1979 poll

[greennui]

Surprised how off-everyone's-radar Jarman's The Tempest is. Definite contender for my list, now that I've seen it. Two scfz views on LB, and greennui has it on his watchlist. Him in particular that I was going to recommend it to, so yippee for that. (Is that a masque at the end, or is that a masque?)

3 tem 1.jpg

3 tem 2.jpg

3 tem 3.jpg

Nice! I've always felt that Jarman's aesthetics have been on the cusp of being my thing so I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of an impression this one makes. I've also been kinda fascinated by the play and the very word 'tempest' lately so it was a nice coincidence that it happened to be from this year.

[St. Gloede]

Quite the fantastic year:

1. Stalker (1979, Andrei Tarkovsky)

Wise Blood (1979, John Huston)
All That Jazz (1979, Bob Fosse)
Real Life (1979, Albert Brooks)
Buffet froid (1979, Bertrand Blier)
Die Blechtrommel (1979, Volker Schlöndorff)
Die Ehe der Maria Braun / The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979, Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
Die Dritte Generation / The Third Generation (1979, Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
Apocalypse Now (1979, Francis Ford Coppola)
¡Que Viva Mexico! - Da zdravstvuyet Meksika! (1979, Sergei M. Eisenstein)

Dalla nube alla resistenza (1979, Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub)
Life of Brian (1979, TerryJones)
L'hypothèse du tableau vole / The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting (1979, Raou Ruiz)
La femme qui pleure / The Crying Woman (1979, Jacques Doillon)
The China Syndrome (1979, James Bridges)
Ce répondeur ne prend pas de messages / This Answering Service Takes No Messages (1979, Alain Cavalier)
Fukushû suru wa ware ni ari / Vengeance is Mine (1979)
Time After Time (1979, Nicholas Meyer)
Panny z Wilka / The Maids of Wilko (1979, Andrzej Wajda)
The Warriors (1979, Walter Hill)

Honorable mentions:

Magyar rapszódia / Hungarian Rhapsody (1979, Miklós Jancsó)
Alien (1979, Ridley Scott)
Rosszemberek / Bad Guys (1979, György Szomjas)
Kramer vs. Kramer (1979, Robert Benton)
Bildnis einer Trinkerin / Ticket of No Return (1979, Ulrike Ottinger)
New Old (1979, Pierre Clémenti)
Clair de femme / Womanlight (1979, Costa-Gavras)
Les soeurs Brontë / The Bronte Sisters (1979, André Téchiné)
Over the Edge (1979, Jonathan Kaplan)
Pentimento (1979, Frans Zwartjes)
Sibiriada (1979, Andrei Konchalovsky)
Manhattan (1979, Woody Allen)
Tess (1979, Roman Polanski)
...And Justice for All. (1979, Norman Jewison)
Escape from Alcatraz (1979, Don Siegel)
Scum (1979, Alan Clarke)
A Walk Through H: The Reincarnation of an Ornithologist (1979, Peter Greenaway)
Woyzeck (1979, Werner Herzog)
Szabadíts meg a gonosztól / Deliver Us from the Devil (1979, Pal Sandor)
A pobezim az na kraj sveta / And I'll Run to the Ends of the Earth (1979, Peter Solan)
Quintet (1979, Robert Altman)
Breaking Away (1979, Peter Yates)
Going in Style (1979, Martin Brest)
La luna (1979, Bernardo Bertolucci)
The Tempest (1979, Derek Jarman)
La tía Alejandra (1979, Arturo Ripstein)
Martin et Léa (1979, Alain Cavalier)
The Brood (1979, David Cronenberg)
A Little Romance (1979, George Roy Hill)
Le navire Night (1979, Marguerite Duras)
Zoo zéro (1979, Alain Fleischer)

[Holymanm]

crushed basil leaves and olive oil

Good guess, but it's actually a band doc.

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

My Spanish is a little rusty as well... but I'm guessing this song is a Savage Steve Holland doc?

