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21701


From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 0:29am
Subject: Industrials (Was: "Neutral" style and Barthe
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
wrote:

>
> Couldn't a neutral style be realized accidently? For example,
could
> industrial films, instructional films and certain home movies be
> examples of neutral style achieved without calculation? Could
> Warhol's SLEEP be described as embodying a neutral style?
>
> Richard

I've never seen Sleep, just heard about it. What I initially had in
mind was not absence of decoupage, which as some have already
suggested is as ostentatious a choice as one could imagine because of
how it violates norms.

I'd be curious to hear what Fred, who likes some industrials, thinks
about the second half of your question, Richard. Leslie Thornton uses
that kind of found footage in Peggy and Fred, but the example that
sticks in my mind - an endless tracking shot taken from directly over
an assembly line - is so striking that I wouldn't think she chose it
for its neutrality. Of course, there is as much variation in that
genre as there is in any other: Ulmer's Diagnostic Procedures and
Resnais' Le chant du styrene are extremely estheticized, for example.

The fellow Adrian cited - praising an Edward Cahn gangster film -
seems to feel that the accidents of B-movie-making could result in
a "neutrality effect."
21702


From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 2:03am
Subject: Re: Corean cinema, recommendations?
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
> wrote:
>
> "Charles Tesson curated one during the 1999 Autumn Festival in
Paris.
> Charles is big on Korean cinema - possibly because he's obsessed
with
> sex."
>
> Then I guess he didn't program any films from the DPRK.
>
> Richard

I'll haul out the schedule and check.

Speaking of North Korea, Pierre Rissient pimped me into interviewing
Simon Shin, the father of N. Korean cinema, when his film Vanished
was going to be at Cannes. Mr. Shin was kidnapped by the dictator,
along with his estranged actress-wife, and ordered to form a
generation of young filmmakers. They eventually escaped with the help
of the CIA, but it was after something like 7 years, so there must be
many disciples working up there.

I saw a couple of good films from Mr. Shin's early days - the Boarder
and the Child and The Eunnuch - but I never saw Vanished, in which an
actor playing the current President of S. Korea - called by name -
orders the assassination of his troublesome mistress, among others.
Mr. Shin was obviously no longer based in South Korea when he made
it. He had moved to LA where he had made a hit film for Disney: The 3
Ninjas. He was prpaaring the first or second sequel (for Sony, I
believe)when I met him in his office at the DGA. Quite a guy.
21703


From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 2:24am
Subject: Re: Corean cinema, recommendations?
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Noel Vera"
wrote:
Kang Woo-Suk's
> Gonggonggui jeog (Public Enemy) is a lot of fun, Dirty Harry but
> with a sense of humor

I just watched it, and apart from the fact that I think Dirty Harry
has a fair amount of black humor, I agree with Noel. Public Enemy is
really Columbo Goes Korean, but the unrepressed attitudes toward
bodily functions (except for sex, totally absent for a change), the
raunchy comedy and the social satire extend the formula in delightful
ways. The scene where the hero, obliged to relieve himself on the
sidewalk, has a run-in in the rain with the killer - an ominous
hooded figure who just butchered his parents in order to make a
killing in the global stock market - hooked me, and afterward I was
unable to tear myself away despite the gritty commercialism.

Apparently both leads - the mega-blue-collar Columbo and his
malignant class adversary - were making their first action film.
They're good actors, as are several of the supporting cast. I gather
from the rather solemn making-of on the DVD that the goofy knife guy
is a well-known character actor, for instance. The picture earns the
Siegel comparison. I assume it did quite well in Korea and will
become a franchise, with or without Kang Woo-Suk.

Noel: Any thoughts as to why the killer covers his parents' corpses
with flour when he goes back looking for his you-know-what? That's
not a spoiler: Like the Columbos, this isn't a whodunit, but a how's-
he-going-to-catch-him.
21704


From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 2:29am
Subject: Re: Robert Mulligan on Netflix
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Noel Vera"
wrote:
>
> Bill, are you the Mulligan fan? Wanted to ask you, Netflix lists
the
> following films of his. Which would you recommend (aside from the
> obvious To Kill a Mockingbird)?
>
> Baby the Rain Must Fall (1965) UR
> Come September (1961) NR
> Fear Strikes Out (1957) NR
> Same Time, Next Year (1978) PG
> Summer of '42 (1971) PG
> The Man in the Moon (1991) PG-13

Noel - I'm answering late, but I do like Mulligan and, aside from a
few (not all) of the above, I would recommend Clara's Heart as an
offbeat point of entry. It's a little less lyrically restrained than
the other work because of Whoopi Goldberg.
21705


From: Noel Vera
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 3:27am
Subject: Re: Corean cinema, recommendations?
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Noel Vera"
> wrote:
> Kang Woo-Suk's
> > Gonggonggui jeog (Public Enemy) is a lot of fun, Dirty Harry but
> > with a sense of humor
>
> I think Dirty Harry
> has a fair amount of black humor

True. I thought the humor here was more genial, in a macho bullshit
sort of way.

> Public Enemy is
> really Columbo Goes Korean

I don't know...Colombo wasn't known for beating the crap out of his
arrests, was he? Maybe the funniest joke there was one point, I
don't remember the exact circumstances now, when he faces a group of
thugs and you can see from his expression and body language he was
going into full violent mode. Then the camera cut away--we don't
need to know what happens next. The movie just set up the gag and
moved on the moment we could see the punchline.

> Noel: Any thoughts as to why the killer covers his parents'
corpses
> with flour when he goes back looking for his you-know-what?

Never occured to me to wonder. I wasn't thinking this was a serious
film, just something I could enjoy. I also thought the fight
sequences were refreshingly simple and free of excessive cutting,
the way they do it in Hollywood nowadays.
21706


From: Noel Vera
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 3:30am
Subject: Re: Robert Mulligan on Netflix
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Noel Vera"
> wrote:
> >
> > Bill, are you the Mulligan fan?
>
> Noel - I'm answering late, but I do like Mulligan and, aside from
a
> few (not all) of the above, I would recommend Clara's Heart as an
> offbeat point of entry.

Thanks Bill, and everyone else. I'll have to confess, I'm not a fan
of Kill a Mockingbird, but I'll give the other films a try, if only
to see what I'm missing.
21707


From: jaketwilson
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 5:17am
Subject: Re: Corean cinema, recommendations?
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Noel Vera"
wrote:

> I don't know...Colombo wasn't known for beating the crap out of his
> arrests, was he? Maybe the funniest joke there was one point, I
> don't remember the exact circumstances now, when he faces a group
of
> thugs and you can see from his expression and body language he was
> going into full violent mode. Then the camera cut away--we don't
> need to know what happens next. The movie just set up the gag and
> moved on the moment we could see the punchline.

One of the funnier moments from the hit-and-miss but quite stylish
Australian comedy BAD EGGS: after various slapstick disasters, the
cop heroes are given one last chance by their boss, who tells
them "Nothing better go wrong at this funeral!" Then we cut to a
headline that says "FUNERAL FIASCO" and the plot moves straight on. I
know it's been done before.

JTW
21708


From: Saul
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 7:18am
Subject: "The Last Campaign" (Was: "Plainsong" and Feminist Westerns)
 
> > If it is the Ed Stabile film, it might be hard to track down - but
> > nothing is impossible.
>
> Could be: Try this - The Last Campaign by Barbara Frank. One of the
> best documentaries I know, portraying the last 20 days of RFK's life
> including the murder - she had 3 cameras in the Ambassador. No
> narration. Edited by William Lubtchansky's smarter older brother,
> Jean-Claude. Much admired by Alexandre Astruc, Peter Brook, even
> Serge Daney. Contains an astonishing scene w. Jerry Lewis. Good luck
> seeing it - I know whereof I speak!

Why are movies with 'Last' in the title always so intriguing - if in
name only?

Could you supply me with any more info re. when and where you saw this
film. This would aid my 'investigation' into the whereabouts of a copy
immensely.
21709


From: Adrian Martin
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 9:06am
Subject: Cinephile porn star
 
We recently swapped mangled film titles; here is a pricelessly mangled
director's name from a French-Canadian website:

"Ruiz met many of the great Hollywood directors, including Butt Boetticher
..."

Butt Boetticher!! Sounds like a gay porn star !!!!!

Adrian
21710


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 8:45am
Subject: Re: Re: "Neutral" style and Barthes
 
--- Richard Modiano wrote:

> Couldn't a neutral style be realized accidently?
> For example, could
> industrial films, instructional films and certain
> home movies be
> examples of neutral style achieved without
> calculation?

Ken Jacobs' "Star Spangled to death" is entirely about
how that isn'tpossible.

Could
> Warhol's SLEEP be described as embodying a neutral
> style?
>

As John Girono (the sleeping man) was the object of
Andy's affection at that time I'd say "no."



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21711


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 8:46am
Subject: Re: Re: PSIFF / GOING THROUGH SPLAT: THE LIFE AND WORK OF STEWART STERN
 
And I should like to extend my condolences as well.

David Ehrenstein
--- Richard Modiano wrote:

>
> Having recently attended a memorial for my brother,
> I offer my
> condolences. May you dwell in peace, may you be
> healed.
>
> Respecfully,
> Richard Modiano
>
>
>
>




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21712


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 8:52am
Subject: Re: Re: Robert Mulligan on Netflix
 
--- hotlove666 wrote:

I would recommend
> Clara's Heart as an
> offbeat point of entry. It's a little less lyrically
> restrained than
> the other work because of Whoopi Goldberg.
>
>
>
>
And I wouldn't.A real wet sock of amovie. Gave it a
very hard slam when it came out -- which I now regret
somewhat as it was the debut of the now-delightful
Neil Patrick Harris.

I pray "Doogie" will forgive me!




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Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.
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21713


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 9:41am
Subject: Re: Robert Mulligan on Netflix
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
>> Noel - I'm answering late, but I do like Mulligan and, aside from
a
> few (not all) of the above, I would recommend Clara's Heart as an
> offbeat point of entry. It's a little less lyrically restrained
than
> the other work because of Whoopi Goldberg.


Very offbeat, in that it doesn't at all give you an accurate idea
of Mulligan's major qualities. If I had never seen a Mulligan film
except this one I doubt that I would be strongly motivated to watch
others. And then there's Whoopi, who is to me what Malkovich is to
Bill K. Getting acquainted with Mulligan through "Clara's Heart" is
like discovering Preminger with "Skidoo" or Wilder with "Buddy
Buddy" (although to be fair it's much better in my opinion than
those two. ) If you must be a-chronological, then do start
with "Man in the Moon." JPC
21714


From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 9:55am
Subject: Re: "The Last Campaign" (Was: "Plainsong" and Feminist Westerns)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Saul" wrote:

>
> Could you supply me with any more info re. when and where you saw
this
> film. This would aid my 'investigation' into the whereabouts of a
copy
> immensely.

I'll answer offline.
21715


From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 9:58am
Subject: Re: Corean cinema, recommendations?
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Noel Vera"
wrote:

>
> > Public Enemy is
> > really Columbo Goes Korean
>
> I don't know...Colombo wasn't known for beating the crap out of his
> arrests, was he?

No - that's the new part. But they even do a little homage, when he's
about to leave and turns back: "There's just one more thing..." Then
he probably starts pounding on him....

I also thought the fight
> sequences were refreshingly simple and free of excessive cutting,
> the way they do it in Hollywood nowadays.

