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17901


From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Nov 15, 2004 4:39am
Subject: Re: The Stupids
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jaketwilson"
wrote:
>
> Just watched this again. It made me think further about Bill's
> characterisation of Landis as a Bazinian, as well as the "comedy
and
> perception" section we recently ran in Senses of Cinema.

I really have to catch up with Mr. We're As Ethical. My Stupids piece
for Torino -- and I really adore that film -- was dedicated to
Derrida, who had just died. Apparently Landis found it accurate, not
far-fetched at all (which doesn't mean he's read Derrida). When three
out of four gags are ABOUT language, it's not hard to make the case.
Jake referred to illustrations: the Stupids books (there are just
three) use a gag that isn't replicated by Landis because it's too
obviously about the theme of the film: all the paintings on the walls
of the Stupid home have titles that don't describe the images, like
Magritte's "La clef des songes": a painting of a dog with the
title "Bus" etc. The Stupids live in language, which has only an
arbitrary relationship to things -- which is why their pets are so
much smarter than they, because they can't speak.
17902


From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Nov 15, 2004 6:03am
Subject: Re: Daney Montage "how to pass from one thing to another."
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Elizabeth Nolan wrote:
> > "how to pass from one thing to another."
> >
> > I found this phrase interesting and was glad to find Bill Krohn's
> > interview in my google search of DANEY montage.
> > http://home.earthlink.net/~steevee/Daney_1977.html
> >
> >
> > The phrase is a statement of the obvious. The art of cinema is
> nothing but passing from one thing to the other. But often the
> obvious has to be re-stated because most people lose sight of it.
> The French is, I think, "passer d'une chose a une autre." That is
> also what life is all about. JPC

Thanks, JP. I'm about to do just that: 11 days in "Old Europe." But
I'll besure to check in at a_film_by.

17903


From: cairnsdavid1967
Date: Mon Nov 15, 2004 2:11pm
Subject: Re: Sidney Lumet
 
Agree.

Though Lumet prides himself on having tackled many different
subjects, his really successful films tend to fall into a more narrow
range, often thrillers dealing with microcosms of society. I think
THE HILL may be his most striking work.

His book is very good too, and shows a man who thinks deeply about
every aspect of his craft. He may be seen as a comparitively minor
auteur (and he may deny the title auteur) but he has produced several
really first-rate films (DOG DAY AFTERNOON) which are both
compassionate and intelligent.
17904


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Nov 15, 2004 2:14pm
Subject: Re: The Stupids
 
--- jaketwilson wrote:


>
> Another modern Bazinian, surely, is Apitchapong
> Weerasethakul, and
> something clicked for me when I watched ANIMAL HOUSE
> around the same
> time as TROPICAL MALADY: both directors get peculiar
> effects from
> apparent stylistic inertia, as if they were
> deliberately avoiding
> building up each scene, or just couldn't be
> bothered.

Enter Andy Warhol.

I don't find TROPICAL MALADY "inert." Calm yes,
"inert" no -- particularly in the second part.






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17905


From: cairnsdavid1967
Date: Mon Nov 15, 2004 2:15pm
Subject: Ophuls (was: All you need to make a film is a girl, a gun, and a staircase)
 
No discussion of the staircase would be complete without a mention of
Ophuls, who uses stairs as a site where the upper and lower orders
pass each other on their way up or down, as opportunities to show off
his mastery of all kinds of camera movement, and channels to force
characters together who wopuld rather be apart.

And the POV shot ascending the stairs and plunging from the window at
the end of LE PLAISIR is possibly the greatest technical feet anyone
has accomplished with a staircase in all cinema.
17906


From: Kevin Lee
Date: Mon Nov 15, 2004 3:06pm
Subject: Re: The Stupids
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jaketwilson"
wrote:
>
> Another modern Bazinian, surely, is Apitchapong Weerasethakul, and
> something clicked for me when I watched ANIMAL HOUSE around the
same
> time as TROPICAL MALADY: both directors get peculiar effects from
> apparent stylistic inertia, as if they were deliberately avoiding
> building up each scene, or just couldn't be bothered. The feeling
of
> succumbing to entropy is the basis of a lot of Landis' comedy, both
> the orgies of destruction and the flat, sarcastically literal
> presentation of scenes and objects. Like Frank Oz's jailhouse clerk
> at the start of THE BLUES BROTHERS, enumerating the prisoner's
> worldly goods: "One hat...black."
>

Fascinating. I'll have to rewatch TRADING PLACES (my favorite Landis)
with this in mind.

Your description of Landis seems to implicitly equate inertia/stasis
with entropy. I think you can make a case for this with all the mind-
numbing car chases in BLUES BROTHERS (a lot of chaotic motion going
nowhere). However I don't think that enumeration of the Blues'
personal effects is "succumbing to entropy" - quite the opposite,
it's the structuring assertion of a fetishist order that centers film
and viewer on their personae. It's no small thing that Landis and/or
the screenwriter invokes all that religious imagery and symbolism.
It's the very act of doing this that makes the subsequent chaos
watchable, because we are navigated through the car wrecks by their
authoritatively sunglassed perspective.

The musical sequences, for me the best thing about the movie, also
have a kind of paradoxical stasis/entropy -- narrative momentum gives
way to non-narrative performance -- and yet these performances have
so much more dynamism and life than the nominal plot, and they ground
the movie in something more meaningful and authentic than Belushi and
Ackroyd's hipster gentrification of black culture.
17907


From:
Date: Mon Nov 15, 2004 4:51pm
Subject: Re: All you need to make a film is a girl, a gun, and a staircase
 
Back for a few days after not reading for nearly
a month, and the list is already buzzing about
what's recently become one of my favorite movies.
Ahh, a_film_by.

Only three great actors in Some Came Running? No
love for Arthur Kennedy? (Or maybe he's leaving
out Frank Sinatra.) But seriously, folks, I've
watched SCR twice in the last couple of months
(vid/film) and was blown away by it both times.
The slightly smeared, almost abstract, quality of
Shirley MacLaine's closeups proves all by itself
that the actors were being closely watched, and
the magnificent quality of Dean Martin's
tossed-off (and, I imagine, improvised) asides
during the first poker game proves they were
being listened to. I'm dying to work the phrase
"you know what 'and' is" into casual
conversation, the way Martin uses it when
doubling the bet: "150 and -- you know what 'and'
is -- 150." Inevitably decor is stressed in
Minnelli, but the movie's last shot is almost a
mea culpa for VM's set-designing excesses: the
surviving characters looking at each other in
culpable silence, as the camera looks down past
the cemetery on the hill to a rusted bridge and a
smoke-belching factory below, which seems to
stand for everything that's been left out of the
story so far. In a movie where a small-town
jeweller's adding machine, desk blotter, safe
door and even his secretary's two-set seem to be
color coordinated, the sudden appearance of such
unvarnished industrial reality is like a bucket
of cold water in the face. It seems to say, in
the simplest terms, that there are problems
aren't can't solve, and chasms it widens instead
of bridging.

Speaking of staircases, I've been on a Cassavetes
rampage lately between the Criterion box and a
local mini-retro (LOVE STREAMS and HUSBANDS
included), and I noticed that literally every
movie from FACES on has at least one if not
several shots through a descending stairwell. (I
haven't seen GLORIA, but googling "Cassavetes"
and "staircase" includes a reference to Gena
Rowlands draggging a child down one, so it looks
like an unbroken run). It doesn't seem to be a
conscious motif and I'm momentarily stuck for any
consistent interpretation, but it did seem
interesting given the canonical dismissal of JC's
visual style (not counting Adrian's excellent
Senses of Cinema article on the subject, which
I'm eager to reread now that I've seen more).

My favorite movie staircase: BIGGER THAN LIFE.

Sam

>
> Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 15:33:58 -0500
> From: Craig Keller
>Subject: Re: Re: All you need to make a film is a girl, a gun, and a staircase
>
>>
>> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
>> wrote:
>>>
> >> "Minnelli and Visconti feature staircases too you know."
>>>
>>> There's probably an article - hell, maybe even a book - to be
>> written
> >> about staircases in cinema. You'd never confuse a Wyler staircase
>>> with a Visconti staircase or a Minnelli staircase. Not to mention a
>>> James Whale staircase or a Nicholas Ray staircase.
>>
>> Here are a few!
>
>And this is from an interview with Jacques Rivette, conducted by
>Frédéric Bonnaud, translated by Kent Jones, from Senses of Cinema --
>http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/16/rivette.html --
>
>"I'm going to make more enemies...actually the same enemies, since the
>people who like Minnelli usually like Mankiewicz, too. Minnelli is
>regarded as a great director thanks to the slackening of the "politique
>des auteurs." For François, Jean-Luc and me, the politique consisted of
>saying that there were only a few filmmakers who merited consideration
>as auteurs, in the same sense as Balzac or Molière. One play by Molière
>might be less good than another, but it is vital and exciting in
>relation to the entire oeuvre. This is true of Renoir, Hitchcock, Lang,
>Ford, Dreyer, Mizoguchi, Sirk, Ozu... But it's not true of all
>filmmakers. Is it true of Minnelli, Walsh or Cukor? I don't think so.
>They shot the scripts that the studio assigned them to, with varying
>levels of interest. Now, in the case of Preminger, where the direction
>is everything, the politique works. As for Walsh, whenever he was
>intensely interested in the story or the actors, he became an auteur –
>and in many other cases, he didn't. In Minnelli's case, he was
>meticulous with the sets, the spaces, the light...but how much did he
>work with the actors? I loved Some Came Running (1958) when it came
>out, just like everybody else, but when I saw it again ten years ago I
>was taken aback: three great actors and they're working in a void, with
>no one watching them or listening to them from behind the camera.
>
>"Whereas with Sirk, everything is always filmed . No matter what the
>script, he's always a real director. In Written On the Wind (1956),
>there's that famous Universal staircase, and it's a real character,
>just like the one in Secret Défense . I chose the house where we filmed
>because of the staircase. I think that's where all dramatic loose ends
>come together, and also where they must resolve themselves."
>
>craig.
>
>[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
17908


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Nov 15, 2004 5:03pm
Subject: Re: Re: All you need to make a film is a girl, a gun, and a staircase
 
--- samadams@e... wrote:


> The slightly smeared, almost abstract, quality of
> Shirley MacLaine's closeups proves all by itself
> that the actors were being closely watched, and
> the magnificent quality of Dean Martin's
> tossed-off (and, I imagine, improvised) asides
> during the first poker game proves they were
> being listened to.

You're absolutely right, which is why I find Rivette's
objection to the film so confusing.ust because he
wouldn't have directed MacLaine the way Minnelli did
doesn't mean he didn't direct her at all. MacLaine is
not Sandrine Bonnaire, and Rivette's simply being
unreasonable.


> Speaking of staircases, I've been on a Cassavetes
> rampage lately between the Criterion box and a
> local mini-retro (LOVE STREAMS and HUSBANDS
> included), and I noticed that literally every
> movie from FACES on has at least one if not
> several shots through a descending stairwell. (I
> haven't seen GLORIA, but googling "Cassavetes"
> and "staircase" includes a reference to Gena
> Rowlands draggging a child down one, so it looks
> like an unbroken run).

Got to getmy laser of "Gloria" out and look at it
again, but as I recall she has several stairway scene
in the film -- the most imporatn early on where she
eludes the hit men by hiding in the starway. The
matter-of-fact way Cassavetes deals with this contract
killing is unique in all cinema.




