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Posts From the Internet Film Discussion Group, a_film_by
This group is dedicated to discussing film as art
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17001
From: Craig Keller
Date: Fri Oct 15, 2004 11:59pm
Subject: Re: Re: DV intention
> 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?
Godard has noted in an interview included in the volume entitled
'Future(s) of Film' that the DV section of 'Eloge de l'amour' is in
fact a film of video-playback, and that was the only way he and his
cinematographer (Julien Hirsch for that section of the film, I believe)
were able to get the saturation the way they wanted. They must have
shot a high-definition/progressive display, as there are no cascading
scan-lines visible on the image.
To address Kevin's post, I don't find what Godard has done here to be a
desecration or sadistic maneuver against the digital image -- it's too
beautiful, no matter what ambivalence he might have about there being
no positive or negative. And I wouldn't say there's even the implicit
expression of the stance that for video or DV to be properly birthed,
it must be routed through a canal of saturation-manipulation. As Bill
pointed out, see the 'Histoire(s),' or 'Origin of the XXIst Century'
for examples of both a "video classicism" and threshold manipulation,
speed-up/slow-down, freeze-frame, superimposition, etc. etc. etc.
craig.
17002
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 1:13am
Subject: Re: DV intention (WAS: BIRTH, KANE, BREATHLESS, et al.)
--- 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?
>
Six of one half a dozen of the other. "Ma Vraie Vie a
Rouen" by Ducastel et martineau was shot on video, and
is about video. It looks best at home rather than a
theatrical setting. Likewise "France/Tour/Detour/Deux
Enfants," "Six fois Deux," and "Grandeur et Decadence
d'un Petit Commerce du Cinema" (a late Godard gem)
The video sections of "Eloge D'Amour" look hideous and
there's no excsue for it. I suspect Godard was looking
fro something along the lines of Antonioni's "The
Mystery of Oberwald," but he fails by a country mile.
As I'm sure you all know, I used to like Godard quite
a lot. Not much lately. "Detective" was his last
really good one, IMO.
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17003
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 1:52am
Subject: Re: DV intention (WAS: BIRTH, KANE, BREATHLESS, et al.)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
>
> The video sections of "Eloge D'Amour" look hideous and
> there's no excsue for it. I suspect Godard was looking
> fro something along the lines of Antonioni's "The
> Mystery of Oberwald," but he fails by a country mile.
>
> As I'm sure you all know, I used to like Godard quite
> a lot. Not much lately. "Detective" was his last
> really good one, IMO.
>
>
>
> It's "Eloge de l'amour" David. The video stuff does look weird
but I'm not sure whether it's hideous or just outlandish. I sort of
liked it. But I don't think I should even say a word about Godard on
this august forum because most of the time I don't know what he is
trying to do and when I do I don't like it. I saw "ELOGE" in Paris
in a theatre (where I was the only spectator) and couldn't make any
sense out of it. Watched it again last week on DVD and wondered how
I could stand it the first time around (Paris does strange
things...) I tend to agree with you, David. But then I don't
care much for early Godard either. Except "Vivre sa vie" and
possibly "Bande a part" and oh yes, "Les Carabiniers". And then
there's a string of films between from about 1965 through 1969 that
I have no idea how I could see again and I thought they were his
great period. Until I can see, or see again, Masculin/Feminin, Deux
ou trois choses, La Chinoise, and Weekend I'd better keep quiet.
JPC
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses.
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17004
From: Hadrian
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 2:27am
Subject: Re: CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT Question
"chimes at midnight" was on video for several years on the Arthur
Cantor Films label --they specialize in theatre videos. It only went
out of print recently, so a video can be found. Buying it would
certainly be expensive, but most specialty video stores worth their
salt would have a copy.
hadrian
> 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
17005
From: Elizabeth Nolan
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 2:47am
Subject: Cast Away
I don't know exactly what you mean by physically eloquent / physical
acting but I don't feel much from the body posturing by Hanks.
I know Boyles and Hanks were paired for Cast Away from the start. I
may be alone in this but I think Ed Norton would have carried the
'alone on the island' scenes better. Norton can tell you exactly what
he is thinking by his body posture and movements.
> From: "Noel Vera"
> Subject: Re: cinephilia & populism
>
> Cast Away, though, had a pretty good, physically eloquent performance
> by Tom
> Hanks. Hanks is always good at physical acting.
17006
From: cairnsdavid1967
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 3:48pm
Subject: Re: CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT Question
Nice disc, that. Sadly, on my version the Spanish interviews are
unsubtitled, but I was able to get a friend to translate - though he
reports that Franco's toothless and heavily-accented Spanish is quite
difficult.
17007
From: cairnsdavid1967
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 3:52pm
Subject: Re: Rene Cl. (Was: Wyler and auteurist taste)
> 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."
I thought FLAME was a little less appealing than the others bit it
begins brilliantly. I love IT HAPPENED but I don't see much
comparison with the Capra. Maybe with A BILLION FOR BORIS?
I MARRIED A WITCH and AND THEN THERE WERE NONE are the ones I keep
coming back to from the US period. He also took over a script
Hitchcock prepared, an episdoe of the compendium FOREVER AND A DAY.
17008
From: cairnsdavid1967
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 3:57pm
Subject: Re: house o wax
> 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.
I'm not sure I'd grant the word auteur to non-directors (pr directors
working in other roles), otherwise I fear the word could start to
diffuse. As I use it, I think of it as referring to a director who
has controlled a film to the extent that his/her contribution is of
more importance to the film's status as art than the writer etc.
In the case of GONE WTW, there are several creditable directors
involved, a strong-willed producer, good cinematopgrapher and great
designer, as well as a script very faithfully adapted from a book, so
there doesn't seem room for an auteur!
One of my fave bits of THE MAZE is the onscreen narrator at the start
who slowly advances towards the camera in a way that's kind of
freaky. One constantly fears for her tripping off the screen
altogether, in a way that all those lion-in-your-lap shock effects in
most 3D movies never do.
17009
From: cairnsdavid1967
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 4:06pm
Subject: Re: transitional cuts
I think the satisfaction from the transitional cuts derives from a
combination of things - the juxtaposition of two objects, as with the
bone and spaceship - the idea created by the juxtaposition: two
different tools used by man - the surprise of the sudden connection,
created by careful pacing...
The LAURENCE cut is more ambiguous, the idea behind it more poetic
and harder to put into words. The earlier part of the film and the
three hours still to go are encompassed in this single transition,
and idea about the desert as a form of pain Laurence inflicts on
himself is present...
Your pinball cut, Elizabeth, could be reinforced with sound. In
LAURENCE, the breath of Peter O'Toole is heard across the cut,
leading us into the desert. A faint continuation of the pinball sound
effects into the next scene could subtly add to the idea. A more
sustyained continuation would turn it into slapstick!
17010
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 4:07pm
Subject: Isabelle (Was: Heaven's Gate)
> Agree that Huppert sucks (sic) in Heaven's Gate, rules in Huckabee's.
> She's France's best actress
I too think she's amazing, though I don't know if I felt that Russell
used her all that well in HUCKABEES. Among her many great performances,
one of the most striking is in Jacquot's fine movie L'ECOLE DE LA CHAIR,
where the whole movie is on her shoulders. - Dan
17011
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 4:17pm
Subject: Re: Re: Heaven's Gate
>>I honestly can't agree that 'the people' in HEAVEN'S
>>GATE are
>>regarded as losers. Certainly Averill is not
>>portrayed as 'The Chosen
>>One who will lead them'. He ultimately DOES lead the
>>people, but
>>they're defeated anyway.
>
> Of course he'sa"The Chosen One" He goes to college
> fucks whores, survives the carnage and winds up on a
> yacht.
I tend to agree with David here, and I think this discussion points to a
more general issue that comes up a lot. If a movie gives pleasure from,
say, a character's personality, and then manages to punish or otherwise
distance itself from the character at the end, does the movie get to
disassociate itself from the character? I tend to hold the movie
responsible for the pleasure that it gives. To judge a movie's position
by its ending is to treat movies as a coherent whole, which is possibly
never the case, and which at any rate is a poor assumption to work from.
There are movies like Hawks' SCARFACE that both give pleasure and
condemn the source of the pleasure, and which I think work pretty well.
The key here is that SCARFACE more or less continuously owns up to
both impulses simultaneously, giving a double perspective. Whereas I
think Cimino's naive romantic hero worship just gets the better of him,
every time out. - Dan
17012
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 4:19pm
Subject: Re: Re: Schatzberg (Was:A is A / Rivette's evidence)
> Exactly. Schatzberg started his career as a director when he was
> already in his forties, with three major films, masterpieces even,
> in three years: "Puzzle of a Downfall Child", "Panic in Needle Park"
> and "Scarecrow" -- none of them look dated today. They were all
> underrated or dismissed by American critics. Later JS had no end of
> trouble with studios and producers. "Misunderstood" was mangled by
> Damon and Ben Amar, and Cannon mis-handled the remarkable "Street
> Smart" which was barely distributed. "Honeysuckle Rose" -- a film
> almost unknown -- although uneven is full of delightful bits and
> pieces. "Reunion", a French-German-English production, is equally
> obscure in the US and I have never seen it (Pinter wrote the
> script). JS's last (?) film, "The Day the Ponies Come back" was a
> total disappointment to me but it has some fans. JPC
You left out the only Schatzberg film I like: THE SEDUCTION OF JOE
TYNAN. Meryl Streep's finest hour. - Dan
17013
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 4:24pm
Subject: Re: house o wax
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "cairnsdavid1967"
wrote:
>
> > 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.
>
> I'm not sure I'd grant the word auteur to non-directors (pr
directors
> working in other roles), otherwise I fear the word could start to
> diffuse. As I use it, I think of it as referring to a director who
> has controlled a film to the extent that his/her contribution is of
> more importance to the film's status as art than the writer etc.
>
I agree, although there is a secondary usage that just makes auteur a
synonym for author. David, for example, likes to say that this or
that actor was the film's auteur. But I would agree that in the
traditional sense, GWTW has no auteur -- although in the larger
sense, one could argue that Vivien Leigh and Margaret Mitchell are
the co-authors of the film, and the rest mere window dressing.
17014
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 4:26pm
Subject: Coming inside (Was: CAFE FLESH)
> That's true, but my recollection of Joanna is that it contains the
> only scene where an individual on whom fellatio is being performed
> actually comes in the other individual's mouth and not on her face. I
> still remember this detail of a film I saw in a theatre many years
> ago because it was a rare moment of almost von Stroheimian realism in
> a genre where the "money shot" is enshrined as a permanent (and
> deeply anti-erotic) convention.
Anti-erotic for you and me, perhaps, but it wouldn't be a convention if
it was anti-erotic for most. The pornography audience seems on the
whole to be committed to a cine-verite approach to sex: proof that the
sex is real is all-important. (From an erotic point of view, it should
go without saying. The aesthetic point of view is irrelevant to most
people in this context, and who can blame them?) I think we are, for
better or worse, removing ourselves from the mainstream of erotic
response if we reject this convention.
That said, the ending of Henry Paris' THE OPENING OF MISTY BEETHOVEN (by
far the best hard-core sex film I've seen, aesthetically speaking) dares
to break the rule by ending on an extreme close-up of consummated
intercourse without the usual pull-out. In context (both of the movie
and of film history), it's quite a romantic moment. - Dan
17015
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 4:26pm
Subject: Re: Isabelle (Was: Heaven's Gate)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> > Agree that Huppert sucks (sic) in Heaven's Gate, rules in
Huckabee's.
> > She's France's best actress
>
> I too think she's amazing, though I don't know if I felt that
Russell
> used her all that well in HUCKABEES.
She's France's Edith Meeks. So what did you think of Huckabee's, Dan?
17016
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 4:31pm
Subject: Re: Re: Schatzberg (Was:A is A / Rivette's evidence)
--- Dan Sallitt wrote:
>
> You left out the only Schatzberg film I like: THE
> SEDUCTION OF JOE
> TYNAN. Meryl Streep's finest hour. - Dan
>
>
With a powerful supporting turn by the legendary
Barbara Harris -- who nails the "neglected
politician's wife" once and for all.
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17017
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 4:34pm
Subject: Re: re: Fuller
> "I think there's something about Fuller's art that's a lot more conceptual,
> and a lot less about space and time, than people usually talk about. A
> lot of the wow moments in Fuller's films have almost the same impact in
> conversation, or in the mind."
By the way, in case it wasn't clear, I didn't mean the word "conceptual"
as a put-down in any way. I know I've used the word in a negative sense
before on this board, referring to stylistic effects that wind up
reducing to a simple idea that might as well have been stated in words.
But "conceptual art" means something different to me, something where
the concepts are part of the process rather than the final result. - Dan
17018
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 4:37pm
Subject: Re: Coming inside (Was: CAFE FLESH)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> >
>
> That said, the ending of Henry Paris' THE OPENING OF MISTY
BEETHOVEN (by
> far the best hard-core sex film I've seen, aesthetically speaking)
dares
> to break the rule by ending on an extreme close-up of consummated
> intercourse without the usual pull-out. In context (both of the
movie
> and of film history), it's quite a romantic moment. - Dan
Thanks for the recommendation. Now what did you think of Huckabee's?
