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Posts From the Internet Film Discussion Group, a_film_by
This group is dedicated to discussing film as art
from an auteurist perspective. The index to these files of posts can be found at http://www.fredcamper.com/afilmby/ The purpose of these files is to make our posts more accessible, for downloading and reading and to search engines.
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emailing them from that Web site.
20301
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 11:09pm
Subject: Re: Fred's post #20259
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Maxime Renaudin"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
> > Check out Manny Farber, an
> > actor-centered critic who is also the supreme formalist, being
> himself a
> > wonderful painter.
>
> Makes me remember Mourlet's text "Prééminence de l'acteur" in "Sur
> un art ignoré". Not sure it was ever translated in English.
"Charlton Heston est un axiome." First published in CdC, August
1959.A MacMahonist credo.
20302
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 11:14pm
Subject: Re: Fred's post #20259
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> >
> Better still Mourlet's "In Defense of Violence" with
> it's immortal "Charlton Heston is an axiom. He
> constitutes a tragedy in himself, his presence in any
> film being enough to instil beauty."
>
> Exchange Alain Delon for Heston and I am so THERE!
>
>
> Guess I quoted from the wrong Mourlet article. I'm so
embarrassed!
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail - now with 250MB free storage. Learn more.
> http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250
20303
From: Gary Tooze
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 11:39pm
Subject: Re: Fred's post #20259
At 11:04 PM 1/3/2005 +0000, you wrote:
>This is an invitation for all you lurkers out there....
Accepted...
Henrik said:
little if any concern about the reaction by the audience, by filmmakers who
make film because they want to express an idea or a thought in ways only
possible on film.>
To me this is Andrei Tarkovsky in a nutshell. Consistent references in his
book "Sculpting in Time" adhere to the principal of not pandering to the
audience - any moment that you diverge from your vision, to appease anyone
- studio exec's, popular opinion, the moral majority etc. etc. - you have
corrupted that vision - and his feeling is that you cannot get 'a little
pregnant'. This, of course, is the reason that most true scriptwriters are
reluctant to have changes forced upon their work. I would love to quote
Howard Roark from King Vidor's "The Fountainhead", but my infant son stole
my memory.
This may be why I shy away from most modern entertainment that I am exposed
to now - even watching TV - how can you even watching, say, 'Friends" ?
...knowing that it was sternly negotiated how many times Joey would pick up
his can of coca-cola? It is a throw -away media in a throw-away culture.
I've abandoned hope for any new Studio/corporate represented films - I'll
be forced to stick with Indie and quasi-indie (ala Dardenne's "Rosetta" et
all... ) or first time directors who are given the complete control as they
have not been corrupted yet. The true test of any greatness can only be
longevity... we listen to back 100's of years later because it is a mark of
greatness. We no longer listen to Manudo - because it was never anything
but a fad. Sorry do I sound jaded ?
Overstayed my welcome...Better shut up and go back to lurking...
Ciao!
20304
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 11:46pm
Subject: Re: Fred's post #20259 NOOOO!
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Maxime Renaudin"
wrote:
>
>
>
> As it has been already discussed here, I believe, it can be
> reasonably argued that Brakhage's films are also narrative, in a
> way.
It could be (and it has been) argued that cinema is narrative "by
nature." Metz, at least in his early writings ("Essais sur la
signification au cinema"),dismissed the "non-narrative genres" from
his field of investigation because apparently he couldn't figure out
how to deal with them semiotically. Discussion could only boil down
to "discontinuous remarks on the points of difference between these
films and 'ordinary' [sic] films." But at the same time he denied
the difference by insisting that any cinematic presentation (no
matter how "abstract") will be read narratively by viewers. There is
some truth in the latter claim. Experience of watching "abstract
films" shows that the mind keeps trying to establish connections
between images no matter how arbitrarily random they may happen to
be.
>
> > I don't hate "realism."
>
> I do.
But what is it you hate when you say you hate "realism"? Do you
believe there is such a thing as realism in film? If so, what are
the distinguishing characteristics of it, as opposed to... what? Non-
realism?... If anything at all is realistic in film, then everything
is.
20305
From: Elizabeth Nolan
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 11:56pm
Subject: Re: to lurkers, and others...
I'm the first to say I'm glad to read about good films I have not even
heard of and the esoteric discussions lead me to seek these films. I'm
working my way through some OZU dvd's I purchased as I know I'll never
see them in the theaters or on TV. {I had only seen GOOD MORNING at the
time of the OZU discussions.}
Still part of my suggestion reference TCM / Essentials was to bring
films many might be familiar with into the discussions.
While we all have different backgrounds reference cinema, we are all
original viewers seeing films from our own perspective. Certainly, I
don't have the viewing experiences or conceptual vocabulary of some but
I like to share my impressions; I'm sure I could add something (from my
outside perspective) to some of the discussions... and when I feel I
can, I post.
And I'm still here, no one has asked me to leave, and often my comments
generate a few replies.
So lurkers, and others ... share your thoughts; that's why we read the
board.
Elizabeth
20306
From: K. A. Westphal
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 0:03am
Subject: Re: Fred's post #20259
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> I missed "Huckabees," but sometimes I'm able to catch up on commercial
> films I've missed at Doc, so perhaps I'll get to see it.
HUCKABEES will be playing at Doc on Jan. 22. The calendar is
tentatively up on the website without captions.
--Kyle
20307
From: Elizabeth Nolan
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 0:11am
Subject: Re: Fred's post #20259 HENRIK's reply
I agree with your sentiments and in some way, your note feels like
watching a movie, or how I want to feel when watching a movie. In your
words, I feel a real voice sharing real feelings and thoughts that I
share.
Elizabeth
> Henrik wrote:
> For me, the answer was, that the film didn't try to make me care, but
> just wanted to tell the story about Pekar. As Thoureau said, "We all
> live our lifes in quiet desperation", and to me that is what film
> about real people should be about. We, as people, are hesitant, thus
> never make the right decision and condemned to live a life regretting.
> In terms of the two films above mentioned, I want to realise this, not
> being told so.
20308
From: Damien Bona
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 0:31am
Subject: Re: OT: dating, and not dating Have you ever seen a woman like this in the movies?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Elizabeth Nolan wrote:
> Have you ever seen a woman like this in the movies?
Elizabeth, your comebacks are in the wonderful tradition of Ann
Sheridan in They Drive By Night:
Sheridan's a waitress at a roadside diner.
Sheridan: Anything you'd like?
George Raft: Yeah, but it ain't on the menu.
Sheridan: And it ain't going to be.
20309
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 0:56am
Subject: Re: to lurkers, and others...
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Gabe Klinger"
wrote:
>
> This is not directed at anyone in particular.
>
> It has come to my attention that there are people out there who
> are too intimidated to post to a_film_by. Others, who have posted
> once or twice, are often insecure about what they write and
> seldom post anything.
>
> Let me assure you there is nothing to be intimidated about. Or let
> me put that another way: I post here regularly and I am probably
> more insecure than you.
>
As a fairly frequent poster, I wish to second the motion. It's
perfectly understandable that people should feel intimidated by the
encyclopedic knowledge, profound wisdom and mastery of language of
the "regulars", but that shouldn't discourage anybody from
participating. Myself, I've been trying hard to figure out what Fred
and Zach have been talking about recently and I'm still scratching
my head. The Group makes me feel very dumb sometimes. Still, I
continue posting...as you can see below:
> JP
> JP
> David
> JP
> Bill
> Bill
> Bill
> David
> David
> JP
> David
> JP
> David
> etc.
>
>
>
20310
From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 1:38am
Subject: Re: Aviator
Better late than never, my comment :)
To put it simply: What a dissapointment, what a flop. This is not a
biopic, this is a 3-hour pilot that leaves us hanging in midair
awaiting episodes never to be shown.
It begins with young Hughes being bathed by his mother, who explains
the dangers of germs to him, suggesting the seed of his neurosis,
which in adult life turned into an obsession and serious illness. We
follow the progression of the disease thru uncooked meat, thru his
obsessive washing of his hands, but just as the disease takes over
control of his mind, the film ends. Clearly, the illness is not what
the film is about then.
Another beginning is in 1927 with the production of Hell's Angels and
its four year production, but making footnotes out of Scarface and The
Outlaw, but never reaching his purchase of RKO and his destruction of
the studio by his ideals for cinema. As such, the reference to his
cinematic enterprise only notes upon his obsession with "perfection",
as such his mental illness, and since the film isn't about that, these
sequences become merely an hour-long footnote to character.
Then we have his many female companionships, mainly Hepburn and his
great love for her, and his disasterous relationships with Gardner and
Domergue. But the film is not about those either.
So what is the film about anyway?
Well, its about aeroplanes, about Hughes the aviator, from how he
developed the XF-11 and Spruce Goose to his battle with PANAM,
beginning with an idea he got in 1927 of a monoplane, over his crash
with the XF-11 to the legendary flight November 2, 1947.
The film lacks many details about Hughes here. It doesn't tell about
him breaking the record of non stop aviation between LA and NY, but
only about his 91 hour around the world record. It also doesn't talk
about his three year dissappearence, where he worked in Mexico as a
mechanic to learn to build engines, his second test flight in the
XF-11 and how the airforce chose the better and cheaper Boing RB-50
instead. Similar the film skips chapters about Hughes as a producer,
like The Front Page and The Sin of Harold Diddlebock. It is only
interested in the huge headlines, like his breaking of the 350mph
mark, his crash and the Spruce Goose.
As such, it is a very selective and uneven biopic, at times even
discombobulated, as Jonathan suggested, concentrating on a few
headliners and focussing on his obsession with the ultimate aeroplane
up until November 1947.
The post war Hughes, the RKO affair, the Howard Hughes Medical
Institute, the battle with the IRS, his work with the CIA, his
marriage with Jean Peters, his Las Vegas affair, his space program,
his anti nuclear lobby, his addiction to codeine, his recluse period,
his obsession with his urine (all three related to his OCD), all much
of what we today associate with Hughes is never part of the story,
simply because these events happend after 1947, where the film ends.
Howard Hughes is unlike any other person of last century, too complex
a character to be reduce to a biopic by a handful of headliners, only
telling a story about less than half of his adult life, and even doing
so, leaving out everything but the huge controversies, only showing
him as one of the most important aviators, which in my opinion is to
oversimplify the story, as it is a biopic. As such, The Aviator is a
flop, and one may ask, whats the point of telling such a story?
But even as a flop, The Aviator is never really boring. It plays like
a tv-series, never allowing the story to die, always introducing new
situations, new characters. And it really makes more sense to look at
it as a pilot, rather than a film, as it ends basically mid action in
the middle of Hughes adult life. Approaching it as a pilot, its pace
and structure suddenly makes sense. But sadly, this is not a pilot, it
is a 3 hour biopic.
The critic must primarely go to John Logan, who, based on his earlier
work, is one hell of a bad screenwriter, who has little regard for
historical autenticity (just look at The Last Samurai and Gladiator),
and, besides these crappy stories, also gave us one of the worst
remakes ever with The Time Machine. It shows little sense for
structure, for timing and for pace. Situations come and go without
ever really being connected, without ever turning into a solid
narrative, and simply is discombobulated.
With such a script, it really is impossible to judge Scorsese as
director. There are sequences, where one can feel his influence, like
in those close-up moments, where Hughes is overwhelmed by his illness,
and where he is driven by his obsession. But apart from these, Im
really not able to distinct any direction. As such, especially in
light of The Gangs of New York, it is fair to ask, as Bill did: Has
Scorsese lost his ability to make film?
Enough about the film itself. Many has expressed troubles with
Leonardo DiCaprio as Hughes. Personally, I think he does an excellent
job, even though his looks may work against him. And so does Cate
Blanchett as Hepburn. Likewise impressive is Alda and Law. But holy
crap about Kate Beckinsale. She simply cannot act. She should stay in
films like Pearl Harbor and Van Helsing, where acting is something
along the lines of posing for a poster and remembering lines.
What surprised me the most is that The Aviator is produced by some
great capacities in form of Michael Mann and Graham King (who
co-produced Traffic and Ali). It is really hard to see their
fingerprints perhaps because of the many co-producers like Scorsese,
DiCaprio and Weinsteins.
Perhaps David can answer this: Why did Scorsese chose this script? I
mean here is a guy who can talk for hours about the colour continuity
in the films of Powell, about the grammar of tracking shots in the
films of Minelli, so how did he miss the lack of structure (and of
anything else) in the script?
Henrik
20311
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 2:01am
Subject: Re: Re: Aviator
--- Henrik Sylow wrote:
>
> Perhaps David can answer this: Why did Scorsese
> chose this script? I
> mean here is a guy who can talk for hours about the
> colour continuity
> in the films of Powell, about the grammar of
> tracking shots in the
> films of Minelli, so how did he miss the lack of
> structure (and of
> anything else) in the script?
>
Wellto put it as simply as possible, I disagree with
you.
of course the film is highly selective about Hughes'
life. And that's because Scorsese is not a realist.
He's a mannerist dealing in realistic detail.
Why did he do this film? Simple. It's "Raging Bull"
with money.
He wanted to work with DeCaprio again and
above all
Marty hates to fly.
This is a film about the thrill of flying.
It's also about the history of color cinematography.
I can't remember a film in which so many of the films
I've liked have either been dismissed ("I Heart
Huckabees," "The Life Acquatic") or completely ignored
("A Home at the End of the World")
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20312
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 2:01am
Subject: Re: Re: Aviator
--- Henrik Sylow wrote:
>
> Perhaps David can answer this: Why did Scorsese
> chose this script? I
> mean here is a guy who can talk for hours about the
> colour continuity
> in the films of Powell, about the grammar of
> tracking shots in the
> films of Minelli, so how did he miss the lack of
> structure (and of
> anything else) in the script?
>
Wellto put it as simply as possible, I disagree with
you.
of course the film is highly selective about Hughes'
life. And that's because Scorsese is not a realist.
He's a mannerist dealing in realistic detail.
Why did he do this film? Simple. It's "Raging Bull"
with money.
He wanted to work with DeCaprio again and
above all
Marty hates to fly.
This is a film about the thrill of flying.
It's also about the history of color cinematography.
I can't remember a year in which so many of the films
I've liked have either been dismissed ("I Heart
Huckabees," "The Life Acquatic") or completely ignored
("A Home at the End of the World")
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20313
From: jaketwilson
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 2:12am
Subject: Re: Fred's post #20259 NOOOO!