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17909


From: thebradstevens
Date: Mon Nov 15, 2004 5:07pm
Subject: I await the end of staircases with optimism
 
After sending my last post about staircases in the cinema, I finally
got around to watching the tape of Bunuel's A WOMAN WITHOUT LOVE
(1951) that has been sitting on my shelf for the last couple of
weeks - and couldn't help being amused by the number of shots that
include staircases. The film is almost pure Douglas Sirk, by the way.
17910


From:
Date: Mon Nov 15, 2004 0:26pm
Subject: Re: All you need to make a film is a girl, a gun, and a stair...
 
Before the glorious staircases of Hitchcock, there were the equally glorious
staircases of Fritz Lang. And through Lang, film noir is full of staircases:
Anthony Mann, Robert Siodmak, Robert Aldrich.

Mike Grost
17911


From: Michael E. Kerpan, Jr.
Date: Mon Nov 15, 2004 5:34pm
Subject: Re: All you need to make a film is a girl, a gun, and a stair...
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:

> Before the glorious staircases of Hitchcock, there were the equally
glorious
> staircases of Fritz Lang. And through Lang, film noir is full of
staircases:
> Anthony Mann, Robert Siodmak, Robert Aldrich.

And then there is Ozu and stairways. While post-war Ozu does have
some very memorable appearances of stairways -- most notably in "Hen
in the Wind" -- Shigehiko Hasumi (correctly, I think) notes that
avoidance of stairway shots (when one would normally expect to see
them) is one of the defining characteristics of much of late Ozu. It
was as if staircases were so menacing (in some undefined fashion) that
showing them was almost taboo.

Ozu's early "Dragnet Girl" had lots to due with guns and girls
(especially young Kinuyo Tanaka) -- and featured an escape from a
balcony -- but were there any stairs? i'll need to re-watch this, I
guess.

MEK

MEK
17912


From:
Date: Mon Nov 15, 2004 0:38pm
Subject: Re: Re: All you need to make a film is a girl, a gun, and a stair...
 
Has anybody mentioned the grand staircase of the Ambersons' in the Welles
film? It seems to me that the scenes between George and Lucy, and between George
and Aunt Fanny, wouldn't be half as good if it wasn't for the tremendous way
Welles uses that specific location.

Peter


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
17913


From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Mon Nov 15, 2004 5:45pm
Subject: Re: Re: All you need to make a film is a girl, a gun, and a stair...
 
> And then there is Ozu and stairways. While post-war Ozu does have
> some very memorable appearances of stairways -- most notably in "Hen
> in the Wind" -- Shigehiko Hasumi (correctly, I think) notes that
> avoidance of stairway shots (when one would normally expect to see
> them) is one of the defining characteristics of much of late Ozu. It
> was as if staircases were so menacing (in some undefined fashion) that
> showing them was almost taboo.

Agreed that the staircase in A HEN IN THE WIND is scary, I wonder if Ozu's
treatment of staircases in the late films isn't governed by a more general
desire to purge his images of dynamic elements. One sees often in later
Ozu that same bland staircase shot, where the stairs are filmed head-on
from the ground floor, as one of the family's children ascends or
descends. - Dan
17914


From: Michael E. Kerpan, Jr.
Date: Mon Nov 15, 2004 5:54pm
Subject: Re: All you need to make a film is a girl, a gun, and a stair...
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:

> Agreed that the staircase in A HEN IN THE WIND is scary, I wonder if
Ozu's
> treatment of staircases in the late films isn't governed by a more
general
> desire to purge his images of dynamic elements. One sees often in
later
> Ozu that same bland staircase shot, where the stairs are filmed head-on
> from the ground floor, as one of the family's children ascends or
> descends. - Dan

What I most recall from late Ozu are the stairway shots where the
stairways are "invisible". One routinely gets a side view, showing
people going into -- or coming out of -- them, but one (almost) never
actually sees them. When you do actually see a rare shot of one (as
in "Autumn Afternoon"), it seems to be in a situation of sadness.
("Floating Weeds" doesn't count -- because the stairway shots there
often tend to track those of the earlier silent version -- rather than
embodying typical late Ozu iconography). I don't think it's an
avoidance of dynamism -- because one often sees people swinging into
them with a certain degree of recklessness or speed (think of Setsuko
Hara in "Late Spring"). ;~}

MEK
17915


From: tedcogs
Date: Mon Nov 15, 2004 5:57pm
Subject: Re: All you need to make a film is a girl, a gun, and a stair...
 
Forgive me if it has already been mentioned, but I just watched the
new Criterion dvd of Eyes Without a Face and that film also has a
memorable climb up a staircase. Prof. Genessier climbs up several
flights up into the highest reaches of his large home where he has a
secret stored away in an attic (?) room.


--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> > And then there is Ozu and stairways. While post-war Ozu does
have
> > some very memorable appearances of stairways -- most notably
in "Hen
> > in the Wind" -- Shigehiko Hasumi (correctly, I think) notes that
> > avoidance of stairway shots (when one would normally expect to
see
> > them) is one of the defining characteristics of much of late
Ozu. It
> > was as if staircases were so menacing (in some undefined
fashion) that
> > showing them was almost taboo.
>
> Agreed that the staircase in A HEN IN THE WIND is scary, I wonder
if Ozu's
> treatment of staircases in the late films isn't governed by a more
general
> desire to purge his images of dynamic elements. One sees often in
later
> Ozu that same bland staircase shot, where the stairs are filmed
head-on
> from the ground floor, as one of the family's children ascends or
> descends. - Dan
17916


From:
Date: Mon Nov 15, 2004 6:09pm
Subject: Soderbergh, Clooney to remake 'Decalogue'
 
I love how this article gives the credit for "dreaming up" the
concept to some FX VP.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/variety/20041110/va_mi/fx_gets_serious_about_bible_study_1

Sam
17917


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Nov 15, 2004 6:53pm
Subject: Re: Soderbergh, Clooney to remake 'Decalogue'
 
Sounds about as inviting as root canal.

Soderbergh is a blight upon the cinema.

--- samadams@e... wrote:

> I love how this article gives the credit for
> "dreaming up" the
> concept to some FX VP.
>
>
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/variety/20041110/va_mi/fx_gets_serious_about_bible_study_1
>
> Sam
>




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17918


From: thebradstevens
Date: Mon Nov 15, 2004 6:57pm
Subject: Re: Soderbergh, Clooney to remake 'Decalogue'
 
"I love how this article gives the credit for "dreaming up" the
concept to some FX VP."

Well, I guess asking Soderbergh and Clooney to remake DECALOGUE is
a 'concept'. Remember, these are the people who thought it was really
great idea to remake SOLARIS in the style of a whiskey commercial.

There was a similar project, also entitled THE TEN COMMANDMENTS,
floating around a few years ago. Jerry Lewis was to be one of the
directors.
17919


From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Mon Nov 15, 2004 7:06pm
Subject: Re: Soderbergh, Clooney to remake 'Decalogue'
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
>
> "I love how this article gives the ﷯credit﷯ for "dreaming up" the
> concept to some FX VP."
>
> Well, I guess asking Soderbergh and Clooney to remake DECALOGUE is
> a 'concept'. Remember, these are the people who thought it was
really
> great idea to remake SOLARIS in the style of a whiskey commercial.
>
> Quite obviously, another example of the intellectual bankruptcy
of contemporary Hollywood. I'm eagerly expecting the announcement of
future cast members such as Brad Pitt, Leonardo, Meg Ryan, and Demi
Moore who may really be wishing to stretch their intellectual
horizons very much like Soderberg and Clooney?

Tony Williams
17920


From: Kevin Lee
Date: Mon Nov 15, 2004 8:17pm
Subject: Re: Soderbergh, Clooney to remake 'Decalogue'
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
Remember, these are the people who thought it was really
> great idea to remake SOLARIS in the style of a whiskey commercial.

Right, I would have preferred a beer commercial with a rock
soundtrack:

"I...
love...
Andrei Tarkovsky
Shots of George Clooney
Stanislav Lem...
and TWINS!"

(For anyone who got that -- I bet you can count the number of NFL
fans in this group with one mutiliated hand -- this Bud's for you!)

Kevin
17921


From: samfilms2003
Date: Mon Nov 15, 2004 8:36pm
Subject: Re: Soderbergh, Clooney to remake 'Decalogue'
 
I'd defend Soderbergh's "Solaris" - a film I really like but after reading
this I'm not in the mood.


>I'm eagerly expecting the announcement of
> future cast members such as Brad Pitt, Leonardo, Meg Ryan, and Demi
> Moore who may really be wishing to stretch their intellectual
> horizons very much like Soderberg and Clooney?

No no ! Bill Moyers as God, Brad Pitt as his best friend.

-Sam W
17922


From:
Date: Mon Nov 15, 2004 8:40pm
Subject: Re: Soderbergh, Clooney to remake 'Decalogue'
 
Kevin Lee wrote:

>
> Right, I would have preferred a beer commercial with a rock
> soundtrack:
>
> "I...
> love...
> Andrei Tarkovsky
> Shots of George Clooney
> Stanislav Lem...
> and TWINS!"
>
> (For anyone who got that -- I bet you can count the number of NFL
> fans in this group with one mutiliated hand -- this Bud's for you!)
>

Well, yeah. But as awful/awesome as that commercial was, I'd like to
think that it went some ways towards helping defeat the singularly
monstrous Pete Coors in his quest for a Senate seat in Colorado.

On a more serious note, the description of that 10 Commandments
series doesn't *really* sound like THE DECALOGUE, does it, except in
very broad strokes? And let's be fair - Clooney and Soderbergh are
only executive producing through their company. It sounds like the
writing and directing of individual episodes is up to other
directors. And whatever one may think of Soderbergh as a director (I
personally like him), he has pretty good taste in filmmakers.
There's hope yet.

-Bilge
17923


From: Kevin Lee
Date: Mon Nov 15, 2004 9:44pm
Subject: Re: Soderbergh, Clooney to remake 'Decalogue'
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ebiri@a... wrote:
> Well, yeah. But as awful/awesome as that commercial was, I'd like
to
> think that it went some ways towards helping defeat the singularly
> monstrous Pete Coors in his quest for a Senate seat in Colorado.
>

Maybe he shouldn't have used it as his campaign song:

"I...
love...
to torture Iraqis,
to stop gays who marry,
banning abortions...
and TWINS!"
17924


From:
Date: Mon Nov 15, 2004 6:11pm
Subject: Re: Soderbergh, Clooney to remake 'Decalogue'
 
In the 1980's, there was a planned series of American TV-movies on the Ten
Commandments. But only one was made: "Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery", if memory
serves. I am not making this up! This seems to have been entirely independent
of the Polish "Dekalog" series. It was not very good.
I love the real Ten Commandments. But I did NOT like Kieslowski's often very
strange interpretations of them. Episode #1, in which a man is punished by God
for trusting in science and reason, really offended me. This is one of the
"sickest" films I have ever seen.
I confess I dread a remake of Dekalog, too. But a fresh start of a series of
ten films by varying filmmakers could be quite interesting.
Tried watching the Soderbergh "Solaris". But the only thing enjoyable were
the costumes - Clooney's space suit is cool!

Mike Grost
17925


From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Mon Nov 15, 2004 11:43pm
Subject: Re: Soderbergh, Clooney to remake 'Decalogue'
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
> I did NOT like Kieslowski's often very
> strange interpretations of them. Episode #1, in which a man is
punished by God
> for trusting in science and reason, really offended me. This is
one of the
> "sickest" films I have ever seen.
> I confess I dread a remake of Dekalog, too. >
> Mike Grost

#1 sounds uncannily parallel to the reactionary elements existing
within Solidarity, a Catholic-inspired trade union which acted
against women's rights once they gained power in Poland. There were
some good things in the old "Evil Empire" in terms of welfare
arrangements which Western commentators were eager to neglect when
championing the supposedly heroic persona of Lech Walensa.

