Movies that Matter to us Most

I saw The Wrestler tonight, the one with Mickey Rourke (in his comeback role as an over-the-hill professional wrestler) and Marisa Tomei as his on-again, off-again, stripper girlfriend. There's a scene where Marisa's character, while doing a lap-dance for Mickey's character (after he's "rescued" her from some early 20-something bachelor party a-holes making fun of Marisa's advanced age - my Gawd, she's what? about 40! in the film) begins quoting the Bible and it immediately reminded me of (how could it not? since these characters - so well acted - are, well, such down-on-their-luck, desperate souls) Miss Lonelyhearts.

I know there's other movie threads out there in LT, but I thought it would be interesting to hear about what you're all watching these days - especially the stuff literature (but it doesn't have to be) related.

I have downloaded Koyaanisqatsi, Alphaville (Godard), Un chien andalou (Bunuel), Linda Linda Linda (a Japanese movie about an all girl band made of Korean outcast kids who become the toast of the school), all six Rocky movies, and about a million episodes of The Supersizers for watching on my frequent ferry trips home. Excited!

"The colour of pomegranate" by Sergei Paradjanov

"Night of the hunter" by Charles Laughton

"Atalanta" by Jean Vigo

but really, hundreds more

HUNDREDS

My absolute favorite for this month (and many other months): The Third Man. Ah, Joseph Cotten, why are you no more?

I was born in that part of W.Va. that features so prominently in the Night of the Hunter.

Late last year I acquired The Seven Samurai and Stalker, and have spent a certain amount of time living inside both.

Zerkalo or 'The Mirror' is on my radar now.

For christmas I was lucky enough to receive two remarkable films 'It Happened Here' ("the best amateur film ever made"), and 'Winstanley' both by Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo.

These films are exceptional in several respects:

- Extreme low budget productions
- Largely amateur casts
- A style in which every scene was treated the same regardless of the importance of message (the most infamous of these being in It Happened Here where real life British Nazi sympathisers were cast as pretend British Fascist leaders, and allowed to speak their minds on e.g. 'the Jewish question' and euthanasia).

Disturbing, intriguing, unlike any other films you are ever likely to see.

A book by Brownlow How It Happened here covers the background.

I haven't watched a movie on T.V. or DVD for so long it isn't funny. Shame on me.
But we did go as a family on the Sunday after Christmas to see Avatar and it was, while not critically literary, OUTSTANDING!~! I cannot wait to see it again! And I hate sci-fi / fantasy.
belva

>5 zenomax: Yaaaay. 七人の侍 is, I think, Kurosawa's best and one of my top five movies ever. Are you familiar with the blind swordsman, Zatoichi?

I have been evangelizing in one breath Avatar in IMAX 3D and Precious. Avatar was all about the movie; I doubt that it has a book, and if it does it is likely trivial. It is an important cinematic experience that could not be captured on DVD, and like Belva I hope to see it again before it blows town. I was equally enraptured by Precious but for the story and the performances; it might be captured on DVD, but it is, one way or another, an important experience; there is a book that some have cheered.

Other recent credible movies include Invictus and Blind Side, the latter not just for Sandra Bullock.

Robert

Have you seen "il postino", or the postman, a movie about a simple Italian postman who learns to love poetry while delivering mail to the famous poet Pablo Neruda ? He then uses his new found skill to woo the local beauty Beatrice.

It stars Philippe Noiret, it is Belgo- Italian - French production.

This movie is an absolute gem !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxXWP12WqAQ&feature=related

http://www.lone-star.net/literature/postino/index.html

Mac,

Someone says to her, "What's he got for you?"

She says, "Metaphor."

I thought I should go live in Italy.

Robert

He's going to open a boutique broin.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw8ZL_gcTSM&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube...

I think I'll go with
My Life as a Dog
Fanny and Alexander (Bergman)
La Strada (Fellini)

I want to comment in more depth on your selections above, but for now, Sarah Vowell on Tom Cruise.

Long, but worth every second.

The Seraphick Jennifer Jones in the 1949 MADAME BOVARY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c_YWQKYPPo&feature=related

>12 solla: I once had a boyfriend who would get into screaming arguments with me over which was better, La Strada or 8 1/2. I told him that it was really stupid to fight over something as dumb as which of two excellent films was better, and anyway we all know 8 1/2 is where it's really at! He responded by breaking up with me. I do like La Strada a lot but 8 1/2 has always been a very emotional experience for me.

Wild Strawberries (I'm using English trans)
Bad Education
8 1/2
The Shop on Main Street
Farewell My Concubine
In The Mood For Love
Cool Hand Luke
...

If your internet is faster than mine, theauteurs.com has a monthly free movie which is generally thought-provoking at least; they also showcase 4-6 movies at a time at http://www.theauteurs.com/criterion (partnership with the Criterion Collection) that gets rotated every once in a while.

>recent movies

I didn't catch Precious when it came out, but I hear so many good things about Gabourey Sidibe that I really wish I hadn't missed it! Avatar, on the other hand, was very pretty and the technology I'm sure is fascinating (I read a few articles about it but I don't think I can really properly appreciate how cool it is), but something about it makes me cringe. Can't put my finger on it. Might be the whole white savior/dumb bestial natives slant. Almodovar's Broken Embraces has finally arrived in my area, so I might go see that soon.

>11 Porius: :) :) :)

Keep forgetting how good they were back then....

I'll throw in (of course) The Bicycle Thief and Pather Panchali.

And these ain't bad either: Greed, the silent directed by Erich von Stroheim; Au Revoir les enfants, Louis Malle; Man of Marble, Andre Wajda; and The Pickpocket, Bresson.

This is hard, there are lots. Love Bergman in general. But love lots of films. Three mainstream films I like very much are:
Contact (and I like the book a lot too)
Cast Away
The Legend of Bagger Vance.

On another day I am sure I can think of another three.

I'm currently re-discovering Nuri Bilge Ceylan (I think thats the spelling) - I loved Uzak (and the short pieces the dvd i saw came with - possibly even more than Uzak for one of them). But I didn't follow his recent films, until I saw Climates which totally made me realise again that I need to make a bee line for all his films and not just think when I am busy 'oh so I miss a foreign film at the cinema, so', I really like his work.

Favorites:

Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock)
It's a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra - and pretty much everything else he did)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan)
The Lord of the Rings (Peter Jackson)
Les Miserables (Bille August)
Beauty and the Beast (Disney)

Glad you mentioned Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I really really like Charlie Kaufmann's stuff. If you're in to postmodern fiction, you can't help but like Being John Malkovich or Adaptation as well.

3> Lola, you did say HUNDREDS, so what are they? Have you considered cataloguing them here? I've catalogued most of our kids movies just so I don't go out and buy ones I've already got, along with a few more up my wife and I's alleys.

Also, directed at everyone, I should've added to the title of this thread, as your listings are perking my curiosity: Why do these movies matter to you? And perhaps links to the very best ones describing them, since "the cinema" and "films" really aren't my forte, so I could, amateur that I am, get an idea if these titles are up my alley. My tastes are truly pedestrian in movies (sigh): mainstream Americana mostly. So please, help educate the movie ignoramus' such as I with some brief commentary as to why these movies click with you as they do.

7> I've heard of Kurosawa. Is there ever an Oscars that doesn't make mention of him? But that's all I know. I also know about that famous foreign film in which the grim reaper plays chess with a man for his soul...something like that...the famous director escapes me.

Here's my pedestrian picks, breaking it down by genre:

Raunch Comedy
--There's Something About Mary
--Dumb and Dumber
--The Jerk
--The Wedding Singer

Romantic Comedy (I view these w/my wife as barter for sex sometimes...is that wrong? Does that make me a Ro-Com Ho? tmi? perhaps?)

--Serendipity - Love in the Time of Cholera plays huge in this. Love story between Kate Beckinsale and John Cusack.
--Lars and the Real Girl

Intense Drama

--Taxi Driver
--American Beauty
--Apocalypse Now
--The Thin Red Line
--The Deer Hunter
--The Spitfire Grill
--Gran Torino
--Million Dollar Baby
--The Shawshank Redemption

Horror

--The Children. A British low budget job recently released. Creeped the devil out of me.
--The Exorcist
--The Exorcism of Emily Rose - had I woken the night after I saw it at 3:00am, I'm positive I'd of had a heart attack.
--Alien
--Suspiria
--Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

AFI Classics

--Sunset Boulevard
--All About Eve
--The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

more to add later....with additional commentary....

'Rique, your mention of WHtBJ? reminds me of another, very different 60s horror movie that I love, the wonderful film The Innocents. It's based off of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, features gorgeous B&W phtography, a brilliant performance from Deborah Kerr, and one of the scariest climaxes I've ever seen. If you haven't watched it yet, I highly recommend it.

Avatar, AVATAR???????

Might be the whole white savior/dumb bestial natives slant.

and the fact that said dumb bestial natives, in spite of their tight little breasts and sexy loin coths, had no genitals! Now, I ask you, how do they breed?

Amaranthic, I wuold have broken up with you and your boyfriend, as any fule knos La Dolce Vita is Fellini's best movie.

my faves:

Anything by the Taviani brothers

anything by Pasolini, especially Medea and Theorem

Anything by Theo Angelopoulous, especailly Ulysses Gaze, for some simply unforgettable images.