> Godard told once: "What is Cinema? The expression of nice
> sentiments". I stick to that. Which leads to actors. Flesh and
> blood. The boiling life, the yelling life. What we are. What we
will
> be. Dust and death. Yes, the miracle of Cinema is that all the
> happiness in the world, all the distress also, may rely in the
smile
> of a woman's face. My favourite, and only, definition. Love the
> actors.
This entire post is gold.
Godard's line reminds me of Farber: "Giving the audience some uplift".
What most persistently troubles me about Fred's position is that it
pays so little heed to a link between empathy and form, the idea that
putting oneself in the shoes of an imaginary character is a path to
seeing in a new way. Mostly I don't go to the cinema to forget I'm a
human being but to realise it. (Which is not to say all "actors" need
be human: Balthazar, King Kong, Daffy Duck.) Aristotle spoke of "pity
and fear", and from there it's not a huge leap to valuing
a "collection of manipulations and affections" (sorry for quoting the
same phrase twice, but I've come to like it). Again, HUCKABEES turns
this into cartoons: philosophical breakthrough comes from seeing the
self in a human Other. On the other hand, there's that rock...
JTW
20314
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 2:25am
Subject: Re: Aviator
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> It's also about the history of color cinematography.
I'm not too sure about that.
> I can't remember a year in which so many of the films
> I've liked have either been dismissed ("I Heart
> Huckabees," "The Life Acquatic") or completely ignored
> ("A Home at the End of the World")
>
But THE AVIATOR hasn't been "dismissed" as far as I know.
Henrik's criticism is largely about what the film is not/doesn't
cover -- and I think that's the worst kind of criticism -- quite
apart from how good or bad the film may be. Did henrik want a nine
or twelve hour film covering every possible aspect of Hughes' life?
In which case he would have dumped on it as being formless and a
mess.
I don't know. I like the film a lot. I'm not going to go on
about the things I don't like so much about it the way i did once
about CASINO and have to revert myself ten of fifteen years later
(if I'm still around). I just can't understand anybody being so
totally turned off by the film as Henrik was. Just a matter of
taste, I guess.
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses.
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
20315
From: Matt Teichman
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 3:17am
Subject: Re: Cinema, taste, merit (was Re: varying...)
This has been an engaging thread. I've been hesitant to jump in because
I don't really believe in such things as "form" and "content."
Nonetheless...
Fred's position on what cinema is about has always struck me as dead
right, one that cuts to the heart of the medium. I too have the feeling
that the vast majority of discourse around films "talks past" what is
really significant about them, mired as it is in a queer kind of 19th
century humanist realism.
I also think acting is very important--indispensible to a medium
obsessed with performance (every film--every photographic film, in any
case--has at least one performer in it, the person running the camera).
And it seems to me that there is plenty of room for the discussion of
acting "on Fred's terms," which suggests to me that he's really
objecting to something else. If there is an objection to be made here,
it is to too much of an emphasis on statements which reconstruct the
psychology of characters. But that kind of statement isn't really about
acting; it's about story.
Fred's approach might be characterized as one interested in the
articulation of space, and I think it can be argued that actors are in
the business of articulating space to the very same extent as things
like composition and camera movement, in the way I might articulate the
space in which I live by humming to myself as I clean my apartment, or a
group of birds might articulate the space in which they travel by
flocking in certain patterns. In a film, an actor's gestures,
intonations, and rhythms all play such a role, but so does the content
of what they say, as well as how their performance of it reconfigures
the context around them. For these reasons, I don't think it would be
at all out of line to do a reading of Kubelka's _Pause!_ that focused
itself on Arnulf Rainer's performance (how the film is structured around
the "pulse" of heavy breathing, arm waving, etc.).
I will confess to not thinking much of the filmmakers Zach mentioned,
Cassavetes and Bunuel being the main exceptions (though more of a case
needs to be made that these films are working on some kind of "different
but just as significant" register). But I actually think _The Killing
of a Chinese Bookie_ is a great film even on "Camper" terms (although he
might not agree, which is probably okay; I also think Eisenstein's films
are great on Bazin's terms, and he certainly wouldn't have agreed), and
that one could make such a case for it by beginning with Gazzara's acting.
-Matt
20316
From: Fred Camper
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 3:13am
Subject: Re: Re: Fred's post #20259 NOOOO!
I promised myself I'd stay out of this for a while, but I can't resist.
I love the notion that JPC claims to be puzzled as to what Zach and I
were talking about! A 69-year-old auteurist in Florida (do I have that
right?) can't figure out a dialogue full of disagreements between a
college undergraduate in New York and a 57-year-old in Chicago, who have
never met? Hmmm. JPC, Zach and I are actually relying on the vocabulary
we gained from a translation of an ancient Chinese text about the
inherent energy of square holes. If you'd read the essay, you'd know we
were referencing it by our language. We are implicitly applying this to
sprocket holes, but our disagreement has to do with differing as to the
kind of aura these holes will create in the actual projection of a film....
maxime, and then jaketwilson:
>> ...My favourite, and only, definition. Love the
>>actors.
>>
>>
>
>This entire post is gold.
>
> Mostly I don't go to the cinema to forget I'm a
>human being but to realise it. ....
>
>
Aha! Gold for me too, but in a different way, in that I'm seeing my
suspicions (and in an earlier post of Dan's, quoting Godard) confirmed.
Zach accused me, not without some justification, of looking at cinema
with a particular bias, I think he meant for my kind of form. But that's
an aesthetic bias. What we have at the core here is, certainly part of a
tradition going back to Bazin, a thematic or philosophical bias, a kind
of humanism I guess. This is a particular position, a particular
attitude toward art and cinema and people and the world. But what if
human beings and humanness are not entirely good? What if they have as
much evil as good? What if actors are therefore not worthy of love any
more than they're also worthy of hate, or of being banished from the
screen entirely? What if it's possible for poeple to have *other* kinds
of experiences from staring at nature (see: the films of Chris Welsby),
or solid colors in the projection performances of Luis Recoder and Bruce
McClure, or, oh, a skyscraper for eight hours, even if the phallic
symbolism and camp joke was intended by Warhol, as I suspect they were.
(At the time he called the Empire State Buildling a "hard-on.")
To put it a bit more subtly, why must human expression revolve around
the human figure? Abstract painters taught us otherwise a hundred years
ago. The "human" is still there, in the painter's expression, but not in
the fictive world of people or landscapes.
While the positions articulated here are preesnted with considerable
sophistication, they strike me as the logical equiavalent of something
like, "I go to the cinema to have fun, and to me having fun is seeing
explosions," or "I go to the cinema to see my faith in love affirmed, so
I only go to love stories with happy endings." You like to see certain
kinds of human stories; somebody else likes to see explosions; what's
the difference? To defend your view you have to argue the virtues of
human stories versus explosions. That means you're arguing for a
particular worldview that you want to see affirmed in cinema, and doing
so cuts you off, as a viewer, from appreciating positions different from
your own.
I think these are all flavors of the basic movie fan fixation: wanting
to see the world re-presented in a way that gives you particular
pleasure, according to your particular fetish. I have an old catalogue,
c. 1980, of 8mm movies of women fighting in their underwear, made
apparently by a fetishist who loved to watch this sort of thing and sold
to others with the same taste. That's movie-fan fetishism too. In
hindsight, I wish I'd bought one or two; maybe they were, uh, "formally"
great!
Pasolini's film "Salo" has a lot of fans here. I hated it so much I
don't think I can even discuss it. But I love the book it's based on,
the Marquis de Sade's "101 Days of Sodom." I found the book a bit hard
to read, in that many of the acts it describes are morally repellent,
and others are very distasteful, and the thought of them being actually
performed (a thought made much more present by watching the movie than
by reading them described) is sickening. But the book is a hypertrophied
view of male power and fantasies of male power; the extreme to which
Sade carries this helped me see into a darkness that I think most males
share a tiny piece of. In that sense I do realize a little bit more of
how I'm human, but arguably all experience does that virtually by
definition. The book is really a journey away from what most would
affirm as human; certainly the children in it are treated only as
disposable objects, not as Dan quoting Godard would want them treated
(which is how I wouild too, in real life).
As I've been saying, I look to cinema, and art in general, to find other
ways of looking at things than my own, not to have my own emotional and
ideological inner self confirmed. Art sometimes helps me affirm the
humanity that I've always suspected I have (however some of my critics
may feel otherwise); just as often, it offers alternative or oppsite
views; JUST as often, it helps me see into the dark void at the center
of my consciousness, to wonder if I exist at all, to look beyond the
edge of my known world -- sometimes with pleasure, sometimes in abject
terror, often with both present together.
Fred Camper
20317
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 3:16am
Subject: Re: to lurkers, and others...
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Elizabeth Nolan wrote:
"I'm the first to say I'm glad to read about good films I have not
even heard of and the esoteric discussions lead me to seek these
films. I'm working my way through some OZU dvd's I purchased as I
know I'll never see them in the theaters or on TV. {I had only seen
GOOD MORNING at the time of the OZU discussions.}"
I would like to suggest an experiment to you with regard to the Ozu
films you'll be viewing. Look at them again without subtitles, or at
least look at parts of them again and look at the actor's faces
whenever they're in conversation with each other. I beleive that
you'll see more of Ozu's style by not glancing at the bottom of the
frame whenever subtitles appear. I think you'll also see unique
aspects about performance too.
Richard
20318
From: Brandon
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 3:35am
Subject: Re: to lurkers, and others...
>Let me assure you there is nothing to be intimidated about. Or let
>me put that another way: I post here regularly and I am probably
>more insecure than you.
I've been here since February, and I think I've only posted once before,
offering copies of a hastily-made film-related CD mix back in June. I
don't think I even introduced myself properly... so here goes.
Brandon Bentley, age 27, Atlanta GA, USA. I was into corny comedies and
horror movies in the 80's and 90's... then in late high school I started
renting "good" movies (Pulp Fiction, Deer Hunter, Brazil)... then in
college I discovered Turner Classic Movies, Mystery Science Theater 3000,
foreign films and Wes Anderson. After college, Atlanta got more screens
for independent and lower-profile films and I discovered local film
festivals, Fritz Lang, Buster Keaton, and Jonathan Rosenbaum. So now I'm
scrambling to catch up with the complete history of cinema, and see every
film and video worth seeing. I go to the theaters as often as possible, I
buy DVDs of movies I've never seen, I fill tapes with movies from TCM, and
everyone at the local indie video store knows my name.
99% of my film knowledge comes from watching films... I haven't taken film
courses or read books on film theory or critical analysis. So I know what
I like, but not how to properly explain myself. I subscribed to this list
mainly to follow along, to check for film recommendations and see what
everyone has to say about the current crop of movies... and I should
probably participate, but as Gabe suggested, I get intimidated.
Anyway, the main way I'm trying to get over my inability to write about
movies is to start WRITING about movies... so I'm starting up a review site
on the web, which I'll post more about when I get it all online.
And since it's a new year, I should present some kind of best-of-2004 list,
but actually my list is pretty uninteresting (except that I'm ecstatic over
Ross McElwee's "Bright Leaves"), so instead I'll close with my
worst-of-2004 list. These would be the worst in terms of expectation vs.
reality... I expected them to be alright and they let me down... not
actually the WORST films I saw all year (alien vs. predator, dreamcatcher,
oh god there's more). So I'm not denouncing the below films as crap
(except "CQ"), I'm just disappointed that I didn't find any reason to like
them.
10. Matrix Revolutions
9. Birth of a Golem (Amos Gitai - I actually fast-forwarded most of it)
8. CQ (roman coppola, crap crap crap)
7. Straight to Hell (alex cox, courtney love, buncha nonsense)
6. Habit (1997 "vampire drama")
5. Epidemic (Lars "Von" Trier)
4. Buffalo Soldiers (don't know why I was convinced it would be good)
3. Koyaanisqatsi (someone told me it was better than Sans Soleil)
2. Code Unknown (michael haneke)
1. Stereo & Crimes of the Future (david cronenberg)
Brandon
20319
From: Michael E. Kerpan, Jr.
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 4:07am
Subject: Re: to lurkers, and others...
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
wrote:
> I would like to suggest an experiment to you with regard to the Ozu
> films you'll be viewing. Look at them again without subtitles, or at
> least look at parts of them again and look at the actor's faces
> whenever they're in conversation with each other. I beleive that
> you'll see more of Ozu's style by not glancing at the bottom of the
> frame whenever subtitles appear. I think you'll also see unique
> aspects about performance too.
While I agree that one must resist distraction by subtitle, I think
you will also miss an awful lot by over-focusing on the faces. Every
detail of posture and gesture and movement potentially has great
significance -- often more than the (seemingly) impassive faces.
MEK
20320
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 4:47am
Subject: Re: Fred's post #20259 NOOOO!
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> I promised myself I'd stay out of this for a while, but I can't
resist.
> I love the notion that JPC claims to be puzzled as to what Zach
and I
> were talking about! A 69-year-old auteurist in Florida (do I have
that
> right?) can't figure out a dialogue full of disagreements between
a
> college undergraduate in New York and a 57-year-old in Chicago,
who have
> never met? Hmmm. JPC, Zach and I are actually relying on the
vocabulary
> we gained from a translation of an ancient Chinese text about the
> inherent energy of square holes. If you'd read the essay, you'd
know we
> were referencing it by our language. We are implicitly applying
this to
> sprocket holes, but our disagreement has to do with differing as
to the
> kind of aura these holes will create in the actual projection of a
film....
>
This is very funny, Fred, and it really broke me up, but I was
not being cute in saying I had trouble following your argument -- I
never could figure out what either of you meant by "abstraction",
for one thing. And I couldn't begin to agree or disagree with stuff
I don't really understand.
My point was just that if someone like me can post on this forum,
then anybody can (well, within reason, of course).
20321
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 4:47am
Subject: Re: Re: Aviator
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
> >
> > It's also about the history of color
> cinematography.
>
> I'm not too sure about that.
>
>
Frankly I think the gradual shifts of color -- from
tw0-strip to three to Technicolor to what I'd call
Coppola-Technicolor (ie. "The Godfather Part II") is
the most technically ambitious thing about the film.
As a color experiment I'd put it right up there with
"Red Desert" and "Yolanda and the Thief"
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20322
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 4:52am
Subject: Re: to lurkers, and others...
--- Brandon wrote:
> 99% of my film knowledge comes from watching
> films...