This also appears in MAN OF IRON when Krsytyna Janda's role is
reduced into one of compliant female.

Tony Williams
17926


From: Nick Wrigley
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004 1:58am
Subject: Buñuel on Metropolis
 
I wondered if anyone knew of an English translation of Buñuel's 1927
piece about METROPOLIS? -- I've located a French translation, from
Spanish, in a 1985 Cinematheque Francaise book, and I'm trying to
translate it, but it's pretty clunky going...

-Nick>-
17927


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004 2:35am
Subject: Re: Buñuel on Metropolis
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Nick Wrigley
wrote:
> I wondered if anyone knew of an English translation of Buñuel's
1927
> piece about METROPOLIS? -- I've located a French translation, from
> Spanish, in a 1985 Cinematheque Francaise book, and I'm trying to
> translate it, but it's pretty clunky going...
>
> -Nick>-

I've never read it, but do send it along and I'll see what I can do
with it (in case you don't know, I'm the French person in residence
on this Group).
17928


From: jaketwilson
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004 3:15am
Subject: Re: The Stupids
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Kevin Lee"
wrote:

> Your description of Landis seems to implicitly equate
inertia/stasis
> with entropy. I think you can make a case for this with all the
mind-numbing car chases in BLUES BROTHERS (a lot of chaotic motion
going
> nowhere). However I don't think that enumeration of the Blues'
> personal effects is "succumbing to entropy" - quite the opposite,
> it's the structuring assertion of a fetishist order that centers
film and viewer on their personae. It's no small thing that Landis
and/or the screenwriter invokes all that religious imagery and
symbolism. It's the very act of doing this that makes the subsequent
chaos watchable, because we are navigated through the car wrecks by
> their authoritatively sunglassed perspective.

True to a point, though the enumeration is conducted in tones of
weary disgust (and the "effects" include a used condom). Note too
that as comic personae the Blues Brothers are characterised almost
entirely through negation -- the masking sunglasses and the absence
of physical or vocal expression as well the "anti-social" attitudes
and the atmosphere of drab sleaze that clings to them wherever they
go. In this paradoxically rousing negativity Landis is obviously
representative of much 1980s Hollywood comedy of the SATURDAY NIGHT
LIVE/NATIONAL LAMPOON school; in BLUES BROTHERS it gets turned around
into something positive mainly through the music and the implicit
respect for its performers, though the Brothers also have a vitality
that comes from having nothing to lose, carrying on like cockroaches
while everything about them is reduced to rubble.
17929


From: Paul Gallagher
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004 3:55am
Subject: Re: Buñuel on Metropolis
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Nick Wrigley wrote:
> I wondered if anyone knew of an English translation of Buñuel's 1927
> piece about METROPOLIS? -- I've located a French translation, from
> Spanish, in a 1985 Cinematheque Francaise book, and I'm trying to
> translate it, but it's pretty clunky going...
>
> -Nick>-

One was published in "Fritz Lang's Metropolis: Cinematic Visions of
Technology and Fear," edited by Michael Minden and Holger Bachman.

Also,
http://www.celtoslavica.de/chiaroscuro/films/metropolis/metro.html
seems to indicate that there's a translation in
"Great film directors : a critical anthology," edited by Leo Braudy
and Morris Dickstein.
17930


From: Nick Wrigley
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004 5:15am
Subject: Re: Re: Buñuel on Metropolis
 
> One was published in "Fritz Lang's Metropolis: Cinematic Visions of
> Technology and Fear," edited by Michael Minden and Holger Bachman.
>
> Also,
> http://www.celtoslavica.de/chiaroscuro/films/metropolis/metro.html
> seems to indicate that there's a translation in
> "Great film directors : a critical anthology," edited by Leo Braudy
> and Morris Dickstein.


Thanks Paul!!
It'll be interesting to compare to my very rough translation. I might
be able to understand what Buñuel means now! :)

-

J-P, out of interest, here's the French version:
http://mastersofcinema.org/misc/METROPbunuel.gif

-Nick>-
17931


From: K. A. Westphal
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004 5:42am
Subject: Re: All you need to make a film is a girl, a gun, and a stair...
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
> Before the glorious staircases of Hitchcock, there were the equally
glorious
> staircases of Fritz Lang. And through Lang, film noir is full of
staircases:
> Anthony Mann, Robert Siodmak, Robert Aldrich.
>
> Mike Grost

Cohesive filmographies filled with staircases aside, my favorite
staircase fetish occurs in the opening scenes of MILDRED PIERCE.

--Kyle Westphal
17932


From:
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004 2:53am
Subject: McCarey's "You Can Change the World"
 
I just became aware that Leo McCarey's 1951 short film, "You Can Change the
World," is available on the recently released DVD anthology, "The Educational
Archives: Patriotism."

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000AGQ66/qid=1100591329/sr=11-1/ref=s
r_11_1/104-7460974-1899126

Has anybody seen the McCarey film? In his superb essay on the director at
Senses of Cinema, Paul Harrill describes it as being "...a short promotional
film McCarey directed for The Christophers, an ecumenical religious charity
started by a Catholic priest. The film stars McCarey regulars Irene Dunne and Bing
Crosby (among others) and features an updating of Ruggles of Red Gap's
Gettysburg Address scene, this time using the Declaration of Independence."

It sounds like a must-see, making this DVD a must-own (or must-rent.)

Peter


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
17933


From:
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004 4:23am
Subject: Re: Re: Lewis DVDs
 
I've only listened to the commentary on THE FAMILY JEWELS and I thought it
was awful. I talked more than Lewis and whoever did during the film. But the
French dubbed version of the film was fascinating. At first, I was upset that
Donna repeats Bugs in a little girl's voice instead of Bugs' voice, thus
mindlessly ruining the joke. But then, it renders Bugs' confused look at the camera
impassably strange.

Also, I think the rank sentimentality in Lewis' films is integral to the
entire grotesque flexing of ego (or is that id?). I stare in horror frequently.
But it feeds into a necessary fantasy of boundless freedom. Here's a man (and we
should always keep in mind that it's a man) who won big off the wager of
democracy. And finally, this is why I value THE LADIES' MAN over THE NUTTY
PROFESSOR. The latter is too didactic, too much an intro to Lewis. With THE LADIES'
MAN, the gamble is higher but so is the payoff.

Still, as I write this, it's making me realize that THE PALM BEACH STORY may
be even more profound than anything Lewis has ever done and it has a lot to do
with the "man" comment above.

Kevin John


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
17934


From: Adrian Martin
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004 10:27am
Subject: re: Soderbergh's SOLARIS
 
Brad wrote ironically: " ... it was a really
great idea to remake SOLARIS in the style of a whiskey commercial"

I am not a great Soderbergh fan (although I value some of his movies) - but
his SOLARIS is a special achievement in his career, I believe. The
appreciations in POSITIF were right on the mark, I thought. It is his most
systematically and intricately stylised film - not a note of music for about
the first 20 minutes, and once off the score hardly stops humming and
throbbing in that distressing way - such a move takes great courage (not to
mention clout) in Hollywood today! This movie also sold me on Clooney, too:
he's very good in it. And the sound design is awesome, so subtle in its
modulations of atmosphere, effect, spatial disorientations, etc.

If SOLARIS looks like a whiskey commercial (which brand?), then so do the
collected works of Assayas, Wong Kar-wai and Philippe Grandrieux!

Adrian
17935


From:
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004 4:28am
Subject: Re: RIPLEY'S GAME
 
Just wanted to say that I violently loathed RIPLEY'S GAME. Ripley is already
rich here so the class antagonism of TALENTED and PURPLE NOON is gone. So we
get two hours of snobby, "witty" anomie. Malkovich's Ripley is arch and
charmless. And then what's with the rampant heterosexuality? Ripley gets a kiss from
Reeves or Jeeves or whoever suggesting an amorous past but that's it. What was
the point?

Kevin John


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
17936


From: Joseph Kaufman
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004 9:29am
Subject: Re: Buñuel on Metropolis
 
>I wondered if anyone knew of an English translation of Buñuel's 1927
>piece about METROPOLIS? -- I've located a French translation, from
>Spanish, in a 1985 Cinematheque Francaise book, and I'm trying to
>translate it, but it's pretty clunky going...
>
>-Nick>-

It's in THE SCIENCE FICTION FILM READER, edited
by Gregg Rickman, which also includes pieces by
our own Dan Sallitt, Bill Krohn and Jonathan
Rosenbaum.
--

- Joe Kaufman
17937


From: Adrian Martin
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004 10:31am
Subject: re: Bunuel on METROPOLIS
 
If no one's said this already: Bunuel's METROPOLIS essay also appears in the
essential collection of the director's writings, AN UNSPEAKABLE BETRAYAL
(Univ of California Press, 2000). No cinephile can be without this amazing
book!

Adrian
17938


From:
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004 5:04am
Subject: THE APPLE (1980)
 
I am extremely embarrassed that it took me 34 years to see Menahem Golan's
THE APPLE (1980). Shame on you all for not forcing me to do this earlier!

THE APPLE merely reinforces my suspicion that the 1980s was the greatest (and
quite possibly the gayest) decade of them all!! XANADU. SHOCK TREATMENT. What
a time! Golan takes what people who hate musicals hate about musicals
(namely, the musical numbers) and multiplies them. There's barely time to catch your
breath or wipe your eyes or pick up your jaw before the next great-awful song
crashes right in front of you. And the ending! Is capitalism the evil here? Or
just logic?

I cannot say anything more as I am in the process of memorizing the thing.
But it's even better than the admittedly great Makhmalbaf film of the same name.

BIM's on the way!

Kevin John


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
17939


From:
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004 5:06am
Subject: Re: re: Soderbergh's SOLARIS
 
Personally, I find that Tarkovsky's films could stand a little whiskey
commercial (if not a little whiskey). Kudos to Adrian and others for standing up for
Soderbergh's perfectly illegit simulation.

Kevin John


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
17940


From: thebradstevens
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004 11:01am
Subject: Re: RIPLEY'S GAME
 
"Ripley is already rich here so the class antagonism of TALENTED and
PURPLE NOON is gone...And then what's with the rampant
heterosexuality?"

The film is simply being true to Highsmith's novel. I read all the
Ripley books a couple of years ago, and it seems to me that the Tom
Ripley of THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY has very little connection with the
Tom Ripley of the four sequels. Anthony Minghella made far more of
Ripley's homosexuality than Highsmith did anyway.
17941


From: George Robinson
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004 11:36am
Subject: Yahoo! News - Hanks may crack 'Code'
 
News calculated to bring up your dinner.
g

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/variety/20041114/va_mi/hanks_may_crack__code_1
17942


From: Richard Modiano
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004 4:26pm
Subject: Re: All you need to make a film is a girl, a gun, and a stair...
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:

"One sees often in later Ozu that same bland staircase shot, where
the stairs are filmed head-on from the ground floor, as one of the
family's children ascends or descends."

The domestic architecture of the kind of houses that Ozu's stories
take place in have very narrow stairways, and Ozu rarely explored
interior space by moving his camera through it, especially in the
late films. Those head on shots are not bland in my view since they
emphasize lines converging at the top and contrast with the people
ascending or descending, the perspective is exaggerated since the
camera is so close to the floor.