Tarkovsky, of course.

anything by Quentin Tarantino, who can really write amazing dialogue FOR ADULTS (his best film is Jackie Brown)

Casablanca (great dialogue, stellar cast, song, perfect.)

better stop.

oh me oh my tomcat, I am so glad you mentioned dear Quentin Tarantino. I love Deniro in Jackie Brown. Quentin, in the last few years, produced a B-Biker movie with Dennis Hopper called Hell's Angels (quite an original title, eh?) but it was staunch with raunch and peyote visions and biker machismo and lustful vixens that I found the whole sordid murderous mess irresistible.

Wow, lists !

What about Aguirre and Fitzcaraldo and Nospheratu ? All by that genius Werner Herzog. How can we forget him ?

Herzog also masterfully adapted Woyzech for the big screen.

Apocalypse Now indeed, but the first version not that stupid "Redux" release.
Speaking about Coppola : "Rumble Fish" !

Rumble Fish was effing awesome Mac! Completely forgot about that. Thank you!

Think of the kind of career Mickey Rourke could've had....if only....

Indeed, he really f. up his possibilities.

>blue alien sex

I thought the Avatar aboriginals had sex by connecting their twitching hair strands! Hence bestiality as well as bestial-ness (appropriate noun form, anyone?). This still does not explain reproduction though. On the topic of secondary sex characteristics, though, I read an interview... here we go:

CAMERON: Right from the beginning I said, “She’s got to have tits,” even though that makes no sense because her race, the Na’vi, aren’t placental mammals. I designed her costumes based on a taparrabo, a loincloth thing worn by Mayan Indians. We go to another planet in this movie, so it would be stupid if she ran around in a Brazilian thong or a fur bikini like Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C.
(source: Playboy)

Priorities, priorities.

Wireless sex ?

> 28 all three : Dillon Hopper and Rourke are great in that movie !

yes yes yes how could I forget Herzog and Coppola!!!

btw, where are the great women directors?

> 30 It is all a question of creativity and imagination. I Guess Milo Manara or Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri would have found a way to illustrate new possibilities of copulating in a galaxy far far away...

Since Kim Basinger entered the room of Dan Ackroyd, I have been fascinated by extra –terrestrial love scenes.

You asked for it, you’ll get it

Top 9 Greatest sex scenes with an alien ;

District 9,
Cocoon
My Stepmother is an Alien
Evil Aliens
Species
Earth Girls Are Easy ( True ! )
Space-Thing
The Man Who Fell to Earth ( Bowie still lives ? )
Starman
They Live

>23 absurdeist: "... that famous foreign film in which the grim reaper plays chess with a man for his soul..."

Seventh Seal by Ingmar Bergman. Haven't seen it yet, but I should one day.

To make sure you will never forget :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqv2dNflLpU

The Seventh Seal was quite good but I can't rouse up enough enthusiasm to watch it again. I've heard good things about The Virgin Spring but don't know anything about it.

The youtube video is loading slowly but I'm going to watch it!! I bet most of your (Mac's) alien sex scenes are on Youtube, somehow they just seem like the kind of thing to be on the internet. Out of your list, I have only seen The Man Who Fell to Earth.

I'm trying to put together a list of movies that I do NOT wish to see again in the near future, regardless of how well-made they are, but so far I'm stuck at:

Salo
Irreversible
The documentary where the guy with CF nails his dick to a board, which actually made me cry (spoiler, he dies - from the CF, not the dick-nailing)

On the topic of The Seventh Seal, I've been watching a lot of stop-motion animation on Youtube lately and:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRt9ZIX4l5g

The 7th Seal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVLJTFk4SeE&feature=fvw

Its a strange feeling I get when someone else answers with a movie I love -- some sort of jealousy 'oh yes I think that too'.

Enrique asked for why about our choices -

Contact - a film about faith but to me also a film about grief and childhoood bereavement and seeking emotional contact, about being alone -- all wrapped up in being about aliens!

Cast Away - I'd spoil this one if I said exactly why love it. I guess its what he's forced to learn and what he unlearns.

The Legend of Bagger Vance - yes, well, I love golf and lost my swing a long time ago so of course I like this. I've read the book too and the Baghavad Gita that inspires it and I like that. Then there's the emotional journey too of R Junah. Just love it - soem beautiful photography and its conveyance at times of moments of remembering somethign very imprtant I find beautiful.

Why Bergman in general? Some sort of sense that he engages the realest parts of me.

Perhaps its the same for Ceylan -- I love his camera work.

Some that stick out from those others have mentioned - the Thin Red Line (and Malick's other films ETA - should say Malick directed films as obviously lots of others were involved too!). I agree about Jackie Brown, it is my favourite. I love Powell and Pressberger, probably my favourite is A Canterbury Tale at the moment. I'll shut up and maybe put different ones up in a month or so.

Two books that taught me something about movies:

5001 Nights at the Movies, by Pauline Kael, esp. the fascinating essay on the making of Citizen Kane and the backstage workings of Hollywood and the world of script writers.

And from another angle entirely, Negative Space, by Manny Farber, who died last year, and was also a painter in addition to being a movie analyst for Art Forum during that magazine's halcyon days when it was the first to recognize the significance of pop art.

There are so many films in so many genres that it's hard to pick just the few favorites. Here's my list of movies I make time to watch if they are on the teevee. Mostly Turner Classic Movies. Most modern movies just don't measure up, IMNSHO.

Okay, a list:

The aforementioned The Third Man
Run Silent, Run Deep
Stalag 17
Sunset Boulevard
Gandhi
Seance on a Wet Afternoon
Shakespeare in Love
The Shawshank Redemption
The Hunt for Red October
High Noon
Double Indemnity
Key Largo (pretty much anything with B & B)
Lawrence of Arabia
My Man Godfrey
Mr. Roberts
Arsenic and Old Lace
Little Caesar
The Warriors
Carry on ...
Monty Python ...
Prospero's Books
Dark Passage
Gaslight
Touch of Evil
The Ten Commandments (with Heston. His earnestness is just a true wonder to behold. Ben-Hur may be the better movie but it's not so terribly overacted and thus loses points with me.)

I saw Tartovsky's Solaris and was not impressed. Kind of like Eraserhead in outer space. However, I may watch it again because the ideas that drive it are not so alien to me now and I may get more of it. I don't mind ponderously heavy dialogue, but after a while it does become tiring and you wish someone would say something that would clue you in to what's happening. I think, though, the failure of the movie to spoon feed the audience is one of its major selling points.

Based on what I chose to highlight here there are many, many more favorites.

#42 - The bbc had a season on Orson Welles over xmas - in one programme there was some comment on Kael on Citizen Kane, apparently she suggested he didn't write much of it I think. They pretty well refuted that, Peter Bogdanovitch was interviewed about it too.

Thanks for the KAEL info Geneg : up in my TBR list !

speaking about lists ( giggle giggle snort )

5 "must have" books about movies !

- Herzog on Herzog edited by Paul Cronin
- Truffaut - Hitchcock
- the Haunted screen by Lotte Einer ( superb B/W stills of early expressionisme )
- Laterna Magica by Ingmar Bergman
- A film, its form and sense by Serguei Eisenstein

Mac - just had a look at the Lotte Eisner book on Amazon - it looks very interesting. From the first page (on WW1):

Mysticism and magic, the dark forces to which Germans have always been more than willing to commit themselves, had flourished in the face of death on the battlefields.

Of the movies allocated chapters in this book, I have only seen Nosferatu, Caligari & Metropolis, but all 3 managed to get their hooks into me.

Ghostbusters, because it's the funniest movie ever.
Little Nicky, because Popeye's chicken is fucking awesome.
Auntie Mame, because any movie that gave us the lines, "Books are awfully decorative, don't you think?" "Look, I'm in print! Just like Edna Ferber," and "Boxed, like Proust." has to be one of the best movies of all time.
Cross Creek because it's a beautiful, elegiac movie about a writer...and it has a baby deer, too.
Time After Time because it's a movie about a writer and it's a gorgeous love story.

What can I say--not a "film" among the bunch.

Popeye's Chicken is fucking awesome

and now I need to search for that "Boxed, like Proust" clip. Classic.

35> Mac, that scene with the alien in They Live is hysterical. I'd so like to link it, but I don't think I should.

41 - what I liked about Contact was how Jodi Foster, in her character, seemed to me to just strip away everything and be completely raw and vulnerable - I'm thinking of the scene where she is going through the wormhole and then seeing what is there. I had watched Jodi Foster films before but that one made me feel like I wanted to see all of them.

However, I hated the book.

Yes she was good at that, she was 'ok to go' too. i like her throughout.
I liked the book - especially the use of pi.

I've had that book forever - Contact - and was wondering if it was worth reading. Who, now, am I supposed to believe, solla, or TonyH? I liked the movie a lot too, and the pun of the title never occurred to me, that the movie was as much about making emotional contact as alien contact.

#52 'Rique: I will add my vote to Tony's. It's worth reading. I liked the movie, too.

>52 absurdeist: FWIW, I liked both the movie and the book. Neither were brilliant, but both were thought-provoking and enjoyable.

ETA--I thought Matthew McConaughey was miscast.

What say you solla, why did you "hate the book".