Also no CGI and ballet and martial arts. Very refreshing.
21716


From: Michael E. Kerpan, Jr.
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 10:49am
Subject: Ayone else seen Dazzling (Xin Lee, 2002)?
 
This past week, I saw a number of recent Chinese films. Some were, as
expected, good to very good (Johnny To's "Throw Down" and "Breaking
News") and another started off well, but derailed before the end due
to script problems (John Chan Kin-Chung's Memory of the Youth" {sic}).
But the most impressive of all turned out to be a total dark horse:
Hua yan / Dazzling (Xin Lee, 2002)

I bought from YesAsia on a whim. It is a tale of a reclusive movie
theater attendant, two taciturn guardian angels (who may be figments
of our hero's imagination -- or may be "real") and several couples
with problems in their love lives. The director uses a mind-boggling
array of cinematic techniques (including drawings, animation, music
video-esqe editing -- and an array of more classical techniques), yet
yet largely succeeds in blending these into a coherent personal style.
The protagonist is played superbly by Wu Lala -- a neophyte actor who
also happens to be China's best sound engineer (he's responsible for
"Not One Less" and "Road Home" -- as well as "Dazzling" itself). As
one of my kids sad (correctly in my opinion) -- "This is sort of like
"Wings of Desire" -- but a lot more fun". I look forward to future
efforts from Xin Lee (he has a new film, Bamboo Shoots, about which I
could find almost nothing -- except that it stars John Lone and a pop
singer named CoCo).

Note: "Dazzling" is set in Shanghai -- and has lots of location
shooting -- giving a fascinating glimpse of a place I've never before
seen portrayed -- at least not during modern times.

Anyone else run across Xin Lee before?

MEK
21717


From:
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 8:42am
Subject: TCM Alert: Worsley, Smallwood, Eddie Cline
 
Tonight (1-24,25), the cable TV Channel Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is
showing a number of rare silent films (all times EST):
8:30 The Temptress (Fred Niblo)
11:00 Ace of Hearts (Wallace Worsley)
12:30AM Camille (Ray C. Smallwood)
1:45AM Laugh, Clown, Laugh (Herbert Brenon)
3:15AM The Rag Man (Edward F. Cline)
I've seen - and RECOMMEND - Ace of Hearts, Camille, The Rag Man. None are
quite masterpices - yet all are impressive, above average movies.
This is your chance to see a lot of high quality but forgotten filmmaking
from the 1920's.
Camille has dazzling sets.
The Rag Man is a little comedy-drama, from Buster Keaton's silent partner.


Mike Grost
21718


From:
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 1:43pm
Subject: BUNNY LAKE/HENRY - neutral films? (was: Otto)
 
J-P, you say that BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING is one of the least neutral films that you can think of. But I've always taken BUNNY (and Preminger's oeuvre overall)

to be highly neutral. Take the Noel Coward character. Most directors would feel the need to explain him away or punish him, transform him into a grotesquery.

At worst, Preminger's camera makes him an object of curiosity. At best, it radiates a profound humanity. And in between, there's all that ambiguity you hear

about. So I kinda agree with the Movie crowd. To me, one of the things that makes BONJOUR TRISTESSE so great is precisely because Preminger doesn't condemn

the sybarites rather than the mere fact that the ending is not a happy one. And let me throw in a good word for the underrated SKIDOO! "I'm not here to

condemn you," says Preminger to the counterculture. But in a way, hadn't he been saying that all along? To Dana Andrews in FALLEN ANGEL,  Jean Simmons in

ANGEL FACE, the sybarites in BONJOUR TRISTESSE, Noel Coward in BUNNY, everyone in SKIDOO!

So then, Bill, does Preminger fit into the mold of a neutral director for you? I mean, isn't there a way in which Coward and his whips and whatnot arrive at

us on a purely denotative level? Or are Preminger's films too manifestly about the problems of presenting someone like Coward on a purely denotative level?

Are there not some images that resist pure denotation?  (This was the problem Teresa De Lauretis had with Michael Snow's extremely difficult PRESENTS, if I'm

remembering her argument correctly.)

HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER spoilers ahead.

And also, Bill, you speak of McNaughton as a neutral director. What of the scene in HENRY when the camera drops oh so conveniently to catch the arrival of

the boy home as his parents are being murdered as well as his own neck breaking? Is that not a bit too calculated and showy for Edward L. Cahn's neutral

universe (and this is one of the reasons I hate HENRY, the odious MAN BITES DOG and, indeed, most serial killer movies)?

And what was the film Cahn started off with that you liked?

Kevin John
21719


From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 2:24pm
Subject: Re: BUNNY LAKE/HENRY - neutral films? (was: Otto)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
Let's start with Cahn. He made a film starring Walter Huston called Law and
Order which is one of the best treatments of the Wyatt Earp story - his first film.
He was bummin-around buddies with John, and I'd almost suspect that John
directed Law and Order (I think he wrote it), but it's better than any of HIS
movies too. Anyway, what I've seen of Cahn's subsequent work suggests that
he threw in the towel after that, although the horror films have a certain
interest (lots for me) because they all posit clashes between groups (like Law
and Order) rather than individuals, and because they are uniformly weird. The
Creature with the Atom Brain has one of the oddest interludes of misogyny
ever seen in an American film - odd and completely gratuitous - and Invisible
Invaders seems to have been the main influence on Night of the Living Dead.

Re: Preminger - No judgement passed on Keir Dullea? On the Patrick O'Neill
(sp?) character in Harm's Way (who was originally supposed to be JFK)? No
judgement passed on Tryon when he lets his sister die? Dana Andrews in
Daisy Kenyon? I agree that there is a serene quality to Preminger that is very
beautiful to watch, but it isn't moral neutrality, and stylistically Bunny Lake is
one of his most flamboyant films - neutrality isn't the word that comes to my
mind on either count.

Serial Killer movies aren't for all tastes, that's for sure. I'll be very happy to stop
watching the damn things (I have to hiatus and do something else for two
months, again deferring the finish), although some are great - Henry included.
I'd have to look at that moment you mention again to comment. BTW, I loathe
Man Bites Dog and refuse to watch it. It's ugly.
21720


From: Tom Sutpen
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 2:52pm
Subject: Possibly OT: Alexander Sesonske "Swamp Water" Article
 
My apologies beforehand if the following represents an OT post, but I
was wondering if anyone whose eyes happen to glance at this message
can tell me where I might obtain a copy of a 1982 article by Alexander
Sesonske entitled "Jean Renoir in Georgia: Swamp Water"; concerning
the production of Renoir's first American film.

All thanks and praises in advance.

Tom Sutpen
21721


From: Tom Sutpen
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 2:58pm
Subject: Re: Possibly OT: Alexander Sesonske "Swamp Water" Article (addendum)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Tom Sutpen" wrote:
>
> My apologies beforehand if the following represents an OT post, but I
> was wondering if anyone whose eyes happen to glance at this message
> can tell me where I might obtain a copy of a 1982 article by Alexander
> Sesonske entitled "Jean Renoir in Georgia: Swamp Water"; concerning
> the production of Renoir's first American film.
>
> All thanks and praises in advance.

*****
Please, if possible, send any answers on this to me offline (I mean to
add that, but forgot).

Thanks again.

Tom Sutpen
21722


From: Adrian Martin
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 4:34pm
Subject: A Lady without Passport
 
Dear friends - Just taped Joseph H. Lewis' A LADY WITHOUT PASSPORT (1950)
off TCM here in Australia. In 30 seconds I saw a stunning opening shot
reminiscent of GUN CRAZY, and later I glimpsed what looked like a weird
reprise of GILDA via George Macready's participation (the film is set in
Havana).

Any opinions out there on this film?

There's also a huge RKO package running late-night here on TV: Tay Garnett's
JOY OF LIVING with Irene Dunne, another tape I have just grazed, looks to be
a real underrated screwball gem. I see in Jean-Pierre's co-book that it was
to be called JOY OF LOVING but that the censors disapproved of the
association between 'joy' and 'loving' !!!!!

Adrian
21723


From: Fred Camper
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 3:39pm
Subject: Re: A Lady without Passport
 
I've only seen it on TV, but and I remember it as uneven but with some
terrific things. There's an incredibly great image, if I'm not
misremembering it, of the plane passengers' faces in Lewsis' highest
"lost" mode, connecting with the narrative at that opint too.

For me he's indeed at his best when characters are isolated and "lost"
in space, the endings of "Gun Crazy" and "The Big Combo" being
paradigmatic examples.

Fred Camper
21724


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 4:01pm
Subject: Re: BUNNY LAKE/HENRY - neutral films? (was: Otto)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
> J-P, you say that BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING is one of the least
neutral films that you can think of. But I've always taken BUNNY
(and Preminger's oeuvre overall) to be highly neutral.


Bill answered for me while I was out shopping. "Bunny Lake" hardly
exists at all outside of its absolutely terrific mise en scene,
which Bill accurately calls "flamboyant" (although it's not flashy,
but rather brilliantly functional). I don't see how this can fit in
with any stylistic neutrality. Perhaps we're just not using the
term "neutral" in the same way. This difficulty of agreeing on what
we mean by "neutral" has plagued this discussion from the very
beginning.
21725


From:
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 11:25am
Subject: Re: A Lady Without Passport
 
There are some notes on this fascinating film on my Joseph H. Lewis web site:
http://members.aol.com/MG4273/lewis.htm

Mike Grost

21726


From: Fred Camper
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 4:26pm
Subject: Re: Re: BUNNY LAKE/HENRY - neutral films? (was: Otto)
 
jpcoursodon wrote:


> .... This difficulty of agreeing on what
> we mean by "neutral" has plagued this discussion from the very
> beginning.

It seems to me there are several possible different meanings of "neutral
style."

1. Letting the camera just record with no apparent artistry. In
narrative sync sound films with crews and actors walking around talking
the resulting space won't be "neutral" because a random and artless
repetition of the conventions of narrative filmmaking lets the
characters' projections of action and emotions take over and charge the
space with those old audience-identification emotions. When this idea
was first introduced here in connection with television works I had the
faint suspicion that it had something to do with that element that I
supposedly undervalue, acting. Let me be screamingly clear that I think
such a style is in no way "neutral," but utterly loaded with ideology.
It tells us what's important is individual human feelings over all else,
rather than, say, coupling an "appreciation" of wilderness rain forests
with an analysis of meat and paper consumption in the world, an equally
important thing to be doing and which serious cinema (which largely does
not include TV documentaries in my view) seems to be largely ignoring.
Where is Dziga Vertov when we need him? But Vertov would be a good
comparison point: the space of "The Man With a Movie Camera" compared to
the "neutral style" of a typical current narrative film should reveal
the differences.

2. A great filmmaker whose style may be expressive but that doesn't
articulate the characters and actions very much, while nonetheless
charged with emotional/psychological meaning. Preminger often maintains
ambiguity in terms of not identifying with particular characters, or
when he does the character identified with may be ambiguous in some
important way. To put it crudely, the bad guy in my favorite of his
films, "In Harm's Way," the Kirk Douglas character, is far from all bad,
and that film identifies with no single character anyway. While the
character Bill mentions is ridiculous, I don't remember the style as
ridiculing him, or judging him. Contrast that with the amazing moment of
judgment in "Shadow of a Doubt," the tilted image of Uncle Charlie alone
in his room. There's a kind of distance between Reminder's style and the
emotions of particular characters, but his style, in a film like "Bunny
Lake is Missing," is deeply emotional, expressive of a "hypnotic"
feeling that mirrors the protagonist's imbalance.

