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24101
From: "Henrik Sylow"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 7:24am
Subject: Re: Hitchcock v. Bresson henrik_sylow
I completely agree, because at some point the use of "better" no
longer suggests a qualitative difference, but becomes a token for
preference, taste or such like. Directors like Hitchcock and Bresson
are both master, but they are masters of two different forms of
cinema, approach cinema differently, thus arguing that Hitchcocks is
superior to Bresson is plain silly.
And its also bad for cinema. Both directors each had such defined
ideas about acting, about mise-en-scene, to name two, that to attempt
to elevate one above the other, is to reduce the qualities of one of
them. The next thing is to have lists, to have the vote of majority
count more than the skill of a master; And as such, the difference
between Sarris' list and a list made by 10,000 teenagers on IMDB is
the same, as taste has been allowed to count as a measurement for quality.
Henrik
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon" wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
> wrote:
> I consider The Birds to be a better film than
> > anything by Bresson.
>
>
> Could someone please define terms like "better" applied to
> compare widely different films by two widely different directors,
> both on the highest level of cinematic achievement? Isn't it apples
> and oranges as Bill suggests? Is such a debate at all meaningful?
> Does it make any sense? I doubt it. Because Sarris made a stupid
> statement many moons ago (stupid because of the apples and oranges
> thing)is it really necessary to pick it up ? Again, and Fred said it
> very well, isn't it just a matter of taste? Maybe it's a subject for
> the OT Line...
>
> Just bitching, as usual. Sorry!
>
> JPC
24102
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 7:25am
Subject: Re: Hitchcock v. Bresson hotlove666
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- hotlove666 wrote:
>
> >
> > Between 1954 and 1964 there is only one minor
> > Hitchcock, To Catch a
> > Thief.
>
> I think "To Catch a Thief" is higky underrated -- and
> Durgnat agrees with me in his Hitchcock book.
> I find it one of the small handful of films that makes
> heterosxuality look interesting.
>
lol - Schickel has writen that it's the film where Grant's
ambivalence about women was displayed with surprising candor by the
director and by the actor.
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Make Yahoo! your home page
> http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
24103
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 8:02am
Subject: Re: The NEW American Cinema hotlove666
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Yoel Meranda"
wrote:
>
> If I was given the chance to continue where Sarris left, and asked
to
> write about narrative filmmakers who made films in English, after
> 1962, my addition would be about nine pages long (if I was also
> obliged to write no longer than Sarris did about each director).
> There would only be three names: Monte Hellman, Michael Mann, David
> Fincher, all of them in the category "Expressive Esoterica"
>
> - From Hellman I have only seen "Two-Lane Blacktop" which I love.
> I've got to see more.
>
> - Michael Mann made and still makes beautiful films using and
abusing
> the cliches of the action genre. The ending image of "Manhunter",
the
> use of architecture in "The Insider", the psychological intensity
> in "Ali" and the choreography of out-of-focus streetlights
> in "Collateral" go beyond anything that is achieved by other
> narrative directors who live in the US.
>
> - David Fincher's camera seem to have a will of its own, sometimes
> unrelated to what's happening in the narrative. The beginning of
the
> very underrated "Panic Room" has many camera movements that move
> around the house for no specific reason (the pretext being the fact
> that the mother and daughter are there to see the place in order to
> decide whether to move in). He's also the only filmmaker who uses
> special-effects for expressive purposes, as proved by the long take
> in the same film (described by many as virtuosity for its own sake)
> that offered an unsettling ride proving that cinema does not have
to
> care about physical laws, in this case that of gravity. I also like
> his metallic lighting. Fincher should also be celebrated for being
> the only person in Hollywood who admits to stealing visual ideas
from
> Brakhage.
>
> Cronenberg also deserves being mentioned in the category "Oddities,
> One-Shots, and New Comers" for only one of his films, "Crash". The
> rest of what I have seen from him is not cinematic at all.
>
> Yoel
> If I was given the chance to continue where Sarris left, and asked
to
> write about narrative filmmakers who made films in English, after
> 1962, my addition would be about nine pages long (if I was also
> obliged to write no longer than Sarris did about each director).
> There would only be three names...
> - From Hellman I have only seen "Two-Lane Blacktop" which I love.
> I've got to see more.
>
> Cronenberg also deserves being mentioned in the category "Oddities,
> One-Shots, and New Comers" for only one of his films, "Crash". The
> rest of what I have seen from him is not cinematic at all.
>
> Yoel
Sarris's point had less to do with popular taste ("A movie is a movie
is a movie") - most sentences purporting to define words are trivial -
than with what he says just before: "As for what constitutes a movie
by our temporary definition, the necessary evil of specialization mus
tbe invoked." Sarris's viewing was specialized in one direction, and
yours is specialized in another, to judge by the remarks I've
excerpted from your interesting appreciations of Hellman, Mann and
Fincher.
Neither your specialization nor Sarris's constitutes a definition of
cinema, but if you wrote a book called "American Cinema: Toward the
New Millennium" that omitted Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Brian
De Palma, Francis Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, Bob Rafelson, Joe
Dante, Sam Peckinpah, Roberet Altman, Terry Gilliam, William
Friedkin, Shirley Clarke, Abel Ferrara, George Lucas, Woody Allen,
Clint Eastwood, John Landis, John Carpenter, George Romero, Fred
Walton, John McTiernan, Joel and Ethan Coen, Michael Cimino, John
Cassavetes, Jim McBride, Tim Burton, James Cameron, Albert Brooks,
Steven Soderbergh, Leonard Kastle, Dan O'Bannon, Paul Thomas
Anderson, Jonathan Demme, John Waters, Paul Verhoeven, John
McNaughton, David O. Russell, Wes Anderson, Alexander Payne, the
Farrelly Brothers, Ron Shelton, Henry Selick and David Lynch - as you
say you would do in responding to the Film Journal poll, to focus on
whatever cinema(s) you are specialized in, and I were writing about
it, my first sentence might be a wry remark about the relativity of
definitions, and my next, a self-recusal based on my own incompetence
to discuss your book, but I wouldn't call you irresponsible or
condescending for giving it a catchy title.
24104
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 8:05am
Subject: Re: Narrative and eschatology in Shyamalan (Was: Shyamalan SPOILERS) hotlove666
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
>
>
> > I think Hurt's character is psychotic, unlike Bush, but Bush's
> > inflating and milking of the terrorist threat is clearly one
target
> > of a film whose meanings aren't limited to the local and
political.
> > MNS puts himself in the movie as the guard-station chief reading
> the
> > paper - which contains a non-explicit headline about the Iraq war
>
> Yes, but we also hear a radio news report about the discovery of a
7-
> year old's dead body - which implies that Hurt was justified in
> creating a community totally isolated from modern America.
That's not a reason to raise your kids in the woods and keep them
there by dressing up like a boogeyman and periodically raiding the
settlement at night! Evil is always with us - the question (for us
mere mortals) is what we do about it.
24105
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 8:10am
Subject: Re: Narrative and eschatology in Shyamalan (still spoilers) hotlove666
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jaketwilson"
wrote:
> in THE VILLAGE is creepy but there's at least an implicit sympathy
> for the desire to escape from a terrifying world. And a society
that
> can produce the purity and valour of the daughter can't be all bad -
-
> we don't particularly want to see her break free, publish a book
> about her life as a cult victim and wind up as a guest on Oprah. I
> like it better than THE TRUMAN SHOW but the respective endings make
> an interesting comparison.
>
> JTW
I like it a lot better than The Truman Show, the ending of which I
have forgotten. I doubt if the daughter would ever do that, although
it's a funny idea, but I can see her deciding that she doesn't want
to be brainwashed and imprisoned anymore, if you want to extend the
boundaries of the film. The rest of the kids will believe that she
saw a real boogeyman unless she tells them diferently, but she knows
she didn't, and she might not like lying to them about it for the
rest of her life.
Don't assume that MNS is out of control and just pushing buttons
because the film contains ambiguities!
24106
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 8:15am
Subject: Hellman (was Re: The NEW American Cinema (and Hitchcock v. Bresson) hotlove666
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jaketwilson"
wrote:
On Hellman's supposed fatalism: What about the ending of Cockfighter?
It's very optimistic! Even the hero of Iguana is making an absurd
gesture of freedom in impossible circuimstances in the last shot.
When you go over to Monte's house you see two kinds of books on the
shelves - histories of the West and books on existentialism. He's an
existentialist, and there are few films that are more deliberately
about Sartre's idea of human freedom than Iguana, dark as it is.
24107
From: "thebradstevens"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 10:40am
Subject: Hellman (was Re: The NEW American Cinema) thebradstevens
>
> I'm not sure how far Bresson believes in the possibility of human
> communication
He may not believe in its possibility, but this doesn't prevent him
from wishing that it were possible.
It's also not mentioned often enough about
> Hellman that he's an extremely funny filmmaker -- Jarmusch plunders
> him ruthlessly there.
What bothers me about Jarmusch is that he usually presents 'cool'
emotional detachment as something admirable. He's studied Hellman's
films, but learned all the wrong lessons from them.
24108
From: "thebradstevens"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 10:45am
Subject: Hellman (was Re: The NEW American Cinema (and Hitchcock v. Bresson) thebradstevens
When a film seems to set its characters and
> actors free to express themselves through acting, and places an
emphasis
> on that, then it seems human-centered. When a film does the
opposite,
> treating its characters as entrapped in its own scheme, then it
does the
> opposite. "Mouchette" is free only to do one thing, which is what
she
> does at the end.
Yes, but "Mouchette" is caught in a trap set for her by the society
in which she lives, not by the filmmaker.
Bresson's and Hellman's films seem permeated by a
> fatalism one can also find in Murnau and Lang. Are you watching
> characters freely expressing their humanity, or insects caught in a
> mechanism?
In Hellman, I am watching characters attempting to freely express
their humanity, despite the fact that they are essentially insects
caught in a mechanism. The point of TWO-LANE BLACKTOP is that the
characters believe themselves to be free, whereas they are simply
recreating the 'traps' of that middle-class society which they have
rejected.
24109
From: "thebradstevens"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 10:51am
Subject: Re: Narrative and eschatology in Shyamalan (Was: Shyamalan SPOILERS) thebradstevens
> >
> > Yes, but we also hear a radio news report about the discovery of
a
> 7-
> > year old's dead body - which implies that Hurt was justified in
> > creating a community totally isolated from modern America.
>
> That's not a reason to raise your kids in the woods and keep them
> there by dressing up like a boogeyman and periodically raiding the
> settlement at night!
I agree with you. But I'm not at all convinced that Shyamalan does.
24110
From: "thebradstevens"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 10:57am
Subject: Hellman (was Re: The NEW American Cinema (and Hitchcock v. Bresson) thebradstevens
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> On Hellman's supposed fatalism: What about the ending of
Cockfighter?
> It's very optimistic
I find the ending of COCKFIGHTER to be incredibly complex.
Essentially, Hellman throws the whole thing back on the audience: we
are free to read the ending as optimistic, pessimistic, upbeat,
downbeat, ironic, romantic, etc. Whatever choice we make will be
supported by the director (Ferrara does something similar at the end
of 'R XMAS). For a supposedly fatalistic filmmaker, Hellman certainly
gives the viewer a lot of freedom!
24111
From: MG4273@...
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 7:50am
Subject: Bride and Prejudice (Gurinder Chadha) nzkpzq
Just a brief note: if the musical film "Bride and Prejudice" (Gurinder
Chadha) is playing near you, it is well worth checking out. This is high-spirited,
old-fashioned fun, with brilliant color and lots of singing, dancing and
romance.
Mike Grost
24112
From: "jess_l_amortell"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 2:40pm
Subject: Tribeca (was: Re: Narrative vs. not..) jess_l_amortell
> I see that Street has a feature called ROCKAWAY in the upcoming Tribeca
> Film Festival.
I hadn't realized that the Tribeca schedule was online, or that it included the North American premiere of 2046 (second on the list after Benning's 13 LAKES). It's annoying that "lesser" directors' names, even if many would be unfamiliar, aren't included in the initial blurbs in the alphabetical list of events, for the most part (ex.: Richard Quine for MY SISTER EILEEN) -- although there's a separate alphabetical list of directors.
http://www.tribecafilmfestival.org/tixSYS/filmguide/title-detail.php
24114
From: "Matthew Clayfield"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 2:56pm
Subject: Tribeca (was: Re: Narrative vs. not..) mclayf00
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jess_l_amortell"
wrote:
> ...Benning's 13 LAKES.
Oh, how I'd kill to see "13 Lakes"! Or, for that matter, "Ten Skies".
In 2004, the Brisbane International Film Festival ran a substantial
Benning retrospective, which he himself attended, and I've been a huge
fan ever since. "11 x 14" is one of my favourite films.
24115
From: Matt Teichman
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 3:21pm
Subject: Re: Sacha Guitry query bufordrat
Many thanks to Bill, Dan, and JPC for the Guitry refs. I will see what
I can do to find them. Google has also led me to the following book:
http://www.amazon.fr/exec/obidos/ASIN/2871300704/qid=1110808000/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/171-2714758-4908209
Sounds interesting...
-Matt
24116
From: "Rick Curnutte"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 4:05pm
Subject: Follow up to THE NEW AMERICAN CINEMA racurnutte1
I'm still extremely curious as to what a Sarris update would look
like, so that will go on as planned.
But there have been so many great ideas thrown around here, it would
be a shame to let them go to waste. So I'd like to use the "Sarris
Poll" as a precursor to a much more inclusive, expansive poll of
international filmmakers.
I'd like to write up a bit about how the polling for the Sarris
update brought about the need for a less-ghettoized grouping of
cinema's greatest artisans.
Any ideas for formatting are welcome, but essentially, I was
thinking of everyone submitting to me simply their 25
favorite/best/preferred/etc. filmmakers to me (in no particular
order, I'm not going to do weighted pointmaking or anything) and I'd
post the results in the NEXT issue of THE FILM JOURNAL (July 1,
2005). Anything goes, of course (documentarians, avant-gardists,
experimentalists, Michael Bay, et al).
Again, you can submit your lists to me off-list (or post them here
if you like). If all this list-making is making you nauseous, I
apologize, I don't come here enough to know the temper of the room,
we'll say. But Peter is one of my closest friends, and he digs this
stuff, so I figured it was fair game.
Rick "Trying to Cover All Bases" Curnutte
24117
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 4:14pm
Subject: Re: Bride and Prejudice (Gurinder Chadha) hotlove666
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
> Just a brief note: if the musical film "Bride and Prejudice"
(Gurinder
> Chadha) is playing near you, it is well worth checking out. This is
high-spirited,
> old-fashioned fun, with brilliant color and lots of singing,
dancing and
> romance.