[Angel]

A Intrusa (The Intruder)

10
Arrebato (Rapture)
Breaking Away
Covjek koga treba ubiti (The Man to Kill)
Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum)
Ek Din Pratidin (And Quiet Rolls the Dawn)
Heartland
Jaguar
Julio comienza en julio (Julio Begins in July)
Junoon (Obsession)
Les petites fugues (Little Escapes)
Llámenme Mike (Call Me Mike)
Murder by Decree
My Brilliant Career
Nacionalna klasa (National Class Category Up to 785 ccm)
Osenniy marafon (Autumn Marathon)
The China Syndrome
Time After Time
Xiao hua

Deliberately excluded (IMDb/TSPDT/S&S top 500)
Alien
All That Jazz
Apocalypse Now
Being There
Dalla nube alla resistenza
L'enfant secret
Life of Brian
Manhattan
Skazka skazok
Stalker

To see before the deadlline
Dios los cría
Gol Maal
Shodo satsujin: Musuko yo
Tenshi no harawata: Nami
Yami no karyudo

Wanted
Ah! Nomugi toge
Boulevard Nights
David
Ku nao ren de xiao

[mesnalty]

Random oddity I just learned about: a 1979 short by the philosopher Manuel DeLanda, documenting his weirdo graffiti in NYC. Recently restored by Anthology: http://www.ismism.net/

[rischka]

i might just have to make real life my #1. this was hysterical.

[...]

Quite probably my favorite year for movies, for reasons both sentimental and otherwise. Late '78, early '79 was when I first started going to see "arthouse" movies at the theater and as such the movies from the time hold a special place in my heart for being "discovered" at the most auspicious moment for furthering my interest in movie history helped in no small part by '79 being a really good year for all kinds of movies from around the world. It was an excellent mix.

In ninth grade I had a class where the teacher posted the monthly movie schedule on his wall for the local repertory movie house. Me and another kid in the class were always interested in it and started hanging out and going to see all the movies we could, maybe most notably seeing All That Jazz every week for the six weeks or so it ran, along with something else since we couldn't actually buy tickets for All That Jazz, and The Tin Drum for being one of the first "foreign" movies I went to the theater to see.

Anyhow, it's really hard to choose a list form this year because of the mix of personal memory and how many good movies there were from '79. My initial list of movies I liked something about:

All That Jazz
Real Life
Sisters or the Balance of Happiness
Breaking Away
Impostors
Dirty Ho
The Tin Drum
Vengeance is Mine
Siberiade
Raining in the Mountain
Camera Buff
Mother, Daughter, Sister
Phantasm
Tess
Last Hurrah for Chivalry
Gol Maal
The Tempest
And Quiet Rolls the Dawn
Chilly Scenes of Winter
Tale of Tales
Life on Earth
Nosferatu
Galaxy Express 999
Christ Stopped at Eboli
Young Girls of Wilko
The Marriage of Maria Braun
A Walk Through H
Dance of the Drunk Mantis
Wise Blood
The Woman with Red Hair
Quadrophenia
Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy
The Onion Field
The Jericho Mile
Alien
Stalker
Apocalypse Now
Harpya
The Black Hole
The Warriors
The Muppet Movie
My Brilliant Career
The Magnificent Butcher
Winter Kills
From the Clouds to the Resistance
Seeking Asylum
The Black Stallion
Don Giovanni
Richard Pryor Live in Concert
A Little Romance
Woyzeck
Life of Brian
Mad Max
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
The Bronte Sisters
Hardcore
Legend of the Mountain
1941
The Brood
The Amityville Horror
Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro
The Plumber
Murder by Decree
The Magician of Lublin
More American Graffiti
A Perfect Couple
Going in Style
The Rose
The China Syndrome
Over the Edge
Hair
When a Stranger Calls
Old Boyfriends
Starting Over
Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears
Air Crew
Mr Mike's Mondo Video
Steel
The Main Event
Salem's Lot
The Last Embrace
'The Seduction of Joe Tynan
Fearless Hyena
Time After Time
Zulu Dawn
Rock 'n' Roll High School
Home Movies
Elvis
Quintet
Dracula
The In-Laws
The Electric Horseman
Norma Rae
Lovers and Liars
Love on the Run
Love and Bullets
Cuba
Kramer vs Kramer
The Frisco Kid
The Jerk
Saint Jack
The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again
The Lady in Red
Butch and Sundance the Early Days
The Visitor
La Luna
Meteor
Fast Company
Escape from Alcatraz
And Justice for All...
Being There
The Concorde Airport '79
Beyond the Poseiden Adventure
Nightwing
California Dreaming
The Wanderers
Prophecy
Roller Boogie

[Lencho of the Apes]

Visually anonymous

fawning

I very much disagree. Even on the surface, Carp's Elvis is a bit of a weak, helpless man-baby and a bit of an asshole, and if you dig deeper...

