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18601
From:
Date: Tue Dec 7, 2004 2:25pm
Subject: Re: Re: Wes Anderson's New Film
Bill Krohn wrote:
>I thought Royal Tannenbaums - announced on the cover of Film Comment
>as "The Film of the Year" - was constipated.
Just in the interest of voicing a contrasting opinion, I thought "Tenenbaums"
was his finest to date (and the cover story piece in that Film Comment, an
appreciation of the film and of Anderson's work in general by Kent Jones, is the
best thing I've read on the director, by the way.) I thought that "Rushmore"
was an improvement on "Bottle Rocket," and "Tenenbaums" was an improvement on
"Rushmore"; at least up until "The Life Aquatic" (which I haven't seen, but
which I hope will continue this trend), it's true that his formal sensibilities
have gotten more and more articulate and refined. Nevertheless,
"Tenenbaums," like the other films, is full of misguided or confused characters and raw,
complicated emotions. This contrast, if you will, is a big subject in Jones'
essay.
I am thrilled to hear "Hatari!" (one of my top 10 movies) as a reference
point for the new film!
Peter
18602
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Dec 7, 2004 7:30pm
Subject: Re: Re: Aviator
--- thebradstevens wrote:
It's only one
> short step
> from 'taking drugs has encouraged the filmmaker to
> challenge genre
> borders' to 'any filmmaker who challenges genre
> borders must be
> taking drugs'.
I don't see this at all. Controlled substance use may
affect or impede performance, or may even be the
subject of a work as it often is with garrel and
Ferrara. But at the end of the day the film itself
must stand or fall on the same aesthetic criteria as
everything else.
This, I'm sure, is why so many people
> think that Monte
> Hellman is some kind of a drug addict, whereas the
> truth is that
> Monte detests drugs, and won't even take an aspirin
> if he has a
> headache.
>
I'd never heard that. Once might well assume that the
director of "Two-Lane Blacktop" may have enjoyed a
joint or two, but so what? Nothing in his oeuvre
suggests anything approaching a consuming interest in
drugs, nor do they proceed from a narcotized mindset.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today!
http://my.yahoo.com
18603
From: Robert Keser
Date: Tue Dec 7, 2004 8:24pm
Subject: Re: Aviator
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
> Any use such information might have is, in my opinion, vastly
> outweighed by the potential dangers. It's only one short step
> from 'taking drugs has encouraged the filmmaker to challenge genre
> borders' to 'any filmmaker who challenges genre borders must be
> taking drugs'. This, I'm sure, is why so many people think that
Monte
> Hellman is some kind of a drug addict, whereas the truth is that
> Monte detests drugs, and won't even take an aspirin if he has a
> headache.
Well, there are potential misinterpretations to any information at
all. I don't know if that's reason enough to suppress from
public discussion our knowledge of behavior that took place on
public movie sets (although other reasons may justify it, such as
respect for the subject's wishes and/or potential embarrassment
or legal complications).
But isn't this all just a sub-element of using biographical data
to assess an artist? Isn't it of artistic interest that
Beethoven's last quartets were written when he was stone-deaf or
that Billie Holiday was shooting up before recording her songs? Can
we make an informed appraisal of Voyage in Italy without mentioning
Rossellini's complex relationship with Bergman? More to the
point, and to take a safely distant example, how would Duel In the
Sun and The Paradine Case look without David Selznick's
compulsive use of Benzedrine? Isn't it useful to speculate that
his consumption of uppers contributed to bloat both these
productions?
--Robert Keser
18604
From:
Date: Tue Dec 7, 2004 3:44pm
Subject: ALL OVER THE GUY (WAS: PT Anderson)
I want gay cinema too, Mike. But ALL OVER THE GUY didn't quite do it for me.
Here's what I said about it at the time:
Overwritten to the nth degree (one scene dissecting the Fuzzy Wuzzy rhyme is
particularly wince-inducing), the film frequently suffocates under its own
cleverness. However funny Eli and Tom’s clashes may play out, they tend to
implode the drama rather than expand it. And executive producer Don Roos, who
directed The Opposite of Sex, has roped in mugging cameos from that film’s Christina
Ricci and Lisa Kudrow that are their own (and only) reasons for existing,
i.e. they halt the drama in its chatty little tracks.
And yet somehow, it still works most likely because its take on
relationships, particularly gay ones, are so refreshing. Instead of searching for
perfect-fit soul mates, Eli and Tom eventually realize that bumping heads comes
with the turf. Director Julie Davis’ hands-off style lets the principals run
with this knowledge and the effect is one that reverberates with a lot of heart
beyond the traditionally circumscribed gay spaces of community. Still, nothing
suggests that this achievement is anything more than a fluke, especially a
press kit which repeatedly commits the “This film is not about being gay; it’s
about…” gaffe that Vito Russo so brilliantly outlined years ago in The
Celluloid Closet.
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
18605
From:
Date: Tue Dec 7, 2004 3:45pm
Subject: Re: Re: Wes Anderson's New Film
For what it's worth, Armond White raves about the film in the current New
York Press:
http://www.nypress.com/17/49/film/ArmondWhite.cfm
He echoes Bill's comparison of the set to that of Jerry Lewis' "The Ladies
Man."
Peter
18606
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Tue Dec 7, 2004 8:50pm
Subject: Re: Now you know ...
Brad:
> From your opening paragraph, I assume that 'this whole genre'
> refers to the horror film rather than the war film. Yet all the
> great American horror films of the 70s - the films of Romero,
> Lieberman, Cohen and De Palma, as well as Oliver Stone's
> remarkable debut feature QUEEN OF EVIL/SEIZURE - were explicitly
> left-wing, presenting patriarchial 'normality' as a source of
> intolerable repression that must be rejected.
Hear, hear! Mike, it's your prerogative to avoid horror films for
any number of reasons, but there's no reason to paint all the
products of this genre as right-wing. I don't know anything about
Lieberman, but from Brad's list above, I can vouch for the work of
Cohen, De Palma, and Romero (who incidentally makes films, contra
convention, about the death of rationalism next to hysteria). TEXAS
CHAINSAW MASSACRE is worth seeing too. These aren't right-wing
films, but instead (at their best) often insightful critiques into
various cultural mores and norms ... which include some serious
right-wing/corporate values.
Robin Wood's done some very good criticism on this issue. Mike,
have you read his HOLLYWOOD FROM VIETNAM TO REAGAN? It's
recommended.
> By the way, is there really 'such support' for the war in Iraq?
> Even the mid-Westerners who reelected Bush seem to be pretty
> uneasy about it.
The support should be at zero. Otherwise it's high.
--Zach
18607
From:
Date: Tue Dec 7, 2004 4:07pm
Subject: Re: Re: Now you know ...
In a message dated 12/7/04 11:01:13 AM, MG4273@a... writes:
> A generalization: a lot of pre-1970 films tried to create a world of beauty
> and joy on screen.
> A lot of post-1970 commercial films try to show as much ugliness, horror,
> cruelty and repulsive events as possible.
>
Mike, you know I enjoy your posts overall. But it is one of my life goals to
refute the above GROSS generalization. Just off the top of my head, here are
some pre-1970 films which show TONS of ugliness, horror, cruelty and repulsive
events (sticking to pre-1960 Hollywood talkies):
THE PUBLIC ENEMY, RAIN, SCARFACE (1932), BLOOD MONEY, TWENTIETH CENTURY, THE
INFORMER, THE PETRIFIED FOREST, HER CARDBOARD LOVER, MR. AND MRS. SMITH,
SCARLET STREET, LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN, POSSESSED (1947), KEY LARGO, THE LONG, LONG
TRAILER, THE BIG COMBO, THE MAN FROM LARAMIE, WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS, MAN OF THE
WEST, etc. Throw two or three of these together and you have the makings of a
really unpleasant evening of cinema.
Ugliness, horror, cruelty and repulsive events were VERY much a part of
Hollywood's so-called golden era. (And just for the record, I like every one of the
films listed above.) Plus you have to keep in mind how historically relative
audience reaction is. What was shocking in 1933...
I share your repulsion with repulsive events and violence in general. But two
absurdly violent post-1970 films turn the carnage back in on itself for a
kind of auto-critique: BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA (1974) and BROTHER
(2000).
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
18608
From:
Date: Tue Dec 7, 2004 4:14pm
Subject: Re: THE SECRET LIVES OF DENTISTS
Brad, I thought I loved DENTISTS but as I look back on my film diary, this is
what I had to say:
"The flu sequences were their own reward for me. They didn't have to be tied
into this test of a man questioning his familial life. Kooky in that
inimitable Alan Rudolph way but also conventional in a way very unlike him. The
fantasy/nightmare scenes are no better than anyone else's and everything seems back
to normal at the end."
Guess I'm sick to the teeth of marriage films. The forever unscrewable
TROUBLE IN MIND remains my favorite Rudolph. And I forgot he did TRIXIE. What a
deeply, deeply wacky film! It came off like a sick film critic experiment. Who the
hell gives him money to do these things?
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
18609
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Dec 7, 2004 9:18pm
Subject: Re: THE SECRET LIVES OF DENTISTS
--- LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
>
> Guess I'm sick to the teeth of marriage films. The
> forever unscrewable
> TROUBLE IN MIND remains my favorite Rudolph. And I
> forgot he did TRIXIE. What a
> deeply, deeply wacky film! It came off like a sick
> film critic experiment. Who the
> hell gives him money to do these things?
>
REMEMBER MY NAME remians my favorite -- a critique of
all marriage films.
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been
> removed]
>
>
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
All your favorites on one personal page Try My Yahoo!
http://my.yahoo.com
18610
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Tue Dec 7, 2004 9:51pm
Subject: Re: Welles at Work
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Adrian Martin
wrote:
> Good news for Wellesians: I just heard about a new book coming out
late next
> year (in French), WELLES AT WORK. It is by Franois Thomas and
Jean-Pierre
> Berthom, two very fine critics who have been associated with
POSITIF; the
> former did a great book on Resnais and the latter on Demy.
Franois wrote to
> me:
>
> >
> Yay!
>
> Adrian
However, I hope Beatrice will not cause any trouble. Does she read
French?
Tony
18611
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Tue Dec 7, 2004 9:51pm
Subject: Re: THE SECRET LIVES OF DENTISTS
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
"For the first two-thirds/three quarters, I was pretty bored - then I
started to have the strangest feeling that I was watching something
as beautiful and delicate as one of Ozu's masterpieces."
Another Ozu connection is Rudolph's rigorous camera but in way that's
opposoite of the fixed camera. A gaffer friend of mine who worked on
three of Rudolph's pictures said, "He hoses down a shot from every
angle." Not meant as a put down but rather an indication of how
exacting Rudolph is.
Richard
18612
From: Andy Rector
Date: Tue Dec 7, 2004 9:57pm
Subject: The Taste of Anderson's
Bill wrote:
>It's just amazing how light-
> hearted it all is -- this is real having-it-both-ways parody,
which
> still finds feelings in the conventions it's parodying. Hawks is
all
> over the place, including HATARI. (Blanchett is also Elsa
> Martinelli.) In a sense THE LIFE AQUATIC is just Hawksian irony
> flipped on its belly, with the laughs being openly solicited
rather
> than sneaked in, while the Hawksian values are reaffirmed and
> updated. And did I mention that it's a feast for the eyes? It was
> made at Cinecitta;
I'm much more interested in seeing this now, even though my feeling
for his earlier films are closer to Gabe's feelings about LIFE
AQUATIC.
I don't usually find it a good thing when a filmmaker plays slap-and-
tickle with ideas, references, big actors, money, and priviledge...
Why shouldn't I just watch TIGER SHARK while we're referencing Hawks
and his gradual sincerity?
(And speaking of references: one of my favourite moments in a
theater this year was watching Ozu's WOMAN OF TOKYO, when Lubitsch's
section from IF I HAD A MILLION bursts upon Ozu's movie, abstracted
along with the rest of O's film. And all of Ozu's references,
especially in the silent work...he's as unrestrained as Tarantino it
seems!)
The end product of Anderson's films doesn't bother me, its his
attitude at the outset which seems to boil down to TASTE. One's
ability or inability to get with HIS determines the level of ones
enjoyment; and that's all. But how important is this to film? We
once had a strain of posts dealing with whether or not a film was
just a bunch of stuff the filmmaker likes...the question is not
resolved for me. I hope a film is much more than that. I always get
a little annoyed by what I see as a squandering by filmmakers like
Anderson, PT Anderson, etc etc. These are privileged people who are
content to bask in their priviledge. The result is often deft and
charming, but shouldn't we place demands on them, if nothing else
because we take cinema seriously (and it is debatable whether or not
they do)?
Jarmusch is certainly taking questions of responsibility (to
history, the larger independent scene, etc.) into account in Dead
Man, Ghost Dog...As is Green, in his relationship to his subject and
his actors. I'm new to Ferrara (thank you Bill!) but after having
seen NEW ROSE HOTEL and ADDICTION I'd say he's after incomparably
bigger game than the
Andersons and surely O'Russell (one could make links); drugs are
irrelevent, as Brad says, to the criteria for gauging his or anyone
elses work. I just watched WHICH WAY TO THE FRONT? again and I think
approaching it from Jerry's personal life at the time would be the
least fruitful approach to this very brilliant film (which
incidentally, Bill, I'd have to say is strongest UP UNTIL the Von
Kesselring section). If the film wasn't made soberly, the least we
can do is look at it soberly.
And speaking of games, maybe Armond White nailed it when he evoked
some kind of competion between O'Russell, Payne (the grafted
competion so rightly decried by Jonathan elsewhere) and Anderson
("Zissou beats this year's good work by...") as its now clear to me
that that's exactly how these filmmakers view their output. The
community is a little sad.
