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24301  < From: "hotlove666"
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 7:19pm
Subject: Re: Sarris, Roud & Experimental Film (was: The NEW American Cinema)  hotlove666


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> Patrick Ciccone wrote:


> Bicycling across country is even better than taking the bus!
>
Hitchcock was a bus fanatic in his early days. Even when he was
already a top director he would take buses all over London, see
things out the window and come back to the studio with an idea for
where to set a scene, according to Ivor Montagu. As late as 1962 he
could recite all the London bus and train schedules by heart faster
than a rap artist on crystal meth. I've seen it on film!
24302  
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 7:23pm
Subject: Re: Sarris, Roud & Experimental Film (was: The NEW American Cinema)  hotlove666


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> > Patrick Ciccone wrote:
>
>
> > Bicycling across country is even better than taking the bus!
> >
> Hitchcock was a bus fanatic in his early days. Even when he was
> already a top director he would take buses all over London, see
> things out the window and come back to the studio with an idea for
> where to set a scene, according to Ivor Montagu. As late as 1962 he
> could recite all the London bus and train schedules by heart faster
> than a rap artist on crystal meth. I've seen it on film!

Whereas the little bit of home movie footage at the Academy showing
Hitchcock attempting to ride a bicycle makes me think it was his
first and last attempt.
24303  
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 7:24pm
Subject: Cassavetes' Faces (was Re: Off with their heads!)  hotlove666


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Peter Henne wrote:
> Zach,
I find an inky, balanced beauty to the range of black and white in
the compositions of "Faces." In most of Cassavetes' films, he makes a
discontinuous construction of space which has moral repurcussions for
the characters, not unlike Antonioni does. Whether
Cassavetes "fashioned" this discontinuity conceptually or it just
came to him "naturally" is beside the point.

I recommend the paperback script for Faces if you can find it - for
Fred too, since he hated the film. On one page you have the script
and on the other page you have Cassavetes' technical comments on how
he shot the scene, with a lot of specifics about things like lighting.
24304  
From: "Blake Lucas"
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 7:57pm
Subject: Lee J. Cobb in PARTY GIRL (Was Re: Identifying the Bad Guy in The Naked Spur  blakelucaslu...


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
>
>

> I always assumed it was a real story, but a fake watch.
>
When he goes to court he grabs one of those dumb-looking silver
watches--he isn't carrying it already. The one in the climax is
leather-banded and he takes it off his wrist. It is his watch.
No big emphasis, but it's clear, as I'm sure you'll observe next
time you see it.

> > I don't know if Rico is "the true hero." But is any principal
Ray
> > character really a villain?
>
> The interesting thing about PARTY GIRL is that the ostensible
hero,
> Farrell (Robert Taylor), is such a complete shitbag - a nasty
piece
> of work who never thinks of anything except his own needs, who is
> willing to use anyone and anything (even Rico's long-ago act of
> kindness) to achieve his goals. He can only get away with what he
> does because he knows that, for all his threats, Rico will never
> actually do anything to harm him.
>
> Abel Ferrara's underrated CAT CHASER works in much the same way.

"A complete shitbag" is pretty rough, even if he does betray the man
who sustained him. "His own needs"--maybe, if that includes
protecting Vicki, done more out of love than "need." I came in on
this not because I care who is the hero and who is the villain. It
matters, but only in a way, and in another way it doesn't. What's
interesting to me is that even though this film is kind of a hymn to
heterosexual love in its Tom/Vicki story, the relationship between
the two men is complex and quite charged, even sexually perhaps.
Can even a vial full of acid burn all those undercurrents away?
And Rico does play it straight with Tommy, more than Tommy does with
him in the last analysis. That supports your view of course.

I've always loved this movie by the way, for many reasons, not least
the substance of what we're talking about here. Because Ray
seemingly was asked to do a conventional hero/heroine/villain
gangster story and as usual his own sensibility--moral and
philosophical as well as artistic--transformed it, though without
the least show of pretension.

I haven't seen the Ferrara you mention. His name comes up all the
time in a_film_by and I know Tag Gallagher likes him, which counts
for a lot with me. I blush to say I have only seen one of his films
--liked it just OK, and can't remember the name. Madonna was in it,
if you could identify and maybe comment. And I promise to remedy
this lapse in my moviegoing as regards Ferrara.
24305  
From: "Patrick Ciccone"
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 8:07pm
Subject: Re: Sarris, Roud & Experimental Film (was: The NEW American Cinema)  pwciccone


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> Patrick Ciccone wrote:
>
> > Doesn't this definition leave out many of the makers of the greatest
> > films?
>
> I'll try reply to some of the other discussion in a day or two, but in
> the meantime there's an obvious reply to this one: artists in all field
> have long been known to have highly eccentric tastes.
What I
> placed at issue in the message Patrick is resonding to is whether a
> person understands "all cinema."

This isn't quite a direct response, but are artists allowed great
eccentricities but not critics or viewers?

Though I love many avant-garde films, I don't know if discussion about
films of a certain type (narrative or avant-garde) need a priori to be
reminded of the existence of other types or strains of cinema. If we
were discussing novels and poetry, would it be obligatory to reframe
the debate to say that all writing can be great, including instruction
manuals, cookbooks, etc.? (And I read cookbooks more often than novels
at current juncture, and do think many of them are greater...) This is
a genuine question, as it seems no accident that the great works of
cinema seem to fall into the post-Griffith narrative film category, or
a smaller canon of avant-garde films, and not as much, if at all, in
other places. In other words, is cinema (everything that can be
produced by a motion picture camera and editing, then projected) the
art form, or are the art forms within this greater possibility the
more important boundaries to consider? (The art form ofnarrative film,
the art form of various types of avant-garde films, etc.) I'm more
inclined to the latter view, in a series of overlapping Venn diagrams,
so that the boundaries can still overlap.

PWC
24306  
From: BklynMagus
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 8:15pm
Subject: Re: Life and movies  cinebklyn


 
hl666 writes:

>I'm a Bloomean, and I see art differently.

Leopold or Harold? LOL

> Art is made out of other art. Making it out of
life is like trying to build a house out of musical
notes. Wrong materials.

Isn't it possible to say that art is made of (in part)
a person's reactons to both life experiences
and art? Isn't an artist's sensibilty shaped by both
his experiential and aesthetic encounters?

An example: I would argue that Mankiewicz's "People
Will Talk" was in part created out of his real life
experiences during the McCarthy era.

> Hitchcock would be the first to say he had no life . . .
He had a better life than I've had!

Huh?

> Reading books. Well, if that's living, I guess I've lived.

Reading books is certainly something people do during
the course of living, isn't it? Isn't a person's life the sum
total of her experiences, aesthetic and otherwise?

> Oh yeah, sex. I have some info about that, but it will
have to be dispensed offline.

But that is why I joined AFB. Damn.

> Counter-example: Stanley Kramer didn't go to film
school either!

Counter-question: would going to film school have made
him a better filmmaker?

> . . . and because it keeps us from thinking about why
H'wd films have gotten so bad - and why certain ones are
still good

My theory: Hollywood now produces films where an
overriding concern is satisfying the personal expression
needs of those involved making the product. Since
satisfyng the desire for personal expression is a
contradictory pursuit, i.e., the more one does it, the
further one finds oneself from the desired goal, this is a
less than ideal basis for creating art.

> and why those of us who like a certain kind of cinema
may have to look for it in Korea or China now.

This is only a guess, since I am not well-versed in the
cultural/social reality of either country, but could it be
that films from China and Korea are still seeking to engage
their audiences in a dialogue rather than just serve as
vehicles for personal expression?

> If that's because of film school, film school is doing a
better job than I thought it was in imposing its sinister
agenda on everyone who passes thru it.

Film schools are merely doing what schools do: they
teach technique/craft which is a homogenizing process.
They hopefully also inspire a person to explore the world
and develop a complex series of responses to it, but you
cannot grade those things. All that you can grade is a) how
well a student deployed technique in creating a film; and
b) in terms of formal, measurable elements, how close that
student came to emulating/imitating the current cultural
ideal/standard. With such a system in place, we should
expect a high level of technical profiency; anything more is
gravy.

> But I suspect that it's because of other forces as well,
and more powerful ones than Bob Rosen has at his
command.

For me suspect #1 is the culture of hyperindividualization
that exists today. There is a premium placed on personal
expression, personal space, personal desires (and their
fulfillment). We are a long way from Mankiewicz's dictum
that since movies decided to talk, they had an obligation
to say something. Nowadays, films are more about somebody
believing that THEY must be heard and are going to use the
cinema as their bullhorn. The auteur theory was put through
the cultural blender, and out came this new axiom championing
personal expression uber alles (without which films schools
would go out of business).

Brian
24307  
From: Adrian Martin
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 9:46pm
Subject: re: Sarris, Roud & Experimental Cinema  apmartin90


 
Rather than say something personalised like 'if somebody doesn't like
experimental film, I don't like them!' (I know this isn't exactly what you
said, Fred, but ... ), I think the whole cultural-social system has to be
blamed for the general aversion to avant-garde arts (in all areas: film,
music, writing, etc). I wish there was a sociological study to show exactly
why - and exactly when - many people start reflexly hating the avant-garde,
even if they have in fact never yet experienced a single scrap of it!

Here (and you and I have to face it, Mike) pop culture is no help:
commercial films and TV and radio are full of stupid caricatures and asinine
jokes about avant-garde films and filmmakers. I can't tell you how many
times, after mentioning the avant-garde in some public forum or another,
people come back at me with childhood memories of some scene in GILLIGAN'S
ISLAND or GET SMART or somesuch which involved a parody of experimental
filmmaking.

The education system has to be mainly to blame (certainly in Australia).
Teachers (in many disciplines) should take it on as an educational challenge
to 'turn students on' to the avant-garde. In my years of teaching, I firmly
came to believe that the right film at the right moment, in the right
context - Deren's AT LAND, Martin Arnold's ALONE, Ulrike Ottinger's
SUPERBIA, many others - could take a student from reflex,
socially-conditioned philistinism to a more open-minded (and excited)
perspective. And there are times when you CAN use pop culture to create this
context: I remember in 1994 when I met the Canadian experimental filmmaker
Mike Hoolboom, and he connected with a group of students by appealing to
their feeling for the collage techniques in Stone's NATURAL BORN KILLERS
(which he regarded as 'the best avant-garde film of the year').

I have probably mentioned before on this list that, at the age of 17, I
encountered here in Melbourne the marathon Film History classes of the
experimental filmmaker Arthur Cantrill: he would show one film after
another, with historical-context introductions in-between, for at least 4
hours straight. He showed mainly avant-garde work, with other bits of silent
cinema, silent comedy, some early sound Fritz Lang, and at the 'outer limit'
CITIZEN KANE. He knew he could leave all that other excellent narrative
stuff to the other staff members (and he was right). I would not be the
cinephile or critic I am today without Arthur's class: it's where I first
saw Snow, Frampton, Kuchar, Kren, Bergner, so much stuff. And many students
were turned on by it. But you could always see the 'pockets of resistance',
again (I believe) socially rather than personally ingrained. At the end of
every year, there would always be elaborate parodies by the filmmaking
students of the avant-garde: sometimes students trying to 'pass something
off' as an ironic pastiche (like running around a field while filming
through some prismatic/transparent ashtray - sheesh!), and others doing
elaborate Mel Brooks-style send-ups. One of these (the most memorable, shot
in beautiful 16mm) showed a group of students in Arthur's class, watching 4
hours of avant-garde film: variously stoned, hypnotised, asleep, having
epileptic fits, masturbating, etc - while, in the projection booth,
expressionistically lit, was a Dr Mabuse figure (generously performed by
Arthur himself as a favour to the student!) grinning like the Devil as he
put the students through such sadistic torture. That's the kind of ingrained
idea the avant-garde is up against !!!!

Adrian
24308  
From: kitebw@...
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 3:48pm
Subject: Re: THE SHINING (Was: Put Another Ax Murder on the Barbie)  natskoli


 
In a message dated 3/16/2005 12:38:36 PM Eastern Standard Time,
a_film_by@yahoogroups.com writes:

I saw it. From the shot of Nicholson frozen to death
we cut to a scene indicating that Danny and Wendy are
alright, and barry Nelson appears again to tell them
that there was nothing at the hotel and it isn't
haunted. Then it's back to that slow track in to the
photo as before.


Doesn't Nelson say something like "You forgot this" and toss Danny his
tennis ball?


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
24309  
From: BklynMagus
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 8:50pm
Subject: Re: Sarris, Roud & Experimental Film (was: The NEW American Cinema)  cinebklyn


 
Fred writes:

> What I placed at issue in the message Patrick is
resonding to is whether a person understands "all
cinema."

From my perspective I would say "No," and add
"Thank goodness." It think it would be just as bad
to understand all cinema as it would be to have an
artist who is understood by everybody.

Personally, I enjoy struggling with filmmakers whom
other people champion and I just don't get. Only
once in a while do I give up totally and write the
person off. Usually, I just take a vacation of whatever
needed length, and then go back into the fray.

But if I could get "all cinema" and knew I could, I
might not even set out on the journey. In some
important ways a person is defined by his limits.

Brian
24310  
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 8:54pm
Subject: Re: Life and movies  hotlove666


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, BklynMagus wrote:
> hl666 writes:
>
Mankiewicz's "People
> Will Talk" was in part created out of his real life
> experiences during the McCarthy era.