When I said Huppert ruled in IHH, I meant as a passive-aggressive
sexpot, which is her fallback position from acting. In Heaven's Gate
she just acted...badly.
17019
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 4:40pm
Subject: Re: Re: The Winner is ...
> For what it's worth, one of the things I enjoy most about hanging around
> auteurists is that you will every so often come across an enthusiastic comment
> about a director you'd previously not paid attention to, written off, or simply
> were unaware of. I'm proud that we have such discussions often on our group.
> The recent reassessment of Robert Wise prompted me to see or re-see some of
> his films, and now I'll have to do the same with Derek and Winner as well.
>
> Also for what it's worth, I've noticed that Eastwood, Cimino, Bogdanovich,
> and even Spielberg are more recent Hollywood directors who most auteurists my
> age (I'm 21) seem to agree about and like a lot. So when I'm talking with
> auteurists in my age group, I feel there are some shared tastes.
My sense is that some of your examples - certainly Eastwood and Cimino -
are also admired by older auteurists. Spielberg, it's true, generated
only occasional auteur interest in the old days, despite his obvious
force of personality. And Bogdanovitch, I believe, was a little
handicapped in the old days by some negative feelings about his writing
in the auteurist community. (Sarris used to be open about his bad
feelings for Bogdanovitch.)
I agree, I'm completely in favor of getting all this heretical praise
out there in the open. We should always be reevaluating everyone, if we
have enough time. - Dan
17020
From:
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 0:42pm
Subject: Re: Coming inside (Was: CAFE FLESH)
In a message dated 10/16/04 11:27:22 AM, sallitt@p... writes:
> The pornography audience seems on the whole to be committed to a
> cine-verite approach to sex: proof that the sex is real is all-important.
>
Which is, of course, the thrust of Linda Williams' groundbreaking HARDCORE.
But I would tweak what you've said slightly: proof that PLEASURE is real is
all-important. That's why the money shot is such a fetish in classic hardcore
pornography. And thus the central problem in so many of these films (DEEP THROAT
being the quintessential example) is how to show FEMALE pleasure.
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
17021
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 4:52pm
Subject: Re: Coming inside (Was: CAFE FLESH)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
>
. And thus the central problem in so many of these films (DEEP THROAT
> being the quintessential example) is how to show FEMALE pleasure.
Masturbation videos come close enough for government work. But we're
talking about films that appeal to a sub-set of male voyeurs -- most
are perfectly happy to know that the guy came. Selfish bastards.
17022
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 5:08pm
Subject: Eastwood (Was: Eastwood, Cimino, Bogdanovich, Spielberg)
> Of the films you cite, those I've seen are not good examples. Ithink
> UNFORGIVEN is very good. But it's a terrific script.
Yeah, that was one superb script. I like that film, but, on the whole,
I've never cared much for Eastwood.
Here's some stuff I wrote back in the day - sorry, Eastwood fans.
HONKYTONK MAN: "...too content with the established archetypes of their
story...I am further irritated by Eastwood's now well-established
tendency as a director to favor a broad and campy style of acting from
his cast, for no aesthetic purpose that I can see. Interestingly, most
of the sets and locations are as authentic-looking as the characters
inhabiting them are forced and unnatural."
SUDDEN IMPACT: "...one of the most bombastic directors this side of Ken
Russell...every gesture in the film is grossly exaggerated for the
purpose of either inflaming the audience or gratifying its vengeful
instincts. The drama has a certain minimalist purity, but Eastwood's
immature directorial sensibility would cancel much larger virtues."
PALE RIDER: "...applies Eastwood's Leone-like exaggeration to another
mythic conglomeration of oppressed little guys, rich capitalists, and a
mysterious, powerful stranger. Eastwood's old-fashioned, faintly
minimalist dramatic instincts keep the film watchable and relatively
coherent, but the aggressive banality of the direction of actors (more
than matched by Butler & Shryack's script) is, as always, his salient
characteristic."
I guess I've relented a bit in recent years, because I rather enjoyed
UNFORGIVEN and BLOOD WORK (but not BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY or MYSTIC
RIVER). - Dan
17023
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 5:14pm
Subject: What is the truth, said jesting Pilate (Was: Rene Cl.)
> For instance, the idea that all Carne's
> later work is lacking in merit - not true.
I don't think this is a matter of truth or falsehood. Auteurism is an
aesthetic, not a theory: in other words, it doesn't explain existing
phenomena, it expresses an aesthetic viewpoint. Obviously, we all have
different aesthetic approaches here, but for some of us, Carne's work
will be lacking in merit. - Dan
17024
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 5:15pm
Subject: Old age is a high price to pay for wisdom (Was: Greatest cut)
>>And there goes our old-timer solidarity: I feel about Coppola and
>>Schlesinger as you do, but I'm a Friedkin fan. Oh, well - every
> man for
>>himself, I guess.
>
> I think that's healthier! We should celebrate difference.:)
It's sadder, but no doubt wiser. - Dan
17025
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 5:20pm
Subject: Re: Re: 180 (Was: Greatest cut)
> Cocteau wrote about how the rule didn't matter. I think it CAN lead
> to confusion if broken carelessly -
Yeah, I agree, it's good to know about conventions. But, having
absorbed the idea, it's also good not to be intimidated by it.
I have a shameful experience in my past that no doubt gives energy to my
animus against this rule. On my first movie, I prepared a careful
cutting continuity, as I still do. As I was setting up a shot for one
scene, the actress said to me, "Aren't you breaking the 180-degree
rule?" I was indeed breaking the rule, I was flustered, and I changed
the shot accordingly. And, in the movie, the shot sticks out like a
sore thumb: the rule wasn't appropriate for that shot, where a larger
visual context had already been established. Now I think about these
things more contextually. - Dan
17026
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 5:37pm
Subject: Re: Eastwood (Was: Eastwood, Cimino, Bogdanovich, Spielberg)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> > Of the films you cite, those I've seen are not good examples.
Ithink
> > UNFORGIVEN is very good. But it's a terrific script.
It's good on all levels, including acting.
Eastwood's broadness in his crowd-pleasers compares unfavorably w.
Hawks in Rio Bravo: Hawks allows himself one Gonzalez Gonzalez for
the guys in the balcony; Eastwood is capable of filling up a whole
move with Gonzalez Gonzalez performances.
You could say that he does a HH balancing act with his comedy
segments in Perfect World, but my problem with that film is what
Moullet calls his liberal demagogy -- showing everything thru the
kid's eyes so we know how to react. (I exacept the one great scene.)
Same startegy with Eastwood and Cusack as our stand-ins in Bridges
and Midnight.
At least he doesn't give his upscale fans any more credit for brains
than he does his shit-kicker fans! To each group its own style of
telegraphy.
Radical philosopher Jacques Ranciere published an interesting attack
on Mystic River in CdC: He saw it as about 9/11 like me and JR and
Andy Klein, but he reads the moral as: It doesn't matter if we turned
around and invaded the wrong country, or locked up a bunch of
innocent people. The evil loose in the world frees us from making
moral judgements. That's why Bacon lets Penn go free.
Ny favorite Eastwoods: Josey Wales (thanks to Phil Kaufman), The
Gauntlet (feeding off Kaufman's invention of "Clint the Innocent"),
Heartbreak Ridge, Unforgiven.
In other words, he should still work with very good directors from
time to time.
17027
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 5:56pm
Subject: Re: Schatzberg (Was:A is A / Rivette's evidence)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
>>
> You left out the only Schatzberg film I like: THE SEDUCTION OF JOE
> TYNAN. Meryl Streep's finest hour. - Dan
You mean you dislike "Downfall Child", "Panic" and "Scarecrow"? I
don't get it; but at least there is auteurist consistancy there. But
then why do you like JOE TYNAN (true, it's somewhat un-
Schatzbergian). JPC
17028
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 6:02pm
Subject: Huckabees (SPOILERS) (Was: Isabelle)
> She's France's Edith Meeks. So what did you think of Huckabee's, Dan?
I must admit that it didn't entirely work for me, though Russell's
brilliance is evident. Sometimes I felt as if I was watching THE
FEARMAKERS, especially in the corporate scenes: a film about global
issues, enacted by the same few people in a couple of rooms. (Idea
about Tourneur courtesy of Chris Fujiwara.)
SPOILERS coming....
I was kind of going with the wacky aspects of the story, but about
halfway through I felt as if a lot of the scenes were thinning out,
reducing to less than the sum of their parts because of a certain
schematic quality to the drama. To some extent, I felt as if Russell's
politics, which in the past have had a bracing effect, were here
contributing to the film's simplification, turning some scenes into
simplistic good-bad affairs. And the tongue-in-cheek opposition between
the philosophies of Hoffman-Tomlin and Huppert went out of control for
me: were we expected to take these viewpoints (especially Huppert's) as
representative of anything in life, even on the most abstract level?
A certain number of things I just didn't get, either in an immediate or
an abstract sense. What was up with Naomi Watts and her Amish bonnet?
Or Jude Law's odd desire to take over a splinter ecological group, or
the seemingly banal expose of his inner needs in the last half hour?
Sometimes I thought of Capra-Riskin, which is probably a better
reference for you than for me. - Dan
17029
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 6:05pm
Subject: Re: Re: Eastwood (Was: Eastwood, Cimino, Bogdanovich, Spielberg)
--- hotlove666 wrote:
showing
> everything thru the
> kid's eyes so we know how to react. (I exacept the
> one great scene.)
> Same startegy with Eastwood and Cusack as our
> stand-ins in Bridges
> and Midnight.
>
I don't find this true in either case. Streep is more
important to "Bridges" than Eastwood as it's her
reactions (and actions) that matter the most.
In "Midnight" Cusack's standing as our "interpreter"
of the events is undermined in literally every
scene.In fact it's a source of genuine comedy in that
the "sophisticated New Yorker" can't fathom Savannah.
Eastwood, quite wisely, let's The Lady Chablis
completely take over all her scenes, as he does with
The Lady Spacey. And don't forget the zing the
Eastwood adds via Irma P. Hall, Patrika Darbo, Dorothy
Loudon and (as the most delectable piece of "rough
trade" I've ever laid eyes on) Jude Law.
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17030
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 6:08pm
Subject: Re: Gonzalez Gonzalez (wEastwood (Was: Eastwood, Cimino, Bogdanovich, Spielberg)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
>
>
> Eastwood's broadness in his crowd-pleasers compares unfavorably w.
> Hawks in Rio Bravo: Hawks allows himself one Gonzalez Gonzalez for
> the guys in the balcony;
It's one Gonzalez Gonzalez too many. The ethnic comedy (GG and
his hot-tempered, gesticulating wife) is so broad and dumb and
predictable that it really mars the movie (I could also do with less
of the coy Wayne-Dickinson interraction; in France the distrib. at
the time had cut at least ten minutes of it and it didn't weaken the
film a bit). JPC
>
17031
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 6:14pm
Subject: Re: Eastwood (Was: Eastwood, Cimino, Bogdanovich, Spielberg)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
"Ny favorite Eastwoods: Josey Wales (thanks to Phil Kaufman), The
Gauntlet (feeding off Kaufman's invention of "Clint the Innocent"),
Heartbreak Ridge, Unforgiven."
I was with HEARTBREAK RIDGE until the last act when the platoon
participated in the "liberation" of Graneda instead of going to
Beirut to be blown up with the 200 marines. I really thought that's
how the movie would end while watching it; that seemed to be the
dramatic logic of all that had gone before, but finally Clint
couldn't go the distance and had to end with a "victory." And at the
time of the actual events, the Graneda invasion was seen as a side
show to take our minds off the Beirut atrocity, a cheap victory to
erase a humiliating defeat, and it seems that Eastwood went along
with this larger scenario in this movie.
Richard
17032
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 6:26pm
Subject: Re: Eastwood (Was: Eastwood, Cimino, Bogdanovich, Spielberg)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
>
> In "Midnight" Cusack's standing as our "interpreter"
> of the events is undermined in literally every
> scene.In fact it's a source of genuine comedy in that
> the "sophisticated New Yorker" can't fathom Savannah.
>
> Eastwood, quite wisely, let's The Lady Chablis
> completely take over all her scenes, as he does with
> The Lady Spacey. And don't forget the zing the
> Eastwood adds via Irma P. Hall, Patrika Darbo, Dorothy
> Loudon and (as the most delectable piece of "rough
> trade" I've ever laid eyes on) Jude Law.
>
> I think Clint had the hots for the Lady Chablis and that's why he
let her not only take over her scenes (that was inevitable) but in a
sense the whole movie, since her scenes are so numerous and
prolonged (without much necessity to the plot). To me that's the
film's major weakness no matter how delectable the Lady Chablis may
be. The Lady Spacey in contrast is rivettingly understated (a great,
great performance). Both are emblematic of a microcosm of false
appearances, as is the invisible dog being ritualistically walked
around on a leash. JPC
>
> _______________________________
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> Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today!
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17033
From: George Robinson
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 7:47pm
Subject: Fw: January on TCM
Fascinating list of screenings on TCM, courtesy of Ira Hozinsky.
g
Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor,
never the victim. Silence encourages the
tormentor, never the tormented.
--Elie Wiesel
> Counsellor at Law
> No Name On The Bullet (ltbx)
> Kapo
> Quai des Brumes
> The Garden of Eden (1928, Lewis Milestone)
> The Quiller Memorandum (ltbx??)
