Last Watched

[Curtis, baby]

some boomer white lady told me that "the power of the dog is incredible" and that she's "excited for all the best movies to come out during oscar season" in the same conversation, so, yeah

[niminy-piminy]

by chance (or by providence???), i happened to stumble upon the following "A/V Geeks" streaming right at the moment when an education flick (ca. 17 min long) called "The Goof" (John Clayton, 1961) started to be shown...

https://youtu.be/Gako3aNoGww?t=2825

Ted and his twin sister, Pam raise hamsters. One day while caring for them, they were talking about the championship baseball game scheduled for that afternoon. Ted was the captain of the team. Mr. Clayborne, the coach, dropped by to tell Ted that because of injuries and absent team members, Henry Robinson would be playing right field. This was terrible news for Ted and Pam since Henry, "the goof" was known for his antics and showing off. Henry arrived, glove-in-hand, and shouting cheers for the team. Ted and Pam shook their heads in disgust and uttered verbal insults. Henry called the hamsters rats and the threesome parted ways not noticing that Mr. Brown, their beloved hamster, had gotten out of its cage which Pam had forgotten to latch. Henry lived up to his reputation at the game. He did not catch any balls hit to right field. The bases were loaded with the score tied and the final hit went to right field. Ted indicated that he had it. Henry and Ted collided and the ball was dropped; the other team won the game. Dejected and angry the kids were consoled by the coach. He tried to tell them that no one felt worse than Henry for losing the game. He suggested that they try harder to be a real friend to Henry. When they got home they found Henry at Mr. Brown's empty cage and accused him of letting the hamster out. Henry denied it and said he had come to feed Mr. Brown a piece of lettuce. Henry spotted Mr. Brown in the bushes and coaxed him with the lettuce. He was so happy when he came to him, stroking him with affection. He asked the twins if they would teach him how to raise hamsters and for a few moments, it seemed that if they all really tried, perhaps they could be friends.

then, i discovered a longer (29 min) monochrome version containing (besides "The Goof" flick) also an intermezzo with an adult (affiliated with Methodist Church) & a few smartass little people discussing goofiness...
https://youtu.be/83nnuu5ObPc

last but not least, omitted from the aforementioned synopsis is the creepy detail the (non-goofy) twins raise hamsters not just for fun but they supply them to a local laboratory developing vaccines!

[sally]

le royaume nain de lilliput contre gigas le long, prince des géants - 1914

know i should be watching 1911 but the least disturbing thing about this was seeing a baby maurice chevalier (incidentally, the suggested playlist threw up next a very much older chevalier talking about cocaine & ether, and yep, appropriate)

very old fashioned for 1914, but also, mental.

[rischka]

ugh i'm stuck with hbo so far i've seen the day after tomorrow, high-rise and clueless <3

Edit: well they must knew it was my bday cuz they're showing magic Mike XXL

Edit edit: this is really fucking dumb

[Curtis, baby]

yi yi
yeah its the best

[rischka]

fresh from my vertigo rewatch and my main take away is: why are they in love with this creepy man i don't think the plot holds up

https://twitter.com/rbgscfz/status/1482 ... 45761?s=20

but hey it looks amazing. i'd forgotten the trippy title sequence and that there were 2 missions! mission dolores! will visit when i make it back to the coast. i don't know how old i was when i first saw this but i remember being very confused at madeline/judy lol. followed up with guy maddin's the green fog

[serri]

Living It Up (1954) dir. Norman Taurog


I liked the back half of this movie about Lewis pretending to be terminally ill quite a lot, set up wasn't so interesting.

[serri]

Passion (1954) dir. Allan Dwan

Must watch action and location shooting. Some odd work going on with the bit actors. Powerful overall.

[Roscoe]

THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH -- Joel Coen's videogamization of Shakespeare, but closer to MYST than anything else. Stodgy filmmaking, gimmicky cheesy CGI, and worst of all a somnolent Denzel Washington who seems to be suggesting that his Macbeth is already dead and the whole thing is a dream before he dies.

[Curtis, baby]

umbugbene has THE review of vertigo imo. kinda frames it as, this is hitchcock's fantasy

[greennui]

Odissea (Franco Rossi/Piero Schivazappa/Mario Bava, 1968) - Just what I've been looking for, an old school, faithful retelling of the Odyssey, with no Kirk Douglas in sight! The original series was split in 8 parts with there also being a theatrical cut of 2 hours, the version I watched though was split in three parts and 6 1/2 hours long so not sure which version I watched!

