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22601
From: samfilms2003
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 5:27am
Subject: Re: What Time Is It There?
 
> Count me in as liking this movie but liking The Hole much more. That
> one was a combination of Ballard's High-Rise and Kafka's The
> Metamorphosis, with Dennis Potter

But isn't the genius of "What Time Is It There" that he gets Kafka and
Ballard without needing Kafka and Ballard ?

ps re Adrian, same with me - I tried "What Time..." and bailed after 25 mins..
..then I saw "The River" and thought "wait a minute (so to speak)"

-Sam "way over my limit tonight" Wells
22602


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 5:28am
Subject: Re: Scorsese's detractors
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
>
> > >
> > > The whole world IS a paperweight, David.
> > >
> > >
> >
>
> Too much Raul Ruiz!
>
> Never too much, David. Haven't you ever shaken that paperweight?
>
> ___(maybe too much Borges?)
22603


From: Saul
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 5:31am
Subject: Re: Scorsese's detractors
 
> --- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
>
> > >
> > > The whole world IS a paperweight, David.
> > >
> > >
> >

JP, what does this MEAN? A paperweight for what or whom? Atlas, perhaps?
22604


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 5:31am
Subject: Re: What Time Is It There?
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "samfilms2003" wrote:
>

>
> But isn't the genius of "What Time Is It There" that he gets Kafka
and
> Ballard without needing Kafka and Ballard ?
>

Which French wit said of which film director: "Il a fait Kafka
dans sa culotte."?
22605


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 5:33am
Subject: Re: Scorsese's detractors
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Saul" wrote:
>
> > --- jpcoursodon wrote:
> >
> >
> > > >
> > > > The whole world IS a paperweight, David.
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
>
> JP, what does this MEAN? A paperweight for what or whom? Atlas,
perhaps?

If you have to ask, Saul, it's hopeless. Do we always have to
MEAN, anyway?
22606


From: Saul
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 5:47am
Subject: Re: Scorsese's detractors
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon" wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Saul" wrote:
> >
> > > --- jpcoursodon wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > > >
> > > > > The whole world IS a paperweight, David.
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > >
> >
> > JP, what does this MEAN? A paperweight for what or whom? Atlas,
> perhaps?
>
> If you have to ask, Saul, it's hopeless. Do we always have to
> MEAN, anyway?

I'm not certain. Though I'm sure David Lynch would agree with that
sentiment and add something like, "The whole world is also a broken
China doll".
22607


From:   Fred Camper
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 6:02am
Subject: Re: Brakhage & avant-garde's "contempt for cinema" (was Re: What Time Is It There?)
 
JPC on "Dog Star Man":


>....just to me a collection of all the old tricks and
>tropes and cliches of the avant garde which amount to a kind of
>contempt for cinema -- a mistrust and even hatred of the image --
>you know, no shot can be held for more than a few seconds....

You can certainly express dislike or hatred of Brahkage's films here,
JPC, but you should have your facts right. "Dog Star Man: Part I"
contains several images that last well more than a few seconds. They
might even be called "long takes."

I'd make two points about Brakhage's alleged "mistrust and even hatred
of the image." One, you must understand that in his cinema, the
spectator's sense of time is being redefined. The viewer is not expected
to sit back, relax, munch on the popcorn. and slow down his perceptual
speed the way most "movies" encourage you to do. (Peter Kubelka on
Hollwyood narrative films: "Oh, they're OK, but kind of slow. First
something happens. Then you wait awhile. Then something else happens."
This quote is very inexactly remembered from almost 40 years ago.) A
shot that lasts a fraction of a second is certainly an "image" to an
aware viewer, and showing it briefly does not express "contempt" for it.
Quite the contrary, for an aware viewer an image can be greatly
intensified for being shown only briefly.

Second, if there is an ambivalence about imagery in Brakhage, as I think
there is, it doesn't come from showing images briefly, but rather is
connected to his deepest and profoundest meanings.

Simply accepting "picture" (his word) as defining cinema in the 20th
century strikes me as, to put it charitably, rather retrograde.

Fred Camper
22608


From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 6:10am
Subject: Re: Back to Pialat (Was: La Cava on TCM)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> > Despite my strictures against bad improv in A nos amours
>
> I hate to let this sit, just because A NOS AMOURS is one of my ten
or so
> favorite films. The thing is, I think I know what Bill means - but
I
> never had that reaction at all until I knew something about the way
the
> film was made.

I have to see the whole film again. I have a tape buried somewhere -
after I watch the tape of Police, and before I watch the tapes of
Loulou, Van Gogh, Soleil and Garcu, which I will have to content
myself with because I was flued out of seeing them at Melnitz.

Here's a counter-example: I'm sure I knew vaguely that scenes were
improvised in A Woman's A Woman before I first saw it, but it was
only later (from Sarris, ironically) that I learned that the moment
Karina looks at the camera and says "I don't know whether to laugh or
cry" was a blown take Godard decided to use anyway. When I saw the
film again with that in mind, it just enriched the shot's meaning - I
still had no problem with also believeing that she was saying it to
Brially (who has that great line - how much later? - "I don't know if
this is a comedy or a tragedy, but one thing's for sure: It's a
masterpiece!")

In fact, today, with my total loss of innocence about movies, I'd be
inclined to bet that Karina came up with that line to save a blown
take - she had dropped the egg - because she's a great natural
actress. A third layer of meaning - one that calls into question the
Oudartian thesis that modernism inheres in moments when an actress
loses it in front of the director and his onscreen stand-in becomes
the recipient of what amounts to a hysterical decleration of love.
Maybe not so hysterical, in this case, or maybe precisely that:
Hysterics, according to a book I'm reading, The Knotted Subject, are
above all great actresses.

If after seeing the improv "under" the dinner scene someone who used
to like it can't see anything else, and the scene is ruined forever,
permanently diminished, it can't have been much of a scene, but I
doubt if that's the case: If it really worked before, knowing that
the person being cruel is the director, who is trying to get a rise
out of his actors, would just enrich the scene, as has been my
experience with that moment in AWAW.

But after that the esthetic distinctions come in. I certainly don't
sense, watching the kissing scene in Notorious, that Grant and
Bergman, were improvising their dialogue, even though I now know they
were, because (like Belmondo and Brially in AWAW) they were trained
actors and made it work. The folks at that dinner table in ANA are a
mix of pros and non-pros, with the most pro (or the most relaxed, no
doubt because he's cocooned by his invincible good looks) being
Collard (not Bonnaire, who doesn't seem in character at all in this
scene).

So improvising with that mix means you're going to have rough edges,
and that can be a plus or a minus - in my experience, it's frequently
a minus: like the scene in Graduate First where the kids are smoking
and telling their life stories and laughing - awful.

Or an improv can go south because of the director. The two actors in
Graduate First's scene where Mom goes postal and attacks her daughter
and threatens to commit suicide are pros doing what they're told and
doing it well -- up to a point. I have lived through exactly that
scene, and it was -- as in the film - a moment of thetricality, of
psychodrama, as well as a real blowup. But because Pialat was
encouraging everyone to take it to the max, the mother OVERACTS by
actually trying to gulp the pills - something I'd bet she was urged
to do. And at that point the scene heads south for me. Maybe because
of the actress, probably because of the director.

These are blemishes in a film I like, and in this case reading
afterwards that a) he didn't have enough money and b) he didn't have
a real producer who could tell him, "Reshoot this, cut that," seemed
to me to be true, as did his judicious comment that he was satisfied
with 2 out of 9 reels. It's not a perfect film, and if he had those
obstacles, he did an amazing job of overcoming them and making
something very new that on the whole works. Bravo! But Therese Giraud
of CdC concocted a whole rationale for the scene where the kids are
laughing, which was that they exist only in the present, and laughing
while recounting their lives is a sign of that. Bull! It's a bad
scene! And I didn't need to read Pialat's interview (which passes
over it in silence anyway) to know that.

If Naked Childhood, on the other hand, is a perfect film, a diamond,
it's not by accident: He had a decent budget, and 3 of the 4
producers were producers any first-feature filmmaker would cut off
his arm to have.

The Mouth Agape is also perfect except for Philippe Leotard, who was
nervous, apparently... I guess because someone told him "With Pialat,
it's reality: life itself!" or just because he wasn't used to playing
ten-minute scenes with an immobile camera, as in shot 3, so he did
something we have all seen actors do in that frame of mind: he
snorts, he sniffs, he eats noisily, he smokes noisily, he makes all
sorts of sounds with his mouth and his respiratory tract. I don't
know why, but people who aren't experienced with alternative
filmmaking styles do that when they're at a loss. Giggling a lot is
another thing they do: the pits.

And it doesn't help the scene - it doesn't work as the character's
dis-ease at having to take care of his dying mother (who may not even
know at this point what's happening), because the character he's
playing wouldn't show his dis-ease that way. It's an acting tic, and
Pialat should have stopped the take until it went away. It doesn't
spoil the scene, but it mars it, obliging us to turn our eyes on the
mother, who isn't doing something weird. Would Pialat have fixed it
if he'd had "a real producer" - what he says he needed - at his side?
Who knows, but in any event I'm inclined to believe that, once in the
editing room, he felt remorse for certain things like anyone else.
And had to make the film work anyway, like anyone else - except big-
budget directors like Hitchcock who just order retakes.

Should we as critics - as auteurists - be able to look past these
little flaws? It's something we have all learned to do - sometimes
maybe too well. As the shades of night gather around me - this
doesn't just apply to film criticism - I find myself less and less
inclined to avert my eyes, even if the booboo appears in a
masterpiece (which I suspect all of Pialat's films are). I simply can
no longer watch Two English Girls and the Continent without being
aware of how miscast and out of tune Leaud is. Or to take a recent
film, I can't watch Unknown Pleasures without noticing that the
director drops the ball every once in a while, that it's some kind of
transitional film where he hasn't found his new manner yet, or the
chops to make it work.

To borrow a phrase from Michel Mardore, writing about Minnelli in
general and The Courtship of Eddie's Father in particular, I find
myself more and more seeing the worm and the apple at the same time.

But none of this even touches on the core of Pialat's art, which Dan
has given us a good resume of - those 2 paragraphs he wrote for the
UCLA Bruin, which ran one - a_film_by got both. So I entreat other
people who have JUST SEEN ALL OF THESE FILMS to join in and talk
about what's unique, wonderful, challenging about them, because they
are all that.

A side note: I'm the fiend who Xeroxed pages out of the Yellow Now
book on A nos amours and sent them to Dan. [Evil laugh]
22609


From: Richard Modiano
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 6:30am
Subject: Re: Introduction and A Few Thought on Mankiewicz
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Brian Dauth" wrote:


"The Honey Pot:

"This film fails because the mystery genre is one of the few that is
unamenable to Mankiewicz's style. As I said above, he constructs
his screenplays out of scenes in which people make choices and take
action. A mystery, if it is to remain a mystery, must never show
such scenes, instead providing only oblique clues as to characters'
choices and actions."

By way of welcome may I suggest that you look up a very good thread
on THE HONEY POT in the a_film_by archives. This picture has more
than a few admirers here. IMO it's one of Mankiewicz's best films.

Richard
22610


From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 6:44am
Subject: Re: Introduction and A Few Thought on Mankiewicz
 
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Brian Dauth"
wrote:
>
>
> "The Honey Pot:
>
> "This film fails because the mystery genre is one of the few that
is
> unamenable to Mankiewicz's style. As I said above, he constructs
> his screenplays out of scenes in which people make choices and take
> action. A mystery, if it is to remain a mystery, must never show
> such scenes, instead providing only oblique clues as to characters'
> choices and actions."

For me there are great moments like that in Honey Pot, but being a
mystery, it muffles them. I can't even talk about them without saying
SPOILERS COMING: For example, the moment when Harison decides to kill
himself.

From the earlier thread that Richard mentioned, I reiterate that you
might find Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Harold Bloom (a
nearly forgotten blowhard of an academic that some members of this
group, themselves washed up, inexplicably keep citing) a useful
adjunct to your developing thesis - the parts on "self-overhearing"
in Shakespeare's monologues. Browning, in his Shakespeare-influenced
dramatic monologues, is the most Mankiewiczian of poets - cf. (re:
Honey Pot) "A Toccata of Gallupi's."
22611


From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 9:07am
Subject: Product placement
 
The other day I resaw "Godfather - part 2" and during the scene, where
the young Corleone is walking the streets, he passes by two signs, one
for Pepsi and one for Coca-Cola.

While one of course could contribute these two signs as part of the
street scene, this was the only scene where they were visible, so I
began to wonder if they were clever product placements.

Henrik
22612


From: Mathieu Ricordi
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 9:34am
Subject: Re: Re: Scorsese's detractors
 
Quoting hotlove666 :

There was a time when every young director who
>
> didn't want to be Spielberg wanted to be either Wenders or Scorsese, and I
>
> was laughing up my sleeve at the whole phenomenon.


Isn't that just the worst? I'm getting exceedingly tired
of young directors who "want to be" the next so and so.
I came from a film-school where we had two guys who wanted to
be the next Wes Andersons, one guy who wanted to be the next
Guy Madden, and for some reason, one girl who wanted to be the
next Guy Ritchie. And these are just those who got picked to direct.
When I showed my own film, one of the assistant prof's directly
went up to me and said "so your hero is Douglas Sirk eh?". Beleive
it or not, at the time I hadn't yet seen a single film by him (or even
"Far From Heaven" for that matter). For the others I mentioned above,
their films suffered greatly from their trying to be their film Gods,
and all that was left was insignificant surface emulations, in other
words, easy indicators that we were indeed watching a guy who liked
a guy. This is not at all a good sign for future films, and
surrounding circumstances are surely not helping. A great number
of people involved in cinema (whether it be at the production or
viewership level) push for easy signifiers and like to fall back on
the padded cushion of passed accumulated knowledge and trivia.
Screening your short film will get more responces on who they
think you're trying to be, then on what your work was actually
trying to do. And though the last thing I want
to do is alienate some of the fine critics that post on this circle,
this proffession has indulged in more than its fare share of
beafing up reviews with cute little parralels than actually taking
the film in question head on. Perhaps I'm shooting my mouth
off and hitting much more than my intended targets, but I'm venting
because art needs vision, personality, and originality like a plant needs
water, and we ain't going to get it if the standard we set for our artists
is what we've already seen.

Mathieu Ricordi
22613


From: Saul
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 9:56am
Subject: The Loss of Self?
 
Behold, Buster K gets older and begins to resemble Michael Caine more
than just a little! Check out this image I recently found online:

http://img68.photobucket.com/albums/v208/ihamet/buster/timeandthecomic.jpg

Is it just me? - I am going crazy from lack of sleep? - or does
someone else see the resemblance between Keaton and Caine???

S.
22614


From: Adrian Martin
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 1:16pm
Subject: re: Scorsese's detractors
 
Bill wrote:

"I haven't seen those copylines in the States."