> The Fall of the Roman Empire (ltbx)
> Man's Favorite Sport? (ltbx??)
> The Split (ltbx)
> Charley Varrick (ltbx)
> Hell is for Heroes (ltbx??)
>
17034
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 8:10pm
Subject: Re: Fw: January on TCM
--- George Robinson wrote:
> > Counsellor at Law
Not to be missed under any circumstances.
> > Kapo
Now we can see for ourselves what Rivette was
complaining about.
> > Quai des Brumes
Marcel Carne
> > The Quiller Memorandum (ltbx??)
It should be because it's in scope. One of my very
favorite Pinter screenplays.
George Segal: Then they told me they were going to
kille me.
Alec Guiness: Oh. And did they succeed?
> > The Fall of the Roman Empire (ltbx)
Marty likes this one.
> > Man's Favorite Sport? (ltbx??)
The original CdC review made reference to Hudson's
gayness -- back in 1964. A very strange film.
> > Charley Varrick (ltbx)
> > Hell is for Heroes (ltbx??)
> >
Two excellent Siegels.
>
>
>
>
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17035
From: George Robinson
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 8:26pm
Subject: Re: Fw: January on TCM
Taking David E's lead, allow me to add a couple of comments of my own:
> > > Counsellor at Law
>
> Not to be missed under any circumstances.
One of Barrymore's best film performances, making a very nice use of his
theatricality.
>
>
> > > Kapo
>
> Now we can see for ourselves what Rivette was
> complaining about.
I haven't seen this in many, many years and my memories of it are less than
fond; recent revisiting of Pontecorvo has been terribly disappointing for
me, so I'm holding my breath.
>
> > > Quai des Brumes
>
> Marcel Carne
Given the new DVD, the print should be very nice. The one they showed on TV5
was downright luminous.
>
> > > The Quiller Memorandum (ltbx??)
>
> It should be because it's in scope. One of my very
> favorite Pinter screenplays.
>
> George Segal: Then they told me they were going to
> kille me.
>
> Alec Guiness: Oh. And did they succeed?
With TCM there are no guarantees on letterboxing, but they usually do lbx
when a print is available.
This is certainly quite a bit better than your average Michael Anderson
epic.>
>
> > > Charley Varrick (ltbx)
> > > Hell is for Heroes (ltbx??)
> > >
>
> Two excellent Siegels.
I think you can make a good case for these as Siegel's best films, although
Escape from Alcatraz, Riot in Cell Block 11, Madigan, Invasion of the Body
Snatchers . . . never mind.
Varrick has a wonderfully intricate and clever screenplay by Howard Rodman,
Sr.; Hell is for Heroes features one of McQueen's best performances, using
his basic anti-social qualities cunningly and some striking B&W
cinematography by Harold Lipstein (DP who shot No Name on the Bullet -- see
below -- Heller in Pink Tights, The Chapman Report, The River's Edge and the
Ozzie and Harriet Show. Hey, it's a living.)
No Name on the Bullet (lbx)
One of several very underrated Audie Murphy westerns, this one directed
quite crisply by Jack Arnold from an inventive anti-McCarthyism script by
Gene L. Coon. I recommend a look at No Name; print should be quite new, too
since it just went to DVD for the first time this summer.
g
17036
From:
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 8:34pm
Subject: Re: Huckabees (SPOILERS) (Was: Isabelle)
Dan Sallitt :
>
> SPOILERS coming....
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> And the tongue-in-cheek opposition between
> the philosophies of Hoffman-Tomlin and Huppert went out of control
for
> me: were we expected to take these viewpoints (especially
Huppert's) as
> representative of anything in life, even on the most abstract
level?
My take on this is slightly different from others, I think. I didn't
read these opposing viewpoints as opposing philosophies, really, as
much as opposing *impulses*, or instincts -- the way that an
individual at times might feel totally connected to the people
around them, or alternately feel totally alienated from them. When
one starts to see these characters as representatives of
philosophical thought, it becomes a problem for me, cause they have
very little internal logic or consistency. They seem to be more
about immediate feelings than anything else. To me, that is. Like
angels or devils over your shoulder in a cartoon, perhaps...
>
> A certain number of things I just didn't get, either in an
immediate or
> an abstract sense. What was up with Naomi Watts and her Amish
bonnet?
Isn't this an example of the desire by some people to withdraw from
the complications of the world, renounce their physical beings, and
retreat into a self-loathing form of religion? Look at the number of
models over the decades who have become born again and/or
reactionaries... but maybe I'm letting my own biases run free here.
-Bilge
17037
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 9:18pm
Subject: Re: Fw: January on TCM
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "George Robinson"
wrote:
>
>> With TCM there are no guarantees on letterboxing, but they
usually do lbx
> when a print is available.
This is a bit unfair to TCM. They do have a policy to show films in
the proper aspect ratio -- provided a letterboxed print is
available, and it is usually the case.
17038
From:
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 10:53pm
Subject: Re: DV intention (WAS: BIRTH, KANE, BREATHLESS, et al.)
Probably a question with no answer, only preferences. Any filmmaker
worth his/her salt ought to be shooting on DV with an eye towards how
the image will transfer to film, often changing the texture of the
image significantly during the transfer. What I wonder is whether,
when it comes time to release such films on home video, the image
then has to be transferred from film back to video in order to
preserve the look of the theatrical version. The dirty little secret
of the latter process is that a great many films are "tweaked" on
their way to video, purposefully creating a home video version that
is different to the film version. For 28 DAYS LATER..., which played
up the grungy video-to-film look for the theatrical version (still,
to my mind, the best strategy in terms of the medium's severe
limitations), the DVD version was substantially *less* muddy than the
film -- but the rather daring darkness of the film in the theater was
one of the things I liked the most. There's a moment where, in the
theater, you could just barely make out the phrase "The end is
extremely fucking nigh" scrawled on the wall of a church. On video
the lettering was clear as day. This might be an "improvement" in
terms of clarity, but it seemed a definite minus in the atmosphere
department. And that's all without even mentioning theater sound,
which even the most sophisticated and pricey home systems can only
approximate (depending obviously on the complexity of the original
mix).
Seems to me that more and more filmmakers are treating home video/DVD
as an end in itself, not just a chance to emulate the theatrical
version. The number of directors who are bought off from releasing
their preferred cuts with a promise their version will be released on
video shows that filmmakers as well as audiences are shifting what
they conceive of as a movie's ultimate form. From a financial
standpoint, a theatrical release is already on its way to being
reduced to a long commercial for the DVD release. I guess it's not
surprising filmmakers are starting to think that way as well.
Sam
>
> Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2004 19:18:39 EDT
> From: LiLiPUT1@a...
>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
>
17039
From:
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 7:00pm
Subject: Re: Huckabees (SPOILERS) (Was: Isabelle)
This was my first Russell film, and really enjoyed it!
It shows the termendous possibility of plot. The film has oodles and oodles
of complex plot. And all tied to meaningful experiences in the lives of the
characters. It builds up into a complex interlocking structure of events and
ideas.
The Jude Law character is a bit complex. He seems to really want to help the
environment. In the current Film Comment, Russell says this characters's ideas
are completely misguided - you cant work within the corporate system, it's
all a delusion.
I confess, I was hoping that the positive sides of Law - his tremendous
energy, his understanding of lots of different kinds of people, even his much
discussed charm - would amount to something positive in the scheme of things. But
it never happens.
Mike Grost
17040
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat Oct 16, 2004 11:14pm
Subject: Re: Re: Huckabees (SPOILERS) (Was: Isabelle)
--- MG4273@a... wrote:
> I confess, I was hoping that the positive sides of
> Law - his tremendous
> energy, his understanding of lots of different kinds
> of people, even his much
> discussed charm - would amount to something positive
> in the scheme of things. But
> it never happens.
>
Well you've hit on the central problem with
"mainstream" politics. It's all about image. Because
(to some people) George W. Bush "looks like a regular
guy," he must be one -- even though he's far from
that. Because he professes religion he must be
religious -- even though he almost never attends
church.
And on and on
Jude Law's situation in the film is much like that of
his girlfriend, Naomi Watts. She at least comes to
realize that she's nothing but an image -- and goes
off in search of a real "self." He's stuck just
standing there and smiling -- as if he had real
feelings. Jason Schwartzman DOES have real feelings --
which is why he scowls.
Only Mark Wahlberg finds a way to break through by
saving Naomi Watts.
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17041
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun Oct 17, 2004 2:17am
Subject: Mr. Mapother Changes Trains
I am in receipt of the following:
You and a guest are invited to attend a special
presentation:
A CONVERSATION WITH TOM CRUISE
Monday, October 25, 2004 at Royce Hall at the UCLA
Campus
6:30 pm Reception
8:00 pm Presentation
As many of you may know, Mr.Mapother and I have never
met.
But our lawyers have been in touch --
http://www.ehrensteinland.com/htmls/library/tomcruiseletters.html
As you may well imagine, I can hardly wait!
__________________________________________________
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17042
From: Andy Rector
Date: Sun Oct 17, 2004 3:45am
Subject: 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). 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
>
> Kevin
Kevin, you are omitting 75% of Godard's video work by only citing
these two films. Puissance de la parole is the most beautiful of
videos (in image quality but also editing technique-- let's not
forget Godard's main formal idea in the use of video: through it's
immediacy and editing new rhythms, relationships, fictions, etc. are
discovered. The video camera as tool for discovery [from Six,Fois...
France/Tour... to L'origine du xxieme siecle], more so than 35mm
because it can be immediately viewed, transported, molded, etc.). His
video scenarios are another story altogether, in beauty and purpose,
beyond the discourse around digital at present. Histoire(s) du cinema
is video (for christssake!) though its easy to forget that as it
enters into ancient-Egyptian-type classifications.
On the contrary, Godard was one of the first to take video seriously
(and it always strikes me that its not important whether it's digital
or analog) and he has been complaining for years about being "alone"
in video inquiry (that is from the standpoint of staying small,
unlike Trier, and/or out of the museum).
I believe that, for Godard, "discussion" of video's "possibilities"
at this late date spells nothing but fatigue.
In the Tesson interview (conducted in 2000) JLG is asked the same
question as in Notre musique and he says what he means: so video is
here, let's make movies; stop talking about the form without the
content.
By the time he shoots the scene for Notre musique he's tired of even
responding without being responded to, so there's blank... Godard's
blank face, like Mallarme's white page!
> 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.
It's the complete opposite of what you say Kevin, Godard has already
said too much.
A video artist without Godard's video work is like a painter without
Cezanne's.
Yours,
andy
17043
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Oct 17, 2004 4:24am
Subject: Re: Eastwood (Was: Eastwood, Cimino, Bogdanovich, Spielberg)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- hotlove666 wrote:
>
> showing
> > everything thru the
> > kid's eyes so we know how to react. (I exacept the
> > one great scene.)
> > Same startegy with Eastwood and Cusack as our
> > stand-ins in Bridges
> > and Midnight.
> >
> I don't find this true in either case. Streep is more
> important to "Bridges" than Eastwood as it's her
> reactions (and actions) that matter the most.
But it's Eastwood watching her reactions and telling us how to read
them.
>
> In "Midnight" Cusack's standing as our "interpreter"
> of the events is undermined in literally every
> scene.In fact it's a source of genuine comedy in that
> the "sophisticated New Yorker" can't fathom Savannah.
>
> Eastwood, quite wisely, let's The Lady Chablis
> completely take over all her scenes, as he does with
> The Lady Spacey. And don't forget the zing the
> Eastwood adds via Irma P. Hall, Patrika Darbo, Dorothy
> Loudon and (as the most delectable piece of "rough
> trade" I've ever laid eyes on) Jude Law.
Agree to all the above, except that Cusack's endorsement of Spacey is
very much part of the planned audience reaction. All the rest is
delightful -- One more viewing of Midnight (and maybe White Hunter)
and I may add it to my favorites list.
>
>
> _______________________________
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> Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today!
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17044
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Oct 17, 2004 4:28am
Subject: Re: Eastwood (Was: Eastwood, Cimino, Bogdanovich, Spielberg)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
> wrote:
>
> "Ny favorite Eastwoods: Josey Wales (thanks to Phil Kaufman), The
> Gauntlet (feeding off Kaufman's invention of "Clint the Innocent"),
> Heartbreak Ridge, Unforgiven."
>
> I was with HEARTBREAK RIDGE until the last act when the platoon
> participated in the "liberation" of Graneda instead of going to
> Beirut to be blown up with the 200 marines. I really thought
that's
> how the movie would end while watching it; that seemed to be the
> dramatic logic of all that had gone before, but finally Clint
> couldn't go the distance and had to end with a "victory." And at
the
> time of the actual events, the Graneda invasion was seen as a side
> show to take our minds off the Beirut atrocity, a cheap victory to
> erase a humiliating defeat, and it seems that Eastwood went along
> with this larger scenario in this movie.
>
> Richard
Actually, that's the excellent but right-wing script you're talking
about, which Eastwood had rewritten to turn it into a service comedy,
with jibes at Arnie and an ending that verges on Kubrick in its
absurdity. He shows the invasion for the joke it was, then gives
Gunny his moment with his wife -- nothing to do with "victory," or
with Beirut, at least in the movie.
