23, 2004 8:38pm
Subject: Re: Drums and Canons
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon" wrote:
>
> I can't single out any of those five and put it above the
> others, and I don't think it can be done except as the expression of
> a thoroughly subjective personal preference. Which is why I'm leery
> of canonical hierarchies.
While auteurists, here and elsewhere, obviously do not shrink from identifying directors' greater and lesser works, I think I'm more than ever drawn to that
auteurist impulse which places the *emphasis* on the continuity and consistency of a director's work, rather than setting the films against one another. It
would be one thing to select Wyler's best film, for example, but it seems to go counter to auteurism to venture to choose the best Preminger, say, or even
the "key" Preminger or one's favorite Preminger. An "evasive" answer like "my favorite is the one I'm watching at the moment" may seem to abandon critical
distinctions (and probably more importantly, passions) but has a wisdom that strikes me as apt. Perhaps I'm fixated on a primitive or outmoded form of
auteurism but it seems, if anything, more appropriate than ever in the face of a current example of troglodytic anti-auteurism like this book review in the
Atlantic Monthly: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2004/06/kipen.htm
Tidbit: "...Rather than draw tortured auteurist parallels between The French Connection and The Exorcist simply because William Friedkin directed them both,
such a book might more profitably examine the career of, say, [screenwriter] Robert Getchell." Tortured -- Ebert's word again!! (And while I'm admittedly not
prepared or inclined to argue with that particular example, I think that others here might be...)
10118
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun May 23, 2004 9:15pm
Subject: Re: Drums and Canons
/06/kipen.htm
>
> Tidbit: "...Rather than draw tortured auteurist parallels between
The French Connection and The Exorcist simply because William
Friedkin directed them both, such a book might more profitably
examine the career of, say, [screenwriter] Robert Getchell."
Getchell optioned the only script I ever wrote. A genius.
Daney's great Nick Ray obit (is it in POL 1?) said that in the cafes
they used to debate who was the greatest director - sometimes it
would be this on, sometimes that one. But everyone would then agree
that Nick Ray had made the greatest film of all time. Then they could
never say which one it was.
Chimes is my favorite Welles. It's the best of a very good lot,
obviously, but I don't know how it can be beat - one of Shakespeare's
two greatest characters played and directed by the greatest
Shakespearean filmmaker. (Poor Hamlet got Olivier and Almareyda...)
Booth Tarkington or Badge of Evil or Herman M. start you off on a
lower level than Shakespeare, in terms of complexity, humanity,
depth, vision, wit, sublimity, etc. etc. And that inspired Welles,
who thought about this one for much of his life before making it, to
make his best film.
10119
From: Craig Keller
Date: Sun May 23, 2004 9:55pm
Subject: Auteurist!
> While auteurists, here and elsewhere, obviously do not shrink from
> identifying directors' greater and lesser works, I think I'm more than
> ever drawn to that auteurist impulse which places the *emphasis* on
> the continuity and consistency of a director's work, rather than
> setting the films against one another. It would be one thing to
> select Wyler's best film, for example, but it seems to go counter to
> auteurism to venture to choose the best Preminger, say, or even the
> "key" Preminger
A question about the term "auteurism"/"auteurist" posed to the group in
general --
Is an "auteurist" one who has a deep cinephile devotion to films, faith
in the artform, personal preferences for directors whose aesthetics
speak to him, memories awash, trances induced, etc., and thus already
knows that a director is the author of the film through the
manipulation of the film's space-time, presentation of narrative, mise
en scène, etc. --
-- or is an "auteurist" one who finds similarities across films that
maybe aren't so aesthetically powerful/"robust" when considered as
discrete works but, with faith and belief vested in cinema, and perhaps
also out of a sense of imperative spurred by the great cultural
artform-inferiority-complex that says a novel is more difficult to
write than the penning of a script or the direction/production of a
film (although why David Thomson and others always pair the cinema
against the novel, as opposed to sculpture, music, or painting, as a
few examples, is beyond me), simply MUST, at all costs, find these
links, repetitions, motifs, concerns, across a filmmaker's oeuvre, for
the sake of confirming or validating the presence of genuine artistic
capability within Director X?
Springboarding from that painful run-on, I ask: Is a list of a
filmmaker's concerns (in the sense of, let's say: "neglected
childhood"; "the dignity of Work"; "loyalty to The Group"; etc.) really
artistic capability? Is it really a stand-in for a filmmaker's ideas
(which might indeed be heads-tail mutable from one film to the next) or
sheer aesthetic brilliance (in the sense of form, structure, the
expression of idea or emotion through image or sound, eloquence in
epiphanic truths, etc.)?
Does the term "auteurism" have any currency at all outside of a way to
validate and articulate personal preference for a director who might be
a genius, or might be shit (but whose films you like anyway, and as an
intellectual being, feel compelled to intellectualize)? (Thinking
here, for some reason I can't put my finger on, of Jean-Pierre's
rebuttal to the cubby-holed categorization of the Welles
would-be-canons; as his remarks correctly imply, all the films which
were cited can stand on their own and throw groatsworths of aesthetic,
intellectual, and sheerly personal fury in all directions, whether the
other Welles films existed or not.)
Finally: Doesn't any frequent user (abuser?) of the phrase "I am an
auteurist" / "I subscribe to auteurism" feel generally filthy for
saying he or she belongs to an "-ism" or is an "-ist"? Or at least
find it all so sickeningly Ayn Rand?
craig.
10120
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun May 23, 2004 11:34pm
Subject: Re: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
It's the verse to Porter's "I've Got You On My Mind."
The invaluable Bobby Short does the best version of
it.
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
>
> wrote:
> >
>
> > "In your heart you know that Kevin Kline was
> exactly
> > like Cole Porter."
> >
> > My Message to Roger --
> >
> > "You don't sing enough,
> >
> > You don't dance enough,
> >
> > You don't drink the great wines of France enough
> >
> > You're not wild enough you're not gay enough --"
> >
> > Full Stop.
> >
> > OK, David, I give up. Sounds like Porter, but
> what the hell is it
> from???
> >
> >
> > __________________________________
> > Do you Yahoo!?
> > Yahoo! Domains – Claim yours for only $14.70/year
> > http://smallbusiness.promotions.yahoo.com/offer
>
>
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10121
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 0:03am
Subject: Harry Potter 3
Just in from Harry Potter and Prisoner of
Azkeban. Quite good. The character has matured and
so has the story. Curaon was a good choice to direct,
as was Steve Kloves to script. Several genuinely scary
moments make this a movie for adolescents rather than
small children -- who'll be confused by the plot
anyway. And the effects are tied to the plot and
characters. They don't just sit there as in
Van Helsing. Rather complex affair this time
out in that the supposed villains turn out to be not
so villainous after all, with even more ambiguity via
a sympathetic (yet nonetheless frightening) werewolf.
The kids continue to shine and they get fine support
from Gary Oldman, David Thewlis, Alan Rickman and in a
brief but devestating turn, Timothy Spall.
This is The Empire Strikes Back of the series.
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10122
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 0:11am
Subject: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> It's the verse to Porter's "I've Got You On My Mind."
>
> The invaluable Bobby Short does the best version of
> it.
>
"This verse I started seem to me/The tinpantithesis of melody..."
Short is an acquired taste I never managed to acquire but I guess he
is invaluable.
The song is from what show? What year? The title rings a bell but I
can't remember anything else. Will you sing it to me, David? (don't
crucify the verse).
> --- jpcoursodon wrote:
> > --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
> >
> > wrote:
> > >
> >
> > > "In your heart you know that Kevin Kline was
> > exactly
> > > like Cole Porter."
> > >
> > > My Message to Roger --
> > >
> > > "You don't sing enough,
> > >
> > > You don't dance enough,
> > >
> > > You don't drink the great wines of France enough
> > >
> > > You're not wild enough you're not gay enough --"
> > >
> > > Full Stop.
> > >
> > > OK, David, I give up. Sounds like Porter, but
> > what the hell is it
> > from???
> > >
> > >
> > > __________________________________
> > > Do you Yahoo!?
> > > Yahoo! Domains – Claim yours for only $14.70/year
> > > http://smallbusiness.promotions.yahoo.com/offer
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
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10123
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 0:32am
Subject: Re: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
>
> Short is an acquired taste I never managed to
> acquire but I guess he
> is invaluable.
>
I have sometimes been msitaken for him.
> The song is from what show? What year? The title
> rings a bell but I
> can't remember anything else.
Published in 1932, "I've Got You On My Mind" was
writen several years earlier and was first intended
for "The New Yorkers" (1930) and then the unproduced
"Star Dust (1931). It was sung in the New York and
London productions of "The Gay Divorce" by
("Divorcee" was the movie) by Fred Astaire and Claire
Luce (not to bt confused with Claire Booth Luce.)
Will you sing it to
> me, David? (don't
> crucify the verse).
>
"You can't be much surprised to hear
I think you're sweller than swell
But granting all your virtues dear,
You've certain failings as well.
You don't sing enough, you don't dance enough,
You don't drink the great wines of France enough.
You're not wild enough, you're not gay enough
You don't let me lead you astray enough.
You don't live enough you don't dare enough,
You don't give enough, you don't care enough
You don't make my sad like sun enough
Yet sweetheart, fun enough --
I've got you on my mind
Although I'm disinclined
You're not so hot, you
But I've got you on my mind.
I'd thank the gods above
If I could only love
Somebody not you
But I've got you on my mind.
Let my poor upset leisure be
Otherwise my pet treasure be
And arrange to let pleasure be
A bit less refined.
For darling, not until
I get that famous thrill
Will I be resigned.
I've got you on my mind."
In short this is Cole's ode to the Zipless Fuck.
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10124
From: samfilms2003
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 0:41am
Subject: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
> I know almost nothing about romanization from the Chinese dialects, but
> it strikes me as odd that for two or three straight dispatches he alone
> has insisted on referring to Wong Kar-wai as "Wong Kar-wei."
I don't either, although I noticed Maggie Cheung & Tony Leung pronounce
it that way i.e. wei on the In The Mood For Love DVD interview.
> in the film's view, all love is
> destined to lead to heartbreak, true communication is impossible, we
> are the victims of our miserable natures, etc.
And ? ;-)
> > And how popular were English-language
> Christmas songs in China in 1966?
Dunno either but an instrumental version of Silent Night played every
day on the stereo in my fav cafe in Saigon back in March...
Has Wong ever made a false move w/ soundtrack music ?
Not that I know of.
Well now I wanna see Tropical Malady and 2046 on a double bill..
-Sam
10125
From: samfilms2003
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 1:08am
Subject: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
>(So far I've only tried perusing it in Google's unquestionably tortured English
translation.)
But how can you resist this ?
" The poetic form is the same one, hypnotizing, orchestrating the displacement of
the bodies on a throbbing tempo, fixing the volutes of the smoke of the cigarettes,
cultivating an obsessing old story of dresses with floral reasons, pullover without
handles, high-heeled shoes, operatic arias or lovesongs of crooners. Music, clothing
blazing, counterparts languides echo states of heart of these maudits born in the
worship of Nat King Cole or the cha-chas of Singapore."
The bastard child of Marurite Duras and William Burroughs
couldn't have done better..
-Sam
10126
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 1:15am
Subject: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
>
> --- jpcoursodon wrote:
> > --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
>
> >
> > Short is an acquired taste I never managed to
> > acquire but I guess he
> > is invaluable.
> >
>
> I have sometimes been msitaken for him.
>
I didn't know you were black (or whatever the proper term is these
days)
>
> > The song is from what show? What year? The title
> > rings a bell but I
> > can't remember anything else.
>
> Published in 1932, "I've Got You On My Mind" was
> writen several years earlier and was first intended
> for "The New Yorkers" (1930) and then the unproduced
> "Star Dust (1931). It was sung in the New York and
> London productions of "The Gay Divorce" by
> ("Divorcee" was the movie) by Fred Astaire and Claire
> Luce (not to bt confused with Claire Booth Luce.)
>
>
> Will you sing it to
> > me, David? (don't
> > crucify the verse).
> >
>
> "You can't be much surprised to hear
> I think you're sweller than swell
> But granting all your virtues dear,
> You've certain failings as well.
> You don't sing enough, you don't dance enough,
> You don't drink the great wines of France enough.
> You're not wild enough, you're not gay enough
> You don't let me lead you astray enough.
> You don't live enough you don't dare enough,
> You don't give enough, you don't care enough
> You don't make my sad like sun enough
> Yet sweetheart, fun enough --
>
> I've got you on my mind
> Although I'm disinclined
> You're not so hot, you
> But I've got you on my mind.
> I'd thank the gods above
> If I could only love
> Somebody not you
> But I've got you on my mind.
