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This group is dedicated to discussing film as art
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11201
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Fri Jun 18, 2004 10:10pm
Subject: Re: Killing an animal for the sake of the movie
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Jaime N. Christley"
wrote:
"But your question involves the killing of animals for art, not
food. I feel if you accept the killing of animals at all, then
requiring the animal to be killed for food but not for art is
inconsistent.[Ebert]"
"The middle paragraph bugs me the most, partly because I can't make
heads or tails of it, and partly because it seems so utterly stupid
and wrong. The contradiction he would like to underline doesn't
exist."
Quite right. What if the movie is bad art like SAVAGE WORLD, an
exploitation picture with John Ashley shot in the Phillipines in
which a goat is killed as part of a bogus ritual? Then there are
pseudo-documentaries like MONDO CANE in which much footage is given
over to killing animals (I'm not talking about LE SANG DE BETES or
MOON FIRE, bona fide documentaries, but movie where the filmmakers
arrange to have animals killed.) SAVAGE WORLD could be dismissed
as not art at all, but what about a respectable Hollywood production
like SOUTHERN COMFORT where two hogs are killed (most likely the way
the pigs were killed in WEEKEND,i.e by professionals)?
It seems to me to be an ends and means issue.
Richard
11202
From: Gabe Klinger
Date: Fri Jun 18, 2004 10:25pm
Subject: Re: Killing an animal for the sake of the movie
I saw two films in Buenos Aires that had animals being killed in real time, one which I
found completely inoffensive, and another that gave me a bad gut reaction, and which
I found completely immoral, even if I can't articulate what it was about it.
The first film is Lisandro Alonso's LOS MUERTOS, which has a goat being caught and
killed for food. The actor in the film, Argentino Vargas, had done this several times
before, and was swift and economical in gutting and skinning the animal. He takes
the dead goat as a present for his daughter, who he hasn't seen in ages.
Even though the scene was obviously staged (the goat seemed to be idly awaiting its
predator) it seemed OK to me. Lisandro's earlier film, LA LIBERTAD, has an armadillo
being killed and eaten. There's a great moment in the film when we realize the
armadillo is still alive -- aside from being beaten profusely -- when it begins
wagging its tail again...
The other film was DOCUMENTARIST by Harutyun Khachatryan, which shows night
footage of dogs being shot. The problem with the scene is that while it is real, the
filmmaker insists that we watch this grueling footage of dogs being killed inhumanely
(often they're shot at from a distance, so they would run around in pain before
collapsing...)
Still the film had many contradictory themes that made it interesting, so I can't
completely discount the scene.
With Lisandro's films, the animals were killed for food and art. Does this make it ok?
Maybe it just makes it less bad.
In the other film there was nothing immediate the filmmaker could do to save the
mutts. But should we give him carte blanche to film them and put the images in an
artistic context? I think this may actually be worse.
Gabe
11203
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Fri Jun 18, 2004 10:54pm
Subject: Re: Weekend Pig
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Jaime N. Christley"
wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
> wrote:
> > Pigs were slaughtered on-screen in Godard's "Weekend"
> > by professional butchers. They had done this many
> > times before, and the animals were being killed for
> > food. Still it was a cheap sensational effect and
> > quite unnecessary in my view.
>
> I agree, even though I think WEEKEND is otherwise an unassailable
> masterpiece, it's even funnier than, say, KEEP UP YOUR RIGHT or A
> WOMAN IS A WOMAN. It also strikes me as deliberate pandering and I
> have a hard time making it work with the rest of the film.
>
> -Jaime
Although I sort of agree with both David and Jaime on the
questionable value of the pig slaughter, I don't see how it can be
described as "pandering". One dictionary definition of "to pander"
is: "to cater to the lower tastes and desires of others." Was Godard
catering to the audience's "lower" taste for watching pigs being
slaughtered? I doubt that such a taste and desire is very widespread
among general audiences.Was Franju "pandering" in LE SANG DES BETES?
And as for it being a "cheap sensational effect", it all depends. For
the butchers there is nothing cheap or sensational about killing the
pigs -- it's their job. And everybody in the audience knows that
pigs -- and other animals -- are killed for food, countless thousands
of them on a daily basis. It's just our hypocritical squeamishness
that makes the scene "a cheap sensational effect."
JPC
11204
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Jun 18, 2004 11:02pm
Subject: Re: Killing an animal for the sake of the movie
Some films where it happens:
The Rules of the Game
Land Without Bread
Padre Padrone
Le sang des betes
Killer of Sheep
Bunuel wanted to have Modot kick a real dog at the beginning of
L'Age d'or, but his wife objected. Modot kicked a stuffed animal
and the Bunuels adopted the dog.
11205
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Fri Jun 18, 2004 11:19pm
Subject: Re: Killing an animal for the sake of the movie
> But I have
> an insuperable aversion to seeing even the smallest creature going
> through trauma, being beaten, or killed, in movies or out.
How about the fish eating the cockroach in What Time Is It There? That one seems pretty funny, for some reason.
11207
From: Robert Keser
Date: Fri Jun 18, 2004 11:47pm
Subject: Re: Killing an animal for the sake of the movie
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jess_l_amortell"
wrote:
> > But I have
> > an insuperable aversion to seeing even the smallest creature
going
> > through trauma, being beaten, or killed, in movies or out.
>
> How about the fish eating the cockroach in What Time Is It There?
That one seems pretty funny, for some reason.
To be logically consistent, we should count that cockroach that
Nicholas Cage munches and swallows in Vampire's Kiss! And how about
all those films with bullfight sequences that end with the bull
collapsing from the final blow?
The most notorious instance is probably in Scipio Africanus,
Mussolini's pet project about Rome resisting Hannibal's invasion.
The very impressive final battle scene turns nauseating when
(director) Carmine Gallone loses control over his hordes: there's
clearly a riot going on as fearful extras and elephants panic, and
a gratuitous shot shows a spear hurtling directly into an elephant's
eye, and then another spear in a different elephant's eye. Supposedly
a number of players (and elephants) died, which caused a scandal at
the time, but didn't prevent it from winning the grand prize at the
1937 Venice Film Festival.
--Robert Keser
11208
From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 0:13am
Subject: Re: Killing an animal for the sake of the movie
First of all...
"...a reader mentions Lars von Trier's upcoming film, MANDERLAY: cast
member John C. Reilly objected to a scene in which a donkey is to be
killed, for real, for the sake of the film. He quit the project."
There has been conflicting reports in the media here in Scandinavia.
Some say that John was on set in Trollhättan, others than he objected
from abroad. However the core of his objected is correct.
In "Manderlay", Lars killed a donkey. It was prepared carefully,
planned under the strict supervision of a veterinarian from a Swedish
Govermential institutio, they had both permission from the police,
the animal care institutions and the goverment to do it.
Now Lars loves to poke his finger into what people dare not speak.
Its a game he plays with the public and the press. He pulls a stunt,
everyone is in outrage and he gets to reveal people as hypocrites,
because the same people who now hate him (even more), the same people
who object to his actions, will go and see his film anyway. I would
suspect that to be the main reason for him killing a donkey.
But as I know Lars, he does not just go up and kill an aninmal. There
is alot of considerations behind actually doing it, and I wouldnt be
surprised if he felt bad about it.
I honestly can't become offended by his actions. He does not exploit
the killing of an animal, it is part of his art. I get more offended
by documentarists from National Geographic, who drug animals to get
cool footage of tigers and other predators attacking and eating their
pray: And we show that to kids.
When Deodato made "Cannibal Holocaust", he forced the cast to cut a
living turtle open. While it is know that the crew vomited during the
take, it is relatively unknow that Deodato himself couldnt watch it
and almost passed out. The intention of Deodato was clear: He needed
a gruesome act in the form of killing an animal to set up the
parallism between greed and cannibalism. While Deodato doesn't regret
creating the scene, he admits both guilt and shame today.
I can't remember the title or the director now, but its an Italian
film where they kill alot of chickens by wringing their necks,
in "Apocalypse Now" they had a cow killed, and Bill added a few more
titles.
When is an animal big and cute enough to offend by its killing? Does
it offend to cut the head of a fish? To kill a rat? a dog? a cute
kitten? a cow?
Henrik
11209
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 0:29am
Subject: Re: Weekend Pig
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
"One dictionary definition of 'to pander' is: 'to cater to the lower
tastes and desires of others.' Was Godard catering to the
audience's "lower" taste for watching pigs being slaughtered? I
doubt that such a taste and desire is very widespread among general
audiences. Was Franju 'pandering' in LE SANG DES BETES? And as for
it being a 'cheap sensational effect', it all depends. For the
butchers there is nothing cheap or sensational about killing the
pigs -- it's their job. And everybody in the audience knows that
pigs -- and other animals -- are killed for food, countless thousands
of them on a daily basis. It's just our hypocritical squeamishness
that makes the scene 'a cheap sensational effect.'"
By the dictionary definition you cite MONDO CANE and several other
quasi-documentaries are indeed "catering to the lower tastes of
others." That goes for the John Ashly movie SAVAGE WORLD too.
On the other hand, I don't think Franju was pandering. as a matter
of fact LE SANG DES BETES was used as propaganda for vegetarianism in
the 1960s. I first saw it with MOON FIRE which was concieved as
propaganda for vegetarianism and was made up of found footage. The
movies were shown in a tent on Sunset Strip where Carney's Hamburgers
now stands.
Judging by the movies cited, it seems to me that the arguement is for
art justifiing the killing animals and that, as yor say, our
hypocritical squeamishness makes such scenes cheap and sensational.
But what about crush films (where a woman in spiked heels stamps to
death rodents and other small animals)? Or bad art? (and isn't a
lot of art in the eye of the beholder these days?)
There's a Japanese proverb: Don't make others suffering the basis of
your pleasure. We should consider this proposition carefully.
Richard
11210
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 1:12am
Subject: Re: Re: Killing an animal for the sake of the movie
And don't forget Nick Cage eating the cockroach in
"Vampire's Kiss."
--- jess_l_amortell wrote:
> > But I have
> > an insuperable aversion to seeing even the
> smallest creature going
> > through trauma, being beaten, or killed, in movies
> or out.
>
> How about the fish eating the cockroach in What Time
> Is It There? That one seems pretty funny, for some
> reason.
>
>
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11211
From: Hadrian
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 2:04am
Subject: Re: Public Taste: controlled by Promotion? (was: Hipsters)
>
> The time layers in IT juxtapose the childhood fears of the clown
> with scary adult things later in life, happening to the same
> characters.
That's interesting...it adds another dimension to what i already
considered an interesting novel. Of course i havn't read it since i
was a teenager, so i wonder if it would hold up as well now...
11212
From: Hadrian
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 2:09am
Subject: Re: Killing an animal for the sake of the movie
>
> The Rules of the Game
> Land Without Bread
> Padre Padrone
> Le sang des betes
> Killer of Sheep
Lot of great movies to reject
Bill, what about the snake in Death and the Garden? If anyone
would know it would be you.
And if you open up to insects and birds...there's a hell of a lot. I
somehow doubt all those duckhunting scenes i've seen are
fake...also, a lot of rabbits in Saura's The Hunt
11213
From: Elizabeth Anne Nolan
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 3:37am
Subject: Re: Killing an animal for the sake of the movie
Une Hirondele a Fait le Printemps / ONE SWALLOW BROUGHT SPRING
/ THE GIRL FROM PARIS has several real animal death scenes as it
is about a agricultural studies gal taking over the stock and acreage
of an aging farmer.
11214
From:
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 0:55am
Subject: Re: Re: Weekend Pig
In a message dated 6/18/04 8:03:40 PM, tharpa2002@y... writes:
> But what about crush films (where a woman in spiked heels stamps to death
> rodents and other small animals)?
>
This is an actual genre?
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
11215
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 5:02am
Subject: Re: Re: Weekend Pig
Yes this is an actual genre.
"Crush Videos" they're called. I ran across mention of
them about five years or so ago.
--- LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
>
> In a message dated 6/18/04 8:03:40 PM,
> tharpa2002@y... writes:
>
>
> > But what about crush films (where a woman in
> spiked heels stamps to death
> > rodents and other small animals)?
> >
> This is an actual genre?
>
> Kevin John
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been
> removed]
>
>
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!
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11216
From:
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 1:09am
Subject: Adult Horror? (Was Public Taste)
> it can only feed on children...who's fears are simpler and more
> primal...the Bogeyman, leeches, etc, whereas adults fears are too abstract to
> physicalize: taxes, divorce, a lonely old age.
>
Then again, might not our conception of horror be a bit limited? I've been
thinking of this lately in relation to a recent screening of House of Sand and
Fog and decided it's as much a horror film as It. It's plenty physical too. And
even better example would be The Long, Long Trailer. If you videotaped me
while watching it, I've no doubt that my body gestures would tell you I was
watching a horror film. I even screamed out loud at one point. Can we call these
adult horror films? Or horror films for adults?
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
11217
From: Damien Bona
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 6:36am
Subject: Re: Weekend Pig
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> Yes this is an actual genre.
>
> "Crush Videos" they're called. I ran across mention of
> them about five years or so ago.