I wonder if Armond White ever watches television, for it is (mainly)
a goldmine of the sort of "adolescent nostalgia" and "humanism"
which he so cunningly touts in Anderson and Speilberg. No doubt
Anderson is its most irresistable practitioner, providing you are
hip to the same currents he is, or want to be.
Yours,
andy
18613
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Tue Dec 7, 2004 10:01pm
Subject: Re: THE SECRET LIVES OF DENTISTS
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
>
> REMEMBER MY NAME remians my favorite -- a critique of
> all marriage films.
> >
Agreed! Geraldine Chaplin is extraordinary throughout the
film. Emily is one of the most astonishing female characters in film
history. Absolutely nothing she does is even remotely predictable,
yet somehow she makes perfect sense... Coming out of jail she writes
and rehearses a speech intended for her ex-husband (she even tests
it on the janitor), then warns her ex that she did indeed write and
memorize it, and proceeds to recite the speech -- totally sincere
and totally devious simultaneously. And what about the scene where
she begs the janitor on her knees to get her some drapes? The
begging is so ironic that it sends the unmistakeable message that
she's not the kind who'll beg for anything.
CHOOSE ME is my favorite of all Rudolph's films (TROUBLE IN
MIND is a worthy companion piece). EQUINOX, in which Lara Flynn Boyd
plays a character close to Chaplin's Emily and Bujold's Nancy
(CHOOSE ME, is one of AR's most underrated efforts. MRS PARKER AND
THE VICIOUS CIRCLE is also a major Rudolph. However, unlike Peter, I
thought BREAKFAST was a total disaster and I couldn't believe AR had
sunk so low. I'm looking forward to seeing DENTISTS...
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> All your favorites on one personal page Try My Yahoo!
> http://my.yahoo.com
18614
From: thebradstevens
Date: Tue Dec 7, 2004 10:09pm
Subject: Re: THE SECRET LIVES OF DENTISTS
> Another Ozu connection is Rudolph's rigorous camera but in way
that's
> opposoite of the fixed camera. A gaffer friend of mine who worked
on
> three of Rudolph's pictures said, "He hoses down a shot from every
> angle." Not meant as a put down but rather an indication of how
> exacting Rudolph is.
Another connection would be Rudolph's use of children in DENTISTS,
which is very similar to Ozu's.
18615
From:
Date: Tue Dec 7, 2004 5:12pm
Subject: Re: Re: THE SECRET LIVES OF DENTISTS
Richard Modiano wrote:
>Another Ozu connection is Rudolph's rigorous camera but in way that's
>opposoite of the fixed camera.
Yes, great point! Rudolph's roving camera moves are astonishing to behold.
I'm glad to hear your gaffer friend confirm what I'd always suspected: that
there's very little in a Rudolph film, visually speaking, that happens by
accident.
Peter
18616
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Dec 7, 2004 10:25pm
Subject: Re: The Taste of Anderson's
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Andy Rector"
wrote:
Competition in the arts has a long, honorable history going back to
the Greeks, which Norman Mailer reminded everyone of when he
wrote "The Talent in the Room."
I mostly didn't spot the references in THE LIFE AQUATIC during the
screening -- spotted them here and there, and thought about them
later. But Ladies Man is kind of hard to miss. And much better done
here than in TOUT VA BIEN. Mostly I was pulled along in a constant
state of delighted surprise, the usual effect of great originality.
Kierkegaard said: "Farce is serious." I don't think any genre is more
valid than any other. Bogdanovich did better when he stopped trying
to be a tragedian and accepted the fact that he's a farceur. David O.
Russell seems to have achieved that insight early on. His short, co-
directed documentary about the current Iraq War, Soldier's Pay, is
very funny, and much more effective than other exposes.
18617
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Dec 7, 2004 10:28pm
Subject: Re: Aviator
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Robert Keser" wrote:
I don't know if Wes Anderson was stoned during production (as Altman
used to be), but Steve Zisou (Murray) is constantly smoking joints,
on and off the job, in THE LIFE AQUATIC.
18618
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Dec 7, 2004 10:41pm
Subject: Re: Welles at Work
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "peckinpah20012000"
wrote:
I hope Beatrice will not cause any trouble. Does she read
> French?
>
> Tony
She has a French lawyer. I almost succeeded in cutting a deal for
financing Other Side that would've brought him into the tent, but
Rick Schmidlin deliberately torpedoed it. As far as I know he (the
lawyer) is out there doing what he always does - a much more
formidable foe than that shmoe White. Taschen already buried a book
on Welles by FX Feeney, one that was all written and paid for,
because of Beatrice, so let's all say a prayer or two for this
project.
18619
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Dec 7, 2004 10:43pm
Subject: Re: Now you know ...
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
two
> absurdly violent post-1970 films turn the carnage back in on itself
for a
> kind of auto-critique: BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA (1974)
and BROTHER
> (2000).
>
> Kevin John
I don't know about the critique, but BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO
GARCIA is political as hell and one of the best films of that decade.
18620
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Tue Dec 7, 2004 10:56pm
Subject: Re: Welles at Work
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "peckinpah20012000"
> wrote:
>
> I hope Beatrice will not cause any trouble. Does she read
> > French?
> >
> > Tony
>
> She has a French lawyer. I almost succeeded in cutting a deal for
> financing Other Side that would've brought him into the tent, but
> Rick Schmidlin deliberately torpedoed it. As far as I know he (the
> lawyer) is out there doing what he always does - a much more
> formidable foe than that shmoe White. Taschen already buried a
book
> on Welles by FX Feeney, one that was all written and paid for,
> because of Beatrice, so let's all say a prayer or two for this
> project.
Amen to that! I've just finished my Welles class tonight with the
inspiring F FOR FAKE which inspired silence of which part might be
due to awe, and the rest of approaching exam fear. I set written
assignments rather than 2 hour exams.
I began teaching in adult education, a world without exams or
grading, and told my students about it last night. It was an
environment I found much more preferable. According to THIS IS ORSON
WELLES, I believed the man himself wanted to work in that field
before he found out that it did not pay much. But, as I informed my
class, he promoted education through his films, especially one
designed to challenge and stimulate viewer perception.
Tony
18621
From: Adrian Martin
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 0:00am
Subject: The Sick Film Critic Experiment (Michael Haneke/Blake Edwards, 2004)
Kevin John wrote:
"It came off like a sick film critic experiment"
Kevin, this is definitely a new genre I WANT TO HEAR MORE ABOUT!
There's surely an essay to be written about "sick film critic experiments"!
Experiments in terror, maybe? Funny games?
fascinated Adrian
18622
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Tue Dec 7, 2004 11:06pm
Subject: Re: Now you know ...
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
> two
> > absurdly violent post-1970 films turn the carnage back in on
itself
> for a
> > kind of auto-critique: BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA
(1974)
> and BROTHER
> > (2000).
> >
> > Kevin John
>
> I don't know about the critique, but BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO
> GARCIA is political as hell and one of the best films of that
decade.
------------------
Naturally, I would agree with the radical aspect of 70s horror for
obvious reasons and hope Mike (aka "Disgusted in Detroit") might
reconsider his verdict.
On BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA, Stephen Prince has written
some interesting arguments in SAVAGE CINEMA about the film's
critique of violence in Sam's post-WILD BUNCH oeuvre. Ironically,
the alternatives to these violence images occur in the "lesser
films" such as THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE, THE GETAWAY, and THE
KILLER ELITE where various characters decide to turn away from their
self-destructive atavistic impulses.
I'm also finishing teaching Sam on Thursday night with THE OSTERMAN
WEEKEND. When I screened NOON WINE (1966), it did lead to a
remarkable change on the part of most students who saw a different
type of director that the stereotypical "Blood Sam." Even a student
disgusted with STRAW DOGS who asked me her only question so far as
to where sin actually belonged in this film, wrote a reasonable
study of the "lesser films." Hope the opening image of THE OSTERMAN
WEEKEND will not result in the return of R.G. Armstrong?
Tony Williams
18623
From: thebradstevens
Date: Tue Dec 7, 2004 11:52pm
Subject: Re: Now you know ...
"I'm also finishing teaching Sam on Thursday night with THE OSTERMAN
WEEKEND."
I hope you're teaching the vastly superior director's cut, available
(admittedly as a very poor quality transfer ) on the DVD.
18624
From:
Date: Tue Dec 7, 2004 7:13pm
Subject: Re: Now you know ...
Hey, I love "The Ostermann Weekend" and "Junior Bonner", too. I thought these
were the MAJOR Peckinpahs! Who says they are minor?
"Noon Wine" was a part of a favorite TV series as a kid, "ABC's Stage 67", an
anthology of original dramas. I'm showing my age...
I read Robin Wood's essays on horror films when they came out in the 70's.
But I am still a bit skeptical. Does it matter what sort of politics the
filmmaker has in the non-violent parts of horror or war movies? These films still
present killing, violence and torture as entertainment. They have a direct and
immediate impact on people. The people in the study who were still traumatized
years later after seeing horror films have a point.
I cannot prove that there is a connection between violent films and
war-mongering. Perhaps there is none. I have perhaps been exposed to too many right
wing people whose main "entertainment" interest in life is seeing very violent
films.
Hey, I'm not even consistent. I've enjoyed some of the cartoonish action
films of the past 20 years, such as "Die Hard", "Speed" and "Daredevil".
My pre-1970 Hollywood = beautiful films, post-1970 Hollywood=disgusting films
was presented as a generalization. There are endless exceptions.
Still, in old Hollywood a typical hero might be The Falcon, the detective
played by George Sanders. The Falcon was awesomely intelligent, witty,
sophisticated, concerned about other people, rarely used violence, and always full of
literate dialogue (thanks to his screenwriters). He was role model, at whom
people in the audience looked in awe. They wanted to be more like him. They knew
they weren't like him yet, but wanted to become more like him. The film gave
people an idealistic goal.
A hero in the new Hollywood is the protagonist of True Lies, played by Arnold
Schwarzenegger. He kills around 99 people in the film, mostly cheaply
caricatured anti-Arab stereotypes, while forcing his wife into prostitution. I have
met countless American men who've told me "True Lies" is their favorite
contemporary movie. Arnie is now the Governor of California, and might well be the
Republican President of the US in the not too distant future. He makes speeches
ridiculing Democrats as "girlie men".
Mike Grost
18625
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 1:05am
Subject: Re: Re: Welles at Work
--- hotlove666 wrote:
Taschen
> already buried a book
> on Welles by FX Feeney, one that was all written and
> paid for,
> because of Beatrice, so let's all say a prayer or
> two for this
> project.
>
Don't she NEVER sleep?
__________________________________
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The all-new My Yahoo! - Get yours free!
http://my.yahoo.com
18626
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 1:10am
Subject: Re: Re: Welles at Work
--- peckinpah20012000
wrote:
>
> Amen to that! I've just finished my Welles class
> tonight with the
> inspiring F FOR FAKE which inspired silence of which
> part might be
> due to awe, and the rest of approaching exam fear. I
> set written
> assignments rather than 2 hour exams.
>
Have you shown them any Sacha Guitry?
Guitry is crucial to F FOR FAKE, IMO.
Moving in a slightly (well not all that slightly)
different direction, I suggest you reccomend they view
"Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train" -- whose title
and inspiration is derived from the death of Francois
Reichenbach.
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
18627
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 1:11am
Subject: Re: Now you know ...
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
> Hey, I love "The Ostermann Weekend" and "Junior Bonner", too. I
thought these
> were the MAJOR Peckinpahs! Who says they are minor?
Stephen Prince and most critics share this opinion. However, the
more one explores these "minor" works the more significant they
become in illumining key aspects of Peckinpah's authorship
Violence and excess are part of the horror genre as they are of
the war film. But the issue lies in how the director uses these
elements. If the film wishes to reveal a serious social origin for
the cause of violence, then this elevates it above the mere
sensational. For example, John's Ryan's hesitation about fatherhood
in IT'S ALIVE as well as Cohen's suggestion that the FDA is also
responsible by launching an untested drug on the market reveals the
presence of a serious authorial investigation far removed from the
Friday the 13th field and the other films you cite. The issue
involves the particular film and the serious intention of the
director. Also some Hong Kong Category 3 films reveal important
issues of exploitation and urban alienation behind the excessive
violence.
> A hero in the new Hollywood is the protagonist of True Lies,
played by Arnold
> Schwarzenegger. He kills around 99 people in the film, mostly
cheaply
> caricatured anti-Arab stereotypes, while forcing his wife into
prostitution. I have
> met countless American men who've told me "True Lies" is their
favorite
> contemporary movie. Arnie is now the Governor of California, and
might well be the
> Republican President of the US in the not too distant future. He
makes speeches
> ridiculing Democrats as "girlie men".
I can not argue with you here since I'm turned off by these types
of films as well as the possible future occupant of the White House.
A former colleague and supposedly "radical feminist" also liked TRUE
LIES!
Tony Williams
>
18628
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 1:16am
Subject: Re: Welles at Work
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- peckinpah20012000
> wrote:
>
>
> >
> >>
> Have you shown them any Sacha Guitry?
>
> Guitry is crucial to F FOR FAKE, IMO.
>
> Moving in a slightly (well not all that slightly)
> different direction, I suggest you reccomend they view
> "Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train" -- whose title
> and inspiration is derived from the death of Francois
> Reichenbach.
I'm working on this. But they've all had a hard problem adjusting
to the Welles Shakespeare films (which the entire class have now
seen for the FIRST time!) o say nothing of F FOR FAKE. I'll know by
assignment delivery next week but I'm working on this problem to
extend horizons and perceptions. It all takes time and one has to
tread gently so as not to alienate them and try to present both
learning and new cultural experiences as fun. Many non-urban
students have seen little beyond Kerasotes monopolitistic films
whenever they do go to the cinema. It is an uphill battle but also
worthwhile.
