SCFZ

sally wrote: ↑Wed Mar 29, 2023 7:46 am

visualtraining wrote: ↑Wed Mar 29, 2023 1:59 am the experience was enriched by having read le baphomet and other works of pierre klossowski in recent years. i was compelled to get out my copy of diana at her bath after finishing the movie

omg omg omg klossowski (& diana at her bath in particular) is one of my absolute very favourites to the point of delirium. wow (I mean I love the ruiz film too but it's rarer to meet klossowski readers)

!!! i would also say pierre klossowski and especially diana at her bath is a special favorite of mine to the point of delirium very happy to know another klossowski lover! i found that an english translated of la vocation suspendue actually was published recently and i was so excited i almost spilled the mug of coffee in my hand this morning and promptly ordered it. very excited to read; this is a piece of the klossowski puzzle i have been longing to examine as i myself attempted a vocation in the roman catholic church (multiple times...). lol this should be in the what are you reading thread but yeah, can't wait for the book to arrive. and then to watch the ruiz film.

St. Gloede wrote: ↑Wed Mar 29, 2023 9:16 am I did a Yvonne Rainer marathon which culminated in this article with write-ups of each of her 7 films:

wonderful reviews st. gloede! i'm planning to watch privilege this week.

greennui wrote: ↑Thu Aug 20, 2020 9:13 pm Every time I think of Edvard Munch that recurring piano piece in it immeditely starts playing in my mind. Does anyone know if it's from an existing piece or just something someone on the set just plonked together? One of the most haunting pieces of film music I know.

It's playing at 2:26:46
https://youtu.be/LmZTNreZI5I?t=8805

Finally found it!! Randomly clicked on a Chopin comp on youtube and after a while I recognized a familiar tune.

54:55

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fezP875xOQ

visualtraining wrote: ↑Mon Apr 03, 2023 4:34 pm

St. Gloede wrote: ↑Wed Mar 29, 2023 9:16 am I did a Yvonne Rainer marathon which culminated in this article with write-ups of each of her 7 films:

wonderful reviews st. gloede! i'm planning to watch privilege this week.

Thank you, visualtraining, and that's great! Really looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

I watched romancing in thin air for the 3rd or 4th time. Always amazed the bananapants plot works so well... or like, at all

the only movie i caught during the ropert retrospective was the only one i hadn't seen before, the apple of my eye, which was pretty much savaged by the french critics when it released in 2016. but i ended up liking the movie a lot, a very dense (it is barely 90 minutes with credits) romantic comedy in the 1930s tradition, where two pairs of siblings (two struggling greek musicians, and a blind piano tuner and her cocaine addicted sister) cross paths in an apartment building, the catch being that the younger musician only realizes he's fallen in love with the blind sister after he claims to have lost his eyesight after she was rude to him in the elevator.

so it's a classic romantic deception plot, full of wordplay, physical comedy and sometimes frankly bizarre tonal shifts. i asked the friend who programmed it if he could ask ropert if she was a farrely brothers fan and she confirmed she was, complaining that dumb and dumber to only received a very small release in france.


le cou de clarisse, benjamin esdraffo 2003

the first and only short feature by esdraffo, who is probably best known as a composer (most of the ropert and bozon movies, whit stillman's love & friendship, adolfo arrieta's wonderful belle dormant).

a very young and mustachioed serge bozon is a cab driver, axelle ropert is his partner and works as receptionist at a hotel, the great jean-christophe bouvet plays the mysterious astronomer who rents the hotel's attic room. a peculiar, modest movie, full of strange little tangents (it is the kind of movie that finds time for a loopy cafe conversation between an elderly michel delahaye and cecile decujis, the editor breathless and many of rohmer's best movies) and still resolves its wisp of a plot in 40 minutes. mostly a footnote but a lovely one nonetheless.




vas-tu renoncer?/edouard et charles, pascale bodet 2021

the friendship between manet (benjamin esdroffo) and baudelaire (pierre leon) as akind of present day art world comedy full of the bustling streets of paris and technology (first shot is of an iphone screen).

serge bozon in a very strange wig plays who speaks in odd, garbled french, and the movie is full of extremely stylized comedic movement that at points verge on the choreographed movement in moguillansky's castro. but there's a sturdy melancholy under everything - manet, under constant attack by his critics, begs for the support of his friend, but baudelaire, nearing the trip to belgium that would signal the end of his writing career, refuses to offer it.