[Joks Trois]

THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH -- Joel Coen's videogamization of Shakespeare, but closer to MYST than anything else. Stodgy filmmaking, gimmicky cheesy CGI, and worst of all a somnolent Denzel Washington who seems to be suggesting that his Macbeth is already dead and the whole thing is a dream before he dies.

I wouldn't go that far, but it is extremely overrated and gets worse the more I think about it. All of this hype about it being a throwback to early cinema is nonsense. Perhaps superficially, but the lack of depth and nuance to the line readings and the absence of complex or interesting psychology really annoyed me. Why bother trying to imitate that style unless you are prepared to go all the way?

[rischka]

bumming in beijing or beijing bastards (1990) there's an extended cut of this foundational chinese documentary available now

https://twitter.com/rbgscfz/status/1484 ... 69248?s=20

[rischka]

Odissea (Franco Rossi/Piero Schivazappa/Mario Bava, 1968) - Just what I've been looking for, an old school, faithful retelling of the Odyssey, with no Kirk Douglas in sight! The original series was split in 8 parts with there also being a theatrical cut of 2 hours, the version I watched though was split in three parts and 6 1/2 hours long so not sure which version I watched!

ok you talked me into it

[sally]

made a start on 1972 with lament/elegy ♥♥♥......love those wild hardman films! yılmaz güney was such a good filmmaker, not nearly enough renown in the film world. also he's hot.

[rischka]

loved the ridiculous eagle shooting heroes, a parody of ashes of time by the stars of ashes of time (i think it might actually make more sense)

https://twitter.com/rbgscfz/status/1484 ... 08802?s=20

- my bollywood evening in paris is less fun but it's hard not to enjoy india's elvis, shammi kapoor

[nrh]

loved the ridiculous eagle shooting heroes, a parody of ashes of time by the stars of ashes of time (i think it might actually make more sense)
- my bollywood evening in paris is less fun but it's hard not to enjoy india's elvis, shammi kapoor

love eagle shooting heroes, and jeffrey lau is a very underrated director (he produced ashes and made this one to pay for it going wildly over budget and over schedule), and his later wuxia parody chinese odyssey 2002 is just as good.

evening in paris is kind of dull - shakti samanta was great at yearning melodrama and even light noir like china town, but this kind of glitzy pop romance just feels leaden under his touch. shammi and sharmila are great, clothing great, songs great, but man it just seems to drag on forever.

[rischka]

yeah i did it in 2 parts - good and evil sharmilas was fun. also most ridiculous ending since a monkey was the real killer

[...]

I really dug Eagle Shooting Heroes when I saw it, but the memory has unfortunately faded a fair bit since then so I'll need to rewatch it sometime, probably not soon though since I'm more gung ho on 2021 and 1911 right now. And Shammi's the best, so I'll have to check that one out too sometime, whenever that might be.

[nrh]

i guess it's not weird that shammi and samanta made so many films together, since they were all hits, but it's such a weird mismatch of star and director sensibility. from what i've seen i'd put china town at the top, kashmiri ki second, singapore distant third and evening in paris last.

[...]

I will adjust my to watch list accordingly!

[St. Gloede]

2 Great & Forgotten Films from Harun Farocki (including 1 new favourite)



Exciting to see two films from very different parts of Harun Farocki's career and both revealed a new side of him that I had not previously seen. Having progressed through Farocki's best-known work I have experienced him as a video artist and as an essayist, most frequently repurposing footage to create new narratives that undercut our perceptions of reality or in his possibly most known work, reconstruct a narrative of a revolution from news reportages and surveillance cameras. In some works he adds narration, in others, he leaves us with the imagery. I have also seen him as a stylist, which comes the closest to the work in his 1970 feature debut, but this is a different being entirely. The biggest surprise was seeing him as a fly on the wall documentary filmmaker in his 46-minute The Re-Education that ended up on my favourite list, and which I really hope I can convince more people to see - through both deserve that honour. 

