Last Watched

[Curtis, baby]

weird finnish movie?? IM IN!

[nrh]

loving the territory

then you need to follow it up with wim wenders the shape of things, which ruiz claims wenders stole his crew (and story) for.

there is a good story somewhere of ruiz needing to coax henri alekan out of retirement for this, the last thing he'd shot was the sadly dreadful mifune/brosnan/delon western red sun ten years earlier.

[rischka]

yes i was wondering about that! the sole screen credits of 'paul getty jr' aka john paul getty III, who was kidnapped by the mafia and held for months while his grandfather refused to pay. until he recieved a severed ear...

also i always wonder if the kid is the same kid from city of pirates and manoel on the isle of wonders (tho a different actor)... maybe it represents young raul

[nrh]

for some reason i rewatched wxiii, the third patlabor movie. it's usually kind of dismissed, i guess because it isn't made by the mamoru oshii/kazunori ito combo, and doesn't really feature the robots at all. but then one of the pleasures of the original series was that they didn't have the budget to have more than a few minutes of robots in most episodes and instead focused on boring mundane detail.

and this is in that wheelhouse, a moody and oddly lyrical detective story that builds to paranoiac monster territory that kind of anticipates the host in certain ways. lots of great scenes of public transit, eating at lonely restaurants, falling asleep listening to records.

[rischka]

so first I watched Corman day the world ended. it's on youtube I don't think I've seen a wenders since until the end of the world for some cup ...exhausting but he has my respect



and samuel fuller is in this, i didn't see him in the territory! it is kind of wonderful



he's so cute and it almost seems like a couple of these guys are playing the same characters they were in the territory? is it just me?



he's telling abt barbara stanwyck and 40 guns thx for telling me to watch this!! ♥ it's so meta

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Corman day the world ended.

I seem to be alone in loving this one, perhaps because the thought of hanging out with shirt-unbuttoned Richard Denning at the end of the world isn't so bad... Such fifties schlock pleasures, as I recall. Perhaps I should peak into Wenders homage, even if at 1982 it's past my personal cinematic best before date...

[savannah]

the baker's wife (1938)

maybe it's because i had a low-grade fever but for me this was almost as annoying as it was delightful. i felt like it had 2-3 really interesting ideas but it kept pulverizing them repeatedly like a slab of yeast. the ending is glorious and i loved the little scenes of pettiness, hypocrisy, tragedy, and comedy that highlight everything beautiful and terrible about village society, but it was like someone who tells a good joke and, seeing they got everyone to laugh, tells it several more times.

[rischka]

Corman day the world ended.

I seem to be alone in loving this one, perhaps because the thought of hanging out with shirt-unbuttoned Richard Denning at the end of the world isn't so bad... Such fifties schlock pleasures, as I recall. Perhaps I should peak into Wenders homage, even if at 1982 it's past my personal cinematic best before date...

it was fun! and in truth they have so little in common it's hard to draw a connection. corman is in the film tho!

[rischka]

the baker's wife (1938)

maybe it's because i had a low-grade fever but for me this was almost as annoying as it was delightful. i felt like it had 2-3 really interesting ideas but it kept pulverizing them repeatedly like a slab of yeast. the ending is glorious and i loved the little scenes of pettiness, hypocrisy, tragedy, and comedy that highlight everything beautiful and terrible about village society, but it was like someone who tells a good joke and, seeing they got everyone to laugh, tells it several more times.

oh gosh i had a similar reaction to this after reading a lot of praise. glad i'm not the only one. also if the baker's wife doesn't want to be with the baker i say let her go

[savannah]

the baker's wife (1938)

maybe it's because i had a low-grade fever but for me this was almost as annoying as it was delightful. i felt like it had 2-3 really interesting ideas but it kept pulverizing them repeatedly like a slab of yeast. the ending is glorious and i loved the little scenes of pettiness, hypocrisy, tragedy, and comedy that highlight everything beautiful and terrible about village society, but it was like someone who tells a good joke and, seeing they got everyone to laugh, tells it several more times.

oh gosh i had a similar reaction to this after reading a lot of praise. glad i'm not the only one. also if the baker's wife doesn't want to be with the baker i say let her go

i feel so validated lol. i was surprised at how well this is loved on letterboxd, not a rating below 3 1/2 stars to be found. the scene where they can't get the info out of the fisherman because he keeps adding uninteresting asides to his story seemed very self-aware...

[nrh]

haven't seen the pagnol yet but the incident in jean giono's blue boy (a great book) isn't played for comedy at all. importantly in the book the shepherd comes back to the village to fight and flirt with the women, and any sense of the baker's victory is totally undermined. sounds like pagnol goes in a totally different direction.

[greennui]

Enjoyed State of Things when I saw it years ago, one of those that really make you wanna go to Lisbon as well. I've watched The Territory as well but have virtually no recollection of it, one of those Ruiz things that totally flew over my head and could use a rewatch probably.

