I felt like spraying diarrhea on all of film-making after watching Godard. Does that count?

well it's a bit dated in that computer control of everyday life is a fact no longer in question. but around the time when this movie came out mcnamara was running the vietnam war via computer, modernist architecture had filled up the world with glass and concrete, and i see lemmy caution as the heroic last assertion of the human animal who "loves gold and women" vs. the dictator of rationality. that, or he's a capitalist agent smashing soviet-style planning. either way, it's an iconic film. and the visuals are just fucking brilliant. but yeah, after neo & the matrix, a bit long in the tooth narrative-wise.


what you just said here is super-interesting to me because on the one hand i totally see it in SLEEPER-- both godard's alphaville and truffaut's farenheit 451 absolutely inform it. but elsewhere? please tell me so i know where to look.

I totally agree. Godard is always a critic first, artist second in my eyes. It took other directors to pull emotional qualities out of some of his rule breaking, instead of just the theory behind it.

Yup - I even took a crack at it..... hard to make a film with just a camera

I think it's more difficult with Godard. Everyone can see what Felliniesque or Hichcockian or Bergmanesque film looks like. With Godard I'd say it's more about a quite playful attitude to things, a knowingness, an ironic and self referential playing around with genre. Not saying Godard invented any of those things but he unified them and turned them into a kind of attitude. I don't think he's ever consciously attempted to make a homage to Godard but I definitely think he absorbed that attitude. Saying that I do think Annie Hall is explicitly Godardian in its self-conscious rule-breaking, and even his crime-comedies, the way he messes around with genre, seems like a nod to the spirit at least of films like Bande a Part.

So I was probably wrong in saying stylistically, but in terms of attitude I'd say definitely.

Yeah, I have an anthology of his film criticism and I love it far more than I do any of his films. The other problem (for me) is that his turn to political dogma in the late 60s robbed him even of that quite free-wheeling spirit in his early films, which, while I'm still not hugely into them, I do prefer them over his later agit-prop stuff.

never. but john waters or the kuchar bros yes.

now for easier inspiration look to rohmer. fixed camera on a tripod and a tape recorder, blam, you've made a movie.

12 Angry Men - Aw man I always forget about Lumet but he is always a god damn knock out. Classic film and good for a night with the lady along with some dinner. But damn that direction by Lumet is absolutely riveting.

Last Year at Marienbad - Aesthetically masterful and the criterion is so so so so gorgeous. But as for everything else... smoke and mirrors. This was my second attempt at watching it, the first time it put me to sleep. Great atmosphere but nothing in the atmosphere. I'd love to see this in a theatre and if I spoke French. I keep going back and forth between "fuck this movie" and "a great film experience that feels like memories". Mostly fuck this movie

I agree, although those jump cuts in the underrated HUSBANDS AND WIVES feel like a nod (or a steal).

I used to think that some (but not all) of Woody's pseudo-documentary films (he's had a bunch, counting stuff like SWEET LOWDOWN) were somehow influenced by Truffaut, who also used that convention a lot, I seem to remember. Haven't watched him in years. Maybe, maybe not.

Woody's in KING LEAR, come to think of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VJP43eAnQE



Ended up finishing by going in chunks over days. Great film? Sure. But you'd have to pay me a lot to give up another two hours. Sober, the price doubles.

Gimme a movie I like vs a great film any day, although I hope the two should meet now and then.

Haha, have to agree. A 'classic' but it'd take a fuck of a lot to get me to sit through it again.

rob!

is this you?



let's make a movie!

a pistol to the head for me

would make a great video wallpaper though, but not for staring at it the full 8 hours that it seems to last

Mike Watt once had a theory that if you were an artist or not, you either smeared it or packed that shit in as a toddler.

i'll always remember that.

Glad to see I'm in good company about Marienbad then :)

I sometimes worry that I watch so much more pure fun films now that I'm finding it harder and harder to have the patience for the more challenging stuff that I used to be able to watch for pleasure.

Yes. I wonder if I've gotten less mature or just stupider as I've aged. At some point, I could've sat through anything as long as Janus or Criterion put it out.

Then again, why did I bother struggling through MARIANBRAD? I was bored. Should've just stopped and moved on. What prize did I win by finishing it?

