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7101


From:   brack_28
Date: Wed Jan 28, 2004 5:40am
Subject: My Baby's Daddy
 
Has anyone seen this? I've been putting off seeing it, but I'm a
big fan of Cheryl Dunye. While I'm sure this is no Watermelon Woman
or Stranger Inside, something of Dunye might have surrived.
7102


From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jan 28, 2004 8:48am
Subject: Re: Fleischer
 
10 Rillington Place kinda swings.
7103


From: Raymond P.
Date: Wed Jan 28, 2004 8:49am
Subject: Re: Bangkok Int'l Film Festival
 
Believe me, you haven't been missing out on much! Another
correspondent of mine said that the festival went DOWNHILL from
there, believe it or not. He is, unfortunately, attending the whole
event.

The standing up during the Royal Anthem is very, very bizarre to me,
even though I've lived in Thailand before. Frankly, I'm not
comfortable doing it, even though I recognize that the King is very
respected in Thailand. But standing at EVERY film showing? That's too
much.

Oh well, it's only a few months until the Hong Kong Film Fest
anyways. I cannot wait!

--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Brian Darr"
wrote:
> I'm sorry to see that the festival is not being run more
> professionally. Though I can't deny reading it also helps me feel
> less like I've been missing out; the schedules for the past two
years'
> fests have had me salivating, but a festival cannot succeed on the
> strength of programming alone.
>
> It's sad to hear that, even at some festivals, Thai cinema practice
is
> still to switch off the film before the credits finished rolling.
It
> happened to me at EVERY film screening I ever saw in Chiang Mai
> commercial theatres, except for Thai films and EU Film Fest films.
I
> got so used to the practice that I was shocked upon going to some of
> the fancier venues in Bangkok where this didn't happen.
>
> Also sad to hear that the film started late; at least this never
> happened to me when I lived there. In fact the practice seemed to
be
> to show most of the previews/commercials before the announced start
> time. If I entered a 12:30 movie right at 12:30, I'd be right in
time
> to stand for the Royal Anthem, then have to endure perhaps one
trailer
> or commercial, and then the film would start. Reserved seating
> ensured that I never had to sit through more so-called "pre-show"
than
> I ever wanted to.
>
> Glad to see a thumbs up for "Saddest Music in the World", especially
> under the circumstances.
>
> I suspect I'll still want to check out "Blind Shaft" for myself, but
> thanks for the brief warning.
>
> -Brian Darr
7104


From: Raymond P.
Date: Wed Jan 28, 2004 8:52am
Subject: Re: Morvern Callar
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> I don't think MORVERN CALLAR can be explained in terms of character
> psychology, alienated or otherwise. Her actions would indicate
> REPULSION-type insanity if we encountered them in real life, and
yet the
> film concerns itself on some level with her evolution and personal
> growth. We're talking some odd (and, for me, unsatisfying) mix of
the
> metaphorical and the literal. - Dan

I find the attitude taken by the main character very refreshing - a
welcomed change from the distraught woman syndrome displayed in
earlier films such as Maborosi, Under the Sand, and even Blue (no
slight to any of these films intended). Movern Callar is much more of
a celebration of life.
7105


From: Eric Henderson
Date: Wed Jan 28, 2004 11:25am
Subject: Village Voice movie quiz '04
 
As per usual, a few relatively easy ones surrounded by lots of hard
stuff...

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0404/atkinson.php



BETWEEN THE LINES

1. For which famous films were these the final uttered lines of
dialogue or narration (translated into subtitles or not)?

A. "She wouldn't even harm a fly."
B. "The day I left, it was written in the almanac: 'The Fire forces
the Goldto move. Extremely favorable for going west.' "
C. "Don't shoot—they're in Switzerland." "Good for them."
D. "Its origin, and purpose, still a total mystery."
E. "If not today, then tomorrow, I will have told someone. I can
think about escaping after that."
F. "He was a credit to the fight game, to the very end."
G. "Yeah, maybe our fucking orders will come through."
H. " . . . Animal."
I. "Won't you leave me a souvenir. Only a small souvenir."

2. What was the sanitized English-subtitle translation for the last
line of Godard's Breathless (1960) before the 2001 restoration, and
what is it now?


-----


VITAL SIGNS

3. What was the first Arab film, and in which country was it made?

4. What year saw the most working movie theaters in the U.S., and
rounded off to the thousands, how many were there?

5. Appearing in three out of five Best Picture-nominated movies was a
coup for John C. Reilly in 2002, an achievement attained by only one
other performer after 1943. (Before that, 10 films were annually
nominated, and triple threats were common.) Name the name and the
year. (Stuntmen don't count.)

6. All told, who appeared in the most Best Picture-nominated films?

7. In 1978, Take One magazine polled industry bigwigs about the best
films of the 1970s (a span they judged ran from 1968 to 1977); what
was François Truffaut's choice as best American film from that
period?

8. Considering the legacies of Venice, Berlin, Cannes, and Toronto
film festivals in toto, what's the most fest awards a single film has
won?

9. Name three films that hit that number.


------


PERSONAL VELOCITY

10. What do these well-known filmmakers have in common: Leo McCarey,
Martin Scorsese, David Cronenberg, Mike Nichols, and Paul Verhoeven?

11. Who bought Sam Peckinpah a drink in the airport as he returned
from marine service in 1946?

12. Name the film in which:

A. Howard Da Silva broke a lightbulb
B. Silvano Mangano has no eyebrows
C. Sarah Miles wipes her crotch-scented hand on a dead man's face
D. Steve Martin confronts an ax slammed through a hotel door
E. Catherine Deneuve explores a cave in high heels
F. Lillian Gish eats leftover food off of plates she's cleaning
G. Liam Neeson stares into the camera lens for nearly a full minute

13. What famous film directors attended these elementary schools?

A. École Internationale, Geneva
B. The Todd School
C. Collegio Nazareno
D. Dewson Street Public School
E. Lycée Janson de Sailly


-----


ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW

14. What was the longest theatrically released documentary?

15. What two actresses had their films banned in Egypt after they
converted to Judaism?

16. What nation once had a long-standing official policy of outlawing
the exhibition of any movie for "lack of artistic merit"?

17. Name the movies in which these books prominently appeared:

A. The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler
B. The Basic Kafka
C. From Ritual to Romance, Jessie L. Weston
D. Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman
E. All I Need Is Love, Klaus Kinski
F. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller

18. Name as many movies as you can that are each the only feature
film ever made entirely in its particular language. (Filmed opera
performances don't count.)
7106


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Jan 28, 2004 3:03pm
Subject: Re: Richard Fleischer
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
.
> >
>
> Oh I know.And that's where I broke off with Cahiers in
> later years -- as Hawks became less interesting to me
> than Huston. And so on and so forth.
>
> ______WOW! Aren't you scared some irate auteurists are going to
stone you to death after such an iconoclastic statement? Next thing
we know you'll confess to reading POSITIF...
>
7107


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Jan 28, 2004 3:55pm
Subject: Re: Re: Richard Fleischer
 
--- jpcoursodon wrote:

> > ______WOW! Aren't you scared some irate auteurists
> are going to
> stone you to death after such an iconoclastic
> statement? Next thing
> we know you'll confess to reading POSITIF...
> >
>
>

Oh it's worse than that. I've even WRITTEN for
"Positif"!

Remember that article I did about Bresson's
correspondances with George Cukor and Bresson's
interest in doing "Lancelor du Lac" with (brace
yourself) Burt Lancaster and Natalie Wood?

__________________________________
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Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it!
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7108


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Jan 28, 2004 3:08pm
Subject: Re: Schatzberg
 
Oh yes, I;d forgotten about thatone. It's one of
Streep's best, least fuzzy performances and Barbara
Harris is just amazing.

--- Dan Sallitt wrote:

> There's actually only one Schatzberg film that I
> really like, and it's
> an odd film out: THE SEDUCTION OF JOE TYNAN. - Dan
>
>


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7109


From: Zach Campbell
Date: Wed Jan 28, 2004 7:50pm
Subject: Re: Stars in My Crown
 
I watched STARS IN MY CROWN the other day and wanted to briefly
revive the discussion from a few weeks ago (as per Peter's
suggestion to me). This is a tremendous film. (Spoilers follow.)

Tourneur may have been the greatest of 'atmospherists' in all of
cinema, or at least, narrative cinema. Bill discussed (I believe)
Biette's characterization of Tourneur as someone who could run a
monotonous rhythm through scenes, and barely alter the mise-en-scene
from shot to shot. Tourneur's great gift was in making tangible the
atmosphere of his given film-worlds. The air between objects is
always deeply felt, often greatly charged, in his films: tense and
electric in much of I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (culminating in the
frightening nighttime journey to the voodoo site), dark and
suggestive in CAT PEOPLE, thin and desolate in NIGHTFALL. The
camera angles, the lighting, the production design, and the acting
all seem to cohere in Tourneur's work to create a precisely balanced
tone: to make the very environments of the characters of a certain
piece. This environment returns to everything else (those angles,
the acting) a highly finished, sustained *tone*. The mood of a
Tourneur film seems to be the way Tourneur made the atmosphere, the
environment, the space seem. What other Hollywood filmmaker was so
consistently concerned with the expressive possibilities of light,
shadow, the (in)visible, and the wind? Sternberg for the first two,
I suppose.

STARS IN MY CROWN has that amazing scene where the Parson prays for
Faith Samuels in her room, and Tourneur's imaginative realization of
her miraculous recovery (a plot turn that might well have turned out
hackneyed) is to alter the atmosphere of the image before our very
eyes. In a room contrasted between light and dark, the wind picks
up and sets to motion the composition, suggesting the currents
that 'move' Faith back into health. Inscribed in the back of our
minds is the image of the Doctor praying in the hallway, which was
the shot immediately preceding the one inside Faith's room. I don't
think any Hollywood filmmaker comes to mind who would have handled
the scene in such a way, and it stands as perhaps the most
unexpected and briefest tour-de-forces in Tourneur's filmography. I
was moved to tears and (because I was watching this on video)
immediately rewound the scene to watch it again, something I don't
know that I've done in recent memory.

A striking thing about STARS is that it, like Mulligan's MAN IN THE
MOON and Tarkovsky's NOSTALGHIA, doesn't seem to work unless you
invest at least a hypothetical belief in God/providence/the
supernatural. I don't know how seriously we can take Tourneur's
films on a metaphysical level, because my impression is that
Tourneur would apply his talent (rather than express it full-
fledged) to bring out and, hmm, ennoble his plots' often run-of-the-
mill worldviews. And yet there's nothing run-of-the-mill about the
things we experience in CAT PEOPLE, I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE, or STARS
IN MY CROWN.

--Zach
7110


From: George Robinson
Date: Wed Jan 28, 2004 8:35pm
Subject: Re: Re: Stars in My Crown
 
I want to propose another paradigm for Tourneur, one that makes him,
along with Walsh and Boetticher,
a profoundly radical filmmaker in terms of conventional Hollywood
discourse.

At the heart of the classical narrative structure is the ability of the
protagonist (heck, the hero, 'cause it's
almost always a male) to control the narrative. Someone -- I think it
was Pascal Bonitzer but I wouldn't
stake my life on it because we're talking about a 27 or 28-year-old
memory here -- describes this as "the master position"
in the narrative. It's the ability to take an active role in determining
the outcome of events, often even a sort of surrogate metteur-en-scene
role (in the more literal, rather than the Biette, sense of the term).
To some extent, the master position is determined by the
centrality of the hero to the narrative, the certainty and correctness
of his actions; in the work of someone like Hawks -- I think the best
example of this principle in action -- it also comes out of the
protagonist's place in the mise-en-scene.

Where Tourneur differs is in the basic narrative structure of his best
films -- all of the Lewtons, Out of the Past, the westerns,
Curse of the Demon, Stars in My Crown, Easy Living, even a rather
pedestrian work like Berlin Express. In these films the
hero -- and it is signficant that the character in question in these
films is invariably male -- is confident of his ability to control
events and of the rightness of his worldview. At each turn his
confidence and his philosophical position is undermined by
events. The shrink in Cat People, the husband in I Walked with a Zombie,
Jeff and Whit in Out of the Past, Holden in
Curse of the Demon, -- these are all sexually agressive men whose
control over the world is predicated on a mixture of
rationalistm and testosterone. By the end of each film, their worldview
is shattered, they have either lost control of events or,
in the cast of Demon, only survive by giving in to the seemingly
irrational. I think that you can make a fairly good case for
Stars and the westerns as adhering to a milder, less sexually charged
version of the same structure.