i don't know bodet's work other than seeing her appear in brief roles in movies like etoile violette and deux remi, deux, and unfortunately most of her earlier films are either not available or not available with subtitles...

address unknown (d. william cameron menzies, 1944)



good twisty thriller has paul lukas return to his native germany just in time to get red-pilled by nazis (pre-internet) cinematography by the great rudolph maté

i watched and liked etoile violette however i did drift off at some point into my fantasy movie of a two hour les hautes solitudes, but with serge bozon in floppy burgundy, occasionally sewing something in close-up finger shots. sigh......someone please make that....

Missed Warnings: The Bradford City Fire (2015) doc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEl8PEsH4xQ

Didn't know about this, I guess it's because it was only the 3rd tier of English football that kept it relatively obscure to similar tragedies like Heysel or Moscow. 56 lives claimed after an Australian man threw away his cigar and the fire caught the wooden stands.

il brigante (castellani 1961) - hot sicilian bandit leads a peasant revolt in post war italy, inspired by american GIs. supposedly based on true events tho everything is naturally more stirring (and bandits better looking) in films. stony hillside towns ruled by capos, a boy torn between the glamorous bandit life and his meeker family, black GIs helping peasants sow their feudal landlords' hunting grounds with grain. it's pretty long too. C+ - B- territory. someone taped this off tv. nostalgic afternoon viewing

This program has a lot of SCFZ appeal...
https://www.deutsche-kinemathek.de/en/streaming

Lencho of the Apes wrote: ↑Wed Apr 19, 2023 9:18 pm This program has a lot of SCFZ appeal...
https://www.deutsche-kinemathek.de/en/streaming

omg it really does, thanks lencho ♥♥♥ i've been wanting to watch i often think of hawaii for ages...

and nude portraits is 1983 on imdb.....
https://www.deutsche-kinemathek.de/en/o ... la-schulze

meanwhile, another female director, my favourite one....(is there a funnier one?)

in the mirror - laila pakalniņa (2020)

snow white, but the mirror is a selfie. and the dwarves are just.....adorable...

everybody's love - valentin vaala (1935)

streaming with subs: https://elonet.finna.fi/Record/kavi.elo ... uva_117900

typical gorgeous finnish scenery with typical varied amusements

visualtraining wrote: ↑Mon Apr 03, 2023 4:34 pm

St. Gloede wrote: ↑Wed Mar 29, 2023 9:16 am I did a Yvonne Rainer marathon which culminated in this article with write-ups of each of her 7 films:

wonderful reviews st. gloede! i'm planning to watch privilege this week.

Did you watch it?

joker (todd phillips) sooo, it's basically death wish meets falling down meets fight club meets the king of comedy meets taxi driver, but not as good as any of those films (and even some of those aren't that good), right? i mean, i was never expecting much cuz of what should be countless obvious reasons (academy award winning mainstream critical darling, comic book blahblahblah that subverts comic book blahblahblah while staying true to comic book blahblahblah, directed by a hackhackhack, etc. etc. etc.), but wow that was bad. it's like that ferry boat scene in the dark knight stretched out to a 2hr runtime; but instead of the dark knight's 'good' and 'bad' people on the two ferries deciding to do the 'good' thing and not blow up the other ferry in order to save themselves, here the 'bad' people ferry blows up the 'good' people ferry without a single second's hesitation and it's a... 'good' thing... cuz, ya know, society? woo. edgy. aside from the immoral amorality of it all tho, it's also just a plainly poor mess of a movie. take out the whole batman mythology shtick, make arthur fleck just a regular character, and there's absolutely nothing here. it's a basic bullshit movie you've seen a million times before. as it stands, you're just waiting around to see phoenix become the joker. that's all. nothing that happens matters one iota. none of it is interesting. it's all just paint-by-numbers scenes until the last blank has been filled in, and voila, you have a nice pretty picture of the joker complete with the green hair, makeup, and suit. whoop-de-doo. but whatever. i'm probably spending too much time leveling semi-thought out criticisms toward a film that itself appears rather poorly thought out. might as well stoop to the same level of the film. phoenix's dancing is stupid, but i like how the acting choice was made during the penultimate tv interview scene with de niro for phoenix to pointlessly start talking out of nowhere like a six year old boy pretending to be a fairy princess. sidenote: til phillips' real last name is bunzl, which is the funniest thing he's ever done