>
> Let my poor upset leisure be
> Otherwise my pet treasure be
> And arrange to let pleasure be
> A bit less refined.
> For darling, not until
> I get that famous thrill
> Will I be resigned.
> I've got you on my mind."
>
> In short this is Cole's ode to the Zipless Fuck.
>
>
>
> Yes and it IS right here on page 113 of Brendan
Gill's "COLE", of which I just dug up my old copy. How could I have
missed it?
There's no further use conceling
That I'm feeling far from gay...
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Domains – Claim yours for only $14.70/year
> http://smallbusiness.promotions.yahoo.com/offer
10127
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 1:27am
Subject: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "samfilms2003" wrote:
> >(So far I've only tried perusing it in Google's unquestionably
tortured English
> translation.)
>
> But how can you resist this ?
>
> " The poetic form is the same one, hypnotizing, orchestrating the
displacement of
> the bodies on a throbbing tempo, fixing the volutes of the smoke of
the cigarettes,
> cultivating an obsessing old story of dresses with floral reasons,
pullover without
> handles, high-heeled shoes, operatic arias or lovesongs of
crooners. Music, clothing
> blazing, counterparts languides echo states of heart of these
maudits born in the
> worship of Nat King Cole or the cha-chas of Singapore."
>
> The bastard child of Marurite Duras and William Burroughs
> couldn't have done better..
>
> -Sam
Marutite Duras?
Yes Google would have been embraced by the surrealists as a great
automatic writer. (just an example: "pullovers without handles" just
means "sleeveless sweaters")
Google is also the Great Demysthifier. Give a wretched translator
any magnificently dressed emperor and the emperor will be stripped
naked. I feel tempted to feed some of my own stuff to this Google
guy! Just to see how it comes out. One might learn something from the
experience.
JPC
10128
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 1:53am
Subject: Re: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
>
> wrote:
> >
> >
> > --- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
> I didn't know you were black (or whatever the
> proper term is these
> days)
> >
TA-DA!
http://ehrensteinland.com/htmls/g001/david.html
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Domains – Claim yours for only $14.70/year
http://smallbusiness.promotions.yahoo.com/offer
10129
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 2:02am
Subject: Re: Auteurist!
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Craig Keller
wrote:
--
>
> Is an "auteurist" one who has a deep cinephile devotion to films,
faith
> in the artform, personal preferences for directors whose aesthetics
> speak to him, memories awash, trances induced, etc., and thus
already
> knows that a director is the author of the film through the
> manipulation of the film's space-time, presentation of narrative,
mise
> en scène, etc. --
YES!!! I pity the next definition (although of course there is always
the temptation to reduce an auteur to "thematic content".)
>
> -- or is an "auteurist" one who finds similarities across films
that
> maybe aren't so aesthetically powerful/"robust" when considered as
> discrete works but, with faith and belief vested in cinema, and
perhaps
> also out of a sense of imperative spurred by the great cultural
> artform-inferiority-complex that says a novel is more difficult to
> write than the penning of a script or the direction/production of a
> film (although why David Thomson and others always pair the cinema
> against the novel, as opposed to sculpture, music, or painting, as
a
> few examples, is beyond me), simply MUST, at all costs, find these
> links, repetitions, motifs, concerns, across a filmmaker's oeuvre,
for
> the sake of confirming or validating the presence of genuine
artistic
> capability within Director X?
>
> Springboarding from that painful run-on, I ask: Is a list of a
> filmmaker's concerns (in the sense of, let's say: "neglected
> childhood"; "the dignity of Work"; "loyalty to The Group"; etc.)
really
> artistic capability? Is it really a stand-in for a filmmaker's
ideas
> (which might indeed be heads-tail mutable from one film to the
next) or
> sheer aesthetic brilliance (in the sense of form, structure, the
> expression of idea or emotion through image or sound, eloquence in
> epiphanic truths, etc.)?
>
I don't think we should care about a director's "concerns" or
ideas" as such and in themselves. Only about the way they are
expressed cinematically, which is the only reason we should be
interested in them in the first place.
>
Does the term "auteurism" have any currency at all outside of a way
to
> validate and articulate personal preference for a director who
might be
> a genius, or might be shit (but whose films you like anyway, and as
an
> intellectual being, feel compelled to intellectualize)? (Thinking
> here, for some reason I can't put my finger on, of Jean-Pierre's
> rebuttal to the cubby-holed categorization of the Welles
> would-be-canons; as his remarks correctly imply, all the films
which
> were cited can stand on their own and throw groatsworths of
aesthetic,
> intellectual, and sheerly personal fury in all directions, whether
the
> other Welles films existed or not.)
I don't know what you mean by "currency". Denying the concept of
auteur is denying cinema as an art form.
> Finally: Doesn't any frequent user (abuser?) of the phrase "I am an
> auteurist" / "I subscribe to auteurism" feel generally filthy for
> saying he or she belongs to an "-ism" or is an "-ist"? Or at least
> find it all so sickeningly Ayn Rand?
>
I believe that it is wiser and safer to practice auteurism without
referring to it and putting a label on yourself. I don't go around
telling people "I really think cannibalism is wrong" or "I believe
the earth is not really flat". If you get around people who insist
the earth is flat, there isn't much you can do aside from walking
away.
JPC
> craig.
10130
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 2:43am
Subject: Re: Re: Drums and Canons
Jean-Pierre,
> Sounds quite perceptive, but what if you (like me) straddle all
> generations?
>
> I can't single out any of those five and put it above the others, and
> I don't think it can be done except as the expression of a thoroughly
> subjective personal preference. Which is why I'm leery of canonical
> hierarchies.
Talking about a canon doesn't imply any kind of unanimity. I very often
disagree with canonical opinions (including the one I just put forth -
I'd pick KANE as my favorite Welles, though I belong to the CHIMES
demographic), but I still find them valuable. If a film is in the
canon, I'll usually work harder at it, revisit it more often. Sometimes
this has yielded good results.
And, of course, a canon is very useful when you haven't seen the films.
A canon aspires to be more than subjective, even though it can't really
be. If canons were objective, they wouldn't change; but if they are
subjective, then maybe Iron Butterfly will replace Mozart someday, and
we suspect that can't happen. So the canon is born from the gap between
our desire for objectivity and our despair at attaining it.
Jim:
> While auteurists, here and elsewhere, obviously do not shrink from
> identifying directors' greater and lesser works, I think I'm more
> than ever drawn to that auteurist impulse which places the *emphasis*
> on the continuity and consistency of a director's work, rather than
> setting the films against one another. It would be one thing to
> select Wyler's best film, for example, but it seems to go counter to
> auteurism to venture to choose the best Preminger, say, or even the
> "key" Preminger or one's favorite Preminger. An "evasive" answer
> like "my favorite is the one I'm watching at the moment" may seem to
> abandon critical distinctions (and probably more importantly,
> passions) but has a wisdom that strikes me as apt. Perhaps I'm
> fixated on a primitive or outmoded form of auteurism
I don't think this is primitive. It's not exactly the way my mind
operates, but I think most auteurists probably feel a little bit of
this. There are some Premingers I really don't enjoy, but I get
defensive if someone starts attacking them.... - Dan
10131
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 3:00am
Subject: Artist-ism, the hidden movie
> Denying the concept of
> auteur is denying cinema as an art form.
This is something I've become aware of in recent years. Auteurism is
functionally pretty much equivalent to "artist-ism" in the cinema.
There is no major movement that makes equivalent claims for the writer
or the producer, and the movement that makes such claims for actors
hasn't left behind much of a scholarly paper trail. Basically, if
you're committed to the idea of films as the work of artists, then
auteurism is the only game in town.
I've recently been thinking that, in my mind, an auteurist approach to
movies takes the form of finding the "hidden" movie behind the obvious
one. In other words, the "directed" movie might have qualities and
feelings that aren't the same as the vibe you get from the plot
description. I think this has a lot to do with why non-auteurists think
auteurists are crazy: we're out there trying to find a non-obvious
movie, and if we succeed, we're vulnerable to the obvious charges that
we're fantasizing. But, in a way, if there isn't a "hidden" movie under
the surface, then what was the director's job other than being a traffic
cop or a producer? - Dan
10132
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 3:35am
Subject: Re: Drums and Canons
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> > And, of course, a canon is very useful when you haven't seen the
films.
>
But I have seen the films.
"La chair est triste helas et j'ai vu tous les films"
10133
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 3:40am
Subject: Re: Artist-ism, the hidden movie
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> > Denying the concept of
> > auteur is denying cinema as an art form.
>
> This is something I've become aware of in recent years. Auteurism
is
> functionally pretty much equivalent to "artist-ism" in the cinema.
> There is no major movement that makes equivalent claims for the
writer
> or the producer, and the movement that makes such claims for actors
> hasn't left behind much of a scholarly paper trail. Basically, if
> you're committed to the idea of films as the work of artists, then
> auteurism is the only game in town.
>
> I've recently been thinking that, in my mind, an auteurist approach
to
> movies takes the form of finding the "hidden" movie behind the
obvious
> one. In other words, the "directed" movie might have qualities and
> feelings that aren't the same as the vibe you get from the plot
> description. I think this has a lot to do with why non-auteurists
think
> auteurists are crazy: we're out there trying to find a non-obvious
> movie, and if we succeed, we're vulnerable to the obvious charges
that
> we're fantasizing. But, in a way, if there isn't a "hidden" movie
under
> the surface, then what was the director's job other than being a
traffic
> cop or a producer? - Dan
Well, of course you don't get any "vibes" from a plot description.
I think the "hidden" movie is not under the surface. It's like the
watermark in a banknote. Hold it up to the light and it will come
through most clearly.
JPC
10134
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 3:46am
Subject: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- jpcoursodon wrote:
> > --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
> >
> > wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > --- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
> >
> > I didn't know you were black (or whatever the
> > proper term is these
> > days)
> > >
>
> TA-DA!
Before you wipe off the black face, will you sing "Mammy" for us?
(meant no offense. Some of my best friends are black and gay. Some
are even black and blue, but that's another story).
>
> http://ehrensteinland.com/htmls/g001/david.html
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Domains – Claim yours for only $14.70/year
> http://smallbusiness.promotions.yahoo.com/offer
10135
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 4:03am
Subject: Re: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
No but my accompanist and I
http://www.postmodern.com/ttgallery/groups/la_aug/pages/gerbils_jpg.htm
will gladly sing you a chorus of "Most Gentlemen Don't
Like Love"
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
>
> wrote:
> >
> > --- jpcoursodon wrote:
> > > --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David
> Ehrenstein
> > >
> > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > --- jpcoursodon wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > I didn't know you were black (or whatever the
> > > proper term is these
> > > days)
> > > >
> >
> > TA-DA!
>
> Before you wipe off the black face, will you
> sing "Mammy" for us?
> (meant no offense. Some of my best friends are
> black and gay. Some
> are even black and blue, but that's another story).
> >
> > http://ehrensteinland.com/htmls/g001/david.html
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > __________________________________
> > Do you Yahoo!?
> > Yahoo! Domains – Claim yours for only $14.70/year
> > http://smallbusiness.promotions.yahoo.com/offer
>
>
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Domains – Claim yours for only $14.70/year
http://smallbusiness.promotions.yahoo.com/offer
10136
From: Ruy Gardnier
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 3:44am
Subject: Re: Re: Drums and Canons
A canon is intersubjective. It explains the way admirers look to a certain
work and how they respond to it. It also has obviously to do with fights for
acknowledgment of the author in question and how our great masters of the
past can respond to the questions we have in the present (which are, for
obvious reasons, not the same).
Some examples:
When a certain author is not in the pantheon yet, for instance, Orson
Welles, it is likely that you'll pick as his best a piece that even morons
will recognize as a magnificent achievement. That is easier to do with
Citizen Kane than F For Fake or Chimes At Midnight.
When a certain author is already in the pantheon, for instance, Orson
Welles, and you're a big fan of his, you feel that morons completely took
him over and you have to rediscover him again through his more obscure, not
so much user-friendly work. Both ways are valid and are fights worth
fighting for, IMO. And both picks are all right, intersubjectively right,
because they deal positively with the struggles they are having with the
recognition of the author in question, and that's what a pantheon is all
about.
Every time I give a lecture on criticism (which hasn't happened a lot) I say
that french XVIII century classicists hated Shakespeare. Those who did not
know that get stunned. And then I say that the french were right. They get
even more stunned, and then I explain that taste and author recognition may
vary according to how people are living their lives, what role they think
art plays in it, which kind of art is being made at the time, what is its
ideal, etc. Then they all feel pleased. Then I say Shakespeare is more
contemporary today than he was at the time he wrote. They all think I'm
crazy.
