Thread bookmarked.

Psyched for the Bresson. Lancelot Du Lac especially.

i gotta wait five months for that :/

suppose i shouldn’t hold my breath that the yang retro’s gonna tour, huh

No idea. Since The Film Foundation restored A Brighter Summer Day, that’s gotta show around the country before the DVD release.

TCM Vault Collection is putting out Shanghai Express Feb 6.

Sigh, looking @the Bresson itinerary w/no Houston dates and am once again reminded how deadly dull our repertory situation here has become as of late.

Some may be added later.

I’m still not holding my breath, but then again Summer almost always means French flicks in town.

Anyhoo, here’s the March 2012 slate from Criterion:

Letter Never Sent

The War Room

A Night To Remember (reissue)

“David Lean Directs Noël Coward” (box set w/In Which We Serve, Blithe Spirit This Happy Breed & an exclusive remaster of Brief Encounter)

The Last Temptation of Christ (blu-ray only)

jeezus, The War Room. how ‘significant’ — strategizing to elect the first Reaganite Democratic president.

that bresson retro should be great. i caught four nights of a dreamer not long ago & liked it, it’s sorta Bresson’s ‘blow up’. a book of essays about him is being re-released w/contributions from Gorin & others, also, in sync.

did any north americans catch las acacias, yet? i liked it a lot

Anarchism on Film series this week in NYC, featuring La Commune:

http://anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/series/38277

By coincidence I was looking at Four Nights of a Dreamer yesterday but the shaggy vhs that ended up on youtube is 10 mins shorter so I’ll wait for a screening somewhere nr my neighbourhood.

Tate modern are screening that Yvonne Rainer that is also on the anarcho season that Morbs talks about:

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/eventseducation/film/25026.htm

Seen it on Ubu and it is a brill — on one viewing — probably requiring more after an extensive ‘hitting the bks’ period, althugh it makes its parallel points of repression of the state and mind (through psychoanalysis) graspable enough.

hadn’t heard of Las Acacias before, seems likely to pop up in NYC (however briefly) next year.

I thought of Eric immediately when Dave Kehr’s readers tried to unearth connections btwn Meet Me in St Louis and Night of the Living Dead:

http://www.davekehr.com/?p=1209&cpage=1#comments

THE LONG LONG TRAILER, to mention only one other film, is terrifying almost from beginning to end)

Prob be at the Kluge dbl bill:

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/eventseducation/film/25027.htm

Looking even further is their Shuji Terayama season, esp this tasty Art Theatre Guild of Japan item w/Nagisa Oshima:

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/eventseducation/film/25202.htm

Nothing much between Xmas and New Year—might go to watch Les enfants Du Paradis or Meet me in St. Louis at the BFI.

I thought of Eric immediately when Dave Kehr’s readers tried to unearth connections btwn Meet Me in St Louis and Night of the Living Dead

Robin Wood made the same connection 30 years ago in The American Nightmare:

“What is symbolic in 1944 becomes literal in Night of the Living Dead, where a little girl kills and devours her parents...”

Two paragraphs earlier in the same piece he mentions The Long, Long Trailer.

what book does that appear in, if it does?

oh sorry, shd read more carefully huh

Must be hard to find now—neither Amazon nor Abe turns up anything.

Sorry for the detour—I mention the book often, as it really influenced me at the time. Here’s an interview with Wood going back to when the book was published.

http://cinemacanada.athabascau.ca/index.php/cinema/article/viewFile/2319/2369

In regular ILX we had a Wood thread or Wood obit thread, I think. Quite illuminating.

Atom Egoyan’s doing a West Memphis 3 drama, and has cast Reese Witherspoon!

http://www.deadline.com/2011/12/reese-witherspoon-to-star-in-the-devils-knot/

What young thing is sexy enough to play D Echols?

The Artist > Drive

RIP Kim Jong-il guys!

jeezus, The War Room. how ‘significant’ — strategizing to elect the first Reaganite Democratic president.

Your Other-ing aside, assuming arguendo your frame, that would in fact seem to be a rather significant subject.

Watched Las Acacias—had to leave 2/3rds of the way through but from what I saw the cute baby saved us all from our boredom. The mundanity was er, mundane, and the rear mirror wasn’t revealing anything.

But seemed to be a slow build...to something.

