Home Film
Art
Other: (Travel, Rants, Obits)
Links About
Contact
a_film_by Main Page
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.
Important: The copyright of each post below is owned by the
person who wrote the post, and reproducing it in any form requires
that person's permission.
It is possible to email the author of any post by finding a post
they have written in the a_film_by archives at
http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/a_film_by/messages and
emailing them from that Web site.
21001
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jan 12, 2005 7:13pm
Subject: Re: The Duellists (Was: Kubrick by...)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> >
> > Bill deprived himself of great
> pleasure if he really refused to watch it -- he should try again
> (there's a good DVD with very interesting comment by Scott). JPC
Wasn't me, JP. I just haven't seen it. I do think the Kubrick
comparison is worth making w. Scott's other films. What always seems
to be missing from them is what I would dare call the Symbolic level
of filmmaking, so rich in Kubrick despite his apparent simplicity.
That doesn't just mean weak scripts, although it usually begins
there. In the case of Alien, I know, the producers threw out a lot of
what was interesting in the O'Bannon script - some of which was
finally used in Alien vs. Predator - so that after the first 40
minutes, which are brilliant, Scott was left to exercise his
considerable visual talents on a story right out of an old Edward
Cahn flick. Olivier Assayas has observed that this often happens in
recent American films, but I think it's a problem Scott carries with
him, except in Thelma and Louise, where he was handed a perfect
script.
21002
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jan 12, 2005 7:13pm
Subject: Re: The Duellists (Was: Kubrick by...)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> >
> > Bill deprived himself of great
> pleasure if he really refused to watch it -- he should try again
> (there's a good DVD with very interesting comment by Scott). JPC
Wasn't me, JP. I just haven't seen it. I do think the Kubrick
comparison is worth making w. Scott's other films. What always seems
to be missing from them is what I would dare call the Symbolic level
of filmmaking, so rich in Kubrick despite his apparent simplicity.
That doesn't just mean weak scripts, although it usually begins
there. In the case of Alien, I know, the producers threw out a lot of
what was interesting in the O'Bannon script - some of which was
finally used in Alien vs. Predator - so that after the first 40
minutes, which are brilliant, Scott was left to exercise his
considerable visual talents on a story right out of an old Edward
Cahn flick. Olivier Assayas has observed that this often happens in
recent American films, but I think it's a problem Scott carries with
him, except in Thelma and Louise, where he was handed a perfect
script.
21003
From: alexistioseco
Date: Wed Jan 12, 2005 7:04pm
Subject: Re: Kidlat Tahimik
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Matt Teichman wrote:
> Noel Vera wrote:
> >I prefer it over his better-known experimental feature, Mabangong
> >Bangungot (Perfumed Nightmare).
> >
> >
> Why, out of curiosity? (I like both)
I'm sure Noel will chime in shortly, but in discussions we've had I do
remember him saying that it was a work that held up better over time.
"Turumba" is more assured filmmaking, that is sure (likely because
there was more of a semblance of plot or script when making it than
"Perfumed Nightmare", which was shot without a script, the voice-over
written during the post-production stage). Personally, I really love
both works and feel they have very important things to say about the
Philippines not just then but now, and think they both hold up
wonderfully. Perfumed Nightmare is an extremely raw work, but in that
sense it's actually quite beautiful to watch-- the work of a quirky
and creative genius with lofty ideas and a wild imagination,
discovering, literally, how to make a film only during the process of
making it.
A bit off topic, but I recall fondly the first time I met Kidlat
earlier this year, at the Philippines Metropolitan Museum.
Scheduled to be screened that morning was Kidlat's "Mababangong
Bangungot" (or Perfumed Nightmare). While waiting for his son, Kidlat
de Guia (they share the same name, which, in Filipino, means Thunder),
to arrive and straighten out the technicals, Kidlat (the father) spoke
to the small audience about the film, sharing some small details of
his past (president of the UP student council, MBA from Wharton,
living in an artists commune in Germany), and about the film and how
it got made (the sound was done completely in post-production, asking
anyone on the street to dub voices for the film). I asked him about
how he met Werner Herzog and what influence Herzog had on him and his
work. Kidlat didn't respond to the question of influence in an
aesthetic sense, but more of the impression that Herzog made on him in
relation to building an audience.
There were a number of student filmmakers living in the artists
commune where he stayed, and he would do odd things for them such as
drive them around, carry things, etc, until one student filmmaker
asked him to play a part in his film. Kidlat agreed and went to class
with that student. The regular teacher of that class was absent, and
it just so happened that Werner Herzog served as the substitute, and
it was there that he and Kidlat met. They kept in touch a little, and
when Kidlat had the idea to make Perfumed Nightmare, he approached
Herzog and asked if he could tell him the synopsis of the film he
planned to shoot (synopsis only, as the film was shot without a
script). Herzog, ever the busy man, said in a burly deep german voice
"Kidlot, I am a fery busy man. But I haf to screen my film for a
community. The drife will be 400km each way, and I am going alone. Iv
you like, you can ride with me in volkswagon, and tell me all about
your feelm on thee way there and back." Kidlat did.
Herzog's film was screened to an audience of about 40 or so people. On
the drive back, Kidlat asked Werner, "Verner, you are driving 800km to
show your film, and only 40 people have shown up to watch it. Are you
dissapointed?". "Kidlot", Werner replied, "I am not dissapointed. Vee
must learn to cultivate our audience. To teach zee people to
appreciate feelm. Vee must start somewhere." "Wow", Kidlat said,
recounting the moment. "This was Werner Herzog, and he drove 800km,
400 going, 400 back, to show his film to a small community of 40
people. That really stayed with me.. The idea of starting small and
cultivating an audience."
I really admire Kidlat for what he is doing in that regard-- teaching
indigenous tribes how to make films so that they can document and
share their own stories.
Now if only he would finish that Magellan film...
21004
From:
Date: Wed Jan 12, 2005 7:59pm
Subject: Re: The Duellists (Was: Kubrick by...)
Dan:
> >
> > Geez, the tone of THE DUELLISTS just seems so different to me
from
> > Kubrick.
This is because you pretty much don't get Kubrick, my friend :)
> The film is steeped in revery, which eventually makes
> the lead
> > character fall into a philosophical detachment from his own
> actions.
True, but that's not *entirely* different from what a somewhat
superficial reading of BARRY LYNDON might provoke. The thing about
Scott is (and I like Scott's films, let me note again) is that he's
sort of like Kubrick without the implied omniscient perspective of
Kubrick's films. When it works, that "detachment" (I put it in
quotes because it's not the word I'd use, but I think I know what
you're getting at) becomes a part of the character in Scott's films,
as opposed to revealing itself as a perspective of the film itself.
JPC:
>
> I completely agree with Dan. "Duellists" is a wonderful film
that
> bears little resemblance to anything else -- good, bad or in-
> between -- that Scott did later -- just as it bore no resemblance
to
> any other film at the time. The Kubrick connection, if valid at
all,
> is more superficial than meaningful.
Well, I don't know what you mean by meaningful. I certainly don't
think THE DUELLISTS is a *comment* on Kubrick. It's an appropriation
of a certain style of filmmaking. I don't think it's a bad film, but
watching it I get the sense that Scott doesn't know what to do with
this style. It runs counter to his story.
> Bill deprived himself of great
> pleasure if he really refused to watch it -- he should try again
> (there's a good DVD with very interesting comment by Scott).
I think you mean me, not Bill. (And that, ladies and gentlemen, is
probably the first and last time anyone will make *that* mistake ;)
I had trouble watching THE DUELLISTS for all those Kubrick
connections, but I have actually seen it all the way through a
couple of times. It's not a bad film, just a hopelessly derivative
and confused one, I think. Which is not all that uncommon (and is
entirely forgivable) in first time filmmakers.
-Bilge
21005
From: Sam Adams
Date: Wed Jan 12, 2005 8:11pm
Subject: Re: Elephant
One of the things that particularly struck me on second viewing was the hallway scene you reference. The first time we see the encounter, the painfully shy
librarian girl runs by in the background, and we hardly register her presence. The next time, the scene is played back from her perspective, and we see her
break into run precisely in order not to be noticed, a strategy we've essentially had no choice but to fall victim to. (This may say as much about me as the
movie, but the most painful moment in the movie is the unflinching medium shot of her body as she struggles to change clothes for gym without letting the
other girls see an inch of skin.) Even if you approach with the film, or any act of violence, with an attitude of liberal tolerance and empathy, it's
impossible to see an event from every perspective, and in a very real sense, knowledge and certainty are at odds. I'll second Kevin's sentiment that ELEPHANT
is *exactly* what high school felt like for me (and, from what I understand, for most of its actors, who devised many of the scenes themselves). Regarding
Mike's characteristically blunt anti-realism, I'd point out that the key term is "feels like." "Daily life" has nothing, or not much, to do with ELEPHANT's
approach -- no realist approach would allow the filmmaker to almost totally exclude adults from the frame the way van Sant (and the brilliant Harris Savides)
do. But that feeling of simultaneously walking around in your own impenetrable bubble and constantly being watched/followed is not something I've seen
another movie come anywhere near capturing.
Sam
Fred Camper wrote:
Keep in mind also the times when we see the same scene again from a
different characters' perspective (I remember one hallway encounter in
partiuclar) and there are different facts -- a character persent in one
version is unseen in the other take of the same scene. This supports the
notion that the film is about the problems of understanding an event,
and how each person's perspective on it is different, undercutting any
single explanation.
21006
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jan 12, 2005 8:23pm
Subject: Re: The Duellists (Was: Kubrick by...)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ebiri@a... wrote:
>
> It's not a bad film, just a hopelessly derivative
> and confused one, I think. Which is not all that uncommon (and is
> entirely forgivable) in first-time filmmakers.
Yeah, like Orson Welles, Nicholas Ray, Sam Fuller, Jerry Lewis, Jean-
Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Jacques Rivette, Satiyajit Ray, David
Cronenberg, Jacques Demy, Michael Cimino, Gerd Oswald, Preston
Sturges, George Cukor, Frank Tashlin, Tim Burton, Luis Bunuel....
It *can* happen. The worst first I've seen: Piranha 2 - The Spawning
by James Cameron. I reviewed it for Boxoffice and went on record as
advising that he never make another film. Camron got sandbagged by
everything on that one: camera, FX etc. But in the case of Scott, who
seems to have had a fairly lavish budget and a free hand with the
Duellists, I suspect that whatever problems appear in his first film
(which I still haven't seen) might very well still be there in his
last film. Whereas George Lucas's first feature, made on a
shoestring, was impressive - so much so that, as habelove was
commenting yesterday, it's a shame he had to "de-shoestring" it once
he had all the money on earth.
21007
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jan 12, 2005 8:27pm
Subject: Older Mr. Lincoln
LINCOLN LOGS IN AT DREAMWORKS
Spielberg, Neeson eye Abe pic
Steven Spielberg is ready to embark on his long-in-the-works biopic
of Abraham Lincoln. Spielberg has begun discussions with Liam Neeson
to play the president as he steers the North to victory in the Civil
War. The plan is to start production next January, sources said.
21008
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jan 12, 2005 8:23pm
Subject: Re: The Duellists (Was: Kubrick by...)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ebiri@a... wrote:
>
> It's not a bad film, just a hopelessly derivative
> and confused one, I think. Which is not all that uncommon (and is
> entirely forgivable) in first-time filmmakers.
Yeah, like Orson Welles, Nicholas Ray, Sam Fuller, Jerry Lewis, Jean-
Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Jacques Rivette, Satiyajit Ray, David
Cronenberg, Jacques Demy, Michael Cimino, Gerd Oswald, Preston
Sturges, George Cukor, Frank Tashlin, Tim Burton, Luis Bunuel....
It *can* happen. The worst first I've seen: Piranha 2 - The Spawning
by James Cameron. I reviewed it for Boxoffice and went on record as
advising that he never make another film. Camron got sandbagged by
everything on that one: camera, FX etc. But in the case of Scott, who
seems to have had a fairly lavish budget and a free hand with the
Duellists, I suspect that whatever problems appear in his first film
(which I still haven't seen) might very well still be there in his
last film. Whereas George Lucas's first feature, made on a
shoestring, was impressive - so much so that, as habelove was
commenting yesterday, it's a shame he had to "de-shoestring" it once
he had all the money on earth.
21009
From: peterhenne
Date: Wed Jan 12, 2005 8:31pm
Subject: Re: Godard-Truffaut feud and Godard Trashing Van Sant, Kiarostami
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Ruy Gardnier"
wrote:
> Godard himself, If I'm not mistaken, has claimed that he takes his
quotes
> from wild readings, opening the books randomly on a given page and
generally
> not reading the whole books.
For many years I've had a ritual of reading the last paragraph of
Virginia Woolf's "The Waves" after watching my tape of "King Lear."