One thing that may help a lot is using a fine little concept created by
Michel Foucault (always him) that, as far as I have seen, has never been
used applying to criticism. It is the concept of an epistemological rupture
(corte epistemológico in portuguese), when a new generation as a whole needs
to bring up new concepts and paramethers for their metier and thus seem to
begin criticism from scratch. THE example has to be Andre Bazin defending
William Wyler and Truffete and Rivaut defending Hawks and Hitchcock and
saying Wyler is crap. Of course, both are right, but Bazin belongs to a
certain period in cinema criticism when he feels he has to show that cinema
is an art, and therefore it needs to be deep in the fields that the other
arts are. While the young turcs, when they begin their own fight, the battle
on the "artness" of cinema is already won, so they have to pick it up at
another level: they have to say "mise-en-scène" is an art, not content.
That's how one can be a hitchcocko-hawksian.
So, hierarchy (I don't seem to like the term canon) is not exactly objective
(it can't find solid ground to definitely PROVE that A is better than B) and
not at all subjective (because each person is a multiplicity, that I learned
from Deleuze), but its intersubjectivity explains how a generation sees the
work of an author, how at a certain time A is believed to be (and proved to
be, I'd say) better than B, and why. Intersubjectiveness has a positive
(immanent objectiveness) value, and that's all the solid that the artground
can be, because it deals with reception and world change, whereas a 2 will
be a 2 forever.
Guess that'll do for the time being.
Ruy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan Sallitt"
To:
Sent: Sunday, May 23, 2004 11:43 PM
Subject: Re: [a_film_by] Re: Drums and Canons
> Jean-Pierre,
>
> > Sounds quite perceptive, but what if you (like me) straddle all
> > generations?
> >
> > I can't single out any of those five and put it above the others, and
> > I don't think it can be done except as the expression of a thoroughly
> > subjective personal preference. Which is why I'm leery of canonical
> > hierarchies.
>
> Talking about a canon doesn't imply any kind of unanimity. I very often
> disagree with canonical opinions (including the one I just put forth -
> I'd pick KANE as my favorite Welles, though I belong to the CHIMES
> demographic), but I still find them valuable. If a film is in the
> canon, I'll usually work harder at it, revisit it more often. Sometimes
> this has yielded good results.
>
> And, of course, a canon is very useful when you haven't seen the films.
>
> A canon aspires to be more than subjective, even though it can't really
> be. If canons were objective, they wouldn't change; but if they are
> subjective, then maybe Iron Butterfly will replace Mozart someday, and
> we suspect that can't happen. So the canon is born from the gap between
> our desire for objectivity and our despair at attaining it.
>
> Jim:
>
> > While auteurists, here and elsewhere, obviously do not shrink from
> > identifying directors' greater and lesser works, I think I'm more
> > than ever drawn to that auteurist impulse which places the *emphasis*
> > on the continuity and consistency of a director's work, rather than
> > setting the films against one another. It would be one thing to
> > select Wyler's best film, for example, but it seems to go counter to
> > auteurism to venture to choose the best Preminger, say, or even the
> > "key" Preminger or one's favorite Preminger. An "evasive" answer
> > like "my favorite is the one I'm watching at the moment" may seem to
> > abandon critical distinctions (and probably more importantly,
> > passions) but has a wisdom that strikes me as apt. Perhaps I'm
> > fixated on a primitive or outmoded form of auteurism
>
> I don't think this is primitive. It's not exactly the way my mind
> operates, but I think most auteurists probably feel a little bit of
> this. There are some Premingers I really don't enjoy, but I get
> defensive if someone starts attacking them.... - Dan
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
10137
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 4:34am
Subject: Re: Re: Drums and Canons
Good post, Ruy!
> THE example has to be Andre Bazin defending
> William Wyler and Truffete and Rivaut defending Hawks and Hitchcock and
> saying Wyler is crap. Of course, both are right, but Bazin belongs to a
> certain period in cinema criticism when he feels he has to show that cinema
> is an art, and therefore it needs to be deep in the fields that the other
> arts are. While the young turcs, when they begin their own fight, the battle
> on the "artness" of cinema is already won, so they have to pick it up at
> another level: they have to say "mise-en-scène" is an art, not content.
I wonder if this is really the perfect example, though. Bazin too was
creating a bit of an epistomological rupture: he was responding to a
generation who threw great emphasis on editing and "pure cinema" in its
fight to establish cinema as an art. Bazin's conviction in the
ontological realism of the photographic image, and his fascination with
cinema's incestuous relationship with the other arts, were a reaction to
existing critical beliefs. The Wyler vs. Hitchcock/Hawks issue seems
small in that context, and in fact the "young Turks" seemed to have
quite a lot in common with Bazin at the time, even in terms of their
favorite directors. From today's perspective, Wyler vs. Hitchcock-Hawks
seems a bigger deal. - Dan
10138
From: Ruy Gardnier
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 4:58am
Subject: Re: Re: Drums and Canons
You're absolutely right, Dan. I'll apply once again my "stun-the-people"
oxymorons: it's because they're bazinians that they go for mise-en-scène
against content. It was the only step Bazin didn't feel safe to take, and my
take on it was (last post) that he didn't because he had to "keep up with
the serious business of art", which was XIX and early XX century romance and
XIX drama. Bazin in fact was on the verge of that epistemological rupture,
and may be considered its father. He's from the old school ("parce qu' enfin
le sujet compte pour quelque chose, Huston against Hitchcock, #27"), but
he's already a new sensibility within that old school. It'll need a new
school with this new sensibility to fully complete the epistemological
twist, and those will be Truffete, Rivaut, Scherer and Lucas.
I simplified things a little bit because that's how examples work. And, oh,
throwing Georges Sadoul to the lions would be an act of cowardice. Bazin, he
who was very fond of animals, handles that with no hands.
Ruy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan Sallitt"
To:
Sent: Monday, May 24, 2004 1:34 AM
Subject: Re: [a_film_by] Re: Drums and Canons
> Good post, Ruy!
>
> > THE example has to be Andre Bazin defending
> > William Wyler and Truffete and Rivaut defending Hawks and Hitchcock and
> > saying Wyler is crap. Of course, both are right, but Bazin belongs to a
> > certain period in cinema criticism when he feels he has to show that
cinema
> > is an art, and therefore it needs to be deep in the fields that the
other
> > arts are. While the young turcs, when they begin their own fight, the
battle
> > on the "artness" of cinema is already won, so they have to pick it up at
> > another level: they have to say "mise-en-scène" is an art, not content.
>
> I wonder if this is really the perfect example, though. Bazin too was
> creating a bit of an epistomological rupture: he was responding to a
> generation who threw great emphasis on editing and "pure cinema" in its
> fight to establish cinema as an art. Bazin's conviction in the
> ontological realism of the photographic image, and his fascination with
> cinema's incestuous relationship with the other arts, were a reaction to
> existing critical beliefs. The Wyler vs. Hitchcock/Hawks issue seems
> small in that context, and in fact the "young Turks" seemed to have
> quite a lot in common with Bazin at the time, even in terms of their
> favorite directors. From today's perspective, Wyler vs. Hitchcock-Hawks
> seems a bigger deal. - Dan
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
10139
From: Adrian Martin
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 8:39am
Subject: Excellent lines!
"the canon is born from the gap between
our desire for objectivity and our despair at attaining it."
Bravo, Dan! This is the one most illuminating things I have ever read about
the crazy business of 'canon-making'.
"I think the "hidden" movie is not under the surface. It's like the
watermark in a banknote. Hold it up to the light and it will come
through most clearly."
Bravo, Jean-Pierre! This is a great way to describe the sense of a film that
is not necessarily immediately 'obvious' - if it was immediately obvious, we
critics would have no job - but nonetheless is not 'buried' in some
invisible, abstract realm, either.
Victor Perkins, a few years back, wrote a great piece about this issue:
meaning is not 'hidden' in a film, he writes, it is there to be seen and
heard ... and what we need are the gentle pointers to the logic or form of
that 'embodiment', not mystical exhumations of something buried or hidden.
Adrian
10140
From: iangjohnston
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 8:46am
Subject: Re: Oasis - now this is a Korean movie I can get behind!
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Kevin Lee"
wrote:
> That's a really neat coincidence, the O.A.S.I.S. site. It's never
> explained what the woman -- and the man, for that matter, who some
> have said suffers from a mild form of autism -- is diagnosed
with.
> One has to wonder how much that matters... You raise a really
> interesting point about Moon So-ri's performance, which the second
> time I watched the film kind of grated on me, it seemed too
mannered
> for its own good... and it made me wonder if I was being
challenged
> to accept it on its own terms much in the way that the film
> challenges people both on and off-screen to accept the two lead
> characters as dignified human beings.
>
> All the same I think the man's performance in the film is even
better
> than Moon So-Ri's, I guess because I find it less gimmicky and
really
> tests the audience's sympathy. Well I guess Moon So-Ri's
bucktoothed
> mugging is a test as well...
>
> Still, I prefer this, as well as Park Chan-wook's SYMPATHY FOR MR.
> VENGEANCE, Bong Joon-ho's BARKING DOGS NEVER BITE, and especially
> Jeong Jae-eun's TAKE CARE OF MY CAT (all three films starring Bae
Doo-
> na, one of the most remarkable actresses working anywhere today)
over
> Kim Ki-Duk's SPRING, SUMMER, CRAP, CRAP... AND CRAP.
This is very much my own view of OASIS. Although (I've only seen
this once and some months ago)I couldn't quite rid myself of the
feeling that the actress's "mugging" might be bordering on the
tasteless/exploitative. But you're right about the man's
performance, certainly more powerful, more impressive, and more
testing of the audience. (I also think, on a moral level if you
like, that the director doesn't indulge in his male protagonist's
sexual violence in the way that someone like Kim Ki-Duk does.) This
is one film from 2003 that's stayed with me really strongly -- one I
want to see again.
I don't have quite as much of a negative reaction to Kim Ki-Duk as
you, although on the basis of THE ISLE and SPRING... he's definitely
a case of Less Than Meets The Eye. I haven't seen the other Korean
films you've mentioned; my own favourite is Hong Sang-soo,
particularly THE POWER OF KANGWON PROVINCE and ON THE OCCASION OF
REMEMBERING THE TURNING GATE.
10141
From: iangjohnston
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 9:01am
Subject: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "samfilms2003" wrote:
> > I know almost nothing about romanization from the Chinese
dialects, but
> > it strikes me as odd that for two or three straight dispatches
he alone
> > has insisted on referring to Wong Kar-wai as "Wong Kar-wei."
>
> I don't either, although I noticed Maggie Cheung & Tony Leung
pronounce
> it that way i.e. wei on the In The Mood For Love DVD interview.
>
"Wong Kar-wai" is the Romanisation of the Cantonese pronunciation of
his name (the Romanisation of his name in Mandarin would be "Wang
Jiawei" -- maybe that's where the "wei" has come from). I don't know
Cantonese so I've no idea how accurate "wai" is in representing the
pronunciation.
Personally I favour talking of Chinese "languages" rather
than "dialects". Often they're as distant from one another as
Portuguese is from Romanian, and one Chinese language can be
incomprehensible to the speakers of another (hence a source of
tension in Taiwan between speakers of Mandarin Chinese, Hakka and
Hoklo).
10142
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 9:24am
Subject: AuteurismcanonbanknoteDavid
I've been writing, so I have to catch up:
I'll proudly call myself an auteurist as long as auteurists are a
suppressed minority position who have to fight back.
Kant: An esthetic judgement is a statement made in objective form
even though it is founded on a subjective feeling. That was not said
debunkingly.
Didn't James talk about "the figure in the carpet" the way we talk
about the hidden film and the threads connecting it to the rest of
the oeuvre?
David is Black, gay AND Jewish. That's why he's such a pussycat.
10143
From:
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 8:31am
Subject: Re: Re: Drums and Canons
In a message dated 5/23/04 11:16:55 PM, corazondiablo@t... writes:
> One thing that may help a lot is using a fine little concept created by
> Michel Foucault (always him) that, as far as I have seen, has never been
> used applying to criticism. It is the concept of an epistemological rupture
> (corte epistemológico in portuguese), when a new generation as a whole needs
> to bring up new concepts and paramethers for their metier and thus seem to
> begin criticism from scratch.
>
>
> I'm writing my thesis about this very thing. Spin magazine in the late 1980s
> applied the concept of epistemological rupture to popular music criticism.
> In fact, Frank Owen used the word epistemological (although I think the next
> word was "shift" instead of "rupture") in an early 1990 column discussing
> hip-hop in the 1980s.
>
I think this happened with film more in the academy than in criticism. In
Aftershocks of the New, Patrice Petro has written about the concept, however
misleading, of "seventies film theory" and the subsequent challenges to its
perceived dominance.