Christine was based on the premise that rock-n-roll/teen lifestyles uncritically reproduced all the structural flaws in the dominant culture, in terms of race, class, environmental issues, capitalist abuses... and Elvis continues that same critique, but only surreptitiously, because it was necessary for the movie not to alienate an audience that hoped to see Graceland before they die, one that had long since drank the very koolaid that Carp's first instinct is to denounce. There's a Sirkian double-perspective that comes into play -- maybe not consistently, but very often -- that ironizes everything the movie ostensibly celebrates.

The ending, a career-montage set to an Elvis-sounding version of Battle Hymn Of The Republic, is one of the most obvious examples. What else could that mean but "our boy is an embodiment of the values of the orthodoxy"? It''s certainly not a reference to Elvis's personal "truth (that) goes marching on."

I'm not the best person to talk about visual style, but II think one of his goals was to capture the anonymous blandness of Elvis' environment, for the same Sirkian/ironic purposes. How else can you film trailer parks and Texaco stations?

[Lencho of the Apes]

I'm also very excited about the movies for this year that look more "avant-garde" than "arthouse," in spite of being feature-length fictions. Examples: Anti-Clock, Zoo Zero, Je Meurs De Soif..., maybe Dead Mountaineer's Hotel... I probably won't get to these until very near the end of the month, so maybe I should plug them now.

Does anyone have an srt for Ruiz' Petit Manuel D'Histoire De France?

[greennui]

Je Meurs De Soif... is a mood piece home video in the vein of Garrel, with a touch of Warhol's screen tests and some added drone music. A cozy watch, the director himself has uploaded pretty much his entire filmography on youtube, which is a neat resource.

[rischka]

yami no karyudo/hunter in the dark



gosha's complicated plot includes a mysterious amnesiac assassin, a clan of murderous women and explosive showdown between nakadai and sonny chiba. maybe not top tier gosha but i enjoyed it, ymmv. very bloody with insistent sato score and gosha's reliable exquisite framing

[greennui]

Chilly Scenes of Winter (Joan Micklin Silver) - A portrait of the young man as a douchebag, or a portrait of the douchebag as a young man...Uncomfortable but poignant. They won't grow old together.

I had to do a double take at Gloria Grahame being in this, not the kinda film you'd expect her to pop up in, thought she'd been long retired by this point.

[MrCarmady]

Thanks for reminding me about that one, greennui! It's available for free on YouTube in decent quality and I love the novel so thought I'd give it a go.
It's odd to see a film with a much sadder ending than the novel it's based on, I imagine about 1% of all adaptations turn out that way. From what I can remember of Beattie's book, it captures it really well, helped by a strong cast and a good sense of pacing. A lot of very funny moments nested in a very poignant frame, can see myself re-watching it / showing it to friends in the years to come.

[greennui]

Thanks for reminding me about that one, greennui! It's available for free on YouTube in decent quality and I love the novel so thought I'd give it a go.
It's odd to see a film with a much sadder ending than the novel it's based on, I imagine about 1% of all adaptations turn out that way. From what I can remember of Beattie's book, it captures it really well, helped by a strong cast and a good sense of pacing. A lot of very funny moments nested in a very poignant frame, can see myself re-watching it / showing it to friends in the years to come.

I was very surprised at finding out about the original ending/poster/title. To me, it would have betrayed everything that came before and ultimately ruin the film for me, so I'm glad they eventually changed it.

The bizarre original poster:

[rischka]

i've got a couple days off so gonna give 220 mins 'christ stopped at eboli' a go in honor of our brave italian compadres

[MrCarmady]

Thanks for reminding me about that one, greennui! It's available for free on YouTube in decent quality and I love the novel so thought I'd give it a go.
It's odd to see a film with a much sadder ending than the novel it's based on, I imagine about 1% of all adaptations turn out that way. From what I can remember of Beattie's book, it captures it really well, helped by a strong cast and a good sense of pacing. A lot of very funny moments nested in a very poignant frame, can see myself re-watching it / showing it to friends in the years to come.

I was very surprised at finding out about the original ending/poster/title. To me, it would have betrayed everything that came before and ultimately ruin the film for me, so I'm glad they eventually changed it.

The bizarre original poster:

Yeah the title is terrible (and the poster is hilariously bad, good find) but the ending works in the book. Beattie, like Silver, is aware of how toxic an obsessed lover like Charles can be, but he goes through so much in it (there's more heartbreaking scenes with the mother than there are in the film), the happy ending feels oddly earned. But I'm glad the film went in a different direction once re-cut, it sort of works as the ultimate anti rom-com which exposes all the rom-com clichés as toxic and a terrible way to strive for romantic fulfillment.