Here’s an interview with Wood going back to when the book was published.

never been able to find this book unfortunately. interview is pretty interesting—lolz @ their perspective on Cronenberg tho

not when the doc is superficial, gabbneb

It’s a pretty good rock & roll doc.

Watched Las Acacias—had to leave 2/3rds of the way through but from what I saw the cute baby saved us all from our boredom. The mundanity was er, mundane, and the rear mirror wasn’t revealing anything.

i think i should ~not be ruffled~ by the ambivalence of someone who didn’t see the whole thing but yeah i really didn’t think that it was mundane? it was quiet but things were going on, the slow change in dynamics was very well done & just the presence of those guys was very charged & appealing, for me, such beautiful actors. i found myself do this kinda semi-instinctive shuffle in my seat or reach for my seatbelt while i was watching it because you were so in the truck.

But seemed to be a slow build...to something.

― xyzz, Monday, 19 December 2011 19:33 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Permalink

Hope I forget that spolier when its shown at 2am on C4 this time next year.

Ok schlump yes the acting ws gd/well-crafted blah blah but right now I’m having my own issues with hyper-static shot cinema — when does it work, and when it doesn’t — and there were things going on, but I need more about what was going on *outside* the truck.

The baby ws the best thing in this, but it was too well-behaved (to heighten the cuteness?). Maybe I’m in an unforgiving mood tonight...

Also watched Davies’ adaptation of Rattingan’s Deep Blue Sea. The story is one that I and many would surely be drawn to — that of a passage from orderly domestic living to passionate chaotic possession (or love).

Been here a few times w/Terence—his grim-but-happy-in-togetherness 50s Britain is totally accepted as fact, but w/the way its filmed and staged by him it attains a mythic status where you begin to doubt whether it existed. Highlight was the aggressive on purpose opening and the last few straght scenes, but the deliberate chronological fudge was unneccesary. Doesn’t add anything beyond telling me it ws an adaptation of a film.

Been reading Thomson’s biog of Orson Welles, and both Thomson and Davies are cut from the same cloth...

Ok schlump yes the acting ws gd/well-crafted blah blah but right now I’m having my own issues with hyper-static shot cinema — when does it work, and when it doesn’t — and there were things going on, but I need more about what was going on *outside* the truck.

ha ha, ty for arguing w/me on this; I think i am defensive of it because i thought it was excellent & that seemed an extra-achievement on account of parts of it risking conventionality or banality. it might be preference that means i don’t mind not getting anything outside of the truck, i am not crazy about ‘establishment’ & thought the stray glimpses of places, the cafe interior, the store, the dinner table where they stopped for food &c, were neat enough & sufficient in that respect. if you wanna go into yr issues w/static cinema pls do, i prob rep hard for a lot of that shit (though there are things that do it wrong, cf bal).

The baby ws the best thing in this, but it was too well-behaved (to heighten the cuteness?). Maybe I’m in an unforgiving mood tonight...

ha. idk. there was that beautiful shot of the baby and the woman, sleeping, the camera working so accurately as the guy’s eye just seeing her. they were all good, the baby & the woman movingly so. & the guy was perfect at being such a ‘guyish’ dude. you could see his brain work.

Kusturica interview; next for him, Benicio Del Toro as Pancho Villa.

http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/news/2011/12/emir-kusturica-on-city-building-and-a-new-renaissance/

The Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago will be playing Four Nights of a Dreamer as part of the Bresson retro mentioned upthread. Psyched for this.

have a hard time picturing Siskel as a big Bresson fan tbh

there isn’t much he likes these days

well he’s been rather silent on the subject tbh

so shd I go see Zulawski’s Possession on its last night @ Film Forum?

^^My best friend says yes.

rewatching Moscow on the Hudson tonight; it’s even better than I remembered.

I love Possession with all its hysterical shrieking, though I wonder what you would think.

possession is a trip, id love 2 see it on a big screen

soto, i thought similarly abt ‘moon over parador’ not too long ago

Did you go, Morbius? I really wanted to but couldn’t make it work

The best part in Moscow on the Hudson is the security guard who says “my jurisdiction extends from Calvin Klein to Style Boutique.”

Schlump — think a static cinema thread wd be good, thought gathering needed tho’.

Possession sounds like a riot, love to see it on the screen if I get the chance.

- Watched The Class on TV, one of the better dramas set innside a classroom.