I saw The Soloist today (Robert Downey, Jr. as Steve Lopez, reporter for the L.A. Times, befriending a homeless schizophrenic played by Jamie Foxx - the "Violin Man" - with an uncanny penchant for playing a two-string violin on the streets of Skid Row) and was moved by it. It reminded me a lot of Shine and A Beautiful Mind, movies I guess in the mentally-ill-overcoming-the-odds-to-inspire-us genre.

Here's a look inside.

55 I thought it was badly written in about the same way that an Ayn Rand novel is badly written - well that may be a little too extreme - in that it was more telling about an idea than dramatizing characters. Saying I hate it might be too extreme also - I hate Clan of the Cave Bear and my feelings about Contact don't have nearly that much intensity. I just think it is badly written and boring

57 -- ah, I see what you mean. I foudn it better written than say that Dan Brown about the grail (I forgot its name!). But I guess I didn't go into it with any expectations of a literary book, partly as it was written by a scientist. It read as many a best seller to me -- but with some very deep ideas, some very human ones too.

Ida Lapino was wonderful as a director. She directed:
Not Wanted
Never Fear
Outrage
Hard, Fast and Beautiful
The Hitch-Hiker
The Bigamist
The Trouble with Angels
Some of these she starred in as well.

Movies I have loved:
Sorry, Wrong Number
Carrington
Munich
The Great Escape
Reds
Serpico
To Kill a Mockingbird
Inventing the Abbotts
Lawrence of Arabia
How the West Was Won
Gone With The Wind
Cry, The Beloved Country
Doctor Zhivago
How Green Was my Valley
The Color Purple
The Power of One
Citizen Kane
The Bridge on the River Kwai, (anything David Lean),
Casablanca
Laura
The Yearling
Miss Potter and
Moulin Rouge
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
The Polar Express
The Apartment
Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas
It's A Wonderful Life, (or any Frank Capra, for that matter), to name a few.
belva

To that list I'd add (what nerve, since it's your list!) almost anything by Preston Sturges.

Saw Inglorious Basterds yesterday ( yes I am that kind of guy who waits 6 months to watch the DVD for 3.5 € instead of ... )

Like the intellectuals we are, I know we are suppose to love Tarantino, but I must admit that the hurdle is a big too high. I didn't understand it, didn't like it and even tought it stupid.

Together with " No country for old men" it will be filed under "junk".

or did I miss something ?

Can I play?

I hated Inglourious Basterds. I have pretty much viscerally hated every Tarantino movie I've ever seen, so I probably shouldn't have been very surprised, but my husband really thought he hoped I'd like it, so I tried it. I hated it for the same reasons I hate all his movies. They don't have characters. They're cartoons. It bores me to tears, when it doesn't actively make me angry.

No Country, though, I loved. It's not just that I hate ultra-violent movies. No Country had characters. I have never been able to see anything by Tarantino as anything other than ultra-violence for its own sake. Am I missing something, probably, but I don't really care. Life's too short.

Speaking of No Country, I love the Coen brothers. They've had their misses, but I am pretty generally not very interested in movies (though I can certainly expostulate about all the ones I hate...) and I love their stuff pretty consistently.

I've got some affinity towards WWII movies; "The Great Escape" and especially that epic battle against boredom and tyrants, "Mr. Roberts."

The other day during the snowstorm and an early-to-home but particularly bad, day at work, I watched "Zombieland". Another new favorite.

The newly restored version of Fritz Lang's Metropolis (with an hour of footage restored) can be live-steamed today. More info and links here: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100211/COMMENTARY/10...

Just came back from an interesting albeit rarefied film, The Last Station, about the final months of Tolstoy's life. Cast included Christopher Plummer (as Tolstoy), Helen Mirren as Tolstoy's wife, Paul Giamatti as Bulgarov, head of the "Tolstoy Society." Certainly worth seeing.

And kudos, thealizabet, for the stupendous and hilarious Calvin and Hobbes in the snow offering on the nature thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/82276

It disappoints me to no end to come to a month old thread and find you've already gotten most of my very favorite movies (and, Lola, you preempted one of the very best in post #2 with Night of the Hunter).

I thought I was special.

Let me reach into my annals of obscuranta and see if I can add a couple to this wonderful list, what with Mac having exhausted Herzog and all:

There is a wonderful noir by Sam Fuller, The Naked Kiss, that I've always been partial to. I think it's not better remembered because, well, you kind of squirm a lot watching it. Here's the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtmSMmti89A

Fassbinder's The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant has also always been a favorite - back in college, students were given small stipends and a lot of freedom to teach courses in January term, and a few friends and I put together a film course that earned the nick-name "Movies to Slit Your Wrist To", and Petra was one of the most depressing of them. Much of it is shot from underneath the furniture in a cramped, mannequin filled room, which is just some of the best cinematography anywhere. There is a 4 minute drag queen rendition of the movie on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Jf2eAAWtK8

>65 copyedit52:, I want to see The Last Station sooo badly. What a cast!

Deconstructing Harry, what a funny movie, funny dialogue, absurd scenarios, metacinematic, (if it were a novel it'd undoubtedly be labeled "postmodern") just saw it this morning. I'd signed off of Woody Allen after he dumped Mia for his then step-daughter (guh-ross, Woody!) but I guess now I've gotten over it.

Favorite line: "You're so f%^$ing verbal!"

>62 katieinseattle: I agree with all your criticisms of Inglourious Basterds, but I still thought it had some appeal. Christoph Waltz in general, and that scene where everybody gets shot up in the basement in particular, were delightful--I loved the feel of the latter, the way, if this makes sense, if plunged me into what felt like some kind of alternate grainy tradition of filmmaking that wasn't quite noir or war or Hollywood or postmodern pastiche but somethhing new. Most of the film, certainly, just felt cobble together from noir and war and etc.

Oh but though!The bit toward the end where they aretrying to speak Italian was funny as hell. And the ending at least left you with something to talk about. Overall, though, I'm pretty ambivalent on it.

I think in general, though, and more even than with books, I just want movies to imagine for me unprecedented ways of being--"just" meaning only, meaning I don't care if I'm entertained, I just want it to be a very different experience (although I also hate unpleasant for its own sake). Tactilely different--maybe in part a synaesthetic thing. Favourites include Metropolis (Lang), Cry-Baby, Trainspotting, Lord of the Rings, The Godfather, A Serious Man, Zoolander, Dr. No, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, My Life Without Me, Arsenic and Old Lace, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, The Transformers: the Movie (1985), Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Nosferatu (Herzog), The Neverending Story, The Princess Bride, Rosemary's Baby, Life on Earth, Cube, The Ice Storm, The Graduate, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Labyrinth, Reservoir Dogs (full disclosure), Twelve Angry Men, Koyaanisqatsi, The Last Supper, American History X, The Gods Must be Crazy, Face/Off, Fargo, The Usual Suspects, Manhattan, The Wings of Honneamise, Battle Royale, My Neighbour Totoro, The Terminator, Romeo & Juliet (1996), Moulin Rouge, Velvet Goldmine, Shakespeare in Love, The Maltese Falcon, Leon, and probably a billion others whose names I can't remember right now.

"Unprecedented ways of being." And then your particular list, Martin. (You once said you didn't mind being called that, despite your name change.) I'd have to think on those I've seen, then about those not on the list, to see what you're getting at. Do you mean lives other than your own?

>70 copyedit52: Well: I suppose the confusion is in "unprecedented"? I just meant that a lot of people seem to gravitate toward the aesthetics or ideas or events or art or whatever of a particular era or eras, as remembered or reconstructed by them--my grandmother, whose tastes remained proudly 1940s, who never came around to the Beatles and used to insist with the principled despair of the doomed that there was nothing more attractive than the back of a man's neck; the 19-year-olds I see out at mod night in Vancouver immersing themselves in 1966; guys I go to school with who can speak Latin and Anglo-Saxon and tell you the difference between a glaive-guisarme and a fauchard-fork. And I'm not immune to that--I have glory places and eras that I'd sell my mother for the chance to experience and be let down by--late 18th-century London, fin de siecle Vienna, twenties Paris, New York from, say, 1965 to 1974 (shoutout to you, Peter*), Tokyo at the height of the Bubble, etc., etc.

BUT I can't really pretend that the complex and predictable reasons these lifeworlds fascinate me so much--art, sex, the way I imagine things smelling and people talking and so on--don't kind of pale into insignificance before the search for novelty, in the sense of trying to understand what it felt like to be alive (and young, and educated, and enthusiastic--a kind of myself-analogue, and I totally recognize how spurious that makes the whole exercise in some ways). I have a tonne of friends who languish in their particular cultural niches, and I just wanna bounce around ... and it's way more better when I can get excited about a homely and unloved period or movement--reading Richard Price's The Wanderers, say, or doing a course in the 17th century and figuring out how to see what had been, in my mind, just tedious religiosity bashing up against outmoded scientism as--instead--a pivotal stage in the creation of the modern world and the modern self (thinking here in terms of the beginning of rationalism and of empiricism,and of thinkers starting to follow out what they meant as methods and philosophies).

I guess it's like, I think art should always be art history, and history should always be affect--which I take to signify some combination of sense-impression and the emotion to which it gives rise.