The passage is quoted near the end of the film, and the act of
reading it right after the film's ending keeps the elegaic tone of
the film lingering as an after-effect, creeping past my watchings
into my doings. Though I had observed the book on the seashore in
the film, I stumbled upon the paragraph's quotation at the end by
accident, when I bought a copy of the book after seeing the film.
After reading the first 20 pages I cheated and looked at the last
page. I haven't finished the book, and I had always assumed Godard
took the trouble to read it through and thus "earn" his quotation,
but now I wonder. As to the remark that Godard quotes first and last
sections of books, lately he also quotes/refers to some last works:
Wittgenstein's "On Certainty" in "JLG," Ophuls' "Lola Montes"
in "For Ever Mozart." The fact that they are final works seems to
have some meaning in the context of drawing (out) his own career to
a close.
Peter Henne
Peter Henne
21010
From:
Date: Wed Jan 12, 2005 8:45pm
Subject: Re: The Duellists (Was: Kubrick by...)
Me, then hotlove666:
> >
> > It's not a bad film, just a hopelessly derivative
> > and confused one, I think. Which is not all that uncommon (and
is
> > entirely forgivable) in first-time filmmakers.
>
> Yeah, like Orson Welles, Nicholas Ray, Sam Fuller, Jerry Lewis,
Jean-
> Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Jacques Rivette, Satiyajit Ray,
David
> Cronenberg, Jacques Demy, Michael Cimino, Gerd Oswald, Preston
> Sturges, George Cukor, Frank Tashlin, Tim Burton, Luis Bunuel....
>
> It *can* happen.
Like I said: Entirely forgivable. I'll add to your list my two
favorite filmmakers: Bernardo Bertolucci, whose LA COMMARE SECA is
quite derivative of (and sometimes at odds with) Pasolini, esp.
since Pasolini wrote the treatment and BB was his assistant just a
year or two earlier; and Stanley Kubrick himself, whose FEAR &
DESIRE is pretty much just a hodgepodge of influences, including
Pudovkin, Welles, Lewis Milestone, and even Bergman (I say "even"
because the film predates Bergman's arthouse rep).
In the case of THE DUELLISTS, though, the inflections reminded me so
much of one particular filmmaker that it just got distracting. But
like I said, it's forgivable, although it's true that Ridley
desperately wants to be Stanley. (That said: What big-budget
director doesn't, these days?)
-Bilge
21011
From: Kevin Lee
Date: Wed Jan 12, 2005 8:47pm
Subject: Re: Rivette Trashing Minnelli
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> >> He was a free agent, an essentially
> >> solitary hero (title of my first article on Keaton back in
> >> 1958: "BK, Conquerant solitaire") and could never be a twin
> >
> > *****
> > I don't know. He managed something close to it in "The Playhouse".
>
> Sometimes Keaton would make himself part of a team. THE SCARECROW
comes
> to mind as a film where he is part of a duo. - Dan
And of course there's the earlier work with Fatty Arbuckle, which I
just had the pleasure of watching (I think one can make a legitimate
case for Fatty as an auteur, but I've yet to see it).
I'd never seen Keaton play second-fiddle to anyone before, and he
made for a pretty good "straight man" next to Arbuckle's pronounced
sociopathy. Was also interesting seeing a very crude, physical and
dynamic slapstick that would eventually, in Keaton's films, be
refined into something as graceful and modernist as a Brancusi
sculpture.
Kevin
21012
From: Kevin Lee
Date: Wed Jan 12, 2005 8:51pm
Subject: Re: "Shock value," said with a harrumph --
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Craig Keller
wrote:
>
> This is pretty good. Sacha Baron Cohen strikes again:
>
> http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/16655.html
>
> craig.
If you're implying (in the context of this overall thread) that Ali G
should be the one to interview Rivette, you're damn right!
21013
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Jan 12, 2005 8:57pm
Subject: Re: Re: The Duellists (Was: Kubrick by...)
--- ebiri@a... wrote:
. I'll add to your
> list my two
> favorite filmmakers: Bernardo Bertolucci, whose LA
> COMMARE SECA is
> quite derivative of (and sometimes at odds with)
> Pasolini, esp.
> since Pasolini wrote the treatment and BB was his
> assistant just a
> year or two earlier
I'm not sure what you're driving at. I know the film,
and the source material (parolini stories) quite well.
Is it because Bertolucci ties the stores together in
the form of a "police procedural"? If so it's a neat
solution the problem of the episode film - espcially
as the police detective is only briefly heard off
screen questioning the subjects.
Allen Midgette is really amazing as the soldier. That
he never became a star saddens me.
Bertolucci was even at one point planning a vehicle
that would star Midgette, Jean-Pierre Leaud and Lou
Castel called "Natura Contra Natura."
I'm not sure if Midgette is still among the living.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - 250MB free storage. Do more. Manage less.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250
21014
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Jan 12, 2005 9:01pm
Subject: Re: Re: The Duellists (Was: Kubrick by...)
>>> Geez, the tone of THE DUELLISTS just seems so different to me
> from
>>> Kubrick.
>
> This is because you pretty much don't get Kubrick, my friend :)
To help me understand, maybe you can talk about the function of the rather
extreme acting style in the film....? It's not hard to see Kubrick's
detachment - what's hard for me is to see what it's playing off against,
so that it's not just detachment from (shall we say for lack of a better
phrase) traditional human values.
> It's an appropriation
> of a certain style of filmmaking. I don't think it's a bad film, but
> watching it I get the sense that Scott doesn't know what to do with
> this style. It runs counter to his story.
What's the nature of the conflict you're perceiving here? Coz the film
seems rather harmonious to me. Scott's filmmaking strikes me as
increasingly keyed to the psychology of the actors: the cuts and changes
of camera angles start out pegged to the narrative overview and the
establishing of period, but gradually move toward an explication of
Carradine's abstracted state of mind,
Actually, I too think the first half-hour of ALIEN is quite good, before
the thing starts setting very simple goals for itself. And BLADE RUNNER
isn't bad, but - Scott seems like a different guy by then. - Dan
21015
From: Kevin Lee
Date: Wed Jan 12, 2005 9:36pm
Subject: Political Correctness, Jia Zhangke's The World (was Rivette Trashing HHH)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Michael E. Kerpan, Jr."
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> > and a statement like "Hou-Hsiao-Hsen, James Cameron - same
problem"
> > is intriguing - what exactly is he taliing about? (Remembering
that
> > he liked HHH's first two.)
>
> Well, my problem is not that Rivette is critical of Hou Hsiao Hsien,
> but that the criticism is not really decipherable. Is it possible
> that the translation is confusing when it referes to "politically
> correct"?
>
> Frankly, I find it hard to see any link between Hou and Cameron.
>
I think what he's trying to get at is what Godard is getting at with
Kiarostami, that is the point when an artist's work starts to seem
programmatized (a disease I like to call Theoangelopolousitis). Of
course, such a disparaging discernment is purely subjective.
HHH is one of my favorites, but I can see how some discerning people
can find his work "politically correct" insofar that HHH's taking
political positions in his films that seem "safe" by the left-leaning
standards that dominate the network of festival programmers and
critics who determine quality for the rest of us. Along those lines
I think Zhang's HERO is a more stimulating film politically than
anything Hou has done since THE PUPPETMASTER.
To clarify about politics -- I'm not so much talking about the
political content in itself but the politics of a film's aesthetics.
To illustrate let me contrast Hou's CAFE LUMIERE and Jia Zhangke's
THE WORLD (incidentally the two films that topped Film Comment's list
of best unreleased films of 2004). THE WORLD strikes me as a
quintessential politically correct film, nothing about it surprised
me except the extent to which it seemed to flatter its viewers
(especially those with a cinematic background who could pick up on
the conscious references to Tati, Fellini and Ozu). Stylistically it
doesn't do much of anything to disrupt or challenge the
predispositions of a sympathetic viewer. Could this be what Rivette
was referring to? If so then you can see how subjective this is. I
think that if I had never seen a Jia Zhangke film before, THE WORLD
would have been a revelation -- but in the context of his career I
think he's falling into formulaic habits both in what he wants to say
and how he says it.
CAFE LUMIERE is a film that seems not to have a political bone in its
body, a continuing of the post-Taiwan trend that began with FLOWERS
OF SHANGHAI and that a number of his early admirers find empty and
dissolute. But it's for the very reason that the film has seemingly
nothing to do with Hou's Taiwaneseness that I think the film can be
seen as more courageous than Jia's, in how much further it's willing
to go to challenge the notion of what defines an HHH movie, and still
come off very much as unmistakably HHH. What's stunning to me about
CAFE LUMIERE is that it doesn't make any big huzzah about either its
story or the political implications of its aesthetics. I noticed an
earlier post cite Godard's distinction between a "film that films"
vs. a "film that projects." I think CAFE LUMIERE and THE WORLD
illustrate this distinction as vividly as Lumiere vs. Melies,
Feuillade vs. Griffith, Antonioni vs. Fellini.
Needless to say I was disappointed by THE WORLD (though I still think
it's a good film, a "respectable" one, it does everything it sets out
to do, no more no less, kind of like a Sino-SIDEWAYS). I'm curious
to hear what other people think about it; I've been a staunch
advocate of Jia Zhangke since 2000 so I'd be more than happy to find
myself convinced that THE WORLD is better than I give it credit for.
(kind of hoping to hear from Jonathan as he mentioned it as the best
film he saw last year in his 2004 wrap up essay).
Kevin
21016
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Jan 12, 2005 10:01pm
Subject: Who's who (was: The Duellists)
I apologize for mistaking Bilge for Bill K. As a thread develops, it
becomes awfully hard to tell who wrote what where, unless you've
read all the posts and have a trememdous memory, which I don't.
Bill, The Duellists was made on a very modest budget. Scott just
made it look expensive. Do yourself a favor and watch the film. I
agree with you (it was you, right?) that "Thelma and Louise" is a
flawless script, and the film is my favorite Scott with "The
Duellists".
21017
From:
Date: Wed Jan 12, 2005 5:52pm
Subject: Ali G vs. Rivette (WAS: "Shock value,")
In a message dated 01/12/2005 3:04:10 PM, alsolikelife@y... writes:
<< If you're implying (in the context of this overall thread) that Ali G
should be the one to interview Rivette, you're damn right! >>
Oh gawd, I never thought of that! That's a brilliant idea! And it might serve
the "challenge to atrophied ideas" function that Bill (I think) lodged
recently.
Kevin John
21018
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jan 12, 2005 10:54pm
Subject: Ben Turpin (Was: Rivette Trashing Minnelli)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Kevin Lee"
wrote:
I think one can make a legitimate
> case for Fatty as an auteur, but I've yet to see it).
Luc Moullet told me that Ben Turpin was a good director.
21019
From:
Date: Wed Jan 12, 2005 5:57pm
Subject: Re: Political Correctness, Jia Zhangke's The World (was Rivette Trashing HHH)
In a message dated 01/12/2005 3:40:14 PM, alsolikelife@y... writes:
<< CAFE LUMIERE is a film that seems not to have a political bone in its
body, a continuing of the post-Taiwan trend that began with FLOWERS
OF SHANGHAI and that a number of his early admirers find empty and
dissolute. >>
Are you suggesting that FLOWERS OF SHANGHAI has no politics?
21020
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jan 12, 2005 10:59pm
Subject: Re: Who's who (was: The Duellists)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
>
> I apologize for mistaking Bilge for Bill K. As a thread develops,
it
> becomes awfully hard to tell who wrote what where, unless you've
> read all the posts and have a trememdous memory, which I don't.
>
> Bill, The Duellists was made on a very modest budget. Scott just
> made it look expensive. Do yourself a favor and watch the film. I
> agree with you (it was you, right?) that "Thelma and Louise" is a
> flawless script, and the film is my favorite Scott with "The
> Duellists".
It's a pleasure I look forward to, along with finally seeing all of
Legend. No matter what else a Ridley Scott film is, you know it will
deliver in the "eye candy" department!
21021
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jan 12, 2005 11:00pm
Subject: Re: Ali G vs. Rivette (WAS: "Shock value,")
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
>
> In a message dated 01/12/2005 3:04:10 PM, alsolikelife@y... writes:
>
> << If you're implying (in the context of this overall thread) that
Ali G
>
> should be the one to interview Rivette, you're damn right! >>
>
> Oh gawd, I never thought of that! That's a brilliant idea! And it
might serve
> the "challenge to atrophied ideas" function that Bill (I think)
lodged
> recently.
>
> Kevin John
I can think of a lot of people I'd like to see him interview.
21022
From:
Date: Wed Jan 12, 2005 6:17pm
Subject: Re: Elephant
Thank everyone for their posts.
1) Apparently most a_film_byers did not see Gus Van Sant attempting to
suggest that the killers were gay. This is very interesting. I never would have
guessed this from the film itself... but it does lead to other readings, as
posters point out.
2) As someone suggested, this whole subject is a Hot Button for me. I tend to
see the root cause of anti-gay discrimination as: the false belief that "gays
are mentally ill". This belief was almost universal when I was growing up in
the 1960's. It was heavily re-inforced by Freudian teaching. It was the
dominant idea most people in the US had about gays in 1960. Seeing "Elephant" as a
film that seemingly revived this belief (apparently suggesting that simply
being gay made you so sick you could shoot up the school) triggered negative
feelings in me.
