SCFZ

rajkumar santoshi's khakee

The Petrified Forest.

the petrified forest is sadly overrated but i'm still fond of it for the individual performances

i'm watching 'if beale street could talk' because it's on hulu. well i've seen about half and i'm too sleepy to finish it tonight but i can already say it's far better than 'green book'

the shinoda petrified forest is kind of great though

rischka wrote: ↑Fri Apr 12, 2019 3:42 am the petrified forest is sadly overrated but i'm still fond of it for the individual performances

Agree, that's why I'm giving it a 7.

Suspiria (2018) is next! Then Cold War.

I'll be seeing US, at some point, and DOGMAN, and SAUVAGE too.

Need to just throw something on that I can have playing in the background while I do some work, so I'm thinking I'm going to ally-watch (@wigwam yes, I have kept the phrase VERY alive and it's spread to people who have no idea who ally is) Edward Sedgwick's Keaton-talkie "Doughboys". It seems like just the mediocre shit I won't mind only sort of paying attention to

gonna watch the beach bum. excited!! :circle:

I salute everyone who watches The Beach Bum. I watched it twice in cinema and looks like it’s going to become a cult classic. Moondog is a cool cat! (also there’s a cute kitten in the film)

and there's a cat in the first fucking scene. i love it already



can this be my new avatar



i mean. I AM moondoggie basically

this movie is hilarious and beautiful

I'm watching this right now, and really enjoying it.

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

A double feature of Prince of Darkness and In the Mouth of Madness! Been a while since I've watched Mouth of Madness

as an arthur kennedy superfan i think i'm gonna like this a lot

not sure yet, as I have several lined up for today and plan on watching 3 or 4, but some of them are definitely:

Conquest of Cochise (William Castle, 1953)
The River Fuefuki (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1960)
Village of the Eight Tombs (Yoshitaro Nomura, 1977)

Didn't manage the Kinoshita, but watched his "Carmen Comes Home" instead.
The Cochise by Castle was quite excellent, especially the last 20 minutes.
Village of Eight Tombs had great atmosphere and camerawork and some nice sequences, but the 150 minute running time made it a bit muddled. Maybe should have been longer as a film. Many interesting characters, especially the detective, who didn't get enough screen time for my taste.

Anyway, on to the old new Kechiche now (Mektoub My Love - Canto Uno) to see what all the fuss is about. Three hours, but I'll try to finish it today. First 30 minutes are great already, but there's so much happening, it's hard to keep up, and I'm a bit exasperated. I thought this was a laid-back film about hanging out, but already lots of trouble, characterization, many interesting and differing characters, etc. etc.
Hope the film relaxes a bit, cause it feels something like a Michael Bay avalanche and I have difficulty keeping up with all the (pretty important) details. The camerawork is out of this world, some of the best handheld I've ever seen in my life. It must have been arduous shooting it, I can't imagine how a filmmaker can have so much energy, as the performances are top-notch so far. Dialogue also fantastic. Much different, more pressurised, compressed, than Kechiche's first three feature films from the 90s and 2000s.

Also I must have watched the trailer for this a hundred times. One of my favorite trailers of all time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27njOvi7HdU

Mektoub went by like a breeze, shortest three hour film ever. All the heavy stuff and themes resolved themselves nicely in the end, and the film went and evolved from depressing to uplifting. That ending at the beach, with one of my favorite songs, was magic. Best Kechiche? Maybe, even if not as sublime as L'esquive.

PS: All that "male gaze" stuff, objectifying female characters by the filmmaker, etc. is pretty much bullshit, cause sexism is one of the biggest themes of the film, so Kechiche is depicting it. Anyways, the hottest persons in the film are Kamel (the older creepy uncle) and the main protagonist, who's on display most of the time. Shaïn Boumedine is a discovery, and his portrayal is outstanding!

Next up: don't know. Maybe another Kinoshita or western by Castle?

wba wrote: ↑Thu Jun 27, 2019 4:09 pm Mektoub went by like a breeze, shortest three hour film ever. All the heavy stuff and themes resolved themselves nicely in the end, and the film went and evolved from depressing to uplifting. That ending at the beach, with one of my favorite songs, was magic. Best Kechiche? Maybe, even if not as sublime as L'esquive.