Thanks again for your suggestions.
Tony Williams
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
18629
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 1:19am
Subject: Re: Now you know ...
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
>
> "I'm also finishing teaching Sam on Thursday night with THE
OSTERMAN
> WEEKEND."
>
> I hope you're teaching the vastly superior director's cut,
available
> (admittedly as a very poor quality transfer ) on the DVD.
I agree with you over the director's cut. But the transfer is bad
as you note, so I'm showing the theatrical version but also
referring to the alternative version available on DVD for those who
look at it again on reserve in the Library. It is also the week
before Finals so fatigue and worry is already affecting several
students.
Tony
18630
From: Robert Keser
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 1:40am
Subject: Re: Aviator
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Robert Keser"
wrote:
>
> I don't know if Wes Anderson was stoned during production (as
Altman
> used to be), but Steve Zisou (Murray) is constantly smoking
joints,
> on and off the job, in THE LIFE AQUATIC.
Hah! Valuable information to put on file! I just saw CLOSER, but
nobody did anything there except drink vodka-and-tonics and stout.
A different milieu, I suppose, but at least they enjoyed some great
dialogue.
--Robert Keser
18631
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 2:20am
Subject: Re: Welles at Work
>
> --- peckinpah20012000
> wrote:
>
>
> >
> > Amen to that! I've just finished my Welles class
> > tonight with the
> > inspiring F FOR FAKE which inspired silence of which
> > part might be
> > due to awe, and the rest of approaching exam fear. I
> > set written
> > assignments rather than 2 hour exams.
> >
>
> How sad that cinema has become a way to induce exam fear in
students. Definitely not what I thought movies were all about when I
was a young cinephile -- or even now that I am a rather old one. But
then most cinephiles I know "teach" film, so I guess they don't mind
inducing fear as part of their gainful employment.
JPC
18632
From:
Date: Tue Dec 7, 2004 9:40pm
Subject: Re: The Osterman Weekend (was: Now you know ...)
On the phony policeman in "The Osterman Weekend":
Was always intrigued by this. And so were a lot of great directors.
There are phony cops in "Les Vampires" (Feuillade), episode 5.
In "Man Hunt" (Fritz Lang).
And the pilot episode of "Peter Gunn" (Blake Edwards), opens with a phony cop
right in the first scene.
There are some comic book & later TV versions too.
Mike Grost
18633
From: Fred Camper
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 2:48am
Subject: Re: Film violence [was: Now you know ...]
I'm surprised to find myself at least somewhat agreeing with Mike
Grost's rather pro-wholesome argument here, since. I should add that
I've probably seen fewer Hollywood films of the last few decades than
most on this list.
Forgive me if I've told my favorite story about a Peckinpah movie
already here, but I think it's apposite.
The principal film critic for the "New York Times" for quite a few
decades was Bosley Crowther. He was, famously, something of a fool. He
took "L'Aventura" as a mystery movie with an obscure plot and some nice
landscapes. When "The Wild Bunch" was released, he attacked it
repeatedly for being too violent. Anyway, after more than one Crowther
attack on violence in the movies that used "The Wild Bunch" as an
example, Peckinpah was given space in the pages of the New York Times to
respond. If I remember right, his argument was that the film starts as
light comedy and lulls you in, turns violent but no more than average
for a western so that you're pulled along, and then achieves a catharsis
when the orgy of violence at the end repels you. Thus, he claimed, it is
really an anti-violent movie.
I read all this and then went off to see it. It had already been in
release for a while, but I could see it on New York's 42nd Street, whose
ten movie theaters showed mostly second run and older Hollywood films.
It was the true Cinematheque for many of us, or at least one of them. I
saw "Red River," "The Searchers," "Rio Bravo," and many other iconic
masterpieces there for the first time. The theaters were very cheap,
often dirty, and distinctly lower class. A friend of mine once saw a
patron take a pee in his seat. They kept the lights up partway so that
nothing too bad would happen. More than once I would hear a woman
suddenly yell out something like, "Take your fingers out of there." The
audience, in other words, was, er, very proletatrian.
Anyway, this audience was apparently unfamiliar with Aristotle, because
rather than feeling catharsis during the final 15 minutes of "The Wild
Bunch," they were orgasming in their pants, if not literally then all
but. People were screaming with glee. It was a little bit like a happy
version of the cafeteria riot in "Shock Corridor."
There's a serious point here. Film aficionados such as the (ahem)
carefully-screened members of an elite group such as a_film_by may well
see a violent film and discern the Marxist subtext, the profound
analysis of social class, the carefully constructed symbolic arguments
against repression, the analysis of the superego and the id, or
whatever. Just because "we" get all that -- perhaps because we think
that way already -- doesn't mean that the potential muggers and soldiers
and moron future presidents of the world are going to get the same
things. All that "Wild Bunch" audience apparently saw, and loved, was
the spurting blood.
I'm not going to advocate censorship. I'm not saying that "proles" never
get it or anything like that. But I do think that people tend to see
films as they see the world, according to their own biases. It seems
equally reasonable to me to take the ending of "The Wild Bunch" as a
protest against excessive violence, or as a paean to killing.
Fred Camper
18634
From:
Date: Tue Dec 7, 2004 9:50pm
Subject: Re: Teaching (was: Welles at Work)
Hey, Tony sounds like a GOOD teacher! Teaching is really hard work.
I used to teach an even more frightening subject: math. I used to tell my
students on the first day, "Math is really fun!" They would look at me in horror
as if the men in white were about to recapture me and take me back to
Bethlehem Asylum.
But by the end of the term, the students were enjoying themselves and
learning. And their written reviews to the department said things like "I never knew
math could be interesting, before Mike."
The important thing is to teach IDEAS, instead of rote work. People start
enjoying themselves when they learn to THINK.
Mike Grost
(About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot of news
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypoteneuse.
- W.S. Gilbert)
18635
From: Matt Teichman
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 3:43am
Subject: Re: Film violence [was: Now you know ...]
Quick reply to Mike:
The most unsettling (or perhaps second most unsettling) bit of violence
I've ever seen in a narrative film is that moment in _Pickup on South
Street_, where Joey slams Candy's head into the table--it really makes
me wince, no matter how many times I watch it. This is of course
because you have the impression that Jean Peters really is getting her
head slammed into the table. Anyway, I bring it up because I take it
that's a film you admire (or at least it's a film you've written on).
-Matt
18636
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 4:15am
Subject: Re: Welles at Work
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
>
>
> >
> > --- peckinpah20012000
> > wrote:
> >
> >
> > >
> > > .I
> > > set written
> > > assignments rather than 2 hour exams.
> > >
> >
> > How sad that cinema has become a way to induce exam fear in
> students. Definitely not what I thought movies were all about when
I
> was a young cinephile -- or even now that I am a rather old one.
But
> then most cinephiles I know "teach" film, so I guess they don't
mind
> inducing fear as part of their gainful employment.
> JPC
I assume that you are not referring to my methods. As mentioned, I
set written assignments in advance already printed on the syllabus
so that students can prepare in advance, work towards the topic, and
use the office hours system so they can talk to me and even show me
drafts of their papers.
Here I am definitely breaking the rules by not setting mid-terms,
final exams, or sudden quizzes designed to undermine the unwary and
make themn feel more insecure than they already are in a factory
situation. That is not my strategy but one sadly common to what one
group member has referred to as "hackademia." Although admittedly
part of the system, I do not use fear as a teaching method but
instead try to instill into students (who have mostly never taken a
film class before both a love for the subject) and an education into
taking what the entertainment industry regards as a "movie" in a
serious manner so that they become active viewers not passive
consumers along with theater pocorn.
This is really hard work, often unrewarding. But when some students
later tell me they were afraid of the subject as it was their first
time studying film and then found that they enjoyed it, the work
appears so worthwhile. They even rent "old", black and white movies
which they never did before and perhaps, look at subtitled foreign
films, even French ones (despite their President!). That is the real
reward.
As Sykes says in THE WILD BUNCH, "It ain't waht it used to be, but
it'll do"
That's my strategy. What others do is their concern. But I try to
help students often doing four other additional courses plan and
prepare in advance so that they can do themselves justice for their
final paper while having to undergo the hurdles of so many two hour
exams in finals week.
Tony Williams
18637
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 4:21am
Subject: Re: Now you know ...
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "peckinpah20012000"
wrote:
>
>
> I'm also finishing teaching Sam on Thursday night with THE
OSTERMAN
> WEEKEND. When I screened NOON WINE (1966), it did lead to a
> remarkable change on the part of most students
Tony, let me know if you don't have The Losers and Pericles on 34th
St. I gave my copies away, but I can get you copies made off them if
you'd like.
18638
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 4:24am
Subject: Re: Film violence [was: Now you know ...]
I should add that
> I've probably seen fewer Hollywood films of the last few decades
than
> most on this list.
>
> Forgive me if I've told my favorite story about a Peckinpah movie
> already here, but I think it's apposite.
> > r."
>
> > I'm not going to advocate censorship. I'm not saying
that "proles" never
> get it or anything like that. But I do think that people tend to
see
> films as they see the world, according to their own biases. It
seems
> equally reasonable to me to take the ending of "The Wild Bunch" as
a
> protest against excessive violence, or as a paean to killing.
>
> Fred Camper
I think this is a valid perspective and one which Stephen Prince
sees as the problem concerning THE WILD BUNCH, namely, the catharsis
theory Peckinpah used there simply did not work and so he attempted
others ways of deglamorizing violent spectacle in his later films.
Would the audience have reacted in the same way to STRAW DOGS, a
film designed to deliberately turn one off violence?
I had to leave earlier at a fascinating point and have to depart
again since my computer is not at home. But the responses have been
really fascinating and, thank you Mike, I do try. However, I've read
earlier responses about members past experiences in academia and
know the problems involved. As far as Peckinpah is concerned, I
think I have succeeded in showing one student who complained about
me postponing a Kubrick class to substitute one involving "an
alcoholic and a drug addict" who only made three good films that the
issue is much more complex.
Tony Williams
18639
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 4:26am
Subject: Re: Now you know ...
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> > Tony, let me know if you don't have The Losers and Pericles on
34th
> St. I gave my copies away, but I can get you copies made off them
if
> you'd like.
Thanks Mike. I have them both and know a source who also has
LONESOME ROAD and some of the GUNSMOKE episodes Sam wrote. Also,
according to David Weddle, THE WESTERNER episodes will be out on DVD
next year.
I began the class showing THE WESTERNER pilot, "Trouble at Tres
Cruces," "Jeff" and "Miss Jenny" and ran "Hand on the Gun" later in
the class.
Tony W
18640
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 4:36am
Subject: Re: Film violence [was: Now you know ...]
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
I do think that people tend to see
> films as they see the world, according to their own biases. It
seems
> equally reasonable to me to take the ending of "The Wild Bunch" as
a
> protest against excessive violence, or as a paean to killing.
>
> Fred Camper
In The Dream Life J. Hoberman sees it as very ambiguous politically,
but with a more specific set of references: My Lai happened while it
was being shot, asuggesting the joy of raising hell in the Third
World is also part of the subtext...of a film embraced by SDS
radicals at the time of its release as a revolutionary manifesto.
Bonnie and Clyde, he reminds us, was seen the same way at the time.
This expression of ANTITHETICAL meanings by one set of symbols is
also typical of dreams, as I point out in my Cineaste review of that
book.
I was a 42nd Street regular too -- that's where I learned to love
Gonzalez Gonzalez and stop worrying about racism in Rio Bravo by
hearing the reactions of the boys in the balcony, where I would never
have dreamed of sitting.
It's hard to know what popular reactions to films mean. I remember my
friend Bob, when he came back from seeing Death Wish on Times Square,
reporting that the audience loved it. Of course, enlightened critics
had unanimously panned Death Wish as a latter-day Jew Suss, a thinly-
veiled racist law and order screed. But when I asked Bob why the
largely black audience he had seen it with "loved" it, he said, "The
like to watch white people acting crazy."
I tell or retell this anecdote to stress: Our way of processing The
Wild Bunch or Death Wish or The Dirty Dozen or A Clockwork Orange is
definitely not that of the (now vanished) Times Square audience, but
the question of what their reactions mean - or meant - is still a
subject for investigation, or for apprehension through class (and
race) empathy, of which my friend Bob was then, at any rate, a rare
master.
Re: Osterman Weekend, here's a bit of bourgeois liberal processing.
Peckinpah changed the villain in Ludlum's novel to make him the head
of the CIA--that being George Bush at the time of the film's
production.
18641
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 4:41am
Subject: Re: Welles at Work
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "peckinpah20012000"
wrote:
>
.
> > > >
> > >
> > > How sad that cinema has become a way to induce exam fear in
> > students. Definitely not what I thought movies were all about
when
> I
> > was a young cinephile -- or even now that I am a rather old one.
> But
> > then most cinephiles I know "teach" film, so I guess they don't
> mind
> > inducing fear as part of their gainful employment.
> > JPC
>
> I assume that you are not referring to my methods.
I was not referring to anybody's methods, and I'm sure yours are
admirable. I was just expressing a feeling of --admittedly silly --
nostalgia for a time when it would have seemed extremely bizarre to
have to take a course to "appreciate" cinema. My film courses and
film teachers were the old Langlois cinematheque, the cine-clubs and
the crummy neighborhood fleapits where we were discovering the
wonders of movies (without any popcorn). JPC
18642
From: Damien Bona
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 5:10am
Subject: Re: Film violence [was: Now you know ...]