>
> --- LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
> >
> > In a message dated 6/18/04 8:03:40 PM,
> > tharpa2002@y... writes:
> >
> >
> > > But what about crush films (where a woman in
> > spiked heels stamps to death
> > > rodents and other small animals)?
> > >
> > This is an actual genre?
> >
> > Kevin John
There's also a gay sub-sub-genre in which the crushing is done by men
in biker boots.
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
11218
From: Damien Bona
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 6:44am
Subject: Re: Killing an animal for the sake of the movie
Years ago, Sarris wrote on this issue and coyly commented that as far
as he was concerned the rabbit in Rules of the Game should have felt
proud to give up his life for such a great work of art.
Now this is a patently stupid statement because bunny had no idea why
he was killed and he clearly was oblivious to the concept of
cinematic art.
I wish I were strong enough to stop being a carnivore, but I haven't
yet proven to be. Still, I flat out feel there's never any
justification for killing an animal for the sake of a movie. Yes,
most of us get sentimental about individual animals (as opposed to,
say, a chicken house full of birds about to be slaughtered), but I
think this half-way attitude is still a positive instinct. And if
anyone ever tried to harm my cat Tiffany I'd fucking kill them.
11219
From: Andy Rector
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 8:21am
Subject: Re: Killing an animal for the sake of the movie
Seems to me that man has done nothing to earn the respect of animals,
quite the contrary has man done over time.
I hate the scene in Tarr's Satantango with the little girl and cat,
even if its fake--
Straub/Huillet, perhaps the most moral of filmmakers, have dealt with
animials on a number of occasions. There is mention of a sacraficed
lamb in Not Reconciled, the actual sacrafice of a calf in Moses and
Aron, and the struggling wolf in From the Cloud to the Resistance.
In the film where they actually killed an animal (I haven't seen it),
Moses and Aron, every precaution was made to ensure that the killing
wasn't pointless. In Gregory Wood's work journal from that film he
writes:
"This shot must be done with care and rapidity for the cattle must be
brought back to the slaughterhouse by noon to be refrigerated
or the meat will start to go bad, and instead of paying the mornings
rental for it's use, Straub will have to pay for the beast."
Daniele Huillet responds to his entry:
"not only because we would have to pay for it: above all because it
would have been an animal killed in vain, if it can't even be eaten
afterwards as a result. We didn't want under any conditions to have an
animal slaughtered especially for the film so we found this solution
with the director of the slaughterhouse."
Earlier in the shooting of Moses and Aron, Huillet reports an
astounding act of consideration, specifically made by Straub: "Before
the start of shooting, Paolo had had a man with a blowing machine come
to spread, it seems, anti-fly insecticides, which the communes
sometimes rent. But Straub refuses to have this operation repeated, as
he considers it too dangerous: the insecticides, he says, are a
violent poison, the animals could come to eat the grass on the
ampitheater and that passes into their milk, etc.. I side with his
opinion: so we will combat the flies with a product that campers use,
which we apply with a paper napkin on the actors faces and on the stem
or surface of the mikes..."
It is in the peripheral of a films shooting where the most offenses
take place. ( But also consider Apocalypse Now!'s decimation of entire
chunks of land IN THE FILM, I hear few condemnations of that). Imagine
how much traipsing goes on behind the scenes (I hope someone
considered Passion of the Christ during its shooting), one hears
outrageous reports every now and then but it's not well enough
acknowledged.
If we eat meat (and I do) and don't see the slaughter, I think that is
wrong. It's just like war. We've no right to wage it, to plunge men
and women into it, (among other reasons!) if we don't know what its
like. At this late date (war, occupation, torture) if there are
beheadings, we should see them, we should see what it looks like when
Guernica happens every month in the Palestinian towns, we should see
what it looks like down on the ground when Baghdad is bombed for days
straight, when the U.S. forces shoot bullets the size of your hand at
people indiscriminatly, or even more indiscriminately, uses cluster
bombs which scatter as many as 200 "bomblets" that routinely do not
detonate on impact, that look like the food packets dropped by the
US.
If one doesn't know what that looks like, one can continue eating it.
Human meat or non-human meat, Godard was reporting in his film.
Writing this is grimly painful, but (and I say this now partly for
myself) things can be done, one can do things with the care and
consideration of the Straubs, one can stop the war by any means
neccessary, one can stop eating meat....one can be as generous as
Stan, the killer of sheep, giving the canned peaches to his friend,
or the lady in Bush Mama with the pie,
or as generous as the street barista is towards the "human rubbish" in
Xala....
Yours,
andy
11220
From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 10:16am
Subject: Re: Broadway Bill
Paramount will release "Broadway Bill" in a remastered DVD version
August 31 for $14,95 (list). Same day and same price: "Rose
Tattoo", "The Country Girl" and "Black Ochid".
Henrik
11221
From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 10:33am
Subject: Re: Adult Horror?
Horror, as such, in form of the simple "boo", transcends age, even
though kids are easier scared and surprised: But well timed and
executed horror works very well on adults.
From a more genre technical point, I would suggest, that adult motifs
as marriage, parenthood, divorce, loss of offspring and so on, can
become adult horror. Films like Clayton's "The Innocent" (adaptation
of Henry James) is adult horror, so is Wise's "Haunting of Hill
House", Polanski's "Repulsion", Tourneur's "Cat People" and of more
recent date, Nakata's "Dark Water".
Opposite these motifs are teen motifs: Teen horror mainly deals with
dating, with high school, experimenting with sex, alcohol and drugs.
Where American horror has become more and more stupid and teen
orientated since Freddy Kruger saw the day of light, Asian horror has
developed into a new form of adult horror, which Hollywood now is
copycatting.
Here, the protagonist is a young urban adult, either single mother
(perhaps divorce) or just single. She is struggling at work, working
long hours and has little social life. But where American horror has
the protagonist prevail, Asian horror mostly lets her cave in under
the "horror".
Henrik
11222
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 1:27pm
Subject: Re: Killing an animal for the sake of the movie
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
> But Jamie
Jaime
> you haven't given a counterargument as to why Ebert's statement is
> "so utterly stupid and wrong."
I rather think the "burden of proof" lies with Ebert, because - as is
characteristic of his op-ed mode (which I sometimes find appealing)
In other words, where you ask WHY ISN'T it a
contradiction/inconsistency, I have asked first, WHY IS IT a
contradiction/inconsistency? As much as Ayn Rand irritates me, I
wonder if she was onto something when she observed that "there are no
contradictions": in other words, either one element of a supposed
contradiction is non-existent (not the case here) or that the
juxtaposition of the two elements is such that you have to ignore an
awful lot of data or history or common sense or what have you in order
to say that one should cancel the other out.
The only other option - one I think Ebert prefers and which exists
between the lines of his answer (and he's undoubtedly not alone) - is
that the meat-eating animal lover is a hypocrite.
So let's go with that for a second. Because I like to pet my kitty
and because a "crush film" would make me ill, I should give up meat.
Well, I can't think of a decent answer why I wouldn't except for my
desire to eat meat, so maybe that's the "right" answer. A little
ridiculous, but I can't say why and even if I protested I'm sure some
hardcore vegan with a gift for oratory that I don't possess would
lecture me out of commission.
But the focus as Ebert and his reader have established it is on the
killing (in movies), not the eating. The conclusion that seems to
have been reached by Ebert is that meat-eaters HAVE NO RIGHT to
protest the use of animal slaughter *for the sake of the artwork*.
Before you tell me that I have to prove that it's ridiculous, I have
to first ask you - is my firm conviction that this position is
ridiculous...so ridiculous?
-Jaime
11223
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 1:59pm
Subject: Re: Killing an animal for the sake of the movie
> If we eat meat (and I do) and don't see the slaughter, I think that is
> wrong. It's just like war. We've no right to wage it, to plunge men
> and women into it, (among other reasons!) if we don't know what its
> like. At this late date (war, occupation, torture) if there are
> beheadings, we should see them, we should see what it looks like when
> Guernica happens every month in the Palestinian towns, we should see
> what it looks like down on the ground when Baghdad is bombed for days
> straight, when the U.S. forces shoot bullets the size of your hand at
> people indiscriminatly, or even more indiscriminately, uses cluster
> bombs which scatter as many as 200 "bomblets" that routinely do not
> detonate on impact, that look like the food packets dropped by the
> US.
To the above I would like to offer two ideas:
1) Can one become anti-war through words, without images of horror?
Let me expand on that a little - if we were the kind of country, like
Palestine or Iraq, that sees images of real violence everyday
committed against their countrymen, do you see widespread anti-war
feeling spreading or becoming decimated? My point is, images of
atrocity can take on all kinds of meaning, they can be used to support
the war effort just as they can be used to inspire anti-war thought
and action. On the other hand, speaking for myself, images of animal
slaughter or cruelty may be complex or pandering, they may have
meticulous and generous or stupid qualities, they can be pandering
while inspiring me to do something absolutely good like rescuing
abused dogs from an incompetent animal shelter, but I can't watch them
and they are extremely troublesome to me as it becomes necessary to
take the images and make them fit with the whole rest of the artwork.
And it'll neither stop me from eating meat nor make meat-eating more
enjoyable.
2) Do you find faulty the whole basis of my argument that I can view
myself as a non-hypocrite by living as a meat eater who is PHYSICALLY
UNABLE to watch non-faked violence committed against living beings
onscreen, even in the case of meticulous good intentions on the part
of filmmakers like Straub/Huillet? That's what I don't understand,
why is it faulty?
-Jaime
11224
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 2:06pm
Subject: unfinished post (was: killing animals...)
Meant to finish this, this is what happens when you work ahead and
forget to go back to finish a thought. Bad idea for the SATs, kids.
> I rather think the "burden of proof" lies with Ebert, because - as is
> characteristic of his op-ed mode (which I sometimes find appealing)
...Ebert takes a potentially complex issue, sees the easiest way out
(that will guarantee further responses if he should decide that he
likes the issue, thus creating a "saga" of reader-Ebert discussion,
i.e. reader challenges Ebert's faulty logic and Ebert tap-dances
around it or Ebert chooses a letter with worse logic and Ebert says "I
didn't say that"), and passes judgment with a neat, clean, but
ill-considered conclusion that can fit on a refrigerator magnet.
Maybe it would please you (Kevin) think that I'm guilty of the same
efforts to gloss. But I don't think that's the case.
-Jaime
11225
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 2:06pm
Subject: Re: Killing an animal for the sake of the movie
> Now, I'm a meat eater and I'm pretty sure some animals had to die so
> that I could have several items of clothing and luggage. But I have
> an insuperable aversion to seeing even the smallest creature going
> through trauma, being beaten, or killed, in movies or out. In films
> that I like, such as Antonioni's MYSTERY OF OBERWALD and Sembene's
> CAMP DE THIAROYE (and presumably Renoir's RULES OF THE GAME), to
> those that I don't like, such as Tolomush Okeyev's THE FIERCE ONE.
> "But your question involves the killing of animals for art, not
> food. I feel if you accept the killing of animals at all, then
> requiring the animal to be killed for food but not for art is
> inconsistent.
His wording is pretty mild here. I dunno, it certainly seems worth
asking oneself why killing animals for food has a special moral status.
I can't think of a particular reason.
This is a subject that's much on my mind lately. As a teenager, I gave
up meat, leather, non-castile soap, etc. for almost ten years. (Imagine
my surprise when I was told, near the end of this period, that celluloid
contained animal products.) I went back to meat eating in my twenties
with a fairly clear conscience, but in the last few years I became very
attached to two cats, and suddenly I found myself unwilling to kill even
insects - my identification with the cats was bleeding all over my life.
However, the cats don't mind killing insects. In fact, they're quite
into it, and one of them is unhappy without hunting opportunities. I
can't help but think that my current sentimentality and protectiveness
about animals removes me from the flow of existence in an unattractive
way. Certainly it distances me from the very objects of my sentiment,
who kill and are killed each day in quantities that human beings can't
match in their wildest genocidal moments.
And then, to knock the animal issue into a cocked hat, there are plants,
which one must eat, and which one can sentimentalize without a big
effort. - Dan
11226
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 2:15pm
Subject: Re: Weekend Pig
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
> Although I sort of agree with both David and Jaime on the
> questionable value of the pig slaughter, I don't see how it can be
> described as "pandering". One dictionary definition of "to pander"
> is: "to cater to the lower tastes and desires of others." Was
Godard
> catering to the audience's "lower" taste for watching pigs being
> slaughtered?
I'll preface my response by saying I'm open to a compelling argument
that the shot works just as "well" as any other shot in the movie
insofar as it fits some thesis of Godard's, or creates meaning within
the rest of the film, so that removing it would be detrimental to the
film as a whole. Or whatever. It won't make watching the shot any
easier, but there you have it.
Now, my answer is, yes, I think Godard is catering to some base desire
in the audience, not to desire images of pig slaughter, but the desire
to be worked up by sensational images, the desire to be grossed out
and to enjoy being grossed out. Maybe this is okay when the
Farrelly's do it with sperm and genitals getting caught in zippers,
but as far as I know, the Farrelly's have yet to slaughter a living
creature for the camera. (Suggesting there's a hierarchy of the
grotesque in the cinema, which there may or may not be.)
> It's just our hypocritical squeamishness
> that makes the scene "a cheap sensational effect."