"When he took on a corrupt system, he became a hero" - this is verbatim from
one of the rah-rah TV publicity spots for THE AVIATOR in Australia (with an
American accented voice-over, so maybe they played in USA too!) - matched to
a breathless montage seemingly cut to resemble that wonderful Warner Bros
cartoon where Daffy Duck cries to the viewer: "Look at me, I'm a buzz boy!"
Another ad has the "he became a true American hero" line. Oh boy.

Adrian
22615


From: Saul
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 1:03pm
Subject: Re: Scorsese's detractors
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Adrian Martin wrote:

> And that ending! A very bad mix of the ends of RAGING BULL (man alone
> in a bathroom with a mirror), KING OF COMEDY (listen to the repetition
> and that final flourish of reverb on the raving Leo! - I hoped to hear
> a Johhny Carson sidekick pipe in with "wonderful Howard Hughes!
> Wonderful, wonderful!") and Todd Haynes' SAFE (woman alone in a
> capsule-room with a mirror, cracking up) - all three of which are
> infinitely better films than THE AVIATOR!

The ending of "The Aviator", which worked perhaps because of it's
abruptness, (though came after a flying sequence that seemed somehow
displaced), reminded me of "Once Upon a Time in America". But instead
of an opium-inuduced dream, this was a schizophrenic/delusional/or
whatever he had, remembering of his life up until that point. The
looping back to the opening childhood scene in the mirror, which gave
the film the same circular structure Leone used, suggests the validicy
of such a reading. This can then be used to see everything else in the
movie as Hughes idealization of events, rather than Scorsese's, who is
now documenting the remembering of a life, rather than the life itself
- or whatever other way it can be taken - all fed through the
psychological associations of a single childhood event, which now can
be taken as either real/imagined, or perhaps more likely, idealized.
22616


From: Brian Charles Dauth
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 1:20pm
Subject: Re: Introduction and A Few Thought on Mankiewicz
 
> For me there are great moments like that in Honey Pot, but being a
mystery, it muffles them. I can't even talk about them without saying
SPOILERS COMING: For example, the moment when Harison decides to kill
himself.

Exactly. The ending is good too with Mankiewicz's tribute to the Anglo-Saxon woman. I hope one day they restore the missing footage -- it may help the movie make more sense. I have just always felt that he was working out his anger in The Honey Pot over having not been able to make Justine along with the drubbing he took for the Cleopatra experience.

Brian Dauth

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
22617


From: Brian Charles Dauth
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 1:47pm
Subject: Re: Scorsese's detractors
 
> I'm getting exceedingly tired of young directors who "want to be"
the next so and so.

But isn't that one of the dangers of film school?

Schools can teach technique and craftsmanship, so young
filmmakers get oriented toward the technical side.

Schools cannot teach moral vision or the desire to
communicate with an audience. As my hero Mankiewicz
said: "Movies decided to talk, and now they have an
obligation to say something."

Filmmakers are paying increasing attention to the intricate
deployment of the technical means of film to the point that an
audience is so busy seeing, hearing and responding to the
technical aspects of a film that the other aspects of a movie are
ignored (which is a good thing since the visions offered are often
stale and trite retreads of convetional wisdom).

> A great number of people involved in cinema (whether it be at
the production or viewership level) push for easy signifiers and
like to fall back on the padded cushion of passed accumulated
knowledge and trivia.

A) It affords them easy access to "hipness." Such-and-such a
scene is a quote from __________.

B) The filmmakers I like -- Mankiewicz, Wilder, Leisen, Hawks,
Wyler -- all served apprenticeships before they became directors.
They had lived through some exciting times.

Now a filmmaker goes from home to college to graduate school --
for the most part protected environments -- and is then ready to
make films. How much of life can they be expected to know about?
I do not think it is any surprise that they would depend on
references/quotes to other films, since they haven't lived long
enough and experienced enough to form a vision yet. Yet to go
out and cultivate experience -- to live -- can derail the arc of a person's
career. By the time one has some life under his belt, he would be
deemed too old to be a filmmaker.

Film schools produce craftsmen; life produces auteurs. The problem
is the system by which we cultivate film artists.

Brian Dauth
22618


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 2:56pm
Subject: Brakhage & avant-garde's "contempt for cinema" (was Re: What Time Is It There?)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
>
> You can certainly express dislike or hatred of Brahkage's films
here,
> JPC, but you should have your facts right. "Dog Star Man: Part I"
> contains several images that last well more than a few seconds.
They
> might even be called "long takes."

I don't "hate" SB's films. I like some of them very much; I
dislike others, such as DSM. In other words, I have no consistent
view on his cinema, and therefore I shouldn't have even mentioned my
dislike of DSM. Shouldn't discuss a film and a style of filming that
I neither enjoy nor understand.

I won't argue with you about "long takes" in SB's DSM. You would
probably agree that they are more the exception than the rule, but
this is not really the point.

What I feel when watching DSM is that SB is more interested in
manipulating the world (his material, call it nature, things, the
real, whatever) than showing it to me. And that manipulation becomes
the main objective, if not an end in itself. And since cinema offers
endless possibilities of manipulation, in filming, editing, printing
etc..., what we get visually in many avant garde films, such as DSM,
boils down to a catalog of cinematic tricks. It is this fascination
with manipulation that I, maybe unfairly, and certainly too hastily,
described as "mistrust and even hatred of the image."

I don't think watching narrative films ("movies") merely involves
sitting back and relaxing and munching on the popcorn. (OT: I hate
popcorn, I never eat or drink stuff at the movies, and I always find
it puzzling when people include the cost of popcorn and soda in the
cost of attending a movie, as though consuming the stuff was a vital
and unavoidable part of the movie-going experience. Perhaps eating
popcorn while watching DSM would enhance my experience, who
knows?)....

You wrote: "

>A shot that lasts a fraction of a second is certainly an "image" to
an
> aware viewer, and showing it briefly does not express "contempt"
for it.
> Quite the contrary, for an aware viewer an image can be greatly
> intensified for being shown only briefly."


I agree,on principle, and I would remind you of the fact that I
love Norman McLaren (whom you hate) and that in some of his films,
notably "Blinkity Blank", many images (they're not "shots" since
they're scratched directly on film) last only a fraction of a
second. However I fail to see the purpose of the consistantly
jittery editing that characterizes a lot of SB's cinema. Again I see
it as manipulation for manipulation's sake. But again, this kind of
editing is only one in the whole avant garde panoply of tricks.

What I miss, admitedly, in SB is what you call his "deepest and
profoundest meanings." They remain unclear and unconvincing to me.
And even if I understood them, I'm not sure I would enjoy the way he
puts them across.

>
>>
> Simply accepting "picture" (his word) as defining cinema in the
20th
> century strikes me as, to put it charitably, rather retrograde.
>

"Retrograde" is not all that charitable, Fred. And it's totally
unfair and wrong to claim that I accept "picture as defining
cinema." I don't even know what that statement means!

JPC
22619


From: Matthew Clayfield
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 3:04pm
Subject: Somewhat O.T. Film School (was: Scorsese's detractors)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Brian Charles Dauth"
wrote:

> Film schools produce craftsmen; life produces auteurs. The problem
> is the system by which we cultivate film artists.



As someone without much auteur-producing life behind him (I'm
nineteen) and who's going through the film school system at the
moment, all I can do for the most part is concur. But, then, the
majority of the students that I know are only out to be craftsmen in
the first place -- nine-to-five film students (or so I call them) who
are content to go out and become nine-to-five film practitioners.

On a practical level, film school has been, for me, thus far, a
monumental waste of time -- thank God I'm on a full scholarship;
otherwise I'd be saving my money and making a feature -- in terms of
theory, which I've only been able to learn about through electives,
however, it's been far more beneficial. The problem is not that more
and more film students want to be the next whoever, nor even the fact
that film school isn't life in a "real world" sense. For me, the
problem is that film schools are just that: schools and not
laboratories for experimentation -- some people say they're the
latter, of course, but they're not.

A set curriculum, a written syllabus...these things by the very nature
don't really allow for experimentation -- and by experimentation I
don't mean the ability to take equipment out every weekend in order to
learn how to use a camera -- I mean the most important thing of all,
which is the development and cultivation of a unique sensibility -- a
unique way of seeing and hearing the world -- the mark of any truly
great artist. In my experience, I've found that film school teaches
protocol, formulas, industry jargon. What it should be doing is not
teaching, but mentoring; encouraging unique visions as opposed to
trying -- and they *do* try! -- to mass produce them in a certain
mould, as they would if they were an assembly line. The best thing
about my education so far has been the fact that, because I've had
enough mentors in the past to know that I've got to take the
initiative to teach myself, I've had unlimited access to the school's
library, and thus read things -- philosophy, anthropology, fiction,
whatever -- 'round the clock. But no-one else I know uses it! I also
don't spend every night working towards my BA of Getting Wasted.

Thus, in the year-and-a-bit that I've been here, nobody has really
become a better filmmaker except for on a purely technical level. The
stories remain dull, the ideas remain stagnant. Not one person or what
they say has become more interesting to me. Sure, maybe they were just
dull to begin with, but I'd much rather think that the school just
hasn't done anything to help guide them into the world, allowing them
to see. Instead they've said, "Look, this is 'Day for Night' and it
shows you what it's like to make a movie! Follow it!" The problem for
film school is that it doesn't allow for exploration. For
individuality. It's really just another institution with its own idea
of what a filmmaker is and should be.



And I think I just went way off topic.

I'm a big fan of pre-Miramax Scorsese (as cliché a cliché as "early
Godard"?), but "The Aviator," bar its colours and, yes, Cate as Kate,
didn't strike me as being anything particularly special.
22620


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 3:10pm
Subject: Re: re: Scorsese's detractors
 
--- Adrian Martin wrote:

matched to
> a breathless montage seemingly cut to resemble that
> wonderful Warner Bros
> cartoon where Daffy Duck cries to the viewer: "Look
> at me, I'm a buzz boy!"

That's from "Duck Amuck" -- another major reference
point for "The Aviator"



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22621


From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 3:10pm
Subject: Re: has Scorsese gone studiocrazy?
 
Having made two crappy films in a row aside now, what is up with Scorsese?

He is about to remake the Hong Kong police / triad drama "Internal
Affairs" as "The Departed", and next he is planning, or at least
negotiating, to remake Kurosawa's "Drunken Angel".

Has he completely fallen of the wagon?

Henrik
22622


From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 3:12pm
Subject: Re: has Scorsese gone studiocrazy?
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Henrik Sylow"
wrote:
>
> Having made two crappy films in a row aside now, what is up with
Scorsese?
>
> He is about to remake the Hong Kong police / triad drama "Internal
> Affairs" as "The Departed", and next he is planning, or at least
> negotiating, to remake Kurosawa's "Drunken Angel".
>
> Has he completely fallen of the wagon?
>
> Henrik

Addition: "Drunken Angel" is to be written by John Logan.
22623


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 3:31pm
Subject: Re: Re: has Scorsese gone studiocrazy?
 
I really don't know how to respond to such nonsense.
"Studiocrazy"? Wouldn't that be "New York New York"
when he used every sound stage in town?

"Two crappy films"? I count one.

"Fallen off the wagon"? What "wagon"?

So he's doing a remake of "Drunken Angel." Maybe it's
in tribute to the man who directed him in a film
called "Dreams."

But of course thatwouldn't fit into the picture of
Scorsese as a craven hack.

This of course leads to the big question: Why isn't he
doing a remake of "Pretty Woman" with Lindsay Lohan?

--- Henrik Sylow wrote:

>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Henrik Sylow"
>
> wrote:
> >
> > Having made two crappy films in a row aside now,
> what is up with
> Scorsese?
> >
> > He is about to remake the Hong Kong police / triad
> drama "Internal
> > Affairs" as "The Departed", and next he is
> planning, or at least
> > negotiating, to remake Kurosawa's "Drunken Angel".
> >
> > Has he completely fallen of the wagon?
> >
> > Henrik
>
> Addition: "Drunken Angel" is to be written by John
> Logan.
>
>
>
>




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22624


From: Jason Guthartz
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 4:34pm
Subject: Brakhage & avant-garde's "contempt for cinema" (was Re: What Time Is It There?)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon" wrote:
> What I feel when watching DSM is that SB is more interested in
> manipulating the world (his material, call it nature, things, the
> real, whatever) than showing it to me. And that manipulation becomes
> the main objective, if not an end in itself. And since cinema offers
> endless possibilities of manipulation, in filming, editing, printing
> etc..., what we get visually in many avant garde films, such as DSM,
> boils down to a catalog of cinematic tricks. It is this fascination
> with manipulation that I, maybe unfairly, and certainly too hastily,
> described as "mistrust and even hatred of the image."
***
> However I fail to see the purpose of the consistantly
> jittery editing that characterizes a lot of SB's cinema. Again I see
> it as manipulation for manipulation's sake. But again, this kind of
> editing is only one in the whole avant garde panoply of tricks.
***
> "Retrograde" is not all that charitable, Fred. And it's totally
> unfair and wrong to claim that I accept "picture as defining
> cinema." I don't even know what that statement means!

Brakhage's cinema suggests the following reply: "the world" or
"nature" of "things" or "the real" which you want cinema to show are
subjective constructs, and the ways in which we construct them are
just as valid material for cinematic
reproduction/exploration/investigation as anything else.

All of these problems you have with "avant-garde tricks" seems to come
from your implicit notion of what is a proper cinematic image, i.e., a
"picture" which uses the camera in particular ways to illustrate a
Renaissance-era notion of objectivity in "showing" the world. To
insist that this pictorial mode of image-making (usually deemed
realistic or naturalistic) as the fundamental shot-unit is indeed
retrograde if one considers modes of production and reception
developed and accepted in other visual arts contemporaneous with
cinema. In other words, to reject abstraction is to reject modern art
("modern" being a composite term reflecting particular aesthetics,
theories, and attitudes, not merely marking a time period), and
"retrograde" is about as charitable as "trickery."

You are absolutely correct to point out that "cinema offers endless
possibilities of manipulation." A consequence of becoming familiar
with avant-garde film is the understanding that *all* cinema is
"trickery," that what is normalized in modes of production and modes
of reception are merely subsets among other options with no inherent
superiority. The basic question facing the artist is how to
manipulate his/her materials to provide the friendly experiencer with
opportunities for fresh aesthetic experiences; the rest is philosophy.

An alternative response is to simply underline the notion of visual
music -- that traditional modes of cinematic representation is not
prioritized in Brakhage's cinema (or that of other alleged a-g
tricksters) and that light, color, shape, rhythm, are the variables he
is "manipulating" (variables particular to film) rather than
characters, plots and related dramatic variables (borrowed from
literature and theater). His focus on the smallest-possible shot-unit
(the frame) allows him to develop an aesthetic of ordered/chaotic
polyphony, of escape-into-the-present; I sense a similar aesthetic in
the solo music of Evan Parker, with which you may or may not be
familiar (it's a parallel I intend to explore in detail in the future.)