By contrast, I suspect that many a_film_byers see the beliefs of some people
that "religion regards gay acts as sinful" as the chief cause of anti-gay
discrimination. To be sure, I hold no truck with such an idea whatsoever. Still,
it seems far less at the center of gay people's persecution that the belief in
"gay mental illness".
3) Gus Van Sant's film is a hall of mirrors, when it comes to meanings. A
film that suggests that "truth is unknowable" is going to seem profound to some
viewers, and deeply annoying to others. In addition, it makes any attempt to
ascribe any meaning to anything in the film problematic. Does the happy
relationship of the football player and his girl friend suggest that heterosexuality
is psychologically healthy? Does the compassion for the crying guy in the
yellow shirt from the gal suggest that male-female relationships are healing and
consoling? Do the killers symbolize anything about homosexuality (probably
negative, because they never perform any but the most monstrous acts)? Who knows?
Attempts to draw any inferences at all, hit a brick wall that suggests All
Truth Is Unknowable.
I do promise to try to read everyone's posts carefully. I have learned a lot
from the current posts on "Elephant".
Mike Grost
21023
From: Patrick Ciccone
Date: Wed Jan 12, 2005 7:22pm
Subject: Masculin-Feminin Trailer
Anybody know the title and artist of the French pop song used in the
trailer (which was made by JLG himself, right?)
PWC
21024
From: Adrian Martin
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 0:37am
Subject: Minnelli POSITIF dossier?
Can any of our POSITIF reading - or writing! - members tell us what is in
the Vincente Minnelli dossier in a new/recent issue? (January 2005, I
think.)
Adrian
21025
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Jan 12, 2005 11:40pm
Subject: Re: Re: Elephant
--- MG4273@a... wrote:
I tend to
> see the root cause of anti-gay discrimination as:
> the false belief that "gays
> are mentally ill". This belief was almost universal
> when I was growing up in
> the 1960's. It was heavily re-inforced by Freudian
> teaching.
And its lynchpin was the Leopold and Loeb case, as Tom
Kalin underscores in his brilliant "Swoon." Clarence
Darrow saved L & L from the chair by pathologizing
their sexuality -- which as Kalin shows was the least
problematic thing about them. He won his case and as a
result condemned several generations of gays and
lesbians to the tendermercies of shrinks and the
less-tender mercies of doctors who offered the "cure"
of a pre-frontal lobotomy.
Do "Google" Columbine and you'll find the usual
neo-fascist hacks, led as always by L. Brent Bozell
and his faithful mouthpiece Matt Drudge pushing the
"the killers were gay line."
Like any number of thing sin "Elephant" this is
glancingly touched on without any special emphasis.
The film as a whol;e is about space and might be
described as a neo-realist variation on "The Shining."
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Get it on your mobile phone.
http://mobile.yahoo.com/maildemo
21026
From: Damien Bona
Date: Wed Jan 12, 2005 11:40pm
Subject: Rivette Trashing Minnelli, Too (was Re: Rivette trashing HHH)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Tom Sutpen" wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Damien Bona"
wrote:
>
> > Although Mankiewicz was an early favorite of Godard's (and Bill
has
> > recently written of his love for "The Honey Pot" -- which I
haven't
> > seen -- while I think "A Letter To Three Wives" is a great film),
> > neither he nor particularly Kubrick has been generally held in
esteem
> > in traditional auteurist circles.
>
> *****
> Does that matter?
I was just trying to put things in historical perspective, and
indicate that Rivette's dismissal of Kubrick was, at one point
anyway -- the rule rather than the exception among auteurists. I
remember being taken aback when, the day after the 1975 Oscars, my
hard-core auteurist film professor said he was just happy that Barry
Lyndon didn't win Best Picture.
Me, I'm quite fond of Dr. Strangelove, Clockwork Orange and Barry
Lyndon, and if for no other reason than Marie Windsor's performance,
The Killing is always worth a look. And Eyes Wide Sht is
extraordinary. I think, perhaps the greatest oof all "last films."
21027
From:
Date: Wed Jan 12, 2005 11:56pm
Subject: Re: Elephant
I think there's a distinction on this last point between "truth is
unknowable" and "ultimate truth is unknowable" -- the difference
being that the first leans towards a hands-in-the-air "why bother?"
stance, where the second is more like an acknowledgement of human
imperfection. With its trendy nihilistic relativism, a movie like
MEMENTO leans towards the former, whereas I think ELEPHANT leans
towards the latter. Van Sant isn't saying, "we'll never know exactly
what makes murderers act the way they do, so just accept it." The
movie, to me, positively aches with the desire to understand their
actions, although it fails as any such attempt must. But that doesn't
invalidate the enterprise of looking (which, in every sense, is
ELEPHANT's subject).
In a sense, ELEPHANT's searching quality ratifies the notion of
ultimate truth, even as it acknowledges that such truth is
inaccessible to mere human understanding. (I doubt it's been tried,
but a reading of the film from a Christian point of view might be
quite interesting, especially given Van Sant's repeated cuts to the
sky and the music concrete which sounds at times like a Babel of
voices, or maybe speaking in tongues). I don't know that I've thought
of it exactly this way before, but I think one of the things I find
distasteful about a movie like MEMENTO is its glib assertion that all
meaning is created -- the quest for Leonard's wife's murderer is
ultimately a farce, albeit one that sustains his existence. In
MEMENTO, the filmmaker gives in to the temptation to play god, while
ELEPHANT maintains that despite his best efforts, man's soul
ultimately surpasses even his own understanding.
Sam
>
>3) Gus Van Sant's film is a hall of mirrors, when it comes to meanings. A
>film that suggests that "truth is unknowable" is going to seem
>profound to some
>viewers, and deeply annoying to others. In addition, it makes any attempt to
>ascribe any meaning to anything in the film problematic. Does the happy
>relationship of the football player and his girl friend suggest that
>heterosexuality
>is psychologically healthy? Does the compassion for the crying guy in the
>yellow shirt from the gal suggest that male-female relationships are
>healing and
>consoling? Do the killers symbolize anything about homosexuality (probably
>negative, because they never perform any but the most monstrous
>acts)? Who knows?
>Attempts to draw any inferences at all, hit a brick wall that suggests All
>Truth Is Unknowable.
>I do promise to try to read everyone's posts carefully. I have learned a lot
>from the current posts on "Elephant".
>
>Mike Grost
>
21028
From: Damien Bona
Date: Wed Jan 12, 2005 11:57pm
Subject: Re: Elephant (Gus Van Sant)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
> "Elephant" is a film about two incredibly vicious gay men who
massacre lots
> of sweet, noble heterosexuals.
> Politically speaking, I found this really hard to take.
> I will stick to gay-themed films with much more realistic gay
characters - "A
> Touch of Pink", "Unconditional Love", "Facing Windows", "All Over
the Guy",
> "Before Night Falls", etc. Any one of these fine films would repay
the
> attention that the cinephile community instead is lavishing
on "Elephant".
> Why is it, when a good movie depicts gay people sympathetically, as
these
> films do, that the film is marginalized and ignored by the
cinephile community?
Mike, I can't speak for all cinephiles, but I know that because gay
people are still outcasts/outlaws in our society, I tend to recoil
from movies like "The Broken Hearts Club" and "A Touch Of Pink,"
which basically set forth that gays are allowed a hunky dory
parallel universe where they can be their quaint amusing selves (I
guess "Will & Grace" would be another example). I think that the two
most impressive American gay films of the last decade and a half
are "Longtime Companion" and "Gods And Monsters" because they present
fully-realized gay characters who are nonetheless always aware of
their "other-ness."
As for "Elephant," I think Tom Sutpen gets it right when he says of
the two killers, "they're portrayed as such thoroughgoing outcasts
from the social pecking order of their peer group that the only
outlet they have for *anything*, any kind of support or acceptence or
even baseline, non-sexual affection is each other." And that's one
reason why I finf "Elephant" so moving.
-- Damien
21029
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Wed Jan 12, 2005 11:59pm
Subject: Ridley Scott
Dan:
> Actually, I too think the first half-hour of ALIEN is quite good,
> before the thing starts setting very simple goals for itself. And
> BLADE RUNNER isn't bad, but - Scott seems like a different guy by
> then.
While home for the holidays I revisited ALIEN, almost at random; it
was never a favorite of mine and I still don't think it's a
tremendous movie. But in the video store the DVD just seemed to
catch my eye ... don't know why.
I'm glad I did see it again. I think it's a very, very modest, but
real, success. The amount of energy and the rapidity of the
cutting, in terms of strobelike effects of light and dark, is quite
unusual for a film of its kind, and even transfixing. I think part
of what makes the film, especially the beginning, so interesting
(and this applies to what I remember of THE DUELLISTS too) is
Scott's willingness to let moments play out a long time. One of my
biggest pet peeves in commercial films is the inability to let
psychology develop slowly--it has to develop, it has to develop in
capital letters, and it has to develop *now*. But not in these
films, where Ridley Scott has his actors keep their hands close to
their chests, and then adds another layer of detached,
inquisitive "gazing" about the action with his roving
and "impartial" camera. THE DUELLISTS and ALIEN, maybe also BLADE
RUNNER, make fascinating little case studies in anti-commercial
components emanating straight from the heart of the commercial
cinema.
It's been too long since I've seen BLADE RUNNER, I can't even be
sure which cut I saw (though I think it was the director's cut), but
I plan on revisiting it soon, after I make good on my plans of
reading some Philip K. Dick novels. Anyway, I don't think I've
liked at all any of the Ridley Scott movies post-BLADE RUNNER. It's
weird how he had such potential early in his feature film career and
it seemed to dissipate very quickly.
In a classroom a few years ago I got an evil eye because another
cinema studies undergrad lamented that people disliked GLADIATOR
just because it was popular, and I didn't have the heart to grin and
say, "Yeah, I agree."
--Zach
21030
From:
Date: Wed Jan 12, 2005 7:44pm
Subject: Re: Elephant (Gus Van Sant)
Thanks everybody, for more posts on "Elephant".
In many ways, I am less sure about my ideas than my (perhaps dogmatic) posts
sound. Unless I feel out other people's ideas on a_film_by, I will never know
what other people think. All I want is to understand other people's ideas
better - and am now!
I sure share Damien Bona's admiration for "Longtime Companion" and "Gods And
Monsters". They are both recommended on my web site Best Films lists.
"Swoon" seemed interesting during its one viewing here - but also a bit
confusing. It is a film I should revisit. It had some moments of creative visual
style.
Both Fred Camper and David Ehrenstein made interesting, informed suggestions
about the real Columbine case - a subject on which I know less than zero. Will
definitely follow these up.
Will also think very seriously about David E's idea that "Elephant" is about
space. And agree with Ruy that the cloud shots are very good.
Mike Grost
21031
From: Matt Teichman
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 0:54am
Subject: Re: Kidlat Tahimik
Thank you, Alexis; that was a lovely anecdote.
What's this about a Magellan film? Picking up where Frampton left off?
(kidding)
-Matt
21032
From: Tom Sutpen
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 1:10am
Subject: Re: Elephant (Gus Van Sant)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Damien Bona" wrote:
> > Why is it, when a good movie depicts gay people sympathetically, as
> these
> > films do, that the film is marginalized and ignored by the
> cinephile community?
>
> Mike, I can't speak for all cinephiles, but I know that because gay
> people are still outcasts/outlaws in our society, I tend to recoil
> from movies like "The Broken Hearts Club" and "A Touch Of Pink,"
> which basically set forth that gays are allowed a hunky dory
> parallel universe where they can be their quaint amusing selves (I
> guess "Will & Grace" would be another example).
*****
Exactly. I'm heterosexual (not that there's anything wrong with that)
and even I know, from the evidence of the two close friends I've had
over the years who are gay, that these movies are at best fantasies;
that the outcast status still largely obtains and still affects those
who have to live under it. I don't pretend to know what's at work in
those films, but from what I've witnessed even at my somewhat distant
vantagepoint they strike me as at least marginally dishonest.
Tom Sutpen
21033
From: Tom Sutpen
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 1:24am
Subject: Old Directors & The 'Cahiers' Mafia (was Re: Rivette Trashing Minnelli, Too)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "mathieu_ricordi"
wrote:
Mathieu,
Consider this only a partial reply to your post. I thought I could
answer the whole thing, but I'm too exhausted from a more
hectic-than-usual day to answer it in full; something I'll have to
finish doing tomorrow.
By the way, there was no hostility directed at you in my post, even
though it might have seemed that way.
> And no
> one,
> > certainly not a pack of dewey-eyed, Hero-worshipping wannabe
> > filmmakers, was ever going to pry their secrets loose without one
> king
> > hell of a fight.