Kevin John
>
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
10144
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 1:15pm
Subject: Re: AuteurismcanonbanknoteDavid
--- hotlove666 wrote:
>
> David is Black, gay AND Jewish. That's why he's such
> a pussycat.
>
>
Ah, but pussycats have claws!
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10145
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 1:23pm
Subject: Re: Re: Drums and Canons
--- LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
> >
> I think this happened with film more in the academy
> than in criticism. In
> Aftershocks of the New, Patrice Petro has written
> about the concept, however
> misleading, of "seventies film theory" and the
> subsequent challenges to its
> perceived dominance.
>
Now THAT'S a very interesting period in that its
epistemological shift it clearly desired was nowhere
near as far-reaching as many at the time imagined that
it would be. In fact, the Lacan-fixation of Stephen
Heath and the CdC (eg. "Young Mr.Lincoln") seem rather
quaint now, as does tha Maoism of "Cinethique" and
"Tel Quel." Would LOVE for Bertolucci to make a film
about that.
Ruy's post about Bazin is pinpoint accurate. That
we're still talking about those critical insights
today is proof of their lasting value.
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10146
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 2:43pm
Subject: Re: Auteurist!
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Craig Keller wrote:
>
> Finally: Doesn't any frequent user (abuser?) of the phrase "I am an
> auteurist" / "I subscribe to auteurism" feel generally filthy for
> saying he or she belongs to an "-ism" or is an "-ist"? Or at least
> find it all so sickeningly Ayn Rand?
Why? There are bad "isms" & "ists" and good ones. Consider, variously, abolitionism, activism, Buddhism, classicism, constructivism, Expressionism,
Impressionism, journalism, modernism, optimism, pacifism, serialism, socialism, etc. -- I'm sure I've left out a few you may subscribe to. There's a long
list of isms at
http://www.informationgenius.com/encyclopedia/l/li/list_of_isms.html which doesn't even include auteurism...
10147
From: filipefurtado
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 3:06pm
Subject: Re: Vecchiali, A. Argento
> Anyone notice that Paul Vecchiali
had a film in this year's Quinzaine
> des Realizateurs at Cannes? Has
anyone seen A VOT' BON COEUR?
Vechiali's film got very good reviews
by the french press. Let's hope it got
some festival showing outside France.
>
> Or, for that matter, how about Asia
Argento's THE HEART IS
> DECEITFUL...ABOVE ALL THINGS, also
in the Quinzaine? On the basis of
> SCARLET DIVA, I'd say she's a
filmmaker to reckon with.
The best brazilian critic that covered
Cannes loved this one.
Filipe
__________________________________________________________________________
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10148
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 3:07pm
Subject: Oasis, Hong, Korean cinema
> This is very much my own view of OASIS. Although (I've only seen
> this once and some months ago)I couldn't quite rid myself of the
> feeling that the actress's "mugging" might be bordering on the
> tasteless/exploitative.
I don't know. Presumably you'd have to compare the performance to the
behavior of real-life cerebral palsy sufferers to find out whether it's
over the top. I haven't the expertise to do that, but I didn't get the
feeling that Moon was taking it too far. The gesture of conceiving the
performance at all as a lead role is rather nervy, and unnerving - once
that step is taken, though, I'd say that restraint is no longer a virtue.
> my own favourite is Hong Sang-soo,
> particularly THE POWER OF KANGWON PROVINCE and ON THE OCCASION OF
> REMEMBERING THE TURNING GATE.
Yeah, he's a very good director, albeit a little hard for me to put
together on a structural level. He cites a Rohmer influence, which is
fascinating. I asked him once in a Q&A about the doubling of narrative
elements in his films, and he said he just gets bored with classical
storytelling. Hope his new film is good - it didn't seem to make much
of a ripple at Cannes.
I'm keeping my eye on Park Chan-Ok, who made the excellent JEALOUSY IS
MY MIDDLE NAME.
- Dan
10149
From: Jerry Johnson
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 3:15pm
Subject: Re: Drums and Canons
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
>
> I wonder if this is really the perfect example, though. Bazin too
was
> creating a bit of an epistomological rupture: he was responding to
a
> generation who threw great emphasis on editing and "pure cinema"
in its
> fight to establish cinema as an art. Bazin's conviction in the
> ontological realism of the photographic image, and his fascination
with
> cinema's incestuous relationship with the other arts, were a
reaction to
> existing critical beliefs.
David Bordwell gave a wonderful detail- and example-intensive
account of Bazin's "rupture" in "On the History of Film Style."
10150
From:
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 11:17am
Subject: Re: Re: Drums and Canons
In a message dated 5/24/04 8:29:23 AM, cellar47@y... writes:
> its epistemological shift it clearly desired was nowhere near as
> far-reaching as many at the time imagined that it would be.
>
That's precisely what Partice writes about. She takes issue with how the term
"seventies film theory" flattens out the complexity of film debates in the
1970s. The story is that there was a turn to history/historicism (most visibly
the New Historicism in literature) in the 1980s and 1990s as a reaction to the
hegemony of grand theory. But Patrice shows how questions of history were
central to those early academic debates.
And "seventies film theory" is far-reaching enough that Lawrence Grossberg
mourns (somewhat off the mark, I would say) a parallel lack in popular music
studies, something to rail against and set the terms for debate.
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
10151
From: filipefurtado
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 4:03pm
Subject: Re: Drums and Canons
> On another note, I am fascinated by
how director-canons shift from country
> to country.
I guess this has many times to do with
availabity. A brazilian example: Eric
Rohmer. Till two years ago was
virtually impossible to see Rohmer
films here. The last one that had got
a commercial release (and the only one
available on video) was A Tale of
Springtime. Some of the best films
from the comedies and proverbs series
(Pauline, The Green Ray) hasn't got
released either. So it was hard to see
the films and it was hard to read
anything on him. Then, a distributor
bot the rights to nearly his complete
filmography (if I'm not mistaken the
only exceptions were Perceval and
Randezvous in Paris), did a somewhat
successful retrospective and then
start to re-release the films.
Suddenly, that completely forgot guy
Rohmer becomes very fashionable in
most cinephile circles. "Have you seen
that one film by Rohmer?", people keep
asking me (there were a couple weeks
with four Rohmers showing commercially
at the same time here in São Paulo).
Filipe
__________________________________________________________________________
Acabe com aquelas janelinhas que pulam na sua tela.
AntiPop-up UOL - É grátis!
http://antipopup.uol.com.br/
10152
From: samfilms2003
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 4:07pm
Subject: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
> Marutite Duras?
Sorry, Long day, Saturday had been a long nite; I use yahoo on the web
so no spel-chekker
-Sam
10153
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 5:50pm
Subject: Re: Auteurist!
> Why? There are bad "isms" & "ists" and good ones. Consider,
variously, abolitionism, activism, Buddhism, classicism,
constructivism, Expressionism, Impressionism, journalism, modernism,
optimism, pacifism, serialism, socialism, etc. -- I'm sure I've left
out a few you may subscribe to. There's a long list of isms at
> http://www.informationgenius.com/encyclopedia/l/li/list_of_isms.html
which doesn't even include auteurism...
What about prism and schism? And don't get me started about mist,
sunkissed, and Christ.
:)
-Jaime
10154
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 5:51pm
Subject: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "samfilms2003" wrote:
> > Marutite Duras?
>
> Sorry, Long day, Saturday had been a long nite; I use yahoo on the web
> so no spel-chekker
I'm reading DESTROY, SHE SAID. Yep. Who wants to touch me? I said
who wants to touch me!
-Jaime
10155
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 5:59pm
Subject: Re: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
Hey, I've SEEN "Destroy she Said." Also "Nathalie
Granger," "La Femme du Gange," "Jaune le Soleil," "Le
Navire Night," "India Song" and "Son Nom du Venise
dans Calcutta Desert."
Wanna touch ME?
--- "Jaime N. Christley"
wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "samfilms2003"
> wrote:
> > > Marutite Duras?
> >
> > Sorry, Long day, Saturday had been a long nite; I
> use yahoo on the web
> > so no spel-chekker
>
> I'm reading DESTROY, SHE SAID. Yep. Who wants to
> touch me? I said
> who wants to touch me!
>
> -Jaime
>
>
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10156
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 6:23pm
Subject: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> No but my accompanist and I
>
>
http://www.postmodern.com/ttgallery/groups/la_aug/pages/gerbils_jpg.ht
m
>
> will gladly sing you a chorus of "Most Gentlemen Don't
> Like Love"
>
I guess they just like to kick it around.
>
>
>
> __________________________________
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> Yahoo! Domains – Claim yours for only $14.70/year
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10157
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 6:35pm
Subject: Re: AuteurismcanonbanknoteDavid
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- hotlove666 wrote:
>
> >
> > David is Black, gay AND Jewish. That's why he's such
> > a pussycat.
> >
> >
> Ah, but pussycats have claws!
>
>
> You need them when you're likely to be discriminated against
on three different counts...
>
> __________________________________
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10158
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 6:44pm
Subject: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Jaime N. Christley"
wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "samfilms2003" wrote:
> > > Marutite Duras?
> >
> > Sorry, Long day, Saturday had been a long nite; I use yahoo on
the web
> > so no spel-chekker
>
> I'm reading DESTROY, SHE SAID. Yep. Who wants to touch me? I said
> who wants to touch me!
>
> -Jaime
My favorite Duras (film) with INDIA SONG. On top of everything it
betrays a sense of humor rarely evident in her writing/filming.
JPC
10159
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 6:50pm
Subject: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
>
> My favorite Duras (film) with INDIA SONG. On top of everything
it
> betrays a sense of humor rarely evident in her writing/filming.
> JPC
You must've been at the screening where I was stoned and got everyone
in Lincoln Center laughing.
Hey, it's camp!
10160
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 6:54pm
Subject: Re: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
> My favorite Duras (film) with INDIA SONG. On top
> of everything it
> betrays a sense of humor rarely evident in her
> writing/filming.
> JPC
>
>
Oh there's one more Duras I forgot to mention -- "Les
Enfants." I found it enormously funny as well.
Did you now that Losey was original set to direct
"Destroy She Said" when it was a script called "The
Chaise Lounge" ? He couldn't make heads or tails of
it, so he handed it back to the author -- who took
matters into her own hands.
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10161
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 7:00pm
Subject: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> >
> > My favorite Duras (film) with INDIA SONG. On top of everything
> it
> > betrays a sense of humor rarely evident in her writing/filming.
> > JPC
>
> You must've been at the screening where I was stoned and got
everyone
> in Lincoln Center laughing.
>
> Hey, it's camp!
You must still be stoned, Bill! I was not talking about INDIA
SONG but about DETRUIRE DIT-ELLE, which is not camp at all, and very
funny at times (which INDIA is not). Besides, camp is in the eye of
the (stoned) beholder.
I did see INDIA SONG at the NY Film Fest. too so we may have
been at the same showing. I do remember quite a bit of snickering.
JPC
10162
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 8:11pm
Subject: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
> >
> > My favorite Duras (film) with INDIA SONG. On top
> > of everything it
> > betrays a sense of humor rarely evident in her
> > writing/filming.
> > JPC
> >
> >
>
> Oh there's one more Duras I forgot to mention -- "Les
> Enfants." I found it enormously funny as well.
>
> Did you now that Losey was original set to direct
> "Destroy She Said" when it was a script called "The
> Chaise Lounge" ? He couldn't make heads or tails of
> it, so he handed it back to the author -- who took
> matters into her own hands.
>
>
>
> Losey is on record as saying it was "one of the best film
scripts I have ever read." -- which of course doesn't preclude the
possibility that he couldn't make heads or tails of it. it's more
likely, however, that they disagreed on casting and money matters
(Duras said Losey wanted the rights). The amazing thing is that this
by then highly successful mainstream director seriously considered
directing a cryptic, avant-gardish script with big stars on a big
budget. Those were the days...
JPC
> __________________________________
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10163
From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 8:28pm
Subject: Anatomie de l'enfer ou America
Pardon my French, but Tartan's new American distribution company,
Tartan USA, will launch August 27 with the release of Catherine
Breillat's "Anatomy of Hell".
Once again I would like to point out, that she is incredible and
that this, in my opinion, is her greatest and more defining work as
an auteur.
Henri
10164
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 8:58pm
Subject: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
> Losey is on record as saying it was "one of the best film
> scripts I have ever read." -- which of course doesn't preclude the
> possibility that he couldn't make heads or tails of it. it's more
> likely, however, that they disagreed on casting and money matters
> (Duras said Losey wanted the rights). The amazing thing is that this
> by then highly successful mainstream director seriously considered
> directing a cryptic, avant-gardish script with big stars on a big
> budget. Those were the days...