No doubt. And no doubt the film is about that, and abouyt the era as
well. I haven't seen it recently enough to respond w. a counter-
argument, which is just as well, because no position is served by
being caricatured (even if Bloom initially did that himself, to shock
us). But I would still argue that the response to existing art is of
more importance than all that.
>
> > Hitchcock would be the first to say he had no life . . .
> He had a better life than I've had!
>
> Huh?

I'd trade!
>

>
> > Oh yeah, sex. I have some info about that, but it will
> have to be dispensed offline.
>
> But that is why I joined AFB. Damn.

Since this concerns Spielbergt, e-mail me. I don't want to have to
sell a kidney to pay for the first round of a lawsuit.
>
> > Counter-example: Stanley Kramer didn't go to film
> school either!
>
> Counter-question: would going to film school have made
> him a better filmmaker?

The arguemnet was that going to film school makes you a bad
filmmaker. I don't agree. I think other factors are important, but
film school can cut both ways.
>
> > . . . and because it keeps us from thinking about why
> H'wd films have gotten so bad - and why certain ones are
> still good
>
> My theory: Hollywood now produces films where an
> overriding concern is satisfying the personal expression
> needs of those involved making the product. Since
> satisfyng the desire for personal expression is a
> contradictory pursuit, i.e., the more one does it, the
> further one finds oneself from the desired goal, this is a
> less than ideal basis for creating art.

Could you give some examples? because it all looks prety vcookie-
cutter to me.
>
> > and why those of us who like a certain kind of cinema
> may have to look for it in Korea or China now.
>
> This is only a guess, since I am not well-versed in the
> cultural/social reality of either country, but could it be
> that films from China and Korea are still seeking to engage
> their audiences in a dialogue rather than just serve as
> vehicles for personal expression?

An interesting idea, but I'd have to grasp the first part of it to
evaluate. Do you think the Harry Potter films, or the Spiderman
films, are about someone OVERDOING personal expression?

>
The auteur theory was put through
> the cultural blender, and out came this new axiom championing
> personal expression uber alles (without which films schools
> would go out of business).

To paraphrase Goebbels, when I hear someone blame the auteur theory
for the sorry state of American films, I take out my revolver.
24311  
From: "thebradstevens"
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 8:57pm
Subject: Lee J. Cobb in PARTY GIRL (Was Re: Identifying the Bad Guy in The Naked Spur  thebradstevens


 
> "A complete shitbag" is pretty rough, even if he does betray the
man
> who sustained him. "His own needs"--maybe, if that includes
> protecting Vicki, done more out of love than "need."

Well, he's finally found a woman who can equal his cynical self-
centeredness. And Taylor seems to have been directed to play the guy
as such an intolerable creep. Indeed, given Lee J. Cobb's problems
with HUAC, I wonder if Ray intended this story about a man who
betrays his oldest friend as a comment on McCarthyism.


>
> I haven't seen the Ferrara you mention. His name comes up all the
> time in a_film_by and I know Tag Gallagher likes him, which counts
> for a lot with me. I blush to say I have only seen one of his films
> --liked it just OK, and can't remember the name. Madonna was in it,
> if you could identify and maybe comment.

SNAKE EYES (later retitled DANGEROUS GAME). My favorite Ferrara,
alongside NEW ROSE HOTEL.
24312  
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 9:02pm
Subject: Lee J. Cobb in PARTY GIRL (Was Re: Identifying the Bad Guy in The Naked Spur  hotlove666


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
>

> > I haven't seen the Ferrara you mention. His name comes up all
the
> > time in a_film_by and I know Tag Gallagher likes him, which
counts
> > for a lot with me. I blush to say I have only seen one of his
films
> > --liked it just OK, and can't remember the name. Madonna was in
it,
> > if you could identify and maybe comment.
>
> SNAKE EYES (later retitled DANGEROUS GAME). My favorite Ferrara,
> alongside NEW ROSE HOTEL.

Blake, why don't you try the last one, R-'XMAS? Or CHINA GIRL? NEW
ROSE is my favorite, but it might be too - excuse the expression -
avant-garde for you to tackle first.
24313  
From: "peckinpah20012000"
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 9:33pm
Subject: Re: THE SHINING (Was: Put Another Ax Murder on the Barbie)  peckinpah200...


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, kitebw@a... wrote:
>
> In a message dated 3/16/2005 12:38:36 PM Eastern Standard Time,
>
>
> Doesn't Nelson say something like "You forgot this" and toss
Danny his
> tennis ball?

Since David has seen this version, I have a question which will
interest this group. I've just finished reading a very pedantic book
by Geoffrey Cocks, titled THE WOLF AT THE DOOR. Published by Peter
Lang, this history professor with an interest in psychoanalysis
attempts to make a case that Kubrick's films are all influenced by
the Holocaust and THE SHINING is his Holocaust film par excellence.

Cocks also suggests that Barry Nelson's character is gay. I'd be
interested to learn if David (and anybody else) has interpreted
Nelson's role in this way. I attempted to contact the 85 year-old
actor for an interview when he appeared at last year's Memphis Film
Festival but he did not reply. He had a very pecular answerphone
featuring a gravally voice which did not identify itself.

Tony Williams
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
24314  
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 9:44pm
Subject: Re: Re: Life and movies  cellar47


 
--- BklynMagus wrote:

>
> An example: I would argue that Mankiewicz's "People
> Will Talk" was in part created out of his real life
> experiences during the McCarthy era.
>

You don't have to "argue" it -- it WAS. The climax of
"People Will Talk" paraphrases the DGA meeting where
DeMille tried to assume comand of all things
"American" only to be cut off at the knees by, of all
people, John Ford.





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24315  
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 9:46pm
Subject: Re: Re: THE SHINING (Was: Put Another Ax Murder on the Barbie)  cellar47


 
--- kitebw@... wrote:

>
>
> Doesn't Nelson say something like "You forgot this"
> and toss Danny his
> tennis ball?
>
>

I believe so -- thereby echoing earlier scenes in the
hotel where a ball suddenly came down the corridor to
him.

Still, I can see why Kubrick cut that scene -- but not
why he cut Anne Jackson's scene, whoch is crucial, IMO.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
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24316  
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 10:01pm
Subject: Re: Re: THE SHINING (Was: Put Another Ax Murder on the Barbie)  cellar47


 
--- peckinpah20012000
wrote:

>
> Since David has seen this version, I have a
> question which will
> interest this group. I've just finished reading a
> very pedantic book
> by Geoffrey Cocks, titled THE WOLF AT THE DOOR.
> Published by Peter
> Lang, this history professor with an interest in
> psychoanalysis
> attempts to make a case that Kubrick's films are all
> influenced by
> the Holocaust and THE SHINING is his Holocaust film
> par excellence.
>

Utterly ridiculous! Kubrick's career is makred by is
total flight from Jewish identity -- though it does
come to haunt him in "Barry Lyndon" ie. Rise above
your station and God will strike you down and cut off
your leg!

"Eyes Wude Shut" approaches Jewishness through a side
door in that it's intensely kafkaesque. But Kafka by
way of Welles.

> Cocks also suggests that Barry Nelson's character
> is gay. I'd be
> interested to learn if David (and anybody else) has
> interpreted
> Nelson's role in this way.

There is nothing in Barry Nelson's character to
indicate anything about his sexual orientation. He's a
mechanism of the plot and nothing more.

I attempted to contact
> the 85 year-old
> actor for an interview when he appeared at last
> year's Memphis Film
> Festival but he did not reply. He had a very pecular
> answerphone
> featuring a gravally voice which did not identify
> itself.
>

He sounds peculiar all around, IMO.



__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Sports - Sign up for Fantasy Baseball.
http://baseball.fantasysports.yahoo.com/
24317  
From: Elizabeth Nolan
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 10:07pm
Subject: MOKEY with Robert Blake and THE PRISONER'S SON  eanmdphd


 
This movie gets poor reviews... no reason to be made, except to be
showing today on TCM; CourtTV just announced there will be a verdict in
the BLAKE trial at 2:30, the movie is running from 1:30-3pm. How
ironic! MOKEY is a mischievous 9-year-old who rebels against his
father's new bride.

"The Prisoner's Song (If I Had the Wings of an Angel)"
(1924)
Music and Lyrics by Guy Massey
Played on concertina and harmonica and sung by Robert Blake with
modified lyrics
Reprised by him on piano
Reprised by Donna Reed on piano
24318  
From: BklynMagus
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 10:13pm
Subject: Re: Life and movies  cinebklyn


 
hl666 writes:

> But I would still argue that the response to
existing art is of more importance than all that.

You may be right. But while that response
might be the dominant wellspring of art, I do not
believe it is the only one.

> Since this concerns Spielberg, e-mail me.

I was just teasing. Gossip bores me (as do
most facts about the lives of artists).

> I think other factors are important, but
film school can cut both ways.

I think film school can a) give you a good technical
base and b) expose you to various examples of
film art. But as Dorothy Parker warned: "You can
lead a whore to culture, but you can't make her
think."

> Could you give some examples? because it all
looks pretty cookie-cutter to me.

It is cookie-cutter since for the vast majority of people
"personal expression" now consists of being "artistic" as
they repeat the cultural tropes they have been
indoctrinated with/paid to parrot.

> Do you think the Harry Potter films, or the Spiderman
films, are about someone OVERDOING personal
expression?

Yes. They are about the frantic efforts of filmmakers
trying to make their personal voices heard while s/he
delivers the message the cultural machine demands.
Hence, the increasing technical sophistication and
emphasis on the provoking of emotional responses
rather than intellectual ones.

> To paraphrase Goebbels, when I hear someone blame the
auteur theory for the sorry state of American films, I take
out my revolver.

I was unclear, my pardon. I am not blaming the auteur
theory. What the culture machine did was deform the theory
(as it does with all cultural products) in order to turn it to its
own ends -- self-perpetuation and self-preservation.

As I have understood the auteur theory, it acknowledged
that the director was the author of the film, and what he
wanted to communicate was done through the medium of film.
Now, it seems to me, the emphasis is on how things are said,
and not so much on what is being said. The cookie-cutter effect
comes from ever increading technical expertise being put at
the disposal of an ever-dwindling number of messages.

The homogenization of cultural attitudes may turn out to be a
by-product of the increasing spread of mass media and its
intersection points with individual lives. Films schools, for their
part, are instituions/hierarchies, and, like most institutions/
hierarchies, are conservative -- they seek to conserve their
energy and capital so as to stay in existence. Professors and
administrators want to put food on the table, go on vacations,
own homes, etc., etc. To ensure the continuing flow of income,
they must assure prospective students that what they will get
out of film school will allow them to meet their material needs.
Technical ability will always be in demand; artisitic vision -- nice,
but not essential (though no one admits this for priopriety's sake).

Nowadays, personal signature is an end in and of it self -- technical
mastery for its own sake. I recognize you by the way you make
movies, not by what you say through the medium of film. Whether
or not that signature says anything of use to the audience or just
reinforces cultural norms -- who cares. I said it my way.

Brian
24319  
From: "peckinpah20012000"
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 10:16pm
Subject: Re: THE SHINING (Was: Put Another Ax Murder on the Barbie)  peckinpah200...


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> >
> > >
> Utterly ridiculous! Kubrick's career is makred by is
> total flight from Jewish identity -- though it does
> come to haunt him in "Barry Lyndon" ie. Rise above
> your station and God will strike you down and cut off
> your leg!
>
> "Eyes Wude Shut" approaches Jewishness through a side
> door in that it's intensely kafkaesque. But Kafka by
> way of Welles.
>
> > Cocks also suggests that Barry Nelson's character
> > is gay. in this way.
>
> There is nothing in Barry Nelson's character to
> indicate anything about his sexual orientation. He's a
> mechanism of the plot and nothing more.
>
> I attempted to contact
> > the 85 year-old
> > actor for an interview when he appeared at last
> > year's Memphis Film
> > Festival but he did not reply. He had a very pecular
> > answerphone
> > featuring a gravally voice which did not identify
> > itself.
> >
>
> He sounds peculiar all around, IMO.

Thanks again, David. I agree with your interpretations and find
the recent spate of academics dabbling outside their disciplines,
without exhibiting the necessary rigor of critical intelligence
marked by yourself and this group, highly disturbing. You have a
really good insight about EYES WIDE SHUT.

"Cultural studies" (or, better, its worst examples) has a lot to
answer for.

Tony Williams


>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Sports - Sign up for Fantasy Baseball.
> http://baseball.fantasysports.yahoo.com/
24320  
From: "Matthew Clayfield"
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 10:21pm
Subject: Re: Cassavetes' Faces (was Re: Off with their heads!)  mclayf00


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666" wrote:
>
> I recommend the paperback script for Faces if you can find it - for
> Fred too, since he hated the film. On one page you have the script
> and on the other page you have Cassavetes' technical comments on how
> he shot the scene, with a lot of specifics about things like lighting.

And one of the special features on the Criterion edition of "Faces" is
a short featurette in which Al Ruban discusses lighting, film stock
and other technical choices.
24321  
From: "Matthew Clayfield"
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 10:43pm
Subject: Re: Life and movies  mclayf00


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, BklynMagus wrote:

> The auteur theory was put through
> the cultural blender, and out came this new axiom championing
> personal expression uber alles (without which films schools
> would go out of business).