- Davies’ Long Day Closes could have been Cinema Paradiso but it was closer to Jacques Demy (a gd thing!).

- Fassbinder’s Satan’s Brew is one of them where you feel everyone involved is out of their minds. Ending’s as coldly and brutal, like Varda’s Happiness.

Schlump — think a static cinema thread wd be good, thought gathering needed tho’.

yesss, let’s, maybe on for real ilx when it is up. there’s some really good discussion on there already, maybe on the Tsai Ming-Liang thread—I always think of a thing a guy said about liking slow films because you can zone out without risk of missing anything, that it’s a harmonious arrangement, to just sit and stare at a thing & think around it. i actually have a bunch of things to feed into this; a Christine Smallwood article on Claire Denis; even a Elif Batuman thing about literary writers’ obsession with concision, which i think can be pronounced in film at the moment, too. it’s been interesting seeing slow cinema be a ~thing~ over the past few years (Dielman retros, pronounced manifestation in Sof Coppola & Baumbach films), & it being occasionally kinda mis-handled since.

re: yr recap, i’ve been watching some Varda, recently—actually bought her new tv series, which i’m only an episode into but which gives me the cameras-are-beautiful, people-are-poetry yield i was expecting—& could use some more tips on her & Demy, there’s so much.

did not go to Possession, rewatched Poetry at home

Watching To Live & Die in LA on my brother’s wii netflix acct. the set design is quite jarring.

ny folk, i v much recommend checking out el sicario room 164, which opens wednesday i think at film forum

YouTube Video

Open

very simple but execution (heh) is near perfect

bums me out that this is his first film to receive distribution in the states. his last (below sea level) is one of the finest observational documentaries of the last decade and i think it’s helpful to know his background going into it (i’ve seen people incorrectly refer to el sicario as an interview—“he should have grilled him harder!”—when it’s actually a very startling filmed monologue).

rewatched Poetry at home

love this

Watched the new “Tinker, Tailor...” film via screener at home. Was completely confused by it though found its evocation of a bleak early 70s London clouded in 2nd hand cigarette smoke very striking. I’ll give it another shot.

re: yr recap, i’ve been watching some Varda, recently—actually bought her new tv series, which i’m only an episode into but which gives me the cameras-are-beautiful, people-are-poetry yield i was expecting—& could use some more tips on her & Demy, there’s so much.

I’ve been watching Vagabond and its brilliant (weird that I found this at my library close to xmas!) Thorough integration of the documentary to the fictional, non-actors directed to add to so much, research made to bring insights (the homeless girl Varda met while researching makes an appearance in the film): where there can be desolation but also a state of being where you wouldn’t have it any other way; and not being scared to show the full working through of what that means (possibly one of the few films that really tries to go over the concept of freedom). Shot in a series of tracking shots where you will usually follow the girl walking, trying to hitch a ride/look for shelter/respite from the cold: this is where the static cinema could add something substantial, in this film they are 10–30 sec shots whereas a Tarr like 6–7 mins could improve on it, although Varda has several of these spaced out to allow for a cumulative effect.

You can see it on youtube but if you get the DVD there is a gem of a follow-up doc made by Varda, where she revisits sights and manages to track down some of the actors (others have died or predictably disappeared)

Varda is a great director (often one or two steps ahead), curiously ignored in favour of lesser ones (Truffaut, Chabrol and Rohmer) so its gd that many of her films have made their way to DVD: go for Pointe Court, Cleo, Happiness and try to catch Lions Love, which is her attempt at making a film in America (sorta like Big Brother actually).

I’ve got to see more of her documentaries, so plenty to watch...

Demy—only watched The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which is a ‘total musical’. Liked the idea of Demy because he didn’t appear to toe the boring New Wave line.

Have you seen The Gleaners and I?

No, really need to.

Beaches of Agnes was sweet.