So Tourneur is offering a counter-view to the traditional,
phallocentric, hero-driven narrative of the period. Why do I bracket him
with Walsh and Boetticher? Because Walsh's films are usually structured
around the out-of-control forward rush of his heroes who
are unable to understand the forces of history arrayed against them
(think of the amazing crane shot at the Little Big Horn in They
Died with Their Boots On, when Walsh reveals that Custer is chasing a
diversionary movement by the Sioux and that he is about'
to be cut off -- and massacred -- by the main body of their troops). My
favorite example of this is Objective Burma -- is there any
other Errol Flynn film in which he spends more time totally unsure of
what to do next? As for Boetticher, the Ranown cycle, Legs
Diamond, A Time for Dying, The Killer Is Loose, even Arruza, are all
films about heroes whose chief project is doomed, either
by their inability to control events that they have set in motion or
because they are ultimately irrelevant to the narrative (as Kitses
aptly points out about Buchanan Rides Alone).

And I suspect that it is the sheer subversiveness of these three
filmmakers -- as well as the usual problem of working with
unfashionable actors like Andrews, Scott, Flynn, in unfashionable genres
-- that is why they are regrettably neglected.

George Robinson
7111


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Jan 28, 2004 11:25pm
Subject: Re: Richard Fleischer
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
> > > ______WOW! Aren't you scared some irate auteurists
> > are going to
> > stone you to death after such an iconoclastic
> > statement? Next thing
> > we know you'll confess to reading POSITIF...
> > >
> >
> >
>
> Oh it's worse than that. I've even WRITTEN for
> "Positif"!
>
> Remember that article I did about Bresson's
> correspondances with George Cukor and Bresson's
> interest in doing "Lancelor du Lac" with (brace
> yourself) Burt Lancaster and Natalie Wood?
>

Yes! #430, December 1996. If they ask you "Are you or have you
ever been" a Positif contributor you won't be able to deny it,
although you can always take the fifth.

Where is that very weird correspondance? Bresson with Lancaster
and Natalie? Sounds like Dreyer wanting to direct Jerry Lewis and
Phyllis Diller...
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it!
> http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/
7112


From: Maxime
Date: Wed Jan 28, 2004 11:47pm
Subject: W.S. Van Dyke
 
I can't say I know much of his work, except a few classics. TCM
(France) showed several of his films in January. Not much time to
catch them, but I eventually fell on IT'S A WONDERFULL WORLD and
found it quite delightful. Full of comical details, constantly far-
fetched, but still convincing. An accident?
7113


From: Maxime
Date: Wed Jan 28, 2004 11:53pm
Subject: Waiting for Pearl
 
I hate to have to discover a movie through television or video. It
is not only a question of light, colour or frame. Call me naive, but
I believe in the miracle of the projection. There is something in
the air, carrying the glazes and the breaths. My TV set is dead, and
so are the puppets. If you want to analyse a film, DVD is great; if
you want to know if, if you want to feel it, there is only one place.
I constantly buy videos (eBay is an amazing place for rarities), but
most of them are still unseen. I know believe that every movie will
be shown some day, some place. I'm just sitting there, waiting for
this day to come. Since the day I saw "Most dangerous man alive", I
had no grace in my curse to these damned programmers who seemed to
be determined to ignore Dwan's work. Until the blessed day when I
heard about the Locarno retrospective. It may be I cried. I
distinctly remember my stupefaction. I could have burned all the
accumulated videos, still unopened.
Yes, I believe that the day will come for every movie.
As for Pearl, Patrick, as expressed in earlier posts, this one is
probably not the first one to be seen, I guess.
7114


From:
Date: Wed Jan 28, 2004 7:17pm
Subject: Re: W.S. Van Dyke
 
"Hide-Out" (Van Dyke, 1934) is a lot of fun. Robert Montgomery plays a
racketeer who hides out on a farm. More comedy than violent - Montgomery gets to
ooze bad-boy charm as a manipulative heel. There is a long study of Montgomery in
the first issue of Rouge.
There is also a fondness here for some of Van Dyke's Jeanette MacDonald epics
- "San Francisco" especially, and also "Naughty Marietta" and "Sweethearts".
(I used to belong to the Jeanette MacDonald - Nelson Eddy Appreciation
Society, which screened their old films in a Methodist church hall in the early
1980's. This was in the pre-video era, and old movies were very hard to see!)
"Trader Horn" is disappointing, IMHO, and the Thin Man movies always seem a
lot less fun than they should, given their talented casts.
As Claudette Colbert says in "It's a Wonderful World":
I swear by my eyes!

Mike Grost
7115


From:
Date: Wed Jan 28, 2004 7:25pm
Subject: Phyllis Diller
 
If Dreyer had directed Phyllis Diller's TV show "The Pruitts of Southhampton"
(1966), maybe it would not have been cancelled after just a few episodes. I'm
still in mourning...
I loved Phyllis Diller as a kid. Her public service ad for seat belts first
persuaded me to buckle up!
Has anyone ever seen her version of the Elmer Rice play, "The Adding Machine"
(Jerome Epstein, 1969)? Where IS this movie?
"I wanted the kids to have a hot breakfast, so I put their cornflakes on the
radiator" - Phyllis Diller (the first female stand-up comedian)

Mike Grost
PS If Burt Lancaster could star for Robert Siodmak and Luchino Visconti,
maybe he could have been great in Bresson.
7116


From: Maxime
Date: Thu Jan 29, 2004 0:27am
Subject: John Huston cineaste
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> Oh I know. And that's where I broke off with Cahiers in
> later years -- as Hawks became less interesting to me
> than Huston. And so on and so forth.

Biette precisely takes Huston as an example of an auteur who is not
a cineaste.
"Fortified by his experience as a screen-writer, when certain to be
able to introduce some disruptive elements in a well-constructed
script, he thought he only need to rely on the sole efficiency of
big stars, and on a discrete work of direction, interchangeable,
almost automatic, to obtain what his auteur's conscience dictated to
him. In his films, the style arose out of a general tone, and not,
strictly speaking, out of an arrangement of shots" [My rough
translation]
Biette restricts, in a way, this opinion to the pre-70's period. He
praises "The Dead".
7117


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Jan 29, 2004 0:56am
Subject: Re: Re: Richard Fleischer
 
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
>
> wrote:
> >
> > --- jpcoursodon wrote:

>
> Where is that very weird correspondance? Bresson
> with Lancaster
> and Natalie? Sounds like Dreyer wanting to direct
> Jerry Lewis and
> Phyllis Diller...
>
I found that in George Cukor's file when I was working
on my book,"Open Secret." Cukor gave a ton and a half
of letters and papers to the motion picture academy. I
was looking for other things but when I came across
"Correspondance with Robert Bresson" I dropped
everything to read it. Cukor was a big fan of "Diary
of a Country Priest," which he saw before its U.S.
debut. He told Bresson how much he liked it and they
exchanged letter periodically. This one totallyupends
the notion that bresson had completely turned his back
on conventional acting. He seriosuly pursued Lancaster
and Wood. But Lancaster was tied up with Visconti, and
that was that. Too bad.


__________________________________
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7118


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Jan 29, 2004 1:19am
Subject: Re: W.S. Van Dyke
 
Well it's all accident when it comes to Woody Van
Dyke. He was MGM's workhorse and chief directorial
traffic cop. I love "The Thin Man" however.

Have you seen "Marie Antoinette"?

--- Maxime wrote:
> I can't say I know much of his work, except a few
> classics. TCM
> (France) showed several of his films in January. Not
> much time to
> catch them, but I eventually fell on IT'S A
> WONDERFULL WORLD and
> found it quite delightful. Full of comical details,
> constantly far-
> fetched, but still convincing. An accident?
>
>


__________________________________
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7119


From: Maxime
Date: Thu Jan 29, 2004 1:22am
Subject: Re: W.S. Van Dyke
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> Well it's all accident when it comes to Woody Van
> Dyke. He was MGM's workhorse and chief directorial
> traffic cop. I love "The Thin Man" however.
>
> Have you seen "Marie Antoinette"?

I'll try to catch it next week if strong recommendation...
7120


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Jan 29, 2004 1:42am
Subject: Re: Re: W.S. Van Dyke
 
It's quite an amazing production. One of the biggest
films MGM ever made. Norma Shearer and Tyrone Power
are both at their loveliest.

--- Maxime wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
>
> wrote:
> > Well it's all accident when it comes to Woody Van
> > Dyke. He was MGM's workhorse and chief directorial
> > traffic cop. I love "The Thin Man" however.
> >
> > Have you seen "Marie Antoinette"?
>
> I'll try to catch it next week if strong
> recommendation...
>
>
>


__________________________________
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7121


From: Robert Keser
Date: Thu Jan 29, 2004 4:17am
Subject: Re: W.S. Van Dyke
 
Marie Antoinette catches Tyrone Power
at the moment he crests into major stardom,
which always makes compelling viewing, plus
there's a cast of Hollywood's most expert
players like John Barrymore, Robert Morley
(his first American film), Henry Daniell, Joseph
Calleia, Albert Dekker and Gladys George. It's
worth seeing for the insanely elaborate wigs alone,
not to mention the wedding gown made from 500
yards of white satin. Pauline Kael noted that
"MGM built a grand ballroom that was several
feet longer than the original at Versailles, and
Adrian designed 1,250 gowns, as well as costumes
for two poodles". As storytelling, it has its moments,
but it certainly provides plenty to look at as one of
the studio period's most stupendous productions.

--Robert Keser


--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
Norma Shearer and Tyrone Power
> are both at their loveliest.
>
> --- Maxime wrote:
7122


From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Thu Jan 29, 2004 4:30am
Subject: Re: W.S. Van Dyke
 
> I can't say I know much of his work, except a few classics. TCM
> (France) showed several of his films in January. Not much time to
> catch them, but I eventually fell on IT'S A WONDERFULL WORLD and
> found it quite delightful. Full of comical details, constantly far-
> fetched, but still convincing. An accident?

I actually think Van Dyke is pretty good, pretty often. THE THIN MAN
isn't just flip - there's something serious and a little dark in that
marriage. The seriousness comes all the way out in MARIE ANTOINETTE,
which I think is an outright good film with some really expressive
moments. WHITE SHADOWS OF THE SOUTH SEAS is good, and I don't think
it's just because of Flaherty; THE PRIZEFIGHTER AND THE LADY is good,
and it's probably not just because Hawks did some of it; MANHATTAN
MELODRAMA, the same year as THE THIN MAN, has some feeling and works
pretty well. I admit that IT'S A WONDERFUL WORLD didn't wow me when I
saw it, but I've heard other people speak up for it. - Dan
7123


From: Elizabeth NOLAN
Date: Thu Jan 29, 2004 7:08am
Subject: BETWEEN THE LINES
 
On Wednesday, January 28, 2004, at 09:55 PM, a_film_by@yahoogroups.com
wrote:

> BETWEEN THE LINES
>
> 1. For which famous films were these the final uttered lines of
> dialogue or narration (translated into subtitles or not)?
>
> A. "She wouldn't even harm a fly."
PSYCHO
> B. "The day I left, it was written in the almanac: 'The Fire forces
> the Goldto move. Extremely favorable for going west.' "
Jim JARMUSCH"S DEAD MAN
> C. "Don't shoot—they're in Switzerland." "Good for them."
SOUND OF MUSIC or THE MORTAL STORM
> D. "Its origin, and purpose, still a total mystery."
> E. "If not today, then tomorrow, I will have told someone. I can
> think about escaping after that."
> F. "He was a credit to the fight game, to the very end."
> G. "Yeah, maybe our fucking orders will come through."
> H. " . . . Animal."
> I. "Won't you leave me a souvenir. Only a small souvenir."
>
> 2. What was the sanitized English-subtitle translation for the last
> line of Godard's Breathless (1960) before the 2001 restoration, and
> what is it now?
7125


From:
Date: Thu Jan 29, 2004 5:24am
Subject: Re: W. S. Van Dyke (camera work)
 
"Hide-Out" (1934) has a circular camera movement. It is a nearly 360 degree
pan around the living room of a farmhouse. The shot simply shows the set; it
has no people in it. It is expository: after a half hour prologue in New York
City, the film makes a drastic shift in locale to the country, and the film is
showing this farm house. There is a comic aspect to this. The farmhouse is
supposed to be a startling change of pace after all the Broadway nightclub scenes
that have preceded it. The shot is intended to make the audience smile, at the
colossal contrast. The house is very nice, and is not being ridiculed. It is
simply a complete change of tone, and hence comic. The comic tone, and the
expository nature of the scene, allows or enables the director to do something
non-naturalistic with the camera. It is as if the director were winking at the
audience, showing them something special. The audience can share in the direct
viewpoint of a filmmaker, where he takes his camera and points something out
to them. It is almost the visual equivalent of the director "narrating"
something with his camera.
Throughout the film, Van Dyke often has long shots, to show the spectacular
sets and activities on screen. It is as if he is saying "Wow! Look at all
this." The shots are unusually long, wide or high, and it seems fairly obvious to
viewers that Van Dyke is doing something a little bit unusual with his
technique.
"Hide-Out" often has a documentary quality. But it is not the serious tone of
a real documentary, or the grim thriller of a crime semi-doc. Instead, the
scenery shown on screen is entertaining, and often comic. Whether Van Dyke is
showing a dance number at a Broadway nightclub, or people picking cherries in
the country, the scenes are light-hearted, and meant to amuse. It is as if Van
Dyke is making a "documentary" about the spectacles in front of him. He's
saying, "Here is the world of the film. It is independent of me. I'm going to make
a documentary about it with my camera".
There is not a great deal of camera movement in W.S. Van Dyke's comedy,
"Personal Property" (1937). One exception is highly atypical in film history: Jean
Harlow is descending a staircase, and Van Dyke pans straight down from her to
Robert Taylor, who is waiting below, directly underneath the staircase. (It
looks like a pan, but it might actually be a descending camera movement on a
crane or elevator.) This sort of vertical movement is very unusual. It emphasizes
the spatial relationship between the two characters, and adds an effect of
comic whimsy to the scene.