3. A great filmmaker whose style is expressive but doesn't seem to be
psychological in any obvious sense. Raoul Walsh would be my paradigmatic
example. His films have a wonderful sense of weight and space but they
seem to me rather "abstract" in the lack of obvious connections, beyond
the standard Hollywood cut to a close up at key moments etc., between
style and theme.

A consideration of avant-garde cinema is also crucial here. Michael
Snow's "La Region Centrale" lays out and articulates a space without
tying it to the obviously "human." Ken Jacobs's "Tom, Tom, the Piper's
Son" articulates so many possible re-envisionings of its early film
subject that I don't think it's possible to identify its style with
particular translatable emotions.

Fred Camper
21727


From: Fred Camper
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 4:37pm
Subject: George Landow/Owen Land films at Rotterdam
 
Here's an announcement of two upcoming programs at Rotterdam of the
films of George Landow, aka Owen Land:

http://www.hi-beam.net/fw/fw28/0153.html

I can't recommend these programs strongly enough. Landow is utterly
unique. A childhood friend of P. Adams Sitney's, he made perhaps the
first "structural" films in 1965, only to famously and hilariously
ridicule the whole concept in "Wide Angle Saxon." Deeply influenced by
Duchamp, his films are like no others, and in that sense he redefines
cinema in a profoundly hermetic, yet often hilarious, manner. Inspired
at times by instructional films (who can forget the immortal line in
"Institutional Quality," "Let's say your name is Madge and you've just
cooked some rice), fascinated by word games and palindromes, his films
are in part about varying degrees of artificiality in an utterly
"artificial medium." They have a rich intensity that probably can never
be completely unraveled.

The filmmaker made most of his films under the named of George Landow,
but changed it around 1980 to Owen Land.

These films were recently restored. Land is reportedly ill and no longer
working. A U.S. tour is scheduled for the fall.

Fred Camper
21728


From: Jonathan Rosenbaum
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 5:01pm
Subject: Re: A Lady without Passport
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Adrian Martin wrote:
> Dear friends - Just taped Joseph H. Lewis' A LADY WITHOUT PASSPORT
(1950)
> off TCM here in Australia. In 30 seconds I saw a stunning opening
shot
> reminiscent of GUN CRAZY, and later I glimpsed what looked like a
weird
> reprise of GILDA via George Macready's participation (the film is
set in
> Havana).
>
> Any opinions out there on this film?

What a coincidence! I just filed my capsule for this week's Reader on
Friday after seeing it last Wednesday. (A 16 mm print is playing at
La Salle Cinema, a venerable local cineclub run by a Chicago bank!)
Lewis himself told Bogdanovich that he regarded the film as
a "stinker," though it's clearly somewhat better than that: I think
he was disappointed because (a) he had just come off directing The
Undercover Man and Gun Crazy back to back, and the latter, though it
didn't turn a profit, won him an MGM contract; (b) this film was
supposed to have been a serious documentary, not a fiction film at
all, about illegal immigration, and then Hedy Lamarr got shoehorned
into it....The location work (Havana and a southern swamp or two in
the U.S.) and studio atmospherics (evoking Only Angels Have Wings in
an early nightclub bit) are both nice, and the film certainly carries
some of Lewis's odd framings. But it's also a routine action movie
much of the time, albeit one with a pretty convincing plane crash.
And Adrian's certainly right about Macready anticipating his part in
Gilda. (Another odd echo: the same actor who plays the insufferable
Italian pontificator at the end of Cy Endfield's The Sound of Fry/Try
and Get Me! turns up in the plane before it crashes, wearing what
appears to be the same bowtie!)

Jonathan
21729


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 5:19pm
Subject: Re: George Landow/Owen Land films at Rotterdam
 
--- Fred Camper wrote:

>
> The filmmaker made most of his films under the named
> of George Landow,
> but changed it around 1980 to Owen Land.
>
> These films were recently restored. Land is
> reportedly ill and no longer
> working. A U.S. tour is scheduled for the fall.
>

I second Fred's reccomendation. George Landow was
among other things the projectionist for the
Filmmaker's Cinematheque in its early days. A few
years back the Los Angeles Film Critics Association
honored him with out Independent/Experimental
Film/Video award but were unable to locate him.



__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
21730


From: Noel Vera
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 5:36pm
Subject: Re: Corean cinema, recommendations?
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Noel Vera"
> wrote:
>
> >
> > > Public Enemy is
> > > really Columbo Goes Korean

> > > I also thought the fight
> > sequences were refreshingly simple and free of excessive
cutting,
> > the way they do it in Hollywood nowadays.
>
> Also no CGI and ballet and martial arts. Very refreshing.

Downright revolutionary. But did you have a theory re: the flour in
the face? I'd like to hear it.
21731


From: Maxime Renaudin
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 5:41pm
Subject: Re: "Neutral" style and Barthes
 
"(…)the temptation to ruin the world, in order to rebuild it pure of
any former use, or, better still, to leave the place empty. To write
without writing, to bring the literature to this point of absence
where it disappears, where we don't have to fear its secrets, which
are lies, it is the "degree zero of writing", the neutrality that
any writer seeks deliberately or without knowing it." (Blanchot, "Le
livre à venir")

"The actors are plunged into a neutral zone where from now on only
shines the intimacy of their relations, following to the naked
movement of an invincible course. Each state is only one moment of
the movement and is abolished in the next moment: the film is
destroyed as it builds itself and leaves no traces behind." (Mourlet)

I guess the ideas of ruins and destruction are fundamental in the
approach of neutrality, which shall not resolve itself in the choice
of refusal, through "non-intervention". When Moullet, back in the
60's tried to define modern Cinema, he came up with 3 main
principles: repetition, holocaust and removal ("ablation"), ablation
being precisely defined as the seek for "degree zero"… After
Rossellini, numerous are those, till Kiarostami, who desperately
tried to approach the real without willing to touch it. Vain
temptation when the demiurgic obsession corrupts it, when it comes
as a "style". The world has to be crushed to rise again, under "this
eagle's glance", which puts everything at equal distance.
Mourlet/Lang)

Lang again. I have always found totally absurd (and terribly funny)
this comment by Moullet about Beyond: "We cannot even criticize the
film any more, because, except for the plot, it is nothing, empty,
and we could not criticize the emptiness. We can merely note that
this emptiness is integral, homogeneous, and continuous during the
whole film.(…) Here is the only masterpiece of the History of the
Cinema about which we have nothing to say, precisely because he does
not say anything, and which would not be a masterpiece any more if
we could say something of it, because, then, it would say something."
21732


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 5:46pm
Subject: Re: "Neutral" style and Barthes
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Maxime Renaudin"


Nice quotations, Maxime, but what is your point?
21733


From: Maxime Renaudin
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 5:48pm
Subject: Fuller Falkenau Weiss
 
Haven's seen Falkenau, the Impossible (Weiss, 88), but a 2004 Weiss
film about Fuller/Falkenau is shown on French TV soon? Appears to be
slighlty shorter than the '88 version (40 mns). Any idea about the
differences between the two films, if any?
21734


From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 5:50pm
Subject: Re: "Neutral" style and Barthes
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Maxime Renaudin"
wrote:
"We cannot even criticize the
> film any more, because, except for the plot, it is nothing, empty,
> and we could not criticize the emptiness. We can merely note that
> this emptiness is integral, homogeneous, and continuous during the
> whole film.(…) Here is the only masterpiece of the History of the
> Cinema about which we have nothing to say, precisely because he does
> not say anything, and which would not be a masterpiece any more if
> we could say something of it, because, then, it would say something."

"To see/
Nothing that is not there/
And the nothing that is."

Wallace Stevens
"The Snowman"

Hope I got it right.
21735


From: Maxime Renaudin
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 6:21pm
Subject: Re: "Neutral" style and Barthes
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
> Nice quotations, Maxime, but what is your point?

I'd like to know, Jean-Pierre...
My point is more a question. Is a certain temptation in modern
Cinema to take the real "as it is" (I'm oversimplifying) not a wrong
track, when it expresses not more than the, legitimate, desire
for "detroying the temple", the one of classic cinema. If Lang's
glance is "neutral", it doesn't mean that it focuses on the
literality (is that a word?) of things. He extracts them from the
real and dissolves them. Kiarostami (who is not my bête noire
actually) sticks to them. In a way, refusing to operate on, let's
say, a tree, he's only saying "a tree is a tree", when he had to
burn it. Denying filming as an act vs. denying the object filmed .
21736


From: Richard Modiano
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 6:26pm
Subject: Re: "Neutral" style and Barthes
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:


Could Warhol's SLEEP be described as embodying a neutral
style?


"As John Girono (the sleeping man) was the object of Andy's affection
at that time I'd say 'no.'"

But of course you're right. It's the adoring gaze par excellence!

Richard
21737


From: Damien Bona
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 6:34pm
Subject: Re: BUNNY LAKE/HENRY - neutral films? (was: Otto)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
BTW, I loathe
> Man Bites Dog and refuse to watch it. It's ugly.

I loathe the film also, although it's not so much its ugliness that
bothers me as its smugness.
21738


From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 6:36pm
Subject: Re: Fuller Falkenau Weiss
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Maxime Renaudin"
wrote:
>
> Haven's seen Falkenau, the Impossible (Weiss, 88), but a 2004 Weiss
> film about Fuller/Falkenau is shown on French TV soon? Appears to be
> slighlty shorter than the '88 version (40 mns). Any idea about the
> differences between the two films, if any?

No clue, Maxime. I'll ask Christa.
21739


From: Richard Modiano
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 6:37pm
Subject: Re: Corean cinema, recommendations?
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:

"Speaking of North Korea, Pierre Rissient pimped me into interviewing
Simon Shin, the father of N. Korean cinema,..."

Fascinating story about Shin. I heard a garbled account and passed
it off as apocryphal. Thanks for clarifying it.

"...but I never saw Vanished, in which an actor playing the current
President of S. Korea - called by name - orders the assassination of
his troublesome mistress, among others. Mr. Shin was obviously no
longer based in South Korea when he made it."

Is VANISHED recent? I ask because the current President Roh (there
was a former President Roh who'd been a general and was noted for his
corruption)was elected in early 2004.

Richard
21740


From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 6:39pm
Subject: Re: BUNNY LAKE/HENRY - neutral films? (was: Otto)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Damien Bona"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
> wrote:
> BTW, I loathe
> > Man Bites Dog and refuse to watch it. It's ugly.
>

> I loathe the film also, although it's not so much its ugliness that
> bothers me as its smugness.

There's a much better video feature mockumentary w. Chris Mulkey, who
cowrote and codirected, called (now) Big Business. My copy's called Bad
Business. Retiring hitman teams up with geeky film student to document his
life before disappearing. Pretty funny.
21741


From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 6:40pm
Subject: Re: Corean cinema, recommendations?
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
wrote:>
> Is VANISHED recent? I ask because the current President Roh (there
> was a former President Roh who'd been a general and was noted for his
> corruption)was elected in early 2004.

This would've been 1996 or 1997. CdC ran it in the Cannes issue.
21742


From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 7:15pm
Subject: Public Enemy (Was: Corean cinema, recommendations?)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Noel Vera" wrote:
>
> Downright revolutionary. But did you have a theory re: the flour in
> the face?