I don't see squeamishness as hypocritical. That's the whole reason
I'm going on about this. I'm with Damien - the "halfway" nature of
our supposedly contradictory impulses is a positive one, just because
we're pulled in opposite directions doesn't mean one direction is more
right or more wrong.
-Jaime
11227
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 2:52pm
Subject: Re: Weekend Pig
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Jaime N. Christley"
wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
>
> > Although I sort of agree with both David and Jaime on the
> > questionable value of the pig slaughter, I don't see how it can
be
> > described as "pandering". One dictionary definition of "to
pander"
> > is: "to cater to the lower tastes and desires of others." Was
> Godard
> > catering to the audience's "lower" taste for watching pigs being
> > slaughtered?
>
.
>
> Now, my answer is, yes, I think Godard is catering to some base
desire
> in the audience, not to desire images of pig slaughter, but the
desire
> to be worked up by sensational images,
But again, you posit that the image is "sensational", whereas
the act of slaughtering a pig is actually totally commonplace and
the only thing that makes the image of it on screen "sensational" is
our hypocritical denial of the commonplaceness of the act through our
refusal to see such images and our shocked response to seeing one and
claims of pandering to justify our outrage.
I haven't seen WEEKEND in ages and don't remember the scene but
I doubt very much that Godard was trying to "work me up" and to
satisfy my desire to be "grossed out". I am more enclined to think he
was saying something like: "pigs are pigs, they get slaughtered,
that's what they're for. You may not like it, you may prefer not to
think about it, but that's the way it is." So just to remind us he
shows us the "unshowable". Maybe I'm wrong; at least that's what
Franju was doing in LE SANG DES BETES -- which of course is NOT
pandering...
JPC
the desire to be grossed out
> and to enjoy being grossed out. Maybe this is okay when the
> Farrelly's do it with sperm and genitals getting caught in zippers,
> but as far as I know, the Farrelly's have yet to slaughter a living
> creature for the camera. (Suggesting there's a hierarchy of the
> grotesque in the cinema, which there may or may not be.)
>
I assume genitals caught in zippers are supposed to be a gag
inducing hilarity. I don't think Godard was trying to amuse us. It's
not a matter of hierarchy.
> > It's just our hypocritical squeamishness
> > that makes the scene "a cheap sensational effect."
>
> I don't see squeamishness as hypocritical. That's the whole reason
> I'm going on about this. I'm with Damien - the "halfway" nature of
> our supposedly contradictory impulses is a positive one, just
because
> we're pulled in opposite directions doesn't mean one direction is
more
> right or more wrong.
>
I would agree to that but the squeamishness IS hypocritical to the
extent it is saying: "I know these things exist but I don't want to
see them, I prefer to ignore them." By the same token we are spared
by the media the viewing of a hostage being decapitated -- which no
doubt would be pandering to the "lower" tastes of some viewers who
get turned on by beheadings.
JPC
> -Jaime
11228
From: samfilms2003
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 3:04pm
Subject: Re: Killing an animal for the sake of the movie
The gelatin used in film emulsions is made from cattle hides and bones.
-sam
11229
From:
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 11:41am
Subject: Re: Killing an animal for the sake of the movie
There is a butchering scene in "The Tree of Wooden Clogs" (Ermanno Olmi,
1976), my least favorite part of the movie. Otherwise, I think this is a great
masterpiece of filmmaking. Clearly, there is a tradition of sorts among the
Renoir-Neorealism-New Wave continuum, that shows meat processing, perhaps in the
name of "realism". Most of the non-Mondo Cane style films that contain such
scenes fall into this filmmaking tradition.
I have a bad conscience on this subject, both eating meat and wearing
leather. Plus, I tend to have the heroes of my prose mystery stories in leather, too
- my detective Jake just appeared in a racecar melodrama in which the team
wore red leather racing suits. ("Torque" made a big impression here, and it had
to come out somewhere!)
In recent decades, I have switched to a much more plant centered diet - lots
of fresh fruit, beans, tofu and vegetables, especially members of the cabbage
family, along with some smaller quantities of fish and chicken. This is partly
for health, and partly for ecology - the world cannot support cattle eating
at the level that Americans enjoy. I rarely eat red meat (mammals such as
cattle, pigs, horses, lamb) anymore.
Mike Grost
11230
From:
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 11:45am
Subject: Claire Denis, Friday Night and Pictorialism
Lars von Trier's latest stunt sounds as odious as usual. He is such a
depressing filmmaker!
The cinephile community would be better off promoting such visually brilliant
filmmakers as Tran Anh Hung or Anges Vara. They have some of the most
ravishing pictorial styles since Minnelli and Sternberg.
Just saw Vendredi soir / Friday Night (Claire Denis). The pictures of Paris
in the evening are beautiful. But I found the human drama in the foreground
much duller. A mixed bag! I wish she'd just made a documentary on Paris at night,
instead. She is certainly a pictorially gifted filmmaker. The use of red
throughout the film is outstanding. Many scenes have carefully designed color
harmonies, either red or green.
By the way, doesn't "soir" mean evening, not night?
Mike Grost
11231
From: Elizabeth Anne Nolan
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 4:48pm
Subject: Re: Killing an animal for the sake of the movie HEAVEN'S GATE (1980)
This film is notorious for the amount of animal abuse that took place during production.
Actual cockfights, decapitated chickens and physical torture of horses are all proven to
have taken place. The outcry prompted the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the Alliance of
Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP) to contractually authorize the American
Humane Society to monitor the use of all animals in all filmed media.
(from IMDB)
11232
From: Elizabeth Anne Nolan
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 4:50pm
Subject: HEAVEN'S GATE (1980)
showing on TRIO today, tomorrow
June 19: 2:00PM
June 20: 10:00AM
June 28: 7:30PM
11233
From: Michael Worrall
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 6:59pm
Subject: Re: Killing an animal for the sake of the movie
This may have been mentioned in another post, and forgive me if it has,
but what about the slaughter of the cow in Eisenstein's "Strike"?
There is a whole range of representational issues going on there --
Eisenstein films the slaughter house workers knocking the cow
unconscious and slitting its throat and intercuts the gutting with the
workers being struck down by the police-- the images function from
alomost pure documentary, sensationalistic (an aspect Eisenstein uses
to move his viewers physically and mentally) to political allegory.
It's a visceral mix, with inflammatory and horrific images, but
Eisenstein is using them to provoke specific responses from the
audience, one being revolution.
Michael
11234
From: Elizabeth Anne Nolan
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 8:14pm
Subject: Re: Killing an animal for the sake of the movie
I think it is important to remember the time frame of some
of these movies.
In the 20's and 30's many people still lived in places
where chickens were plucked, etc. Movies made at that
time were showing common place events.
Movies made today about those times are quite
foreign for today's audiences.
Today's slaughters are far removed from the realities
of most people.
11235
From: Michael Worrall
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 8:24pm
Subject: Re: Killing an animal for the sake of the movie (correction)
There may be an error or two in my last post, was it a bull that was
slaughtered and was it the army, rather than the police, that fire upon
the workers?? It's been 12 years since I have seen the film and I
rather dislike misquoting films.
Michael
11236
From: Andy Rector
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 9:40pm
Subject: Re: Killing an animal for the sake of the movie
>> My point is, images of
> atrocity can take on all kinds of meaning, they can be used to
support
> the war effort just as they can be used to inspire anti-war thought
> and action.
Good point. I was trying to infer that a beheading of an american is
reported and often exploited by the media for all its barbarity, but
the equally barbaric disintegration/mutilation of bodies by way of
high tech explosives and long range guns is not seen here or much
reported,
though its happening everyday right now. I find it ironic when
recently headlines
read "40 killed in Baghdad explosion", a number and headline appended
because it was detonated by a suicide bomber. No such numbers or plain
language when for weeks Baghdad was bombarded by the US in March last
year, the deaths were hard to know of and are now impossible to assess
accurately. Just an hour ago, as reported by the National Post
(Canada) the US military fired missles into a residential neighborhood
in Fallujah "killing at least 16, and leveling houses"-- the deaths so
far in Fallujah alone are in the multiple thousands, like 9-11, mostly
civilians. I don't need to go on like this, I'm sure you know all the
outrages, contradictions, hypocrisies... but in my opinion, images
play a part, their presence and their presentation. One can only be
ignorant if one doesn't KNOW (not to say at all that eating meat is
ignorant). I am for information. We amuse ourselves with half
realities or outright lies everyday, and in my opinion, to eat meat
(an everyday reality) without the reality of the slaughterhouse is yet
another lie.
I don't find your argument faulty in the least. You are entitled to be
repulsed! It repulses me too. I don't think your comments are
hypocritical either.
If one lives a life to which death is a means to one's comfort, I
don't think the act of killing should be hidden.
Most of this killing is far removed from our realities, Elizabeth
said. And I say this is all immoral from a labor standpoint as well.
This ignorance of ours to the act/JOB of butchering is another bead on
the string of callousness in a capitalist society. We should at least
be aware of it, I say! This was what moved Burnett to make Killer of
Sheep. He met someone on the bus who worked in a slaughterhouse, and
Burnett thought of how working in this environment everyday must be
next to other daily realities.
Theres Brecht's comment, quoted in a Straub film, that fascism is just
capitalism with the slaughterhouse unveiled, gore in full view.
Jaime, I can't disagree with you because I hate seeing it too. I abhor
even the moment in Au hasard, Balthazar when the kid lights a
newspaper on fire attached to the Balthazar's tail. But its just as
bad because of man's baseness in doing something this stupid, or in
making murder into mass exploitation and profit that disturbs me the
most. But I can't absolve myself here either--that's why I'm going on
like this.
I'd also like to add to our list of animal films Chasing Butterflies
(Otar Ioselliani) when the lady shoots a fish with an arrow right
through its middle, pulls it out of the water, and clumsily beats it
about the head with a rock until it is dead. She plans to make a meal
out of it and feed it to vegetarian Hari Krishnas, "they'll never
know, the way I make it...I've done it before".
Yours,
andy
11237
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 10:09pm
Subject: Re: Weekend Pig
> But again, you posit that the image is "sensational",
> whereas
> the act of slaughtering a pig is actually totally commonplace and
> the only thing that makes the image of it on screen "sensational" is
> our hypocritical denial of the commonplaceness of the act through our
> refusal to see such images and our shocked response to seeing one and
> claims of pandering to justify our outrage.
I don't accept that it's commonplace, nor do I see how my fail to
accept this makes me a hypocrite.
> I haven't seen WEEKEND in ages and don't remember the scene but
> I doubt very much that Godard was trying to "work me up" and to
> satisfy my desire to be "grossed out".
I am more enclined to think he
> was saying something like: "pigs are pigs, they get slaughtered,
> that's what they're for. You may not like it, you may prefer not to
> think about it, but that's the way it is." So just to remind us he
> shows us the "unshowable". Maybe I'm wrong; at least that's what
> Franju was doing in LE SANG DES BETES -- which of course is NOT
> pandering...
I've been looking forward to seeing the Franju film and I actually set
up a viewing of a 16mm print at my local library but it fell through.
But it doesn't sound like the kind of film Godard made. It sounds
like a whole different set of meanings and contexts. Not that it'll
make viewing such things easier, but I hope that (as with the upcoming
Von Trier film...and future viewings of the Godard masterpiece) I'll
be able to accept my discomfort AND have a good understanding of the
filmmaker's art.
> I would agree to that but the squeamishness IS hypocritical to the
> extent it is saying: "I know these things exist but I don't want to
> see them, I prefer to ignore them." By the same token we are spared
> by the media the viewing of a hostage being decapitated -- which no
> doubt would be pandering to the "lower" tastes of some viewers who
> get turned on by beheadings.
You know, I don't think I need to see someone getting decapitated. It
sounds like we're not going to be able to see eye to eye on this. If
that makes me a hypocrite, which I still don't buy in the least, then
I'll just have to be at peace with you seeing me in that way.
I knew a lot of pilots in the US Navy who craved to watch the bomb
footage from a mission they'd just done, or that their buddy had
flown. It was a turn-on but, unlike porn it could be watched in the
briefing rooms and it was "acceptable." And I'm pretty certain none
of them turned against the war because of the images they saw. Quite
the opposite.
And these are, my culture tells me, gentlemen.
-Jaime
11238
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 10:29pm
Subject: regarding the slaughter in films
It occurred to me today that one of the reasons why images of real
animal slaughter in movies that are otherwise great or good bother me
so much (and moreso when it's a shitty film, 'cuz it's shitty AND
unpleasant to watch) is because I feel like I'm reacting more strongly
than other viewers...and probably more than the filmmaker intended, so
it makes me doubt whether I'm engaged with the work "the way I'm
supposed to." Or, rather, there IS no doubt, because in averting my
eyes I'm missing part of the film. In the strictest, strictest sense,
I haven't even seen WEEKEND "properly."
-Jaime
11239
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 10:54pm
Subject: Re: Weekend Pig
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Jaime N. Christley"
wrote:
>
> > But again, you posit that the image is "sensational",
> > whereas
> > the act of slaughtering a pig is actually totally commonplace
and
> > the only thing that makes the image of it on screen "sensational"
is
> > our hypocritical denial of the commonplaceness of the act through
our
> > refusal to see such images and our shocked response to seeing one
and
> > claims of pandering to justify our outrage.