Mike Grost
7126


From: Greg Dunlap
Date: Thu Jan 29, 2004 11:59am
Subject: Re: BETWEEN THE LINES
 
> > C. "Don't shoot—they're in Switzerland." "Good for them."
> SOUND OF MUSIC or THE MORTAL STORM

I thought sure this was GRAND ILLUSION

> > D. "Its origin, and purpose, still a total mystery."

2001



=====
--------------------
Greg Dunlap
heyrocker@y...

__________________________________
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7127


From: michelle carey
Date: Thu Jan 29, 2004 0:26pm
Subject: Indémodable Zouzou 60 et 70
 
So this post may not be directly auteurist and I am doubly apologetic as it
is my first but I read with interest of the above-named program, currently
playing at Pompidou, devoted to the actress of Philippe Garrel (and Rohmer,
Cozarinsky, Blier etc) films.

http://www.cnac-gp.fr/Pompidou/Manifs.nsf/0/615062E3CCCD4A60C1256DC90045B5DF
?OpenDocument&sessionM=2.4.1&L=1

Is there anybody in the Paris region that might see these and could you
please give a report? I am interested in the films for their aesthetic
quality but am also looking to know the print quality of the Garrel films.

Following, and closer to topic...somewhat...of course I try to see as many
films as possible by certain filmmakers or directors and this credit-line is
the one I look at first when encountering a title old or new. However I am
interested to know if others follow certain actors as I do and equally try
to seek out their films as one does with a director or filmmaker?

Can one associate a type of film with an actor? Can one follow an actor¹s
career from an auterist perspective? I think it is possible, though not as a
rule. A good example is Jean-Pierre Léaud. One can say there is a ³type² of
JPL film. Whether it is directed by Truffaut, Godard, Eustache, Garrel,
Rivette, Pasolini or Assayas, JP brings to each film a certain aesthetic or
style through his performance, characterisation and dialogue, which may
often originate from himself rather than the director. His innate and unique
Jean-Pierreness transcends any notion of Hitchcockian-style Œdirecting the
actor¹. He comes to personify a certain type of individual or, further, a
certain type of cinema. Or, is it because he largely works with these
directors who are concerned with poetic/intellectual type protagonists?
Chicken and egg? What about Adam Sandler (pre Punch Drunk Love)?

This is in contrast to an actor such as Tony Leung, who has appeared in such
an eclectic mix of films.

I do not mean to be provocative but am interested to know if anyone else
believes in the ³actor-auteur².

Michelle



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
7128


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Jan 29, 2004 2:12pm
Subject: Re: Indémodable Zouzou 60 et 70
 
--- michelle carey
wrote:

>
> Can one associate a type of film with an actor? Can
> one follow an actor¹s
> career from an auterist perspective?

Of course you can!it's fairly obvious that Bette
Davis, Joan Crawford, Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney
are auteurs. You cite Leaud, and I would add Belmondo,
Delon, Anna Magnani and Catherine Deneuve. And I trust
you've read what Jack Smith had to say about Maria
Montez.

Michel Mourlet's declaration that Charlton Heston is
"an axiom of the cinema" is, needless to say, central.


The authorial command certain stars possess doesn't
negate the auteur status of filmmkaers they work with,
but rather opens the door to collaboration eg.
Resnais' "Stavisky" with Belmondo, Charles Boyer and
Stephen Sondheim.



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7129


From:
Date: Thu Jan 29, 2004 9:26am
Subject: Re: Indémodable Zouzou 60 et 70
 
In a message dated 1/29/04 7:55:49 AM, michelle@s... writes:

> However I am interested to know if others follow certain actors as I do and
> equally try to seek out their films as one does with a director or
> filmmaker?
>
Yes I do with Joan Crawford.

> Can one follow an actor¢®s career from an auterist perspective?
>
I do that with Saint Crawford here:
http://neumu.net/continuity_error/2003/2003-00003_continuity.shtml

Has even seen letty Lynton,

Kevin




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
7130


From:
Date: Thu Jan 29, 2004 9:37am
Subject: Re: Phyllis Diller
 
I wish so much of her humor didn't revolve around the hatred of the aging
female body (see also Joan Rivers) but I'm a big Diller fan. And she's still
working; just saw her on Hollywood Squares a few days ago.

Been dying to see the Pruitts of Southhampton ever since learning of its
loony premise from the 50 Worst TV Shows Ever issue of TV Guide. Have only seen a
brief clip of it on the internet. Have you seen The Fat Spy with Diller, Mike?
Sort of a gene-splice of Avalon-Funicello beach flix and Robert Downey.
Totally directionless but watchable nonetheless.

And then, of course, there's the other, more elusive Phyllis Diller, star of
Dwain Esper's grunge epic Maniac (1934).

Dying to see Did You Hear The One About The Traveling Saleslady,
Kevin


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
7131


From: Jess Amortell
Date: Thu Jan 29, 2004 3:12pm
Subject: Re: BETWEEN THE LINES
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Greg Dunlap wrote:
> > > C. "Don't shoot—they're in Switzerland." "Good for them."
> > SOUND OF MUSIC or THE MORTAL STORM
>
> I thought sure this was GRAND ILLUSION


Yes -- and

> > B. "The day I left, it was written in the almanac: 'The Fire forces
> > the Gold to move. Extremely favorable for going west.' "
> Jim JARMUSCH"S DEAD MAN

is actually an Eastern western: ASHES OF TIME. (These must be the easy on=
es, although Stuart Byron, the originator of the quiz, who died in 1991, pre=
sumably wouldn't have gotten that one..)
7132


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu Jan 29, 2004 4:14pm
Subject: Re: W.S. Van Dyke
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> Well it's all accident when it comes to Woody Van
> Dyke. He was MGM's workhorse and chief directorial
> traffic cop. I love "The Thin Man" however.
>

He was much more than a traffic cop. Just look at the polish and
efficiency and quality of acting in "It's a Wonderful World", a movie
that was shot in a record twelve-day and never shows it. And I don't
think you could call a traffic cop the man who took "White Shadows in
the South Seas" from Flaherty and made it his own, then later
made "Eskimo" in the same perhaps naive but wonderful
romantic/Rousseauist mood. Workhorse, yes, but what a horse!

And there is a wonderful line in "Forsaking All Others": "I wish
someone married me, I could wear a decent hat" (spoken by Rosalind
Russell, written by Joseph Mankiewicz, I guess...)
JPC
7133


From: magaroulian
Date: Thu Jan 29, 2004 8:40pm
Subject: Re: W.S. Van Dyke
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon" wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
> wrote:
> > Well it's all accident when it comes to Woody Van
> > Dyke. He was MGM's workhorse and chief directorial
> > traffic cop. I love "The Thin Man" however.
> >
>
> He was much more than a traffic cop. Just look at the polish and
> efficiency and quality of acting in "It's a Wonderful World", a movie
> that was shot in a record twelve-day and never shows it.

Beg to differ, a little, JPC! Watched IT'S A WONDERFUL WORLD the other night with a friend. True, the print was a rotten TCM one
(very dark), and the last minute or two was missing. But it came across as a schmozzle. Did Ben Hecht also write the script in
record time? If so, I wouldn't be surprised! Goddam awful - for all the borrowings from IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT and THE 39
STEPS! 'Spirited (in adversity)!' was the best I could think to say of this one.

KM
7134


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu Jan 29, 2004 11:23pm
Subject: Re: W.S. Van Dyke
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "magaroulian"
wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
> > --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein

> > wrote:
> > > Well it's all accident when it comes to Woody Van
> > > Dyke. He was MGM's workhorse and chief directorial
> > > traffic cop. I love "The Thin Man" however.
> > >
> >
> > He was much more than a traffic cop. Just look at the polish
and
> > efficiency and quality of acting in "It's a Wonderful World", a
movie
> > that was shot in a record twelve-day and never shows it.
>
> Beg to differ, a little, JPC! Watched IT'S A WONDERFUL WORLD the
other night with a friend. True, the print was a rotten TCM one
> (very dark), and the last minute or two was missing. But it came
across as a schmozzle. Did Ben Hecht also write the script in
> record time? If so, I wouldn't be surprised! Goddam awful - for
all the borrowings from IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT and THE 39
> STEPS! 'Spirited (in adversity)!' was the best I could think to
say of this one.
>
> KM

Ah but you saw it on TV and you admit it was a bad print too! I saw a
fine print in a theater in New York about a dozen years ago. It's not
a great comedy, it's clearly derivative, it's very slow getting
started... But my point was that it is a very well directed movie
that doesn't show at all how rushed it was. And Stewart's various
disguises are quite funny. By the way James Harvey in his great
book "Romantic Comedy in Hollywood" raves about the film for about
five pages (somewhat excessively I must admit).

JPC
7135


From: Elizabeth Anne Nolan
Date: Fri Jan 30, 2004 6:22am
Subject: Re: BETWEEN THE LINES
 
I obviously would flunk many of the 'tests' on this board, but let me say t=
his:
I was told at every level of schooling "You're not going to make it," and
subsequently graduated with honors. I was not a rebel; only a maverick
who saw things differently.

Additionally, on graduation day while gathered with many other new Ph.D.
holders, one fellow came over to congratulate me. I bounced back the
congratulations and he said something like "Oh, no, you did it with such
pleasure. I hated it all the way."

Listen, all I ask for is a little clue as to the time period that the quest=
ionaire
might be refering to. Still I have fun reading the questions and hope you =

can at least chuckle at my responses.




--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Jess Amortell" wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Greg Dunlap wrote:
> > > > C. "Don't shoot—they're in Switzerland." "Good for them."
> > > SOUND OF MUSIC or THE MORTAL STORM
> >
> > I thought sure this was GRAND ILLUSION
>
>
> Yes -- and
>
> > > B. "The day I left, it was written in the almanac: 'The Fire forces
> > > the Gold to move. Extremely favorable for going west.' "
> > Jim JARMUSCH"S DEAD MAN
>
> is actually an Eastern western: ASHES OF TIME. (These must be the easy =
on=
> es, although Stuart Byron, the originator of the quiz, who died in 1991, =
pre=
> sumably wouldn't have gotten that one..)
7136


From:
Date: Fri Jan 30, 2004 2:17am
Subject: Re: Re: W.S. Van Dyke
 
If you're anywhere near Milwaukee, Times Cinema is showing It's A Wonderful
World, March 12-18th.

http://www.timescinema.com/schedule.htm

Kevin


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
7137


From:
Date: Fri Jan 30, 2004 8:28am
Subject: Re: BETWEEN THE LINES
 
For what it's worth, I could not answer most of these questions in a million
years!
This is a really "tough trivia" quiz.
Will the answers ever be published?