the joker movie really is one of the stranger cultural objects of my lifetime. i mean, if you told 10 year old batman superfan nrh they were going to make a joker movie he would have thought it was kind of a weird idea. if you explained that it was going to be an agonizingly self-serious pop-psych origin story shot in ersatz '70s new hollywood style, and that batman wouldn't even be in it, he would thing you were deranged. but then of course they tried to make an entire television series based around alfred the butler...

the decades long inability to make a halfway satisfying batman movie (or tv show) is really baffling. the longevity of the character is basically due to the fact that he's just an amalgam of a bunch of per-superhero pulp/adventure tropes, and can basically be thrown into any pulp genre setup you want, as long as the level of realism can deal with the inherent weirdness of the "millionaire who dresses up in bat branded tights to fight crime" conceit. but instead we get two decades of bloated self seriousness from directors who just want to make a scorsese movie but don't know how to do so without leaning on pop culture detritus...

nrh wrote: ↑Mon Apr 24, 2023 8:40 pm but instead we get two decades of bloated self seriousness

I will always take bloated self seriousness over what alternative - camp?

I was pleasantly surprised by the new iteration of Batman from Matt Reeves. Even though he made the two best Apes movies, I was still sceptical about his take on the Gotham's hero, since I would have preferred a film about an older Batman rather than going back to the one of Robert Pattinson's age. But Reeves almost succeeded. If only the third act was slightly better and less predictable.

The Awful Truth - McCarey, 1937

Trying not to make too much of the fact that after a running gag about wind blowing women's skirts up ends with a scene where the same thing happens to Cary Grant.

Irene Dunne's performance is so strange here, it's like she can't keep up with her own thoughts and she's always two beats behind, still talking about what was relevant a couple of moments before..

Silga wrote: ↑Mon Apr 24, 2023 9:05 pm I will always take bloated self seriousness over what alternative - camp?

not at all - there is a wide ranger of pulp/pop modes you can work in before you get anything near something like the schumacher movies (or the '60s tv show), or even the baroque stylization of the burton movies (and others that followed in their wake - the mulcahy shadow, that weird little phantom movie, etc).

and i think there it's looking at the comics that is illustrative. you get something like the famous joker story where he poisons gotham's harbor with joker toxin so all of the fish have his smiling joker face, and he can therefore make a copyright claim on the city's entire seafood supply. it is comic book logic, more than slightly absurd, but also a serious thriller story with a high body count as he murders his way through the competition. but if you are making a movie about a man who dresses up like a bat to fight crime you really can't shy away from comic book logic!

there's actually a lot to like in the reeves batman, especially zoe kravitz as catwoman and way the movie conceives of the city, enough that i'll definitely go see the next one. but there is an ersatz quality to the se7en derived serial killings and the political corruption stuff. stripping all the strangeness away from the penguin seems to be a cowardly move, the cowardice of an adolescent afraid that someone will call his favorite comic books juvenile.

nrh wrote: ↑Tue Apr 25, 2023 12:00 am

Silga wrote: ↑Mon Apr 24, 2023 9:05 pm I will always take bloated self seriousness over what alternative - camp?

not at all - there is a wide ranger of pulp/pop modes you can work in before you get anything near something like the schumacher movies (or the '60s tv show), or even the baroque stylization of the burton movies (and others that followed in their wake - the mulcahy shadow, that weird little phantom movie, etc).

and i think there it's looking at the comics that is illustrative. you get something like the famous joker story where he poisons gotham's harbor with joker toxin so all of the fish have his smiling joker face, and he can therefore make a copyright claim on the city's entire seafood supply. it is comic book logic, more than slightly absurd, but also a serious thriller story with a high body count as he murders his way through the competition. but if you are making a movie about a man who dresses up like a bat to fight crime you really can't shy away from comic book logic!

there's actually a lot to like in the reeves batman, especially zoe kravitz as catwoman and way the movie conceives of the city, enough that i'll definitely go see the next one. but there is an ersatz quality to the se7en derived serial killings and the political corruption stuff. stripping all the strangeness away from the penguin seems to be a cowardly move, the cowardice of an adolescent afraid that someone will call his favorite comic books juvenile.