This must have been in the early '70s; I know Losey had just won the
Palme D'Or (or was about to) but was he still a "highly successful
mainstream director"? Was he ever?
Just saw my two favorite Loseys (so far), TIME WITHOUT PITY and THESE
ARE THE DAMNED. Second viewing for the latter, thankfully since I
didn't quite "get" it the first time around. But I clicked with TIME
right away, now there's a knockout film!
-Jaime
10165
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 10:35pm
Subject: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > My favorite Duras (film) with INDIA SONG. On top of
everything
> > it
> > > betrays a sense of humor rarely evident in her
writing/filming.
> > > JPC
> >
> > You must've been at the screening where I was stoned and
got
> everyone
> > in Lincoln Center laughing.
> >
> > Hey, it's camp!
>
> You must still be stoned, Bill! I was not talking about INDIA
> SONG but about DETRUIRE DIT-ELLE, which is not camp at
all, and very
> funny at times (which INDIA is not). Besides, camp is in the eye
of
> the (stoned) beholder.
>
> I did see INDIA SONG at the NY Film Fest. too so we may
have
> been at the same showing. I do remember quite a bit of
snickering.
>
> JPC
Nope, you were talking about INDIA SONG (see your quote
above), which virtually defines camp, and was very funny that
night. I can just see you letting the waves of joyous collective
hilarity wash over you with a disapproving frown on your face....
Another very funny moment in Duras: Depardieu's two
appearances in NATHALIE GRANGER.
10166
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 10:52pm
Subject: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
--> > Losey is on record as saying it was "one of the best film
> > scripts I have ever read." -- which of course doesn't preclude
the
> > possibility that he couldn't make heads or tails of it. it's more
> > likely, however, that they disagreed on casting and money matters
> > (Duras said Losey wanted the rights). The amazing thing is that
this
> > by then highly successful mainstream director seriously
considered
> > directing a cryptic, avant-gardish script with big stars on a big
> > budget. Those were the days...
>
> This must have been in the early '70s; I know Losey had just won the
> Palme D'Or (or was about to) but was he still a "highly successful
> mainstream director"? Was he ever?
> James
This was 1968 and Losey had had at least two major hits with "The
Servant" and, in 1967, "Accident". British and French critics raved
about them and Losey in general (with the exception, in France, of
the obscure MacMahonien, who had burned their idol when "The servant"
came out). Losey was famous, honored, and making money. Depends how
you define "mainstream" --- I meant it as opposed to the definitely
not mainstream cinema Duras made.
JPC
10167
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 10:59pm
Subject: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
> wrote:
> > --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > >
> > > > My favorite Duras (film) with INDIA SONG. On top of
> everything
> > > it
> > > > betrays a sense of humor rarely evident in her
> writing/filming.
> > > > JPC
> > >
> > > You must've been at the screening where I was stoned and
> got
> > everyone
> > > in Lincoln Center laughing.
> > >
> > > Hey, it's camp!
> >
> > You must still be stoned, Bill! I was not talking about
INDIA
> > SONG but about DETRUIRE DIT-ELLE, which is not camp at
> all, and very
> > funny at times (which INDIA is not). Besides, camp is in the eye
> of
> > the (stoned) beholder.
> >
> > I did see INDIA SONG at the NY Film Fest. too so we may
> have
> > been at the same showing. I do remember quite a bit of
> snickering.
> >
> > JPC
>
> Nope, you were talking about INDIA SONG (see your quote
> above), which virtually defines camp, and was very funny that
> night. I can just see you letting the waves of joyous collective
> hilarity wash over you with a disapproving frown on your face....
>
> Another very funny moment in Duras: Depardieu's two
I still wear that frown on my face. Especially after you
truncated my post just to have the last word. Unworthy of a great
mind like yours, Bill.
JPC
> appearances in NATHALIE GRANGER.
10168
From: Elizabeth Anne Nolan
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 11:33pm
Subject: Re: Oasis, Hong, Korean cinema
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> > This is very much my own view of OASIS. Although (I've only seen
> > this once and some months ago)I couldn't quite rid myself of the
> > feeling that the actress's "mugging" might be bordering on the
> > tasteless/exploitative.
>
> I don't know. Presumably you'd have to compare the performance to
the
> behavior of real-life cerebral palsy sufferers to find out whether
it's
> over the top. I haven't the expertise to do that, but I didn't get
the
> feeling that Moon was taking it too far. The gesture of conceiving
the
> performance at all as a lead role is rather nervy, and unnerving -
once
> that step is taken, though, I'd say that restraint is no longer a
virtue.
1) Cerebral palsy has a range of manifestations so it is hard for
a performance to be too little or too much.
2) Not know what her baseline was, ie, that is, did she have CP?
She certainly looked like she did, even to a "trained" viewer.
3) Because of the CP, almost any behavior shown on the screen
could have been believable as the script was written. It wasn't like
she had to do or say specific things for the most part.
I thought the performance remarkable, and courageous all
around. I've seen the male lead in a few things ...reminds me of
young DeNiro. I read that the actress has to be hospitalized twice
because of the cramping and dehydration. I hope audiences give OASIS
a chance; quite a few viewers walked out in Palm Springs (as also
happened in THE SON).
ELIZABETH
10169
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Mon May 24, 2004 11:50pm
Subject: Losey
> Just saw my two favorite Loseys (so far), TIME WITHOUT PITY and THESE
> ARE THE DAMNED. Second viewing for the latter, thankfully since I
> didn't quite "get" it the first time around. But I clicked with TIME
> right away, now there's a knockout film!
Those are my two favorites also, and they're quite different, when you
think about it. TIME is a real melodrama, with everything writ large,
and it gets its effects through the working out of the melodrama;
whereas DAMNED is modernist, really, with two competing narratives, one
of which destroys the other. But they end the same, with an emptied-out
space where our identification figures used to be. - Dan
10170
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue May 25, 2004 0:36am
Subject: Re: Losey
"Time Without Pity" is the key Losey film for the
MacMahonists.
I saw "These Are the Damed" in 1965 when it was first
relased in the U.S. on the bottom half of a double
bill. Can't remember what the "A" picture was. Having
seen "The Servant" -- repeatedly -- by then, it really
bowled me over. here was a genre picture that ddin't
look or act like any genre picture I'd ever seen.
The in 1966 came "Modesty Blaise" and I became a Losey
Obsessive.
While I like "Accident" and "The Go_Between," they're
very much "playing it safe" Losey films, to me. The
REAL "goods" comes with his two Delon vehicles "M.
Klein" and "The Assassination of Trotsky."
"Don Giovanni" and "The Trout" have much to reccomend
them as well -- especially the latter.
I am also very much willing to defend the gilded
excesses of "Secret Ceremony."
And "Boom!" is his "Party Girl."
--- Dan Sallitt wrote:
> > Just saw my two favorite Loseys (so far), TIME
> WITHOUT PITY and THESE
> > ARE THE DAMNED. Second viewing for the latter,
> thankfully since I
> > didn't quite "get" it the first time around. But
> I clicked with TIME
> > right away, now there's a knockout film!
>
> Those are my two favorites also, and they're quite
> different, when you
> think about it. TIME is a real melodrama, with
> everything writ large,
> and it gets its effects through the working out of
> the melodrama;
> whereas DAMNED is modernist, really, with two
> competing narratives, one
> of which destroys the other. But they end the same,
> with an emptied-out
> space where our identification figures used to be. -
> Dan
>
>
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
http://messenger.yahoo.com/
10171
From: Robert Keser
Date: Tue May 25, 2004 2:15am
Subject: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
Lest we think that only yahoo Americans like Bill would snicker
through India Song: I remember seeing it first run in Paris, with a
fairly large audience at a cinema off Blvd. St. Michel, and the
chuckling was audible throughout (say, maybe they were Friends
of Bill!)
Personally, I liked the film quite a bit but still had to smile now
and then at Duras's upfront and fearless commitment to
"artiness".
--Robert Keser
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
> I still wear that frown on my face.
10172
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Tue May 25, 2004 2:37am
Subject: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Robert Keser" wrote:
> Lest we think that only yahoo Americans like Bill would snicker
> through India Song: I remember seeing it first run in Paris, with a
> fairly large audience at a cinema off Blvd. St. Michel, and the
> chuckling was audible throughout (say, maybe they were Friends
> of Bill!)
>
> Personally, I liked the film quite a bit but still had to smile now
> and then at Duras's upfront and fearless commitment to
> "artiness".
>
> --Robert Keser
>
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
> wrote:
>
> > I still wear that frown on my face.
1) Describing Bill K. as a "yahoo American" -- whatever that
means -- is obviously totally inappropriate.
2) Any fairly large audience is bound to chuckle at INDIA SONG.
Whether they're stoned or not. What does it prove?
3) Bill in his stoned condition disrupted the first American
screening of a film that, whatever you think of it, deserved serious
(even though maybe smiling) attention. With the wonderful excuse of
being stoned he was joining the yahoos who throughout history have
delighted in ridiculing anything new and different.
4) I suppose Bill was hiding somewhere in the balcony while I
was sitting fourth row orchestra. Otherwise I would gladly have
punched his stoned nose. It could have been the beginning of a
beautiful friendship, Flagg and Quirk style...
JPC
10173
From: samfilms2003
Date: Tue May 25, 2004 2:39am
Subject: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
> Lest we think that only yahoo Americans like Bill would snicker
> through India Song: I remember seeing it first run in Paris, with a
> fairly large audience at a cinema off Blvd. St. Michel, and the
> chuckling was audible throughout (say, maybe they were Friends
> of Bill!)
I saw it at a drive-in outside of Baltimore and the considerably more
sophisticated audience watched with rapt attention.
The refreshment stand did its worst business in years that night.
-Sam
10174
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue May 25, 2004 3:07am
Subject: India Song at the drive-in
>>Lest we think that only yahoo Americans like Bill would snicker
>>through India Song: I remember seeing it first run in Paris, with a
>>fairly large audience at a cinema off Blvd. St. Michel, and the
>>chuckling was audible throughout (say, maybe they were Friends
>>of Bill!)
>
> I saw it at a drive-in outside of Baltimore and the considerably more
> sophisticated audience watched with rapt attention.
How did such a thing happen? - Dan
10175
From: Robert Keser
Date: Tue May 25, 2004 3:29am
Subject: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
> 1) Describing Bill K. as a "yahoo American" -- whatever that
> means -- is obviously totally inappropriate.
> 2) Any fairly large audience is bound to chuckle at INDIA
SONG.
> Whether they're stoned or not. What does it prove?
> 3) Bill in his stoned condition disrupted the first American
> screening of a film that, whatever you think of it, deserved
serious
> (even though maybe smiling) attention. With the wonderful excuse of
> being stoned he was joining the yahoos who throughout history have
> delighted in ridiculing anything new and different.
> 4) I suppose Bill was hiding somewhere in the balcony while I
> was sitting fourth row orchestra. Otherwise I would gladly have
> punched his stoned nose. It could have been the beginning of a
> beautiful friendship, Flagg and Quirk style...
Number 3 would seem to negate Number 1, but that's okay. What price
consistency in this cockeyed world?
--Robert Keser
10176
From: Robert Keser
Date: Tue May 25, 2004 3:41am
Subject: Re: Oasis, Hong, Korean cinema
Just saw Moon So-ri—recovered from her Oasis exertions—in
another commanding and committed performance as a woman
exploring her sexual options in Im Sang-soo's very frank A Good
Lawyer's Wife, although the director ultimately seemed to borrow
too much (or not enough) from Kieslowski's "sixth commandment"
story in The Decalogue, the one about the woman having an affair
with the teen voyeur next door.
Of other recent Korean productions, three enigmatic films of Hong
Sang-soo played here in Chicago—The Turning Gate, Virgin
Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, and The Power of Kangwon
Province—and all three seemed stimulatingly original (probably
because their centers are exceptionally secret!), but without
feeling pretentious about it.
The only Park Chan-wook film I've seen is his mainstream
blockbuster, the utterly riveting Joint Security Area. Despite an
awkward beginning section (which has probably kept it from
distribution in the U.S.), the exciting political drama holds at
least three outstanding performances in a consistently compelling
screenplay, much better than the more formulaic thriller Shiri with
which it shares some correspondences.
Unlike Kevin, I don't despise Kim Ki-duk's Spring, Summer,
Autumn, Winter… but it certainly seems suspect in its appeal to
conventional values, and upon reflection afterwards the movie seems
to shrivel in the mind rather than grow in meaning. Its authenticity
appears even more in doubt when compared to Mandala,
Im Kwon-taek's breakthrough film from 1986, which tells a
moving and stunningly ironic story that also looks fresh and visually
striking in a uniquely rough way. In my opinion, any rare chance to
see this classic is not to be missed, especially for those who
appreciated the director's colorful and unsparingly tough
Chunhyang and Chihwaseon.