I don't think they'd go out of business at all. Speaking from personal
experience, film schools are far more obsessed with technical
profiency, professionalism and industry values than they are with
personal expression. You see a lot of pretty pictures coming out of
these places, but little else. Not even filmmakers with something
(anything!) to say.
24322  
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 10:50pm
Subject: Re: MOKEY with Robert Blake and THE PRISONER'S SON  hotlove666


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Elizabeth Nolan wrote:
> This movie gets poor reviews... no reason to be made, except to be
> showing today on TCM; CourtTV just announced there will be a verdict in
> the BLAKE trial at 2:30,

Acquittal. Just as well.
24323  
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 10:45pm
Subject: Plasticity (Was: Off with their heads!)  sallitt1


 
> I think
> that one thread in postclassical American cinema (both Hollywood
> and "independent" narratives) is a move away from plasticity

I find this to be true all over the world. When you go to a film festival
and see a lot of films at once, this direction seems quite conspicuous. -
Dan
24324  
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 10:53pm
Subject: Sapphic Madge (Was: THE SHINING)  hotlove666


 
> > Cocks also suggests that Barry Nelson's character
> > is gay. I'd be
> > interested to learn if David (and anybody else) has
> > interpreted
> > Nelson's role in this way.
>
> There is nothing in Barry Nelson's character to
> indicate anything about his sexual orientation. He's a
> mechanism of the plot and nothing more.

That's as funny as a story Joe McBride told me about teaching Vertigo up
North. One of his students told him that another teacher told the class that
Madge is gay.
24325  
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 11:01pm
Subject: Re: Re: MOKEY with Robert Blake and THE PRISONER'S SON  cellar47


 
--- hotlove666 wrote:

>
> Acquittal. Just as well.
>
>
>
>

Little Mickey walks!

Clearly the state didn't prove its case. I suspect it
was those "hit men" obsessed with UFO's and the like.
Not very convincing.

This leaves the door open for my dream project: The
Criterion Edition of "Second-Hant Hearts" with
separate commentary tracks by Robert Blake and Barbara
Harris!

"The longer you wait the beautifuler it gets."



__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/
24326  
From: BklynMagus
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 11:04pm
Subject: Re: Plasticity (Was: Off with their heads!)  cinebklyn


 
> I think that one thread in postclassical American
cinema (both Hollywood and "independent" narratives)
is a move away from plasticity

Brian's Not That Smart question time:

What does it mean to move away from plasticity?

Thank in advance.

Brian
24327  
From: "joe_mcelhaney"
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 11:07pm
Subject: Re: Easter Parade  joe_mcelhaney


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, BklynMagus wrote:



> I felt that Walters' camera was in league with the
> performers rather than in competition. It knew
> exactly where to be -- it transmited the sensation of
> movement without calling attention to the fact that
> it was moving. This observation really hit me watching
> "Shakin' the Blues Away."
>
> One question:
>
> Robert Alton is credited as choreographer and director
> of dance sequences. Does anyone know if he is more
> responsible than Walters for the dance sequences?

If you listen to the audio commentary on your DVD, John Fricke states
that Walters choreographed and directed the smaller numbers in the
film while Alton directed and staged the big production
numbers: "Stepping Out with My Baby," "The Girl on the Magazine
Cover," "Shaking the Blues Away," etc. I'm sure, though, that
Walters was consulted and generally around when the numbers were put
together. He was still the director. The best moments in the film,
IMO, belong to Walters and not Alton. "A Couple of Swells," for
example, is entirely Walters: choregraphy and camera.

Funny you should feel Walters's style so strongly in that Ann Miller
number because that looks so much like Alton to me, especially those
automatic dollies and cranes into and out of the dance. But Ava
Astaire claims that Alton only choregraphed the top part of Ann
Miller's body for that number! Nick Castle did the taps. So
obviously we should never believe credits, not that any of us would
by now, of course.

So little work has been done on Walters but it seems to me that the
best place to begin would be to find ways to analyze this gift for
intimacy he has in terms of staging and movement as well as the quiet
rapport that his camera can achieve with his actors. (I'm thinking of
some of his non-musicals here as well.) No real eye for color and
decor, though. The backgrounds and surrounding environments
in "Easter" look cluttered and overall I prefer a smaller Walters
film like "Summer Stock" where the spaces are cleaner and simpler. I
could revive my discussion from many months ago of the "minor"
musical as a descriptive rather than pejorative category as one way
to begin talking about Walters. But as I incurred the violent wrath
of J-P Coursodon last time around with THAT one I'd rather see
someone else tackle Chuck Walters.

Was most interested, though, to hear the discussion on the "Easter"
disc of the original script prepared by Minnelli and Goodrich/Hackett
and for Gene Kelly and Garland. Apparently, it was very dark and
Kelly's character was largely unsympathetic, another one of his post-
Pal Joey heels who in this case was often emotionally brutal to
Garland's character. Walters brought in Sidney Sheldon to soften the
material and make it lighter. Had Minnelli made the film it would
undoubtedly have been one of his "curiously depressing" (Sarris's
term)musicals. I wonder if this script is in the vaults somewhere.
24328  
From: "jpcoursodon"
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 11:10pm
Subject: Re: Plasticity (Was: Off with their heads!)  jpcoursodon


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, BklynMagus wrote:
> > I think that one thread in postclassical American
> cinema (both Hollywood and "independent" narratives)
> is a move away from plasticity
>
> Brian's Not That Smart question time:
>
> What does it mean to move away from plasticity?
>
> Thank in advance.
>
> Brian

Better you should ask: "What is plasticity?"

JP "dumb and dumber" C.
24329  
From: "Matthew Clayfield"
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 11:11pm
Subject: Re: Plasticity (Was: Off with their heads!)  mclayf00


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> > I think
> > that one thread in postclassical American cinema (both Hollywood
> > and "independent" narratives) is a move away from plasticity
>
> I find this to be true all over the world. When you go to a film
festival
> and see a lot of films at once, this direction seems quite
conspicuous. -
> Dan

What is meant by this exactly?
24330  
From: "Matthew Clayfield"
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 11:12pm
Subject: Re: Plasticity (Was: Off with their heads!)  mclayf00


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Matthew Clayfield"
wrote:
>
> What is meant by this exactly?

Brian beat me to it.
24331  
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 11:15pm
Subject: Meanining again (Was: Life and movies)  hotlove666


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, BklynMagus wrote:
> hl666 writes:

I wouldn't defend or blast film schools. I've never been to one, so I don't know,
but anyone who has been around a while at a_f_b knows what I think about
the culture racket. And I would bet dollars to donuts that the auteur theory has
been distorted - everything is distorted by this culture, and by its temples of
higher learning.

That said, I just see a lot of people cranking out very costly, boring garbage in
H'wd, no doubt imagining that it's self-expression as they do. Your argument
for content is interesting, because content is pretty verboten. And in one way I
have no doubt you're right - the auteur theory argued against content in a
certain way, in certain polemical contexts, like Chabrol's article about little
subjects making better films than big ones.

More generally, the defense of genre guys like Hitchcock and Hawks vs.
message guys like Lumet and Kramer gave carte blanche to the new breed of
filmmakers to play the studio's game and keep their mouths shut, because
genre garbage is real film art, supposedly, and not the serious stuff. That's
where the theory - as perverted by self-interested people - may have paved
the way to a lot of people cashing in while fancying that they are following in
the footsteps of John Ford. After all, didn't he make westerns?

My baseline for issues of meaning and form, or formalism, is that how a film
meaans matters more than what it means, although the what isn't negligible
either. But to revert to a Bloomean formula, if you look at the evolution of
poetry, you'll see that Ashbery, say, MEANS a lot less than Pope, and the
dimunition of meaning seems to be one axis along which the evolution of
painting can be traced as well - although there are exceptions, throwbacks,
etc.

Perhaps in film we haven't gotten to the Ashbery stage yet. My favorite
working directors - Ferrara, Russell, Ang Lee, Spike Lee, Shyamalan - are
nothing if not significant, and just off hand I can't think of a great one, here or
elsewhere, who isn't significant.

Perhaps Kubrick was shooting for something akin to Ashbery. If you compare
Full Metal Jacket to Paths of Glory, that seems to have been the intent as he
moved along. In a strange way, that may also have been Cassavetes' aim, a
little. Certainly it was Warhol's. And the temptation pops through here and
there in other film artists - in an experiment like Soderbergh's Schizopolos,
say.

On the other hand, it could be argued - if one knew more about the subject -
that avant-garde film often is totally, intentionally, joyfully meaningless in the
same way that Ashbery or Rauschenberg is. Or damn near.
24332  
From: "Matt Armstrong"
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 11:28pm
Subject: Re: MOKEY with Robert Blake and THE PRISONER'S SON  matt_c_armst...


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Elizabeth Nolan wrote:
> > This movie gets poor reviews... no reason to be made, except to
be
> > showing today on TCM; CourtTV just announced there will be a
verdict in
> > the BLAKE trial at 2:30,
>
> Acquittal. Just as well.

All of the evidence was circumstantial. But based on what I've read,
he probably got away with murder.

I saw Barry Gifford speak at a screening of "Lost Highway" a couple
years ago. He said that Lynch was obsessed with the OJ Simpson trial
and that his inspiration for that film was the question "How can
O.J. golf?" One nervy questioner asked if Gifford found Blake's case
ironic. Blake's character in the film, is of course a
Mephistophelean type who aids the Bill Pullman character in killing
his wife. Gifford politely declined to comment. The real-life
parallels have only deepened the film's sense of dread and its
resonance.
24333  
From: "jpcoursodon"
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 11:34pm
Subject: Re: Sapphic Madge (Was: THE SHINING)  jpcoursodon


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> That's as funny as a story Joe McBride told me about teaching
Vertigo up
> North. One of his students told him that another teacher told the
class that
> Madge is gay.

Poor Madge. She would have been better off with a girlfriend than
with Scottie.
24334  
From: "thebradstevens"
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 11:45pm
Subject: Re: THE SHINING (Was: Put Another Ax Murder on the Barbie)  thebradstevens


 
> "Eyes Wude Shut" approaches Jewishness through a side
> door in that it's intensely kafkaesque. But Kafka by
> way of Welles.
>

It's interesting that Kubrick places a menorah among the decor in the
Hartford's apartment. The film can certainly be read as being about
the return of a repressed Jewish identity.
24335  
From: "jpcoursodon"
Date: Wed Mar 16, 2005 11:45pm
Subject: Re: Easter Parade  jpcoursodon


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "joe_mcelhaney"
wrote:
>
> I
> could revive my discussion from many months ago of the "minor"
> musical as a descriptive rather than pejorative category as one
way
> to begin talking about Walters. But as I incurred the violent
wrath
> of J-P Coursodon last time around with THAT one I'd rather see
> someone else tackle Chuck Walters.
>


Violent wrath? Surely you jest. I have no such recollection. (or
maybe I just forgot?) I'd be interested in hearing about your theory
of "minor" as "descriptive". Some of my favorite musicals are minor
(e.g."I Love Melvin", which would make my 10 Best Musicals List if I
made lists). But then their being among my favorites tends to pull
them out of the "minor" category into the Major. JPC
24336  
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 0:00am
Subject: Re: Meanining again (Was: Life and movies)  hotlove666


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666" wrote:

.
>
> Perhaps Kubrick was shooting for something akin to Ashbery. If you
compare
> Full Metal Jacket to Paths of Glory, that seems to have been the intent as he
> moved along. In a strange way, that may also have been Cassavetes' aim, a
> little. Certainly it was Warhol's. And the temptation pops through here and
> there in other film artists - in an experiment like Soderbergh's Schizopolos,
> say.

Or What? (aka Che?) - a neglected masterpiece by Polanski.
24337  
From: "Zach Campbell"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 0:07am
Subject: Re: Plasticity (Was: Off with their heads!)  rashomon82


 
Brian wrote:
> What does it mean to move away from plasticity?

Well, when I used it in my post, I was referring to the
characteristics of the film image that are connected to and effected
by the celluloid itself. (A synonym for plasticity--which may or
may not be problematic--might be 'materiality.') This is why I
suggested that the move away from plasticity is linked to the
emergence of TV, video, the Internet. When cinema was just
about 'all there was,' filmmakers could deal with the medium because
it was something generally uncomplicated by translation, unless one
meant a translation from one art (theater, literature) to cinema.
But with, say, video, it's not so very clear that we have two
different arts--and if indeed we do, these arts are still very close.

Once the film image gets "translated" to another medium, like video,
you have a different kind of object. Something gets lost; and
without trying to put words in his mouth, I think that for Fred
this "something" is essential to what makes great cinema (and while
I am less convinced about the essentialism, for certain films and
filmmakers I completely agree). But whatever is lost of the image,
something also remains. (Serge Daney on SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON on
television: "Forty-one years later the film 'passes' perfectly from
the big to the small screen. ... There's no need to say that when a
frame no longer has edges, but a heart, the small screen welcomes it
with all the respect which is its due.")

The commercial cinema, in general and as a whole, has no doubt
become inattentive to the film-specific properties of cinema which
were at one time a given (not to say that they were ever "given" to
be great). This is no doubt why Fred and Yoel (er, correctly if far
too stringently IMO) are dissatisfied with contemporary Hollywood.
But I think that with this split, this rupture, this "corpse"--to
evoke Bill and through him Harold Bloom--comes an opportunity that
numerous postclassical film artists have seized upon.

There's a more literal meaning to plasticity, which refers directly
and tactilely to the celluloid, but that's something I don't think
is ever engaged with in cinema except in certain avant-garde films.
(Fred once mentioned some titles and suggested they were the
only "realistic," or truly "realist," films.)