[rischka]

beautiful photography and a lot of easter eggs. 'the survivors' is the title of the sci-fi film the crew is making. and getty has an early computer. in what, 1982 so a commodore 64 maybe i still like the territory better but it ended kind of abruptly... any chance they ran out of film...

[nrh]

i think they did basically run out of resources. ruiz being ruiz i'm not sure if the ending would have been any less abrupt.

jon jost was there shooting a documentary about the production but either it was never finished or just never got released

[rischka]

drive drive remember that movie 'they drive by night'

'garfield'

no no thieves highway that's the one garfield did

u wish!! that was richard conte! :film nerds:

oh he gets it later on

now I need to see dwans most dangerous man alive the last film of dwans career and similar theme of survivors

[pabs]

I saw the blaxploitation film Coffy (Hill, 1973). It was so crazy, I loved it! A black woman, whose daughter died taking impure drugs, goes on a solo revenge rampage, hunting down and shooting every man she holds responsible in an orgy of vigilante justice. I can understand why women would object to the film's constant tearing off of ladies' tops in fights (one of them between a trio of prostitutes at a party), but here it mostly comes across as zany and camp. Really cartoon-ish. Basically, whenever there was even a tiny chance a breast might accidentally fall out of clothing into full view, it did. But her "Die, muthafucka!" moments were so much fun. Black power!! 8/10

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (Greaves, 1968) was a cool social experiment. First released 23 years later, it's amazing it was almost lost. 7.5/10

[greennui]

Some short reviews.

Ludwig II 1955 ‘Ludwig II: Glanz und Ende eines Königs’ Directed by Helmut Käutner - Gorgeous technicolor, decent but doesn't really trump Visconti. It occurred to me that Anton Walbrook never played Ludwig and how wrong is that?

Private Property 1960 Directed by Leslie Stevens - Neat forgotten home invasion noir.

Excursion 1966 ‘Ekdromi’ Directed by Takis Kanellopoulos - The mood, the score!

Moses and Aaron 1975 ‘Moses und Aron’ Directed by Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet - Much prefer them singing.

Riddles of the Sphinx 1977 Directed by Peter Wollen, Laura Mulvey - The score!

Nobody’s Business 1996 Directed by Alan Berliner - Great film to put me back in a movie watching mood, 60 minutes , short sweet and hilarious at times.

Heimat Is a Space in Time 2019 ‘Heimat ist ein Raum aus Zeit’ Directed by Thomas Heise - The reading out of family letters from the time of escalating antisemitism and looming Holocaust was really chilling. The latter parts failed to captivate me as much.

[greennui]

Four episodes into Out 1 and I'm kinda struggling, the cuteness of Juliet Berto is what keeps me going.

[savannah]

Four episodes into Out 1 and I'm kinda struggling, the cuteness of Juliet Berto is what keeps me going.

lately i'm really struggling to commit to the 3+ hour movies on my watchlist, although i have no problem binging tv episodes. how do you all feel about watching long movies in "episodes" rather than watching the whole thing in one sitting?

the wayward cloud (tsai ming-liang, 2005)
my fourth ming-liang and i continue to adore him. i want to space out and savor his work but it's hard not to rush through his filmography after seeing something like this. i wasn't expecting the (delightful!!) musical numbers. lee kang-sheng dressed as a merman singing in a water reservoir is everything. still mulling over all that's being said in this film about the ways commerce affects even our intimacy (watermelon surplus? time to repurpose them as new tools to put distance between each other. water shortage? doesn't mean we can stop filming the shower scene of a porno for which there is simultaneously zero and astronomical demand). absolutely savage ending, raw footage from collective subconscious nightmares.

grand illusion (jean renoir, 1937)
the summary did not prepare me for this experience. i love when that happens. lost count of the ways renoir likens war to a game/theater without seeming to even try. the searchlight-as-spotlight scene and the way the drag show abruptly ends were particularly amazing.

medicine for melancholy (barry jenkins, 2008)
this has been sitting on my watchlist since the days of the auteurs (so around the time it came out i guess? eesh. my original watchlist is old enough to have a learner's permit). long before anyone knew jenkins for moonlight, so i was kind of surprised to see his name in the credits. it's fine. i didn't love the washed out, almost-black-and-white effect. i really like the main conceit of the relationship and thinking about what it must be like to hook up with one of the only other people of your race in a city/scene where you're a single-digit % minority, and all the questions you'd ask yourself about it, but it didn't sell me on the "they're falling in love" scenes.

[pabs]

Sing Your Song - The Harry Belafonte Story (Rostock, 2011).

I'm continually amazed at how fucking racist a lot of Americans have been/were (and some presumably still are). Horrified.

It makes me hate many Americans. Sorry, but it does. There are some really really bad people in that country.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mE1ir5j5jOI

[pabs]

lately i'm really struggling to commit to the 3+ hour movies on my watchlist, although i have no problem binging tv episodes. how do you all feel about watching long movies in "episodes" rather than watching the whole thing in one sitting?

I do that often. I'll watch films in two, or even up to four, sessions, sometimes over as many as five days.