>
> Mike Grost
But we don't want high-spirited, old-fashioned fun, Mike - we want
grim, naturalistic misery about people like bugs!
24118
From: "jpcoursodon"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 4:14pm
Subject: Off with their heads! (was: NEW American Cinema) jpcoursodon
If Sarris had applied the same rigorous (and highly idiosyncratic)
standards Yoel suggests, his book would have been a very slim volume
indeed. Whereas one of his purposes was to discuss many directors
who had never gotten any recognition or serious critical attention.
Bill's list is eloquent enough. All the names he cites are worthy of
inclusion in any meaningful NEW AMERICAN CINEMA book, at various
level (which is the purpose of the "categories"). By the way
Tavernier and I included about 80% of those new names in "50 ANS DE
CINEMA AMERICAIN" even though the book was published in 1991, and
we updated it three years later for the paperback edition.
JPC
PS By "idiosyncratic" I didn't mean that Yoel's three choices are
bizarre or questionable, simply that they eliminate an enormous
number of worthwhile directors.
24119
From: programming
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 4:29pm
Subject: Re: Tribeca (was: Re: Narrative vs. not..) cfprogramming
On 3/14/05 8:54 AM, "Matthew Clayfield" wrote:
> Oh, how I'd kill to see "13 Lakes"! -- and, for that matter, "Ten Skies".
>
Well, for Ten Skies, you can always come to Chicago April 30! We're showing
it then.
Patrick Friel
Chicago Filmmakers
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
24120
From: Jim Healy
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 7:40pm
Subject: Re: Tribeca (was: Re: Narrative vs. not..) blaftoni
programming wrote:
> On 3/14/05 8:54 AM, "Matthew Clayfield" wrote:
>
> > Oh, how I'd kill to see "13 Lakes"! -- and, for that matter, "Ten Skies".
> >
>
> Well, for Ten Skies, you can always come to Chicago April 30! We're showing
> it then.
>
13 LAKES is showing in Rochester, with Benning in person, on April 6.
Jim Healy
George Eastman House
24121
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 4:55pm
Subject: Re: Hitchcock v. Bresson (Was the NEW American Cinema hotlove666
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Blake Lucas"
wrote:
The Birds for me ranks
> with Au Hasard Balthazar among the all-time greats, and I'm not
sure
> a discussion about "what is art?" or "what is great filmmaking?"
> really needs to prefer one of these films to the other.
PEANUTS:
Lucy: Who do you love more, your mother or your father?
Charlie Brown: Well, uh, that's kind of...
Lucy: WISHY-WASHY! (Charlie Brown does a little circular flip in the
air.)
[JPC, still nursing that ankle]
> > Could someone please define terms like "better" applied to
> > compare widely different films by two widely different directors,
> > both on the highest level of cinematic achievement?
Sarris and The Founder were both doing it, JP, so I was just trying
to make the comparison a little more conceivable, and I found to my
surprise that there were comparisons to make if you didn't go totally
apples and oranges. Here's one: The Birds and Balthazar both concern
Man's relationship to Nature, but give very different takes on the
subject. Both are brilliant (although I have some problems w.
Balthazar - cf. infra), but Balthazar depends on the Schubert that is
played over its images for 30% of its meaning, beauty and emotional
impact, whereas Hitchcock decided he didn't need music for The Birds,
and he was right.
Of course the daring experiment he did with electronic sound
contributes to the film, but not the way the B Flat Major contributes
to Balthazar: "Boo. Hoo. Boohoohoohoohoo Hoo..." Unless I'm
remembering wrong, this is atypical use of music for Bresson (quite
different from the Bach erupting at the end of A Condemned Man).
Is it possible that he felt the need for a very big musical prop this
time because his reduction of depth-of-field in Balthazar was an
experiment that had deprived his cinema of the stunning autonomous
form he had achieved in The Trial of Joan of Arc, a film that uses
music, but not like THAT? (Cf. Oudart, "La suture," if you read
French or can find a decent translation of it...Good luck on the
latter, but there is a translation of sorts in the BFI CdC collection
for the 60s and 70s...)
But certainly AH's most Bressonian film is The Wrong Man, and again,
I don't think comparisons are completely idiotic. (Nor would I
hesitate to rank, in order of preference 1. Red Desert 2. Marnie 3.
Une femme douce.) More generally, saying whether one likes Beethoven
more than Schubert, for example, has meaning that Schroeder would
certainly understand, even if Charlie Brown wouldn't. Eric Rohmer
ends his book on music with Beethoven, and makes the case there that
as a listener and an amateur music critic he sees no point in going
any further.
24122
From: "Ruy Gardnier"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 5:07pm
Subject: Re: Re: Narrative and eschatology in Shyamalan (Was: Shyamalan SPOILERS) ruygardnier
(ALL SPOILERS)
Yes, and then he ends the film by putting the following in Hurt's mouth:
"Noah has given us a chance to continue this place...
...if that is something...
...we still wish for."
More, I think every religious content criticism of SIGNS should as well be
applied equally to Tarkovski's THE SACRIFICE, because Shyamalan's film is
nothing short of a remake.
Also, for strong arguments against some of today's greatest filmmakers, I
feel that everyone who felt compelled to go against Clint Eastwood for
having a disabled person want to kill herself in his film should also go
against Pedro Almodovar for sponsoring a seemingly gay person rape a
comatose dazzling woman and getting her knocked up.
From: "thebradstevens"
> Jackson's character is clearly shown to be wrong, but Hurt's isn't. I
> would argue that this is why Shyamalan revealed the truth two-thirds
> of the way in rather than at the end - because he wanted time to
> convince us that Hurt's actions could be justified.
24123
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 5:20pm
Subject: Re: Re: Narrative and eschatology in Shyamalan (Was: Shyamalan SPOILERS) cellar47
--- Ruy Gardnier wrote:
> Also, for strong arguments against some of today's
> greatest filmmakers, I
> feel that everyone who felt compelled to go against
> Clint Eastwood for
> having a disabled person want to kill herself in his
> film should also go
> against Pedro Almodovar for sponsoring a seemingly
> gay person rape a
> comatose dazzling woman and getting her knocked up.
>
Yoo hoo -- over here!
Almodovaris running neck and neck with Quentin
tarantino for the most overrated director of our time.
There is noting "daring" or "cutting edge" about his
work whatsoever. It's all about conformity to the
status quo. In fact, if I had the time the energy and
the inclination, I could write a substantial essay
about why "Bad Education" is a 21-gun salute to
pedophile priests.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/
24124
From: "Blake Lucas"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 6:20pm
Subject: Hellman (was Re: The NEW American Cinema) blakelucaslu...
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
>
> It's also not mentioned often enough about
> > Hellman that he's an extremely funny filmmaker -- Jarmusch
plunders
> > him ruthlessly there.
>
> What bothers me about Jarmusch is that he usually presents 'cool'
> emotional detachment as something admirable. He's studied
Hellman's
> films, but learned all the wrong lessons from them.
Amen on both points. If ever there was an emperor who wears no
clothes it's the director of Dead Man. And the austerity already
remarked on in Hellman in some of these posts doesn't preclude a
highly existential, highly reflective humanism which always makes
its way into the light in these films, and which crucially often
goes hand in glove with the humor you allude to. My favorite
example is GTO's little speech in Two-Lane Blacktop when he
unexpectedly reveals the truth and ends with memorable line (won't
be exact quote probably as I don't have it in front of me): "I'm
going to have to come down to earth soon...or I'm going to go into
orbit." Memorably hilarious and incredibly emotionally compelling
all at once.
24125
From: "Blake Lucas"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 6:20pm
Subject: Hellman (was Re: The NEW American Cinema) blakelucaslu...
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
>
> It's also not mentioned often enough about
> > Hellman that he's an extremely funny filmmaker -- Jarmusch
plunders
> > him ruthlessly there.
>
> What bothers me about Jarmusch is that he usually presents 'cool'
> emotional detachment as something admirable. He's studied
Hellman's
> films, but learned all the wrong lessons from them.
Amen on both points. If ever there was an emperor who wears no
clothes it's the director of Dead Man. And the austerity already
remarked on in Hellman in some of these posts doesn't preclude a
highly existential, highly reflective humanism which always makes
its way into the light in these films, and which crucially often
goes hand in glove with the humor you allude to. My favorite
example is GTO's little speech in Two-Lane Blacktop when he
unexpectedly reveals the truth and ends with memorable line (won't
be exact quote probably as I don't have it in front of me): "I'm
going to have to come down to earth soon...or I'm going to go into
orbit." Memorably hilarious and incredibly emotionally compelling
all at once.
24126
From: "thebradstevens"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 6:26pm
Subject: Hellman (was Re: The NEW American Cinema) thebradstevens
My favorite
> example is GTO's little speech in Two-Lane Blacktop when he
> unexpectedly reveals the truth
Ah, but what makes you think it's the truth. It could be just another
pose.
24127
From: "Blake Lucas"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 6:29pm
Subject: Hellman (was Re: The NEW American Cinema (and Hitchcock v. Bresson) blakelucaslu...
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
> wrote:
> >
> > On Hellman's supposed fatalism: What about the ending of
> Cockfighter?
> > It's very optimistic
>
> I find the ending of COCKFIGHTER to be incredibly complex.
> Essentially, Hellman throws the whole thing back on the audience:
we
> are free to read the ending as optimistic, pessimistic, upbeat,
> downbeat, ironic, romantic, etc. Whatever choice we make will be
> supported by the director (Ferrara does something similar at the
end
> of 'R XMAS). For a supposedly fatalistic filmmaker, Hellman
certainly
> gives the viewer a lot of freedom!
For me the key to the film is Frank's return home and earlier
encounter with this woman he loves. In the first release as Born to
Kill it was a very small but crucial part of this which was
seemingly displaced by the intercut non-Hellman footage which had
nothing to do with the movie at all. The effect of seeing
Cockfighter with perhaps less than a minute completely changed was
electrifying to me, because the whole thrust of it came into focus
and its greatness, just a little obscure before, was fully
revealed. And that observation does not preclude the truth of what
you say above about the openness of the ending. With the whole
underlying issue clearer and more poignant it just makes the
complexity of our response deeper perhaps.
24128
From: "Blake Lucas"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 6:53pm
Subject: Re: Hitchcock v. Bresson (Was the NEW American Cinema blakelucaslu...
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Blake Lucas"
> wrote:
>
> The Birds for me ranks
> > with Au Hasard Balthazar among the all-time greats, and I'm not
> sure
> > a discussion about "what is art?" or "what is great filmmaking?"
> > really needs to prefer one of these films to the other.
>
> PEANUTS:
>
> Lucy: Who do you love more, your mother or your father?
> Charlie Brown: Well, uh, that's kind of...
> Lucy: WISHY-WASHY! (Charlie Brown does a little circular flip in
the
> air.)
I make lists all the time and am always glad to share them and own
up to any preferences. I just thought this thread was supposed to
be taking up some other broader questions than some of these
preferences. For the record, I would have rated The Birds over Au
Hasard Balthazar for most of my life, but after my last two viewings
of the latter in the last few years, it's now the other way around.
(And I don't think I could do a circular flip if I wanted to, Bill).
>
> Sarris and The Founder were both doing it, JP, so I was just
trying
> to make the comparison a little more conceivable, and I found to
my
> surprise that there were comparisons to make if you didn't go
totally
> apples and oranges. Here's one: The Birds and Balthazar both
concern
> Man's relationship to Nature, but give very different takes on the
> subject. Both are brilliant (although I have some problems w.
> Balthazar - cf. infra), but Balthazar depends on the Schubert that
is
> played over its images for 30% of its meaning, beauty and
emotional
> impact, whereas Hitchcock decided he didn't need music for The
Birds,
> and he was right.
>
> Of course the daring experiment he did with electronic sound
> contributes to the film, but not the way the B Flat Major
contributes
> to Balthazar: "Boo. Hoo. Boohoohoohoohoo Hoo..." Unless I'm
> remembering wrong, this is atypical use of music for Bresson
(quite
> different from the Bach erupting at the end of A Condemned Man).
>
It's accurate about the music in Balthazar and lack of it in The
Birds, and I do agree the Schubert has a telling effect on the whole
movie. But may I point out that the same could be said of
Hitchcock's followup to The Birds (strongly related to it, in my
view): Herrmann's music for Marnie also arguably accounts for (at
least) 30% of its meaning, beauty and emotional impact (this might
even be said for Vertigo as well). All this proves is that both
filmmakers could make great films with music as a vital formal
element or not, depending on the choice in that circumstance.
>
> But certainly AH's most Bressonian film is The Wrong Man, and
again,
> I don't think comparisons are completely idiotic.
I'm always glad to see The Wrong Man mentioned because I think it's
one of Hitchcock's greatest films and doesn't seem to make that many
lists. And far from being idiotic this comparison is in fact
extremely valuable, because The Wrong Man reveals Hitchcock as a
completely different kind of humanist than Bresson, secular rather
than religious--the dissolve from wrong man to right man as Manny
prays never indicates an answer to a prayer for me, for surely God
doesn't care about such things; He leaves Rose in her own world in
an insane asylum at the end--"That's Fine for You"--staring into a
space in which God is absent and there is no grace. But Hitchcock
at least cares about her and her husband too, and that's enough.
24129
From: "Blake Lucas"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 7:06pm
Subject: Hellman (was Re: The NEW American Cinema) blakelucaslu...
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
>
> My favorite
> > example is GTO's little speech in Two-Lane Blacktop when he
> > unexpectedly reveals the truth
>
> Ah, but what makes you think it's the truth. It could be just
another
> pose.
Of course you are right. And in fact I meant to write "seems to
reveal the truth" but it didn't come out that way, perhaps because
something about his tone and bearing seems to change enough that I
believe him.
And yet, though I'm embarrassed to admit it, I confused this GTO
monologue with another earlier one to the Driver, which could also
be a pose, lie, story or whatever--the "cracked up" one. That was
the one where I felt he told the truth about himself, though it can
never be proven of course. The "go into orbit" one (to the Girl who
has, as I recall, fallen asleep) was the one I wanted to cite for a
complex emotional effect of being incredibly funny yet incredibly
moving at the same time, which I guess you might agree with.
If I don't get back to Hellman very soon, I don't want to forget
your earlier citation (I believe it was you) of the Girl's "No Good"
line in a key scene near the end. This is also the scene I would
have picked to show the emotions Hellman's characters try to
suppress in every way possible breaking through the surface, but for
me it comes earlier in the Driver's "We'll go to Cincinatti, Ohio
and get some parts..." to her or whatever it is he says--a more
heartfelt declaration of love I have never heard in the cinema.