No! He kills them and goes back the next day in his business suit to look for
the you-know-what. Not finding it, he sprinkles flour on the corpses. To mask
the stench so that he has time to complete his stock-market killing? Maybe...
Then he kills the guy who spilled milk on him to throw the cops off and
sprinkles powder on him to "sign" the murder, serial killer style. At the end
SPOILER Detective Kang beats him to a pulp in a ditch and dumps the
cocaine he and his crooked partner stole at the beginning on him so he'll get
the death penalty. (Apparently, three murders isn't enough for that!) But why
the first flour sprinkle? Search me.
21743


From: jaketwilson
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 7:26pm
Subject: Re: "Neutral" style and Barthes
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Maxime Renaudin"
wrote:
If Lang's
> glance is "neutral", it doesn't mean that it focuses on the
> literality (is that a word?) of things. He extracts them from the
> real and dissolves them. Kiarostami (who is not my bête noire
> actually) sticks to them. In a way, refusing to operate on, let's
> say, a tree, he's only saying "a tree is a tree", when he had to
> burn it. Denying filming as an act vs. denying the object filmed .

But of course Kiarostami does "operate" and we're not literally meant
to think otherwise. I'm not the biggest fan of TEN but FIVE conducts
Nature like an orchestra and that shot of the dogs which erases
itself is plain as can be about "filmmaking as an act", dissolving
reality into form, etc. The whole game of innocence, neutrality, is
Socratic irony, so to speak. I remember when he spoke at the
Melbourne Film Festival he was quite funny about how he manipulated
the cast of TEN to get the results he wanted – setting things up so
the boy would be late for his swimming lesson, for example.

JTW
21744


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 7:26pm
Subject: Re: "Neutral" style and Barthes
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Maxime Renaudin"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
> > Nice quotations, Maxime, but what is your point?
>
> I'd like to know, Jean-Pierre...
> My point is more a question. Is a certain temptation in modern
> Cinema to take the real "as it is" (I'm oversimplifying) not a
wrong
> track, when it expresses not more than the, legitimate, desire
> for "detroying the temple", the one of classic cinema.

WOW! Enough material here to feed a whole book. But you raise so
many problems. I don't know what "modern cinema" is. I don't know
what "the real" is -- and therefore even less what the real "as it
is" is (even if we're "simplifying"). And I don't really know
what "classic cinema" exactly is (where does it start, where does it
end, why? How? What does "classic" mean anyway?)And I have no idea
whether the desire to destroy it is legitimate or even exists.

So I am this guy who doesn't know anything ( and I'm not being
cute about it, I really don't)and is left with basic ontological
questions on his hands. So I can't follow you where you're going,
no matter how much I would like to. But then you're not the only one
I can't follow. So, no big deal.

JPC
21745


From: jaketwilson
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 7:34pm
Subject: Re: BUNNY LAKE/HENRY - neutral films? (was: Otto)
 
> There's a much better video feature mockumentary w. Chris Mulkey,
who
> cowrote and codirected, called (now) Big Business. My copy's called
Bad
> Business. Retiring hitman teams up with geeky film student to
document his
> life before disappearing. Pretty fun

I never heard of that one, but there's an Australian film called THE
MAGICIAN using the exact same premise, which is also not bad. No
doubt it's been done by students worldwide!

JTW
21746


From: year90ninezero
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 8:13pm
Subject: Framing (Was"Neutral" style and Barthes)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Maxime Renaudin"
wrote:

..
> My point is more a question. Is a certain temptation in modern
> Cinema to take the real "as it is" (I'm oversimplifying) not a
> wrong
> track, when it expresses not more than the, legitimate, desire
> for "detroying the temple", the one of classic cinema. If Lang's
> glance is "neutral", it doesn't mean that it focuses on the
> literality (is that a word?) of things. He extracts them from the
> real and dissolves them. Kiarostami (who is not my bête noire
> actually) sticks to them. In a way, refusing to operate on, let's
> say, a tree, he's only saying "a tree is a tree", when he had to
> burn it. Denying filming as an act vs. denying the object filmed .

Doesn't the act of framing itself function as a removal of the filmed
event/object from any pure relation to the real? If so, then any
thing received by the camera, by its placement (by its mechanical
nature, too), automatically inflect the filmed event/object?

I might be getting to specific, but I think "neutral style" is
impossible in film art from this perspective. Style is always a
structure of formal elements, but a neutral affect or emotion through
style is different. Kiarostami might be aiming more for a
contemplative position for the audience (the object/event) in films
like "Ten" or "Close-Up" (I haven't seen "Five"), even if the
production of the film is riddled with arrangements and decidedly
non-neutral film "acts" (the sound blips in "Close-Up", the rigid
scene structure of "Ten", etc.)

I'm totally new, so let me know if my post(s) are contrary to the
accepted protocol.

-Charlie Hoehnen
21747


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 8:34pm
Subject: Re: Framing (Was"Neutral" style and Barthes)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "year90ninezero"
wrote:

>
> I'm totally new, so let me know if my post(s) are contrary to the
> accepted protocol.
>
> -Charlie Hoehnen

Don't worry! There is no "accepted protocol" (as far as I can
tell) and this post of yours sounds very much like the kind of stuff
that is being posted daily in this Group. So, welcome!
21748


From:
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 4:35pm
Subject: Re: "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt" (was: "Neutral" style and Barthes)
 
In a message dated 05-01-24 18:51:02 EST, Maxime writes:

<< Lang again. I have always found totally absurd (and terribly funny)
this comment by Moullet about Beyond: "We cannot even criticize the
film any more, because, except for the plot, it is nothing, empty,
and we could not criticize the emptiness. We can merely note that
this emptiness is integral, homogeneous, and continuous during the
whole film.(…) Here is the only masterpiece of the History of the
Cinema about which we have nothing to say, precisely because he does
not say anything, and which would not be a masterpiece any more if
we could say something of it, because, then, it would say something." >>

"Beyond a Reasonable Doubt" really does seem relentlessly visually empty.
When I saw it, I was terribly upset. Poor Fritz Lang, I thought! Here he has
a film without any mise-en-scene, in this poverty row production. So different
from all the great works in his past (and future).
Till this recent discussion, never dreamed that this film could be
deliberately styless.
Why would Lang want to do this?
"Beyond" will probably never be my ideal Lang movie. In fact, have always
been mystified by the tremendous enthusiasm it has inspired among critics.

Spoken as a die-hard Fritz Lang enthusiast.
Mike Grost
21749


From:
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 4:39pm
Subject: What is "Classic Cinema"?
 
A definition: Classic Cinema is fictional narrative films, made from
1909-1975.

This works pretty well in a lot of contexts.

Mike Grost
21750


From: year90ninezero
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 9:57pm
Subject: Re: What is "Classic Cinema"?
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
> A definition: Classic Cinema is fictional narrative films, made from
> 1909-1975.
>
> This works pretty well in a lot of contexts.
>
> Mike Grost

Although for many the end of the classical period was presaged by
"Psycho" (1960)and its abrupt shits in identification, the reflexive
camera, without mentioning the new relationship the film had to its
audience (marketing, pleasure in the terror, etc.)

-Charlie Hoehnen
21751


From:  
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 5:24pm
Subject: Re: Re: Possibly OT: Alexander Sesonske "Swamp Water" Article (addendum)
 
Tom Sutpen wrote:

>Please, if possible, send any answers on this to me offline (I mean to
>add that, but forgot).

Queries trying to locate articles about film are not OT, and replies should
be made to the list, as this kind of information adds the general body of film
knowledge.

Peter and Fred
21752


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 10:30pm
Subject: Re: What is "Classic Cinema"?
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
> A definition: Classic Cinema is fictional narrative films, made
from
> 1909-1975.
>
> This works pretty well in a lot of contexts.
>
> Mike Grost

Thanks, Mike; this is illuminating.

What do we call cinema starting January 1976?

When I was in my twenties I loved a kind of music known then
as "modern jazz." Now it's labelled "classic jazz."

Isn't it possible that the cinema of the past 25 or 30 years
(which is still by and large fictional narrative) will be
called "classic" a few decades from now? And that we will still be
stuck with one of those words that cannot be properly defined even
though everybody takes their meaning for granted?

JPC
21753


From:  
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 5:35pm
Subject: Re: Re: Robert Mulligan on Netflix
 
Jean-Pierre Coursodon wrote:

>Very offbeat, in that it doesn't at all give you an accurate idea
>of Mulligan's major qualities.

Well, I must say that I love "Clara's Heart" and I was very happy when it
ended up being the one Mulligan film which received the most individual attention
in our feature in The Film Journal: there's Bob Keser's essay on it, Zach
Campbell's essay on it (contrasting it with "To Kill a Mockingbird"), and my
interviews with two editors who worked on the picture. And at least one Mulligan
fan on this list (Fred) considers it to be the very greatest Mulligan!

I'd agree it might be the wrong way to go in introducing Mulligan to someone
unfamiliar with his work, but I think it does showcase his major qualities as
a filmmaker, as both Bob and Zach's essays discuss.

Peter
21754


From: Richard Modiano
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 10:54pm
Subject: Re: What is "Classic Cinema"?
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:

"Isn't it possible that the cinema of the past 25 or 30 years
(which is still by and large fictional narrative) will be
called "classic" a few decades from now? And that we will still be
stuck with one of those words that cannot be properly defined even
though everybody takes their meaning for granted?"

Maybe the cinema of the past 25 or 30 years will be called "neo-
classical" cinema, or maybe some group of films from that period will
be labelled as such and the rest will be called "modern" or, dare I
say, "post-modern."

Any definition of what constitutes "classic" cinema will have to
avoid arbitariness and also avoid errors of type,namely, the types
set forth will have to be sufficiently exclusive of each other to be
in seperate categories. Mike's definition seems to me to be a kind
of waste basket too blurred to be useful, especially when compared to
the taxonmies used in, say, painting, sculpture and architecture.

Richard
21755


From: Gabe Klinger
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 11:59pm
Subject: Re: "Neutral" style and Barthes
 
"We cannot even criticize the
> film any more, because, except for the plot, it is nothing, empty,
> and we could not criticize the emptiness. We can merely note
that
> this emptiness is integral, homogeneous, and continuous
during the
> whole film.(…) Here is the only masterpiece of the History of
the
> Cinema about which we have nothing to say, precisely
because he does
> not say anything, and which would not be a masterpiece any
more if
> we could say something of it, because, then, it would say
something."

A good description of Rohmer's TRIPLE AGENT.

Gabe
21756


From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 0:56am
Subject: Re: "Neutral" style and Barthes
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Gabe Klinger"
wrote:

which would not be a masterpiece any
> more if
> > we could say something of it, because, then, it would say
> something."
>
> A good description of Rohmer's TRIPLE AGENT.
>
Beg to differ, G-Man. Triple Agent, like Topaz, is about "how
politics and spying destroy character, destroy people, destroy life"
(Samuel Taylor to Hitchcock). I do love it, though.
21757


From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 1:00am
Subject: Re: "Neutral" style and Barthes
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:

>
> WOW! Enough material here to feed a whole book. But you raise so
> many problems. I don't know what "modern cinema" is. I don't know
> what "the real" is -- and therefore even less what the real "as it
> is" is (even if we're "simplifying"). And I don't really know
> what "classic cinema" exactly is (where does it start, where does
it end, why? How? What does "classic" mean anyway?)And I have no idea
> whether the desire to destroy it is legitimate or even exists.
>
> So I am this guy who doesn't know anything

Your months of translating Tag have left their mark, JP. You sound
just like him!