17045
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Oct 17, 2004 5:03am
Subject: Prisoner of Japan
A first viewing of the tape kindly sent to me by Maxime reveals a
film that is at least as much Ulmer (who produced, rewrote the script
and shot 2 days) as Ripley (who wrote the first draft and shot 4).
Essentially, it's part of a diptych with Tomorrow We Live, made
independently and released by PRC; Prisoner was Ulmer's first film
made for PRC, and it's what got him his contract. Both end with a
patriotic spectacle -- tanks, planes -- and both have the minimalist
setups of Ulmer's next 5 PRCs, with more production values in
Prisoner. The story, credited to Ripley, whose bleakness surpassed
Ulmer's, fits right in with Ulmer's themes, looking back in many ways
to Black Cat and forward to Strange Illusion. Who but Ulmer, Ripley
and PRC would stage a WWII drama in one set, a house on an out-of-the-
way island where a young man, hobbled by an unresolved Oedipus
complex and his pacifist beliefs, is a prisoner, apparently free to
move about and do as he pleases, of a Japanese master spy and his
American-looking wife who are radioing the positions of American
ships to Japan to be blown out of the water? (The boy's father was a
great astronomer, but he isn't up to snuff. At one point the Japanese
mastermind offers to discover a new star and let him write it up
under his own name.) The pacing, which makes 62 minutes feel like at
least twice that, works beautifully, IMO, within the claustrophobic,
paralytic premise, and the film unquestionably creates a mood --
helped by Erdody's score and punctuated with nicely lit shots of a
nocturnal jungle outside and with the occasional black screen when
the house's generator goes on the blink. The juxtaposition of the
closeup of the dead face of the young boy who was going to help the
hero break free with a sudden burst of jive music from the deadly
radio, the montage sequences showing the radio at work, the various
views through the hero's telescope (of the moon, to begin with: "The
deadest thing I've ever seen," says the American officer looking at
it, who will soon be dead himself. "That moon and I have a lot in
common," says the hero) all add up to a formal experiment in
challenging circumstances that shows Ulmer on the way up and Ripley,
no doubt, on the way out -- an irony that adds a supplementary layer
of bleakness to the vision of the film. Thanks, Maxime! Talk about
the Missing Link....
17046
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Sun Oct 17, 2004 5:19am
Subject: Re: Eastwood (Was: Eastwood, Cimino, Bogdanovich, Spielberg)
"Actually, that's the excellent but right-wing script you're talking
about, which Eastwood had rewritten to turn it into a service comedy,
with jibes at Arnie and an ending that verges on Kubrick in its
absurdity. He shows the invasion for the joke it was, then gives
Gunny his moment with his wife -- nothing to do with "victory," or
with Beirut, at least in the movie."
I'll grant that HEARTBREAK RIDGE may transcewnd its era, and from the
US military point of view the invasion was no doubt a joke, but it
did result in the death of Maurice Bishop and the destruction of New
Jewel Movement, and in 1986 the movie seemed to me to be an
apologia. I haven't seen it since then and at the time I didn't know
Eastwood had rewritten the script, so I guess I should take another
look and reconsider.
Richard
17047
From: Noel Vera
Date: Sun Oct 17, 2004 7:34am
Subject: Ulmer on a budget
Just saw Edgar Ulmer's Pirates of Capri, about the pirate Sirocco
(Louis Hayward), who raids the ships of Queen Carolina (Binnie
Barnes) the same time he doubles as Count Amalfi, Carolina's
favorite courtier, and am I exaggerating matters a bit much if I say
this is at least as enjoyable as--and perhaps more visually
interesting than--The Adventures of Robin Hood? Louis Hayward
affects what sounds like a Spanish accent (actually, he's supposed
to be Italian) when masked as Captain Sirocco and the oddest titter
this side of Steve Buscemi (or do I mean Beavis?) when playing Count
Amalfi ("You're very talented, Amalfi!" "Thangk kew! Eh-eh-eh-eh-
eh!").
Ulmer juggles a somewhat complicated plot that throws together
revolutionary fervor, talk about social reform, and intricate court
intrigues, making room along the way for grand ball scenes, a
breathtaking escape (Hayward or his stunt double--but Shirley Ulmer
claims Edgar always made his actors do their own stunts--drops down
what looks like a hundred-foot building in 24 seconds), and a
massive palace takeover scene straight out of the French Revolution
(this is the Revolution with a happier ending).
You'd think Ulmer, used to four-day shoots on zero budgets in films
like Detour, would be lost in a production this big, but he directs
as confidently as Cecil B. DeMille, using the sumptous costumes and
gorgeous sets (built in the legendary Cinecitta Studios) to give the
film a luxurious texture, at the same time employing noir shadows,
crisp editing, and odd camera angles to keep you alert, visually
stimulated.
It's full of sly moments of character revelation (Amalfi in a
carriage with his Countess orders soldiers with spears to charge a
gang of unarmed convicts, showing that Amalfi (or Sirocco, in posing
as the Count) has his ruthless side, while the Countess, disgusted
with the charge, has her softhearted side). Hayward's Sirocco is
remarkably likeable, even with the vocal eccentricities (or is it
because of them?): he has an easy Bruce Wayne/Alfred Pennyworth
chemistry with his loyal aide Pepino (Mikhail Rasumny), and real
erotic tension opposite the Countess Mercedes de Lopez (Mariella
Lotti), who despises the Count she's forcibly engaged to, the same
time she's secretly in love with the pirate. There's a surprisingly
complex treatment of Queen Carolina--Sirocco believes that she's a
kindhearted woman frightened and out of her depths, and insists on
protecting her from the revolution (the same time he's mounting it).
He's trying to play the game both ways, attacking from without,
eating away from within, not just because it's effective, but
because he's a believer in both sides--in the justice of the
people's cause, and in the goodness of the queen (you wonder if
maybe there isn't a love quadrangle here--Amalfi loves the Countess
loves Sirocco loves the Queen). Ulmer doesn't stint in giving us the
complexity of the problem Sirocco/Amalfi's solving, the same time he
manages to make us believe in the hero's confident, surefooted (he
has to be, the slightest slip and he could be hanged as a traitor or
shot as a reactionary) way towards a solution. Wonderful,
surprisingly intelligent fun.
P.S. seems our own Bill Krohn had written about this film, noting
how Hayward and his girl are separated from the rest of the crowd
(he fights for them but isn't a part of them, nice distinction).
17048
From: Noel Vera
Date: Sun Oct 17, 2004 7:41am
Subject: Re: Cast Away
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Elizabeth Nolan wrote:
> I don't know exactly what you mean by physically eloquent /
physical
> acting but I don't feel much from the body posturing by Hanks.
Oh, I've always thought Hanks excelled in physical acting. It's the
years of slapstick roles that hones you--comedy is a great training
ground.
That said, I saw it in the way Hanks acted a pudgy man during the
first half (it wasn't just the double chin, he flopped around on the
island). When the film jumped to some months later, he stands
different; is more graceful, more confident in the way he moves.
There are tiny little details, like the way he seems to obssessively
touch things, his fingers counting them like a blind man, as if to
reassure him of their length or number.
Oh, I think he's physically eloquent, all right, and his best roles
take advantage of that fact.
I
> may be alone in this but I think Ed Norton would have carried the
> 'alone on the island' scenes better.
Norton is an excellent, and maybe a more interesting choice, sure.
17049
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Oct 17, 2004 9:15am
Subject: Re: Eastwood (Was: Eastwood, Cimino, Bogdanovich, Spielberg)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
wrote:
>
>
> "Actually, that's the excellent but right-wing script you're
talking
> about, which Eastwood had rewritten to turn it into a service
comedy,
> with jibes at Arnie and an ending that verges on Kubrick in its
> absurdity. He shows the invasion for the joke it was, then gives
> Gunny his moment with his wife -- nothing to do with "victory," or
> with Beirut, at least in the movie."
>
> I'll grant that HEARTBREAK RIDGE may transcewnd its era, and from
the
> US military point of view the invasion was no doubt a joke, but it
> did result in the death of Maurice Bishop and the destruction of
New
> Jewel Movement, and in 1986 the movie seemed to me to be an
> apologia. I haven't seen it since then and at the time I didn't
know
> Eastwood had rewritten the script, so I guess I should take another
> look and reconsider.
>
> Richard
You might be surprised. I'm not sure the rightwing script (by the guy
who wrote Hamburger Hill) wouldn't have made a better movie, but it
would definitely have been an apologia. Gunny's opening jailhouse
monologue is scatalogically hilarious in the script, and a lot of it
was mixed out as an afterthought in the finished film -- maybe
because Clint was running for Mayor then, and per Schickel, being
forced to clean up his language on the stump.
A lot of the rewriting is that kind of silliness, but the whole thing
somehow hangs together, and the last scene on the airport tarmac is
undersated and anything but gung-ho -- despite the presence of a
brass band and the flag (used rather interestingly, as I recall).
BTW, the DOD was supposed to lend its support and pulled out when he
wouldn't make changes. He told the press that what they were asking
for was "insane."
17050
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Oct 17, 2004 9:30am
Subject: Re: Ulmer on a budget
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Noel Vera"
wrote:
>
> P.S. seems our own Bill Krohn had written about this film, noting
> how Hayward and his girl are separated from the rest of the crowd
> (he fights for them but isn't a part of them, nice distinction).
Am I on the box? I never got the DVD Arianne sent me because she made
the mistake of sending it registered. I always assume registered
means someone is serving me with papers.
There is an amazing roman a clef about the making of Pirates, The
Celluloid Asylum, by Sydney Hay, the screenwriter. Hay had never been
on a movie set, so he didn't know what was crazy and what was normal -
- and his portrayal of Shirley is oddly anti-Semitic -- but it is a
blow-by-blow account, and his conversations with "Sigfried Melmson"
ring true, as if he dashed home and scribbled down Ulmer's comments
after each chat. I lent my copy to a bad book-loan risk, but it's not
a million-dollar rare book. It may even be available for a reasonable
price at abe.com.
Pirates was Nino Rota's first film, I believe. And Ulmer had no
problem spending money when it was there. He tended to be hampered
when he actually worked with a studio, to judge by The Strange Woman,
where the sets and costumes are by the various departments, not by
him. But his European postwar productions were usually well-financed,
and he got to do everything on those. Muchachas de Baghdad, which was
released here severely cut and in b&w, is a good example of what he
could do when given the opportunity, and so is Pirates.
I just learned from a memoir I browsed at Book City that Story of
Three Queens got made because the producer offered to use a new
European 'Scope process for a Hedy Lamarr vehicle, thereby putting
the process on the map, and the proprietor of the process put up the
money. Not enough, unfortunately. Ulmer did all the pre-pro, but
after he shot Genevieve de Brabant the money ran out and Lamar's
current husband took over the financing, meaning that EGU was
suddenly working for his hormone-maddened star. He didn't even get to
edit his episode, and it shows.
The big exception to the studio curse, of course, was Universal, for
whom he made two masterpieces.
17051
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Oct 17, 2004 9:40am
Subject: Re: Prisoner of Japan
Just learned from Arianne that she has a few reels of this one. That
plus The Border Sheriff, one of EGU's many two-reel silent westerns
for Universal, which she bought on e-Bay, would make a tasty duo...
17052
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun Oct 17, 2004 1:41pm
Subject: Re: Re: Cast Away
--- Noel Vera wrote:
>
> Oh, I think he's physically eloquent, all right, and
> his best roles
> take advantage of that fact.
>
Particularlylin the sublime "Joe vs. The Volcano"
> I
> > may be alone in this but I think Ed Norton would
> have carried the
> > 'alone on the island' scenes better.
>
> Norton is an excellent, and maybe a more interesting
> choice, sure.
>
Norton's physicality is on full display in "Death to
Smoochy." He also has one of the best numbers in
"Everyone Says I Love You"
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17053
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sun Oct 17, 2004 2:48pm
Subject: Re: Re: Schatzberg (Was:A is A / Rivette's evidence)
> You mean you dislike "Downfall Child", "Panic" and "Scarecrow"? I
> don't get it; but at least there is auteurist consistancy there. But
> then why do you like JOE TYNAN (true, it's somewhat un-
> Schatzbergian). JPC
I've seen all those - I wouldn't say I dislike them, but I don't really
grasp his style of naturalism. I wouldn't mind revisiting some of his
films. TYNAN felt like a commissioned project that he brought something
extra to - so maybe I have more problem with his story instincts than his
direction. - Dan
17054
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sun Oct 17, 2004 2:57pm
Subject: Siegel (Was: January on TCM)
>>>> Charley Varrick (ltbx)
>>>> Hell is for Heroes (ltbx??)
>>
>> Two excellent Siegels.
>
> I think you can make a good case for these as Siegel's best films
I'd go along with that judgment. HELL IS FOR HEROES, especially, seems
like Siegel's standout film.
THE LINEUP is less perfect than HEROES, but I think I'd go to that one as
my third Siegel pick. - Dan
17055
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sun Oct 17, 2004 3:16pm
Subject: Re: Re: Huckabees (SPOILERS) (Was: Isabelle)
> My take on this is slightly different from others, I think. I didn't
> read these opposing viewpoints as opposing philosophies, really, as
> much as opposing *impulses*, or instincts -- the way that an
> individual at times might feel totally connected to the people
> around them, or alternately feel totally alienated from them. When
> one starts to see these characters as representatives of
> philosophical thought, it becomes a problem for me, cause they have
> very little internal logic or consistency. They seem to be more
> about immediate feelings than anything else. To me, that is. Like
> angels or devils over your shoulder in a cartoon, perhaps...