24130
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 7:10pm
Subject: Re: Re: Hitchcock v. Bresson (Was the NEW American Cinema cellar47
--- Blake Lucas
wrote:
And far from being idiotic this comparison
> is in fact
> extremely valuable, because The Wrong Man reveals
> Hitchcock as a
> completely different kind of humanist than Bresson,
> secular rather
> than religious--the dissolve from wrong man to right
> man as Manny
> prays never indicates an answer to a prayer for me,
> for surely God
> doesn't care about such things; He leaves Rose in
> her own world in
> an insane asylum at the end--"That's Fine for
> You"--staring into a
> space in which God is absent and there is no grace.
Very Bressonian. Especially late Bresson. Far too
little has been made of the clear distinction between
faith in early Bresson (especially "Les Dames du Bois
de Boulogne" and "Man Escaped") and doubt that starts
to seep in with "Pickpocket" then really starts to
ratchet its way up with "Balthazar," coming to full
voice in "Le Diable Probablement."
"L'Argent" is the cri de coeur of an athiest.
> But Hitchcock
> at least cares about her and her husband too, and
> that's enough.
>
Bresson cares only for the beauty of his "models" --
and in this he's a lot like Sternberg, especially in
"Shanghai Gesture."
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24131
From: "Blake Lucas"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 7:36pm
Subject: Re: Hitchcock v. Bresson (Was the NEW American Cinema blakelucaslu...
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- Blake Lucas
> He leaves Rose in
> > her own world in
> > an insane asylum at the end--"That's Fine for
> > You"--staring into a
> > space in which God is absent and there is no grace.
>
> Very Bressonian. Especially late Bresson. Far too
> little has been made of the clear distinction between
> faith in early Bresson (especially "Les Dames du Bois
> de Boulogne" and "Man Escaped") and doubt that starts
> to seep in with "Pickpocket" then really starts to
> ratchet its way up with "Balthazar," coming to full
> voice in "Le Diable Probablement."
>
> "L'Argent" is the cri de coeur of an athiest.
These things are never simple, are they? For in fact, though I
think of his movies as secular, we know Hitchcock was a practicing
and presumably devout Catholic (correct me if I'm wrong, Bill). As
for Bresson, even if he makes a movie that is the cri de coeur of an
atheist--a good description of L'Argent--within the heart there can
still be a soul which believes all grace is not of this earth.
Which brings me back to the music of Schubert in Balthazar which
Bill seems to score against the film somewhat--it plays against a
vision of life on earth which I find to be about as bleak as can be,
though an insightful and truthful one. Bresson is so rigorously
unsentimental--and never more than here, no matter how much the
epiphany of that donkey at the end might touch some of us--that the
beauty of Schubert's music by contrast almost makes his world seem
more desolate. As far as atheism or the lack of same, it all
depends on what relation you feel God has to the world--does He care
or is He just dispassionate about it all. Bresson surely feels the
latter and on some level always did; oddly enough, as different as
he is, Renoir in The River seems to take exactly the same view. But
I do believe Hitchcock feels all a character in a movie can hope for
is the love of his or her director, as they won't get it from God.
That's as true for the characters in The Birds and Marnie as for
those of The Wrong Man.
And now I'm going to have get off a_film_by and spend a little time
with my day job...because like the man said, if I don't come down to
earth soon, I'm going to go into orbit.
__________________________________
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24132
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 7:38pm
Subject: Re: Narrative and eschatology in Shyamalan (Was: Shyamalan SPOILERS) hotlove666
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Ruy Gardnier"
wrote:
> (ALL SPOILERS)
>
> Yes, and then he ends the film by putting the following in Hurt's
mouth:
> "Noah has given us a chance to continue this place...
> ...if that is something...
> ...we still wish for."
Yes, but his own daughter knows that Noah didn't die heroically
trying to kill a Bogey, and now she's going to have to lie to all the
other young people about it - starting with her husband. So Pop can
hope to continue the collective delusion, but there's more trouble
coming.
I didn't say that he was evil, by the way - just deluded.
I will have to resee the Tarkovsky and get back to you on the Signs
comparison. Wouldn't be at all surprised if Night has seen it. His
religion is basically Christian, on the showing of his first Miramax
film about the religious prep school, which contains the seeds of
Sixth Sense.
24133
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 7:52pm
Subject: Re: Hitchcock v. Bresson (Was the NEW American Cinema hotlove666
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Blake Lucas"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
> wrote:
> >
> > "L'Argent" is the cri de coeur of an athiest.
There was certainly a progressive hardening of Bresson's art to ideas
of transcendence, but as Blake syas, these things aren't simple. The
modern creed that reconciles these contraries is Gnosticism, and it
may be that Bresson went from being a Jansenist to being a Gnostic at
the end. It has happened before.
>
> These things are never simple, are they? For in fact, though I
> think of his movies as secular, we know Hitchcock was a practicing
> and presumably devout Catholic (correct me if I'm wrong, Bill).
He was definitely a practicing Catholic, although the service that is
read of Ed Lauter in that memorable cemetery scene in Family Plot is
Mormon.
But
> I do believe Hitchcock feels all a character in a movie can hope
for
> is the love of his or her director, as they won't get it from God.
> That's as true for the characters in The Birds and Marnie as for
> those of The Wrong Man.
A Lurker on the Threshold here at afb who has spent a lifetime
addressing these issues in Hitchcock is Ken Mogg, who is passionately
convinced that AH was a Schopenhauerian (so much so that Tag
Gallagher at one point started referring to AH as "Schopencock" in
his e-mails to Ken.) I strongly recommend Ken's The Alfred Hitchcock
Story, even if you have to access it in the screwed-up American
edition - it is an endlessly fascinating resource, and I find the
Schopenhauer argument (also accessible on the web in Ken's MacGuffin
posts) very tempting.
24134
From: "thebradstevens"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 9:34pm
Subject: Re: Narrative and eschatology in Shyamalan (Was: Shyamalan SPOILERS) thebradstevens
> I didn't say that he was evil, by the way - just deluded.
What annoys me are all those things the film fails to point out.
We're clearly not invited to consider why, if Hurt's character felt
the need to create an isolated community, he created this kind of
community. He could have created a hippy commune. But instead he
created a nineteenth century theme park based on a rigorous division
of the genders (even his daughter complains that she can't do the
same things as the boys), from which homosexuals and racial
minorities are absent. It may be George Bush's idea of paradise, but
it ain't mine.
24135
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 9:46pm
Subject: Re: Narrative and eschatology in Shyamalan (Was: Shyamalan SPOILERS) hotlove666
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
>
>
> > I didn't say that he was evil, by the way - just deluded.
>
> What annoys me are all those things the film fails to point out.
> We're clearly not invited to consider why, if Hurt's character felt
> the need to create an isolated community, he created this kind of
> community. He could have created a hippy commune. But instead he
> created a nineteenth century theme park based on a rigorous division
> of the genders (even his daughter complains that she can't do the
> same things as the boys), from which homosexuals and racial
> minorities are absent. It may be George Bush's idea of paradise, but
> it ain't mine.
But, The Brad, why is it good filmmaking to POINT ALL THAT OUT? You
obviously got it without that!
24136
From: "thebradstevens"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 9:58pm
Subject: Re: Narrative and eschatology in Shyamalan (Was: Shyamalan SPOILERS) thebradstevens
> But, The Brad, why is it good filmmaking to POINT ALL THAT OUT? You
> obviously got it without that!
Yes, but the point I'm making is that everything about the film's
tone suggests we are supposed to approve of Hurt's actions. The film
doesn't point out (for example) the absence of homosexuals, not
because Shyamalan is trying to be subtle and allow viewers to make
their own connections, but because he takes it for granted that
homosexuals will be absent from a utopia.
24137
From: "jpcoursodon"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 10:03pm
Subject: Re: Hitchcock v. Bresson (Was the NEW American Cinema jpcoursodon
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Blake Lucas"
wrote:
>
> And now I'm going to have get off a_film_by and spend a little
time
> with my day job...because like the man said, if I don't come down
to
> earth soon, I'm going to go into orbit.
But Blake, don't you know being a member of a_film_by is a full-
time job?
24138
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 10:13pm
Subject: Re: Narrative and eschatology in Shyamalan (Was: Shyamalan SPOILERS) hotlove666
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
>
>
> > But, The Brad, why is it good filmmaking to POINT ALL THAT OUT? You
> > obviously got it without that!
>
> Yes, but the point I'm making is that everything about the film's
> tone suggests we are supposed to approve of Hurt's actions. The film
> doesn't point out (for example) the absence of homosexuals, not
> because Shyamalan is trying to be subtle and allow viewers to make
> their own connections, but because he takes it for granted that
> homosexuals will be absent from a utopia.
Really? All I can do is quote Straub on Othon, where Galba is played by an
attractive actor: "If villains in movies always look like villains, you'll be
disarmed when you meet one in real life." Incidentally, Ford is Straub's
favorite filmmaker, and I think that he often gets bad-rapped for not
underlining his points the same way Shyamalan is being bad-rapped by you -
- apart from that, all your observations are perfectly valid and interesting. But
you're attributing the fault to the director and not to the Hurt character,
because Hurt has a nice face.
24139
From: "Zach Campbell"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 10:30pm
Subject: (One type of) New American Cinema rashomon82
Sorry to come into the discussion a little late.
Rick's project looks like it's more concerned more with the
evaluating/ranking component of Sarris' project than with the
taxonomizing part. (Which is why the international version is going
to be just a 'list 25,' I suppose.) I don't know if I'll
participate simply because I feel like I don't have *quite* a good
enough handle--I mean, Sarris saw tons of these films, probably more
than many of us see of contemporary commercial American (or English-
language) narrative cinema [CCA(oEL)NC]. I don't feel right ranking
in anything but a vague way; there are directors I suspect deserve
to be 'pantheon' filmmakers but whose work I simply haven't seen
enough of (e.g., everyone's favorite, Charles Burnett). But I think
it's an interesting undertaking.
Still, the taxonomizing is a useful tool in itself and integral to
Sarris' original project--and can't be applied to today's CCA(oEL)NC
without some discomfort. Certainly Rick realizes this, and I hope
if people offer them he includes "alternate" taxonomies (or "family
trees"--something Mike Grost has done interestingly) in a comments
section. (In fact, Rick, I would be thrilled to see as an appendix
to this project a 'comments' section in which contributors are
invited to write essays or mini-essays specifically on the very
possibility and implications of "updating Sarris' American Cinema."
If you were to encourage this I would be more likely to participate
myself, in part because I would feel better about my own
shortcomings as a viewer of American cinema, and CCA(oEL)NC in
particular.)
I mean, Sarris' original criteria for pantheon status is, evaluative
level of greatness aside, applicable to MANY directors working in CCA
(oEL)NC. And it gets much trickier in all of the "lesser"
categories. Where does one put the film school generation
(Scorsese, De Palma, Spielberg, Coppola, et al)? They all can fit
quite logically in Pantheon, Far Side of Paradise, Expressive
Esoteria (well: maybe the smaller guys), Strained Seriousness, or
Less Than Meets the Eye--in the case of these filmmakers, their
placement depends arbitrarily on one's personal taste and esteem of
the filmmaker rather than also being based on their placement
within 'the system,' and their classification, whatever it is,
proves grossly ill-fitting in one respect or another.
A new iteration of the sentiment that spurred Sarris' AMERICAN
CINEMA would be highly appreciated (by me anyway), but I think it
would have to involve new categories. (And I'd like to see the same
thing done for other forms and other national cinemas. Anyone want
to update Sitney? Or apply Sarris to France--I guess, based on pre-
1968 work, the pantheon would look like Feuillade, Renoir, Resnais,
Godard, Bresson, Tati, Clair, Vigo? Would anyone place Guitry
there? Gremillon or Franju? Marcel Carne, anyone?)
Meanwhile, I've also been grappling to decide on the category that
should be the easiest (and smallest). So far I've hammered out the
following: Blake Edwards, Abel Ferrara, John Cassavetes, and Monte
Hellman are the ones I'm most comfortable with in the updated
Pantheon. Their work is very much of a piece, constantly
experimenting and challenging itself and the viewer. Mulligan
possibly also. Burnett possibly. Davies, Eastwood, Haynes, and
Cronenberg at least warrant some consideration (even if I'm more
comfortable with them in Far Side right now). A lot of these people
are so damn uneven--Ford didn't make masterpieces every time out,
but he was working on a really high level with great consistency, at
least in the sound era (I'm unable to make a judgment about the
silent work).
And what if they've made too few films? Elaine May, Terrence
Malick, Tom Noonan. Very great work there, just not a whole lot of
it.
--Zach
24140
From: Peter Henne
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 10:33pm
Subject: Re: Hellman (was Re: The NEW American Cinema (and Hitchcock v. Bresson) peterhenne
Online Now Send IM
Sorry, but I don't have the feeling that you've answered my questions. Are you abandoning or amending your binary scheme, now that you admit that one example, Robert Bresson, cannot fit into either position of this scheme? "Complex inner life" in context sounds to me like soft determinism; in which case, you haven't accounted for Bresson's descriptions of the "model" which I cited, in particular the model as "non-rational, non-logical." If there is at least one non-rational, non-logical agent in the world, how is fatalism possible?
Moreover, I question how one is to be moved by characters in a truly predetermined scheme, since they have no choice, no responsibility, and thus--to my way of thinking--no nobility. At most, one might pity them. But my responses to Bresson's characters are not limited to pity.
Nor have you fleshed out what you mean by "insect." Again, when we liken a person to an insect, it is usually denegrating. An insect has no inner life. It's true that Bresson has demonstrated a moral sympathy for unconscious natural organisms, e.g., the fallen trees in "The Devil, Probably." But it's a stretch from there to say that a tree or an insect has consciousness like a person does, if that is in fact what you have in mind.
One can perfectly well account for the name Mouchette meaning "little fly" as a reflection of her lowly social status, and nothing more than that.
Peter Henne
Fred Camper wrote:
Bresson is more complicated than my binary scheme -- and more
complicated than anything we can say about him. But I think my idea is
being misunderstood. The characters in films with fatalistic or
predetermined schemes can have a complex inner life. An "insect" in
Bresson can be deeply moving, as can a donkey, as can a person.
"Mouchette" is an "insect," and it's no accident that Bresson chose to
make a film whose lead character has that name, which means something
like "little fly" in French.
Fred Camper
---------------------------------
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24141
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 10:36pm
Subject: Identifying the Bad Guy (Was:Narrative and eschatology in Shyamalan hotlove666
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666" wrote:
But
> you're attributing the fault to the director and not to the Hurt character,
> because Hurt has a nice face.
To take an example that's more up The Brad's genre-lovin' alley: In Night of
the Living Dead there's a lot of conflict between Ben, the snazzy-looking black
guy, and the paunchy, balding businessman. A key area of dispute: Whether
to stay in the house and board it up or seal themselves in the basement.