--Robert Keser
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Elizabeth Anne Nolan"
wrote:
>
> I thought the performance remarkable, and courageous all
> around. I've seen the male lead in a few things ...reminds me of
> young DeNiro. I read that the actress has to be hospitalized twice
> because of the cramping and dehydration.
> ELIZABETH
10177
From: Jonathan Rosenbaum
Date: Tue May 25, 2004 3:51am
Subject: Re: India Song at the drive-in
> >
> > I saw it at a drive-in outside of Baltimore and the considerably
more
> > sophisticated audience watched with rapt attention.
>
> How did such a thing happen? - Dan
This must have been during the shooting of Polyester, yes? I still
remember that Duras triple-bill on the marquee.
Jonathan
10178
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue May 25, 2004 4:08am
Subject: Re: On '2046': Ebert Strikes Again
>
> 1) Describing Bill K. as a "yahoo American" -- whatever that
> means -- is obviously totally inappropriate.
I'm not a yahoo. Hotlove666 is a yahoo.
> 2) Any fairly large audience is bound to chuckle at INDIA
SONG.
> Whether they're stoned or not. What does it prove?
That American audiences are "drole," as Duras said after the
screening.
> 3) Bill in his stoned condition disrupted the first American
> screening of a film that, whatever you think of it, deserved
serious
> (even though maybe smiling) attention.
Nope, it was the second one. I let the first one unfold in awed
silence. I was stoned then too.
With the wonderful excuse of
> being stoned he was joining the yahoos who throughout history have
> delighted in ridiculing anything new and different.
J-M Straub: If you're strong enough, you can laugh at anything.
> 4) I suppose Bill was hiding somewhere in the balcony
Keerect.
while I
> was sitting fourth row orchestra. Otherwise I would gladly have
> punched his stoned nose. It could have been the beginning of a
> beautiful friendship, Flagg and Quirk style...
That's QUIRT! And I don't befriend people who punch me in the nose. I
like the friendship we have, J-P, verbal haymakers and all.
10179
From: Adrian Martin
Date: Tue May 25, 2004 4:48am
Subject: Gilded Excesses
"I am also very much willing to defend the gilded
excesses of "Secret Ceremony."
Hey David, you and Camille Paglia are 'as one' on that !!!!!!
My favourite Losey remains THE SLEEPING TIGER (1954). I prefer his films
when they are melodramas, and also when there is some kind of 'classical'
kind of internal stylistic restraint that serves (somewhat paradoxically) to
push the melodramatic emotions into high gear. When Losey is all 'excess' on
every level, my interest wanes. But he did many fine things in his varied
career.
Speaking of Duras and INDIA SONG - a film I have adored since seeing it (a
formative experience) with a bunch of stoned hippie actors at the age of
16!! (dogs were running around in the hall, etc) - I have to say that it's
one of those films that can push the viewer into a strange 'zone' of
hysterical hilarity (whether one is stoned or not!). Remember the off-screen
man screaming, crying, wailing for what seems like forever!? There's
something Ulmer-ish about this extremity of drama with such minimal
on-screen resources. And there's the trance-effect of that fantastic piano
theme, over and over and over - Manny Farber thought it was "Blue Skies",
which renders it even funnier in my memory!!
The greatest comic directors usually pegged as unendingly sombre: Duras,
Bresson, Straub-Huillet. (Amazingly, I encounter people who can't even
detect the constant and fully intended humour in Ruiz! It's weird watching
the extremely witty HYPOTHESIS OF A STOLEN PAINTING with a crowd who are
taking it in solemn, church-like silence.)
Actually, I noted a fairly recent piece in POSITIF on 'humour in Bresson' -
a critical breakthrough!!
Adrian
10180
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Tue May 25, 2004 5:00am
Subject: Re: Gilded Excesses
> The greatest comic directors usually pegged as unendingly sombre: Duras,
> Bresson, Straub-Huillet.
Sokurov!!! One of my favorite moments in a Sokurov film is when,
after a long period of "meditating the beauty of the green, green
forest," Lenin shreiks into the void and the cows answer!
Kubrick!!!
> (Amazingly, I encounter people who can't even
> detect the constant and fully intended humour in Ruiz! It's weird
watching
> the extremely witty HYPOTHESIS OF A STOLEN PAINTING with a crowd who are
> taking it in solemn, church-like silence.)
I wish Brent Kite (aka "natskoli") would post some Ruiz musings. He
mentioned to me that when he was in theater, he would often use in
auditions and whatnot the scene from ON TOP OF THE WHALE where the
fellow talks about his grandfather who ate his hands.
Should confess I still don't have a handle on Ruiz but I'm trying.
-Jaime
10181
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Tue May 25, 2004 5:09am
Subject: Schindler's List 3
One of the chief criticisms of SCHINDLER'S LIST is that it's about
Schindler's victory, not the unspeakable failure of humanity that is
the Holocaust. It seems worth mentioning that the film is aware of
this, explicitly aware of this. The scene in which Schindler rescues
Stern from the train (and certain death), a scene that marks
Schindler's transformation into a savior figure, is followed
immediately by what is the film's first arguably "non-narrative"
sequence, in which the Jews' possessions are counted: suitcases,
shoes, jewelry, and finally the gold caps in their teeth. A minor
(and capitalist-driven) success followed by an abstract and utterly
horrifying signal of failure. This is *in* the film - a tribute to
Spielberg's then-newfound subtle style that it took me many *many*
viewings to notice it.
-Jaime
10182
From:
Date: Tue May 25, 2004 1:12am
Subject: Re: Gilded Excesses
Adrian Martin wrote:
>It's weird watching
>the extremely witty HYPOTHESIS OF A STOLEN PAINTING with a crowd who are
>taking it in solemn, church-like silence.
On a similar note, Peter Bogdanovich remembers going to a screening of "The
Trial" with Orson Welles at some point in the 70s. Welles, who considered his
film a comedy, was laughing wildly at practically every scene. The other
theatre patrons were a little snooty and kept shushing Welles, apparently unaware
of who he was (although I don't know who could miss that laugh!)
Inappropriate laughter during movies is one of the things I hate most on this
Earth, but I'll make an exception for Welles. And, more to the point, "The
Trial" actually is very funny! On the subject of the Wellesian canon, I don't
know where I fit 'cause I basically adore everything the man ever did and my
most cherished favorites are all over the place: "Chimes," "Ambersons,"
fragments from "The Dreamers" and "The Magic Show," etc., etc.
Peter
10183
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue May 25, 2004 5:16am
Subject: Re: Gilded Excesses
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Adrian Martin wrote:
> "I am also very much willing to defend the gilded
> excesses of "Secret Ceremony."
>
> Hey David, you and Camille Paglia are 'as one' on that !!!!!!
>
Me three. Everyone in the movie is crazy - that's why they had to
shoot a frame narration (in what someone thought was Losey's style)
when it showed on newtork tv, where a lawyer and a psychiatrist
discuss whether Farrow should swing. I wonder where that material is.
Farber thought it was "Blue Skies",
> which renders it even funnier in my memory!!
>
When I first saw La femme du Gange, my favorite Duras, the musical
theme was Blue Moon, but she changed it because of rights, and the
knew theme became the theme of India Song as well. I loved it with
Blue Moon.
Actually, I noted a fairly recent piece in POSITIF on 'humour in
Bresson' -
And it was four letters long, right?
10184
From: Adrian Martin
Date: Tue May 25, 2004 6:52am
Subject: Low Journalism
Dear friends - Here is an alarming 'opinion piece' from an Australian
newspaper - the writer is an ex-leftie from the 60s, and also a former film
critic (!), now the editor of a popular right-wing magazine and prominent
conservative spokesman. Read it and weep (and note the anti-auteurist
swipe!). - Adrian
TITLE: Two-faced, this French kissing of a slob
By: Padraic P. McGuinness
WHO ever imagined that the big prizewinners in the international film
industry would be fat, hairy slobs? First, the New Zealander director of the
Lord of the Rings trilogy, Peter Jackson, and second the American director
of Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore.
Of course, the great producers and directors in the past were never film
star material themselves; it was always one of the defining features of
Hollywood in the old days (and probably still is) that an essential element
in the career path (a rung on the ladder to success, you might say) of any
dewily innocent-looking ingenue was the casting couch, where she would be
joined with a repulsive-looking gnome.
About the only alternative was to marry an already successful star, as
Nicole Kidman did.
The Jackson awards were for a remarkable adaptation of one of the great
fantasy stories of the 20th century; he deserves every award and every
dollar it will earn. Not so for Moore.
His film, whatever its merits, was awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes
film festival on purely political grounds, as a manifestation of French
anti-Americanism and American leftist self-hatred.
The chairman of the award jury was Quentin Tarantino, who made his name in
cinema through the portrayal of excessive and pointless violence and yet
considers himself anti-war.
There is little doubt that the inspiration for the inexcusable treatment of
Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers came from filmmakers like Tarantino and
their counterparts in the American pornography business.
But the award at Cannes really puts the final nail into the coffin of the
French film industry, which paradoxically built its success on Hollywood's.
What would French film be without the ``film noir'' elements stolen from
America, the invention of the ``auteur'' theory of filmmaking by the new
wave directors who could not understand English-language dialogue, or the
imitation of American actors?
The purely French kind of cinema never had much international success,
except among the tiny audiences of the art-house cinemas. But the more
French culture declines in relative importance (especially relative to
American culture) the more aggressively the French cinema industry demands
bigger subsidies.
The latest Cannes festival was continually interrupted by demonstrations by
actors and others demanding more unemployment benefits for not acting in or
making films which no one would want to see anyway if they were made.
Now the Cannes jury has, along with the French Government, once again
definitively sold the pass to American culture. For what is more central to
American culture, and especially Hollywood film culture, than the portrayal
of American power as that of an evil empire, inimical to world civilisation
and peace?
Moore's title is a reference to a story, Fahrenheit 451, by a famous
American science fiction writer, Ray Bradbury. It is about book-burning in a
future American dystopia, and was made into a film by the great French new
wave director, Francois Truffaut.
So the theme of French anti-Americanism, itself derivative from American
self-hatred and from American creative sources, has a long history. Indeed,
it can even be traced back to the participation of the French General
Lafayette in the American Revolution, whence he imported new ideas to
France.
For years, anyway, the Cannes film festival has been predominantly an
American marketing event. Without American money, films and attendances it
would simply collapse. The terrace of the Carlton Hotel in Cannes is always
crowded with Americans, with French film industry beggars dancing
attendance.
Even the Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, owes his career in
Hollywood to Cannes and its Americans it was there that he came to public
attention as the body-building star of Pumping Iron, the success story of
the 1977 Cannes festival.
It is the central irony of European anti-Americanism that it has now, as
the Anglo-American journalist Christopher Hitchens has pointed out, elevated
to one of its great cultural awards an American who far from being an
elegant, Euro-style intellectual sophisticate, is a fat, hairy, foul-mouthed
slob just like the Euro image of the typical American supporter of George
Bush.
The fact that he is peddling propaganda of great crudeness and lack of care
for the facts just makes him better in their eyes.
Moore is the hero also of those in Australia who would think themselves
better educated and more cultured than the average footballer.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder - if you tell these people what they
want to hear, they will accept anything.
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
Publication date: 25-5-2004
Edition: Late
Page no: 11
Section: News And Features
Sub section: Opinion
10185
From: Paul Gallagher
Date: Tue May 25, 2004 0:45pm
Subject: Re: Drums and Canons
A good perspective on how canons were being challenged and
rethought in the 1950's is provided by Claude Gauteur's comments
on the 1958 Brussels "referendum" on the best films of all time:
http://66.108.51.239/brussels_0008.htm
I summarized the article in a Usenet thread:
http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=a8oto7%24mcb%241%40panix3.panix.com
[T]he Dec. 1958 Cahiers analyzes the results of a referendum
at the Cinematheque de Belgique in Brussels,
which asked 150 film historians each to list the thirty
most important
films made before 1955. A total of 609 different titles
were cited. It's interesting to look at the Brussels list,
since it shows the prevailing view
of film history back in 1958, and it gives a perspective
on how much the evaluations of particular films and directors
have changed.