Fred, when The Wild Bunch was released in 1969, Bosley Crowther was
already gone from the Times, having been let go largely because of
his clueless reaction to "Bonnie & Clyde" in '67. My recollection is
that Vincent Canby put The Wild Bunch on his 10 Best List of 1969,
his initial year as the paper's first stringer. (And I think he had
Cable Hogue on his list the following year.)
Judith Crist, who was then a very prominent reviewer for New York
magazine attacked "The Wild Bunch" for its violence and called it one
of the worst (if not THE worst) picture of '69.
The Times back then had often provocative and high-spirited
discussions of films in its Arts & Leisure section (who can forget
Sarris and Kael and Simon attacking each other) so maybe it was an
article by a non-Times person to which Peckinpah was responding.
I seem to recall Crist ridiculing Peckinpah's contention that "The
Wild Bunch" was anti-violence, and her eloquent phrase was that you
need to take a "barf bag" with you into the theatre.
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> I'm surprised to find myself at least somewhat agreeing with Mike
> Grost's rather pro-wholesome argument here, since. I should add
that
> I've probably seen fewer Hollywood films of the last few decades
than
> most on this list.
>
> Forgive me if I've told my favorite story about a Peckinpah movie
> already here, but I think it's apposite.
>
> The principal film critic for the "New York Times" for quite a few
> decades was Bosley Crowther. He was, famously, something of a fool.
He
> took "L'Aventura" as a mystery movie with an obscure plot and some
nice
> landscapes. When "The Wild Bunch" was released, he attacked it
> repeatedly for being too violent. Anyway, after more than one
Crowther
> attack on violence in the movies that used "The Wild Bunch" as an
> example, Peckinpah was given space in the pages of the New York
Times to
> respond. If I remember right, his argument was that the film starts
as
> light comedy and lulls you in, turns violent but no more than
average
> for a western so that you're pulled along, and then achieves a
catharsis
> when the orgy of violence at the end repels you. Thus, he claimed,
it is
> really an anti-violent movie.
>
18643
From: Adrian Martin
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 6:57am
Subject: re: film teaching
Tony wrote of his students:
"They even rent "old", black and white movies
which they never did before"
Bravo, Tony! You are obviously a good teacher. I am reminded, however, of a
favourite story from my own teaching days.
Years after teaching a particular intake of students that I 'took through'
an entire course in the early '80s - 3 intensive years of film study - I ran
into one of them on a tram. This girl came up to me, all smiles (she was by
this time about 25, and herself a teacher), and said:
"Hey, I really remember your class, it was great. I really liked ... that
old black and white film, you know."
The rub: in my class, she had seen and studied approximately several hundred
'old black and white films' (and written detailed papers on probably half a
dozen of them), and was now no closer to naming a single one of them !!!!
Adrian (teacher of amnesia)
18644
From: Matthew Clayfield
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 7:50am
Subject: Re: Welles at Work
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
"How sad that cinema has become a way to induce exam fear in
students. Definitely not what I thought movies were all about when I
was a young cinephile -- or even now that I am a rather old one. But
then most cinephiles I know "teach" film, so I guess they don't mind
inducing fear as part of their gainful employment."
Luckily, "student" and "young cinephile" aren't exclusive terms; I
actually look forward to most of my exams.
Unfortunately, of the students I know personally, I'm the also the
only one that I'd describe as being a cinephile, and I was that way
inclined before going to university, so...
18645
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 7:58am
Subject: PSYCHO/AVIATOR
Since no one who's seen it has likened AVIATOR to PSYCHO I assume
that they didn't spot the near subliminal skull face. So add PSYCHO
to the mix of 8 1/2 and CITIZEN KANE.
Richard
18646
From: Adam Hart
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 9:37am
Subject: Re: Welles at Work
(OT?) Last year we showed F FOR FAKE in Seattle and brought Gary
Graver, Welles' cameraman, into town - I looked into Elmyr de Hory
and found out that a, ahem, "real fake" by Elmyr is now selling for
five figures. Now, I found this information on a single site online,
so perhaps it's just a cool-sounding myth.
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- peckinpah20012000
> wrote:
>
>
> >
> > Amen to that! I've just finished my Welles class
> > tonight with the
> > inspiring F FOR FAKE which inspired silence of which
> > part might be
> > due to awe, and the rest of approaching exam fear. I
> > set written
> > assignments rather than 2 hour exams.
> >
>
> Have you shown them any Sacha Guitry?
>
> Guitry is crucial to F FOR FAKE, IMO.
>
> Moving in a slightly (well not all that slightly)
> different direction, I suggest you reccomend they view
> "Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train" -- whose title
> and inspiration is derived from the death of Francois
> Reichenbach.
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
18647
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 9:40am
Subject: Re: PSYCHO/AVIATOR
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
wrote:
>
> Since no one who's seen it has likened AVIATOR to PSYCHO I assume
> that they didn't spot the near subliminal skull face. So add
PSYCHO
> to the mix of 8 1/2 and CITIZEN KANE.
>
> Richard
I didn't spot it, but according to one of the technicians there's a
frame of skeleton superimposed on Hughes when he's being irradiated
by the flashbulbs and newsreel lights at the Senate hearing.
18648
From: Elizabeth Nolan
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 9:52am
Subject: OT: asthma
Remember, I haven't practice medicine for a many years, but in
Emergency Medicine, 'all wheezing is not asthma, all asthma is not
wheezing.'
Since there is little quality control in street drugs, one can't know
what users are snorting or inhaling or ingesting.
Any 'experience' that 'excites' someone even in a 'panic' attack can be
accompanied by an epinephrine surge which is what is used to treat
asthma. So if a 'side effect' for the user is a 'panic' attack, an
epinephrine surge might help asthma.
The body's functioning is a tremendous 'homeostatic' event; while on
the surface, two different states might look very similar (ie,
identical vital signs), state A might be primed to respond more
strongly than state B to the same events.
For me, one of the most difficult sets of patients were those short of
breath who remained short of breath after you gave them the first few
lines of medication and intubation was next. I remember the absolutely
sudden 'scared to death' look on a young teenage girl's face who came
in for 'milk allergy.' Everything seemed to be going routine as we
responded immediately to her story (believing her 'milk allergy'
history event though she had not yet having significant symptoms); we
gave the SQ medication, started the IV, had the aerosol ready. She was
making a big deal about the restaurant apparently putting some milk in
something ... and suddenly, she began to swell up. Within moments, she
said "Aren't you going to help me?" And just as suddenly, the
medications kicked in and intubation was avoided. It was a terrific
demonstration of how timely emergency treatment can make a significant
different... literally seconds.
> Incidentally, re feeling sorry for Scorsese: snorting cocaine
> apparently actually *improves* the symptoms of asthma (if you
> believe The Encyclopedia Britannica 2001, which states this
> directly), thus validating Freud who originally proposed the use of
> cocaine to *treat* asthma. The asthma emergencies that are connected
> to cocaine use apparently come from smoking crack, not snorting the
> drug, as well as from the associated risks of using alcohol and
> pills at the same time. Is there a doctor in the house? Elizabeth?
>
> --Robert Keser
18649
From: Elizabeth Nolan
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 10:06am
Subject: TWO-LANE BLACKTOP
I don't know the particulars, but I suspect a small work on a small
budget with such a measured result requires much more deliberate and
focused activity than some of the 'free-wheeling' apparently present on
bigger sets with bigger budgets.
perhaps David Ehrenstein wrote
> I'd never heard that. Once might well assume that the
> director of "Two-Lane Blacktop" may have enjoyed a
> joint or two, but so what? Nothing in his oeuvre
> suggests anything approaching a consuming interest in
> drugs, nor do they proceed from a narcotized mindset.
18650
From: Elizabeth Nolan
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 10:15am
Subject: not less repulsion; less pleasanties
There were always ugliness, horror, cruelty, etc... what may have
happened is that in the jaded and cynical times of the seventies and
afterwards, many sweet movies were relegated to 'made for tv, family
venues, and girly films' that just don't make the critical lists.
>> A generalization: a lot of pre-1970 films tried to create a world of
>> beauty
>> and joy on screen.
>> A lot of post-1970 commercial films try to show as much ugliness,
>> horror,
>> cruelty and repulsive events as possible.
>>
>
> Mike, you know I enjoy your posts overall. But it is one of my life
> goals to
> refute the above GROSS generalization. Just off the top of my head,
> here are
> some pre-1970 films which show TONS of ugliness, horror, cruelty and
> repulsive
> events (sticking to pre-1960 Hollywood talkies):
> THE PUBLIC ENEMY, RAIN, SCARFACE (1932), BLOOD MONEY, TWENTIETH
> CENTURY, THE
> INFORMER, THE PETRIFIED FOREST, HER CARDBOARD LOVER, MR. AND MRS.
> SMITH,
> SCARLET STREET, LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN, POSSESSED (1947), KEY LARGO, THE
> LONG, LONG
> TRAILER, THE BIG COMBO, THE MAN FROM LARAMIE, WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS,
> MAN OF THE
> WEST, etc. Throw two or three of these together and you have the
> makings of a
> really unpleasant evening of cinema.
>
> Ugliness, horror, cruelty and repulsive events were VERY much a part of
> Hollywood's so-called golden era. (And just for the record, I like
> every one of the
> films listed above.) Plus you have to keep in mind how historically
> relative
> audience reaction is. What was shocking in 1933...
>
> I share your repulsion with repulsive events and violence in general.
> But two
> absurdly violent post-1970 films turn the carnage back in on itself
> for a
> kind of auto-critique: BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA (1974) and
> BROTHER
> (2000).
>
> Kevin John
18651
From: thebradstevens
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 10:48am
Subject: Re: TWO-LANE BLACKTOP
"I don't know the particulars, but I suspect a small work on a small
budget with such a measured result requires much more deliberate and
focused activity than some of the 'free-wheeling' apparently present
on bigger sets with bigger budgets."
Exactly. Most of Ferrara's films have been made on short schedules (3
weeks for BAD LIEUTENANT, 4 for THE BLACKOUT) and microscopic
budgets - and's he's never gone over schedule or over budget.
David Ehrenstein wrote
> > I'd never heard that. Once might well assume that the
> > director of "Two-Lane Blacktop" may have enjoyed a
> > joint or two, but so what?
But why might one well assume that?
Nothing in his oeuvre
> > suggests anything approaching a consuming interest in
> > drugs, nor do they proceed from a narcotized mindset.
If you had heard numerous stories about Monte taking copious amounts
of drugs, I'm sure you'd have no trouble discerning a 'narcotized
mindset' in CHINA 9, LIBERTY 37 or THE SHOOTING.
18652
From: Kristian Andersen
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 0:14pm
Subject: Fishing with John
Has anyone else seen this TV series with John Lurie? He invites Tom Waits,
Dennis Hopper, Jarmusch and others to go fishing with him. Spoof fishing
documentary style with ridiculous pompous narration. Am I the only one who
didnt find it funny at all? I thought there was one good line about one of
the local fishermen: Lon has wooden legs, but his feet are real!. The rest
reminded me of the sorta dry, but not funny, humour that I used to do
films about in High School. In 2004, the joke seems sorta old too its not
that great an observation to notice the ridiculousness of some TV
documentaries and then spoof it. Besides, I thought John Lurie, especially
with Waits, looked uber fucking self-conscious. At the scene where they play
cards for example, it was so embarrassing that I almost had to turn away.
Usually if its that powerful I like the film (Funny Ha Ha restaurant scene
with nerd talking love to girl!!!), but not this time.
---
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18653
From: cairnsdavid1967
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 1:04pm
Subject: Re: OT: asthma
Fascinating, Elizabeth!
> >Is there a doctor in the house? Elizabeth?
This reminds me of a favourite theatre story.
Ralph Richardson: "Is there a doctor in the house?"
Audience memeber: "I'm a doctor."
Ralph: "Doctor, isn't this play terrible?"
18654
From: filipefurtado
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 1:00pm
Subject: Re: Re: Film violence [was: Now you know ...]
I must confess this whole discussion
baffles me.
If screen violence help to make people
more receptive to war, why
governements for a long time decided
that the best way to show war on the
media without raising public opnion
against it was making it PG-rated?
I know lots of horror buffs only like
to see guts on screen, but is that the
filmmakers fault? I'm quite sure lots
of people are turned on by the
violence on The Wild Bunch -- doesnt
matter what were Peckinpah intentions
-- but many people certainly come out
of Fuller's anti-war films believing
that fighting evil koreans must be cool.
How many people dies of violent death
in Ford's Fort Apache (at least the
last time I check being killed by a
gumshot was still seem as violent
doesn't matter the amount of blood
involved)? Ford's film (which is far
greater than Peckinpah's) may be a lot
less graphic, but it still is very
violent. That we did not seem Fort
Apache as violent, may says something
about how graphic violence on screen
has made us more receptive toward a
person being killed, but it also says
something about which film is trying
to make its violence more acceptable.
I'm not saying that violence must be
shown in a garaphic manner, but that
don1t showing it that way is not
necessarally superior. There's many
films whose violence annoys me, but
theres also many others whose decision
to let it offscreen (or making it look
more acceptable onscreen) annoys me
every bit as much.
Modern horror films have a tendency
toward a post humanist sensibility,
which I think is still no a crime.
John Carpenter and George Romero
obviously have some sort of pleasure
in destroying bodies in Dawn of the
Dead and The Thing (to get those
directors more violent films), but
they are very aware of that, and I
don't think the violence in those
films is seem any sort of positive light.
Filipe
__________________________________________________________________________
Acabe com aquelas janelinhas que pulam na sua tela.
AntiPop-up UOL - grtis!
http://antipopup.uol.com.br/
18655
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 1:53pm
Subject: Re: Re: TWO-LANE BLACKTOP
--- thebradstevens wrote:
>
> If you had heard numerous stories about Monte taking
> copious amounts
> of drugs, I'm sure you'd have no trouble discerning
> a 'narcotized
> mindset' in CHINA 9, LIBERTY 37 or THE SHOOTING.