>
> I don't accept that it's commonplace, nor do I see how my fail to
> accept this makes me a hypocrite.
>
Pigs are slaughtered for food by the thousands everyday and
probably have been ever since there have been pigs and humans to eat
them. If that is not commonplace what is your definition
of "commonplace"?
>
> You know, I don't think I need to see someone getting decapitated.
It
> sounds like we're not going to be able to see eye to eye on this.
If
> that makes me a hypocrite, which I still don't buy in the least,
then
> I'll just have to be at peace with you seeing me in that way.
>
I don't "need" to see someone decapitated either, and I certainly
don't want to. (and there was nothing personal in my comment). I was
pointing to the kind of attitude that spirits away unpleasant things
by simply avoiding to show them. We all participate in that kind
of "hypocrisy" (perhaps we need a better word) at least to some
extent. We all know that the most horrible things (much more horrible
than killing a pig) are going on here and there and everywhere in the
world but we prefer not to think about them or to think about them
selectively, once in a while, then move on to something more
cheerful -- because after all we can't spend our entire life dealing
with the reality of horror and evil (moreover, we're helpless). And
sometimes a photograph or a bit of film or video jolts us out of that
inevitable complacency that helps us keep our sanity and survive in
that "foul sty" Uncle Charlie described to an unsuspecting innocent.
So we say that the image is in poor taste and panders to lower tastes
and base instincts.
JPC
> I knew a lot of pilots in the US Navy who craved to watch the bomb
> footage from a mission they'd just done, or that their buddy had
> flown. It was a turn-on but, unlike porn it could be watched in the
> briefing rooms and it was "acceptable." And I'm pretty certain none
> of them turned against the war because of the images they saw.
Quite
> the opposite.
>
> And these are, my culture tells me, gentlemen.
>
> -Jaime
The pilots have been trained to do a job. They want to find out if
the mission has been successful, if they've done their job properly.
How could they live with themselves if they hated what they do? Most
soldiers are like that in all wars. Are you implying that viewing
the result of their bombings was a sexual turn-on? I can't place
myself in the head of a Navy pilot but I suspect that's a bit
extreme although eros raises its often ugly head in the most
unexpected places.... Anyway if they were "gentlemen" they probably
wouldn't have joined the military...
JPC
11240
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 11:04pm
Subject: Re: Killing an animal for the sake of the movie
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Elizabeth Anne Nolan"
wrote:
> Today's slaughters are far removed from the realities
> of most people.
True, but the slaughters are not any less real for it. Slaughters
of animals and slaughters of humans alike. People make their
own "realities", and a slaughter-less reality is conveniently
comfortable.
JPC
11241
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 11:11pm
Subject: Re: Killing an animal for the sake of the movie
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Andy Rector"
wrote:
. I don't need to go on like this, I'm sure you know all the
> outrages, contradictions, hypocrisies... but in my opinion, images
> play a part, their presence and their presentation. One can only be
> ignorant if one doesn't KNOW (not to say at all that eating meat is
> ignorant). I am for information. We amuse ourselves with half
> realities or outright lies everyday, and in my opinion, to eat meat
> (an everyday reality) without the reality of the slaughterhouse is
yet
> another lie.
>
.
>
> Most of this killing is far removed from our realities, Elizabeth
> said. And I say this is all immoral from a labor standpoint as well.
> This ignorance of ours to the act/JOB of butchering is another bead
on
> the string of callousness in a capitalist society. We should at
least
> be aware of it, I say! This was what moved Burnett to make Killer of
> Sheep. He met someone on the bus who worked in a slaughterhouse, and
> Burnett thought of how working in this environment everyday must be
> next to other daily realities.
>
,
> andy
Thanks. All this is pretty much what I was trying to say in my
response to Jaime.
JPC
11242
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 11:18pm
Subject: Re: Killing an animal for the sake of the movie
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Andy Rector"
> Good point. I was trying to infer that a beheading of an american is
> reported and often exploited by the media for all its barbarity, but
> the equally barbaric disintegration/mutilation of bodies by way of
> high tech explosives and long range guns is not seen here or much
> reported,
> though its happening everyday right now. I find it ironic when
> recently headlines
> read "40 killed in Baghdad explosion", a number and headline appended
> because it was detonated by a suicide bomber. No such numbers or plain
> language when for weeks Baghdad was bombarded by the US in March last
> year, the deaths were hard to know of and are now impossible to assess
> accurately. Just an hour ago, as reported by the National Post
> (Canada) the US military fired missles into a residential neighborhood
> in Fallujah "killing at least 16, and leveling houses"-- the deaths so
> far in Fallujah alone are in the multiple thousands, like 9-11, mostly
> civilians.
I'm with you a hundred percent on this. And a lot of other people are
onto what the media is doing, thankfully. Not enough, but more than I
tend to suspect. (Being a pessimist when it comes to "people.")
> We amuse ourselves with half
> realities or outright lies everyday, and in my opinion, to eat meat
> (an everyday reality) without the reality of the slaughterhouse is yet
> another lie.
I'll go for that. After seeing Fassbinder's 13 MOONS I have enough
slaughterhouse-awareness to last me for quite a long time!
> If one lives a life to which death is a means to one's comfort, I
> don't think the act of killing should be hidden.
I think you've summed it up very nicely. And I think we agree that
comfortable lives don't require the kind of foreign policy our current
administration (taking the cue from dozens of past administrations) is
working by.
> Jaime, I can't disagree with you because I hate seeing it too. I abhor
> even the moment in Au hasard, Balthazar when the kid lights a
> newspaper on fire attached to the Balthazar's tail. But its just as
> bad because of man's baseness in doing something this stupid, or in
> making murder into mass exploitation and profit that disturbs me the
> most. But I can't absolve myself here either--that's why I'm going on
> like this.
A perfect example, too - BALTHAZAR has got to be just about the
greatest movie I've ever seen, and the way Bresson's "real" cruelty to
the donkey (possibly to include rumors that it was really shot at the
end, the veracity of which I'm not certain) causes a bad reaction in
me that I have to take into account as a part of the whole experience.
-Jaime
11243
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 11:27pm
Subject: Re: Claire Denis, Friday Night and Pictorialism
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
.
> Just saw Vendredi soir / Friday Night (Claire Denis). The pictures
of Paris
> in the evening are beautiful. But I found the human drama in the
foreground
> much duller. A mixed bag! I wish she'd just made a documentary on
Paris at night,
> instead. She is certainly a pictorially gifted filmmaker. The use
of red
> throughout the film is outstanding. Many scenes have carefully
designed color
> harmonies, either red or green.
> By the way, doesn't "soir" mean evening, not night?
>
> Mike Grost
I agree with you on the beautiful, atmospheric use of color in
Denis's film, especially the opening shots. She has a great DP. I
didn't find the "human drama" dull at all, it's really a very fine
film.... "Soir" does mean "evening" but "night" often means "evening"
in English, and the action takes place mostly late in the evening and
into the night.
JPC
11244
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Sat Jun 19, 2004 11:29pm
Subject: Re: Weekend Pig
> Pigs are slaughtered for food by the thousands everyday and
> probably have been ever since there have been pigs and humans to
eat
> them. If that is not commonplace what is your definition
> of "commonplace"?
I'll cede to your point, JP. When you said "commonplace" it sounded
as if you were saying "it's all around us," which would be an
impossible situation because Americans (and Europeans, as far as I can
tell) love meat but don't wish to see an animal slaughtered. But by
your use of the word, very true.
> I don't "need" to see someone decapitated either, and I
certainly
> don't want to. (and there was nothing personal in my comment). I
was
> pointing to the kind of attitude that spirits away unpleasant
things
> by simply avoiding to show them. We all participate in that kind
> of "hypocrisy" (perhaps we need a better word) at least to some
> extent. We all know that the most horrible things (much more
horrible
> than killing a pig) are going on here and there and everywhere in
the
> world but we prefer not to think about them or to think about them
> selectively, once in a while, then move on to something more
> cheerful -- because after all we can't spend our entire life
dealing
> with the reality of horror and evil (moreover, we're helpless).
And
> sometimes a photograph or a bit of film or video jolts us out of
that
> inevitable complacency that helps us keep our sanity and survive in
> that "foul sty" Uncle Charlie described to an unsuspecting
innocent.
> So we say that the image is in poor taste and panders to lower
tastes
> and base instincts.
I'm surprised, JP, because I think we're approaching a common ground
that I had thought impossible as recently as the last post. I think I
have Andy to thank for that, in part.
One thing - I wonder if instead of "hypocrisy" we should say that we
enjoy meat while wishing to avoid slaughterhouse imagery (or view such
imagery as "hard medicine" that may hurt but will improve us) because
we're civilized. After all, isn't civilization in part the act of
absorbing and neutralizing barbarism, without getting rid of it?
> How could they live with themselves if they hated what they do?
Most
> soldiers are like that in all wars. Are you implying that viewing
> the result of their bombings was a sexual turn-on?
In a way, yes. Sex and sexual arousal isn't at all alien to killing
and committing violence and destroying things, even when it's state
policy.
-Jaime
11245
From: Andy Rector
Date: Sun Jun 20, 2004 0:01am
Subject: Re: Killing an animal for the sake of the movie
>>And I think we agree that
> comfortable lives don't require the kind of foreign policy our
current
> administration (taking the cue from dozens of past administrations)
is
> working by.
Good point again, agreed. I'd add that meat as not required, in fact
it sticks rancid in your colon. It wouldn't be only the animals that
we'd help if we'd quit eating them. And the advantages of ceasing to
murder masses of people wouldn't be only spiritual.
>>>the way Bresson's "real" cruelty to
> the donkey (possibly to include rumors that it was really shot at
the
> end, the veracity of which I'm not certain)
In Godard's interview with Bresson, I believe, I think Bresson says he
did the contrary, he put the donkey in the field with the sheep and
simply waited for it to fall asleep...maybe even more beautiful of a
thing than one can imagine from the film: Bresson waiting for a donkey
to fall asleep. Sleep is the cousin of death, by the way.
I think the greatest moment in BALTHAZAR is when the donkey is put in
the circus and we see the other animals eyes looking at him.
yours,
andy
11246
From: Noel Vera
Date: Sun Jun 20, 2004 3:52am
Subject: Re: Killing an animal for the sake of the movie
Of films that show animals being killed onscreen,
throw in Lino Brocka's "Insiang," with its long
opening sequence at a slaughterhouse.
I think it's a cultural thing. As an eater of many
strange things--fried scorpion, dog, locust, among
other things--I'm hardly bothered at all. I'm
conscious of it, and I can see where people will wince
at a scene of cruelty to animals, but it doesn't
affect me at a gut level. For the record, I do approve
of Hollywood's present-day rules as to animal killings
onscreen, though, but if the film I happen to be
watching is non-Hollywood, or was made before the laws
were in place, it doesn't bother me.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail is new and improved - Check it out!
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11247
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun Jun 20, 2004 4:43am
Subject: Re: Re: Killing an animal for the sake of the movie
That may be true, Noel, but it's also a question of
context. Franju's "Le Sang des Betes" is about
slaughterhouses. It's not "exploiting" imagery of
annimal slaughter -- it comes with the subject.
What's question about "Weekend" to me is that the real
deaths of the animals arrives after over an hour's
worth of fake deaths of humans in staged accidents. It
is as if the real animal deaths were being used to
give the fake human deaths more power.
Don't get me worng, it's a very great film, but this
aspect still rankles me. I truly believe Godard could
have done without it.
As for Deodato claiming remourse and upset over the
murder of a turtle in "Cannibal Holocaust" -- pull the
other leg, it's got bells on!
--- Noel Vera wrote:
> Of films that show animals being killed onscreen,
> throw in Lino Brocka's "Insiang," with its long
> opening sequence at a slaughterhouse.
>
> I think it's a cultural thing. As an eater of many
> strange things--fried scorpion, dog, locust, among
> other things--I'm hardly bothered at all. I'm
> conscious of it, and I can see where people will
> wince
> at a scene of cruelty to animals, but it doesn't
> affect me at a gut level. For the record, I do
> approve
> of Hollywood's present-day rules as to animal
> killings
> onscreen, though, but if the film I happen to be
> watching is non-Hollywood, or was made before the
> laws
> were in place, it doesn't bother me.
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail is new and improved - Check it out!
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
>
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11248
From: Paul Gallagher
Date: Sun Jun 20, 2004 4:56am
Subject: Re: Killing an animal for the sake of the movie
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jess_l_amortell"
wrote:
> > But I have
> > an insuperable aversion to seeing even the smallest creature going
> > through trauma, being beaten, or killed, in movies or out.
>
> How about the fish eating the cockroach in What Time Is It There?
That one seems pretty funny, for some reason.
At the New York Film Festival, someone asked Tsai Ming-liang how
he got the fish to eat the cockroach. Tsai said the fish improvised
that scene. He said the fish was a good actor.
Paul
11249
From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Sun Jun 20, 2004 7:34am
Subject: Re: Killing an animal for the sake of the movie
Earlier JP said the perhaps most pinpointing argument so far, "people
make their own 'realities'" and continued, "...and a slaughter-less
reality is conveniently comfortable."
