Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 1:55pm
Subject: Re: More Big Red One
Bill, can you change your name to Alan Smithee in the credits until
someone fixes the image?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Gabe Klinger"
>
> At the screening in Chicago I brought up the crappy-looking
> image to Richard Schickel in the Q&A.
16902
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 2:59pm
Subject: Re: Eastwood, Cimino, Bogdanovich, Spielberg (was: The Winner is)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
>
> Eastwood. Have seen five films over the years: Firefox, Heartbreak
Ridge,
> Bronco Billy, Play Misty for Me, Midnight in the Garden of Good
and Evil. Always
> found Eastwood's work utterly without merit on any level -
terminally dull,
> visually dead, with no entertainment value at all, let alone any
signs of
> artistry.
Well, five films out of 23 or 24 is not much, especially
considering that most of them are not among his best.I could pick
out five titles out of Hawks's output and declare his work "utterly
without merit". You really should see "The Outlaw Josey
Wales", "Bird", "A Perfect World" and also (although I think they've
been somewhat overrated) "Unforgiven" and "Mystic River". And "The
Bridges of Madison County" (which i think was underrated).
But since joining a_film_by, have gradually realized that I'm the
only
> auteurist on Earth who does not think Eastwood is a great master!
Clearly
> something is wrong here. I am really Not Getting It. It might be a
matter of
> personality clash. I really dislike the characters in Eastwood's
films. I would dread
> spending any time with these people in real life, and do not enjoy
seeing them
> on screen. Eastwood is also my least favorite actor in the modern
cinema.
There are lots of great films whose characters are not likeable
and I wouldn't spend any time with them in real life either. Would
you like to spend some time with Ethan Edwards, or Aldrich's Mike
Hammer? You can hardly base a judgment on such criteria.
16903
From: samfilms2003
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 3:26pm
Subject: Re: More Big Red One
I haven't seen this "reconstruction" but, if evidence that it went through a video
step(s) is glaringly obvious then I think one could reasonably say they failed at it.
I won't say a digital intermediate is neccessarily undetectable - although in some
cases it can be. But it shouldn't hit you over the head.
I think you're absolutely doing the right thing to call this stuff to account,
the potential for using DI in reconstruction is great, but the potential for
abuse and cutting corners exists too.
-Sam
16904
From: Adrian Martin
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 4:00pm
Subject: re: More Big Red One
Gabe: "I am feeling a little demoralized ... "
Gabe, I think I speak for all of us in the A Film By Correct Version and
Ratio Police when I say: we are right behind you, buddy!
While you were at it, you should also have blasted Schickel on his atrocious
DVD commentary for ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA - the worst 'critical
accompaniment' I have yet heard in this medium.
Your comment about being 'disturbed' about a film of the celluloid era being
dragged into the digital era is haunting. I was just watching today the
digital restoration supplement on the Criterion release of Cassavetes'
SHADOWS - part of the absolutely amazing JC box set - and it was fascinating
to hear the logic spelt out concerning how much dirt and dust they decided
to remove digitally - some, maybe most, but not all - out of respect for the
film's original 16mm rawness! These kinds of slightly screwy
rationalisations are being made all the time in digital restorations.
Sometimes it is this very notion of an absolutely 'scrubbed clean', pristine
print which can be paradoxically both terrific (because you finally see the
film after so many bad dupes, etc) and disquieting in the digital era: I am
remembering how Lawrence Alloway once argued, for instance, that an
absolutely integral and crucial part of cinema's particular 'aura' is the
visible ageing of its celluloid copies - time and history inscribing
themselves on the print, perhaps a very Straubian idea!
Adrian
16905
From: Adrian Martin
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 4:05pm
Subject: re: Heaven's Gate
Saw the Kirk restoration of HEAVEN'S GATE today on a big, big screen. No
subtitles, no freeze frame - and, apart from a very subtle and very
momentary colour effect in the roller skating scene, no sepia.
So did Cimino actually have a hand in this new version? I remain a bit
confused about the status of this new version - is it indeed 'authorised' by
Cimino?
Adrian
16906
From: thebradstevens
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 4:14pm
Subject: Versions of A CHINESE BOOKIE (was Re: More Big Red One)
"part of the absolutely amazing JC box set"
Speaking of which, I was delighted to finally obtain the 'original'
134-minute version of THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE - the only
print of this I'd seen previously was dubbed into German.
Curiously, the scene in which Cosmo (Ben Gazzara) auditions a new
dancer for his club was accompanied in the German-dubbed 134-minute
version by a Bo Harwood (I assume) song which I guess must be
entitled 'Evening'. All prints of the 109-minute version that I've
seen use a different Harwood song, 'Late Afternoon', during this
scene. But both the long and short versions on the DVD contain 'Late
Afternoon'. So it would seem that even the long version exists in
different versions!
16907
From: thebradstevens
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 4:18pm
Subject: Re: Heaven's Gate
"So did Cimino actually have a hand in this new version? I remain a
bit confused about the status of this new version - is it
indeed 'authorised' by Cimino?"
I gather that it isn't - that the restoration simply involved
repairing damage to the negative.
So what did you think of the film?
16908
From:
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 0:23pm
Subject: Re: Eastwood, Cimino, Bogdanovich, Spielberg (was: The Winner...
Certainly was not trying to give a final report on Eastwood. Just an interim
response to the five films I've seen.
I feel socially uncomfortable around Eastwood's characters. They seem to me
to represent a certain kind of macho conformism, a Regular Guy. People who
believe that society is created for Regular Guys, and that everyone else should go
hide under a rock, and leave all jobs, life and existance to Real Men. I've
met such people in real life - twenty years ago I worked for a boss who never
tired of a constant stream of anti-black, anti-Catholic and anti-gay remarks.
Eastwood's world seems like this.
Eastwood seems the prinicpal spokeman for homophobia in American film, from
his star turns in The Eiger Sanction and Magnum Force, down to Midnight in the
Garden of Good and Evil. The last has a painful, Jesse Helms like look at
anti-gay stereotypes: the cruel gay rich man (played by Kevin Spacey) who lacks
human feelings and will gleefully hurt anyone who gets in his way; and his
exploitative boy toy (played by Jude Law), out for what he can get. Both seem
subhuman and without the slightest shred of feelings or decency.
Clint Eastwood's popularity always seemed to me to be a political statement.
He represented a way for American men to vote for a right wing, totally macho
man as their ideal. Eastwood seems to have no talent as an actor - he is about
as wooden a person who ever stepped in front of a camera. But many people
want to see a man who says "Go Ahead - Make My Day". Or who will pull an earring
out of a black man's ear (Heartbreak Ridge). That scene hurt just to look at
it!
Mike Grost
16909
From:
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 4:26pm
Subject: Re: More Big Red One
>
> Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2004 02:00:37 +1000
> From: Adrian Martin
>Subject: re: More Big Red One
>
>While you were at it, you should also have blasted Schickel on his atrocious
>DVD commentary for ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA - the worst 'critical
>accompaniment' I have yet heard in this medium.
Obviously you haven't listened to Schickel on LA DOLCE VITA, a waste
of time even on the subway. Three hours of nattering and he doesn't
get at a single interesting thing about the movie -- though he does
manage to mention that it was the first to depict the papparrazi
about four times. (A point of no real interest, at least compared to
the movie's very obvious and lasting artistic merits.) I read a
number of reviews of the movie after watching it again recently (the
first was almost 1o years ago, then on 16, this time on 35) and was
surprised to find that the movie seems ill-served even by its
defenders, a lot of whom seem overly obsessed with Fellini's
Catholicism. (Snore.) I mean yes, maybe the "fish" in the last scene
is a Christ symbol, but given the crabs spilling out of its dead
mouth, isn't it more relevantly a perverse birth image, particularly
in a movie where the worst insult Marcello can lob as his fiancee is
to call her "maternal"? By far the most interesting aspect for me was
the focus on the terror of mediocrity, also a major force in I
VITELLONI -- and, incidentally, the upcoming SIDEWAYS, by Fellini
devotee Alexander Payne.
By the by, and speaking of "disturbing" restorations, the
side-by-side comparison on the Koch Lorber DVD of DOLCE VITA makes it
look like the restored version has been not only cleaned up, but
darkened and significantly de-grained (a la such notorious discs as
SUNSET BLVD and CITIZEN KANE). Has anyone intimately familiar with
the film (David E?) seen the new disc? And if so, thoughts?
Sam
16910
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 4:41pm
Subject: Re: Re: BIRTH OF A NATION - 1st anything?
> Several prominent feature-length films had been released prior to
> Birth. The Italians produced epic national pageants such as "Cabiria"
> (1913) and "Quo Vadis?" (1912). Even earlier, the French had
> formulated Film d'Arte, a company devoted to releasing hoary canned
> theatre productions; the reign of Film d'Arte culminated in the
> release of the four-reel "Queen Elizabeth" (1912), starring Sarah
> Bernhardt.
My understanding is that QUEEN ELIZABETH is generally considered the first
American feature film. Its success supposedly established Jesse Lasky and
Famous Players, which eventually evolved into Paramount.
But I think *THE* BIRTH OF A NATION was influential in a way that makes
BREATHLESS and KANE look like non-events. When I worked on the AFI
1911-1920 catalog, we screened a whole bunch of random films from the
teens. The 1915 films, without any exception that I recall, used a
proscenium-like frame, cutting within scenes only on rare occasions. But
the 1916 crop was altogether different: most of the films were already
using Griffith's codification of decoupage, with master shots, closeups
for dramatic effect, cross-cutting, etc. - Dan
16911
From: Elizabeth Nolan
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 4:51pm
Subject: transitional cuts
> Message: 9
> Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2004 09:58:04 -0700 (PDT)
> From: David Ehrenstein
> Subject: Re: Re: Blier, editing
>
> --- cairnsdavid1967
>>
>> The greatest cut of all time, just about, is from O'Toole blowing out
>> a match to the sun rising in the desert. And there's a nice one where
>> he holds up his new arab robes to blow in the wind and we then cut to
>> him wearing them as he gallops along on a camel. The epic sensibility
>> gets a welcome shot in the arm from this briskness.
>
> It's neck-and-neck for greatest cut honors with the bone-to-spaceship
> cut in "2001"
I agree these are interesting cuts, but I wonder what it is that makes
our eye so entertained by these. Is it the 'super-imposition' of two
different tho related images in the same compositional space that
suddenly delights the eye especially when the story is advanced, ala
the bone-to-spaceship?
One script I am working on has the son character playing pinball...
then followed by the put-upon mother character 'pinballing' her way up
a staircase crowded with all sorts of junk left by the son and daughter
on the staircase. It works in my mind.
Elizabeth
16912
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 5:06pm
Subject: Bazin (Was: Film textbooks are OT?)
> If film textbooks foster the illusion that Film Studies is a homogenous
> discipline, to paraphrase you, Bazin fosters the illusion that the
> ontology of the photographic image is a homogenous idea. He doesn't
> introduce doubt, he doesn't provide counter arguments, etc. This is not
> a negative critique of his writing. Rather, as I've been trying to say,
> most, if not all, writing fosters these kinds of illusions.
Maybe I'll pipe up on Bazin's behalf, though I don't get the feeling that
you are singling him out in particular. Your "most, if not all" argument
might be what really requires discussion. As Barthes might have pointed
out, your critique runs the risk of imparting to your own words the
mythological quality of being somehow a not-closed system.