I watched Le Bonheur on a crappy VHS copy from the library earlier this year. Dark stuff.

the gleaners & i is terrific, & v moving, but it’s kinda even richer, for me, as a counterpart to cleo (& possibly a bunch of other films from the same period)—it’s exploring so much of what Varda was looking at—youth, inhabiting a body, being a woman, which feels so overt in Cleo, not even just as a thing remarkable for being in a film directed by a woman—but from the other side, Varda looking at her hands now she has aged. & they’re such a testament to film that is made possible & diaristic by a small digital camera.

those follow-up docs are fascinating; I’m putting on a screening of Les Demoiselles de Rochefort in a couple of weeks (which is another fun Demy, really ambitious, another crazy-new-wave-appropriation of a Hollywood model/standard) & am dying to see the doc she made twenty years after, back in town (there’s a nice scene in her new doc where she writes a sketch around a photograph she took in the ’60s, & films it as a period piece). I have Daguerrotypes to screen, soon, also. the ones I’ve seen are a really messy selection so nice to have yr recommendations.

i oughtta watch Vagabond, huh

Vagabond surprised me too. Its cumulative effect is powerful.

“Daguerreotypes” is one of my favorite docs, period. I need to watch more Varda.

v psyched for it, imma drag some people over to see it i think. the last doc i saw was a partially unsubtitled mur murs, which I liked.

i love this Sukhdev Sandhu story about talking to AV, btw:

She spoke with a startling lack of sentimentality about the ever-more rapid migration of cinema from the big screen to the computer screen: “For me,” she said, “it is not a problem. If you watch a film on a laptop when you’re in bed, the film is closer to your heart. Sometimes you fall asleep. OK. Then you wake up and you do not know what is the film and what is your dream. This is perfect.”

Xmas has been a time for cinematic revolution in this room.

After finally watching Carlos before Xmas (5 hr versh, natch) I went ahead and got Chris Marker’s Grin Without a Cat making it, with Varda, a Left-bank cinema club night. Apparently there is a four hour cut of this story (pretty much the only story in this year of protests upon protests) of the new left in the late 60s (Vietnam, Che’s murder) right through to Chile.

This is the three hour cut, which Marker apparently re-jigged after the end of the Soviet Untion, but also tantalizingly before the new wave of protests this year, which seems to be saying that, well, some of cats have just about got away, survived, are about.

Maybe they’ve come back...might need another new ending...

The montage, the music (a brill electronic score), all put together as if a dream (or nightmare) that I will certainly never forget. One of the best things I’ve watched this year.

As Carlos and Grin... showed, the fighting was worldwide. So I turned to more local stories: Padatik by Mrinal Sen. Guerilla Fighter who bunks in posh flat for a couple of days while things ‘cool down’, from ’71. At the end of it the increasingly impatient (oh youth!) protagonist is told to “be brave”.

I watched Wakamatsu and Masao Adachi Declaration of War, filmed somewhere in Palestine after they got back from the lol Cannes Film Festival! Its a propaganda film, but not Eisenstein so its of limited appeal but some of the comments from a couple of revolutionaries in the film (people who gave it all up) are fascinating if you’re watching all of this back-to-back. Wakamatsu made a doc about the J. Red Army which I’ve yet to see.

Also hunted down Sur by Fernando Solanas (he of ‘Third Cinema’ fame) and it reminded me of Travelling Players by Angelopolous. Just not as good, the main reason to watch are the shots of people in the foggy night of Buenos Aires, but the time jumbling is less effective, and the story does come down to the personal a bit much. The best bit was the soundtrack: mostly by Piazolla, but also a scene where Maria (whose hisband has been jailed by the military) goes out to a nightclub which appears to be a hub of Argentinian new wave. Bad haircuts are seen.

Watched and enjoyed “Hugo” (3D) tonight. Lovely way to spend a couple of hours. Scorsese is pretty terrible with the slapstick though, eh?

Some of us think he’s pretty boring with the 3D, and with kids who aren’t prostitutes or the Dalai Lama.

Pretty sure a lot of people also thought he was pretty boring with kids that are the Dalai Lama.

Thought Hugo was pretty boring with the sniffly-nose kid’s giant head taking up the screen for an hour and a half. I liked seeing the Méliès films in 3d though.

caught ‘margaret’ the other day. a terrific mess.

works by Ford, Kuchar, Chaplin, Hawks, Pixar and the Nicholas Bros added to the National Film Registry:

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/daily-briefing-25-titles-added-to-the-national-film-registry

I love the Kuchar short (‘I, An Actress’), a fitting epitaph to throw in there. Short of his whole part at the end of ‘Thundercrack!’ I can’t think of a better dialogue heavy bit to introduce someone to the spirit of Kuchar.

watched Sans Soleil last night

George Kuchar retro in NYC, Feb 10–12 (PDF, page 7):

http://anthologyfilmarchives.org/AFA123_2012CalCompletes.pdf

man, i’ve only seen a handful of those! jealous that y’all will see an actual print of ‘eclipse of the sun virgin’

Tanaki—did u like Sans Soleil? It was my first Marker after La Jetee and I was really underwhelmed. Was a few years ago so I want to revisit.