[rischka]

i've got a couple days off so gonna give 220 mins 'christ stopped at eboli' a go in honor of our brave italian compadres

btw i will upload this if anyone wants it. it's in 4 episodes

reminds me of that olmi film, the tree of wooden clogs

[ofrene]

i've got a couple days off so gonna give 220 mins 'christ stopped at eboli' a go in honor of our brave italian compadres

btw i will upload this if anyone wants it. it's in 4 episodes

Me!

[rischka]

i'll get right on it

[wba]

Fantastic year, though I've only seen about 70 films.

Here are 20 masterpieces:

Final list

01. Tenshi no harawata: Akai kyôshitsu "Angel Guts: Red Classroom" (Chusei Sone, Japan)
02. Nacionalna klasa "National Class Category Up to 785 Ccm" (Goran Markovic, Yugoslavia)
03. The Lady in Red (Lewis Teague, USA)
04. Mad Max (George Miller, Australia)
05. Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Robert Wise, USA)
06. La drolesse "The Hussy" (Jacques Doillon, France)
07. Tapage nocturne "Nocturnal Uproar" (Catherine Breillat, France)
08. Dir muss er ja nicht gefallen (Franz Stepan, West Germany)
09. Une femme speciale "A Very Special Woman" (Jean-Marie Pallardy, France)
10. When a Stranger Calls (Fred Walton, USA)

11. Moonraker (Lewis Gilbert, UK/France)
12. Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (D. A. Pennebaker, UK)
13. The Warriors (Walter Hill, USA)
14. Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, Soviet Union)
15. Murder by Decree (Bob Clark, UK/Canada)
16. Alien (Ridley Scott, UK/USA)
17. Shan zhong zhuan qi "Legend of the Mountain" (King Hu, Taiwan/Hong Kong/South Korea)
18. Die Brut des Bösen "Roots of Evil" (Christian Anders, West Germany)
19. Phantasm (Don Coscarelli, USA)
20. The Brood (David Cronenberg, Canada)


also great

Salem's Lot (Tobe Hooper, USA)
Supersonic Man (Juan Piquer Simon, Spain)
raining in the mountain (king hu)
bildnis einer trinkerin (ottinger)
the marriage of maria braun (fassbinder)
L.A. Toll & Die (Kincaid/Gage)
woyzeck
saint jack
apocalypse now
manhattan
zombi 2
castle of cagliostro
tale of tales
Victoria (Widerberg)
...

[wba]

rose of versailles, the animated version of the book demy was supposed to be adapting, also released in '79 and it's genuinely terrific, even though (if i remember correctly) it only truly hits its style when osamu dezaki takes over directing halfway through.

I watched that animated TV series from 1979 about 2 years ago, and it's pretty great! Didn't know there was a live-action movie as well.

[greennui]

Lady Oscar really doesn't feel like any other film. Japanese source material, French setting (filmed at Versailles and etc), a cast of European (mostly English) B actors and it's Jacques Demy at the helm of it all.

[greennui]

Final list, prob.

1. Fascination (Jean Rollin)

Messidor (Alain Tanner)
Lady Oscar (Jacques Demy)
New Old (Pierre Clémenti)
Arrebato (Iván Zulueta)
Water Lady (Kim Ki-young)
Ballad of Tara (Bahram Beizai)
Chilly Scenes of Winter (Joan Micklin Silver)
Nezha Conquers the Dragon King (Shuchen Wang, Yan Ding Xian, Jingda Xu)
The Bright Night (Marcel Hanoun)
Je meurs de soif, j’étouffe, je ne puis crier… (Gérard Courant)
Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro (Hayao Miyazaki)
Tess (Roman Polanski)
Drugstore Romance (Paul Vecchiali)
Zoo zéro (Alain Fleischer)
Jaguar (Lino Brocka)
Anti-Clock (Jane Arden, Jack Bond)
My Window (Zbigniew Rybczynski)
House of Flames (Kihachiro Kawamoto)
A Respectable Life (Stefan Jarl)

[dominicano1970]

Manhattan (Allen)