Anyway, the "Ontology" essay that you singled out ends with this rather
unusual one-sentence paragraph: "On the other hand, however, cinema is
also a language." No previous mention of this topic, no follow-up. It
almost sounds as if Bazin is part of a lecture seminar, and is giving an
introduction to Christian Metz, up next. On the closed-open continuum,
surely this comment must land closer to the open side?
Apart from this, Bazin inserts a few "It is true that...however...."
passages in an attempt to bring imagined counterarguments into the
discussion. Ditto his many footnotes, many of which deal with
complications to his argument - he shows a marked desire not to simplify
his discourse. Of course, one can argue that the counterarguments that a
writer is capable of imagining will inevitably belong to the writer's same
closed system. Which brings us back to "most, if not all" - what's the
trick to becoming one of the lucky few? - Dan
16913
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 5:14pm
Subject: Re: Eastwood
David:
> He's like a right-wing Robert Redford.
This, combined with Mike's comments about Eastwood's apparent
machismo, literally shock me. I feel just a little like Gore Vidal
defending Mark Twain ...
It is true that Eastwood has leans Republican, but as we've gone
over on this board before, he's far from "one of the bad guys." His
films are actually among the more politically and socially
insightful and challenging that Hollywood has produced in the last
several decades. You'll find in his cinema an assortment of losers,
loners, the disenfranchised, 'deviants,' and *poor* people who do
not pop up that often in Hollywood unless Hollywood wants to make a
token out of them. From MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN to BLOOD WORK,
Eastwood made a series of solid genre films in a minor key that
painted a far less monolithic image of American life than most
comparable films. Eastwood is not the proponent of machismo: he's
its foremost self-critic! As he gets older and his body weakens,
the films take on greater and greater resonance as documents of
aging and mortality, and hold up enthusiastically the diversity
(across generation, gender, etc.) of human life and the emptiness of
masculinist violence. UNFORGIVEN is nothing if not an expose of
the 'tough guy' ethos.
One immediate reference is an article I wrote on BLOOD WORK -
http://www.24fpsmagazine.com/Archive/BloodWork.html
And in either Cineaste or Cineaction, in a recent issue, there was a
very fine article examining Eastwood's Westerns for their unusually
high level of subtle social criticism. I'm sorry I can't remember
the exact issue or author, I'll try to be back with it later tonight
or tomorrow.
> I'd really love to read an actual analysis of a moment in any film
> where Clint uses the mechanics of cinema in an interesting way
> because I can't think of any strong examples.
Visually he's not the most interesting player in the game. (But
he's far from incompetent.) Eastwood's virtues tend to be more in
line with pacing, tone, character. WHITE HUNTER, BLACK HEART starts
off with amazing confidence and wit -- Eastwood's humor is too often
ignored and, to my mind, hilarious -- and ends up being a harrowing
portrait of the consequences of uncompromising thought and
behavior. Those final two shots are haunting. It's infinitely
superior to the film that is responsible for its subject matter,
too: THE AFRICAN QUEEN.
> Wait: I remember a grotesque rack-focus in PLAY MISTY FOR ME which
> was sort of effective in a disturbing scene - but that was a while
> ago.
I haven't seen everything yet, but to me, MISTY is his least
impressive film after MYSTIC RIVER. Still has some good stuff in it.
--Zach, who thinks that Eastwood is one of Hollywood's few real hopes
16914
From: thebradstevens
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 5:18pm
Subject: Re: Eastwood, Cimino, Bogdanovich, Spielberg (was: The Winner...
"I feel socially uncomfortable around Eastwood's characters. They
seem to me to represent a certain kind of macho conformism, a Regular
Guy. People who believe that society is created for Regular Guys, and
that everyone else should go hide under a rock, and leave all jobs,
life and existance to Real Men."
Most of Eastwood's films prior to the mid-80s begin from some such
assumption, but the best of them go on to show Eastwood's
protagonists being placed under assault by various representatives of
the 'other' - women, homosexuals, African-Americans. THE OUTLAW JOSEY
WALES has it's central character join a non-oppressive community, and
the film is structured as a series of 'lessons' for Josey Wales, who
gradually learns that he should stop trying to be 'Clint Eastwood'.
But Jean-Pierre is correct - you really haven't seen his best work.
Try TIGHTROPE, which he directed without credit.
16915
From: thebradstevens
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 5:24pm
Subject: Re: Eastwood
"He's like a right-wing Robert Redford."
Have you seen THE MILAGRO BEANFIELD WAR? Robert Redford is a right-
wing Michael Cimino!
"I'd really love to read an actual analysis of a moment in any film
where Clint uses the mechanics of cinema in an interesting way
because I can't think of any strong examples."
See the consistent doppelganger imagery in the very underrated SUDDEN
IMPACT (eg. Eastwood confronting his own reflection in a broken
mirror, or the cut from a psycho killer talking on the telephone to
Eastwood taking an unrelated phone call).
16916
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 5:26pm
Subject: Re: More Big Red One
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Patrick Ciccone"
>
> Bill, can you change your name to Alan Smithee in the credits
until
> someone fixes the image?
Since I still haven't seen it because of a schedule conflict, I'll
wait. But Joe McBride tells me that Rick Schmidlin, who did
nothing on this as far as I know but delay the work for 7 years by
taking it away from Michael Friend and the Academy just for spite
(after which he didn't return Christa's calls for 3 years, until JR
twisted his arm), and to top it all off told a festival organizer friend
of mine that Richard "stole" the project from him, me and Curtis
Hanson (!), apparently screamed and wept his way into a
"consultant" credit, so I may seriously consider it.
Richard had a tight budget. If this is a dupe off a Hi-Def, there's
an edit list somewhere, and a 35mm print can always be created
from that when there's money. Gabe was right to ask the
question, and the audience was wrong to attack him, but all hail
Richard Schickel -- after Schmidlin's "intervention," I had written
this one off, and Richard brought it back to life. It will look great
on DVD.
If anyone ever does make a 35mm without the voiceover and
with the classical score, I know the perfect guy to be a consultant
on music cues: Jan Harlan. He found Zarathustra for Kubrick, I
bet he'd be honored to do it for nothing for Sam. He seemed to
be a very nice guy the one time I met him.
16917
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 5:29pm
Subject: Re: Re: More Big Red One
--- samadams@e... wrote:
Has anyone intimately
> familiar with
> the film (David E?) seen the new disc? And if so,
> thoughts?
>
I haven't seen the new one, though I'm told it;s good.
I own an exceelent laserdisc.
I gather that Schikel doesn't mention the Montessi
scandal -- wich is evoked at seevral points in the
film. There's a book about it. A young woman's body
wasfound by the shore at Ostia. No particular cause of
death was established -- repseumably sudden heart
atack. The family put out a very silly story as to why
she was there. Further investigation revealed that she
had been a party girl, hobnobbing with all and sundry.
Was it murder? Never estaboushed but plenty of gossip.
Consequently it's a surprise when the partygoers
dscover a giant fish at the end of the film. The
audience had been expecting a woman's body.
The chief papparazzi whose life is evoked in the film
made his fame shooting Anita Eckberg. He also shot an
impromptu strip at tnight club that's evoke in Nadia
Gray's strip in the party scene.
"La Dolce Vita" is right up there with "His Girl
Friday" and "Sweet Smell of Succcess" as one of the
great newspaper story movies. It's also a ton of other
things. It's a film about a social history that was
unfolding even as it was being made.
Fellini associate Alessandro Von Normann was assoicate
produceron "The Talented Mr.Ripley" which unfolds in
the very time period of"La Dolce Vita."
_______________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today!
http://vote.yahoo.com
16918
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 5:42pm
Subject: Re: BIRTH OF A NATION - 1st anything?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt
>
> But I think *THE* BIRTH OF A NATION was influential in a way that
makes
> BREATHLESS and KANE look like non-events. When I worked on the
AFI
> 1911-1920 catalog, we screened a whole bunch of random films from
the
> teens. The 1915 films, without any exception that I recall, used
a
> proscenium-like frame, cutting within scenes only on rare
occasions. But
> the 1916 crop was altogether different: most of the films were
already
> using Griffith's codification of decoupage, with master shots,
closeups
> for dramatic effect, cross-cutting, etc. - Dan
We must also remember those tantalizing "lost films" such as the
Hobart Bosworth SEA WOLF (1913) which suffered distribution problems
and was last heard of in Australia during 1926. Even Cecil B. De
Mille in his autobiography deals with this topic but admits there
were others active before him in directing the "first American
feature."
Tony Williams
16919
From: Samuel Bréan
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 6:22pm
Subject: Film restoration (was: More Big Red One)
Two articles on this subject in the French newspaper "Libération":
http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=245622
http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=245623
I find the interview with Dominique Païni, formerly at the head of the
Cinémathèque Française, more interesting than the first piece.
There were also some good articles in "Positif" # 504 (February 2003),
including two on John Ford's recently restored silent feature BUCKING
BROADWAY. By way of coincidence, the issue of "Cinema" (# 08) which includes
a DVD of the film is out now. There are two articles on Ford (I haven't read
them yet). STRAIGHT SHOOTING is better IMO, but BUCKING BROADWAY is
nevertheless worthy of interest.
http://www.leoscheer.com/revue.php3?id_article=231
Samuel
_________________________________________________________________
MSN Actions Solidaires : http://www.msn.fr/actionssolidaires/ la
solidarité à portée de click
16920
From: iangjohnston
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 7:08pm
Subject: Re: An Auteur-Friendly University Press?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Adrian Martin
wrote:
> Tony - don't you think there are quite a few university and/or
> serious-minded presses that are really quite auteurist at this
period in
> time? In fact, I think of it - for better and for worse - as a
> 'neo-auteurist' period in publishing.
>
> Look at the evidence (cue Rivette: the evidence is on the page,
all you have
> to do is read it ... ): there's the BFI World Cinema Directors
series.
> There's the Illinois University Press directors series (both of
those, it
> must be said, restricted to LIVING directors, alas). There's Faber
& Faber,
> resolutely director-centred in almost all of its many film books,
and in
> PROJECTIONS. The overwhelming majority of BFI Classics and Modern
Classics
> emphasise the auteur above all else. Then we have Brad's books on
Hellman
> and Ferrara, Chris' book on Tourneuer and his forthcoming works on
Preminger
> and Jerry Lewis, reprints coming from Columbia of ALL Robin Wood's
director
> studies, the Cambridge series which is director-centred, the
excellent
> Wallflower Press in UK which does a lot of director books, etc ...
down to
> things like the woeful 'Pocket Essentials' series and many non-
academic
> things.
>
> I think it is currently harder to get a book published on film
genre! Or
> certain unfashionable kinds of film theory. Or many pockets of
film history.
>
> Getting a good book on Kubrick published should be, in this
context, a
> bloody snap!
>
> Opinions, anyone?
>
> Adrian
Yes, but... How many academics' director studies have you read which
start out with the tiresome "I don't believe in the auteur" preface?
(The BFI's various series are not immune -- see Dana Polan's
otherwise rather good book on Jane Campion.) Judging from a recent
TLS review, the Manchester University Press French Directors series
also seems to suffer from this disease. Here's reviewer Emilie
Bickerton on Martine Beugnet's book on Claire Denis:
"Denis is an auteur and Beugnet's analysis proves as much, despite
her rejection of the term. The director as the coherent source of
the film's meaning is dismissed as a 'romantic folly', and it is
amid such theoretical underpinnings (grounded in post-structuralist,
death-of-the-author analysis) that Beugnet ceases to engage with her
subject [...] The result is the loss of film as the septieme art; a
distinctive form in itself, requiring a distinctive form of
criticism. As each film is taken as just another text, worth becomes
irrelevant, value flattened out."