Me, I'm perfectly capable of launching a thread about some unheard of
near-oxymoron -- say, "neutral style" -- just to figure out (with a
little help from my friends) what it DOES mean!
21758


From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 1:02am
Subject: Re: Framing (Was"Neutral" style and Barthes)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "year90ninezero"
wrote:
>
> Doesn't the act of framing itself function as a removal of the
filmed
> event/object from any pure relation to the real?

It sure does. That's why neutral style, when encountered, is very
artful - "the art that conceals art," to quote Pope.
21759


From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 1:05am
Subject: Re: "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt" (was: "Neutral" style and Barthes)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
> In a message dated 05-01-24 18:51:02 EST, Maxime writes:

>
> "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt" really does seem relentlessly visually
empty.
> When I saw it, I was terribly upset. Poor Fritz Lang, I thought!
Here he has
> a film without any mise-en-scene, in this poverty row production.
So different
> from all the great works in his past (and future).

Paradoxically, the last shot is of the maker's hand (standing in for
the warden's). I know that there are supposed to be shots of Lang's
hand throughout his work, but in this case it was a late decision
(the shot isn't in the script) and it puts his signature to his
most "unsigned" work. The least that can be said: He wasn't
renouncing it!
21760


From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 1:07am
Subject: Re: "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt" - follow-up
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:

But of course, the hand we see in the last shot REFUSES to sign
SPOILER (the pardon)! Pretty slick!
21761


From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 1:10am
Subject: Re: What is "Classic Cinema"?
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
wrote:
>

I first encountered the term in CdC between 1968 and 1972. From there
it disseminated thru disciples and also through fellow travellers
like Bellour. No word has meaning in a vaccuum, and that's where my
sense of it came from. It's pretty much Mike's sense of it.
21762


From: Andy Rector
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 1:12am
Subject: Re: "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt" (was: "Neutral" style and Barthes)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
> In a message dated 05-01-24 18:51:02 EST, Maxime writes:
>
> << Lang again. I have always found totally absurd (and terribly
funny)
> this comment by Moullet about Beyond: "We cannot even criticize
the
> film any more, because, except for the plot, it is nothing,
empty,
> and we could not criticize the emptiness. We can merely note that
> this emptiness is integral, homogeneous, and continuous during
the
> whole film.(…) Here is the only masterpiece of the History of the
> Cinema about which we have nothing to say, precisely because he
does
> not say anything, and which would not be a masterpiece any more
if
> we could say something of it, because, then, it would say
something." >>
>
> "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt" really does seem relentlessly visually
empty.
> When I saw it, I was terribly upset. Poor Fritz Lang, I thought!
Here he has
> a film without any mise-en-scene, in this poverty row production.
So different
> from all the great works in his past (and future).
> Till this recent discussion, never dreamed that this film could be
> deliberately styless.
> Why would Lang want to do this?
> "Beyond" will probably never be my ideal Lang movie. In fact, have
always
> been mystified by the tremendous enthusiasm it has inspired among
critics.
>
> Spoken as a die-hard Fritz Lang enthusiast.
> Mike Grost

Of course I understand the disquiet the film provokes but I am a
true believer in Lang and ESPECIALLY this film. It is a film of a
plan, a plan of a plan, a procedure in a procedure. As a filmmaker
interested in police work and its (im)morality Lang has come close
to this procedural abstraction in the past, even back to M. The
scene at the bar with Andrews and the journalist sitting in a booth
is as much of a breach in "decor" as any Straub film. Though I've
always been shocked at the flatness of the acting, I'd think that
Andrews wouldn't allow it. It's not styless, as Bresson is not
styless. truth is concrete, says lang's friend!
A spiral is much more horrifying and stark when it's not guilded.
Considering it was his last american film, I can't help but think of
it as his reflection on the contriving and executing of plots
(without holes) and even mise en scenes that he did for hollywood
for so long.

By the way, Mike, where can that Moullet quote (the english
translation above) be found? I'd do anything for a eng translation
of his book from the 60's.


andy
21763


From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 1:23am
Subject: Re: "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt" (was: "Neutral" style and Barthes)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Andy Rector"
wrote:
> As a filmmaker
> interested in police work and its (im)morality Lang has come close
> to this procedural abstraction in the past, even back to M.

And like M, Beyond can be seen as a film against capital punishment.
It starts off as that, then reverses the lesson by a revelation that
calls everything we have seen into question, indeed, one that calls
ALL appearances into question. But this only proves that no one's
life should ever be taken because of circumstantial evidence, or any
kind of evidence, given that all is Maya. Pretty slick!

So pace Moullet, the movie DOES have a message - one of the hoariest
socially conscious messages in the book: a denunciation of capital
punishment.

I contradict myself - I always contradict myself!
21764


From:
Date: Mon Jan 24, 2005 10:06pm
Subject: Re: What is "Classic Cinema"?
 
<< A definition: Classic Cinema is fictional narrative films, made from
1909-1975. >>
I share the skepticism of JPC and Richard Mondiano, about whether this is a
genuinely meaningful term. Lots of post-1975 filmmaking has much in common with
traditional, pre-1975 approaches.
Still the term is used everywhere from Hollywood to the Cahiers. In Peter
Tonguette's interview on "Clara's Heart", (in The Film Journal), Mulligan's
collaborators keep refering to his film style as a examplar of the Old Hollywood,
rather than the New.
Whenever I see the term "Classic Cinema" in a critical discussion, I mentally
substitute the above definition. It usually seems to express what the writers
actually mean.

Mike Grost
21765


From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 3:36am
Subject: Re: What is "Classic Cinema"?
 
Isn't "classic" a term that at least suggests a lasting significance,
a timeless quality? If so, would a limitation of cinema by date not
invalidate such?

Also, by what approach does one define timeless? It's appeal to a mass
audience, it's critical acclaim or it's technical merits? Or by any of
these, whatever serves its purpose?

Henrik


--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
>
> << A definition: Classic Cinema is fictional narrative films, made
from
> 1909-1975. >>
> I share the skepticism of JPC and Richard Mondiano, about whether
this is a
> genuinely meaningful term. Lots of post-1975 filmmaking has much in
common with
> traditional, pre-1975 approaches.
> Still the term is used everywhere from Hollywood to the Cahiers. In
Peter
> Tonguette's interview on "Clara's Heart", (in The Film Journal),
Mulligan's
> collaborators keep refering to his film style as a examplar of the
Old Hollywood,
> rather than the New.
> Whenever I see the term "Classic Cinema" in a critical discussion, I
mentally
> substitute the above definition. It usually seems to express what
the writers
> actually mean.
>
> Mike Grost
21766


From: thebradstevens
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 5:13am
Subject: Larry Clark to direct Nicholas Ray biopic
 
Now here's something I'm looking forward to seeing:

http://www.citylightsmedia.com/CLPictures/Interupted.html
21767


From: K. A. Westphal
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 7:02am
Subject: Re: What is "Classic Cinema"?
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
wrote:
>
> Maybe the cinema of the past 25 or 30 years will be called "neo-
> classical" cinema, or maybe some group of films from that period will
> be labelled as such and the rest will be called "modern" or, dare I
> say, "post-modern."

I've used this arbitrary five-tier system for a few years:

1893-1928 Silent Cinema
1929-1959 Classical Cinema
1959-1975 Age of European Modernism
1975-1999 Age of American Blockbuster
2000-Present Digital Revolution

This is a limited system; the bias towards Western styles reflects the
dominant paradigm of style at the time.

--Kyle Westphal
21768


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 8:14am
Subject: Re: Larry Clark to direct Nicholas Ray biopic
 
Ah yes. One relentless self-mythologizer finds
another.
I'd rather see a fim about Ray's earlier years -- say
one built around the making of "In a Lonely Place" and
the collapse of his marriage to Gloria Grahame.

Rather interested in Buscemi's Burroughs film, also
mentioned in the link.

--- thebradstevens wrote:

>
> Now here's something I'm looking forward to seeing:
>
>
http://www.citylightsmedia.com/CLPictures/Interupted.html
>
>
>
>




__________________________________
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The all-new My Yahoo! - What will yours do?
http://my.yahoo.com
21769


From: Adrian Martin
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 9:21am
Subject: re: neutral style
 
Bill, I have found all the answers you seek - in Maurice Blanchot's THE
INFINITE CONVERSATION, which has a very large section devoted to 'the
neutral'. No movies in there, but it hardly matters ...

I have just started to delve into it, but Blanchot (speaking of Kafka)
defines the neutrality effect as that of the NON-CONCERNING:

"What is happening? What new exigency has befallen the reader? It is not
that this concerns him: on the contrary, it concerns him in no way, and
perhaps concerns no one; it is in a sense the non-concerning, but with
regard to which, by the same token, the reader can no longer comfortably
situate himself in relation to what does no even present itself as
unsituatable" (p. 384)

For myself, I think of the neutral style/effect in cinema as something
essentially DISQUIETING, chilling - I am thinking of a film like I SPIT ON
YOUR GRAVE, which so 'artlessly', dispassionately sets out its trauma and
revenge scenario - and Blanchot captures this well for me: these events are
'un-concerning', do not reach out to involve me as a spectator, but all the
same I can no longer situate myself comfortably in relation to this
'neutral' spectacle ...

You know, I also suspect the neutral effect in cinema has maybe even more to
do with the SOUNDTRACK - the absence of music, the drone of room-noise,
post-sync voices - than with the image.

Adrian
21770


From: Matt Teichman
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 9:26am
Subject: Napoleon DVD?
 
Hello all,

I was wondering whether anyone recommended the Region 4 DVD of Gance's
_Napoleon_. I think it's the only one available, though I might be
wrong...

thanks as always,
-Matt
21771


From: Kevin Lee
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 9:45am
Subject: David Walsh shoots down The Aviator
 
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jan2005/avia-j13.shtml

I still like the movie, but I love being given another pair of eyes
to see it with. I don't recall any other critic pulling the rug from
under Scorsese's lionization of Hughes and dousing it with a bucket
of sociohistorical ice water.
21772


From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 10:25am
Subject: NYC: Yang retrospective - new schedule
 
For those of you in NYC who were planning to attend the Edward Yang retro
at Anthology, the schedule has been reduced: A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY, A
CONFUCIAN CONFUSION and MAHJONG did not arrive. Here's the new schedule.
- Dan

Edward Yang
TAIPEI STORY
1985, 110 minutes, 16mm.
Friday, January 28 at 7:00, Sunday, January 30 at 3:00 & Tuesday, February
1 at 7:00.

Edward Yang
THE TERRORIZER
1987, 120 minutes, 16mm.
Friday, January 28 at 9:30, Sunday, January 30 at 5:30 &
Tuesday, February
1 at 9:30.

Edward Yang
THAT DAY, ON THE BEACH
1982, 166 minutes, 16mm.
Wednesday,
February 2 at 7:30.

