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pasolini is great but can often put me to sleep. the look of that movie is awesome though-- not sure what you mean by amateurish?

for a different medea, check out the lars von trier version if you can find it. it's slightly bizarre and i really liked it. bad dvd transfer but the great visual language come through regardless./QUOTE]

Maybe it was just my copy but there was some nauseating camera work. Perhaps it was intentional? Either way it turned me off. For the most part great though.

I'm a big fan of the play and what I loved was how real he made the story be. It felt like it was from another world but also very human.

Will check out the Von Trier. I'm actually a bit ashamed to say he's a filmmaker I've never really given the time of day.

Pasolini did embrace a form of realism during that period which was heavily influenced by 68-era political theory. Godard was interested in similar ideas in some of his late 60s-early 70s films. I'm not sure either of them would've described it as 'amateurish', but it does come over that way at times.

Anyway, last night I rewatched



La Belle et la Bete

Love this so much. Some of my all-time favourite scenes/moments in all cinema.

Haha. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely not a great film, and it's more annoying than I thought when I was younger and snobbier and angstier (Rob, the Cusack character, is a real fucking snob, and a really angsty one at that), but I identified with him when I was in my early 20s.

I remember, back in, 2002 or 2003, my former high school girlfriend, who I was still kinda "touching base" with on a fairly regular occasion, saw High Fidelity and called me and said she felt like she finally "understood" me. I was happy as a clam at the comparison, and told her to watch Say Anything and Igby (speaking of Igby) for further study. Hah.

Looking back, I'm embarrassed. Like, "wow, ok, so this confused, jealous, snobby, whiny man-child who doesn't know what he wants made someone think of me, and I thought that was cool?!" Makes me want to re-evaluate my drug intake at the time. Maybe I was more out of it than I thought.

Grosse Point Blank is great. It's another one I haven't seen in ages, but it always turns out to be better than I remembered. Unfortunately, it came out in that post-Pulp Fiction era, where every violent-ish movie about crime or drugs with a dash of black comedy was marketed as "this year's Pulp Fiction," so this comedy was lumped in with films of a much different class, like Fargo. It's a shame. It's no Fargo, but it's good and funny as hell. Plus, it brought "Blister in the Sun" back into public consciousness, where it remains today. :)

Haha! "Madea," "Medea" :)

Sometimes I get stuff. ;)

I saw this once, quite a long time ago now, and thought it was absolutely astonishing for a film from 1946 ('47?). I don't remember much, but the imagery and the overall tone stuck with me. I must see it again now. Thanks for mentioning this.

I actually went looking for this a couple years ago, and was sidetracked by a 2014 remake starring Vincent Cassel (who I love, and who would make an excellent Joker, by the way). I rented it, and wasn't completely disappointed. It's nowhere near as good as Cocteau's by any stretch of the imagination, but it's sure to be better than the Disney live-action Beauty & the Beast remake that's coming out this year (ughck).

Its French, and again, it has Vincent Cassel, so I'd probably recommend it just for kicks. Here's a trailer if you're interested:

https://youtu.be/MStCMbNvvcw

@ rob - aaaa haaa haaa haaaa! thanks to sev's explanation now i get it. wonder if it's modeled after the original... prolly something

@ sev - ha ha hah ha. well. self awareness is a great thing-- so is growing up ha ha

@ demon - that one is amazing. another to have on a continuous loop on the wall. all cocteau's movies really-- the orpheus ones holy shit-- esp the last one

@ the dom - lvt is great. a true filmmaker, with a great visual style. is he a sadist who often tortures his characters and the audience with depictions of great suffering? yes, sure. but he's very good at it. he's had several phases, all of them interesting i think. the early one goes prolly from the element of crime to europa (i don't remember all the movies). then he was one of the dogme 95 people. then he did his american movies where women encounter charitable gringos (dogtown, dancer in the dark). later he did his depression trilogy (antichrist, melancholia, nymphomaniac I & II). i'm being very choppy here, missing a bunch of movies & themes. but his work is extensive. seeing it chronologically might be good cuz the element of crime was a pretty great debut.

re: medea, it's almost a silent movie as i recall. instead of a greek setting it looks european low medieval/viking. and the visuals pay a huge homage to carl theodor dreyer. was originally shot for tv so it's low resolution/bad transfer. worth the look for me though. oh, another great thing he did was KINGDOM. which later was remade in the us as "kingdom hospital", but fuck that. the original kingdom was a great fucking tv series. great.

@symbols - Will expedite checking him out. My friend recommends Breaking the Waves to me constantly I'll borrow it from him.