Been screening a few African/Third world cinema films: Mambety’s Hyenes and Cisse’s Yeelen are really great, as is Pereira dos Santos’ Rio, 40 Degrees.

Loved it — even more than La jetée

I guess this is the most applicable thread, although I’m not sure how cineaste it is: I finally found some time to finish posting a Facebook countdown of my favourite movies I did a few months ago onto my homepage.

http://phildellio.tripod.com/movies.html

(Be forewarned: James L. Brooks places more films than Carl T. Dreyer and Rainer W. Fassbinder combined.)

Clemenza, you’re dead to me now. When you go over to our mother’s house for New Year’s Eve let me know ahead of time so I don’t have to see you

I was just being strong for all of us the way Papa was.

Or watch Dinner For One with you

j/jk I just narrowly renewed my own Film Snob bona fides by going to see Marienbad and The Gold Rush at the FF last week

I’ve always felt like I’ve had a foot in both worlds. (Last two films at home: Prince of the City and L’Avventura. I think they’re both overrated.) We had a lot of back and forth in the comments about the relationship between these kinds of lists and the official canon 9or whatever you want to call it0.

Shift up, shift down...

Which means that 2012 will be the Year of Apatow and Rogen for me

I’ve got Dreyer but no Fassbender or Brooks in my canon, as per Mubi:

ELECTROCUTING AN ELEPHANT (Edison, 1903)

M (Lang, 1931)

GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933 (LeRoy, 1933)

THE SCARLET EMPRESS (von Sternberg, 1934)

MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW (McCarey, 1937)

HELLZAPOPPIN’ (Potter, 1941)

FIREWORKS (Anger, 1947)

UN CHANT D’AMOUR (Genet, 1950)

GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES (Hawks, 1953)

THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (Laughton, 1955)

GERTRUD (Dreyer, 1964)

SIMON OF THE DESERT (Buñuel, 1965)

BREAKAWAY (Conner, 1966)

WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (Nichols, 1966)

WEEKEND (Godard, 1967)

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (Romero, 1968)

BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS (Meyer, 1970)

PINK NARCISSUS (Bidgood, 1971)

WOMEN IN REVOLT (Morrissey, 1971)

THE WICKER MAN (Hardy, 1973)

FEMALE TROUBLE (Waters, 1974)

SCORE (Metzger, 1974)

THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (Hooper, 1974)

BARRY LYNDON (Kubrick, 1975)

NASHVILLE (Altman, 1975)

CARRIE (De Palma, 1976)

GREY GARDENS (Maysles, Mayles, Hovde, 1976)

THE TENANT (Polanski, 1976)

ALL THAT JAZZ (Fosse, 1979)

THE WARRIORS (Hill, 1979)

MOMMIE DEAREST (Perry, 1981)

MS. 45 (Ferrara, 1981)

TANGO (Rybczynski, 1981)

TENEBRAE (Argento, 1982)

SANS SOLEIL (Marker, 1983)

SLEEPAWAY CAMP (Hiltzik, 1983)

CRIME WAVE (Paizs, 1985)

DO THE RIGHT THING (Lee, 1989)

PARIS IS BURNING (Livingston, 1990)

SÁTÁNTANGÓ (Tarr, 1994)

SHOWGIRLS (Verhoeven, 1995)

DOGVILLE (von Trier, 2003)

MUNICH (Spielberg, 2005)

INLAND EMPIRE (Lynch, 2006)

THE TREE OF LIFE (Malick, 2011)

Criterion shared part of their New Year’s cartoon today on fb. Look forward to Weekend, Quadrophenia, and Harold & Maude amongst others.

Have you ever read Hoberman & Rosenbaum’s Midnight Movies, Eric? Excellent book—it came to mind when I looked at your list. A friend of mine once listed Crime Wave as one of his ten favourite films. Haven’t seen it.

Yep. Pretty great tho could’ve benefitted from a more humorous approach.