Unlike Ozu, Mizoguchi comissioned sets so that he could move his
camera through room after room, but he also eschewed domestic
stairways. But for exteriors Mizo made use of vast temple stairways,
and many other Japanese directors have used temple and castle
stairways in at times an abstract manner though Ozu seems to never
have made use of those stairways despite all the movies he made that
took place in the temple city of Kamakura.

And finally, since it hasn't been mentioned in this thread, the
greatest stairway of them all (or is an escalator?)is in A MATTER OF
LIFE AND DEATH.

Richard
17943


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004 4:31pm
Subject: Re: Re: All you need to make a film is a girl, a gun, and a stair...
 
--- Richard Modiano wrote:


>
> And finally, since it hasn't been mentioned in this
> thread, the
> greatest stairway of them all (or is an
> escalator?)is in A MATTER OF
> LIFE AND DEATH.
>

True, but don't forget the ladder that takes her to
the top in LOLA MONTES.

And the grand stairway that Henry Fonda climbs holding
the dying Lucille Ball in his arms in THE BIG STREET.
>




__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The all-new My Yahoo! - Get yours free!
http://my.yahoo.com
17944


From: Kevin Lee
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004 4:50pm
Subject: Re: The Stupids
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jaketwilson"
wrote:
> True to a point, though the enumeration is conducted in tones of
> weary disgust (and the "effects" include a used condom).

Yeah but that disgust is meant to beckon us into the world of Blues,
where part of the initiation involves forfeiting our sense of
decency, which allows us to thumb our noses at all the squares we'll
be running over for the next couple of hours (that is unless they're
wearing a frock).

Note too
> that as comic personae the Blues Brothers are characterised almost
> entirely through negation -- the masking sunglasses and the absence
> of physical or vocal expression as well the "anti-social" attitudes
> and the atmosphere of drab sleaze that clings to them wherever they
> go. In this paradoxically rousing negativity Landis is obviously
> representative of much 1980s Hollywood comedy of the SATURDAY NIGHT
> LIVE/NATIONAL LAMPOON school; in BLUES BROTHERS it gets turned
around
> into something positive mainly through the music and the implicit
> respect for its performers, though the Brothers also have a
vitality
> that comes from having nothing to lose, carrying on like
cockroaches
> while everything about them is reduced to rubble.

I can't tell if you're more or less ambivalent about all this than I
am. Ultimately I end up resenting the film because it has the
potential to say something about black culture, and maybe it does
just by letting those performances stand as oases in the midst of so
much chaos counterbalanced by deadpan white-boy posturing. In the
end I see it as a great concert movie marred by overly repetitive
hipster mugging. But you've made me curious to see it again, if only
to see how the class issues (the condom and how it may code our
response along class lines) intersect with the race issues.
17945


From: Kevin Lee
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004 4:54pm
Subject: Re: TARNATION (WAS: Fipresci site alert)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
>
> In a message dated 10/29/04 4:48:49 PM, alsolikelife@y... writes:
>
>
> > I don't even know where to begin with this movie -- my problems
with
> > it seem to conflate the more I think about it (most recently I
> > learned, from someone who interviewed Caouette, that the BLUE
VELVET
> > sequences were actually staged reenactments -- I need to verify
this
> > before I start spreading it around) but the problems have less to
do
> > with the film itself than the fictional properties of documentary
> > narratives.
> >
> What will it tell you if you do indeed find out that the footage
was a
> reenactment?
>
> Kevin John
>

That Caouette is aspiring to an even more extreme level of
reconstructionist autobiographical myth-producing than I assumed, and
that the movie was definitely not made for $206, among other things.

sorry to reply to you so late, Kevin J. Have you seen this movie yet?
17946


From: Michael E. Kerpan, Jr.
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004 5:29pm
Subject: Re: All you need to make a film is a girl, a gun, and a stair...
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
wrote:

> Unlike Ozu, Mizoguchi comissioned sets so that he could move his
> camera through room after room, but he also eschewed domestic
> stairways.

As we watched one of Mizoguchi's films recently (I forget which), my
wife and I both noted the patent unreality of the domestic household
set he used -- as compared to those found in Ozu and Naruse.

> But for exteriors Mizo made use of vast temple stairways,
> and many other Japanese directors have used temple and castle
> stairways in at times an abstract manner though Ozu seems to never
> have made use of those stairways despite all the movies he made that
> took place in the temple city of Kamakura.

Ozu makes use of (and even has a bit of fun with) a grand set of
outdoor steps in "Late Spring".

MEK
17947


From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004 5:47pm
Subject: Re: re: Soderbergh's SOLARIS
 
> I am not a great Soderbergh fan (although I value some of his movies) -
> but his SOLARIS is a special achievement in his career, I believe. The
> appreciations in POSITIF were right on the mark, I thought. It is his
> most systematically and intricately stylised film - not a note of music
> for about the first 20 minutes, and once off the score hardly stops
> humming and throbbing in that distressing way - such a move takes great
> courage (not to mention clout) in Hollywood today! This movie also sold
> me on Clooney, too: he's very good in it. And the sound design is
> awesome, so subtle in its modulations of atmosphere, effect, spatial
> disorientations, etc.

I think I'd go along with this, without wanting to rave. I'd never liked
any previous Soderbergh film, but SOLARIS made me feel for the first time
that he might have an interesting sensibility, expressed through the form
of the film.

Clooney is always good, in my opinion. - Dan
17948


From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004 5:56pm
Subject: Re: Re: All you need to make a film is a girl, a gun, and a stair...
 
> The domestic architecture of the kind of houses that Ozu's stories
> take place in have very narrow stairways, and Ozu rarely explored
> interior space by moving his camera through it, especially in the
> late films. Those head on shots are not bland in my view since they
> emphasize lines converging at the top and contrast with the people
> ascending or descending, the perspective is exaggerated since the
> camera is so close to the floor.

I didn't mean to imply that I thought Ozu's staircase shots were
deficient. I think they fit well with Ozu's visual ideas. But I don't
find the perspective to be forced in any significant way. - Dan
17949


From: Richard Modiano
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004 6:26pm
Subject: Re: All you need to make a film is a girl, a gun, and a stair...
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Michael E. Kerpan, Jr."
wrote:

"As we watched one of Mizoguchi's films recently (I forget which), my
wife and I both noted the patent unreality of the domestic household
set he used -- as compared to those found in Ozu and Naruse."

Well, Ozu and Naruse laid most of their stories in the Kanto region
while Mizoguchi favored the Kansai where the architecture is
distinctly different. But that's an interesting observation about
unreality of the domestic household set since Mizo took great pains
to make all his period sets authentic as well as the sets for
contemporay geisha houses, inns and brothels (places where he spent a
lot of time before his formal converstion to Buddhism.) I wonder if
the unreality of that household set you saw relects his feelings
about domesticity.

There is one contemporary set used by Mizo that's astonishingly
realistic, an exterior of a house constructed on a sound stage that's
so perfectly lighted that I couldn't detect the artifice until I saw
a miniature train go by on the horizon (it's in OYU SAMA/MISS OYU.)

"Ozu makes use of (and even has a bit of fun with) a grand set of
outdoor steps in 'Late Spring'.

I had forgotten about that. I think some of Ozu's fun came from the
ability to stage a scene of levity on the steps of the Hacihman
Shrine which would have been forbidden by the war time Japanese
censors.

Richard
17950


From:
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004 1:42pm
Subject: Re: Re: TARNATION (WAS: Fipresci site alert)
 
In a message dated 11/16/04 11:02:26 AM, alsolikelife@y... writes:


> sorry to reply to you so late, Kevin J.  Have you seen this movie yet?
>

Yes, I really liked it. In some ways, it reminded me of MADONNA - TRUTH OR
DARE, especially the famous scene where Beatty berates Madonna for not wanting
to talk off camera. In TARNATION, cameras work similarly but they're more a
matter of survival. Here's a boy who needed a reverse shot of himself to make him
feel real. Those cameras had to be constantly filming because he was walking
through life as a zombie. His self recordings gave him a sort of public sense
of himself, a sense of a life lived much in the same way that the recordings
on ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICAN FOLK MUSIC functioned for their often unaccountable
performers.

But I have some misgivings. I actually thought that Caouette WASN'T aspiring
to reconstructionist autobiographical myth-producing, that it went a long way
towards giving you the impression that you had plumbed the depths of Caouette
's soul, that you knew him after the film. And all this despite the distancing
devices of quick editing, titles and multiple images. I saw a preview
screening that Caouette attended and he told us that the original cut was well over
two hours (no shock there) and it included a scene in which he "killed" his
grandfather before degenerating into a PINK NARCISSUS fantasia. I would like to
see that version since I think it would have undercut the intense, realistic
(hate to use that word but...) portrait. I honestly don't think people walked out
of the theatre thinking a myth was produced, that the myth-making was openly
bared. I think they walked out thinking that they knew Caouette as well as
anybody now.

Kevin John


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
17951


From: Michael E. Kerpan, Jr.
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004 6:47pm
Subject: Re: All you need to make a film is a girl, a gun, and a stair...
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
wrote:

> But that's an interesting observation about unreality of the
> domestic household set since Mizo took great pains to make
> all his period sets authentic as well as the sets for
> contemporay geisha houses, inns and brothels (places where
> he spent a lot of time before his formal converstion to Buddhism.)
> I wonder if the unreality of that household set you saw relects
> his feelings about domesticity.

Our sense was that the interior space was way too large for the social
circumstances of the characters involved. Maybe it was just done to
make filming easier -- and not for any ideological reason?

> There is one contemporary set used by Mizo that's astonishingly
> realistic, an exterior of a house constructed on a sound stage that's
> so perfectly lighted that I couldn't detect the artifice until I saw
> a miniature train go by on the horizon (it's in OYU SAMA/MISS OYU.)

I recently watched this -- but failed to note any miniature trains. ;~}

An interesting film, btw, but one but with a rather dodgy script that
is not quite worthy of the excellent performances and cinematography.

> I had forgotten about that. I think some of Ozu's fun came from the
> ability to stage a scene of levity on the steps of the Hacihman
> Shrine which would have been forbidden by the war time Japanese
> censors.

Ozu seems to have generally enjoyed pushing (ever so gently) the
limits of propriety.

My favorite outdoor stair scenes are actually those in Rivette's "Pont
du Nord" where Bulle Ogier and her daughter Pascale just seem to have
to keep climbing set after set of steps forever (and never seem to go
back down). Now that I think of it, "Pont du Nord" has a woman, a
girl, and a gun (or two) in addition to lots of stairs. (What a shame
this never seems to have gotten an American distributor).

MEK
17952


From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004 8:53pm
Subject: NYC: Instituto Cervantes
 
I went to see NAZARIN last night in the Bunuel series at Instituto
Cervantes, and was shocked to find not only DVD projection (which I was
prepared for) but also an image stretched to fit a wide screen. The poor
kid in the projection booth had no idea what I was talking about and no
inclination to change anything. Has this been the norm for this venue?
I was going to see THE YOUNG ONE there on Thursday, but my schedule has
suddenly become free for that evening. - Dan
17953


From: George Robinson
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004 11:37pm
Subject: [Fwd: [AMIA-L] Archival footage alert!]
 
FYI, movie fans!

g

--
The entire world is a narrow bridge,
but the main thing is not to be afraid.
-- Rabbi Nakhman of Breslov




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
17954


From: George Robinson
Date: Tue Nov 16, 2004 11:45pm
Subject: My last posting
 
The non-text portions of my message were so efficiently removed by the
software that the text portions also disappeared. Below is the message,
from AMIA-L that I was trying to forward to all of you.

g

For those with cable TV...from the A&E web site:

A&E ORIGINAL SPECIAL: HOLLYWOOD HOME MOVIES provides an intimate peek
into the lives of the celebrities we feel we already know. From
Hollywood's Golden Era to the paparazzi-infested lives of stars today,
we see stars doing the things we all do - vacationing, having parties,
celebrating holidays, spending family time. But because of their
larger-than-life personas, they seem to do them in a way that's both
more glamorous and more perfect than the rest of us ever could.