There is a great deal of "hypocrasi" involved in it, as we blindly
accept animals to be slaughtered, even make us self believe its done
humanely (what a wonderful word), as we likewise accept (to some
extend) the killing in war.
While Godard killed a pig, it was the only real thing Godard could
do. I see Godard's killing as a political statement and to make the
audience react. If he had killed a rubber pig, no one had even
bothered to become outraged. And as there is a touch of Godard in
LvT, of course Lars has to kill the Donkey.
When David said, that some killing "comes with the subject" - If you
portrait a slaughterhouse as in "Le Sang des Betes", to show
slaugther of lifestock is within the context - I agree, but how we
approach the context differs.
Perhaps out tolerance has something to do with our perception
of "innocence". A cow is predestined to become a steak, so its
perfectly ok to kill it. But it is not predestined for a dog to be
killed (at least not in western countries), so to kill a dog is
crossing the border. A back alley Chinese cook may have another
perception, a vegitarian a third and an artist who needs to create a
specific index another.
Here I would like to ask again, where do "we" set the line? Is it ok
to kill a cockroach? A spider? A rat? A dog? A cow? A pig? A whale?
Isn't it to begin with our own perception of innocence, that, as JP
suggests is "a made up (personal) reality" that dictates what we find
acceptable or not?
Henrik
PS: Im sure Deodato's other leg can outplay a glockenspiel, but cast
and crew still testified, that he had to turn his head away, that he
vomited and that he spend alot of time alone later on. They did so,
because before the scene Deodato was all "Butch" and forced them to
do it, but when filming it, he couldn't take it.
11250
From: Andy Rector
Date: Sun Jun 20, 2004 8:22am
Subject: Re: Killing an animal for the sake of the movie
"Numbers sanctify..."
11251
From:
Date: Sun Jun 20, 2004 10:53am
Subject: John Dickson Carr Centenary
2006 will be the centenary of the great mystery writer John Dickson Carr.
To celebrate, mystery scholar Tony Medawar has put out this invitation on the
discussion group GAdetection. I know we have some Carr admirers and mystery
authors on a_film_by, so I am sharing it here.
"Dangerous Crossing" (Joseph M. Newman, 1953) is perhaps the best film
version of a Carr story.
Mike Grost
Here is Tony Medawar's post:
I am starting to assemble contents for a Carr centenary volume, publisher as
yet unconfirmed but mixing previously unpublished material with "scholarly"
contributions and, if I can get them, new stories with a Carrian flavour.
If you would be willing to contribute an article or piece of fiction please
contact me at
tony.medawar@d...
Fell free to draw this to the attention of every Carr fan you know.
Tony
11252
From:
Date: Sun Jun 20, 2004 3:24pm
Subject: re: Weekend pig
I'd always heard LE SANG DES BETES referred to as anti-carnivore, but
I was quite surprised watching it recently (April) to find that for
me it played as nothing of the sort. Of course a slaughterhouse is
not a pleasant place to spend time, even virtually, but to me the
film is much more about acknowledging the death/bloodshed that is
fundamentally a part of life than condemning it. (i.e. the opening
narration which sets up the abbatoir's proximity to the peaceful
streets of Paris.) Franju finds a certain beauty/truth in the
juxtaposition.
Ebert's infamous second paragraph may be overstating the case for
rhetorical effect, but I think there's something inherently bizarre
about the fact that people who eat meat would so vehemently condemn
the slaughter of animals for "art". Is killing a donkey for a film
less moral than not finishing your hamburger? Considering that people
don't have to eat meat, at least as often as Americans typically do,
isn't our overconsumption just as wasteful?
I do have a negative gut reaction to an animal being slaughtered on
camera, but I think that reaction is, at base, hypocritical, given
that I'd happily allow the animal to be slaughtered so I can eat only
the tenderest and most tasty parts of it, while the rest is thrown
away (or, these days, turned into meat-pulp and fed back to the
animal that produced it.) The hypocrisy only increases when I realize
I feel less umbrage about someone like Renoir doing so than a
borderline fraud like Trier: Is dying for art acceptable if it's good
art?
Likewise, I find it odd that some people can't bear to see animals
mistreated on film, even when that mistreatment is clearly faked but
don't particularly care about humans, a sentiment which might have
reached its absurd apex in SUMMER OF SAM, where several humans are
gunned down in cold blood, but the dog must be shown at the end to be
(illogically) still alive.
Re: BALTHAZAR. According to Bresson, the donkey was given a drug for
the final scene which put it into a stupor simulating death, but was
up jumping around "five minutes later." Likewise, the scene with the
tail being set on fire is clearly staged, but the many blows rained
upon poor Balthazar's body seem quite genuine.
Sam
11253
From:
Date: Sun Jun 20, 2004 11:34am
Subject: Confession (Alexander Sokurov)
"Confession" is not listed among Sokurov's credits in the IMDB.
Have never seen ANY reference to it anywhere other than Fred Camper's review.
First read this review when it came out (faithfully read Chicago Reader every
week).
Admittedly, Russian TV mini-series are not big ticket items on US TV - more's
the pity, becuase I would really like to see this!
Am very pleased to see a video / made-for-TV movie the center of attention at
a_film_by. TV is a vast submerged world of filmmaking, unfortunately ignored
by most film historians.
Any clues where one might see "Confession"?
Mike Grost
PS After seeing "Friday Night" (Claire Denis) on Friday night, the Lithuanian
folk song "Subatele / Saturday Eve" kept going through my head on Saturday
evening. It's a lively, polka-like tune. Are there any other admirers on
a_film_by of real folk music? There are over 100, 000 lyrics to 35, 000 melodies in
the corpus of Lithuanian folk music - the "dainos". Welsh and Scots Gaelic have
enormously rich folk song heritages, too. Also like Amerindian songs.
11254
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Sun Jun 20, 2004 5:06pm
Subject: Re: Confession (Alexander Sokurov)
Although this might not help someone to find a specific Sokurov film
(most are unavailable on video and screenings are few and far
between), here's the filmography on the English-language version of
Sokurov's official site (which lists CONFESSION and his latest fiction
film, FATHER AND SON):
http://www.sokurov.spb.ru/island_en/flm.html
Those links to producers (see other pages on the site), Europe-based
distributors, etc., may help.
-Jaime
11255
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Sun Jun 20, 2004 5:16pm
Subject: Re: Confession (Alexander Sokurov)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
> "Confession" is not listed among Sokurov's credits in the IMDB.
> Have never seen ANY reference to it anywhere other than Fred Camper's review.
> Any clues where one might see "Confession"?
I'd been wondering the same thing. It wasn't in the Sokurov retro at MoMA several years ago.
The following is from the Masters of Cinema site ("Confession" seems to be not only elusive but expensive):
-----
'Ideale Audience in France are releasing (in Feb 2004) a limited edition 30 copies of "MILITARY SERIES" an Alexander Sokurov 3 x DVD boxset for 12,000 Euros (yes, twelve thousand (that's $14,000)). The Spanish art gallery Elba Benitez are also distributing the set in Spain. The films are Confession (1988, 210 mins in 5 parts, "Made before the Kursk disaster, but now seemingly haunted by it, this poetic diary of "confession" of a ship captain is one of Sokurov's most majestic and troubling achievements."); Spiritual Voices (1995, 327 mins in 5 parts, "a soft and subtle portrait of lonely Russian soldiers whose inner strength serves as a metaphor for humanity's ultimately spiritual nature"); A Soldier's Dream (1995, 11 mins, a short made with material from Spiritual Voices, "This smaller film was created as a kind of gift to the film critic and historian Dr Hans Schlegel, who has done so much for me and for so many other Eastern European cinematographers."). The 3 DVDs total 9 hrs 13 mins, are R1-8 compatible, encoded in NTSC. These are the original Russian video versions with menus allowing a choice of different subtitles (English, French, Italian, TBC German and Spanish) and providing access to different chapters. Included is a bonus CD-ROM with synopses, articles, press information, screening conditions and photos from each film, including the biographical elements and other relevant background material in English. Apparently, this is a limited edition, signed by Sokurov - for museums, filmotheques and collectors which includes rights to screen them. MoC hope that more realistically priced versions are also forthcoming.'
11256
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Sun Jun 20, 2004 5:34pm
Subject: Re: Weekend pig
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, samadams@e... wrote:
"I'd always heard LE SANG DES BETES referred to as anti-carnivore,
but I was quite surprised watching it recently (April) to find that
for me it played as nothing of the sort. Of course a slaughterhouse
is not a pleasant place to spend time, even virtually, but to me the
film is much more about acknowledging the death/bloodshed that is
fundamentally a part of life than condemning it. (i.e. the opening
narration which sets up the abbatoir's proximity to the peaceful
streets of Paris.) Franju finds a certain beauty/truth in the
juxtaposition."
That's your pure vision, but for years the movie was shown by
vegetarian groups as an arguement for vegetarianism, and that's the
context in which I first saw in 1968.
"Considering that people don't have to eat meat, at least as often as
Americans typically do, isn't our overconsumption just as wasteful?"
Yes, especially in the case of beef where acres of rainforest in
Argentina are turned into grazing land every day to meet the US
demand for beef.
"The hypocrisy only increases when I realize I feel less umbrage
about someone like Renoir doing so than a borderline fraud like
Trier: Is dying for art acceptable if it's good art?"
If you sacrifice yourself for art or otherwise undergo extreme pain
for art (like Chris Burden who had himself shot with a 22. rifle and
on another occasion had himself crucified to the hood of a Volkswagen)
that's the choice of the artist for him or herself. Killing an
unwilling victim is another matter. The contradiction that Jaime
posited with his initial post still stands and may be beyond
resolution by anyone other than an ethical genius.
"Likewise, I find it odd that some people can't bear to see animals
mistreated on film, even when that mistreatment is clearly faked but
don't particularly care about humans, a sentiment which might have
reached its absurd apex in SUMMER OF SAM, where several humans are
gunned down in cold blood, but the dog must be shown at the end to be
(illogically) still alive."
In experiments done by Dr.Stanley Milligrom (of the famous obedience
to authority experiments)he found that people were more disturbed by
films of animals being mistreated than of humans being simililarly
mistreated. There were two reasons according to his findings: 1.
The animals were innocent of any wrong doing and didn't merit
mistreatment, whereas the humans probably did something to deserve
their suffering. 2. The humans were probably not really being
mistreated whereas the animals were.
The theme of sacrificing others for art was the subject of THE TRAIN
with Paul Scofield as a Nazi aesthete transporting paintings from
France and Burt Lancaster as a philistine partisan ordered to stop
the national treasures from being stolen. The Lancaster character
can't stomach the loss of his comrades just to save a lot of old
paintings. It wasn't a great picture (too didactic)but it seems
appropriate to mention it in this discussion since it addresses your
question "is dying for art acceptable if it's good art?"
Richard
11257
From: Fred Camper
Date: Sun Jun 20, 2004 6:35pm
Subject: Re: Re: Confession (Alexander Sokurov)
I emailed the French video distributor listed on the Sokurov Web site to
ask about the availabilty of his work at prices geared to individuals,
and I'll post here if I hear anything.
$14,000 -- "far fucking out," as one might have said back in the late
1960s. I think when translated into rubles one could make a whole
feature film with that sum, or at least, could have when I was there in
1999.
- Fred C.
11258
From: Robert Keser
Date: Sun Jun 20, 2004 8:05pm
Subject: Re: Confession (Alexander Sokurov)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
> "Confession" is not listed among Sokurov's credits in the IMDB.
> Have never seen ANY reference to it anywhere other than Fred
Camper's review.
Last year at Facets in Chicago, the faithful assembled for several
weekends of one-time-only showings of Sokurov rarities (on Betamax),
including Confession. The latter seemed like a mammoth road movie of
the soul, only set on a ship navigating the arctic wasteland (and
Fred's review does it justice). All of Sokurov's works are quite
fascinating and unique (though only big-bucks auteurists will be
able to swing that fourteen thousand dollars). My own favorite
Sokurov is the horrifying (and surprisingly funny) movie about
dealing with a corpse, The Second Circle. In one way, it's like
Sokurov's The Trouble With Harry.
Some might be interested in the following unpublished piece about
Sokurov's A Humble Life that I hammered out last year at the time
of the Facets series:
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The reference books describe A Humble Life (1997) as a study of a
Japanese artist, yet Sokurov fills more than thirty-five minutes
before he discloses that the subject's art is sewing kimonos.
First Sokurov sets up a framing device of the director writing a
letter (which serves as the narration), then examining antique
photographs of Russians, and finally moving "in search of beauty"
to Japan, where he takes refuge in a seemingly abandoned house on
a remote forest hilltop in Nara prefecture.
With his customary zen concentration on evoking the immediacy of the
moment, he slowly examines the texture of the earth, the scratches
across weathered floorboards, the woven patterns of the floor mat,
sometimes interspersed with ecstatic compositions of fog rising
through snowfall into the silvery sky above the dark forest. Though
brief strands of Tchaikowsky and Mahler surface discreetly, natural
sound is the bloodstream of the film, audio so intensely realized
that we hear a beetle scrape its way across a straw mat. The
occasional manmade sounds—the sputter of a passing motorcycle or
the metallic clang of Buddhist monks' bells—leap out with
surpassing human strangeness from this sound world of nature.