It's bad with classic films but think about it. The most they take out of your life is 2, maximum 3 hours. And at least once you've watched one you've earned the right to comment on it. Paintings are even better. Even the most complex ones can be absorbed in a matter of minutes. It's different with novels. Who seriously now has the time to invest in something like War and Peace, or Ulysses? Imagine how much easier life would've been if Joyce had painted Ulysses instead of written it.

That is not exactly correct. SHITTY paintings can be absorbed in a minute. That type of shit is what is used for adverts and "decoration" because it is devoid of meaning.

Real art takes time to appreciate, evene if yuou love it at first sight. The great art of the world benefits so much from actually living with it, seeing it in different lights at different times of day, when you are in a different mood, etc.

I regularly read 1000+ page books. If people counted the wasted hours spent staring at their phone or tablet reading meaningless shit on instagram and face and snapchat they would add up to PLENTY!

People just are not taught to teach themselves anymore. even college students are fucking idiots these days.

I sat through all 5 hours of CHE' at the movie theatre with my mom! That was a loooong film!

marienbad is a beautiful film--just very fucking boring

but it's beautiful to look at.

it's more of an art installation than a movie

i'd blow it up the size of a whole wall & go about my day

demonyo mentioned paintings-- well. it's like a painting that moves.

the question is how long can you sit in front of the painting and stare at it looking for a "story"

8 hours? 2 hours? 1?

same as eraserhead for me. i have fallen asleep so many times in front of it. never managed to watch it in a straight sitting. looks great though.

Is "ambient films" a thing? Should be.

yeah. exactly.

btw eno put out a video in the mid 80s--"thursday afternoon" it was called.

the vhs box asked you to put your cathode ray 4x3 tv monitor sideways

i watched it in the late 90s, on a computer, and i put the thing sideways

it was just the highly distorted image of an apparently sleeping woman, moving ever so little, colored blue, with some textures added. kinda fractal i guess? can't remember 100%. and then an ambient eno soundtrack.

i fell asleep of course. i slept with eno's woman. i did that. i did not regret it.

I could never bring myself to sit through 3 minutes of the Brakhage films if Lee and Text of Light were not performing at the same time. Pointless visual crap.

I agree, they can't be fully absorbed but that initial impression tells us if we want to commit more time to it. You could equally say that any good film or book only reveals its full meaning through multiple viewings and reads. But you'd have a far lesser sense of their potential worth by watching or reading them for 5 minutes, than you would looking at a painting for the same amount of time.

Equally, how many 1000+ books have you read multiple times compared with the number of paintings you've looked at over and over again?

That is true demonrail666. a picture is indeed worth a thousand words, but a good book has over a thousand words a page sometimes!

I have read stephen King's IT (980 pages) 4 times. I have read the Bible several times. I read The Stand (1100 extended eddition pages) 3 times. I have read Moby Dick (unabridged at 800+ pages) three times. I have read quite a few non-fiction books that run over 1000 pages, but not re-read them. I do not read much fiction. About 90% non-fiction to 10% fiction.



.

It's even worse with tv series. In a few years people who weren't around to watch Sopranos, Breaking Bad etc are gonna feel pressured to spend 100 hours of their life on just one series. It's gonna be interesting to see which ones last and which ones will be forgotten.

Ok, ok. whoah.... whoah.

Stephen King is one thing. His writing is so simplistic that it's pretty easy to pound through one of his longer books in a few days. I've read plenty of more thematically and linguistically dense books — longer ones, too — just in the "epic fantasy" subgenre. Simple shit though, still.

But The Bible?! Really? You've read The Bible "several times?" First of all... are you lying? If not, then... WHY have you done that?

I'll freely admit to never having read The Bible from cover to cover. And I likely never will. I've read a pretty good portion of it, but only in brief chunks at really weird/desperately boring times in my life.

Unless you're a pastor or a priest, or a professor of classics or some shit with a PhD in religious philosophy, what reason could you possibly have for reading THE BIBLE several times?

The Bible for better or for worse is a reference point for a multitude of art and culture. There are plenty of reasons for reading the Bible, or any religious text, outside of being a student or pastor. Even if one is not religious those stories can still be beautiful, relatable and wise.
I respect any study of religious texts. It is a great source of inspiration and critical thinking if read the right way. How many great paintings, novels, films or even song lyrics mirror or reference the Bible? Even speeches.