Viewers also learn about celebrity shutterbugs - Tony Curtis, Jeff
Bridges, Walt Disney, Dominick Dunne, Rock Hudson and Glenn Ford - and
how their images preserved that side of Hollywood that was unscripted,
unrehearsed and unstyled.

http://www.aetv.com/global/listings/series_showcase.jsp?EGrpType=Theme&Id=11665558&NetwCode=AEN


The program is scheduled to air this Sunday, Nov. 21, at 8:00 pm; no
word on whether they'll rebroadcast, but it's apparently going to be
made available on DVD later. Info on that as it becomes available, I
guess. On the web site for the program (link above) you can also read
the "Hollywood Home Movies" discussion list, and even sign up for a
Hollywood Home Movies sweepstakes sponsored by Kraft foods. Far out.

Snowden

(Ms.) Snowden Becker
Public Access Coordinator
Academy Film Archive
1313 N. Vine St, Los Angeles CA 90028
(310) 247-3016 x 387
(310) 657-5431 FAX
17955


From: joe_mcelhaney
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004 0:19am
Subject: Re: NYC: Instituto Cervantes
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> I went to see NAZARIN last night in the Bunuel series at Instituto
> Cervantes, and was shocked to find not only DVD projection (which I
was
> prepared for) but also an image stretched to fit a wide screen.
The poor
> kid in the projection booth had no idea what I was talking about
and no
> inclination to change anything. Has this been the norm for this
venue?
> I was going to see THE YOUNG ONE there on Thursday, but my schedule
has
> suddenly become free for that evening. - Dan

When I went to see THE RIVER AND DEATH last week, same problem: On
video (tape, not DVD), projected wide and with probably the same very
confused projectionist. He began the evening by showing the wrong
film, ARCHIBALDO DE LA CRUZ, until the screams of the audience
convinced him of his error. Then finally up came THE RIVER AND DEATH
but, contrary to the publicity, shown without English subtitles. Two
years of Spanish in high school allowed me to (sort of) follow it all
and as the screenings were free of charge (and worth every penny) I
didn't feel compelled to complain. It's not an easy film to see and I
wasn't about to walk out in a huff. But I'm not going back.
17956


From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004 0:37am
Subject: Re: NYC: Instituto Cervantes
 
> I went to see NAZARIN last night in the Bunuel series at Instituto
> Cervantes, and was shocked to find not only DVD projection (which I was
> prepared for) but also an image stretched to fit a wide screen. The poor
> kid in the projection booth had no idea what I was talking about and no
> inclination to change anything. Has this been the norm for this venue?
> I was going to see THE YOUNG ONE there on Thursday, but my schedule has
> suddenly become free for that evening. - Dan

Yes, this was also the case at the one film I got to, ILLUSION TRAVELS BY STREETCAR last week. I should have issued a warning, but the stretching seemed relatively mild and I guess I decided it went hand in hand with the video territory (and free admission), even slightly enhancing the surreal quality of the work! So far I haven't managed to go back, though; a somewhat raucous element in the audience that night was another deterrent. I'd definitely planned on THE RIVER AND DEATH, for one, but from their xeroxed videography (added to Bill K.'s remarks) I figured there would indeed be no subtitles. Quite an enterprising display of Bunuel books, in various languages (under glass) in the lobby...
17957


From: samfilms2003
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004 0:46am
Subject: Re: NYC: Instituto Cervantes
 
All the more unfortunate in that Nazarin might be Gabriel Figueroa's finest
work, to my eye.

-Sam


> I went to see NAZARIN last night in the Bunuel series at Instituto
> Cervantes, and was shocked to find not only DVD projection (which I was
> prepared for) but also an image stretched to fit a wide screen. The poor
> kid in the projection booth had no idea what I was talking about and no
> inclination to change anything. Has this been the norm for this venue?
> I was going to see THE YOUNG ONE there on Thursday, but my schedule has
> suddenly become free for that evening. - Dan
17958


From: jaketwilson
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004 1:11am
Subject: Blues Brothers (was: The Stupids)
 
Kevin Lee wrote:

> I can't tell if you're more or less ambivalent about all this than
I am. Ultimately I end up resenting the film because it has the
> potential to say something about black culture, and maybe it does
> just by letting those performances stand as oases in the midst of
so much chaos counterbalanced by deadpan white-boy posturing. In the
> end I see it as a great concert movie marred by overly repetitive
> hipster mugging. But you've made me curious to see it again, if
only to see how the class issues (the condom and how it may code our
> response along class lines) intersect with the race issues.

Ditto for TRADING PlACES, which I haven't seen in ages. But I like
BLUES BROTHERS all the way. I doubt Landis is trying to make a
cultural statement other than letting the performances speak for
themselves, which they do. Despite moments of conscious provocation
like the scene with Carrie Fisher, it's far more good-natured than
ANIMAL HOUSE, as it's clear from the start that the Brothers are
their own worst enemies -- the key villains aren't respectable
people, who barely exist in their universe, but other marginal types
who are more comic than hateful (it doesn't hurt that they're played
by great character actors like Henry Gibson and Charles Napier).
17959


From: Zach Campbell
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004 3:31am
Subject: Bunuel availability (NYC: Instituto Cervantes)
 
Joe McElhaney on THE RIVER AND DEATH:
> It's not an easy film to see and I
> wasn't about to walk out in a huff. But I'm not going back.

By the way, I was looking recently and saw that apparently Bunuel's
Mexican films are for the most part unavailable on DVD, at least not
in Region 1. Is there any valid reason for this? Any plans for the
future?

--Zach
17960


From: Noel Vera
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004 7:21am
Subject: Re: Soderbergh's SOLARIS
 
Tarkovsky's Solaris looks nothing like a whisky commercial and I for
one am glad of that--too many whisky commercials passing for movies
nowadays. Soderbeg's version is intelligently made and well-acted,
but it doesn't have the same sense of mystery, or the same beautiful
photography. It felt like a decent, rather literal-minded adaptation
of Stanislaw Lem's novel, but doesn't feel like a Soderbergh film
the way Tarkovsky's felt like a Tarkovsky film.

For the record, not a big fan of Soderbergh either; perhaps my
favorite of his films is The Limey, more of a character study than
most of his other films. Out of Sight is an amusing diversion.
17961


From: Noel Vera
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004 7:28am
Subject: Re: All you need to make a film is a girl, a gun, and a stair...
 
As for staircases, maybe one of the most expressive use of one was
in that scene where Toshiro Mifune reveals several plot developments
to a gang leader, whose feet reacted accordingly, in Yojimbo.

Not to mention that gigantic staircase scene in Hidden Fortress.

And of course, how can we not fail to mention the climax of Vertigo,
the climb up and dizzying look down the bell tower's spiral
staircase?
17962


From: jerome_gerber
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004 0:25pm
Subject: Re: Bunuel availability (NYC: Instituto Cervantes)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Zach Campbell" wrote
>
> By the way, I was looking recently and saw that apparently Bunuel's
> Mexican films are for the most part unavailable on DVD, at least not
> in Region 1. Is there any valid reason for this? Any plans for the
> future?
>
> --Zach

Besides EL BRUTO, you are right. However, LOS OLVIDADOS, NAZARIN, LA ILUSION VIAJA
EN TRANVIA and MEXICAN BUS RIDE have been released in fairly good transfers with
english subs by a company in Mexico called Alterfilms. Their website is
www.alterfilms.com. LOS OLVIDADOS is also available with english subs fairly cheaply in
France.

Alterfilms, however, last time I looked, was not accepting credit cards from the USA. They
wanted bank transfers. I bought my copies fairly easily on ebay. Alterfilms are also
releasing some Emilio Fernandez with english subs as well like MARIA CANDELARIA,
SALON MEXICO and BUGAMBILIA. One looks forward to the missing Bunuels.


Jerry
17963


From: George Robinson
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004 0:23pm
Subject: [Fwd: Our Annual Clearance Sale has begun!]
 
Pardon the cross-listing but I think this will be of interest to members
of both lists. I haven't done business with these folks but their
selection and prices are impressive.

George Robinson

--
The entire world is a narrow bridge,
but the main thing is not to be afraid.
-- Rabbi Nakhman of Breslov




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
17964


From: Elizabeth Nolan
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004 4:28pm
Subject: staircases technology, tenements, European
 
It would be interesting to view the staircase imaginings from the first
stationary camera to the dolly shots to the hand-held to the eye in the
sky digital... what appears on the screen and our interpretation of it
is much influenced by the technology of the times.

I don't think anyone mentioned the staircase of the tenements, with the
obligatory scrub lady sometimes offering social commentary (even
without dialogue) or info / misinformation for the detective, etc.

Similarly, I don't think anyone mentioned the European staircases often
seen in French and Italian films. I don't recall the same for English
films; perhaps because of the London bombings, lifts are more common
place. What about the German films, staircases of elevators?

I was watching AN AMERICAN FRIEND and there is a glass enclosed
escalator scene... there is just so little you can do with an
escalator.


Elizabeth
17965


From: Robert Keser
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004 4:53pm
Subject: Re: All you need to make a film is a girl, a gun, and a stair...
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Noel Vera"
wrote:

"…And of course, how can we not fail to mention the climax of
Vertigo, the climb up and dizzying look down the bell tower's spiral
staircase?"

Or the near-murderous back staircase in Shadow of a Doubt?

As for that stairway to heaven, Minnelli had one at the end of Cabin
in the Sky, beating Powell and Pressburger by at least two years.
And don't forget the definitive "Stairway to Paradise"
that lights up one step at a time in An American in Paris.
Interestingly, I can't think of any stairways leading down to
hell (sinners unceremoniously fall down a chute in Heaven Can Wait,
as I recall).

Sternberg likes staircase activity too, notably in Thunderbolt
(but also Dietrich riding her white stallion up the palace stairs in
The Scarlet Empress). Sirk has Dorothy Malone mambo-sprinting up the
stairs in Written on the Wind, but also stages a spectacular suicide
on the stairs inside the Bradbury building in Shockproof.
Borzage's Mannequin has the memorable sequence of scenes with
Spencer Tracy and Joan Crawford nuzzling on the tenement stairs,
where the light bulb keeps going out.

But frame for frame, no movie has *more* stairs than The Third Man,
beginning with Harry Lime's apartment, then Anna's apartment,
then Calloway's office, then the literary society HQ where Holly
Martins escapes UP the spiral staircase and then immediately DOWN
the rubble-strewn city stairs. Of course, the sewer-chase finale
involves much scrambling up and down multiple stairways, for both
quality *and* quantity.

--Robert Keser
17966


From: Travis Miles
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004 4:58pm
Subject: Re: There's so much to do with an Escalator!
 