Anyway, the first paragraph of "Metaphors on Vision" says it all much
more eloquently than I'll ever be able to.

-Jason G.
22625


From: George Robinson
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 5:04pm
Subject: Critical Ethics [Was 'Brakhage & avant-garde's "contempt for cinema"']
 
JP and all --

I'm intrigued by your remark in the midst of the Brakhage colloquy,
"Shouldn't discuss a film and a style of filming thatI neither enjoy nor
understand." I can't say I either disagree or agree with the statement
-- I think it it's a case-by-case thing for me -- but it raises an
interesting set of questions.

Is it fair to write about a film, filmmaker, genre to which you are
manifestly unsympathetic?
If you do, what kind of "full disclosure" is appropriate?

When I do my record column for Jewish Week -- which is billed as a
consumer guide so the expectations of the readers are very different
from what they bring to my film writing (I hope!) -- I frequently find
myself saying, "I don't care for this musical genre, but if you do, you
may like this."

I have to admit that I'm less inclined to say something similar when I
write a film piece, although I'm not sure I can articulate why.

George (I'm not crazy about e-mail but these are good of their kind)
Robinson
22626


From: Elizabeth Nolan
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 5:13pm
Subject: Re: Scorsese's detractors -- all over the place, like his movies
 
>> From: David Ehrenstein
>>
>> Scorsese is a director who thrives on ambiguity and
>> unresolved problems.
>


>
>> From: Dan Sallitt
>>>
>>> between Hughes and Faith Domergue. When Domergue discovers his
>>> affair with Ava Gardner, she crashes her car into his repeatedly.
>>> After this scene, she is never mentioned again, and Hughes is never
>>> held to account for the girl's treatment, either by Gardner or
>>> within the context of the movie.
>>
>> I dunno. I think you can criticize this plot thread for not
>> amounting to
>> much; and maybe criticize Scorsese for his besetting flaw of opting
>> for
>> sensation (sudden car violence) over anything else.
>>
>> What makes the {crash} scene feel funny to me is that
>> Scorsese is single-mindedly concerned with giving us the (excessively
>> edited) sensation of a plane slicing through a residential
>> neighborhood.
>> The scene has some power, but it's so fixated on the level of sensory
>> impact that it kind of feels vulnerable to charges of losing the big
>> picture, even if the big picture didn't involve deaths.
>
>>> I think Scorcese knows exactly what he's doing with respect to these
>>> incidents in "The Aviator" and "Mean Streets."
>>
>> I must say that the one thing I never feel about Scorsese is that he
>> knows
>> exactly what he is doing. To my mind, he just lacks the necessary
>> sensibility to find context. Which is not to deny his talent. But I
>> never cease to be mystified at the almost unanimous acclaim for his
>> genius. - Dan

>>>> From: LiLiPUT1@a...
>>>> product of a man who has little awareness of (or perhaps interest
>>>> in) his own
>>>> strengths and weakenesses.


My personal feeling is that more money for his budgets has not always
helped Scorsese; he gets caught up in his big scenes but loses the
strength of his story telling demanded in small budgets.
I get the impression he thinks more money means a bigger story and some
big stories are too big, even for the big screen; too much gets
undeveloped.

It is curious to wonder what MEAN STREETS, GOODFELLAS, and RAGING BULL
would be if done today with BIG BUDGETS and what sort of small budget
stories would be told of CASINO, GANGS OF NEW YORK, and AVIATOR. I
personally do not know the budgets associated with the various
movies... so if this thought is too ___________, just dismiss it.

I don't mind the lack of the males' attendance in the seizure scene...
men at that time may have tended to leave such events to the women.
But I do mind watching CB as KHepburn on the screen for such a long
time with little payoff reference story for other than what is deemed
by many to be good acting footage (personally, I do not feel she
portrayed KH's confidence).

Elizabeth
22627


From: BklynMagus
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 5:18pm
Subject: Re: Somewhat O.T. Film School (was: Scorsese's detractors)
 
Matthew wrote:

> I mean the most important thing of all, which is the development
and cultivation of a unique sensibility -- a unique way of seeing and
hearing the world -- the mark of any truly great artist.

The problem is: a) you cannot grade that; b) make a curriculum out
of it; and c) (worst of all) charge $20,000 for doing it: "We are now
going to train you in being yourself and being alive."

> What it should be doing is not teaching, but mentoring; encouraging
unique visions as opposed to trying -- and they *do* try! -- to mass
produce them in a certain mould, as they would if they were an
assembly line.

The West today is probably the most media-saturated/propagandized
culture the world has ever known. We need to mass produce
filmmakers so that these filmmakers can in turn mass produce images.

> The best thing about my education so far has been the fact that,
because I've had enough mentors in the past to know that I've got to
take the initiative to teach myself, I've had unlimited access to the
school's library, and thus read things -- philosophy, anthropology,
fiction, whatever -- 'round the clock.

Unfortunately, many people I know read something only with an eye
toward whether or not it can be made into a movie.

> I'm a big fan of pre-Miramax Scorsese (as cliché a cliché as "early
Godard"?), but "The Aviator," bar its colours and, yes, Cate as Kate,
didn't strike me as being anything particularly special.

My favorite Scorsese is The King of Comedy -- from a script he didn't
like which he had to wrestle with. I think that some of the best films
made by auteurs are ones where they have had to struggle with the
source material to bring it into line with their own vision. Mankiewicz
had only one original screenplay in 21 films and Billy Wilder 5 in 27
films.

Just like Rupert Pupkin had only one monologue to give, today's
emerging filmmakers only have one movie to make. Once they make
it, they seem to just keep on re-making it with ever increasing
technical panache and diminishing returns. Voila Scorsese. Most of his
films from Mean Streets to The Aviator have been male melodramas
where the audience is asked to sympathize with a reckless, violent,
uncaring male and the situations he finds himself in (which he rarely
acknowledges as being of his own making/choosing).

The beauty of The King of Comedy is that Scorsese's antipathy to the
character of Pupkin causes him not to try to make him sympathetic to
the audience which has the effect of making The King of Comedy a
more honest film than Scorsese usually produces. By honest I mean
that instead of omitting the consequences of Pupkin's behavior (in order
to build up audience sympathy), Scorcese shows them, thereby
introducing a note of ambiguity which is most often absent from his work.
Also, of all his post-Taxi Driver films, The King of Comedy has the lowest
quotient of filmic razzle dazzle.

Brian Dauth
22628


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 5:28pm
Subject: Re: Re: Somewhat O.T. Film School (was: Scorsese's detractors)
 
--- BklynMagus wrote:


>
> The beauty of The King of Comedy is that Scorsese's
> antipathy to the
> character of Pupkin causes him not to try to make
> him sympathetic to
> the audience which has the effect of making The King
> of Comedy a
> more honest film than Scorsese usually produces. By
> honest I mean
> that instead of omitting the consequences of
> Pupkin's behavior (in order
> to build up audience sympathy), Scorcese shows them,
> thereby
> introducing a note of ambiguity which is most often
> absent from his work.
> Also, of all his post-Taxi Driver films, The King of
> Comedy has the lowest
> quotient of filmic razzle dazzle.
>

I wouldn't reach so soon for "antipathy." Marty didn't
want to do the film initially, and had to be talked
into it. Same with "Raging Bull." Do we see a pattern
here?

When I talked to him about it he was especially keen
on the waiting room scene as he'd been in countless
waiting rooms himself over the years. His main problem
in doing the film was the fact that he was trying to
kick cocaine at the same time. Dark days, but a bright
movie.

(it's one of my very favorites too.)


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22629


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 5:29pm
Subject: Brakhage & avant-garde's "contempt for cinema" (was Re: What Time Is It There?)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Jason Guthartz"
wrote:
>
> All of these problems you have with "avant-garde tricks" seems to
come
> from your implicit notion of what is a proper cinematic image,
i.e., a
> "picture" which uses the camera in particular ways to illustrate a
> Renaissance-era notion of objectivity in "showing" the world.


I do not have such a notion. Since I have never formulated such
a notion, you (like Fred Camper earlier) have to call it "implicit"
so that you can safely call me "retrograde." I never asked myself
what a "proper cinematic image" is -- I'm even convinced that there
is no such thing and that the very term is meaningless.

You wrote:
"In other words, to reject abstraction is to reject modern art"


Far from rejecting abstraction I have always embraced it, to the
point of having produced abstract art myself for half a century. As
far as film is concerned, I have repeatedly stated that I actually
very much like Brakhage's abstract hand-painted films. But do I have
to love everything that is "modern" in order not to be retrograde?

I'm getting a little tired of people reading my mind and telling me
what I think and lecturing me for not agreeing with them. I didn't
call Fred retrograde when he said he hates McLaren (giving for sole
reason McLaren's alleged "cuteness"). Neither do I needed your
lecture to realize that all cinema (and all art, for that matter)
is "trickery" -- an argument that can conveniently justify just
about anything.

JPC
22630


From: Matt Armstrong
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 5:51pm
Subject: Re: The Loss of Self?
 
> Is it just me? - I am going crazy from lack of sleep? - or does
> someone else see the resemblance between Keaton and Caine???
>
> S.

Yep, it's uncanny. My mom recently pointed out that Matt Damon and
Hilary Swank could be twins. And in a fit of delirium, I recently
posted some pictures demonstrating the resemblance between the older
Gary Cooper and Bill O' Reilly.

http://democracysblooperreel.typepad.com/democracys_blooper_reel/2005
/01/_alright_so_i_w.html

Now allow me to duck the flaming arrows.
22631


From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 5:55pm
Subject: Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?
 
Since that's what it seems to come down to, I can testify that he's
extremely smart - amazingly quick, funny and learned - and not the
goombah some imagine: not a thug, not a misogynist, not an eye
unconnected to a brain. I think he IS a genius, but one who has been
ensnared in the studio backlash against the 60s for about two decades
now -- a period that has seen Coppola silenced and other young Turks
scaling back their visions to keep working. De Palma is the other
survivor, but he has always been a genre specialist, so They
understand him. Mission I1 wasn't a bad movie, and it bought DeP some
cred, but don't look for that movie about Yablonski any time soon.
And that's it. I agree with David that it's amazing Scorsese has
gotten as far as he has - that's because of the reputation, which
makes people want to do THEIR projects with him, as happened with
Aviator. Not a great movie, but a very good one - maybe his Mission
I1. We'll see.
22632


From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 6:03pm
Subject: Re: Scorsese's detractors (copylines)
 
> "I haven't seen those copylines in the States."
>
> "When he took on a corrupt system, he became a hero" - this is verbatim from
> one of the rah-rah TV publicity spots for THE AVIATOR in Australia ]...[
> Another ad has the "he became a true American hero" line. Oh boy.

For the record, I just heard on a (WQXR, NY) radio commercial (complete with "stirring" music): "He had a spirit as big as America!"
22633


From: Matt Armstrong
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 6:20pm
Subject: Re: What Time Is It There?
 
> > Count me in as liking this movie but liking The Hole much more.
> That
> > one was a combination of Ballard's High-Rise and Kafka's The
> > Metamorphosis, with Dennis Potter (a la Cantonese pop tunes)
mixed
> > in.
> I clearly started with the wrong movie. It had had good reviews,
> too...

I realize we've almost beaten the Tsai thing into the ground, but
one important thing I haven't seen mentioned yet is that all of
Tsai's features are pieces of a larger whole. He's used the same
cast and many of the same locations in Taipei since 1992's "Rebels
of the Neon God." I even read somewhere that most of the film's
interiors are shot in his (or Kang Sheng's)actual apartments.

"Rebels," "The River" and "What Time is it There?" also form a kind
of trilogy about a single family. Kang-Sheng Lee plays the son
(named Hsiao Kang in all three.) Tien Miao and Yi-Ching Lu
play "Father" and "Mother" respectively.

Shiang-chyi Chen also turns up as "Girl" in most of these movies.

Tsai obviously likes working with the same ensemble (and Kang-Sheng
is clearly his muse) but what I've enjoyed most about his movies is
the fun I get in piecing together how they fit into his larger
vision.

So while I don't think they need to be viewed in order, there is
something to be gained from seeing more of them. I know people who
find Tsai's films the cinematic equivalent of Ambien. They always
keep me riveted, but I understand why people think he's mannered.
(Just look at the incredible long takes in "Goodbye Dragon Inn.")

I agree with Hadrian that "The Hole" is kind of the odd man out,
though Tsai's new one is supposedly another "musical." Anyone seen
it?
22634


From: BklynMagus
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 6:28pm
Subject: Re: Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?
 
> Since that's what it seems to come down to, I can testify that he's
extremely smart - amazingly quick, funny and learned - and not the
goombah some imagine: not a thug, not a misogynist, not an eye
unconnected to a brain.

But the question them becomes for me: why is there such a high
quotient of misogyny in his films? At the very least, Scorsese males
display a high degree of anxiety toward women. I think the dualism
of "Scorsese: Goombah or Genius" excludes a third answer: both
(in differing degrees).

> I agree with David that it's amazing Scorsese has gotten as far as
he has

Scorsese is not a subversive artist (excepting King of Comedy in my
view) so he has had that in his favor.

Since Coppola is the great analyzer of systems and how they ensnare
and trap people, Hollywood will not be too keen on him. As for DePalma,
his explorations of sexualities, especially female and other sexualities,
is not too endearing either.

Of the three, Scorsese is safest in terms of content since he is the least
radical of the trio.

Brian Dauth
22635


From: Jason Guthartz
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 6:33pm
Subject: Brakhage & avant-garde's "contempt for cinema" (was Re: What Time Is It There?)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon" wrote:
> I never asked myself
> what a "proper cinematic image" is -- I'm even convinced that there
> is no such thing and that the very term is meaningless.

How can you be convinced of something you've never considered?


> I'm getting a little tired of people reading my mind and telling me
> what I think and lecturing me for not agreeing with them.

I for one am merely calling you to account for the language you use in
what I can only read as pejorative statements towards the
"avant-garde", e.g.:

> what we get visually in many avant garde films, such as DSM,
> boils down to a catalog of cinematic tricks.
***
> I see it as manipulation for manipulation's sake. But again, this
kind of
> editing is only one in the whole avant garde panoply of tricks.

So, accepting your acknowledgment that all cinema is trickery and
manipulation, you seem to be differentiating "avant-garde" from
"non-avant-garde" on some other basis, one which you have failed to
positively identify, and therefore can only be infered from your
references to image qualities (focus, stability) and montage
techniques (shot length).

> What I feel when watching DSM is that SB is more interested in
> manipulating the world (his material, call it nature, things, the
> real, whatever) than showing it to me.
***
> Neither do I needed your
> lecture to realize that all cinema (and all art, for that matter)
> is "trickery" -

You claim to understand that all cinema is trickery, yet you say "this
kind of editing is only one in the whole *avant garde* panoply of
tricks" instead of saying "...in the whole *cinematic* panoply of
tricks." Why?

What is the distinction between "manipulating" and "showing"?


> - an argument that can conveniently justify just
> about anything.