Mike Grost
PS Leslie Stevens (TV writer and sometimes director), once reprtedly made a
film in the invented "universal language" of Esperanto. Does this qualify as a
unique film in that language? Stevens' TV-Movie "I Love a Mystery" (1966),
based on the old radio series, is good fun. There are also some old Columbia
B-movies from the 1940's about the same characters.
7138


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Fri Jan 30, 2004 2:00pm
Subject: Re: Re: BETWEEN THE LINES
 
Yes. "Incubus" is absolutely unique.

--- MG4273@a... wrote:
> For what it's worth, I could not answer most of
> these questions in a million
> years!
> This is a really "tough trivia" quiz.
> Will the answers ever be published?
>
> Mike Grost
> PS Leslie Stevens (TV writer and sometimes
> director), once reprtedly made a
> film in the invented "universal language" of
> Esperanto. Does this qualify as a
> unique film in that language? Stevens' TV-Movie "I
> Love a Mystery" (1966),
> based on the old radio series, is good fun. There
> are also some old Columbia
> B-movies from the 1940's about the same characters.
>


7139


From:
Date: Fri Jan 30, 2004 10:51am
Subject: Esperanto films
 
I found a website that mentions that Esperanto appears in Idiot's Delight,
Woman of the Tropics, The Road to Singapore, and The Conspirators. There's also
the sui generis 60s record label ESP-Disk. But below is a mini history of
Esperanto in film I found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_film

Kevin


There are two feature films known to have been shot exclusively in the
constructed language Esperanto. Both were shot in the 1960s, and both were long
thought lost until recent restorations.

The first was the French production Angoroj (Agonies) in 1964, directed by
Atelier Mahé. It runs approximately one hour, just shy of feature length, and
its story involves murder. After a restoration and home video release (in the
PAL format) in Switzerland, the film appears to be once again unavailable. Very
little detailed information about Angoroj is available, except that the cast
included some proficient Esperantists, including Raymond Schwartz, who was
associated with the Esperanto Cabaret in Paris.

The second feature was the 1965 American production Incubus, a low-budget
horror film directed by the creator of the television series The Outer Limits.
Admired for its stark artistry, Esperantists generally cringe at the actors'
poor pronunciation.

A 1987 horror film by Serbian director Goran Markovic titled Vec vidjeno
apparently includes both Esperanto and Serbo-Croatian dialogue. Esperanto also
makes an appearance in Andrew Niccol's critically admired 1997 science fiction
drama Gattaca.

Earlier examples of Esperanto in film consist mainly of old newsreel and
documentary footage, some dating back as early as 1911, when the seventh
international Esperanto conference was held in Antwerp, Belgium. The funeral of
Esperanto creator L. L. Zamenhof in 1917 was filmed. And according some sources,
French cinema pioneer Leon Ernest Gaumont wanted to make a film about Esperanto to
showcase a sync sound process he had developed, but the project was curtailed
by the onset of World War I.

The next direct link between Esperanto and film involves the 1940 film The
Great Dictator, written, directed and starring Charlie Chaplin: the signs in the
shop windows of the ghettoized Jewish population in the film are written in
Esperanto. The 1931 Esperanto novel Mr Tot Acˆetas Mil Okulojn, written by
Polish author Jean Forge (aka Jean Fethke), was adapted by Fritz Lang as The
Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse in 1960. (The film was in German, not Esperanto.) Forge
also directed films of his own, at least two of which are known to have been
Esperanto productions, Morgau Ni Komencos la Vivon (1934) and Verda Stelo
Super Varsovio (1959). It is unknown if either film survives.

In the british sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf (1988 - ?), the signs all the
corridors are all written in both english and esperanto, the characters occasionally
speak a little esperanto too.




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

 


7140


From:
Date: Fri Jan 30, 2004 11:05am
Subject: Re: Shangri-La Pizza (Nick Castle); Carlos Saura
 
In a message dated 1/27/04 2:59:09 AM, MG4273@a... writes:


> "Shangri-La Pizza" (Nick Castle, 1990) is an integrated musical. It is a
> half an hour long, and made as a TV pilot. It is an all-singing, all-dancing
> extravaganza, set in a brightly colored pizza parlor. It is so much fun, but it
> has disappeared from view.
>
If it has disappeared from view, how did you see it?

Kevin



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
7141


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Fri Jan 30, 2004 5:16pm
Subject: Leslie Stevens
 
In addition to his esperanto oddity, "Incubus", which I find hard to
swallow, Stevens made two remarkable films: "Private Property" (with
Corey Allen, Warren Oates and Steven's wife Kate Manx) and "Hero's
Island", one of the most original American films of the fifties.
After "Incubus" he gave up directing (except for some television)
until 1987 when he made the weird, silly thriller "Three Kinds of
Heat" for Cannon, about two female cops (one from Hong Kong,tailing
drug dealers in a resplendent white uniform and helmet). Of course he
was primarily a playwright (His play "The Lovers" was adapted by
Franklin Schaffner as "The War Lord")

In 1960 I wrote a laudatory review of "Private Property" in which I
praised Kate Manx. A reader wrote to the mag that I was foolish and
naive not to have noticed that she was a transvestive (Manx
being "Man X.") The rumor circulated among cinephiles... Many years
later I caught the transvestite in a "Lassie" episode on TV. She
sadly committed suicide for reasons unknown to me. I still have a set
of stills of "Private Property" and have had one of Kate Manx blown
up.
JPC
7142


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Fri Jan 30, 2004 6:06pm
Subject: Re: Leslie Stevens
 
"Private Property" is indeed a remarkable little
independent /"Off-Hollywood" movie. In New York it
opened at the Paris theater -- a very prestigious
first-run "art" house. At the time it was remarked
upon that such a mature treatment of sexuality in all
its variants was made in America rather than Europe.
it was hoped there would be more of its kind to come.
But that didn't happen for some time.

--- jpcoursodon wrote:
> In addition to his esperanto oddity, "Incubus",
> which I find hard to
> swallow, Stevens made two remarkable films: "Private
> Property" (with
> Corey Allen, Warren Oates and Steven's wife Kate
> Manx) and "Hero's
> Island", one of the most original American films of
> the fifties.
> After "Incubus" he gave up directing (except for
> some television)
> until 1987 when he made the weird, silly thriller
> "Three Kinds of
> Heat" for Cannon, about two female cops (one from
> Hong Kong,tailing
> drug dealers in a resplendent white uniform and
> helmet). Of course he
> was primarily a playwright (His play "The Lovers"
> was adapted by
> Franklin Schaffner as "The War Lord")
>
> In 1960 I wrote a laudatory review of "Private
> Property" in which I
> praised Kate Manx. A reader wrote to the mag that I
> was foolish and
> naive not to have noticed that she was a
> transvestive (Manx
> being "Man X.") The rumor circulated among
> cinephiles... Many years
> later I caught the transvestite in a "Lassie"
> episode on TV. She
> sadly committed suicide for reasons unknown to me. I
> still have a set
> of stills of "Private Property" and have had one of
> Kate Manx blown
> up.
> JPC
>
>


__________________________________
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7143


From:
Date: Fri Jan 30, 2004 6:11pm
Subject: Re: BETWEEN THE LINES
 
Along with the all-Esperanto INCUBUS, another potential title for
that question is Emir Kusturica's TIME OF THE GYPSIES, the only film
ever made in the Gypsy Roma language, as I recall.

-Bilge
7144


From:
Date: Fri Jan 30, 2004 7:49pm
Subject: Re: Leslie Stevens
 
Leslie Stevens was also associated with "The Outer Limits" TV series, as writer-producer-creator - and sometimes director. My favorite of his work on the series is:
4-20-64 THE PRODUCTION AND DECAY OF STRANGE PARTICLES
which he wrote and directed (the title comes from particle physics). He also created the "Search" TV series, which had an ingenious premise (cameras saw everything the hero in the field saw, and a headquarters team saw it, and gave him sage advice by radio). This certainly anticipates all sorts of modern technology, Internet, webcams, remote interaction, not to mention that I can feel a Metaphor For Cinema coming on! (Just saw "Rear Window" last night.) The best Search episode seen here which Stevens wrote:
12-20-72 THE GOLD MACHINE Director: Russ Mayberry
Have never seen any of Stevens' theatrical films. His "I Love a Mystery" (1966) for TV has charm - Stevens was writer and director.
My impression from Stevens' TV work is that he is an imaginative writer, with good storytelling wrapped around clever science fictional or high tech premises. As a director, he is pleasantly functional, and does a decent job enhancing the story values of his scripts. But he did not seem like a highly personal visual stylist - more an "auteur" than a "metteur-en-scene", in Biette's terms (by George, I think I've got it!)

Mike Grost
PS: In "The Gold Machine", the hero recites Yeats' poem "The Second Coming", which can be heard by Burgess Meredith & Team back at headquarters. Just as the hero (Hugh O'Brien) gets to "Things fall apart, the center cannot hold" he is attacked by bad guys!
7145


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Fri Jan 30, 2004 10:40pm
Subject: Re: BETWEEN THE LINES
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ebiri@a... wrote:
> Along with the all-Esperanto INCUBUS, another potential title for
> that question is Emir Kusturica's TIME OF THE GYPSIES, the only
film
> ever made in the Gypsy Roma language, as I recall.
>
> -Bilge

In 1980 Jean-Pierre Denis made "Histoire d'Adrien" in the Occitan
dialect of a South-Western French region.

JPC
7146


From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Jan 31, 2004 0:49am
Subject: Magnolia Film Festival
 
Just in case anyone here is near Starkville, MS: both Bilge Ebiri and I
got our films into the Magnolia Film Festival. We both screen on
Saturday, Feb. 7 - Bilge's film NEW GUY at 2:30 pm, and my film ALL THE
SHIPS AT SEA at 5 pm.

Location and info:

The Starkville Cinema 12
705 Highway 12 E.
Starkville, MS

$5 Thursday and Friday nights, $10 all day Saturday
advance tickets: ron@m... or 662 494 5836

http://www.magfilmfest.com

- Dan
7147


From:
Date: Fri Jan 30, 2004 7:55pm
Subject: Re: Shangri-La Pizza
 
This film was simply shown on TV one night in 1990. It probably was a "pilot"
(proposed first episode) for a TV series, that was never made. It has never
been shown since. Lots of pilots are given one time showings in the summer.
The credits are:
7-30-90 SHANGRI-LA PIZZA (30 minutes)
Written and Composed: Mark Mueller & Craig Safan & ?
Director: Nick Castle
Choreography: Michael Peters
I wasn't quite fast enough to get all the writers credits.
IMHO opinion the best shows on commercial-fictional American TV are 1) the
pilots and 2) the trial series of 4-6 episodes that used to be run in the
summertime. Extra care was spent on these by their creators, in hopes of impressing
first network executives, then the viewing public. These shows are rarely
broadcast again after their first run. Syndicated TV concentrates on long-running
TV series, such as Cheers, Friends or Starsky and Hutch - often much less
interesting. Meanwhile, the best comercial TV never gets seen after its first
showing. Such works have now built up a huge "terra incognita" of TV films. Where
can one see them? Maybe in TV museums in New York or Los Angeles? I don't know.
There are detailed lists on my web site (towards the bottom) of all the
episodic TV shows I liked over the last few decades. They lean heavily on such
short lived series.

Mike Grost
PS I've received e-mail from strangers, saying how much they liked
"Shangri-La Piza", a charming musical, and wondering where they could see it again. I
just don't know. The listing on my web site is one of the few references to this
work anywhere on the Internet.
7148


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sat Jan 31, 2004 5:17am
Subject: Re: Magnolia Film Festival
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> Just in case anyone here is near Starkville, MS: both Bilge Ebiri
and I
> got our films into the Magnolia Film Festival. We both screen on
> Saturday, Feb. 7 - Bilge's film NEW GUY at 2:30 pm, and my film ALL
THE
> SHIPS AT SEA at 5 pm.
>
> Location and info:
>
> The Starkville Cinema 12
> 705 Highway 12 E.
> Starkville, MS
>
> $5 Thursday and Friday nights, $10 all day Saturday
> advance tickets: ron@m... or 662 494 5836
>
> http://www.magfilmfest.com
>
> - Dan


Good luck to both of you!
7149


From:
Date: Sat Jan 31, 2004 5:23pm
Subject: Altman's 3 Women
 
I thought that some here would be interested to know - if they don't already
- that Robert Altman's "3 Women" looks to be finally coming to DVD, courtesy
of the Criterion Collection.

http://criterionco.com/asp/release.asp?id=230

This is particularly good news given how rare it is to find letterboxed
prints of this 'Scope film airing on television. For me, "3 Women" is in many
respects the very greatest Altman. There's a very interesting dynamic created in
combining his roving camera moves and fly on-the-wall lens choices with such a
mysterious, ambiguous story - a story, as is well known, the director
literally dreamt himself. It's a side to Altman that is not often seen. The much
less successful "Images" is another example of it, and so is the highly
interesting and visually arresting "Quintet," made several years after "3 Women."
"Quintet" was one of Altman's last studio films and remains one of his least
talked-about.