Re: Pasolini - yeah I admit ameurerish was probably the wrong word. Didn't really have time to sit down and type something out properly. I've been doing some reading on him and my interest is pretty big with him right now.

breaking the waves is great-- and very much revealing of his themes-- but it's a mature film already, and made the international arthouse/indie circuit in its day, and he was already famous by then, and got a good cast etc. i mean a lot of people got introduced to him that way so it's a totally valid way to see him for the first time.

but if you can find "the element of crime" you'll be able to track his obsessions nicely from there forward. granted it's not the most masterful or mature of works, but the visual fireworks are pretty great especially considering the evident low budget he had in the mid 80s. he immerses you in a certain particular nightmarish atmosphere, and it's an atmosphere to which he'll return over & over through his work (not in breaking the waves, but in kingdom or antichrist for example). also it resonates with europa, a later movie which is the one that was sort of his breakout movie. epidemic is in the middle of those two-- it was kinda crazy and i don't remember much of it ha ha ha.

what can i say. i like chronologies. they're eye-opening. besides, he tends to work in trilogies and groups/series, which are interesting when seen that way.

Green Inferno

In which a bunch of SJWs get captured and eaten by the very people they've set out to save: a premise I love.

^^ ha ha ha ha that looks awesome!

i might have to wait till next halloween season just for ritualistic reasons but i'm thinking eli roth will have a bigger part this year than the last one

The Neon Demon

Not sure what to say about this. Fucked up in the extreme. Borderline indescribable. Total head fuck. A film I can see myself watching over and over again without even trying to get to the bottom of it. Wow.

Really wondering about this one since recently rewatching other Winding Refn films. Images look cool as hell.

I'm putting Neon Demon on my list. Thanks for the heads up!

Black Swan - Ehhhhhhhh. I loved it when it first came out but now it was really flat for me. Portman was incredible and I think some of the gimmicks got in the way. Would've liked to see less of the swan transformstion, she could've done that herself. Also seeing the Red Shoes recently spoiled this one.....

a fish called wanda

it's still funny after all these years, but not as funny as the first time

asshooooooooooooole!

plus the body of work of jamie lee curtis in the late 80s will live in history

what is a SJW?

i was guessing single jewish women--because cohen

das racis! am i raciss?

but oh ha ha yes i am

the obvious google result is social justice warrior mha ha ha ha

but hey, i was betrayed by my own mind

what is the Jewish version of a PAWG?

Small Time Crooks

Definitely not one of Woody's best. The movie switches completely about a 3rd in, from a pretty uninteresting heist plot to an only slightly better one about social mobility. It was part of a boxed set so all I can say is I'm pretty glad to have gotten it out of the way early.

pablo's dog!

we put on the flavor with a chemical spray

the name chichi potter

all of cousin may's lines

"you know, the boys..."

etc etc etc

man, that movie is hilarious. my wife owns the vhs tape from way back when. we play it often, when there's nothing to do.

we like the goofy shit and this one of them. lots of great jokes.

Be interesting to see what you make of it. I'm still blown away, maybe because it feels like the kind of film I always wanted Argento to make but which, for whatever reasons, he could never quite seem to pull off - or at least sustain for an entire movie (Suspiria being the one possible exception).

A lot of the dialogue in that seemed like a return to the one-liners of his earlier pre-Annie Hall era, which I never liked. If anything I even prefer his more whimsical stuff like Midnight in Paris and Magic in the Moonlight to his more slapstick/caper based stuff. Of course that period from Annie Hall up to Hannah and Her Sisters was his real golden age for me.

right, this is more like bananas or love and war or take the money and run etc. straight-up comedy. but better than that era.

so maybe this is more like mighty aphrodite where you have jokes but with more structure. also, bullets over broadway.

midnight in paris is great! but magic in the moonlight was meh for me.

i actually just put it on, small time crooks i mean, because we have some last-minute paperwork to do tonigh (uggghh!) and this will help us cope

all the robbers had ronald reagan masks ha ha ha ha

and tracy ullman is so good in it

and michael rappaport is the greatest moron ever

okay. paperwork. fuck!!

I like Magic in the Moonlight but I can't really defend it, if that makes sense. I just like to have it on. The scenery, the soundtrack, Colin Firth being Colin Firth. It's a guilty pleasure.

I've come to the conclusion that I enjoy Woody Allen most when the comedy takes a bit of a backseat. Even bits of Annie Hall irritate me, when he's trying to shoehorn a gag in where it isn't needed. I'd say Hannah and Her Sisters is the one where he gets the balance just right.

this totally looks like something I would dig. by the same director of Drive? it's got Keanu!! everyone loves Keanu right?

Raging Bull - Will be watching some more Marty in anticipation of Silence.

Oh shit, I forgot about Silence! I wonder if it's come to our little shithole theater yet. Definitely feels like a passion-project for Scorsese, as opposed to the "Scorsese" film-as-mini-genre (Goodfellas, The Departed, Wolf of Wall Street). More Kundun than Taxi Driver, I guess. But still... I loved Kundun.