Art isn't justified, it's experienced. If there is any argument made
by art in general or an artwork in particular, it is one which says
"Here are materials and phenomena with which you may or may not be
familiar, please experience and reflect upon such materials and
phenomena in the context of your perceptual habits and habitual
pleasures." Modern art aesthetics is distinctive for its incorporation
of a wide range of materials and phenomena, the better to address the
full-body knowledge/logics of immediacy and intensity, transcending
and re-situating the rational-mind logics of causation and meaning.

JPC, I don't care that you disagree with my tastes. I care that you
not persist in labelling-in-order-to-discredit-or-marginalize, or that
if you insist on using a particular categorical label ("avant garde"),
that you provide some objective meaning to the term. Perhaps I'm wrong
in inferring your attitudes towards imagery, rather than merely
accepting what appears to be an equation of "avant garde" with "films
JPC mostly doesn't care for." But I'm presuming and hoping you're not
using "avant garde" merely as a pejorative, and can only infer your
definition by your usage.

-Jason G.
22636


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 6:34pm
Subject: Re: Re: What Time Is It There?
 
--- Matt Armstrong wrote:

Kang-Sheng Lee
> plays the son
> (named Hsiao Kang in all three.) Tien Miao and
> Yi-Ching Lu
> play "Father" and "Mother" respectively.
>

And Tsai plays the "Gentleman Caller."



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22637


From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 6:41pm
Subject: Re: Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?
 
First of all, I have never even suggested that Scorsese is a hack. To
me, there is no question about whether he is a genius or not. He is.
And on top of that, he loves cinema. I treasure his article in
Fangoria, where he wrote about his deep admiration for Cronenberg. I
treasure his homage to Minnelli in "Dreams". I truly admire Scorsese
as a film maker.

But to be completely uncritical of his work, I fail to understand.

Ten years ago, I read an article in "Sight and Sound", where, cant
remember the writer, the lack of creativity and intelligence in
Hollywood was spelled out, as Hollywood seemed more busy remaking
French and Italian films, than making something original. And
Hollywood is even less original these days, making sequels as usual,
and having their focus on remaking Japanese horror and filming every
marvel comic known to man.

And what does Scorsese do? He is making a remake of the biggest box
office succes in Hong Kong. And what does he plan to do next? Another
remake. I can't remember his exact words, Im sure Bill can quote it
correctly if I don't, but Hitchcock once said, "If you don't know what
to do, remake a hit." To me, that is what Scorsese is doing right now.

More than that, it looks like vehicles for diCaprio, challeging acting
parts, more than a product based on a vision.

Furthermore, I understand even less why he continues to work with
Logan, a writer I will use the word hack about.

So I asked if Scorsese had gone studio crazy, if he given up his
integrity to remake films the general American audience never would
watch. I wasn't suggesting he was a hack or whatever. But since I'm
stepping on uncritical toes, I will end this here.

Henrik
22638


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 6:42pm
Subject: Re: Re: Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?
 
--- BklynMagus wrote:


>
> But the question them becomes for me: why is there
> such a high
> quotient of misogyny in his films? At the very
> least, Scorsese males
> display a high degree of anxiety toward women.


Because this is the world he knows about.
I've actually lostcount of how many times Marty has
been married, but to me at least it says something
that Isabella Rossellini wouldn't dream of saying one
unkind word about him in my talks with her. For her it
was a marriage that simply didn't work out and she's
crazy about him as a filmmaer AND a human being.

Interesting too that Barbara DaFina (who he et while
shooting "The King of Comedy") stayed on as his line
producer well after their marriage was over.

I don't believe that marty has EVER made a film about
himself. There are bits and pieces of autobiographical
je ne sais quoi here and there. Obviously in
"Intalianamerican" -- less obviously in "American Boy"
-- but nothing that truly captures what he's like.

In some ways Kit Carson in "David Holtzman's Diary" is
closest to what he's like.

But then so is Ondine in "The Chelsea Girls."



> > I agree with David that it's amazing Scorsese has
> gotten as far as
> he has
>
> Scorsese is not a subversive artist (excepting King
> of Comedy in my
> view) so he has had that in his favor.
>

Uh, no. His only real commercial succes in recent
years was "CapeFear" -- which he did on DeNior's
insistence.


> Of the three, Scorsese is safest in terms of content
> since he is the least
> radical of the trio.
>

I can think of few commercially released films more
radical than "Casino."



__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The all-new My Yahoo! - What will yours do?
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22639


From: Matt Armstrong
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 6:46pm
Subject: Re: Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?
 
>
> Of the three, Scorsese is safest in terms of content since he is
the least
> radical of the trio.
>
> Brian Dauth

Scorsese safe? He's certainly the only one of them to incur the kind
of censorious wrath and death threats visited upon "The Last
Temptation of Christ." The tempest in a teapot over "Dressed to
Kill" doesn't even come close!

In fact, looking at the output for Coppola, Scorsese and DePalma, I
can't imagine how you'd conclude that Marty's content is
the "safest."

I just revisited their filmographies on IMDB and I find this claim
baffling!
22640


From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 6:48pm
Subject: ...an apology upfront
 
Sorry for the harsh tone in my previous post, but the recent debate on
both Scorsese and Eastwood just seemed to me to be an two-front war,
and I simply got caught up in the tone.

Henrik
22641


From: Richard Modiano
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 6:54pm
Subject: Re: Somewhat O.T. Film School (was: Scorsese's detractors)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Matthew Clayfield"
wrote:

"In my experience, I've found that film school teaches
protocol, formulas, industry jargon. What it should be doing is not
teaching, but mentoring; encouraging unique visions as opposed to
trying -- and they *do* try! -- to mass produce them in a certain
mould, as they would if they were an assembly line."

I worked at the Art Students League of New York for awhile where the
guiding philosophy of instruction was one of mentoring by showing the
student how to work in a particular medium without having to re-
invent the wheel. I taught print-making to kids on Saturday mornings
and let them choose their subject and kept my teaching to showing
them how to register the sheet, make color seperations, block out the
screen, etc. I tried to cultivate taste by referring them to good
prints at museums, shows, in books, and the work of other students.

The League was created when a group of students and teachers rebelled
against the prevailing system of instruction imported from Europe and
used at the National Academy of Art; it was anti-establishment for
its day (1876) because the students hired the teacher, paid by the
month and elected the administrators. Jackson Pollack and Georgia
O'Keefe were students there (and Charlton Heston and Madonna modelled
there in their salad days.)

Maybe you film students should try something like that. There are
many editors, directors, cinematographers between jobs or forced into
retirement who'd be willing to show you the ropes. When I was in
high school in the late 1960s Lee Garmes wanted to work on our
student film! He lived in North Hollywood on the same block as my
friend (now a gaffer) who was directing the picture.

Anyway, don't get discouraged, and try and read Stan Brakhage's "A
Moving Picture Giving and Taking Book."

Richard
22642


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 6:57pm
Subject: Brakhage & avant-garde's "contempt for cinema" (was Re: What Time Is It There?)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Jason Guthartz"
wrote:
>


in inferring your attitudes towards imagery, rather than merely
> accepting what appears to be an equation of "avant garde"
with "films
> JPC mostly doesn't care for." But I'm presuming and hoping you're
not
> using "avant garde" merely as a pejorative, and can only infer your
> definition by your usage.
>
> -Jason G.

"Avant garde" is a useful although inaccurate and even slightly
ridiculous label. I never used it as a pejorative. If I put down a
bad western, or musical, that doesn't mean that I use the
terms "western" or "musical" pejoratively. Same for avant garde. I
have nothing against avant garde per se. I like some avant garde
works and dislike others. You may "infer" all you wish. JPC
22643


From: samfilms2003
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 7:05pm
Subject: Brakhage & avant-garde's "contempt for cinema" (was Re: What Time Is It There?)
 
> What I feel when watching DSM is that SB is more interested in
> manipulating the world (his material, call it nature, things, the
> real, whatever) than showing it to me.

I don't think it's manipulation so much as manipulations opposite,
the film surface and light are also the material, the nature, things,
the real.

The Dog Star Man is manipulated by nature, and it's as if resistance is
futile, but neccessary.


> It is this fascination
> with manipulation that I, maybe unfairly, and certainly too hastily,
> described as "mistrust and even hatred of the image."

Well I would say sometimes a profound mistrust of the image as icon
the propensity of narrative film structure to claim truth - but, as above,
paradoxically an innocence in the image, nothing but the image.

-Sam Wells

ps JP It's fine with me if you don't like Dog Star Man; I'm just suggesting
what I think is going on there, and alternate ways to aproach the film
and SB if someone wants to do that.
22644


From: samfilms2003
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 7:24pm
Subject: Brakhage & avant-garde's "contempt for cinema" (was Re: What Time Is It There?)
 
Jason I don't think you're wrong here but I also don't think we
should imply Brakhage really occupied some state-of-art
grace; even the famous "Imagine an eye.." contains a disclaimer.

The "Sincerity" series savagely challenges presumptions of innocence, no ?

-Sam
22645


From:   Fred Camper
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 7:24pm
Subject: Re: Brakhage & avant-garde's "contempt for cinema" (was Re: What Time Is It There?)
 
JPC,

I'm sorry that my comments seem to you like insults. I intend a
critique, not a personal insult. I think your distinction between
"manipulating the world" and "showing it to me" is what caused me to use
the word "retrograde." My justification for the idea behind that word is
this. There's a long and great tradition not only in avnat-garde film
but in twentieth century art of artists who don't think about showing
anything to the viewer while working; who work in hermetic isolation
creating a world that doesn't pretend to "show" anything to anyone. I
don't think Cezanne wanted to "show" you anything; he pursued his own
"project" in painting. I don't think Gertrude Stein was interested in
"showing" her world either, but rather in using writing to create a kind
of poetry that you can take or reject as you like. Mainstream commercial
narrative films with actors walking around and talking, by contrast, are
very much concerned with "showing" a world, and that's what their
techniques are designed, in part, to do. Brakhage's films, like much
other art, ask you to meet them halfway, to change your way of seeing,
to speed up your perception. Indeed, I think it's a quality of much of
the best avant-garde film that requires a very active viewer engagement,
and requires a viewer to change her/his way of seeing. The "showing it
to me" phrase indicates, to me, a contrary notion of a the viewer as a
passive receiver, even if that wasn't your intent.

One distinction I often make is that while at least some elements in
commercial narrative films are meant to affect everyone the same way and
unite the audience as a collective mass -- we're all scared during the
shower-murder of "Psycho" -- avant-garde films separate audience members
from each other. Because of these films' structure, each person is
likely to have a different reaction. There was even a cinema, Peter
Kubelka's "Invisible Cinema" for the original Anthology Film Archives,
that enshired that idea in its architecture, with hoods around each
viewer's head separating each from the others.

Fred Camper
22646


From: Peter Henne
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 7:57pm
Subject: Re: Re: Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?
 
By and large a goombah. I simply don't find myself reflecting back on the moral universes developed in Scorsese's films, whereas I do for some of Coppola's, especially "The Conversation" and "Apocalypse" (1979 version, w/out end credits). Scorsese so often has to pump in torrents of physical violence or other shock material to keep the "energy" going, which just elicits my yawn. (Whatever happened to the angle on power grabbing he took in "Innocence," which was at least interesting?) "Apocalypse" is a very dark, graphic film, but Coppola just about always lets the horrors seep in environmentally and not all at once, which allows you the freedom to contemplate it. Even the helicopter raid is built up and prepares you to take stock of what will become surprising, fast-moving brutality. In the broader view Coppola is busy erasing the geographic borders of armed conflict. Scorsese's MO is to get busy trying to twist your arm till it falls off (is that a shake down artist?)--he keeps
going for the quick, localized hit on audience sensibilities. If Scorsese had directed "Apocalypse" said energy would have been higher, but at the expense of the persistent creep of dread which Coppola evoked--and I think that's what the film's admirers most appreciate about it. But I don't think Scorsese ever had the balls to direct a film in which unconditional evil was so little villified by directorial decisions. With the exception of "Raging Bull," the Joe Pesci characters are cartoons and presented to us as repugnant before we can judge them ourselves.

Peter Henne



BklynMagus wrote:

Scorsese is not a subversive artist (excepting King of Comedy in my
view) so he has had that in his favor.

Since Coppola is the great analyzer of systems and how they ensnare
and trap people, Hollywood will not be too keen on him. As for DePalma,
his explorations of sexualities, especially female and other sexualities,
is not too endearing either.

Of the three, Scorsese is safest in terms of content since he is the least
radical of the trio.

Brian Dauth





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Yahoo! Search presents - Jib Jab's 'Second Term'

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22647


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 8:42pm
Subject: Brakhage & avant-garde's "contempt for cinema" (was Re: What Time Is It There?)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> JPC,
>
I think your distinction between
> "manipulating the world" and "showing it to me" is what caused me
to use
> the word "retrograde."

Obviously, "showing it to me" was an unfortunate choice of words.
Writing for this Group is like walking through a mine field. Every
word has to be carefully analyzed before being used, or it's likely
to blow up in your face.

... There's a long and great tradition not only in avnat-garde film
> but in twentieth century art of artists who don't think about
showing
> anything to the viewer while working;


This is drifting far away from what I meant. But at any rate I
have difficulty following you here. Those artists may not think
about showing anything to the viewer while working, but the end-
result is a work that is intended for viewers to see. I am not aware
that Cezanne refused to exhibit his paintings or Gertrude Stein to
publish her writings. So I think you are unfairly using my use
of "showing" to justify your branding me "retrograde." Ultimately
the artist is always showing us something. In the case of DSM I feel
he is doing his best to make me wonder what it is exactly he is
showing, and why.

In the last section of your post you return to your cherished
concept of "mainstream commercial narrative films with actors
walking around and talking" (you always make the "walking around and
talking" sound as some strange aberration)being some Pablum for
totally passive popcorn-eaters. For my part I suspect there is as
much mental activity required for watching such a film (whether it's
good or bad is irrelevant)as for watching your average avant garde
film. Also, within the field of narrative film, there is an
amazingly broad range of forms and styles, some of which at least
require a considerable effort on the viewer's part. Such films are
often discussed here. Why single out "avant garde' as the only
intellectually demanding form of cinema?
>
Contrary to what you claim, commercial narrative films do not
affect everyone the same way -- even if that's the intention. And I
doubt that each viewer has a different reaction to Dog Star Man,
even if they all have hoods over their heads.
JPC
>
22648


From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 8:48pm
Subject: Re: Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Henrik Sylow"
wrote:
>
> First of all, I have never even suggested that Scorsese is a hack.

Henrik, I don't know if you're responding to my attempt to reframe
the debate, but I should make it clear: "goombah" doesn't mean hack -
it's dergatory NY slang for "Italian," and implies the traits I
itemized. Scorsese has portrayed quite a few characters that would be
called goombahs by people who don't like them. Another film that does
that is Summer of Sam. Interestingly, as has often been noted,
Scorsese has in common w. Coppola AND De Palma (and Dante, for that
matter) the fact that he is Italian-American.
22649


From: BklynMagus
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 8:51pm
Subject: Re: Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?
 