>
> So let me get this straight, these filmmakers are Gods
> sitting on some Mount Olympus, and we should all be grateful
> if they grace us with their gifts once in a while? You make
> it sound like these "hero worshipping wannabe filmmakers"
> are some annoyance to poke a stick at.
*****
No, you're misreading me. I'm merely stating what informed these
filmmakers attitude toward discussing their work. It happens to be an
attitude I believe they were entitled to; much as I, as a fellow
cinephile, might wish otherwise. As a natural consequence of being in
the motion picture business for all those years, they were deeply
distrustful of everyone, and that included ALL journalists. These old
timers, in their day, had achieved the status of Absolute Stardom in
their field and when they saw a bunch of mere critics (from their
perspective, mind; and don't think they didn't, to a man, have a
contempt for movie reviewers which stretched back decades) speak of
them and their work in terms that might turn the head of God, they
were immediately suspicious. Maybe you think they should have welcomed
these critics with open arms, but it's naive to think, with their
conditioning, that such a thing would ever have occurred.
> You ignore the fact that
> for every Ford, Hawks, Godard ect, are many artists with
> great capabilities and imagination that haven't had the luck
> or the privilege to attain such a level. Your comments remind me
> of the umfortunate ones critics sometimes make (when trying to
> sound hype no doubt like you are) when reffering to "film nerds".
> And the irony is almost always lost on them beleive me.
*****
I think there's something fundamental you're missing in my position:
When I talk about cinephiles and how we're too absorbed in our own
passion to see certain realities for what they are, I include myself
right along with everyone else. I'm not divorced from this process one
iota. There's part of me . . . a big part . . . that still loses sight
of the things I'm talking about here and melts reflexively into the
most naively idealistic attitudes about films and filmmakers you could
imagine. And believe me, I'm not under any illusion that I'm hip,
either; my comments don't emerge from that. I was a "film nerd" from
an early age and I'm still one to this day.
> However, you make it seem like if they
> agree to an interview, they have a right to tell their critical
> admirers to take a hike. Who are they to do so? What are they without
> the culture and thought process behind their work? Your contempt
> for passionate cinephiles and critics makes it seem like all
> these directors require is to put their films in the can and
> voila! The artistic completion brought on by critics and fans
> gives the work its ark and its raison d'etre. And no filmmaker
> as privileged as a Ford should forget it.
*****
Privilege has nothing to do with it, Mathieu. Anyone who successfully
breaks into that most corrosively competitive of businesses does so
through a combination of talent, brains, guile, cunning and will. Ford
was not privileged. He earned every ounce of his acclaim. Critics and
fans can only advance the fortunes of a work (something critics alone
rarely can do), they do not complete it, nor do they supply an artist
with his or her 'raison d'etre'. They're good for an artist to have as
a morale booster, yes, but they do not materially affect the work for
good or ill. That's just a fact.
> Why should an artist want to fight against
> someone who is trying to complete their art? If you are
> reffering to the fact that some of these men had to keep
> mum about being artists in order to be able to
> keep making their films in the studios than I can see a point,
> but why a passionate lover of their movies is seen as a threat,
> and someone to kick out doesn't make very much sense. Neither
> does calling it a "great pricipal".
*****
They saw EVERYBODY as a threat, don't you understand? Good God, what
do you think all those decades in Hollywood does to a man? All that
soul-draining warfare with producers; all those morale-depleting years
of working on projects that didn't mean anything to them; all that
backbreaking labor trying to realize their art under the worst, most
circumscribed conditions any set of artists ever had to face. Under
those circumstances, how could they not have had contempt for a group
of penny-a-word movie reviewers (again, from their perspective) half
their age, crawling out of the overseas woodwork, claiming to
understand, love and appreciate their work better than anyone. You
know how many times those old buzzards had heard THAT old sweet song
from producers and other assorted Hollywood vampires right before
getting the dagger in the sternum? No, they couldn't for a second
believe that anyone who wasn't IN THEIR SKIN might even begin to know
what it was like to be an artist in that industry in that time. Their
attitude was: these critics either want something from me (which they
did, to a degree) or they're flat-out nuts; what good's it gonna do to
take them seriously? You may think these directors were curdled by a
lifetime of frustration and shouldn't have dismissed the "Cahiers"
mafia so swiftly. I might agree with you. But the reality is they did
dismiss them; they mocked and scorned and derided the very idea of
these cinephiles; and by their lights they had good reason for doing it.
> > A great critic is just about the last thing Godard was. But that's
> of no moment here.
>
> Well I gathered from your distaste towards the Rivette interview
> that another non-standard thinker wouldn't be your type.
*****
It's not that at all. I love non-standard thinkers. I cherish the
unorthodox deeply. My feeling is that Godard and all the rest of them
weren't dispassionate enough in their practice of the film critic
racket, that's all. If they'd distanced themselves from what they were
writing about . . . been just a tiny bit more cynical . . . they might
have achieved greater insight. All they wound up doing was writing
about their passion for film. And that gets old really quick.
And to be clear . . . in fact, I thought I was clear about it . . .
the Jacques Rivette interview was great; if a little bit twisted.
There's no distaste. I'll confess Rivette the filmmaker has more value
to me than Rivette the critic, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy
reading what he has to say. Who among us doesn't?
(to be continued)
Tom Sutpen
21034
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 1:33am
Subject: Re: Re: Elephant (Gus Van Sant)
--- Tom Sutpen wrote:
>
> *****
> Exactly. I'm heterosexual (not that there's anything
> wrong with that)
> and even I know, from the evidence of the two close
> friends I've had
> over the years who are gay, that these movies are at
> best fantasies;
> that the outcast status still largely obtains and
> still affects those
> who have to live under it. I don't pretend to know
> what's at work in
> those films, but from what I've witnessed even at my
> somewhat distant
> vantagepoint they strike me as at least marginally
> dishonest.
>
You can't imagine what it was like in the past, Tom.
Coming of age in the 60's I grapsed at everystraw that
came my way. "Victim," "The Leather Boys" even "The
Servant" gave me something. Best of all there was
"Darling." At last, a movie for me. Instead of
suffering in Queens I could be in Capri sharing a
hunky Italian waiter with Julie Christie!
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - now with 250MB free storage. Learn more.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250
21035
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 2:43am
Subject: Re: Ridley Scott
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Zach Campbell"
wrote:
"...I don't think I've liked at all any of the Ridley Scott movies
post-BLADE RUNNER. It's weird how he had such potential early in
his feature film career and it seemed to dissipate very quickly."
Harlan Ellison used to have a column in the Magazine of Fantasy &
Sceince Fiction called "Harlan Ellison is Watching" and he talked
about working with Ridley Scott on the screenplay for DUNE before it
went to David Lynch a few years later. He had serious misgivings
about Scott (he called ALIEN a disco version of THE THING) but
changed his tune when Scott told him that it was his ambition to be
the "John Ford of science fiction" and mentioned several science
fiction stories he'd like to film. Evidently his experiences with
BLADE RUNNER and LEGEND and their below par box office lead Scott to
become a director for hire. Like Bill and J-P I think he's only as
good as the scripts he gets.
Richard
21036
From: Kevin Lee
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 3:02am
Subject: Re: Political Correctness, Jia Zhangke's The World (was Rivette Trashing HHH)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
>
> In a message dated 01/12/2005 3:40:14 PM, alsolikelife@y... writes:
>
> << CAFE LUMIERE is a film that seems not to have a political bone in its
>
> body, a continuing of the post-Taiwan trend that began with FLOWERS
>
> OF SHANGHAI and that a number of his early admirers find empty and
>
> dissolute. >>
>
> Are you suggesting that FLOWERS OF SHANGHAI has no politics?
the operative word in that quote was "seems" -- my point being that people often define
political films based on the film's topicality, whereas the real political action may be traced
in how the film deals with its subject, whatever that subject may be. For that very reason,
I'd say the seemingly apolitical FLOWERS OF SHANGHAI is every bit as political as the
flagrantly political THE WORLD -- and as I think more about this, I wonder if FLOWERS OF
SHANGHAI already says everything (about manufactured desire, pleasure as commercial
product, and the innate politics of Chinese interpersonal relationships) that THE WORLD
tries to say.
Kevin
21037
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 3:09am
Subject: Re: Elephant
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
"Gus Van Sant's film is a hall of mirrors, when it comes to meanings.
A film that suggests that "truth is unknowable" is going to seem
profound to some viewers, and deeply annoying to others. In
addition, it makes any attempt to ascribe any meaning to anything in
the film problematic."
I know that Van Sant didn't have this meaning in mind when he titled
the film ELEPHANT, but your reading here reminds me of the classic
Indian story of the blind men and the elephant where the blind men
touch seperate parts of the elephant and compare the animal to a
snake, a tree trunk, a fan, etc. the idea being that each blind man
had only a part of the truth. The multiple over-lapping
presentations suggests this to me also.
Richard
21038
From: Sam Adams
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 3:14am
Subject: Re: Elephant
Actually,Vant Sant had eaxctly that meaning in mind (at least, according to him). The Alan
Clarke film from which Van Sant (via an intermediary) took the movie's title is named for
the expression "the elephant in the living room," but Van Sant assumed the title came from
the parable, and only found out later where Clarke had taken his title from. That a title
suggesting multiple interpretations is itself subject to at least two is a neat little wrinkle.
Sam
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano" wrote:
> I know that Van Sant didn't have this meaning in mind when he titled
> the film ELEPHANT, but your reading here reminds me of the classic
> Indian story of the blind men and the elephant where the blind men
> touch seperate parts of the elephant and compare the animal to a
> snake, a tree trunk, a fan, etc. the idea being that each blind man
> had only a part of the truth. The multiple over-lapping
> presentations suggests this to me also.
>
> Richard
21039
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 3:28am
Subject: Re: Elephant
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Sam Adams" wrote:
"Actually,Vant Sant had eaxctly that meaning in mind (at least,
according to him)."
I believe Van Sant. I only knew about the "elephant in the living
room" connotation.
Richard
21042
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 3:52am
Subject: A_Kubrick_by
Speaking of other people filming Kubrick's scripts, I just saw (and
liked) The Young Poisoner's Handbook, a concerted homage to A
Clockwork Orange, down to the Purcell theme, where the "homage" part
didn't bother me at all - Benjamin Ross seems to have his act
together.
21044
From: K. A. Westphal
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 4:27am
Subject: Re: Elephant
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote: In addition, it
makes any attempt to
> ascribe any meaning to anything in the film problematic. Does the
happy relationship of the football player and his girl friend suggest
that heterosexuality
> is psychologically healthy? Does the compassion for the crying guy
in the
> yellow shirt from the gal suggest that male-female relationships are
healing and
> consoling? Do the killers symbolize anything about homosexuality
(probably
> negative, because they never perform any but the most monstrous
acts)? Who knows?
> Attempts to draw any inferences at all, hit a brick wall that
suggests All
> Truth Is Unknowable.
I'm surprised that most discussion about this film on a_film_by
centers on the sexual aspects. The racial undercurrents of the movie
are far more troubling to me.
Scott Foundas (who I don't usually agree with) described ELEPHANT in
L.A. Weekly as "Abercrombie and Fitch--The Movie" -- and I don't think
he's too far off the mark. Some of the grotesque girls aside, it's a
very Aryan movie.
It's not so much that all the major characters are white (until the
last 5 minutes); casting token minorities characters is a silly
practice steeped in its own loaded logic. I wouldn't mind the casting
so much if the characters weren't so aestheticized--if the t-shirts
weren't calibrated so precisely with skin tones and the characters not
used as wandering aesthetic statements in Van Sant's exploration of
space. And it's not even a matter of geography; even if ELEPHANT is
set in Podunk, Montana, we still see ethnic characters in the
film--only as out-of-focus wallpaper in the cafeteria.
I'll agree with some other posters that it's a dead-on depiction of
high school doldrums ... and funnily enough, the marketing seemed to
focus on that. When my hometown indie theater played it, the press
materials they cribbed went to pains to avoid any reference to the
shooting.
I have other problems with ELEPHANT. Namely that I don't think it ever
finds a proper context for itself. Immediatedly after it finished,
HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR came to mind. In Resnais' film, there's that naive
line about a film can sell peace because an ad can sell soap. In that
moment, Resnais acknowledges the folly and limitation of his own
enterprise--namely the impossibility of representing the horrorific in
90 minutes. Van Sant sure knows about the impossibility of
understanding an event like Columbine (were they gay? did they play
too many video games? watch too many Hitler documentaries?), but I
don't think he understands the implication of trying to represent it
with a film. It's a lovely film about a massacre, and I don't find
much awareness of that paradox in ELEPHANT. Van Sant isn't any more
aesthetically considerate than the student at the end who stares and
photographs the library carnage.
Keep in mind, I liked the film, just with some large reservations.
It's beautifully shot and my criticism reflects my anxiety that such a
powerful and accomplished film leaves such large problematic
implications unanswered.
--Kyle Westphal
21045
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 4:57am
Subject: Re: Elephant
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "K. A. Westphal"
wrote:
it's a
> very Aryan movie.