Anyhow, let me dive more into the two films themselves:


Eine Sache, die sich versteht (15x) / Something Self Explanatory (15x) (1971, Hartmut Bitomsky & Harun Farocki)



My immediate thoughts after seeing Something Self Explanatory (15x) was "I can't believe Farocki ever did anything like this" and "I need to seek out the works of Hartmut Bitomsky" - but let's just dive into the theatricality and craziness first - as this is essentially over the top and utterly insane political theater. The degree of fake sets and even insane stunts are amazing. At one point they literally have a car flipping around on the road, and this, of all things, in a grainy low-budget essay-comedy-satire attempting to teach people about Marxist/Socialist theory (having read a decent bit of political and economic theory some of this feels closer to Proudhon than Marx).

We are presented with 15 segments, each of them is narrative in one way or another, from botched robberies to two workers just destroying the products of the other without understanding the work that went into them. As a piece of educational material, I'm not quite sure it succeeds. It often gives answers, but it does not back the answers to their questions up - which could be because they view them as, well, "self-explanatory", perhaps because they don't want to get bogged down or perhaps they had not thought further themselves - but the segments - they just come to life. It does offer intellectual content, but it is the packaging that is truly impressive, as this film is simply an absolute riot - with all-out comedic sketches that work on their own. Obviously, some are more basic, but others are so full of life - and they truly as a whole - not to mention they actually have meat on the bone. An absolutely delightful re-discovery. 8/10.


Die Umschulung / The Re-Education (1994, Harun Farocki)


"Sales come naturally to West Germans. They sell everything, it is part of their culture", says a frustrated salesman from former East Germany. He is not the only one struggling. Looking at the crowd of dispassionate and possibly even bothered faces crammed into this corporate retreat, it is not even clear if they want to get better or learn the tricks of the trade - but that is why they are here. East Germany is no more, and its citizens must learn how to function in a new economic system. They must learn how to smile and nod, how to bend the truth in their favour and how to please and/or deceive the customer.

Complete with cheesy performances and jokes from the coaches, attempting to engage and inspire, Harun Farocki takes on the role of Allan King or Frederick Wiseman - a fly on the wall - casually observing how the people are to observe, learn and mimic corporate behaviour and language. This is honestly intriguing enough in itself, as there is a degree of vulnerability and honesty within the pretence that captures something very human - but what grabbed me and made it an instant favourite is the way Farocki grabs it and purposefully frames it through the lense of re-education - capturing a unique moment in time when one way of life ended.

The Re-Education may, despite being a 46-minute made for TV documentary be one of the most important documents from recent history, capturing just how ill at ease East Germans are with the ways of what western society has normalised. It shows how, when they did not have the same pressure to sell they would be more honest, but also less courteous - and it shows the massive culture clash. It also does something more. Through showing the exercises, where people take on the roles of salesmen, we can see it on their bodies, hear it in their voices, the fakeness of it all. They are truly resetting everything they know and recalibrating how they act with the world. Their way of life has ended.

Amazingly, Farocki even manages to capture their lunch conversations diving into these very issues, where you see their angst, surrender or in some cases a willingness to persist in their ways - though as some point out - it would mean ruin. There is a gaudy, uneasy feeling looming throughout as the works many faces flow over you - and this is in large part due to the title alone. This lense, or even commentary on what is occurring make what we see all the more powerful - and makes something as mundane as a corporate seminar with workshop get epic and existential dimensions. A stunning work that needs to be discovered and seen.

9/10

Note: Farocki made a very similar film named "Indoctrination" 7 years earlier, focusing, seemingly, on the same seminar, but then with West Germans. I will definitely seek it out as well, and I can imagine the two making a wonderful double bill of a joint 92 minutes.

[St. Gloede]

Die Schulung AKA Indoctrination (1987, Harun Farocki)



After writing up my thoughts on The Re-Education I could not help myself from jumping back to Farocki's first exploration of corporate seminars. In a way these films could and probably should be considered a duology, as not only do they have similar subversive forms, asking us to actively question and contextualize what we are seeing - with a key from the title - but each seminar is held by the very same coach. He is charming, enthusiastic, cheeky, gaudy, manipulative - and he will train people to express themselves in a way that captivates - be that leading teams as in Indoctrination - which focuses on executives - or ex-East German salesmen not used to manipulating their targets in The Re-Education. In this frame of mind I have to make the generally unusual claim that the sequel, is better - by far. In fact though, while watching Indoctrination I had to remind myself that this came first so as to not judge it too harshly.