So this is very good news. And Fuller's "Pickup on South Street" is out from
Criterion in February!

Peter
7150


From:
Date: Sat Jan 31, 2004 5:34pm
Subject: Re: Re: Rafelson
 
Bill Krohn wrote:

>In the 80s all the mavericks were rounded up and put to work for the
>studios.

It's interesting that many of them fared pretty well artistically. We've
talked already about Friedkin and Rafelson. Bogdanovich didn't work much in the
'80s, but I argue in my piece that "Mask" - the first real "job for hire" he
ever did - is a major film. Even Ashby rebounded with his last film, the
terrific "8 Million Ways to Die."

About Rafelson, I wonder how "Stay Hungry" ultimately figures in an analysis
of his career. It looks to be the last of the personal films (at least until
"Mountains of the Moon"), but it's such a minor work to come on the heels of a
masterpiece like "The King of Marvin Gardens" that I've never been sure how
to classify it...

Peter
7151


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat Jan 31, 2004 11:22pm
Subject: Re: Altman's 3 Women
 
--- ptonguette@a... wrote:

> For me, "3 Women" is in many
> respects the very greatest Altman. There's a very
> interesting dynamic created in
> combining his roving camera moves and fly
> on-the-wall lens choices with such a
> mysterious, ambiguous story - a story, as is well
> known, the director
> literally dreamt himself. It's a side to Altman
> that is not often seen. The much
> less successful "Images" is another example of it,
> and so is the highly
> interesting and visually arresting "Quintet," made
> several years after "3 Women."
> "Quintet" was one of Altman's last studio films and
> remains one of his least
> talked-about.
>

I quite agree with you about "Three Women." At the
time of its release it was almost invariable called
"Altman's Persona." But it couldn't be more different
from "Persona." This a specifically American vision,
and one even mor specifically of the American desert.
In this it's nearest relative is Antonioni's
"Zabriskie Point."

Altman's interest in social pettiness is one of the
most fascinating aspects of his work. It crops up in
"The Comopany" via the young male dancer who fails to
fit in, and is observed as a lonely,possibly lovelorn,
outisder.

Shelley Duvall's Millie is at one and the same time
ridiculous and not at all that far from the image of
elegabt with-it-ness she imagines herself to be.
Spacek's Pinky begins as pathetic and then after the
accident becomes a monster. The third woman, played by
Janice Rule, is a complete mystery. It's no surprise
that shortly after this Rule (who passed away quite
recently) quit the business and became a psychiatrist.
The musical score by Gerald Busby is as unique as the
murals by Bodhi Wind. Dennis Christopher makes his
screen debut in a walk-on.

Every time I visit Palm Springs I think of "Three
Women."

I wish "Quintet" worked. It has all the elements of a
one-of-a-kind fascinator, but somehow fails to
connect.

Maybe it's becamuse every time Francesco Rabal talks
about the "tournament" it comes out sounding like
"tuna melt."

And the arrow sticking out of Nina Van Pallant's head
doesn't help either.


>


__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it!
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/
7152


From:
Date: Sun Feb 1, 2004 0:35am
Subject: Re: Altman's 3 Women
 
This feature film recreates in detail a long complex real life dream of the writer-director, Robert Altman. Films based on dreams are apparently rare. Kurosawa's "Dreams" (1990) shows eight dreams of the director, and Bruce Baillie's "Quick Billy" (1971) includes a shot based on his dreams, one in part 3, where shots of a woman walking in a field dissolve into an image of water. The dream sequence in Martin Scorsese's Kundun (1997) is based on an actual dream of the Dalai Lama. A number of major works were inspired by dreams, including Coleridge's Kubla Khan, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, J.G. Ballard's "Report on an Unidentified Space Station". Altman's dream does not include supernatural, fantastic, or non naturalistic elements. But it does seem extraordinarily atmospheric, eerie and emotionally charged. Many of the scenes have the non sequitor aspect of dreams, combined with the feeling that some hard to grasp, hidden logic is at work. I think this is Altman's best work.

Mike Grost
7153


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sun Feb 1, 2004 1:21am
Subject: Re: Altman's 3 Women
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ptonguette@a... wrote:
> I thought that some here would be interested to know - if they
don't already
> - that Robert Altman's "3 Women" looks to be finally coming to DVD,
courtesy
> of the Criterion Collection.
>
> http://criterionco.com/asp/release.asp?id=230
>
> This is particularly good news given how rare it is to find
letterboxed
> prints of this 'Scope film airing on television. For me, "3 Women"
is in many
> respects the very greatest Altman. Peter

"Three Women" is one of my 2 or 3 favorite Altmans and it's not
only his greatest use of CinemaScope, but one of the greatest uses of
Scope of the seventies or any other period for that matter. This is a
case where you'll have to reluctantly agree with Fred that if you
don't see it on the big screen you don't see it (there's the little
running gag of the bottom of Duvall's coat always getting caught in
her car door that's probably lost on TV, among many other things).
Still it's good to have it on DVD.
JPC
7154


From: Eric Henderson
Date: Sun Feb 1, 2004 2:41am
Subject: Re: Altman's 3 Women
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
> (there's the little
> running gag of the bottom of Duvall's coat always getting caught in
> her car door that's probably lost on TV, among many other things).

Jesus. Thanks for reminding me of that great gag. I had the
opportunity to see it on a big screen and even though it was one of
the most vivid moviegoing experiences of the last few years, I still
managed to forget all about that bit.

I remember having a (admittedly ridiculous) tiff with some of my fine
feathered friends after this film was over Altman's diverse methods
of painting his characters. It was mostly a two-way contest between
the NASHVILLE/SHORT CUTS group, who professed to be impressed by how
he did so much with (seemingly) so little, and then the IMAGES/3
WOMEN group, who countered that sure, Altman's small slices are
insightful but not necessarily fully shaded and fluid like what he
does with York or Duvall/Spacek. (Even Rule, who seems out of the
NASHVILLE school of character definition, ends up surprising us
multiple times.) I was, of course, in both groups, diplomat that I am.

I'm quite excited for this release. Mark off another of my personal
favorites that everyone's going to think I discovered through its
inclusion in the Criterion line-up.
7155


From: Eric Henderson
Date: Sun Feb 1, 2004 2:48am
Subject: Re: Altman's 3 Women
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> Altman's interest in social pettiness is one of the
> most fascinating aspects of his work.

This is exactly what I should've brought up with that "ensemble vs.
chamber piece" debate I mentioned in my last post... what seems to
give the latter the edge, actually. Whereas one doesn't seem to have
to work very hard to single out the simplistic charicatures in
NASHVILLE (I mean, if they *must*), the various moments of
ridiculousness in 3 WOMEN (be they from Duvall, Spacek, or the
gargoyle head nurse) are far more tolerable as they at least seem to
be presented as the character's foibles rather than the director's
contempt.
7156


From: Fred Camper
Date: Sun Feb 1, 2004 3:13am
Subject: Re: Re: Daves - 3:10 to Yuma (spoilers)
 
This is a reply to Zach's of January 18th. I'm just going to have to
"do" our group at my own pace!

Zach, you make a really good argument for the film and its style. (I
also thought your Tourneur post was excellent, by the way.) And I
certainly agree that "emotional identification" is a part of most
Hollywood films one way or another, and that in some directors
(Hitchcock, as Robin Wood argued quite well, for example) the way the
audience is asked to identify with characters can also be a pathway to
the art.

I just didn't feel the things you describe in the film were being
articulated in an interesting way, though I can see why you would say
that they are there.

For me, the images never make a spatial world; the lines and depth
effects never combine to make an architectural statement. It just looks
like a bunch of shots to me. I'd say the same, by the way, about another
classic Western, "High Noon," which I resaw not long ago. I'm not sorry
I saw either of these; they're useful as reference points, and to some
extent I was engaged, or at least enjoyed them, on a
narrative-identification level.

There's no particular reason that a film should have to pass the
"silent" test to be good, but I wonder if it would cohere for you as a
silent film -- or dubbed into a language you didn't understand. I still
remember seeing "Mouchette" for the first time in French without
subtitles, not getting much of the dialogue, and still being
overwhelmed, and overwhelmed in a way consistent with my later viewings.
Sometimes, reading defenses of Hollywood films, I wonder if the writer
isn't just appreciating a well-told story with some effective acting or
nice stylistic "touches" that are really just stylish embellishments
that don't do anything more than provide an appealing container for the
narrative. But your posts on Daves and Tourneur make me suspect you
aren't responding to their films in that way.

- Fred
7157


From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sun Feb 1, 2004 4:50am
Subject: Re: Re: Altman's 3 Women
 
> the various moments of
> ridiculousness in 3 WOMEN (be they from Duvall, Spacek, or the
> gargoyle head nurse) are far more tolerable as they at least seem to
> be presented as the character's foibles rather than the director's
> contempt.

At the time, I certainly felt that the Duvall's dress caught in the door
was a sign of Altman's contempt for her. I haven't revisited the film,
though, and I notice that I'm cutting Altman more slack these days when
I do revisit the old films. - Dan
7158


From: Raymond P.
Date: Sun Feb 1, 2004 8:16am
Subject: WARNING: MGM has botched the Ingmar Bergman Collection!
 
MGM has seriously cropped EVERY disc released in this collection! It
is a travesty....my most-awaited collection turns into a complete
hack job (literally)!

Check out the stills at Gary Tooze's website:

http://www.new.dvdbeaver.com/
7159


From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Sun Feb 1, 2004 9:13am
Subject: Re: Altman's 3 Women
 
I couldn't agree more with what that has been said. I completely agree
that it is the best film by Altman, that it is his "Persona", that it
is amongst his best use of scope and so forth. This is for me one of
the best DVD releases this year :)

It is a very unusual Altman film. While it has all the normal
charactaristics, it also has an intimacy, weaven into an almost
hypnotic dreamlike feel, which none of his other film have. Its been
years since I last saw it, but I so clearly remember Spacek walking in
slow motion, soft focus and glowing in her white uniform - almost, if
not being, some sexual fantasy. These transitions between "fantasy"
and then typical Altman overlapping dialogue scenes, were irresistable
not to analyse and became my introduction to Altman as auteur.

"3 Women" also represent, for me, the last film of Altman, before he
hit the dirt with incredible bad films: I so often have tried to look
at "A Wedding", "Quintet", "Popeye", "Health", "Fool for Love" and "OC
and Stiggs" and tried to find any redeeming elements or even
directorial qualities (as there are none in the stories), but after "3
Women" Altman just entered a 12 year period of making crappy films and
showing no signs of skill. It wasn't until "Vincent and Theo" that
Altman again demonstrated control, and first with "The Player" he was
back into shape; but the intimacy was lost. The new Altman
demonstrated a control so strong, that his directions seemed almost
casual. I dare say, that while the intimacy was lost, it had now been
replaced by such a strong confidence in his own ability to direct,
that one doesn't feel his presence: The mise-en-scene is casual and
accidential (in lack of a better word). I cannot think of any other
auteur, who once had one unique signature and now has another
different signature - maybe Bergman after "Cries and Whisper".

Henrik
7160


From: Fred Camper
Date: Sun Feb 1, 2004 2:38pm
Subject: Re: WARNING: MGM has botched the Ingmar Bergman Collection!
 
Hmm. From the Web site it looks as if the images have been cropped from
1.33:1 to 1.62:1. But isn't that what theaters all over the world have
been doing since the 1960s? In the U.S. theaters typically show in
1.85:1, and in Europe, 1.66:1. Have the films in question ever been
shown in 1.33:1 in Europe, or the US? How often? Do we know what Bergman
intended? Just because the image on the 35mm film strip is 1.33:1
doesn't mean it was (a) shown that way or (b) intended to be shown that way.

I'm not saying the cropped images look right, I'm just questioning how
they have been shown in theaters or what was actually intended. Maybe
Bergman did intend 1.33:1, but then aside from the fact that the DVDs
are botched it would be interesting to know how often theaters and other
venues showed the film that way.