>
casting token minorities characters is a silly
> practice steeped in its own loaded logic
But the black football player who saves a couple of people hiding in
one of the rooms by getting them out a window, then gets gunned down,
is the Scatman Crother character from Shining. He's pivotal.
21046
From:
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 5:36am
Subject: Re: A_Kubrick_by
>
> Speaking of other people filming Kubrick's scripts, I just saw (and
> liked) The Young Poisoner's Handbook, a concerted homage to A
> Clockwork Orange, down to the Purcell theme, where the "homage" part
> didn't bother me at all - Benjamin Ross seems to have his act
> together.
Yeah, I seem to recall Ross dropping in a couple of times on my old stomping
grounds, alt.movies.kubrick, back in the mid-90s, and once wrote a nice
appraisal of BARRY LYNDON for Sight & Sound. That said, I have serious
misgivings about YOUNG POISONER, which indeed is an extended *
something* to ACO. I wouldn't exactly call it homage -- anytime that a director
starts lifting shot sequences, music cues, and entire scenes wholesale from
another one, it gets hard to use that word. I'd say "pastiche," but bearing in
mind that ACO was impossible to see in Britain back at that time, and hence
not a reference point for the average viewer, I wonder if "ripoff" is more
appropriate.
That said, the film has some nice performances that keep it watchable. And
Ross seems to have taste, at the very least -- I look forward to other films the
guy might make, although I admit I haven't been keeping up with his career.
21047
From: Gabe Klinger
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 6:11am
Subject: Yo, Rivette, big up yo'self
Ali G: I'm here wiv my main man Jacques Rivette. This cat be a
director and he work with some of the finest bitches in the world.
Iz you wicked?
Rivette: Ça va.
Ali G: Who dat bitch in the movie wiv da painter?
Jacques Rivette: Emmanuelle Beart.
Ali G: She got a nice batty. Did you like... ever get it on wiv her, like
in the batty hole?
Rivette: No...
Ali G: Like have you eva been wiv any of da bithces in you' films?
Rivette: No.
Ali G: Yo, Jacques, like I'm startin' to think you iz all
homosapien. Did you ever see da film Showgirls with da bitch
from da telly?
Rivette: Yes, I came out walking 6 feet above the ground.
Ali G: Waz you like a little bit ratted?
Rivette: What?
Ali G: Waz you like all on drugs?
Rivette: That's not what I meant.
Ali G: And what ditchou think of The Titanic?
Rivette: Cameron thinks he is De Mille.
Ali G: I think he be Da Shit.
Rivette: I like Secret Beyond the Door, That Obscure Object of
Desire...
Ali G: You like to git nasty then?
Rivette: ...Beauty and the Beast.
Ali G: Iz you like into bestiality?
Rivette: Cocteau was responsible for my vocation as a
filmmaker.
Ali G: Yo, I don't wanna be hearin' 'bout that shite. Wot it be like to
direct Milla in Joan of Arc?
Rivette: I didn't make it, but I'm dying to see it. Of his films I like
La Femme Nikita.
Ali G: Yeah.
Rivette: But Joan of Arc belongs to everyone (except Jean-Marie
La Pen).
Ali G: Wot yos be banging on about?
21048
From: Fred Camper
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 6:10am
Subject: TO: Alfred Eaker (was: anger rising an interview by dnl)
The message below applies to four posts by Alfred Eaker, but all should
read it:
Alfred,
In reference to your recent postings of entire texts of three Kenneth
Anger interviews, we refer you to a sentence in our Statement of
Purpose: "And members shall not post copyrighted material beyond the
short excerpts permitted under 'fair use.'"
The three interviews you posted are each available online:
http://www.ratso.net/anger.html
http://www.topy.net/anger.html
http://www.sfbg.com/AandE/35/05/kenneth.html
Our statement asks that you not post whole text, but post the urls. We
further ask that you don't simply post urls, but tell us why you think
they are of interest. If you want to set up an "Anger links page"
similar to some of Fred's filmmaker links pages, do that and tell us
about it.
You also posted a long section of a text by Scott MacDonald without
identifying the source. "Fair use" has never been specified precisely,
and if it's a section from a book it may be OK to post something that
long, but if it's most or all of an article then it is too long. Please
at least let us know the source.
Because the existence of copyrighted material in our archives endangers
Yahoo!'s willingness to host our group and violates our terms of
service, we have deleted your three Anger interview posts. Members won't
lose anything by this; they can read the interviews at the urls above.
Fred Camper and Peter Tonguette
Your co-moderators
21049
From: Fred Camper
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 6:15am
Subject: IMPORTANT: Members please read, on group policy
Members, PLEASE adhere to the terms of our Statement of Purpose. Not
doing so with respect to copyrighted material could endanger Yahoo's
hosting of our group, as posting copyrighted material violates Yahoo's
terms of service. We ask all of you again to NEVER paste material
already available on the 'Net into our posts. Our Statement of Purpose
requires that you post the url instead, and we also ask that you don't
present posts simply with urls, but offer at least a few words as to why
you think the article you're linking to is of interest.
Neither of us enjoy spending time tracking this sort of stuff down, and
so we insist that members adhere to this.
Also, we are going to add this to our Statement of Purpose:
If there is a film text that you think would be of interest to the
group, and it's either not copyrighted or you have the permission of the
copyright holder to place it permanently on the Web, you can put it into
a post, but you *must* identify the source: print publication if any
with issue number and date and page numbers or "unpublished and posted
with the permission of the author," with any additional information as
appropriate. Copyrighted material not already on the Web cannot be
posted except in small excerpts that fall under the terms of "fair use"
in copyright law. If you do post short excerpts, you MUST fully identify
the source: book or periodical, issue number, page numbers.
Related matters are addressed in our following post to Alfred Eaker,
which we also ask you to read.
Fred Camper and Peter Tonguette
Your co-moderators
.
21050
From: Fred Camper
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 6:17am
Subject: A personal note on our posts
I just want to be clear that when Peter and I co-sign a post, we have
both written it and both read it, and there's often some considerable
back and forth discussion between us before posting it. In other words,
I hope everyone takes these rare policy posts seriously.
Fred Camper
21051
From: Noel Vera
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 6:20am
Subject: Re: Elephant (Gus Van Sant)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Matthew Clayfield"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Noel Vera"
wrote:
> >
> > Thought the time spent with the people before the massacre was
> > essential, otherwise they would be just shotgun fodder. We get
to
> > know these people before they die, that's a major part of the
film's
> > impact.
>
> Really? I didn't feel that I got to know them very well at all. The
> film's interest in its characters was, for me, vague and detached -
-
> certainly not non-existant, but definitely more on the level of
> 'slightly curious' than 'fully engaged'.
We don't know them enough to write their resume, that's true. But
moments like that young man with his drunk dad, or that overweight
girl in the girl's dressing room. Speaking for myself at least, I
felt for what they were going through.
I'd characterize the film's view of them as being "not telegraphed"
than "slightly curious." As with most of Van Sant's films, there's a
consistent sympathy for the young outsider here.
And that kiss psychologically made sense to me (tho what does that
make me if I believe I understand it?)--they who are about to die,
who have never experienced a kiss, nor have their social lives
developed to the point that a girl would even consider giving them
one, they have this one last chance. It's a boy--but a friend--
so...why not?
Still doesn't make them gay. Opportunistic, more like.
21052
From: Noel Vera
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 6:31am
Subject: Re: Kidlat Tahimik
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Matt Teichman
wrote:
> Noel Vera wrote:
> > >I prefer it over his better-known experimental feature,
Mabangong
> >Bangungot (Perfumed Nightmare).
> >
> >
> Why, out of curiosity? (I like both)
>
> -Matt
I like Perfumed Nightmare, it's very funny, and its crudity is
charming, but you can be crude, and experimental, and still have an
eye--which I don't think Kidlat had, at this stage.
I think of him more as a comic essayist than a filmmaker, except
with Turumba--there he had a subtle visual style that points up or
presents the comedy with clarity (the way Chaplin does).
21053
From: Noel Vera
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 6:33am
Subject: Re: Kubrick by... (was:Rivette Trashing Minnelli)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "samfilms2003" wrote:
>
> > A short filmography:
>
> This is truly wonderful Noel !
>
> Shd be in the New Yorker (forgive me) or something !
>
> -Sam W
Thanks Sam!
I did post it where I think it would be better appreciated, tho...
21054
From: Noel Vera
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 6:35am
Subject: Re: Kubrick by... (was:Rivette Trashing Minnelli)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Noel Vera"
> wrote:
>
> You left out Sidney's prophetic early shorts:
>
> The Flying Pattisier, about a pastry-store owner who flies a
single-
> engine plane to remote desert regions in the Southwest, lightening
> the hardscrabble existence of the peasants with blanc-mange.
>
> and
>
> Day of the Food Fight, a documentary in which an apprentice sous-
chef
> teams up with his twin brother and bedmate, a school janitor, to
put
> down a food fight at the cafeteria of the Brooklyn high school
where
> both are currently employed.
Coolness, Bill!
21055
From:
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 1:45am
Subject: Re: Yo, Rivette, big up yo'self
Gabe, that was GREAT! You're in the lead for best post of 2005!
Thanx!
Kevin John
21056
From: Samuel Bréan
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 11:40am
Subject: RE: Minnelli POSITIF dossier?
>From: Adrian Martin
>Can any of our POSITIF reading - or writing! - members tell us what is in
>the Vincente Minnelli dossier in a new/recent issue? (January 2005, I
>think.)
>
>Adrian
>
I just read POSITIF, but here are the contents of the Minnelli dossier
(issue #526, December 2004):
- Minnelli, travailleur et artiste, par Yann Tobin [General article]
- Des joies fragiles. La caméra dans les musicals de Minnelli, par Alain
Masson
- Quand les corps perdent leur légèreté. Notes sur quelques mélodrames de
Minnelli, par Vincent Amiel
- Deux caravanes. Tous en scène et La Roulotte du plaisir, par Jacqueline
Naccache
- Le monde menacé, par Christian Viviani
- L'image-Minnelli. Présence du spectacle et splendeur du passé, par Marc
Cerisuelo
- De quelques "parenthèses" dans l'oeuvre de Minnelli, par Dominique
Rabourdin [VM's uncredited collaborations]
- Rappel filmographique, par Yann Tobin
- Note bibliographique, par Michel Ciment
I pasted the names of the articles from this site, where you can also find
the contents of the January issue (the dossier being on Anthony Mann):
http://www.cine-studies.net/r10a01.html
Samuel
21057
From: Michael E. Kerpan, Jr.
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 2:46pm
Subject: "Political Correctness" in HHH
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Kevin Lee" wrote:
> To clarify about politics -- I'm not so much talking about the
> political content in itself but the politics of a film's aesthetics.
> To illustrate let me contrast Hou's CAFE LUMIERE and Jia Zhangke's
> THE WORLD (incidentally the two films that topped Film Comment's list
> of best unreleased films of 2004). THE WORLD strikes me as a
> quintessential politically correct film, nothing about it surprised
> me except the extent to which it seemed to flatter its viewers
> (especially those with a cinematic background who could pick up on
> the conscious references to Tati, Fellini and Ozu). Stylistically it
> doesn't do much of anything to disrupt or challenge the
> predispositions of a sympathetic viewer. Could this be what Rivette
> was referring to?
I don't see how Rivette could have been referring to this in his
dismissive remarks on Hou Hsiao Hsien.
If, as it appears, he had first seen "City of Sadness" and
"Puppetmaster" and then later "Good Men, Good Women" and "Goodbye
South, Goodbye" (and maybe an earlier film or two), his critical
comments would almost have to be the result of a negative evaluation
of a single film -- GMGW.
If any HHH film merited the charge of simply giving audiences more of
what they wanted and expected, it might be "City of Sadness". While I
would judge this a masterpiece (albeit based on viewing a so-so
fullscreen video), one could argue that stylistically this film was
"merely" an intensified version of the same sort of thing he had been
doing ever since "Boys of Fengkuei" (my earliest HHH).
But whatever stability of style HHH had up to the point of CoS, he
moved into a period of constant experimentation thereafter -- and I
don't think one can fairly charge him with pandering to audience
pre-conceptions and expectations in any subsequent film.
"Puppetmaster" was a significant novelty -- in its intercutting
between actual present recollections and a reconstructed past. It was
also novel for HHH in bringing "performance" to the forefront -- both
in the puppetmaster's reminiscences and in the plays shown in the
retrospective portions. (I would say that this intensified focus on
actors and performance has largely remained since this point).
In "Good Men, Good Women", HHH also added a good number of new things
to the cinematic pot. Multiple time lines are juggled -- and not all
of these are necessarily reliable. Are we seeing the real past of the
actress our protagonist is portraying -- or just her fantasies about
this? Moreover, no prior film relied so heavily on the efforts of a
single, central performer.