EXCELLENT!
I haven't taken film
> courses or read books on film theory or critical
> analysis. So I know what
> I like, but not how to properly explain myself.
I think you're doing just fine on that score.
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20323
From: jaketwilson
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 4:52am
Subject: Re: Fred's post #20259 NOOOO!
Fred,
This debate is eternal, obviously: I'm not really trying to convince
you of anything, simply to put an alternate point of view as well as
I can. I do see where you're coming from when you complain about
certain kinds of cinematic experience being overvalued at the expense
of others, but I'm less inclined to make this a distinction between
films which function "formally" and those which don't, because it
seems to me that all experience can be described in "formal" terms,
i.e. with the emphasis less on the object itself than on how it's
presented or viewed. Critics make a big deal of this because part of
their job is to provide new angles on experience by describing an
object in unfamiliar terms, but that doesn't mean that a way of
seeing that takes the object as primary is insufficient or "wrong".
The real issue is the value of the experience itself.
I don't think that films need revolve around the human figure, or
even animals, monsters, anthropomorphised blobs of goo... All I'm
saying is that films are made by people for people, and to that
extent reflect human experience, as you acknowledge, "by definition".
(Cf Louis Armstrong: "I guess all songs is folk songs. I never heard
no horse sing one.") I don't remember who here pointed out that every
film has one human actor, the one behind the camera, but it seems we
agree that whatever happens onscreen, "the human is still there".
Whether we're looking at the Empire State Building or Kermit the
Frog, we wouldn't be doing so if it weren't for a human being who had
a vision and tried to get others to see it too.
In other words, I don't think what we're talking about is a "thematic
bias", though it may be a philosophical one. The real point of
difference seems to be that you see the activities of making and
experiencing art as taking place outside the "personality", whereas
to me personal feelings and attitudes are what count, what make one
film or vision different from another. The same goes for viewers:
my "fetishes", if that's what you want to call them, are not at all
irrelevant to my experience of film. How could they be? I'm still
the same person in the cinema that I was outside. One could see the
history of a given cinematic genre, say the Western, as a matter of
deepening and complicating a particular set of fetishes, at the same
time gaining some kind of intellectual understanding and control over
them. A word for this is "irony", which can be found even in Sade,
who, yes, shows us part of what it means to be human, including what
it means to deny the humanity of the self and others. But it would be
hard to discuss this without talking about "content". Humanism
doesn't mean cosiness, however much I like James L. Brooks. I also
still like explosions, though not as much as I did when I was 14.
JTW
20324
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 4:54am
Subject: Re: Re: to lurkers, and others...
--- "Michael E. Kerpan, Jr."
wrote:
> While I agree that one must resist distraction by
> subtitle, I think
> you will also miss an awful lot by over-focusing on
> the faces. Every
> detail of posture and gesture and movement
> potentially has great
> significance -- often more than the (seemingly)
> impassive faces.
>
Quite true. Think of Cyd Charisse in "Party Girl" or
Reg Park In "Hercules Conquers Atlantis."
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20325
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 5:04am
Subject: Re: Fred's post #20259 NOOOO!
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
>
> I think these are all flavors of the basic movie fan fixation:
wanting
> to see the world re-presented in a way that gives you particular
> pleasure, according to your particular fetish. I have an old
catalogue,
> c. 1980, of 8mm movies of women fighting in their underwear, made
> apparently by a fetishist who loved to watch this sort of thing
and sold
> to others with the same taste. That's movie-fan fetishism too. In
> hindsight, I wish I'd bought one or two; maybe they were,
uh, "formally"
> great!
>
Probably true, but Fred, isn't your personal kind of attachment
to cinema a form of fetishism just like the ones you deride?
> Pasolini's film "Salo" has a lot of fans here. I hated it so much
I
> don't think I can even discuss it.
I hated it too, and I don't like LES ENFANTS DU PARADIS either, so
we must have a few things in common. But if you're honest with
yourself you have to grapple with why you cannot even discuss SALO
while you "love" Sade's book.
But I love the book it's based on,
> the Marquis de Sade's "101 Days of Sodom." I found the book a bit
hard
> to read, in that many of the acts it describes are morally
repellent,
> and others are very distasteful, and the thought of them being
actually
> performed (a thought made much more present by watching the movie
than
> by reading them described) is sickening. But the book is a
hypertrophied
> view of male power and fantasies of male power; the extreme to
which
> Sade carries this helped me see into a darkness that I think most
males
> share a tiny piece of. In that sense I do realize a little bit
more of
> how I'm human, but arguably all experience does that virtually by
> definition. The book is really a journey away from what most would
> affirm as human; certainly the children in it are treated only as
> disposable objects, not as Dan quoting Godard would want them
treated
> (which is how I wouild too, in real life).
>
EVERYBODY is treated as disposable object in Sade. And it goes way
beyond mere "male power" (of which Sade actually had very little).
What we have to come to terms with, male or female, is that Sade is
us. "Sade mon prochain".
20326
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 5:19am
Subject: Re: Re: Fred's post #20259 NOOOO!
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
> > Pasolini's film "Salo" has a lot of fans here. I
> hated it so much
> I
> > don't think I can even discuss it.
>
>
> I hated it too, and I don't like LES ENFANTS DU
> PARADIS either, so
> we must have a few things in common. But if you're
> honest with
> yourself you have to grapple with why you cannot
> even discuss SALO
> while you "love" Sade's book.
>
>
WellBarthes provides a leg up on that score in that he
declared Sade to be deliberate "unfilmable." Pasolini,
by doing so, is committing a form of aesthetic
"blasphemy" in Barthes' view.
For me this is preciselyt why "Salo" is so
fascinating. But I'd scarcely call it a "likeable"
film in any way.
> But I love the book it's based on,
> > the Marquis de Sade's "101 Days of Sodom." I found
> the book a bit
> hard
> > to read, in that many of the acts it describes are
> morally
> repellent,
> > and others are very distasteful, and the thought
> of them being
> actually
> > performed (a thought made much more present by
> watching the movie
> than
> > by reading them described) is sickening.
Which is why Pasolini made it. He takes Sade "at his
word."
But the
> book is a
> hypertrophied
> > view of male power and fantasies of male power;
> the extreme to
> which
> > Sade carries this helped me see into a darkness
> that I think most
> males
> > share a tiny piece of.
Not entirely male. The "diseuses" (Helene Surgere,
Sonia Saviange, Caterina Borrata) are power figures
too.
In that sense I do realize
> a little bit
> more of
> > how I'm human, but arguably all experience does
> that virtually by
> > definition. The book is really a journey away from
> what most would
> > affirm as human; certainly the children in it are
> treated only as
> > disposable objects, not as Dan quoting Godard
> would want them
> treated
> > (which is how I wouild too, in real life).
> >
Godard would never have made "Salo."
> EVERYBODY is treated as disposable object in Sade.
> And it goes way
> beyond mere "male power" (of which Sade actually had
> very little).
> What we have to come to terms with, male or female,
> is that Sade is
> us. "Sade mon prochain".
>
>
And that's why Klossowski is referenced in the film's "Bibliography."
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20327
From:
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 5:20am
Subject: Re: to lurkers, and others...
Brandon:
Knowledge about movies *should* come from movies -- no wrong moves
there. And the only way to be a better writer is to write: I remember
reading an interview with a cartoonist where he said a teacher had
told him to imagine a large stack of blank white paper, and told him,
"When you've drawn on both sides of every page, that's when you'll
start to get good." The longer I write, the taller that stack seems
to grow, but the only thing for it is to keep plugging away. I
wouldn't suggest immersing yourself in critical theory all at a clip,
but finding writers you like and pursuing them in depth is a good way
to find new movies and try different writing styles on for size. And
please, and this goes for all the lurkers, don't be intimidated. It's
only the internet, and even the regular posters are apt to say things
they wish they could take back (and often do) on occasion.
As for your "most disappointing" list: I loved CODE UNKNOWN -- quite
apart from some of the more contrived Hanekes I've seen -- but no
argument on most of the rest. And BRIGHT LEAVES is just great, isn't
it?
Sam
20328
From: K. A. Westphal
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 5:20am
Subject: Presence/Absense (Was: Re: Aviator)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
> Henrik's criticism is largely about what the film is not/doesn't
> cover -- and I think that's the worst kind of criticism -- quite
> apart from how good or bad the film may be.
In theory, I agree with you, J-P.
But aren't we all guilty of that criticism sometimes?
I know that was my reaction when I saw CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS on DVD.
The film seemed more interested in fragmenting its tabloid narrative
than in exploring the underlying inequalities of the American legal
system that drive the "plot." So Jarecki focuses on a bagatelle rather
than the movie *I* wanted to see.
--Kyle Westphal
20329
From: Elizabeth Anne Nolan
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 6:50am
Subject: Viewing OZU: even upside-down
I spend most of my time with cinema, and have time to watch and
read. One of my readings on OZU suggested watching his films
upside down (the film upside down, not me) and that his
compositions, form, etc would still be apparent, if not more
so. With a dvd playing on my computer screen, I can
try that experiment easily.
For the new members, I'll repeat that I was an ER MD and
felt that it was always important to look at the patients' faces
when they came into the ER. Often just looking at the patient's
would tell me how ill the patient was.
One unusual case involved a slight 40-ish Vietnamese male who
came into the ER from who knows where. It was impossible to
get a history because there were no translators available.
I did some preliminary tests including an EKG which was normal
and then called the cardiologist to admit the patient; needless
to say, the cardiologist wasn't happy. He questioned my
judgment and all I could say was "look at his face, the man is
scared to death." I can only imagine that his experiences in
Vietnam (made that assumption as he did not speak any
English) had to be somewhat harrowing and whatever is
going on now is worse than that. The cardiologist admitted
the patient relunctantly for observation with the diagnosis of
Chest Wall Pain {clearly not cardiac} and that night, the
patient had an episode of ventricular fibrillation which will
be fatal if not cardioverted to a normal rhythm by applying
electrical shock to the chest.
I believe his life was saved because I looked at his face and
saw that he looked "scared to death."
Looking at faces comes natural to me as I often make eye
contact with others, even those who find it uncomfortable.
Elizabeth
"Michael E. Kerpan, Jr." wrote:
> While I agree that one must resist distraction by subtitle, I think
> you will also miss an awful lot by over-focusing on the faces. Every
> detail of posture and gesture and movement potentially has great
> significance -- often more than the (seemingly) impassive faces.
"Richard Modiano" wrote:
> > I would like to suggest an experiment to you with regard to the Ozu
> > films you'll be viewing. Look at them again without subtitles, or at
> > least look at parts of them again and look at the actor's faces
> > whenever they're in conversation with each other.
20330
From: Noel Vera
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 7:28am
Subject: Re: Aviator
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Henrik Sylow"
wrote:
> To put it simply: What a dissapointment, what a flop.
Sorry to hear that. Liked some of the films you've defended
(Miyazaki in particular), but I guess we have to disagree on this
one.
Here's something I posted on another forum:
Maybe not great, but better than his last, and better than the
critics' darling Sideways I'd say. Not that I didn't like Payne's
latest, but The Aviator seems to have so much more to offer.
I love it that for all the epic size and sweep of it, it's a very
personal film. It's typical--no, it's representative--of Scorsese, I
think, that he'd take an epic and turn its priorities on their
collective heads, make not budget and special effects but obsession
and character and human nature rule the film, show all that
impressive externals (CGI effects galore; an enormous plane crash;
extravagant sets and luxurious costumes) and tell us that it's
what's inside Hughes that interests him the most. I've said it
before, I'll say it again, he's like Mel Gibson turned inside out.
And with talent.
The story, especially the last part, reminds me of Capra's Mr. Deeds
Goes to Town, where the forces of evil (political and industrial
corruption, monopoly, big money interests) gather around our hero,
but his greatest obstacle and opponent is basically himself. Then
Cooper (sorry, De Caprio) stands up, shakes off the funk, and shows
them all for the pixielated ninnies they really are.
With this and Catch Me If You Can, De Caprio makes up for his recent
dull turns; he's charismatic, untamed, intense, everything he
promised to be early in his career and only is nowadays on
interviews or in the tabloids.
A few reservations--Cate Blanchett is wonderful, but for the record,
Hepburn was much more beautiful (not a fair assessment, merely an
observation). And the film suffers from trying to re-enact Hell's
Angels, not that I can see how Scorsese could have done otherwise--I
don't think anyone can do what Hughes, a non-filmmaker, could have
done with that one picture, with what may be the greatest aerial
battle ever filmed.
Niggling reservations, of course. Best film of 2004 to date, I'd say-
-which isn't a stellar year from where I'm sitting, but is less
unstellar than it could have been without this.
20331
From: Saul Symonds
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 8:11am
Subject: Re: Aviator
"Henrik Sylow" wrote:
> The film lacks many details about Hughes here. It doesn't tell about
> him breaking the record of non stop aviation between LA and NY, but
> only about his 91 hour around the world record. It also doesn't talk
> about his three year dissappearence, where he worked in Mexico as a
> mechanic to learn to build engines, his second test flight in the
> XF-11 and how the airforce chose the better and cheaper Boing RB-50
> instead. Similar the film skips chapters about Hughes as a producer,
> like The Front Page and The Sin of Harold Diddlebock. It is only
> interested in the huge headlines, like his breaking of the 350mph
> mark, his crash and the Spruce Goose.
"The film lacks many details about...." "It doesn't tell..." "It also
doesn't talk about..." etc etc etc. And herein lies one of the
beauties of biopics. There is a wealth of information which exists
outside the text and which the viewer calls into play when watching
the film. This not only allows movies such as "Raging Bull" to have a
beautifully truncated quality, (no fictional boxing film would ever
attempt a segment such as the central juxtaposition of home footage
and clips from Jake's fights, as they usually construct one or two or
more central fights for the film to revlove around, rather then create
fragments from an entire life), and more than this, what Henrik's
comment makes clear is that biopics become expressive, as much because
of what is there, as because of what isn't there. The details of a
person's life that are left out, (most obvioulsy, for example, those
biopics that end before the death of the protagonist), make their
absence felt, (just as Bresson's desire for a man without a hat, and
not a bald headed man, made itself felt).
