SCFZ

the phantom of paris (1931)

thought i'd check out another john s robertson directed film after captain salvation just to see if he carried anything else as interesting along with him but unfortunately this one contained john gilbert so i saw nothing

Finally saw this year’s Palme d’Or winner Titane but wasn’t prepared for how awful it was. I imagine Cronenberg fans may dig this but for me, it was a big vapid mess that tried to do too much, while failing to be interesting by offering shocks and provocations at every turn. Cannes have made plenty of rubbish choices over the years but this may be their worst.

In a more positive experience, I was completely taken by surprise with Jacques Doillon’s La Vie de Famille (Family Life). I watched it because of the cast (Sami Frey, Juliet Berto & Juliette Binoche) but wasn’t expecting a great deal. It ended up being mostly a brilliant film about the dynamics between a father and daughter, done better or at least as well as anything I've seen before. It managed to be both funny and intelligent, and never fell into the sentimentality that these types of films seem destined to fall into. I thought this was superior to Doillon’s best known film, Ponette, and that it definitely deserves to be better known.

Sensation Hunters/Club Paradise - Christy Cabanne, 1945

One of the more special Monograms -- there's an Ulmeresque tenderness shown toward working-class miseries, most of the characters are driven by desires they can't fulfill within the existing paradigm. Practically everyone here whose tastes I know would find something worthwhile in this, except maybe Brian D or Jiri.

ulmeresque tenderness! ♥♥♥

certainly none of that in kvarnen/the mill (1921) - john w brunius

typical conservative scandi-moralising rural drama with crushing metaphor, and just.....the concomitant misogyny....but....the woman (clara kjellblad) who plays the evil slut-queen does it with such joyful gusto (and this her only film credit also, what happened there?)...and then it all livened up when our hero goes berserk (expresses his anguish by ripping his shirt open! yes!) with a really really weird cat and some nice shots moving around inside the gloomy mill interiors - black black blood dripping on the white white flour...and then....it all went dull again......did brunius direct any horror movies? would watch those....

no screenshots cuz the quality is awful but in memory of the mysterious clara:

twodeadmagpies wrote: ↑Tue Dec 14, 2021 10:03 pmclara kjellblad

I did some quick research and it seems like she was primarily a dancer. She was a member of the Ballets suédois in Paris that did the choreography in films like L'inhumaine and Entr'acte. Jenny Hasselquist, the lead actress in Vem Dömer, was also a member.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballets_su%C3%A9dois

Here's Clara in London dancing an Arabian dance in slow motion (at the very end of the clip):

https://www.filmarkivet.se/movies/veckorevy-1922-12-11/

robert osborne says this was the first film to attempt to show the aftermath of a nuclear war. made in 1951 but you'd swear it was the 60s - frank lloyd wright house in the desert doesn't hurt. of interest to us post-apocalypse fans these things are somehow comforting to me. director arch oboler was a radio legend, playwright and quite a character



the house was sadly gutted by wildfire a few years ago. it was the property of the film's writer/director when he made the film there on a very low budget

wes anderson has painted himself into a corner at this point. soo clever and soo exhausting. many of the actors were very good including the weird kid from dune, benicio del toro and jeffrey wright (as james baldwin i think?)... it's just too much of a muchness

i needed a chaser after this so i watched randolph scott in the bounty hunter

i do not care if we go down in history as barbarians -- someone here (i think) said this was very much my thing and they were right -- very timely and very effective

rischka wrote: ↑Sat Dec 18, 2021 4:42 pm i do not care if we go down in history as barbarians -- someone here (i think) said this was very much my thing and they were right -- very timely and very effective

That was me!

i had a load of 86s lined up but they all sound pretty depressing/cynical wise-ass & evelyn announced 1911, so there i go.....

watched the biggie, l'inferno. got to have held the record for most buttocks on film for decades, tableaux story perfectly suited for 1911 film-making style & great special effects, that tornado of carnal lust, wow...

also watched: the maid at the helm - YES! sea-movie, girl pistol-whipping her aggressor, and loved the floating useless men waggling their impotent telescopes; the old captain - sentimental idiotic garbage but the bad man was just electric vital virility, and no credit anywhere, lost to history, who knows if he made more, boo; mieux valait la nuit - omg, mirrors, vision, blindness tropes, but if there was doubt it was implicating cinema, then the staring directly into the camera scene removed that - would be an absolute recommendation to check out more of the clever, aware director, only again, no credit, lost to history...

and finally this, which is just 4 mins of 1911 nightmares:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_GyAAl6gW4

erdgeist - jessner, 1923

looooove the german expressionist zombies!