--Zach
24338  
From: "jaketwilson"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 0:47am
Subject: Meaninglessness (Was: Life and movies)  jaketwilson


 
> > Perhaps Kubrick was shooting for something akin to Ashbery. If
you
> compare
> > Full Metal Jacket to Paths of Glory, that seems to have been the
intent as he
> > moved along. In a strange way, that may also have been
Cassavetes' aim, a
> > little. Certainly it was Warhol's. And the temptation pops
through here and
> > there in other film artists - in an experiment like Soderbergh's
Schizopolos,
> > say.
>
> Or What? (aka Che?) - a neglected masterpiece by Polanski.

I love it. A number of Polanski films are practically "meaningless",
notably PIRATES, where my friend and I eventually agreed the
ungainliness was part of the point -- all those jokes about lugging
round a big useless object (the throne) reflecting the white-elephant
nature of the production. That also recaps TWO MEN AND A WARDROBE,
where as I recall Polanski was adamant the wardrobe didn't stand for
anything -- as opposed to, say, a grand piano which would have made
it an allegory of the alienation of the artist. In that instance some
allegory remains, but there's also a level, as in Warhol, which is
simply the literal documentation of an action -- in that sense you
could see TMAAW as being "about" the sadism of the filmmaking
process, with the director offscreen making the actors do all the
work!

I've barely looked at Bloom and like Ashbery only mildly, but I used
to have a theory that TV shows like David Letterman's were pop
culture equivalents to his poems -- preserving the form while
underlining the absence of content, in part by repeating the same
devices over and over. Most of the examples so far are comic or
satiric and could be taken as comments on the futility of looking for
meaning; but in a paradoxical sense that's "content" too. In the end
you get to the Zen idea that meaning and its absence are the same
thing.

I'm sure there are lots of instances from the theatre: definitely
Pinter's plays, though not his screenplays so much. I think Van
Sant's work at least from PSYCHO on tries to erase the usual kinds of
meaningfulness, but I wouldn't call him a satirist -- he's looking
for something else, which eludes me a bit.

JTW
24339  
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 0:51am
Subject: Re: Meaninglessness (Was: Life and movies)  hotlove666


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jaketwilson" wrote:
>
That also recaps TWO MEN AND A WARDROBE,
> where as I recall Polanski was adamant the wardrobe didn't stand for
> anything -- as opposed to, say, a grand piano which would have made
> it an allegory of the alienation of the artist.

Polanski comes out of the era when Theatre of the Absurd was on the boards
and in the air. One could argue that defeating meaning is what he's always
been about. I have to resee Pirates with that in mind - it's the only one I've
never gotten. Maybe there really is nothing to get!
24340  
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 1:16am
Subject: Re: Meaninglessness (Was: Life and movies)  cellar47


 
--- jaketwilson wrote:

>
> I love it. A number of Polanski films are
> practically "meaningless",
> notably PIRATES, where my friend and I eventually
> agreed the
> ungainliness was part of the point -- all those
> jokes about lugging
> round a big useless object (the throne) reflecting
> the white-elephant
> nature of the production.

I reccomend "Bitter Moon" in this regard. "What?"
however is unspeakably brilliant.


> I've barely looked at Bloom and like Ashbery only
> mildly,

Try to score a copy of "A Nest of Ninnies," the novel
Ashbery co-authored with James Schuyler. It's Jane
Bowles on acid.



__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Easier than ever with enhanced search. Learn more.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250
24341  
From: "jaketwilson"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 1:40am
Subject: Re: Meaninglessness (OT)  jaketwilson


 
> Try to score a copy of "A Nest of Ninnies," the novel
> Ashbery co-authored with James Schuyler. It's Jane
> Bowles on acid.

Never read it but my university library did have a copy of ALFRED AND
GUINIVERE which is just wonderful. I like Schuyler a lot better than
Ashbery, Frank O'Hara too.

A footnote, unrelated to anything: my father introduced me to Frank
O'Hara's poetry which he had loved for many years, but without ever
realising that O'Hara was gay.

JTW
24342  
From: "Zach Campbell"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 1:51am
Subject: Cassavetes' Opening Night  rashomon82


 
Peter, Charles, and David ... I just checked out OPENING NIGHT this
afternoon (again: box set DVD, those transfers are sparkling). I
had never seen the film before, only clips from it. You are
absolutely right about this one and its very obvious formal
engagement and beauty.

I am absolutely exhausted at this point in the evening, a long day
(and week) with little sleep and a lot of writing on my part. I
feel like I'm going to collapse in my chair soon. But I should try
to formulate some thoughts on OPENING NIGHT, it's not a film that
deserves to be met with silence.

Peter, Rivette is also a useful point of comparison, particularly
this film which deals so much with performance on the literal level
as well as more submerged one. Myrtle and Maurice opening night ad
libbing is a high point (and the most viscerally
convincing "argument" I've encountered that suggests that comedy is
ultimately more profound than tragedy). "I am not me." The bizarre
sensation that accompanies a realization like that is right at the
heart of what I think is so amazing in Cassavetes.

When I made the comment that Cassavetes is "no Blake Edwards," I was
being semi-facetious, because I do think Cassavetes does have an
eye. FACES is quite interestingly lit (I'll have to check the DVD
again and see that lighting documentary). OPENING NIGHT's rich
colors came as a little bit of a surprise to me, partly because (as
I said) I hadn't revisited Cassavetes in a while and my memory of
the experience and feel of his films was a little moldy. The color
red is important, yeah--I'll have to watch the film again to see how
rigorously it adheres to this formula, but I liked how the color was
gradually associated more and more with Rowlands/Myrtle, so that by
the final scene she's wearing it (she has succeeded in "controlling"
it). In fact the red carpet of the stage (which I believe has
played prominently in all previous scenes of the stage) is rendered
largely invisible in this scene as the camera--closer to the stage
itself this time--does not film the carpet (much?) but focuses on
Rowlands and Cassavetes from the knees up, mostly. The "parallel"
emotion you mention, Peter, is eventually transferred in some way to
the characters. Not sure yet what it "means."

And of course, nobody--including Myrtle--ever "controls" much of
anything, really. Which is why the film's "success in failure" is
such a dazzling choice. A fascinating work. I'd love to hear more
of everyone's thoughts on it.

--Zach
24344  
From: "jpcoursodon"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 3:28am
Subject: Re: Meaninglessness (Was: Life and movies)  jpcoursodon


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jaketwilson"
wrote:
>
>>
> > Or What? (aka Che?) - a neglected masterpiece by Polanski.
>
> I love it. A number of Polanski films are
practically "meaningless",
> notably PIRATES, where my friend and I eventually agreed the
> ungainliness was part of the point -- all those jokes about
lugging
> round a big useless object (the throne) reflecting the white-
elephant
> nature of the production. That also recaps TWO MEN AND A WARDROBE,
> where as I recall Polanski was adamant the wardrobe didn't stand
for
> anything


The wardrobe of course stands for something: it stands for not
standing for anything. (see also Bunuel).

For a perhaps different kind of Polanski meaninglessness, check
out the self-destructing artifact called "Bitter Moon".
JPC
24345  
From: "samfilms2003"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 4:08am
Subject: Re: Plasticity (Was: Off with their heads!)  samfilms2003


 
Hmmm...

I'm on lists with, a lot of, & friends with, a few more-or-less commercial
DP's and I've noticed that, since the emergence of various forms of
video/HD etc as material competition to film in what was exclusively
film's area, that the discussion of very formal properties of film -
grain, the motion rendering of specifically 24 frames per second of
images (itself a convention of course, not inherent - but in *practice*..),
even the shutter interupts of film presentation - that DP's are quite often
talking these days in a fashion I would associate with how "film as film"
was discussed by AG/Exp filmmakers say 30 years ago.

How this relates - or doesn't - to "plasticity" in current popular cinema
I'm not so sure, but thought I'd throw this out there....

-Sam



--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Zach Campbell" wrote:
24346  
From: "samfilms2003"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 4:13am
Subject: Re: Plasticity (Was: Off with their heads!)  samfilms2003


 
> > When cinema was just
> > about 'all there was,' filmmakers could deal with the medium because
> > it was something generally uncomplicated by translation, unless one
> > meant a translation from one art (theater, literature) to cinema.

But it WAS complicated by those translations don't you think ?
Better, worse, both, but complicated.....

-Sam
24347  
From: "Yoel Meranda"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 4:54am
Subject: Re: Plasticity (Was: Off with their heads!)  ymeranda


 
Zach wrote: "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."

We agree. Then my question is:
Can you imagine a good painting without its plasticity? Can you
imagine a good sculpture without form? Can you imagine songs that
have no musicality? Examples?
and Why would you in cinema? All of these arts are representative
too. What is different about cinema that it can just be a
representative art without plasticity?

Yoel
24348  
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 4:55am
Subject: Re: Re: Arnaud Desplechin in Brooklyn  sallitt1


 
> The key missing scene (in ESTHER KAHN) is a dream where she sees
> everyone as fake people w. balloons for heads

Here are some other cuts from the long version - I posted this somewhere
when both versions were fresh in my mind.

-------

Other than the balloon men, the biggest cut that I can think of was
Philip's monologue in the tavern about his experience in jail and his
mental breakdown.

The cuts I really regret are the ones that greatly shorten the very
moving scene of Esther and her father talking by the banks of the river,
just before she moves out.

...

Oh, that reminds me. Another cool scene that was cut is the one in
which Esther negotiates with her parents and convinces them to let her
go on the stage, working out a payment plan with them.

---------

- Dan
24349  
From: "jaketwilson"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 6:00am
Subject: Re: Plasticity (Was: Off with their heads!)  jaketwilson


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Yoel Meranda"
wrote:
>
> Zach wrote: "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."
>
> We agree. Then my question is:
> Can you imagine a good painting without its plasticity? Can you
> imagine a good sculpture without form? Can you imagine songs that
> have no musicality? Examples?

Warhol? The Sex Pistols? Etc.

If anyone has more specific examples of how commercial DPs talk
nowadays, I'd be curious, because it seems to me that "plasticity" is
often still present in action films, even of the Michael Bay kind.
Horror and thrillers too -– all genres where you can't just point the
camera at some actors and expect it to work. Of course sound counts
for a lot here too. I agree with Zach that whatever the problems with
current Hollywood cinema, it doesn't boil down to "pictures of people
walking round and talking". People who admire Scorsese, Coppola, De
Palma, Friedkin, Altman, Lynch, John Carpenter, Ridley Scott or
either of the Paul Andersons aren't all caught up in acting and
dialogue!

JTW
24350  
From: "Gabe Klinger"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 6:15am
Subject: Esther cuts (Re: Arnaud Desplechin in Brooklyn)  gcklinger


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> > The key missing scene (in ESTHER KAHN) is a dream where she sees
> > everyone as fake people w. balloons for heads
>
> Here are some other cuts from the long version - I posted this somewhere
> when both versions were fresh in my mind.

Desplechin, like Hou Hsiao-hsien, is a notorioius tinkerer. I know how cinephiles like to
fuss over the variousu runtimes of films, from when they are presented at festivals to
when they are released comercially. Most cuts don't make a difference. I doubt 2046 looks
much different from the Cannes version and to anyone other than Wong Kar-Wai. Jim
Jarmusch also trims his films substiantially without removing plot or small details. But with
Desplechin every cut does make a difference. And every one of his films has appeared in
some abridged form from LA SENTINELLE (which was cut for TV) on.

His Edward Bond movie, LÉO..., was a small release (only one screen in PAris) compared to
KINGS AND QUEEN. It now exists on DVD in a double-disc set with the "Unplugged"
version -- really a different movie altogether. This is the exception where
Desplechin had his cake...

Gabe
24351  
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 6:20am
Subject: Re: Cassavetes' Opening Night  cellar47


 
--- Zach Campbell wrote:
A fascinating work. I'd
> love to hear more
> of everyone's thoughts on it.
>


Tw things to keep in mind

1) This is Joan Blondell's last film. Therefore in
historical terms it is EPIC.

2) The film is among other things a 21-gun salute to alcoholism.

__________________________________________________
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24352  
From: "Saul"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 6:29am
Subject: Re: THE SHINING (Was: Put Another Ax Murder on the Barbie)  asitdid
Online Now Send IM

 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein wrote:

> Still, I can see why Kubrick cut that scene -- but not
> why he cut Anne Jackson's scene, whoch is crucial, IMO.

David, think of it not in terms of what is lost, but in terms of what
is gained. As I mentioned to Bill in an email, I think the deletion of
the doctor sequence creates one of the film's most unsettling scene
transitions. Danny is in the bathroom, talking to Tony – now, without
warning or explanation, Kubrick cuts in Danny's portents of doom – and
shows us for the first time that blood-letting elevator – we see
Danny's screaming face, blood in the corridor, and then cut directly
to a title card and then overhead shots of thick mountainous woods and
that ominous synthesized score once again. What the doctor scene does
is give is an `explanation' of sorts for what happened to Danny and
turns his encounter into something rather prosaic, (I know it also
gives back history about Jack, but the deletion of this, once more,
adds rather than detracts.) Though Kubrick presents everything in this
film as ordinary, and though that adds to its unsettling nature, he
resists explanation at all cost. A lesser director would have provided
for the audience one reason or way in which Jack might have gotten out
of the pantry at the end of the film – Kubrick gives us ghosts who,
ethereal as they are, manage to unbolt the door – and never once lets
us understand this. So now, not having `understood' Danny's visions
the first time they appear, (or having understood Tony for that matter
whom is also explained `away' as it where), not even in a medical
sense, each successive vision becomes another puzzle piece that can
unlock what is happening. The deletion of the doctor also makes the
ordinariness of the following car-ride to the Overlook a scene in
which we contemplate, not the rather banal dialogue, but the
strangeness of the previous scene. Many of the cuts in the Australian
version delete scenes which give the audience a chance to gather
themselves together and take stock of what's happening, deletes scene
which acts as releases of built up tension. And back to the rest of
the doctor scene, Jack's typical back-story, delivered via Wendy to
the doctor, allows us to understand Jack from a psychological
perspective. Without it, Kubrick forces us to paint a picture without
a frame.