When the elderly woman is discovered in the house, asleep and barely
even distinguishable in the shadows of a hidden hallway, Sokurov
examines her the same way: his camera observes every hair in her
eyebrow, the line of her foot folded beneath her body. In this
stately, hushed progression of images, when her fingers insert a
thread into the eye of a needle, her action of pulling the thread
taut approaches high drama, and when a bumblebee flies toward the
camera, it seems as melodramatic as a gunshot.
Sokurov then folds the woman into his search for beauty, overlaying
double-exposures of mists and movements of fog across the images,
making a virtue of video-smudging, the smeary brown, black, and
yellow colors suggesting canvases by Rembrandt. One bravura crane
shot follows smoke up a chimney, then dissolves to the smoke joining
the mists above the roof, then all evaporates into the perpetually
stormy winter clouds. In the end, Sokurov captures such a trance-like
play of light and dark, of the weight and texture of the natural
world, that when the woman finally reads her poems aloud, she seems
disappointingly anchored in pedestrian reality, expressing bitter
feelings over her husband's death a decade earlier, plus maternal
complaints thar her daughter never visits. But then poetry is not
her art; it is Sokurov's.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
--Robert Keser
11259
From: Fred Camper
Date: Sun Jun 20, 2004 8:14pm
Subject: Re: Natue, partly (ineviably) OT (was: Killing an animal...)
The question of "animal rights" is a big can of worms, so to speak, and
I don't have any dogmatic conclusions.
I haven't seen the films Gabe mentions, but I think I'd be close to his
views: it's a case by case question, in films and elsewhere.
Some Hitler-admiring Indian potentate made a film he thought Hitler
would like, and but Hitler couldn't watch its footage of animal
slaughter, he was so repulsed. Later he is thought to have quite enjoyed
the footage of many of the 1944 coup plotters being hideously tortured
to death. And Hitler was, by the way, a vegetarian. Not that this should
give vegetarianism a bad name -- Hitler is also known to have liked
small children, and claimed that smoking was bad for the health -- but
it is worth pondering nonetheless.
It always amuses me (as Jess's cockroach-killing reference points out)
to see that it's the cuddly and furry animals whose killing upsets so
many. Animal activists never made much of a to-do over the various forms
we have of killing roaches, such as the Roach Motel (slow death by
starvation or thirst) and those powders that explode their bellies.
I would guess that in the making of most movies, many thousands of
animals are killed without anyone knowing it or caring much about it. I
refer to the thousands of bugs crushed against the many windshields and
under the many tires of the vehicles that lug cast and crew and
equipment around. Those of you who drive cars kill many animals too in
the course of driving. Surely we bicyclists kill fewer, but we kill some
too. And this isn't even counting the humans the U.S. has killed in Iraq
in the two wars we've fought over oil. (There's a very short piece in
the current "Harper's" in which the writer points out that of all the
reasonably plausible possible justifications for the war, the
Administration has offered all but one, that it was a war for oil, and
he goes on to say he hopes we did it for oil, which is at least an
arguably rational reason from the point of view of U.S. self-interest,
because if it wasn't for oil, then we're truly at the edge of the abyss.)
It also should be pointed out that animals torture each other to death
all the time just for fun (thanks to Dan for his comments on his cats).
Watch a cat "play" with a still-living bird it has ripped open sometime.
And scientists a few years ago observed those lovable dolphins, the same
human-life-saving creatures Jacques Cousteau nearly deified in millions
of fund-raising letters, engaging in an unmotivated mass slaughter of
another species of fish, not for food or any other discernible reason.
I do think if you're going to eat a killed animal, you should be willing
to look at its killing (not at a "crunch film" but at killings like
those of the animals you actually eat), so I agree with Andy there. If
looking at its killing upsets you inconsolably, maybe you should ask
why, and maybe even consider vegetarianism. Since the cause of killing
animals for food is eating meat, and I think people should be
responsible for the consequences of their actions, meat-eaters should be
willing to look that the consequences of their dietary practices. That
doesn't mean that you, Jaime, have to like watching this -- and I *do*
think you're supposed to feel revulsion at the burning donkey tail in
Balthazar, that's part of the point, the animal as victim of generations
of cruelty.
Sam writes, "I think there's something inherently bizarre about the fact
that people who eat meat would so vehemently condemn the slaughter of
animals for 'art.'" I agree. In this connection, in many Western
countries, and especially in the U.S., the average person eats far more
"nutrition" (calories and protein both) than is needed to keep the body
healthy. And then we feed all kinds of protein and calories to our pets,
and put all kinds of fertilizer on our lawns, consuming the planet's
resources in "unnecessary" activities. I think if it's OK to overeat and
feed our pets meat and put fertilizers on our lawns it should be OK to
kill an animal (quickly and as painlessly as possible) for the sake of a
film. Better, in fact, if the film is a great one: since when is
overeating or feeding our pets meat better than producing great art?
The "Diet for a Small Planet" (which was the title of a 60s book that
included recipes) argument for vegetarianism is a really compelling one,
even more now than then with Brazil destroying its rainforest to meet
its MacDonald's contracts as global warming threatens to kill hundreds
of millions or worse with a sudden "tipping" that could flood all of
Bangladesh to say nothing of New York, and is the reason I don't eat
much meat. It doesn't seem to be an argument for eating *no* meat
though, given my participation in the rest of industrial culture: I took
a 747, rather than sailing a boat like I should have, when I went to
Hong Kong this April.
The real crime, the crime that may ultimately be judged to be far more
monstrous than anything we humans have done to each other, is our
wholesale appropriation of the planet and its creatures for our own
purposes, resulting in potentially huge climate change, massive and
possibly irreversible global pollution with industrial toxins, enormous
wildlife habitat destruction, uncountably massive species extinctions.
Our goal seems to be to transform the entire Earth into a parking lot
with landscaped gardens alongside it. The decrying by Huillet and others
(cited in Andy's post) of animals killed "in vain" seems almost
pathetically absurd to me in light of the wholesale destruction of
countless thousands of species, and of course countless millions of
individual animals, caused by the industrial culture from which we all
benefit. That benign insecticide "Campers use" (and we Campers who have
also camped know it well) was probably is based on DEET, a
chlorofluorocarbon that lasts a long time in the environment and whose
effects are unknown. It's been suspected of causing serious damage to
small children when applied too heavily to them, though. You'd probably
save more animals' lives by forsaking some of your consumption of fossil
fuels (less driving, more efficient home heating, whatever) than by any
other single step you can take, including not eating meat.
Precious few films have ever tried to view nature from nature's point
of view, rather than anthropomorphizing it. This is a subject of deep
interest to me, on which perhaps at some point I'll teach a course or
curate a film series or both; I have given one lecture-screening on the
subject, which is documented at http://www.fredcamper.com/L/Nature.html
; one of the few counter-examples to the humanizing of nature imagery,
the films of Chris Welsby, are reviewed at
http://www.fredcamper.com/Film/Welsby.html
"The Searchers" would be part of my "series." There's a kind of conflict
throughout the film between the wild and untamable rock formations of
the outdoor scenes and the rectilinear rooms of the indoor ones, limning
the film's wilderness/civilization theme visually. At the end certain
characters enter the dark room of the cabin that we cannot see in
silhouette, in effect entering the civilized space of the movie theater
as well, for which the rooms serve as a metaphor, leaving you-know-who
outside, to "wander forever between the winds."
There's a great short abstract Brakhage film he made in response to
animal docs on TV, "The Lion and the Zebra Make God's Raw Jewels" (see
http://www.fredcamper.com/Film/Brakhage1.html -- sorry about all these
links to my site, don't feel obligated to go to them, but since they're
relevant I include them) He envisions nature as a process of creation
and destruction, of ripping flesh making new things. Some animals, after
all, each other animals to live. Would that we humans would only kill
each other to live, rather than to fuel our SUVs. Cannibalism would seem
more humane to me than much of what we're doing today.
- Fred C.
11260
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun Jun 20, 2004 11:26pm
Subject: The Best of Groucho
">http://fablog.ehrensteinland.com/"> Latest
FaBlog: What Ray Bradbury Needs is a Nice Hot Cup of
"Shut the Fuck Up!"
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11261
From: George Robinson
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 0:10am
Subject: Re: The Best of Groucho
Bless you David and Groucho.
Ray Bradbury, who is one of the most pompous, self-righteous jackoffs ever
to put pen to paper, hasn't written anything since the Grant Administration.
I suppose he thinks he discovered the fact that paper burns at 451degrees
Fahrenheit. He and Michael Moore deserve each other.
By the way, anyone remember Groucho's famous Take One interview at the
height of the Vietnam war, in which he said, "The only thing that can save
this country is Nixon's assassination." John Mitchell allegedly considered
filing charges against Grouch for threatening the life of the President. Boy
do we need Julius Marx now.
George (The only thing that can save this country would be for Washington DC
to be swallowed by a giant sinkhole. Oh, I forgot, it IS a giant sinkhole)
Robinson
Our talk of justice is empty until the
largest battleship has foundered on the
forehead of a drowned man.
--Paul Celan
11262
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 0:20am
Subject: Re: The Best of Groucho
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> ">http://fablog.ehrensteinland.com/"> Latest
> FaBlog: What Ray Bradbury Needs is a Nice Hot Cup of
> "Shut the Fuck Up!"
>
>
> You should be polite to your elders, David. The man has a
right to feel proprietary, although of course in his place I would
feel flattered to have my title quoted in such a clever way.
Also, it's hard not to admire a person who lives in LA and
never learned to drive.
"Every little bird seems to whisper Louise."
JPC
> __________________________________
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> New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages!
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11263
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 0:29am
Subject: Re: The Best of Groucho
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "George Robinson"
wrote:
> George (The only thing that can save this country would be for
Washington DC
> to be swallowed by a giant sinkhole. Oh, I forgot, it IS a giant
sinkhole)
> Robinson
>
>
> Sure sure George, but what do you put in place of the giant
sinkhole, George? Are you ready with alternatives? Is anybody?
We hardly need Ray Bradbury as a scapegoat.
11264
From:
Date: Sun Jun 20, 2004 9:50pm
Subject: Corner in Wheat (D. W. Griffith)
Just saw "Corner in Wheat" (D. W. Griffith, 1909).
This film is just stupendous!
How many political films today are as forceful?
One can see where Dreyer got ideas for Vampyr here.
Griffith films show a repeating fear of being trapped in a room with no exit.
See: The Sealed Room, An Unseen Enemy, A Girl and Her Trust, Broken Blossoms.
This film also looks forward to the couple with the small farm patch in
"Isn't Life Wonderful".
Mike Grost
11265
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 2:24am
Subject: Re: Re: The Best of Groucho
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
> Also, it's hard not to admire a person who
> lives in LA and
> never learned to drive.
>
That would be ME TOO, J-P!
And Joe Dante as well.
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11266
From: Noel Vera
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 2:24am
Subject: Re: Killing an animal
> That may be true, Noel, but it's also a question of
> context. Franju's "Le Sang des Betes" is about
> slaughterhouses. It's not "exploiting" imagery of
> annimal slaughter -- it comes with the subject.
>
> What's question about "Weekend" to me is that the
> real
> deaths of the animals arrives after over an hour's
> worth of fake deaths of humans in staged accidents.
> It
> is as if the real animal deaths were being used to
> give the fake human deaths more power.
>
> Don't get me worng, it's a very great film, but this
> aspect still rankles me. I truly believe Godard
> could
> have done without it.
Agreed, David, though it never occured to me when I
saw Weekend. Graduating from faked human deaths to a
real animal death does seem questionable, from an
ethical and aesthetic point of view. It doesn't turn
my stomach the way I suppose it does some people--it
doesn't have the same visceral impact--but I do
understand and sympathize with that point of view.
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11267
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 4:00am
Subject: Re: The Best of Groucho
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> --- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
> >
> > Also, it's hard not to admire a person who
> > lives in LA and
> > never learned to drive.
> >
> That would be ME TOO, J-P!
>
> And Joe Dante as well.
>
>
> Could we start a Group of non-drivers?
>
>
> __________________________________
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> New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages!
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
11268
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 4:41am
Subject: Re: Re: The Best of Groucho
Mais Oui!
It's not as difficult to get around L.A. by bus as you
would imagine. It just requires proper planning.
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
>
> wrote:
> > --- jpcoursodon wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > Also, it's hard not to admire a person
> who
> > > lives in LA and
> > > never learned to drive.
> > >
> > That would be ME TOO, J-P!
> >
> > And Joe Dante as well.
> >
> >
> > Could we start a Group of non-drivers?
> >
> >
> > __________________________________
> > Do you Yahoo!?
> > New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages!
> > http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
>
>
__________________________________
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11269
From:
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 0:55am
Subject: Re: Re: The Best of Groucho
Well, you can add me to the list of non-drivers, along with Fred (I presume),
David, Joe Dante, and Ray Bradbury. I'm apt to begin quoting Tim Holt in
"Ambersons" on this subject.
