I have like 10 Asian movies that I haven't seen yet.
Some obscure Korean detective stories, a Chinese romance flick or two and some Japanese movies too.
I will stay in my hometown until Dec 29th and until then I will do nothing else than watch these movies and eat.

seen a couple of great things lately:



repulsion (polanski, 1965) - awesome horror movie. not gore porn like these days but more psychological. catherine deneuve is both gorgeous and creepy here. also, marcello's girlfriend from la dolce vita is here playing her sister... yvonne... something.



the magician (bergman, 1958). oh, bergman, how could you make such beautiful filmed plays! you were like the chinese wood carver... great story and screenplay and characters.
max von sydow, bibi andersson, ingid thulin, the guy from scenes from a marriage who also plays uncle isaac in fanny and alexander... the priest from winter light... great cast. damn, i had never even heard of this but it is such a gem.

^^ both of these on beautiful criterion discs

I watched The Saint yesterday, it was really good, 90s Val Kilmer was all really good flicks. .. there was also a Cheech and Chong marathon so i saw that too

Repulsion is great, a must-see, even if some refuse to watch Polanski.

i still travel in jet planes though they were invented by nazis. that is to say the work and the person are two different things. actually his apparent obsession with rape makes the movie even more disturbing though. i wonder what happened to him while he was hiding from the nazis.

anyway, just watched...



HILARIOUS. the longer it lasts the funnier it gets. great movie.

Just added Repulsion to my Netflix queue. Can't believe I've never heard of this one before.

We have RED and MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT waiting for us to get to.

Almost through the Gilmore girls series. Wow, Season 7 is a freaking mess. Worthless. Really entertaining show up until this point though. And always interesting to see how many continuity mistakes these TV shows have: In a Season 6 show, Logan is in the hospital, and in one scene featuring a conversation between Logan and Rory, the close-ups clearly show that he is lying not in his hospital bed but at home in his apartment, and then the final long shot of the scene shows them in the hospital room. It was surreal. You just have to scratch your head, like, are TV directors/editors really that lax, just don't care, just don't see?

I put Aaltra on my Netflix list, thanks for the recco. I watched Life of Brian and Rare Exports on Exmas (tradition!) And watched the Turing movie with Benny Cumberbatch. He's a hell of an actor! I didn't much think of Keira Knightly in it, she's too pretty to be that role, makes it pretty unbelievable. I always liked Mark Strong, and he's pretty strong in this, but the guy's gotten plugs, which are real obvious and kind of ruins him in a WW2 movie, huh?

magic in the moonlight was entertaining but not "ooooh"-- one of his light comedies. is red the kieszlowski one?


ha ha ha life of brian-- perfect! haven't heard of rare exports but now i'm curious

anyway, just watched--



FRANCES HA (noah baumbach, 2013)

this one is about being a white girl stuck in a post-college phase in brooklyn. it's a whole lot like "girls" but in movie form (it even had some cast members from "girls") . it was strange to find the director was noah baumbach-- i thought it was someone much younger when it started-- it felt a bit like andrew bujalski circa 2005 . oh, baumbach cowrote it with greta gerwig which is probably why. i like greta gerwig-- she's like this adorable giantess, and her character here will make you cringe and be sad a lot for her. but it's not a tragedy. oh, hollywood! i want to see the tragedy version of that story now. kinda like melinda & melinda.

i hate the title of this book, but the concept is quite nice. going in i've only seen three, ugetsu, WR: mysteries of the organism and twin peaks: fire walk with me, and it was interesting to see what the people had to say about them, but there are mega spoilers in all three chapters i read so i'm not gonna read the other parts yet.

trying to figure out how to choose what to watch next, not sure if i wanna look up synopsis or just watch the ones directors i've heard of chose

Annie Hall and Manhattan.

Mixed feelings watching these again. Annie Hall (while brilliant) does have a tendency at times to sound like a script made up of one-liners. Manhattan, on the other hand, is an absolute masterpiece that seems to get better as I get older.