16921
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 7:48pm
Subject: Re: Eastwood, Cimino, Bogdanovich, Spielberg (was: The Winner...
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
I'm middle-of-the-road on Eastwood. I see him pretty much as
the macho Woody Allen: persona-driven cinema alternating with
films he doesn't star in; uneven output in both veins, always
dependent on script quality; mise-en-scene very dependent on
collaborators (although I find Unforgiven more beautiful than any
Allen film); an auteur in every film, a cineaste (rediscovering the
world and reinventing cinema to do so) very, very occasionally:
Zelig, Unforgiven. I probably wouldn't enjoy sitting down at the
kitchen table and having a beer with either of them -- although
I'm sure they both can turn on the charm when they have to -- but
I'm not a proponent of the Auteur As Good Person Theory
anyway. See Unforgiven, Mike. Pace JP's assertion that it's
overrated, if that doesn't convince you, nothing will -- it's a 4-star
masterpiece.
16922
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 7:51pm
Subject: Films I liked lately
Trouble Every Day, Intolerable Cruelty. Just thought I'd mention it.
16923
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 8:04pm
Subject: Re: More Big Red One
Sorry for venting. If Michael Friend (and Curtis Hanson) had done
it, it would have been done a long time ago by a professional
archivist with adequate funds. I'll always be angry that that was
stopped. But let me reiterate that Schickel is a hero, and from
some died-in-the-wool Fullerians who've seen it, like Joe
McBride, I hear only good things. Can't wait to see it myself on
the 22nd at UCLA.
16924
From: George Robinson
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 7:11pm
Subject: Re: No one is 21. [was Re: The Winner is ...]
Actually, it was 1890s Brit Lit -- I wrote an excellent paper on Oscar Wilde
that I reused in grad school.
And I was programming things like a Straub-Huillet festival and a week of
Fuller.
Heh, heh.
g
Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor,
never the victim. Silence encourages the
tormentor, never the tormented.
--Elie Wiesel
----- Original Message -----
From: "Damien Bona"
To:
Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 2004 11:48 PM
Subject: [a_film_by] No one is 21. [was Re: The Winner is ...]
>
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "George Robinson"
> wrote:
> > 21?
> >
> AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH
> HHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!
>
>
> Come on, George. I knew you when you were 21 -- precious memories of
> Carl Hovde's 1890s American literature class and Zooprax . . .
>
>
16925
From: George Robinson
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 7:17pm
Subject: Re: My next magnum opus [Was Re: Akerman]
Well, as the imprint might tell you, it's on a Jewish topic -- it's a
followup to my last book, Essential Judaism, called Essential Torah. No film
in it -- although there certainly are lots of -- mostly lousy -- movies
based on the first five books of the Bible. Indeed, off the top of my head
I'm hard-put to think of a good movie derived from this material. Aldrich's
Sodom and Gomorrah comes the closest I guess.
The next one will be a film book I hope.
g
Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor,
never the victim. Silence encourages the
tormentor, never the tormented.
--Elie Wiesel
----- Original Message -----
From: "hotlove666"
To:
Sent: Thursday, October 14, 2004 12:54 AM
Subject: [a_film_by] Re: Akerman
>
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "George Robinson"
> wrote:
> > Having just gotten my third extension on the contract for my
> current book
> > for Schocken, I'm entirely sympathetic. My agent informed me quite
> bluntly,
> > "This is the last extension, George. Finish the damn book already."
> >
> The Serial Killer in the Cinema is now officially into overtime.
> What's yours about, George?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
16926
From: Noel Vera
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 9:20pm
Subject: Re: Eastwood, Cimino, Bogdanovich, Spielberg (was: The Winner...
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
>
> I'm middle-of-the-road on Eastwood.
Is this Mike's or Bill's I can't remember.
I've seen Unforgiven, Tightrope, Play Misty for Me, A Perfect World,
Mystic River among others. I can't say I'm impressed. He's not
incompetent; he has good taste. I much prefer Don Seigel or Sergio
Leone.
16927
From: Noel Vera
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 9:24pm
Subject: house o wax
Saw Andre de Toth's House of Wax. Wonderful fun, especially with
Vincent Price's velvet-voiced villain (a wronged villain, something--
I'm not sure, but I seem to remember it that way--he often liked to
play (well, there was the Phibes movies)) and Charles Bronson
perfectly cast as his mute assistant (lovely touch there, where the
camera pans past a row of grotesque wax heads, then zooms in to
point out Bronson's among them--a shot parodied in Young
Frankenstein).
The subtext seems to be the transient nature of art, and the inverse
manner in which it is received by its audience. Price's character
(which seems to borrow elements, even images, from The Phantom of
the Opera) starts out as a genuine if unsuccessful artist; when the
fire burns his prized waxworks, he continues as some kind of
horrible but commercially triumphant parody, ingenious in the way he
continues his trade, but with something essentially perverse,
essentially false under the surface success (funny--what makes him a
false artist is that he uses real material for his art). What ruins
him is the temptation to reach out once more, to recreate a past
masterpiece (his beloved Marie Antoinette), to become, however
fleetingly, an artist again (As a final stroke of irony, he becomes,
in effect, what he strives to achieve).
Of course, de Toth had to make concessions to the 3-D effect. Some
of the staging is painfully odd (the fainting lady, the fencers)
some of it, I'm guessing (not having the necessary glasses) must
have been a startling success (the swinging pinata, the skeleton
turning its hand, the hanged man in the elevator cage).
16928
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 9:56pm
Subject: Re: house o wax
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Noel Vera"
wrote:
"Of course, de Toth had to make concessions to the 3-D effect. Some
of the staging is painfully odd (the fainting lady, the fencers)
some of it, I'm guessing (not having the necessary glasses) must
have been a startling success (the swinging pinata, the skeleton
turning its hand, the hanged man in the elevator cage)."
Not to mention the can can girls flaunting their fannies. Seeing the
movie in 3-D alters your reading somewhat. The living people become
interchangeable with the wax figures, fugitive, messy life is
transformed into permanent ordered art. There's also a creepy
necrophiliac kinky undertone made more forceful by the 3-D.
Richard
16929
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 10:10pm
Subject: Re: An Auteur-Friendly University Press?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
> Isn't Johns Hopkins the publisher of Chris Fujiwara's Tourneur
book and
> Jonathan Rosenbaum's "Essential Cinema"? Sounds pretty auteurist
to me!
>
> Mike Grost
I've also heard that Johns Hopkins is eliminating its film series
similar to Cambridge axing its genre vols. which affected a
colleague's bid for promotion this Fall since his book was scheduled
to appear this year. But they reneged on the contract - a common
proceedure today.
Tony Williams
16930
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 10:12pm
Subject: Re: An Auteur-Friendly University Press?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
> wrote:
> >
> > --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "peckinpah20012000"
> >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > > >
> > But Kubrick IS dead, Tony!
>
>
> Not only that, but he was white and male. Triple threat.
That's why I left my former department Cinema and Photography and
am now in English. A past Chair of C&P and now Associate Dean has
openly proclaimed that the College will not hire any more white
males. The irony is - he is both!
"There are a million stories in hackademia and this has been one of
them."
Tony Williams
16931
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 10:29pm
Subject: Re: Eastwood, Cimino, Bogdanovich, Spielberg (was: The Winner...
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> See Unforgiven, Mike. Pace JP's assertion that it's
> overrated, if that doesn't convince you, nothing will -- it's a 4-
star
> masterpiece.
I said "somewhat overrated" (considering the hyperbolic praise, the
Oscars etc...)but still recommended it among his best in my response
to Mike... By the way I wrote a glowing review of the film in
POSITIF. JPC
16932
From:
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 9:19pm
Subject: Re: Re: An Auteur-Friendly University Press?
In a message dated 10/14/04 5:15:23 PM, peckinpah20012000@y... writes:
> the College will not hire any more white males.
>
What about white GAY males?
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
16933
From: K. A. Westphal
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 1:34am
Subject: BIRTH, KANE, BREATHLESS, et al.
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt
>
> But I think *THE* BIRTH OF A NATION was influential in a way that makes
> BREATHLESS and KANE look like non-events.
Something I've been thinking about for a while...
The conventional canon seems to divide very nicely (and dubiously)
around a dozen or so major films that "changed the medium irrevocably"
(to quote, ironically, Sight and Sound's neglected Innovators series).
POTEMKIN, LAST LAUGH, BIRTH, KANE, BREATHLESS ... I needn't belabor
the point.
As Dan demonstrate, the concept is a bit silly. (Remember when all the
early '60s 'Scope pictures started using jump cuts because they were
all so damn impressed with Godard? More snide comments about LAWRENCE
OF ARABIA aside, I can't either.)
Now, I was working in the project booth last night during a showing of
Mizoguchi's 47 RONIN, PTS. 1 and 2. I had seen it before on television
and wanted to get another look at it, but I scarcely had time;
prepping 23 35-mm reels isn't a quick job. Anyway, I got a few
glimpses of it again, and it struck me how Mizoguchi's mise-en-scene
was at least as complex and elaborate as that in CITIZEN KANE. They
were made around the same time, though we didn't see 47 RONIN in the
West until 1979, according to the programming notes.
So, given those qualifications, I wonder:
When will there be another "major" film, the kind whose influence is
seen across a wide spectrum of genres, budgets, etc. for years to come?
Come to think of it, there hasn't been a film like that in a good two
or three decades. What was the last one? STAR WARS? Ebert writes that
2001 is a watershed film, comparable in importance to BIRTH and KANE,
for pointing towards non-narrative forms. But then, avant-garde
filmmakers had been already been doing that for decades. Perhaps the
"ground-breaking films" are those that appropriate obscure techniques
and class them up for mainstream consumption.
Still, I struggle to think about the prospect of another milestone
film. With video and DVD, film appreciation strikes me as a much more
sophisticated beast than it was for the "film generation." National
cinemas that never saw the light of day in the 70s are now relatively
prominent; I assume that the film community would resist most any
claims about a "new style" of film and point to a Korean bootleg of
their favorite Argentine film and remind the philistines that
Technique X is old hat.
Perhaps I'm only interested in this question because I was born after
all the major films were released. I just wonder if one can walk into
a theater today and come away as shocked as one did in '15, '41, or
'60. (I'm not arguing for "the death of cinema" here. There are still
great films being made and distributed. I only yearn for the ecstasy
of seeing "revolution" on the screen.)
--Kyle Westphal
16934
From: Fred Camper
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 2:07am
Subject: Re: BIRTH, KANE, BREATHLESS, et al.
K. A. Westphal wrote:
> ...Still, I struggle to think about the prospect of another milestone
> film....
Arguably the culture has changed, not just in film but in all the arts,
to become more diverse and more decentered. The notion of a landmark
work that gives birth to many others is perhaps not as appropriate to
our age as to former times.
> ...I only yearn for the ecstasy of seeing "revolution" on the
> screen....
Again, the terms may have shifted. Is it possible that the next
"revolutionary" film will not look, on the surface, a lot different
from, say, the recent films of Bela Tarr, but that on close inspection
those camera movements that look a bit Tarr-ian are actually very
different aesthetically, and evidence a different and new conception of
the world? Might not a "revolution" be effected in subtle ways ways that
aren't so evident on the surface? Or might it not involve a group of
filmmakers who forge a different aesthetic gradually and to some extent
collaboratively rather than a lone genius producing a single
transformative film.