>
WellI haven't. But considering that "The Shooting"
stars Jack Nicolson a "narcotized mindset" comes with
at least part of the territory.
__________________________________
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18656
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 2:14pm
Subject: Re: Re: Film violence [was: Now you know ...]
--- filipefurtado wrote:
> I must confess this whole discussion
> baffles me.
>
I'll second that baffling.
> If screen violence help to make people
> more receptive to war, why
> governements for a long time decided
> that the best way to show war on the
> media without raising public opnion
> against it was making it PG-rated?
Or more to the point, why did so many U.S. television
stations cancel network screenings of"Saving Private
Ryan" recently? Hey, it's got violence, it's by
Spielberg, and it's a 21-gun salute to the completely
"uncontroversial" World War II, isn't it?
But maybe other factors come into the picture now.
Maybe Spielberg's rendering of speicficities of
violence -- like the shot of a soldier reeling around
on the battlefield carrying his own severed arm) might
not be the recruiting poster for National Guard duty
(which is all supposed to be about "putting you
through college," doncha know) that the Bush
administration so desires to continue its campaign of
wholesale genocide in the Middle East.
>
> I know lots of horror buffs only like
> to see guts on screen, but is that the
> filmmakers fault? I'm quite sure lots
> of people are turned on by the
> violence on The Wild Bunch -- doesnt
> matter what were Peckinpah intentions
Recall the film's very first line -- and one of my
favorite in all of cinema: "I KNOW what you 'meant to
do,' it's what you DID that I don't like!"
> -- but many people certainly come out
> of Fuller's anti-war films believing
> that fighting evil koreans must be cool.
>
Something Fuller was quite concerned about. He called
the overwhelming majority of war films "recuriting
posters."
> How many people dies of violent death
> in Ford's Fort Apache (at least the
> last time I check being killed by a
> gumshot was still seem as violent
> doesn't matter the amount of blood
> involved)? Ford's film (which is far
> greater than Peckinpah's) may be a lot
> less graphic, but it still is very
> violent. That we did not seem Fort
> Apache as violent, may says something
> about how graphic violence on screen
> has made us more receptive toward a
> person being killed, but it also says
> something about which film is trying
> to make its violence more acceptable.
Surely Shirley Temple helps make violence more
accepatable, no?
> I'm not saying that violence must be
> shown in a garaphic manner, but that
> don1t showing it that way is not
> necessarally superior. There's many
> films whose violence annoys me, but
> theres also many others whose decision
> to let it offscreen (or making it look
> more acceptable onscreen) annoys me
> every bit as much.
>
And "Black Hawk Down," filled with violent images, is
foursquare in favor of American Imperialism.
> Modern horror films have a tendency
> toward a post humanist sensibility,
> which I think is still no a crime.
> John Carpenter and George Romero
> obviously have some sort of pleasure
> in destroying bodies in Dawn of the
> Dead and The Thing (to get those
> directors more violent films), but
> they are very aware of that, and I
> don't think the violence in those
> films is seem any sort of positive light.
>
Unlike the violence in the Italian "Cannibal" movies,
made "real" by their presentation as
films-within-films.
Not all violence and/or horror is the same. The
"Cannibal" films are awful. They're the last decadent
gasp of what used to be stylish and inventive Italian
horror film tradition -- Bava,Freda and Argento.
Remember that Bava's "Black Sunday" -- surely tame by
today's standards -- was banned for years in Great
Britain.
I treasure my copy of "Motion's" (a great British film
mag of the 60's) "Companion to Sadiam and Violence in
the Cinema" -- mostly written by Raymond Durgnat and
Ian Johnson, with it's sub-categories "Torture Deaf
Aide, By" and "Torture,Dentures By."
The director most frequently citied for the violent
content of his films was Fritz Lang -- who merited an
entry all by himself.
>
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18657
From: K. A. Westphal
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 2:21pm
Subject: Re: Film violence [was: Now you know ...]
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> Forgive me if I've told my favorite story about a Peckinpah movie
> already here, but I think it's apposite.
>
> Anyway, this audience was apparently unfamiliar with Aristotle, because
> rather than feeling catharsis during the final 15 minutes of "The Wild
> Bunch," they were orgasming in their pants, if not literally then all
> but. People were screaming with glee. It was a little bit like a happy
> version of the cafeteria riot in "Shock Corridor."
>
> There's a serious point here. Film aficionados such as the (ahem)
> carefully-screened members of an elite group such as a_film_by may well
> see a violent film and discern the Marxist subtext, the profound
> analysis of social class, the carefully constructed symbolic arguments
> against repression, the analysis of the superego and the id, or
> whatever. Just because "we" get all that -- perhaps because we think
> that way already -- doesn't mean that the potential muggers and
soldiers
> and moron future presidents of the world are going to get the same
> things. All that "Wild Bunch" audience apparently saw, and loved, was
> the spurting blood.
It seems
> equally reasonable to me to take the ending of "The Wild Bunch" as a
> protest against excessive violence, or as a paean to killing.
>
> Fred Camper
I've been having a spirited e-mail discussion as of late with another
film "aficionado" around my age about some films and this topic comes
up. Not THE WILD BUNCH specifically, but film violence in general.
My contention is that screen violence, from BONNIE AND CLYDE on, has
been vulgar, not because it's explicit but because it's so serious. In
a great film like Hawks' SCARFACE, the violence is constant and
gleeful, but those montages of random slaughter create a definite
nightmarish feel. What's more, as florid as the opening titles are,
the film tries to portray a socially relevant problem.
The Vietnam allegories aside, BONNIE AND CLYDE is a nostalgic take on
violence. We're supposed to feel sophisticated because we
"understand" the violence better than Bosley Crowther does. Even if
the film isn't immoral as Crowther charged, that doesn't necessarily
mean it's moral. Starting with BONNIE AND CLYDE, there are a whole
slew of films (inclusive of THE WILD BUNCH, TAXI DRIVER, and MYSTIC
RIVER) that attempt to elevate violence to a theme; instead of
presenting violence in electrifying but resonant terms, these films
are Serious and confuse "Violence in America is a sick, harmful,
*gasp* deadly phenomenon" with profundity of cause. I'd much rather
have the violence-as-art of RIO BRAVO than the violence-is-"Art" in
THE WILD BUNCH.
Incidentally, the other thing I really detest about THE WILD BUNCH is
that the elegiac tone lies on such a flimsy foundation. This isn't the
Closing of the West articulated by Ford in LIBERTY VALANCE. The Wild
Bunch aren't pioneer figures whose ways have become too crude for an
increasingly sophisticated society. In Peckinpah's film, the question
isn't, "What happens when your morality and methods become archiac?"
but instead--and this is a markedly more trivial premise--"What
happens when you find that them punk kids with their machine guns and
scorpion-poking sticks are more BAD ASS than you are?" The film tries
to bemoan the wholesale industrialization of violence, but it doesn't
work. The Bunch steal and kill so they can retire and hence have
"moral clarity," but the posse chasing them is doing their killing on
the government dime, so they've "sold out." If anything, THE WILD
BUNCH is about hobbyists feeling left out when their pasttime becomes
too professional.
And as for Fred's experience on 42nd Street, I don't think an audience
reaction can indicate the success of the filmmaker. The context is
clearly different, but a few months ago I went to a screening of CITY
GIRL and SUNRISE at a revival house in Palo Alto. The audience (and my
guest) seemed enchanted by SUNRISE periodically, but they also laughed
at the most lyrical moments, such as the lap dissolve between the
street scene and the field of flowers. Again, this audience wasn't
contemporary with the film, but I assumed if they were coming to see a
silent double feature they would be marginally sensitive to its aesthetic.
--Kyle Westphal
18658
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 3:47pm
Subject: Re: Film violence [was: Now you know ...] (useless information)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Damien Bona" wrote:
>
> Fred, when The Wild Bunch was released in 1969, Bosley Crowther was
> already gone from the Times, having been let go largely because of
> his clueless reaction to "Bonnie & Clyde" in '67. My recollection is
> that Vincent Canby put The Wild Bunch on his 10 Best List of 1969,
> his initial year as the paper's first stringer.
It was Canby who reviewed The Wild Bunch, calling it "so full of violence - of an intensity that can hardly be supported by the story - that it's going to prompt a lot of people who do not know the real effect of movie violence (as I do not) to write automatic condemnations of it," and concluding:
"I think I should add, when I came out of it, I didn't feel like shooting, knifing, or otherwise maiming any of Broadway's often hostile pedestrians."
http://movies2.nytimes.com/mem/movies/review.html?oref=login&title1=THE%20WILD%20BUNCH%20%28MOVIE%29%20&reviewer=By%20Vincent%20Canby%20&pdate=19690626
In a later story, by the way, he reported that four violent passages had been quietly eliminated from the film -- see http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/nytimes/results.html?st=advanced&QryTxt=peckinpah&By=&Title=&datetype=6&frommonth=03&fromday=01&fromyear=1969&tomonth=12&today=31&toyear=1969&restrict=articles&sortby=REVERSE_CHRON&x=43&y=13
> The Times back then had often provocative and high-spirited
> discussions of films in its Arts & Leisure section (who can forget
> Sarris and Kael and Simon attacking each other) so maybe it was an
> article by a non-Times person to which Peckinpah was responding.
It may have been Jonas Mekas, not Crowther, who decried (or at least described) the film's violence! He apparently wrote a piece beginning: ''The other evening I went to see "The Wild Bunch." On the screen, the blood was splashing, like never before. This side of the screen, there was the most boorish audience I had ever seen.'' The rest of the article (see URL above) wasn't available free.
The Aljean Harmetz piece listed there, "Man was a killer long before he served a god," must have been the Peckinpah interview ("the face is a roadmap of the high country" - ?) in which he gave his response.
18659
From: Robert Keser
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 4:24pm
Subject: Re: Re: Film violence [was: Now you know ...]
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "filipefurtado"
wrote:
...but many people certainly come out
> of Fuller's anti-war films believing
> that fighting evil koreans must be cool.
There's a very interesting article by A. Jay Adler called "The
Altered State of War" in the last BRIGHT LIGHTS at
http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/45/war.htm
Adler argues that the difference between a pro-war and anti-war film
is how the homefront is depicted. A pro-war film would idealize the
family and sweetheart at home (think BATTLE CRY), while an anti-war
film (like Pabst's WESTFRONT 1918 or ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT)
would show that the homefront is the *source* of the problem.
Fuller's combat films, though, mostly seem to ignore the homefront
in order to concentrate on the immediacy of the soldiers'
experience. One strategy he uses is to show the after-effects of the
violence, making the point that violence does not solve any problem
but creates new problems. In THE BIG RED ONE, the scene in the sort
of cavern-hospital with all the wounded soldiers brings this out,
serving to effectively dampen the bloodlust of even the least
evolved audiences. (Was this scene in the 1980 cut?)
--Robert Keser
18660
From: Fred Camper
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 4:55pm
Subject: Re: Re: Film violence [was: Now you know ...]
Damien Bona wrote:
>
> Fred, when The Wild Bunch was released in 1969, Bosley Crowther was
> already gone from the Times...
Thanks for this correction. I found that the Times has its old articles
online for sale and can't find any by Bosley on "The Wild Bunch." Canby
wrote on it several times, I think mostly favorably, so I'm not sure
what Times articles I'm remembering. I wasn't in the about of reading
Judith Crist back then, especially after reading (if I remember this
right!) her trashing of "Marnie." I'm sure I did see "The Wild Bunch" on
42nd Street with the reaction I mentioned, though.
Fred Camper
18661
From: Robert Keser
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 4:45pm
Subject: Re: Film violence [was: Now you know ...]
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
>...on New York's 42nd Street, whose ten movie theaters
> showed mostly second run and older Hollywood films...The theaters
> were very cheap, often dirty, and distinctly lower class. A
> friend of mine once saw a patron take a pee in his seat.
Hey, we had that in Chicago too! The Clark Theater (long gone now)
was Chicago's equivalent to NY's Thalia, with a new
double-bill every day or two. Since it was unique in staying open
twenty-four/seven, and located not far from the then run-down
district of winos and burlesque theaters, it naturally became a
haven for disreputable boozers sleeping it off. More than once,
especially on a Sunday morning, the audience found the movie
soundtrack augmented (or challenged!) by the natural sounds of
humanity relieving itself while the rest of us were trying to watch
REBECCA or LES ENFANTS DU PARADIS or SUNSET BOULEVARD.
--Robert Keser
18662
From: Fred Camper
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 5:02pm
Subject: Re: Re: Film violence [was: Now you know ...]
Oops, I only just saw Jess's post. Thanks to him for finding the actual
articles; I could only find how to purchase them! It's funny that I
conflated Canby and Crowther in memory, as now I would saw that Canby,
though he was hugely limited, was a significant improvement.
Fred Camper
18663
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 5:35pm
Subject: Re: Re: Film violence [was: Now you know ...]
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Robert Keser" wrote:
In THE BIG RED ONE, the scene in the sort
> of cavern-hospital with all the wounded soldiers brings this out,
> serving to effectively dampen the bloodlust of even the least
> evolved audiences. (Was this scene in the 1980 cut?)
>
> --Robert Keser
Barely.
18664
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 5:44pm
Subject: Re: Film violence [was: Now you know ...]
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> Oops, I only just saw Jess's post. Thanks to him for finding the
actual
> articles; I could only find how to purchase them! It's funny that
I
> conflated Canby and Crowther in memory, as now I would saw that
Canby,
> though he was hugely limited, was a significant improvement.