SO this is what I like from movies--I think the intense visualness lets them provide that immersive thing in a different way than books (McLuhan, hot and cool media, blah blah). And what it probably sounds like is that I should be looking for films that are as weird and different as they could possibly be, either, like, historically (a movie about the distant past? but those always are so bland and Hollywood--Ten Commandments, Troy, whatever) or visually or narratologically ... and the latter two are true to a point--I like Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle; I like Spike Jonze (Adaptation should have been on the list above)--I mentioned Koyaanisqatsi, and it's as fascinating to me to think about how that was the way "avant-garde" manifested itself in the '80s, or a way--that combination of visual spectacle, minimalism, and, like, deep ecology--as it is to just take the film in. I like the idea of Godard's Alphaville and the French New Wave as much as I do the idea of future city whatever whatever.

So but this is kind of a thesis, and I wasn't trying to demonstrate the thesis with the "particular" list above--we're all messier than the tales we tell ourselves about ourselves, and this was really just movies that I'd enjoyed (and maybe wouldn't a second time?). Nevertheless, to take the first few as a sample: Metropolis I don't think needs any explaining in light of what I'm saying here; Cry-Baby is this phantasmagorical '50s through the lens of a doyen of the kind of gross corner of the '70s counterculture, but kind of older and mellowed and going for more of a mass audience than with, like, Pink Flamingos--so many layers there, and that's kind of what I mean about the synaesthesia--it feels like biting into a viennetta or one of those horrible old English pies with three kinds of meat and nine kinds of spices and a 'caudle' made from grape juice and cream. I love when freaks try to go mainstream, and when corporate rock gets freaky (this is all so music-tinged); the rules of the game change and it gets soooo much more interesting than people just hoeing a row within a tyrannical tradition. (Isn't that Strummer's Law? That conformity to a subculture increases at the same rate as rebellion against the culture at large?)

Okay, okay, yap yap. Trainspotting is the same, right? Late '80s punk waster fiction made over as mid-'90s blingy Britpop--Cool Britannia's return of the repressed. LoTR is just, like, a huge chunk of my childhood that was bound to make me cry and cry when it hit the screen. But there's a case here too, right? What's more amazing than trying to imagine yourself an elf in Elrond's house facing down the encroaching doom of a fantasy world?

And, y'know, soon. Godfather is in a weird way my synaesthetic approach to Hollywood--I remember thinking "so this is the kind of film that wins all the 'best movie of all time' polls. (I don't love Citizen Kane, btw.) It's always as interesting to think about why other people do or did or not like things as why I do/n't.Obsessed with canonicity, and it makes me sad that nobody's really interested in talking about it any more in lit departments except Harold Bloom, who's more trying to guard the gate than play with the notion itself and how weird and fascinating it is.

And the other thing is that I don't know shit about movies, and half the time when you go out to watch one it's SO DULL, and 90% of the people I know turn off their critical faculties when the film or TV goes on and just want to suck the teat for a bit. I just hate wasting time on boring shit. So RECOMMENDATIONS PLS.

Or, um, short answer: Not lives other than my own so much as what my life would have been had I been there and then. Which is obviously impossible and sort of alchemical, like I think I can translate my substance into something else. But it's also dreamy and pleasant. Hope this all made sense.

*and absolutely call me Martin. It's my name! Or, whatever else you choose.

I enjoyed reading all that, Martin. The free flow of it, the little nuggets floating the stew. Like this:

Isn't that Strummer's Law? That conformity to a subculture increases at the same rate as rebellion against the culture at large?

I don't know who this Strummer is, but I agree. And:

I think art should always be art history, and history should always be affect--which I take to signify some combination of sense-impression and the emotion to which it gives rise.

But then, I am a sensory type, as has been well established on various threads, and no doubt forgotten by everyone but zenomax, who's into such things.

No movie recommendations, but given your loosey-goosey stream, and your preference for aesthetics--that is the actual, the affect, as you put it--I would recommend the movie critic Manny Farber, and his book Negative Space. Farber was a painter, as well--died last year--wrote about movies for Art Forum (among other publications) when that magazine was excited about pop art and no one else took it seriously.

>72 copyedit52: Strummer=Joe Strummer of the Clash, one of the most principled, decent, and anti-hacking on people rock singers I know. And thanks for the recommendation!

Great post Martini, Can I call you Martini ?

>74 Macumbeira: natuurlijk!

Why are the Godfather films so consistently heralded as the greatest films ever made? I always found the first two well made enough, particularly coming from Coppola, whom I've never found especially talented, but they're still shallow as all get out.

I saw someone else mention hatred for Tarantino. Hur dur dur, I'm in the same boat. I just don't get it. Maybe I just can't see past his obnoxiously overwhelming and stupid personality that oozes through every stolen scene. He's a guy who copies style from every director considered cult enough but doesn't seem to understand anything beyond the style. He just seems like an idiot who can't see past the surface of these films. That said, I thought Jackie Brown and Inglourious Basterds weren't half bad.

(PS Sorry Martin, I got fugging abandoned in Washington by my asshole roadtrip companion and ended up borrowing over $500 to get home. No way I could have traveled up over the border. :|)

I've been obsessed with French cinema lately, partly because I'm learnin French and am enjoying immersing myself, partly because I prefer movies with subtitles during nightly exercises, and partly because I've fallen in love with Godard's unique demands upon his viewers. Mmmm, Godard....

>76 tootstorm: pffff, no worries at all, chumbly. You missed a great trip to Galiano Island (our cabin was called "Pepperland" and by the photo albums has at one time or another in the past forty years been home to every hippie. It was magical) and a barefoot hike up what passes for the local mountain. Give me a shout if you ever make it back up to these parts, of course!

I have recently seen and now hold in esteem The Fighter and The King's Speech. There's a bunch of so so movies in the local theaters to be seen now; I hope to get to them, but I'm excited because The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest will get to my area, finally, next week.

Robert

I couldn't agree with you more, Mr. D., regarding The Fighter. The other one is on the docket to see asap. Christian Bale never ceases to blow my mind these characters he comes up with, and how exactly he nails the idiosyncrasies of their personas to a tee.

I can't recommend enough, Christian Bale's performance in The Machinist. He literally starved himself in order the lose the 65 pounds he had to lose to play an imsomniac machinist, who haunts the closest things he has to a girlfriend, his prostitute friend played by Jennifer Jason Leigh. Gritty, edgy performances abound in this dark, sometimes surreal, pic.

Not to get too esoteric on y'all, but there's a French movie called The Prophet, nominated for an Oscar this year in the Best Foreign Film category, that's the best thing I've ever seen about prison life. Better than Bresson on the same subject. Realistic to the nth, but with a fantasy element that lifts it to another level.

I tried IMDb'ing The Prophet but couldn't find it, damn it! Maybe somebody else is more IMDB savvy than I and could link it here that I may get a glimpse of it.

Does this work:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1235166/

Bingo. Gracias.

>78 Mr.Durick: Yes, let's hear it for The Kings Speech! Still waiting to to see The Fighter, though.

I drove across town (probably nearly a gallon of gas round trip) to see a transmission from London of Hamlet, and it was broke. So I saw Made in Dagenham which I had been planning on seeing. Sally Hawkins stars in another bicycle riding adventure. It was a pleasant film with some important triumphs in it, but it would have been much better if it had English subtitles; I don't think it was made for American audiences.

Tuesday I'll try for Hamlet again with a back up of Black Swan.

Robert

I found Black Swan to be one of the most stress-inducing cinematic experiences of my life, surpassed in my memory perhaps only by Das Boot, and though my heart was in my throat nonstop, I nevertheless loved every minute of it. Give Natalie Portman the Oscar right now, would'ja. She did not relax or stop moving once during the film. So how could the audience hope to relax? Outstanding, Black Swan, but I still liked The Fighter better.

Enumerating one's favourite films is quite an arduous process, isn't it? Some of us gravitate towards various genres, subject matters, and time periods that it'd take days to discuss them, but here are some intense, emotional gems that have a hold on me.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Harold and Maude
Trois Couleurs: Bleu, Blanc, Rouge
Secretary
Sue: Lost in Manhattan
Lea
Margaret's Museum

Saro

MRS. BROWN with Judy Dench, Richard Pasco, Billy Connolly, and Geoffrey Palmer was a fine movie.

Funny, Saddest Music in the World wasn't on my list back up in >69 MeditationesMartini:. Oversight!

And >86 absurdeist: YES, stress-inducing. But great. I don't know why people hack on Portman. Is it just because of Star Wars? She was great, hmmm, as long ago as Leon, which has to have been practically her first movie; she was the only good thing about Garden State; she was great in this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpMPFGBtE7Q, and I am doubleplusexcited to see her as Jane Foster in Thor (directed by Kenneth Branagh!). I think she's great.

So much to discuss....I'm not going to give you guys a list of most-meaningful-to-me movies, but I am willing to discuss a few at a time.

It's too early to tell re Black Swan, but I know that it is one of those rare films that implanted itself into my brain upon a single viewing. Close-ups of Portman's face ran themselves on the inside of my eyelids for at least two days afterward and I had at least one dream. I'm with EF, just give her the Oscar. Her fragility and hidden rage took center stage in each scene (except the Black Swan performance, where she shows us something quite different). I will have to watch it again at some point, especially for the dancing scenes.

Have to go for the moment, I'll be back to continue.

Oh: in re great Canadian films--Atanarjuat

(I don't love Citizen Kane, btw.)

Bless you, Martin!

>92 LolaWalser: :)!

I haven't seen Black Swan but I read a pretty convincing argument that it is Blades of Glory* - but not as good.

*Apparently Portman character tracks Will Ferrell character.

I'd be interested to see that argument.