In physics there were a long series of lone geniuses in earlier times,
Newton and Einstein among them, but there may not have been another
since Einstein, that is, since General Relativity in 1916. The later
groundbreaking work seems to have been done more collaboratively. The
analogy between physics and cinema is of course deeply flawed, and
proves nothing, but I thought it was worth mentioning anyway.
Fred Camper
16935
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 2:27am
Subject: Re: BIRTH, KANE, BREATHLESS, et al.
--- Fred Camper
>
> Arguably the culture has changed, not just in film
> but in all the arts,
> to become more diverse and more decentered. The
> notion of a landmark
> work that gives birth to many others is perhaps not
> as appropriate to
> our age as to former times.
>
I would say that "Blade Runner" qualifies.
Also "Nashville"
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
16936
From:
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 10:32pm
Subject: Re: Re: Eastwood, Cimino, Bogdanovich, Spielberg (was: The Winner...
In a message dated 10/14/04 12:22:41 PM, bradstevens22@h... writes:
> Try TIGHTROPE, which he directed without credit.
>
Whoa, I didn't know that. Please elaborate.
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
16937
From:
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 11:04pm
Subject: Re: BIRTH, KANE, BREATHLESS, et al.
1) Films shot in one long take:
Big Monday (Michael T. Rehfield, 1998)
This is a feature length movie, shot on video, made in one long take, as the
director moves gracefully through New York City. It is quite an experience!
Three years later "Russian Ark" (Sokurov, 2001) is a second such full length
video.
2) "Why Didn't They Ask Evans" (Tony Wharmby, John Davies, 1980) is something
new in whodunit movies. It explores detection in genuine depth. It has a
maximalist aesthetic - a desire to explore every facet of the plot. This three
hour film was made for British TV. It was based on an Agatha Christie novel, and
led to whole series of Christie adaptations for British TV using the same
approach, such as the series of Partners in Crime and Poirot.
Mike Grost
16938
From:
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 11:39pm
Subject: Re: Re: 180 (Was: Greatest cut)
In a message dated 10/14/04 5:37:19 AM, skuttrusk@h... writes:
>
> Ozu tends to cut at exactly 180 between two characters looking straight into
> the lens.
>
Actually, Ozu tends to cut on a 360 degree circle.
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
16939
From:
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2004 11:43pm
Subject: Re: Bazin (Was: Film textbooks are OT?)
Dan, yes, you're absolutely correct that I'm not singling out Bazin (and, for
the record, I adore "The Ontology..."). And, yes, my critique does run the
risk of imparting to my own words the
mythological quality of being somehow a not-closed system. And your reading
of Bazin is extremely perceptive in uncovering his "openness," if you will, and
my "closedness."
<
Easy. As Jameson says, you make your autocritique and admit your mere
optionality. I'm no unambiguous advocate of this approach, largely because, as
Jameson continues, "the media excitement falls away, everyone loses interest, and
the code in question, tail between its legs, can shortly be observed making for
the exit from the public sphere or stage of that particular moment of History
or discursive struggle" (from POSTMODERNISM OR, THE CULTURAL LOGIC OF LATE
CAPITALISM, p. 397). I was simply reeling from the suggestion that because film
textbooks do NOT admit their mere optionality (and I suppose one could perform
an analysis of, say, FILM ART or whatever along the lines of your analysis of
Bazin in order to see how precisely unautocritical [yipes!] it is - I'm just
extremely uninterested in doing so) that they therefore have nothing to offer
or shouldn't be used.
And, for the record, I'm not valorizing the 180 degree rule in any way. But I
don't think it's useless to know it exists and how it works in certain films.
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
16940
From: samfilms2003
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 4:15am
Subject: Re: 180 (Was: Greatest cut)
> Kubrick and Kurosawa both play fast and loose with the 180 rule too.
And Mizoguchi in Ugetsu; the camera position seems to signal its knowing
of surprise twist to befall characters by crossing the line - it's like the
camera says "I know something you don't want to know but you're about
to find out !"
-Sam
16941
From: Robert Keser
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 4:33am
Subject: Re: An Auteur-Friendly University Press?
peckinpah20012000@y... writes:
> > the College will not hire any more white males.
LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
> What about white GAY males?
Actually when I was applying for my previous teaching job, I was
advised to make sure that the search committee would find out
somehow that I was gay, through some offhand reference. The idea is
that big institutions are scared of lawsuits, so--to make the final
cut--each candidate has to present some ligitiable [is that a word?]
angle. (In other words, a candidate who is not female, disabled, or
a member of some minority will find his name moved off the
shortlist). This kind of backhand strategy is most ironic, of
course, given that U.S. law forbids the employer to ask about such
basic public facts as the applicant's age and marital status!
Anyway, in that situation, the strategy proved successful for me.
--Robert Keser
16942
From: Paul Gallagher
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 4:37am
Subject: Re: Triple Agent (Spoilers!)
I asked Grover Furr (http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/), for
more information about Rohmer's "Triple Agent," Nikolai Skoblin. I was
wrong to write that Skoblin was a German agent.
Furr writes, "Skoblin was indeed a double agent, but not a triple
agent... "
"I did look around the Russian internet. There are a lot of articles
mentioning Skoblin. The story that he was working for the Nazis seems
to have originated in a TASS-Imprecorr story that stated that. This
was disinformation, no doubt intended to deflect attention away from
the fact that Skoblin was indeed a Soviet agent and did kidnap Miller.
"I have emailed a colleague in Russia to ask him whether he knows of
anything well documented on Skoblin. There are a lot of pot-boiler
rehashes of 1930s conspiracy stuff, much of which originated with the
White Russian emigration."
The colleague in Moscow sent him several references in Russian,
including a book, Sudoplatov's "Special Operations",
_Spetsoperatsiia_.
"Sudoplatov utterly rejects any collaboration by Skoblin -- whose
codename in the NKVD was "Fermer", i.e. "Farmer" -- with the Germans.
He points out that, if Skoblin had been involved with the Germans,
they would certainly have freed his wife Plevitskaia, who was still in
a French prison, sentenced to 20 years for participating in Miller's
kidnapping. (Sudoplatov believes she was not involved at all)."
I also asked about the story that the Germans, perhaps with Skoblin's
aid, forged documents, describing a conspiracy within the Soviet
military led by Tukhachevsky.
Furr responded, "I and a Russian colleague have spent a great deal of
time researching the Tukhachevsky affair. The first thing we did was
to examine this widespread story... Some German SD agents claimed to
have been involved in this forgery after the war. Their accounts do
not mesh in any way, and they clearly made it all up...
"Sudoplatov also rejects the story about false documents, pointing out
with truth that they have never turned up. Khrushchev's team searched
hard for them in 1962-64; their report was published almost 10 years
ago now, and actually points more towards Tukhachevsky's guilt than
anything.
"General Miller was taken to Moscow, interrogated, and -- from what I
can tell -- executed after trial on May 11, 1939. He wrote Yezhov a
few letters, a couple of which I've found on the Web in Russian; let
me know if you want them. I read through them; Miller comes off very
badly, IMO, and actually tries to say that he was apolitical, even
though he headed a pro-Nazi Russian officers' group dedicated to the
overthrow of the USSR. The Emigres were a demoralized lot, and this
kidnapping seems to have finished them off as any kind of force, for
now they trusted no one, especially each other, since Skoblin had been
'one of theirs.'
"Sudoplatov confirms that Skoblin was thereupon trained in Spanish and
sent to the Spanish civil war, where he was killed in an air raid in
Barcelona.
"Plevitskaia's voice is still prized among Russian fanciers of
folksongs, and a few of her old, old records were still commercially
available as of a year or two ago. Imagine that!"
Serge Renko, who played Fiodor in "Triple Agent," was curious about
Skoblin when he spoke at the New York Film Festival, but he was under
the impression that the Soviet files on him were still classified. But
apparently the material is now available.
Paul
16943
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 6:36am
Subject: My next magnum opus [Was Re: Akerman]
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "George Robinson"
wrote:
I want to write a musical based on the Talmud. Do you have an in with
Stephen Sondheim?
16944
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 6:38am
Subject: Re: house o wax
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Noel Vera"
wrote:
>
> Saw Andre de Toth's House of Wax. Wonderful fun, especially with
> Vincent Price's velvet-voiced villain (a wronged villain, something-
-
> I'm not sure, but I seem to remember it that way--he often liked to
> play (well, there was the Phibes movies)) and Charles Bronson
> perfectly cast as his mute assistant
And Phyllis Kirk. You forgot (dribble shlurp) Phyllis Kirk!
16945
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 6:40am
Subject: Re: house o wax
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
wrote:
>
There's also a creepy
> necrophiliac kinky undertone made more forceful by the 3-D.
>
> Richard
The nocturnal pursuit in the street is one of the scariest things I
ever saw.
16946
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 6:42am
Subject: Re: An Auteur-Friendly University Press?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "peckinpah20012000"
A past Chair of C&P and now Associate Dean has
> openly proclaimed that the College will not hire any more white
> males. The irony is - he is both!
Tell him you're Peruvian and "passing." Give him The Human Stain to
read.
16947
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 6:52am
Subject: Re: BIRTH, KANE, BREATHLESS, et al.
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
> 1) Films shot in one long take:
> Big Monday (Michael T. Rehfield, 1998)
> This is a feature length movie, shot on video, made in one long
take, as the
> director moves gracefully through New York City. It is quite an
experience!
> Three years later "Russian Ark" (Sokurov, 2001) is a second such
full length
> video.
There's another neat one called Running Time, although they fudged
the one take, it being on film.
> 2) "Why Didn't They Ask Evans" (Tony Wharmby, John Davies, 1980) is
something
> new in whodunit movies. It explores detection in genuine depth. It
has a
> maximalist aesthetic - a desire to explore every facet of the plot.
This three
> hour film was made for British TV. It was based on an Agatha
Christie novel, and
> led to whole series of Christie adaptations for British TV using
the same
> approach, such as the series of Partners in Crime and Poirot.
>
> Mike Grost
I once toyed with the idea (before finding out how entrenched in its
ways PBS is) of producing a series of classic detection novels as a
PBS series, each by a different writer, and giving each to a
different director as an esthetic challenge. "Here's a book called
The Problem of the Green Capsule in which a small group of people
who, as a psychological experiment in the unreliability of eyewitness
testimony, watch a litle 'murder' skit that unexpectedly ends in a
real murder. All tell a different version of what they saw, and a
camera filming it contradicts all their versions. Find a way to film
that!"
There have been some interesting experiments: The Last of Sheilah,
notably. But it is a challenge if you don't just lazily film
great 'tec tales like glorified plays.
16948
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 6:57am
Subject: Re: Greatest cut (Was: Blier, editing)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "cairnsdavid1967"
wrote:
>
>
> As a filmmaker in my own small way, I'm in awe of Lean.
Big fan of Great Expectations: Monte Hellman, who imitated the
graveyard scene at the beginning in Better Watch Out!
16949
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 6:59am
Subject: Re: Rene Cl. (Was: Wyler and auteurist taste)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "cairnsdavid1967"
wrote:
LES BELLES DE NUIT.
> Even if you don't like the latter, you get to look at Gerard
Phillipe
> and Gina Lollobrigida.
I never have. God! Saw And Then... recently. Sub-Whale fun. The Crazy
Ray: Cute idea, well done. I still haven't seen Le Million, believe
it or not. Will make a point of it. Because Grandes Manouevres rocks.