>
> Fred Camper
Canby thrashed "Heaven's Gate" savagely and was instrumental in
the film's hasty withdrawal from distribution. A slightly more
perceptive evaluation from the Times might have made a difference...
18665
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 6:02pm
Subject: Re: Fishing with John
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Kristian Andersen"
wrote:
> Has anyone else seen this TV series with John Lurie?
Sounds dreadful. Which network?
18666
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 6:22pm
Subject: Re: Re: Film violence [was: Now you know ...]
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
> Canby thrashed "Heaven's Gate" savagely and was
> instrumental in
> the film's hasty withdrawal from distribution. A
> slightly more
> perceptive evaluation from the Times might have made
> a difference...
>
I'm not so sure about that. UA moved to withdraw and
recut "Heaven's Gate" with lightening speed after that
review came out, which suggests that misgivings re
Cimino's "Foolish Wives" was well under way.
The review was incredibly funny -- and one of my
all-time favorites.
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18667
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 6:50pm
Subject: Re: Film violence [was: Now you know ...]
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
"I'm sure I did see 'The Wild Bunch' on 42nd Street with the reaction
I mentioned, though."
I saw THE WILD BUNCH at the Pix Theatre in Hollywood on opening
weekend and someone in the mostly youthful audience yelled "Bitchin!"
at the climatic shoot out. The Pix attracted a mixed audience. And
since someone wondered whether STRAW DOGS could inspire such a
response the answer is yes. I saw it at the Egyptian Theatre also in
Hollywood shortly after its release and when a charcter gets caught
in the man-trap an audience member yelled out "Right on!" The
Egyptian was patronized by a solid middle class audience in those
days. Of course in both cases it was one voice among hundreds.
I remember reading a book of Dwight Macdonald's film crictism shortly
after seeing STRAW DOGS and he had an essay lamenting the trend
toward nihilism exlemplified by movies as diverse as PSYCHO and
YOJIMBO, and I woindered what he'd make of movie violence 10 or 12
years on.
Japan has a long history of violent entertainment starting with
Kabuki in the 17th century. Some plays were popular for grand
guignol-like effects. Explicit violence in Japanese movies didn't
appear until the 1950s as far as I can tell, but there's a 1935
version of DAIBOSATSU TOGE/SWORD OF DOOM that I haven't seen that was
likenened to the Hawks SCARFACE for its violence. Any consideration
of the effects of violent entertainment on audiences would benefit
from cross-cultural comparisons.
Richard
18668
From: Damien Bona
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 7:03pm
Subject: Re: Film violence [was: Now you know ...]
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
>
> I read all this and then went off to see it. It had already been in
> release for a while, but I could see it on New York's 42nd Street,
whose
> ten movie theaters showed mostly second run and older Hollywood
films.
> It was the true Cinematheque for many of us, or at least one of
them. I
> saw "Red River," "The Searchers," "Rio Bravo," and many other
iconic
> masterpieces there for the first time. The theaters were very
cheap,
> often dirty, and distinctly lower class. A friend of mine once saw
a
> patron take a pee in his seat. They kept the lights up partway so
that
> nothing too bad would happen. More than once I would hear a woman
> suddenly yell out something like, "Take your fingers out of there."
The
> audience, in other words, was, er, very proletatrian.
>
Fred, you'll be glad to hear that, despite how antiseptic and tourist-
oriented Times Square has become, the spirit of the old 42nd Street
still lives on, albeit in a minor key. Last week I saw "Finding
Neverland" (of all things) at the Empire on 42nd Street. There was
a gentleman sitting all the way back in the last row, and anytime
someone climbed the steps in his direction he began shouting, "Back
it up ! Back it up! Don't come no farther." And in a scene in the
movie when one of the kids stands up to grandmother Julie Christie,
he was besides him with glee, yelling, "Yeah! Yeah! Give it to
granny! Give it to her!"
(Gee, it's disconcering to write the phrase "grandmother Julie
Christie.")
18669
From: Travis Miles
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 7:44pm
Subject: Re: Re: Film violence
At Monday night's "Collateral with Michael Mann" event in New York, there
were a few instances of spontaneous applause for extreme violence (i.e. the
"yo homie" scene in an alleyway where Tom Cruise caps the guys who stole his
briefcase) which led me to wonder what M. Mann was feeling when he heard
that (it made me feel creepy). There is clearly a trend of the pleasure of
retribution in his films, but it's usually balanced with demonstrations of
the horrific and arbitrary nature of violence, and the retribution is often
seen to be futile. Anyone who'd recruit Andy McNab to choreograph a
firefight must have some stake in the aesthetics of violence, however.
On 12/8/04 1:50 PM, "Richard Modiano" wrote:
>
when a charcter gets caught
> in the man-trap an audience member yelled out "Right on!"
18670
From: Ruy Gardnier
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 7:52pm
Subject: Re: Re: Film violence [was: Now you know ...]
Kyle,
> My contention is that screen violence, from BONNIE AND CLYDE on, has
> been vulgar, not because it's explicit but because it's so serious. In
> a great film like Hawks' SCARFACE, the violence is constant and
> gleeful, but those montages of random slaughter create a definite
> nightmarish feel. What's more, as florid as the opening titles are,
> the film tries to portray a socially relevant problem.
It's the nightmarish feel that makes the difference? I don't think so. One
of the things that you have to point out in this "epistemological shift" on
the use of violence on movies is the fact that reality calls. News,
television, magazines, and yes, big cities getting bigger, and violence
increasing, demand a certain approach on violence. It is possible to act
Pollyana, as certains do, and complain about the "use of violence"
(indiscriminate as that, not the use but the expression), but I think it
responds to a worldview that some prefer NOT to see, but that is there.
There's even an american mainstream film released this very year that's
about it: it is called The Village, but people apparently haven't digged
enough to find more than bad narrative smartness or badly plotted
point-of-view changes.
> mean it's moral. Starting with BONNIE AND CLYDE, there are a whole
> slew of films (inclusive of THE WILD BUNCH, TAXI DRIVER, and MYSTIC
> RIVER) that attempt to elevate violence to a theme; instead of
> presenting violence in electrifying but resonant terms, these films
> are Serious and confuse "Violence in America is a sick, harmful,
> *gasp* deadly phenomenon" with profundity of cause.
If you pick Mystic River together with Taxi Driver or The Wild Bunch, I
don't think you'll get anything out of it. It should be regarded alongside
Gangs of New York or, err, The Village, as a vision on violence that is
contemporary to GWB attacking other countries. The main concern of these
films is to say that violence is rooted on the grounds of society, and if
you get judgmental - if you say violence is bad or violence is good - you
simply won't get the depth that these films beg you to reach. *Sick* is
already a moral judgment that these three films don't make.
> increasingly sophisticated society. In Peckinpah's film, the question
> isn't, "What happens when your morality and methods become archiac?"
> but instead--and this is a markedly more trivial premise--"What
> happens when you find that them punk kids with their machine guns and
> scorpion-poking sticks are more BAD ASS than you are?"
It has some of that, indeed, but it's not that easy.
> work. The Bunch steal and kill so they can retire and hence have
> "moral clarity," but the posse chasing them is doing their killing on
> the government dime, so they've "sold out." If anything, THE WILD
> BUNCH is about hobbyists feeling left out when their pasttime becomes
> too professional.
If you have a general idea about society and about the role of art in
society, a role of morally building and raising spectators with role models
or positive heroes, that is alright with you. Comes to my mind the concern
you have with Hawks' Scarface "portray(ing) a socially relevant problem" in
order to justify the violence shown. I, for myself, think that educating is
exposing, and sometimes unmercifully (as the most violent reply in all movie
history, the actor who plays the filmmaker destroying the peasant's dream of
social justice by saying that the the couple who own two houses can live in
one and rent another in Kiarostami's Through the Olive Trees). That's a
whole different account in "education", which obliges to see through morals,
whereas most education is made to set standards of morals. If you agree with
this other concept of education, the moralizing and somewhat Pollyanna one,
you'll be at least worthblind to the work of countless moviemakers who do
not judge, but show (normative vs. descriptive).
18671
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 7:55pm
Subject: Re: PSYCHO/AVIATOR
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
"I didn't spot it, but according to one of the technicians there's a
frame of skeleton superimposed on Hughes when he's being irradiated
by the flashbulbs and newsreel lights at the Senate hearing."
It's more than 1 frame and occurs when Hughes is seated at the table
and is illuminated by a flash bulb which produces an x-ray-like
effect showing head to sternum. On reconsideration, it's more like a
science fiction effect than the PSYCHO skull.
Richard
18672
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 8:06pm
Subject: Re: Film violence [was: Now you know ...]
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Damien Bona"
wrote:
> (Gee, it's disconcering to write the phrase "grandmother Julie
> Christie.")
All good things must come to an end.
18673
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 8:13pm
Subject: Re: Re: Film violence [was: Now you know ...]
Not if I have anything to say about it!
She's as beautiful as ever.
--- hotlove666 wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Damien Bona"
>
> wrote:
>
> > (Gee, it's disconcering to write the phrase
> "grandmother Julie
> > Christie.")
>
> All good things must come to an end.
>
>
>
>
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18674
From: filipefurtado
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 8:20pm
Subject: Re: Re: Film violence [was: Now you know ...]
> >
>
> Unlike the violence in the Italian
"Cannibal" movies,
> made "real" by their presentation as
> films-within-films.
>
> Not all violence and/or horror is
the same. The
> "Cannibal" films are awful. They're
the last decadent
> gasp of what used to be stylish and
inventive Italian
> horror film tradition -- Bava,Freda
and Argento.
I almost mention the italians.
Deodato's Canibal Holocaust is one of
the few films from which I walked out.
But I also a big fan of Bava and
Argento whose films content isn't all
that less violent than Deodato's. The
difference is approach, simply
sadistic in Deodato's and as a door to
an aesthetic experiment in Argento/Bava.
Filipe
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18675
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 8:18pm
Subject: Re: Film violence [was: Now you know ...]
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Ruy Gardnier"
wrote:
> Kyle,
>
> There's even an american mainstream film released this very year
that's
> about it: it is called The Village, but people apparently haven't
digged
> enough to find more than bad narrative smartness or badly plotted
> point-of-view changes.
THE VILLAGE is about Bush's use of fear to stay in power.
Violence: Where isn't it? "Normal" social relations - people sleeping
in the streets while Ken Lay walks off with a stolen fortune - are
violent, and are maintained by (among other things) the threat of
violence. The moral interdiction of violence in the lynch-mob scene
in Young Mr. Lincoln has two fallback arguments: the threat of
violence, and the "castrating stare" of Lincoln, which backs the
threat up up symbolically.
As we watch Iraq turn into Hell on Earth, we can meditate on the
virtues of the violence that any relatively peaceful society is based
on (in this case, Sadaam's), and on the cost of using violence to
overturn a violent order: revolution, which is the ultimate target of
Lincoln's interdiction. I suppose it comes down to whether you think
a non-violent order could exist after the bloodletting.
In any event, we are living in a society built by violence,
maintained by violence, and dependent on violence against other
nations and peoples to ensure its survival. You can't talk about
movie violence apart from that context.
18676
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 8:20pm
Subject: Re: PSYCHO/AVIATOR
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
wrote:
>
>
> It's more than 1 frame and occurs when Hughes is seated at the
table
> and is illuminated by a flash bulb which produces an x-ray-like
> effect showing head to sternum. On reconsideration, it's more like
a
> science fiction effect than the PSYCHO skull.
>
> Richard
It is, but your first instinct was right: Hughes IS (among other
things) Norman Bates.
18677
From: Gabe Klinger
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 8:27pm
Subject: Re: Fishing with John
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Kristian Andersen"
> wrote:
> > Has anyone else seen this TV series with John Lurie?
>
> Sounds dreadful. Which network?
They were on IFC and later on a Criterion DVD.
I don't think they suck. In fact, some episodes I have watched
three or four times (the two-part Dennis Hopper one in Malaysia
is particularly good).
It should be noted that this is not a fake fishing show. It's as real
as any other nature show, with as many staged moments as
documentary ones. Mostly, though, it's about Lurie's inability to
make things exciting for his cranky and/or eccentric guests, who
are surrogates for the audience. For example, in the Willem
Dafoe episode they go ice fishing but never catch anything. At the
end, both of them freeze to death; however, before we get there,
we see them endure the winter, build a shack from scratch,
attempt to beat cabin fever, etc.. In order for us to believe that all
of us this happened (before the outlandish ending, anyway),
Lurie also has to convince us that his interest in ice fishing is
genuine -- which he does. That they didn't catch any fish is not
staged; it's the truth. And the rest is a result of that. Same in the
Jim Jarmusch episode, where they wait idly for hours and hours
before catching a shark.
Simply, whlie nothing is happening, Lurie begins to invent. Not
only are these the funny moments ("The men are covered with
sores and boners"), but they offer a solution to the problem of
most nature shows, which usually bog down the viewer with the
process instead of focusing on the more human aspects of the
journey.
There's also a lot of great exotic scenery. I found the Jamaica
episode, with Tom Waits, very beautiful...
Gabe
18678
From: Kristian Andersen
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 8:54pm
Subject: re: Fishing with John
Message: 14
Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 18:02:29 -0000
From: "hotlove666"
Subject: Re: Fishing with John
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Kristian Andersen"
wrote:
> Has anyone else seen this TV series with John Lurie?
Sounds dreadful. Which network?
- Its actually quiete old (1991). I think IFC might have aired it back
then. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139776/
---
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Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
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18679
From: filipefurtado
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 9:01pm
Subject: Re: Crowther/Canby/Cimino [was: Film violence]
I've read just around a dozen reviews
by both men, but Canby struck me as no
more than a update version of
Crowther, with a larger tolerance to a
more modern aesthetics. Which is one
way of saying Canby is Crowther who
can stomachs Bonnie & Clyde.