Annie Hall = 4/5; Manhattan a solid 5

thats not true.. the nazis invented both jet propulsion AND rocketry using slave labor from the concentration camps. Indeed Van Braun had personally requested thousands of Jewish prisoners, its said he was also personally involved in overseeing such. Im not saying don't travel by jet, just saying in that instance we can't necessarily make such distinctions, the evils perpetuated by the Nazis as re directly interconnected with their technology developments through the use of slaveclabor

i haven't seen those in a long time. i remember annie hall a lot better, having seen it repeatedly. what i remember of manhattan is the hemingway girl in black and white, and she buys him a harmonica or something? the whole thing about him having to be less cerebral. things fade in memory. i should watch that again. i was probably high when i saw it because i remember the people i saw it with and they were never ever sober.

i saw this the other day:



DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID (Buñuel, 1964). Buñuel is so weird sometimes I think he turned a straightforward story into a bunch of broken scenes to mock the bourgeoisie, but what was fantastic about this film was Jeanne Moreau-- what an amazing face! A masterpiece really (her face, not the movie). I looked for a photo to post here but none really catch the movement of those eyes--the disc cover does a good job though.

Sushi Girl- Major Tarantino influences, which could be a detractor or a reason to watch, it was a fun movie to watch either way.

Real Genius and My Boyfriend's Back.

I watched it about a week ago after having not seen it in about a decade. But I've watched it perhaps 30 times in my life. It struck me too as being too joke-heavy but then I remembered it came right after Love and Death, and it suddenly seemed miles more mature.

For some meat, think of it as a revisionist flick, like so many other 70s classics. It's an anti-romance film, subverting the genre in a number of ways.

And it's a technical knock-out. Look at how he frames that JFK/Alice Porchnick scene (although that might be all Gordon Willis for all I know). I swear it's as graceful as Renoir.

And it also initiated what I am coming to believe is one of the great cinematic wonders of the last blah blah blah. Allen's work from Annie Hall all the way to Bullets Over Broadway...that streak is jaw-droppingly good and might only be fully appreciated when he dies. (Coming sooner than we think, folks.)

The duds? Midsummer's Night Sex Comedy, Alice, Shadows and Fog, perhaps September. As duds go, those are pretty good.

And the winners? The rest, mostly. Those light things like Danny Rose, Radio Days and Zelig bristle with energy and imagination and do their little thing perfectly.

He pretty much mastered the "dramady," Hanna and Crimes particularly. (The "and" duo.) But I'd throw Purple into that category. Man, that gut-wrenching ending!

I think Hanna and Crimes look "classic" in their warm autumnal way, as classic in my mind as b and w. The neglected Husbands and Wives is also one of my favorite looking films. I could just fall into those colors.

For me, Bullets Over Broadway was something of a cutoff point. Some sort of magic deserted him after that very good film. As far as I'm concerned, he hasn't made a truly great film since. (Nope, still not sold on Match Point or Midnight, though I might give Vicky another try.) There were clever ideas, but they never seemed to work out. And of course there were bad ideas that never could (looking at you, Hollywood Ending, but you've got company close behind).

But whatever. Who else, for more than a decade, made films which are 95% good or masterpieces. EVERY YEAR! Genius? Cut the dross, concentrate on the good, and the answer is obviously yes.

My criticism of Annie Hall now seems overstated, but I did make it in the belief that it's still a brilliant film, just not quite as brilliant as it seemed when I first fell in love with it in my teens. Whereas Manhattan seems to have aged even better, perhaps because as I've gotten older its exploration of mid-life crises seems even more resonant than it did when I first saw it. I loved it then but, upon re-watching it the other day, I came to the realisation that I hadn't quite got it before. Plus I'm now more able to get some of the more literary jokes that, in my teens, sounded impressive but I never quite understood.

Either way, while I've not seen a lot of his more recent stuff, I agree that his 'middle period' (if we can call it that) stands up to any filmmaker from that era.

I can't even begin to count the number of things I explored as a teen simply so I could understand an Allen joke. What's weird is the lines can sometimes be funny even if the viewer doesn't get the reference. Neat trick.