Another movie I just saw and enjoyed so much that I want to see it again, is The Social Network. Funny, relevant, outstanding dialogue, and, for me, motivating. Anyone else?

I saw and enjoyed The Social Network, and thought the dialogue was very "Sorkinesque." In "West Wing" many of Sorkin's character interchanges were often quite rhythmical (is that even a word?). Interestingly, I think he majored in musical theater at Syracuse.

I saw Black Swan and Tron recently and enjoyed them both. It's cool what worlds they can create these days with the help of computers. I'll watch movies like Avatar and Tron any day because they're so cool visually.

Idiocracy is a movie I love but everyone I recommend it to hates on it. Whatever, I think it's a hilarious distopia.

Mostly, though, I love foreign movies. Having grown up on Hollywood, I find it fascinating to see movies from other countries and other national film industries.

Orfeu Negro is really good, I've seen that one a bunch of times. Brazil, Carnaval, Orpheus and Eurydice...

Cidade de Deus (City of God) is another Brazilian movie I like. Its Italian cousin Gomorrah was really good too, it was an Italy I didn't really know existed.

Nueve reinas (Nine Queens) is a fun Argentine buddy-caper movie. Seeing Ricardo Darín in every single movie made in Argentina gets a little old, but he's good here with Gastón Pauls. I also enjoyed El secreto de sus ojos.

Chile? Machuca was pretty good. I have a soft spot for Johnny Cien Pesos as well.

On the Waterfront is an old favorite of mine. I don't know where I found it, but I used to have an On the Waterfront poster in high school.

That recent movie about Chinggis Khaan, Mongol, was a lot better and more faithful to his story (as it's remembered in Mongolia) than I expected. I think it was made by Russians, and I was surprised by how authentic it felt. I also liked The Story of the Weeping Camel.

I like Idiocracy too. And Nine Queens. There was an American remake of the latter recently, but I don't recall the name, and it wasn't half as good.

87> arduous if not impossible, but fun to try!

Anybody seen Blue Valentine? I like just about every indie Ryan Gosling does, and Michelle Williams does quality work too.

@98: Wow, with John C. Riley and Diego Luna in the Darín/Pauls roles, and Maggie Gyllenhaal in the female lead. I'm actually intrigued, and can't believe I didn't know about this...if it's on Netflix I'll def watch it soon.

Don't forget the Golden Globes tonight, hosted by Ricky Gervais.

And for those of you who may not know who Ricky Gervais is: He's a British comedian that has a natural knack for saying things that really shouldn't be said; for creating jaw-dropping awkward moments: I love him when he appears on these award shows. Not too familiar with the rest of his work.

Robert De Niro receives the Cecil B. Demille award for lifetime achievement. So yeah, the De Niro of today is not the De Niro of decades past, though check his 2008 little-seen indie What Just Happened? before you write him off as still not being that edgy, relevant actor that made him one of the greats.

The reviews of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest have been mostly indifferent telling us to see it only if we need to round out our Millennium Trilogy experience. I cannot judge it from the viewpoint of someone coming to it unaware of books and previous movies. I am caught up in the excitement of the story and am happy to see a depiction of it on the no longer silver but mostly white screen.

This movie tries to capture an 800 or 900 page book, if I remember correctly, in two and a half hours. Some of the details are merely hinted at (a body rolling from a car, for example); others are not rounded out. Where the book might have lingered, the movie had to fit it in. Still, I was, slouching, psychologically on the edge of my seat all the way through. I wanted to see Lisbeth Salander and then some of her supporters justified, and I got to.

I was cheered by the ending of the book, and I was really happy to see it laid out so as to watch it.

I will probably own these three movies on DVD sometime not too long from now, and I will also watch the Hollywood version of this story.

Robert

Robert, did Hollywood offer any reason for a remake other than the reluctance of the great unwashed to read subtitles? Is just having a Swedish story too weird?

I saw the first movie. Loved the actress playing Lisbeth, but the books, judging by the reductions of the material needed to make it playable, are always going to trump the screen.

Actually, I haven't had the opportunity to ask Hollywood about it, but, you know, they know better than those funky Europeans how to make an entertainment. Umm, right. I typically would not expect the Hollywood production to have much to show me.

I am interested in the Hollywood version for two reasons. I'm excited about this story. The reviewers keep saying things like, "This may be the case where the Hollywood version is better than the original." I am happy with the original, so I remain to be convinced, but they have successfully challenged me to watch their attempt.

Robert

I don't believe I've ever seen a Hollywood movie that bettered a European movie or other non-American movie (see Nine Queens, above). I'm curious as to whether anyone else thinks they have, and of course can cite the movie(s). Also, if anyone has seen a non-American movie made after or based upon the Hollywood version that they believe improved on it.

#106

Can't think of anything at the moment... I wonder if any in the last category exist (non-US versions made AFTER the US version).

#105

I'm curious too. I don't think I'll pay money to see it, but the library can expect my request. I'm especially curious about the adventure with the sleazebag guardian. Do you think we'll get to see a gigantic dildo in action on the dude's backside in the Hollywood version?

And who'll be the Nazis?

The answer to all your questions may be Hitchcock. A couple of his films were remakes of now long forgotten films from abroad, and he's been remade many times, without measuring up. I think the French were generally smart enough to be inspired by him but not to remake him, while the British have tried to do remakes.

Then there is always "What's Up Tigerlily" ;)

Lots of Hollywood films are remade by Bollywood or for China, and usually they're just different. You don't really want to compare directly.

But remaking a modern Hollywood extravaganza is a tall order, since what Hollywood has to offer film is mindless spending. In the early days of cinema, the German or French director simply aspired to get to Hollywood to get at all that cash, though of late they've been wise enough not to succumb to the devilish temptations. But it takes a brave director to remake a bit of Hollywood fluff on half the budget - what would be left? Unless you're going to add some Bollywood song and dance.

#108

What you're talking about is influence, broadly, not specific movies being remade. Obviously the American film industry has had a huge influence on others--and vice versa. The back-and-forthing streams of influence are quite difficult to disentangle.

But speaking of remakes, can anyone explain what they achieved with remaking Haneke's "Funny games"? I haven't see the US version, but I understand that it is identical to the Austrian one scene by scene, word by word--except that it is in English, with Anglo actors, and naturally somewhere other than Austria.

No, remakes. Hitchcock's #17, for instance, is a remake of a German film. Note that #17 is technically a foreign film made by Hitchcock rather than one of his Hollywood numbers. He had to start out with the low budget stuff in the sticks before he could go to Hollywood and do the big stuff. It's not one of his blockbusters, but it's back in now that we can get all of hitchcock on dvd.

The 39 Steps is one that was remade with more fully genuine British accents, apparently because it irked someone to have a great british film made by an American director.

Okay, I don't know what you are talking about. Peter was asking about non-US versions of US films. How is Hitchcock's remake of a German movie pertinent?

Nice dig about sticks, American director etc. Your starry striped knickers in a twist this morning? :)

He asked several questions, the first was whether anyone could think of a Hollywood film that bettered a foreign one - there really aren't many, but Hitchcock is utlimately the answer to every question about good movies in Hollywood.

It wasn't a dig on the sticks - at the time, London was indeed a place where a young American could go to break in, and Hollywood was a place that went shopping for its directors abroad and took the cream of the crop. It's the era when there is a virtual mass movement of the entire German cinema to Hollywood, and there is little room in Hollywood for young local directors. It's often forgotten that Hollywood starts making truly good movies right at the point when it becomes the world center for cinema rather than its American headquarters.

Then the war ends and everyone who isn't dead or crazy goes home and we make Ben Hur.

A few movies that come to mind whose non-U.S. version I preferred, or whose Hollywood version I decided not to see, anticipating disappointment.

One, whose name I don't recall, a Dutch film in which the creepy protagonist kidnaps a woman whose husband spends the ensuing years putting up posters, trying to find her, meets the creep and then discovers what happened to his young wife. Made in America with Jeff Bridges (whom I love), who plays the creep. Anyone know the names of those two films?

Another, Yojimbo, I think it's called, made into The Magificent Seven, with Steve McQueen, Yul Brynner, a star-studded cast.

The recent Dinner for Schmucks, a remake of a French film which was far subtler and had more sensible casting.

Nine Queens, an Argentine film (see above) relocated to Los Angeles, which surely has its sleazy scam artists, but c'mon, Buenos Aires it ain't.

And wasn't there a recent American remake of Breathless? Which I won't even bother to see, since, among other things--like the iconic status of the French original--the alienated youth point in time doesn't, can't, translate.

Uh, guys? Godzilla?

Yojimbo was remade as "A Fistful of Dollars", a spaghetti western, so technically a second foreign film from the American perspective (and from the same American novel). The Magnificent Seven was remade from Seven Samuri, another Kurosawa - both were adapted into American Western form, both very successfully. In each case a situation where the remakes are different and stand on their own merits. Better or worse? Radically different. I don't know the Jeff Bridges film, there - you've got me. The Breathless remake was sometime in the 80s and was an unmitigated disaster, with Richard Gere. Laugh at, not with.

Yes, Godzilla! But isn't that entirely a Japanese based franchise?

Yes, of course, Seven Samurai, and the American film wasn't bad either. The Bridges remake was The Vanishing, which perhaps is what the Dutch version was called too. You will never see the likable Dude as dislikable as in that movie.