Raging Bull is one of the best films of the 20th century. Fucking depressing, tragic, hard for me to watch, but goddammit, it's the performance of a lifetime for DeNiro. I often find myself going back and forth between this and Taxi Driver as his peak performance... couldn't tell you where I stand now, but this is definitely one of the best screen performances of all time in my book.

No Country for Old Men. Certainly not a great Coen Bros work, but pretty good Cormac adaption, anyways....

sure, and why not


i see. for me he's first and foremost a comic. he started doing stand-up. i go to him primarily for the jokes, with a side bonus elsewhere which might be literary or psychological or whatever.

i remember the first time i saw zelig. i laughed so hard i my belly was hurting. and i'm pretty sure i wasn't stoned. okay, maybe 50/50 chance i was stoned. but still. and yeah there's something more profound than all the laughter (in the case of zelig, a look at jewish assimilation?), but without it it's not great. then again the early german romantics valued laughter greatly-- so let's not underestimate a good joke. maybe the whole universe is a joke.

his supposed big failure was his bergmanian period-- interiors, etc. serious/heavy. which i know i've seen, but can't recall. someone tried to drown herself or something-- i don't know.

Yeah, his Bergman stuff never worked.

I'm probably a bigger fan of stand-up comedy than I am the situation-based comedy you tend to get in movies. Besides that I find a lot of non-comedy movies (say Goodfellas) make me laugh far more than most official comedies.

yes.

but... oh, HEY! you mentioned hannah & her sisters as your favorite of his films.

and what's the great philosophical underpinning of the whole thing...?

DUCK SOUP!

(i love duck soup)

ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

anyway. hannah & her sisters is great for sure no matter how one slices it. great cast, great everything.

Hannah & Her Sisters is great. I miss out on a lot of this Woody talk because I went through my Woody era when I was in high school, so I've missed a SHIT TON OF SHIT at this point, but I do love his films. Gotta play some catch-up.

My favorites are Annie Hall and Crimes and Misdemeanors. God damn but those are great movies.

I tend to disagree. It's not "Coensy" in the traditional, lovable, bizarro, funny-even-when-deadly-serious way, but I think as a film, it's a goddamn masterpiece. One of the few instances where I actually prefer the movie to the book (the others are... well... mostly Harry Potter films).

I'm not a Cormac fan generally speaking. Or... at all, really. But I like the stories, if not his style of writing. I think the Coens' take on No Country was fucking mind-blowing. And oddly, even though it lacks "Coenness," it kicks ass as a cinematic feat.

Wish Javier Bardem would stop playing ridiculous villains (he's in the new -- yes, another one -- Pirates of the Caribbean, as the disfigured, creepy, oozey, hunch-backed baddie... just like he was the creepy disfigured baddie in Skyfall, and blah...) and love up to that role once or twice before being the world forgets about him.

All kinds of things make me laugh, I just don't find most comedies especially funny. I see no more contradiction in that than in a music lover saying he doesn't like musicals. It's the form the humour takes that's the problem for me, not humour itself.

Raging Bull had me giggling the whole time as well. Of course not at everything but you get the point.

Yeah I haven't really been excited for a Scorsese picture in years. This one seems like it'll be different but who knows. I love the guy but honestly his list of great films he's made is very very short. I do love the fact that he lives and breaths cinema. He's on almost every special feature I've ever seen in a DVD and involved a lot in restorations and film history. Love the dude for sure. Quote him all the time "great pictcha".

I didn't comment on the De Niro performance because it's been written about enough and I can't add much but yeah... he's terrifying.

Last one I saw: High Noon - oh man this one brings home the goods. The clocks. The old love triangle hidden underneath. How pitiful of a hero Gary Cooper is. And then the climax lasts for like .5 seconds and then it just ends. Great great great western.

oh i wasnt suggesting that youre humorless or that you should like comedies. sorry if that came across somehow-- not what i intended

i was just trying to point that comedy is at the heart of allen's work-- even, in fact, in his best dramas

i.e. for him, the marx brothers have the secret of life

No, i know that's not what you meant.

I know comedy's at the heart of his work, just that I tend to prefer it when he gives it a side role, rather than lets it take centre-stage. One of the best comedies I've seen in recent years is Sideways. Obviously the comedy is there, and very very funny, but it's used more as a natural part of the themes and situations it deals with, rather than the thing itself. I suppose it's the difference between comedy as a genre and comedy as an element.

man, i remember with sideways i cringed a whole lot. that paul giamatti character was fucking disturbing.

there was something funny said about drinking merlot though. dont recall the exact line but it was some kind of threat involving merlot. it was ages ago! but i do remember it mostly as a depressing movie, ha ha ha.

i also remember the cinematography bothered me-- i saw it in a good movie theatre so i don't think it was the projection. yeah, i remember strange shit like that-- the candles at some restaurant bothered me.

then again, it was alexander payne, so it should have its funny parts

i should rewatch it soon actually. perfect for what i need these days--laughs, no heroes. yes.

Went and saw Moonlight before it closed. Beatiful film