> Howard Hughes is unlike any other person of last century, too complex
> a character to be reduce to a biopic by a handful of headliners,
Perhaps, such a complex and eloquent man as Hughes can only be reduced
to something such as headliners - perhaps we can only ever have a glib
reading, and from that surface try find the insights and depths of his
existence. In truth, Scorsese wouldn't need to be comprehensive in his
portrayal of Hughes life - one fact, one instance, one date, can
produce the richest possible meanings. And besides, I don't think I'd
ever want a film that fully penetrated the Hughes myth, or fully
showed the man behind that myth. Hughes will always, and must always,
remains a fundamentally opaque figure. Like Rimbaud, it will be his
absences, his disspearances, the facts unknown or those that don't add
up, that will continue to fascinate people. And perhaps a biopic that
creates and hints at the same abscenes in the truest one possible.
BTW, "New York, New York" is perhaps Scorsese's most brillant film,
and a great musical at that. I just thought I'd add this final, OT
point, while we're on the subject of Scorsese, and because musicasls
and the oh so wonderful Doris Day were in recent disucssions...
-- Saul.
20332
From:
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 3:32am
Subject: Re: Aviator
One thing that puzzled me about the two-color Technicolor simulation at the
start of "The Aviator". It looked as if the whole film were designed in red and
blue. But some 1920's two color films, such as the extraordinary "The Toll of
the Sea" (Chester M. Franklin) are printed today in red and green. This may
or may not be authentic - Barry Salt says modern prints of "Toll" are in fact
much sharper and clearer and also more brightly colorful than anything that
could have been printed in the 1920's (how's that for a switch on the usual decay
of film!).
I suspected that this was a matter of design in "The Aviator". One often sees
Leonardo DiCaprio in blue suits, blue shirts, etc, in these scenes, which are
traditionally classy colors for men. If poor Leo had had to wear green suits,
he would have looked like a dork (or the comic book character Jimmy Olsen,
who often wore this color suit in Superman). In any case, loved the bright red
planes at the beginning in these scenes.
Have a lot of qualms about "The Aviator". Best parts of the film: any of the
flying scenes (around a half an hour's worth of mnaterial in a 2 hour plus
film). Agree with Henrik that John Logan is generally a poor scriptwriter. Only
Logan script liked here: "Tornado" (directed by Noel Nosseck, 1996), a TV film
about storm chasers - no special effects, but much more absorbing than
"Twister". In both "Tornado" and "The Aviator", the best parts are the inspiring
scenes of scientists & engineers trying to break through to new ideas and
accomplishments - such as Hughes trying to set a speed record in the experimental
plane. By contrast, thought Hughes' personal life was not real interesting, and
often downright repellent.
Mike Grost
20333
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 8:52am
Subject: Re: Aviator
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
For those who wanted to see other parts of HH's life, there's always
William A. Graham's 2-part tv movie w. Tommy Lee Jones, The Amazing
HH, which is 4 hours and quite good. Also, I believe that there's
still a project in the works w. the director of Memento and Jim
Carrey dealing w. the material in Citizen Hughes: the Vegas years,
drug addiction, the Mafia, the CIA, the Russian sub.
As I indicated before, I think this one is about George W. Bush.
BTW, reseeing it, I thought I saw the switch to digital 3-strip
Technicolor happening after the first plane crash, in the scenes
where she's cleaning up his wounded foot. True? False?
20334
From:
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 4:18am
Subject: Re: Fred's post #20259
By "abstraction", I am guessing that Fred & Zach mean "composition, color and
camera movement" - the parts of film that involve geometric visual patterns.
If this is so, then I strongly agree with them - such visual elements are
overwhelmingly important in film. And often the part of film that is neglected by
many reviewers. This is not the only important aspect of film - but it is a
big and neglected one.
This is different from the other meaning of "abstract film" films created out
of pure color patterns & light: Oskar Fischinger, Jordan Belson, James
Whitney, late Brakhage, etc. I LOVE films like this! Recently had a chance to see
Robert Breer's "Recreation I" (1957) and Caroline Davis' hand-painted
"Midweekend" (1985). Both of these were helped here by watching the "By Brakhage" DVD -
it helped train my eyes to watch this sort of film. I was able to actually
"see" the Breer film much better than any prior screenings of Breer in my life -
my eyes are more sensitive now!
One area in which I am less sure of agreement with Fred & other posters:
their qualms about films designed to "please" or "give pleasure". I really like
many films which try to please audiences. Aren't "Singin in the Rain" and "Rear
Window" film classics, for example? And recently, have enjoyed a series of
romantic comedies, a genre that really tries to please its audience. "A Boyfriend
for Christmas" (Kevin Connor) is genuinely endearing. Even a factory hatched
romantic film such as "Chasing Liberty" (Andy Cadiff) deserves gratitude in my
book for trying to please audiences (it's fun - light romance set against
gorgeous views of Prague and Venice). I would much rather see a film like this or
"Love Actually" (Richard Curtis) than so many films which try to depress
people.
Mike Grost
PS My cat Harry loved to watch explosions on TV. Whenever I see an action
film with explosions, think that it is ideal film viewing for cats - not humans!
Harry was also fascinated by Captain Kirk's shiny chest emblem, and he would
try to put his paw over it on the TV screen.
20335
From: Saul Symonds
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 9:24am
Subject: Re: Aviator
"hotlove666" wrote:
> BTW, reseeing it, I thought I saw the switch to digital 3-strip
> Technicolor happening after the first plane crash, in the scenes
> where she's cleaning up his wounded foot. True? False?
Richardson says in American Cinematogrpher (Issue Jan 05) "The first
act, which covers Hughes's early career in Hollywood, was supposed to
have Technicolors two-colour look. With the second act, which begins
after Hughes sets a speed record flying across the continental United
States [1937] and goes with Katherine Hepburn to Connecticut, we
transition to that vibrant, three-strip look that most of us associate
with the glorious Technicolor years."
To sumarise the rest: Orignally after the XF-11 crash the film was
going to stop using either Technicolor process and switch to a more
contemporary look, but during editing Scorsese decided he missed the
color and the three-strip look was extended for the rest of the film.
-- Saul.
20336
From: Matthew Clayfield
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 9:26am
Subject: The Face (was: Viewing OZU: even upside-down)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Elizabeth Anne Nolan" wrote:
>
> Often just looking at the patient's
> would tell me how ill the patient was.
>
> I believe his life was saved because I looked at his face and
> saw that he looked "scared to death."
I'm a big fan of the face as well; one of my own wannabe-Godardian
aphorisms, in fact, is as follows [the last little bit is the relevant
part]:
"The cinema was invented so that we could watch horses running in slow
motion. We lucked out, however, as it also allowed us to look at
moving trains, to watch the rain as it fell and to see people laughing
in close-up".
Corny, I know, but, that's just me! [Needless to say, I'm a big fan of
the photographic image's ontological qualities as well...]
One of the things I love most about Cassavetes is his undying love for
and fascination with the human face; it seems to me that, on one level
[of many], his work can be seen as a noble attempt to catalogue the
many faces [so to speak] of the human face in all its luminosity and
mystery. This isn't to say that the human body [which, yes, I'm a big
fan of as well] is of lesser importance in Cassavetes work, but merely
that the face seems to become the subject of an extremely interesting,
incredibly passionate, and almost anthropological study, separate to
narrative, theme and everything else; formal, too, in its own right.
I'm not really sure if that made much sense. I'm young [and I'm going
to keep using that excuse for at least six more years!] and I'm still
deciding what it is about cinema that really grabs me, holds me and
shakes me about. Certainly, I believe that the human form -- the face,
the body and the voice -- is an absolutely integral part of any formal
system that exists in narrative cinema and that the human presence
suggested by JTW [behind the camera; in the editing suite; holding the
pin that scratches the celluloid] is integral to cinema on the whole.
> Looking at faces comes natural to me as I often make eye
> contact with others, even those who find it uncomfortable.
Like me. I find eye contact INCREDIBLY uncomfortable for some reason.
I've just never been very "good" at it.
And yet I love the human face. Go figure.
I have a feeling I may have just turned the Ozu thread into another
"Fred's Post"-themed thread. [Note to self: stick to lurking...]
20337
From: Tom Sutpen
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 9:40am
Subject: Re: Aviator
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666" wrote:
> BTW, reseeing it, I thought I saw the switch to digital 3-strip
> Technicolor happening after the first plane crash, in the scenes
> where she's cleaning up his wounded foot. True? False?
*****
I haven't seen "The Aviator" as yet. However, this intrigued me enough
to go hunting around the web for info.
Perhaps this will explain it; perhaps not:
http://www.technicolor.com/Cultures/En-Us/Home/TheAviator2.htm
Tom Sutpen
20338
From: Saul Symonds
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 11:31am
Subject: to what end....????
After Gabe's recent post about lurkers, and a series of very
interesting discussions on meaning, form, floor maps, etc,etc,etc, I
began thinking about the end point towards which all this talk is
leading. In part, a hangover of Rimbaudian proportions I was suffering
this morning got me thinking about all those hours I spend in the dark
of a cinema, in front of flickering images, staring wide-eyed.
(Moments of self-indulgent decadence tend to, in my experience,
provoke such sweeping questions and thoughts). I was wondering whether
any of the critics here, or film-addicts/buffs/lovers/etc for that
matter, see their lives as defined by cinema. That is, do we see
movies as a constant which defines everything else in our lives, and
ultimately gives it meaning? I think in a recent post someone said
they were trying to discover what appeal movies had for them - but is
cinema the question, or the answer. Should we be asking what this
object means to us, or is this object the thing that answers our
questions of meaning. I know that posters here have a wide range of
interests that go beyond the cinema, (which reminds me Mike, I've been
working through, and loving your mystery stories - some of my earliest
remembered read novels were collections of 40s and 50s hard-boiled
crime fiction - or stuff like Horace McCoy's "They Shoot Horses, Don't
They?" a title that even now brings about whiffs of profound
sadness), and that's why I was curious about the place which people
here accord cinema.
Jean-Pierre Melville once said, "Being a spectator is the finest
profession in the world". I've never been sure if a critic is primarly
a watcher or a writer, and to what extent cultural and psychological
forces shape the reasons that we watch movies. The cinema, the space
of the cinema, can be thought of a as womb, and perhaps the appeal of
movies lies in the appeal of returning to the womb - of crawling back
into the comforting darkness, innocence, and asexuality from which we
emerged. It is an act that can be rewarding, but also deeply painful -
movies place on screen not just our hopes and aspirations, but our
most profound regrets, sadness, loss and sorrow - even Technicolor
visions of life at its happiest, can serve to reinforce those more
downbeat aspects of life. The following lyrics from "Mad World" (I'm
still not sure if I prefer Tears for Fears of Gary Jules) have always
struck me as a good image of the life of a film critics, film goer,
etc, and a good image of what movies do, of what they mutely express:
"All around me are familiar faces, worn out places, worn out faces ...
bright and early for the daily races, going nowhere, going nowhere ...
the tears are filing up their glasses, no expression, no expression
... hide my head I want to drown my sorrow, no tomorrow, no tomorrow
... and I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad, the dreams in
which I'm dying are the best I've ever had ... I find it hard to tell
you, I find it hard to take, when people run in circles..." Film, in
asserting life, and therefore in asserting mortality, might be nothing
more that a dream in which we're dying - a protracted escape from, and
realization of, our eventual deaths.
By the way, the quote Mike has placed in his profile - "To see a world
in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower. To hold infinity in
the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour - William Blake" -
despite the ways it can be read in terms of Blake's own idiosyncratic
world view, or larger religous ideologies, also sums up one of the
points I was trying to express in my "Aviator" post about the fact
that one aspects of a person's life can encapsualte that life better
than many aspects or details about that life put together, which can,
ultimately, have an inverse effect.
-- Saul.
20339
From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 11:50am
Subject: Re: How we view film (was: Aviator)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon" wrote:
I just can't understand anybody being so
> totally turned off by the film as Henrik was. Just a matter of
> taste, I guess.
I probably should have been more precise in my critic, rather than
repeating what I thought the film didn't cover, and blew it making an
attempt of saying something intelligent, which wont be the last time,
but I merely tried to point out why the film didn't work for me, and
failed. My apologies for its shortcomings.
But is our differences really based on something as simple as taste?
Last year we discussed "Kill Bill 2", a film which I found to be one
of the most stupid films I've seen in a long time, a film which only
understood the surface structure of Kung Fu cinema, full of bad
dialogue, where the characters acted without intelligence and where
the protagonist got away with anything (because she couldn't die as
she was the star). For instance when Thurman is to kill Madsen, she
spends alot of time scouting out the area and the trailer, knowing he
sits right in front of the door, and does what? Opens the door, and
gets shot, in what may be the worst display of obvious stupendious
acting normally found in really bad z-grade horror (look the trail of
blood leads into the dark, stay here while I go look).
I cannot remember each of the members who loved it and their reasons,
but I remember Bill and him talking about it paying tribute to a great
actress. Did Bill dismiss the poor narrative qualities or the bad
cliche dialogue? Or did he approach the entire "body" of the film with
a different set of glasses? Or was it just taste?
About "Aviator", it really has been awarding to read the comments on
how the film uses colour, as has David's comments about "Raging Bull",
which I also can see, but how come I seem to be the only one who
thinks that if a film introduces an element, it should not let it
hanging in midair, like his OCD or like his movieproductions? To use
Barthes, to me, these are indiciers being used as catalysts, and that
frustrates me and in terms make me view the narrative as flawed.
I like to think that on an average day, we are above taste, and view
film by a set of rules by which we define cinema, based on our
approach to cinema by narrative, auteurism, political, even sexual. I
also like to think, that we redefine these rules, adapt them,
depending on director, origin of film and so forth.
If so, when we agree, is this because we share similar base? And if
so, how come those who agree on several films, suddenly disagree on
another? Is it really just taste in the end and us defending taste by
any means? Or do we only agree out of chance, because part of our base
overlaps? Or is it really just taste that overlaps? And as such, are
all those fine theories about cinema mere tools we use to defend taste?
How do we watch film?
Henrik
20340
From: Doug Dillaman
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 0:09pm
Subject: Taking the Klinger challenge: some thoughts on editing
Per Gabe's recent post encouraging "de-lurking", I figured that maybe
I'd use this as a chance to overcome my fears and chime in with some
thoughts that have been brewing in my head over the past few months.
Fred notes that in general, critics favor acting over how the film
works as a whole. From having read this group for a while, I think
there's a corollary: in general, it seems that editing - particularly
intra-scene editing - is completely overlooked in estimating a film.