In a way, "Goodbye South, Goodbye" is a revisitation of HHH's prior
(pre-Puppetmaster) territory -- albeit in a fashion that is both more
visually "distanced" and yet more reliant on the acting skills of its
principals.
Although Rivette didn't have the benefit of seeing later films, I'd
note that the (I think creative) instability of HHH's style has
remained a constant. "Flowers of Shanghai" has already been discussed
-- and no one has argued that this film was just more of the same old
thing. "Millennium Mambo" is, in turn, almost the polar opposite of
"FoS. While it shares some characteristics with GMGW, its more
extravagant visual style, extremely subjective (albeit fractured and
dislocated) viewpoint, and mood set it very far apart from this
predecessor.
I have yet to see "Cafe Lumiere", and impatiently await its arrival in
Boston -- via theater or DVD (whichever comes first).
In short, I would submit that, whether or not one LIKES the work HHH
has done in the past 12 years or so, any charge that he has been
"resting on his laurels", or "making films in a mechanical,
unreflective fashion" would be patently specious.
Michael Kerpan
Boston
21058
From: samfilms2003
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 2:47pm
Subject: Re: Elephant
>--if the t-shirts
> weren't calibrated so precisely with skin tones and the characters not
> used as wandering aesthetic statements
Haven't you seen any American teenagers lately ? ;-)
-Sam (parent of a High School Senior)
21059
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 2:56pm
Subject: Re: Re: Elephant
--- hotlove666 wrote:
>
> But the black football player who saves a couple of
> people hiding in
> one of the rooms by getting them out a window, then
> gets gunned down,
> is the Scatman Crother character from Shining. He's
> pivotal.
>
>
>
>
He is indeed -- and props for making the "Shining"
connection. (In some ways "Elephant" is a remake)
Gus mentioned the importance of thw character to me in
that the school is alarmingly white. Consequently "the
excluded" becoems highlighted. This is similar to the
black court stenographer in "Swoon"whose exit from the
court -- ordered by the judge because gay sexuality is
about to be discussed -- his highlighted by Kalin (and
his script co-author Hilton Als0 in a evry specific
way. In the 1920's no court stenographer would have
been female, much less black.
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
21060
From: Mathieu Ricordi
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 8:44pm
Subject: Re: Old Directors & The 'Cahiers' Mafia (was Re: Rivette Trashing Minnelli, Too)
Quoting Tom Sutpen :
>
> > Mathieu,
> Consider this only a partial reply to your post. I thought I could
>
> answer the whole thing, but I'm too exhausted from a more
>
> hectic-than-usual day to answer it in full; something I'll have to
>
> finish doing tomorrow.
>
> By the way, there was no hostility directed at you in my post, even
>
> though it might have seemed that way.
Tom,
I'll reserve any replies I might have for later, allowing you
to finish your thoughts at your will. By the way, I sympathize
with your exhaustion, I'm new to this forum myself, and I've been
surprised at not only its frantic pace, but the speed of the replies,
and the amount of stuff I feel I would like to reply to but can't
always on my schedule. As well, rest assured,
I never felt any hostility from your posts, I take all of this as
gold old fashioned critical sparring, and I'll be getting 'into it'
a lot with various people on various topics in the near future I'm sure.
Mathieu Ricordi
21061
From: Kevin Lee
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 9:48pm
Subject: Re: "Political Correctness" in HHH
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Michael E. Kerpan, Jr."
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Kevin Lee"
wrote:
>
> If any HHH film merited the charge of simply giving audiences more
of
> what they wanted and expected, it might be "City of Sadness".
Politically, perhaps. But I wonder how many of the kindly judges who
awarded it the Golden Lion at Venice actually GOT the movie, other
than on the level of "it's a noble film about an oppressed people".
While I
> would judge this a masterpiece (albeit based on viewing a so-so
> fullscreen video), one could argue that stylistically this film was
> "merely" an intensified version of the same sort of thing he had
been doing ever since "Boys of Fengkuei" (my earliest HHH).
Not sure what you mean by intensified -- I'd use "elaborated". I'd
put it in terms of orchestration. I think if you put FENGKUEI next to
SADNESS it's clear that HHH has gone from chamber music to full scale
symphony.
>
> But whatever stability of style HHH had up to the point of CoS, he
> moved into a period of constant experimentation thereafter -- and I
> don't think one can fairly charge him with pandering to audience
> pre-conceptions and expectations in any subsequent film.
You offer a nice account of his post-CITY OF SADNESS progress in
furthering his own vision, but you might be selling CITY OF SADNESS
and other earlier films short. I think he was always experimenting --
one could argue that A TIME TO LIVE AND A TIME TO DIE, he's
expanding on what he had with FENGKUEI and SUMMER AT GRANDPA'S --
taking the childhood coming of age story and infusing it with a
newfound sense of the socio-historical, how a personal history ties
in to a national history. And when it came time for CITY OF SADNESS,
those concerns exploded into the forefront. There is so much going
on in that movie, in terms of language(s), subjective perceptions
that compete and complement each other, forms of communication,
official macro-history vs. unofficial micro-history -- if this movie
were made in English or with European actors it would be considered
the greatest historical film ever made in the eyes of the world,
outpacing THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS and THE LEOPARD.
And PUPPETMASTER ain't bad either.
In short, I would submit that, whether or not one LIKES the work HHH
> has done in the past 12 years or so, any charge that he has been
> "resting on his laurels", or "making films in a mechanical,
> unreflective fashion" would be patently specious.
>
Well I believe he has publicly lamented his own inability to help
revitalize the Taiwanese film industry, which used to fluorish so
well back when he was making more commercially viable films. There's
always some direction for an artist to improve or challenge himself.
Whether he considers it a direction worth taking is solely his
judgement to make, and ours as well.
Kevin
21062
From: Michael E. Kerpan, Jr.
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 10:09pm
Subject: Re: "Political Correctness" in HHH
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Kevin Lee" wrote:
>
> Not sure what you mean by intensified -- I'd use "elaborated".
> I'd put it in terms of orchestration. I think if you put FENGKUEI
> next to SADNESS it's clear that HHH has gone from chamber music to
> full scale symphony.
I think your just saying what I was trying to say -- only better. ;~}
> You offer a nice account of his post-CITY OF SADNESS progress
> in furthering his own vision, but you might be selling CITY OF
> SADNESS and other earlier films short. I think he was always
> experimenting -- one could argue that A TIME TO LIVE AND A TIME
> TO DIE, he's expanding on what he had with FENGKUEI and SUMMER AT
> GRANDPA'S -- taking the childhood coming of age story and infusing
> it with a newfound sense of the socio-historical, how a personal
> history ties in to a national history.
Well, I may have been over-simplifying. I didn't really mean to say
that HHH's style remained _static_ from "Boys" to "City" -- only that
his degree of experimentation (comparatively) exploded after "City".
For all that, I think I probably enjoy "Dust in the Wind" most of all
the films from this period -- and, perhaps, there he may just have
been refining the methods he had used in his prior films.
> And when it came time for CITY OF SADNESS,
> those concerns exploded into the forefront. There is so much going
> on in that movie, in terms of language(s), subjective perceptions
> that compete and complement each other, forms of communication,
> official macro-history vs. unofficial micro-history -- if this movie
> were made in English or with European actors it would be considered
> the greatest historical film ever made in the eyes of the world,
> outpacing THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS and THE LEOPARD.
I can't disagree. But I am at a disadvantage in evaluating this, as I
don't feel the video I've seen gives me an adequate feel for the
totality of the film. I find it hard to believe that this has never
appeared on (English subtitled) DVD.
> And PUPPETMASTER ain't bad either.
Again, I only feel I've seen half the film (the pan and scan US DVD
struck me as a travesty). I would say I enjoyed the reminiscences
more than the "re-enactments" in this -- at least on first viewing.
> Well I believe he has publicly lamented his own inability to help
> revitalize the Taiwanese film industry, which used to flourish so
> well back when he was making more commercially viable films.
> There's always some direction for an artist to improve or challenge
> himself. Whether he considers it a direction worth taking is solely
> his judgement to make, and ours as well.
For me, artists (of all sorts) can build up a sufficient degree of
credibility that I am willing to trust their experiments, and not
blame them (too much) for trying something a bit different (even if
the attempt leads to less than satisfactory results).
MEK
21063
From: Travis Miles
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 10:18pm
Subject: Re: Fleming's Red Dust
For the New York Film Critics Circle selection month at the American Museum
of the Moving Image, Mike d'Angelo has selected Victor Fleming's RED DUST
(1932). The theme of the month is "Breaking Boundaries", and as such I
expect this to be some pre-code action (it's got Jean Harlow) but can anyone
make a pointed recommendation (or interdiction) for this one?
Thanks,
Travis
21064
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 11:25pm
Subject: More Last Films at the 'Theque
With presenters, no less:
Satiyajit Ray (Agantuk - Le visiteur, 1991) presented by Charles
Tesson, Robert Bresson (L'Argent, 1982 ;
presented by Benoît ) Yasujiro Ozu (Le Gout du
saké, 1962) presented by Nicolas Klotz, Sergio
Leone (Il était une fois en Amérique, 1984) presented by Arnaud
Desplechin; Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999) presented by
Chantal Akerman (didn't someone suggest her for the remake?), John
Huston (The Dead, 1987) presented by Jean-Michel
Frodon, Eliza Kazan The Last Tycoon 1976 presented by Patrice Rollet,
Luchino Visconti The Innocent (1976) presented by
Jacques Fieschi. Toubiana hasn't found anyone to present Heaven Can
Wait or Buddy Buddy yet. One of us shd volunteer to do the latter for
a plane ticket - no one's going to want to touch it!
21065
From: Tom Sutpen
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 11:38pm
Subject: Re: More Last Films at the 'Theque
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666" wrote:
>
> With presenters, no less:
>
> Toubiana hasn't found anyone to present Heaven Can
> Wait or Buddy Buddy yet. One of us shd volunteer to do the latter for
> a plane ticket - no one's going to want to touch it!
*****
I'll do it gladly. They're not gonna like what I have to say, but then
I'd consider it a highlight of my life to mix it up with an angry
crowd at the Cinematheque.
Tom Sutpen
21066
From: Mathieu Ricordi
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 11:39pm
Subject: Re: More Last Films at the 'Theque
Quoting hotlove666 :
>With presenters, no less:
>
>
>
> Satiyajit Ray (Agantuk - Le visiteur, 1991) presented by Charles
>
> Tesson, Robert Bresson (L'Argent, 1982 ;
>
> presented by Benoît ) Yasujiro Ozu (Le Gout du
>
> saké, 1962) presented by Nicolas Klotz, Sergio
>
> Leone (Il était une fois en Amérique, 1984) presented by Arnaud
>
> Desplechin; Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999) presented by
>
> Chantal Akerman (didn't someone suggest her for the remake?), John
>
> Huston (The Dead, 1987) presented by Jean-Michel
>
> Frodon, Eliza Kazan The Last Tycoon 1976 presented by Patrice Rollet,
>
> Luchino Visconti The Innocent (1976) presented by
>
> Jacques Fieschi. Toubiana hasn't found anyone to present Heaven Can
>
> Wait or Buddy Buddy yet. One of us shd volunteer to do the latter for
>
> a plane ticket - no one's going to want to touch it!
Forgive me if this is a follow up to a previous post that I missed,
but where are these films going to be screened?
Mathieu Ricordi
21067
From: Jonathan Rosenbaum
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 0:13am
Subject: Re: Political Correctness, Jia Zhangke's The World (was Rivette Trashing HHH)
>
> Needless to say I was disappointed by THE WORLD (though I still
think
> it's a good film, a "respectable" one, it does everything it sets
out
> to do, no more no less, kind of like a Sino-SIDEWAYS). I'm curious
> to hear what other people think about it; I've been a staunch
> advocate of Jia Zhangke since 2000 so I'd be more than happy to
find
> myself convinced that THE WORLD is better than I give it credit
for.
> (kind of hoping to hear from Jonathan as he mentioned it as the
best
> film he saw last year in his 2004 wrap up essay).
>
> Kevin
For me, the best thing about THE WORLD is that it justifies its own
title. I felt I was getting a solid look at what's happening in the
world at the moment--something few other contemporary films have
afforded me, at least to the same degree....For whatever it's worth,
I know that Robin Wood was comparably overwhelmed by the film when he
saw it, like me, at the Toronto festival.
I see it as a kind of companion piece to PLATFORM--a film about
the "next" Cultural Revolution in China, i.e., capitalism and
everything it entails there--which also means capitalism from the
vantage point of people who've known something about Communism, a
perspective that's very different from ours. The scene of mutual
recognition between the heroine and the Russian woman--who've managed
to become friends without speaking a word of each other's language--
when they turn up at the same club as call girls was extremely moving
to me, and there were many comparable moments I could cite, including
the heroine's reflection that she's never known anyone who's flown on
a plane at the very moment that her Russian friend is flying
overhead. I would not, alas, cite the ending, which is the only thing
in the film that struck me as a misfire both times that I saw it).