Another issue for Ben: The radio says get to a relief center. So he gets the
young couple fried and eaten trying to do that, although the house is
surrounded. Then everyone else gets killed because the zombies eventually
break through the boards. Only Ben survives...by sealing himself in the cellar.
But we jeer at the businessman and root for him, and no one ever says
(because no one is left to say it!), Ben, you got everyone killed with your ego-
tripping stupidity. Because he's a great-looking guy and the other guy is
designated "schmuck" when he walks in the door. Even his wife prefers Ben. If
you examine his actions objectively, he never does anything that bad - he just
freezes once out of fear and almost gets Ben killed, after Ben has gotten the
two kids killed. Six of one and half a dozen of the other. When I mentioned all
this to Mr. and Mrs. Romero they laughed and said other people had pointed
it out. I actually think the remake was done to accentuate these absurdities.
But I'll bow to the gentleman from Illinois for further comment.
One other favorite example of mine: Ralph Meeker is introduced in The
Naked Spur with a bill of particulars identifying him as everything from an
owlhoot to an arsonist, a series of charges supported by the fact that he looks
like Ralph Meeker. But if you examine the subsequent actions of Stewart and
Meeker, who's the bad guy? Who's the good guy?
24142
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 10:37pm
Subject: Re: Re: Narrative and eschatology in Shyamalan (Was: Shyamalan SPOILERS) cellar47
--- thebradstevens wrote:
The film
> doesn't point out (for example) the absence of
> homosexuals, not
> because Shyamalan is trying to be subtle and allow
> viewers to make
> their own connections, but because he takes it for
> granted that
> homosexuals will be absent from a utopia.
>
>
>
>
"They who cannot be named!"
__________________________________
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24143
From: Jim Healy
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 1:48am
Subject: Re: Re: Narrative and eschatology in Shyamalan (Was: Shyamalan SPOILERS) blaftoni
thebradstevens wrote:
>
> Yes, but the point I'm making is that everything about the film's
> tone suggests we are supposed to approve of Hurt's actions. The film
> doesn't point out (for example) the absence of homosexuals, not
> because Shyamalan is trying to be subtle and allow viewers to make
> their own connections, but because he takes it for granted that
> homosexuals will be absent from a utopia.
>
I used to agree with Brad here completely and I'm not sure I disagree yet.
It seemed to me that we're supposed to approve of Hurt's actions when we
see the newspaper headlines about all the rampant violence in the 'outside'
world. (Also, anyone with mental illness would be, ultimately anyway,
absent from such a utopia because for Shyamalan, mental illness usually
equals homicidal tendencies - witness Adrien Brody in The Village and
Donnie Wahlberg in Sixth Sense).
At first viewing, The Village seemed a reactionary and sophomoric movie. It
may have been the creepiest movie I saw in a long time, but not for any of
its intended reasons.
That said, Bill's given me pause for thought here and I feel I have to see
the movie again to see if there is an extra, twisty level of irony that I
might have missed. That scene with the newspaper is what put me on the side
of disliking the movie. If it wasn't there, I might have seen the film as
more admirably ambiguous in its attitudes toward the village elders and
their plan.
Last thought: I know that putting 1892 on the gravestone at the beginning
is meant to throw the audience off the scent of the twist, but why would it
be necessary for Hurt and the elders to tell all the kids it was 1892? Why
not just tell them it's 2004? Would that make all the kids start asking for
playstation and Burger King and condoms? How would they know any better?
Jim Healy
24144
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 10:44pm
Subject: Re: Narrative and eschatology in Shyamalan (Was: Shyamalan SPOILERS) hotlove666
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein wrote:
>
> --- thebradstevens wrote:
> The film
> > doesn't point out (for example) the absence of
> > homosexuals, not
> > because Shyamalan is trying to be subtle and allow
> > viewers to make
> > their own connections, but because he takes it for
> > granted that
> > homosexuals will be absent from a utopia.
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> "They who cannot be named!"
And are named all the time in the film, a gays are by the Christian Right. You'd
think those folks had issues the way they keep harping on that one...
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
> http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/
24145
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 10:48pm
Subject: Re: Narrative and eschatology in Shyamalan (Was: Shyamalan SPOILERS) hotlove666
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Jim Healy wrote:
>
>
> thebradstevens wrote:
for Shyamalan, mental illness usually
> equals homicidal tendencies - witness Adrien Brody in The Village and
> Donnie Wahlberg in Sixth Sense.
Or Sam Jackson in Unbreakable? Anyway, Brodie's there to show that the
outside is inside.
>
That scene with the newspaper is what put me on the side
> of disliking the movie. If it wasn't there, I might have seen the film as
> more admirably ambiguous in its attitudes toward the village elders and
> their plan.
But Shyamalan puts himself in this world, reading that newspaper. Evil exists,
but is that any reason to etc etc?
>
> Last thought: I know that putting 1892 on the gravestone at the beginning
> is meant to throw the audience off the scent of the twist, but why would it
> be necessary for Hurt and the elders to tell all the kids it was 1892? Why
> not just tell them it's 2004? Would that make all the kids start asking for
> playstation and Burger King and condoms? How would they know any
better?
Well, Hurt has to teach history classes, and for these kids, history has to stop
in the early 19th Century.
24146
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 10:53pm
Subject: Re: (One type of) New American Cinema hotlove666
Feuillade, Renoir, Resnais,
Godard, Bresson, Tati, Guitry, Pagnol, Gremillon, Vigo, Demy, Cocteau,
Eustache, Rouch.
The rest of the NV is Far Side, as are Pialat and Varda.
Carne and Clair go to Less Than Meets the Eye.
> And what if they've made too few films? Elaine May, Terrence
> Malick, Tom Noonan.
Don't know Noonan. May is Expressive Esoterica. Mallick is Strained
Seriousness.
24147
From: Matt Teichman
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 11:24pm
Subject: Re: Fluxus films online bufordrat
Hmm... please correct me if I'm wrong, but these sort of look like
they're from the Re:Voir tape.
Now, in general I don't believe in copyright laws. But I do think that
in this case it's worth supporting Re:Voir if you can afford to. Pip
Chodorov runs one of the finest video labels I know of and does such a
great job with the telecines; I sat in on one with him once and it was a
joy to watch. And apparently he is going to re-release his fantastic
catalogue on Blu-Ray.
http://www.re-voir.com
-Matt
Jason Guthartz wrote:
>works by George Landow, Yoko Ono, Paul Sharits, among others:
>
>http://www.ubu.com/film/fluxfilm.html
>
>
24148
From: "Gabe Klinger"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 0:34am
Subject: Melinda and Melinda gcklinger
Anyone see the Woodster's latest? I thought it was intriguing at times but mostly it
revolted me. But my reaction is typical. If you are or were ever interested in Woody Allen,
A.O. Scott's piece in the Times --
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/movies/13Scot.html?
-- is the start of a much-needed discussion (though he hasn't seen the film). For starters,
Allen is back, almost completely in the new one, to Bergman. Long, talky scenes with
Radha Mitchell, in the Liv Ulmann role; Larry Pine and Wallace Shawn are the graceful
storytellers; Chiwetel Ejiofor (from DIRTY PRETTY THINGS) is the intrusive other. In terms
of narrative scope, the way it intersects two different versions of the same story, is only
slightly more ambitious than his recent films (since DECONSTRUCTING HARRY at least).
Melinda, the only fully developed character: she suffers, she suffers, she suffers. But her
predicament is comically outmoded -- she's in emotional turmoiil from living in the
midwest -- and Chloe Sevigny is her 5th ave. Wasp buddy who married her college
boyfriend. It's Woody's world, and A.O. Scott suggests we're simply refusing it. If it's a
matter of simply not meeting the mainstream's expectations, well, big surprise.But if
anyone is implying that Allen is misunderstood, if anything I think we have seen too
clearly. Bergman soured at points but he returned to confront his critics. This seems to me
like what Allen is doing. HOwever, his approach to humanity has narrowed so that it's hard
to relate to anything going on his films. I never saw Allen as an intellectual experience. I
always saw him as the norm. Now he's become irrelevent (perhaps the larger point
in AO Scott's piece.).
Gabe
24149
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 0:40am
Subject: Re: Melinda and Melinda hotlove666
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Gabe Klinger" wrote:
>
> Anyone see the Woodster's latest? I thought it was intriguing at times but
mostly it
> revolted me.
I'm seeing it Wednesday.
24150
From: MG4273@...
Date: Mon Mar 14, 2005 8:11pm
Subject: Grost Picks (was: New American Cinema) nzkpzq
Pantheon Directors
Blake Edwards
Curtis Harrington
Dusan Makavejev
Robert Mulligan
Ken Russell
*
The Far Side of Paradise
Robert Altman
Peter Bogdanovich
John Cassavetes
Martha Coolidge
Jonathan Demme
James Ivory
James D. Parriott
Sam Peckinpah
Joseph Pevney
Joseph Ruben
Julien Temple
John Waters
Peter Weir
*
Expressive Esoterica
(Probably some of these should be ranked higher... If I knew more about them,
I probably would!)
Percy Adlon
Woody Allen
Michael Apted
Charles Band
Paul Bartel
Richard Benjamin
Kenneth Branagh
Thomas Carter
Bob Clark
Jack Clayton
Rob Cohen
Julie Dash
Martin Davidson
Michael Dinner
Anthony Drazan
Dennis Dugan
Peter Farrelly
Brian Gilbert
James Goldstone
Brian Grant
Peter Greenaway
Maggie Greenwald
Walter Hill
Arthur Hiller
Michael Hodges
P. J. Hogan
Rod Holcomb
Hugh Hudson
Tim Hunter
Danny Huston
Nicholas Hytner
Jim Jarmusch
Charles Jarrott
Joe Johnston
Fritz Kiersch
George Lucas
Sidney Lumet
Baz Luhrmann
John McTiernan
Guy Maddin
Stuart Main, Peter Wells
Bruce Malmuth
Peter Medak
Francis Megahy
Alan Metter
Robert Ellis Miller
Russell Mulcahy
Donald Petrie
Sally Potter
Albert Pyun
Carl Reiner
Rob Reiner
Ivan Reitman
Norman René
W.D. Richter
Matthew Robbins
Patricia Rozema
Ridley Scott
John Schlesinger
Joel Schumacher
Don Siegel
Joel Silberg
Iain Softley
Steven Spielberg
Storm Thorgerson
Wayne Wang
Peter Werner
Tony Wharmby
Irwin Winkler
Peter Yates
Franco Zeffirelli
*
Fringe Benefits
Maria Luisa Bemberg
Constantin Costa-Gavras
Alain Resnais
Jerzy Skolimowski
Taviani Brothers
*
One-Shots & Newcomers (good filmmakers who have made just one film, or
ocassionally a bit more)
Man of the Century (Adam Abraham)
Flashback (Franco Amurri)
Princess Caraboo (Michael Austin)
Grease 2 (Patricia Birch)
Speed (Jan DeBont)
Murdercycle (Tom Callaway)
Primer (Shane Carruth)
Shangri-La Pizza (Nick Castle)
Bride and Prejudice (Gurinder Chadha)
Gods and Monsters (Bill Condon)
Dances With Wolves (Kevin Costner)
Love Actually (Richard Curtis)
Billy Elliot (Stephen Daldry)
All Over the Guy (Julie Davis)
The Sum of Us (Kevin Dowling, Geoff Burton)
Peter Gunn Theme (Matt Forrett)
Never Been Kissed (Raja Gosnell)
That Thing You Do! (Tom Hanks)
Back to the Beach (Lyndall Hobbs)
The Mikado (Norman Campbell, Brian MacDonald)
Happy, Texas (Mark Illsley)
Daredevil (Mark Steven Johnson)
Torque (Joseph Kahn)
A Man of No Importance (Suri Krishnamma)
Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective (Christopher Lewis)
Tron (Steve Lisberger)
Hit and Runway (Christopher Livingston)
Shakespeare in Love (John Madden)
Encino Man (Les Mayfield)
Student Exchange (Mollie Miller)
Don't Tell Her It's Me (Malcolm Mowbray)
A Touch of Pink (Ian Iqbal Rashid)
Big Monday (Michael T. Rehfield)
Wing Commander (Chris Roberts)
Field of Dreams (Phil Alden Robinson)
Unbowed (Nanci Rossov)
Before Night Falls (Julian Schnabel)
Foreign Student (Eva Sereny)
Parting Glances (Bill Sherwood)
Odd Jobs (Mark Story)
Relative Values (Eric Styles)
Peacemaker (Kevin S. Tenney)
La Bamba (Luis Valdez)
*
Subjects for Further Research
Alan Bridges
Peter Chelsom ("Hear My Song" is great, but his other films...)
Cyril Coke (The stupendous "Flickers", made for British TV)
David Cronenberg
Todd Haynes
Michael Lindsay-Hogg
Frank Oz
Nicholas Roeg
Alan Rudolph
David O. Russell
Arthur Thompson
Larry Yust
24151
From: "thebradstevens"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 1:44am
Subject: Re: Identifying the Bad Guy (Was:Narrative and eschatology in Shyamalan thebradstevens
But surely one of the points Romero is trying to make in this film is
that the events are not attributable to individual action. That this
is not the kind of hero-centered narrative to which America's genre
cinema has accustomed us. That there is no correct stance to take
when confronted with the living dead. The zombies are the product of
a 'living dead' culture which is corrupt from top to bottom, and no
amount of well-meaning individual reform is going to make the
slightest bit of difference.
Also, you seem to have forgotten that Ben dies at the end.
Re. THE VILLAGE. It's not a question of Hurt having a nice face. The
whole structure and tone of the film encourage us to perceive him as
a good guy, just as the structure and tone of TRIUMPH OF THE WILL
encourage us to believe that Hitler is a terrific bloke.
By the way, if all goes according to plan, William Hurt will be
playing David Holzman in Jim McBride's sequel to DAVID HOLZMAN'S
DIARY.
24152
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 1:50am
Subject: Re: Re: Identifying the Bad Guy (Was:Narrative and eschatology in Shyamalan cellar47
--- thebradstevens wrote:
>
> By the way, if all goes according to plan, William
> Hurt will be
> playing David Holzman in Jim McBride's sequel to
> DAVID HOLZMAN'S
> DIARY.
>
>
>
>
Really?
Is Kit involved?
What about Lorenzo?
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/
24153
From: "Brian Charles Dauth"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 2:17am
Subject: Re: Brians' Picks (was: New American Cinema) cinebklyn
Okay, be gentle. LOL.