I missed that one.

Did anybody see the remake of Let the Right One In? I thoroughly enjoyed the Swedish original, and will not see the American remake unless given a compelling reason to try it.

I wouldn't mention American "Godzilla" in the same breath with the 1954 "Gojira". What started out poetically as a metaphor for destruction through man's folly ended up as another eardrum-busting mindless piece of videogame trash for morons. Irony, eh, in the light of Hiroshima and Nagasaki... can't leave even Japanese monsters alone...

Pace Amusing, I can't think of any specific American remake bettering any specific foreign movie, even with the valiant example of claiming Hitchcock as a true-blue Yankee, retroactively through his entire career. (Funny, that.) By the way, I happen to like Hitchcock plenty, UK to US--but I can't rate his American remakes higher than the British originals. Yes, his budgets were small, but the talents involved were big.

"The magnificent seven" was fun, but it doesn't hold a candle to Kurosawa. (What next, George Lucas's "Star Wars" one-upping "The hidden fortress"?) Briefly, it doesn't do anything cinematically interesting, and especially--it doesn't do anything new. I think this is often the biggest problem with remakes (it's redundant to specify "American remakes"), why they usually appear so, well, stupid. They'll pick up one or two elements of whatever they think has made the movie a success--the plot, the twists, this or that visual joke--but they'll lose the artistic content, the stylistic je ne sais quoi which made the movie watch-worthy in the first place. You can learn how to make movies from The seven samurai, but not from The magnificent seven.

ETA:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English-language_films_based_on_foreign-lan...

Making an on-topic post for a change... I've been entering my movies on LT (official disclaimer--which is a very bad, bad thing and you shouldn't do it); these nine so far are labelled as "all-time favourite":

http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?tag=all-time+favourite&view=lolawals...

There'd be more but I buy mainly from Amazon, and lots of good stuff isn't available in North America...

Hollywood can't remake Hollywood much less movies from foreign lands. Consider the original High Noon against the remake, or the original Sahara against the remake, or the original Sabrina versus the remake. I think anyone who wants to compare the detrimental effects of alcohol versus cocaine just needs to watch movies made in the thirties/forties and movies made since the eighties. I think it all started going south with The French Connection. The first movie I can recall about which the car chase was a greater topic of discussion than the movie itself.

Lola, when I go to your link of nine all-time faves it comes up empty. I clicked on movies and got the same result. However, I did find that you and I share about a fifth of my library.

I fixed the link.

Oh, man, the second Sabrina sucked so badly... And Spencer Tracy was a good enough "Father of the bride", tyvm. Or the original Ocean 11? And so on.

Sheer making of quick bucks.

>121 LolaWalser: eardrum-busting mindless piece of videogame trash for morons

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Get offa my lawn, you damn kid!

>126 LolaWalser: I's just trollin':) But that doesn't mean I wouldn't like to see Hollywood remake Rodan

The Night of the Hunter takes place on the part of the Ohio river where I was born and where I spent the first couple of years of life. It's one of my favorites, too. Robert Mitchum explicating love and hate is one of the most bone-chilling scenes in all of American cinema. He was just a serious bad guy. Possibly the most serious up with which Hollywood ever came.

Let's see if I can come up with nine all time favorite movies. Most are going to be Hollywood and probably all before 1980, but one or two. My tastes don't generally run to foreign films.

In no particular order, just off the top of my head.

High Noon
Twelve Angry Men
Run Silent, Run Deep
Seance on a Wet Afternoon
Passport to Pimlico
The Night of the Hunter
Key Largo
The Gospel According to Saint Matthew (Pier Paolo Passolini)
Arsenic and Old Lace

That's as good a nine as I can come up with. I'm sure there are others that I've forgotten, but then at bottom I'm not much on films. Compared to your list, Lola, it's pretty pedestrian.

#127

You speak a strange alien tongue, o Youthful One. I'm complaining on behalf of SPENCER TRACY here.

#128

That whole movie is... a poem. Actually, Laughton himself (I think) said it was an extended Mother Goose rhyme. Something beautiful and creepy, familiar and alien at the same time, domestic yet threatening...

You should try to see the Swedish movie on my list, Gene, "Songs from the second floor".

I just noticed that each of my nine faves is in B&W. What does that say?

#131

You were born in simpler times? :)

As far as I'm concerned, colour is a luxury, not a necessity.

Compared to your list, Lola, it's pretty pedestrian.

Not at all. All of mine are well-worn classics too.

Good to see Night of the Hunter on both lists.

I realize I'd starting confusing "Hollywood" and "American" and got jumbled upin a number of posts, and I'm sorry.

There is one set of remakes that comes quickly to mind that has consistently reproduced wonderful films (or at least consistently prior to 1990, there being some later versions that leave something to be desired). Dracula. Nosferatu.

#133

Ah yes. The great myths will never die. Add Dreyer's "Vampyr"--I think it was the first Stoker-inspired movie (although the plot has nothing to do with Stoker). Vampyres were in the ayre.

Beauty & beasts. Am partial to that one.

not much time to contribute anything save an appreciative nod or two to all posters. it's great to have a movie thread like this in the salon.

one of my all time fave's is fellini's LA Dolce Vita.

I know this is going to sound awfully narcissistic, but I left out a couple of my favorites in # 128 so here's a revised list and this time I think it's much closer to right.

High Noon
Twelve Angry Men
Run Silent, Run Deep Stalag 17
Seance on a Wet Afternoon
Passport to Pimlico
The Night of the Hunter
Key Largo The Third Man
The Gospel According to Saint Matthew (Pier Paolo Passolini)
Arsenic and Old Lace

Speaking of Stalag 17, for you Community fans out there the fellow who plays the really curmudgeonly old man, the guy that makes Chevy Chase look like an angel played the barracks captain Hoffy Hoffman. His name is Richard Erdman.

I think the numero uno on this list for me is a toss-up between High Noon and The Third Man. I think the quick cut shot leading up to the train whistle as the clock strikes noon is one of the best examples of editing to heighten tension since the lead in to Donner's hammer strike toward the end of Das Rheingold. Being visual it adds even more tension. It's probably my favorite scene in all of movies.

136: Of those I have only seen the Third Man (recently! and I loved it), Stalag 17 (the world's best prison movie, even better than Papillon or the Great Escape) and Twelve Angry Men (wow, that was such a great movie). Need to see the rest of them.

When I was a kid there was a theater nearby that did old style double features of old movies with cartoons in the middle. I saw Lost Horizons and several Hitchcock movies there with my 80 year old godfather.

I loved A HOLE IN THE HEAD with Edward G. Robinson & 'Old Blue Eyes.'

Oooh, I was jealous of Beryl Reid on her account (in "Killing Sister George")

Susannah York, British Actress, Dies at 72

I don't remember enough of the original True Grit to compare the new True Grit to it. I suppose there will be people who will claim that the new movie is an offense to the old one solely on the basis that it proves them wise, but the new movie is good enough. One should see the Golden Globe winners, for the most part, first, but this movie has some marvelous exposition, if not development, of character. I thought Mattie was exceedingly well played.

Robert

THE LIMELIGHT with Charlie Chaplin, Claire Bloom, and Buster Keaton was a treat from start to finish. Chaplin teaches us about what it is to be human, how damnably difficult it is.

I went to the movie Black Swan. I could have done without it. There were some agonizing scenes, but they did not justify the movie to me. I was never happy to be involved in the movie; I was never eager to see what was next; I didn't especially care how it all turned out, except that I had paid for my ticket and deserved to know. I suppose it was well made, but so what?

Am I the only one?

Robert

No, Robert, I thought it was dreck. Bad acting, bad "dancing", trite story, bland direction... completely negligible.

You have relieved me greatly. I think I'm going to skip Natalie Portman's picture opening tomorrow.

Thank you,

Robert

Refreshingly critical, you two. Not that I've seen the movie, what with the inertia that comes over me when I hear or read about one that tells me to stay away. I like to think it's aesthetic intuition. I didn't see, for instance, Avatar and have no desire to see it. I've never seen Titanic or Gladiator. Maybe I missed something; I'm sure there're some who'll say so.

I did see the King George movie the other day. What's it called again? It was okay. Good actors, certainly. And Churchill as a bit player was amusing, though it had me wondering about the historical weight the viewer was supposed to give to the protagonist, and thus the story.

My wife tried to convince me otherwise. (I almost always go to the movies with her, though she goes far more often alone.) And because I knew what she was getting at even before she spoke, I said, "Well yes, of course, there's always that," after she said what I thought she would. "A story about particular people."

#144

Robert, I don't know which picture you mean, but I imagine there are better ways to spend a couple hours, or even five minutes. For instance, if your faith in ballet as an art form has been damaged by the BS, you might want to heal thyself viewing Maya Plisetskaya's vids, e.g. this one:

The swan by Saint-Saens

See, it CAN be transcendental.

#145

Refreshingly critical, you two.

Just tell me how many paragraphs you want.

I've never seen "Titanic" either. Can't stand Dicaprio's ugly, evil mug and besides, what's the point of making new Titanic movies after "A night to remember", unless they can be at least as good?

146: As i have said many a time, I was rooting for the iceberg.

I love Leo! Leo is hot! Leo is a heartthrob! Leo can act!

Let's hear it for Leo!

Lola, lovely and riveting piece. Thank you.