I just watched Nicholas Ray's IN A LONELY PLACE on DVD. I enjoyed it
quite a bit; it's a potent piece of screen writing, one of Bogart's
best turns. But I did find many of the cuts within scenes quite
frustrating. There's one dialogue scene between two ladies where the
cuts back and forth have them facing the same directions, and many
other jumpy cuts in different scenes with only slight variations of
shot size that wind up distracting from the flow of the film. (Please
note I'm not at all against jump cuts or crossing the line in
purposeful usage, but I'm not at all convinced that their use is
purposeful in any but the most utilitarian way here.)
I find this sort of awkward cutting in lots of older films, including
many that are undoubtedly esteemed as classics by many of the members
of this board. THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE is another one that
I've recently viewed where I had a hard time getting past the editing.
I wonder: is this cutting, and editing in general, overlooked because
it was often not the province of the director in older films (and
therefore fits poorly into the auteur theory), or is it just accepted
as part of the course and irrelevant in the face of mise-en-scene?
I'm of course bringing my own biases and experience to play (I just
completed film school, concentrating in editing). But one of the things
I love the most in film is the perfection of rhythmically coordinated
motion (from the hand-painted films of Brakhage to the contrapuntal
motion in many of Tarkovsky's long takes), and the editing in many
classic films is disruptive to this flow. I don't know if others
perceive it or not - it's nothing that I really identified consciously
before studying editing this past year.
(I also wonder if cinephiles have grown tolerant of these punctuations
of flow by necessity of having to survive jumpy reel changes, the
removal of frames from damaged prints, seeing obscure films on TV with
ad breaks, et cetera ... a demand to appreciate cinema's pure flow
requires a purity of both presentation and viewing environment rarely
available.)
Doug
20341
From: Matthew Clayfield
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 2:12pm
Subject: Re: to what end....????
Firstly, Saul, what a wonderful post.
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Saul Symonds" wrote:
> I think in a recent post someone said
> they were trying to discover what appeal movies had for them - but is
> cinema the question, or the answer?
For me, it's really both. It's sort like Brandon saying that
ninety-nine percent of his film knowledge has come from watching
films; for me, cinema is the answer to the question of itself -- the
answer is there, on the screen -- l'evidence [!], if you will.
If I ask, "Why cinema?," all I can really do is let it exist in and of
itself as the answer: "Because."
And, yes, I would say that my life is defined by cinema -- a lust for
it and what I feel it allows me to see, understand, feel and learn,
namely about who I am and how I want to live my life.
> Film, in
> asserting life, and therefore in asserting mortality, might be nothing
> more that a dream in which we're dying - a protracted escape from, and
> realization of, our eventual deaths.
That's some wonderful stuff, Saul. I just read Barthes' "Camera
Lucida" for the first [highly influential] time and am reminded of his
assertion that "All those young photographers who are at work in the
world do not know that they are agents of Death." I wrote on a piece
of paper at the time, "Photographers = agents of Death; filmmakers =
agents of a Living Death," and was reminded of a_film_by discussion in
which someone mentioned that silent films have an impact on them today
in that no-one in the film, and no-one who made it, is no longer
living. That discussion, along with the Barthes text, has greatly
altered my way of seeing things; cinema really is that dream in which
we're not only dying, but in which we are already dead, and in which
we will never die. It's a very beautiful, melancholy thing, this
cinema game...
20342
From: Matthew Clayfield
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 2:28pm
Subject: Re: Taking the Klinger challenge: some thoughts on editing
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Doug Dillaman wrote:
>
>(I also wonder if cinephiles have grown tolerant of these punctuations
> of flow by necessity of having to survive jumpy reel changes, the
> removal of frames from damaged prints, seeing obscure films on TV with
> ad breaks, et cetera ... a demand to appreciate cinema's pure flow
> requires a purity of both presentation and viewing environment rarely
> available.)
And don't forget the remote control and chapter markers on DVDs. Many
younger viewers [myself included, though I'm trying to break the
habit] have grown up with the "luxury" of random access, to the point
where power over the medium is an inherent expectation. This is the
reason one person I know will never buy a DVD -- the thought of
*owning* a film [as opposed to "being owned" by one] is repellant to
her [she still hires them though; whether she pauses or skips through
chapter markers like a madman, however, I don't know].
[That's not what the bulk of your post was about though, Doug -- sorry!]
20343
From: Michael E. Kerpan, Jr.
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 2:33pm
Subject: Re: Viewing OZU: even upside-down
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Elizabeth Anne Nolan" wrote:
>
> I spend most of my time with cinema, and have time to watch and
> read. One of my readings on OZU suggested watching his films
> upside down (the film upside down, not me) and that his
> compositions, form, etc would still be apparent, if not more
> so.
I think such an experiment would make me ill. ;~}
Have you seen "Late Spring" yet? If not, let me especially recommend
(in addition to the faces), Setsuko Hara's legs and Chishu Ryu's
adam's apple and shoulders.
(In general, I find Hara's physical movements extraordinarily
expressive in this film).
MEK
20344
From: Tom Sutpen
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 2:57pm
Subject: Question for Bill, re: "It's All True"
I meant to ask this during the course of the Norman Foster discussion
a couple of days ago, but I plum forgot:
Bill, exactly how much existing footage from "It's All True"
(regardless of who shot it) did not make it into the '93 documentary?
And, assuming you've seen it, how would you characterize its overall
quality in comparison to that which ended up making the cut?
(I apologize if this has been dealt with previously; but I can read
only so much of this august forum's old threads before the words start
to run together like goulash)
Tom Sutpen
20345
From: Matthew Clayfield
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 2:57pm
Subject: Re: to what end....???? ADDENDUM
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Matthew Clayfield"
wrote:
> ...and was reminded of a_film_by discussion in
> which someone mentioned that silent films have an impact on them today
> in that no-one in the film, and no-one who made it, is no longer
> living.
Of course, that makes no sense; what I meant to say is that *everyone*
in the film, and *everyone* who made it, is no longer living.
20346
From: Tom Sutpen
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 3:17pm
Subject: Re: to what end....???? ADDENDUM
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Matthew Clayfield"
wrote:
> > ...and was reminded of a_film_by discussion in
> > which someone mentioned that silent films have an impact on them today
> > in that no-one in the film, and no-one who made it, is no longer
> > living.
>
> Of course, that makes no sense; what I meant to say is that *everyone*
> in the film, and *everyone* who made it, is no longer living.
*****
Not to worry. I'm a hard-core recidivist when it comes to that kind of
sentence construction; so you're among friends.
Tom Sutpen
20347
From: samfilms2003
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 3:24pm
Subject: Re: to lurkers, and others...
>Richard wrote:
> I would like to suggest an experiment to you with regard to the Ozu
> films you'll be viewing. Look at them again without subtitles, or at
> least look at parts of them again and look at the actor's faces
> whenever they're in conversation with each other.
I do this with just about every subtitled film on DVD.
> I beleive that
> you'll see more of Ozu's style by not glancing at the bottom of the
> frame whenever subtitles appear. I think you'll also see unique
> aspects about performance too.
And the lighting, selective focus when applicable and so on.
The pacing feels different too, when you get your eyes out of
that look down look up look down rhythm.
-Sam
20348
From: samfilms2003
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 3:27pm
Subject: Re: to lurkers, and others...
> 3. Koyaanisqatsi (someone told me it was better than Sans Soleil)
Do NOT give that person an unsecured loan ;-)
-Sam
20349
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 3:40pm
Subject: Pop music (Was: Lists Lists Lists)
> The smartest put-down: Sallitt's on popular music (because it didn't even
> sound like a put-down)
Do you mean where I said that variety, almost for its own sake, was prized
these days? I admit that there's a shade of put-down in there, but on the
whole I think this is a good development. Most of my life, music critics
have savagely ostracized one kind of music or another - usually a kind
that I had some fondness for. So it came as a relief to me when pop music
criticism entered this phase of decadence or evolution or whatever, where
nearly anything off the beaten path gets attention just for stimulating
critics' jaded sensibilities. No kind of music seems to be completely
despised any more, especially if it's combined with some dissimilar genre
to create a weird hybrid. I can live with this state of affairs. - Dan
20350
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 4:08pm
Subject: Re: Cinema Tragedies (was Re: Welles and the Canon)
> In 1993 I heard that a collector in Sendai owned a 265 minute 16mm
> print but I never met anyone who's seen it so I doubt that it
> exists. The complete print was screened only once at its premiere.
> Since Kurosawa made it for Shochiku he wasn't consulted about the re-
> cut (most of the cuts occur in the first several reels.)
Isn't this the film where Kurosawa told the studio, "If you want to cut
it, you'd better do it lengthwise"? It's a great line, though I can't say
that I liked the film. - Dan
20351
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 4:10pm
Subject: Re: Aviator
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Saul Symonds" wrote:
>
>
> To sumarise the rest: Orignally after the XF-11 crash the film was
> going to stop using either Technicolor process and switch to a more
> contemporary look, but during editing Scorsese decided he missed the
> color and the three-strip look was extended for the rest of the
film.
Right. Actually, 1935 has already started when it kicks in, but the
decisions is correct esthetically as well. The field he crashlands
the plane in is blue. After that green returns, and is quite
noticeable in Connecticut.
20352
From: samfilms2003
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 4:14pm
Subject: Re: Taking the Klinger challenge: some thoughts on editing
> I wonder: is this cutting, and editing in general, overlooked because
> it was often not the province of the director in older films (and
> therefore fits poorly into the auteur theory), or is it just accepted
> as part of the course and irrelevant in the face of mise-en-scene?
Doug, if you have a director like Ford who simply would not provide
so calle coverage if he didn't wish to, then some very specific structure
of the editing is going to be determined by the mise-en-scene, wether
or not the editing is the "province" of the director or not.
Also, although I'm not, you know, the kind of scholar or student of
Hwood directors like many here, I would have to say my feeling is
the cutting in Nicholas Ray's films is consistently unusual; I'd be
tempted to perversely argue the way it must then arise out of his
mise-en-scene - in scope films especially - is one of his strengths;
you're not "supposed" to fuck with spatial integrities in Cinemascope.
Bless Nick Ray ;-)
-Sam Wells
20353
From: Michael E. Kerpan, Jr.
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 4:18pm
Subject: Cinema Tragedies (was Re: Welles and the Canon)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> Isn't {Kurosawa's "Idiot"} the film where Kurosawa told the studio,
> "If you want to cut it, you'd better do it lengthwise"?
Yes.
> It's a great line, though I can't say that I liked the film.
Why did you dislike it?
MEK
20354
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 4:17pm
Subject: Re: Question for Bill, re: "It's All True"
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Tom Sutpen" wrote:
>
> I meant to ask this during the course of the Norman Foster
discussion
> a couple of days ago, but I plum forgot:
>
> Bill, exactly how much existing footage from "It's All True"
> (regardless of who shot it) did not make it into the '93
documentary?
> And, assuming you've seen it, how would you characterize its overall
> quality in comparison to that which ended up making the cut?
>
All the color from the stock library at Paramount was used, except
for buildings and things. All the worthwhile images of Four Men went
in, but there is still some unpreserved - probably Rio harbor stuff,
and fishing stuff. The real unseen treasures are from Bonito, and the
LA Film Crix donated 7 thousand dollars 2 yrs ago to preserve takes
selected by Catherine Benamou of that. We actually edited a couple of
bullfighting sequences that weren't used - quite interesting - and
she says the material that's being preserved is worthwhile. I just
haven't seen it. Finally, there's a lot of b&w doc.umentary footage
of Carnaval shot when they arrived that is unpreserved - precious
historical footage, perhaps with small gems of Welles-making-a-
documentary here and there, although we used quite a bit in the
credits. More money is needed to preserve the whole find.
20355
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 4:18pm
Subject: Cinema Tragedies (was Re: Welles and the Canon)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> Isn't this the film where Kurosawa told the studio, "If you want to
cut
> it, you'd better do it lengthwise"? It's a great line, though I
can't say
> that I liked the film. - Dan
I heard Wilder use it coming out of a preview of The Front Page.
20356
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 4:18pm
Subject: Brakhage (Was: varying degrees of merit)
> when I was first overwhelmed by Brakhage's
> films in 1964 it was at a screening on a bedsheet in someone's
> apartment, and you would not find his name in hardly any "serious" film
> book, which there weren't many of then.
When I took my first film classes at Harvard in 1973-74, Brakhage films
were shown (courtesy of Alfred Guzzetti, I think). And this was in the
days when Hawks or Ford were still outre - they might have shown up in
genre classes, but not in film history classes. Back then, I'd have said
that what used to be called "American independent film" was more highly
regarded than Hollywood auteurist favorites, and that Brakhage was already
one of the most acclaimed of the bunch. Is this a change from 1964, or
did you feel that Brakhage was still neglected a decade later? - Dan
20357
From: Fred Camper
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 4:47pm
Subject: Re: Brakhage (Was: varying degrees of merit)
Dan Sallitt wrote:
> ....Is this a change from 1964, or
>did you feel that Brakhage was still neglected a decade later?
>
Well, I think he's still neglected compared to the attention he should
be getting today, so I certainly think he wasn't getting "enough"
attention in 1973-4. But 1973 was a *huge* change from 1964. In 1964, he
really was an "underground" filmmaker. Only Film Culture had published
anything about him. I doubt his films were shown in any of the few film
classes that existed around the country. I'd like to think my efforts at
the MIT Film Society, showing his films in Cambridge between 1965-71,
helped.
In around 1970 the Museum of Modern Art gave him a retrospective. The
January 1973 issue of "Artforum" was a special issue on Eisenstein and
Brakhage, edited by Annette Michelson, who treated them as figures of
equal importance in her opening essay. His shows at Millennium Film
Workshop that year were "seriously" sold out -- you had to get there an
hour and a half early to get in; I remember hearing that Jonas Mekas and
Ernie Gehr didn't get in, though I think one or both was somehow let in
at the last minute.
And as to Harvard, the first person to teach film there, a woman
professor who shepherded a film course many sections of which were
taught by students and whose name I've forgotten, is supposed to have
said at the time of the "Artforum" issue that she hadn't taken Brakhage
seriously before but now that she sees him compared to Eisenstein in the
pages of "Artforum" she has changed her mind. This story, which I heard
third hand, is if true I guess a pretty good anecdote in the annals of
"canon formation," though I also feel sure that if an "Arftorum" editor
had tried to put a bad filmmaker over on the world -- "Eisenstein and
Emshwiller," say, it might have affected a few people but wouldn't have
made Emshwiller's reputation in the long run.