Edward Yang
YI YI
2000, 173 minutes, 35mm.
Thursday,
February 3 at 7:30.
21773


From: alfred eaker
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 10:27am
Subject: contemporary oepra on film
 
something one doesn't read about too often on film sites.
there is a good number of highly innovative stagings of both modern
and classic operas on video. good luck finding them. usually there
are released for about a week and yanked.
but, here's is a too brief list.
the genesis of filmed avant-garde opera interpetation was Pierre
Boulez and Patrice Chereau presentation of Wagner's Ring Cycle in
1980 (still available on dvd).
it made a huge splash. the rhine maidens were prostitutes above a
dam, Wotan was a mafioso jerk and Valhalla a NY city skycraper.
it was presented over a week on television, like a soap opera.the
purists (including the arch conservative ny times music critic Harold
C Schoenberg) were outraged (it doesnt take much to annoy
musicologists).
leave it to one time avant-garde boogey man Boulez to have been a
part of it. and Chereau cemented his rep here and has gone onto
numerous follow up projects, including (by all accounts)a stunning
film of Alban Berg's 'Wozzeck'with Daniel Barenboim conducting.
unfortunately, it was only released over seas and finding it would
amount to a small miracle.
oddly enough, Barenboim is known primarily for his retro romantic,
Furtwanglerian conducting. yet,he has repeatedly worked with
progressive stage directors. among those has been Harry Kupfer.
Kupfer and Barenboim filmed their interpetation of the ring cycle,
in abstract geometric staging. as stunning as this film was,their
production of Wagner's 'Parsifal' was even better and remains the
quintessential film of any Wagner opera. both were available for
about ten minutes and i luckily saw them.
but that teaming didn't make the impression that Peter Sellars made
with his filming of the three mozart operas; 'Don Giovanni, Cosi Fan
Tutti' and 'Marriage of Figaro'.
Tutti was set in a cafe,replete with Mozart silhoutted restrooms. the
participants were punk trash types while Don Giovanni cast two
african americans in the leads, was set in harlem and the Don
listened to the overture on a ghetto blaster. the Sellers Mozart
operas were refreshing interpetations that made the orthodox James
Levine- Met productions look stale and lifeless. naturally, the
musicologists were yet again up in arms.
in 1993 Julie Taymor ('Titus' and 'Frida')debuted with a filmed
staging of Stravinsky's 'Oedipus Rex' which remains unlike any opera
filmed before or since. if you've seen 'Titus' you've seen Taymor's
stylized violence which is in great abundance here. this out of print
film is fetching a fortune on amazon and ebay.
a 1995 film of Valery Gergiev's Kirov production of Prokofiev's 'The
Fiery Angel' gave Ken Russell's 'The Devils' a run for the
sacreligious money (unavailable).
in 1997 Maria Ewing's 'Salome' was finally filmed. Ewing had made her
rep with this Richard Strauss opera (based on the contoversial,
delightfully lurid Oscar Wilde play) by stripping down to her bare
necessities in the frenzied dance of the seven veils.any man not
aroused after seeing this had better check his pulse.
in 2000 Peter Sellars gave us a marvellous film of
Handel's 'Theodora'.the presecution of chrisitans takes place on a
televised press conference, by the business-suited Roman governor of
Antioch and has Roman legionaries garbed as a SWAT team with
automatic weapons. The Roman governor is a totally political animal
with a drinking problem. Dawn Upshaw and David Daniels,
Christian victims, are executed not in a pit of lions but strapped to
tables for lethal injections.
this year we finally saw the release of a filmed version of Leonard
Bernstein's mass. Bernstein wrote this rock opera mass as a response
to the Nixon administration and as a tribute to the slain Kennedys.
predictably it was denounced and yanked pretty quickly. ironically
enough it was finally filmed in Vatican City in 2000. it was released
a month ago and anyone interested better grab it up.
Peter Mussbach's 1996 highly expressionistic staging of Alban Berg's
dark opus 'Wozzeck' is till available on dvd, as is Andrew Davis '97
filmed production of Berg's (even more lurid) 'Lulu' with the
indespensable godsend modernist soprano Christine Schaffer in the
title role. amazingly, still available.
Oliver Knussen's 'Where the wild things are/Higglety Pigglety Pop' was
filmed in '94. based off the books of Maurice Sendak and mother goose
these are wonderfully filmed experiences with life size puppets and
magical sets.oop.
Carlo Menotti's 'The Medium' was filmed in 1951, and may well be one
of the oldest opera videos in existence.
It is still one of the best. Menotti was also a great
operatic stage director, and he commits his work to film with great,
detailed attention.
a rad production of Offenbach's 'Tales of Hoffman.
while not quite as controversial as 'The Fiery Angel',it admirably
does it's best to top it.
conductor Kent Nagano respects Offenbach's intentions while stage
director Erlo plays havoc with them.
the production takes place in a symbol-infested mental hospital,
giving it a feverish,surreal atmosphere. many patrons found the
staging offensive.
John Corigliano's film of his opera 'Ghost of Versailles' won raves
in virtually ever corner of the world. it was a highly eclectic mix
of differenet operatic styles. it did so well that inevitably a film
was made. the film sold well and made money. alas, not as much as
it's distributors had hoped and after only a few months was
uncerimoniousely yanked. i have not seen hide nor hair of it for
about ten years. go figure.
21774


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 10:42am
Subject: Re: David Walsh shoots down The Aviator
 
More dishwater than icewater. While he may have a
point ("an idiotic one but a point nonetheless") about
the Hughes vs. Tripp battle he seems to think that
Hepburn's family actually WERE Socialist rather than
the pampered dingbats Scorsese (quite accurately)
presents. Falling in line with this is his bizarre
criticism of Cate Blanchett -- as if la Hepburn were
still alive and about to register a protest.

--- Kevin Lee wrote:

>
>
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jan2005/avia-j13.shtml
>
> I still like the movie, but I love being given
> another pair of eyes
> to see it with. I don't recall any other critic
> pulling the rug from
> under Scorsese's lionization of Hughes and dousing
> it with a bucket
> of sociohistorical ice water.
>
>
>
>


__________________________________________________
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21775


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 10:51am
Subject: Re: contemporary oepra on film
 
--- alfred eaker wrote:

Chereau cemented his rep here and
> has gone onto
> numerous follow up projects, including (by all
> accounts)a stunning
> film of Alban Berg's 'Wozzeck'with Daniel Barenboim
> conducting.

Moreover much of the staging of the "Ring" finds its
way into Chereau's films. The trees from "Die Walkure"
loom at the climax of "Those Who Love Me Can Take the
Train" and the brothers in "Son Frere" connect much
like Wagner's demi-gods.


> in abstract geometric staging. as stunning as this
> film was,their
> production of Wagner's 'Parsifal' was even better
> and remains the
> quintessential film of any Wagner opera. both were
> available for
> about ten minutes and i luckily saw them.

What do you think of Syberberg's "Parsifal"?

> but that teaming didn't make the impression that
> Peter Sellars made
> with his filming of the three mozart operas; 'Don
> Giovanni, Cosi Fan
> Tutti' and 'Marriage of Figaro'.
> Tutti was set in a cafe,replete with Mozart
> silhoutted restrooms. the
> participants were punk trash types while Don
> Giovanni cast two
> african americans in the leads, was set in harlem
> and the Don
> listened to the overture on a ghetto blaster.

Never much imressed with Sellars. "Cute" ideas, glibly
served.

What say you of Losey's "Don Giovanni"?


> John Corigliano's film of his opera 'Ghost of
> Versailles' won raves
> in virtually ever corner of the world. it was a
> highly eclectic mix
> of differenet operatic styles. it did so well that
> inevitably a film
> was made. the film sold well and made money. alas,
> not as much as
> it's distributors had hoped and after only a few
> months was
> uncerimoniousely yanked. i have not seen hide nor
> hair of it for
> about ten years. go figure.
>
A laser disc was put out. No DVD?

As I know both John and Bill I was lucky enough to be
present for opening night at the Met. Wow -- what an
event? About 20 minutes in the audience sudden;y
realized that they were going to be entertained,
rather than put to sleep.

The funniest thing in the video is the curtian call
with John and Bill walking out together to get the
Standing O of all time.


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21776


From: Raymond P.
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 10:53am
Subject: Re: Another Best of 2004 list...(sorry!)
 
The reason why I love FIVE? Simple - its humanity. He imbues even
the simplest of objects with such humanistic characteristics. From
the lonely log cruelly split in half to the oceanic might that is
ignored by humans, who pass it by without ever noticing its grace.

The duck part is the most "forced" in terms of sentiments, although
I'd argue that the levity it provides is fitting, coming halfway
through the film.

And this is the quality I love about Kiarostami. He turns simple
static shots into a Rembrandt, and we cannot help but to explore the
canvas until we give some meaning into it ourselves.

--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Kevin Lee"
wrote:
>
> Please say more about FIVE. Saw this last monday at MoMA and after
about midway I just
> kind of said to myself, "I could probably make a lawyerly defense
for this film given what I
> see Kiarostami doing with the dialectic between realty and
fiction, naturalness and
> manipuulation, that he's cultivated throught this career, but deep
down, I'm just not
> feeling it from Abbas tonight." I liked the first scene the most -
- one of the most brilliant
> "narratives" I've seen concocted in some time. The ducks on the
other hand made me
> wanna puke.
>
>
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Raymond P."
wrote:
> >
> > Just want to bring a slightly stranger perspective to the best
of
> > 2004... Here's my 10 best of the year, out of the 170+ mostly
> > art/indie films I saw:
> >
> > 1. Five (Abbas Kiarostami)
> > 2. Tony Takitani (Jun Ichikawa)
> > 3. The World (Jia Zhangke)
> > 4. Dealer (Benedek Fliegauf)
> > 5. Los Muertos (Lisandro Alonso)
> > 6. This Charming Girl (Lee Yoon-Ki)
> > 7. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry)
> > 8. Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
> > 9. The Time We Killed (Jennifer Reeves)
> > 10. Two Great Sheep (Liu Hao)
> >
> > Honourable mentions:
> >
> > The Soup, One Morning (Izumi Takahashi)
> > Henri Langlois: Phantom of the Cinematheque (Jacques Richard)
> >
> > Most promosing young directors (with only 2 films under their
belts):
> >
> > Ning Hao (Incense, Mongolian Pingpong (2005))
> > Lisandro Alonso (La Liberdad, Los Muertos)
> > Benedek Fliegauf (Forest, Dealer)
> > Ho Yuhang (Min, Sanctuary)
21777


From: Raymond P.
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 11:03am
Subject: Tony Takitani - adaptation of Haruki Murakami
 
I've mentioned this film a lot lately...but it's only because it is
the film that I would rush out to see again immediately. I really
love this film, and I'm glad that it will have a chance to be shown
theatrically in the US. Incredibly moving, with great tableau
visuals inspired by Edward Hopper, amazing cast that plays dual
roles (Rie Miyazawa (The Twilight Samurai) and Issey Ogata (Yi Yi -
A One and a Two)) and one fantastic score by Ryuichi Sakamoto...a
tour-de-force of the best in Japanese talent. It is tied as my #1
film of the year, along with Kiarostami's FIVE.

Official website:
http://www.tonytakitani.com/

Japanese trailer:

http://www.apple.com/jp/quicktime/trailers/theatres/tonytakitani_larg
e.html

Press release:

http://parkcity.indiewire.com/biz/archives/000059.html

Strand Picks Up Sundance '05 Competition Film "Tony Takitani"
by Brian Brooks/indieWIRE

Strand Releasing has acquired North American rights to Jun
Ichikawa's "Tony Takitani," which will have its US premiere at the
2005 Sundance Film Festival in the world dramatic competition
section, the company announced Wednesday. The deal was negotiated on
behalf of Celluloid Dreams by Charlotte Mickie and on behalf of
Strand Releasing by co-Presidents, Jon Gerrans and Marcus Hu. Strand
plans a theatrical release sometime in May or June of this year in
the U.S.