16950
From:
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 3:04am
Subject: Re: Eastwood, Cimino, Bogdanovich, Spielberg (was: The Winner is)
Mike Grost wrote:
>My trouble with Spielberg is that I have never been able to
>detectect the slightest consistency of approach in his work.
Mike, over the summer I interviewed Armond White - by far the most cogent and
insightful defender of Spielberg in print - and we went through Spielberg's
body of work film by film. I certainly came away from the interview with a
renewed sense of the consistency of Spielberg's themes and styles. The interview
will be appearing in January in The Film Journal. I think you might find it
interesting reading.
For what it's worth, I do agree with you about "Catch Me If You Can" being a
major Spielberg film (second only to "E.T." as my favorite)... but I'd argue
for it as being a totally coherent part of Spielberg's body of work!
Peter
16951
From:
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 3:16am
Subject: Re: Films I liked lately
I liked both of those too, Bill. The best new film I've seen recently is
Russell's "I Heart Huckabees." The best old-but-sort-of-new film I've seen
recently is Bogdanovich's "director's cut" of "They All Laughed," to which he has
added a little less than a minute of previously unseen footage. But that
footage, however brief, is sublime: when John Ritter, Colleen Camp, and Dorothy
Stratten (among others) are in the shoe store on 5th Avenue, Blaine Novak
roller-skates up to the store window. Cut to a POV shot of the silliness and chaos
going on inside the store. Cut to Novak's wonderful facial reaction. Another
beautiful moment in a film which gets better and more beautiful with each
year.
The WORST old-but-sort-of-new film I've seen recently is Lucas' "director's
cut" of "THX-1138." The new effects are terrible!
Peter
16952
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 7:20am
Subject: Re: BIRTH, KANE, BREATHLESS, et al.
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "K. A. Westphal"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt
> >
>
> The conventional canon seems to divide very nicely (and dubiously)
> around a dozen or so major films that "changed the medium
irrevocably"
> (to quote, ironically, Sight and Sound's neglected Innovators
series).
> POTEMKIN, LAST LAUGH, BIRTH, KANE, BREATHLESS ... I needn't belabor
> the point.
>
> As Dan demonstrate, the concept is a bit silly. > Now, I was
working in the project booth last night during a showing of
> Mizoguchi's 47 RONIN, PTS. 1 and 2. I had seen it before on
television
> and wanted to get another look at it, but I scarcely had time;
> prepping 23 35-mm reels isn't a quick job. Anyway, I got a few
> glimpses of it again, and it struck me how Mizoguchi's mise-en-scene
> was at least as complex and elaborate as that in CITIZEN KANE. They
> were made around the same time, though we didn't see 47 RONIN in the
> West until 1979, according to the programming notes.
But Mizo had probably seen prewar Wyler. He was a fan.
>
> So, given those qualifications, I wonder:
>
> When will there be another "major" film, the kind whose influence is
> seen across a wide spectrum of genres, budgets, etc. for years to
come?
The late critic-filmmaker Jean-Claude Biette complicated the old
metteur-en-scene/auteur distinction by adding director (= more or
less hack) and cineaste or filmmaker, meaning someone who reinvents
the medium every time he makes a film. (He relatived "auteur" by
making it no longer the supreme honorific term, reserving that place
for cineaste. I wrote here ages ago that I found this useful because
thematic and formal repetition, which is rightly taken at least as a
condition of auteurship, is something you find in many filmmakers.)
I'm much more attuned to the idea that individual filmmakers are
obliged to do that with some regularity -- although it can happen
just once, per J-C: The Dead -- than I am to the idea of big
groundbreaking movies, although I think the ones you name -- Star
Wars and 2001 -- definitely qualify. I'd add Once Upon a Time in the
West to that list.
Lately we are seeing films that reinvent the technical canvas in
major ways, which I find interesting, but not VERY interesting, like
the first encounter with the work of a cineaste: Sky Captain, Waking
Life, The Hulk, even Dinosaurs, to go back a ways. The first three of
those shade into esthetic discovery, IMO. And I'm sure The Polar
Express will be a knockout at least on that level, as was Roger
Rabbit.
The only film I've seen lately -- but I've seen almost nothing! --
that was the work of a cineaste, proposing his own vision of our
world and reinventing cinema to do it, was I Heart Huckabees.
I think this is a very interesting question.
16953
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 7:22am
Subject: Re: Films I liked lately
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ptonguette@a... wrote:
> I liked both of those too, Bill. The best new film I've seen
recently is
> Russell's "I Heart Huckabees." The best old-but-sort-of-new film
I've seen
> recently is Bogdanovich's "director's cut" of "They All Laughed,"
I need to resee They All Laughed, in whatever version. I love it, and
it's been too long.
I should have added Slasher to my list of good new movies. But my
favorite old movie revisited (completely unchanged -- I just had to
write about it) is The Stupids. What a jewel!
16954
From:
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 3:22am
Subject: Re: Re: Eastwood, Cimino, Bogdanovich, Spielberg (was: The Winner...
Bill Krohn wrote:
>mise-en-scene very dependent on
>collaborators (although I find Unforgiven more beautiful than any
>Allen film)
Except I'd argue this has become less so since Allen started working with
Carlo Di Palma in the mid-80s. The style they forged together - the long takes
with lots of zooming - may have been originally Di Palma's influence, but, as I
argue in an upcoming appreciation of the Allen/Di Palma films for Senses of
Cinema (sadly occasioned by Di Palma's passing in July), Allen has basically
stuck with that style in the films after their collaboration ended. The one
exception is the great "Anything Else," where he retained the long takes but
ditched the zooming because he was working in 'Scope for the first time in 20
years. The new "Premiere" lists Allen's output over the past decade as being one
of the all-time great disappointments in the history of the medium or some
such nonsense, but for anyone interested, there's an awful lot of interesting
filmmaking going on in these movies.
Peter
16955
From: Aaron Graham
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 7:53am
Subject: Re: Films I liked lately
> The best old-but-sort-of-new film I've seen
> recently is Bogdanovich's "director's cut" of "They All Laughed,"
to which he has
> added a little less than a minute of previously unseen footage.
Sounds like a great added moment of bliss to an already perfect film.
I hope somebody releases this on DVD soon with PB commentary!
> The WORST old-but-sort-of-new film I've seen recently is
Lucas' "director's
> cut" of "THX-1138." The new effects are terrible!
>
> Peter
I didn't like this either, though the function with Walter Murch
discussing the sound design was very interesting, so the disc isn't
completely useless. I really hated those new additions to the "Star
Wars" films, too.
As for myself, I've been going through the new Hitchcock-Warner Bros.
9-disc set, with our very own Bill Krohn providing ample insight into
the productions on the documentaries located on the discs. The real
revelation for me was "Suspicion", which I previously didn't hold
much enthusiasm for. I think I've watched it about 5 times since
purchasing it a week and a half ago. At any rate, this set is
exhilarating.
-Aaron
16956
From: Matthew Clayfield
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 8:00am
Subject: Re: BIRTH, KANE, BREATHLESS, et al.
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
> The only film I've seen lately -- but I've seen almost nothing! --
> that was the work of a cineaste, proposing his own vision of our
> world and reinventing cinema to do it, was I Heart Huckabees.
>
> I think this is a very interesting question.
It *is* an interesting question, but it ultimately has to be
preceded by another; what actually constitutes reinvention in the
first place? "Reinvent" is a very loaded verb.
I've not seen I HEART HUCKABEE'S yet [I have no idea when it's
getting released in Australia], but I'd be interested in hearing how
you feel that it reivents the medium and what ways.
16957
From: cairnsdavid1967
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 8:29am
Subject: Re: house o wax
There's a 3D screening of this here in Edinburgh around Halloween.
It'll be my second experience of it on the big screen.
3D seem to turn the players into cut-outs, like the figures in a toy
theatre, and HOW is one of the films that makes a positive virtue of
this. The characters are insubstantial (apart from Price) but the
mise-en-scene is consistently amusing.
Another 3D film that's well worth a look is THE MAZE. Has anyone
discussed William Cameron Menzies yet?
16958
From: cairnsdavid1967
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 8:31am
Subject: Re: 180 (Was: Greatest cut)
> > Ozu tends to cut at exactly 180 between two characters looking
straight into
> > the lens.
> >
> Actually, Ozu tends to cut on a 360 degree circle.
>
> Kevin John
Maybe we're using our terms differently, but wouldn't a 360 cut bring
you right back to the image you started on?
I'm no expert on Ozu but I remember a bit of secondary school
geometry.
16959
From: cairnsdavid1967
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 8:35am
Subject: Re: Rene Cl. (Was: Wyler and auteurist taste)
> I never have. God! Saw And Then... recently. Sub-Whale fun. The
Crazy
> Ray: Cute idea, well done. I still haven't seen Le Million, believe
> it or not. Will make a point of it. Because Grandes Manouevres
rocks.
You know Clair shot an ending where MM kills herself as the army
parade by in the street outside her darkened apartment? it made
Cocteau cry. Then he cut it and replaced it with a more bittersweet,
inconclusive end. It's still the film where Clair comes closest to
showing a dark side.
His critical downgrading may be partly due to the sheer lightness of
his work, which makes it not the kind of thing you'd want to watch in
bulk. LE MILL is so well done it has to get some admiration though,
and I get alot of pleasure out of several of the others, as indicated.
16960
From: cairnsdavid1967
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 8:36am
Subject: Re: Eastwood, Cimino, Bogdanovich, Spielberg (was: The Winner...
> > Try TIGHTROPE, which he directed without credit.
> >
>
> Whoa, I didn't know that. Please elaborate.
>
> Kevin John
The imdb doesn't know it either. But if he's reposnible for filming
the closeups of feet following girls into dark alleyways, he should
be spanked.
16961
From: cairnsdavid1967
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 8:37am
Subject: Re: Greatest cut (Was: Blier, editing)
> > As a filmmaker in my own small way, I'm in awe of Lean.
>
> Big fan of Great Expectations: Monte Hellman, who imitated the
> graveyard scene at the beginning in Better Watch Out!
Remember how the convict tells Pip he has a friend who can get into
locked rooms by squeezing through any tight space, and will eat your
liver? and remember how the character of Eugene Tooms in THE X FILES
does just that?
16962
From: cairnsdavid1967
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 8:39am
Subject: Re: More Big Red One
> If anyone ever does make a 35mm without the voiceover and
> with the classical score, I know the perfect guy to be a consultant
> on music cues: Jan Harlan. He found Zarathustra for Kubrick, I
> bet he'd be honored to do it for nothing for Sam. He seemed to
> be a very nice guy the one time I met him.
I met him briefly at PIFAN in South Korea and thought he was a lovely
chap. Intended to send him my movie which contains Kubrick jokes.
Never got round to it. I'm an idiot.
16963
From: thebradstevens
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 10:28am
Subject: Re: Eastwood, Cimino, Bogdanovich, Spielberg (was: The Winner...
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
>
> In a message dated 10/14/04 12:22:41 PM, bradstevens22@h... writes:
>
>
> > Try TIGHTROPE, which he directed without credit.
> >
>
> Whoa, I didn't know that. Please elaborate.
According to Richard Schickel's Eastwood biography, Eastwood took
over direction of TIGHTROPE after the first day, when writer Richard
Tuggle proved inadequate to the job. Eastwood ended up directing the
whole thing, with Tuggle remaining on the set to offer advice.