Pantheon Directors
Woody Allen
David Cronenberg
Jonathan Demme
Clint Eastwood
Bob Fosse
Sergio Leone
The Far Side of Paradise
Robert Altman
Hal Ashby
Charles Burnett
John Cassavetes
Francis Ford Coppola
Brian DePalma
Blake Edwards
Milos Forman
Stephen Frears
Terry Gilliam
Mike Leigh
Sidney Lumet
Terrence Malick
Michael Mann
Roman Polanski
Bob Rafelson
Carl Reiner
Don Siegel
Steven Spielberg
Peter Weir
Expressive Esoterica
Bernardo Bertolucci
David Lynch
Alan J. Pakula
Sydney Pollack
Ken Russell
John Singleton
Fringe Benefits
Warren Beatty
Mike Nichols
Robert Redford
Lightly Likeable
Bill Condon (for "Gods and Monsters")
James Ivory (for "Maurice")
Herbert Ross (for "The Last of Sheila" and "Pennies From Heaven")
Less Than Meets The Eye
Todd Haynes
Spike Lee
George Lucas
Martin Scorsese
Steven Soderbergh
Strained Seriousness
Paul Thomas Anderson
Wes Anderson
Gregg Araki
Robert Benton
James L. Brooks
Michael Cimino
Joel & Ethan Coen
Kevin Costner
Nora Ephron
Ron Howard
Jim Jarmusch
Anthony Minghella
Alan Parker
Rob Reiner
Oliver Stone
Quentin Tarantino
Gus Van Sant
24154
From: Matt Teichman
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 2:24am
Subject: Re: The NEW American Cinema bufordrat
hotlove666 wrote:
>Neither your specialization nor Sarris's constitutes a definition of
>cinema, but if you wrote a book called "American Cinema: Toward the
>New Millennium" that omitted Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Brian
>De Palma, Francis Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, [...] - as you
>say you would do in responding to the Film Journal poll, to focus on
>whatever cinema(s) you are specialized in, and I were writing about
>it, my first sentence might be a wry remark about the relativity of
>definitions, and my next, a self-recusal based on my own incompetence
>to discuss your book, but I wouldn't call you irresponsible or
>condescending for giving it a catchy title.
>
>
Don't you love the title of David James' book on American avant-garde
film? (_Allegories of Cinema: American Film in the Sixties_) Surely
James was making a point similar to Fred's.
-Matt
24155
From: "Brian Charles Dauth"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 3:08am
Subject: Re: Arnaud Desplechin in Brooklyn cinebklyn
All of Arnaud Desplechin's films will play at
BAM in Brooklyn April 13-17.
Here is the link.
http://www.bam.org/film/Desplechin.aspx
I am far from expert on French cinema, but I
enjoy his work, especially his most recent
film "Rois et Rienne."
Brian
P.S. Sergio Leone in May
24156
From: Adrian Martin
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 4:26am
Subject: Gainsbourg DVD news apmartin90
Alert to all Gainsbourgians on list:
"Une anthologie en DVD pour Gainsbourg -
Le 25 avril prochain sortira, en double DVD, une anthologie de documents
vidéo sur Serge Gainsbourg. Intitulée D¹autres nouvelles des étoiles et
comprenant près de cinq heures de documents et chansons filmées, elle
montrera outre les interventions chantées de Gainsbourg à la télé, de
Discorama aux Enfants du rock , l¹intégralité du tournage de L¹Histoire de
Melody Nelson, filmé en 1971, deux documents inédits (Adieu créature et La
Nuit d¹octobre), une douzaine d¹interviews captées entre 1965 et 1982, des
extraits live (Casino de Paris ou Zénith), des duos et trios (Jane Birkin,
Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve, Jacques Dutronc, Charlotte Gainsbourg,
Anna KarinaŠ), les clips de Lemon Incest et Charlotte Forever, le tout
accompagné d¹un précieux livret biographique.
On y retrouvera également une belle compilation de ses morceaux enregistrés
pour la télévision, de Douze belles dans la peau en 1963 à Vieille canaille
en 1986. Gainsbourg sera également honoré, avant la fin de l¹année, par un
album hommage préparé par Les Inrocks et auquel ont notamment participé Cat
Power, Placebo, Carla Bruni, Portishead, Tricky, ou Kid Loco et Jarvis
Cocker."
24157
From: "Josh Mabe"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 3:37am
Subject: Re: Josh's Picks (was: New American Cinema) brack_28
I had fun avoiding XML programming homework this weekend by making a
longer version of this list... I'm just posting here the shorter and
interesting parts. And I fully accept that all three in "Less than
Meets the Eye" are probably in that group due to a lack of my
appreciation and understanding - and not due to the filmmaker's
talents.
Pantheon Directors:
Abel Ferrara
Alex Cox
Andy Warhol
Brian De Palma
Bruce Baillie
Charles Burnett
David Cronenberg
Jonathan Demme
Ken Jacobs
Lewis Klahr
Michael Snow
Nathaniel Dorsky
Owen Land
Robert Altman
Robert Breer
Ross McElwee
Spike Lee
Stan Brakhage
Terrence Malick
Warren Sonbert
The Far Side of Paradise:
Alan Rudolph
Albert Brooks
David Lynch
Ernie Gehr
George Kuchar
Jane Campion
Jerry Lewis
Jim Jarmusch
John Cassavetes
John Sayles
Jonas Mekas
Julie Murray
Martin Scorsese
Paul Sharits
Paul Thomas Anderson
Steven Spielberg
Victor Nunez
Wes Anderson
Less Than Meets the Eye:
James Broughton
Morgan Fisher
Saul Levine
Make Way for the Clowns!:
Chris Elliot
H. Jon Benjamin
24158
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 4:04am
Subject: Oh What the Hell ! (New American Cinema) cellar47
Pantheon Directors
Robert Altman
Warren Beatty
John Cassavetes
Francis Ford Coppola
Todd Haynes
Charles Laughton
Ken Russell
Martin Scorsese
Gus Van Sant
Andy Warhol
The Far Side of Paradise
Hal Ashby
Shirley Clarke
Bill Condon
Morris Engel
Stephen Frears
Terry Gilliam
Sergio Leone
Sidney Lumet
Roman Polanski
Steven Spielberg
Expressive Esoterica
Wes Anderson
David Cronenberg
Brian DePalma
Alan J. Pakula
Sydney Pollack
Fringe Benefits
Bernardo Bertolucci
Donald Cammell
Milos Forman
Peter Weir
Lightly Likeable
Gregg Araki
Charles Burnett
Clint Eastwood
Blake Edwards
Bob Fosse
James Ivory
Jim Jarmusch
Anthony Minghella
Don Siegel
Less Than Meets The Eye
Woody Allen
James L. Brooks
Joel & Ethan Coen
Jonathan Demme
Strained Seriousness
Robert Benton
Spike Lee
Mike Leigh
Terrence Malick
Michael Mann
Mike Nichols
Bob Rafelson
Robert Redford
Carl Reiner
David Lynch
Steven Soderbergh
The Pits
Paul Thomas Anderson
Michael Cimino
Kevin Costner
Nora Ephron
Ron Howard
George Lucas
Alan Parker
Rob Reiner
Herbert Ross
John Singleton
Oliver Stone
Quentin Tarantino
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
24159
From: "Rick Curnutte"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 4:27am
Subject: Re: (One type of) New American Cinema racurnutte1
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Zach Campbell"
wrote:
> Still, the taxonomizing is a useful tool in itself and integral to
> Sarris' original project--and can't be applied to today's CCA(oEL)
NC
> without some discomfort. Certainly Rick realizes this, and I hope
> if people offer them he includes "alternate" taxonomies
(or "family
> trees"--something Mike Grost has done interestingly) in a comments
> section. (In fact, Rick, I would be thrilled to see as an
appendix
> to this project a 'comments' section in which contributors are
> invited to write essays or mini-essays specifically on the very
> possibility and implications of "updating Sarris' American
Cinema."
> If you were to encourage this I would be more likely to
participate
> myself,
Actually, I've already done so in another post, so feel free.
Rick
24160
From: Jonathan Takagi
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 4:35am
Subject: Re: Melinda and Melinda jontakagi
On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 00:34:43 -0000, Gabe Klinger wrote:
> Anyone see the Woodster's latest? I thought it was intriguing at times but mostly it
> revolted me.
I was unmoved. But I do think that Woody Allen has
found a good replacement in Will Ferrell.
Jonathan Takagi
24161
From: "Yoel Meranda"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 4:50am
Subject: Re: Off with their heads! (was: NEW American Cinema) ymeranda
Thanks to Bill and jpcoursodon for the comments... and thanks to Fred
for correcting me on Brakhage.
First of all, I wouldn't actually call the new book "American Cinema:
Toward the New Millennium". It would be "American Cinema after 1962:
What the fuck happened to US?"
I have seen Orson Welles' "Lady from Shanghai" twice this weekend
(both on 35mm) and thought about how impossible it was to explain how
far below Welles, Hitchcock, Cukor, Minelli and Sirk the Hollywood
cinema has fallen. What is called "Independent Cinema" doesn't give
much hope either. And yes, I'm making these judgements based on my
aesthetic values; don't know how I would write anything based on
someone else's. Sarris was aware that some directors' films worked on
a formal level and some not, and he seemed to like both, with a bias
towards the former. My "bias" is stronger than his and I do not think
that Preston Sturges (a great comedian) should be evaluated in the
same pages with a real artist such as George Cukor.
Even Michael Mann or David Fincher, although I have huge respect for
their cinema, cannot even come close to what was achieved almost
ordinarily by Hollywood in the 50's. Just take some of the films of
the year 1958: "Tarnished Angels", "Vertigo", "Man of the
West", "Some Came Running", "Gigi", "Bonjour Tristesse", "Wind across
the Everglades", "Bitter Victory", "Touch of Evil".
Which director on your list made any films even comparable to these
in terms of beauty?
From the list of directors you sent, I could add David Lynch to "Less
than Meets the Eye"; Brian de Palma and Paul Thomas Anderson
to "Lightly Likable" and Farrelly Brothers to "Make Way for the
Clowns". I'm curious about Abel Ferrara since Tag Gallagher praises
him so much.
I haven't seen the films of some people you mentioned. For the ones I
have seen, I mostly enjoyed watching their films but none of them
gave me pleasures that can be compared to what I get from "Lady from
Shanghai". They weigh so little compared to "Lady from Shanghai", or
even (a standard much below that) "Collateral", that I don't see any
reason to talk about them. Remember that we are adding to Sarris so
if you are planning to add someone in one of his categories, you
should be able to compare the new addition with the old ones in the
same category.
Zach proposes Monte Hellman and Blake Edwards for the "Pantheon". I
love both of them, especially Edwards, but what happens when you
compare them to Orson Welles for example? (Edwards is listed under a
very good category in Sarris' book)
By the way, I believe I have one more addition to the
category "Expressive Esoterica": Mike Figgis. I liked all of his
films when they came out and saw "Miss Julie" on DVD last year.
Assuming "Miss Julie" is not an anomaly, he has one of the most
cinematic eyes around. I love the poetry he can make just by playing
with the focus. Too bad I haven't seen anything he made after that.
Yoel
24162
From: "Yoel Meranda"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 5:40am
Subject: 25 Filmmakers (Was: Follow up to THE NEW AMERICAN CINEMA) ymeranda
I need to see many more films to have any confidence in the list
below but this is where things stand for me at the moment. There is
only one conclusion that I draw from it: if your first name is
Robert, you have a better chance of being a good filmmaker.
In case there is enough interest in this "25 Filmmakers/Directors", I
believe they should go to the "Files" section of a_film_by. And by
the way, can we make the "Files" section public too?
---
1. Roberto Rossellini
2. Robert Breer
3. Robert Bresson
4. F.W. Murnau
5. Douglas Sirk
6. Sidney Peterson
7. John Ford
8. Orson Welles
9. Stan Brakhage
10. George Cukor
11. Chris Marker
12. Jonas Mekas
13. Josef von Sternberg
14. Howard Hawks
15. Alfred Hitchcock
16. Hollis Frampton
17. Vincente Minelli
18. Peter Kubelka
19. Andy Warhol
20. Max Ophuls
21. Anthony Mann
22. Ernie Gehr
23. Harry Smith
24. Otto Preminger
25. Fritz Lang
---
Yoel
24163
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 6:28am
Subject: Night of the Living Dead (Was: Identifying the Bad Guy ) hotlove666
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
> But surely one of the points Romero is trying to make in this film
is
> that the events are not attributable to individual action. That
this
> is not the kind of hero-centered narrative to which America's genre
> cinema has accustomed us. That there is no correct stance to take
> when confronted with the living dead. The zombies are the product
of
> a 'living dead' culture which is corrupt from top to bottom, and no
> amount of well-meaning individual reform is going to make the
> slightest bit of difference.
That's a VERY tendentious reading of the meaning of the ghouls.
>
> Also, you seem to have forgotten that Ben dies at the end.
Not at all. Does that mean he wasn't pigheaded and dead(ly) wrong
before?
I don't think that Ben's death makes it a film about capitalism. The
great thing about the end credits is that they are adding a meaning
to the film retrospectively - answering a question that hasn't been
asked, as Serge Daney put it. Dawn of the Dead is a film about
capitalism, among other things, but that is another retroactive
interpretation added to the first film, like its own end credits,
which recall imagery of lynchings in the South.
For Serge it was as if we had forgotten that Ben was black until he's
killed. It never comes up - even the businessman doesn't use racial
epithets when he's in the catbird seat. The ghouls outside have made
the racial differences among the human characters irrelevant...until
the repressed returns with that rifle shot and the images under the
credits. It's a parasitical interpretation of the film - which was
made IMO with no thought of meanings, almost automatically - but it
IS definitely being added on in those last hundred feet. And if you
accept it, it negates the notion that the zombies represent
capitalism.
The zombies are dead people who eat the living. The juxtaposition of
the visit to the father's grave with the appearance of the first
ghoul off on the horizon (what a great use of natural depth of field,
played with consciously in the interiors as well) suggests that this
could be the father's ghost - that's about the only foothold for a
Woodian interpretation of the first film. But Wood's readings of the
first two Dead films are contradictory: He thinks the ghouls are the
return of repressed desires in the first film (including incest and
cannibalism), whereas in the second film they have become repression -
and capitalism - incarnate: anesthesized shoppers. That's why I call
my article on the trilogy (soon to be a tetraology) 13 Ways of
Looking at a Zombie. Monolithic interpretations don't work here.
> By the way, if all goes according to plan, William Hurt will be
> playing David Holzman in Jim McBride's sequel to DAVID HOLZMAN'S
> DIARY.
Good news would be that all IS going well and it's happening, even if
David Holzman was being played by Paris Hilton!
24164
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 6:30am
Subject: Re: Arnaud Desplechin in Brooklyn hotlove666
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Brian Charles Dauth"
wrote:
> All of Arnaud Desplechin's films will play at
> BAM in Brooklyn April 13-17.
>
> Here is the link.