Here is what the Brussels referendum designated "the best
films of all time":
Battleship Potemkin (Sergei M. Eisenstein, USSR, 1925)
Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin, U.S.A., 1925)
The Bicycle Thief (Vittorio De Sica, Italy, 1948)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl T. Dreyer, France, 1928)
Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir, France, 1937)
Greed (Erich von Stroheim, USA, 1923)
Intolerance (D. W. Griffith, USA, 1916)
Mother (V. I. Pudovkin, USSR, 1926)
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, USA, 1941)
Earth (Alexander Dovzhenko, USSR, 1930)
The Last Laugh (F. W. Murnau, Germany 1924)
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (Robert Weine, Germany, 1919)
Louis Marcorelles and Claude Gauteur provided detailed commentary in
Cahiers. Marcorelles discussed the top twelve films, and
Gauteur commented on what was missing among the titles
mentioned by the historians.
Silent films predominated among the top 12 films, but sound films
made up the majority of all films mentioned. 7 of the top 10 films
were silent, 10 of the top 20 were silent, but the overall
distribution per year was as follows:
1895-1910 10 titles
1911-1919 42
1920-1929 123
1930-1939 171
1940 10
1941-1945 54
1946-1950 91
1951-1955 100
The USA had the national cinema best represented on the list,
with 222 films chosen. France was represented by 119 films,
Germany by 62, the USSR by 46, Great Britain by 31, Italy by
30, Sweden by 21, Japan by 17, Mexico by 10, and Czechoslovakia
by 9. It's interesting that even though so
much of Hollywood film went unacknowledged, the American cinema
still held first place with regard to number of titles selected.
Several directors received a large part of their votes from
only one or two of their films. Wiene, Ekk, Dupont, the
Vasilyev brothers, Pastrone, and Jakubowska received all their
votes from _The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari_ (42), _The Road to
Life_ (25), _Variety_ (24), _Chapajev_ (22),
_Cabiria_ (18), and _The Last Stage_ (13).
Other directors represented mainly by one film:
Dovzhenko, _Earth_, 47 votes out of Dovzhenko's total of 57
Welles, _Citizen Kane_, 51 out of 56
Fellini, _La Strada_, 29/37
Kurosawa, _Rashomon_, 37/50
Milestone, _All Quiet on the Western Front_, 19/22
Sternberg, _The Blue Angel_, 35/38
Lean, _Brief Encounter_, 35/42
Olivier, _Henry V_, 25/32
Others represented by primarily one or two films were:
De Sica and Zavattini: _The Bicycle Thief_, 85/125
Eisenstein: _Potemkin_, 100/168
Renoir: _The Grand Illusion_, 72/105
Stroheim: _Greed_, 71/93
Murnau: _The Last Laugh_, 45/91
Pudovkin: _Mother_, 54/91
Griffith: _Intolerance_, 42, and _Birth of a Nation_, 61/122
Ford: _Grapes of Wrath_, 40, and _Stagecoach_, 31/107
Vidor: _Hallelujah_, 21, and _The Crowd_, 16/44
Gauteur thought often the directors' best work went unhonored. In
particular he did not think _Grand Illusion_ was Renoir's masterpiece.
In contrast Chaplin, Clair, Flaherty, Pabst, Carne, Lang, Lubitsch,
Capra, Sjoestrom, Stiller, Bresson, and Mizoguchi were each represented by
several titles.
Marcorelles had little regard for Pudovkin, _The Cabinet
of Dr. Caligari_, or _The Bicycle Thief_. He thought the
humanitarian subject matter of _Grand Illusion_ and _The
Bicycle Thief_ and the "para-Proustian" construction of
_Citizen Kane_ were major reasons for their high estimation
by the Brussels poll. He did not think it was based on a
deep understanding of Renoir or Welles.
Gauteur objected to how De Sica was rated above Rossellini,
Fellini above Visconti, Sjoeberg above Bergman, Wyler above
Hawks, Kurosawa above Mizoguchi.
The most often cited French directors were Clair (135 votes),
Renoir (105), Carne (74), Vigo (43), Feyder (37), Gance (27),
Melies (26), Clement (20), Cocteau (19), Autant-Lara (18),
Bresson (18). Of these, only Clair and Carne received votes
distributed among a large number of their films.
The rest received most of their votes for 1 or 2 films. Marcorelles
thought Clair vastly inferior to Renoir and Vigo, and indeed Clair's
reputation has fallen greatly in the past few decades.
The top French films were:
The Grand Illusion (Renoir) 72 votes
Under the Roofs of Paris (Clair) 33
Le Million (Clair) 32
The Children of Paradise (Carne) 30
Carnival in Flanders (Feyder) 27
An Italian Straw Hat (Clair) 26
A nous la liberte (Clair) 25
L'Atalante (Vigo) 22
Le jour se leve (Carne) 22
Voyage to the Moon (Melies) 22
The most honored American directors were Chaplin (250 votes),
Griffith (122), Ford (107), Stroheim (93), Flaherty (82),
Welles (56), Vidor
(44), Murnau (30), Wyler (30), and Milestone (22). Cukor received
only 4 votes, Sternberg and Hitchcock only 3, Preston Sturges, Dwan,
and De Mille only 1 each. Aldrich, Anthony Mann,
Mankiewicz, Preminger, Nicholas Ray, and Walsh were not
mentioned at all.
The top American films were:
The Gold Rush (Chaplin) 85 votes
Greed (Stroheim) 71
Intolerance (Griffith) 61
Citizen Kane (Welles) 51
Birth of a Nation (Griffith) 42
Grapes of Wrath (Ford) 40
Modern Times (Chaplin) 34
City Lights (Chaplin) 32
Stagecoach (Ford) 31
Nanook of the North (Flaherty) 26
Gauteur noted that fantasy and horror films and film noir were almost
absent. The Western was represented mainly by Stagecoach (31 votes),
The Ox-bow Incident (7), Shane (4), Cruze's Covered Wagon (4), High
Noon (3), and The Mark of Zorro (3).
Musical comedy was almost absent. Two films received more than one
vote:_On the Town_ received 4 votes, _The Band Wagon_ just 2. Gauteur
remarked, "It's not for today to make people admit that
Fred Astaire is worth all the Pudovkins in the world, and
that a single scene of _Singing in the Rain_ (which did
not receive a single vote) contains more beauty,
both aesthetic and ethical, than _The Bicycle Thief_."
Gauteur objected especially to the absence of comedies, apart from
those of Chaplin and Clair. He thought it was astonishing that Buster
Keaton received only 11 votes. The Marx Brothers were also mentioned
only 11 times. Jacques Tati received 7 votes, Max Linder and
Harry Langdon 3, Harold Lloyd and Mae West 2, W.C. Fields 1.
Cahiers du Cinema did its own poll among its editors: Andre
Bazin, Charles
Beylie, Charles Bitsch, Claude Chabrol, Philippe Demonsablon, Jean
Domarchi, Jacques Doniol-Volcroze, Jean Douchet, Claude Gauteur,
Jean-Luc Godard, Fereydoun Hoveyda, Louis Marcorelles, Andre Martin,
Luc Moullet, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer, and Francois Truffaut.
The first round selected the best directors by order of the importance
of their body of work.
1. Murnau
2. Renoir
3. Rossellini
4. Eisenstein
5. Griffith
6. Welles
7. Dreyer
8. Vigo
9. Mizoguchi
10. Stroheim
11. Hitchcock
12. Chaplin
13. Ophuls
14. Lang
15. (tie) Hawks, Keaton
17. Bergman
18. Nicholas Ray
19. (tie) Norman McLaren, Flaherty
21. (tie) Bunuel, Clair
23. (tie) Visconti, Dovzhenko
The second round asked for the best films by the 12 top "auteurs."
1. Sunrise (Murnau, 1927)
2. The Rules of the Game (Renoir, 1939)
3. Journey to Italy (Viaggio in Italia) (Rossellini, 1953)
4. Ivan the Terrible (Eisenstein, 1945/1958)
5. Birth of a Nation (Griffith, 1915)
6. Confidential Report/ Mr. Arkadin (Orson Welles, 1956)
7. Ordet (Dreyer, 1955)
8. Ugetsu monogatari (Mizoguchi, 1953)
9. L'Atalante (Vigo, 1934)
10. The Wedding March (Stroheim, 1927)
11. Under Capricorn (Hitchcock, 1949)
12. Monsieur Verdoux (Chaplin, 1947)
10186
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue May 25, 2004 1:18pm
Subject: Re: Gilded Excesses
--- Adrian Martin wrote:
> "I am also very much willing to defend the gilded
> excesses of "Secret Ceremony."
>
> Hey David, you and Camille Paglia are 'as one' on
> that !!!!!!
>
YIKES! The Dreaded Camille likes it?
Clearly the "Rule of the Stopped Clock" is in effect.
> My favourite Losey remains THE SLEEPING TIGER
> (1954). I prefer his films
> when they are melodramas, and also when there is
> some kind of 'classical'
> kind of internal stylistic restraint that serves
> (somewhat paradoxically) to
> push the melodramatic emotions into high gear. When
> Losey is all 'excess' on
> every level, my interest wanes. But he did many fine
> things in his varied
> career.
>
"The Big Night" is very much worth mentioning in this
regard.
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10187
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Tue May 25, 2004 1:26pm
Subject: Good Sam, anyone?
Very few references to GOOD SAM in the archives? Would someone care
to give me their appreciation of it, or point me in the direction of
an appreciation that has already been written? I know two members
think highly of it (Dan and Zach), probably two more as well (Damien
and Fred), undoubtedly even more.
Thanks!
-Jaime
10188
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue May 25, 2004 1:26pm
Subject: Re: Low Journalism
--- Adrian Martin wrote:
> Dear friends - Here is an alarming 'opinion piece'
> from an Australian
> newspaper - the writer is an ex-leftie from the 60s,
> and also a former film
> critic (!), now the editor of a popular right-wing
> magazine and prominent
> conservative spokesman. Read it and weep (and note
> the anti-auteurist
> swipe!). - Adrian
>
Like countless other ex-Lefties, the man is a complete
idiot. He froths at the mouth about the french. And
how many jury members this year were french?
Precisely ONE!
Apparently Emannuelle beart is in posession of Lamont
Cranston-like powers to "cloud men's minds" and force
them to vote for a film because of its politics rather
than its artistry -- one being of course entirely
divisible from the other.
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10189
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue May 25, 2004 1:47pm
Subject: Re: Good Sam, anyone?
> Very few references to GOOD SAM in the archives? Would someone care
> to give me their appreciation of it, or point me in the direction of
> an appreciation that has already been written? I know two members
> think highly of it (Dan and Zach), probably two more as well (Damien
> and Fred), undoubtedly even more.
Here's something I wrote to Zach in private email the day after I saw
GOOD SAM. Unfortunately, it doesn't treat the film directly; but my
thoughts about McCarey's overall work were largely triggered by the SAM
screening. - Dan
--------
More and more I think the key to McCarey is how he constantly places
audience surrogates within the film and then plays with their/our
feelings. Sometimes it's elementary and not incredibly interesting
(like the millions of scenes where a character laughs at something on
our behalf, as if to give us a laugh track), and sometimes it gets
really complicated (like the way he manages our attitudes toward
altruism and its consequences in GOOD SAM. Or that incredible moment in
MY SON JOHN where Helen Hayes becomes a super-audience by detecting the
tiniest nuance in her son's behavior and turning the whole film on it).
A long time ago I was watching an early scene in THE AWFUL TRUTH, where
Irene Dunne and Cary Grant's relationship starts to break down in the
presence of guests, and I thought to myself that if I could figure out
what was unique about the shots where those houseguests were watching
Dunne and Grant, I'd arrive at the essence of McCarey. Because those
shots are so simple and everyday, and yet no one else in the world would
do them in that way. Now I realize that McCarey took an element (the
observers to a plot crisis) which is always used in exactly one way (to
emphasize publicness, and therefore to enhance our identification with
the observees, not the observers), and characteristically twisted it so
that the guests become audience surrogates, laughing at the impending
breakup the way we the audience are expected to laugh at it (and not
cringing in discomfort the way real-life guests would). So some of our
identification flows toward these minor characters, which totally
changes the scene. It's almost like turning cinema into theater.
I'm also impressed this time around that McCarey, the alleged good-time,
love-everybody director, fills his films with the most convincing
portaits of malevolence and cruelty.
10190
From:
Date: Tue May 25, 2004 1:47pm
Subject: Re: Drums and Canons
The 1958 Brussells poll seems to reflect the Communist politics of many non-auteurist film critics of the era. This list is full of Communist filmmakers:
Eisenstein, Chaplin, Renoir, Dovzhenko, Pudovkin, De Sica. Many of the non-Communists on the lists are there for "social criticism" films about the poor,
films whose "message" was endorsed by Communist critics: Griffith, Stroheim's "Greed", Vidor's "The Crowd". Plus Welles' negative look at the life of a
capitalist: "Citizen Kane".
By contrast, the auteurists from 1950's French film magazines and schools picked filmmakers because they admired them aesthetically. This was a huge and
basic shift in taste. It is still a "daring" idea, to recognize anything of artistic value in commercial art.