16964
From: thebradstevens
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 10:36am
Subject: Re: Films I liked lately
"The best old-but-sort-of-new film I've seen recently is
Bogdanovich's "director's cut" of "They All Laughed," to which he has
added a little less than a minute of previously unseen footage."
Isn't this the version in which PB removed a scene from the middle of
the film and ran it as a precredits sequence? I always thought that
was kind of silly. This version played on UK subscription TV 6 or 7
years back. I notice that, as with the DVD of MASK, Bogdanovich has
added some Bruce Springsteen songs to the soundtrack of this version.
16965
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 10:38am
Subject: Re: Films I liked lately
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Graham"
>
, I've been going through the new Hitchcock-Warner Bros.
> 9-disc set, with our very own Bill Krohn providing ample insight
into
> the productions on the documentaries located on the discs. The real
> revelation for me was "Suspicion", which I previously didn't hold
> much enthusiasm for. I think I've watched it about 5 times since
> purchasing it a week and a half ago. At any rate, this set is
> exhilarating.
>
> -Aaron
Laurent couldn't use my explanations about the ending -- he says WB
didn't want to confuse people -- but you can read about it (them) in
my first ever piece in Hitchcock Annual, which was then revised on
the MacGuffin, where the honest-to-God real preview ending is finally
posted. Also recommended, less self-servingly, Mark Crispin Miller's
piece on the film in his collection on TV, Boxed In. I think it's a
remarkable film -- that moment where she enters the house and the
cloud envelops it, for example: well-described in Ken Mogg's chapter
in The Alfred Hitchcock Story, which was the first to open the whole
hugely important can of worms about the letterbox mystery... (babble
babble... The film is so complex that it has driven MAD!)
16966
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 10:42am
Subject: Re: BIRTH, KANE, BREATHLESS, et al.
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Matthew Clayfield"
>
reinvention in the
> first place? "Reinvent" is a very loaded verb.
>
> I've not seen I HEART HUCKABEE'S yet [I have no idea when it's
> getting released in Australia], but I'd be interested in hearing
how
> you feel that it reivents the medium and what ways.
Sorry for "reinvents," but I'm pretty shameless about using words,
even cliches, which I think will put over tough ideas fast.
Personally I hate the word! I have to resee HUckabee's -- it was too
new to comment on much the first time. (Another phrase to put across
Biette's idea -- kind of an "ex-cliche" -- would be "making it new.")
16967
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 10:49am
Subject: Re: house o wax
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "cairnsdavid1967"
wrote:
>
Has anyone discussed William Cameron Menzies yet?
Not nearly enough. I finally saw The Maze in a great 3-D print at the
LA Cinematheque's 3-D fest, and it is one of the summits of the 3-D
boom. (Jonathan Rosenbaum argues convincingly for Kiss Me Kate as
another, but I've yet to see it projected in 3-D.) Ulmer claimed to
Bogdanovich that he, EGU, was the first production designer, but
Menzies was as far as I know (ulp! - a first!) to get the credit,
making him co-auteur of GWTW along w. Selznick, I'd say. His skills
in that area are much on display in The Maze, along with some wild
humor when Richard Karlson's friends try to get a laugh out of him
when they drop in on him at his musty castle unannounced. The
surprise ending (which I wouldn't reveal to the unitiated under
torture) and the servant's speech about the "Old Gentleman" strongly
suggest that Menzies knew damn well what he was up to when he created
his masterpiece, Invaders from Mars.
16968
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 1:28pm
Subject: Re: Re: house o wax
--- hotlove666
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Noel Vera"
>
> And Phyllis Kirk. You forgot (dribble shlurp)
> Phyllis Kirk!
>
>
I love that scene in "The Last Show" where Lily Tomlin
says "Oh we're just like Nick and Nora Charles!"
Art Carney: "Nick and Nora Charles ?"
Lily Tomlin: "You know -- Peter Lawford and Phyllis
Kirk."
__________________________________
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Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Get it on your mobile phone.
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16969
From: K. A. Westphal
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 1:33pm
Subject: Re: BIRTH, KANE, BREATHLESS, et al.
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
> 1) Films shot in one long take:
> Big Monday (Michael T. Rehfield, 1998)
> This is a feature length movie, shot on video, made in one long
take, as the
> director moves gracefully through New York City. It is quite an
experience!
> Three years later "Russian Ark" (Sokurov, 2001) is a second such
full length
> video.
Though I'm not familiar with BIG MONDAY, I think RUSSIAN ARK is one of
the great *new* films -- along with IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE and
MULHOLLAND DR. -- because the technique is so integral to the theme.
RUSSIAN ARK could've easily been just another formalist experiment,
and it was for me for about the first hour or so. But then two of the
museum officials are heard in a dark corner, pontificating about how
amazing and strange it is that the Hermitage survived World War II --
and it all came together for me ... what accounts for the way the past
survives the present ... why is the past an essential part of Russian
character? Most importantly, how are we to understand history as we
are inexorably moving (as does the camera) into the future?
What makes it great for me is that Sokurov's ideas cannot be separated
from the medium. Not sure if the Digital Cinema Revolution is dead
yet, but I've found the worthwhile entries are those for which film
would've been inadaquete or untenable. I place ATANARJUAT in that same
category. While some would dispute the impossibility of shooting in
that location in 16 and 35 mm, I still think that film could not have
been made with DV.
Now, I also include UNKNOWN PLEASURES in my short list of worthy
digital efforts, though I can't say it could not have been shot on
film. Still, of all the DV pieces I've seen, that one has the
loveliest color palette.
-Kyle Westphal
16970
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 1:38pm
Subject: Re: Re: Rene Cl. (Was: Wyler and auteurist taste)
--- cairnsdavid1967
>
> His critical downgrading may be partly due to the
> sheer lightness of
> his work, which makes it not the kind of thing you'd
> want to watch in
> bulk.
Speak for yourself.
His American work is excellent. Frank O'Hara loved
"Flame of New Orleans" and "It Happened Tomorrow" is
preferable in every way to "It's a Wonderful Life."
_______________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today!
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16971
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 2:39pm
Subject: Re: Eastwood, Cimino, Bogdanovich, Spielberg (was: The Winner...
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
> >
> > In a message dated 10/14/04 12:22:41 PM, bradstevens22@h...
writes:
> >
> >
> > > Try TIGHTROPE, which he directed without credit.
> > >
> >
> > Whoa, I didn't know that. Please elaborate.
>
>
> According to Richard Schickel's Eastwood biography, Eastwood took
> over direction of TIGHTROPE after the first day, when writer
Richard
> Tuggle proved inadequate to the job. Eastwood ended up directing
the
> whole thing, with Tuggle remaining on the set to offer advice.
According to Pat McGilligan's own biography of Eastwood things were
not so clearcut. "The decision making on the set was sometimes a
suble negotiation," he writes. Tuggle (whom at one point McG.
calls "Tuggie") told him: "Some scenes were done kind of by me, Some
were done kind of by him, and most of them were done together." He
adds, "But it was his crew and they would basically be listening
more to him than to me."
16972
From:
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 11:00am
Subject: Re: Re: 180 (Was: Greatest cut)
In a message dated 10/15/04 3:34:44 AM, skuttrusk@h... writes:
>
> Maybe we're using our terms differently, but wouldn't a 360 cut bring
> you right back to the image you started on?
>
No, not necessarily. The point I was trying to make was that Ozu cuts on
various points of the circle (60 degrees, 90 degrees, etc.) and not just the 180
degrees radian (is that the word, geometry people?). If he comes back to the
image he started on, so be it. But again, it's not necessary.
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
16973
From:
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 11:00am
Subject: Re: Re: Eastwood, Cimino, Bogdanovich, Spielberg (was: The Winner...
In a message dated 10/15/04 3:36:43 AM, skuttrusk@h... writes:
> The imdb doesn't know it either. But if he's reposnible for filming
> the closeups of feet following girls into dark alleyways, he should
> be spanked.
>
I'm confused. So is Eastwood responsible for filming anything in TIGHTROPE or
isn't he?
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
16974
From:
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 11:10am
Subject: Re: Re: Eastwood, Cimino, Bogdanovich, Spielberg (was: The Winner...
In a message dated 10/15/04 10:07:18 AM, LiLiPUT1@a... writes:
> I'm confused. So is Eastwood responsible for filming anything in TIGHTROPE
> or
> isn't he?
>
Oops, sorry - I posted before I read Brad and JP's posts.
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
16975
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 3:30pm
Subject: Re: BIRTH, KANE, BREATHLESS, et al.
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
"But Mizo had probably seen prewar Wyler. He was a fan."
He was a fan because he could point to Wyler as a Western filmmaker
who was doing something similiar to what Mizo had started doing in
1930 (or possibly earlier)in FURSATO/MY HOME TOWN. The first Wyler
movie he saw and liked was COUNSELOR AT LAW. He liked Wyler but he
never claimed him as an influence. On the other hand, he
acknowledged DOCKS OF NEW YORK as the most influential Western film
on his own work, and sought out Sternberg when Sternberg visited
Japan in 1935 and later gave a generous endorsement of ANATAHAN when
it was released in Japan.
Richard
16976
From: Michael Lieberman
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 4:47pm
Subject: Re: transitional cuts
Elizabeth-
I like your idea -- pinball vs. pinballing. I've been taught by many professors (most notably Ken Jacobs) about the connection between a cut (a third image between
two sandwiched ones created mentally). I'm attempting to do the same kinds of transitional cuts in a film I am working on now (i.e. - cut between two rommates
watching war coverage on television and then walking inside of an F-16 plane at a military airshow).
ML
----- Original Message -----
From: Elizabeth Nolan
To: film_by
Subject: [a_film_by] transitional cuts
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2004 09:51:59 -0700
> Message: 9
> Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2004 09:58:04 -0700 (PDT)
> From: David Ehrenstein
> Subject: Re: Re: Blier, editing
>
> --- cairnsdavid1967
>>
>> The greatest cut of all time, just about, is from O'Toole blowing out
>> a match to the sun rising in the desert. And there's a nice one where
>> he holds up his new arab robes to blow in the wind and we then cut to
>> him wearing them as he gallops along on a camel. The epic sensibility
>> gets a welcome shot in the arm from this briskness.
>
> It's neck-and-neck for greatest cut honors with the bone-to-spaceship
> cut in "2001"
I agree these are interesting cuts, but I wonder what it is that makes
our eye so entertained by these. Is it the 'super-imposition' of two
different tho related images in the same compositional space that
suddenly delights the eye especially when the story is advanced, ala
the bone-to-spaceship?
One script I am working on has the son character playing pinball...
then followed by the put-upon mother character 'pinballing' her way up
a staircase crowded with all sorts of junk left by the son and daughter
on the staircase. It works in my mind.
Elizabeth
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16977
From:
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 1:14pm
Subject: Re: Re: Films I liked lately
Brad Stevens wrote:
"Isn't this the version in which PB removed a scene from the middle of
the film and ran it as a precredits sequence?"
No, this is a different version. As you describe, the version you're
referencing (unseen by me, alas, though described to me by Bill Krohn) takes a scene
from the middle of the picture and places it at the beginning in order to
clarify for the audience that Gazzara, Ritter, et al, are detectives.
This third version of "They All Laughed" has no pre-credits sequence or, as
far as I can tell, any other changes beyond the addition of the footage I
described. To give you a better context for where it appears, it's during the long
sequence in which Gazzara and Novak are following Hepburn, while Ritter is
preoccupied with Stratten and Camp in the shoe store. It's a truly magical
addition.