-- Saul.
24353  
From: "Yoel Meranda"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 6:59am
Subject: Re: Plasticity (Was: Off with their heads!)  ymeranda


 
> Warhol? The Sex Pistols? Etc.

> JTW

I don't think think Sex Pistols are that great but I like them. Punk
can be very formal, early Joy Division is the best example of it
("Warsaw"). Sex Pistols can't be imagined without the expressiveness
of their music. Just listen to the instrumental parts of "Anarchy in
the UK", just to pick one song I know well... I think the whole song
has that power in the music, even if you don't listen to the words.

I already gave my answer on Warhol on post 21602:
"Andy Warhol's art is as formalist as it gets. I thought people used
the word realism for his films but I had never met someone who called
his paintings "neutral" or anything like that.
Silk-screening totally formalizes the reality. What you see has
nothing to do with Marlyn Monroe's face and I think that is one of
the most amazing things about Warhol's art (maybe even the point of
it?).

From his films, I have only seen "Blow Job" and I am in love with the
film. What makes it great is not that it is "neutral", it actually is
the exact opposite. It is extremely sensual, the film asks you to
watch the movement of the lights on the screen and it asks you to
feel the lack of depth, etc."

http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/a_film_by/message/21602

Yoel
24354  
From: Fred Camper
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 7:08am
Subject: Re: Re: Plasticity (Was: Off with their heads!)  fredcamper


 
I'm not sure there was more "plasticity" in mediocre Hollywood films of
the 30s and 40s than today. But one thing that changed in recent decades
is the necessity (for those filmmakers who care) to compose both for the
tube (with TV light and 1.33:1 aspect ratio) and the 1.85:1 cinema
screen. This can't be good for compositional precision. And to light an
image for both TV and film must be hard too.

What does seem the case is that the films Hollywood filmmakers of the
40s and 50s most in this group would count as great used "plasticity"
more than current filmmakers. By this I mean that the cinematic space
they established -- the kinds of compositions and light and depth as
they developed across time -- did profound expressive work. Simply
saying that there is attention to composition in Scorsese is not the
same thing as arguing that his images make an aesthetically powerful world.

Zach's case, as I understand it, is that films can succeed in other
ways. Here I have to turn to my dogmatic openmindnedness and say that at
least in theory I agree. It's just that I haven't found too many
examples. On the other hand, I don't see too many recent films.

And this brings me to my response in another thread, to follow.

Fred Camper
24355  
From: Fred Camper
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 7:19am
Subject: Re: Re: Sarris, Roud & Experimental Film (was: The NEW American Cinema)  fredcamper


 
Patrick Ciccone wrote:

> This isn't quite a direct response, but are artists allowed great
> eccentricities but not critics or viewers?

Everyone is allowed anything they want in terms of taste. I'm also
allowed to disagree with other people's tastes, to say that anyone who
prefers Bergman to Bresson doesn't understand cinema (or at least,
cinema according to Fred), et cetera. You pick your battles. I don't
find it productive to disagree with Peter Kubelka's opinion of Preminger
(members of this list who were at his Chicago events will know what I
mean), because Kubelka is a great filmmaker, one of the very very
greatest, presenting a unique view of cinema and the world. Someone who
claims to be a cinephile, but who might have more flexible tastes, or is
claiming for example to write film history books or teach cinema, I feel
I have more "standing" to disagree with.

> ....it seems no accident that the great works of
> cinema seem to fall into the post-Griffith narrative film category, or
> a smaller canon of avant-garde films, and not as much, if at all, in
> other places. ...

First of all, the canon of avant-garde film is pretty vast. It may not
be as vast as the canon of great Hollywood film, but Brakhage alone made
almost 400, most of them great. More to the point, if you divide each
mode, avant-garde and Hollywood, by the total dollars spent on each,
avant-garde film has delivered almost infinitely more aesthetic
greatness per dollar than Hollywood.

I don't understand why you leave out documentary.

On my personal great filmmaker list, the filmmakers do fall into either
narrative, avant-garde, and documentary.

But I have see wonderful home movies and instructional and industrial
films. They aren't "wonderful" in the same way as the films by
filmmakers on my list. They don't quite fit into the same aesthetic
tradition. But they are great in their ways. And not just those. I
referred to "Micro-Cultural Incidents in 10 Zoos" and the Worth and
Adair-produced Navajo films in another post. "Micro-Cultural" is not
particularly "plastic." But since it doesn't involve you in the
emotional lives of the characters, it's not nearly as popular as "Faces."

We shouldn't be limiting cinema by taxonomizing it, but rather be as
open as possible to all its possibilities. In my opinion.

Fred Camper
24356  
From: "Fernando Verissimo"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 8:08am
Subject: Re: Re: THE SHINING (Was: Put Another Ax Murder on the Barbie)  f_verissimo


 
Saul:
"David, think of it not in terms of what is lost, but in terms of what
is gained. As I mentioned to Bill in an email, I think the deletion of
the doctor sequence creates one of the film's most unsettling scene
transitions."

I agree.
Here's another case of unsettling scene transition: right after Danny sees
the two Grady twins on the corridor (the "come and play with us, Danny"
scene), the film cuts to the "Monday" title card and then to a beautiful
shot zooming out of a TV set displaying a soap opera. Danny asks his mother
if he can go into the room to pick up a toy and she says "ok, just don't
make any noise, try not to wake your father" or something like that. This is
the American version.
In the other one, there's no soap opera. The bedroom scene (where Jack tells
his son how much he loves him and how glad he is to be at Overlook) comes
right after Danny's spooky encounter with the twins.

The removal of two of those title cards ("Thursday" and "8 am") has a
similar effect, as we get even more clueless about the time frame.

The international version lacks a lot of lap dissolves and some great lines
too.
Wendy to Danny, right at the beginning: "You will see. It will be lots of
fun there."
Jack: "Loser has to keep America clean."

My opinion is that the cuts SK made reduces the overall ironic undertones,
perhaps because the irony wasn't directed at foreign audiences. I can't
figure any other reason why he would stand to the american uncut version by
the time THE SHINING was released on video in the US. He could have released
the new version if he wanted to, couldn't he?

fv
24357  
From: "jaketwilson"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 9:53am
Subject: Re: Plasticity (Was: Off with their heads!)  jaketwilson


 
> I already gave my answer on Warhol on post 21602:
> "Andy Warhol's art is as formalist as it gets. I thought people
used
> the word realism for his films but I had never met someone who
called
> his paintings "neutral" or anything like that.
> Silk-screening totally formalizes the reality. What you see has
> nothing to do with Marlyn Monroe's face and I think that is one of
> the most amazing things about Warhol's art (maybe even the point
of
> it?).
>
> From his films, I have only seen "Blow Job" and I am in love with
the
> film. What makes it great is not that it is "neutral", it actually
is
> the exact opposite. It is extremely sensual, the film asks you to
> watch the movement of the lights on the screen and it asks you to
> feel the lack of depth, etc.

I agree! I was definitely thinking of Warhol more as painter than
filmmaker. Granting I've seen practically none of his works
as "originals" I'd surmise that his silk-screening technique means
surrendering certain dimensions of expression -- which might connect
with one of the syndromes Zach pointed towards in contemporary
Hollywood filmmaking, the tendency to work with icons which can be
transferred across media, implying a literal and figurative loss of
depth. There are possibilities in this approach as well as losses,
or at least that was my argument.

JTW
24358  
From: "Matthew Clayfield"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 11:01am
Subject: Re: Plasticity (Was: Off with their heads!)  mclayf00


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Zach Campbell" wrote:
>
> The commercial cinema, in general and as a whole, has no doubt
> become inattentive to the film-specific properties of cinema which
> were at one time a given (not to say that they were ever "given" to
> be great). This is no doubt why Fred and Yoel (er, correctly if far
> too stringently IMO) are dissatisfied with contemporary Hollywood.

Gerda Johanna Cammaer's piece in the new edition of "Synoptique"
(which is dedicated entirely to experimental film -- how timely!)
seems to me to be focused on these exact issues:

http://www.synoptique.ca/core/en/articles/cammaer_canadian/
24359  
From: "thebradstevens"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 11:07am
Subject: Re: THE SHINING (Was: Put Another Ax Murder on the Barbie)  thebradstevens


 
>
> My opinion is that the cuts SK made reduces the overall ironic
undertones,
> perhaps because the irony wasn't directed at foreign audiences.

But the irony of Scatman Crothers' return to the hotel is clearer in
the American version, where his journey takes up much more screen
time - after all that effort, he gets killed as soon as he arrives!
Kubrick was parodying those cinematic 'codes' which encourage us to
believe that if a genre film shows an individual making a tremendous
effort to help out somone who is in trouble, then they will usually
succeed in their task.
24360  
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 11:32am
Subject: Re: Re: Plasticity (Was: Off with their heads!)  sallitt1


 
> What does it mean to move away from plasticity?

I wrote this in Senses of Cinema in 2003 about Bong Joon-ho's MEMORIES OF
MURDER:

In a festival where good and bad films alike tended to suppress
composition in the name of realist or minimalist strategies, Memories
hearkens back to the cinema of Murnau and Mizoguchi with its multiple
visual planes, action growing from the center of the image, and
unobtrusive use of shot duration to create both humor and drama.

-----------

Obviously it's not easy to talk about "suppressing composition," because
there's always something on screen. But one sometimes feels that the
qualities of the composition aren't engineered to be expressive in
themselves, but only as part of some "meta" approach that relies on the
associations we accumulate with some camera style. - Dan
24361  
From: "Zach Campbell"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 0:52pm
Subject: Re: Plasticity (Was: Off with their heads!)  rashomon82


 
Sam wrote:
> DP's are quite often talking these days in a fashion I would
> associate with how "film as film" was discussed by AG/Exp
> filmmakers say 30 years ago.

Well then maybe I spoke too soon about transferable images. I would
definitely imagine that on a film crew, the DP would be the one most
attentive to film/video differences these days. Still, I think that
overall commercial cinema has made films fit for the greatest
malleability between celluloid viewing and video viewing.

Sam again:
> But it WAS complicated by those translations don't you think ?
> Better, worse, both, but complicated.....

Yes. Read my post again, I said 'uncomplicated ... unless.' What I
was talking about was how the film image was uncomplicated by
translation, not the art film as a whole.

Yoel wrote:
> Then my question is: Can you imagine a good painting without its
> plasticity? Can you imagine a good sculpture without form? Can you
> imagine songs that have no musicality? Examples? and Why would you
> in cinema? All of these arts are representative too. What is
> different about cinema that it can just be a representative art
> without plasticity?

I cannot imagine any painting without paint, any sculpture without
form, or any song without musicality. A film has its own
materiality, and so does video (see Joan Jonas' VERTICAL ROLL if you
haven't already). There is always materiality, and there is never
content without form. (It can be bad form, lazy form, yes--but
always always always form.) But I think art can survive in some
cases when translated from one medium to another: film and video
operate on different principles but they remain 'moving images' to
the eye. I don't think plasticity is always the element which makes
a work of art great, or that an analysis of it has to discuss
plasticity to be great. (You've read Foucault's famous introduction
to THE ORDER OF THINGS, where he breaks down LAS MENINAS, right?)

I want to approach the cinema empirically, and if a certain section
of cinema moves in a way that emphasizes the translatable aspects of
film/video images, I will be there to follow some of it--and like
some of it, and dislike some of it. It's what's happening in the
broader art of the moving image--so it's worth considering neutrally.

Fred wrote:
> But one thing that changed in recent decades
> is the necessity (for those filmmakers who care) to compose both
> for the tube (with TV light and 1.33:1 aspect ratio) and the
> 1.85:1 cinema screen. This can't be good for compositional
> precision. And to light an image for both TV and film must be hard
> too.

But with the rise of DVD and the popularity of widescreen TV's, and
people's (it seems to me) growing comfort with letterboxed formats
on square TV screens, I think the first problem is getting better.
The second one, well, I don't know.

Fred, again:
> "Micro-Cultural" is not particularly "plastic." But since it
> doesn't involve you in the emotional lives of the characters, it's
> not nearly as popular as "Faces."

Wha? I never thought I'd see Cassavetes used and denigrated as an
audience-friendly success story ... This is like saying that
MICROCULTURAL INCIDENTS (which I will try to watch soon) doesn't
show pretty pictures so it's not nearly as popular as DOG STAR MAN.
I mean, seriously, Fred ...

--Zach
24362  
From: "Zach Campbell"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 1:09pm
Subject: Re: Cassavetes' Opening Night  rashomon82


 
David:
> 1) This is Joan Blondell's last film. Therefore in
> historical terms it is EPIC.

It's not her last film according to the IMDB--not even her second-to-
last. What gives? Is it just the last good one? The last good
role?