[rischka]

i do that too - if it's late i will fall asleep and watch half the next day. quite often with 2+ hr films. if it's really good i'll start over so sometimes, it might be 3 days, like with this film. la sombra del caudillo (bracho 1960) a wicked political thriller with many twists and turns. loved how bracho shot the grandiose architecture against a big romantic score from the opening scenes. and the congress building!





this staircase especially







terrific looking film. and the coup plotters resonated with current events!! black comedy gold. this is the only film i've seen lencho give 4.5 stars making me especially curious enjoyed it a great deal



women were very much an afterthought here so it's real nice to see mexico's next president will be a woman go ladies!

[nrh]

Four episodes into Out 1 and I'm kinda struggling, the cuteness of Juliet Berto is what keeps me going.

out 1 is something i think of as one of my most important movie experiences, but i always wonder if i'd have the same experience if shown in a different format. i saw it over two weekend days, with one hour or so long intermission between parts, which had a kind of overwhelming effect. a lot of the people i know who saw the recentish restoration (and liked it) saw it over the course of weekday nights, in 2 hour chunks (roughly 2 episodes) per night, which just seems like it would be totally different. i have the blu ray, keep putting off revisiting, partly worried about not having that magic of the first contact...

always try my best not to break up movies, but that mostly means that the really long stuff (sorry tranque laquen) ends up sitting around for years. and of course it's inevitable that you sometimes just fall asleep anyway. so maybe best to give up and accept that this is the way it's going to be...

[Lencho of the Apes]

caudillo

I have a fresh copy of this, some recent 4K transfer that's got to look better than whatever I watched, so I'm close to rewatching it. Never would have occurred to me to link it to Jan 6th... or to think of it as black comedy, I'll have to look for that. For a movie that was destroyed and then found on 16mm in Czechoslovakia, those stills look pretty sharp. Anyway, glad you enjoyed it.

[rischka]

it's a bluray. is it censored? I noticed a few odd transitions

was this the founding of the PRI? is this why it was suppressed

institutional revolutionary party - incredible oxymoron

[rischka]

I'm continually amazed at how fucking racist a lot of Americans have been/were (and some presumably still are). Horrified.

It makes me hate many Americans. Sorry, but it does. There are some really really bad people

don't cancel us oz. some of us are trying. and then i watched



high, wide and handsome (mamoulian 1937) not sure if the title refers to randolph scott but it's the only thing i can figure lol



i couldn't cheer on his oil explorations, his big fight with the railroad or his dreams of a pipeline but his romance with irene dunne was pretty cute



mamoulian has some really nice dissolves. this one goes on for several seconds. on the whole i'm afraid the film is trying to do too much - screwball, operetta, manifest destiny, the pipeline scenes even reminded me of early soviet films!



it's nearly like that borzage that careens from one genre to the next, history is made at night (also 1937!) if only it were that much fun. an interesting watch (w cats)

[Lencho of the Apes]

censored?

Not censored, just banned. Details here': https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_sombra ... a_de_1960)

[rischka]

i wondered how they'd filmed in what appeared to be the actual government buildings. a shame bracho fought for the rest of his life for it's release. i suppose the cynical contrast of heroic architecture and rousing score with the events portrayed was mostly in my head then definite black comic potential, esp those going from one office to another repeating the same speeches. surely one of the very best mexican films

which btw i noticed in nyt victimas del pecado will play at film forum in october! ¡viva ninón! need to get some mexican films now


https://youtu.be/wgFsoZ08cQ0

[greennui]

always try my best not to break up movies, but that mostly means that the really long stuff (sorry tranque laquen) ends up sitting around for years. and of course it's inevitable that you sometimes just fall asleep anyway. so maybe best to give up and accept that this is the way it's going to be...

I've waited several days to watch the next part so not really the most ideal of viewings. So far it feels like it's been three hours of Michael Lonsdale rolling around on the floor, though Bulle Ogier has started popping up more frequently which is always promising.

Germany in Autumn (Various, 1978) - Would have liked to have seen a sitcom based on the Fassbinder segment, just endless drunken bickering and jealousy in a large, gloomy and desolate apartment.

The Telephone Book (Nelson Lyon, 1971) - A nice mixture of cartoony sleaziness, blissful horniness and highly stylized aesthetics.

The Blue Note (Andrzej Żuławski, 1991) - When it comes to hysterics, I'm more of a Ken Russell man than a Zulawski one, especially when the subject matter is a classical composer.

Brief Crossing (Catherine Breillat, 2001) - Everything about this was just straight fire, need to watch more Breillat films.

Freddy Got Fingered (Tom Green, 2001) - Haven't laughed this much in ages, in need of a critical revaluation.

[rischka]

finally watched ACCA (assa) what does this word mean please

good movie! and apparently what finally convinced the population that perestroika was real. soviets were extremely anti-rock



#nofunzone

imdb to the rescue:

The title is a slang word from the counterculture of Moscow and Leningrad, meaning a mess, turmoil or confusion.The structure of the film itself represents a similar mixture of characters and stories which are not all connected logically.