David E wrote:

> Because this is the world he knows about.

But because he knows this world does not
change the fact that his films are full of misogyny.

What I do not find in these films is a condemnation
of misogyny. One could argue that Scorsese wanted
his viewers to make up their own minds, but with his
adroit use of cinematic craft, he slants the movie
toward his male heroes.

> but to me at least it says something that Isabella
Rossellini wouldn't dream of saying one unkind word
about him in my talks with her.

I am sure he is a nice person, but even nice people
allow the cutural biases of the times/cultures in
which they work into their art (often unconsciously).

> I can think of few commercially released films more
radical than "Casino."

Jonathan Demme's The Manchurian Candidate. Sinatra
role played by a Black man, Janet Leigh role played by
a Black woman. The intense homobond between Denzel
and Liev Schreiber. The erasure of the image of a
Black man and its replacement with that of a White man
in order to protect the Black man from blame. Last shot:
an image of the human cost of imperialism/capitalism.

Casino: White man rises to top of commercial profession
with the help of violence. White man abuses woman he
is obsessed with and marries. Wife devolves into drug
addiction and dies. Of three main characters, the two
males are given voiceovers, while the woman is kept
silent. Last shot: White man sits at desk reminiscing
about the good old days. Standard Hollywood issue male
melodrama about the passing of a man's youth and vigor.
Any sense of social repercussions/consequences is omitted
(similarly, in Gangs of New York, Scorsese omits any
mention of the lynching of Blacks that occurred which is
equal to making a film about the Titanic and neglecting the
iceberg).

In film after film, Scorsese tries to drum up sympathy for men
who end up cornered by the very systems they put in place
and exploited to their advantage for so long.

Brian Dauth
22650


From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 9:24pm
Subject: Re: Re: Back to Pialat (Was: La Cava on TCM)
 
> Here's a counter-example: I'm sure I knew vaguely that scenes were
> improvised in A Woman's A Woman before I first saw it, but it was
> only later (from Sarris, ironically) that I learned that the moment
> Karina looks at the camera and says "I don't know whether to laugh or
> cry" was a blown take Godard decided to use anyway. When I saw the
> film again with that in mind, it just enriched the shot's meaning

I wasn't saying that all improv is hurt by insider information. But the
improv in A NOS AMOURS is somehow vulnerable. The dinner scene features
a bunch of people sitting around awkwardly, put at a disadvantage, not
sure how to respond to an unexpected attack in a previously safe zone.
Which all makes sense within the fiction. But it's super-easy to think,
upon learning that it was an improv, about awkward actors and
directors-provocateurs.

> If after seeing the improv "under" the dinner scene someone who used
> to like it can't see anything else, and the scene is ruined forever,
> permanently diminished, it can't have been much of a scene

Well, that's true enough. I don't think the scene was exactly ruined, but
I became self-conscious while watching it.

The big point I want to make is that it's very difficult to know to what
extent we are influenced by what we bring to a movie. Whenever insider
information points us in a certain direction, and after seeing the film we
think, "Yeah, that insider information was spot on," I think we ought to
step back and question our emotional response. Not discard it, but not
give it a free pass either.

> But after that the esthetic distinctions come in. I certainly don't
> sense, watching the kissing scene in Notorious, that Grant and Bergman,
> were improvising their dialogue, even though I now know they were,
> because (like Belmondo and Brially in AWAW) they were trained actors and
> made it work.

You know, that scene was affected for me by insider information as well.
No big deal, but I do feel the awkwardness more intensely than I think I
should.

> The folks at that dinner table in ANA are a
> mix of pros and non-pros, with the most pro (or the most relaxed, no
> doubt because he's cocooned by his invincible good looks) being
> Collard

But he's also the one with the clearest mission - to defend Bonnaire - and
with the least vulnerability - because he's new to the poisoned family
circle. Maybe he seemed more pro because his part was conceived with more
confidence.

> (not Bonnaire, who doesn't seem in character at all in this
> scene).

I'm in danger of making a facile statement here, but I'm going to make it
anyway: this is a film about how people aren't in character most of the
time. Central to the concept is that we see many aspects of Bonnaire's
personality, and that they are often enough at odds with whatever
fictional construct we have of her. We often see her happy and partying,
though she is anhedonic; she is obedient and disobedient to her family;
we feel her longing for human contact, though she flees from all her
meaningful relationships.

I'm not sure exactly what you meant when you said that Bonnaire was out of
character. Her acting all bourgeois and engaged is certainly integrated
into the film's crazy-quilt plan: when next we see her, she will have
found a way to sabotage this movement in her life. And her coyness and
lack of anger when badgered by her father seem about right to me. Tell me
if I missed your point.

> The Mouth Agape is also perfect except for Philippe Leotard, who was
> nervous, apparently... I guess because someone told him "With Pialat,
> it's reality: life itself!" or just because he wasn't used to playing
> ten-minute scenes with an immobile camera, as in shot 3, so he did
> something we have all seen actors do in that frame of mind: he
> snorts, he sniffs, he eats noisily, he smokes noisily, he makes all
> sorts of sounds with his mouth and his respiratory tract.

Well, this is Leotard, no? He likes to play the barbarian. I don't find
him perfect in the film, and I actually think his attack on Mom in that
early long take is too much, and throws the film off balance for a while.
But I don't care all that much - it's an amazing film anyway.

> And it doesn't help the scene - it doesn't work as the character's
> dis-ease at having to take care of his dying mother (who may not even
> know at this point what's happening), because the character he's playing
> wouldn't show his dis-ease that way. It's an acting tic, and Pialat
> should have stopped the take until it went away.

I'd guess that Pialat wouldn't like the idea of making Leotard conform to
his conception of the character. I doubt that Pialat goes into movies
with that firm a concept of the part as distinct from the actor. I could
be wrong about this.

> Should we as critics - as auteurists - be able to look past these
> little flaws? It's something we have all learned to do - sometimes
> maybe too well. As the shades of night gather around me - this
> doesn't just apply to film criticism - I find myself less and less
> inclined to avert my eyes, even if the booboo appears in a
> masterpiece

I agree with you. About the principle, not necessarily about the
particular flaws!

> I simply can
> no longer watch Two English Girls and the Continent without being
> aware of how miscast and out of tune Leaud is.

Really?? - Dan
22651


From: BklynMagus
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 9:28pm
Subject: Re: Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?
 
Matt writes:

> Scorsese safe?

Pretty much so to my eyes.

> He's certainly the only one of them to incur
the kind of censorious wrath and death threats
visited upon "The Last Temptation of Christ."

I wasn't thinking in terms of angering the
religious right (hell, SpongeBob does that).

I was thinking in terms of his hewing to the
standard tropes of Hollywood/American
filmmaking.

> In fact, looking at the output for Coppola,
Scorsese and DePalma, I can't imagine how you'd
conclude that Marty's content is the "safest."

Little, if any, class analysis in his work. His films
are full of gender and sexual conformity.

In The Godfather, you come away with the sense
that mobsters = capitalists. In The Aviator you are
given a capitalist as the hero.

I never get from Scorsese a sense that the whole
system is rotten; just a few bad apples (usually
Pesci) whose elimination would solve the problem.

In Coppola you get depictions of entire sytems of
confinement and entrapment. Scorsese is a "lone
gunman" filmmaker while Coppola depicts webs
of power and coercion.

> I just revisited their filmographies on IMDB and I
find this claim baffling!

Scorsese is just conventional to me. For example,
he is not nearly as transgressive in sexual matters
as DePalma. Take as an example Femme Fatale: the
lesbians get away with it and the heroine blows off
the advances of the het man at the end. In
Scorsese movies women get beat up a lot (I cannot
remember if there are any lesbains in his films. I do
recall the cartoon leathermen from After Hours).

For all his cutting edge technique, there is great deal
of old-fashioned thinking in Scorsese's movies.

Brian Dauth
22652


From: Ruy Gardnier
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 9:28pm
Subject: Re: Re: What Time Is It There?
 
I think Tsai Ming-liang was on a run early on. First saw VIVE L'AMOUR, then
THE RIVER, then THE HOLE, then caught up with REBELS OF THE NEON GOD on VHS.
Like all of them very much and in a way his films ressemble a lot a weird
mix of Antonioni and Tati. Lee Kang-sheng's physical acting is one of these
films' strongest points, and so is their rhythm. After WHAT TIME IS IT
THERE, he seems to revolve on the same ground as ever. As an admirer, I
liked it. His following, GOODBYE DRAGON INN, seemed to me like an arthouse
CINEMA PARADISO, and all the angst that made his previous films wild
journeys has turned into, as someone said, angelopoulositis. Feels like his
next film could be about a soccer field: someone kicks the ball hard, it
disappears, and the players keep looking at themselves for 80 minutes.
22653


From: Matt Armstrong
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 9:31pm
Subject: Re: Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?
 
>
> Jonathan Demme's The Manchurian Candidate. Sinatra
> role played by a Black man, Janet Leigh role played by
> a Black woman. The intense homobond between Denzel
> and Liev Schreiber. The erasure of the image of a
> Black man and its replacement with that of a White man
> in order to protect the Black man from blame. Last shot:
> an image of the human cost of imperialism/capitalism.


As much as I enjoy both versions of "The Manchurian Candidate," this
PC reading (pitting Demme of all directors vs. Scorsese) strikes me
as absurd. One could just as easily argue that "The Manchurian
Candidate" is misogynist for its portrayal of a strong female
politician as a ballbusting, smothering (and incest-prone) bitch.

And whatever one makes of that last shot, Demme's remake is hardly
as political or as literal in its real-world connections as it could
be. It's possible to be a "good republican" and walk away from the
movie unscathed, just as much as it was possible to be a homophobe
and enjoy "Philadelphia."


> Casino: White man rises to top of commercial profession
> with the help of violence. White man abuses woman he
> is obsessed with and marries. Wife devolves into drug
> addiction and dies. Of three main characters, the two

You've left out one of the major details of the movie. DeNiro's
character is a Jewish outsider who will never be accepted by the
Italian mob. It's impossible to ignore that "Casino"
and "Goodfellas" are both negative views of capitalism.

And yes, there's lots of misogyny in Scorsese's films. Mobsters?
Misogynists. Psycho cab drivers? Misogynists. Hollywood producers?
Misogynists. Are you raking him over the coals for his *choice* of
material, or for accurately re-creating the worlds he's showing us?

On the one hand, Scorsese is being taken to task here for showing us
a part of the world *as it is* while Demme is lauded for political
abstraction. It's the Demme film that asks us to accept a happy
ending too.
22654


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 9:48pm
Subject: Re: Re: Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?
 
--- BklynMagus wrote:


>
> What I do not find in these films is a condemnation
> of misogyny.

What do you want?Gregory Peck in "To Kille a
Mockingbird"?

One could argue that Scorsese wanted
> his viewers to make up their own minds, but with his
> adroit use of cinematic craft, he slants the movie
> toward his male heroes.

How? Bedcause they get the most amount of screen time?
Is Cathy Moriarty less impressive than DeNiro in
"Raging Bull"? I think not.

>

>
> Jonathan Demme's The Manchurian Candidate. Sinatra
> role played by a Black man, Janet Leigh role played
> by
> a Black woman.

Big deal! It's a niche market.

The intense homobond between Denzel
> and Liev Schreiber.

HUNH?

The erasure of the image of a
> Black man and its replacement with that of a White
> man
> in order to protect the Black man from blame. Last
> shot:
> an image of the human cost of
> imperialism/capitalism.
>
Much prefer the last shot --and sound -- of the
original.

> Casino: White man rises to top of commercial
> profession
> with the help of violence. White man abuses woman
> he
> is obsessed with and marries. Wife devolves into
> drug
> addiction and dies.

A man walsk to a car, turns on the ignition and it
explodes.His body flies in slow motion through a sea
of neaon to the tune of the "Kyrie" of the "St.Matthew
Passion."

Of three main characters, the
> two
> males are given voiceovers, while the woman is kept
> silent.

Her body does the talking.


Last shot: White man sits at desk
> reminiscing
> about the good old days.

You forgot the tribute to the cover art of "Noel
Coward in Las Vegas."

Standard Hollywood issue
> male
> melodrama about the passing of a man's youth and
> vigor.

Uh, nope. More like Beckett's "Endgame" actually.

> Any sense of social repercussions/consequences is
> omitted

Oh really? I guess you didn't see the cut with Alan
King, Kevin Pollack and Fluff La'Cloque

> (similarly, in Gangs of New York, Scorsese omits any
> mention of the lynching of Blacks that occurred
> which is
> equal to making a film about the Titanic and
> neglecting the
> iceberg).
>
Sorry but there are shots of blacks beiung lynched in
the film's climax.

> In film after film, Scorsese tries to drum up
> sympathy for men
> who end up cornered by the very systems they put in
> place
> and exploited to their advantage for so long.
>

Sympathy is neither asked for nor created.



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22655


From: Zach Campbell
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 9:52pm
Subject: Re: Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?
 
Brian Dauth wrot:
> Scorsese is just conventional to me. For example,
> he is not nearly as transgressive in sexual matters
> as DePalma. Take as an example Femme Fatale: the
> lesbians get away with it and the heroine blows off
> the advances of the het man at the end.

Keep in mind these, uh, "lesbians" are total fantasy-tropes that De
Palma is working with. I am a great admirer of Brian De Palma and
think of his sensibility as a liberating and challenging one, but I
don't think he should be construed as a heroic voice of the queer
community. He's a straight male making films (very complex and
critical films IMO) about various straight male fantasies. What
makes FEMME FATALE so impressive--I think it's an excellent film--is
that De Palma chooses to imbue the femme fatale fantasy with a
conscience and a consciousness, so that certain major elements of
the film (treading delicately here to avoid spoilers) are
attributable to HER, as ingrained into HER psyche, problematizing
the simplistic cultural guilt that generally works UPON the femme
fatale. The ideal "viewer" (the straight male) loses some of the
satisfaction of seeing the femme fatale punished.

De Palma is a filmmaker interested not so much in exploring "the
Other" as evoking it just enough so that "the Self" gets
blindsided. Armond White hit the nail right on the head when he
insisted that PEEPING TOM was the seed from which De Palma grew. I
do think he's the most talented of his whole "school"
or "generation."

> In Scorsese movies women get beat up a lot (I cannot
> remember if there are any lesbains in his films. I do
> recall the cartoon leathermen from After Hours).

Well, women get beat up a lot in De Palma movies too ...

--Zach
22656


From: Matt Armstrong
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 9:57pm
Subject: Re: Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?
 
>
> In Coppola you get depictions of entire sytems of
> confinement and entrapment. Scorsese is a "lone
> gunman" filmmaker while Coppola depicts webs
> of power and coercion.

I guess you're talking about "The Godfather" movies and also "The
Conversation" (one of my favorite movies.) But in the last two
decades, Coppola's output has been deeply flawed, too conventional
or hack work ("Jack" anyone?)