Alien (Scott)
And Quiet Rolls the Dawn (Sen)
Apocalypse Now (Coppola)
The Black Stallion (Ballard)
The China Syndrome (Bridges)
The Crying Woman (Doillon)
Drugstore Romance (Vecchiali)
Hunter in the Dark (Gosha)
The Intruder (Christensen)
Kramer vs. Kramer (Benton)
Last Embrace (Demme)
Mad Max (Miller)
The Marriage of Maria Braun (Fassbinder)
Norma Rae (Ritt)
Saint Jack (Bogdanovich)
10 (Edwards)
Time After Time (Meyer)
Vengeance Is Mine (Imamura)
When a Stranger Calls (Walton)

[rischka]

ok final list

bildnis einer trinkerin (ottinger)

raining in the mountain (king hu)
dalla nube alla resistenza (straub/huillet)
dirty ho (kar leung lau)
kummatty (aravindan)
siberiade (konchalovsky)
messidor (tanner)
real life (brooks)
alien (ridley scott)
christ stopped at eboli (rosi)
the brood (carpenter)
the marriage of maria braun (fassbinder)
ballad of tara (beizai)
arrebato (zulueta)
tall shadows of the wind (farmanara)
legend of the mountain (king hu)
full moon scimitar (chor yuen)
hunter in the dark (gosha)
a walk through h (greenaway)
over the edge (kaplan)

sorry i didn't watch more. my diy mask for work:



perfect, no?

[brian d]

final list:
the cruelties of cheriyachan (abraham)
ballad of tara (beizai)
the bogeyman (aravindan)
raining in the mountain (hu)
the mother (monteiro)
nosferatu (herzog)
life of brian (jones)
dirty ho (chia-liang)*
jovana lukina (nikolić)
the love of the three pomegranates (monteiro)
ti miséria (campos)
stalker (tarkovsky)
and quiet rolls the dawn (sen)
schalken the painter (megahey)
anti-clock (arden/bond)
from the clouds to the resistance (straub/huillet)
¡qué viva méxico! (eisenstein)
alexandria... why? (chahine)
the muppet movie (frawley)
the brontë sisters (téchiné)


also watched:
the butterfly murders (hark)
last hurrah for chivalry (woo)

[mesnalty]

This'll be my final too, I think:

1. Stalker (Tarkovsky)

Kummatty/The Boogeyman (Aravindan)
ORG (Birri)
Real Life (Brooks)
The Hussy (Doillon)
Aurelia Steiner (Vancouver) (Duras)
The Marriage of Maria Braun (Fassbinder)
A Walk Through H (Greenaway)
Nosferatu the Vampyre (Herzog)
Legend of the Mountain (Hu)
Raining in the Mountain (Hu)
Monty Python's Life of Brian (Jones)
Siberiade (Konchalovsky)
Gol Maal (Mukherjee)
Asparagus (Pitt)
Alien (Scott)
From the Clouds to the Resistance (Straub/Huillet)
Messidor (Tanner)
Young Girls of Wilko (Wajda)
Arrebato (Zulueta)

[...]

Could I skip another year and get double the choices this time? No? Okay then, I guess this will be my final ballot. I'd hoped to watch more, but the covid19 thing kinda threw off any kind of planning. I might get the urge to adjust something before the deadline since I am leaving out too many I'd like to keep.

All That Jazz
Real Life
Impostors
Sisters or the Balance of Happiness
Raining in the Mountain
Siberiade
Camera Buff
Dirty Ho
Vengeance is Mine
Christ Stopped at Eboli

The Tin Drum
Breaking Away
Young Girls of Wilko
The Marriage of Maria Braun
Mother, Daughter, Sister
And Quiet Rolls the Dawn
Phantasm
Tale of Tales
Last Hurrah for Chivalry
The Black Hole

[ofrene]

Doomed Love

Alien
Apocalypse Now
Ballad of Tara
Christ Stopped at Eboli
Dirty Ho
From the Clouds to the Resistance
L’Enfant Secret
Legend of the Mountain
My Brilliant Career
Nosferatu
Real Life
Sisters, or The Balance of Happiness
Stalker
Tale of Tales
The Battle of Chile – Part III
The Marriage of Maria Braun
Ticket of No Return
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Vengeance Is Mine

[Silga]

Final list:

1. Hardcore (Paul Schrader)

Escape from Alcatraz (Don Siegel)
Alien (Ridley Scott)
Rocky II (Sylvester Stallone)
The Onion Field (Harold Becker)
Manhattan (Woody Allen)
Going in Style (Martin Brest)
The China Syndrome (James Bridges)
And Justice for All (Norman Jewison)
Cuba (Richard Lester)
Seven (Andy Sidaris)
The Warriors (Walter Hill)