>
> http://www.bam.org/film/Desplechin.aspx
>
> I am far from expert on French cinema, but I
> enjoy his work, especially his most recent
> film "Rois et Rienne."
>
> Brian
>
See.
All.
Of.
Them.
24165
From: "Zach Campbell"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 6:32am
Subject: Re: Off with their heads! (was: NEW American Cinema) rashomon82
Yoel:
> Even Michael Mann or David Fincher, although I have huge respect
> for their cinema, cannot even come close to what was achieved
> almost ordinarily by Hollywood in the 50's. Just take some of the
> films of the year 1958: "Tarnished Angels", "Vertigo", "Man of the
> West", "Some Came Running", "Gigi", "Bonjour Tristesse", "Wind
> across the Everglades", "Bitter Victory", "Touch of Evil".
> Which director on your list made any films even comparable to
> these in terms of beauty?
Yoel, keep in mind the films you've just mentioned are the cream of
the crop--hardly representative of things "achieved almost
ordinarily by Hollywood in the 50's." In terms of a standard
consistency of quality, Hollywood has seemed to me never to have
been able to live up to the 1930s. The 1950s are largely great (and
a special decade for auteurists) because of the skyscrapers that jut
out of the much lower cinemascape. Most 1950s Hollywood films are
aesthetically not interesting in the way you and Fred are looking
for.
> Zach proposes Monte Hellman and Blake Edwards for the "Pantheon".
> I love both of them, especially Edwards, but what happens when you
> compare them to Orson Welles for example? (Edwards is listed under
> a very good category in Sarris' book)
Well, to answer this question satisfactorily I think I would have
bring back the discussion about aesthetics and types of formalism we
had some months back. (Particularly telling might be Fred's recent
comment about Hellman's work in post 24051: "They are austere and
formal works." I hope Fred admits this is just a typo,
because "formalist" would make sense, and "formal" makes NO sense
whatsoever, because there was never a film made that was
not "formal." And yet maybe it was a Freudian slip--maybe Fred
wants to think of just "his" types of movies, "his" favorites, as
being "formal"--as having form?)
The things that happen in cinema now are not the same things that
happen in cinema's past. Cinema changes, just as architecture
changes, and I wouldn't want to be part of film culture's equivalent
of those who saw the "barbaric" modern architecture and named
it "Gothic," denigratingly, since it couldn't compare to classical
ideals ... Does Hellman live up to Welles' ideals and standards?
No, precisely because they are WELLES' ideals and standards, they
are of a particular time and place, they have a history and a
materiality to them. Art is not universal, it is not eternal, it is
not a discourse amongst a few great minds in agreement, and I also
don't think it's ever possible to single out the "essential"
elements to all great art. You and Fred have a slightly different
take on this matter, though, which may say something as to why
people from relatively few segments of film production (classical
Hollywood auteurs, American avant-garde filmmakers, European
modernists) make up the majority of your favorite filmmakers lists.
I'm not even one to defend contemporary Hollywood, either--Mike
Grost or Kevin John are probably better equipped and more willing to
do that here. I do indeed agree that film for film, quality has
dropped since the studio era--in fact it has been dropping since the
1930s or '40s probably. I also think that Hollywood is producing
fewer masterpieces per year. But I do think that masterpieces are
still being made in Hollywood, and in between the handful that come
out there are plenty of other interesting films. And these films
NEED to be discussed INTELLIGENTLY, by people who DO realize that
this is only one kind of cinema--because there is so much wasted ink
and bandwidth on the dominant cinema that threaten to submerge the
good with the bad, and which threaten to destroy our understanding
of contemporary Hollywood and all of its characteristics and
changes.
And so Edwards and Hellman (and Cassavetes and Ferrara) stand up
just fine, I think.
--Zach
24166
From: "Zach Campbell"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 6:35am
Subject: Re: Arnaud Desplechin in Brooklyn rashomon82
Bill wrote on Desplechin @ BAM:
> See.
> All.
> Of.
> Them.
I second this. I have already seen all of these films, and would
very much like to see them all again. Desplechin is a tremendous
filmmaker. My favorite--almost everyone's favorite?--is ESTHER
KAHN, the best film of the decade thus far. Even the least
impressive in my opinion, KINGS AND QUEEN, is still quite
interesting. Amazing tonal control, dexterity most filmmakers would
kill for, and my god can he draw some great performances (see ESTHER
and MY SEX LIFE especially for this).
--Zach
24167
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 6:38am
Subject: Re: Off with their heads! (was: NEW American Cinema) hotlove666
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Yoel Meranda"
wrote:
>
.
>
> First of all, I wouldn't actually call the new book "American
Cinema:
> Toward the New Millennium". It would be "American Cinema after
1962:
> What the fuck happened to US?"
>
> I have seen Orson Welles' "Lady from Shanghai" twice this weekend
> (both on 35mm) and thought about how impossible it was to explain
how
> far below Welles, Hitchcock, Cukor, Minelli and Sirk the Hollywood
> cinema has fallen.
Remember that we are adding to Sarris so
> if you are planning to add someone in one of his categories, you
> should be able to compare the new addition with the old ones in the
> same category.
There's the rub - not the other historical arguments (change in the
nature of production, generalization of auteurism) which we've heard.
But all arts decline, and in their decline become exquisite cadavres.
>
> Zach proposes Monte Hellman and Blake Edwards for the "Pantheon". I
> love both of them, especially Edwards, but what happens when you
> compare them to Orson Welles for example? (Edwards is listed under
a
> very good category in Sarris' book)
I agree - I wouldn't move him. Hellman is Far Side. At the moment, I
don't contemplate any additions to the Pantheon if I do a list except
Kubrick.
24168
From: Adrian Martin
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 7:48am
Subject: Sarris/Benayoun apmartin90
As a completely whimsical footnote to the Sarris discussion: in the mid
'80s, the prolific Robert Benayoun wrote a piece in AUTREMENT magazine about
"American Criticism and French Criticism". In it he dismisses Sarris'
AMERICAN CINEMA taxonomic listings as a load of rubbish. Along the way, he
translates for his French readers Sarris' colourful categories; his
renditions will be amusing to some list members:
Fringe Benefits = Cinéastes 'marginaux'
Strained Seriousness = les pédants laborieux
Expressive Esoterica = les isolés ésotériques
On the Far Side of Paradise = Loin du Paradise
Less Than Meets the Eye = RB describes this as 'un méprisant tiroir de
débarras'
Oddities and One-Shots = les bizarreries et ratages
Benayoun concludes that the work of Sarris (which he compares to Sadoul)
should be named "the bible des erreurs d'appréciation" , for it is "une
estimation condescendante, frivole, faussement désinvolte et tout à fait
impardonnable du cinéma américain".
Adrian
24169
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 6:56am
Subject: Re: Sarris/Benayoun hotlove666
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Adrian Martin wrote:
> As a completely whimsical footnote to the Sarris discussion: in the
mid
> '80s, the prolific Robert Benayoun wrote a piece in AUTREMENT
magazine about
> "American Criticism and French Criticism". In it he dismisses
Sarris'
> AMERICAN CINEMA taxonomic listings as a load of rubbish. > Benayoun
concludes that the work of Sarris (which he compares to Sadoul)
> should be named "the bible des erreurs d'appréciation" , for it
is "une
> estimation condescendante, frivole, faussement désinvolte et tout à
fait
> impardonnable du cinéma américain".
>
> Adrian
Well, Sarris did get Jerry Lewis wrong (while making a snide remark
about Benayoun), so that's to be expected. But apart from Lewis, whom
I hereby add to the Pantheon along with Kubrick, who is on Benayoun's
best H'wd directors list?
24170
From: Fred Camper
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 7:42am
Subject: Re: Re: Off with their heads! (was: NEW American Cinema) fredcamper
Zach, and others,
I'm suddenly overwhelmed with work for the next week until leaving town,
for a while, and the discussion is once again just too fast for me to
keep up with. I mean, it's fine if you all have time, but I spent a few
hours on Sunday (because the replies kept coming so quickly) and now I'm
out of time. I had wanted to address some of Dan's posts but by the time
I'm able the time will have passed, perhaps.
You're right to recognize a certain common aesthetic in myself and Yoel.
He's one of perhaps eight or ten people I've known in my whole life who
I think sees cinema reasonably close to the way that I do.
About "formal," I was trying to avoid "formalist" because of its very
specific historical associations. I don't agree that all films are
"formal" in the dictionary senses of "being or relating to essential
form or constitution" or "characterized by strict or meticulous
observation of forms; methodical" (
http://www.bartleby.com/61/36/F0263600.html ) Most bad narrative films
don't seem to me to be much more than actors walking around and talking;
the imagery is vacant and devoid of real meaning other than its "content."
As I said earlier, the Sarris updating project seems like fun but it
should be understood that Sarris's categories were idiosyncratic to him
and to his time, and I think that's what gives them their best meaning.
Times change. In the last decade or so there have emerged avant-garde
filmmakers (a category Sarris excluded I know) who seem to me not be
trying to make masterpieces in the old sense. Brian Frye comes to mind,
but there are others. Perhaps the old system of evaluation isn't even
appropriate to them. And as for the supposedly few categories on my
favorite filmmaker list, I want to know what categories of filmmakers
are missing from my list that are on others? I supposed you could say
"recent Hollywood filmmakers"; I might deny that that's a true category.
It seems to me that with the inclusion of avant-garde filmmakers,
documentary filmmakers, and filmmakers from a variety of national
cinemas, my list is a lot more diverse than most. But as should be
evident from my posts here, the cinemas as defined by my favorite
filmmaker lists are not the only kinds of cinema I like. I like some
home movies, I like some oddball category-defying films a lot (example:
Ray L. Birdwhistell's "Microcultural Incidents in 10 Zoos"). I love very
dearly the seven "Navajo Films" made in 1966 and chronicled in the book
"Through Navajo Eyes," and have been advocating them for 25 years. They
are so far out that many reject them completely. I believe Sitney hates
them. Steve Anker thought one was "not a personal film" when I showed it
in a lecture-screening at the San Francisco Cinematheque, despite the
fact that the filmmaker had made all the decisions, and had chosen to
film her mother weaving. And my review of them is one of the few pieces
of mine the Chicago Reader rejected -- on the grounds that they seemed
from my review like "amateur films."
I know all too well that most 1950s Hollywood films -- most Hollywood
films of any era, in fact -- are "aesthetically not interesting" in my
terms. Remember I went to "3:10 to Yuma" partly on your recommendation
and hated it -- but I would also recognize it as more interesting than
some of the more "generic" 50s films I've seen.
Here's the gist of the matter, as I see it, and I suspect Yoel will
agree with me but feel sure he'll let us know if he doesn't. I'm just
not very interested in a film unless it's "aesthetically interesting."
And I basically agree with Yoel's rejection of most recent Hollywood.
Many of these are films made by cinephiles who are repeating the tropes
of earlier masterpieces in a less interesting way, "humanizing" them in
a way that trivializes them by stripping them of meaning. They've
learned to make their "action" films in film school rather than by
racing cars or fighting with Pancho Villa. They work, and I hate to say
this because I'm going to sound like Pauline Kael here, out of knowledge
of movies rather than of life. How many films of the 70s or 80s remade
"The Searchers"? Or "Vertigo?" Stuart Byron wrote an article about
remakes of "The Searchers," fingering "Close Encounters of the Third
Kind" as one of many, complete with that loony "Monument Valley" house
sculpture. Why does the runaway in Paul Schrader's "Hard Core" return
with her dad at the end? Not because anything we have learned about her
suggests that she might, but because Debbie goes home at the end of "The
Searchers." For that matter, why does the hustler in Schrader's
"American Gigolo" have that moment of revelation at the end? It's
certainly not comprehensible in terms of anything we've learned about
him. It only becomes comprehensible if you remember that Schrader loves
"Pickpocket," whose ending he blatantly rips off in his film. And the
young boy's sexual awakening in "E.T" seems to require a John Ford
movie, seen on TV and conveyed to him by the ET.
But what's worse is that most of these films are formal garbage. I don't
know if it's the hopeless soup of TV space -- directors did seem to
start calculating things for TV by the 60s -- or the inevitable decline
of a vital mode of art making as it makes its seemingly inevitable
descent into meaningless mannerisms; no one can really explain these
things. But there are plenty of examples in other fields. Italian
painting doesn't seem to have been especially distinguished in the 19th
Century, for example, after many glorious earlier centuries. But even
earlier, it was in a long decline from a peak in the 15th or 16th
centuries, depending on your taste (I choose the 15th as the apex).
Again, I'm always more sure of things that I love. I mean it sincerely
when I say I could be all wrong. Maybe there are lots of great current
Hollywood directors and I'm not seeing their films or not understanding
them when I do see them.
The crux of it, though, is this: I simply don't value a film very much
if it tells a good story reasonably well and with good acting and nice
stylistic flourishes that enhance the emotional effect. I can enjoy it,
but if it's not aesthetically complete in itself -- in the way that the
music in a Bach cantata is even if you don't know the meanings of the
words -- I have to count it as an aesthetic zero, or as close to zero.
Where others see a range with lots of grays in between "Vertigo" and the
work of some worthless hack, I see a more bifurcated world of films.
"Vertigo" certainly tells its great story really well with great
stylistic flourishes, but it goes way beyond just doing that. A great
film, for me, is most often one which defines a whole universe with its
own laws of perception and space, and does so through its imagery. It's
not about pushing your buttons, but about giving you another way to see.
Sarris's lists were nothing if not polemical. He wasn't trying to write
an objective film history, and lord knows I'm not either. If through
some cruel twist of fate I was giving the research funds and time to
write a history of Hollywood filmmaking, and was denied the request I'm
sure I'd make to write an "aesthetic history" from my own point of view,
I'm sure I'd be looking at all those Wyler and Stevens and Kramer films
I've tried to avoid. But that kind of history was not at issue in Yoel's
post. Aesthetic merit is what he put at issue. And what counts there is
the number of great films, not the number of pretty good ones. And even
you, Zach, seem to agree that Hollywood is not what it was.
Fred Camper
24171
From: "jess_l_amortell"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 7:45am
Subject: Re: Arnaud Desplechin in Brooklyn jess_l_amortell
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Zach Campbell" wrote:
> ESTHER
> KAHN, the best film of the decade thus far.
I note that BAM's schedule lists ESTHER KAHN as 163 minutes (not 142). So, is there any way of learning whether that means they're actually showing the original longer cut (not shown in these parts since the Lincoln Center screenings, I think), or did they just pull that figure off the imdb?
24172
From: "jess_l_amortell"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 8:11am
Subject: Re: John Maybury and "The Jacket" (was: The NEW American Cinema) jess_l_amortell
> > ...Fincher should also be celebrated for being
> > the only person in Hollywood who admits to stealing visual ideas from
> > Brakhage. ...