I like Leo. He's not hot, tho. But of course tomcat thinks everybody is hot, being a tomcat.

I liked Inception and Blood Diamond - but I might have liked them even better with another actor.

I also recently saw him in a 1990s movie where he played Rimbaud. It was an OK movie. Again, I might have liked it even better with someone else.

I don't know what it is exactly I have against DiCaprio. It's not that he can't act. I just don't really like him on the screen.

I wrote about my impressions of DiCaprio with multiple links. I wrote briefly about No Strings Attached with a link. As I was about to write about the movie I saw yesterday my crappy Dell laptop ate my message. I wanted to cry, but I don't have time. You aren't actually missing much, but I labored over it.

I saw Lebanon. It is a focused, intense 110 minutes, all but a few seconds of it set in an Israeli tank in the war in 1982. It played here for all of a week, only a couple of times a day, in the afternoon; it deserves much wider attention. A big screen made the cave-like tank interior especially real, but I think it would work on a teevee screen.

Robert

150> I've never taken DiCaprio seriously either. He's too boyish, that's the problem for me, pure and simple. His boyishness makes his characters unbelievable. I know it's a facile reason -- and certainly not his fault -- but there it is. However, one role of his where he put that boyishness to great use, was in What's Eating Gilbert Grape? (DVD) in which he portrayed a developmentally disabled young man to great effect. The movie was ... okay ... but his performance alone makes it worth watching.

How 'bout in the very early DiCaprio movie when he was DeNiro's son; his mother was Ellen Barkin, whom the DeNiro character abused, along with young Leonardo. What was that one called?

I would contend that boyishness was also an advantage in The Basketball Diaries and of course Romeo and Juliet.

153> This Boy's Life

Agree with both of you; his early stuff works for me too. Him playing Howard Hughes in The Aviator (DVD) is a bit of an unbelievable stretch for my imagination.

He's one of those actors who when I watch them, I'm aware I'm watching Leonardo DiCaprio, rather than the character he's supposed to be portraying. I couldn't do what he does, though, so what do I know. Just my perception.

Don't punk out, Henri. Apologizing for your perception. Take two aspirin and get a good night's sleep.

I'm aware I'm watching Leonardo DiCaprio, rather than the character he's supposed to be portraying.

And that is the case with every single damn Hollywood celebrity actor these days! How can you watch a bleeding movie with those inflated puppets, even if it's not projectile vomitworthy, when half the time you're wondering if they broke up with their fifth model girlfriend or adopted the sixteenth little Sudanese, and what their colour scheme for the kitchen is this year?

Other dumb ugly unfuckable Hollywod oxen-men: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Brad Pitt--oh why do I bother--that entire contingent of interchangeable Collins and Ewans and whatevertheyarecalleds--all of them, ALL OF THEM!!!!1! Factory of dreams mon cul! Factory of thousand-year long snoozes! Factory of ruination for the otherwise wonderful (Antonio Banderas) or the potentially wonderful (Hugh Jackman)! Factory of glistening, "bedazzled" shit!

HOTT sexy men who are/were ALSO good actors, or were hott sexy BECAUSE they were such good actors: Terence Stamp, Richard Harris, Malcolm MacDowell, Dirk Bogarde, Ian McKellen, Ian Richardson, Charles Dance, Oliver Reed during the six minutes before he went to fat & moustache, even Laurence Olivier--even Laurence Olivier!!!--and

well, obviously I'm missing Americans--and there must be a reason. Could it be it's because so few were actually trained as actors (rating stardom on looks alone)--anyway, I shall ponder.

And now for something completely different.

The other day I'm watching John Huston's "Heaven knows, Mr. Allison" and Robert Mitchum is gobsmackingly, APPALLINGLY hot. I mean you want to reach through the screen and do him right then and there, your sexual orientation and marital whatevers notwithstanding. Well, you can't do that, but the poor tantalised viewer has a screen alter ego who--so the poor viewer hopes--will do the deed FOR the viewer. Except the blasted alter is a freakin' nun, and wouldjabelieveit--she refuses him! Deborah Kerr, you twit, better that you had refused the part! (And I'm suddenly reminded that Burt Lancaster was hott AND a goodish actor too.)

What's with Deborah and nun roles anyway? Was she being showered with them on account of being Irish?

Oh, Hollywood owes me.

I agree with everything you said, Lola. Or if not quite, enough not to make a piddling argument. Well, no. I don't see the Burt Lancaster goodish actor thing.

On English actors: I always know, when I watch even some dreck, that the acting will be superior to anything the Hollywood crew offers. I should have added that to my brief comments on the King George taking speech lessons movie. (Why can't I remember the name of these things?)

I'd be remiss if I didn't add Albert Finney to your list. In anything. A closeted gay man in Dublin. A rigid but principled father in Till the Devil Knows You're Dead, where he does "American" pretty good. Opposite Tom Courtenay in The Dresser. And a more recent film, where he also plays opposite Tom, who moves in with him after Tom's wife dies, the name of which I also don't recall.

Albert Finney--oh my god YES. Have you seen "The dresser"? You must, you must!

I don't see the Burt Lancaster goodish actor thing.

Maybe I was blinded by lust, but I thought he was fine in "Far from heaven". At any rate, I've liked him since childhood (The Crimson Pirate etc.)--ah, which reminds me again of Martin Landau! A pure Oedipal crush--looked something wicked like my old man (Dad isn't quite so large in the mouth tho'.) Landau's an excellent actor too. The second-ranked in Hollywood is where one must look for that combo of talent and charisma the big names usually lack.

Ha--you added The Dresser on edit? I usually prefer seeing movies alone, but it looks like we just may be movie-buddies, Peter.

156> just a little gun shy havin' a strong opinion, but I'll get over it, and thankfully Lola is here to teach us a lesson or two about following Jim Rome's credo, "have a take, and don't suck."

I certainly hope though, Lola, you would not include Christian Bale in your dumb ugly unfuckable Hollywod oxen men descriptive, because he's a chameleon, whose own personality and even physicality becomes consistently unrecognizable in his roles. Most recently The Fighter, but what he did in a movie I think maybe four people saw, The Machinist, opposite Jennifer Jason Leigh, was dumbfounding. Would not have known it was Christian Bale were I not such a fan of his. Now, of course, it's hitting me ... he's not American! Shit, and I thought I had you!

Okay, how 'bout Chris Cooper as an excellent chameleonic American actor?

Acceptable US actors - Ed Norton?

>160 LolaWalser:. No, Lola. Maybe you got so excited at the mention of Finney that you missed it the first time around. On edit I added the second Finney-Courtenay collaboration, which I now know is called A Rather English Marriage:

When their wives die on the same day in the same hospital room, two aging British World War II vets--upper-crust Reggie (Albert Finney) and retired milkman Roy (Tom Courtenay)--become unlikely roommates in Reggie's mansion.

Check it out, if you haven't already.

The Crimson Pirate was the first ever movie I was taken to see. No kidding. I must've been about minus one.

Lola I like it when you talk dirty and I am happy you did not include J. Depp, Matt Dillon, Harisson Ford, Dennis Quaid, De Niro etc etc

162> in my book, yes. And add Ryan Gosling while you're at it.

The exquisite Deborah Kerr was Scottish-born. The reason English actors are vastly superior, simple, dipthongs, DIPTHONGS. Carriage don't hurt, neither.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-yblNKfQyk
Poor Oscar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_x3fiayN_k&feature=related

Has anyone in-thread ever watched this? It's a favorite of mine.

The Crimson Pirate was the first ever movie I was taken to see

Mine was "Notre-Dame de Paris" with Gina Lollobrigida and Anthony Quinn! Twenty years after it first came out! Movies travelled slowly to Syria.

#164

I rarely see contemporary movies, so usually I have no opinion on them people whatsoever. The only reason I got to see "Black Swan", for instance, was because it was a New Year's meetup with a friend. Before that I hadn't been in a multiplex for at least three years, and I say that with pride.

Depp I've seen in several Tim Burton's movies, leaves me cold; Dillon and Quaid I can't place; the best thing about Ford I can think of is that he looks like he had fun in Star Wars and Indiana Jones; De Niro I don't think I saw in anything except "The taxi driver".

Christian Bale, Freeque? Was he in "American Psycho"? If so, he seemed to be having fun too, and that's always a plus in my book.

You didn't see DeNiro in Mean Streets? Vraiment?

You didn't see DeNiro in Mean Streets? Vraiment?

I didn't.

I'm full of surprises like that.

It's where he lost his metaphorical virginity.

'Acting class'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkddEkM7FQw
Give me an infirm P.U. over Jonny Dipp and his crowd anyday.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OocV5DHEp68&feature=related
Maybe it has to do with greatness?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAHPvPUFSUc&feature=related

167

"The New Anne Taylor Store's on the right."

Oh Gawd, I gotta see that one.

157 fantastic rant lola. I am cheering from the gallery here. American movie making was basically killed by the Vile turd George Lucas and his pile of star wars shite, and that Spielberg git, with ET. They stopped making movies for adults in favour of 'family' movies, and everything just went to shit.

British actors can actually act.
I think it was Olivier who said to some Merhucan method 'actor' who asked him about his 'method': "just pretend, dear boy, it's called acting."

Other great british chameleon actors: Gary Oldman, Daniel Day Lewis, Anthony Hopkins, EMMA THOMPSON OMG I love her.