And DePalma's aesthetics may continue to be interesting, but I don't
see his films even attempting to take on the world we actually live
in. Not since "Casualties of War" or (ugh) "Bonfire of the Vanities."

> Scorsese is just conventional to me. For example,
> he is not nearly as transgressive in sexual matters
> as DePalma. Take as an example Femme Fatale: the
> lesbians get away with it and the heroine blows off
> the advances of the het man at the end.

Sounds like standard noir. "Femme Fatale" takes place in movieworld.
Scorsese is usually more interested in the real world. The
stereotypical femme fatale is still a sexist stereotype, perhaps a
more refreshing one than the beaten or neglected women in Scorsese's
mob millieu. Seems to me this is apples and oranges.
22657


From: Matthew Clayfield
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 11:04pm
Subject: Re: Somewhat O.T. Film School (was: Scorsese's detractors)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, BklynMagus wrote:

> The problem is: a) you cannot grade that; b) make a curriculum out
> of it; and c) (worst of all) charge $20,000 for doing it: "We are now
> going to train you in being yourself and being alive."

You're right, they can't. And that's the major predicament, too,
because what, therefore, is the real point of film school? Beyond
turning out dazzling craftsmen and little more. The only answer I can
see is to make money.

> Just like Rupert Pupkin had only one monologue to give, today's
> emerging filmmakers only have one movie to make.

And some don't even have that.
22658


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 11:13pm
Subject: Leaud in "Deux Anglaises" (was: Back to Pialat )
 
> > I simply can
> > no longer watch Two English Girls and the Continent without being
> > aware of how miscast and out of tune Leaud is.
>
> Really?? - Dan

Yes, really?? Do you think Leaud is out of tune because he
doesn't fit into a British environment? In which case he would be
the opposite of miscast, since the character is indeed "out of tune"
with everything British (especially the language!). Or is it because
Leaud doesn't belong in a period piece? This objection would be more
valid, although the real problem with Leaud is that he is so much...
Leaud that he runs the risk of seeming miscast in most films outside
the Truffaut-Doinel saga or the films of Godard, Rivette and
Eustache. He does seem miscast in almost every "mainstream" film he
has made (and he has made only a few, which goes to prove the
difficulty of casting him). "Two English Girls", although in my
opinion one of Truffaut's very best films, is closer
to "mainstream" than anything he did with Godard/Rivette/Eustache.

I wonder, Bill: Who should Truffaut have cast instead of Leaud?
And: to what extent does the "miscasting" spoil your pleasure? JPC
22659


From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 11:24pm
Subject: Re: Leaud in "Deux Anglaises" (was: Back to Pialat )
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon" wrote:

Or is it because
> Leaud doesn't belong in a period piece? This objection would be more
> valid, although the real problem with Leaud is that he is so much...
> Leaud that he runs the risk of seeming miscast in most films outside
> the Truffaut-Doinel saga or the films of Godard, Rivette and
> Eustache. He does seem miscast in almost every "mainstream" film he
> has made (and he has made only a few, which goes to prove the
> difficulty of casting him).

Period, and also the character. Leaud, who's great in Godard-Truffaut-
Eustache, is a limited actor. Off the top of my head, I can't think of who could
replace him, but Scorsese cast Daniel Day-Lewis, a very good actor, in his
Two English Girls homage, The Age of Innocence, and that's what's called for.
It's not one of theTruffauts I can rewatch with unmixed pleasure, although
certainly it is a beautiful piece of filmmaking. I don't often quote Spielberg, but
what he said about casting being 95% of successful (narrative) filmmaking
has some truth to it. It's less of a problem when you have, say, Cliff Robertson
acting wooden in The Honey Pot - he looks great in a black suit, which is the
minimum requiremnt for the actor playing Fly. But when you have a central
character like the hero of Two English Girls played by someone who can't
even understand the character's psychology, that's a problem. Leaud and the
girls are acting on different levels. Which inevitably translates into a
judgement on the character, but that makes for half a loaf.
22660


From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 11:29pm
Subject: Re: Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Matt Armstrong"
wrote:

The
> stereotypical femme fatale is still a sexist stereotype, perhaps a
> more refreshing one than the beaten or neglected women in Scorsese's
> mob millieu.

De Palma IS the character; he based her on his own life experience -
something real bad in his own past that he had to come to terms with, if only in
fantasy.

I'm amazed, by the way, at how we have devoted an unsconscionable amount
of electrons to Scorsese without once discussing his visual style, or the visual
style of particular films, which is why some consider him a genius. That's not
aimed at you, Matt, but I'd find this endless thread more enriching if it weren't
just about his inferred morals.
22661


From:
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 6:31pm
Subject: Re: Somewhat O.T. Film School (was: Scorsese's detractors)
 
UW-Milwaukee's film department STRONGLY encourages experimentation, so much
so that the so-called nine-to-fivers actively resent it.

Kevin John


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
22662


From:
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 6:52pm
Subject: Re: Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?
 
In a message dated 05-02-10 18:40:01 EST, Bill Krohn writes:

<< I'm amazed, by the way, at how we have devoted an unsconscionable amount
of electrons to Scorsese without once discussing his visual style, or the
visual
style of particular films, which is why some consider him a genius. >>

I've repeatedly tried to get discussions going on the red-and-blue homage to
2-color Technicolor in "The Aviator", dragging in 1920's 2-color works such as
the red-and-green "The Toll of the Sea" (Chester M. Franklin) and Fritz
Lang's largely red-and-green "The Tiger of Eschnapur" (1959), which might also be a
homage to 2-color (just a guess on my part). So far, there have been few
takers, as Bill points out...
It's the avaiation scenes that are most interesting in "The Aviator", along
with the nightclub ones. The red-orange plane is a startling use of 2-color.

Mike Grost
22663


From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 0:24am
Subject: Re: Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
> In a message dated 05-02-10 18:40:01 EST, Bill Krohn writes:

> I've repeatedly tried to get discussions going on the red-and-blue homage
to
> 2-color Technicolor in "The Aviator"

Certainly a key concept for that film, but what is it about Scorsese as a director
that makes him worth all this attention besides that particular use of color?
Does he have a recognizable style?
22664


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 0:34am
Subject: Re: Re: Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?
 
--- MG4273@a... wrote:


>
> I've repeatedly tried to get discussions going on
> the red-and-blue homage to
> 2-color Technicolor in "The Aviator", dragging in
> 1920's 2-color works such as
> the red-and-green "The Toll of the Sea" (Chester M.
> Franklin) and Fritz
> Lang's largely red-and-green "The Tiger of
> Eschnapur" (1959), which might also be a
> homage to 2-color (just a guess on my part). So far,
> there have been few
> takers, as Bill points out...

Didn't I say that he ought to have called it "The
Aviator or A History of Color Cinematography" ?

> It's the avaiation scenes that are most interesting
> in "The Aviator", along
> with the nightclub ones.
>
I'd go for much more than that. I love the Casa
Hepburn scene too, and the bit where Juan Trippe tries
talking to him through the locked door.





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22665


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 0:36am
Subject: Re: Re: Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?
 
--- hotlove666 wrote:


>
> Certainly a key concept for that film, but what is
> it about Scorsese as a director
> that makes him worth all this attention besides that
> particular use of color?
> Does he have a recognizable style?
>
>
>
>
Not in the sense that he repats certain visual tropes
in every damend movie. I would say that in a Scorzese
film you can be assurred that nothing hasn't been
thought ought thoroughly. ESPECIALLY the structuring
absences.



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22666


From: Aaron Graham
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 0:44am
Subject: Re: Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:

> > It's the avaiation scenes that are most interesting
> > in "The Aviator", along
> > with the nightclub ones.
> >
> I'd go for much more than that. I love the Casa
> Hepburn scene too, and the bit where Juan Trippe tries
> talking to him through the locked door.

For me, the most interesting stuff was Hughes in the screening room
circa "Hell's Angels" and the scenes concerning his decline in mental
health. In fact, I could have done with more of the latter, despite
Scorsese's claim that this film was only supposed to represent a
certain period of Hughe's life.
22667


From:  
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 8:24pm
Subject: Woody Allen (Was: Quiet American (WAS Re: Mankiewicz (was: Cahiers 1963))
 
Well, I would go to bat for many of Woody Allen's recent films and would
argue that "Anything Else" (2003) is analogous to Hitchcock's "Family Plot" in
some respects. Bill has written of how Hitchcock reinvented his mise-en-scene
for that great last film and I think Allen does something similar (though not as
revolutionary) in "Anything Else," while not a "last film," certainly one
which belongs to later period Allen. It basically boils down to aspect ratio:
after years of working in 1.85, Allen switched to 'Scope for this project and
the whole way he saw changed. Dolly shots replaced his usual zooms; close-ups,
once so rare in Allen, were used very expressively. It's as though the change
in screen dimensions refreshed his visual sensibilities. I was so thrilled
by these developments that I saw the film twice in theatres.

(I suppose I should qualify my remarks by saying that the film's acting and
writing weren't as impressive as the filmmaking.)

I note that "Melinda and Melinda" (which I haven't seen yet) has him going
back to 1.85. But that doesn't mean it won't be good; I'm sure it will be a
solid work, which is how I'd characterize such enjoyable recent films as "The
Curse of the Jade Scorpion" and "Hollywood Ending."

I am an admirer of "Mighty Aphrodite," Bill, but (as someone said at the
time) I always have thought of it as a mere prelude to his great musical comedy,
"Everyone Says I Love You."

Peter


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
22668


From: Brian Charles Dauth
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 1:39am
Subject: Re: Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?
 
Matt writes:

> As much as I enjoy both versions of "The Manchurian
Candidate," this PC reading (pitting Demme of all directors
vs. Scorsese) strikes me as absurd.

Why is this reading PC? I consider it radical to make the
star (and savior of "democracy") a Black man in a Hollywood
movie.

> One could just as easily argue that "The Manchurian
Candidate" is misogynist for its portrayal of a strong female
politician as a ballbusting, smothering (and incest-prone)
bitch.

Or how about the pressures of a capitalistic/imperialist
political system deforming a woman to the point that
she becomes a caricature and is willing to sacrifice her son
for imperialist/capitalist ends?

> And whatever one makes of that last shot, Demme's
remake is hardly as political or as literal in its real-world
connections as it could be.

So it is not as political as you think it could be. Does that
make is less radical? That there is any critique at all in
a major Hollywood production is radical.

> It's possible to be a "good republican" and walk away
from the movie unscathed, just as much as it was possible
to be a homophobe and enjoy "Philadelphia."

Good republicans walk away from everything unscathed
since they are absolutely convinced of the correctness of
their beliefs (same as homophobes).

> You've left out one of the major details of the movie. DeNiro's
character is a Jewish outsider who will never be accepted by the
Italian mob.

And this redeems the movie in what way? Just like Henry Hill
(and Martin Scorsese), Ace Rothstein is an outsider who desires
to conform and fit in -- a process for which Scorcese shows great
sympathy. Travis Bickle wants to clear the streets of all the queers
and the Blacks so New York City will then conform to his idea of
how it should be. Conformity is not a radical pursuit.

> It's impossible to ignore that "Casino" and "Goodfellas" are
both negative views of capitalism.

I don't see it. I see it critical of certain excesses that capitalism
can lead to, but not of the entire capitalistic system -- Scorsese
shows too much fondness for his male strivers for any critique
to be all encompassing. Most often the critique comes in the
form of Pesci's characters which as someone pointed out are
usually cartoons and easily mocked.

> And yes, there's lots of misogyny in Scorsese's films.

And almost no condemnation of it.

> Are you raking him over the coals for his *choice* of
material, or for accurately re-creating the worlds he's
showing us?

He more than recreates. Scorsese endorses.

> On the one hand, Scorsese is being taken to task here for
showing us a part of the world *as it is* while Demme is lauded
for political abstraction.

Not just *as it is*, but as it is seductively reproduced/replicated
to engender sympathy on the part of the audience for that part
of the world. Scorsese is the perpetual outsider with his nose
pressed up on the glass wanting in.

> It's the Demme film that asks us to accept a happy
ending too.

Happy? Denzel's had to kill his friend and his life has been
shattered (shaved head). Real happy.

Brian Dauth
22669


From: Craig Keller
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 2:02am
Subject: Quasi-OT: Oscars Telecast
 
This was just forwarded to me. Not sure what the source is, NYTimes or
someplace else. It's excerpted from a profile on the producer of the
Oscar telecast. Anyway, it made me laugh.

craig.
=====

Each time he's asked by the academy to produce an Oscar show, Cates
likes to
plan a surprise or two to augment the evening's unscripted magic. He
pioneered the "necrology" -- memorial segments paying tribute to stars
who
died, now an award-show staple. One year, he put an Oscar aboard a space
shuttle and had it handed out via satellite. He's also brought a bear
and a
horse on stage to help with presentations.

So what about this year? All he'd say was, "You'll notice as soon as you
watch the show."
22670


From: Brian Charles Dauth
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 2:14am
Subject: Re: Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?
 
David writes:

>What do you want? Gregory Peck in "To Kill a
Mockingbird"?

Not that extreme. But some counterbalance would be
appreciated.

> Because they get the most amount of screen time?

More that their plights get fuller treatment and pleas
for sympathy -- DeNiro punching the wall in jail and
wailing "I am not an animal." Yes he is and a depraved
one at that, but Scorsese wants us to sympathize with
him, despite the fact that all his troubles were brought
on by his own actions.

> Is Cathy Moriarty less impressive than DeNiro in
"Raging Bull"? I think not.

She is fine.

> Big deal! It's a niche market.

My apololgies, but I don't understand this comment.

> Much prefer the last shot --and sound -- of the
original.

Good as well. I love Frankenheimer.

> Her body does the talking.

But she is deprived of being one of the controlling
narrative consciences. That says more than
anything spoken by her body.

> Uh, nope. More like Beckett's "Endgame" actually.

To paraphrase Addison: "You're stepping Scorsese way
up in class." At best he is a top flight second tier
director. I sometimes get the impression that he would
be happier teaching movies than making them. He fills
his movies with so many references and homages,
that narrative drive and moral vision seem to have been
jettisoned to make room for all of the references.

As someone said, Scorsese seems to be aware of this, so
he injects some hyped-up violence every once in a while
to keep his movies going.

> Sorry but there are shots of blacks being lynched in
the film's climax.

My pardon. Shots yes, but he plays down the extent of the
violence visited upon Balcks at the time. I freely admit to
having issues with Scorsese over his racial vision.

> Sympathy is neither asked for nor created.

I disagree. For me Scorsese films are full of heterosexual
male special pleading which he tries to make palatable with
gobs of cinematic erudition.