For the record, this was just a matter of the credits (which weren't actually Fincher's work), right? Or was there something more? I liked SE7EN, but was there anything in the film proper that was based on Brakhage?
24173
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 8:30am
Subject: Re: Arnaud Desplechin in Brooklyn hotlove666
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jess_l_amortell"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Zach Campbell"
wrote:
> > ESTHER
> > KAHN, the best film of the decade thus far.
>
> I note that BAM's schedule lists ESTHER KAHN as 163 minutes (not
142). So, is there any way of learning whether that means they're
actually showing the original longer cut (not shown in these parts
since the Lincoln Center screenings, I think), or did they just pull
that figure off the imdb?
I guess call them. I saw the longer version in Paris, and it's the
one I'd like to have in my videotheque, but I can't say that people
who see the other version are in the dark about the film. The key
missing scene is a dream where she sees everyone as fake people w.
balloons for heads: a statement about Esther, but also about Stanley
Cavell, whose criticism - all centering on skepticism and the
ultimate skeptical question, other people's existence - the filmmaker
knows well.
24174
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 8:33am
Subject: Apocalypse Maintenant? hotlove666
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?
tmpl=story&cid=2333&ncid=2333&e=2&u=/afp/20050314/ennew_afp/afplifesty
lefilmfrance_050314171845
24175
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 8:44am
Subject: Re: Off with their heads! (was: NEW American Cinema) hotlove666
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> Zach, and others,
>
How many films of the 70s or 80s remade
> "The Searchers"? Or "Vertigo?" Stuart Byron wrote an article about
> remakes of "The Searchers," fingering "Close Encounters of the
Third
> Kind" as one of many, complete with that loony "Monument Valley"
house
> sculpture. Why does the runaway in Paul Schrader's "Hard Core"
return
> with her dad at the end? Not because anything we have learned about
her
> suggests that she might, but because Debbie goes home at the end
of "The
> Searchers." For that matter, why does the hustler in Schrader's
> "American Gigolo" have that moment of revelation at the end? It's
> certainly not comprehensible in terms of anything we've learned
about
> him. It only becomes comprehensible if you remember that Schrader
loves
> "Pickpocket," whose ending he blatantly rips off in his film. And
the
> young boy's sexual awakening in "E.T" seems to require a John Ford
> movie, seen on TV and conveyed to him by the ET.
The meaning of a film was another film long before The Movie Brats
came along. Schrader happens to be a bad example of that because his
work sucks. Your other example, Spielberg, isn't exactly someone I'd
brandish as proof of esthetic life in H'wd after the Golden Age,
either. A good filmmaker who cites The Searchers would be George
Lucas in Star Wars.
Try After Hours and The Trial, or The Life Aquatic and Red River, or
Enemies, A Love Story and 8 1/2, or 2001: A Space Odyssey and Citizen
Kane, or Stars in My Crown and Vampyr if you want to be fair to that
universal fact about art as it applies to H'wd film.
Walsh didn't learn how to make movies from filming Pancho Villa. He
learned how to make movies by standing behind "the Old Man" while he
directed and watching what he did. Otherwise lumberjacks and
astronauts would be great filmmakers. Hitchcock had no life, but he
was the greatest of all.
24176
From: "Damien Bona"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 9:22am
Subject: Re: The NEW American Cinema damienbona
PANTHEON:
Terrence Davies
Blake Edwards
Terrence Malick
Robert Mulligan
Roman Polanski
THE FAR SIDE OF PARADISE:
Woody Allen
Robert Altman
Gillian Anderson
Wes Anderson
Hal Ashby
Warren Beatty
Bernardo Bertolucci
John Boorman
Albert Brooks
Jane Campion
Larry Cohen
Bill Condon
Joe Dante
Jonathan Demme
Clint Eastwood
Christopher Guest
Jonathan Kaplan
Richard Lester
Richard Linklater
Ken Loach
David Lynch
Paul Mazursky
Sam Peckinpah
Arthur Penn
Ken Russell
Oliver Stone
Gus van Sant
Paul Verhoeven
Paul Weitz
EXPRESSIVE ESOTERICA:
Allison Anders
George Armitage
Peter Bogdanovich
Kenneth Branagh
James Bridges
Tim Burton
John Carpenter
John Cassavetes
Michael Caton-Jones
Michael Cimino
Martha Coolidge
David Cronenberg
Brian De Palma
Michael Dinner
John Duigan
Atom Egoyan
Peter and Bobby Farrelly
Abel Ferrara
David Fincher
Bill Forsythe
Stephen Frears
Keith Gordon
Marleen Gorris
Lasse Hallstrom
Walter Hill
Norman Jewison
Ang Lee
Michael Mann
Anthony Minghella
Stacy Peralta
Bob Rafaelson
Alan Rudolph
Nancy Savoca
John Sayles
Fred Schepisi
John Waters
Wayne Wang
Michael Winterbottom
LIGHTLY LIKABLE
Paul Bartel
Bruce Beresford
Rob Cohen
Richard Donner
Curtis Hanson
Stephen Herek
Colin Higgins
James Ivory
Paul Newman
Alan Parker
Sam Raimi
Harold Ramis
Mark Rydell
Martin Ritt
Herbert Ross
Ron Shelton
Howard Zieff
LESS THAN MEETS THE EYE:
Richard Attenborough
John G. Avildsen
John Badham
Robert Benton
James L. Brooks
James Cameron
Joel Coen
Francis Ford Coppola
Milos Forman
Terry Gilliam
Taylor Hackford
George Roy Hill
Ron Howard
Roland Joffé
Spike Jonze
Lawrence Kasdan
Philip Kaufman
Spike Lee
Barry Levinson
Sidney Lumet
Adrian Lyne
John Madden
Penny Marshall
Sam Mendes
Mike Nichols
Alan J. Pakula
Alexander Payne
Sydney Pollack
Rob Reiner
Franklin J. Schaffner
Barbet Schroeder
Jim Sheridan
Ridley Scott
Steven Soderbergh
Peter Weir
Peter Yates
Franco Zeffirelli
Robert Zemeckis
STRAINED SERIOUSNESS:
Alejandro Amenábar
Paul Thomas Anderson
Cameron Crowe
Frank Darabont
Mike Figgis
Mark Forster
Bob Fosse
William Friedkin
Mel Gibson
Todd Haynes
Mike Leigh
Baz Luhrman
Wolfgang Pertersen
Robert Redford
Michael Ritchie
David O. Russell
John Schlesinger
Paul Schrader
Joel Schumacher
Martin Scorsese
M. Night Shyalaman
Bryan Singer
Todd Solondtz
Steven Spielberg
Barbra Streisand
Quentin Tarantino
24177
From: "thebradstevens"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 11:10am
Subject: Re: Identifying the Bad Guy (Was:Narrative and eschatology in Shyamalan thebradstevens
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- thebradstevens wrote:
>
> >
> > By the way, if all goes according to plan, William
> > Hurt will be
> > playing David Holzman in Jim McBride's sequel to
> > DAVID HOLZMAN'S
> > DIARY.
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> Really?
>
> Is Kit involved?
>
> What about Lorenzo?
>
I don't believe there are any plans for Lorenzo to be involved,
though he may be.
But Kit definitely isn't involved.
24178
From: MG4273@...
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 6:19am
Subject: Re: Off with their heads! (was: NEW American Cinema) nzkpzq
In a message dated 05-03-14 23:51:20 EST, Yoel Meranda writes:
<< It would be "American Cinema after 1962: What the fuck happened to US?" >>
This is hilarious! (In a good way.). Or as the saying goes: "They don't make
movies like they used to."
I often feel this way too. It is heartbreaking to compare Sternberg, Keaton
and Minnelli to the gore-fest garbage floating through the multiplex.
Still, I have also tried to keep a look out for above average cinema of the
post-1968 period.
Some thoughts: The great classic cinema is much studied. There are at least
15 books on John Ford, including Tag Gallagher's giant tome (which I have read
several times.) So when studying Ford, one is confident that: 1) A whole lot
of other cinephiles have loved and embraced his work 2) There are a lot of
things about his cinema one knows to watch for: great composition, his evocation
of other societies, treatment of racism and war-mongering, brilliant landscape,
codes of personal conduct, etc.
One has none of this in most modern cinema. When one sees (and enjoys) "Bride
and Prejudice" or "Torque", one is seeing filmmakers that the cinephile
community really has not studied much. One doesn't know if one is seeing a really
good movie, or is just having a good day, or liking the film's stars, or
havings one buttons pushed, or whatever. And no one is giving you any clues about
what to watch, or the filmmaker's themes and abilities.
Still, I think we are more likely as a community to discover good art in
films that are "fun" or "gripping" than in movies that are boring and dull.
A lot of enjoyable films have been made in genres not much studied by critics
over the last 30 years: comedy, historical dramas (known as heritage films in
Britain), musicals and music videos, 1980's TV comedy-mystery TV shows. This
is a huge reservoir of work that is just not much watched (by our cinephile
community). I have never seen a music video on anyone's list of great films, for
example. Brian Grant's "Shock the Monkey", Julien Temple's "Poisoned Arrow"
and Storm Thorgerson's "Street of Dreams" will stand up to repeated viewings...
Many films in all these genres have a "lavish visual look". Is there a
"personal visual way of seeing" lurking in such films, as Fred Camper rightly
siggests is one of the great achievements of film? Only some carefuil study by the
cinephile community will bring this out.
Mike Grost
24179
From: "Ruy Gardnier"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 0:49pm
Subject: Re: Film criticism and literature ruygardnier
From: "hotlove666" >
> Is your writing
> inspired by/modelled on film critics or literary authors?
Yes, strongly. Glauber Rocha, Torquato Neto, Haroldo de Campos, Gilles
Deleuze & Félix Guattari, William Seward Burroughs, Paulo Francis, Jean-Luc
Godard, early François Truffaut, Kent Jones, Tag Gallagher (both very
recently), Emmanuel Burdeau. All of them very provocative and very rigorous.
24180
From: "Ruy Gardnier"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 1:04pm
Subject: Re: Farber and Negative Space ruygardnier
As I've never knew of a library in Rio de Janeiro that had a copy of
Negative Space, and never had the luck to bump into it on a used books shop,
I could only read something by Farber in french, in January 2005. As I was
going to make a speech in Brasilia on Herzog, Fassbinder, Wenders et al., I
took a look in his articles on WH and RWF, and also two pieces on the New
York Film Festival. All very insightful and illuminating. I know it
represents a tiny tiny fraction of his writing, and probably one that isn't
even considered very much (because it's not on american film perhaps), but
still somehow I felt the need to step up and sing my praise.
Ruy
----- Original Message -----
From: "thebradstevens"
> > Following Godard, maybe Farber was making films all along, so much
> > the better.
> Yes, but my point was that Godard (as well as Rivette) managed to
> simultaneously describe the films he was going to make and provide
> some insights into the films he was ostensibly reviewing. How,
> exactly, do Farber's misreadings of TOUCH OF EVIL or THE BIG SLEEP
> tell us anything interesting about those films?
24181
From: Matt Teichman
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 2:00pm
Subject: Re: Birdwhistell, Frampton, Asch, Landow/Land bufordrat
Fred Camper wrote:
>I like some
>home movies, I like some oddball category-defying films a lot (example:
>Ray L. Birdwhistell's "Microcultural Incidents in 10 Zoos").
>
I'm glad you mentioned this extraordinary film.
I wonder if anyone has really dealt with the affinities between a
certain strain of "ethnographic" films and the so-called "structural
film." The two Timothy Asch films I've seen are just about the only
ones I know of to capture anything of the spirit of George Landow's, and
there is certainly a deep connection between Birdwhistell and Hollis
Frampton (Frampton even talks about him in his essay, "Incisions in
History/Segments of Eternity"); both pairs of filmmakers (if they can
indeed be paired) seem to have a serious interest in investigating the
act of film exegesis. _Microcultural Incidents_ is practically a film
version of _S/Z_ (though ultimately more interesting and successful than
the Barthes text, I think).
-Matt
24182
From: "Zach Campbell"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 2:04pm
Subject: Re: Off with their heads! (was: NEW American Cinema) rashomon82
Fred:
> The crux of it, though, is this: I simply don't value a film very
> much if it tells a good story reasonably well and with good acting
> and nice stylistic flourishes that enhance the emotional effect. I
> can enjoy it, but if it's not aesthetically complete in itself --
Fred, I don't want to burden you, but I simply want to reiterate a
sentiment: If you were to see, say, THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE
(or FACES) or NEW ROSE HOTEL (or THE BLACKOUT) and see the above,
you would be as mistaken as if someone said, "I simply don't value a
film with just a bunch of flashing images. It can be pretty, but
it's not really good cinema. Brakhage isn't worth my time." This
isn't to say that you have to love or even appreciate Cassavetes or
Ferrara or numerous other directors. But they are serious
filmmakers whose bodies of work should not be reduced to the
formulae of commercial filmmaking. Again, it's this binary that I
think is insufficient: a "Fred-approved" film versus a film that
only "tells a good story." Nothing else, nothing in between. I
don't believe it.
> And even you, Zach, seem to agree that Hollywood is not what it
> was.
Indeed. But I still want to follow the threads! I want to figure
out how those cinephile directors kept making the films. I think
that one thread in postclassical American cinema (both Hollywood
and "independent" narratives) is a move away from plasticity, which
is--I would think--one reason why this work might bother you. But
the film image became a disputed thing, a malleable thing, as soon
as television and then video (and now the Internet) have enacted
their respective changes to the film image and our relationship to
it. Some filmmakers have done brilliant work on these terms:
Ferrara, De Palma, Eastwood. (Schrader I have no opinion on;
Spielberg, well, you know I admire some of his work, but I sure
wouldn't hold him up as contemporary Hollywood's incarnation of
Ford!)
Again, I don't expect you (or Yoel) to all of the sudden embrace the
filmmakers I'm championing (whom you don't already love--I mean, we
have plenty of common favorites!). But neither do I think you
should relegate them to the trash bin of conventionalism,
complacency, and formal bankruptcy--because quite simply they don't
belong there.