Bergman's longtime cinematographer, Sven Nykvist, is still living, no?
Why doesn't a member of this group take on a worthwhile research project
and try to contact him with some questions?

- Fred
7161


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sun Feb 1, 2004 4:06pm
Subject: Re: Altman's 3 Women
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> > the various moments of
> > ridiculousness in 3 WOMEN (be they from Duvall, Spacek, or the
> > gargoyle head nurse) are far more tolerable as they at least seem
to
> > be presented as the character's foibles rather than the
director's
> > contempt.
>
> At the time, I certainly felt that the Duvall's dress caught in the
door
> was a sign of Altman's contempt for her. - Dan


That would be an extremely innocuous way of
expressing "contempt"! I took it as making gentle fun of the
character's pretensions (she thinks she's so perfect and she doesn't
realize she's doing something klutzy, something that wouldn't be
funny or even noticeable if an 'ordinary" person did it...) If I
remember correctly, Alman's direction never attracts attention to
that piece of coat (it's not her dress) sticking out; everytime it's
shown in a long shot. Some viewers might not notice it even on the
big screen. That's what I liked about it. It's thrown away, although
it obviously had to be carefully directed. (Some Altman films are
full of such throwaways, especially "Popeye").
JPC
7162


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sun Feb 1, 2004 4:15pm
Subject: Re: Altman's 3 Women
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Henrik Sylow"
wrote:

I dare say, that while the intimacy was lost, it had now been
> replaced by such a strong confidence in his own ability to direct,
> that one doesn't feel his presence: The mise-en-scene is casual and
> accidential (in lack of a better word). >
> Henrik

Isn't that a good (although not the only one) definition of good
direction?
7163


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sun Feb 1, 2004 4:34pm
Subject: Re: WARNING: MGM has botched the Ingmar Bergman Collection!
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> Hmm. From the Web site it looks as if the images have been cropped
from
> 1.33:1 to 1.62:1. But isn't that what theaters all over the world
have
> been doing since the 1960s? In the U.S. theaters typically show in
> 1.85:1, and in Europe, 1.66:1. Have the films in question ever been
> shown in 1.33:1 in Europe, or the US? How often? Do we know what
Bergman
> intended? Just because the image on the 35mm film strip is 1.33:1
> doesn't mean it was (a) shown that way or (b) intended to be shown
that way.
>

This raises a puzzling question: why would Bergman and his DP
elect to shoot in 1.33:1 while knowing full well that the films would
be cropped practically everywhere they were shown? Perhaps Bergman
(like many other directors) was not aware of what was going on in
movie theaters at the time (see what happened to "Touch of Evil").
The real puzzle in that regard is "Elephant"... JPC
>
> Bergman's longtime cinematographer, Sven Nykvist, is still living,
no?
> Why doesn't a member of this group take on a worthwhile research
project
> and try to contact him with some questions?
>
> - Fred
7164


From: Craig Keller
Date: Sun Feb 1, 2004 5:17pm
Subject: Re: WARNING: MGM has botched the Ingmar Bergman Collection!
 
> Bergman's longtime cinematographer, Sven Nykvist, is still living, no?
> Why doesn't a member of this group take on a worthwhile research
> project
> and try to contact him with some questions?

It might be an even better idea for someone, maybe among the
Swedish-speakers here, to contact Svensk Filmindustri directly to find
an authority on the matter. Nykvist, while still alive, suffers from
severe aphasia (the beginning stages of which -- circa 2000 -- are
chronicled in his son Carl-Gustaf Nykvist's documentary 'Light Keeps Me
Company'), and can no longer speak, in addition to having progressively
returned to an ever more "solidified" state of child-like mentality and
looped nostalgia. It's a very sad end, but at least a gentle reduction
for the most sensitive of cinematographers.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
7165


From: Fred Camper
Date: Sun Feb 1, 2004 7:11pm
Subject: Re: WARNING: MGM has botched the Ingmar Bergman Collection!
 
A better and bigger idea: People with a little time on their hands
should choose directors of the 50s, 60s, and 70s that they love, and
contact the director and cinematographer of key films to find out what
the intended aspect ratios were. JPC, are Bresson's cinematographers
still around? Was he framing for the European 1.66:1; was he framing for
1.33:1; was he trying to make films that would work at anything between
1.33 to 1.85, or what?

These are the questions I wish had been asked of Sirk, Welles, and
Russell Metty. The 35mm prints of "All That Heaven Allows" and "Written
on the Wind" are 1.33:1, as are prints of many Hollywood films of the
1950s; how were they really intended to be shown by their makers,
regardless of what theaters were doing? And are some cinematographers
from that period still living? Our group could take on a collective
project that might be really really useful.

- Fred
7166


From: Joseph Kaufman
Date: Sun Feb 1, 2004 7:27pm
Subject: Re: WARNING: MGM has botched the Ingmar Bergman Collection!
 
In my experience art houses in the 1960s were pretty alert to what
the ratio was supposed to be. That information could frequently be
found officially inscribed on the countdown leader. In the case of
Bergman it wasn't up to him to match the 1.85 ratio; it was up to
the theater to match the intentions of the artist.

It's pretty obvious that MGM's ratio is wrong. Many older films
(where the director or d.p. usually aren't there) are transferred in
a kind of automatic mode on the part of the telecine operators. They
go to a prescribed ratio and then just make sure that the contrast,
et al hit certain norms (sometimes despite what was intended).
--

- Joe Kaufman
7167


From: Fred Camper
Date: Sun Feb 1, 2004 8:23pm
Subject: Aspect ratios (was: WARNING]
 
I forward this from Nick Wrigley, a former member of our group, with
his permission. Craig is right about Nykvist; I saw that same doc too,
which by the way is quite interesting even for someone like me who
isn't all that interested in Bergman. I'm certainly willing to believe
the Begrman and Nykvist were framing for 1.37:1 (which is the correct
aspect ratio for 35mm. "1.33" is a kind of shorthand some use for all
such 1.33 or 1.37 ratios).Perhaps Bergman himself can be contacted
indirectly in the way Craig suggests. And I'm willing to bet many at
Svensk Filmindustri will be able to read and reply in English. But this
also raises the question of what other directors were framing in the
late 50s, 60s, and 70s for the old ratio, which goes brings us back to
my proposed research project.

- Fred

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Bergman boxset
Resent-Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2004 13:19:47 -0600
Resent-From: f@f...
Resent-To: fc@f...
Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2004 19:27:42 +0000
From: Nick Wrigley
To: Fred Camper



Hiya Fred,

Nick from MoC here ( www.mastersofcinema.org )

A friend passed on your recent email about the Bergman boxset (which
I've replied to below):

> From the Web site it looks as if the images have been cropped from
> 1.33:1 to 1.62:1. But isn't that what theaters all over the world have
> been doing since the 1960s?

I've spoken to three people in the last two days who have seen the
films in question theatrically, numerous times, in 1.37:1 Academy
ratio. I've seen the recent restored HOUR OF THE WOLF theatrically and
it was 1.37:1. It's likely that these films have been shown wrongly in
theatres all over the world at 1.66:1 but it's no excuse for MGM,
particularly as these films seem tightly framed at 1.37:1!

Remastered versions appear on UK BBC4 as 1.37:1 and the remastered
French DVDs are 1.37:1.


> Bergman's longtime cinematographer, Sven Nykvist, is still living, no?
> Why doesn't a member of this group take on a worthwhile research
> project
> and try to contact him with some questions?

I believe Nykvist has a degenerative disease which has rendered him
unable to speak. I don't know exactly if he's well enough, but I'll ask
around.

Thanks!

-N>-
7168


From: Jess Amortell
Date: Sun Feb 1, 2004 10:48pm
Subject: Re: Aspect ratios
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> People with a little time on their hands . . .


For what it's worth, Criterion's website has

Seventh Seal (1957) 1:33
Through a Glass Darkly (1961) 1:33
Winter Light (1962) 1:33
The Silence (1963) 1:33
Wild Strawberries (1967) 1:33

Cries and Whispers (1972) 1:66
Scenes from a Marriage (1973) 1:33
Magic Flute (1975) 1:33
Autumn Sonata (1978) 1:66

-- with Scenes and Flute's anomalous ratio in the '70s presumably owing to TV origins. So the above could suggest that, perhaps alone of the films in this box set, at least The Serpent's Egg (1977) - which I don't think I've ever seen - *could* have been 1:66 ... (or was it TV too?)
7169


From: Jess Amortell
Date: Sun Feb 1, 2004 10:55pm
Subject: Re: Aspect ratios: correction
 
> Wild Strawberries (1967) 1:33


Wild Strawberries: should be 1957 of course. Which leaves '63 to '72 up for grabs...
7170


From: Tristan
Date: Mon Feb 2, 2004 0:03am
Subject: Re: Altman's 3 Women
 
For all you Altman fans: This Tuesday on the Sundance channel, the
first episode of Tanner '88 is being shown. Every week on Tuesday
another episode will be shown. This will take 10 weeks, so get out
some tapes, because I'm pretty sure it's quite rare.
7171


From: Fred Camper
Date: Mon Feb 2, 2004 0:04am
Subject: Group Business: Your bios, etc. (everyonel please read)
 
Dear Members,

From time to time someone complains to us that they don't know who a
lot of people in our group are.

We want to allow for the possibility that someone wishes to remain
anonymous, or wishes to post only a first name. But in general, we hope
that members will post their full names and put useful information into
their Yahoo! profiles, which most have not done. We would like all of us
to be able to know each other's names if possible, ages and locations if
possible, and have some indication as to all our interests. If you have
a personal Web site, please place the url in your Yahoo! profile and in
our "Links" section.

Also note that members are requested to supply bios for the bios page.
Please email these to Fred at f@f... . If you separate
paragraphs with double spaces, begin each paragraph break with a

,
encase words you want italicized (such as film titles) with and
, and use the html code for links if you know how (it's not hard to
learn), you'll make Fred's life easier. If you have a bio on your Web
site, just email the url for the bio, and we'll make it into a link, as
Fred has just done with his own bio. Posting it on your own site will
also make it easier for you to update it.

Your friendly co-moderators,
Fred and Peter
7172


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 2, 2004 0:46am
Subject: Re: Re: Aspect ratios
 
"The Serpent's Egg" was a theatrical release. I've
never seen it either.

--- Jess Amortell wrote:

> -- with Scenes and Flute's anomalous ratio in the
> '70s presumably owing to TV origins. So the above
> could suggest that, perhaps alone of the films in
> this box set, at least The Serpent's Egg (1977) -
> which I don't think I've ever seen - *could* have
> been 1:66 ... (or was it TV too?)
>
>
>


__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it!
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/
7173


From: Raymond P.
Date: Mon Feb 2, 2004 2:14am
Subject: Re: WARNING: MGM has botched the Ingmar Bergman Collection!
 
I saw both "Shame" and "Hour of the Wolf" at a retrospective last
year, and the films were DEFINITELY not 1.66:1. They were 1.37:1,
just like Peerpee (Nick) confirmed.

Raymond

--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> Hmm. From the Web site it looks as if the images have been cropped
from
> 1.33:1 to 1.62:1. But isn't that what theaters all over the world
have
> been doing since the 1960s? In the U.S. theaters typically show in
> 1.85:1, and in Europe, 1.66:1. Have the films in question ever been
> shown in 1.33:1 in Europe, or the US? How often? Do we know what
Bergman
> intended? Just because the image on the 35mm film strip is 1.33:1
> doesn't mean it was (a) shown that way or (b) intended to be shown
that way.
>
> I'm not saying the cropped images look right, I'm just questioning
how
> they have been shown in theaters or what was actually intended.
Maybe
> Bergman did intend 1.33:1, but then aside from the fact that the
DVDs
> are botched it would be interesting to know how often theaters and
other
> venues showed the film that way.
>
> Bergman's longtime cinematographer, Sven Nykvist, is still living,
no?
> Why doesn't a member of this group take on a worthwhile research
project
> and try to contact him with some questions?
>
> - Fred
7174


From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Mon Feb 2, 2004 4:45am
Subject: Re: Re: Altman's 3 Women
 
>>At the time, I certainly felt that the Duvall's dress caught in the
> door
>>was a sign of Altman's contempt for her. - Dan
>
> That would be an extremely innocuous way of
> expressing "contempt"! I took it as making gentle fun of the
> character's pretensions (she thinks she's so perfect and she doesn't
> realize she's doing something klutzy, something that wouldn't be
> funny or even noticeable if an 'ordinary" person did it...) If I
> remember correctly, Alman's direction never attracts attention to
> that piece of coat (it's not her dress) sticking out; everytime it's
> shown in a long shot. Some viewers might not notice it even on the
> big screen. That's what I liked about it. It's thrown away, although
> it obviously had to be carefully directed. (Some Altman films are
> full of such throwaways, especially "Popeye").