Well, that makes sense, but the characters certainly take the viewpoints
as philosophies, both in word and in action. On the surface level, at
least, it's a movie about a search for a philosophy. I'd say it's not
just on the surface level.
And even so...these angels and devils aren't prescribing courses of
action, like cartoon angels and devils - just states of mind. I can't
find a metaphor for the movie that doesn't lead back to philosophy.
Maybe it's hard for me to find the right level of abstraction here,
because Russell is so brilliant with the concrete particulars of how
people behave.
> Isn't this an example of the desire by some people to withdraw from
> the complications of the world, renounce their physical beings, and
> retreat into a self-loathing form of religion? Look at the number of
> models over the decades who have become born again and/or
> reactionaries... but maybe I'm letting my own biases run free here.
Again, yeah, the thematic underpinnings aren't too hard to find. But
these underpinnings are driven to the behavioral surface, with no warning,
no stylistic cues. I think there are probably at least two levels at
which one can say "No one would act that way" about that bonnet.
I wish I could cross ANATOMY OF HELL, which knows exactly how to pitch a
discourse at an abstract level, but doesn't unify well for me, with
HUCKABEES, which has thematic structure but not the layer of style
abstraction that I'm looking for. - Dan
17056
From: Patrick Ciccone
Date: Sun Oct 17, 2004 6:05pm
Subject: Godard and DV
I read an interview with JLG (can't remember where) in which he was
pessimistic about DV. He didn't like the instanteous qualities of it,
compared to analog video. One must remember that the vast majority of
Godard's video work is analog video, and (I presume) not edited on
non-linear computer systems.
Patrick
17057
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Oct 17, 2004 6:11pm
Subject: Re: Godard and DV
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Patrick Ciccone" wrote:
>
> I read an interview with JLG (can't remember where) in which he was
> pessimistic about DV. He didn't like the instanteous qualities of
it,
> compared to analog video. One must remember that the vast majority
of
> Godard's video work is analog video, and (I presume) not edited on
> non-linear computer systems.
>
> Patrick
Nonlinear has been around for some time -- the big problem for
features was storage, solved now for almost a decade. But the Avid
was being used for commercials and video clips for years before that.
I have no idea what Godard had when doing Histoire(s).
17058
From: Noel Vera
Date: Sun Oct 17, 2004 6:20pm
Subject: Re: Ulmer on a budget
> Am I on the box? I never got the DVD Arianne sent me because she
made
> the mistake of sending it registered. I always assume registered
> means someone is serving me with papers.
I think you're mentioned in some of the extra features, is why I
remembered.
> There is an amazing roman a clef about the making of Pirates, The
> Celluloid Asylum, by Sydney Hay, the screenwriter.
I'll try look out for it.
> Pirates was Nino Rota's first film, I believe.
It was.
> I just learned from a memoir I browsed at Book City that Story of
> Three Queens got made because the producer offered to use a new
> European 'Scope process for a Hedy Lamarr vehicle...current
husband took over the financing, meaning that EGU was
> suddenly working for his hormone-maddened star. He didn't even get
to
> edit his episode, and it shows.
But I liked Lamarr in Strange Woman! You mean they never got along?
> The big exception to the studio curse, of course, was Universal,
for
> whom he made two masterpieces.
The Black Cat (agreed, totally, very early Ulmer) and...?
17059
From: Gabe Klinger
Date: Sun Oct 17, 2004 6:37pm
Subject: Re: Godard and DV
> Nonlinear has been around for some time -- the big problem
for
> features was storage, solved now for almost a decade. But the
Avid
> was being used for commercials and video clips for years
before that.
> I have no idea what Godard had when doing Histoire(s).
Lots of Beta and an Avid.
Of course in the film(s) he's also running celluloid through a
flatbed, but I think those images are just for effect.
In the documentary on Godard in the Cinemas cinema series
(1987) he reaches in to a cabinet and grabs two oversized Beta
cassettes: one of Santiago Alvarez's 79 SPRINGS and another of
FULL METAL JACKET (the former being an honest war film, and
the latter being a total piece of shit).
Gabe
17060
From: Patrick Ciccone
Date: Sun Oct 17, 2004 6:38pm
Subject: Re: Godard and DV
I was going to qualify what I said with that caveat, but I always got
the impression that Godard was using non-linear systems, at least up
to 1990 or so (and the video work extends back into the 1970s). And
Histoire(s) seems to have examples of speeded up motion that one would
expect to put in the final product. I also thought the repeated image
and sound of the film on the bobine was a metaphor for the process
Godard was using with video.
This is all speculation, of course.
>
> Nonlinear has been around for some time -- the big problem for
> features was storage, solved now for almost a decade. But the Avid
> was being used for commercials and video clips for years before that.
> I have no idea what Godard had when doing Histoire(s).
17061
From: Craig Keller
Date: Sun Oct 17, 2004 8:02pm
Subject: Re: Re: Godard and DV
> one of Santiago Alvarez's 79 SPRINGS and another of
> FULL METAL JACKET (the former being an honest war film, and
> the latter being a total piece of shit).
Unless you're quibbling on the film's shit metaphor, I would love to
read a substantiation of this statement. The film is arguably a
masterpiece, and one of the most tightly constructed movies I've ever
seen. "A total piece of shit" is something that might apply to the
latest Fabolous video, but when phrases like this end up getting slung
around on this board, whether you care for Kubrick or not, it comes off
as incredibly childish and sticks out like pure provocation or some dim
attempt at emulating Rivette in the nasty part of an interview. I've
written ten pages in a notebook laying out the structure of this film,
the intertwining of metaphors, echoes and reverberations from one
section to another, etc., so you'll excuse me for taking umbrage with
the "total piece of shit" kiddie-crit tag.
craig.
17062
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sun Oct 17, 2004 8:57pm
Subject: Total piece of shit
Gabe's provocative statement was definitely intended to fan
controversy, and since controversy is this forum's main reason for
being, I don't think it was at all inappropriate. Now it's up to
Gabe to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that FULL METAL JACKET is a
total what he claims it is (personally I would draw the line
at "total" but I'm sympathetic to whoever doesn't like the film).
JPC
17063
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun Oct 17, 2004 9:26pm
Subject: Re: Total piece of shit
I would say it's incoherent. it starts out in one
direction and then after a very early climax veers off
into another.
Nothing D'Onnofrio does in part one relates to
anything that transpires in part two -- though I
suspect we're supposed to think so.
Still the film is far from useless as Derek Jarman was
able to sneak onto the sets when no one was looking
and shoot his greatest film, "The Last of England."
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
> Gabe's provocative statement was definitely intended
> to fan
> controversy, and since controversy is this forum's
> main reason for
> being, I don't think it was at all inappropriate.
> Now it's up to
> Gabe to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that FULL
> METAL JACKET is a
> total what he claims it is (personally I would draw
> the line
> at "total" but I'm sympathetic to whoever doesn't
> like the film).
> JPC
>
>
>
>
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17064
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sun Oct 17, 2004 10:01pm
Subject: Re: Total piece of shit
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> I would say it's incoherent. it starts out in one
> direction and then after a very early climax veers off
> into another.
>
> Nothing D'Onnofrio does in part one relates to
> anything that transpires in part two -- though I
> suspect we're supposed to think so.
>
David, this is exactly the point I made in my discussion of the
film in "50 ans..." ... among others.
> Still the film is far from useless as Derek Jarman was
> able to sneak onto the sets when no one was looking
> and shoot his greatest film, "The Last of England."
>
> --- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
> >
> > Gabe's provocative statement was definitely intended
> > to fan
> > controversy, and since controversy is this forum's
> > main reason for
> > being, I don't think it was at all inappropriate.
> > Now it's up to
> > Gabe to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that FULL
> > METAL JACKET is a
> > total what he claims it is (personally I would draw
> > the line
> > at "total" but I'm sympathetic to whoever doesn't
> > like the film).
> > JPC
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
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17065
From: Fred Camper
Date: Sun Oct 17, 2004 10:04pm
Subject: Re: Total piece of shit (by Kubrick)
Hnmmm, I've been way behind on reading posts here, so I clicked on this
provocative header hoping it would be about George W. Bush.
Kubrick is very self conscious, he's got lots of "structure" and
metaphor and so on; I don't doubt that Craig's analysis is an
intelligent and honest one. But just having structure and metaphor
doesn't make a great film, in my view. I've probably seen fewer Kubrick
films than most everyone in our group, though from all his periods, but
every one I have seen (possibly excepting the early and somewhat
anonalous "Killer's Kiss") had what I would call a lack of visual
structure. There are lots of ideas, and lots of visual tricks, but the
spatial architecture, which in what I would call a great fim consists of
the way lines and surfaces and angles and light and movement combine to
create the meaningful visual expression that I find in Ford and
Hithcockc and Rossellini and Bresson and Brakhage and Kubelka, is
lacking. His films have for me a curious visual "emptiness," a feeling
that the imagery is a kind of vacant vessel for styliswtic and thematic
and plot flourishes ("redrum" and all that), and this is true from me
from "The Killing" to "Full Metal Jacket" to "Eyes Wide Shut, to choose
three I've seen in recent years. Their hollow core siggests "A. I."
(which I also disliked) as his perfect subject, I suppose, as was HAL,
but he doesn't do enough with that hollowness in his own films to make
it an expression in itself.
As a war movie, "Full Metal Jacket" seemed rather predictable too -- I
just *knew* it was the African-American who would get killed. I wanted
to compare it in this respect to "Fixed Bayonets" in my recent review of
the latter, but wound up not doing so courtesy of an editor, though the
editor's decision was probably a wise one. (The great Harvey Kurtzman
had a short-lived humor magazine, "Humbug," that included a long-running
movie parody "you know who gets killed" -- the sergeant says "I need
three men for a dangerous mission" just after one was showing the others
picturs of his wife and kids and talking how we was getting out next week.)
Fred Camper
17066
From: thebradstevens
Date: Sun Oct 17, 2004 10:13pm
Subject: Re: Total piece of shit
"Nothing D'Onnofrio does in part one relates to anything that
transpires in part two -- though I suspect we're supposed to think
so."
But why assume that this is a bad thing? Even the most talentless
television hack is capable of making a film that's 'coherent' in the
way you suggest FULL METAL JACKET isn't (but should be). Why judge
Kubrick by the standards of a narrative driven cinema in which he
clearly has not the slightest interest?
17067
From:
Date: Sun Oct 17, 2004 7:15pm
Subject: Re: Re: Godard and DV
In a message dated 10/17/04 3:02:54 PM, evillights@m... writes:
> "A total piece of shit" is something that might apply to the
> latest Fabolous video, but when phrases like this end up getting slung
> around on this board, whether you care for Kubrick or not, it comes off
> as incredibly childish and sticks out like pure provocation or some dim
> attempt at emulating Rivette in the nasty part of an interview.
>
And the same thing can be said about your childish, purely provocation attack
on Fabolous. I mean, did you write ten pages in your notebook laying out the
structure of Fabolous' video or his music?
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
17068
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun Oct 17, 2004 11:19pm
Subject: Re: Re: Total piece of shit
--- thebradstevens wrote:
Why judge
> Kubrick by the standards of a narrative driven
> cinema in which he
> clearly has not the slightest interest?
>
>
>
>
Because I don't believe that's true. Matthew Modine's
"fate" is to sing the Mickey Mourse Club song.
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17069
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Sun Oct 17, 2004 11:25pm
Subject: Re: Total piece of shit
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
"I would say it's incoherent. it starts out in one direction and then
after a very early climax veers off into another.
"Nothing D'Onnofrio does in part one relates to anything that
transpires in part two -- though I suspect we're supposed to think
so."
I suspect that Kubrick saw NINGEN NO JOKEN/THE HUMAN CONDITION and
was taken by the basic training scenes of part II of that movie.
Bara's suicide during basic training was part of the overall pattern
of brutality that was life in the Japanese military, and foreshadowed
the fate of the squadron in their suicide mission at the end. In
Kubrick's film the only thing that held the two parts together was
the visual grid of rhyming reverse angles (forward track answered by
reverse track, character posed in front of an arch answered by
another character posed in front of an arch, etc.) Seems interesting
but dosen't resonate with any greater meaning.
Richard
17070
From: thebradstevens
Date: Sun Oct 17, 2004 11:51pm
Subject: Re: Total piece of shit
I think it was Jonathan Rosenbaum who proposed that the film is
another of Kubrick's reflections on 'perfect' systems that break
down - the perfect system here being narrative itself. Once
the 'father/director' (Sergeant Hartman) is destroyed by the killing
machine he has created, the formal control of the opening scenes is
abandoned, and the narrative shoots off in various purposeless
directions.
Purposelessness is precisely what the film is about. There is no
possibility of 'purposeful' movement, because the nature of America's
involvement in Vietnam precludes it. Nothing that Modine's character
does has any point: like Barry Lyndon, he's not going anywhere in
particular, and (like pretty much everyone else he encounters) has no
ultimate aim or mission. Even the final encounter with a sniper takes
place simply because the American soldiers have taken a wrong turn.