> I was watching AN AMERICAN FRIEND and there is a glass enclosed
> escalator scene... there is just so little you can do with an
> escalator.
>
Standish Lawder's NECROLOGY is a fantastic escalator film (as are markedly
similar escalator sequences in Arthur Lipsett's 21-87). Roughly speaking,
though, the escalator seems best suited to "the gag", as employed in BAD
SANTA, MALLRATS, DAWN OF THE DEAD, and numerous Jackie Chan films, or to the
"I suddenly recognize/significantly fail to recognize the person going the
other direction on the opposing escalator" moment, as employed in various
80s cop movies and brilliantly in TIME AND TIDE. The opening of Tsai's THE
RIVER, though, uses this to gracefully portentous effect. There was a
commercial in the UK about three years ago that featured an anonymous
couple's flirtation on one of the Underground's incredibly long, seemingly
infinite escalators (Tottenham Court Road, for example), which brought to
mind the staircase at the end of Powell and Pressburger's A MATTER OF LIFE
AND DEATH, itself a massive escalator. This commercial led a friend of mine
to conceive of a Larry Cohen/Noel Coward concept film where a couple on the
run (Billy Crudup and Venus Williams), expected at both the top and bottom
of an Underground escalator by hired killers, have to somehow stay right in
the middle while exchanging pithy romantic dialogue for a handy 70 minutes
or so.
17967


From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004 5:50pm
Subject: Warshow on Rossellini: "Not Cushioned by Ideas"
 
After finishing (the old edition of) Robert Warshow's THE IMMEDIATE
EXPERIENCE, I'm inclined to regard him as the best pre-Bazin critic (he
and Bazin were actually writing at the same time, but I suspect there was
no influence).

Here's a bit of Warshow's review of PAISA, in which he describes the
execution of the Fascist snipers in the Florence episode. Warshow is
quite hard on Rossellini at times, but here is what he likes about the
film:

"This scene moves so rapidly that the action is always one moment ahead of
the spectator's understanding. And the camera itself remains neutral
waiting passively for the action to come toward it and simply recording as
much of the action as possible, with no opportunity for the variation of
tempo and the active selection of detail that might be used to 'interpret'
the scene; visually, the scene remains on the same level of intensity from
beginning to end, except for the increasing size and clarity of the
objects as they approach the camera - and this has the effect of a
'natural' rather than an interpretive variation. The speed of the action
combined with the neutrality of the camera tends to exclude the
possibility of reflection and thus to divorce the events from all
questions of opinion. The political and moral distinctions between the
snipers and their captors do not appear (even the visual distinction is
never very sharp), and the spectator is given no opportunity to assent to
the killing. Thus the scene derives its power precisely from the fact
that it is not cushioned in ideas: events seem to develop according to
their own laws and to take no account of how one might - or 'should' -
feel about them."

I detect a certain affinity between Warshow's thinking and that of some of
the Cahiers writers. The valuable "not cushioned by ideas" concept looks
forward to Rohmer's later discussion of space in Chaplin and Keaton.

And this is the only attempt I recall to deal with the issue of speed in
Rossellini, which is very important to the effect of the films. - Dan
17968


From:
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004 5:57pm
Subject: Unconditional Love (P.J. Hogan, 2002)
 
First this film was recommended by my sister. Then Robin Wood picked it as an "Overlooked" choice on the Masters of Cinema website.
The strange film combines a lot of genres. It is mainly a drama about people coping with rejection and loss. But it is not grim - there is a lot of comedy, music and adventure, plus some mystery aspects, too! In fact, it is the biggest hodge-podge of genres since the (very different) "The Brotherhood of the Wolf" (Christophe Gans).
The characters recall the types in Hogan's previous comedies, "Muriel's Wedding" and "My Best Friend's Wedding". But they are more sympathetic than either. One could do a detailed comparison, especially between Muriel and the current film, but it would involve spoilers.
This film also bucks current conventions by being loaded with plot. A lot keeps happening, and the less you know in advance, probably the better.
Definitely an evening's pleasant entertainment, in all senses of the word!

Mike Grost
17969


From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004 6:12pm
Subject: Warshow on Dreyer: "The Blocking of Responses"
 
More Warshow, this time on the early scenes of the witch's execution in
DAY OF WRATH. Again, Warshow is by no means impressed with everything
Dreyer does, but he is fascinated by the effect of this scene. (This
passage is rather long, and I can't type it all - check out the original.)
After describing how Dreyer excludes a historical perspective,
documentation, drama, and all problematical aspects of the subject,
Warshow continues:

"Dreyer's initial impulse, in his deliberate exclusion of the historical
and dramatic, is to deprive events of the quality of reality; it is this,
indeed, which accounts for his concern with the past: since the past can
be contemplated but not changed, it exists from one point of view as an
aesthetic object ready-made - one can experience it 'pure.' But he
practices his aestheticism on events that possess a priore an unusual
emotional importance, and in one of the most realistic of all mediums.
In the screen's absolute clarity, where all objects are brought close and
defined unambiguously, the 'reality' of an event can be made to inhere
simply in its visible presence; so long as the internal structure of a
film remains consistent, all its elements are in these terms equally
'real' - that is, completely visible. Thus...Dreyer is able to give his
aestheticized vision of the past all the force of reality without
impairing its aesthetic autonomy; in the absence of a historical-dramatic
reality, the purely visible dominates and is sufficient: the witch is an
object of art, but she is also - and just as fully - a human being (she is
*there*), and she is burnt; the burning is so to speak accomplished by the
camera, which can see the witch without having to 'interpret' her.

"The effect is something like a direct experience of the tension between
art and life. In a sense, the image as image becomes a dramatic force:
the issue is not, after all, good against evil or God against Satan, but
flesh against form; stripped as it is of all historical or social
reference, the spectacle is of a woman burnt to serve beauty. It is a
spectacle not to be understood - the image itself is all the meaning - but
to be endured; and the enormous excitement that surrounds it, the sense
almost of a prolonged assault on one's feelings, results largely from the
exclusion of all that might be used to create an appearance of
understanding. Even to see the witch as a victin of injustice would
provide a certain relief by placing the events on the screen within some
'normal' frame of response. But no such opportunity appears, nothing in
the film is allowed to speak for the audience or to the audience.... It
is as if the director, in his refusal to acknowledge that physical
movement implies dramatic movement, were denying the relevance of the
spectator's feelings; one is left with no secure means of connecting the
witch with reality, and yet she is real in herself and must be responded
to; as responses are blocked, the tension increases."

Obviously some of the ideas here connect to those in the passage on PAISA
that I posted earlier. A lot of valuable stuff in there. - Dan
17970


From: Kevin Lee
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004 6:11pm
Subject: Re: TARNATION (WAS: Fipresci site alert)
 
Hi Kevin J -- I think both your enthusiasm and reservations speak for
me as well. In addition to what you said, I think my own
appreciation for the film is more for what it symbolizes
technologically than sociologically (though the two are inextricably
linked). What I mean by this is that I find it very very exciting
and encouraging that theoretically, someone can author a cinematic
masterpiece using consumer-level equipment. Perhaps this is what
experimental filmmakers like Brakhage and the like have been doing
all along, but in any case it's always great to be reminded that the
extent of one's available resources matter less than one's ability to
maximize their use.

But what will also inevitably happen is that every self-absorbed
individual who knows how to hold a camera to their face will be
making these confessionals. There was an article in a recent FILM
COMMENT on this issue.

--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
> Here's a boy who needed a reverse shot of himself to make him
> feel real. Those cameras had to be constantly filming because he
was walking
> through life as a zombie. His self recordings gave him a sort of
public sense
> of himself, a sense of a life lived much in the same way that the
recordings
> on ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICAN FOLK MUSIC functioned for their often
unaccountable
> performers.

Yes, and I like the idea of seeing TARNATION as a work of folk art
(which is why I'd be curious to see what the original 3 hour version
was like, before Van Sant and John Cameron Mitchell got involved and
it became more commercially oriented). But as with those folk
recordings, that act of asserting one's existence in one's recordings
in a sense negates the existence, replacing it with a myth of
existence, one whose outsized dimensions seems to be an
overcompensation for the life that really was. Robert Johnson will
always be larger than life because he's less a real person than an
amalgamation of truly haunting recordings enhanced by Faustian
anecdotes. Perhaps what's truly the amazing about TARNATION is how
it takes 20 years of banal videography and turns it into a portal
peering into an otherworldly existence.

>
> But I have some misgivings. I actually thought that Caouette WASN'T
aspiring
> to reconstructionist autobiographical myth-producing, that it went
a long way
> towards giving you the impression that you had plumbed the depths
of Caouette
> 's soul, that you knew him after the film.

Isn't this a myth-production?

I saw a preview
> screening that Caouette attended and he told us that the original
cut was well over
> two hours (no shock there) and it included a scene in which
he "killed" his
> grandfather before degenerating into a PINK NARCISSUS fantasia.

Caouette apparently lives a few blocks from me. I had asked a
reporter friend who interviewed him if we could get a copy of the 3
hr version, but no luck so far.

I would like to
> see that version since I think it would have undercut the intense,
realistic
> (hate to use that word but...) portrait.

I think it might have given more "reality" to the movie, at least the
reality of, say, Warhol, Morrissey and Tsai, three filmmakers whose
technique actively interrogates the nature of their characters'
reality even as they promote its mythical allure.

I honestly don't think people walked out
> of the theatre thinking a myth was produced, that the myth-making
was openly
> bared. I think they walked out thinking that they knew Caouette as
well as
> anybody now.

Isn't that kind of a contradiction, that a myth can be produced but
also be exposed as a myth? But I was making the same claim for those
directors mentioned above. But your last line seems to negate your
assertion that the audience sees through Caouette's myth making.

Tricky stuff to navigate, but worthwhile. And almost certainly
relevant to our feelings towards musicians and writers and what not,
if you want to expand the discussion.
17971


From: Kevin Lee
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004 6:15pm
Subject: Re: TARNATION (WAS: Fipresci site alert)
 
There was a piece by David Foster Wallace about a new bio on Borges,
but it goes into length about the relevance of Borges' life to his
literary legacy. I think there were some points made that are
relevant to our discussion, but I'd have to go through the article
again. Anyway here's a link (copy and paste to browser):

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?
res=9A03E3D6123DF934A35752C1A9629C8B63
17972


From: J. Mabe
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004 6:23pm
Subject: Re: MoC overlooked DVDs (was: Unconditional Love (P.J. Hogan, 2002))
 
Also on this list of overlooked dvds was Kent Jones'
recomendation of KAIRAT and KARDIOGRAMMA (Doriane
Films). Any idea where to find these? All I can find
is:
http://www.amazon.fr/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00008NNGV/qid%3D1100715736/402-0233816-7929713
which doesn't seem to have a place to buy it.

Thanks,
Josh Mabe



--- MG4273@a... wrote:

> First this film was recommended by my sister. Then
> Robin Wood picked it as an "Overlooked" choice on
> the Masters of Cinema website.
> The strange film combines a lot of genres. It is
> mainly a drama about people coping with rejection
> and loss. But it is not grim - there is a lot of
> comedy, music and adventure, plus some mystery
> aspects, too! In fact, it is the biggest hodge-podge
> of genres since the (very different) "The
> Brotherhood of the Wolf" (Christophe Gans).
> The characters recall the types in Hogan's previous
> comedies, "Muriel's Wedding" and "My Best Friend's
> Wedding". But they are more sympathetic than either.
> One could do a detailed comparison, especially
> between Muriel and the current film, but it would
> involve spoilers.
> This film also bucks current conventions by being
> loaded with plot. A lot keeps happening, and the
> less you know in advance, probably the better.
> Definitely an evening's pleasant entertainment, in
> all senses of the word!
>
> Mike Grost
>




__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The all-new My Yahoo! - Get yours free!
http://my.yahoo.com
17973


From: Kevin Lee
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004 6:27pm
Subject: Holy Wars in Contemporary Cinema: Theo van Gogh's Submission
 
I'm surprised no one has even mentioned the murder of Theo van Gogh
last week. (I searched the archives and found nothing). The more I
think about it, it's an even more dire marker than Gibson's movie of
how religion and cinema are figuring into a global culture war that's
forcing a reckoning over the true meaning of tolerance.