And, a whimsical taxonomy of postclassical American narrative
cinema --
The Image and the Act of Looking Concern Me: Ferrara, De Palma,
Mann, Friedkin
The Icon Concerns Me: Eastwood, Milius, Boorman, Dante, Haynes
I'm Only Interesting When I'm Messy: Spielberg, Cronenberg (often
messy!), Cassavetes (often messy!), Crowe
I'm Continuing a Classical Thread (or Would Be in a Perfect World):
Hellman, Edwards, Mulligan, Davies, Malick, Polanski, Ashby, Condon,
Brooks, Bogdanovich
I'm Reviving the 1930s: Wes Anderson, Russell
I Won't Let the 1970s Die: P.T. Anderson, Fincher, Soderbergh,
Tarantino
I'm Responsible for Hollywood's Decline, I Must Retire: Coppola,
Lucas, Howard, Scott (Ridley and Tony), Darabont
Pop Cinema Is Alive and Well Because of Me (often a variant of Image
& Icon categories): Heckerling, Verhoeven, Burton, the Farrelly
Brothers, Hill, Luhrmann
Chameleons: Wang, Van Sant, Duigan, Winterbottom, Raimi, Weir
Miscellany (Zach Hasn't Figured Out a Place for Them But They Are
Worthwhile): Cohen, Linklater, Rudolph, Scorsese
--Zach
24183
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 2:32pm
Subject: Re: Re: Identifying the Bad Guy (Was:Narrative and eschatology in Shyamalan cellar47
--- thebradstevens wrote:
>
> I don't believe there are any plans for Lorenzo to
> be involved,
> though he may be.
>
> But Kit definitely isn't involved.
>
>
>
>
Well that sucks.
I ran into Kit late last year at a reception for
"Motorcycle Diaries." He's stillKit. And therefore in
no way William Hurt.
__________________________________
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Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/
24184
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 2:34pm
Subject: Re: Sarris/Benayoun sallitt1
> As a completely whimsical footnote to the Sarris discussion: in the mid
> '80s, the prolific Robert Benayoun wrote a piece in AUTREMENT magazine about
> "American Criticism and French Criticism". In it he dismisses Sarris'
> AMERICAN CINEMA taxonomic listings as a load of rubbish.
Replying with equal whimsy: isn't this to be expected, as Benayoun was
part of the first organized opposition (Positif) to the politique?
As has been pointed out, American films were quite important to Positif:
they derided Cahiers' taste, but not its attention to American cinema.
The tone was something like, "How can Cahiers dismiss a vigorous,
politically committed film like X in favor of the inept and reactionary
film Y?"
Even though Cahiers couldn't be described as feminist, the gradual
influence of the women's movement probably worked in their behalf vis a
vis the Positif aesthetic: the archetypal Positif quote might actually
have been more like "a vigorous, masculine, politically committed film."
Jean-Pierre or other historians might want to check me on this. - Dan
24185
From: "Rick Curnutte"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 3:14pm
Subject: Re: 25 Filmmakers (Was: Follow up to THE NEW AMERICAN CINEMA) racurnutte1
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Yoel Meranda"
wrote:
>
> I need to see many more films to have any confidence in the list
> below but this is where things stand for me at the moment. There
is
> only one conclusion that I draw from it: if your first name is
> Robert, you have a better chance of being a good filmmaker.
>
> In case there is enough interest in this "25
Filmmakers/Directors", I
> believe they should go to the "Files" section of a_film_by. And by
> the way, can we make the "Files" section public too?
Would it be ok for me to simply post the results in the files
section when the poll is completed?
Rick
24186
From: Fred Camper
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 3:37pm
Subject: Re: Re: Off with their heads! (was: NEW American Cinema) fredcamper
Zach Campbell wrote:
If you were to see, say, THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE
> (or FACES) or NEW ROSE HOTEL (or THE BLACKOUT)...
I need to see the Ferrara, I acknowledge. I have seen "Faces," once,
when it was released. I still remember it though; it made a big
impression on me; I hated it. If you can indicate the things that you
like about it that seem to fall outside of my aesthetic, I'd be interested.
To Bill, of course there are no rules about what makes a good filmmaker;
I agree that a person with "no life" could be as great an artist as
anyone else. And of course artists learn from other artists. Still, as I
tried to show through my examples, there's a certain quality to many of
the films of Hollywood cinephile directors that I find disturbing, and
indicative.
Fred Camper
24187
From: "jpcoursodon"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 4:15pm
Subject: Re: Sarris/Benayoun jpcoursodon
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Adrian Martin
wrote:
> > As a completely whimsical footnote to the Sarris discussion: in
the
> mid
> > '80s, the prolific Robert Benayoun wrote a piece in AUTREMENT
> magazine about
> > "American Criticism and French Criticism". In it he dismisses
> Sarris'
> > AMERICAN CINEMA taxonomic listings as a load of rubbish. >
Benayoun
> concludes that the work of Sarris (which he compares to Sadoul)
> > should be named "the bible des erreurs d'appréciation" , for it
> is "une
> > estimation condescendante, frivole, faussement désinvolte et
tout à
> fait
> > impardonnable du cinéma américain".
> >
> > Adrian
>
> Well, Sarris did get Jerry Lewis wrong (while making a snide
remark
> about Benayoun), so that's to be expected. But apart from Lewis,
whom
> I hereby add to the Pantheon along with Kubrick, who is on
Benayoun's
> best H'wd directors list?
Thanks, Adrian, for mentioning the Benayoun piece, which I didn't
know. The snide remark was that Benayoun was a Lewis look-alike,
which is not completely inaccurate, but I don't think that would
have been enough to make him hate Sarris's entire book. RB was
wildly polemical, a firebrand. I don't think he was into making
lists -- although he was a Surrealist and Surrealists liked Lists --
like: "Read/Do Not read and, in "L'Age du Cinema" (1950-51) where RB
wrote, "See/Do not see". The following American directors were
listed as "Don't See": Capra, Griffith, Lubitsch, Wyler, Sturges
(and Disney). In the See column there were Chaplin, Stroheim,
Langdon, Fritz lang, Tod Browning, Sternberg, Cooper-Shoedsack, King
Vidor, James Whale, John Huston. I would assume Ado Kyrou co-wrote
the list but in complete agreement with RB.
RB, who passed away a few years ago, was a great fan of Woody
Allen, Huston, Kazan, Altman -- and of course Keaton (who curiously
is not in the above list).
JPC
24188
From: "jpcoursodon"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 4:44pm
Subject: Re: Sarris/Benayoun jpcoursodon
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
>
> Even though Cahiers couldn't be described as feminist, the gradual
> influence of the women's movement probably worked in their behalf
vis a
> vis the Positif aesthetic: the archetypal Positif quote might
actually
> have been more like "a vigorous, masculine, politically committed
film."
> Jean-Pierre or other historians might want to check me on this. -
Dan
This is a hypothetical, synthetic quote that probably never
appeared in POSITIF even if it seems a likely one. Both Cahiers and
Positif were totally male-oriented in their early period, and
feminism caught up with them slowly and more or less simultaneously.
For a long time the only woman writing for Positif was a political
activist. I don't remember women writing for Cahiers in the fifties
or early sixties. But several of the Positif guys (esp. Kyrou) were
homophobic. They wrote things like "Only faggots like Audrey
Hepburn" (because she was flat-chested and suspected to be
intelligent). Things changed of course, as they always do.
The Cahiers/Positif feud was inspired by much more than political
beliefs. Their tastes and aesthetics really differed beyond
political ideology. There was a famous early Positif article (#11,
sept. 1954,collectively written) that put down as "overrated" most
of the American directors praised by CdC (Hawks, Cukor, Lang, Ray,
Preminger...) and Hitchcock's "Vertigo" was panned in a truly
mindbogling article.
JPC
24189
From: "Michael E. Kerpan, Jr."
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 4:47pm
Subject: Re: Sarris/Benayoun michaelkerpan
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon" wrote:
> The Cahiers/Positif feud was inspired by much more than political
> beliefs. Their tastes and aesthetics really differed beyond
> political ideology. There was a famous early Positif article (#11,
> sept. 1954,collectively written) that put down as "overrated" most
> of the American directors praised by CdC (Hawks, Cukor, Lang, Ray,
> Preminger...) and Hitchcock's "Vertigo" was panned in a truly
> mindbogling article.
So, what American directors did THEY prefer -- if any?
24190
From: "Dave Kehr"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 4:49pm
Subject: Tarr and Balsan mizoguchi53
There's a sad but informative story on the Le Monde website --
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3476,36-401702,0.html --
about the suicide of Humbert Balsan and how it has led to the shut
down of the Bela Tarr film he was producing, apparently thanks
largely to the intransigence of Mr. Tarr, who has refused to make
any concessions to get the picture back on track. It was to be an
adaptation of a Simenon novel filmed in Corsica. Big egos, it
seems, are not restricted to Hollywood.
24191
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 5:05pm
Subject: Re: Identifying the Bad Guy (Was:Narrative and eschatology in Shyamalan hotlove666
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> > But Kit definitely isn't involved.
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> Well that sucks.
>
> I ran into Kit late last year at a reception for
> "Motorcycle Diaries." He's stillKit. And therefore in
> no way William Hurt.
David, I ran into him two years ago, and he was still very much Kit.
But stuff has gone down and that collaboration is no longer possible
for either of them. 'Nuff said.
24192
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 5:08pm
Subject: Re: Off with their heads! (was: NEW American Cinema) hotlove666
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> Zach Campbell wrote:
>
> To Bill, of course there are no rules about what makes a good
filmmaker;
> I agree that a person with "no life" could be as great an artist as
> anyone else. And of course artists learn from other artists. Still,
as I
> tried to show through my examples, there's a certain quality to
many of
> the films of Hollywood cinephile directors that I find disturbing,
and
> indicative.
>
> Fred Camper
Actually, I was thinking "the anxiety of influence," which is
considerably less idealistic as a theory than "artists learning from
other artists." One example, since you brought up The Searchers, this
time by a canonized great filmmaker: Run of the Arrow.
24193
From: "samfilms2003"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 5:11pm
Subject: Re: Josh's Picks (was: New American Cinema) samfilms2003
Personally I find these groupings bizzare ! (I sometimes find
Andrew Sarris to be "strained seriousness")
but in your context....
> The Far Side of Paradise:
> Ernie Gehr
> Jane Campion
...I would absolutely positively put Ernie Gehr in the "Pantheon"
and Jane Campion for "An Angel At My Table" (my fav film bio of an artist
at work & life) and "Sweetie"
> Jonas Mekas
Deserves his own category.
> Julie Murray
On my "Further Research" list as I've only seen one film once
> Saul Levine
Never seen his films but knowing a couple of his former students
he gets "The Pantheon" as a teacher alone.
Actually "Far Side Of Paradise" sounds like a more fun place to
live than "The Pantheon' ;-)
-Sam
24194
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 5:13pm
Subject: Re: Re: Identifying the Bad Guy (Was:Narrative and eschatology in Shyamalan cellar47
--- hotlove666 wrote:
> David, I ran into him two years ago, and he was
> still very much Kit.
> But stuff has gone down and that collaboration is no
> longer possible
> for either of them. 'Nuff said.
>
>
>
>
"David Holzman" without Kit is like "Hamlet" without
the Prince.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
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24195
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 5:17pm
Subject: Re: Identifying the Bad Guy (Was:Narrative and eschatology in Shyamalan hotlove666
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- hotlove666 wrote:
>
> > David, I ran into him two years ago, and he was
> > still very much Kit.
> > But stuff has gone down and that collaboration is no
> > longer possible
> > for either of them. 'Nuff said.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> "David Holzman" without Kit is like "Hamlet" without
> the Prince.
Well, that would be a short Hamlet, all right - he's in all but about
two scenes! Seriously, David, time marches on, you can't cross the
same river twice, we can't go home again, que sera sera, cinema
reigns.
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
> http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/
24196
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 5:22pm
Subject: Re: Josh's Picks (was: New American Cinema) hotlove666
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "samfilms2003" wrote:
>
> Actually "Far Side Of Paradise" sounds like a more fun place to
> live than "The Pantheon' ;-)
>
It was definitely more accessible by the time I got to H'wd. The only
Pantheonista I interviewed was Welles, the new kid on the block. Lots
of Far Siders and Esoterici, however....
No one has mentioned two fun sequels to Sarris: Corliss's writers
canon and The American Vein. I particularly enjoy Wicking and
Vahimagi's categories there - from Kings of the Stardust Ballroom to
Paso Por Aqui.
24197
From: "samfilms2003"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 5:34pm
Subject: Re: Off with their heads! (was: NEW American Cinema) samfilms2003
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Yoel Meranda" wrote:
> I have seen Orson Welles' "Lady from Shanghai" twice this weekend
> (both on 35mm) and thought about how impossible it was to explain how
> far below Welles, Hitchcock, Cukor, Minelli and Sirk the Hollywood
> cinema has fallen. What is called "Independent Cinema" doesn't give
> much hope either.
I saw this or similar 35mm print the same summer (summer of Summer of
Sam I think...) that "everyone" in the US of A was either talking/arguing about
"The Blair Witch Project" or "Eyes Wide Shut"
and for me "The Lady From Shanghai" WAS 'the film of the year'
(I have no agenda in dissing EWS, but that roughly 5 min - or less -
scene on board the yacht, with Orson & Rita H. *smouldering* in
the TRUE WITCHERY of Harry Stradling Jr's shadows and Everett Sloane
seething on deck said more to me about sexual jealousy than all
3 hrs of the Kubrick film.)
-Sam
24198
From: "samfilms2003"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 5:43pm
Subject: Re: Off with their heads! (was: NEW American Cinema) samfilms2003
> Try After Hours and The Trial, or The Life Aquatic and Red River, or
> Enemies, A Love Story and 8 1/2, or 2001: A Space Odyssey and Citizen
> Kane, or Stars in My Crown and Vampyr if you want to be fair to that
> universal fact about art as it applies to H'wd film.
Or Vampyr and A Corner In Wheat.
Or Side/Walk/Shuttle and 2001 he he
(OK a delicious parody at the end)
-Sam
24199
From: "Josh Mabe"
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 5:43pm
Subject: Re: Birdwhistell, Frampton, Asch, Landow/Land brack_28
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Matt Teichman >
>Ray L. Birdwhistell's "Microcultural Incidents in 10 Zoos").
> I'm glad you mentioned this extraordinary film.
I just discovered today that as a library staff member, I can check
out 16mm prints from my school's suprisingly kickass collection.
I'm going to check out a print of this film and maybe Blood of a
Poet and hell! maybe Iron Horse. Time to put the pageant projector
and collapsable screen to good use. I wish I'd known about this
earlier... I've only got one semester left to abuse the hell out of
this privledge.
Josh Mabe
and Sam W. - yeah... I guess Gehr does deserve pantheon... and I
probably have a bunch of other inconsitancies, too...
24200
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Mar 15, 2005 5:51pm
Subject: Re: Re: Identifying the Bad Guy (Was:Narrative and eschatology in Shyamalan cellar47
--- hotlove666 wrote:
> Well, that would be a short Hamlet, all right - he's
> in all but about
> two scenes! Seriously, David, time marches on, you
> can't cross the
> same river twice, we can't go home again, que sera
> sera, cinema
> reigns.
>
Oh sure we can. Ever see "Paris Texas"? Kit wrote it
you know.
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