--Zach
24363  
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 2:12pm
Subject: Re: Re: Cassavetes' Opening Night  cellar47


 
My mistake. Thought it was her very last.

Well it was certainly her last important one.

--- Zach Campbell wrote:
>
> David:
> > 1) This is Joan Blondell's last film. Therefore in
> > historical terms it is EPIC.
>
> It's not her last film according to the IMDB--not
> even her second-to-
> last. What gives? Is it just the last good one?
> The last good
> role?
>
> --Zach
>
>
>
>



__________________________________
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24364  
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 2:16pm
Subject: Re: THE SHINING (Was: Put Another Ax Murder on the Barbie)  hotlove666


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
>
>
> >
> > My opinion is that the cuts SK made reduces the overall ironic
> undertones,
> > perhaps because the irony wasn't directed at foreign audiences.
>
> But the irony of Scatman Crothers' return to the hotel is clearer
in
> the American version, where his journey takes up much more screen
> time - after all that effort, he gets killed as soon as he arrives!

It is much less of a shaggy dog story now.

As with the cuts Saul itemized, the effect is to condense the action
and heighten the disquiet. The Australian Shining (as I like to call
it...) is a scarier movie than the American one.

In the case of the doctor, her elimination, which creates an
unnerving cut, leaves Jack's later remark to Lloyd the Bartender
about hurting Danny - "But it was three years ago!" - unprepared and
unexplained. Similarly, Danny's reassuring words to himself when the
Arbus Twins ask him to come play - "Remember what Mr. Halloran said -
they can't hurt you - they're just like pictures in a book" - are now
a murky fragment, because that part of the conversation with Halloran
has also been cut.

Both are mistakes if you think in terms of correct exposition, but as
Dan O'Bannon says, "Nobody gives a shit" about exposition - audiences
LIKE figuring things out from murky clues. So to me the Australian
Shining [sic] is an interesting experiment Kubrick attempted in order
to see if the film would do better this way in the international
market. But as Fernando says, he chose to put the long version out on
video in America, where fans of the film would have felt cheated by a
shorter version.

At least four mysteries remain:
1) All-seeing, all-knowing Master of Versions, The Brad, am I right
that Making the Shining is longer on the DVD than it was on the BBC?
2) How the fuck did that professor conclude that Barry Nelson's
manager was gay???
3) Was the ball the manager gives Danny at the end of the premier
version the one that came rolling at him down the corridor when he
saw the Arbus Twins, or the one Jack was hurling agaginst the wall in
the lobby when he couldn't write?
4) Just how DID the ghosts open the meat locker if they're like
pictures in a book? Of course we never actually see it happening - we
just hear the bolt opening over a profile shot of Jack...
24365  
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 2:24pm
Subject: Re: Plasticity (Was: Off with their heads!)  hotlove666


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Zach Campbell"
wrote:

I don't think plasticity is always the element which makes
> a work of art great, or that an analysis of it has to discuss
> plasticity to be great. (You've read Foucault's famous
introduction
> to THE ORDER OF THINGS, where he breaks down LAS MENINAS, right?)

If I understand Dan's initial remark - and I thought I did until he
explained it - no, plasticity isn't necessaarily what makes a film
great. Film, according to Bazin, is always a trace of reality, and
that (as in Las meninas) is the basis for a film esthetic that takes
into account the ontology of the medium. "Plasticity" is a plastic
term that can be stretched until it is a) meaningless and b) covers
anything, but the out-of-focus caught-on-the-fly images of some very
good documentaries foreground the film-reality relationship, not the
plasticity of the image, and that is true of certain films as well.
24366  
From: "Yoel Meranda"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 2:32pm
Subject: Re: Plasticity (Was: Off with their heads!)  ymeranda


 
Zach wrote: "I cannot imagine any painting without paint, any
sculpture without form, or any song without musicality. [...] There
is always materiality, and there is never content without form. (It
can be bad form, lazy form, yes--but always always always form.)[...]
I don't think plasticity is always the element which makes a work of
art great, or that an analysis of it has to discuss plasticity to be
great. (You've read Foucault's famous introduction to THE ORDER OF
THINGS, where he breaks down LAS MENINAS, right?)"

I guess my questions weren't clear enough. I agree with you that
there is "always, always, always" form. I was specifically asking for
examples in other arts than film.

I haven't read Foucault intro you mentioned, I will. Is "Las Meninas"
the only example in the history of art? Who are the painters who used
things other than plasticity to create great work? and who are the
poets who wrote great poems with no regard to the form?

Still waiting for more examples...
Yoel
24367  
From: Fred Camper
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 2:43pm
Subject: Re: Re: Plasticity (Was: Off with their heads!)  fredcamper


 
Zach Campbell wrote:

>
> Fred, again:
>
>>"Micro-Cultural" is not particularly "plastic." But since it
>>doesn't involve you in the emotional lives of the characters, it's
>>not nearly as popular as "Faces."
>
>
> Wha? I never thought I'd see Cassavetes used and denigrated as an
> audience-friendly success story ... This is like saying that
> MICROCULTURAL INCIDENTS (which I will try to watch soon) doesn't
> show pretty pictures so it's not nearly as popular as DOG STAR MAN.
> I mean, seriously, Fred ...

Well, seriously, remember I was replying to Patrick's claim that the
good stuff was either narrative or avant-garde. And seriously, "Faces"
has gotten hugely more attention than the Birdwhistell film, and I think
my reason is a likely one. Just because "Faces" is not at Speilberg
level popularity doesn't invalidate the comparison. A google search for
"Microcultural Incidents in 10 Zoos" (plus "ten zoos") and
"Birdwhistell" produces about ten hits. A google search for "Cassavetes"
plus "Faces" plus (recognizing that "Faces" is also a common word) "John
Marley" produces 675 hits.

Remember the tension here is between the claim that my aesthetic is
narrow because I don't sufficiently appreciate films that are more based
on acting than on "plastic" values -- which is perhaps true -- and my
claim that I love many different films whose success doesn't come
primarily from "plastic" values in the conventional sense of the term
(an aesthetic effect from imagery that meets my "Bach test") and that
also are not appreciated by all that many cinephiles. And part of the
reason many people, myself included, love Brakhage is in fact the
sensuous beauty (not "prettiness") of his imagery. If there's something
outrageous about all this that I'm missing, please explain.

Fred Camper
24368  
From: "Patrick Ciccone"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 3:31pm
Subject: Re: Sarris, Roud & Experimental Film (was: The NEW American Cinema)  pwciccone


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:

> We shouldn't be limiting cinema by taxonomizing it, but rather be as
> open as possible to all its possibilities. In my opinion.

I don't know if I was proposing a taxonomy, just malleable boundaries.
You excised the comparison to writing in my post: my point is that
cinema of any form is an impure art, and more than any other medium,
an art form of other art forms. So I think that the horizontal axis of
all cinemas (the litany of various types we've outlined) is often less
important to understanding "taxonomic" forms of cinema than the
vertical axis of other arts (theater, music, painting, novel) to
particular forms of cinema.

PWC
24369  
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 3:40pm
Subject: Re: Re: Plasticity (Was: Off with their heads!)  sallitt1


 
> If I understand Dan's initial remark - and I thought I did until he
> explained it - no, plasticity isn't necessaarily what makes a film
> great. Film, according to Bazin, is always a trace of reality, and
> that (as in Las meninas) is the basis for a film esthetic that takes
> into account the ontology of the medium. "Plasticity" is a plastic
> term that can be stretched until it is a) meaningless and b) covers
> anything, but the out-of-focus caught-on-the-fly images of some very
> good documentaries foreground the film-reality relationship, not the
> plasticity of the image, and that is true of certain films as well.

Sounds good to me - but the original remark was Zach's. I was just
butting in. - Dan
24370  
From: "samfilms2003"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 3:42pm
Subject: Re: Plasticity (Was: Off with their heads!)  samfilms2003


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Zach Campbell" wrote:

>
> Well then maybe I spoke too soon about transferable images. I would
> definitely imagine that on a film crew, the DP would be the one most
> attentive to film/video differences these days. Still, I think that
> overall commercial cinema has made films fit for the greatest
> malleability between celluloid viewing and video viewing.

In the sense that there is no "Naked Spurs" today generically as
mainstream, probably yes.


> Sam again:
> > But it WAS complicated by those translations don't you think ?
> > Better, worse, both, but complicated.....
>
> Yes. Read my post again, I said 'uncomplicated ... unless.' What I
> was talking about was how the film image was uncomplicated by
> translation, not the art film as a whole.

I'm not so sure. The legacy of theater, spoken dialog from "novelistic"
sources has profound effect on blocking, placement of the talking
bodies in space. If you want to cite the 'Mizoguchis' and 'Welleses'
it's one thing --- but on average ?


>
> Fred wrote:
>> And to light an image for both TV and film must be hard
> > too.

Yes. But it's a moving target. In general I would say that even
HWood DP's since Gordon Willis, the best ones have, over time,
gone pretty far in terms of NOT bending too much for TV.
Lighting ratios, color esp are often far higher (ie more range)
than in the 50's 60's.... (remember they wanted to fire Willis from
Godfather I because the shots were allegedly "too dark for the
drive-ins" ;-)

Of course for every comml film that really works with a Caravaggio-
like tonal range, there are 5 or 6 that are "Color By Jellybean"

A MUCH deeper question to me is, why are the values of Mannerism
held in such high esteem in late 20th / early 21st Century vis art ?
A "whole 'nother story", no ?

-Sam
24371  
From: Fred Camper
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 3:54pm
Subject: Re: Re: Sarris, Roud & Experimental Film (was: The NEW American Cinema)  fredcamper


 
Patrick Ciccone wrote:

> I don't know if I was proposing a taxonomy, just malleable boundaries.
> You excised the comparison to writing in my post: my point is that
> cinema of any form is an impure art, and more than any other medium,
> an art form of other art forms. ...

Sorry, I just don't agree. Narrative films hardly seem more impure than,
say, opera. Your statement doesn't apply at all to much of avant-garde
film -- to Peter Kubelka's first five films, for example. I can't
imagine a film less "impure" than "Schwechater" or "Arnulf Rainer."

In making your statement about "cinema," are you not normalizing the
word "cinema" to refer to sync sound narrative films? What other forms
of cinema are so much more impure than poetry? Arts often draw on each
other, and even poetry can be "impure" -- what about the long prose
quotations in William Carlos Williams's "Paterson," for example. The
last section of Louis Zukofsky's "A" is written like a musical score,
with four "voices" going on at once. And much earlier poetry was meant
to be sung.

About writing, of course many forms of writing besides "novels and
poetry" can be great. You left out the obvious ones, short stories and
plays. But there are also, for example, letters. And aphorisms. And
diaries. If there was a "writing as art" board and someone posted, "Good
writing tells stories mostly, and then there are some avant-garde
examples too, but fewer," you can be sure that I'd protest.

Fred Camper
24372  
From: "Zach Campbell"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 3:56pm
Subject: Re: Plasticity (Was: Off with their heads!)  rashomon82


 
Yoel:
> I guess my questions weren't clear enough. I agree with you that
> there is "always, always, always" form. I was specifically asking for
> examples in other arts than film.
>
> I haven't read Foucault intro you mentioned, I will. Is "Las Meninas"
> the only example in the history of art? Who are the painters who used
> things other than plasticity to create great work? and who are the
> poets who wrote great poems with no regard to the form?

Whoa! My proposition is only that plasticity is not synonymous with form, and that form
encompasses a broader range of elements than plastic/material components of an art
form. Form is not only the organization of concrete material. The reason I'm not quite
able to answer your query about examples is that we're not agreeing on the premises of
the debate. I don't think that there are any examples of any art that we can totally
extrapolate from materiality--only that not everything is ultimately rooted in or
attributable to that materiality. This includes that disparaged concept, "narrative," which
is itself ALWAYS formal, too (and yet apparently incapable of greatness itself).

I would say that the greatness in Vermeer and Tintoretto and Monet (masters all of
plasticity) cannot be fully explained by what they do in plastic terms. Vermeer, especially,
whose work is of course vital to see "in the paint," still translates incredibly well to decent
slide and plate reproductions (in my opinion). Something is lost, yes--but I'm also
concerned with answering the question of what remains, because something *does*
remain. This is vague, I know, but I actually have to hurry and wanted to answer this now
to avoid further confusion on the topic. (And anyone, as Dan mentioned to Fred,
invocations of 'the editing, the composition, the lighting, and the acting style' are just as
vague.)

As for poetry, well, what do you regard as its plasticity? The sound? The images on the
page?

--Zach
24373  
From: "thebradstevens"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 4:24pm
Subject: Re: THE SHINING (Was: Put Another Ax Murder on the Barbie)  thebradstevens


 
> 1) All-seeing, all-knowing Master of Versions, The Brad, am I right
> that Making the Shining is longer on the DVD than it was on the BBC?

Not at all. But the title is different. On the BBC broadcast, it was
simply MAKING THE SHINING, whereas on the DVD it is THE MAKING OF
STANLEY KUBRICK'S THE SHINING (also, the title appears at a different
point). The end credits are also different.

> 2) How the fuck did that professor conclude that Barry Nelson's
> manager was gay???

Perhaps because both Barry Nelson and the guy he asks to join him
during the initial interview are such a contrast to the brazen hetero-
masculinity of Jack Nicholson.