Based on a story by acclaimed writer Haruki Murakami ("The Wind Up
Bird Chronicle"), the story involves a lonely illustrator, Tony
Takitani, who finds the unexpected love of a beautiful young woman
whose affliction is her uncontrollable urge to collect expensive
couture clothing. The film stars well known Japanese actors, Issey
Ogata and Miyazawa Rie in what Strand describes as "dual roles akin
to Alfred Hitchcock's 'Vertigo' and is used similarly as a thematic
tool."

Ichikawa's credits include "Tokyo Lullaby" and "The Osaka Story."
The film features a lush score by Academy Award winner Ryuichi
Sakamoto, who also did the score for Strand's release of John
Maybury's "Love is the Devil."

"We're huge fans of Murakami's writing and considered it a faithful
and unique approach to adapting his work for the screen," said both
Gerrans and Hu in a statement. Upcoming Strand releases include
Fatih Akin's "Head-On," which debuts on January 21st and won best
picture from the European Film Academy, as well as critical
favorite "Tropical Malady" by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, which was
also acquired from Celluloid Dreams.
21778


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 11:07am
Subject: Re: "Neutral" style and Barthes
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:


> Your months of translating Tag have left their mark, JP. You sound
> just like him!
>

Well, that's sort of flattering... But I have always been leery of
accepted concepts that can't stand the test of questioning, or
simply defining.


> Me, I'm perfectly capable of launching a thread about some unheard
of
> near-oxymoron -- say, "neutral style" -- just to figure out (with
a
> little help from my friends) what it DOES mean!

That's nice, but we still don't know what "neutral style" is (if
anything).
21779


From: Richard Modiano
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 11:24am
Subject: Re: Larry Clark to direct Nicholas Ray biopic
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:

"Rather interested in Buscemi's Burroughs film, also mentioned in the
link."

During the period covered by INTERRUPTED Ray was approached to direct
an adaptation of Burroughs' JUNKY with Dennis Hopper, much discussed
in the Film & Television Production Dept. of NYU at the time and
described in the Burroughs biography "The Literary Outlaw."

Richard
21780


From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 11:29am
Subject: What is "Classical Cinema"? (Was: What is "Classical Cinema"?)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Henrik Sylow"
wrote:
>
> Isn't "classic" a term that at least suggests a lasting
significance,
> a timeless quality?

Yeah, because like the "Corean cinema" thread, no one has corrected
the initial misnomer. We're talking about what people mean when they
refer to "classical cinema." "Classic" means what you say, Henrik. To
me it's mostly an argument about words, so at least let's get the
word right.
21781


From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 11:30am
Subject: What is "Classical Cinema" ? (Was: What is "Classic Cinema"?) erratum
 
This is the new header I intended.
21782


From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 11:35am
Subject: Re: What is "Classic Cinema"?
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "K. A. Westphal"
wrote:

>
> 1893-1928 Silent Cinema
> 1929-1959 Classical Cinema
> 1959-1975 Age of European Modernism
> 1975-1999 Age of American Blockbuster
> 2000-Present Digital Revolution
>
> This is a limited system; the bias towards Western styles reflects
the dominant paradigm of style at the time.

Yeah, but Asia, moving at another pace, would be hard to factor in -
and of course those cinemas ARE responding to the economically
dominant style even today. This is a very interesting periodization,
Kyle.

The arrival of European modernism did transform cinemas everywhere,
from Japan to the US. It's the one period where the US didn't
dominate, and it corresponds roughly to what we call "the Sixties,"
before the reactionary period that we are in now. I might suggest
moving the end of the age of modernism to 1979 or 1980.
21783


From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 11:41am
Subject: Re: Larry Clark to direct Nicholas Ray biopic
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
>
> Now here's something I'm looking forward to seeing:
>
> http://www.citylightsmedia.com/CLPictures/Interupted.html

I'm glad Susan got some dough, but Interupted is not really a
biography. Note that Danny Fisher, a longtime Ray collaborator, is
listed as a contact. I assume he'll be working on it. I wonder if
there will be any attempt to use the Marco footage, which is the
little white whale swimming after Moby We Can't Go Home Again in my
mind: I was there when Marco was being filmed, and it looked good!
Susan said she didn't want to cut it together when Clelia Cohen
contacted her about putting it on the DVD of They Live By Night -
this may have already been in the works.

Then there's The Passionate Plumber.....
21784


From: Fred Camper
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 11:46am
Subject: Re: David Walsh shoots down The Aviator
 
Kevin, thanks for posting this. I've read Walsh a number of times
before. At times he can seem more than a little bit doctrinaire -- "this
film is fatally flawed by failing to point out that the Italian
Communists were a bunch of reactionary fools," that sort of thing -- but
he's often very good, and seems to have a good feel for visual style
(though not in this piece).

I haven't seen "The Aviator," but in a way his review made me want to,
unlike the favorable reviews. It really rang true. And it helped me
understand the often-praised dissolve-to-the-present ending of "The
Gangs of New York," which I have seen and didn't like at all. The ending
has a certain fleeced quality -- "Yes, life was brutal in the past, but
look at the fabulous city that evolved from it" -- whose obnoxiously
sentimental patriotism seemed accurately skewered by Walsh. We now know
that the boom of the 90s was fueled in part by criminal and
near-criminal hype on Wall St. -- one analyst famously changed his
rating on a stock he was negative on in order to get his kids into an
exclusive preschool, a form of bribe taking it seems to me. Scorsese's
ending could I suppose be taken that way too, suggesting that the
"gangs" are still within the towers, but the point is that its too
fuzzy-headed to be taken seriously.

Fred Camper
21785


From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 11:48am
Subject: Re: neutral style
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Adrian Martin wrote:
> Bill, I have found all the answers you seek - in Maurice Blanchot's
THE
> INFINITE CONVERSATION, which has a very large section devoted
to 'the
> neutral'. No movies in there, but it hardly matters ...
>
> I have just started to delve into it, but Blanchot (speaking of
Kafka)
> defines the neutrality effect as that of the NON-CONCERNING:
>
> "What is happening? What new exigency has befallen the reader? It
is not
> that this concerns him: on the contrary, it concerns him in no way,
and
> perhaps concerns no one; it is in a sense the non-concerning, but
with
> regard to which, by the same token, the reader can no longer
comfortably
> situate himself in relation to what does no even present itself as
> unsituatable" (p. 384)
>
> For myself, I think of the neutral style/effect in cinema as
something
> essentially DISQUIETING, chilling - I am thinking of a film like I
SPIT ON
> YOUR GRAVE, which so 'artlessly', dispassionately sets out its
trauma and
> revenge scenario - and Blanchot captures this well for me: these
events are
> 'un-concerning', do not reach out to involve me as a spectator, but
all the
> same I can no longer situate myself comfortably in relation to this
> 'neutral' spectacle ...
>
> You know, I also suspect the neutral effect in cinema has maybe
even more to
> do with the SOUNDTRACK - the absence of music, the drone of room-
noise,
> post-sync voices - than with the image.
>
> Adrian

I'm leaving in your whole post, Adrian - it's great!

I would relate it to the sublime, which is (per Battlin' Bloom) an
ancestor of the uncanny. When in the last shot of Henry: Portrait of
a Serial Killer (SPOILER COMING) Henry dumps the trunk containing his
gf's body at the side of the road, I feel the awe that is supposed to
be reserved (in theories of the sublime) for tsunamis and tigers.
Ultimately (according to Thomas Burke) the sublime is based on sights
that arouse fear, whereas the beautiful seems more related to
sympathy (this is me, not Burke), as if the two parts of tragic
emotion, fear and sympathy, had been split in two after the
enlightenment. Absence of sympathy, fear transformed into its
esthetic equivalent, awe: that's what I feel when I watch Henry, and
particularly the ending.
21786


From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 11:49am
Subject: Re: Napoleon DVD?
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Matt Teichman
wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I was wondering whether anyone recommended the Region 4 DVD of
Gance's
> _Napoleon_. I think it's the only one available, though I might be
> wrong...
>
> thanks as always,
> -Matt

Didn't Coppola block a US DVD release by demanding a percentage? I'm
really quoting a vague memory sloshing arouynd in my head...
21787


From: Jonathan Rosenbaum
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 11:51am
Subject: Re: Larry Clark to direct Nicholas Ray biopic
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
>
> Now here's something I'm looking forward to seeing:
>
> http://www.citylightsmedia.com/CLPictures/Interupted.html

This has been in development for years, with Clark as director.
Susan Ray told me about at least a couple of years ago.
21788


From: Gabe Klinger
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 11:56am
Subject: Re: Larry Clark to direct Nicholas Ray biopic
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
>
> Now here's something I'm looking forward to seeing:
>
> http://www.citylightsmedia.com/CLPictures/Interupted.html

The project was announced over three years ago. I don't think it
has moved forward at all.

Then again, it did take Clark about a decade to make KEN PARK.

Gabe
21789


From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 0:00pm
Subject: Re: Re: BUNNY LAKE/HENRY - neutral films? (was: Otto)
 
> Re: Preminger - No judgement passed on Keir Dullea? On the Patrick O'Neill
> (sp?) character in Harm's Way (who was originally supposed to be JFK)? No
> judgement passed on Tryon when he lets his sister die? Dana Andrews in
> Daisy Kenyon?

Well, Andrews is a complicated guy in that film - but the treatment of his
father-in-law is unreservedly contemptuous. - Dan
21790


From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 0:04pm
Subject: Re: David Walsh shoots down The Aviator
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:

We now know
> that the boom of the 90s was fueled in part by criminal and
> near-criminal hype on Wall St. -- one analyst famously changed his
> rating on a stock he was negative on in order to get his kids into
an
> exclusive preschool, a form of bribe taking it seems to me.
Scorsese's
> ending could I suppose be taken that way too, suggesting that the
> "gangs" are still within the towers, but the point is that its too
> fuzzy-headed to be taken seriously.

I always liked the last shot. The towers also symbolize (by
anticipation) the current gang war going on between Christian
fundamentalism and Muslim fundamentalism. I didn't care for the rest
of the film, except for a few patches, but the graves and the towers
moved me.

There was a time when almost any seriously vituperative Marxist
attack on a H'wd film, assuming the author had some facts to back it
up, was automatically interesting to me, but that ship seems to have
sailed. The Aviator is Young Mr. Hughes, with all the later sins
foreshadowed. As for the choice to glorify the young HH (whom is an
analog for Bush), I agree that that is an expression of contemporary
politics. Why now, after Hughes projects have been buzzing around
H'wd for three decades like maddenened blowflies, did one finally get
made? But to the film is critical of the current American Right:
Hughes is to Bush as tragedy is to farce. That's not a hard dialectic
to understand, and I find Walsh's review undialectical for a
socialist. He did much better on Passion of the Christ.
21791


From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 0:06pm
Subject: Re: David Walsh shoots down The Aviator
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
Scorsese's
> ending could I suppose be taken that way too, suggesting that the
> "gangs" are still within the towers, but the point is that its too
> fuzzy-headed to be taken seriously.
>
> Fred Camper

I always liked the last shot. The towers also symbolize (by
anticipation) the current gang war going on between Christian
fundamentalism and Muslim fundamentalism. I didn't care for the rest
of the film, except for a few patches, but the graves and the towers
moved me.