No, I agree that in Annie, Allen too often forces the joke. I'll go further and say some of the jokes don't work. Of all the "David" jokes he could've written, "David? That's a Biblical name. What does he call you? Bathsheeba?" strikes me as a not very good one.

I think by the time Manhattan rolled around, he had learned how to create witty characters. The jokes seem to come out of the character rather than the sense that Allen is forcing the jokes upon them, if that makes sense.

Oh yeah. Joke writing. One more area where Allen completely excels.

Man, I'm really gonna miss the guy after he taps off.

Yeah, some of the dialogue in AH just comes across as one-liners. "Call the lobster squad", etc, whereas with Manhattan it seems more natural, more conversational. Plus there's far less sight-gags. But as you said before, AH is a transition film; M seems more like him at ease with his new creative self. But it's a mark of his brilliance that we can find fault in a film that, were we not aware of the greatness that would follow, would probably count as one of the greatest comedies ever made ... and probably still is.

And like you, AH was pivotal in my broader cultural education. I read McLuhan straight after seeing it. But Manhattan literally changed my life, from sparking what's since become a life-long love for Gershwin, listening to (and loving) Louis Armstrong's Potato-Head Blues and generally concretising an obsession with New York that hasn't weakened since. I even made it an ambition to have dinner at Elaine's and was massively sad when I read it'd closed.

I wonder: was TAXI DRIVER (1976) or ANNIE HALL (1977) the more accurate portrayal of the city in the 70s?

hey! nothing wrong with shadows and fog! great filmed play. and while alice is not up there with the best ones it's a good movie and also funny.

great observations there about his transition from stand-up to making humor part of the characters.

i'm going to have to rewatch manhattan again.

and don't worry guys, that new york no longer exists. started disappearing with giuliani and now it belongs to lena dunham & many finance bros.

---

anyway, yesterday i finally watched:



THE WIND RISES (MIYAZAKI, 2014). Well, fuck, he is done with films. Hard to judge this in those terms except to say it's a fitting end. a biopic that deals with the nature of creativity, a final display of his obsession with flying machines (Howl, Laputa, Porco Rosso, etc), and a supersad love story fit for La Traviata. Is it his "best" movie? Not sure anything can take the crown from the masterpiece that is Spirited Away, and this is different from what we've come to expect from the guy, but if you put aside your expectations and just watch the movie it is pretty great. Structurally maybe a bit jumbled as it hops ahead in years with the protagonists growing up, but where it excels is in the visuals and that inimitable Miyazaki magic. God damn, I'm going to miss the guy.

ps- werner herzog dubs one of the characters (we recognized him instantly and couldn't stop laughing).

I liked it. sad and beautifully filmed. my wife thinks the Scientology cult killed Hoffman for this.

^ Not afraid to say I didn't really get this.

Good theory, btw.

Someone like Tesla would be best placed to say with any authority but I'd say they're both equally subjective accounts of very contrasting areas/people. But part of the allure of 70s era NY for me is it seems ultimately a myth founded on films, books, etc. To me it'll always be a place of vigilantes, gangs dressed up like baseball players, neurotic Jewish intellectuals, and Serpico's beard. Probably nothing like the reality, but who cares, nor was the wild west.

NYC in the 70's was a direct result of the massive amount of cheap heroin imported through the CIA.

Midnight Cowboy, 69

tired of bad "indie" movies and "White People's Problems" aka "Bougie Nights"?

think 'merica didn't have its own successful stab at neorrealism?



MY BROTHER'S WEDDING - (CHARLES BURNETT, 1983).

great, funny, hilarious, etc. not as good as KILLER OF SHEEP which is one of america's best movies ever but still damn good. also comes out pretty short at 1h 17 min in the 2007 director's cut (gotta check out the original cut-- looks like it was 2 hours) so it's very accessible.

great dialog, situations, characters, etc. film exposure a bit iffy at times but works great with the subject matter. acting not so great but in the end who cares--call it brechtian and move on, dammit.

seriously check it out. but check out "killer of sheep" first though, because that movie is just incredible. seriously, if you haven't seen killer of sheep do yourself a favor and stop whatever you're doing and rent it now. a fucking masterpiece. watch it in a double feature along with WATTSTAX. holy fuck. you'll thank me later.