Having said all that, I have to admit that I greatly prefer Ford's
THE LONG GRAY LINE.
17071
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2004 0:03am
Subject: Re: Total piece of shit
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
> wrote:
>
> "I would say it's incoherent. it starts out in one direction and
then
> after a very early climax veers off into another.
>
> "Nothing D'Onnofrio does in part one relates to anything that
> transpires in part two -- though I suspect we're supposed to think
> so."
>
>
> I suspect that Kubrick saw NINGEN NO JOKEN/THE HUMAN CONDITION and
> was taken by the basic training scenes of part II of that movie.
> Bara's suicide during basic training was part of the overall
pattern
> of brutality that was life in the Japanese military, and
foreshadowed
> the fate of the squadron in their suicide mission at the end. In
> Kubrick's film the only thing that held the two parts together was
> the visual grid of rhyming reverse angles (forward track answered
by
> reverse track, character posed in front of an arch answered by
> another character posed in front of an arch, etc.) Seems
interesting
> but dosen't resonate with any greater meaning.
>
> Richard
But isn't the film satiric in utlizing Kubrick's fondness for
Swift's excremental vision as Michael Ciment and others have pointed
out? The whole purpose of the first part is to illustrate the Marine
Corps use of psychological techniques in making the
recruits "killing machines." It does this by reversing the civilized
qualities of its recruits by making them regress to the anal-
aggressive stage of sexuality mentioned in Freud's "Three Essays on
Sexulity." By with Pyle, Gunny fails and recreates a primeval being
seated on the "head" who utters the telling lines, "I am in a world
of shot" before killing Gunny and then shooting himself moving from
sadism to masochism.
The second part not only shows how the Marine Corps training fails
in the Squad being trapped by a female Viet Cong sniper. But it also
illustrates the change in Private Joker from being the film's
supposed objective narrator into another version of Pyle when he
kills the sniper. "Real hard core, man." Thus the final march to the
Mickey Mouse Club song is ironic. It represents another retreat into
immaturity reflecting a deeply satiric pessimism on the part of
Kubrick in depicting another chapter of human regression in the
twentieth century. The lines, "in a world of shot" are not
accidental on the part of a director well versed not only in Swift
but possibly, also, Freud.
Tony Williams
17072
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2004 0:06am
Subject: Re: Total piece of shit (by Kubrick)
> His films have for me a curious visual "emptiness," a feeling
> that the imagery is a kind of vacant vessel for styliswtic and thematic
> and plot flourishes ("redrum" and all that)
This is tricky terrain, of course, because Kubrick often seems to trying
for a feeling of empty space and emotional vacuums. Which sounds fine to
me in theory. Though I'm not a fan, I don't find him devoid of visual
imagination. In fact, I'm really drawn to that lighting technique he uses
so often, where the background is illuminated and light glances directly
into the camera. I suspected it's inspired by newsreel cinematography:
kind of a dream of the ideal environment for a one-person camera crew,
with the occasional defect of light hitting the lens directly as proof of
reality.
When I last saw 2001, I remember feeling that the film's most expressive
moments for me were mostly infused with morbidity: early human killed by
tiger in long shot, early human killed by blunt object, Lockwood's death
dance in space, the suspended animation chambers turned into coffins. I
suspect that my problem with Kubrick is not that he's incompetent in all
the other scenes, but that I have problems with his concerns, and that my
response to morbidity and his interest in it constituted a rare moment of
overlap for us.
I often feel that a lot of what interests Kubrick in life or in cinema
comes across to me as disdainful or superior in some way. His direction
of actors, which drives me crazy and completely bars my access to some of
his films, often seems to me to be expressing a sort of cynicism about
existing acting conventions. Often it's hard for me to tell whether he's
embracing cliche or using it to express distance, and neither hypothesis
works well for me when I try it on for size. In extreme cases like A
CLOCKWORK ORANGE, he and I simply can't come to terms about what we're
willing to laugh at.
In short, I suspect my problems with Kubrick mostly have to do with a poor
match of sensibilities. - Dan
17073
From: Gabe Klinger
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2004 1:19am
Subject: Re: Godard and DV
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Craig Keller
wrote:
> > one of Santiago Alvarez's 79 SPRINGS and another of
> > FULL METAL JACKET (the former being an honest war film,
and
> > the latter being a total piece of shit).
>
> Unless you're quibbling on the film's shit metaphor, I would
love to
> read a substantiation of this statement.
Maybe ask Godard... he's the one who said it.
And not in those words or anything. But basically it amounted to
that. He cites specific scenes in FULL METAL JACKET as
particularly putrid, but says nothing of the structure of the film that
so endears to you.
Gabe
17074
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2004 1:42am
Subject: Re: Total piece of shit
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "peckinpah20012000"
wrote:
>
> But isn't the film satiric in utlizing Kubrick's fondness for
> Swift's excremental vision as Michael Ciment and others have
pointed
> out? The whole purpose of the first part is to illustrate the
Marine
> Corps use of psychological techniques in making the
> recruits "killing machines." It does this by reversing the
civilized
> qualities of its recruits by making them regress to the anal-
> aggressive stage of sexuality mentioned in Freud's "Three Essays
on
> Sexulity." By with Pyle, Gunny fails and recreates a primeval
being
> seated on the "head" who utters the telling lines, "I am in a
world
> of shot" before killing Gunny and then shooting himself moving
from
> sadism to masochism.
>
> The second part not only shows how the Marine Corps training
fails
> in the Squad being trapped by a female Viet Cong sniper. But it
also
> illustrates the change in Private Joker from being the film's
> supposed objective narrator into another version of Pyle when he
> kills the sniper. "Real hard core, man." Thus the final march to
the
> Mickey Mouse Club song is ironic. It represents another retreat
into
> immaturity reflecting a deeply satiric pessimism on the part of
> Kubrick in depicting another chapter of human regression in the
> twentieth century. The lines, "in a world of shot" are not
> accidental on the part of a director well versed not only in Swift
> but possibly, also, Freud.
>
> Tony Williams
Hey Tony, why do you keep writing "world of shot" when it's "world
of shit"? Is your Freudian slip showing?
Of course Kubrick is "ironic". His irony as usual is splattered all
over with a trowel. He's telling us what we know and rubbing it in
and smothering us with his smart but actually dumb slyness.
And so: "Now it's time to say goodbye to all the company
M.I.C.K.E.Y.M.O.U.S.E'
(Julie London did a nice slow ballad version of that at the end
of one of her LPs -- but I digress...)
JPC
17075
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2004 1:48am
Subject: Re: Godard and DV
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Gabe Klinger"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Craig Keller
> wrote:
> > > one of Santiago Alvarez's 79 SPRINGS and another of
> > > FULL METAL JACKET (the former being an honest war film,
> and
> > > the latter being a total piece of shit).
> >
> > Unless you're quibbling on the film's shit metaphor, I would
> love to
> > read a substantiation of this statement.
>
> Maybe ask Godard... he's the one who said it.
>
> And not in those words or anything. But basically it amounted to
> that. He cites specific scenes in FULL METAL JACKET as
> particularly putrid, but says nothing of the structure of the film
that
> so endears to you.
>
> Gabe
So we misunderstood. Gabe was really JLG speaking. And for once I
sort of agree with JLG.
JPC
17076
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2004 1:51am
Subject: Re: Godard and DV
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
>
> In a message dated 10/17/04 3:02:54 PM, evillights@m... writes:
>
>
> > "A total piece of shit" is something that might apply to the
> > latest Fabolous video, but when phrases like this end up getting
slung
> > around on this board, whether you care for Kubrick or not, it
comes off
> > as incredibly childish and sticks out like pure provocation or
some dim
> > attempt at emulating Rivette in the nasty part of an interview.
> >
>
> And the same thing can be said about your childish, purely
provocation attack
> on Fabolous. I mean, did you write ten pages in your notebook
laying out the
> structure of Fabolous' video or his music?
What's Fabolous????? (sorry, I'm still stuck with JS Bach and
Charlie Parker).
>
> Kevin John
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
17078
From: Damien Bona
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2004 2:13am
Subject: Re: Ulmer on a budget
When I saw the picture --in a terible print broadcast on a PBS
station, this is what I jotted down:
The print was terrible and headache-inducing, but even under that
handicap, this swashbuckler came across in many ways as quite
remarkable. Ulmer has designed some incredible compositions and the
location shooting and peasant-looking Italian extras make the story
immediate and moving – for once you can relate to the characters in
this type of film as real flesh-and-blood people. There is an
operatic quality to much of the film, with a true heightened
emotionalism. There's a certain goofiness at times -- acrobats on a
military ship, for instance -- but there's also a sense of gravity
about the results of the fighting -- it genuinely seems like a left-
wing adventure film. Ulmer has also come up with some disconcerting
and frankly erotic scenes of sadism and torture. Hayward is a little
stolid as Sirocco, but is marvelous in his fop disguise. And Serato
is a great -- again operatic -- villain, Beautiful Nino Rota score
**************
And I'll second Noel's comments that Pirates of Capri is SO much
better than the merely enjoyable Robin Hood -- and I say this as
someoneone who realized he was queer while watching Errol Flynn
movies at age 13,
-- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Noel Vera"
wrote:
>
> Just saw Edgar Ulmer's Pirates of Capri, about the pirate Sirocco
> (Louis Hayward), who raids the ships of Queen Carolina (Binnie
> Barnes) the same time he doubles as Count Amalfi, Carolina's
> favorite courtier, and am I exaggerating matters a bit much if I
say
> this is at least as enjoyable as--and perhaps more visually
> interesting than--The Adventures of Robin Hood? Louis Hayward
> affects what sounds like a Spanish accent (actually, he's supposed
> to be Italian) when masked as Captain Sirocco and the oddest titter
> this side of Steve Buscemi (or do I mean Beavis?) when playing
Count
> Amalfi ("You're very talented, Amalfi!" "Thangk kew! Eh-eh-eh-eh-
> eh!").
>
> Ulmer juggles a somewhat complicated plot that throws together
> revolutionary fervor, talk about social reform, and intricate court
> intrigues, making room along the way for grand ball scenes, a
> breathtaking escape (Hayward or his stunt double--but Shirley Ulmer
> claims Edgar always made his actors do their own stunts--drops down
> what looks like a hundred-foot building in 24 seconds), and a
> massive palace takeover scene straight out of the French Revolution
> (this is the Revolution with a happier ending).
>
> You'd think Ulmer, used to four-day shoots on zero budgets in films
> like Detour, would be lost in a production this big, but he directs
> as confidently as Cecil B. DeMille, using the sumptous costumes and
> gorgeous sets (built in the legendary Cinecitta Studios) to give
the
> film a luxurious texture, at the same time employing noir shadows,
> crisp editing, and odd camera angles to keep you alert, visually
> stimulated.
>
> It's full of sly moments of character revelation (Amalfi in a
> carriage with his Countess orders soldiers with spears to charge a
> gang of unarmed convicts, showing that Amalfi (or Sirocco, in
posing
> as the Count) has his ruthless side, while the Countess, disgusted
> with the charge, has her softhearted side). Hayward's Sirocco is
> remarkably likeable, even with the vocal eccentricities (or is it
> because of them?): he has an easy Bruce Wayne/Alfred Pennyworth
> chemistry with his loyal aide Pepino (Mikhail Rasumny), and real
> erotic tension opposite the Countess Mercedes de Lopez (Mariella
> Lotti), who despises the Count she's forcibly engaged to, the same
> time she's secretly in love with the pirate. There's a surprisingly
> complex treatment of Queen Carolina--Sirocco believes that she's a
> kindhearted woman frightened and out of her depths, and insists on
> protecting her from the revolution (the same time he's mounting
it).
> He's trying to play the game both ways, attacking from without,
> eating away from within, not just because it's effective, but
> because he's a believer in both sides--in the justice of the
> people's cause, and in the goodness of the queen (you wonder if
> maybe there isn't a love quadrangle here--Amalfi loves the Countess
> loves Sirocco loves the Queen). Ulmer doesn't stint in giving us
the
> complexity of the problem Sirocco/Amalfi's solving, the same time
he
> manages to make us believe in the hero's confident, surefooted (he
> has to be, the slightest slip and he could be hanged as a traitor
or
> shot as a reactionary) way towards a solution. Wonderful,
> surprisingly intelligent fun.
>
> P.S. seems our own Bill Krohn had written about this film, noting
> how Hayward and his girl are separated from the rest of the crowd
> (he fights for them but isn't a part of them, nice distinction).
17079
From: Andy Rector
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2004 2:23am
Subject: Re: Godard and DV
> Lots of Beta and an Avid.
>
> Of course in the film(s) he's also running celluloid through a
> flatbed, but I think those images are just for effect.
>
> In the documentary on Godard in the Cinemas cinema series
> (1987) he reaches in to a cabinet and grabs two oversized Beta
> cassettes: one of Santiago Alvarez's 79 SPRINGS and another of
> FULL METAL JACKET (the former being an honest war film, and
> the latter being a total piece of shit).
>
> Gabe
Avid? As in non-linear?
In an interview with Gavin Smith, Godard says that he used consumer
Sony equipment, which would be analog.