> 3) Was the ball the manager gives Danny at the end of the premier
> version the one that came rolling at him down the corridor when he
> saw the Arbus Twins

I haven't seen this scene, but I believe this was the idea.

> 4) Just how DID the ghosts open the meat locker if they're like
> pictures in a book?

I guess Halloran got it wrong about that. Perhaps that's part of the
joke - that Halloran plays the all-knowing hero, but is about as
useless as tits on a bull (or whatever).
24374  
From: "thebradstevens"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 4:34pm
Subject: BIGGER THAN LIFE and THE SHINING  thebradstevens


 
I've always believed that THE SHINING is a remake of Nicholas Ray's
BIGGER THAN LIFE, with the miracle drug replaced by a haunted hotel.
So when I watched MAKING THE SHINING, I was delighted to see that one
of the people who visited the set was James Mason!
24375  
From: BklynMagus
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 4:52pm
Subject: Re: THE SHINING (Was: Put Another Ax Murder on the Barbie)  cinebklyn


 
hl666 writes:

4) Just how DID the ghosts open the meat locker
if they're like pictures in a book? Of course we never
actually see it happening - we just hear the bolt
opening over a profile shot of Jack...

My reading has always been that until that moment
Kubrick made his kind of horro movie -- a more
cerebral one about the breakdown of and malleability
of minds.

The pivot point is when Jack is "let out" of the meat
locker -- then the movie becomes a conventional
horror movie complete with illogic.

This reading also explains O'Halloran's death since
he doesn't die in the novel. If he can "shine," he
should know that Jack is there. But if the film has
now embraced illogic, then that doesn't matter.

The larger issue of why a Black man can bring the
rescue vehicle, but is killed despite his "abilities"
remains fuzzy.

Brian
24376  
From: "Patrick Ciccone"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 5:05pm
Subject: Re: Sarris, Roud & Experimental Film (was: The NEW American Cinema)  pwciccone


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> Patrick Ciccone wrote:
>
> > I don't know if I was proposing a taxonomy, just malleable boundaries.
> > You excised the comparison to writing in my post: my point is that
> > cinema of any form is an impure art, and more than any other medium,
> > an art form of other art forms. ...
>
> Sorry, I just don't agree. Narrative films hardly seem more impure
than,
> say, opera.
I was saying that all cinema is impure, not narrative. I'm not trying
to defend narrative film as better or anything. But all of forms of
cinema, to me, have a greater possibility of containing other art
forms than most art forms. This is partially by nature of the physical
possibility of recording sound and picture. A Bach piece, as a score
or performed, cannot "contain" a movie or painting. Metaphorical
perhaps, but not literally.

Take Brakhage's handpainted films--a still painting could not contain
them, but cinema can contain a series of paintings in time.

Your statement doesn't apply at all to much of avant-garde
> film -- to Peter Kubelka's first five films, for example. I can't
> imagine a film less "impure" than "Schwechater" or "Arnulf Rainer."
>
> In making your statement about "cinema," are you not normalizing the
> word "cinema" to refer to sync sound narrative films?

How so? I'm not arguing that at all--I think the primacy of narrative
cinema in many accounts (to which I'm not really party to, despite
arguingon its behalf) is that it consumed other major narrative art
forms (the novel, drama, narrative poetry.) This vertical axis, for
the most part, is true across most narrative films, however varied
they are. The reason I'm arguing on narrative cinema's behalf is that
it inherited from these other forms the so-called manipulative
elements that I think you view as essentially evil unless contained in
a great visual form--but they are in fact integral to all these
narrative forms, film or not.

I think much avant-garde cinema IS more pure, and that on a per maker
and per film basis, there are often less, rather than more, vertical
connections with other arts. This, of course, does not make it inferior.

> "Good writing tells stories mostly"
Is anyone arguing this? I'm not. I know this is a hypothetical
question, but I feel like narrative cinema, when not absolutely
formally great, is sometimes a straw man your arguments against
it--E.T. doing this, actors fooling people, etc. I guess I'm asking
you why you think (as you appear to argue) that sub-great narrative
cinema is always worthless or essentially evil.

PWC
24377  
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 5:06pm
Subject: Re: Re: THE SHINING (Was: Put Another Ax Murder on the Barbie)  cellar47


 
--- BklynMagus wrote:

>
> The larger issue of why a Black man can bring the
> rescue vehicle, but is killed despite his
> "abilities"
> remains fuzzy.
>

it's not fuzzy at all. A racist culure wracked with
guilt over how much it enjoys its own racism is
constantly confecting iconic figures to maintain
denial. This is what Sidney Poitier was used for in
the past. Since then he's been ugraded to Morgan
Freeman and Denzel Washington. (Only Mankiewicz gave
Poitier any complexity in "Now Way Out" -- which is
also one of the few honest films about racism.)

Sactman Crothers in "The Shining" is derived from the
hero of "Night of the Living Dead." And his
forestalled "rescue" operation is explicitly evoked at
the climax of "Elephant" -- a film that's largely a
meditation on the Kubrickian tracking shot.

__________________________________________________
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24378  
From: "samfilms2003"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 5:12pm
Subject: Re: Plasticity (Was: Off with their heads!)  samfilms2003


 
I wrote:
> A MUCH deeper question to me is, why are the values of Mannerism
> held in such high esteem in late 20th / early 21st Century vis art ?
> A "whole 'nother story", no ?

I meant *a* ...visual art, da movies

-Sam
24379  
From: "Richard Modiano"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 5:16pm
Subject: Re: THE SHINING (Was: Put Another Ax Murder on the Barbie)  tharpa2002


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, BklynMagus wrote:

"The larger issue of why a Black man can bring the rescue vehicle,
but is killed despite his "abilities" remains fuzzy."


Maybe this is Kubrick's subversion of Stephen King's use of a "Magic
Negro" to redeem the white characters (also used in other novels and
stories too, most notoriously in "The Green Mile.")

By the way, in an interview in the old "Twilight Zone" magazine King
was asked how closely he worked with Kubrick on THE SHINNING and he
answered that he didn't work with him at all, and only heard from him
once when Kubrick phoned in the middle of the night to ask if King
believed in an afterlife.

Richard
24380  
From: Fred Camper
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 5:25pm
Subject: Re: Re: Sarris, Roud & Experimental Film (was: The NEW American Cinema)  fredcamper


 
I'm engaging in these issues because they are things I really care
about, but I'm really falling too far behind in work. I'm going to try
some self-discipline and stop reading our group for a day or two, which
I'll fail eventually, I suppose. Meanwhile:

Patrick Ciccone wrote:

> I was saying that all cinema is impure, not narrative.

I still don't agree, unless all art is "impure." My Kubelka examples are
as "pure" as any abstract painting, or more so.

> A Bach piece, as a score
> or performed, cannot "contain" a movie or painting.

Maybe not, but it can contain poetry. And it does, in the approximately
300 cantatas he wrote (only a bit over 200 of which survive). There is
no greater music in the world. And the sacred cantatas, which are most
of them, are even more impure in their additional original function as
part of church services. Some even have breaks mid-way through where the
minister gave the sermon. And the music consciously works to illustrate
the words, which typically connected with the expected theme of the
sermon, and in ways that might seem very obvious and dumb if the music
weren't so great.

So, I still don't agree that "all film" is more "impure."

> Take Brakhage's handpainted films--a still painting could not contain
> them, but cinema can contain a series of paintings in time.

But I don't think these films have very much to do with painting. The
"paintings" in them are not complete in themselves, not "paintings"
taken from the art of painting, as in, for example, a ridiculously
"impure" art documentary that consists mostly of zooms in on paintings
with a narrator commenting on them in an uninspired fashion. Brakhage's
hand painted films have as much, or more, to do with music. They are
*not* impure because they include paintings in the sense that a
Hollywood musical is impure because it contains the same songs and
dances as the stage show that it was based on. And I'm not indicating
here a preference against musicals -- I don't think "impure" art is
better or worse than art in its purer forms. I'm just arguing against
the idea that cinema is more impure, which I think mainly works with
commercial narrative films.

> The reason I'm arguing on narrative cinema's behalf is that
> it inherited from these other forms the so-called manipulative
> elements that I think you view as essentially evil unless contained in
> a great visual form--but they are in fact integral to all these
> narrative forms, film or not.

"Evil" might be too strong, but I think you have me right there. But
it's not the "impurity" that bothers me.

>I guess I'm asking
> you why you think (as you appear to argue) that sub-great narrative
> cinema is always worthless or essentially evil.

I wouldn't quite put it that way, in that there can be pleasures and
values in "sub-great narrative" cinema as well as things that bother me.
But it will perhaps require a little essay to answer, so this part I
have to put off for a while. The crux of it to me revolves around what
bothers me about the audience manipulation aspects -- about "Psycho" in
a bad version. I regret not having seen van Sant's "copy," so I can't
use that (nor can I know that it's "bad"), but perhaps I will be able to
answer using "Psycho."

Fred Camper
24381  
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 5:31pm
Subject: Re: THE SHINING (Was: Put Another Ax Murder on the Barbie)  hotlove666


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:

> > 4) Just how DID the ghosts open the meat locker if they're like
> > pictures in a book?
>
> I guess Halloran got it wrong about that. Perhaps that's part of
the
> joke - that Halloran plays the all-knowing hero, but is about as
> useless as tits on a bull (or whatever).

Except, as I'm sure you know, that if he hadn't delivered the Snow
Cat, Wendy and Danny would still be at the Overlook. Also, doesn't he
distract Jack long enough for Wendy to get out of the bathroom? His
function is very much replicated by the black student in Elephant,
who doesn't stop the bad guys, but gets a group of people out of that
classroom thru the window. He also takes a long time getting where
he's going, only to be nailed the instant he confronts the shooters.
24382  
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 5:32pm
Subject: Re: BIGGER THAN LIFE and THE SHINING  hotlove666


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
>
> I've always believed that THE SHINING is a remake of Nicholas Ray's
> BIGGER THAN LIFE, with the miracle drug replaced by a haunted
hotel.
> So when I watched MAKING THE SHINING, I was delighted to see that
one
> of the people who visited the set was James Mason!

That's funny. Oudart described the film as a resonance chamber where
many films are recalled. Night of the Hunter too.
24383  
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 5:36pm
Subject: Re: THE SHINING (Was: Put Another Ax Murder on the Barbie)  hotlove666


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> > Scatman Crothers in "The Shining" is derived from the
> hero of "Night of the Living Dead."

That's another film in the echo chamber. What's amazing is how many
films get echoed by such a simple narrative.
24384  
From: "Yoel Meranda"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 5:38pm
Subject: Re: Plasticity (Was: Off with their heads!)  ymeranda


 
"I would say that the greatness in Vermeer and Tintoretto and Monet
(masters all of plasticity) cannot be fully explained by what they do
in plastic terms. Vermeer, especially, whose work is of course vital
to see "in the paint," still translates incredibly well to decent
slide and plate reproductions (in my opinion). Something is lost, yes-
-but I'm also concerned with answering the question of what remains,
because something *does* remain."

I don't know whether you'll agree, Zach, but a few months ago I wrote
to a friend something like "In good art, form and content are like
the two sides of the same coin". (when I say form I mean abstract
form) If you take one of them out, there is no coin left! Don't know
how exactly form and content combine but I know that when those two
combine I feel like my consciousness is leaping forward.

If there was a way of replacing the girl in a Vermeer with a
lumberjack... can't continue the idea because it doesn't make sense.
The fact that what is being represented is a girl and that that girl
has a saintliness is essential. Wbat is essential about any of his
paintings is that the whole thing is essential: What you recognize as
a girl and the way the abstract form elevates that image to something
that resonates with our consciousness.

I haven't seen the film about Vermeer called "Girl with a Pearl
Earring" but I watched the trailer. In the trailer, you see the same
scene in the famous painting with the same lighting and a similar
girl and similar colors, etc. The film itself can be good but that
image, in itself, has no value of art in it whatsoever. Why? because
it's the content stripped from its form. There is no coin left!

The fact that you can accept art without abstract form means you
don't care about my coin and then I don't know what you're looking at
when watching Welles or Minelli. Concentrating on abstract form does
not mean leaving the content aside, because our brain registers the
content much more easily than its abstractness since that is the way
brain works in daily life. I'm not saying I'll get everything you see
but I'm sure you'll get none of what I see because aesthetic
experience requires active participation from you so that you can
teach yourself to see what is in front of you. The good news is: the
more you do it, the more it becomes natural.

The question when a medium is transfered to another should be: How
much of its abstract form are we losing? And because cinema can be
defined differently for each director, since they have different
kinds of abstractnesses, the answer depends on the director. In my
opinion, from the films I have seen, some of Hawks and Cukor can be
translated; none of Ford can. I saw Ford's amazing "She Wore a Yellow
Ribbon" on 35mm the other day and I'm curious to see whether it
really translates to video in my terms.

Yoel
24385  
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 5:43pm
Subject: The Immortal Story on DVD?  hotlove666


 
Does the film exist in this format? Where can it be gotten from, if
not in DVD, in videocassette?
24386  
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 6:00pm
Subject: Re: Re: Plasticity (Was: Off with their heads!)  cellar47


 
--- Yoel Meranda wrote:

>
> If there was a way of replacing the girl in a
> Vermeer with a
> lumberjack... can't continue the idea because it
> doesn't make sense.
> The fact that what is being represented is a girl
> and that that girl
> has a saintliness is essential. Wbat is essential
> about any of his
> paintings is that the whole thing is essential: What
> you recognize as
> a girl and the way the abstract form elevates that
> image to something
> that resonates with our consciousness.
>

Interesting, in that last night I saw Greg Araki's
"Mysterious Skin." In one scene the hustler hero (the
prodigiously talented and unspeakably beautiful Joseph
Gordon Levitt) goes to the apartment of a john (Billy
Drago) who has a huge reproducion of the Vermeer over
his bed -- mainly a huge reproduction of the face. He
refers to it as a Vermeer "or something like it," in
that's a detail. What it's doing over his bed and in
the film isn't easily answered.