I remember Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote
somewhere that Canby's pan of
Identification of a Woman made the
film lost its american distributor and
damage Antonioni's career. A less
negative review by him wouldn't avoid
Heaven's Gate to bomb, but it may have
help the film be received in a less
negative light (and so maybe doesn't
bomb as harder). Canby's review
certainly was influential, Roger Ebert
very dumb review of the film
(available at his web site) mentions
it which is very rare in Ebert's work.
__________________________________________________________________________
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18680
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 9:17pm
Subject: Re: Crowther/Canby/Cimino [was: Film violence]
--- filipefurtado wrote:
> I've read just around a dozen reviews
> by both men, but Canby struck me as no
> more than a update version of
> Crowther, with a larger tolerance to a
> more modern aesthetics. Which is one
> way of saying Canby is Crowther who
> can stomachs Bonnie & Clyde.
>
I disagree. Crowther was upset about the actual
content of "Bonnie and Clyde" -- its violence and
seeming flipness towards same.
Canby,by contrast, spend his entire review making
sport of Cimino's pretensions. I can't remember the
line exactly but he said that it was as if Cimino had
sold his soul to the devil to win the Oscar for "The
Deer Hunter" and now with "Heaven's Gate" Old Nick had
come around to collect.
Look, I like a big "film maudit" blowout as much as
the next aesthete as my devotion to "One From the
Heart," and "Les Amants du Pont-Neuf" will attest. But
"Heaven's Gate," decorative as it often is, is a mess.
> I remember Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote
> somewhere that Canby's pan of
> Identification of a Woman made the
> film lost its american distributor and
> damage Antonioni's career.
True. The "prestige" of the NYT was such that a number
of moviegoers who had bought tickets to the New York
Film Festival screening of the Antonioni returned them
rather than see it for themselves because the Times
didn't like it. But a foreign film is different from a
Hollywood superproduction.
A less
> negative review by him wouldn't avoid
> Heaven's Gate to bomb, but it may have
> help the film be received in a less
> negative light (and so maybe doesn't
> bomb as harder). Canby's review
> certainly was influential, Roger Ebert
> very dumb review of the film
> (available at his web site) mentions
> it which is very rare in Ebert's work.
>
The fact that we're still talking about it today shows
the film found it's own "water level."
Doubt that "Yesr of the Dragon," "The Sicilian,"
"Desperate Hours" or "Sun Chaser" will be able to do
the same.
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18681
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 9:41pm
Subject: Re: Crowther/Canby/Cimino [was: Film violence]
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
>
> Canby,by contrast, spend his entire review making
> sport of Cimino's pretensions. I can't remember the
> line exactly but he said that it was as if Cimino had
> sold his soul to the devil to win the Oscar for "The
> Deer Hunter" and now with "Heaven's Gate" Old Nick had
> come around to collect.
>
Actually, all the daily reviewers panned the film with the same
kind of arguments ("pretentious", "incoherent" etc...)and in the
same derisive fashion. Same thing with the weeklies. Denby
patronizingly advised Cimino to stop pretending he was an artist,
and suggested a number of deletions that amounted to practically
everything that makes the film original and personal. Kael titled
her piece "Poses" etc...
"Heaven's Gate" is a flawed film, but a fascinating one, and one
that demands and deserves attention. All the critics complained that
the plot didn't make sense, but if they had just paid attention (or
had gone to the trouble of watching the film a second time, as I did
at the time)they would have found that most of the obscurities could
be explained, and that most of what appeared to them gratuitous
actually had a reason for being.
As far as I can remember there was no press screenings and the
critics saw the film the day it opened, leaving them no time for
reflexion and subjecting them to the influence of a restive, bored
audience. Of course the film might have fared as poorly if the
critics had seen the film in advance AND done their job seriously,
but there is no doubt that the overwhelmingly negative response of
the press played a part in the scuttling of the film by UA.
JPC
>
>
>
> __________________________________
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18682
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 9:48pm
Subject: Re: Re: Crowther/Canby/Cimino [was: Film violence]
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
> "Heaven's Gate" is a flawed film, but a
> fascinating one, and one
> that demands and deserves attention.
The same can be said of "Party Girl"
All the critics
> complained that
> the plot didn't make sense, but if they had just
> paid attention (or
> had gone to the trouble of watching the film a
> second time, as I did
> at the time)they would have found that most of the
> obscurities could
> be explained, and that most of what appeared to them
> gratuitous
> actually had a reason for being.
Actually I never found the film to be obscure at all.
It's got a tiny amount of plot, a scooch more of
character (lingering close-ups of Kristofferson and
Huppert) and a ton and a half of atmosphere trying to
passitself off as mise en scene.
>
> As far as I can remember there was no press
> screenings and the
> critics saw the film the day it opened, leaving them
> no time for
> reflexion and subjecting them to the influence of a
> restive, bored
> audience.
The absence of a press screening is a sure sign that
film is being dumped because the studio has ost faith
in it.
Of course the film might have fared as
> poorly if the
> critics had seen the film in advance AND done their
> job seriously,
> but there is no doubt that the overwhelmingly
> negative response of
> the press played a part in the scuttling of the
> film by UA.
>
Plus poor advance sales. It was a quasi-roadshow you
know. "Hard tickets" were made available. Few buyers.
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18683
From: thebradstevens
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 10:02pm
Subject: Re: Crowther/Canby/Cimino [was: Film violence]
"All the critics complained that the plot didn't make sense"
From what I recall, about half the critics complained that the plot
didn't make any sense. The other half complained that the plot was
too simple. In other words, they all knew that they were supposed to
complain about something, but had no idea what it was.
18684
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 10:34pm
Subject: Re: film teaching
> "Hey, I really remember your class, it was great. I really
liked ... that
> old black and white film, you know."
>
> The rub: in my class, she had seen and studied approximately
several hundred
> 'old black and white films' (and written detailed papers on
probably half a
> dozen of them), and was now no closer to naming a single one of
them !!!!
>
> Adrian (teacher of amnesia)
As the immortal Bard would say, "Ay, there's the rub."
Sorry, Adrian, could not resist it!
Tony Williams
18685
From:
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 6:56pm
Subject: Re: Film violence
Some more thoughts:
1) I have clearly failed to establish good evidence that film violence causes
pro-war attitudes, or right wing politics. My apologies to the members of the
list. It's a suggestion worth investigating, but one which needs the
resources of psychologists or political scientists. This idea is definitely Not
Proven. And I should not go off with half-baked ideas.
2) There are now thousands of commercial films, made in the last 35 years,
whose main subjects seems to be violence. Almost none of these are on the
recommended movie lists of a_film_by members in the Files section of a_film_by, or
on their web sites, or in their published critical writings.
If a_film_by members are not dismissive of violent films in general, why are
so few "highly violent" films on their lists of recommended films?
Statistically speaking, the odds that pure chance could cause their absense is at least
tens of millions to one.
3) An example: "Pirates of the Caribbean". This was one of the most popular
and big box office films of the last few years. It mainly consists of a mix of
violence (sword fights, etc) and special effects - perhaps 70% of its running
time. Many "ordinary moviegoers" said it was one of the best films they had
ever seen. Hardly anyone at a_film_by regards it as a Major Film. Why?
I know why I do not like it. Here is a review:
"This film consists almost entirely of violence, augmented by special
effects. I rarely think that film violence has any artistic, intellectual, moral or
political point. So the film seems largely devoid of any worthwhile
accomplishment to me. It's a turkey."
This review gives aesthetic reasons for my dismissal of this film.
What are the aesthetic reasons for its being ignored by other a_film_by-ers?
Or the thousands and thousands of films like it?
This is a challenge to all of you!
4) Although I cannot prove it, I would not be surprized that the violence in
"Pirates" somehow reflects the violence in the War on Iraq, as several posters
suggest. Even if this is true, does that mean I have to sit there for two
hours and watch this movie? Or treat it as Essential Cinema?
The violence in "Fahrenheit 9/11" is linked to the Iraq War and George Bush.
The violence in "Pirates" is not linked to anything. I liked Michael Moore's
film, but do not see what I am learning from "Pirates", or most other violent
films.
5) My goal is not to censor film violence. I am just trying to get some
aesthetic principles out on the table, so they can be examined explicitly, to see
if they are correct or false.
Mike Grost
18686
From: Peter Henne
Date: Thu Dec 9, 2004 0:44am
Subject: Re: Re: Film violence [was: Now you know ...]
Perhaps a moral test of screen violence is whether or not the scene or movie prevents you from feeling violent. "Psycho" and "The Godfather" films make me feel violent, and fuel personal fantasies of violence in me. I avoid seeing them now, and if you're wondering, I've seen them enough times to make up my mind. "The Wild Bunch," I'm honestly not so sure. But "Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid" definitely makes me feel the violence I watch is grim and undesirable. The film leaves me cringing at gunfights instead of thrilled by them. The Romero trilogy likewise leaves me recoiling from violence and not wanting to participate in it, and I even feel hesitant about wanting to pick off zombies (which I guess is one thing Pt. 3 wants to accomplish). These films don't deliver messages about violence but bring you to feel something about violence which is negative. I would say they engender moral clarity. Theory can proceed by collecting together samples of violent films which invoke repulsion,
and finding what might be their aesthetic commonalities regarding onscreen violence. I'm sure that distanciation will be one of the factors, but exactly what distanciation is for movie violence is hard to say.
To the obvious objection that viewers will disagree on which violence repulses them, viewers will always disagree on disputable aspects of any film, but that doesn't stop theory from going on, now does it?
Ruy Gardnier wrote:
Kyle,
> My contention is that screen violence, from BONNIE AND CLYDE on, has
> been vulgar, not because it's explicit but because it's so serious. In
> a great film like Hawks' SCARFACE, the violence is constant and
> gleeful, but those montages of random slaughter create a definite
> nightmarish feel. What's more, as florid as the opening titles are,
> the film tries to portray a socially relevant problem.
It's the nightmarish feel that makes the difference? I don't think so. One
of the things that you have to point out in this "epistemological shift" on
the use of violence on movies is the fact that reality calls. News,
television, magazines, and yes, big cities getting bigger, and violence
increasing, demand a certain approach on violence.
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18687
From: thebradstevens
Date: Thu Dec 9, 2004 0:48am
Subject: Re: Film violence
"I have clearly failed to establish good evidence that film violence
causes pro-war attitudes, or right wing politics."
Wouldn't pro-war or right wing films (whether violent or not) be more
likely to 'cause' pro-war or right wing attitudes?
"There are now thousands of commercial films, made in the last 35
years, whose main subjects seems to be violence. Almost none of these
are on the recommended movie lists of a_film_by members in the Files
section of a_film_by, or on their web sites, or in their published
critical writings."
There must be thousands of non-violent films that are also not on
those lists.
AS for members of this group not writing about films whose 'main
subjects seem to be violence' (a category which would include NIGHT
AND FOG, but not TRIUMPH OF THE WILL), I've spent six years writing a
book about Abel Ferrara, director of THE DRILLER KILLER, MS.45 and
KING OF NEW YORK. Tony Williams has written extensively about the
American horror film. Adrian Martin has written a book about ONCE
UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. Jonathan Rosenbaum co-authored a book
about 'Midnight Movies'.
"An example: "Pirates of the Caribbean". This was one of the most
popular and big box office films of the last few years...What are the
aesthetic reasons for its being ignored by other a_film_by-ers?"
That's just silly. I'd be amazed to find that many members of this
group had even seen PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN. Nothing about it
sounded promising. It's not by a director that anyone I know admires.
I certainly have no intention of seeing this, and not because it's
likely to be violent (frankly, this is the first I've heard about
that aspect of the film), but because it's likely to be pap.
Now Tobe Hooper's THE TOOLBOX MURDERS...that I'm looking forward to
seeing!
18688
From: thebradstevens
Date: Thu Dec 9, 2004 1:01am
Subject: Re: Film violence [was: Now you know ...]
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Peter Henne wrote:
> Perhaps a moral test of screen violence is whether or not the scene
or movie prevents you from feeling violent. "Psycho" and "The
Godfather" films make me feel violent, and fuel personal fantasies of
violence in me. I avoid seeing them now, and if you're wondering,
I've seen them enough times to make up my mind. "The Wild Bunch," I'm
honestly not so sure. But "Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid" definitely
makes me feel the violence I watch is grim and undesirable. The film
leaves me cringing at gunfights instead of thrilled by them. The
Romero trilogy likewise leaves me recoiling from violence and not
wanting to participate in it, and I even feel hesitant about wanting
to pick off zombies (which I guess is one thing Pt. 3 wants to
accomplish). These films don't deliver messages about violence but
bring you to feel something about violence which is negative. I would
say they engender moral clarity. Theory can proceed by collecting
together samples of violent films which invoke repulsion,
> and finding what might be their aesthetic commonalities regarding
onscreen violence. I'm sure that distanciation will be one of the
factors, but exactly what distanciation is for movie violence is hard
to say.
I think it's important not to imply that there is any particular
value to films which attempt to make audiences 'reject' violence by
simply subjecting them to violent scenes. If that were the case,
SOLDIER BLUE would be one of the greatest films ever made!
Peckinpah's films certainly don't work this way, though they are
intended as critiques of the violent impulses in their audiences. In
THE WILD BUNCH and STRAW DOGS, the viewer is supposed to 'enjoy' the
violence - in the former film because the violence is presented as a
spectacle, in the latter because we are asked to feel satisfaction at
the sight of revenge being meted out to characters whom we have come
to despise. But no one who has seen these films will imagine that
this 'enjoyment' is simple or straight-forward. Rather, it is
accompanied by a sense of disturbance.