Brian Dauth
22671


From:
Date: Thu Feb 10, 2005 9:15pm
Subject: Re: Critical Ethics
 
In a message dated 2/10/05 11:16:31 AM, filmlists@g... writes:


> Is it fair to write about a film, filmmaker, genre to which you are
> manifestly unsympathetic?
> If you do, what kind of "full disclosure" is appropriate?
>
Yes, it's absolutely fair if you can still say something substantial. In
music criticism, Simon Reynolds is superb at it whether I agree with him (trance)
or not (New York Dolls). As for disclosure, the "if you like new age, you'll
love xyz" line is an enormous, ugly cliche. No amount of damage control will
kiss the boo boos of those new age fans you offended anyway.

Kevin John


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
22672


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 2:31am
Subject: Re: Re: Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?
 
--- Brian Charles Dauth
wrote:


> More that their plights get fuller treatment and
> pleas
> for sympathy -- DeNiro punching the wall in jail
> and
> wailing "I am not an animal." Yes he is and a
> depraved
> one at that, but Scorsese wants us to sympathize
> with
> him, despite the fact that all his troubles were
> brought
> on by his own actions.
>
Not at all. He makes it painfully clear precisely why
Jake is in jail. And he IS an animal -- note the
film's title?


>
> > Big deal! It's a niche market.
>
> My apololgies, but I don't understand this comment.
>

I'm black, gay, half-Jewish and raised a Roman
Catholic.

Any further questions?


> But she is deprived of being one of the controlling
> narrative consciences. That says more than
> anything spoken by her body.
>

You equate control with verbal dexterity. Big mistake.



>
> To paraphrase Addison: "You're stepping Scorsese way
> up in class." At best he is a top flight second
> tier
> director. I sometimes get the impression that he
> would
> be happier teaching movies than making them. He
> fills
> his movies with so many references and homages,
> that narrative drive and moral vision seem to have
> been
> jettisoned to make room for all of the references.
>

Like James Joyce.

> As someone said, Scorsese seems to be aware of this,
> so
> he injects some hyped-up violence every once in a
> while
> to keep his movies going.
>

Someone was wrong.


> My pardon. Shots yes, but he plays down the extent
> of the
> violence visited upon Balcks at the time. I freely
> admit to
> having issues with Scorsese over his racial vision.
>

So do I, believe it or not. But not along the lines
you've taken. And by the way I consider "Gangs of New
York" to be a failure.



> I disagree. For me Scorsese films are full of
> heterosexual
> male special pleading which he tries to make
> palatable with
> gobs of cinematic erudition.
>
You're forgetting Robert Plunkett in "After Hours."

And those leathermen weren't cartoons. They were top
erotic models -- and much appreciated by some of us.



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22673


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 2:58am
Subject: Re: Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?
 
I am getting increasingly uneasy about Brian's posts. We are all
leftists who hate Bush in particular and Capitalism in general
(although capitalism is our bread and butter, no matter how stale
the bread and rancid the butter) but the direction of Brian's rants
seems to me to go a bit far into radicalist territory and away from
anything we might call auteurist. Apparently for him Scorsese is a
shitty filmmaker because he doesn't indict the whole rotten
capitalist system. David has been responding to his rants wittily as
usual but wit or even (or especially) plain common sense are not
going to help. Personally I don't really want to read the kind of
hardline leftist ideology I used to get turned off by when I was a
teenage film buff in France and everybody had to be a communist or
else they were some bourgeois reactionary -- even possibly a
royalist. Brian's ideologically inspired posts are bringing back
unpleasant memories of film criticism that was entirely controlled
by political ideology. To me, auteurism, or whatever version of it
I embrace, was among other things a way to escape from the tyranny
of political correctness (they didn't call it that in those days, of
course). Sometimes it seems that it's deja vu all over again.

JPC
22674


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 3:01am
Subject: Re: Quasi-OT: Oscars Telecast
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Craig Keller
wrote:
>
> Each time he's asked by the academy to produce an Oscar show,
Cates
> likes to
> plan a surprise or two to augment the evening's unscripted magic.


Unscripted magic??? Yes that worth a laugh.
22675


From: Richard Modiano
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 3:15am
Subject: Re: Quasi-OT: Oscars Telecast
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:

"Unscripted magic??? Yes that worth a laugh."

You can say that again, but let me elaborate a little. My landlord
is a memeber of the Academy and his wife used to work there (I've
heard plenty of nasty stories about the Academy's internal politics)
and they assure me that evry unforeseen contingency is planned for
and every "spontaneous" event vetted in advance of the telecast. The
only good the Awards accomplish is keeping the Margaret Herrick
Library open.

Richard
22676


From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 3:32am
Subject: Re: Re: Leaud in "Deux Anglaises" (was: Back to Pialat )
 
> But when you have a central character like the hero of Two English Girls
> played by someone who can't even understand the character's psychology,
> that's a problem.

I think that's not a problem in a Truffaut film, because he pretty much
blocks off the psychological aspect of things anyway. If anything, I'd
say that poor Stacey and Kika are miscast, straining for a more
traditional interpretation. But that's okay, I love them too. - Dan
22677


From: Brian Charles Dauth
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 3:38am
Subject: Re: Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?
 
Matt writes:

> I guess you're talking about "The Godfather" movies
and also "The Conversation" (one of my favorite movies.)

Also "Apocalyse" and "Rumble Fish" to an extent.

> But in the last two decades, Coppola's output has been
deeply flawed, too conventional or hack work ("Jack" anyone?)

I agree. I think he still wanted to examine systems ("Tucker";
"Gardens of Stone", "The Rainmaker"), but while the spirit was
willing . . .

> And DePalma's aesthetics may continue to be interesting, but I don't
see his films even attempting to take on the world we actually live
in. Not since "Casualties of War" or (ugh) "Bonfire of the Vanities."

I do.

> Scorsese is usually more interested in the real world.

I guess we will disagree. I see Scorsese as increasingly interested
in movieworld. Each suceeding film seems less a narrative of life,
than a series of cinematic recreations/homages that are strung
together in place of a narrative. To me he is a film school filmmaker,
with his films more fun to analyze than to watch.

Brian Dauth
22678


From: Noel Vera
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 4:07am
Subject: Re: Million Dollar Baby Questions
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Noel Vera"
> wrote:
>
> >
> > I do have problems with many of the details.
>
>
> The questions you raise are "good" questions, I guess.

They're nitpick questions, I suppose; the broader problems I had
were with Eastwood's style (or lack of, at least for me), acting
chops (or lack of), and material, which I didn't much like. Plus
even with his kind of modest budget (modest by Hollywood standards;
in Manila three million dollars is a superproduction) it would have
been easy to pay someone (an RN would do) to ask him/her the best
way to kill a patient.

> few movies would survive if submitted to that kind of scrutiny. It
> all goes back to the question, "Why didn't the Indians shoot the
> horses?"

I had some thoughts on that--seriously--and I'm thinking Ford
answered too hastily. Maybe the Indians valued the horses too much?
Maybe they thought it dishonorable? The proper person to ask is an
expert, of course, though even Larry McMurtry might do--and he has a
scene in Lonesome Dove where the Indian was more interested in the
horse than the beautiful white woman who owned it.
22679


From: Noel Vera
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 4:14am
Subject: Re: Somewhat O.T. Film School (was: Scorsese's detractors)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, BklynMagus wrote:
>Most of his
> films from Mean Streets to The Aviator have been male melodramas
> where the audience is asked to sympathize with a reckless, violent,
> uncaring male and the situations he finds himself in

I'd agree with David--you empathize with his predominantly male
protagonists, at least he immerses you in their situations, but I
for one never felt he was asking us to sympathize with them. I feel
there's a distance in the films, a space where you can judge these
characters the way you see fit.

>(which he rarely
> acknowledges as being of his own making/choosing).

They almost never do--and I find that damningly honest.
22680


From: Brian Charles Dauth
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 4:17am
Subject: Re: Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?
 
David writes:

> I'm black, gay, half-Jewish and raised a Roman
Catholic.
> Any further questions?

And I am white, queer and raised a Roman Catholic.
Sorry, I still do not get it.

> You equate control with verbal dexterity. Big mistake.

Why is that a mistake?

> Like James Joyce.

True. Never been a Joyce fan. Always preferred
Faulkner.

> And those leathermen weren't cartoons. They were top
erotic models -- and much appreciated by some of us.

Sure I appreciated them too, but they were still cartoons,
like Tom of Finland drawings.

> Not in the sense that he repeats certain visual tropes
in every damned movie. I would say that in a Scorsese
film you can be assurred that nothing hasn't been
thought ought thoroughly. ESPECIALLY the structuring
absences.

That could also be an after-the-fact justification for
Scorsese's omissions. Like Mark Twain in Huckleberry
Finn having Huck and Jim pass St. Louis in the night
(because Twain wasn't ready to deal with Huck and
Jim in St. Louis), Scorsese builds his films around the
holes created by the issues he wants to avoid.

I do not doubt that everything is thought out to the
last detail, but maybe that is why his work seems
increasingly lifeless to me and concerned more with other
movies than lived reality.

Brian Dauth
22681


From: Richard Modiano
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 4:28am
Subject: Re: Million Dollar Baby Questions
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Noel Vera"
wrote:

"few movies would survive if submitted to that kind of scrutiny. It
all goes back to the question, 'Why didn't the Indians shoot the
horses?'

"I had some thoughts on that--seriously--and I'm thinking Ford
answered too hastily. Maybe the Indians valued the horses too much?
Maybe they thought it dishonorable? The proper person to ask is an
expert, of course, though even Larry McMurtry might do--and he has a
scene in Lonesome Dove where the Indian was more interested in the
horse than the beautiful white woman who owned it."

According to the book "Indians of the Plains" published by the
American Museum of Natural History horses were a source of wealth for
those tribes, so that's why they didn't shoot the horses. But I take
J-P's point that a lot of movies could be demolished by holding them
to tight logical standards. And I have sympathy with your objection
too inasmuch as the dramatic logic of the scene failed to supercede
Eastwood's weak plotting here.

Richard
22682


From: Brian Charles Dauth
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 4:58am
Subject: Re: Somewhat O.T. Film School (was: Scorsese's detractors)
 
Noel writes:

> I'd agree with David--you empathize with his predominantly
male protagonists, at least he immerses you in their situations,
but I for one never felt he was asking us to sympathize with them.

I have never felt empathy for his characters. When I was a queer
street kid in my teens and 20's, Scorsese males were the biggest
threat to my continuing survival. Maybe my having had to deal
with so many of them in real life colors my perception of Scorsese's
representations of them.

> I feel there's a distance in the films, a space where you can judge
these characters the way you see fit.

I have never experienced that distance (except in "The King of
Comedy"). To me Scorsese is always being aggressive, assualting
the viewer (like a cinematic Jake LaMotta).

> They almost never do--and I find that damningly honest.

I guess I would too if I perceived that distance in Scorsese's films
which you find in them.

Brian Dauth
22683


From: Jason Guthartz
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 5:00am
Subject: Item: 50,000 Old Asian Films Found
 
wow!


http://www.mastersofcinema.org/

February 11, 2005
[50,000 OLD ASIAN FILMS FOUND]

Mainichi Shinbun newspaper today reports the death of a legendary
cinema collector, Yoshishige Abe, aged 81. His father was a police
doctor who worked for the Korean Consulate, and together they both
collected fifty-thousand films both pre and post war at their
storehouse. They had previously refused all investigations by scholars.

The article focuses mostly on Na Unkyu's debut Arirang (1926), one of
the most influential films of early Korean cinema. North and South
Korea apparently each sent representatives to reclaim the film but Abe
refused. Thinking of it as an anti-Japan movie he said he would be
willing to give the film rolls to both nations only if Korea united.

Abe has no heir, so after the lawful procedures, Film Center [Japan]
will investigate the films. The catalogue contains Daichi wa Hohoemu
[The Earth Smiles] (Mizoguchi, 1925) amongst its many treasures.
22684


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 5:15am
Subject: Re: Re: Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?
 
--- Brian Charles Dauth
wrote:


>
> And I am white, queer and raised a Roman Catholic.
> Sorry, I still do not get it.
>

Really? Have we met? How old are you? Have you read
"Vathek"? How long did it take you to get throughthe
Lucia books? Can you do "Me and My Town" spontaneously
or do you need a lyric sheet?

> > You equate control with verbal dexterity. Big
> mistake.
>
> Why is that a mistake?
>
Because the cinema isn't just about words, it's about
bodies.

Never been a Joyce fan. Always preferred
> Faulkner.
>
"The Wild Palms" I hope. But seriously I'm much too
wrapped up in Proust and Musil.


> Sure I appreciated them too, but they were still
> cartoons,
> like Tom of Finland drawings.
>
You should get out more. Where do you live anyway?

> That could also be an after-the-fact justification
> for
> Scorsese's omissions.

I don't do that.


> I do not doubt that everything is thought out to the
> last detail, but maybe that is why his work seems
> increasingly lifeless to me and concerned more with
> other
> movies than lived reality.
>

So much the better. Lived reality frequently sucks.



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22685


From: Noel Vera
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 5:18am
Subject: Re: Million Dollar Baby Questions
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Noel Vera"
> wrote:
>
> "few movies would survive if submitted to that kind of scrutiny.
It
> all goes back to the question, 'Why didn't the Indians shoot the
> horses?'
>
> "I had some thoughts on that--seriously--and I'm thinking Ford
> answered too hastily. Maybe the Indians valued the horses too
much?
> Maybe they thought it dishonorable?
> According to the book "Indians of the Plains" published by the
> American Museum of Natural History horses were a source of wealth
for
> those tribes, so that's why they didn't shoot the horses.
> Richard

Plus I read this detail (was it Little Big Man?) about some kind of
tagging--where a brave rides up to the enemy, and 'tags' him with a
feather or touches his chest with a spear or suchlike. Hardly
logical or tactically sound, but it makes their not shooting the
horses feel less unlikely.
22686


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 5:19am
Subject: Re: Re: Somewhat O.T. Film School (was: Scorsese's detractors)
 
--- Brian Charles Dauth
wrote:


>
> I have never felt empathy for his characters. When
> I was a queer
> street kid in my teens and 20's, Scorsese males were
> the biggest
> threat to my continuing survival. Maybe my having
> had to deal
> with so many of them in real life colors my
> perception of Scorsese's
> representations of them.
>
Aha! Now we approach the nitty-gritty! Well outside of
Oscar Levant, I never found anyone in cinema to truly
empathize with until I saw Jean-Hughes Anglade in
"L'Homme Blesse" -- which as I trust you recall was
about a street kid.


> I have never experienced that distance (except in
> "The King of
> Comedy"). To me Scorsese is always being
> aggressive, assualting
> the viewer (like a cinematic Jake LaMotta).
>
You're too sensitive.

And Marty's knne-high to a fire plug and asthmatic.
You could take him like THAT!






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Yahoo! Mail - now with 250MB free storage. Learn more.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250
22687


From: Noel Vera
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 5:24am
Subject: Re: Somewhat O.T. Film School (was: Scorsese's detractors)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Brian Charles Dauth"
wrote:
> I have never felt empathy for his characters. When I was a queer
> street kid in my teens and 20's, Scorsese males were the biggest
> threat to my continuing survival.