More generally, all the material about the theme park itself was
something I found alternately hilarious and disturbing--and, again,
very emblematic of what's happening in the world at the moment. What
it does with space may not be as impressive as what's in PLATFORM,
but what it does with scale is, for me, pretty amazing.
My modem at home is busted, meaning that until a new one arrives in
the mail, I can only access my emails at work. Which is only to say
that I may not be able to post again, at least for awhile.
Jonathan
21068
From: Jonathan Rosenbaum
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 0:17am
Subject: Re: Political Correctness, Jia Zhangke's The World (was Rivette Trashing HHH)
I'm curious
> to hear what other people think about it; I've been a staunch
> advocate of Jia Zhangke since 2000 so I'd be more than happy to
find
> myself convinced that THE WORLD is better than I give it credit
for.
> (kind of hoping to hear from Jonathan as he mentioned it as the
best
> film he saw last year in his 2004 wrap up essay).
>
> Kevin
P.S. The animated segments involving mobile phones were also pretty
amazing to me--and certainly not any sort of retread on Jia's part.
21069
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 1:02am
Subject: Re: More Last Films at the 'Theque
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Tom Sutpen" wrote:
>
>
> *****
> I'll do it gladly. They're not gonna like what I have to say, but
then
> I'd consider it a highlight of my life to mix it up with an angry
> crowd at the Cinematheque.
>
> Tom Sutpen
Well, it's safe to assume that all the people Toubiana has
gathered to introduce those last films hold Wilder in very low
esteem anyway. I don't know what you have to say, Tom, but if it's
negative they'll of course approve of it, and if it's positive they
might be perverse enough to consider that Buddy Buddy is after all
one of Wilder's best. So by all means apply for the job if they're
going to pay for you fare and lodging. JPC
21070
From:
Date: Thu Jan 13, 2005 8:54pm
Subject: Re: More Last Films at the 'Theque
If I managed to get to the "Theque, I would be bubbling over with good cheer!
Closest so far - watching "The Dreamers".
Actually, I get excited every time I go to the movies at the Detroit
Institute of Arts. We have a new season starting on Feb 4 - but still no schedule yet.
Mike Grost
21071
From: Tom Sutpen
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 2:26am
Subject: Re: More Last Films at the 'Theque
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
> If I managed to get to the "Theque, I would be bubbling over with
good cheer!
> Closest so far - watching "The Dreamers".
> Actually, I get excited every time I go to the movies at the Detroit
> Institute of Arts. We have a new season starting on Feb 4 - but
still no schedule yet.
*****
The last time I got excited going to a movie was when I had to run a
gauntlet of Christian protesters when I went to see "The Last
Temptation of Christ". Never thought I'd make it in there alive.
Tom Sutpen
21072
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 2:33am
Subject: Reminiscing in Tempo (with apology to Duke)
The word "Cinematheque" has always been my Proustian madeleine --
brings back memories of the original Paris Cinematheque, Avenue de
Messine, back in the early fifties, where I first saw "L'Age d'or"
and "Sherlock Jr" and "Pandora's Box" and even a lot of American
Avant Garde (Anger, Deren, Belson etc...) -- all within a few
months. The auditorium was tiny -- about 60 seats. Small screen, but
even the opening of Duel in the Sun looked hugely wonderful on it.
The Cinematheque has gone through so many lives since them -- and so
have I (sheds a discreet tear). and now it's closing with a show of
last films -- it all sounds so necrological but at the same time
stimulating. The 'teque will reopen, although in a weirdly wayout
neighborhood. And life will go on. Maybe I'll never go again. You
can't go home again, they say.
JPC (written in a slightly, but not inordinately, drunken state).
21073
From: Tom Sutpen
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 2:40am
Subject: Re: More Last Films at the 'Theque
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon" wrote:
> Well, it's safe to assume that all the people Toubiana has
> gathered to introduce those last films hold Wilder in very low
> esteem anyway. I don't know what you have to say, Tom, but if it's
> negative they'll of course approve of it, and if it's positive they
> might be perverse enough to consider that Buddy Buddy is after all
> one of Wilder's best. So by all means apply for the job if they're
> going to pay for you fare and lodging.
*****
"Buddy, Buddy"s standing among fellow auteurists mystifies me, I'll
admit. It's arthritic and garish; painfully unfunny. And I don't know
what people see in it. Virtually every film Billy Wilder made in the
ten years or so leading up till that has more going for it than their
reputations would suggest, but that film falls apart completely.
As for taking on a pack of unruly cinephiles at some Last Films
shindig, I'm more than equal to the task. But I've already called
ahead and told them I won't be showing up unless they promise in
writing that I can program a Shohei Imamura retrospective for them
later this year.
That's my only condition.
Tom "Child of the Cinematheque" Sutpen
21074
From:
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 3:27am
Subject: Re: Fleming's Red Dust
Travis Miles :
> For the New York Film Critics Circle selection month at the
American Museum
> of the Moving Image, Mike d'Angelo has selected Victor Fleming's
RED DUST
> (1932). The theme of the month is "Breaking Boundaries", and as
such I
> expect this to be some pre-code action (it's got Jean Harlow) but
can anyone
> make a pointed recommendation (or interdiction) for this one?
I'm not exactly the voice of auteurism here, but I like this film.
(But of course, I like Fleming in general.) Gable is pretty great as
the charmingly conflicted rubber plantation honcho, Mary Astor gives
one of her better performances, and the whole thing is drenched in
sweaty, lustful Pre-Code abandon. The dialogue is quite zippy,
too: "This place just reeks of hospitality and good cheer. Or maybe
it's this cheese."
-Bilge
21075
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 4:26am
Subject: Re: Fleming's Red Dust
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ebiri@a... wrote:
"The dialogue is quite zippy, too: 'This place just reeks of
hospitality and good cheer. Or maybe it's this cheese.'"
And Jean Harlow cleaning out the parrot's cage: "Whadda you been
eatin', cement?"
Richard
21076
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 4:40am
Subject: Re: More Last Films at the 'Theque
> Toubiana hasn't found anyone to present Heaven Can
> Wait or Buddy Buddy yet.
HEAVEN CAN WAIT by Lubitsch? But CLUNY BROWN comes after that. - Dan
21077
From: Adrian Martin
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 8:20am
Subject: "Miradas" magazine
A Spanish-language on-line magazine of major interest: MIRADAS from the
'International School of Cinema and Television' in Cuba.
http://www.miradas.eictv.co.cu/
The current issue is devoted to avant-garde cinema ... among many essays and
testimonies, it contains interviews with Noel Burch, and Jean-Pierre Gorin.
Also a questionnaire answered by, among others, Sokurov!
PS Thanks for the POSITIF info, Samuel: that is a very useful site listing
magazine contents.
Adrian
21078
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 8:40am
Subject: Re: More Last Films at the 'Theque
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Mathieu Ricordi
wrote:
> >
>
> Forgive me if this is a follow up to a previous post that I missed,
> but where are these films going to be screened?
>
> Mathieu Ricordi
The French Cinematheque
21079
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 8:43am
Subject: Re: More Last Films at the 'Theque
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Tom Sutpen" wrote:
> The last time I got excited going to a movie was when I had to run a
> gauntlet of Christian protesters when I went to see "The Last
> Temptation of Christ". Never thought I'd make it in there alive.
They were very hard to find here. I had to do an article on them, and
when I stood on line to get in at the Avco Century City, I finally
found one working the back of the line, where I naturally was. We
were all grateful to him for showing up.
21080
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 8:46am
Subject: Re: Reminiscing in Tempo (with apology to Duke)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
>
> The word "Cinematheque" has always been my Proustian madeleine --
> brings back memories of the original Paris Cinematheque, Avenue de
> Messine, back in the early fifties
As far as I'm concerned, I've never been to the Cinematheque - like
much of Paris it was destroyed before I got there. Beaubourg seems to
be the equivalent for youngfilm buffs today - that's where they're
showing the Minnellis.
21081
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 8:48am
Subject: Re: More Last Films at the 'Theque
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> > Toubiana hasn't found anyone to present Heaven Can
> > Wait or Buddy Buddy yet.
>
> HEAVEN CAN WAIT by Lubitsch? But CLUNY BROWN comes after that. -
Dan
My mistake - that's what they're showing. Although Heaven Can Wait is
more of a last film than Cluny Brown!
21082
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 8:53am
Subject: Re: More Last Films at the 'Theque - Erratum
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> > > Toubiana hasn't found anyone to present Heaven Can
> > > Wait or Buddy Buddy yet.
> >
> > HEAVEN CAN WAIT by Lubitsch? But CLUNY BROWN comes after that. -
> Dan
> My mistake - that's what they're showing. Although Heaven Can Wait
is
> more of a last film than Cluny Brown!
Actually, they're showing That Lady in Ermine. They'd have done
better to show The Human Factor.
Another title on the program w. no commentator listed yet: The
Countess from Hong Kong.
21083
From: Samuel Bréan
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 9:09am
Subject: RE: Re: More Last Films at the 'Theque
>From: "hotlove666"
>--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> > > Toubiana hasn't found anyone to present Heaven Can
> > > Wait or Buddy Buddy yet.
> >
> > HEAVEN CAN WAIT by Lubitsch? But CLUNY BROWN comes after that. -
>Dan
>My mistake - that's what they're showing. Although Heaven Can Wait is
>more of a last film than Cluny Brown!
Actually, they're not showing either: they're showing THAT LADY IN HERMINE,
which is quite strange since it was finished by Preminger. In the same way,
there's HELLO, SISTER (aka WALKING DOWN BROADWAY), Erich von Stroheim's last
(uncredited) directorial participation. I didn't know about this film, is it
worth viewing?
I'm especially looking forward to seeing those last Dwan and Ulmer features
Maxime talked about, since I greatly enjoyed the works by these two
directors I've seen so far. Oh, and quite a few other "last films," of
course... There's a "Cinéma bis" double bill with Terence Fisher's wonderful
FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL and Riccardo Freda's L'OSSESSIONE CHE
UCCIDE (MURDER OBSESSION here). The trailer to the latter was a bit of a
mess, but I'll go anyway!
BTW, the program is available here:
http://www.cinemathequefrancaise.com/photos/94_dernierfilm.pdf
Samuel
21084
From: Samuel Bréan
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 9:11am
Subject: RE: Re: More Last Films at the 'Theque - Erratum
>Actually, they're showing That Lady in Ermine. They'd have done
>better to show The Human Factor.
>
>Another title on the program w. no commentator listed yet: The
>Countess from Hong Kong.
Sorry for cross-posting with you, Bill! Chaplin's film will be introduced by
Serge Toubiana and Nicolas Saada.
Samuel
21085
From: Tom Sutpen
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 11:42am
Subject: Re: More Last Films at the 'Theque
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666" wrote:
> > The last time I got excited going to a movie was when I had to run a
> > gauntlet of Christian protesters when I went to see "The Last
> > Temptation of Christ". Never thought I'd make it in there alive.
>
> They were very hard to find here. I had to do an article on them, and
> when I stood on line to get in at the Avco Century City, I finally
> found one working the back of the line, where I naturally was. We
> were all grateful to him for showing up.
*****
In my brush with them there had to be at least fifty, mostly Catholic,
and they'd been standing outside that theater for a solid week
hectoring the patrons before I braved the storm. The way they screamed
at us was almost blood-curdling. I was with my then-girlfriend and
you'd have thought I was taking her in for an abortion from the way
they carried on. "Don't go in there! Stay out! You don't have to go
in!". It was genuinely scary there for a second or two.
I actually thought I'd been through the worst of it a few years
before, enduring that freak show which accompanied Godard's "Je vous
salue, Marie" at the old Orson Welles Cinema. Chanting, people holding
up pictures of aborted fetuses; you can't even begin to imagine the
dementia one had to walk through to get in the theater. But "The Last
Temptation of Christ" was far worse because the protesters were truly
enraged.
The memory of it is a big reason why I boycotted "The Passion of the
Christ" last year.
Tom Sutpen
21086
From:
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 8:40am
Subject: Re: More Last Films at the 'Theque
In a message dated 05-01-14 04:10:20 EST, Samuel Bréan writes:
<< In the same way, there's HELLO, SISTER (aka WALKING DOWN BROADWAY), Erich
von Stroheim's last (uncredited) directorial participation. I didn't know
about this film, is it worth viewing? >>
Years ago, when seen, this film just looked pathetic. It had few traces of
the greatness of Stroheim's previous films. It is unclear how much of Stroheim's
work survived in the print I saw - it was heavily re-shot by other hands.
Mike Grost
21087
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 2:19pm
Subject: RE: Re: More Last Films at the 'Theque
>>>> Toubiana hasn't found anyone to present Heaven Can
>>>> Wait or Buddy Buddy yet.
>>>
>>> HEAVEN CAN WAIT by Lubitsch? But CLUNY BROWN comes after that. -
>> Dan
>> My mistake - that's what they're showing. Although Heaven Can Wait is
>> more of a last film than Cluny Brown!