Well, you're saying that Altman has comic skill and a sense of balance,
and I'd agree. I'm actually, slowly, becoming more pro-Altman, partly
from liking a lot of his recent work, partly from liking some of the old
films better.

But I don't see Altman's mockery as gentle fun. He likes to make some
characters look ridiculous; the laughter is at their expense. - Dan
7175


From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Mon Feb 2, 2004 5:53am
Subject: Re: Altman's 3 Women
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:

> But I don't see Altman's mockery as gentle fun. He likes to make
some
> characters look ridiculous; the laughter is at their expense. - Dan

I don't find 3 WOMEN as compelling as some of the film's biggest
supporters, but I find this interesting - Duvall's character is pretty
silly to begin with, Altman doesn't point it up too much, as far as
his mise-en-scene is concerned. The only "questionable" scenes might
be the ones in which we hear cruel dialogue directed towards her, that
she can't hear. But these people are semi-anonymous, we're hardly in
their company, or if we are, we can hardly say we enjoy it more than
they enjoy Duvall's.

And, as the film progresses, it becomes clear that Altman is concerned
with stranger things than petty jibes at his heroine.

In any case, sometimes I like contempt in films, if it pleases me and
it doesn't seem to come too easy. The major disappointment with Terry
Zwigoff's BAD SANTA was that the film's most compelling element (its
bitterness, mean spirt, and cynicism) didn't have a worthy adversary:
we were given a very forceful worldview, aimed towards a muddled,
general haze (something to do with Christmas cheer, the holidays, The
Man, regular people, etc).
7176


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 2, 2004 2:27pm
Subject: Re: Re: Altman's 3 Women
 
--- Dan Sallitt wrote:
.
>
> But I don't see Altman's mockery as gentle fun. He
> likes to make some
> characters look ridiculous; the laughter is at their
> expense. - Dan
>
Yes and No. Just about everybody remembers Duvall's
dress getting caught in the car door. But our finding
that funny is a ot diferent than the obvious loathing
of the other people at the motel. Moreover, after
Spacek's suicide attempt Duvall becomes far more
striaghtforwardlysympathtic in the way she tries to
help her and take charge of the situation as best she
can. Consequently when the "new" Spacek turns on her
-- and pointedly becomes part of the motel set -- it's
scarcely set-up to meet with our approval. Put it
altogether and you've got a rather complex array of
possible responses to a group of chracters that aren't
offered upto us in the standard Hollywood manner.


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7177


From:
Date: Mon Feb 2, 2004 1:24pm
Subject: Altman's The Company
 
In the end credits to The Company, I noticed that many of the dances featured
in the film were sponsored by various benefactors/institutions (e.g. "Tensile
Involvement" Sponsored by The Marvin and Elaine Gottlieb Family Foundation).
Does anyone know more about this? Is this a clever, unique way to fund a film?
I've swept through the press kit but turned up no information.

The failure to address these matters of funding in the film itself lessened
its impact for me. I liked The Company but I miss the brute economics of a
Showgirls. What was at stake, economically, in Neve Campbell's getting hurt at the
end? Will she still be getting a paycheck while she heals, for instance? We
never find out. And really, what was at stake for her econmically throughout
the entire film? Take her apartment. Sure, it's by the train tracks and not
exactly cavernous. But even at that, I'm sure it cost a pretty penny in Chicago.
Moreover, it seems a far cry from Nomi Malone's trailer not to mention Altman's
statement concerning what he wanted to show in The Company: "Here are
world-class artists who, for the most part, are poorly paid and live hand to mouth;
often in very unglamorous conditions." That doesn't describe Campbell's
conditions which get tons more screen time than the apartment crammed with struggling
dancers. Perhaps a glimpse of Malcolm McDowell's director's pad would have
provided a useful contrast (we see MacLachlan's palace in Showgirls).

And for such a gay subject (potentially gay subject?), the overall thrust was
distressingly het. I appreciate the perversity of ending Campbell's
heterosexual relationship in media res rather than finally formed. But we were still
treated to its every twist and turn. By contrast, what was up with the boy who
got kicked out of one of the productions? Who was that man who dictated his
life? His sugar daddy? His agent? His father? I know such identity politics will
enrage both formalist critics and film theorists and it even goes against my
own better instincts. Joan Crawford knows I'm not asking for more positive or
realistic representations. I'm just waiting for that film about a heterosexual
romance that takes place in a gay and lesbian community center because, ya
know, straight people might work there too.

The only person on earth who thinks Pret-A-Porter and Gosford Park are the
same goddamn movie,
Kevin


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
7178


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 2, 2004 6:56pm
Subject: Re: Altman's The Company
 
--- LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:

>
> The failure to address these matters of funding in
> the film itself lessened
> its impact for me. I liked The Company but I miss
> the brute economics of a
> Showgirls.


Well I sure as hell DON'T.

I cannotcomprehend the high regard in which that piece
of dreck is held. Especially by people who should know
better like Jacques Rivette.

What was at stake, economically, in Neve
> Campbell's getting hurt at the
> end? Will she still be getting a paycheck while she
> heals, for instance? We
> never find out.

No we don't. Her little tumble is deliberately
anti-climactic -- as is much of the action.

And really, what was at stake for
> her econmically throughout
> the entire film? Take her apartment. Sure, it's by
> the train tracks and not
> exactly cavernous. But even at that, I'm sure it
> cost a pretty penny in Chicago.
> Moreover, it seems a far cry from Nomi Malone's
> trailer not to mention Altman's
> statement concerning what he wanted to show in The
> Company: "Here are
> world-class artists who, for the most part, are
> poorly paid and live hand to mouth;
> often in very unglamorous conditions." That doesn't
> describe Campbell's
> conditions which get tons more screen time than the
> apartment crammed with struggling
> dancers.

Well she's got a nice apartment and a gorgeous
boyfriend. This is a movie, after all. Still she works
as a waitress too.

Perhaps a glimpse of Malcolm McDowell's
> director's pad would have
> provided a useful contrast (we see MacLachlan's
> palace in Showgirls).

But he's not romantically involved with her.

>
> And for such a gay subject (potentially gay
> subject?), the overall thrust was
> distressingly het. I appreciate the perversity of
> ending Campbell's
> heterosexual relationship in media res rather than
> finally formed. But we were still
> treated to its every twist and turn.

Well the movie was her idea, she's one of theproducers
and hand a hand in the script too.


By contrast,
> what was up with the boy who
> got kicked out of one of the productions? Who was
> that man who dictated his
> life? His sugar daddy? His agent? His father?

Sugar Daddy seems likely.

I know
> such identity politics will
> enrage both formalist critics and film theorists and
> it even goes against my
> own better instincts.

Well it doens't enrage me. As a matter of fact I'm
usually the one to complain.But not this time out.
"The Company" verydeliberately shies away from
"issues" and grand sweeping "statments." It's the
"Anti-Red Shoes" in that respect. McDowell is in the
Walbrook position, but he's not like Walbrook at all.
He's grand and more than a bit pompous, but practical.
And he doesn't get into his dancer's personal lives.

Joan Crawford knows I'm not
> asking for more positive or
> realistic representations. I'm just waiting for that
> film about a heterosexual
> romance that takes place in a gay and lesbian
> community center because, ya
> know, straight people might work there too.
>

Have you seen "Camp"?



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7179


From:
Date: Mon Feb 2, 2004 3:04pm
Subject: Re: Altman's The Company
 
In a message dated 2/2/04 1:03:22 PM, cellar47@y... writes:


> Have you seen "Camp"?
>

Camp was my pick for the very worst film of 2003. I absolutely loathed it.

Since I don't know any better, what's wrong with Showgirls?

Kevin


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
7180


From:
Date: Mon Feb 2, 2004 3:22pm
Subject: A Decade Under The Influence
 
Two things that stood out for me in this condescending documentary on 70s
American cinema:

1. Peter Bogdanovich's claim that Welles' Othello was the first
self-financed, independent American film. Shadows was the second. (Admittedly, this was
relegated to an extra on the DVD.)

2. Sydney Pollack: "MTV started to happen and there was an impatience for
linear narrative. You wanted to jump everything and get to the high point and
then make everything a collection of high points. Why sit through valleys? Let's
just do peaks."

Kevin


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
7181


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 2, 2004 8:50pm
Subject: Re: Altman's The Company
 
--- LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:

>
> Camp was my pick for the very worst film of 2003. I
> absolutely loathed it.
>
> Since I don't know any better, what's wrong with
> Showgirls?
>
Well since you loathed "Camp" perhaps we have nothing
to discuss.

"Showgirls" was ugly, grotesque and stupid.
>
>


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7182


From: Doug Cummings
Date: Mon Feb 2, 2004 8:57pm
Subject: Re: A Decade Under The Influence
 
>Two things that stood out for me in this condescending documentary on 70s
>American cinema:
>
>1. Peter Bogdanovich's claim that Welles' Othello was the first
>self-financed, independent American film. Shadows was the second.
>(Admittedly, this was relegated to an extra on the DVD.)

I just attended a benefit screening of "Salt of the Earth" (1953) a
couple weeks ago for the striking grocery workers in Southern
California, and I bet the union that financed the film despite the
industry and FBI attempts to ban its production would argue that it
was pretty independently produced. (After Welles, before Cassavetes,
at least.)

Doug
7183


From: Zach Campbell
Date: Mon Feb 2, 2004 9:28pm
Subject: Re: Altman's The Company
 
David:
> Well she's got a nice apartment and a gorgeous
> boyfriend. This is a movie, after all. Still she works
> as a waitress too.

I wasn't bothered by the nice-sized, well-decorated apartment. My
impression, which the film doesn't promote but certainly makes
plausible, is that Neve is her parents' special little girl and they
probably put up for the place. She pays bills, maybe even some
rent, but it's more than reasonable that her character wasn't
entirely financially dependent.

What bothered me in terms of departures from (or snubs to) 'reality'
is that this dancer nonchalantly stocks eggs, butter, and beer in
her fridge. I couldn't buy it ...

Still, it's an excellent movie.

--Zach
7184


From:
Date: Mon Feb 2, 2004 5:39pm
Subject: Re: Altman's The Company
 
In a message dated 2/2/04 2:56:34 PM, cellar47@y... writes:


> Well since you loathed "Camp" perhaps we have nothing
> to discuss.
>

In the interest of not simply shutting down critical discourse just because I
didn't like a movie, here's what I wrote about Camp in my forthcoming Ten
Worst Films of 2003 column:

1. Camp – For sure, there are worse, more inconsequential items on this list
than Camp. But no film in 2003 made me angrier. Here we have an unquestionably
queer setting, theatre summer camp, and the production centers around a hunky
straight white boy whose heteronormative thrust is augmented every step of
the way. His introductory rendition of “Wild Horses,†shot with adoring,
predatory roundlets, stereotypically marks
him as heterosexual to the relief of the counselors and the lust of the
teenage misfits who attend the camp. His obsessive-compulsive disorder supposedly
marks him as a misfit too but it plays a barely existent role in the story. And
his lecherous ways get elided by a rushed dénouement where everyone
inexplicably comes back around to his deadly obliques. It all plays as if
writer/director Todd Graff were nervous about focusing too much on his gay or overweight or
Puerto Rican characters and used this monstrous paradigm of lean, compulsory
heterosexuality to ward off the threat. As a result, they’re reduced to the
secondary characters they’ve always been in cinema. Graff epitomizes a new breed
of filmmakers who trip over themselves to throw identity politics up on the
screen but wind up creating more oppressive representations than most
mainstream product. Like Lost and Delirious but even more dangerous, Camp is a film
best avoided by teenage misfits of any stripe.

Kevin


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
7185


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 2, 2004 10:57pm
Subject: Re: Altman's The Company
 
--- LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:

I'm not so sure about "the relief of the counselors."
Did we see the same film?

" His
> obsessive-compulsive disorder supposedly
> marks him as a misfit too but it plays a barely
> existent role in the story."

Again I disagree.

And
> his lecherous ways get elided by a rushed
> dénouement where everyone
> inexplicably comes back around to his deadly
> obliques.

Ah those obliques!