YES!! Such a sensual, lyrical movie. GAB, every once in a while, you make total sense

Storytelling through camera (paramount, like with hitchcock), facial expression, body movement, and the art of dialogue where people say everything when usually trying to conceal or talk about something else. That is cinema!! And that is actually silent cinema technique, or simply that which cinema can do best. Show, don't tell. This film actually out-Rohmers Rohmer in every sense, and the characters are maybe even dumber and more pathetic than the ones by Rohmer.

wba wrote: ↑Thu Jun 27, 2019 4:09 pm
Next up: don't know. Maybe another Kinoshita or western by Castle?

I'm at the halfway-mark stopping-point in the Kinoshita 1949 version of Yotsuya Kaidan -- its long and leisurely, but it's rather good. Everybody's so sleazy, its like a samurai Postman Always Rings Twice.

Haha, sounds great. Would like to see a sleazy Kinoshita. The few I've seen so far were rather middle-class morality chaste-like (but great nevertheless). I've ordered 10 Kinoshitas on DVD, so i might watch more in the future.

DIAMONDS IN THE NIGHT -- on the Criterion Channel, I've started it twice and enjoyed what I saw and had to stop both times goddammit to hell.

Roscoe wrote: ↑Thu Jun 27, 2019 6:54 pm DIAMONDS IN THE NIGHT -- on the Criterion Channel, I've started it twice and enjoyed what I saw and had to stop both times goddammit to hell.

If you can get your hands on it, I recommend you watch Nemec' short Sousto aka "A Loaf of Bread" from 1960 first, as it's actually the prologue to Diamonds of the Night, and though stylistically differs from the feature it is as brillant and devastating as Diamonds.

Many thanks for the heads up on A LOAF OF BREAD -- it's streaming on the Criterion Channel, and is included as an extra on the Criterion Blu-Ray which will be mine mine all mine at the next sale.

wba wrote: ↑Thu Jun 27, 2019 7:47 pm

Roscoe wrote: ↑Thu Jun 27, 2019 6:54 pm DIAMONDS IN THE NIGHT -- on the Criterion Channel, I've started it twice and enjoyed what I saw and had to stop both times goddammit to hell.

If you can get your hands on it, I recommend you watch Nemec' short Sousto aka "A Loaf of Bread" from 1960 first, as it's actually the prologue to Diamonds of the Night, and though stylistically differs from the feature it is as brillant and devastating as Diamonds.

Many thanks for the heads up on A LOAF OF BREAD -- it's streaming on the Criterion Channel, and is included as an extra on the Criterion Blu-Ray which will be mine mine all mine at the next sale.

Moonrise

THE CRANES ARE FLYING -- new restoration at Film Forum. I'm in the most minor of minorities in being unimpressed with I AM CUBA, so we'll see how I do with this one.

I saw THE CRANES ARE FLYING at a special screening in November last year. I was so happy for the opportunity to see a classic on a cinema screen - something which lucky NYorkers like you might almost take for granted. It's certainly a rare treat for a cinephile like me, living in a provincial city.

This restored version you mention, does that mean it's been digitized? The version I saw eight months ago looked pristine and the friend I saw it with said it was a digital version we watched.

I'm confused about digital versions of classics and what "digital" actually means and how these digital films compare to the original, celluloid versions of these classics. "Are restored, digital versions visually inferior to the films as they first appeared in their original format/medium?" is what I'm asking.

pabs wrote: ↑Tue Jul 09, 2019 6:36 am "Are restored, digital versions visually inferior to the films as they first appeared in their original format/medium?" is what I'm asking.

Yes and no. Basically, they are two different things.

It's a bit like looking at the Mona Lisa (the actual painting by da Vinci) and looking at a digital restoration of the Mona Lisa. They are just two (very) different things.

When it comes to films though, and learning to see or recognize these kinds of things (when merely to "watch" a film is so difficult in itself), most people don't see the difference between different film stock, different formats, even different media.
Most don't even see it, if the original aspect ratio is off.

I guess there's just "too much to see", when one is looking at a moving image.

To educate yourself on this kind of stuff is very difficult. And to learn to see and recognize it even more so. Even some people who are supposedly "restoring" films don't have the knowledge and capacity needed for such an enormous enterprise.

If you're interested in such stuff there are some good books available on this area, but to learn something substantial you'd have to start "working" with film prints, e.g. as a projectionist, or at a film lab (if there are still any around...), or at an archive or such a thing. To hold film material in your hands, look at it, feel it, and to project it yourself is probably one of the first steps in experiencing that whole "analogue" thing, and then, as a first step" to be able to visualy recognize the difference to digital stuff when seeing it projected.

Being able to see the difference between different media and different stock, or hear the difference between different audio systems is actually just the beginning - not an actual goal as such (as one might suppose).