The 11-minute short that apparently incited his murderer is available
for free screening on iFilm (warning: nudity and sexually explicit
themes)
http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2655656

news story on the murder:
http://www.indexonline.org/news/20041102_netherlands.shtml

Dennis Lim's piece in Village Voice is a good an editorial take on
the controversy.
http://www.indexonline.org/news/20041102_netherlands.shtml
17974


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004 6:51pm
Subject: Re: Holy Wars in Contemporary Cinema: Theo van Gogh's Submission
 
I am as surprised as you are and I have been thinking about bringing
it up for a week myself, but I didn't want to open a religious can
of worms (or can of religious worms?)Anyway, thanks for the links!

JPC



--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Kevin Lee"
wrote:
>
> I'm surprised no one has even mentioned the murder of Theo van
Gogh
> last week. (I searched the archives and found nothing). The more
I
> think about it, it's an even more dire marker than Gibson's movie
of
> how religion and cinema are figuring into a global culture war
that's
> forcing a reckoning over the true meaning of tolerance.
>
> The 11-minute short that apparently incited his murderer is
available
> for free screening on iFilm (warning: nudity and sexually explicit
> themes)
> http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2655656
>
> news story on the murder:
> http://www.indexonline.org/news/20041102_netherlands.shtml
>
> Dennis Lim's piece in Village Voice is a good an editorial take on
> the controversy.
> http://www.indexonline.org/news/20041102_netherlands.shtml
17975


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004 7:19pm
Subject: Re: Re: Holy Wars in Contemporary Cinema: Theo van Gogh's Submission
 
--- jpcoursodon wrote:

>
>
> I am as surprised as you are and I have been
> thinking about bringing
> it up for a week myself, but I didn't want to open a
> religious can
> of worms (or can of religious worms?)Anyway, thanks
> for the links!
>

Be it a can or worms or a Diet of Worms all religion
is the height of foolishness, IMO. If people wish to
kill themselves (and religion is at heart nothing less
than a call to mass suicide) they're welcome to do so.

"Include me out," as Sam Goldwyn once said.



__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today!
http://my.yahoo.com
17976


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004 7:23pm
Subject: Re: TARNATION (WAS: Fipresci site alert)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Kevin Lee"
wrote:
>
>
>
> But what will also inevitably happen is that every self-absorbed
> individual who knows how to hold a camera to their face will be
> making these confessionals. There was an article in a recent FILM
> COMMENT on this issue.


On that subject (recent modern technology has made everybody a
performer and his/her own director) there is a terrific article in
the December issue of Harper's Magazine: ATTACK OF THE SUPERZEROES
by Thomas de Zengotita. He writes about "the celebration of people
refusing to be spectators" and turning everything into a kind of
reality show.
17977


From: Robert Keser
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004 7:35pm
Subject: Re: Holy Wars in Contemporary Cinema: Theo van Gogh's Submission
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
>
> I am as surprised as you are and I have been thinking about
> bringing it up for a week myself, but I didn't want to open a
>religious can of worms (or can of religious worms?)Anyway, thanks
for the links!


Van Gogh was apparently a poster boy for freedom of expression in
some awful directions. Witness this:

http://www.indymedia.nl/nl/2004/11/22932.shtml

--Robert Keser
17978


From:
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004 7:54pm
Subject: I ♥ Huckabees (David O. Russell) - Just Testing the Heart Symbol
 
Am just testing to see if the heart symbol will show up on a_film_by:
I ♥ Huckabees (David O. Russell)
This is just a test.
Had it been an actual auteurist post, you would have been directed to a local web site...

Mike Grost
17979


From: jerome_gerber
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004 9:27pm
Subject: Re: MoC overlooked DVDs (was: Unconditional Love (P.J. Hogan, 2002))
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "J. Mabe" wrote:
> Also on this list of overlooked dvds was Kent Jones'
> recomendation of KAIRAT and KARDIOGRAMMA (Doriane
> Films). Any idea where to find these? All I can find
> is:
> http://www.amazon.fr/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00008NNGV/qid%3D1100715736/402
-0233816-7929713
> which doesn't seem to have a place to buy it.

Josh...try here. It's where I got my copy.
Jerry

http://www.alapage.com/mx/?
id=136711094239835&donnee_appel=ALAPAGE&tp=F&type=4&VID_NUMERO=522866&s
upport=DVD&devise=&fulltext=kairat&sv=X_L
17980


From: Kevin Lee
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004 9:29pm
Subject: Re: Holy Wars in Contemporary Cinema: Theo van Gogh's Submission
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> Be it a can or worms or a Diet of Worms all religion
> is the height of foolishness, IMO. If people wish to
> kill themselves (and religion is at heart nothing less
> than a call to mass suicide) they're welcome to do so.
>
> "Include me out," as Sam Goldwyn once said.
>

I think Christopher Hitchens expressed a similar sentiment when he
said something to the effect of, "If they want to martyr themselves,
I'm willing to oblige them."

Unfortunately I think the words ring to the same effect as "Let them
eat cake", and look what happened to ol' Marie.

In other words, I think this issue is going to impose itself on more
and more people (violently or otherwise), whether we like it or not...
17981


From: Kevin Lee
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004 9:34pm
Subject: Re: I ♥ Huckabees (David O. Russell) - Just Testing the Heart Symbol
 
Does this mean you'll be posting on it soon?

I just watched this. For a good 30-40 minutes I thought it was one
of the very best films in one of the very best years I've had
watching movies. I may still end up thinking that way, just for the
mental activity it stimulated, but as it went on it seemed to get
narrower, not wider, in what it was trying to say.

Kevin

--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
> Am just testing to see if the heart symbol will show up on
a_film_by:
> I ♥ Huckabees (David O. Russell)
> This is just a test.
> Had it been an actual auteurist post, you would have been directed
to a local web site...
>
> Mike Grost
17982


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004 9:35pm
Subject: Re: Holy Wars in Contemporary Cinema: Theo van Gogh's Submission
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > I am as surprised as you are and I have been
> > thinking about bringing
> > it up for a week myself, but I didn't want to open a
> > religious can
> > of worms (or can of religious worms?)Anyway, thanks
> > for the links!
> >
>
> Be it a can or worms or a Diet of Worms all religion
> is the height of foolishness, IMO. If people wish to
> kill themselves (and religion is at heart nothing less
> than a call to mass suicide) they're welcome to do so.
>
> "Include me out," as Sam Goldwyn once said.
>
> I totally agree, David, except that they are NOT welcome to do so
as far as i am concerned. And we're all concerned, whether the God
of choice is George W. Bush's or Osama ben Laden's.
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today!
> http://my.yahoo.com
17983


From: thebradstevens
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004 10:09pm
Subject: Re: Unconditional Love (P.J. Hogan, 2002)
 
I may be wrong, but I don't believe this film was even released as
a 'for sale' item in the UK - it seems to have been a rental only
DVD, probably because it was assumed that nobody could possibly want
to own the damn thing. The copy I picked up was an ex-rental from
Blockbuster.

Hogan's PETER PAN is terrific as well.
17984


From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004 10:17pm
Subject: Bonjour Mr. Lewis
 
Has this documentary shown on French TV ever been released on VHS?
If so, would anyone be interested in making me a copy?

Tony Williams
17985


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004 11:56pm
Subject: Manny Farber Show
 
Manny Farber fans who live in New York and vicinity can see a
retrospective of Farber's paintings at the P.S.1 Contemporary Art
Center on Jackson Avenue at 46th Ave. in Long Island City, Queens.

In a Farber interview I read maybe twenty years ago he complained
that friends and relatives who visited him never made any comment
about his works. Especially film critics and film buffs.
17986


From:
Date: Wed Nov 17, 2004 6:59pm
Subject: Re: I (Heart) Huckabees (David O. Russell)
 
At least on my computer, the heart symbol did not take in a_film_by. But it
shows up just fine on my web site. Who knows why?
A lot of people felt the first half of Huckabees is richer than the second.
The characters are so interesting, that one wants to see them blossom out more,
and achieve more.
Russell has a real coup in including the Sudanese situation in his film. More
films should do so! He is also correct in showing the evangelical Christian
family in actually taking steps to help the refugees - they HAVE taken the lead
in this, while much of the rest of the world has dragged its feet, liberals
included. He is also correct, IMHO, in showing them as collaborating with
environmental destruction through their support for right wing causes. So this is
one of the first looks at the big evangelical debate in the US, to actually get
some traction pro and con, and dig its teeth into some real issues - real
achievements and real failures of this group of people. I was hoping for still
more - which we might get from later films, assuming anyone has the guts to go
on with this subject.
Russell, like Neil La Bute (In the Company of Men) before him, has trouble in
depicting the business world. Both suggest that its problems lie in bad
behavior from middle managers (Jude Law in Huckabees, Aaron Eckhart in Company of
Men). This seems very dubious to me. Most middle managers are real pussycats.
They are Organization Men, men and women who have been carefully selected for
their ability to "go along and get along" with other people, and be team
players. Problems in the business world start at the distant top - CEO's who make
huge salaries for destroying rain forests and laying off thousands of employees.
The sort of bad behavior shown in these films - Law telling degrading stories
about women, Eckhart's character demeaning a black employee - would get these
men immediately fired in most companies. This whole stuff is wildly
unrealistic. Critiques of corporate behavior should start in the executive suite, not
with characters at this level.
The fireman character is really interesting. He is typical of a huge group of
active middle Americans, who are searching for ways to make things better. He
was very interesting. I would like to see films that go even deeper into this
group of people. People desperately need idealistic portraits from works of
art, which they can use as role models. This idea can be pooh -poohed, but I
believe it to be true.
By the way, comic books used to be full of all sorts of idealistic
characters, in the 1960's. The demise of mass comics reading has left current
generations without one of the main sources of positive role models that earlier
generations had.

Mike Grost
17987


From: Greg Dunlap
Date: Thu Nov 18, 2004 0:20am
Subject: Re: Re: I (Heart) Huckabees (David O. Russell)
 
> At least on my computer, the heart symbol did not take in a_film_by.
> But it shows up just fine on my web site. Who knows why?

Your website shows HTML, which can display a heart, whereas this
mailing list is (at least optionally) plain text, which cannot. The
modern internet plain text emoticon for a "heart" symbol is <3 (turn it
on its side).

=====
--------------------
Greg Dunlap
heyrocker@y...

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
17988


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Nov 18, 2004 0:53am
Subject: Re: Manny Farber Show
 
Manny's paintings are an extension of his film
criticism and vice versa. Do not miss his show under
any circumstances. Patricia's work is first-rate as
well.

--- jpcoursodon wrote:

>
> Manny Farber fans who live in New York and vicinity
> can see a
> retrospective of Farber's paintings at the P.S.1
> Contemporary Art
> Center on Jackson Avenue at 46th Ave. in Long Island
> City, Queens.
>
> In a Farber interview I read maybe twenty years ago
> he complained
> that friends and relatives who visited him never
> made any comment
> about his works. Especially film critics and film
> buffs.
>
>
>
>




__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today!
http://my.yahoo.com
17989


From: Elizabeth Nolan
Date: Thu Nov 18, 2004 4:30am
Subject: ALEXANDER
 
I saw ALEXANDER on Monday night at the SD Cinema Society and just
watched the making of HEAVEN's GATE. Many thought ALEXANDER was quite
bad; one woman suggested the $150M could have been better spent on
cancer research (stem cell would have been more timely here in
California). Another person asked if a poor box office for ALEXANDER
would similarly derail North's career.
17990


From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Thu Nov 18, 2004 4:38am
Subject: Re: MoC overlooked DVDs (was: Unconditional Love (P.J. Hogan, 2002))
 
>>First this film was recommended by my sister. Then
>>Robin Wood picked it as an "Overlooked" choice on
>>the Masters of Cinema website.