But, gee, I actually like Bradbury's writing and I love two films which were
taken from his work: Truffaut's "Fahrenheit 451" (natch) and Jack Clayton's
"Something Wicked This Way Comes." (I've also heard great things about Norman
Lloyd's episode of "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour," "The Jar," adapted from a
Bradbury story.) Granted, it's the mise-en-scene in these films which makes them
great, not the texts they're taken from, but I also genuinely enjoy Bradbury's
fiction. Oh, well.
Peter
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
11270
From: Fred Camper
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 5:35am
Subject: Re: Re: The Best of Groucho (now very OT)
ptonguette@a... wrote:
>Well, you can add me to the list of non-drivers, along with Fred (I presume)..
>
Actually, I've had a license since about age 23. There are people who
have been in cars I was driving who would advise others against having
that experience, and I've never owned a car, but I've driven across
country a few times, also in rental trucks, and to far northern Canada
several times, and Chicago to New York and back a few times, and between
New York and Boston many times. The last time I drove a car or truck was
about three years ago, though.
Getting around L A. by bus can take forever, in my limited experience,
but this city's streets are quite navigable by bicycle, or at least the
basin from downtown to the ocean at Santa Monica is and as far south as
LAX -- I've not biked into the Valley. It also felt safer to me in terms
of danger from cars than I might have expected -- safer than Chicago.
- Fred C.
11271
From: Damien Bona
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 6:09am
Subject: Re: The Best of Groucho
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ptonguette@a... wrote:
> Well, you can add me to the list of non-drivers, along with Fred (I
presume),
> David, Joe Dante, and Ray Bradbury. I'm apt to begin quoting Tim
Holt in
> "Ambersons" on this subject.
Peter, I could see not driving in New Orleans but I can't imagine it
in Columbus or in Maryland. Are you going to get your license? (It's
must faster to get to the movies. :o) )
(I've also heard great things about Norman
> Lloyd's episode of "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour," "The Jar," adapted
>from a Bradbury story.)
Norman Lloyd directed "The Jar"? That's a great episode, perhaps the
best of the ones Hitchcock himself didn't direct. I saw it as a kid
and have never forgotten it -- creeped the bejeesus out of me.
11272
From: Ruy Gardnier
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 6:06am
Subject: Re: Re: Zach Attack/Sallitt Answer/Enlightenment
Kevin: "Well, Dan, at the very least, I can tell you that Adorno was a
German Jew who
got out of Nazi Germany early (1934). His exile was, at best, bewildering
for
him (as it was for countless others, e.g. Kracauer most definitely). Plus,
not long before co-writing Dialectic of Enlightenment, he had lost his
friend
Walter Benjamin in 1940 to the Nazi scourge (and god know who else). So this
is
where the extreme pessimism comes from."
Adorno's first article for a schoolpaper was dedicated to Adolf Hitler.
Walter Benjamin shot himself, in fact. Fear of getting caught by the Nazis
in France or by the Franquists in Spain.
Kevin: "He was a big supporter of Schoenberg and the twelve tone system.
But he was prickly about some individual Schoenberg works as well. I'm not
sure he ever prasied a film, certainly no Hollywood product at the time of
his
exile. He's most famous for his "no poetry after Auschwitz" bit but wound up
pumping at least one post-Auschwitz poet (I forget who exactly but I have
the
name written down somewhere if you want to know). I mean, after all, this is
a
guy who ripped on slippers!"
That might be Paul Celan, isn't it?
ruy
11273
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 7:37am
Subject: Re: John Dickson Carr Centenary
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
> 2006 will be the centenary of the great mystery writer John Dickson
Carr.
> To celebrate, mystery scholar Tony Medawar has put out this
invitation on the
> discussion group GAdetection. I know we have some Carr admirers and
mystery
> authors on a_film_by, so I am sharing it here.
> "Dangerous Crossing" (Joseph M. Newman, 1953) is perhaps the best
film
> version of a Carr story.
> Mike Grost
I'll run to Eddie Brandt's as soon as I can. But have you seen the
film of The Burning Court? It's impossible to find. It was also done
on tv back in the Golden Age, and very well, too. I believe Seth Holt
actually directed some Colonel Marches for British tv in the 50s. And
someone, in 2006, should be putting out a DVD of the radio shows, as
was done w. Welles. Pascal Bonitzer, former leading light of CdC and
now filmmaker, is a Carr fan. He should film one - my first choice
for a film would be Problem of the Green Capsule, in which 5 people
carefully watching, as part of a psychological experiment, a staged
murder that turns out to be real give different accounts of what they
saw, while a film taken of the event differs from all of them -- and
is itself disproven at the end.
Then of course there's Tod Browning's last film, Miracles for Sale,
which is based on Death from a Tophat by Carr's good friend and rival
Clayton Rawson.
11274
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 7:40am
Subject: Re: Broadway Bill
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Henrik Sylow"
wrote:
> Paramount will release "Broadway Bill" in a remastered DVD version
> August 31 for $14,95 (list). Same day and same price: "Rose
> Tattoo", "The Country Girl" and "Black Ochid".
>
> Henrik
Manny Farber wrote a terrific article about Broadway Bill, for some
reason. It's in Negative Space.
11275
From:
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 7:53am
Subject: Re: John Dickson Carr Centenary
I have not seen most of the Carr adaptations! I did not like "The Man in the
Cloak". And the fairly recent TV remake of "Dangerous Crossing", called
"Treacherous Crossing", was dullsville.
Stuff I want to see:
"Colonel March of Scotland Yard" (1953) was a TV series based on Carr's short
story collection "The Department of Queer Complaints" (1939-1941). It starred
Boris Karloff, no less. Had no idea that Seth Holt was involved - I'm a huge
fan of Holt, just like most other auteurists.
The US TV version of "The Burning Court" (1960) was scripted by the Kelley
Roos detective-novel team. (The Roos' detective heroine was played in film at
various times by Loretta Young and Brigitte Bardot - now THERE'S versatility in
casting!)
In 1963, a feature film version of "The Burning Court" was directed by Julien
Duvivier. It starred Edith Scob and Jean-Claude Brialy. Stills from it always
used to be on the back of Carr paperbacks. But I have never had a chance to
see the film - and have been looking for it for 40 years now!
Carr is one of America's most imaginative writers.
If people on the list have never read a Carr mystery novel, the clear place
to start is "The Three Coffins" (1935). I love "The Problem of the Green
Capsule" (1939), too! In Britain it is known as "The Black Spectacles".
Carr rarely wrote for film or TV. But he had a prolific career as a radio
scriptwriter. Some of his best scripts were collected in the volume "The Dead
Sleep Lightly" (1983). It is available in a lot of libraries, and is very good.
It was edited by Carr authority Douglas G. Greene, who wrote Carr's biography,
"The Man Who Explained Miracles".
Mike Grost
author of the Jacob Black "Impossible Crime" stories at:
http://members.aol.com/MG4273/mymyst.htm
A proud follower of the Carr tradition!
11276
From: Adrian Martin
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 1:15pm
Subject: Re: Adorno
Ruy, thanks for bringing back the Adorno thread! Because I wanted to comment
on Kevin's comment: "I'm not sure he ever praised a film, certainly no
Hollywood product at the time of his exile."
Without getting too reading-list pedantic, there's a lot more to Adorno's
thought (and output) than THE CULTURE INDUSTRY and a quotable quote about
poetry after Auschwitz. The best source of intimate info about Adorno's
feelings about film - including Hollywood film - is the great
Adorno-Benjamin correspondence. And the best recent text about the
Adorno-cinema relation in all its dimensions is by Nicole Brenez in the 50th
issue of TRAFIC.
Brenez mentions (without even getting into the substance of her complex
argument in this essay) the following data: Adorno's work on music in film
done with Eisler refers to films by Ivens, Ford, Losey. He met many
filmmakers in Hollywood, including Chaplin, Wilder and Lang. He launched the
career of Alexander Kluge, his student, by introducing him to Lang and
thereby getting him a job on the set of HINDU TOMB! His specific essays on
film include "Kierkegaard Problematizes Chaplin" (try singing that one to a
Cole Porter tune, guys!) in 1930, "Chaplin in Malibu" (1964) and
"Transparencies on Film" (1966). (His collaborator Horkeimer wrote a 1949
piece called "After the Cinema" which Nicole sees in a duet with Barthes'
"On Leaving the Movie Theatre".) And in the letters to Benjamin, there are
many references to passing movies, stars, genres, comedies, melodramas ...
Benjamin, in turn, urged Adorno to see "the admirable OLD DARK HOUSE" !
There were a lot of angles to Adorno. I like his dialogue from the 60s with
Ernst Bloch, where you get more of Adorno's interest in utopian thought than
is evident in the more pessimistic culture-industry writings. But pessimism
is of course also Adorno's glory! Nicole's text on him is called "The
Cinema, Despite Everything" ...
Adrian
11277
From: filipefurtado
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 1:19pm
Subject: Re: Re: The Best of Groucho
>
> Peter, I could see not driving in
New Orleans but I can't imagine it
> in Columbus or in Maryland. Are you
going to get your license? (It's
> must faster to get to the movies.
:o) )
Well, after Fred survived a few days
in Brasilia by bicycle anything is
possible.
Add me to the list of non-drivers. I
tried to get license, but after while
I dsecide that I and cars weren't made
for each others. Actually I do nearly
everything by foot.
Filipe
>
>
> (I've also heard great things about
Norman
> > Lloyd's episode of "The Alfred
Hitchcock Hour," "The Jar," adapted
> >from a Bradbury story.)
>
> Norman Lloyd directed "The Jar"?
That's a great episode, perhaps the
> best of the ones Hitchcock himself
didn't direct. I saw it as a kid
> and have never forgotten it --
creeped the bejeesus out of me.
>
>
>
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11278
From: Fred Camper
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 1:45pm
Subject: Re: Re: Confession (Alexander Sokurov)
Ideale Audience replied to my query that they don't release the Sokurov
videos for individuals but are considering such a release and will let
me know. I have no idea how they'll price them though; that $14,000
price is scary, even if it's just for museums.
OT: Bicycling in Brasilia felt reasonably safe. It's bicycling in
Felipe's city, São Paulo, that was a real challenge.
- Fred C.
11279
From: joe_mcelhaney
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 2:04pm
Subject: Re: Lang and Adorno
I would also add to Adrian's post (and this may be in Nicole's essay,
which I haven't read) that Lang and Adorno regularly socialized in
California in the 1940s before Adorno returned to Germany in 1949.
After that, they corresponded for many years. (All of these surviving
letters are housed in the Adorno Archives, deposited there, I
believe, after Lily Latte gave them to Thomas Elsaesser.) And while
Adorno did indeed arrange for Kluge to be an assistant to Lang on the
Indian films, Kluge eventuallly became a source of embarrassment to
Adorno when Kluge, in 1966, publicly claimed that on the third day of
shooting TIGER, over a dispute with Brauner, Lang stopped directing
the film and simply sat around and supervised the shooting instead.
Kluge claimed that out of this he did not learn how to make films but
only how movies are made in Germany. Adorno wrote to Lang,
apologizing for this and finding in Kluge's behavior, "something
impossible, humanly speaking...for it was a question of tact, of
upbringing, and quite simply, of humanity."
11280
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 2:27pm
Subject: Re: Adorno
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Adrian Martin wrote:
His specific essays on
> film include "Kierkegaard Problematizes Chaplin" (try singing that
one to a
> Cole Porter tune, guys!)
I'm sure Cole would have come up with a good rhyme for Kierkegaard.
Remember: "If your blonde won't respond when you flatter'er/Tell her
what Tony told Cleopaterer." Not to mention those risque anal rhymes
involving Coriolanus and the Astor Bar...
But seriously Adrian thanks for the info. I have to get that TRAFIC
issue. I hear it is mammoth!
11281
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 2:38pm
Subject: To drive or not to drive/Tavernier
Since in the USA at least (and most so-called "civilized"
places) "you are what you drive" doesn't that leave the non-driver
with an identity problem?
To get back on topic, sort of, you can add Bertrand Tavernier to the
list of non-drivers (so we have two non-driving directors thus far,
Dante and BT).
I take this opportunity (?) to recommend Tavernier's "Laisser passer"
which has been out on DVD here in the US for a few weeks. I know the
Cahiers/Libe crowd reviled it (and IMHO Tesson's piece in Cahiers was
shameful)but it's really one of his better films, and even if you
have reservations about it it should be of interest to anyone who
likes "old" French cinema and is curious about what was going on in
the film world there during the German occupation.
JPC
11282
From: Travis Miles
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 2:43pm
Subject: Re: Re: Lang and Adorno
Kluge also became a source of embarrassment to Adorno when he clandestinely
shot footage of him and included it in Abschied von Gestern.
On 6/21/04 10:04 AM, "joe_mcelhaney" wrote:
> I would also add to Adrian's post (and this may be in Nicole's essay,
> which I haven't read) that Lang and Adorno regularly socialized in
> California in the 1940s before Adorno returned to Germany in 1949.