There was a time when almost any seriously vituperative Marxist
attack on a H'wd film, assuming the author had some facts to back it
up, was automatically interesting to me, but that ship seems to have
sailed. The Aviator is Young Mr. Hughes, with all the later sins
foreshadowed. As for the choice to glorify the young HH (whom is an
analog for Bush), I agree that that is an expression of contemporary
politics. Why now, after Hughes projects have been buzzing around
H'wd for three decades like maddenened blowflies, did one finally get
made? But to the film is critical of the current American Right:
Hughes is to Bush as tragedy is to farce. That's not a hard dialectic
to understand, and I find Walsh's review undialectical for a
socialist. He did much better on Passion of the Christ.

(Whew! I thought to copy this message a millisecond before Yahoo lost
it!)
21792


From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 0:08pm
Subject: Re: BUNNY LAKE/HENRY - neutral films? (was: Otto)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> > Re: Preminger - No judgement passed on Keir Dullea? On the
Patrick O'Neill
> > (sp?) character in Harm's Way (who was originally supposed to be
JFK)? No
> > judgement passed on Tryon when he lets his sister die? Dana
Andrews in
> > Daisy Kenyon?
>
> Well, Andrews is a complicated guy in that film - but the treatment
of his
> father-in-law is unreservedly contemptuous. - Dan

Right - so as with Harm's Way you have a good bad man and an
unredeemable ball of slime.
21793


From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 0:25pm
Subject: Re: contemporary opera on film
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "alfred eaker" wrote:

a refreshing post (didn't know of the Chereau "Wozzeck" for one), but some (many? most?) of these are not films, but tapings of stage performances. The

Syberberg and Losey mentioned by David are films, of course, as are Straub/Huillet's Schoenbergs, for example.

> Ewing had made her
> rep with this Richard Strauss opera (based on the contoversial,
> delightfully lurid Oscar Wilde play) by stripping down to her bare
> necessities in the frenzied dance of the seven veils. any man not
> aroused after seeing this had better check his pulse.

"The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death..."
21794


From: alfred eaker
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 0:44pm
Subject: Re: contemporary oepra on film
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- alfred eaker wrote:
>
> Chereau cemented his rep here and
> > has gone onto
> > numerous follow up projects, including (by all
> > accounts)a stunning
> > film of Alban Berg's 'Wozzeck'with Daniel Barenboim
> > conducting.
>
> Moreover much of the staging of the "Ring" finds its
> way into Chereau's films. The trees from "Die Walkure"
> loom at the climax of "Those Who Love Me Can Take the
> Train" and the brothers in "Son Frere" connect much
> like Wagner's demi-gods.
>
>
> > in abstract geometric staging. as stunning as this
> > film was,their
> > production of Wagner's 'Parsifal' was even better
> > and remains the
> > quintessential film of any Wagner opera. both were
> > available for
> > about ten minutes and i luckily saw them.
>
> What do you think of Syberberg's "Parsifal"?
>
musically, ok. however, as a symbolic "film" with the facist
implications; it's a must.I can't beleive i forgot that one.

> > but that teaming didn't make the impression that
> > Peter Sellars made
> > with his filming of the three mozart operas; 'Don
> > Giovanni, Cosi Fan
> > Tutti' and 'Marriage of Figaro'.
> > Tutti was set in a cafe,replete with Mozart
> > silhoutted restrooms. the
> > participants were punk trash types while Don
> > Giovanni cast two
> > african americans in the leads, was set in harlem
> > and the Don
> > listened to the overture on a ghetto blaster.
>
> Never much imressed with Sellars. "Cute" ideas, glibly
> served.
>
> What say you of Losey's "Don Giovanni"?
>
again a superior "film" definitely. and again,musically, only 'ok'.
Mazaal isn't exactly a top drawed Mozartian and was an odd choice to
conduct.
>
> > John Corigliano's film of his opera 'Ghost of
> > Versailles' won raves
> > in virtually ever corner of the world. it was a
> > highly eclectic mix
> > of differenet operatic styles. it did so well that
> > inevitably a film
> > was made. the film sold well and made money. alas,
> > not as much as
> > it's distributors had hoped and after only a few
> > months was
> > uncerimoniousely yanked. i have not seen hide nor
> > hair of it for
> > about ten years. go figure.
> >
> A laser disc was put out. No DVD?
>
> As I know both John and Bill I was lucky enough to be
> present for opening night at the Met. Wow -- what an
> event? About 20 minutes in the audience sudden;y
> realized that they were going to be entertained,
> rather than put to sleep.
>
> The funniest thing in the video is the curtian call
> with John and Bill walking out together to get the
> Standing O of all time.
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
21795


From: alfred eaker
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 0:48pm
Subject: Re: contemporary opera on film
 
i hate to admit, but i haven't seen Ken Russell's "Mahler" and being
almost fanatical about both Mahler and Russell, I am going to order
it soon.
His "Lisztmania" and the Tchaikovsky one (dammit I forget, help) are
both high on my list.
I forgot to mention Bergman's "Magic Flute", of course.

--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jess_l_amortell"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "alfred eaker"
wrote:
>
> a refreshing post (didn't know of the Chereau "Wozzeck" for one),
but some (many? most?) of these are not films, but tapings of stage
performances. The Syberberg and Losey mentioned by David are films,
of course, as are Straub/Huillet's Schoenbergs, for example.
>
> > Ewing had made her
> > rep with this Richard Strauss opera (based on the contoversial,
> > delightfully lurid Oscar Wilde play) by stripping down to her bare
> > necessities in the frenzied dance of the seven veils. any man not
> > aroused after seeing this had better check his pulse.
>
> "The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death..."
21796


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 1:03pm
Subject: Re: Re: contemporary opera on film
 
--- alfred eaker wrote:

>
> i hate to admit, but i haven't seen Ken Russell's
> "Mahler" and being
> almost fanatical about both Mahler and Russell, I am
> going to order
> it soon.
> His "Lisztmania" and the Tchaikovsky one (dammit I
> forget, help) are
> both high on my list.

"Mahler's is fairly low-key for the most part. Robert
Powell is good but the heart of the film is Georgina
Hale's Alma ( and whatever became of this wonderful
actress? She was a standout in both "The Devils" and
"The Boy Friend") Of course Ken being Ken he pulls out
all the stops for Mahler's conversion to Christianity
-- turning it into a kind of live-action version of
"What's Opera Doc?"



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21797


From: Peter Henne
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 1:13pm
Subject: Re: Re: What is "Classic Cinema"?
 
This is exactly the breakdown I had in mind of posting myself. "Classical" necessarily implies a dominant system, which Hollywood is. Approx. 1930-1959 forms

a period in which norms of editing, framing, performance (including talking), and the illusion of a story are held fast. Of course there are exceptions--but

none of them actually halt practicing the norms; the system marches on through this period. For many reasons (shifts in the studio system, the

well-articulated and broad challenges to the norms from Italian cinema, the NV, etc.), the late 1950s usher in a period of experiment and cross-examination.

The many threads of this period seem to reach an impasse with "Numero Deux," "Salo," "In the Realm of the Senses," "Nashville," "The Passenger," and a host

of other films (fill in your own epoch closers, but I am trying to cite films which were widely noticed by filmmakers and critics). I am in agreement with

Sarris's review of "The Godfather" and this article can serve to
describe a whole trend in American cinema which continues through the present. Of course, "Jaws" and "Star Wars" come in and the special-effects streak will

combine with the bloody violence streak. Separately and together they impact framing, shot lengths, performance, and to a lesser degree the illusion of

narrative. An uncritical viewer from 1950 plunked down in front of a 1990 blockbuster would find the film wild and outside the norms in all of these aspects.

By "T2" a shift emerges in the ontology of film, as we can no longer trust the camera to have an essential connection to physical reality, however strong or

weak you may describe that connection to have been. Whatever it was its guarantee is gone (and that's the main reason I haven't seen a new American film in

three years).

In brief, I am writing to second Kyle Westphal's categorization. It makes a lot of sense to me..

Peter Henne


"K. A. Westphal" wrote:

--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
wrote:
>
> Maybe the cinema of the past 25 or 30 years will be called "neo-
> classical" cinema, or maybe some group of films from that period will
> be labelled as such and the rest will be called "modern" or, dare I
> say, "post-modern."

I've used this arbitrary five-tier system for a few years:

1893-1928 Silent Cinema
1929-1959 Classical Cinema
1959-1975 Age of European Modernism
1975-1999 Age of American Blockbuster
2000-Present Digital Revolution

This is a limited system; the bias towards Western styles reflects the
dominant paradigm of style at the time.

--Kyle Westphal





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21798


From: Craig Keller
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 2:32pm
Subject: La Cicatrice intérieure
 
This weekend at MoMA --

La Cicatrice intérieure (The Inner Scar). 1972. France. Written and
directed by Philippe Garrel. With Nico, Garrel, Pierre Clémenti. With
songs by Nico. Shown at MoMA shortly after completion, Garrel's sixth
film virtually disappeared from view when it was discovered that a
strain of fungus had attacked the negative during production in

Iceland. A beautiful digital restoration by the Cinémathèque française,
this essentially nonnarrative film is as much about dramatic landscape
as it is about the disconnect between intimates. Some dialogue in
English. 60 min.

Saturday, January 29, 6:30; Monday, January 31, 7:30. T2

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
21799


From:
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 2:47pm
Subject: Re: La Cicatrice intérieure
 
Lest anyone be put off by "some dialogue in English" and the apparent lack
of subtitles, the film has next to no dialogue. There's a brief bit in
French and another in German, some phrases in English and Nico's lyrics.
Highly recommended.

Fred.

> This weekend at MoMA --
>
> La Cicatrice intérieure (The Inner Scar). 1972. France. Written and
> directed by Philippe Garrel. With Nico, Garrel, Pierre Clémenti. With
> songs by Nico. Shown at MoMA shortly after completion, Garrel's sixth
> film virtually disappeared from view when it was discovered that a
> strain of fungus had attacked the negative during production in
>
> Iceland. A beautiful digital restoration by the Cinémathèque française,
> this essentially nonnarrative film is as much about dramatic landscape
> as it is about the disconnect between intimates. Some dialogue in
> English. 60 min.
>
> Saturday, January 29, 6:30; Monday, January 31, 7:30. T2
21800


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 2:57pm
Subject: Re: La Cicatrice intérieure
 
Even MORE than highly reccomended by your friendly
neighborhood Nicomaniac -- me. The english largely
consists of Nico screaming "Philllleeeeppp! What have
you brought me here?!?!!!!" as they trundle across the
Valley of the Kings. The "Desertshore" album is
decorated with stills from the film. "Janitor of
Lunacy" is the big number, as one indescribably
beautiful shot follows another: Nico riding a horse
led by little Ari on foot is my favorite. And ther's
one stunning moment where we aee a horse staning in a
ring of fire on the desert.

Should be shown on giant projection screen at Burning
Man.

--- fmv@s... wrote:

> Lest anyone be put off by "some dialogue in English"
> and the apparent lack
> of subtitles, the film has next to no dialogue.
> There's a brief bit in
> French and another in German, some phrases in
> English and Nico's lyrics.
> Highly recommended.
>





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