> Also on this list of overlooked dvds was Kent Jones'
> recomendation of KAIRAT and KARDIOGRAMMA (Doriane
> Films). Any idea where to find these? All I can find
> is:

Wow - on the Masters of Cinema site, I found out that VIVA L'ITALIA is
available on DVD with French subtitles, which I can usually manage to
understand. - Dan
17991


From: George Robinson
Date: Thu Nov 18, 2004 1:04pm
Subject: Public Knowledge - Lame Duck Alert: Tell Your Senators to Oppose "The Intellectual Property Protection Act."
 
Friends --

First, my apologies for cross-posting, but this affects everyone on
these lists and I want to make sure you all see it.

The geniuses in the U.S. Senate are planning to reconsider the House's
omnibus "Intellectual Property Protection Act." For those of you who
didn't follow the initial fight on this piece of legislation, allow me
to point out a few of its choicer passages.

In a wholesale rewriting of existing copyright law to satisfy the media
conglomerates, this bill would essentially do away with "fair use." It
would make it illegal to skip commercials when you tape a TV program.
I'm not making this up; I'd love to see them enforce it.

One section of the bill establishes "offering for distribution" as basis
for criminal copyright violation and "making available" for civil
violation, regardless of whether there is any distribution or copying,
let alone infringement. This bill drastically lowers the standards for
what constitutes a criminal copyright violation.

Another component would allow the Justice Department to file civil suits
against copyright infringers. Speaking as someone who writes for a
living, I'd love to have Alberto Gonzales filing lawsuits for me against
plagiarizers, but speaking as a taxpayer I see no reason why the lazy
bastards in the media conglomerates shouldn't have their own lawyers do
their scut work. Ironically, the Ashcroft DoJ actually didn't want any
part of this particular task in the first place.

A few years ago, Dick Snyder, then the head of Simon and Schuster, a
publishing firm notorious for screwing its writers, announced that he
was "in the business of creating copyright." That is criminal bullshit.
Writers, musicians, filmmakers, painters create copyright. Corporations
then hijack it and force it down our throats with legislation like this.

I urge you to go to the Public Knowledge website (link below) and tell
the Senate not to allow this pernicious piece of legislation to come to
the floor.

And for those of you living outside the US, please don't dismiss this as
more American ethnocentricity; who do you think will want to dictate
copyright laws the next time there's an international convention to
revise Berne?

George (Good and mad) Robinson


http://www.publicknowledge.org/action/IPPA2391
17992


From: Sascha Westphal
Date: Thu Nov 18, 2004 3:09pm
Subject: Re: All you need to make a film is a girl, a gun, and a stair...
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Robert Keser" wrote:
> Borzage's Mannequin has the memorable sequence of scenes with
> Spencer Tracy and Joan Crawford nuzzling on the tenement stairs,
> where the light bulb keeps going out.


The stairway to Chico’s mansard is a central element in Frank Borzage’s
SEVENTH HEAVEN (1927). It is part of – what Frederick Lamster described as –
“numerous interlocking philosophical […] and cultural oppositions.” It
belongs to two clearly separated worlds. On one hand the stairs are just
that: stairs, leading up seven stories to Chico’s small place. But on
arriving in the apartment above the roofs of Paris for the first time Diane
calls it ‘heaven’. And in a way it is.
So on the other hand the stairway has also a symbolic, a deeply metaphorical
meaning. Hervé Dumont pointed out the figurative meanings of stairs in the
Masonic rites. His idea was to read the whole film as a representation of
Borzage’s Masonic knowledge. I think in the end it isn’t important if one
sees the seven flights of stairs as a symbol for Masonic conceptions or some
other spiritual concept. When Chico, risen from the dead, runs up the stairs
in the last sequence, his ascension leads him to paradise. He arrives in the
mansard which really becomes heaven. The sunbeams that bathe the re-united
couple in light in one of cinema’s most beautiful shots are of divine
origin. It is the light of transcendence and transfiguration. From that
moment on Chico and Diane live on another plane.

There is even a connection between the stairway in SEVENTH HEAVEN and the
one in VERTIGO. You could say that they – and of course the two films in
general – represent opposite concepts of a love that is so enormous that it
changes everything. Borzage’s stairway becomes cinema’s first – at least the
first I know of – ‘stairway to heaven’. Even when Chico runs up the stairs
there is no vertiginous feeling, on the contrary as he takes step by step
the viewer feels more and more elated. Whereas VERTIGO’s stairway just leads
up. It has no destination. Heaven is out of reach. You can run higher and
higher but you will only feel more isolated. The obsessive love that saves
Chico and Diane destroys Hitchcock’s characters. One falls to her death, the
other is suspended between heaven and hell forever unable to get rid of his
feeling of eternal vertigo. In SEVENTH HEAVEN the stairway leads you out of
the world to an “unio mystica, the total fusion of essence and soul, of Eros
and Psyche” (Dumont). In Vertigo the stairway is the world, forever east of
Eden, but also west of hell.

Sascha Westphal
17993


From:
Date: Thu Nov 18, 2004 3:58pm
Subject: Re: Solaris
 
I quite liked Soderbergh's Solaris, but then, I also like whiskey.
(and by the way, where were all the pools-of-light haters when I was
going after LOST IN TRANSLATION?) My favorite inadvertent compliment,
from a friend who didn't like it at all: "He managed to lose an hour
from the Tarkovsky version and still make it feel just as long."
Soderbergh is fanatical about cutting running time to the bare
minimum (even when, as in the case of TRAFFIC, he hits bone), but
even though his SOLARIS is something like 98 minutes, you still feel
the longeurs and the sense of mystery. If nothing else, you have to
admire the cojones of a director who takes the capital earned from
two big box office hits and an Oscar winner and plows it into an
unabashed $50 million art film.

None of this, of course, makes me look forward to OCEAN'S TWELVE with
any sense of ancitipation.

Sam
17994


From: Travis Miles
Date: Thu Nov 18, 2004 5:22pm
Subject: Re: Manny Farber Show
 
The Farber show was wonderful (especially his early paintings on paper), and
my wife and I were secretly charmed to recognize Assayas amongst the
gallery-goers. As she put it, "At least somebody else gets the Straub
references."
Also charming were the inclusion of fragments of film leader in some of his
later "table top" paintings (like Une Femme Douce), some of which are
labeled New Yorker Films. He must have been stealing the leaders from prints
he was showing at UCSD!
What strikes me most about Farber is how syncretic each of his pursuits
becomes (the criticism like art, the art like criticism, cinema and personal
biography at the heart of it all). It's really inspiring, as in a phrase
from his painting "Passive is the Ticket" (badly paraphrased): "Try to do
painting, writing, teaching, fucking all at the same time."
Take David's advice and go see it if you're in New York.
T

On 11/17/04 7:53 PM, "David Ehrenstein" wrote:

>
> Manny's paintings are an extension of his film
> criticism and vice versa. Do not miss his show under
> any circumstances. Patricia's work is first-rate as
> well.
>
> --- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
>>
>> Manny Farber fans who live in New York and vicinity
>> can see a
>> retrospective of Farber's paintings at the P.S.1
>> Contemporary Art
>> Center on Jackson Avenue at 46th Ave. in Long Island
>> City, Queens.
>>
>> In a Farber interview I read maybe twenty years ago
>> he complained
>> that friends and relatives who visited him never
>> made any comment
>> about his works. Especially film critics and film
>> buffs.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today!
> http://my.yahoo.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
17995


From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Nov 18, 2004 7:24pm
Subject: Re: I ♥ Huckabees (David O. Russell) - Just Testing the Heart Symbol
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:

Just saw Russell's 30-minute documentary on the war in Iraq at
Torino: Soldier's Pay. It manages to explore a much discussed subject
in an entirely fresh, subversive way. At once mind-boggling and very
funny. The guy's a master.
17996


From: Kevin Lee
Date: Thu Nov 18, 2004 11:35pm
Subject: I Heart Musique vs. Notre Huckabees - a flash poll
 
For those who have seen both I HEART HUCKABEES and NOTRE MUSIQUE:

- How many of you agree that there's considerable thematic overlap
between the two films? (hint: metaphysics and politics as dialectic)
- If so, which do you think does a better job exploring and
developing said themes?

As of now I'm leaning Godard, but I'm essentially a swing voter on
this issue.

Kevin
17997


From: Matt Teichman
Date: Fri Nov 19, 2004 6:12am
Subject: Godard query
 
I was wondering whether anyone happened to know what filmstock the
second two parts of _Notre Musique_ were shot on. I found the look of
it rather unlike anything I'd ever seen before, with the possible
exception of Kodachrome...

thanks,
-Matt
17998


From:
Date: Fri Nov 19, 2004 1:48am
Subject: Re: Re: TARNATION (WAS: Fipresci site alert)
 
In a message dated 11/17/04 12:26:49 PM, alsolikelife@y... writes:


> But your last line seems to negate your assertion that the audience sees
> through Caouette's myth making.
>
I'm kinda confused about what I mean at this point as well. Basically, my
reservations about TARNATION, and many other documentaries, stem from the effect
of offering the illusion of total knowledge. We walk out of the theatre
feeling as if we know Caouette entirely. What more could there possibly be to know?
We've seen so much, so deeply into his soul. But, of course, we can never know
someone entirely via documentary. What does knowing someone entirely even
mean? (And I'm not saying you've said this, Kevin. Just a conversation with
myself or the others in the theatre with me.)

So the PINK NARCISSUS fantasia and the lies about grandpa PERHAPS would have
upset this epistemological certainty a bit.

Kevin John




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
17999


From:
Date: Fri Nov 19, 2004 5:35am
Subject: Re: Re: TARNATION (WAS: Fipresci site alert)
 
In a message dated 04-11-19 01:52:51 EST, Kevin John writes:

<< the illusion of total knowledge. We walk out of the theatre feeling as if
we know Caouette entirely. What more could there possibly be to know? >>

When I read a non-fiction book, it is often good to read a couple of other
books on the same subject at the same time. It is surprising how many new
perspectives this opens. Often one book will completely leave out important
information and ideas. Reading them all together gives a much deeper look at
something. And often helps clue one in to the essentials of a new subject.
One has fewer options of this sort with film, typically.

Mike Grost

18000


From: Kevin Lee
Date: Fri Nov 19, 2004 5:28pm
Subject: Trilingual silent serial plays with live benshi(s) at NYC this weekend
 
Of all places, I learned about this from today's NY Post!

http://www.nypost.com/movies/34459.htm

Tomorrow at 8 p.m. at El Museo del Barrio, 1230 Fifth Ave., at 104th
St., (212) 831-7272, and Sunday at 7 p.m. at the Queens Theater in
Flushing Meadows Park, (718) 760-0064.

http://www.elmuseo.org/

Saturday, November 20
El Automovil Gris (The Grey Automobile), 8 pm
Teatro Heckscher
This ground-breaking theatrical piece combines the Japanese Benshi
narrative style of live actors with a Mexican silent classic film by
Enrique Rosas. Presented in collaboration with méxicoNOW, a project
of
Arts International.
Tickets: $20; $15 students, seniors, and members.

A silent Mexican serial done with Benshi narration in English,
Spanish and Japanese! Wow!!! Who's your daddy, BLADE RUNNER???

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