Last Watched

[greennui]

Opfergang

this has been on my watchlist for ages. Any chance you could put it in the spot??

[greennui]

Singing Behind Screens (Ermanno Olmi, 2003) - "A story within a story film about a Chinese female pirate" and "Ermanno Olmi" is two things I didn't expect to hear in the same sentence, but I'm glad I've had now.

[Roscoe]

STORY OF TEMPLE DRAKE -- the Criterion Blu-Ray of the lurid little PreCode potboiler adapted from the Faulkner novel. The story is concentrated to fit in to 75 minutes, and as lurid as it undoubtedly is, It's all so watered down as to be unrecognizable. Some fine cinematography and some fine performances from Miriam Hopkins and particularly Jack LaRue as the vile Trigger. Glad I saw it, I guess.

[flip]

The Killer That Stalked New York (Earl McEvoy, 1950) - All I knew about the content going in was the title, so I assumed it was about a serial killer or something. But no, it's a docu-noir about patient zero in a potential pandemic. So if that's what you're looking to watch these days, this could be worth checking out, and if you want to avoid that kind of thing, this is not something to see. It suffers from that kind of preachy (and at the beginning, sexist) voiceover you find in a lot of those kinds of noirs but it's a slow boil that turns into something sometimes amazing. 7/10

[MrCarmady]

Autostop rosso sangue (Pasquale Festa Campanile, 1977)

Fucking hell that was bleak and unpleasant, and a lot of the dialogue is real B/C-movie stuff, but again, Morricone! Corinne Clery! The visuals! Franco Nero as one of the biggest cunts in the history of cinema!

[wba]

Autostop rosso sangue (Pasquale Festa Campanile, 1977)

Fucking hell that was bleak and unpleasant, and a lot of the dialogue is real B/C-movie stuff, but again, Morricone! Corinne Clery! The visuals! Franco Nero as one of the biggest cunts in the history of cinema!

Need to see that one! Haven't watched anything by Campanille, yet.

[MrCarmady]

I'd recommend it! Haven't seen anything else, though, what's on your radar?

[wba]

Not sure, cause I always thought Campanille was mainly a director of comedies.

[rischka]

Messalina Venere imperatrice (Cottafavi 1960) quite the spectacle! i watched the english dub #1 the lead actress is english, #2 virtually all italian films are dubbed anyway and the italian version on youtube has hard french subs, too confusing for me. enjoyed the hell out of this. holding out for a cottafavi peplum boxset as many of these sure need and deserve restoration peplum is a genre that used to look ridiculous but has really grown on me, especially in the hands of a talented director like cottafavi or bava

[lagrange]

Bleu Shut (Nelson, 1970)
enjoyable experimental short featuring robert nelson and willam t. wiley playing a game where they guess the names of boats over the span of thirty-three minutes interspersed with clips of, among other things:
-a barking dog
-nelson sitting in a mirrored room in the nude
-sausages and beans
-the whispering scene from the passion of joan of arc
-two fingers squeezing a nut
not even the weirdest thing i watched this past week

[MrCarmady]

Happy Here and Now (Michael Almereyda, 2002)





Wow, people really do not like this movie, huh. Well, people are missing out. Letterboxd 'Review' (more like stoned stream of consciousness reaction) here

[liquidnature]

some recents:

The Gold Rush (1925) - just as good as i'd hoped
Thief (1981) (rewatch) - Didn't remember anything about this. Second half is quite frankly on another level. Only Mann could pull that off. The lighting, the synth, the slow-mo. omg
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) - what an absurd film. 1/10 or 10/10? couldn't tell you, so I went with 7/10. Walter Huston is the real treasure here.
The Great Train Robbery (1903) - is that train through the station window shot real or an effect? one of the coolest images I've seen from the early years

[wba]

i watched the english dub [...] #2 virtually all italian films are dubbed anyway

#1 yes, in Italian. Same as virtually all cinema around the world has been dubbed in their native language (at least till the early 60s when "direct sound" became increasingly popular). It's called post-production.

#2 the english dubbing of most any "foreign" film has almost always sucked. It's really shitty.

[Roscoe]

The Great Train Robbery (1903) - is that train through the station window shot real or an effect? one of the coolest images I've seen from the early years

That shot is an effect -- it's a matte shot.

[rischka]

i watched the english dub [...] #2 virtually all italian films are dubbed anyway

#1 yes, in Italian. Same as virtually all cinema around the world has been dubbed in their native language (at least till the early 60s when "direct sound" became increasingly popular). It's called post-production.

