I heard about a new documentary on Jim Baker and the source family (http://vimeo.com/58953915 | http://thesourcedoc.com/) and found out this series of interviews.

Not everything Bunuel made is available, but of the dozen or so I've seen, none have disappointed. Oh, I suppose he repeats his themes a lot, particularly male jealousy, but big whoop.
-----
Zero Dark Thirty was so much better the second time. Kind of genius in its own way. First time, I thought it was cold and devoid of normal human emotion. Now I see that as its strength. Almost any other director would've made it more pulse-pounding and "action-y", and I think it took great control to simply tell the story without jerking the audience around.

Anyone else see it?

i forgot who the fuck didn't like it (apparently tons of people, judging by the imdb ratings) but this shit was brilliant, gorgeous, extraordinary, delicious---



cosmopolis

really, i think i get why so many people don't like it-- you have to be familiar with, or at least amenable to cronenberg's language, methods, obsessions. it pulls elements from things as far away as existenz and the italian machine (one of his early shorts) and dead ringers and crash...

it's "heavy" too-- it demands you think instead of just see--add some jazz drums and intertitles and it could be masculin-feminin (ha).

fantastic. extraordinary. i enjoyed it immensely. i want to watch it again right now.

K so I think one thing we all seem to agree on is Scorcese rules. So top 5 films by him?

In no order for me it's

1)Taxi Driver
2)Raging Bull
3)King Of Comedy
4)Shutter Island
5)Mean Streets

It's admittedly De Niro heavy but bite me. Two notable mentions for me is The Departed and Kundun.

i didn't like the departed. but goodfellas should be in his top 5 i think.

1. Last Temptation of Christ
2. Kundun
3. Aviator
4. A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies
5. (A fan edit of New York, New York could be really good)

I hate that film with a passion.


1. Mean Streets
2. Taxi Driver
3. Goodfellas
4. Raging Bull
5. Colour of Money

haaa haaa haaa

i can see how you could hate the characters, but they are what they are-- the ultimate sociopathic one percenter and his various minions/associates.

it all made perfect sense to me, it even felt a bit of a cyberpunk movie (minus the punk part), the unreal everything of it, perfect, very don de lillo, very cronenberg also, brilliant.

if anything the only part that felt a bit off to me was the last one, the one with harvey pekar, or whatever he's called. which is the only part that people who hate the movie seem to have liked. to me it was the opposite, it was a slight letdown, a bit obvious, after all that otherwordliness to end up in that random grime and the predictable employee with a grudge, but eh, the dialogue throughout the film was poetry to my ears, what can i say, i'm a sucker for conversation movies.

e.g.:

"your prostate is asymmetrical"

As you say, there was something inevitable about Cronenberg adapting a DeLillo novel; they do seem like kindred spirits in lots of ways. It's interesting that you're drawn to the dialogue, though. I like DeLillo a lot but that's a side of his writing I really struggle with. Great ideas and amazing descriptions but he does that thing where his characters don't so much speak to each other as make statements. I'm sure it fits with his overall message and can apprecate how it might work conceptually, it just really grates on me, and it seems that Cronenberg stuck pretty close to DeLillo's dialogue.

haaa haaa yes!! i remember you saying how much you hate his dialogue. which again i can understand-- it is as you say, not natural speech but statement-making. i think a lot of people of his era do/did stuff like that, try to jam some sort of philosophical shit to inform their novels because the novel had been declared dead and they had to try something so they turned to "theory". so you have people like kundera or julian barnes or what was the name of that playwright with the chaos in the english garden? i forget. in any case, yes, it's theory, disguised as novel or drama, but where i find julian barnes's moralizing extremely irritating i find delillo speaking through his stiff masks highly entertaining. the sense of alienation/otherwordliness i get from him is wonderful: i "get" it, not that i claim i "understand" it, but i catch his mental illness temporarily, and for me it's an enjoyable ride, like one of those comfy fevers one has to take in bed with a pile of comic books. calvino does the same thing to me by the way, now that i think of it (except calvino is harder to enter). i rant too much this morning, i am procrastinating urgent work, i should temporarily flee but thanks for the ear.

not sure if this counts but just finished watching "citizens of cosmopolis" which is the documentary on the "making of" cosmoposlis and its fucking sensational. damn, i love those people, particularly the crew. looks like such a great place to work.

on a hilarious note, i wasn't aware that the actor guy is the one from "twilight". mainly because twilight doesn't register in my radar except as laughable tv commercials and vague pop culture references. but good on him, for doing this. good actor too. and is juliette binoche getting hotter with age? please say it is so... she was smoldering. ANyWAY, good fun, good fun. if i could own this blu-ray i probably would, but i never buy movies. maybe i'll just keep it around longer till its magic is fully spent and i can return it.

Along with Winter Light, it's probably mine, too.

Microcosmos is a cool flick.

heres the whole movie of MICROCOSMOS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zboRn6cImY
it's actually quite good. better to watch while listening to something else
the music and soundtrack to this movie is more silent then anything
or at least "nature noises"
quite good
i would recommend this for a new years eve party on mushrooms
we did it some years ago and mustve played it 6 times in a row

Trying to watch all my Ethan Hawke movies

I've not seen the documentary but thanks for the recommendation. I'll definitely see if I can find it. Although I've seen quite a few of Bergman's films, I really don't know much about him at all, either about his life or motivations, anything.

In 1934, aged 16, he was sent to Germany to spend the summer vacation with family friends. He attended a Nazi rally in Weimar at which he saw Adolf Hitler.[8] He later wrote in Laterna Magica (The Magic Lantern) about the visit to Germany, describing how the German family had put a portrait of Adolf Hitler on the wall by his bed, and that "for many years, I was on Hitler's side, delighted by his success and saddened by his defeats".[9] Bergman did two five-month stretches of mandatory military service. - (wikipedia)