Indoctrination is missing the historical moment, it is missing the look behind the curtain (pun intended) at how one culture and way of life is consumed (pun intended) into another, and it is missing the larger implications, the sense of dread, the high stakes (extinction, the disappearance of a way of life, desperately seeking ways to keep the companies afloat) and the claustrophobia that came from the mountain setting and the participants' inability to leave. Seeing comfortable executives simply learning ways to control a room is just not as awe inspiring, especially when you recently saw the latter.

That said, objectively (by my subjective standards) it is still a great work, especially when you take a step back. You get a look behind the curtain of manipulation and Farocki really manages to make you connect to many of the participants, feel their fears and desires and bring forth something human. The way the coach behaves is also critically explored as we go through the exercises, see how he interacts with, tricks and feeds the participants in various ways. It is, yet again, a 45-46 minute effort, but it has far more grandeur and power, and makes a seminar come to life under a critical eye. I am quite amazed that these challenging and thought-provoking films would be casually released on TV. 8/10

[rischka]

thx for your thoughts G, i have some farockis lined up as i love experimental documentary

my last watched is lost kitchen sink drama 'the leather boys' d. sidney j furie (1964) - a sensitive portrayal of young (almost) love? between 2 remarkably clean-cut bikers after one becomes disillusioned with his marriage (to rita tushingham).

beautiful b/w photography, esp a wintertime highway run to edinburgh. sensitive subject (too much for US audiences at the time) very well done



his biker jacket makes me laugh every time. 'dodgy' indeed

[St. Gloede]

Thanks, Rischka, hope you share your views on the Farockis you catch as well. Which were you thinking of seeing.

Bookmarked The Leather Boys, looks like a very interesting film.

[sally]

i got fed up with 1911 so to liven things up a bit i moved onto...1912! actually, just wanted more valdemar, and gosh stumfilm.dk didn't even tag vor tids dame (the modern girl) as erotisk! major error!

not only was there so much intense hotness (clara pontoppidan had WAY more chemistry with him than he did with ice-queen asta) that i watched one amazing scene where he did some kind of pseudo-phallus thing with the handle of a tennis racket whilst she winked at the camera about 10 times, but there was also comedy! and action! in boats! (and there was me thinking the boat chase scene in delmont's 1913 the mysterious club was somehow innovative, nothing of the sort in comparison!) and get this! an actor called viking ringheim! really! (am ignoring the horrendous politics tho)

can't believe this was all 1912. miles ahead from 1911....

♥♥♥

[Lencho of the Apes]

made a start on 1972 with lament/elegy ♥♥♥......love those wild hardman films! yılmaz güney was such a good filmmaker, not nearly enough renown in the film world. also he's hot.

It freaked me out that that location that looked like a World Heritage Site was being systematically destroyed onscreen -- and if it was a set they created, that boggles me too. But yeah, good movie. Banditi Di Orgosolo vibe. And baby dinosaurs screaming for food.

[sally]

oh same. i eventually decided that it was real, but maybe not as old as it looked (hopefully) and i think there was some very nifty editing of the rock falls perhaps

watched another 72 (le seuil du vide) that should also be more iconic than the obscurity it's plunged in (à la THAT room, see plot). it's like the tenant for girls. (dir. by a man of course tho, it's the 70s & oh my god look at his other films, makes it even more bizarre that this exists)

don't suppose anyone has ATHANOR do they? although i've holy grailed it for so long it can't possibly be as interesting as i've imagined it

[greennui]

watched another 72 (le seuil du vide) that should also be more iconic than the obscurity it's plunged in (à la THAT room, see plot). it's like the tenant for girls. (dir. by a man of course tho, it's the 70s & oh my god look at his other films, makes it even more bizarre that this exists)

don't suppose anyone has ATHANOR do they? although i've holy grailed it for so long it can't possibly be as interesting as i've imagined it

Kinda like an inverse Jean Rollin, pornographer dabbling in the occasional fantastique.

Athanor was on kg unseeded for years, so frustrating! Think it’s been removed now.

[sally]

Kinda like an inverse Jean Rollin, pornographer dabbling in the occasional fantastique.

that's precisely what i was groping for!

another 72 - ettore scola's la più bella serata della mia vita - based on dürrenmatt, beautifully shot, and featuring alberto sordi, pierre brasseur, michel simon & charles vanel! so surreal to think that last week i watched charles vanel in a film from 1923....