The editing techniques he used in Histoire(s) seem to me blatantly
applied by hand, in rhythm above all. If you look closely you can see
that he is using your typical wipe (even a diamond wipe), mask, and
dissolve features found on any analog consumer edit controller.
I've no doubt this formed the videos being as he'd been using the
same thing or something similar as far back as Meetin W.A. in the
early 80's, and his television work bears the influence of its tools
too (the handwriting in white over images in Six Fois..., the split
screens etc.).
Yes, I heard Godard say that digital "lacks rigour" because of its
immediacy but I was under the impression that he was speaking more
about its uses up till now and therefore the filmmakers states of
mind while using it. No doubt that we have to adjust ourselves.
As for editing in non-linear, it changes things immensely, maybe even
more so than shooting images. It would be rather difficult to do
something as complex as Godard did in Histoire(s) using non-linear
editing, but at the same time, for basic editing the
filmmaker/editor is faced with too many choices. Speaking from a
little bit of experience I would say that its harder to think in non-
linear editing because of the lost sense of construction, or at least
its a totally different way of constructing which should be
considered.
Babette Mangolte wrote a terrific article in the subject in a book
called Camera Obscura, Camera Lucida.
Yours,
andy
17080
From: Damien Bona
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2004 2:24am
Subject: Re: Total piece of shit
I haven't seen Full Metal Jacket since the weekend it opened, and
back then I felt it was nonsense. (Why an I not surprised that Craig
Keller loves it?) But, having found "Eyes Wide Shut" to be one of the
greatest films of the 1990s -- Peter T and I both have an affinity
for Old Man's films -- I'm willing to give Full Metal, and any
Kubrick, another chance. Although I suspect that "Eyes Wide Shut" is
Kubrick's only great film, poltically -- as opposed to aesthetically -
- one can't really dislike Dr. Strangelove.
17081
From: Andy Rector
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2004 2:28am
Subject: Re: Total piece of shit
As war films 79 Springtimes of Ho Chi Mihn and Full Metal Jacket
aren't as far apart as honesty and shit. As films on the VIETNAM war,
Kubrick's is
surely a piece of shit. Alvarez is one of the greatest.
Alvarez's film is for the peoples struggle against imperialism,
Kubrick's is for the brutes who "won"(in the sense that they devasted
Vietnamese society and now exploit it, Kennedy's goal).
Alvarez's film may have or could have been (could still be!) useful
in the struggle.
Perhaps Kubrick's film could only be useful to those within the belly
of superpowers who might recognize their ignorance, victimization,
and barbarism-- in that order.
Kubrick's awkward structure is, in my opinion, the greatest thing
about it.
Yours,
andy
17082
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2004 2:36am
Subject: Re: Ulmer on a budget
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Noel Vera"
wrote:
>
> > The big exception to the studio curse, of course, was Universal,
> for
> > whom he made two masterpieces.
>
> The Black Cat (agreed, totally, very early Ulmer) and...?
The Naked Dawn, although that seems to have been a negative pickup.
But Universal was a place where you could get something done before
Wasserman.
17083
From: Damien Bona
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2004 3:04am
Subject: The Letter
JP, I haven't been able to access from the site your comments about
Wyler's The Letter possibly being racist, so here are some general --
non-direct -- statements on the issue:
I've come to realize that I'm fairly willing to overlook to some
degree racist elements in movies of the 30s and 40s insofar as they
are reflective of their times. (For instance, most modern audiences
groan at the portrait of Uncle Remus in Song of the South -- in fact,
the Left did so back in 1947 when the film was released -- but I just
see him as a warm and funny character (although a present day non-
ironic portrayal of the same would really set me on edge.) So insofar
as as the Asians in The Letter are "inscrutable" I just take it as a
convention of the time and consider how it works within the themes of
the film, all the time realizing that it has nothing to do
with "reality." Incidentally, I once watched The Letter with a
Chinese-American actor friend and while he certainly didn't consider
it a positive representation but he was fascinated by how the Asians
were presented as "exotic."
17084
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2004 3:06am
Subject: Re: Total piece of shit
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Andy Rector"
wrote:
>
> As war films 79 Springtimes of Ho Chi Mihn and Full Metal Jacket
> aren't as far apart as honesty and shit. As films on the VIETNAM
war,
> Kubrick's is
> surely a piece of shit. Alvarez is one of the greatest.
> Alvarez's film is for the peoples struggle against imperialism,
> Kubrick's is for the brutes who "won"(in the sense that they
devasted
> Vietnamese society and now exploit it, Kennedy's goal).
> Alvarez's film may have or could have been (could still be!) useful
> in the struggle.
> Perhaps Kubrick's film could only be useful to those within the
belly
> of superpowers who might recognize their ignorance, victimization,
> and barbarism-- in that order.
> Kubrick's awkward structure is, in my opinion, the greatest thing
> about it.
This, of course, assumes that Kubrick is on the side of the brutes
and affirms every barbaric action of ignorant victimization which
occurs in the film.
Kubrick is not a didactic director who presents his audience with
positive images, political or otherwise.
Tony Williams
>
> Yours,
> andy
17085
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2004 3:09am
Subject: Re: Total piece of shit
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "peckinpah20012000"
> wrote:
> >
>
>
> >
> Hey Tony, why do you keep writing "world of shot" when
it's "world
> of shit"? Is your Freudian slip showing?
>
> Of course Kubrick is "ironic". His irony as usual is splattered
all
> over with a trowel. He's telling us what we know and rubbing it in
> and smothering us with his smart but actually dumb slyness.
>
> And so: "Now it's time to say goodbye to all the company
> M.I.C.K.E.Y.M.O.U.S.E'
>
> (Julie London did a nice slow ballad version of that at the end
> of one of her LPs -- but I digress...)
>
> JPC
Dear JPC,
It is because I'm more used to reading hard copy than dealing with
the internet, hence I make typos. Probably, I should get an eye test.
Now, there's a Freudian slip!
Tony Williams
17086
From: samfilms2003
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2004 3:21am
Subject: Re: Total piece of shit
> Purposelessness is precisely what the film is about. There is no
> possibility of 'purposeful' movement, because the nature of America's
> involvement in Vietnam precludes it.
"On the ground" perhaps so, but one of my issues with "Full Metal Jacket"
and the rest of them is this 'purposelessness hell' stuff disguises a strategy
of very intense purpose; Vietnam, Iraq, we've got purpose galore....
-Sam
17087
From: Andy Rector
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2004 3:21am
Subject: Re: Total piece of shit
> Tony Williams wrote:
> This, of course, assumes that Kubrick is on the side of the
brutes
> and affirms every barbaric action of ignorant victimization which
> occurs in the film.
Not at all. My point was that K's film was made for the victors, for
better or worse.
(I'm inclined to say for the better, in seeing how ignorant the
victors can be.)
He certainly didn't make a film siding with the Vietnamese however.
Yours,
andy
17088
From: samfilms2003
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2004 3:30am
Subject: Re: Godard and DV
> It would be rather difficult to do
> something as complex as Godard did in Histoire(s) using non-linear
> editing,
Andy, I can't think of anything in video that would be *harder* to do
with a non-linear editing system.
Machine to machine editing was about as linear and rigid as you could
get; any film editing machine - Moviola, Steenbeck - is non-linear
and freer in comparison.
Watched "Elephant" on DVD tonight; interesting to see in the making of
bonus short Gus Van Z cutting "Elephant" on film using a KEM.
-Sam
>but at the same time, for basic editing the
> filmmaker/editor is faced with too many choices. Speaking from a
> little bit of experience I would say that its harder to think in non-
> linear editing because of the lost sense of construction, or at least
> its a totally different way of constructing which should be
> considered.
17089
From:
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2004 0:05am
Subject: Re: Re: Godard and DV
In a message dated 10/17/04 8:53:22 PM, jpcoursodon@y... writes:
> What's Fabolous????? (sorry, I'm still stuck with JS Bach and
> Charlie Parker).
>
He's a rapper.
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
17090
From: Noel Vera
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2004 4:07am
Subject: Re: Ulmer on a budget
> The Naked Dawn, although that seems to have been a negative pickup.
Check. Though to be fair, Wasserman approved The Last Temptation of
Christ (no masterpiece, I suppose, but a guilty favorite of mine).
Damien:
>the location shooting and peasant-looking Italian extras make the
story immediate and moving – for once you can relate to the
characters in this type of film as real flesh-and-blood people
That ties in with what I remember Bill told us Shirley Ulmer told
him, that the poor in his films were so real because he was one of
them.
17091
From: Noel Vera
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2004 4:19am
Subject: Re: Total piece of shit
I'm not a big fan of Kubrick, not any more, but he still provokes a
good quarrel, doesn't he?
My problem with Full Metal Jacket is partly in the details--he filmed
in England, and you can actually see the palm trees wilting from the
inhospitable clime--partly that he seems to have missed out the
viciousness of the original novel, Gustav Hasford's The Short Timers.
The sniper episode came before the novel's real climax, a far more
harrowing situation; plus there are passages in the novel that, I
think, would have given the film much more force.
I agree about Kubrick's treatment of actors; my Kubrick articles that
I posted earlier on this thread (okay, a lot of it didn't exactly
thread new ground) were based on the observation that oftentimes it's
when Kubrick wasn't fully in control of his material that his films
were even more interesting--to whit, Spartacus (where Douglas wrested
control from him), and Lolita (where Sellers was imporvising wildly).
When Kubrick was faced off with an inferior writer (King, for
example) or one who had little say about the adaptation (Burgess,
whose rights to the novel of Clockwork were apparently sold on the
cheap (what Kubrick did to Burgess' most famous novel is really
terrible)), the results feel gross, rather heavy-sprited.
I suppose I have to exempt Strangelove and 2001. In those two cases
Kubrick got exactly what he wanted, and it's his best work.
Which makes Full Metal Jacket something of an anomaly, come to think
of it--it's one of the cases where Kubrick seemed to have pulled his
punches, watered down the material.
17092
From:
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2004 0:20am
Subject: Response to Derrida obit (Possibly OT)
There's a page in response to the NY Times' obit of Derrida here:
http://www.humanities.uci.edu/remembering_jd/index.php
Also, Jonathan Sterne's thoughts on Derrida's passing are here:
http://www.badsubjects.org
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
17093
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2004 5:12am
Subject: Re: The Letter
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Damien Bona"
wrote:
"JP, I haven't been able to access from the site your comments about
Wyler's The Letter possibly being racist, so here are some general --
non-direct -- statements on the issue:"
It was me and not J-P who finds the orientalism of THE LETTER an
obstacle. As I recall J-P called it "a fine movie."
"I've come to realize that I'm fairly willing to overlook to some
degree racist elements in movies of the 30s and 40s insofar as they
are reflective of their times."
I think that a great work of art can transcend whatever incidental
racism may be present in it, but when the racist elements are
integral to a work or deliberate (I don't charge THE LETTER as being
a deliberate racist screed) than it becomes problematic, at least for
me.
"...So insofar as as the Asians in The Letter are "inscrutable" I
just take it as a convention of the time and consider how it works
within the themes of the film, all the time realizing that it has
nothing to do with 'reality.'"
You noted Wyler's objectivity in this film as a virtue, but the
objectivity didn't encompass the Asian characters, I didn't see any
attempt to distance the viewer from sharing the horror of
misceganation experienced by the white characters. He also takes the
colonial politics for granted
Of Wyler's theatrical adaptaions I prefer THE LITTLE FOXES to THE
LETTER; it has all the virtues of THE LETTER and is a very corrosive
portrait of the Southern bourgeois gentry and the social fabric that
sustains that gentry. That class critique probably comes from
Hellman which leads me to belive that Wyler was principally concerned
with the purely dramatic elements of his properties, and if there was
any sort of class conciousness or critique of racial politics in the
orginal material, fine, and if not, Wyler didn't see fit to question
why not.
"Incidentally, I once watched The Letter with a Chinese-American
actor friend and while he certainly didn't consider it a positive
representation but he was fascinated by how the Asians were
presented as 'exotic.'"
Representations of the other are always fascinating. BREAKFAST AT
TIFFANY'S is a film I really admire, but the Mickey Rooney character
poses difficulties. I asked some Japanese friends what they thought
about that charcater and they did not percieve the character as
Japanese! I wondered if Mr. Kuniyoshi was called Mr. Kim (Korean) or
maybe Mr. Wong for the Japanese market, but that wasn't the case. He
just looked like a silly American got up as a Japanese, so no one was
particularly offended. On the other hand, Jpanese-Americans strongly
objected, especially Sansei. Older folks thought it might be
allright if the character had been played by an Asian actor, but the
younger generation didn't like the yellow face or the
characterization. In the interest of full disclosure I have a
Japanese step-mother and my significant other is Japanese-American
(and she's a lawyer who graduated from UC Berkeley, so I don't get
any breaks on racial issues.)