Romero's Living Dead trilogy works in quite a different way. Romero
has no interest in asking his audience to reject violence. Indeed,
the violence in DAWN OF THE DEAD has a healthy, slapstick quality -
the extremely violent eradication of the zombies, as well as the
zombies' gory massacre of the bikers, is actually a celebration of
the destruction of a 'living dead' consumer culture (the zombies) and
a cult of brutal masculinity (the bikers) - precisely those aspects
of our culture which must be eliminated before the non-oppressive,
interracial male/female relationship of the climax can come into
existence.
18689
From:
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 8:05pm
Subject: Re: Re: Film violence
In a message dated 12/8/04 5:59:00 PM, MG4273@a... writes:
> If a_film_by members are not dismissive of violent films in general, why
> are
> so few "highly violent" films on their lists of recommended films?
>
Hey, I HIGHLY recommended at least two, BRING ME THE HEAD and BROTHER. Start
with those if you haven't seen them already, Mike, and then get back to me.
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
18690
From:
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 8:33pm
Subject: Re: Re: Film violence
Ah yes, Brad! I forgot about all these films. Ok now we're getting somewhere.
So in addition to BRING ME THE HEAD and BROTHER, Mike, here's a list of
extremely violent post-1970 films that at least I highly recommend:
THE DRILLER KILLER - Absolutely adored this one after years of ignoring it on
video shelves because I mistook it for an paint-by-numbers slasher flick!
MS.45
KING OF NEW YORK
ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA
PINK FLAMINGOS
FEMALE TROUBLE
DESPERATE LIVING
DAWN OF THE DEAD
DAY OF THE DEAD
BLACK BOX (Beth B and Scott B)
SUBMIT TO ME NOW (Richard Kern - how could I have forgotten one of my
all-time faves?!?!?)
YOU KILLED ME FIRST
BEGOTTEN
SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE
CASINO
GOODFELLAS
FIREWORKS (Kitano's)
SHOGUN ASSASSIN
And for the smaller screen, there's always THE SOPRANOS (Does SIX FEET UNDER
count? If so, watch away.)
And some here would recommend Kiyoshi Kurosawa's CURE but I found it absurdly
overpraised.
So there ya go, Mike. That should hold ya for a while.
And for whatever it's worth, I absolutely loathed PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN
but mine is a minority opinion amongst my non-crit friends.
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
18691
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu Dec 9, 2004 2:26am
Subject: Re: Crowther/Canby/Cimino [was: Film violence]
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> Of course the film might have fared as
> > poorly if the
> > critics had seen the film in advance AND done their
> > job seriously,
> > but there is no doubt that the overwhelmingly
> > negative response of
> > the press played a part in the scuttling of the
> > film by UA.
> >
>
> Plus poor advance sales. It was a quasi-roadshow you
> know. "Hard tickets" were made available. Few buyers.
>
>
> David, I paid the usual admission price (can't remember how
much) on the opening day in New York (first afternoon show. At night
was the big premiere). I still have the stub somewhere. Saw it
again the next day, same thing. So I don't really know what you're
talking about.
Millions of people dislike the film, you're one of them and I
can't argue with you. I'm sure that if you had been the Times critic
at the time, you would have found tons of more intelligent things to
say about it, even though against it, than Canby, Kael, Denby and
others put together. And that was pretty much my point. No one
reviwed the film at any serious level.
JPC
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
18692
From: peterhenne
Date: Thu Dec 9, 2004 2:25am
Subject: Re: Film violence [was: Now you know ...]
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
>
>
>
>
> I think it's important not to imply that there is any particular
> value to films which attempt to make audiences 'reject' violence
by
> simply subjecting them to violent scenes. If that were the case,
> SOLDIER BLUE would be one of the greatest films ever made!
It's not so simple as rejection of violence by subjection or
overkill, and in fact those tactics only chase the tail. "Pat
Garrett" has less extreme violence than "Wild Bunch" but I
think "Pat Garrett" is more successful at bringing viewers to feel
disgust (and not just shock) at the killings. When I watch "Pat
Garrett," I simply want to put violence aside. Ideally it's a matter
of the filmmaker equiping the audience with tools to view violence
morally.
>
> Peckinpah's films certainly don't work this way, though they are
> intended as critiques of the violent impulses in their audiences.
I've never felt that "Straw Dogs" succeeded as anything other than
Grand Guignol. Peckinpah managed to make us feel divided about the
characters in the film but that's about all the credit I can give
him. He failed as a moralist, in the sense that an artist may
propose a quandary and call upon us to exercise our moral
sensibilities. The Dustin Hoffman character is a little man who
fails to keep the high ground--end of story. There is no interesting
quandary for me. You could say his character is mousy to the point
that he is ill-prepared for life, not simply fending off thugs and
rapists. Under threat he gets by on his cleverness for a while which
of course runs out. But I do think Peckinpah wishes to have a moral
correspondence generally. As for "The Wild Bunch," I'm not
convinced that we are drawn to feel exactly pleasure when watching
the violence. It is excitement and passion, but when I examine my
feelings I don't come up with glee, joy or something like that
during the slaughter.
When you say "critique," you have agreed with me on an intellectual
level. But I am looking at this phenomenologically. What happens to
me when I watch the film? This is why I have stressed the feeling of
violence in the viewer, rather than the filmmaker's intention to
critique.
>
> Romero's Living Dead trilogy works in quite a different way.
I don't think your political interpretation fits very well with "Day
of the Dead." The zombies CAN'T be killed off, so another way for
humanity to survive has to be found. Surprise, surprise, we might
try living with them and breaking down differences....
18693
From: filipefurtado
Date: Thu Dec 9, 2004 2:32am
Subject: Re: Re: Film violence [was: Now you know ...]
> If a_film_by members are not
dismissive of violent films in
general, why are
> so few "highly violent" films on
their lists of recommended films?
> Statistically speaking, the odds
that pure chance could cause their
absense is at least
> tens of millions to one.
Well, that's not true. There's many
violent films in those lists.
As for writing about violent films, I
wroet an essay on William Friedkin's
To Live and Die in LA last month, and
I'm finishing one on Robert Aldrich's
Grissom Gang right now.
> 3) An example: "Pirates of the
Caribbean". This was one of the most
popular
> and big box office films of the last
few years.
Yes it was popular, but it got mostly
negative reviews ("Depp is amusing,
the film is a mess" was the tone of
most of them) and I don't have many
cinephiles fans that liked it. But the
most repulsive violent scene I saw
last year was in the other Jerry
Bruckheimer production released that
summer (Bad Boys 2) and it was
completly non-graphic PG-13
enterteriment: a chase scene that ends
destroying a whole Havana slum, made
of close ups of the stars (Will Smith
and Martin Lawrence) having a great
time and very distant shots of a car
destroying some houses without a human
being in sight. It would be improved
by showing some graphic mayhem, but
then it would probably accused of
being too violent. BTW, Bad Boys 2 was
a perfect recruiting film for Iraq war.
Filipe
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18694
From: filipefurtado
Date: Thu Dec 9, 2004 2:40am
Subject: Re: Re: Film violence
>
> Now Tobe Hooper's THE TOOLBOX
MURDERS...that I'm looking forward to
> seeing!
Haven't it come out on UK yet? It was
released straight to video here almost
a year ago. My brother wrote a
positive review of it to Contracampo.
I've seen only acouple of scenes,
which looked above average for Hooper
(who I really doesn't care to).
Filipe
>
>
>
>
>
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18695
From:
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 9:43pm
Subject: Re: Film Lists (was: Film violence)
The reference is to the long lists of "The Best Films of All Time", in the
Files section of a_film_by, or on Dan Sallitt's web site, or in Jonathan
Rosenbaum's print book "Essential Cinema". These tell in complete detail which films
the viewer actually likes as a whole in film history.
So far, I have not found a source for a Brad Stevens list, or a Adrian Martin
list. I would be eager to read such a list. I am learning SO much from the
lists actually seen so far. They are very, very interesting, and filled with
films I have never seen, but am eagerly tracking down. I have a LOT to learn
about film history.
Really violent films tend to be rare on these lists. "Bonnie and Clyde", "The
Wild Bunch", "A Clockwork Orange", "Blade Runner", "The Godfather",
"Apocalypse Now", and some Tarantino show up - but most films are more likely to be
like "La Promesse" or Kiarostami...
Mike Grost
18696
From: filipefurtado
Date: Thu Dec 9, 2004 3:06am
Subject: Re: Re: Film Lists (was: Film violence)
>or on Dan Sallitt's web site
Well, #2 on Dan's 1989 is Alan
Clarke's Elephant which is a 40-minute
film made of a series of violent
killings. Just to give an example. And
it's far from the only violent film in
Dan's list.
Filipe
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18697
From:
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 10:13pm
Subject: Re: Re: Film Lists (was: Film violence)
Mike Grost wrote:
>The reference is to the long lists of "The Best Films of All Time", in
>the
>Files section of a_film_by
Just a side note about this: as editor/compiler of The Top 10 File on
a_film_by, I should mention that any member who hasn't submitted lists for the
project, and wishes to do so, should email me. I'm glad people are finding the file
useful and illuminating. Due to work, I'm several months behind in updating
it, but a comprehensive update should come by the new year.
I suppose I'm a bit on the fence in this (quite interesting) discussion. I
am a fan of Romero and Ferrara and many of the other names being mentioned, but
I often find myself thinking that cinema doesn't gain a whole lot by
including needlessly explicit depictions of... anything. The whole "limitations
aiding creativity" argument, which arguably applies to the majority of great
narrative films in Hollywood's golden era.
Peter
18698
From:
Date: Wed Dec 8, 2004 10:48pm
Subject: Re: Film violence [was: Now you know ...]
Some more points (and perhaps some olive branches):
1) We might be talking at cross purposes. When some people say "highly
violent films", they are referring to a handful (maybe 25 or less) of films made by
prestige directors: Peckinpah, Coppola, Ferrara, Tarantino, a little Kubrick
and Arthur Penn.
When other people, such as myself, refer to "highly violent films", they are
mainly talking about the huge flood of really bad commercial films typified by
"True Lies", "Pirates of the Caribbean", "Twister", "American Kickboxer IV"
and hundreds, maybe thousands of other films that flood the multiplex, video
store and late night cable TV. These films are really Baaaaaad. They stink to
high heaven.
Believe me, I am not trying to diss Peckinpah or Ferrara. I am trying to come
up with some aesthetic theory that will allow me to communicate with the
non-cinephile friends I know, many of whom think that "True Lies" is the high
point of the modern cinema (no foolin!)
2) Suggestion: I THINK that many auteurists have decided that "True Lies" et
al are bad because they are Hollywood films. This is a theory, and it might be
right. My problem with this: I like lots of Hollywood comedies. I am happy as
a clam watching "Alex and Emma" (Rob Reiner) or "Maid in Manhattan" (Wayne
Wang) and other Hollywood comic films. So my line of demarcation is that "really
violent films tend to be bad".
3) My inept prose allowed some ambiguities to creep into my phrasing. I wrote
negatively about "films whose main subject is violence". This has two
meanings, unfortunately. I meant "films which show lots of violence" (eg, True Lies).
But it can also refer to a completely different kind of film, a perfectly
legitimate kind: "films which seriously discuss violence as their theme": "Night
and Fog", "The Village", "Bowling for Columbine", "Rosenstrasse". I never
intended any critique of such films.
4) I've never seen an Alan Clarke film, and had no idea they were violent.
This is my mistake. Maybe I am mis-reading the film lists in other ways, too.
Mike Grost
18699
From: Paul Gallagher
Date: Thu Dec 9, 2004 3:59am
Subject: Re: Historical Accuracy in Movies (was Tibet OT)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "cairnsdavid1967"
wrote:
> > I was interested in the articles on "Gangs of New York" in part
> > because I live not so far from what used to be Five Points, but
also
> > because Scorsese seemed to be intending to make a big statement
on
> New
> > York and American history, but what the statement was didn't seem
> > especially clear.
>
> He was attacked for falling into a right-wing view of history - the
> idea of the area as irredeemably bad, that despite the efforts of
> charitable workers the residents were addicted to every kind of
vice.
The article by Benjamin Justice objected that the film ignored racism
among the Irish and that it depicted the Draft Riots wrongly: "The
Draft Riots were race riots as much as attacks against the government,
and the factions were not white Irish versus white Protestants, but
white Irish men, women, and children (and some white Protestants)
against blacks. For four days and nights, these angry mobs picked many
targets--police stations, newspaper offices, homes of the
well-to-do--but they visited consistent and bloodthirsty violence on
African American men, women, and children everywhere. 'It seemed to be
an understood thing throughout the city that the Negroes should be
attacked wherever found,' reported The New York Times... What Gangs
gives us instead is worse than apologetic; it's denial."
http://66.108.49.138/justice.txt
with two replies:
http://66.108.49.138/reply.txt
http://66.108.49.138/reply2.txt
Paul
18700
From: Damien Bona
Date: Thu Dec 9, 2004 5:28am
Subject: Re: Film violence [was: Now you know ...]
Saw Godard's "Notre Musique" last night. The first segment, the
Kingdom of Hell, which consists of a montage of carnage taken from
movies and newsreels (mostly from depictions of wars, although the
climax of Kiss Me Deadly, for instance is included), probably
contains the highest ratio of violence to film frames of any movie
I've seen. But I doubt that any person watching the film could find
the violence and destruction appealing, sexy, seductive. Of course,
most people at a Godard film are probably not inclined to commit
violent acts, but I daresay that even the Audience for, say, "Mondo
Cane" would be repulsed by the imagery in "Notre Musique," even
though many of the individual segments were designed to be
inspirational and exhilarating.
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