Fred Camper
20358
From:
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 11:58am
Subject: Re: Viewing OZU: even upside-down
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Elizabeth Anne Nolan" wrote:
>
> I spend most of my time with cinema, and have time to watch and
> read. One of my readings on OZU suggested watching his films
> upside down (the film upside down, not me) and that his
> compositions, form, etc would still be apparent, if not more
> so.
Back in the 1920's Sternberg expressed a wish for his films to be projected
upside down. Then viewers could concentrate on the lighting, composition, and
so on. He was not being literal - he was just trying to give people clues about
what was important in his movies.
I have never actually tried watching a movie upside down.
I like to pause films, and look at a single frame for 5 or 10 minutes. It is
amazing the things you can see and learn!
This may or may not be an "authentic" way to look at films.
BUT: When the film was being made, the director planned the shot, watched it
being filmed, often in many takes, saw the shot in the dailies, saw it again
while editing, maybe paused it in the Moviola or computer, watched rough cuts
many times, etc. The director probably saw many shots in the film for many
minutes. Pausing and watching a film might actually be closer to directors' own
experience of a film, then just "watching the movie" in normal speed.
Mike Grost
20359
From: Michael E. Kerpan, Jr.
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 5:10pm
Subject: Re: Viewing OZU: even upside-down
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
> I like to pause films, and look at a single frame for 5 or 10
> minutes. It is amazing the things you can see and learn!
> This may or may not be an "authentic" way to look at films.
> BUT: When the film was being made, the director planned the shot,
> watched it being filmed, often in many takes, saw the shot in
> the dailies, saw it again while editing, maybe paused it in the
> Moviola or computer, watched rough cuts many times, etc. The
> director probably saw many shots in the film for many minutes.
> Pausing and watching a film might actually be closer to directors'
> own experience of a film, then just "watching the movie" in normal
> speed.
Well, one theory is that Ozu's preferred cinematic framing was
directly related to his hobby of photography, using a twin lens reflex
camera. So single frame-based analysis might be especially appropriate
as one way to look at his work.
I don't know that I linger over shots for minutes at a time, but I do
like the ability to get selected "stills" on the fly with DVD players.
MEK
20360
From:
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 0:11pm
Subject: Re: Aviator
In a message dated 05-01-04 11:11:47 EST, Bill Krohn writes about "The
Aviator":
<< The field he crashlands the plane in is blue. After that green returns,
and is quite noticeable in Connecticut. >>
In "The Toll of the Sea" (1922), the nature scenes in the forest are all in a
bright green - the trees and grass look real. This contrasts with the red of
the Chinese buildings (the story takes place in China, and stars Anna May
Wong, although it was apparently shot in California). There are no blues anywhere
in the film. It looks like a delirious red-and-green Christmas tree run amok!
I liked the red-and-blue color scheme of "The Aviator" very much. But it was
completely different from the red-and-green world I was expecting.
Barry Salt's desription of two-color also uses the words red and green, both
for the earlier Prizma process, and then the improved subtractive Technicolor
process used in "The Toll of the Sea".
Mike Grost
20361
From:
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 0:21pm
Subject: Re: Aviator
Hold the presses!
Salt goes on to say that in the 1920's, the dyes used were "orange-red" and
"blue-green". So the pure, brilliant red & green of modern prints of "The Toll
of the Sea" (freshly struck from the two-part negatives) might not be fully
authentic.
Salt also says that surviving materials of "The Black Pirate" (1924) now look
"a pale salmon pink and a steel blue" which "may be due in part to the fading
of the dyes".
This might have been the model used by "The Aviator". The colors in the
opening sometimes have a bit of a frail, washed out look. Whereas the eye-popping
modern prints of "The Toll of the Sea" of "The Affairs of Anatol" make most
music videos look low key!
Perhaps authenticity in the matter of two-color Technicolor is going to be
elusive.
Mike Grost
20362
From: Elizabeth Anne Nolan
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 5:31pm
Subject: Pausing, single still frame -- CINEMATIC INFORMATION
MG4273@a... wrote:
> > I like to pause films, and look at a single frame for 5 or 10
> > minutes. It is amazing the things you can see and learn! ...
> > Pausing and watching a film might actually be closer to directors'
> > own experience of a film, then just "watching the movie" in normal
> > speed.
"Michael E. Kerpan, Jr." wrote:
> So single frame-based analysis might be especially appropriate
> as one way to look at his work.
> I don't know that I linger over shots for minutes at a time, but I do
> like the ability to get selected "stills" on the fly with DVD players.
I want to see theatrical screenings rather than at home even though
I have a 50 inch screen (more than 10 years old). But one problem
with the theatrical screen is there is no pause or rewind!
As a writer, I feel each scene should have single still frames that
tell the point of that scene, the tension, dynamics, characteristics
-- like the story=boards, but with all the proper light and color.
Anyone want to mention one of their favorite single still frames that
conveys a lot of CINEMATIC INFORMATION at that moment in the story?
Has such collection been assembled in a book?
Let's eliminate the likes of Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct or other
photogenic stars, even Garbo and Deitrick.
20363
From:
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 0:36pm
Subject: Re: Brakhage (Was: varying degrees of merit)
One suspects that this book helped, too:
"An Introduction to the American Underground Film" (1967) by Sheldon Renan
This was a $2.25 paperback original, from Dutton, the same folks who later
put out that "The American Cinema" paperback by Andrew Sarris. It is an
amazingly clear and informative roadmap to many avant-garde filmmakers of the era,
including Brakhage. You could buy this in any bookstore, and learn a ton about
experimental film.
No one ever seems to talk about this book today. It is the sort of
handy-dandy little reference guide that would benefit every student of film.
On Ed Emshwiller: "George Dumpson's Place" (1961-1963) is the best film of
his seen here. His earlier science fiction illustrations (signed "EMSH") are
outstanding.
Mike Grost
20364
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 5:37pm
Subject: The other Brooks (Was: Ambersons)
>> though Peter did say that Welles, who was espescially
>> riled about Richard Brooks getting to make LORD JIM (a favorite
>> project), did say off-the-record (and not on tape) that Brooks ought
>> to be thrown in jail for what he did to Conrad.
>
> *****
> That's nothing. Brooks should have been put to hard labor in Cinema
> Jail long before that; for crimes committed against Dostoevsky,
> Sinclair Lewis, Tennessee Williams and F. Scott Fitzwhatsisname. I'm
> convinced Brooks was on a one-man crusade back in the fifties to
> transform literary works into middlebrow pap (and usually with MGM
> driving the getaway car).
Interestingly, the Cahiers writers liked Brooks quite well, and I think
the Movie critics followed suit. The American auteurists weren't quite as
impressed, seems to me.
Years ago, I saw BATTLE CIRCUS and rather liked it - always meant to
revisit it. I don't care for the later Brooks films that I've run across,
though ELMER GANTRY interested me a bit. - Dan
20365
From:
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 0:39pm
Subject: Request for Information
A lady I do not know sent me an e-mail asking for information.
Do any a_film_by-ers recognize this?
It sounds like a good movie, which is why I'm going slightly OT to post this.
Mike Grost
Here is her e-mail:
Here's a brief description of the film, or what I can remember from my
childhood, anyway. This film played quite a bit on PBS in the early-mid 70s. It is
foreign, possibly Italian or French. - It is about a young urchin of a boy
and his love of a particular horse on a carousel. The film is sparse in
speaking parts - The boy rarely speaks other than to beg change from patrons at a
cafe, and he gets yelled at by those patrons. The boy eventually resorts to
stealing some change/tip money from a cafe table, so he can ride the carousel. My
memory gets spotty after that, but I remember - the carnival shuts down and
the carousel is dismantled and the horses put in storage in a large dark
"garage" with - dirt floor? I vaguely remember some strange scene of several
urchin-like children converged in the darkness of the large storage garage, digging
up the favorite carousel horse from mud - then in the end, the child is seen
riding the now very large white and beautiful come-alive carousel horse in the
snow. This film has been evading me now, for decades.
Does this film ring a bell with you...?
Thanks for any help you can give -
20366
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 5:49pm
Subject: Re: The other Brooks (Was: Ambersons)
--- Dan Sallitt wrote:
>
> Years ago, I saw BATTLE CIRCUS and rather liked it -
> always meant to
> revisit it. I don't care for the later Brooks films
> that I've run across,
> though ELMER GANTRY interested me a bit. - Dan
>
Just before it closed Brooks stopped by the editorial
offices of the "Los Angeles Herald Examiner" and
screened us all his print of "Deadline USA." He was
quite an interesting character. "The Professionals" is
a truly great western adventure film. I also "admire"
Elmer Gantry " and "In Cold Blood." But his Tennesee
Williams adaptations are awful, despite excellent
casts.
Among his writing credits : "White Savage" with the
ineffable Maria Montez.
Brooks' love letter to his then wife, jean Simmons
"The Happy Ending" is not without interest --
particularly for its deliberately abrupt ending. It
has one of Michel Legrand's best scores ("What are You
Doing the Rest of Your Life?" is the title song) plus
an interesting supporting turn by an actor billed as
"Robert Darin."
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
20367
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 5:57pm
Subject: Graham's The New Wave (Was: Cinema, taste, merit)
> As for "Positif" vs."Cahiers" I strongly reccomend
> finding a copy of "The New Wave" by Peter Graham
> (Doubleday, 1968) which contains "In Praise of Andre
> Bazin" by Gerard Gozlan - an extended and very precise
> attack on "Cahiers" esthetic and political practices.
Yeah, I think this is essential reading for today's auteurists. In the
50s, the Cahiers were perceived by many to be pro-clerical, socially
conservative, even protofascist. Even if you don't classify the politique
as rightist, it was certainly anti-leftist in some sense: it pointedly
forsook the political concerns of leftist film writers, the better to
focus on quasi-religious concerns that struck many as frivolous at best
and reactionary at worst. - Dan
20368
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 6:05pm
Subject: Maud (Was: Cinema, taste, merit)
> What were the other Rohmers shown? He's a very great
> filmmaker, I feel. In "Maud" he does variations on the
> kind of cross-cutting between characters that
> Hitchcock refined in the motel room office scene in
> "Psycho."
The cross-cutting in MAUD had a tremendous influence on me. Rohmer took a
formal device that was meant to synthesize two camera positions into a new
whole, and subverted it so that each camera position had its own autonomy,
with shot duration overriding dramatic turning points in the dialogue. -
Dan
20369
From: Brandon
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 6:02pm
Subject: Re: Request for Information
>A lady I do not know sent me an e-mail asking for information.
>Do any a_film_by-ers recognize this?
>It sounds like a good movie, which is why I'm going slightly OT to post this.
Doesn't ring a bell, but I may have found it with a google search.
Check out:
http://users.ultinet.net/~kfo/cbs.html
and scroll down to "The Little Wooden Horse".
Yeah, it's just a one-sentence description, and it's on CBS instead of
PBS... but this show aired in the late 70's and showed short foreign films,
and the description sound close enough.
A second search finds this page, confirming that it was a French film:
http://www.gymmy.org/CCFF.html
The IMDB doesn't list the film under that title, but maybe if we searched
IMDB or Google for the French title, we'd get something. I don't know
French myself...
Brandon
20370
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 6:12pm
Subject: Re: Viewing OZU: even upside-down
> > One of my readings on OZU suggested watching his films
> > upside down (the film upside down, not me) and that his
> > compositions, form, etc would still be apparent, if not more
> > so.
There's one shot in the photographer's studio sequence in RECORD OF A TENEMENT GENTLEMAN in which Ozu provides this effect himself (this could even be what
gave your viewing advisors their cue).
(For some reason, to this day I've never been able to see a face photographed upside down onscreen without at least beginning to twist my head around, as if
instinctively, to "read" it.)
.......
> one theory is that Ozu's preferred cinematic framing was
> directly related to his hobby of photography, using a twin lens reflex
> camera.
20371
From: Jonathan Takagi
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 6:27pm
Subject: Re: Pausing, single still frame -- CINEMATIC INFORMATION
On Tue, 04 Jan 2005 17:31:27 -0000, Elizabeth Anne Nolan wrote:
> Anyone want to mention one of their favorite single still frames that
> conveys a lot of CINEMATIC INFORMATION at that moment in the story?
Check out the current issue at:
http://www.rouge.com.au/
Jonathan Takagi
20372
From: Tom Sutpen
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 6:30pm
Subject: Re: to what end....????
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Saul Symonds" wrote:
> In part, a hangover of Rimbaudian proportions I was suffering
> this morning got me thinking about all those hours I spend in the dark
> of a cinema, in front of flickering images, staring wide-eyed.
> (Moments of self-indulgent decadence tend to, in my experience,
> provoke such sweeping questions and thoughts). I was wondering whether
> any of the critics here, or film-addicts/buffs/lovers/etc for that
> matter, see their lives as defined by cinema. That is, do we see
> movies as a constant which defines everything else in our lives, and
> ultimately gives it meaning?
*****
I'm unsure why, but it's difficult for me to say whether Cinema has
given my life meaning. I'd like to think I would've turned out to be a
healthy, relatively productive citizen even if I hadn't enveloped
myself in film at a young age. I'll admit that, apart from some
personal relationships I've had, Cinema has gone further than anything
else toward defining who I am. If that suggests the presence of a
'meaning' that wouldn't otherwise be there, then perhaps the answer to
your question is yes. But *if* film has given meaning to my life, it's
only because I've allowed it to.
After all, pursuing an interest in film is a willful act, whether
anyone wants to admit it or not. Of course, discovering the medium,
becoming transfixed by it either gradually or in an instant, is
something you just can't govern; it happens to you. But everything
following the discovery is a matter of choice, and only a foolish
cinephile would ever claim that their subsequent exploration of
Cinema's beauties and its horrors was completely beyond their control.
There isn't one of us here in this gathering of professional and
amateur cinephiles who hasn't deliberately given over some portion of
their life to Cinema, and given it gladly. Whatever meaning it has
given our lives . . . different for each of us . . . is a meaning
we've more or less consciously sought out.
> I think in a recent post someone said
> they were trying to discover what appeal movies had for them - but is
> cinema the question, or the answer. Should we be asking what this
> object means to us, or is this object the thing that answers our
> questions of meaning.