Richard
17094
From: Craig Keller
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2004 5:47am
Subject: Full Metal Jacket + Kubrick (was: Godard on DV / total piece of shit)
A few thoughts and responses on 'Full Metal Jacket,' a film I love very
much --
Gabe:
Apologies for the misunderstanding -- re-reading it I see you could
have meant Godard's position, irrespective of your own. I hope that
'Cinéma Cinémas' pops up as a Criterion supplement or somewhere else,
I'd love to see it -- and love the Fuller episode on the 'Pickup on
South Street' disc. In the 'Future(s) of Film' book I mentioned
recently, Godard brings up 'Full Metal Jacket,' and posits that the
film portrays the Viet Cong as "gooks." In his famous and very funny
letter turning down the New York Film Critics' (I think?) lifetime
achievement award he cites Alvarez's films versus that of Kubrick.
Love JLG as I do, sometimes I don't get the old fellow, and this would
be one of those occasions.
Fred:
-"But just having structure and metaphor doesn't make a great film, in
my view."
Na klar. I don't believe the pre-planned skeleton of a work alone is
what makes it great -- but some degree of discipline in the preparation
of an aesthetic schema is, for me, most times a necessity for a work to
have a lasting effect. (Not across the board of course -- I can flow
with the aleatory as well as the next spectator, and indeed, a
filmmaker's maintaining 'absolute control' over the course of an entire
narrative-film is probably an impossibility.) A greater theoretical
door opens on this issue when one evaluates certain films, paintings,
etc., and discovers they are great "in spite of their authors" -- great
by chance, as it were. I must admit epiphany in the face of absolutely
"subconscious" conditions on the part of the author has tended to elude
me, in the scope of "finished" or recorded works -- while
greatness-in-real-time, often as a result of some sort of
improvisational circumstances even if not outright "pre-planned," is
something I've felt sparks while witnessing quite often, and usually
more often with music than with anything involving dramatic performance
or dramaturgy, for whatever reason.
-"There are lots of ideas, and lots of visual tricks, but the spatial
architecture, which in what I would call a great fim consists of the
way lines and surfaces and angles and light and movement combine to
create the meaningful visual expression that I find in Ford and
Hitchcock and Rossellini and Bresson and Brakhage and Kubelka, is
lacking. His films have for me a curious visual "emptiness," a feeling
that the imagery is a kind of vacant vessel for stylistic and thematic
and plot flourishes"
I can't agree with this at all. To start off, I suppose I wonder what
you mean by "visual tricks" -- camera movements, certain cuts...?
Regardless, one of the things I admire most about Kubrick, and am
endlessly in awe of, is the very spatial architecture you term lacking.
There's a sense of determinism in his spaces and compositions (and
that's only one part of what makes them tick, in my opinion), which is
perhaps what you and many on this list don't respond to (or outright
despise), but which seems to me unique in the cinema, -- the Kubrickian
arrangement of lines, rhythm of cuts, tracking shots which connote an
"unfurling" or "inevitability" (no doubt one component of what's been
referred to as Kubrick's film-as-"system"), and the most consistently
effective use of zooms across the work of all the directors whose work
I've seen (feel free to disagree, naturally) -- the Kubrick zoom
-penetrates-, delving not just into the psychology of the character
(Tom Cruise in the cab is like D'Onofrio listening to the speech about
Lee Harvey Oswald), but in a sense the psychology of the world --
pockets of "vacuum" that, like singularities, become critical moments
(or moments where critical decisions are made) that will have a
massive, usually destabilizing, effect on the action yet to play out.
In turn, Kubrick's symmetries seem, to me, a visual correlative for
something like "World-View" (out of these visual motifs and
constructions that suggest, to me, something like: "Eyeline" -- or
diagrams of parallax -- or even, wink-wank, Godard's "stereo").
As far as "redrum" goes, it seems to me that one important element of
that moment is the fact that Shelly Duvall's lipstick is being mashed
out of malevolence (on the part of the spirit-vibes) toward an
"under-used" femininity. Sticking on the topic of this film ('The
Shining'), I'll also mention that both it and '2001,' and 'Barry
Lyndon,' are treatises on cinematic space for me (and of which '2001''s
vacuum seems to me the apotheosis, and a horror) -- in the case of 'The
Shining,' one of the moments or images I'll never be able to escape is
the slow pull-back from the television-set, while Danny plays on the
floor and Shelly Duvall sits transfixed -- the massive empty space
slowly, quietly, terrifyingly becoming more revealed -- and, in the
process, "becoming" in a sense a television set itself, and a terrarium
(or, to use the critical parlance -- Bergala's? -- aquarium)... with
the "actual" television in center-frame echoing the monolith of '2001.'
(Of course, as the picture progresses and the madness reaches full
pitch, the clichés of a lifetime's intake of televisual living rear
their head against Shelly -- right down to the Disney 'Haunted Mansion'
set -- and, less televisually but more psychosexually, in a precursor
to the Mickey Mouse Club song yipped out on the River Styx, a teddy
bear "cos-player" fellating a hotel denizen.)
-"As a war movie, "Full Metal Jacket" seemed rather predictable too -- I
just *knew* it was the African-American who would get killed."
But it's not just the African-American -- a bunch of the troops get
shot!
Brad:
-"Even the final encounter with a sniper takes place simply because the
American soldiers have taken a wrong turn."
And there's even a 180-degree-rule-breaking cut during the Mickey Mouse
song that would seem to suggest that these barely-post-adolescents are
still without direction in the war in which they've been sent to fight!
Godard's comments about denying the "reverse shot" of the Viet Cong in
the film can hardly be taken as anything other than an off-hand remark
about a film half-remembered -- the p.o.v. targetings of the sniper are
among the most effective "reverse shots of The Other" I can think of --
certainly not in the tradition of Sirk's 'Battle Hymn,' say, but
something different -- it almost puts the sniper in a kind of
"Providential" position, wherein the Other, with silence, rains havoc
on the aggressors who, from a similarly elevated position in one
instance (on the chopper), have been snuffing out the Vietnamese like
nothing more than abstracted blips in frenetic motion on the rice
field. The little boys throwing their poop at each other and
fingerbanging Mary Jane Rottencrotch are in for a double stunted shock
when the sniper turns out to be a young female, begging at the troops'
boots to be euthanized. When I watch this scene, I almost still
expect, during the closeup of the catatonic Joker/Modine, for the film
to break down like in the middle of 'Persona.' To address
Jean-Pierre's comments about what he takes to be a stupid ending, the
"Mickey Mouse Club" song with its spelling out of the letters has
always seemed to me to be a kind of pants-shitting ward to counter the
dying sniper's death-prayer (which she murmurs in staccato exhalations
before pleading "Shoot - me - Shoot - me").
[And let me add that this isn't just a River Styx / souls-lost-in-Hades
scene -- it's also an "amnesia" scene, and Modine's
fascinatingly-phrased sentence on the voice-over -- "We hump down to
the Perfume River to set in for the night" -- suggests that this
no-zone is also a scene from the banks of the River Lethe!]
Finally, to Andy:
"Alvarez's film is for the peoples struggle against imperialism,
Kubrick's is for the brutes who "won"(in the sense that they devasted
Vietnamese society and now exploit it, Kennedy's goal)."
That may be the case (with we the Western moviegoers as the "winning"
brutes, and 'Full Metal Jacket' as being technically "for" us), but the
film has always obviously seemed to me (the evidence is on the screen!)
a blistering critique on American imperialism, the American presence in
Vietnam, and the influence of Western culture on the Vietnamese or the
oppressed anywhere. It's right there in the -very first shot- of Part
2, when Nancy Sinatra's song proclaims "one of these days these boots
are gonna walk all over you" and, contrary to the Westernized dolled-up
whore proceeding into the frame from the foreground, Matthew Modine
sits with one leg draped over another on his chair at the outdoor
table, Army-issue combat boot bobbing up and down gingerly on his knee,
"spry" in a way he never was in the preceding forty minutes at Parris
Island. On the billboard in the background, center of frame, looms a
Vietnamese-language billboard that brandishes a gross caricature of "an
Asian man." Coupled with the camera thief's conflated
"Oriental"/"Chinese" kung-fu-movie moves against the two servicemen, it
becomes clear that a corrupting influence is at work, seemingly
ingrained at the unconscious or self-suppressing level, as a result of
the American colonial presence and the presence of Western economies --
it's no small gesture for the thief to be stealing the soldier's camera
-- a first means, in effect, to steal back "the Image."
(Also interesting about this cut -- just as the baby-faced and
infantile [and infantilized] D'Onofrio/Pyle (Pile), bald in the
moonlight, becomes a kind of Starchild-gone-haywire, sneering and
reptilian in a split-second flash, the "leap forward" that follows his
suicide on the toilet happens to be 'Planet Earth, 1968' -- the precise
era in which '2001''s first spectators would be viewing the earlier
film.)
This is partly my case for 'Full Metal Jacket' -- it's simply
tremendous, -tremendous-, in my opinion. While there are many films
that give me a sizable, even ecstatic, degree of pleasure, there are
very few that thrill me as much as those of Stanley Kubrick.
craig.
17095
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2004 6:10am
Subject: Re: Total piece of shit
Before the list becomes "unavailable" again, let me post the URL for
my Full Metal Jacket article, which just showed up on a Kubrick
website:
http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0104.html
The article was written for CdC when the film came out, and expanded
for a book called Incorporations edited by Jonathan Crary, who
allowed me to poke a few holes in Deleuze's pretenses to scientific
thought in the PS, but censored out a paragraph about my misbegotten
mentor, Harold Bloom. I've written the site asking them to indicate
that the last five paragraphs are a post-script, and to correct some
spelling howlers that happened with the optical scanner + spell
check, like spelling Deleuze "Delouse." Hardly appropriate, since I
got the whole idea for the piece from him!
The debate rages on. Godard would no doubt agree w. Gabe -- he never
stopped disliking Kubrick, and went on tv to demonstrate why FMJ was
a bad film, frame by frame.
17096
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2004 6:14am
Subject: Re: Godard and DV
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Andy Rector"
wrote:
It would be rather difficult to do
> something as complex as Godard did in Histoire(s) using non-linear
> editing, but at the same time, for basic editing the
> filmmaker/editor is faced with too many choices.
Wouldn't it help?
Speaking from a
> little bit of experience I would say that its harder to think in
non-
> linear editing because of the lost sense of construction, or at
least
> its a totally different way of constructing which should be
> considered.
I've never edited any other way, and it suits me fine. But I know
people who are baffled by it!
17097
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2004 6:21am
Subject: OT (Was: Total piece of shit)
Speaking of Vietnam, how dangerous would it be for anyone from the
Left to say publicly that the insurgents in Iraq are saving our
butts, and have given us our only hope of geting rid of our own
incipent fascist regime? I don't agree with the ones who are blowing
up innocent bystanders, but a lot of people over there are just
putting their lives on the line to drive our army out. If they had
rolled over and played dead, Bush would be Emperor by now.
17098
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2004 6:22am
Subject: Re: Ulmer on a budget
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Noel Vera"
wrote:
>
> > The Naked Dawn, although that seems to have been a negative
pickup.
>
> Check. Though to be fair, Wasserman approved The Last Temptation of
> Christ (no masterpiece, I suppose, but a guilty favorite of mine).
>
Me too. Didn't someone burn a cross on his lawn when it was being
released?
17099
From:
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2004 5:30am
Subject: Kubrick
Kubrick is a good example of the difficulty auteurists have in arriving at a
consnsus about a contemporary filmmaker.
I tend to be a non-Kubrick fan. His best films (2001, Barry Lyndon) are
interesting, and show some good visual style. But did not like The Killing at all,
and have never been able to get more than half way through Full Metal Jacket.
Kubrick is obviously a thoughtful, careful filmmaker. But most of his work
does not seem to have a lot of shot by shot, scene by scene inspiration. It just
seems flat and uninteresting. Many of his films are relentlessly depressing,
too. Art as joy is a concept remote from his work, which is this terrible
downer (Wyler, too, usually!)
The Kubrick gap, (more like a gulf) between his admirers and detractors has
the usual critical problems. The non-fans such as myself are stuck in the
negative criticism box. We don't see a lot of interest in Kubrick's films. Are they
really uninteresting, or are we missing something good?
By contrast, Kubrick's admirers make huge claims for his work - he is one of
the great film artists; OR: "Eyes Wide Shut" is one of the great films of the
90's. "Eyes Wide Shut" seemed like a minor work to me. It "holds the interest"
throughout - it is not boring. But it never amounts to anything special or
creative. It did not seem to me good enough even to recommend to anybody for
viewing! Yet here it is, often seen as a film classic by Kubrick admirers.
Kubrick's films usually fail to work for me on an "entertainment" level. I
cannot see anything interesting in the characters in "Eyes Wide Shut" or their
problems. And would pay money not to have to see the soldier in the first half
of "Full Metal" being tortured. When Kubrick's admirers talk about how great
these films are, do they mean they are gripped? In the naive way that a good
film tends just to fascinate and absorb? I got so wrapped up in "The Trial of
Joan of Arc" (Bresson) recently that I could not take away my eyes from the
screen for a second.
Mike Grost
17100
From: thebradstevens
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2004 10:09am
Subject: Re: Total piece of shit
"On the ground" perhaps so, but one of my issues with "Full Metal
Jacket"
> and the rest of them is this 'purposelessness hell' stuff disguises
a strategy
> of very intense purpose; Vietnam, Iraq, we've got purpose galore....
>
> -Sam
This is true. And it's the reason that Aldrich's TWILIGHT'S LAST
GLEAMING is the greatest film about the Vietnam war.
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