Last night I finished watching Die zweite Heimat (or Heimat 2), and wow, what a magnificent addition it was to Reitz's first cycle of films, Heimat.

It's the kind of experience you feel you're living inside of. Both H1 and Heimat 2 are now firmly entrenched amongst my all-time favourite films, with this second cycle being the standout.

10/10

i cannot lie, i enjoyed zardoz so much i am watching it again with director commentary. boorman is 88 yrs old and was best friends with lee marvin. i recommend the commentary xD



the puppetmaster opening was added because people complained they didn't understand the film. is god in show business too?? it didn't help says boorman

Oh, great, some cocky sophomore slid in there behind Risch' to school me on Zardoz. Now I have an opportunity to practice restraint. And humility.

LOL filmbros

Fun facts: Burt Reynolds was the original zed, not many guys could pull off that costume. Connery couldn't get work after bond so he agreed to do it when burt had to withdraw. Hard to imagine that film film was made for 1 million dollars and shot within 10 miles of boormans home in ireland. He admits it may have suffered from 'too many ideas' and sees things he should've cut now. And is still amazed at his own hubris

heh. This Zardoz related Christmas tweet came up yesterday.

http://twitter.com/jfkenney/status/1473 ... 76896?s=20

Have we done a Boorman poll yet? He is a nut, but an interesting one.

ha thx for those cookies! i love boorman. excalibur is still the best king arthur movie! point blank is a gangster classic! also i remember hope & glory kinda fondly - i thought of it while watching 'bound for the fields, mountains and the seacoast' idk if we did a poll nor how to check

last night watched 'a moment of romance' (1990) and damned if andy lau isn't an icon

https://twitter.com/rbgscfz/status/1474 ... 12672?s=20

today i'm gonna see comrades: almost a love story and yes my hk double feature is all so i can get a bronze badge on LOVEHK cinema list @icheckmovies

let me guess the moment of romance sequels are terrible the plot of this one was problematic but omg that ending

moment of romance 2 is pretty bad (it is the one that johnnie to did not make), very much a weak version of the original. 3 is totally different - a romantic melodrama set during the second world war. haven't seen it since i tried watching all of the johnnie to movies in the course of like a month and didn't like it then, but there's some cool stuff in the second half and it's such an odd project that it's kind of worth a look...

i have both but can't imagine watching one without andy lau OR johnnie to...



maggie cheung world's cutest mcdonald's employee

I was a big Boorman fan as a teen, but my ardor cooled a bit post-Emerald Forest. I still liked Hope and Glory and Where the Heart is well enough, but it was a more mitigated thing. Those early movies had something of a proto-Lynchian oddness to them that faded a bit as Boorman learned to moderate his excesses. Still dig Having a Wild Weekend more than it probably deserves and his wacky Exorcist II and the other mentioned, just faded a bit in my appreciation overall.

Andy Lau is an icon as, of course, is Maggie Cheung no matter where they work.

leo the last! mastroianni in london! (not that i remember much about it other than it was interestingly problematic, marcello was hot and it captured that period of london brilliantly)

i confess it's probably some romantic notion about english eccentricity i am curious about leo the last!

watched the very extremely snowy great silence last night w the italian dub. i think it helps. i just can't suspend disbelief about JL Trin and Kinski in the old west so it's another layer of removal to the fantasy plane where spaghetti westerns happen maybe my favorite morricone score too

https://twitter.com/PulpLibrarian/statu ... 56420?s=20

a whole boorman thread from the pulp librarian. coincidence??

the greatest silence = illest spag western

my holiday features were

bell book and candle (which, dumb, but there's jimmy)
christmas evil aka better watch out (creepy/funny w/fiona apple's dad)
Карнавальная Ночь/carnival night (let's put on a show new year's musical from soviet russia)



today i think i will take a chance on the new matrix

I dig Carnival in Moscow. One of it's lesser known pleasures is seeing where Lermontov started out before becoming a ballet impressario.



(Tell me that last guy doesn't look like an slightly undernourished Walbrook.)

POWER OF THE DOG -- 5/10.

Really? That's it?

I like Carnival Night a lot. I'm convinced that, in its climax, it makes rather clever reference to Khrushchev’s Secret Speech, which adds a veiled layer of political commentary to the film that makes it quite memorable.