That sounds like a harrowing personal experience. Interesting, in
that Scorsese was an asthmatic and had to deal with those same
aggressive, assaultive males, trying to blend in with them (hence
what I see is his lifelong ambivalence towards them--and why Judas
was such a crucial role for him).
22688


From: Noel Vera
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 5:32am
Subject: Re: Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Brian Charles Dauth"
wrote:
> Matt writes:
>
> > I guess you're talking about "The Godfather" movies
> and also "The Conversation" (one of my favorite movies.)
>
> Also "Apocalyse" and "Rumble Fish" to an extent.
>

Rumble Fish I need to see again, also perhaps One From the Heart;
Conversation--well, I like it a lot, but I do think it owes much to
Blow-Out. The Godfather films (the first two) still hold up.]

Apocalypse Now, however, doesn't for me. Images that seem borrowed
from Herzog's Aguirre, a long, meandering narrative that tries to be
all things to all Americans about the Vietnam War, plus Marlon
Brando in the end quoting profundities...I don't know. The clearly
Filipino Igorots performing a carabao sacrificial rite doesn't help
me buy the film, either.

> > And DePalma's aesthetics may continue to be interesting, but I
don't
> see his films even attempting to take on the world we actually
live
> in. Not since "Casualties of War" or (ugh) "Bonfire of the
Vanities."
>
> I do.

I wouldn't ask him to. Do we need ALL filmmakers to take on the
world as we live in? I like De Palma's 'voice,' like the way he's
working (most of the time), think his films add to the variety of
films we love.

> I see Scorsese as increasingly interested
> in movieworld. Each suceeding film seems less a narrative of life,
> than a series of cinematic recreations/homages that are strung
> together in place of a narrative.

The Last Temptation of Christ is the most thoroughly researched,
archeologically accurate film on Christ and on the crucifixion put
on film that I know. Okay, so they all speak like they're standing
in the streets of New York, but that's an anachronism that's
actually interesting (there was a discussion here some months
earlier about the impossibility of actually capturing speech of past
historical periods--which I take to mean 'if you can't actually
capture how they talk, you might as well insert your notions').
Here, characters immediate and interesting to Scorsese (because they
talk and act and feel much the way he does) are inserted into the
most accurately realized world of ancient Palestine yet filmed.

Then there's Goodfellas, which was practically a documentary of that
kind of street life, and Casino, practically a documentary of that
portion of Vegas history. For someone with his head lost in film
styles and history, Scorsese seems pretty obsessed with getting
period and place details right.

>To me he is a film school filmmaker,
> with his films more fun to analyze than to watch.

That's a whole generation of them, Coppola included that went to
film school, then did their 'internship' with Roger Corman. The film
brats nowadays, though, I don't think much of.
22689


From: Brian Charles Dauth
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 5:43am
Subject: Re: Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?
 
David writes:

> Have we met?

No, but the next time you are in NYC we could have
lunch if you like.

> How old are you?

45

> Have you read "Vathek"?

Nope. But I have read Dhalgren twice.

> How long did it take you to get through the
Lucia books?

Not yet begun. Where do I get them?

> Can you do "Me and My Town" spontaneously
or do you need a lyric sheet?

Need the sheet. My husband is the musician/performance
artist in the family. I am the movie geek.

> Because the cinema isn't just about words, it's about
bodies.

Gotcha. I will watch Casino again with that in mind (it is
my second favorite Scorsese).

> "The Wild Palms" I hope.

Definitely. When I discovered Faulkner as a teenager, that
was the one I wrote a sceenplay of. I intercut the stories
even more than he did.

> But seriously I'm much too wrapped up in Proust and Musil.

I am more Patrick White.

> You should get out more.

I should, but they don't show movies at The Spike anymore.
In fact, there isn't even a Spike even anymore. Watching All
About Eve there was an experience I will never forget. By the
end of the movie, a barful of leathermen had become a bunch
of Eves and Margos with some Birdies and Miss Caswells
sprinkled in here and there. Even a Karen Richards one night,
but he left early.

> Where do you live anyway?

Brooklyn.

> I don't do that.

I didn't think you did.

> So much the better. Lived reality frequently sucks.

As Mankiewicz said: Life always louses up the script.
I know it has been true in my life.

Brian Dauth
22690


From: Brian Charles Dauth
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 5:55am
Subject: Re: Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?
 
JPC writes:

> . . . but the direction of Brian's rants seems to me to go a bit
far into radicalist territory and away from anything we might
call auteurist.

Why is radical critique not a part of auteurist critique? To me
they are intertwined. How can one talk of Shohei Imamura,
for example, without dealing with both the auteurist and radical
aspects of his work? To ignore the radical aspects would be like
ignoring a whole portion of his work.

> Apparently for him Scorsese is a shitty filmmaker because he
doesn't indict the whole rotten capitalist system.

I never said he is a shitty director. I said he is a second tier
director in my opinion (with one masterwork "The King of
Comedy").

> Brian's ideologically inspired posts are bringing back
unpleasant memories of film criticism that was entirely
controlled by political ideology.

Sorry, I am not trying to give you flashbacks. I know how
painful they can be (think Henry Fonda in Daisy Kenyon,
maybe my favorite melodrama).

> To me, auteurism, or whatever version of it I embrace, was
among other things a way to escape from the tyranny of
political correctness (they didn't call it that in those days, of
course).

I think auteurism is just the opposite. It is an approach that
acknowledges that when an auteur sets about his work, his
ideology, his operating system, will be reflected in the finished
product more so than the ideologies of any of his collaborators.

All the tools that an auteur uses to tell or not tell a story (and
the method/pattern of their deployment) are makers of his
ideology/vision of the world. To me it seems silly to investigate
only the markers and not examine what they are pointing at.

Brian Dauth
22691


From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 5:57am
Subject: Re: Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Brian Charles Dauth"
wrote:

>
> > So much the better. Lived reality frequently sucks.
>
> As Mankiewicz said: Life always louses up the script.
> I know it has been true in my life.
>
> Brian Dauth

Now that that's been took care of, let's talk esthetics. So did
anyone besides me and Dan see the Pialats?
22692


From: Brian Charles Dauth
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 6:01am
Subject: Re: Somewhat O.T. Film School (was: Scorsese's detractors)
 
Noel writes:

> Interesting, in that Scorsese was an asthmatic and
had to deal with those same aggressive, assaultive
males, trying to blend in with them (hence what I see
is his lifelong ambivalence towards them--and why
Judas was such a crucial role for him).

I guess I just do not get how someone could be
ambivalent about them, especially for a lifetime.

When I realized in full the toxic nature of my family
and community -- it was goodbye danger, hello
life.

Brian Dauth







Yahoo! Groups Links
22693


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 6:02am
Subject: Re: Re: Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?
 
--- Brian Charles Dauth
wrote:

>
> No, but the next time you are in NYC we could have
> lunch if you like.
>
Thanks muchly but I don't know if I'll ever go back to
New York. Last there in 99. Discovered that the city
I'd grown up in had vanished. As a result I began to
write my memoirs.

> > How old are you?
>
> 45
>
58 on the 18th.


> Nope. But I have read Dhalgren twice.

Great. He's my favorite African-American writer. Have
you read "Times Squre Red/ Times Square Blue"?

>
> > How long did it take you to get through the
> Lucia books?
>
> Not yet begun. Where do I get them?
>
Alsmot anywhere. Try Barnes and Noble on line. Type in
"E.F. Benson."

> > Can you do "Me and My Town" spontaneously
> or do you need a lyric sheet?
>
> Need the sheet. My husband is the
> musician/performance
> artist in the family. I am the movie geek.
>

Have him enroll you in the nearest "Remedial Sondheim"
class

> > Because the cinema isn't just about words, it's
> about
> bodies.
>
> Gotcha. I will watch Casino again with that in mind
> (it is
> my second favorite Scorsese).
>
Excellent!

> > "The Wild Palms" I hope.
>
> Definitely. When I discovered Faulkner as a
> teenager, that
> was the one I wrote a sceenplay of. I intercut the
> stories
> even more than he did.
>
> > But seriously I'm much too wrapped up in Proust
> and Musil.
>
> I am more Patrick White.
>
Hmm. I should read more of him.
Does the name Irving Rosenthal ring a bell?

> > You should get out more.
>
> I should, but they don't show movies at The Spike
> anymore.
> In fact, there isn't even a Spike even anymore.

That's why I left New York!

> Watching All
> About Eve there was an experience I will never
> forget. By the
> end of the movie, a barful of leathermen had become
> a bunch
> of Eves and Margos with some Birdies and Miss
> Caswells
> sprinkled in here and there. Even a Karen Richards
> one night,
> but he left early.

It was ever thus.

>
> > Where do you live anyway?
>
> Brooklyn.
>
The Heights perchance? Love it over there. An old, old
friend still lives there. He had a ringside seat when
the planes hit the twin towers.


>
> As Mankiewicz said: Life always louses up the
> script.
> I know it has been true in my life.
>

Mine too.

Mankiewicz was a wise man. And one of my very favorite
Metrosexuals to boot. Rather an important figure in
gay history in that he not only had an affairwith Judy
Garland and lived to tell about it, but encouraged her
to see a shrink. When Mayer found out he screamed "MY
little star isn't crazy!!!" and showed Mankiewicz the
door.So he went to Fox and the rest is history. His
influence persists to this day what with "Desperate
Housewives" being a variation on "A Letter to Three
Wives."



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22694


From: Brian Charles Dauth
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 6:11am
Subject: Re: Pialat (was Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?)
 
hl666 asked:

> Now that that's been took care of, let's talk esthetics. So did
anyone besides me and Dan see the Pialats?

I saw some at the Walter Reade last year.

Police was my favorite. Loulou was also good.

A Nos Amours, Graduate First, and Under Satan's Sun
were so-so to poor.

Brian Dauth
22695


From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 6:36am
Subject: Re: Pialat (was Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Brian Charles Dauth"
wrote:
> hl666 asked:
>
> > Now that that's been took care of, let's talk esthetics. So did
> anyone besides me and Dan see the Pialats?
>
> I saw some at the Walter Reade last year.
>
> Police was my favorite. Loulou was also good.
>
> A Nos Amours, Graduate First, and Under Satan's Sun
> were so-so to poor.
>
> Brian Dauth

Another precinct heard from. I should explain that Maurice Pialat,
like Jean Eustache, is considered in France to be a major figure in
the history of cinema. When he died recently Cahiers du cinema
devoted a whole issue to him. Often compared (inaccurately) to
Bresson, he is as distinctive, as strange, as challenging as Straub
or Duras or Godard, under the cover of what appears to be naturalism.
He is also the rare filmmaker of this stature who is not unanimously
liked - witness Brian's assessments - by people who in general agree
on the broad strokes of the film canon.

The retrospectives at the Walter Reade and more recently at UCLA,
accompanied by a big spread in Film Comment, were an opportunity for
American cinephiles to see and assess the whole body of work, and I
remember how eagerly members of this group were looking forward to
the one in New York. But to judge by what has been said about him at
a_film_by, no one felt that cinematic lightning had struck. Or is
Pialat someone who needs to be seen and reseen to be appreciated? As
the mini-debate between Dan and me has indicated, he's not an easy
acquisition, but I find him a fascinating subject for discussion. The
issues his films pose are the fundamental ones, no matter how you
assess the results.
22696


From: Noel Vera
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 6:45am
Subject: Re: Somewhat O.T. Film School (was: Scorsese's detractors)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Brian Charles Dauth"
wrote:
> Noel writes:
>
> > Interesting, in that Scorsese was an asthmatic and
> had to deal with those same aggressive, assaultive
> males, trying to blend in with them (hence what I see
> is his lifelong ambivalence towards them--and why
> Judas was such a crucial role for him).
>
> I guess I just do not get how someone could be
> ambivalent about them, especially for a lifetime.

You've never met my parents.

And there's criticism that's politically engaged, and criticism that
doesn't have as much faith in the significance of politics. I say
like filmmakers, preferring one voice over the other makes for a
less interesting conversation all around.
22697


From: Noel Vera
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 6:57am
Subject: Re: Somewhat O.T. Film School (was: Scorsese's detractors)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Noel Vera"
wrote:
>
> And there's criticism that's politically engaged, and criticism
that
> doesn't have as much faith in the significance of politics. I say
> like filmmakers, preferring one voice over the other makes for a
> less interesting conversation all around.

Let me qualify myself: I tend towards apolitical criticism--that's
to my taste. But shutting down or putting down one kind at the
expense of the other is ultimately counter-productive, I think.
22698


From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 8:26am
Subject: Re: Scorsese: style
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666" wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
> > In a message dated 05-02-10 18:40:01 EST, Bill Krohn writes:
>
> > I've repeatedly tried to get discussions going on the red-and-blue
homage
> to
> > 2-color Technicolor in "The Aviator"
>
> Certainly a key concept for that film, but what is it about Scorsese
as a director
> that makes him worth all this attention besides that particular use
of color?
> Does he have a recognizable style?

As we all know, "Raging Bull" is solid black and white, but out of the
blue Scorsese suddenly creates a parallel montage sequence, where he
on one side shows la Motta's life as a boxer (in black and white,
mainly stills) and his honeymoon and life as family man in super 8
colour. Thru this 2½ minute montage, Scorsese boils down three years
of la Motta's life, noting upon pointless boxing matches, upon the
transition from all boxer to now family man.

To me, this is one of Scorsese's central style elements, his ability
to play with cinema, where, while it notes upon a profound
understanding of film, also, at least to me, suggests that Scorsese
approaches his mise-en-scene with a playfulness. Consider "Mean
Streets", its opening sequence and the druken sequence (accompanied by
"Rubber Biscuit"), where Keitel has a camera strapped to his body,
consider "Taxi Driver", the "You talking to me" sequence, the
nightclub tracking shot, and the final image (the homage to "First
Great Train Robbery") in "Goodfellas" and the use of mindscreen and
its following elliptic sequence in "Aviator".

Henrik
22699


From: Adrian Martin
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 1:00pm
Subject: N. Ray interview?
 
Looking through some old photocopies, I came across, in French translation
(by later-screenwriter Jacques Fieschi, in the magazine CINEMATOGRAPHE) an
interview with Nick Ray, done shortly before his death - by Kathryn Bigelow!
(and also Fatima Igramhan, who also appends an essay on Ray's final artistic
activities). Anyone know where/if this appeared in English ? It appeared in
French mid 1979.

curious Adrian
22700


From: Michael E. Kerpan, Jr.
Date: Fri Feb 11, 2005 0:23pm
Subject: Re: Item: 50,000 Old Asian Films Found
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Jason Guthartz" wrote:

> February 11, 2005
> [50,000 OLD ASIAN FILMS FOUND]

> The catalogue contains Daichi wa Hohoemu
> [The Earth Smiles] (Mizoguchi, 1925) amongst its many treasures.

I wonder how many treasures thought to be lost forever could be in
this cinematic horde. I hardly dare to dream.

MEK

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