It all plays as if
> writer/director Todd Graff were nervous about
> focusing too much on his gay or overweight or
> Puerto Rican characters and used this monstrous
> paradigm of lean, compulsory
> heterosexuality to ward off the threat.

Except that in context this lean heterosexual is a
freak.





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7186


From: jaketwilson
Date: Mon Feb 2, 2004 11:36pm
Subject: Re: Altman's 3 Women
 
Dan Sallitt wrote:

> But I don't see Altman's mockery as gentle fun. He likes to make
> > some characters look ridiculous; the laughter is at their
expense.

Cheap derision is everywhere in Altman, but what strikes me is how he
uses mockery and the related habit of pinning down supporting
characters to a small number of repeated gestures (how many of his
movies feature clandestine alcoholics?) as strategies to enforce a
dreamy distance from the narrative, a "flattening" effect I associate
with the use of zooms in the '70s films. It's another strange push-
pull technique -- I don't know another director who holds us between
alienation and entrancement in quite the same way. So many of his
actors, especially the women, are like slightly out-of-control
cartoons, but the best ones -- Shelley Duvall, or Jennifer Jason
Leigh in KANSAS CITY -- have an eccentricity and unreadability that
turns them objects of mysterious fascination rather than
straightforward figures of fun. Satire involves scorn, and like Jaime
I have no problem with that as such; but though nearly all Altman's
films have apparent satirical elements, most of the stronger ones (I
rate THREE WOMEN very highly too) ultimately move away from social
commentary into their own private worlds.

JTW
7187


From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Tue Feb 3, 2004 0:14am
Subject: Re: A Decade Under The Influence
 
I only watched the first episode and about half of the second, but I
also found it pretty wanting. It's extraordinarly shallow, just mad
about sound bites, and full of what seems to be every last
self-congratulatory gesture of '70s mythmaking the directors could get
their hands on. If I didn't know anything about living in America in
the '70s, I would have thought it was populated by nothing but
peace-loving hippies, and there's, like, the Vietnam War and stuff,
and people going to see THE GODFATHER and STAR WARS.

Jeremy Heilman made a great observation when he point out how the doc
would flash a poster from, say, FOXY BROWN or a ten-second clip from
JOE, among posters from seven or eight other films, with some slick
and unchallenging commentary/music track, as if the film was saying,
"Whew, got those out of the way."

-Jaime

--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
> Two things that stood out for me in this condescending documentary
on 70s
> American cinema:
>
> 1. Peter Bogdanovich's claim that Welles' Othello was the first
> self-financed, independent American film. Shadows was the second.
(Admittedly, this was
> relegated to an extra on the DVD.)
>
> 2. Sydney Pollack: "MTV started to happen and there was an
impatience for
> linear narrative. You wanted to jump everything and get to the high
point and
> then make everything a collection of high points. Why sit through
valleys? Let's
> just do peaks."
>
> Kevin
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
7188


From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Tue Feb 3, 2004 0:41am
Subject: Re: A Decade Under The Influence
 
> 1. Peter Bogdanovich's claim that Welles' Othello was the first
> self-financed, independent American film. Shadows was the second.
(Admittedly, this was
> relegated to an extra on the DVD.)

I sympathize with Bogdanovich's Welles love, and I understand that
there isn't much else going on in his life right now besides talking
about Welles and telling the same (admittely funny) jokes and
anecdotes over and over again - but really, his statement only makes
sense until you start to examine what's meant by "self-financed,"
"independent," and "American." I mean, to begin with, not even
scratching the surface here, but OTHELLO was entered into competition
at Cannes as a Moroccan film.

> 2. Sydney Pollack: "MTV started to happen and there was an
impatience for
> linear narrative. You wanted to jump everything and get to the high
point and
> then make everything a collection of high points. Why sit through
valleys? Let's
> just do peaks."

Why sit through Sydney Pollack films? RANDOM HEARTS = one of the
biggest valleys of all.

-Jaime
7189


From: samfilms2003
Date: Tue Feb 3, 2004 1:24am
Subject: Re: A Decade Under The Influence
 
> Why sit through Sydney Pollack films?

Well he directed the Hollywood version of "Dog Star Man" -
"Jeremiah Johnson" !

-Sam
7190


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Feb 3, 2004 1:57am
Subject: Re: Re: A Decade Under The Influence
 
--- samfilms2003 wrote:
> > Why sit through Sydney Pollack films?
>
> Well he directed the Hollywood version of "Dog Star
> Man" -
> "Jeremiah Johnson" !
>

Hah!

Well "They Shoot Horses Don't They" is excellent and
"The Way We Were" not at all bad -- despite the third
act boondoggle. But overall he's a much better actor
than he is a director. His reading of the line "All
rumors are true" in "The Player" is amazing, and he's
the best thing in "Eyes Wide Shut."

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7191


From: Craig Keller
Date: Tue Feb 3, 2004 2:12am
Subject: Re: Re: A Decade Under The Influence
 
> and he's
> the best thing in "Eyes Wide Shut."

Oh, good grief.

craig.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
7192


From: samfilms2003
Date: Tue Feb 3, 2004 3:26am
Subject: Re: A Decade Under The Influence
 
> Well "They Shoot Horses Don't They" is excellent

I think I'd agree. (it's been years since I've seen it....)

-Sam
7193


From:
Date: Mon Feb 2, 2004 10:31pm
Subject: Re: Re: Stars in My Crown
 
Zach Campbell wrote:

>I watched STARS IN MY CROWN the other day and wanted to briefly
>revive the discussion from a few weeks ago (as per Peter's
>suggestion to me). This is a tremendous film. (Spoilers follow.)

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this amazing film! It's great to see
that "Stars in My Crown" has so many supporters on a_film_by. Tag has said that
it wasn't too widely seen in the '60s and perhaps this is the reason why even
such a major Tourneur supporter and scholar as Robin Wood doesn't even mention
the film (or barely mentions it) in his otherwise superb entry on the
director in the Roud volume. Does anyone know if Wood wrote about "Stars in My
Crown" at a later date?

>STARS IN MY CROWN has that amazing scene where the Parson prays for
>Faith Samuels in her room,

This is my favorite scene of the movie and I also found myself rewinding it
and watching it again on my first viewing.

>In a room contrasted between light and dark, the wind picks
>up and sets to motion the composition, suggesting the currents
>that 'move' Faith back into health.

What's particularly astonishing is that the atmosphere changes within a
single shot: the long shot of the Parson praying at the bedside of Faith. I
haven't clocked the exact duration of this shot, but it feels lengthy in relation to
the cutting rhythms of the rest of the scene; the wind picks up towards the
very end. Also notable is the shot following it, of Faith turning her head,
'cured'; her recovery has been almost instantaneous.

A small thing I commented upon in my original post on "Stars in My Crown" is
that Tourneur also utilizes qualities of the atmosphere by having the wind
sweep up the fake 'will' of Famous's at the end of that extraordinary scene.

Fred Camper wrote:

>I still
>remember seeing "Mouchette" for the first time in French without
>subtitles, not getting much of the dialogue, and still being
>overwhelmed, and overwhelmed in a way consistent with my later viewings.

You know, I have to say that probably the biggest change I've undergone as a
filmgoer over the past year or so is my belief that looking at even sound
films as one would look at a silent film is >not< an impoverished way of viewing
cinema - provided that it's a great movie. In fact, as Bogdanovich noted
thirty years ago in an essay in his "Pieces of Time," sound movies have an
advantage over silents in terms of one's visual experience of them; there aren't title
cards which interrupt the imagery. Spoken dialogue is a lot easier to block
out than title cards.

Anyway, if I find myself watching a narrative film and drifting from
following the plot as its expressed through dialogue or acting, that's sometimes all
it takes to convince me that the film I'm watching is a great one.

Peter
7194


From:
Date: Mon Feb 2, 2004 11:00pm
Subject: Re: Altman's 3 Women
 
David Ehrenstein wrote:

>This a specifically American vision,
>and one even mor specifically of the American desert.

That's the thing I was trying to tease out in my initial comments on the
film; the movie's this fascinating combination of the 'naturalistic' side of
Altman - the one who can evoke a sense of place and community so effortlessly -
with this incredible dreamlike, "Persona"-like story and atmosphere. And yet it
never feels schizoid; the film is of a piece.

>I wish "Quintet" worked. It has all the elements of a
>one-of-a-kind fascinator, but somehow fails to
>connect.

I'm not sure I'm prepared to make a lengthy defense of "Quintet" (for
starters, I haven't seen it in years), but I remember finding it pretty singular.
What a location!

Henrik, I agree with you about "3 Women," but I have to disagree that
Altman's work disintegrated thereafter. In fact, the entirety of "Tanner '88"
(thanks for the reminder, Tristan) arguably constitutes one of his very greatest
achievements; I find it far superior to "The Player" (with which it shares some
elements.) I'm partial to a number of films you name and would actually argue
that it's Altman's mise-en-scene which makes flawed works from the '80s like
"Fool for Love" or "O.C. & Stiggs" so fascinating. I can't imagine that "O.C."
sounded much different from "Porky's" on paper, but Altman comes onto the set
with his zooms and overlapping dialogue and basically makes an anti-teen
movie; it's actually a great example of the old Altman contempt, as I don't think
he had an ounce of sympathy for the leads in this film.

Anyway, I would agree that the particular side of Altman which manifests
itself so explicitly in "Images" and "3 Women" has not been seen in many years.
Maybe he can't get an original script of his own writing financed ("Images" and
"3 Women" were both originals). I regret this, but that doesn't mean that
he's not done some amazing work during the past twenty years. Anyone with me
that "Short Cuts" is >the< major Altman work of the '90s? I can't wait to see
"The Company."

Peter
7195


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Feb 3, 2004 4:52am
Subject: Re: Altman's 3 Women
 
--- ptonguette@a... wrote:
Anyone with me
> that "Short Cuts" is >the< major Altman work of the
> '90s?

Hear, Hear!

I can't wait to see
> "The Company."
>
>

I love it. Interested to hear what you think.

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7196


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Feb 3, 2004 4:55am
Subject: Re: Re: A Decade Under The Influence
 
--- samfilms2003 wrote:
> > Well "They Shoot Horses Don't They" is excellent
>
> I think I'd agree. (it's been years since I've seen
> it....)
>
Originally its screenwriter, James Poe, had hoped to
direct and star his wife -- Barbara Steele (!)-- in
the role that went to Susannah York.

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7197


From:
Date: Tue Feb 3, 2004 2:10am
Subject: Re: Altman's The Company
 
In a message dated 2/2/04 4:59:34 PM, cellar47@y... writes:


> I'm not so sure about "the relief of the counselors."
> Did we see the same film?
>

Right after he sings "Wild Horses," the counselors get all amazed and
googly-eyed and say something like "Wow! An actual heterosexual boy."

" His
> obsessive-compulsive disorder supposedly
> marks him as a misfit too but it plays a barely
> existent role in the story."

Again I disagree.>>

Oh come on. He first mentions it in that auditorium or wherever and it comes
up once, maybe two more times tops after that. If he's a misfit, I'm Alain
Delon, c. Purple Noon.

<>

Yes, they're divine. But that doesn't make up for appallingly shoddy (and
offensive) storytelling.

<>

I honestly don't see how you can say that. Even though he's not the typical
theatre camp kid, he's never made to feel like an outcast. Indeed, he's
downright worshipped.

Love,
Alain Delon


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7198


From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Feb 3, 2004 4:30pm
Subject: Re: Altman's 3 Women
 
I can't imagine that "O.C." sounded much different from "Porky's" on
paper, but Altman comes onto the set with his zooms and overlapping
dialogue and basically makes an anti-teen movie

I like Porky's.
7199


From: Craig Keller
Date: Tue Feb 3, 2004 5:08pm
Subject: Re: Re: Altman's 3 Women
 
> I like Porky's.

How was the Daney conference?

craig.

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7200


From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Feb 3, 2004 6:20pm
Subject: Daney conference
 
Good. The game plan seems to have been to make Serge the patron saint
of inter-disciplinary studies (e.g. "Film AND..."), a very lucrative
aca-racket because of double funding sources, but there were enough
a_film_by members present - Chris Fujiwara and me on separate panels,
and Gabe Klinger in the audience - to keep people from forgetting
the "A" word (auteurism). My favorite presentation was Stuart
Klawans' "Unfaithfully Yours: When Cinema Is Linda Darnell, and the
Critic Behaves Like Rex Harrison." I hope it'll be published
somewhere.


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