[note: i don't know what ever happened to charles burnett but i am beginning to suspect his career went down as he assumed ideological obligations and became preachy (he made some tv movies, etc). this 2007 disc features a newish short (post-katrina) that's just.... too contrived. a real pity.]

Alright. This is very funny. I'll give you that. But I'm reminded of that great line from Annie Hall: "I know. I'm a bigot. But for the left."

But those flicks look great. I'm looking forward to watching them with great anticipation, so thanks.

sure. look, i'm only a "bigot for the left" by necessity. if we weren't in such a conservative homogeneous media climate i'd complain less. where is today's grapes of wrath or on the waterfront? film has erased the working class. they simply do not exist in teh popular imagination except as comic foil. fucking hollywood has redefined povery as "vassar graduate struggling to be a dancer in brooklyn"-- or (on a different genre) ghetto criminals in police flicks. it's outrageous. i don't blame the trust fund brooklynites for it-- they're just doing their thing. but fuckit, we have to be reminded of the constant erasure/stereotyping/ridiculing.

but don't get me wrong, i do enjoy films featuring the hoity-toity. whit stillman is one of my favorite filmmakers. and since you were asking for 80s/90s indie films i'd recommend metropolitan --> barcelona --> the last days of disco. in that order. i reeeeally llike metropolitan and have watched it a bunch of times.

Too true. I'm struggling to think of a single nuanced and broadly positive representation of the working class in mainstream contemporary hollywood. Maybe Erin Brockovich.

Yeah. This is a problem come to think of it. Let's go back a little. Any working class films from the 70s generation? There's that Paul Shrader film BLUE COLLAR. Um...maybe, maybe the first half of FIVE EASY PIECES.

I guess I now appreciate how the TV show Roseanne was seismically broundbreaking.

---

Looked up Stillman on IMDB. Two things I wasn't aware of:

The Cosmopolitans (TV Series) (1 episode)
- Pilot (2014)

Damsels in Distress (2011)

Worth investigating?

BTW, I haven't seen METRO in years but I think about it all the time. Lines from that film pop into my head maybe every two weeks or so. For years this has been happening.

---

Anyone notice the paradox at the heart of "bougie" films (Allen, Stillman)? On the one hand, we're shown unhappy, neurotic, often foolish characters. And yet the lifestyle is so damn attractive, who wouldn't want to be one of them?

In terms of the 70s, I suppose it depends on whether we're talking political with a big P. Blue Collar, definitely, but I think films like The Deer Hunter, Dog Day Afternoon, Saturday Night Fever (one of the most underrated films ever IMO), Mean Streets, Spielberg in general (when you think about it) were far less demonising and far more sophisticated representations of the working class than we get with today's Hollywood.

i watched and liked damsels in distress-- it's with greta gerwing also (see "frances ha" in the previous page). i liked the movie-- it's sort of terrible, clunky and a cheap production, but great at the same time. i can't explain. it's also a sort of musical which is a genre i tend to hate as well. but what is it about stillman's movies i can't resist? i guess a fundamental, earnest sense of innocence, or untainted goodness-- hard to explain. a serious moral conservatism. i think some of the dialog in metropolitan is very revealing of his deepest beliefs-- like when audrey roget refuses to play.. spin the bottle or whatever the game... because she says there is a reason we've developed some social conventions. quaint, absurd in our age of facebook (that movie was long before facebook), but it still makes sense. he's a kind of radical in that sense-- goes against the grain of cynical trends and really cares about individuals. very american, in a sense (see: barcelona).

he's also directed some tv but i think more of a hired gun. it's his auteurism that interests me (he wanted to be a novelist in his youth).