#2 the english dubbing of most any "foreign" film has almost always sucked. It's really shitty.

yeah i didn't say it was good but i don't speak italian! i'm fairly sure the english actress was speaking english anyway but the italian release is like 15 mins longer... i would have preferred eng subs ofc but no one has made them yet. italian films have some unique issues i think. i watched voyage to italy in italian and it's quite clear george sanders is speaking english; he even tells someone at one point, 'i don't speak italian' -- in italian

[wba]

Yeah, just wanted to point it out.

Foreign actors seldom spoke the language of the countries they often acted in (not just Europe, but all over the world). In Germany there are even some famous examples of films, where German actors or actresses were dubbed by other actors, cause the filmmaker (or producer) didn't like their dialect or the sound of their voice, or such.
Even in the US, some actors were dubbed by other actors, sometimes.

I guess it's a bit weird if the lip movement doesn't match the dialogue, but I must say, I'm not too sensitive to that, cause when one watches animation, that's almost never the case as well. And anyway, I usually want to hear the original dialogue and sound track as intended by the artists, instead of a dubbed film in another language (even if done skillfully).

But as you also mention, the bigger issue than (bad) dubbing is really those nasty "international" edited versions, where whole chunks of the film are missing. Italians seem to have been specialists in that regard for a few decades, similar to Hong Kong.
Very sad, indeed.

[Joks Trois]

^^It depends on the film. I wish Italians didn't record sound like that in the past because the synching issues can be distracting on repeat viewings, but it worked for some EE directors like Jancso who filmed from a distance.

[Silga]

Wild Bill (Walter Hill, 1995) 4/10

Felt like a caricature version of a western. While Jeff Bridges is cool as usual, Ellen Barkin's overacting is on another level. David Arquette is completely miscast and the great John Hurt criminally under-used.

Maybe I'll redeem Walter Hill with The Long Riders which I plan to watch soon.

[MrCarmady]

Wild Bill (Walter Hill, 1995) 4/10

Felt like a caricature version of a western. While Jeff Bridges is cool as usual, Ellen Barkin's overacting is on another level. David Arquette is completely miscast and the great John Hurt criminally under-used.

Maybe I'll redeem Walter Hill with The Long Riders which I plan to watch soon.

The Long Riders is superb! One of the films that should be next to the definition of the word 'autumn' in the dictionary

[Roscoe]

TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE -- 7/10. An unwieldy mess, as this kind of Lang potboiler tends to be. It can't manage the focused genius of the same director's M, but then few movies can. Still plenty of good energetic fun.

[Silga]

Wild Bill (Walter Hill, 1995) 4/10

Felt like a caricature version of a western. While Jeff Bridges is cool as usual, Ellen Barkin's overacting is on another level. David Arquette is completely miscast and the great John Hurt criminally under-used.

Maybe I'll redeem Walter Hill with The Long Riders which I plan to watch soon.

The Long Riders is superb! One of the films that should be next to the definition of the word 'autumn' in the dictionary

Well, maybe I should wait till autumn to finally watch it. But I also want to complete Walter Hill's filmography. Only got 5 films left.

[liquidnature]

The Great Train Robbery (1903) - is that train through the station window shot real or an effect? one of the coolest images I've seen from the early years

That shot is an effect -- it's a matte shot.

Interesting, thanks. I need to learn more about the technicalities of filmmaking, obviously. Speaking of which, I found this great article on famous matte shots/artwork - worth the read!

http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/20 ... on-of.html

[MrCarmady]

Well, maybe I should wait till autumn to finally watch it. But I also want to complete Walter Hill's filmography. Only got 5 films left.

I'm on the other end of the spectrum, only seen that one and 48 Hrs. but was very impressed with both. I guess The Driver, The Warriors and Southern Comfort are the next obvious choices.

TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE -- 7/10. An unwieldy mess, as this kind of Lang potboiler tends to be. It can't manage the focused genius of the same director's M, but then few movies can. Still plenty of good energetic fun.

I am one of the few people I've come across who prefers The 1,000 Eyes of Dr Mabuse to this one, it just goes pure potboiler. I guess a lot of the praise it gets is for the parallels people draw from it with the rise of Hitler, but I always find it hard to care much about the subtext if I don't care much about the text. I really owe M a re-watch, though, remember it being amazing but nothing else.

I just watched Elvira Madigan and took about 1200 screenshots. Insanely beautiful film.

[Lencho of the Apes]

Foreign actors

There's an often-repeated anecdote about Toshiro Mifune learning all his dialogue phonetically for Animas Trujano... but it didn't work, so his voice ended up being dubbed by actor Narciso Busquets.