> After that, they corresponded for many years. (All of these surviving
> letters are housed in the Adorno Archives, deposited there, I
> believe, after Lily Latte gave them to Thomas Elsaesser.) And while
> Adorno did indeed arrange for Kluge to be an assistant to Lang on the
> Indian films, Kluge eventuallly became a source of embarrassment to
> Adorno when Kluge, in 1966, publicly claimed that on the third day of
> shooting TIGER, over a dispute with Brauner, Lang stopped directing
> the film and simply sat around and supervised the shooting instead.
> Kluge claimed that out of this he did not learn how to make films but
> only how movies are made in Germany. Adorno wrote to Lang,
> apologizing for this and finding in Kluge's behavior, "something
> impossible, humanly speaking...for it was a question of tact, of
> upbringing, and quite simply, of humanity."
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
11283
From: Fred Camper
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 3:04pm
Subject: Re: To drive or not to drive/Tavernier
jpcoursodon wrote:
>Since in the USA at least (and most so-called "civilized"
>places) "you are what you drive" doesn't that leave the non-driver
>with an identity problem?
>
>
>
Maybe our identity is to reject this pathetic state of affairs....
- Fred C.
11284
From: Craig Keller
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 3:47pm
Subject: Re: Re: Adorno
>
> I'm sure Cole would have come up with a good rhyme for Kierkegaard.
> Remember: "If your blonde won't respond when you flatter'er/Tell her
> what Tony told Cleopaterer." Not to mention those risque anal rhymes
> involving Coriolanus and the Astor Bar...
Which in part would then explain this classic lyric by The Smiths
(well, Morrissey) -- "As Antony said to Cleopatra / As he opened the
crate of ale -- / 'Oh, I saaaay.... / [CHORUS] 'Some girls are bigger
than others.' "
cmk.
11285
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 4:14pm
Subject: Re: To drive or not to drive/Tavernier
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
>
>
> jpcoursodon wrote:
>
> >Since in the USA at least (and most so-called "civilized"
> >places) "you are what you drive" doesn't that leave the non-driver
> >with an identity problem?
> >
> >
> >
> Maybe our identity is to reject this pathetic state of affairs....
>
> - Fred C.
I made my decision not to drive after seeing NIGHT AND FOG in high
school. I was born and raised in the San Frenando Valley and unlike
the rest of LA it has few bike lanes though the traffic is lighter.
As for the bus system, as David said, you can do it with planning in
advance, and the buses now have bike racks.
For DVD renters in LA Cinefile will give you a free rental with a
regular rental if you travel there by bike. Hadrian told me that so
far I'm the only customer who makes use of it.
Richard
11286
From: joe_mcelhaney
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 4:22pm
Subject: Re: Adorno
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Craig Keller
wrote:
> >
> > I'm sure Cole would have come up with a good rhyme for
Kierkegaard.
> > Remember: "If your blonde won't respond when you flatter'er/Tell
her
> > what Tony told Cleopaterer." Not to mention those risque anal
rhymes
> > involving Coriolanus and the Astor Bar...
>
> Which in part would then explain this classic lyric by The Smiths
> (well, Morrissey) -- "As Antony said to Cleopatra / As he opened
the
> crate of ale -- / 'Oh, I saaaay.... / [CHORUS] 'Some girls are
bigger
> than others.' "
>
> cmk.
On that note and to return to Cole Porter for a moment, don't
forget: "When your baby is pleading for pleasure/Let her sample your
Measure for Measure."
They didn't use that lyric in the movie.
11287
From: Elizabeth Anne Nolan
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 4:47pm
Subject: Re: To drive or not to drive OT
Biking was not so popular when I was at BUCKNELL; I
never had a bike lock as everyone on campus seemed
to know the sole bike belonged to me. (1969-73)
When I moved to Cambridge, biking seemed more
prevalent and theft common. We had the snap-off
wheels which helped prevent some theft. I remember
the first cycling helmet (BELL) I purchased was from a
mountain climbing equipment store ... better than
nothing. And I remember riding in several inches
of snow.
Now my biking is limited to Coronado and I have
a Dahon folding cycle for storage in my office area.
I've cut car trips over the bridge from almost
daily to just a few times a week and I've
avoided LA for a few months ... so driving mileage
is lower.
11288
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 4:54pm
Subject: Re: Natue, partly (ineviably) OT (was: Killing an animal...)
> I do think if you're going to eat a killed animal, you should be
willing
> to look at its killing (not at a "crunch film" but at killings like
> those of the animals you actually eat), so I agree with Andy
there. If
> looking at its killing upsets you inconsolably, maybe you should
ask
> why, and maybe even consider vegetarianism.
I'm not willing to watch an animal die. But I'll eat it, after it's
been prepared for me. End of story. I've considered vegetarianism,
but decided against it, since I'd have to give up...eating meat.
> That doesn't mean that you, Jaime, have to like watching this --
Nor do I have to watch it at all. I refuse to recognize the moral
authority which says otherwise.
> and I *do*
> think you're supposed to feel revulsion at the burning donkey tail
in
> Balthazar, that's part of the point, the animal as victim of
generations
> of cruelty.
I'll grant that.
>
> Sam writes, "I think there's something inherently bizarre about
the fact
> that people who eat meat would so vehemently condemn the slaughter
of
> animals for 'art.'" I agree. In this connection, in many Western
> countries, and especially in the U.S., the average person eats far
more
> "nutrition" (calories and protein both) than is needed to keep the
body
> healthy. And then we feed all kinds of protein and calories to our
pets,
> and put all kinds of fertilizer on our lawns, consuming the
planet's
> resources in "unnecessary" activities. I think if it's OK to
overeat and
> feed our pets meat and put fertilizers on our lawns it should be
OK to
> kill an animal (quickly and as painlessly as possible) for the
sake of a
> film. Better, in fact, if the film is a great one: since when is
> overeating or feeding our pets meat better than producing great
art?
Overeating, okay. But eating meat, that's not something I'm
prepared to give up right now.
-Jaime
11289
From: Craig Keller
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 5:21pm
Subject: Godard and Aspect Ratios
Thought many of you might find this interesting. Just posted by
Richard Brody to the Godard listserv --
In the current (June, 2004) issue of Cahiers du cinema, Jean-Luc Godard
has
published a brief essay, "Formats," comparing the moral and political
implications of different aspect ratios. I will not go into too much
detail here
because in this e-mail I cannot show the images and drawings that are
integral to
it, but for the benefit of those who don't read French, I'll translate
literally the foreword:
"Jean-Luc Godard had wished that Notre musique be projected in 1/37, a
format
very rarely available in movie theaters today. On the basis of two
frame
enlargements from his film and of sketches comparing the different
formats in
current use, he provides evidence in these documents entrusted to
Cahiers of the
effects of the modifications to which films are so often subjected."
The evidence presented is favorable to the 1.37/1 format.
R.
11290
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 6:00pm
Subject: Re: Re: Adorno (and Cole Porter)
--- joe_mcelhaney wrote:
> On that note and to return to Cole Porter for a
> moment, don't
> forget: "When your baby is pleading for pleasure/Let
> her sample your
> Measure for Measure."
>
> They didn't use that lyric in the movie.
>
>
And don't forget "Red Hot and Blue":
"Due to the tragic lowness of my brow,
All music that's highbrow,
gets me upset.
Each time I hear a strain of Stravinsky's,
I hurry to Minsky's,
and try to forget.
I don't like Schubert's music or Schumann's,
I'm one of those humans,
Who only goes in for Berlin and Vincent Youmans,
So whenever some musical man I meet
I always murmur -- tout suite:
If you want to thrill me and drill me for your crew,
then sing me a melody that's red hot and blue,
I can't take Seblius or Delius,
But I know I'd throw my best pal away -- for
Calloway!"
etc.
11291
From: Andy Rector
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 7:03pm
Subject: Re: Godard and Aspect Ratios
Where did this post appear? Is it a group like this one? How can I join?
Yours,
andy
11292
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 8:09pm
Subject: Re: Adorno (and Cole Porter)
-
> --- joe_mcelhaney wrote:
>
> > On that note and to return to Cole Porter for a
> > moment, don't
> > forget: "When your baby is pleading for pleasure/Let
> > her sample your
> > Measure for Measure."
> >
> > They didn't use that lyric in the movie.
> >
> >
>
Of course! In the same show, the lines from "Too Darn Hot"
According to the Kinsey report
Ev'ry average man you know
Much prefers to play his favorite sport
When the temperature is low
became in the movie: "According to the latest report/Ev'ry average
man you know/Much prefers his baby to court/When the temperature is
low". The Production Code wouldn't even let you use the name "Kinsey".
Just after KISS ME KATE's "measure for measure" double entendre
there is an even more risque one (Just recite an occasional
sonnet/And your lap'll have Honey upon it). Can't remember whether or
not it made the movie (if it did it must have been because the
censors did'nt get the joke).
11293
From: Damien Bona
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 8:20pm
Subject: Re: Adorno (and Cole Porter)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
> Of course! In the same show, the lines from "Too Darn Hot"
> According to the Kinsey report
> Ev'ry average man you know
> Much prefers to play his favorite sport
> When the temperature is low
>
> became in the movie: "According to the latest report/Ev'ry
average
> man you know/Much prefers his baby to court/When the temperature is
> low". The Production Code wouldn't even let you use the
>name "Kinsey".
The original lyric has finally made it to celluloid. It's heard in
Bill Condon's upcoming "Kinsey."
11294
From: Aaron Graham
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 8:22pm
Subject: Re: Godard and Aspect Ratios
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Andy Rector"
wrote:
> Where did this post appear? Is it a group like this one? How can I
join?
>
> Yours,
> andy
http://lists.topica.com/lists/godard/
I'm a member and I find it to be the most intelligent place online
that discusses Godard (well, along with this one!)
-Aaron
11295
From: Damien Bona
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 8:36pm
Subject: Re: Adorno (and Cole Porter)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
>
> I'm sure Cole would have come up with a good rhyme for Kierkegaard.
Offhand, I can't think of a song that has a rhyme for Kierkegaard,
but in "Isn't It A Pity," Ira Gershwin wrote,
"
"My nights were sour,
Spent with Schopenhauer."
And Comden and Green in Wonderful Town's "Pass That Football":
"I never learned to read,
Mother Goose or Andre Gide."
11296
From: Craig Keller
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 8:48pm
Subject: Re: Re: Godard and Aspect Ratios
> Where did this post appear? Is it a group like this one? How can I
> join?
>
It's called "Godard" at Topica.com -- or, godard@t... -- I think
you just send an email saying subscribe-godard@t... or something?
The only thing to be aware of is that for the last few months, the
messages all have these text ads appended not just to the bottom of the
message, but also to the top, making posts hard to read and ugly. I
guess Topica needs the revenue. (One benefit it has to Yahoo! Groups
-- although the ads to me are a pretty big drawback -- is that the
search engine on the site is a lot better, if I recall. But it doesn't
get nearly the volume as this list.)
craig.
11297
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 8:51pm
Subject: Re: Re: Adorno (and Cole Porter)
FABULOUS!
Have you seen it Damien? I'm longing to.
--- Damien Bona wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
>
> wrote:
>
> > Of course! In the same show, the lines from
> "Too Darn Hot"
> > According to the Kinsey report
> > Ev'ry average man you know
> > Much prefers to play his favorite
> sport
> > When the temperature is low
> >
> > became in the movie: "According to the latest
> report/Ev'ry
> average
> > man you know/Much prefers his baby to court/When
> the temperature is
> > low". The Production Code wouldn't even let you
> use the
> >name "Kinsey".
>
> The original lyric has finally made it to celluloid.
> It's heard in
> Bill Condon's upcoming "Kinsey."
>
>
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!
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11298
From: Elizabeth Anne Nolan
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 8:59pm
Subject: no man dies for love
... our hero cannot be lost until his tale is to told ...
for heaven be thanked, we live in such an age where
no man dies for love, except upon a stage.
Comes from the narration in TOM JONES when Tom
is defending the 'virtue' of his Sophie.
Caused me to think of films in which a
'man dies for love.' A TALE of TWO CITIES comes
to mind.
Others?
11299
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 9:07pm
Subject: Re: Adorno (and Cole Porter)
.
>
>
> Offhand, I can't think of a song that has a rhyme for Kierkegaard,
> but in "Isn't It A Pity," Ira Gershwin wrote,
> "
>
> "My nights were sour,
> Spent with Schopenhauer."
>
>
I love that song, even though Alec Wilder (with whose tastes in
songs I usually agree) disparaged it in his great book. Just before
your quote we have:
"Imagine all the lonely years you've wasted
Fishing for salmon,
Losing at backgammon."
Wasn't that cute?
But still going back to Porter, the verse to "Brush Up" has
Euripides rhymed with "with ease".
11300
From: Michael Lieberman
Date: Mon Jun 21, 2004 9:23pm
Subject: Re: no man dies for love
"Last Tango in Paris" and "Pierrot le fou".
----- Original Message -----
From: "Elizabeth Anne Nolan"
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 2004 20:59:24 -0000
To: a_film_by@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [a_film_by] no man dies for love
... our hero cannot be lost until his tale is to told ...
for heaven be thanked, we live in such an age where
no man dies for love, except upon a stage.
Comes from the narration in TOM JONES when Tom
is defending the 'virtue' of his Sophie.
Caused me to think of films in which a
'man dies for love.' A TALE of TWO CITIES comes
to mind.
Others?
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