Peter
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
16978
From:
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 1:25pm
Subject: Re: Re: Eastwood, Cimino, Bogdanovich, Spielberg (was: The Winner...
Jean-Pierre Coursodon wrote:
"According to Pat McGilligan's own biography of Eastwood things were
not so clearcut. "The decision making on the set was sometimes a
suble negotiation," he writes."
But it certainly sounds as though Eastwood had significantly more day-to-day
directorial involvement in "Tightrope" than on other Eastwood productions
which Clint didn't direct - say, "Every Which Way But Loose." I always had the
sense that James Fargo actually did direct that film. It doesn't sound as
though you could say that so unequivocally about Tuggle and "Tightrope."
Peter
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
16979
From: K. A. Westphal
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 7:24pm
Subject: CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT Question
I know there are more than a few Welles experts on this board, so
perhaps you could illuminate this for me:
I've never seen CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, though I've wanted to for years
now. Video copies are hard to come by. DocFilms has a 35 mm print in
their projection booth. They say they own it, but that they cannot
show it because of "legal issues." One of the grad students claimed
that CHIMES was the only Welles film not shown at the recent Film
Forum retro.
I was unaware of issues surrounding this film. Can anyone describe
this problem?
Thanks.
--Kyle Westphal
16980
From: Aaron Graham
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 7:53pm
Subject: Re: Films I liked lately
>but you can read about it (them) in
> my first ever piece in Hitchcock Annual, which was then revised on
> the MacGuffin, where the honest-to-God real preview ending is
finally
> posted. Also recommended, less self-servingly, Mark Crispin
Miller's
> piece on the film in his collection on TV, Boxed In. I think it's a
> remarkable film -- that moment where she enters the house and the
> cloud envelops it, for example: well-described in Ken Mogg's
chapter
> in The Alfred Hitchcock Story, which was the first to open the
whole
> hugely important can of worms about the letterbox mystery...
(babble
> babble... The film is so complex that it has driven MAD!)
Thanks for the recommendations! I'll take a look at my back issues of
The MacGuffin to see if I have the one with your piece. "Boxed In"
sounds like a great read, too. Isn't there also an essay about Jerry
Lewis's telethons in the collection?
-Aaron
16981
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 8:27pm
Subject: Re: CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT Question
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "K. A. Westphal"
wrote:
"I've never seen CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, though I've wanted to for years
now. Video copies are hard to come by. DocFilms has a 35 mm print in
their projection booth. They say they own it, but that they cannot
show it because of "legal issues." One of the grad students claimed
that CHIMES was the only Welles film not shown at the recent Film
Forum retro."
No doubt someone in this group can give you the full skinny on the
legal issues, but I can confirm that Beatrice Welles through her
representatives has halted any announced screening of the movie. In
1998 is was advertised as being shown as part of a Shakespeare film
festival at the Monica Theatres in Santa Monica California and was
pulled before the festival started.
In the meantime, you'll have to make do with a Spanish DVD of fairly
good quality. Suevia Films is the DVD distributor. The disc is
region 2 PAL format and is available under the title CAMPANADAS A
MEDIANOCHE (with English and alternate Spanish soundtracks.) There's
a lot of interesting supplementary material including interviews with
Edmond Richard and Jesus Franco.
Richard
16982
From: thebradstevens
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 8:30pm
Subject: Re: CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT Question
"I was unaware of issues surrounding this film. Can anyone describe
this problem?"
Not sure that I could describe it, but I suspect its initials are BW.
16983
From: thebradstevens
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 8:39pm
Subject: Re: Films I liked lately
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ptonguette@a... wrote:
> Brad Stevens wrote:
>
> "Isn't this the version in which PB removed a scene from the middle
of
> the film and ran it as a precredits sequence?"
>
> No, this is a different version. As you describe, the version
you're
> referencing (unseen by me, alas, though described to me by Bill
Krohn) takes a scene
> from the middle of the picture and places it at the beginning in
order to
> clarify for the audience that Gazzara, Ritter, et al, are
detectives.
>
> This third version of "They All Laughed" has no pre-credits
sequence or, as
> far as I can tell, any other changes beyond the addition of the
footage I
> described. To give you a better context for where it appears, it's
during the long
> sequence in which Gazzara and Novak are following Hepburn, while
Ritter is
> preoccupied with Stratten and Camp in the shoe store. It's a truly
magical
> addition.
That's not in either of the versions I've seen!
In version 2, PB took a scene that originally appeared approximately
40 minutes in. Blaine Novak is trying to sneak into the building
where his office is located while Ben Gazzara distracts the woman who
works downstairs (I forget her name). John Ritter comes running up,
and shouts to Novak. The three men are then chased into the building,
and take the elevator up to their office. The sequence ends with them
entering the office, and we see from the writing on the door that it
is a detective agency. The film then cuts to the opening scene.
To plug the gap created by the removal of this scene from its
original position, Bogdanovich added some very scratched footage
showing the woman chasing Novak into the elevator while waving a
large knife. After the elevator door closes, the woman receives a
round of applause from several onlookers.
16984
From: Kevin Lee
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 8:57pm
Subject: Re: BIRTH, KANE, BREATHLESS, et al.
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "K. A. Westphal"
wrote:
Not sure if the Digital Cinema Revolution is dead
> yet,
It's just beginning. Ten years from now, nobody's going to be
shooting on film. Nobody, except maybe Guy Maddin. Though if he
really wanted to challenge himself he might give it a shot.
> Now, I also include UNKNOWN PLEASURES in my short list of worthy
> digital efforts, though I can't say it could not have been shot on
> film. Still, of all the DV pieces I've seen, that one has the
> loveliest color palette.
Did you see this theatrically or on video? I think it looks much
better on TV for the reason you describe (and I'm assuming the same
goes for THE WORLD, which wasn't very impressive on a big screen --
murky and splotchy DV color palette, especially towards the end).
The thing is, a large swath of his intended audience -- not
international festival goers, but mainland Chinese audiences -- are
far more likely to see his film on video than in the theater, so it's
just as well.
Kevin
16985
From: Kevin Lee
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 9:15pm
Subject: Re: More Big Red One
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Adrian Martin
> Your comment about being 'disturbed' about a film of the celluloid
era being
> dragged into the digital era is haunting.
How about a filmMAKER of the celluloid era being dragged into the
digital era? I'm thinking of Bergman's SARABAND. His shooting on HD
gives his familiar mise-en-scene a strange new palette of colors and
textures, as if it were a Bergman film being beamed from another land
of soft pastels and slightly metallic hues, almost as if it were a
dream. Very similar in this regard to Sokurov's FATHER AND SON (also
shot on HD, if I'm not mistaken). And suddenly 50 years of Bergman
cliches feel as fresh as an apple pie cooling on a sunbeamed
windowsill.
My impression is that HD has a surreal, paradoxical quality of
blending the hard facticity of most video images (where every facial
blemish screams out its existence) with the inorganic, un-real
textures of computer animated human forms (a la Final fantasy). In
other words this unsettling hyper-real/hyper-fake imagery serves to
remind one of the essential real/fakeness of cinema, which I think is
a good thing. Maybe this is what it was like to watch celluloid 100
years ago.
16986
From: Kevin Lee
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 9:25pm
Subject: addendum on Godard and DV (was Re: More Big Red One)
If I were a video artist I'd be more offended by Godard's approach to
video than Chantal Akerman apparently is about Godard's alleged anti-
Semitism (which, by my understanding of the main thrust of NOTRE
MUSIQUE, is a totally bogus claim). I haven't seen all of Godard's
video work, but looking at IN PRAISE OF LOVE and NOTRE MUSIQUE, it
seems that his only way to make a video image beautiful is to run it
through the meatgrinder until its over-pixilated, over-saturated
carcass renders some kind of pulpy essence (witness the opening
chapter of NOTRE MUSIQUE). In other words he does to video images
what Lars von Trier does to human beings. The results may be
arresting, but they still belie what I think is a fundamental (dare I
say sadistic?) contempt for the video aesthetic; since it can never
be as incipiently "beautiful" as celluloid, he has to pulverize it to
make it into something he finds interesting.
All the same, I think his soon-to-be famous silence in NOTRE MUSIQUE
when asked his opinions on digital video may be seen less a quiet
condemnation of video as an admission of his own inability to truly
engage with the medium, as enamored as he is to film. He simply has
no answer.
Kevin
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Kevin Lee"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Adrian Martin
wrote:
> > Your comment about being 'disturbed' about a film of the
celluloid
> era being
> > dragged into the digital era is haunting.
>
> How about a filmMAKER of the celluloid era being dragged into the
> digital era? I'm thinking of Bergman's SARABAND. His shooting on
HD
> gives his familiar mise-en-scene a strange new palette of colors
and
> textures, as if it were a Bergman film being beamed from another
land
> of soft pastels and slightly metallic hues, almost as if it were a
> dream. Very similar in this regard to Sokurov's FATHER AND SON
(also
> shot on HD, if I'm not mistaken). And suddenly 50 years of Bergman
> cliches feel as fresh as an apple pie cooling on a sunbeamed
> windowsill.
>
> My impression is that HD has a surreal, paradoxical quality of
> blending the hard facticity of most video images (where every
facial
> blemish screams out its existence) with the inorganic, un-real
> textures of computer animated human forms (a la Final fantasy). In
> other words this unsettling hyper-real/hyper-fake imagery serves to
> remind one of the essential real/fakeness of cinema, which I think
is
> a good thing. Maybe this is what it was like to watch celluloid
100
> years ago.
16987
From:
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 5:29pm
Subject: Re: Re: Films I liked lately
Brad Stevens wrote:
>That's not in either of the versions I've seen!
Yes, I got the impression that the footage has never been in any version of
the film before. To Aaron: I'd certainly assume that this is the version which
will be on the DVD whenever a DVD of the movie appears.
>In version 2, PB took a scene that originally appeared approximately
>40 minutes in.
Thanks for the description. Another reason Bogdanovich may have moved up
this scene is because he was concerned that audiences wouldn't know right away
that the film was in fact a comedy. I say this because during his introduction
to the screening of this new, third version, he told the story of Frank
Sinatra seeing the film with an audience and, fifteen minutes in, yelling, "It's a
romantic comedy!!"
Personally speaking, though (and without ever having seen how the film plays
with this alteration), I'm quite pleased both with how the movie opens and
with the placement of the scene you describe midway through the film.
>Blaine Novak is trying to sneak into the building
>where his office is located while Ben Gazzara distracts the woman who
>works downstairs (I forget her name).
Elizabeth Pena?
Peter
16988
From: Kevin Lee
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 9:29pm
Subject: correction (was Re: More Big Red One)
I've just been informed that Sokurov actually shot FATHER AND SON on
35. I'll have to see this again, as I could swear it looks like hi-
def digitial video.
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Kevin Lee"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Adrian Martin
wrote:
> > Your comment about being 'disturbed' about a film of the
celluloid
> era being
> > dragged into the digital era is haunting.
>
> How about a filmMAKER of the celluloid era being dragged into the
> digital era? I'm thinking of Bergman's SARABAND. His shooting on
HD
> gives his familiar mise-en-scene a strange new palette of colors
and
> textures, as if it were a Bergman film being beamed from another
land
> of soft pastels and slightly metallic hues, almost as if it were a
> dream. Very similar in this regard to Sokurov's FATHER AND SON
(also
> shot on HD, if I'm not mistaken). And suddenly 50 years of Bergman
> cliches feel as fresh as an apple pie cooling on a sunbeamed
> windowsill.