----

the 70s had plenty i think, plus there was a large international scene, so no complaints from me there. roseanne was rare post-reagan i suppose but even she eventually wins the lottery or something-- not that i watched it, but im aware of it. the early seasons of "good times" were there much earlier, though john amos quit because he didn't want to portray a cartoon character.

lucky louie in fact was a pretty great working class sitcom of the early 2000s, but who the fuck even knows about it? lasted only 1 season.

Car Wash
Cooley High
Rocky

the 70s had a working class

nowadays everyone is a temporarily embarrassed millionaire

ha!

So I guess around 1981 someone crunched the numbers and realized the working class don't really go to the movies that often, so why made movies about them? Brilliant.
--
Roseanne had scenes that took place in a factory line! Blows my mind to think of it.

i think it was more than crunching numbers. it was that mainstream america fell under the spell of the great communicator. everyone can be rich if they just want to! if you're struggling it's your own fault. who wants to watch a loser when we can dream of being yuppies? if you can dream it you can do it. etc.

--

ps george lopez worked in a factory too but apparently his schtick was about the fiction of "race."

--

there's this great scene in lucky louie where they've been hard up for a while and finally the wife gets her paycheck they wanna go out & celebrate and they go to the cash checking place and get a bunch of money orders to pay all their overdue bills and then they're left with 26 cents in change.

--

ps - just read this! good stuff. http://www.alternet.org/story/148122/how_america's_working_class_died_on_the_disco_danc e_floor

^^ weird link doesn't copy correctly. just google "70s working class films" and it will appear on top.

From the article:

The megahit of 1977 allowed the nation to begin to move toward the 1980s celebration of working-class heroes who managed to get out, while casting those who could not into cinematic (and political) darkness.

What 80s movies celebrate "getting out"? Or is there a rags-to-riches hit? Just wondering which movies he means.
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Looked up highest grossers of 1980s:

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), $435 million
Return of the Jedi (1983), $309 million
The Empire Strikes Back (1980), $290 million
Batman (1989), $251 million
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), $245 million
Ghostbusters (1984), $238 million
Beverly Hills Cop (1984), $234 million
Back to the Future (1985), $210 million
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), $197 million
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), $179 million

I gather from this no one had any interest in the real world. Someone might even suggest everyone was living in a daydream nation.

---

Not to harp, but:

Roseanne-1988
George Lopez Show-2002
Lucky Louis-2006

(By the way, why is Louis so negative about the show? It's not that bad. Also he co-created, produced, wrote, acted in it, so even if it did suck I'm not sure how much blame goes to others.)

Louis CK said HBO ruined his show.

as far as movies celebrating "getting out" in the 80's?

Brewster's Millions (a remake, I know)
Trading Places
Annie

is he negative about it? i thought he was fucking proud. get the discs (2 of them) & check out the commentaries, etc. he's pissed that it was cancelled but both him and pamela adlon were very proud of their work-- which btw c.k. compares it to the honeymooners (they even went for a similar look in the apartment).

can't think of any blockbusters that were about rags to riches stories but for example there's this class-conscious comedy from late 80s/early 90s called "dutch" featuring the al bundy guy as some working class dude dating a rich lady and he goes to pick up the lady's kid for thanksgiving... all kind of shit ensues. but the thing is that this working class schmoe is a millionaire who owns a fucking construction company. and so love triumphs in the end. al bundy the shoe salesman on the other hand is painted as a loser and an object of ridicule.

oh wait there is plenty of that material in the yuppie age about "getting out". the secret of my success, trading places... even a pink-collar revolt like "9 to 5" ends up in marriage and yuppiedom. the 80s were a time of ideological carnage. after that, if you don't have a trust fund it's your own damn fault.

the british thank fuck gave us mike leigh who is still making films. haven't watched his latest. last i saw was vera drake which in recollection was very good. but that's just a drop in the bucket.

Dig this:

Less Than Zero (1987)
Wall Street (1987)
Bright Lights, Big City (1988)

I tried to think of movies critical of how the eighties defined "success" and was surprised to find they all came out roughly the same time.