[Joks Trois]

re: Walter HIll. I've been slowly revisiting his filmography over the last year or two. He is a pretty good director, but he is also quite meat and potatoes. There are some exceptions like The Warriors, which has excellent style, but overall he is more like a Don Siegel/Hawks style director. Having said that, I was surprised at how good Southern Comfort was, which I didn't see in my youth, but I thought The Long RIders was just so so despite its reputation.To me his most underrated films are from the late 80's and early 90's. e.g Johnny Handsome, Another 48 Hours and Trespass. I wouldn't rate them as his best films, but they do show a confidence and stylistic 'maturity', so to speak, that often goes unrecognised. I also thought the film he made with Stallone wasn't too bad either, especially given that he was called in late to the project, but after Trespass his films are a bit of a wash. I'd say Hard Times is probably my favourite film of his now.

The Warriors: rewatched last night. You can definitely see how aspects of this influenced a whole bunch of different films from Escape From New York to Do The Right Thing, as well as video games like Double Dragon. To say that it's a film of its time is obvious if you are judging it by the fashion and acting, but there are also some aspects of it that are not typical at all for a Hollywood studio film. There are even times where you can see shades of Bresson lurking beneath its nocturnal surface. 7 or 7.5/10.

[wba]

I'm at the mid-point with Walter Hill, meaning I've seen roughly half his directorial output by now. It wasn't planned, though, it just happened over the years (I also have a lot of unwatched Hill films on DVD, some of them gathering dust for over a decade). I love him dearly and would agree with the Siegel/Hawks comparison: A true professional, who (to me) seemed to be innovative mostly at the beginning of his career. In that regard, and many others, I'd compare him to John Carpenter.
Anyway, I'd say Hill is easily one of the best american directors of his generation (same as Carpenter).

My preferences (so far) ranked:


Masterpiece

Streets of Fire (1984)
The Driver (1978)
The Warriors (1979)
The Long Riders (1979)
Broken Trail (2006)


pretty good

Bullet to the Head (2012)
48 Hrs. (1982)
Geronimo (1993)


decent

Crossroads (1986)
Red Heat (1988)
Last Man Standing (1996)
Supernova (2000)


I need to revisit Last Man Standing, though.

I'd guess if Hill had only made films for 10 years, say from 1975 to 1984 (that would be his first 7 films till Streets of Fire) he would have attained legendary, almost mythological status by now.

[wba]

Foreign actors

There's an often-repeated anecdote about Toshiro Mifune learning all his dialogue phonetically for Animas Trujano... but it didn't work, so his voice ended up being dubbed by actor Narciso Busquets.

Yeah, I've read about that one. He also tried this on some other film(s), as far as I remember.

[Joks Trois]

Definitely comparable to John Carpenter, but I think Carp has more obvious/identifiable signature formal traits. I rewatched Red Heat recently and couldn't get into it. Supernova was bad man! Last Man Standing was hugely disappointing in 1996, but when I rewatched it a few years ago I didn't mind it. Has its moments. His career slowed down a bit after it bombed though.

[wba]

Yeah, completely agree. Carpenter is imo therefore "better" than Hill, even when he does "mediocre" stuff (or to put it bluntly: he never ectually did anything truly mediocre).
Some of Hill's run-of-the-mill films on the other hand could have also been directed by somebody else (e.g. Crossroads, Red Heat).

I thought Supernova was decent, when I last saw it (but my expectations were low, so I was probably surprised that it wasn't a stinker). Still my list favorite Hill, as you can see from my ranking. I disliked Last man Standing when I first saw it back in the 90s, but it's not that bad, actually. And maybe I'd enjoy it even more, if I rewatch it.

PS: Carpenter also made incredible films between 1975 and 1982 (roughly in the same period as Hill - though I dislike Dark Star and therefore left it out). It's sad to see how both their careers gradually declined though (declined, because they basically started with a string of startling masterpieces and therefore from an incredibly high point). But compared with many other US filmmakers from the 80s and 90s and 2000s, they still made (some) great stuff, of course.
Both would have surely been even more outstanding, and might have had a better career towards their "end", if they had worked in the old studio system: imagine Hill and Carp making films in the 30s, 40s and 50s (and maybe even the 60s)!
It's a bit as with many other directors of roughly that generation (e.g. Coppola, Cimino, Milius, etc.).

EDIT: I forgot Hill's excellent BROKEN TRAIL (2006)!

[nrh]

@wba watch johnny handsome!