Teriffic film,BTW.



__________________________________
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24387  
From: Craig Keller
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 6:35pm
Subject: Re: Re: THE SHINING  evillights


 
On Thursday, March 17, 2005, at 12:32 PM, hotlove666 wrote:
>
> That's funny. Oudart described the film as a resonance chamber where
> many films are recalled. Night of the Hunter too.

That's very interesting. I've always understood one of the main
"theses" of 'The Shining' to be the televisual image's infection of
American culture. The hotel's ghosts seem able to hone in on and tap
the fear of its residents; in the case of Duvall, what the Overlook
ends up regurgitating from the depths of her stunted
(child-psychological) psyche, especially toward the end, are moments
and scenes from the television ether -- hence "Heeeeere's Johnny!"
(side-note, there's no way Kubrick would have included this line as
anything other than a fully -conscious- cliché), hence the Disney
'Haunted Mansion' skeleton spook-room, and, perhaps most disturbing of
all, the evil-children's-toy teddy-bear man -- with the fellatio
striking me as a manifestation of a rather bruised (submissive,
fractured) libido.

Duvall's relationship toward the television as "totem" (which is to
say, "monolith") is underscored in what is (for me) one of the most
powerful moments in cinema -- the close-up on the television in the
hotel's living room area, camera pulling back, television revealed as
"silent" monolith; Mrs. Torrance sits watching, smoking, Danny plays
with his toy ("we call him 'Doc' "), camera continues backward and
upward, -- Spiegel im Spiegel, the room itself becomes a television
(this is probably most apparent when the film is viewed as intended in
1.33), the characters effectively trapped between infinite reflections,
reverberations.

BTW -- doesn't the cartoon that Danny's watching at the beginning
replay in the Harfords' apartment in 'Eyes Wide Shut'? (Whether it's
identical or not, the connection is still established.)

craig.
24388  
From: "Zach Campbell"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 6:41pm
Subject: Re: Plasticity (Was: Off with their heads!)  rashomon82


 
Yoel:
> I don't know whether you'll agree, Zach, but a few months ago I wrote
> to a friend something like "In good art, form and content are like
> the two sides of the same coin". (when I say form I mean abstract
> form) If you take one of them out, there is no coin left! Don't know
> how exactly form and content combine but I know that when those two
> combine I feel like my consciousness is leaping forward.

But I agree with you on this point! I'm only saying that plasticity is not the entirety
of form. A film whose form depends wholly on plasticity won't "make it" to video. A film
whose form is tied up with plasticity but not wholly dependent on it will have a much
better chance of "making it." Some films depend more on plasticity for their form than
others. (And for me it is form--not plasticity per se for all great cinema--that is
important.) Why is this plurality and diversity so troubling?

> Wbat is essential about any of his
> paintings is that the whole thing is essential: What you recognize as
> a girl and the way the abstract form elevates that image to something
> that resonates with our consciousness.

I'd say, though, that the abstract form does not "elevate" the image--it is the image. (I
would think you'd say the same thing.)

> I'm not saying I'll get everything you see
> but I'm sure you'll get none of what I see because aesthetic
> experience requires active participation from you so that you can
> teach yourself to see what is in front of you.

Why do I get the feeling that I'm being politely insulted? I have said numerous times that I
agree with and empathize with your approach, and Fred's approach, to looking at cinema
in certain terms--in certain situations. My only departure is that my take on cinema is
non-essentialist, and does not boil down to "all or nothing," and therefore if I don't
appreciate a film on "your" terms, there are still other ways to appreciate it. Apparently
this viewing mobility boils down to me being unable to possibly see what you see ... ? And
apparently I am not actively participating when I view films? I really don't like the
insinuation here ...

> And because cinema can be
> defined differently for each director, since they have different
> kinds of abstractnesses, the answer depends on the director. In my
> opinion, from the films I have seen, some of Hawks and Cukor can be
> translated; none of Ford can.

I totally agree on the 'define-it-by-the-director' part. Some films and some filmmakers
don't translate, or more accurately they don't translate well enough to make their films
worth watching on video reproductions. Some films do translate "well enough." (I've never
ever claimed that the translation is perfect or neutral or invisible.) Read my posts on this
topic and you'll see that I'm constantly acknowledging that something is 'lost.' I just think
that acknowledging that sometimes something isn't lost. And I'm positing (and neither
you nor Fred have yet dealt with this) that postclassical cinema has taken an interesting
new direction in terms of the crisis of the image.

--Zach
24389  
From: "thebradstevens"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 6:41pm
Subject: Re: THE SHINING (Was: Put Another Ax Murder on the Barbie)  thebradstevens


 
>
> Except, as I'm sure you know, that if he hadn't delivered the Snow
> Cat, Wendy and Danny would still be at the Overlook.

They could have survived until help arrived, since Jack would have
frozen to death in the maze anyway.
24390  
From: "thebradstevens"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 6:43pm
Subject: Re: The Immortal Story on DVD?  thebradstevens


 
I don't think it has ever been released in any format, though it
sometimes plays on television, so a lot of people will have copies
they've recorded off air.
24391  
From: "thebradstevens"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 6:46pm
Subject: Re: THE SHINING  thebradstevens


 
one of the most
> powerful moments in cinema -- the close-up on the television in the
> hotel's living room area, camera pulling back, television revealed
as
> "silent" monolith; Mrs. Torrance sits watching, smoking, Danny
plays
> with his toy ("we call him 'Doc' "), camera continues backward and
> upward, -- Spiegel im Spiegel, the room itself becomes a television
> (this is probably most apparent when the film is viewed as intended
in
> 1.33), the characters effectively trapped between infinite
reflections,
> reverberations.

And this whole scene is missing from the non-American cut of the
film!!!

The film on the television is Robert Mulligan's SUMMER OF 42, by the
way.
24392  
From: Craig Keller
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 6:51pm
Subject: Re: The Immortal Story on DVD?  evillights


 
On Thursday, March 17, 2005, at 12:43 PM, hotlove666 wrote:
>
> Does the film exist in this format? Where can it be gotten from, if
> not in DVD, in videocassette?

There's an Italian disc -- so-so transfer, and burned-in Italian subs.
(They projected from this disc at the Film Forum NYC screening of the
film last year.) Not sure where one orders it from; there was a review
with a lot of captures (and I believe a link or at least info about
where to find it) over at WellesNet, but I can't tell where it went..

craig.
24393  
From: "Richard Modiano"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 7:09pm
Subject: Re: The Immortal Story on DVD?  tharpa2002


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:

"Does the film exist in this format? Where can it be gotten from, if
not in DVD, in videocassette?"

Not exactly appropos to your question, but 16mm prints are offered
for sale in "The Big Reel" from time to time in the $100.00 to
$200.00 range.

Richard
24394  
From: "Yoel Meranda"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 7:22pm
Subject: Re: Plasticity (Was: Off with their heads!)  ymeranda


 
Zach,

What you term as the "crisis of the image" is something you
experience intellectually. You look at an image and think about it
and realize that it is impossible to read it, to interpret it and it
is not a real representation. Or is there more to it? Can you
describe in detail how you explain the greatness of one of your
favorite directors using the words "crisis of the image"?

For me, art is not an intellectual experience, it is a sensual one.
Intellect is something we impose on the world, it is our categorizing
and organizing our ideas; ideas which are not stable anyway. I
believe what sensual images can do is beyond ideas and they touch
somewhere closer to how the nervous system works. Why? Don't know
because science isn't there yet... but I feel it. One of my favorite
filmmakers, Sidney Peterson, says the following about his own films;
I believe it is true for all art: "These images are meant to play not
on our rational senses, but on the infinite universe of ambiguity
within us."

If the intellectual process that arises from the "crisis of the
image" leads the artist to a different awareness of the world that
leads him/her to create a different kind of sensual experience, I
have no problem with it. And actually, I believe that is very close
to what makes Sirk so great. Fred also wrote many times about how
Brakhage was perfectly aware of the "crisis of the image" (if I
understand what you mean correctly) and made films about this. I
certainly feel that while watching "Dog Star Man".

Sorry you felt insulted... it was certainly not my purpose.

Yoel
24395  
From: "Matt Armstrong"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 7:54pm
Subject: Re: THE SHINING (Was: Put Another Ax Murder on the Barbie)  matt_c_armst...


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
> wrote:
> >
> > > Scatman Crothers in "The Shining" is derived from the
> > hero of "Night of the Living Dead."
>
> That's another film in the echo chamber. What's amazing is how
many
> films get echoed by such a simple narrative.

And Bergman's "Hour of the Wolf" too!
24396  
From: Fred Camper
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 8:17pm
Subject: Re: Re: Plasticity (Was: Off with their heads!)  fredcamper


 
Zach Campbell wrote:

> ...And I'm positing (and neither
> you nor Fred have yet dealt with this) that postclassical cinema has taken an interesting
> new direction in terms of the crisis of the image.

Zach, first, I think you likely do see many of the things I do in the
films we both love. Second, I take your "crisis of the image" to mean
something different from what Yoel assumes -- that you're talking about
a shift, in what you take to the be best narrative films of recent
decades, away from doing the primary expressive work through
composition, lighting, editing, and so on, the "plastic values," and
strengthening the emphasis on other things, such as acting, or acting in
relationships to elements such as editing. Is that right? Your comments
on Cassavetes would fit in there. If I understand this right, it seems
like a reasonably accurate description to me of a change that's
occurred; I'd only question how much I can personally find to like in
the products of that change. Perhaps this is a problem with my "narrow"
aesthetics, or it may prove to a problem with others' over-interest in
the empathetic elements of character-identification. I'm being honest in
saying that I really think it could be either of those, or neither.

Fred Camper
24397  
From: Fred Camper
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 8:23pm
Subject: Re: Re: The Immortal Story on DVD?  fredcamper


 
Richard Modiano wrote:


> Not exactly appropos to your question, but 16mm prints are offered
> for sale in "The Big Reel" from time to time in the $100.00 to
> $200.00 range.

To quote from the ending of Jack Chambers's great non-narrative film,
"The Hart of London," "You have to be very careful." Used prints of
pre-1p83 (or so) color films are most often made from internegatives,
and if the print was also made before 1983 (my date may be a year or two
off), you should know that the Kodak stock in use before then (replaced
afterwards with a low-fade stock Kodak made thanks to the great efforts
of Marin Scorsese, who should be honored for that project again and
again) had an unstable cyan layer, which faded in as little as five
years, producing the muddy reddish-brown look with pale blues or no
blues at all that cinephiles know all too well. I have seen such a 16mm
print of "The Immortal Story," back around 1981. A print of this film
with no blues is ridiculous, since warm-cool color contrasts were part
of the basis of the film. Such prints are atrocities that should never,
or just about never, be screened.

Fred Camper
24398  
From: kitebw@...
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 3:27pm
Subject: Re: THE SHINING (Was: Put Another Ax Murder on the Barbie)  natskoli


 
In a message dated 3/17/2005 6:08:32 AM Eastern Standard Time, Saul writes:

(I know it also
gives back history about Jack, but the deletion of this, once more,
adds rather than detracts.)


I don't know. It gives us half the info necessary to piece together the
strange time discrepancy between when Jack broke Danny's arm (years ago, Jack
tells Lloyd) and when he quit drinking (months ago, Wendy tells the dr). Which
kind of defeats the explanation offered. And the scene also introduces the
bear pillow, which undergoes nightmare metamorphosis into the bear/dog/pig thing
going down on the old guy in one of Wendy's hallway visions. So I'd be
inclined to leave it in. But I like to see different cuts of films I enjoy.

Fernando Verissimo writes:

"the film cuts to the "Monday" title card and then to a beautiful
shot zooming out of a TV set displaying a soap opera. "

Mulligan fan alert: Not a soap, SUMMER OF 42.

"I can't
figure any other reason why he would stand to the american uncut version by
the time THE SHINING was released on video in the US. He could have released
the new version if he wanted to, couldn't he?"

That's a good question.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
24399  
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 8:35pm
Subject: Re: THE SHINING  hotlove666


 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
>
> And this whole scene is missing from the non-American cut of the
> film!!!

Rights?
>
> The film on the television is Robert Mulligan's SUMMER OF 42, by
the
> way.

Yeah, I've never been able to figure that one.
24400  
From: Jim Healy
Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 11:45pm
Subject: Re: Re: THE SHINING  blaftoni


 
hotlove666 wrote:

> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
> wrote:
> >
> > And this whole scene is missing from the non-American cut of the
> > film!!!
>
> Rights?
> >
> > The film on the television is Robert Mulligan's SUMMER OF 42, by
> the
> > way.
>
> Yeah, I've never been able to figure that one.

Anyone have any thoughts as to why Paul Mazursky's BLUME IN LOVE is on the
tv in EYES WIDE SHUT? That is the movie, right? A favorite of Kubrick's
perhaps?

Both the Mulligan and the Mazursky are WB-owned movies, which must have
made it easy to clear rights.

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