>
> My impression is that HD has a surreal, paradoxical quality of
> blending the hard facticity of most video images (where every
facial
> blemish screams out its existence) with the inorganic, un-real
> textures of computer animated human forms (a la Final fantasy). In
> other words this unsettling hyper-real/hyper-fake imagery serves to
> remind one of the essential real/fakeness of cinema, which I think
is
> a good thing. Maybe this is what it was like to watch celluloid
100
> years ago.
16989
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 9:40pm
Subject: Re: Eastwood, Cimino, Bogdanovich, Spielberg (was: The Winner...
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ptonguette@a... wrote:
> Jean-Pierre Coursodon wrote:
>
> "According to Pat McGilligan's own biography of Eastwood things
were
> not so clearcut. "The decision making on the set was sometimes a
> suble negotiation," he writes."
>
> But it certainly sounds as though Eastwood had significantly more
day-to-day
> directorial involvement in "Tightrope" than on other Eastwood
productions
> which Clint didn't direct - say, "Every Which Way But Loose." I
always had the
> sense that James Fargo actually did direct that film. It doesn't
sound as
> though you could say that so unequivocally about Tuggle
and "Tightrope."
>
> Peter
Well, in the rest of my quotation, which you deleted, Tuggle
clearly stated that sometimes he directed, sometimes Clint did, and
sometimes it was a joint effort. he also made it clear that Eastwood
had what you call "day-to-day involvement" and that the crew was
behind Clint rather than Tuggle in case of disagreement. Tuggle also
said that he refrained from directing the scenes between Eastwood
and his daughter Alison, "because I could sense the closeness
between them, the nervousness Clint had with her. I did not
particularly want to get in the middle of that." Maybe we can settle
on the compromise that the film was co-directed and let it go at
that. It's a very interesting, somewhat upsetting film.
JPC
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
16990
From: Joseph Kaufman
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 9:42pm
Subject: Re: CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT Question
We were given to understand that a court case was undertaken in Spain
to clear up the convoluted legalities of the rights to CHIMES AT
MIDNIGHT in an amicable fashion. Apparently the outlook is hopeful,
and perhaps BW's posturings on this particular title can be laid to
rest.
--
- Joe Kaufman
16991
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 9:54pm
Subject: Re: An Auteur-Friendly University Press?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
>
> In a message dated 10/14/04 5:15:23 PM, peckinpah20012000@y...
writes:
>
>
> > the College will not hire any more white males.
> >
> What about white GAY males?
>
> Kevin John
>
I don't know about that category but I know that "ladies" are
exempt since, I think, at least two, work in that department.
Tony Williams
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
16992
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 9:55pm
Subject: Re: 180 (Was: Greatest cut)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
>
> The point I was trying to make was that Ozu cuts on
> various points of the circle (60 degrees, 90 degrees, etc.) and not
just the 180
> degrees radian (is that the word, geometry people?). If he comes
back to the
> image he started on, so be it. But again, it's not necessary.T
ag Gallagher has some great observations on Mizoguchi's cutting in
his Mizo piece posted at Senses or Screening.
16993
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 9:56pm
Subject: Re: BIRTH, KANE, BREATHLESS, et al.
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
> wrote:
>
> "But Mizo had probably seen prewar Wyler. He was a fan."
>
he
> acknowledged DOCKS OF NEW YORK as the most influential Western film
> on his own work, and sought out Sternberg when Sternberg visited
> Japan in 1935 and later gave a generous endorsement of ANATAHAN
when
> it was released in Japan.
Wow! That's fascinating, Richard.
16994
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 10:06pm
Subject: Re: Films I liked lately
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Graham"
"Boxed In"
> sounds like a great read, too. Isn't there also an essay about
Jerry
> Lewis's telethons in the collection?
>
> -Aaron
I'd have to check. It IS where Miller wrote (in an obituary) that
calling Hitchcock the Master of Suspense is like calling James Joyce
an "ace punster."
My two contributions to Ken's site on Suspicion are a bit confusing --
the first is more like a long meditation on the facts that comes to
no sure conclusions; the second is correcting my mistake in the
otherwise coherent Hitchcock Annual piece (itself an improvement on
the version I wrote for Trafic...), when Ken pointed out to me that
Lina doesn't drink the milk in the scene I had identified as the
preview ending, when AH clearly stated in a contemporary interview
that she did, causing titters at the preview.
16995
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 10:13pm
Subject: addendum on Godard and DV (was Re: More Big Red One)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Kevin Lee"
wrote:
>
> If I were a video artist I'd be more offended by Godard's approach
to
> video than Chantal Akerman apparently is about Godard's alleged
anti-
> Semitism (which, by my understanding of the main thrust of NOTRE
> MUSIQUE, is a totally bogus claim).
Complex history. On the one hand, he and J-P Beauviala, who built a
special 35mm handheld camera for Godard, did not exactly embrace the
idea of shooting on video; on the other hand, Godard was one of the
first directors to start using the stuff, and his use of it isn't
limited to the effects in Eloge d'Amour: He uses it very
straightforwardly in Grandeur et decadence and (if memory serves) in
6 x 2 and Tour detour; he integrates it as a production tool at least
as early as Sauve qui peut, where the messing around with speeds is
actually a dynamiting of the celluloid on which the film is shot; and
he expands the limits of video in Histoire(s) in ways that indicate
his reconciliation with the medium, to say the least.
Nonetheless, the Beauviala-Godard critiques of the beginning of the
Digital Revolution are still relevant and interesting.
16996
From: Aaron Graham
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 10:40pm
Subject: Re: Films I liked lately
> That's not in either of the versions I've seen!
>
> In version 2, PB took a scene that originally appeared
approximately
> 40 minutes in. Blaine Novak is trying to sneak into the building
> where his office is located while Ben Gazzara distracts the woman
who
> works downstairs (I forget her name).
Wow, this is interesting. This version just aired on Canadian TV
about a month ago and I was under the impression that it was the cut
on the VHS. Subconsciously, I thought there was something different
about it. Where was this version released?
PS. I believe the actress was Elizabeth Pena?
-Aaron
16997
From:
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 7:18pm
Subject: DV intention (WAS: BIRTH, KANE, BREATHLESS, et al.)
In a message dated 10/15/04 4:00:06 PM, alsolikelife@y... writes:
> Did you see this theatrically or on video? I think it looks much better on
> TV for the reason you describe
>
Not sure if I've brought this up before but what is the, um, ideal way to see
a DV movie? I first saw both CHUCK & BUCK and THE LADY AND THE DUKE on film
in a theatre. I next saw them both on video in my home at the colors were
indeed more vivid, the visuals more viscreal, the, um, texture more touchy-feely,
etc. So does Rohmer, for instance, intend for us to see THE LADY AND THE DUKE
on film? Does anyone claim that the ideal way to see THE LADY AND THE DUKE is
on film?
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
16998
From: samfilms2003
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 11:27pm
Subject: addendum on Godard and DV (was Re: More Big Red One)
First I need to say I *love* what he did with DV in "Eloge de L'Amour"
One DV's most daring practioners turns out to be one of the oldest,
interesting....
> he integrates it as a production tool at least
> as early as Sauve qui peut, where the messing around with speeds is
> actually a dynamiting of the celluloid on which the film is shot;
I dunno, speed ramping is no more inherently electronic than mechanical
from my perspective (witness the use of film cameras for in-camera speed
ramps on otherwise Digital productions)
What's so bad about creatively dynamting anyway ? :)
> Nonetheless, the Beauviala-Godard critiques of the beginning of the
> Digital Revolution are still relevant and interesting.
JPB has been 100% about film capture, but digital finish I would argue is
really consistent with "the Aaton philosophy" if we can speak of such a
thing.
-Sam
16999
From: K. A. Westphal
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 11:43pm
Subject: Re: DV intention (WAS: BIRTH, KANE, BREATHLESS, et al.)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
> >
> Not sure if I've brought this up before but what is the, um, ideal
way to see
> a DV movie? I first saw both CHUCK & BUCK and THE LADY AND THE DUKE
on film
> in a theatre. I next saw them both on video in my home at the colors
were
> indeed more vivid, the visuals more viscreal, the, um, texture more
touchy-feely,
> etc. So does Rohmer, for instance, intend for us to see THE LADY AND
THE DUKE
> on film? Does anyone claim that the ideal way to see THE LADY AND
THE DUKE is
> on film?
>
> Kevin John
>
When I saw ATANARJUAT, the print was atrocious. Splotches and hairs
everywhere. Green lines running down the frame. And that was just the
print. As for the actual video transfer, it was decent. In the
close-ups, the detail was very close to film-level. In the long shots,
it was lacking.
Yet when I saw RUSSIAN ARK in the theater, it was beautiful, sharp as
any 35 mm film I'd ever seen. I was very impressed with it, but then
it may've been the difference between the normal 29.97 fps of video
and RUSSIAN ARK's 24 fps.
The DVD of ATANARJUAT looks very good; haven't seen the Wellspring
release of ARK, but I hear it's good, if somewhat soft.
What I mean to say is that my experiences have really run the gamut:
Seeing 24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE on film was disappointing. All the colors
were washed out and it destroyed (what I assume to be) the film's
atmosphere.
When I saw PIECES OF APRIL, it looked pretty bad, but then I think the
effort put into photographing it was pretty minimal. In my review of
it, I wrote: "... Nor do we ever understand much about these
characters. Holmes does her best looking gloomy for the camera (which
is difficult, considering "Pieces of April" is shot on frustrating,
cheap digital video). Though her character is similarly underwritten,
Clarkson fairs better as the mother, her stoic, blank face effectively
conveying the unspeakable anguish of her cancer-stricken character. "
Granted, when it was published, the parenthetical note about DV was
cut out.
I actually saw UNKNOWN PLEASURES on film, when it played for a week in
NY when I visiting last spring. There were limitations, but it still
left an impression on me.
As for your question, Kevin, I doubt the question can be resolved in a
neat way. After all, what's the proper way to view IN PRAISE OF LOVE?
Switch from 35mm projection to digital midway through?
--Kyle Westphal
17000
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 11:55pm
Subject: addendum on Godard and DV (was Re: More Big Red One)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "samfilms2003"
>
> First I need to say I *love* what he did with DV in "Eloge de
L'Amour"
>
> One DV's most daring practioners turns out to be one of the oldest,
> interesting....
>
> > he integrates it as a production tool at least
> > as early as Sauve qui peut, where the messing around with speeds
is
> > actually a dynamiting of the celluloid on which the film is shot;
>
> I dunno, speed ramping is no more inherently electronic than
mechanical
> from my perspective (witness the use of film cameras for in-camera
speed
> ramps on otherwise Digital productions)
>
> What's so bad about creatively dynamting anyway ? :)
I didn't mesan to imply that there's anything wrong with it. I do
think those variations in speed -- sometimes several within one shot -
- are done using video transfer. I could be wrong.
>
> > Nonetheless, the Beauviala-Godard critiques of the beginning of
the
> > Digital Revolution are still relevant and interesting.
>
> JPB has been 100% about film capture, but digital finish I would
argue is
> really consistent with "the Aaton philosophy" if we can speak of
such a
> thing.
That may be -- and again, it's fine with me. I was just pointing out
the complexity of JLG's evolution with respect to video. The one film
I made was shot (the contemprary part) with an Aaton and finished on
an Avid. But I'm curious where JPB himself stands today. It would be
fun to get him and Godard together to tape a 20 Years Later bull
session.
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