>
> Actually, they're not showing either: they're showing THAT LADY IN HERMINE,
> which is quite strange since it was finished by Preminger.
That's quite odd. My understanding is that Lubitsch's direction is
restricted to the first 10 minutes of the film.
I guess it's true that HEAVEN CAN WAIT is more of a "last film" than CLUNY
BROWN, but I love CLUNY much more.
> In the same way,
> there's HELLO, SISTER (aka WALKING DOWN BROADWAY), Erich von Stroheim's last
> (uncredited) directorial participation. I didn't know about this film, is it
> worth viewing?
I think it is, actually. I'm not generally a von Stroheim fan, but it's
hard to see this film without acknowledging that he had something: the
other directors' footage just feels so much less sharp and more anonymous
than his.
My impression is that von Stroheim's footage constitutes about half of the
(quite short) film. - Dan
21088
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 3:31pm
Subject: Re: More Last Films at the 'Theque
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
> In a message dated 05-01-14 04:10:20 EST, Samuel Bréan writes:
>
> << In the same way, there's HELLO, SISTER (aka WALKING DOWN
BROADWAY), Erich
> von Stroheim's last (uncredited) directorial participation. I
didn't know
> about this film, is it worth viewing? >>
>
> Years ago, when seen, this film just looked pathetic. It had few
traces of
> the greatness of Stroheim's previous films. It is unclear how much
of Stroheim's
> work survived in the print I saw - it was heavily re-shot by other
hands.
>
> Mike Grost
HELLO, SISTER is a six-reeler (a little over or under 60
minutes), unusually short for the time and of unheard of brevity for
Stroheim! I remember a rather dismal affair, with a few interesting
scenes, or shots. The American Film Institute Catalog (1931-1940)
has a long entry on the film's history. They give a list of scenes
probably directed by Stroheim, based on the February 1933 retake
script. They might represent close to half of the final footage.
James Wong Howe, the cinematographer, estimated that there were
four reels by EVS in the film as released. He also stated that Raoul
Walsh had done some directing work on the film, and Walsh has
confirmed it in at least one 1971 interview.
JPC
21089
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 4:33pm
Subject: The LAFCA Awards Dinner
I do wish it had been somehow possibly for everyone in
"a film by" to have been at the Los Angeles Film
Critics Association Awards dinner last night in
Century City. These are always fun occasions but this
one was particularly special in that we were honoring
JerryLewis with our Lifetime Achivement Award. He was
there in fine fettle, cracking jokes like the pro that
he is and beaming up at the other winners who range
from AlexanderPayne and the "Sideways"gang to Ken
Jacobs for his 50 years in the making "Star Spangled
to Death."
Ken talked about how when he was a youth he saw
"Greed" at the Museum of Modern Art, and learning how
this was but a fragment of a larger now-lost
masterpiece realized tat Hollywood wasn't for him. Yet
in being there last night he felt connected to it
regardless.Chista and Samantha Fuller were there, as
the reconstruction of "The Big Red One" was being
honored -- a fact that also cheered Ken.
Liam Neeson, who won best Actor for "Kinsey" was quite
funny in his acceptance speech, "doing" Clint Eastwood
to Jerry's visible delight.
Bill Condon is going to do "Dreamgirls" next.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - now with 250MB free storage. Learn more.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250
21090
From: Tom Sutpen
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 5:29pm
Subject: Walking Down Broadway (was Re: More Last Films at the 'Theque)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon" wrote:
> HELLO, SISTER is a six-reeler (a little over or under 60
> minutes), unusually short for the time and of unheard of brevity for
> Stroheim! I remember a rather dismal affair, with a few interesting
> scenes, or shots. The American Film Institute Catalog (1931-1940)
> has a long entry on the film's history. They give a list of scenes
> probably directed by Stroheim, based on the February 1933 retake
> script. They might represent close to half of the final footage.
>
> James Wong Howe, the cinematographer, estimated that there were
> four reels by EVS in the film as released. He also stated that Raoul
> Walsh had done some directing work on the film, and Walsh has
> confirmed it in at least one 1971 interview.
*****
The majority of direction on what became known as "Hello, Sister" was
executed by Edwin Burke and Alfred L. Werker and, to the best of my
knowlegde, none of the reshoots were photographed by Howe.
It's doubly tragic that "Walking Down Broadway" suffered its fate,
because it's the only instance where a Stroheim film's subsequent
mangling was not a consequence of his recidivist extravagance. By all
accounts, he not only didn't go crazy and expand the work beyond all
proportion during its production, he actually brought it in slightly
under-budget and under-schedule; which was damn near miraculous.
It was all part of an ongoing power struggle between Production chief
Winfield Sheehan (who'd brought Stroheim over to Fox in 1931) and Sol
Wurtzel, a genuine character who'd started out as William Fox's
secretary way back in 1917 and worked his way up to head of operations
for Fox Pictures. Wurtzel firmly believed directors like Stroheim were
anathema to what movies should be. The very last thing he wanted in a
film coming out of his studio was any spark of originality or moral
ambiguity; anything that might cause someone in the audience to
question the nature of most of the movies they were paying to see. He
had a deep deep contempt for the public and for anyone who might
suspect that motion pictures were anything more than an immensely
profitable, high-end racket. Art was a four-letter word to him.
The completed "Walking Down Broadway" was apparently so redolent of
everything that aroused his darkest impulses that, regardless of Fox's
having announced in "Variety", with some note of triumph, the
successful completion of the work in October of 1932, Wurtzel
immediately resolved to have it re-written and re-shot by others. He
didn't even wait until there'd been a preview which might have given
him a pretext, however feeble, for his decision; he just butchered
"Walking Down Broadway" on general principles (soon after, "Variety"
printed a story which had Stroheim turning in a cut of 21 reels; which
wasn't true, but no doubt enough people in Hollywood bought it to make
planting the story worth the effort).
Any reading of Erich von Stroheim's career in Hollywood reveals its
destiny. Given his aggressive individuality, his temperament as both
an artist and as a man, there was no rational way he could ever
succeeed for very long there. It was always going to end shortly and
end badly; regardless of how brilliant the work that transpired while
the clock was ticking. One could then understand if Stroheim had
foundered as a consequence of his unrestrained exorbitance as a film
artist; it would contain undeniable logic. But to have his career
snuffed out in a grotesque display of mere executorial whim was not
only immensely tragic, it was downright anticlimactic.
Tom Sutpen
21091
From: Tom Sutpen
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 5:37pm
Subject: Walking Down Broadway -- Erratum
Just to clear up a factual error:
Sol Wurtzel had been William Fox's secretary *until* 1917, when Fox
sent him out to California to take charge of the studio's West Coast
operations.
Tom Sutpen
21092
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 6:19pm
Subject: Re: Political Correctness, Jia Zhangke's The World (was Rivette Trashing HHH)
> Needless to say I was disappointed by THE WORLD (though I still think
> it's a good film, a "respectable" one, it does everything it sets out
> to do, no more no less, kind of like a Sino-SIDEWAYS). I'm curious
> to hear what other people think about it; I've been a staunch
> advocate of Jia Zhangke since 2000 so I'd be more than happy to find
> myself convinced that THE WORLD is better than I give it credit for.
I was really impressed by THE WORLD - and I had thought that Jia was
slipping into an unproductive, too-casual mode with UNKNOWN PLEASURES, so
I was worried about him. I just sat there thinking, "God, have there ever
been more beautiful wide-screen compositions?" I really love his eye, and
he has a nice way of suspending the behavioral stuff in those angled
spaces, so that the people maintain mystery despite giving us a lot of
irrelevant data about themselves.
I found the theme-park world-equals-world metaphor a bit too heavy for Jia
to juggle properly, but the particulars were so appealing to me that I
could handle an overbearing concept. I too felt that the end didn't work.
- Dan
21093
From:
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 1:26pm
Subject: TEMPTATION fun (WAS: Re: More Last Films at the 'Theque)
In a message dated 01/14/2005 2:44:49 AM, hotlove666@y... writes:
<< > The last time I got excited going to a movie was when I had to run a
> gauntlet of Christian protesters when I went to see "The Last
> Temptation of Christ". Never thought I'd make it in there alive. >>
Let me second that emotion, Tom. I saw it (at the Biograph?) in Chicago and
it was a freakin circus outside. Old women singing and holding heavy lacquered
paintings of Jesus. TV crews frantically filming anyone. A cross standing
taller than the theatre. The staff got us in the theatre in a VERY short time. It
was like a guerilla operation. But in the 5 or so minutes I was standing
outside, I had close to ten pamphlets (from atheists to come together, holy
holy...except you!) shoved in my hand. And an old man stood by the door, pointing at
each and every single one of us saying "Shame on you!" Lots of fun.
Kevin John
21094
From:
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 1:41pm
Subject: Re: The LAFCA Awards Dinner
In a message dated 01/14/2005 10:34:47 AM, cellar47@y... writes:
<< Bill Condon is going to do "Dreamgirls" next. >>
As in the Broadway musical????
Kevin John
21095
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 6:48pm
Subject: Re: Fleming's Red Dust
> For the New York Film Critics Circle selection month at the American Museum
> of the Moving Image, Mike d'Angelo has selected Victor Fleming's RED DUST
> (1932). The theme of the month is "Breaking Boundaries", and as such I
> expect this to be some pre-code action (it's got Jean Harlow) but can anyone
> make a pointed recommendation (or interdiction) for this one?
I think this is a pretty good film. Fleming's a nice mix of rough and
sensitive, and the film has a pleasant, casual feel. The plot's a little
painful (in the 30s mode of romantic self-sacrifice), but Fleming's not
really into pain, which helps. - Dan
21096
From: Fred Camper
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 7:03pm
Subject: MPORTANT: New Statement of Purpose, Please read
We have made some necessary revisions in our group's "Statement of
Purpose," which can be found in the files section or by clicking on the
link on our main page or at http://www.fredcamper.com/M/Aboutafb.html
They aren't extensive, but we've made a few additions to the "firm
prohibitions" section. mostly involving regulating the posting of pasted
in material or material written by others. Please keep in mind that
Yahoo! threatens to delete groups that participate in copyright
violations, so we have to be careful about that. The group's main
direction is unchanged, but we'd like to urge every member who posts to
read the new statement.
Fred and Peter
Your Co-Moderators
21097
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 7:23pm
Subject: Re: More Last Films at the 'Theque
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Samuel Bréan wrote:
There's a "Cinéma bis" double bill with Terence Fisher's wonderful
> FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL and Riccardo Freda's
L'OSSESSIONE CHE
> UCCIDE (MURDER OBSESSION here).
Glad you like FATMFH - it was the subject of my first article
(published in a mimeographed-in-NY film magazine) and has not had the
reputation it deserves. Even the author of the only English-language
Fisher book I know of dumps on it. It is a true testament film, too,
depicting the end of the cinema Fisher had practiced so brilliantly.
21098
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 7:33pm
Subject: Walking Down Broadway (was Re: More Last Films at the 'Theque)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Tom Sutpen" wrote:
>
> It was all part of an ongoing power struggle between Production
chief
> Winfield Sheehan (who'd brought Stroheim over to Fox in 1931) and
Sol
> Wurtzel, a genuine character who'd started out as William Fox's
> secretary way back in 1917 and worked his way up to head of
operations
> for Fox Pictures.
Thanks for the chilling summary. Wurtzel did at least one good deed -
he helped Dwan restart his career after talkies came in w. the superb
Black Sheep, which Dwan wrote as well, and greenlighted the next
phase of Dwan's career, which included some interesting low-budget
films. He was the first of four producers - Small, Yates, Bogeaus
being the others - who made possible the glories of Late Dwan. But
that doesn't excuse him being a scumbag.
My impression is that he was actually the head of the low-budget
division at that point.
21099
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 7:40pm
Subject: Re: The LAFCA Awards Dinner
Precisely.
He sees it as a logical outgrowth of writing the
screenplay of "Chicago."
The timing couldn't be better as a major B'way revival
of Bennett's "A Chorus Line" has just been announced.
--- LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
>
> In a message dated 01/14/2005 10:34:47 AM,
> cellar47@y... writes:
>
> << Bill Condon is going to do "Dreamgirls" next. >>
>
> As in the Broadway musical????
>
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
21100
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Fri Jan 14, 2005 7:45pm
Subject: Re: Fleming's Red Dust
--- Dan Sallitt wrote:
>
> I think this is a pretty good film. Fleming's a
> nice mix of rough and
> sensitive, and the film has a pleasant, casual feel.
> The plot's a little
> painful (in the 30s mode of romantic
> self-sacrifice), but Fleming's not
> really into pain, which helps.
Ford's remake, "Mogambo" is loads of fun, with Grace
Kelly as Mary Astor, Ava Garnder as Jean Harlow, and
Clark Gable as Clark Gable.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - 250MB free storage. Do more. Manage less.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250
a_film_by Main Page
Home Film
Art
Other: (Travel, Rants, Obits)
Links About
Contact