Just saw Guy Maddin's "The Saddest Music in the World". It describes American commercial art as vulgar and obvious and full of cheap gimmicks. (I do not
remember the exact words from the film. They are sure to be much quoted in the future.) This point of view was dominant through the 1950's. It is making a
strong comeback today. In many circles, it has never gone away. It is a point of view that is 1) deeply held by many people 2) but an idea that is very hard
to combine with any sort of conventional auteurism, as least as auteurism has been practised over the last 50 years. I cannot see logically how one can
admire Sternberg, Ford, Hawks, Lang and Minnelli, and still believe that "all commercial art is junk".
Sooner or later, logic suggests, every critic is going to have to make an explicit, public decision. Does the best commercial art have aesthetic value? or
not? This is a central question that confronts students of film history today.
Mike Grost
10191
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue May 25, 2004 1:56pm
Subject: These Are the Damned, SF Reader
> Just saw my two favorite Loseys (so far), TIME WITHOUT PITY and THESE
> ARE THE DAMNED. Second viewing for the latter, thankfully since I
> didn't quite "get" it the first time around.
By the way, for New Yorkers who just saw THESE ARE THE DAMNED, I have an
article on it in Gregg Rickman's new SCIENCE FICTION FILM READER. The
article is also online at:
http://www.panix.com/~sallitt/damned.html
Several other a_film_by members have articles in Gregg's book - Chris
Fujiwara on CREATION OF THE HUMANOIDS, Bill Krohn on Joe Dante's
EXPLORERS, and Jonathan Rosenbaum on A.I. - Dan
10192
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue May 25, 2004 1:57pm
Subject: Re: Re: Drums and Canons
--- MG4273@a... wrote:
I cannot see logically how one can
> admire Sternberg, Ford, Hawks, Lang and Minnelli,
> and still believe that "all commercial art is junk".
Neither can I. And there are many other names that
shoudl be added to that list.
> Sooner or later, logic suggests, every critic is
> going to have to make an explicit, public decision.
I've devoted the better part of my life to just such a
discussion.
> Does the best commercial art have aesthetic value?
> or not? This is a central question that confronts
> students of film history today.
>
And the answer is YES!
Next question?
Anyone who would dismiss all commercial art in one
fell swoop is not worthy of serious regard.
__________________________________
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10193
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue May 25, 2004 2:02pm
Subject: Korean cinema
> Just saw Moon So-ri—recovered from her Oasis exertions—in
> another commanding and committed performance as a woman
> exploring her sexual options in Im Sang-soo's very frank A Good
> Lawyer's Wife
What did you think of it? I walked out on it at Toronto - I wasn't
disgusted, but I didn't have a good feeling about the direction, and
there was a competing screening.
> especially for those who
> appreciated the director's colorful and unsparingly tough
> Chunhyang and Chihwaseon.
Seems that auteurist opinion is divided on Im Kwon-Taek. I didn't enjoy
CHUNHYANG at all, but I know a lot of people, including Dave Kehr, went
for it big time. - Dan
10194
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue May 25, 2004 2:15pm
Subject: Re: Re: Drums and Canons
> The 1958 Brussells poll seems to reflect the Communist politics of
> many non-auteurist film critics of the era. This list is full of
> Communist filmmakers: Eisenstein, Chaplin, Renoir, Dovzhenko,
> Pudovkin, De Sica. Many of the non-Communists on the lists are there
> for "social criticism" films about the poor, films whose "message"
> was endorsed by Communist critics: Griffith, Stroheim's "Greed",
> Vidor's "The Crowd". Plus Welles' negative look at the life of a
> capitalist: "Citizen Kane". By contrast, the auteurists from 1950's
> French film magazines and schools picked filmmakers because they
> admired them aesthetically.
I certainly agree that the politics of the left had a lot to do with
forming the canon as it existed at the time of the Brussels poll (and
the 1952 Sight and Sound survey). And I too find auteurism a good,
usable platform for aesthetic exploration. But we can detect certain
preferences in subject matter in the "epistomological rupture" of the
politique, too. We've discussed this before, but the Catholic roots of
the movement resulted in a lot of interest in films that fit a religious
view of the world: the vale of tears, the acted-upon (as opposed to
acting) protagonist, the subtle shift of consciousness as dramatic
climax. Certainly the Positif writers of the time lambasted Cahiers for
its scorn of left-wing films and its clerical agenda. It wasn't that
simple, of course, but we should acknowledge that the auteurist world
view was influenced by other things besides aesthetics. - Dan
10195
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Tue May 25, 2004 2:25pm
Subject: Re: Gilded Excesses
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
>
>
> > My favourite Losey remains THE SLEEPING TIGER
> > (1954). I prefer his films
> > when they are melodramas, and also when there is
> > some kind of 'classical'
> > kind of internal stylistic restraint that serves
> > (somewhat paradoxically) to
> > push the melodramatic emotions into high gear. When
> > Losey is all 'excess' on
> > every level, my interest wanes. But he did many fine
> > things in his varied
> > career.
> >
> "The Big Night" is very much worth mentioning in this
> regard.
>
>
>
> My favorite Losey might be the first one I ever saw -- "The
Prowler" (1951) except that I haven't seen it in ages (is it
available in video?) I was totally fascinated by the film at the time
(I wrote of its "abstract 'realism' verging on 'le fantastique'")....
Many of his later films seem to be the antithesis of what the early
ones were about -- yet in "30 ans de cinema americain" (1970) I
paradoxically wrote that Losey had never changed and that dividing
his work into "periods" was meaningless. Twenty years later Tavernier
pointed out (in our co-written Losey piece in "50 ans")
that "Monsieur Klein" (the masterpiece of the late period) confirmed
the above view, echoeing "The Prowler"...
>
>
> __________________________________
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10196
From: Kevin Lee
Date: Tue May 25, 2004 2:55pm
Subject: Re: Oasis, Hong, Korean cinema
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Robert Keser" wrote:
> Just saw Moon So-ri—recovered from her Oasis exertions—in
> another commanding and committed performance as a woman
> exploring her sexual options in Im Sang-soo's very frank A Good
> Lawyer's Wife, although the director ultimately seemed to borrow
> too much (or not enough) from Kieslowski's "sixth commandment"
> story in The Decalogue, the one about the woman having an affair
> with the teen voyeur next door.
Judging from GOOD LAWYER'S WIFE and OASIS, I'd say Moon So-ri is one
of the most fascinating physical actresses around today. She has a
presence that is electric. Her nude scenes in GOOD LAWYER'S WIFE
have a live-wire kind of sexiness, a raw physicality that is quite
bracing to behold. It's remarkable that a film that deals with sex
the way it does was a commercial hit in Korea -- I can't imagine such
a film being successful in the states, unless it were given the
tricked-up, soft-porn Adrian Lyne treatment.
And what about A TALE OF TWO SISTERS, a film I forgot to mention in
my Korean honor roll? This movie is like the last 20 minutes of
MULHOLLAND DR. stretched out over 2 hrs, and yet it too was a big hit
in Korea. What is it about Korean audiences that they embrace such
challenging and artistically courageous films?
> Of other recent Korean productions, three enigmatic films of Hong
> Sang-soo played here in Chicago—The Turning Gate, Virgin
> Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, and The Power of Kangwon
> Province—and all three seemed stimulatingly original (probably
> because their centers are exceptionally secret!), but without
> feeling pretentious about it.
Was it Dan who just mentioned the Rohmer influence on Hong? That's
exactly who I was thinking of when I saw VIRGIN STRIPPED BARE, the
same kind of conceptual, chess-like approach to human interactions,
and as I do with Rohmer I got the same kind of queasiness over the
film's depiction of uncertainty and tension between the sexes, an
attitude I would describe as neoconservative and that would upset me
if it weren't presented so honestly... You're right about the
deadpan lack of pretentiousness in VIRGIN, and yet it is formally
more challenging than possibly any Rohmer film I've seen, and frankly
one or even two viewings isn't enough to put my head around it. I'll
have to see it again, though I should see other Hong films first to
get a broader perspective of what he's after.
> Unlike Kevin, I don't despise Kim Ki-duk's Spring, Summer,
> Autumn, Winter… but it certainly seems suspect in its appeal to
> conventional values, and upon reflection afterwards the movie seems
> to shrivel in the mind rather than grow in meaning. Its
authenticity
> appears even more in doubt when compared to Mandala,
> Im Kwon-taek's breakthrough film from 1986, which tells a
> moving and stunningly ironic story that also looks fresh and
visually
> striking in a uniquely rough way. In my opinion, any rare chance to
> see this classic is not to be missed, especially for those who
> appreciated the director's colorful and unsparingly tough
> Chunhyang and Chihwaseon.
And don't forget the great WHY DID BODHI-DARHMA LEAVE FOR THE WEST?
as a great film about the Buddhist lifestyle, and like SPRING,
SUMMER, CRAP, ETC., it is one that deals with three ages of life, but
with far more reverence for its subject matter in all its mystery.
Kim Ki-duk is the new Zhang Yimou of picture postcard Orientalist
cinema -- they should have passed out fortune cookies in the lobby
for SPRING, SUMMER... Am I the only one who was outraged with
the "winter" sequence when the woman reappears wearing a veil, I
guess as a lesson to the man to abandon his destructive lustful
urges? This glorified misogyny isn't Buddhism, this is Fundamental
Islam!!!
10197
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Tue May 25, 2004 2:51pm
Subject: Re: Drums and Canons
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- MG4273@a... wrote:
> > > Does the best commercial art have aesthetic value?
> > or not? This is a central question that confronts
> > students of film history today.
> >
>
> And the answer is YES!
>
> Next question?
>
> Anyone who would dismiss all commercial art in one
> fell swoop is not worthy of serious regard.
>
>
> Yes of course. But what is commercial art? Is there such a
thing as non-commercial art? The artist is always selling something.
The writer wants to be published, the painter to be exhibited, the
composer to be performed -- and they all want their stuff to be
recognized in the form of at least some degree of financial gain.
Isn't that commerce?
We call "commercial", with a pejorative meaning, what we
consider "bad" art. But the reality is that all art is to some extent
at least commercial. The artist produces for a market. Very few
artists (and even fewer -- if any -- great ones ) produce just for
themselves without any desire of public exposure or financial gain.
How many films can truly be said not to be commercial?
JPC
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> Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
> http://messenger.yahoo.com/
10198
From: samfilms2003
Date: Tue May 25, 2004 2:55pm
Subject: Re: India Song at the drive-in
> How did such a thing happen? - Dan
In the same way India exists beyond the walls of a chateau in France ;-)
-Sam
10199
From: Kevin Lee
Date: Tue May 25, 2004 3:02pm
Subject: Re: Oasis, Hong, Korean cinema
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> > This is very much my own view of OASIS. Although (I've only seen
> > this once and some months ago)I couldn't quite rid myself of the
> > feeling that the actress's "mugging" might be bordering on the
> > tasteless/exploitative.
>
> I don't know. Presumably you'd have to compare the performance to
the
> behavior of real-life cerebral palsy sufferers to find out whether
it's
> over the top. I haven't the expertise to do that, but I didn't get
the
> feeling that Moon was taking it too far. The gesture of conceiving
the
> performance at all as a lead role is rather nervy, and unnerving -
once
> that step is taken, though, I'd say that restraint is no longer a
virtue.
Yes, and this touches on a point I tried to make earlier, that the
significance of the performance rests not so much on how accurately
it portrays a surmised condition not even identified in the film, but
on how purposefully it challenges our ability to accept it as human
behavior that is real and honest, and thus to open ourselves to
accept humankind in all its forms, no matter how exasperating. In
other words, an aesthetic choice for both actress/director morphs
into a moral debate for the audience.
10200
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue May 25, 2004 3:09pm
Subject: Losey
>> My favorite Losey might be the first one I ever saw -- "The
> Prowler" (1951) except that I haven't seen it in ages (is it
> available in video?)
I don't think so. It's an amazing film, though. It's fascinating how
Losey always managed to make the most unusual and subversive films (I
don't necessarily mean "subversive" in a political way, but in terms of
commercial conventions that Losey felt empowered to ignore or twist),
even when he didn't seem to have much clout. Think, for instance, of
the films that Nick Ray was making during Losey's American period
(1948-51). Some are excellent, but the less interesting ones feel much
more beholden to industry standards than any of Losey's films. Of
course, Losey felt as if he was being forced into compromise after
compromise, and I'm sure it's true. But he must have had some kind of
prestige, or have been a real battler, or something.
After TIME WITHOUT PITY and THE DAMNED, my favorites are THE PROWLER,
EVE, THE GO-BETWEEN, and LA TRUITE. - Dan
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