> I know that posters here have a wide range of
> interests that go beyond the cinema, (which reminds me Mike, I've been
> working through, and loving your mystery stories - some of my earliest
> remembered read novels were collections of 40s and 50s hard-boiled
> crime fiction - or stuff like Horace McCoy's "They Shoot Horses, Don't
> They?" a title that even now brings about whiffs of profound
> sadness), and that's why I was curious about the place which people
> here accord cinema.
*****
I have countless interests other than Cinema, but no matter how many I
developed, it's still at or near the center of my life. It's not
something I accord as much as it is something I willingly accept. Even
when I deliberately turned away from film, it was defining what I did;
only in those years it was defining me in a different sense than it
had before. I just didn't know it.
If my love for, and interest in, Cinema had not been so vast, I
wouldn't have sought to run away from it for as long as I did.
> Jean-Pierre Melville once said, "Being a spectator is the finest
> profession in the world". I've never been sure if a critic is primarly
> a watcher or a writer, and to what extent cultural and psychological
> forces shape the reasons that we watch movies.
*****
Well, that's the key question, isn't it. I mean, as fine and enjoyable
and enlightening as discussions of form genuinely are, the question of
why we develop and pursue a passion for this particular form of
expression, to the point where we devote some measure of our lives to
it, is the more fascinating area of investigation.
No one, to the best of my knowledge, has ever explored the psychology
of moviegoing; either in individuals or audiences. It's potentially
the best, most culturally revealing area of academic study as far as
film is concerned, yet it remains largely unregarded. It's as though
someone determined early on that the Social Sciences and the Arts were
never to fraternize within the walls of Old Ivy. And that is truly
unfortunate, because the social phenomenon of moviegoing fascinated me
right from the beginning; mostly because I thought if I knew what
drove others to chase the cinematic experience, then I might have more
insight into why I was doing it so relentlessly.
All I knew . . . and know . . . is that when I became interested in
cinema at 14, a bottomless well of interest and curiosity, and an
enthusiasm the like of which I have never felt before or since, opened
up within me. And when it did, I jumped in with both feet as fast as I
could.
Why I did, I still couldn't tell you.
Tom Sutpen
20373
From: Ruy Gardnier
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 6:39pm
Subject: Re: Request for Information
Thanks to Brandon, I found out:
It's a 1966 french film called "Le Petit Cheval de bois" (got it right, Mr.
Coursodon?), directed by Richard Balducci, with song by Francis Lai.
According to http://www.cinedic.com/bio/b/balducci_richard.htm, the film won
a Walt Disney award for children's film.
From: "Brandon"
To:
>
> Check out:
> http://users.ultinet.net/~kfo/cbs.html
> and scroll down to "The Little Wooden Horse".
>
20374
From: Tom Sutpen
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 6:55pm
Subject: Re: The other Brooks (Was: Ambersons)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> >> though Peter did say that Welles, who was espescially
> >> riled about Richard Brooks getting to make LORD JIM (a favorite
> >> project), did say off-the-record (and not on tape) that Brooks ought
> >> to be thrown in jail for what he did to Conrad.
> >
> > *****
> > That's nothing. Brooks should have been put to hard labor in Cinema
> > Jail long before that; for crimes committed against Dostoevsky,
> > Sinclair Lewis, Tennessee Williams and F. Scott Fitzwhatsisname. I'm
> > convinced Brooks was on a one-man crusade back in the fifties to
> > transform literary works into middlebrow pap (and usually with MGM
> > driving the getaway car).
>
> Interestingly, the Cahiers writers liked Brooks quite well, and I think
> the Movie critics followed suit.
*****
That's true, isn't it.
Okay . . . amend the indictment and throw that charge in as well!
> The American auteurists weren't quite as
> impressed, seems to me.
>
> Years ago, I saw BATTLE CIRCUS and rather liked it - always meant to
> revisit it. I don't care for the later Brooks films that I've run
across,
> though ELMER GANTRY interested me a bit.
*****
Oh, I'd never completely dismiss Richard Brooks; despite what the
above reads like. "Battle Circus" is just . . . sad. But beyond that,
Brooks managed to turn out a number of good films in his career;
usually when he wasn't adapting an author the stature of Scott
Fitzwhosis or Feyodor Dostoevsky, though. In the latter instances he
was merely following a long-standing Hollywood custom of butchering
works of literature for fun and profit. There's nothing unique about
that, per se; it's just that the thing that's made my eyebrows go up
and down is the single-mindedness with which he pursued that hallowed
tradition between 1958 and 1965.
But someone who could make films like "The Happy Ending" or "Take the
High Ground" or "Something of Value" or, especially, "The
Professionals" is not someone to be written off as a hack, as sorely
tempted as one might be in the face of his other work.
Tom Sutpen
20375
From: Tom Sutpen
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 7:06pm
Subject: Re: to lurkers, and others...
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
wrote:
> I would like to suggest an experiment to you with regard to the Ozu
> films you'll be viewing. Look at them again without subtitles, or at
> least look at parts of them again and look at the actor's faces
> whenever they're in conversation with each other. I beleive that
> you'll see more of Ozu's style by not glancing at the bottom of the
> frame whenever subtitles appear. I think you'll also see unique
> aspects about performance too.
*****
I've done that on and off for years (though in most cases on video
where you can't get rid of the subtitles; you just have to ignore
them), and it's often illuminating, provided you're familiar enough
with the film in question.
I haven't done it with an Ozu film yet, but one filmmaker who benefits
from that practice in much the same way you describe is Ingmar
Bergman. You'd be surprised how rich a so-called lesser Bergman film
like "Brink of Life" is when you're focus is solely devoted to what's
on the screen.
Tom Sutpen
20376
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 7:39pm
Subject: Re: Aviator
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
the eye-popping
> modern prints of "The Toll of the Sea" of "The Affairs of Anatol" make most
> music videos look low key!
> Perhaps authenticity in the matter of two-color Technicolor is going to be
> elusive.
As in many things. A collector friend who has a Tech print of Pinocchio told
me that if I want to see the film as it looked on release I have to come see his
print - the Disney restoration amps up the colors. As previously mentioned,
Uni's 1999 prints of The Birds got the colors wrong - AH had requested a
"boutique" developing bath with extra cyan green, and they didn't know that
when they made their prints. Like the incorrect timing on the "restored"
Othello, this is largely a matter of not looking - it's all written down somewhere!
The timing indications for Othello were with the negative, for example, and the
records of how The Birds was developed are at the lab. For those of us who
saw it in its first release, the new prints are a subtle letdown, because AH had
a REASON for using more green.
20377
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 7:53pm
Subject: Re: Brakhage (Was: varying degrees of merit)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> Dan Sallitt wrote:
P. Adams Sitney invited Brakhage and others to show films at my college at
Yale in 1967.
20378
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 7:58pm
Subject: Re: Aviator
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
the eye-popping
> modern prints of "The Toll of the Sea" of "The Affairs of Anatol" make most
> music videos look low key!
> Perhaps authenticity in the matter of two-color Technicolor is going to be
> elusive.
As in many things. A collector friend who has a Tech print of Pinocchio told
me that if I want to see the film as it looked on release I have to come see his
print - the Disney restoration amps up the colors. As previously mentioned,
Uni's 1999 prints of The Birds got the colors wrong - AH had requested a
"boutique" developing bath with extra cyan green, and they didn't know that
when they made their prints. Like the incorrect timing on the "restored"
Othello, this is largely a matter of not looking - it's all written down somewhere!
The timing indications for Othello were with the negative, for example, and the
records of how The Birds was developed are at the lab. For those of us who
saw it in its first release, the new prints are a subtle letdown, because AH had
a REASON for using more green.
20379
From: Fred Camper
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 8:11pm
Subject: Re: Re: to lurkers (and group business)
Of course all are encouraged to post. At the same time everyone should
realize that the volume of posts is now so large that few have time to
read everything.
Lately I've found reading the group on the Web site by clicking on
"expand messages" on the message page is most efficient, though it
doesn't flag for you what you have and haven't read.
Many here will agree that the members who make five or ten posts in a 24
hour period are among our most valuable, knowledgeable, and entertaining
posters. But if we want to keep the group reasonably manageable, maybe
we should all edit ourselves a bit, or slow down the pace a bit, or both.
I say this not as co-moderator (when I post as co-moderator I will
consult with Peter and we'll agree on a text and then post it co-signed)
but as an interested member.
On another note, two people sent in bios as the result of a recent
request, and those have been added. I've posted a procedure for adding a
new bio or correcting your old one at
http://www.fredcamper.com/M/Bioshowto.html
Fred Camper
20380
From: Fred Camper
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 8:12pm
Subject: Re: Re: to lurkers (and group business) Correctoin
I wrote:
I've posted a procedure for adding a
new bio or correcting your old one at
That should have been
http://www.fredcamper.com/M/Bioshowto.txt
20381
From:
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 3:16pm
Subject: Re: Pop music (Was: Lists Lists Lists)
In a message dated 1/4/05 9:48:21 AM, sallitt@p... writes:
> Do you mean where I said that variety, almost for its own sake, was prized
> these days? I admit that there's a shade of put-down in there, but on the
> whole I think this is a good development.
>
Yes but a put-down of the folks willfully stuck in musical ghettos, not the
decadent music whores.
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
20382
From: Peter Henne
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 8:26pm
Subject: Re: Pausing, single still frame -- CINEMATIC INFORMATION
The book published for "Paris, Texas" (Ecco Press, New York, 1984) contains two sections, a transcription ("a description, of the finished and edited film
containing of course all of Sam Shepard's original dialogue"), followed by 187 two-page color frame enlargements from the film. Some of the enlargements have
brief citations of place, which are easy to ignore. The degree to which the book's second section conveys character, plot, and setting with images alone is
striking, though I admit it is hard to subtract my memory of the film experience when perusing the book.
Peter Henne
Elizabeth Anne Nolan wrote:
Anyone want to mention one of their favorite single still frames that
conveys a lot of CINEMATIC INFORMATION at that moment in the story?
Has such collection been assembled in a book?
Let's eliminate the likes of Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct or other
photogenic stars, even Garbo and Deitrick.
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20383
From: Jonathan Takagi
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 8:33pm
Subject: Re: Re: to lurkers (and group business)
On Tue, 04 Jan 2005 14:11:01 -0600, Fred Camper wrote:
> Lately I've found reading the group on the Web site by clicking on
> "expand messages" on the message page is most efficient, though it
> doesn't flag for you what you have and haven't read.
Also, I've found that gmail does a good job keeping threads together, taking
up just one spot for all the subsequent replies to a message. You can easily
skip the ones you've already read. If you need an invitation for gmail, contact
me off-list and I'll send you one.
Jonathan Takagi
20384
From: Saul Symonds
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 8:49pm
Subject: Re: Fred's post #20259 NOOOO!
Fred Camper wrote:
> But I love the book it's based on,
> > the Marquis de Sade's "101 Days of Sodom." I found the book a bit
> hard
> > to read, in that many of the acts it describes are morally
> repellent,
"The 120 Days of Sodom", though quite an extreme book, (perhaps
matched today only by Bret Easton Ellis's "American Psycho", and then
that still doesn't quite make it), is "morally repellent" only
depending on the angle from which you approach it. If we cannot define
morality outside the terms our society sets for us, (in Nazi Germany
they believed that what they were doing was of the highest moral value
- and that only those with the greatest moral strength could carry out
the genocide), then we are in trouble. Humankind will always need its
de Sade's to set a different standard of morality.
> >The book is really a journey away from what most would
> > affirm as human;
But didn't Krafft-Ebbing show that de Sade's, (and Sacher-Masoch's)
prose were deeply and fundamentally describing very human acts, and
those which many felt repressed inside of them?? Doesn't this then
make the book a journey into what is human, but merely from an angle
we might not want to see?
-- Saul.
20385
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 9:13pm
Subject: Re: Cinema, taste, merit (was Re: varying...)
> So perhaps you're just
> cauterizing my posts here when you say there's "almost none of that
> sense..." in my writing? Because I think that would be a grotesquely
> inaccurate characterization of my writing on commercial narrative
> cinema, unless I just don't understand what you mean.
Yes, I was talking about your posts here (though hopefully not cauterizing
them!). Though I have read some of your other work, I've been quite lax
in recent years about keeping up with the web sites of my film friends.
> As a filmmaker defining what kind of cinema he wants to see, this is
> very nice. (What year was it written, I wonder? It sounds to me like it
> could be the starting point for a pretty acidic attack on Godard's
> "Hélas, pour moi.")
Godard wrote this in 1959 - I believe it came from an article gloating
over the triumph of the Nouvelle Vague at Cannes that year.
> As a definition of what makes great cinema, it's
> seriously wrong.
Here come the compromises and concessions of which I spoke in that
post.... I don't think that Godard was condemning, say, von Sternberg for
making his characters "talk like a train," though you could interpret his
words that way. In context, one feels strongly that he is not so much
limiting filmmakers to some standard of realism, as is he attacking a
certain tendency of the cinema of his time (both commercial and art) to
sacrifice the surprise and entropy of life for a comfortable
predictability that assures audiences that they are seeing something
familiar and can use old rules to orient themselves. He probably wasn't
really talking about realism in any practical sense.
Nonetheless, the underlying concern with breaking through the shell of
fictional bad habits and discovering the infinite variety of real life is
a common theme of the old auteurist texts.
> Acting style in "Strange
> Illusion." I dunno, I think it's middle-period Hardy Boys
Kind of a special case, isn't it. It's as if Ulmer wants the acting to be
worse than usual. Most B films, however bad, have a little more acting
verisimilitude than STRANGE ILLUSION. Yet the movie does have something.
> and it
> doesn't seem to connect all that well with acting style in "The Naked
> Dawn."
I dunno, I think it does. I'd say those performances in THE NAKED DAWN
are pretty unsatisfactory by everyday acting standards. I don't rule out
the possibility that Ulmer got what he wanted, though.
> Acting styles in de Toth's noirs versus Anthony Mann's noirs?
> Perhaps there are just things I've missed here.
I'd think this one wouldn't seem so obscure. Many commentators have
mentioned de Toth's distinctively "quiet" way of directing actors (it
stands out with his villains, because of the convention of movie villains
usually being more histrionic and less taciturn than heroes). Whereas
Mann goes over-the-top operatic at peak moments: think of Stewart grinding
Duryea into the bar in WINCHESTER '73, waiting for that gunshot in the
hand in LARAMIE, etc. I can't think of moments when de Toth would rupture
an actor's discourse like that. (These moments really do register as
ruptures: editing slows down, Mann moves in for close-ups of flaring
nostrils and wild eyes.)