And regards to having time for Ulysses: it's a marathon not a sprint. A chapter a day or every other day. It was serialized just like any TV show and can be read that way. Plus if you arent trying to unturn every stone in the book it's actually fun as hell (in my opinion at least). I think this can apply to most of the marathon books.

As far as painting goes I would find it hard to appreciate something like a Rothko without investing enough time in it.

^^ i had to read ulysses in a hurry for a college course and found the irish tapes on the basement of georgetown university and listened to them that way as i read.

but anna karenina i read episodically like a good XIX century novel should be.

as for the bible-- it depends. the gospels were written for morons so you can read them in no time.

genesis and exodus are fun mythical shit. except for the begats. begat begat begat.

the book of numbers however--ha! i triple-dog dare you.

there is a lot of dense bureaucratic bullshit in the jewish bible. i don't think anybody except for yeshiva students has ever read those pages.

Yikes. Having a deadline for Ulysses must have sucked the fun right out of it.

And yeah I guess I overlooked shit like Numbers or Leviticus. Gross! But come on Job is gorgeous.

yeah. job is world-class shit.

the story of david and batsheba is also great. unfortunately too short. could have used more exposition and extensive dialogue ha ha ha.

Ruth is a beautiful story.

Oh, I see the appeal of reading the Bible. I've never read it straight through, but I've read passages, psalms and epistles aplenty. For me, it's a hunt and peck kind of thing. If I skim through enough pages, I'm bound to find something interesting, if not outright beautiful, as you suggest.

But I don't think I would ever pick up the freaking Bible and read it straight through like a novel. Though I might, because I have a massive appreciation for religious texts and studies myself, and I am fascinated by religion in general.

Several times though? Really? That, I just don't get. It's like ... I don't know... Watching The Godfather trilogy for months on end. Sure, it's quite a thing. But what do you gain from saying, "I'm in the mood to read/watch a movie, and even though there's an infinite number of books/movies I've never read/seen, for some reason I'd rather just read the Bible/watch the Godfathet a bunch of times. That'll be sweet.

Do not get.

The Bible is a seriously fucked up book. Iron Age nonsense. Does it have cultural significance today? Unfortunately, yes. As to your other tomes, there's a lot more Melville out there than M Dick, and Stephen King, really?

THE GRIFTERS



holy fuck was that a disturbing movie

4/5 i guess

now that we have a grifter as president one has to learn the subject

Interview With the Vampire

The main frustration is that the best characters (Armand and Lestat) are so marginal in the film, compared with Louis (a horribly miscast Brad Pitt). Not a problem in the book sequels that dedicate whole books to them - and I'm sure the intention was to do the same in a series of films, but it never happened, so this feels more like an unfulfilled teaser. Still a good watch, though.

SAVED!



this was billed as a comedy, and while it is that in the sense of "happy endings enjoyed by all" it's not a funny-ha-ha movie in the least. more like a drama really. had a couple of lolworthy moments which were seen in the trailers around 12 years ago but not much more. 2/5 did not like.

GROSSE POINTE BLANK

yeah, that's the sountrack album cover and it's fitting because it was a fun soundtrack. as a movie it's not the best, but as an action comedy it's great-- it's funny, and it has good action, and that's exactly what i wanted, plus the soundtrack was enjoyable. in that regard, 5/5, send me more in this genre for mindless weekend fun.

You should like some of the Elmore Leonard adaptations: Get Shorty; Out of Sight (and Jackie Brown, obviously). Leonard's the master of that crime/comedy thing and his novels usually translate really well to film. Avoid Be Cool, though. It's a sequel to Get Shorty but awful.

In the same genre, Guy Ritchies Lock Stock and 2 Smoking Barrels, Rock n Rolla and Snatch

ah yeah, watched get shorty ages ago, unfortunately for me i had to write a paper about "race" and ended up obsessing about their negative portrayal of bolivians, ha ha ha. that kind of ruined it for me.

but i'll take a 2nd look.

jackie brown was great though.


i have lock stock *next in line* in my action queue actually, thanks. will look for the others as well.

--

i have kinachi okamoto's KILL! at home, which is presumably a samurai/giallo parody, and it's based on the same novel as SANJURO

also have coming soon in that similar vein: 3 kings (watched already a couple of times, always good), kill me 3 times, 7 psychopaths (wow, a lot of numbers in that little lot, what's up w/ that, adds up to 13, lucky number).