You make some very good points here, NRH!

I'm a big fan of Tim Burton's Batman films and both are my favorites. However, I can't imagine current studio system would ever go with such style nowadays. Burton touched magic with those two films and, IMHO, none of its copycats succeeded (that includes Mulcahy's The Shadow and McFarlane's Spawn). And Joel Schumacher failed miserably with.. whatever that was. Haven't seen The Phantom yet.

Also, I agree that characterization of Penguin in the new Batman movie was its biggest misstep. A waste of a chance to have Penguin induce some sort of playful & villainous mischief to the story where everything else is grim and dark. On the bright side, Colin Farrell really gave it all with his performance. Kind of interested in his new spin-off series as well.

Serial killings motive might have been there to distinguish this Batman story from others where at most times you know who the perpetrator of evil is. And as a fan of Zodiac, I didn't mind it.

Lencho of the Apes wrote: ↑Mon Apr 24, 2023 9:32 pm The Awful Truth - McCarey, 1937

Trying not to make too much of the fact that after a running gag about wind blowing women's skirts up ends with a scene where the same thing happens to Cary Grant.

Irene Dunne's performance is so strange here, it's like she can't keep up with her own thoughts and she's always two beats behind, still talking about what was relevant a couple of moments before..

i had to waatch this a few times before it worked for me and now i love it. i can't explain ♥

last man on earth, omega man, i am legend, 28 days later, multiple twilight zones? i love this genre

unfortunately harry isn't the last white man on earth

mel -"i have no problem with negros"

harry -"that's mighty white of you"

now i can't help wondering if spike lee was referencing this in 'she's gotta have it' (1986)





in a shocking twist they decide to try polyamory

100 days - viera čákanyová (2009)

nice amusing little short, i am beginning to appreciate the art of the short film more and more

Gyorgy Feher's TWILIGHT, a fascinating and troubling movie of great beauty and creepiness, almost but not quite ruined by the stupidity of the LIncoln Center Film Society's Gilman Theater. The bright floor lights and exit signs cast a light that was clearly visible upon the edges and corners of the screen for most of the film, most damagingly and annoyingly during the film's frequent night scenes (Feher's night scenes are particularly dark, damn near pitch black). It wouldn't be so bad during a screening of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA or some other sun-drenched work, but it really messed with this film's impact.

The direst thing I can say about it is that the film will look so much better on my TV in my living room, where I can turn the lights the fuck off. And then there's the issue with the cinema's speakers rattling during the bass notes on the soundtrack, and the frequent audio intrusions from the cinema next door, and yeah, fuck you Film Society of Lincoln Center.

still beautiful man week here - the long wait (d. victor savile 1954)



tony quinn has amnesia after a firey highway accident



come to find out he may not want to know who he is



the upside being women really like him. story is absurd but i'm a sucker for amnesia noir :p some of the dialogue is textbook 'hardboiled' that made me lol. not terrible and occasionally even fun with hot-blooded tony searching for that one dame who could save him ♥

How to Save a Dead Friend (2022), by Marusya Syroechkovskaya. DOCUMENTARY

Russia is hell for its non-conforming youth. There's no future for them. Marusya and Kimi are inseparable lovers coming-of-age as the country's authoritarian dreams take hold. Turning Marusya's camera on themselves, the two capture the euphoric anxiety of their youth, burning the candle at both ends -- but as one light burns brighter, the other may be extinguished forever. A message from a silenced generation.

This is the basket-case, shit-hole country that the American right praises and supports.

8/10

Creed II is so dumb i can't believe i finished it. cliche ridden, bad music, weird reprise of the dumbest rocky

i used to love boxing movies now all i can think is 'why are you giving yourself CTE' ♥ wallace

is creed 1 any good? i heard good things but those movies look generic in a bad way...

but then all the good boxing movies in the last ten years or so (ah wilderness one and two, mukkabaaz, sarpatta parambarai, etc) are sprawling social dramas with boxing as just one of many elements.

yeah i liked the first creed and was surprised about that, not being a huge fan of the rocky series. so i thought i'd try this one but now i can stop

also i was looking for something to watch on amazon prime before i cancel it again