> "One last observation: you seem not to have noted one of Zach's most
> important points: that direction of actors or manipulation of time,
> rhythm, emphasis, etc. is no more or less 'formal' than what's in a
> composition."
>
> I didn't miss it, I asked Zach to write an essay about it. I'd like to
> see this defended, particularly in films I haven't really gotten.
Does Zach have to mount the defense? I'd think the burden of proof would
be on those who claim that form relates primarily to visuals - there's
nothing obvious about that claim.
To deal with this at all, one has to deal with the form vs. content idea,
and that's a bear. Many have denied that such a split between form and
content can be defined in art, and in a strict sense they're probably
right. The terms seem more suitable to describe, say, an essay, where you
can identify a set of concepts that the author is trying to communicate,
and call that the content. But most of us probably feel that art isn't
sending a message, Western Union-style. It's tempting to call it all
form.
When I was talking about classical art forms in my last post in this
thread, I mentioned that I thought they created a dichotomy between
something straightforward for the conceptual mind to lock onto (narrative,
representation, etc.) and expressive elements that are able to work around
the edges of consciousness, because consciousness has been thrown a bone.
This kind of dichotomy can be harnessed to the form-content idea if one is
so inclined - I tend to link these structures in my mind. So I often talk
about the bone being thrown to the conscious mind (narrative, etc.) as
"content," and the expressive elements that are harder to nail down as
"form." I don't know if this would hold up in court.
Anyway, if you buy this, all sorts of acting things can be described as
form. You'd use "content" to describe only the simple, signifying
backbone of a performance, and "form" to describe the variations in
rhythm, amplitude, and coloration that aren't burdened with telling the
story.
And, if you don't buy my way of describing form, then you really have to
come up with some justification of your own for using "form" and "content"
in the first place, because they are very tricky concepts when applied to
art.
> Or perhaps too many movie fans, including the auteurist ones, are too
> attached to movies as vehicles for involving us in the characters and
> the story and manipulating our emotions.
I know that you feel that your position isn't properly honored here, but
statements like this can make the rest of us feel the same way. A lot of
us have been trying with all our might to make complex rather than simple
statements about film acting, film identification, etc., while doing our
best to remain sensitive to other aspects of the film experience. If you
really tune in to what is said here about acting, I think you'll see that
there's a serious effort being made to strike deep into the film. - Dan
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
20386
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 9:29pm
Subject: Re: Pausing, single still frame -- CINEMATIC INFORMATION
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Jonathan Takagi
wrote:
> On Tue, 04 Jan 2005 17:31:27 -0000, Elizabeth Anne Nolan
wrote:
>
> > Anyone want to mention one of their favorite single still frames
that
> > conveys a lot of CINEMATIC INFORMATION at that moment in the
story?
>
> Check out the current issue at:
>
> http://www.rouge.com.au/
>
> Jonathan Takagi
This current issue is entirely devoted to images from films, each
contributor having been asked to select one image. When Adrian asked
me to contribute I was dubious about the endeavor -- cinema is
motion, stills are always lying etc... (the issue is dealt with in
an introduction by the editors of ROUGE). I selected the last shot
of Tarkovsky's "Nostalghia", which is actually a very long and very
slow zoom out, which of course is lost in the still reproduction, as
are also the music and sounds on the soundtrack, which are very
important. Still, the image contains a lot of "information" since it
actually collapses past and present together and as such
recapitulates the film's fundamental theme and brings poetic
resolution to the protagonist's psychological quandary. To me it is
one of the most affecting closing shots in film history -- but what
can be derived from it based on a still picture is very
unsatisfactory. Do watch the movie instead!
20387
From: Patrick Ciccone
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 9:33pm
Subject: Re: to lurkers (and group business)
> Lately I've found reading the group on the Web site by clicking on
> "expand messages" on the message page is most efficient, though it
> doesn't flag for you what you have and haven't read.
I never noticed this after years--how stupid!
What happened to Tag?
Patrick
20388
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 9:44pm
Subject: Re: Fred's post #20259 NOOOO!
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Saul Symonds"
wrote:
>
> > >The book is really a journey away from what most would
> > > affirm as human;
>
> But didn't Krafft-Ebbing show that de Sade's, (and Sacher-Masoch's)
> prose were deeply and fundamentally describing very human acts, and
> those which many felt repressed inside of them?? Doesn't this then
> make the book a journey into what is human, but merely from an
angle
> we might not want to see?
>
> -- Saul.
"Tout ce que signe Sade est amour." (Gilbert Lely).
20389
From: Tom Sutpen
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 10:19pm
Subject: Re: Brakhage (Was: varying degrees of merit)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
> One suspects that this book helped, too:
> "An Introduction to the American Underground Film" (1967) by Sheldon
Renan
> This was a $2.25 paperback original, from Dutton, the same folks who
later
> put out that "The American Cinema" paperback by Andrew Sarris. It is an
> amazingly clear and informative roadmap to many avant-garde
filmmakers of the era,
> including Brakhage. You could buy this in any bookstore, and learn a
ton about
> experimental film.
> No one ever seems to talk about this book today. It is the sort of
> handy-dandy little reference guide that would benefit every student
of film.
*****
Hear hear. I've had a well-thumbed copy of that for decades and,
although I have attitudes toward the avant-garde that from time to
time lack a certain . . . reverence . . . I think it's one of the
indispensible texts in the vast swell of words those films have
generated; especially for newcomers to the faith.
Tom "Luther" Sutpen
20390
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 10:17pm
Subject: Cinema, taste, merit (was Re: varying...)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> When I was talking about classical art forms in my last post in this
> thread, I mentioned that I thought they created a dichotomy between
> something straightforward for the conceptual mind to lock onto (narrative,
> representation, etc.) and expressive elements that are able to work around
> the edges of consciousness, because consciousness has been thrown a
bone.
> This kind of dichotomy can be harnessed to the form-content idea if one is
> so inclined - I tend to link these structures in my mind. So I often talk
> about the bone being thrown to the conscious mind (narrative, etc.) as
> "content," and the expressive elements that are harder to nail down as
> "form." I don't know if this would hold up in court.
Gance said that audiences' hearts would be open to the poetry of his
Napoleon because their heads would be satisfied about the truth of the tale
(all that research).
20391
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 10:23pm
Subject: OT: Sade (Re: Fred's post #20259 NOOOO!)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon" wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Saul Symonds"
> wrote:
> >
> > > >The book is really a journey away from what most would
> > > > affirm as human;
> >
> > But didn't Krafft-Ebbing show that de Sade's, (and Sacher-Masoch's)
> > prose were deeply and fundamentally describing very human acts, and
> > those which many felt repressed inside of them?? Doesn't this then
> > make the book a journey into what is human, but merely from an
> angle
> > we might not want to see?
> >
> > -- Saul.
>
> "Tout ce que signe Sade est amour." (Gilbert Lely).
There is evidence that Sade did some of the really bad things he wrote about
and it was covered up by his family. He spent a lot of time in jail for a couple of
misdemeanours and some dirty books. Smoke - Fire?
20392
From:
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 5:32pm
Subject: Re: Request for Information
Thanks to the a_film_by-ers who figured this out!
I passed this information on to the lady.
"Le Petit Cheval de bois" directed by Richard Balducci.
This director is a complete unknown to me!
Thanks,
Mike Grost
20393
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 10:54pm
Subject: Re: OT: Sade (Re: Fred's post #20259 NOOOO!)
--- hotlove666 wrote:
>
> There is evidence that Sade did some of the really
> bad things he wrote about
> and it was covered up by his family. He spent a lot
> of time in jail for a couple of
> misdemeanours and some dirty books. Smoke - Fire?
>
There is eveidence that the Unites States government
dies some of the really bad things Sade writes about
but they were covered up by the press.
__________________________________
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20394
From: Saul Symonds
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 11:05pm
Subject: OT: Sade (Re: Fred's post #20259 NOOOO!)
"jpcoursodon" wrote:
> > "Tout ce que signe Sade est amour." (Gilbert Lely).
I think this is a beautiful quote - one which see the tenderness so
often overlooked in de Sade's prose.
"hotlove666" wrote:
> There is evidence that Sade did some of the really bad things he
wrote about
> and it was covered up by his family. He spent a lot of time in jail
for a couple of
> misdemeanours and some dirty books. Smoke - Fire?
Well, after an early military career and a stint in the Seven Years'
War, de Sade married, and the scandals began - he abused prostitutes
frequently - one account I read cited an instance where he whipped a
prostitute and poured hot wax into her wounds. Unsurprisingly, he was
in and out of jail a lot - and escaped exectution several times before
winding up in the insane asylum. As far as his family covering up his
questionable acts, his son did burn all his unpublished manuscripts
after his death, but that's all I'm aware of.
His "Dialgoue Between a Priest and a Dying Man" is an important work
from the point of view of film critics/buffs as it was perhaps the
most important of all de Sade's works for Buñuel, (and both the
situation and themes of this peice return in many different forms
throughout his career). It can be read in here, in French, I'm sure an
English version is on the net somewhere. Don't know where
though.http://desade.free.fr/dialogue.html
If you are so inclinced, pictures of a cast of his skull, which was
removed from the grave for scientific purposes of some sort, can be
seen here http://www.monsieurlesix.be/history/gallery.html
-- Saul.
20395
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 11:20pm
Subject: OT: Sade (Re: Fred's post #20259 NOOOO!)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein wrote:
?
> >
> There is eveidence that the Unites States government
> dies some of the really bad things Sade writes about
> but they were covered up by the press.
More than we will ever know. I'm sure, as I told Patrick, whose job includes
writing this stuff up, that what has come out about Guantanamo was just what
they couldn't hide - ie, literally, bury. When the watchdog is on the criminals'
side, murder and torture run rampant, and that is the frightening situation we
are in. In fact, our next Attorney General will probably be the guy whose
"legal" opinion unleashed these horrors. These are very, very bad times.
My tentative outing of Sade as a serial killer is just my contrarianism - Barthes,
Bunuel and others I respect think it's all "ecriture." But Sade may have buried
a few "objects" - a code word he used in a rather unnerving letter to a
confidant - himself. A French psychoanalyst named Sursini, who has
psychoanalyzed interned SKs, is my source.
I'm burrowing into my SK book at last, obviously.
20396
From:
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 6:21pm
Subject: Re: to what end....????
Saul,
Thank you for a very kind post!
I am thrilled that you are reading my mystery stories. Authors love to hear
this!
On its main subject. I've always thought that art was a vehicle for
imagination. It can do other things, too, such as record reality. But above all, art
can embody and share the wildest and most creative imaginings humans can offer.
Art's ability to show us things that are both complex and original seems
awesome.
Mike Grost
Emily Bronte - To Imagination
O radiant Angel, speak and say
why I did cast the world away,
and on a strange road journeyed on
heedless alike of wealth and power,
of glory's wreath and pleasure's flower.
Or am I wrong to worship where
faith cannot doubt nor hope despair
since my own soul can grant my prayer?
Speak, God of Visions!, plead for me,
And tell why I have chosen thee.
20397
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 11:28pm
Subject: OT: Sade (Re: Fred's post #20259 NOOOO!)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Saul Symonds"
wrote:
>
> "jpcoursodon" wrote:
> > > "Tout ce que signe Sade est amour." (Gilbert Lely).
>
> I think this is a beautiful quote - one which see the tenderness so
> often overlooked in de Sade's prose.
>
Actually I find it difficult to detect any tenderness in Sade's
prose, but his style is magnificent. It was also Lely who remarked
that no matter how repulsive the acts Sade describes, his prose is
so beautiful that "you only hear the music."
>
> "hotlove666" wrote:
> > There is evidence that Sade did some of the really bad things he
> wrote about
> > and it was covered up by his family. He spent a lot of time in
jail
> for a couple of
> > misdemeanours and some dirty books. Smoke - Fire?
>
He did a few bad things but nothing even close to even the
milder scenes in his books. And he didn't get much of a chance to
act out his fantasies as he spent the greater part of his life in
jail or the asylum. His mother-in-law did everything she could to
get him into jail and keep him there, rather than covering up for
him. JPC
20398
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 11:28pm
Subject: OT: Sade's Skull (Re: Fred's post #20259 NOOOO!)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Saul Symonds" wrote:
I thought the grave was a fake.
20399
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Tue Jan 4, 2005 11:58pm
Subject: OT: Sade (Re: Fred's post #20259 NOOOO!)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> ?
> > >
>.
>
> My tentative outing of Sade as a serial killer is just my
contrarianism - Barthes,
> Bunuel and others I respect think it's all "ecriture."
Given a chance he might have become a serial killer, who knows?
It is definitely not all "ecriture." But what he actually did (with
prostitutes, mostly) was milder than a lot of BDSM practices that
are fairly widespread today. Rose Keller, the beggar and possible
prostitute who accused him of pouring hot wax in her wounds after
repeated whippings, was wildly exagerating, apparently. The
physician who examined her found no trace of it or of any violence
beside whipping. In an earlier case of a prostitute who lodged a
complaint against him he seems to have merely talked about kinky
things rather than done anything (she refused to be sodomized, to be
whipped, or even to whip him...) Maybe it was a good thing for
literature that Sade spent so much time in jail, where he wrote the
bulk of his work. Had he remained free he might have acted out his
fantasies instead of writing them down. JPC
But Sade may have buried
> a few "objects" - a code word he used in a rather unnerving letter
to a
> confidant - himself. A French psychoanalyst named Sursini, who has
> psychoanalyzed interned SKs, is my source.
>
> I'm burrowing into my SK book at last, obviously.
20400
From: Saul Symonds
Date: Wed Jan 5, 2005 0:27am
Subject: OT: Sade (Re: Fred's post #20259 NOOOO!)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon" wrote:
> Actually I find it difficult to detect any tenderness in Sade's
> prose, but his style is magnificent.
Hmmm...This one might be a little hard for me to defend!! Perhaps
you're right... Can we agree on tenderness in Pasolini's film then? I
cite the final moment of two boys dancing and talking about their
girlfriends, or when the two girls sadly kiss, as examples...(If I
manage to find a concrete example in Sade, I'll be sure to post it or
email it to you....
I imagine you've read Sade in the original French? Do you see any
major differences/losses in the translation to English??
-- Saul.
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