I still sing the praises of Al Pacino, though. Anyone seen his 'Looking for Richard?' and I will always have a soft spot for Jack Lemmon.

That Pacino thing was very good.

Some more fine acting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p2ZsvZxPzQ&feature=related
Action!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HYVH4iybOw&feature=related
Djyess
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--FiFX-UpW0&feature=related
What never?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDd-MtRFvRA&feature=related

>167 Jesse_wiedinmyer:. Never saw it, Jesse, but just added it to my Netflix queue because I'm a sucker for movies located in places I've been, and also because, sight unseen, it had a high what call "funk factor": the budget to make The Cruise is listed at $139,064(!), and Netflix's recommendations for other movies I'd presumably like include the quasidocumentaries Crumb and Man on a Wire.

Brando.

But isn't everyone mostly talking about old men, other than the current hollywood brat squad? Who can praise an actor under 40 from any part of the world?

Peter - can confirm Man on a wire was very good.

Who can praise an actor under 40 from any part of the world?

Kidding, eh? There's tons of wonderful young actors--in cinematographies of smaller nations, theatre stages all over the world, and, naturally, even in the US (television is a good place to start looking for young American talent--true talent).

I could name dozens but there's little point if no one else knows them... (so far, one hopes).

Hollywood is one of a kind, it's not analogous to any other nation's cinema industry, and the subspecies of fabulous beings it produces, especially in the last 2-3 decades, aren't really comparable to actors elsewhere.

I was just pointing out, what struck me about the names being discussed was not so much their nationality but their age. Maybe hearthrobs aren't what they used to be? At least in the English speaking world.

I mean, the british equivalent of today's Leo is Orlando Bloom, right? Is he better?

The best movies I've seen over the last couple decades have been subtitled. Hollywood doesn't have a lot of good directors left working in it making moveis worth watching (the best for my money are probably David O. Russell and David Lynch; I'm less of a Tarrantino and Scorcese fan). BUT, does the rest of the English speaking world? Am I missing the great british actors and directors of the current decade?

There are a number of younger actors whom I think could be quite good, if they had a decent movie to act in.

Bloom is Hollywoodized to the point that I wouldn't even consider him, personally.

Is there a talented british actor who has escaped the Hollywood disease? Must we go to the stage or the tube to find alternatives there, too, as Lola suggested for Americans?

Olivier certainly did Hollywood at the time, but he also kept a hand in the London stage, which gives his acting a very different kind of feel. I just don't know who I can compare to him in the Leo generation.

Christian Bale's acting chops I'd consider as one example of a Brit having escaped the "Hollywood disease," whom I mentioned above. And yeah, Lola, that was him in American Psycho, and I'd say he was definitely having him some good old fashioned serial killing fun! How many actors could make such an atrocious human being seem so elegant and appealing, besides Bale? Dude's in a league of his own.

I'm a sixty six year old bachelor and sometimes need to confirm for myself that that is not a state of perdition. I went yesterday to two movies about failing marriages: Blue Valentine and Rabbit Hole. The former was excellent; the latter was good. I am glad not to have participated in circumstances like those of either. I wonder whether they are inevitable.

I saw eight or nine trailers. Four of them made me interested in potential reviews: Somewhere, The Illusionist (2010), The Company Men, and Another Year. Some of them are American films; perhaps I am in a state of perdition.

Robert

Anyone out there seen My Dog Tulip? Good, bad, indifferent?

Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-Gena!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql2A9fgklQ4&feature=related

Por-man, that is beautiful.

And, (the Dawg is gonna be crass once again) 'great costumes!

I was at the multiplex yesterday from about 3:30 pm until about 10:30 pm with a break from a little after 6 until a little before 7. It was a marvelous time.

First I saw the movie The Way Back "inspired" (I quote) by the book The Long Walk. When they got to India the official asked them, "Where have you come from?" and one answered, "Siberia." The official went on to ask their mode of transportation, and one answered, "We walked." It is a tale of personal triumph and of grand triumph. The movie also reminds us that Stalin is to remain despised.

Then I saw the National Theater Live presentation of Fela! I, a concert, opera, and movie goer, have never seen such a thing. The words remarkable and amazing came to mind as it unfolded. It is a musical spectacular made rich by its politics. It has probably nearly run its course in theaters around the world, but an opportunity to see it should not be missed. I believe that there are books on the subject of Fela Kuti; I will be looking into them.

Robert

Robert, friends who saw Fela! in NYC raved about it, but I missed it. I didn't realize it was captured on film. I'm going to have to check on that.

The National Theater Live productions are not on film; they are electronically captured. We failed to get Hamlet because Fedex didn't deliver the hard drive in time. I'm hoping a DVD of it comes out; I'll get a copy perhaps just for the files.

Robert

Another Year struck me as a sweet movie. I thought of a couple of things to knock it for, but they didn't survive. One is that the characters were pretty much types, but they were so well played that they didn't come across that way to me. Another is that the blissful older couple dumped the troubled woman who thought that she had friends, but they didn't really; they just wanted some time for their family without, sometimes, the intrusion of Mary. Poor Mary; you don't want to be trapped by such a person, but they are so needy they are so hard to turn away.

This is yet another movie in a season of movies to see.

Meanwhile I can't make up my mind whether to see 127 Hours. Do I really want to spend two hours getting involved with a man deciding to and then cutting off his arm? It may be that I do. On the other hand, brave and appropriate though it was, it might be one of those gruesome parts of life to put aside until forced on me by reality.

Robert

Every year it's a goal of mine to see as many Oscar-nominated movies as possible, at least the Best Picture nominees before the show itself. Last year I got closer than ever, seeing 9 of the 10 BP nominees before the broadcast and the 10th (An Education - just lovely) after. The point being, that I previously had no intention of seeing 127 Hours, but now will have to to see if Franco's performance is worthy.

Heh! cg, you and I have exactly the opposite goals! :)

Oscar-nominee to me signals "avoid" in all but a few categories--animation, foreign, and where the looks of a movie are concerned.

I'm currently watching a new batch of (old) Russian fairy tales I just got from a Russian shop in NYC.

There's one, "Viy", after a story by Gogol, that totally blew me away. A young seminarian encounters a witch and beats her to death. The witch turns into a lovely girl and, on her deathbed, demands that the seminarian say prayers for her soul for three nights, next to her coffin. Each night she tries to kill him, and on the third, invokes the foulest demons, vampires, werewolves and the horrendous Viy to help her do it. The end is terrific!

Loved the special effects to pieces (it's from 1967).

Viy is a classic.

Mac, you've seen it? Cooooool.

Yes, well, Lola, I figure that maybe one day I'll get tired of Hollywood, but that day is nowhere near, plus doing it this way is necessary for my plans for world domination through pop culture mavenhood.

I always mean to go seek out those esoteric gems and whenever I do I am usually rewarded, but maybe that's another phase. But I'm sure I can sneak one like Viy in every now and then.

Jack Okie in THE GREAT DICTATOR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg-3AdzjhYI

Speaking of Hollywood, I just saw Hitchcock's Vertigo for the first time and damn.

You want to stay away from those towers. Another excellent Hollywood movie starring Orson Welles and Edward G. Robinson and featuring a clock tower is The Stranger. If you can, you should give it a look see.

>199 geneg: downloading.

I have been fortunate enough recently to see a couple of really sweet movies. Today, I caught the last local showing of the Japanese movie Dear Doctor, also known as Dia dokuta. In this movie a man and a village of 1500 depend on each other and develop a kind of distant affection. When something goes wrong with the health of one of his patients that distance is lengthened and foreshortened both at once. I would like to hear kidzdoc's reaction to this movie.

Robert

Before I went to see The Illusionist I wrote an adverse review just in case. This movie takes on the question of whether one should trust in the affections of Scottish women, and resoundingly answers that we should keep our distance.

Then I saw it.

The Illusionist is a beautiful movie. It is a grippingly and exquisitely sad movie. Go see it.

It is, by the way, a French movie. Only a few concessions are made to English speakers, but they are adequate.

Robert

The reviewers I read who reviewed Somewhere didn't seem quite to know what to do with it, so I decided to see for myself but kind of expected Hollywood sweet. As it turns out I don't quite know what to make of it -- reason enough, I think, to recommend it. It is not among the great movies, however.

Among the Oscar nominated short films, both animated and live, which I also saw today, there are certainly films to see. Without a list of them at hand I can't say which ones to look for, but sitting through all of them was more pleasure than duty. Tim Minchin narrates one of the best animated ones.

Robert

Robert,

Are you part of the Academy? Sounds like you're having fun.

I saw the King's Speech last weekend. I wasn't enthusiastic about going. Plotline: speech therapist helps king with stammer.

BUT. I loved it! Every minute. Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush were delights. Helena B-C, too. It wasn't just about a stammer. It was about King Edward abdicating, and the stifling pressures of being a prince, and courage, and friendship.

Colin Firth is my current front-runner for Best Actor, but I've yet to see True Grit and The Fighter, so we'll see.

I am a pleasure seeking movie goer. I may go early to the theater today to catch a movie before the high definition rendition of King Lear from the National Theater. If that movie turns out to be 127 hours it will be because of some twist on duty (say to a unity of experience), but not an official one. It may turn out to be Biutiful or nothing.

I have seen The King's Speech, True Grit, and The Fighter. They are not all of the films that deserved attention, but they are all good. I thought, however, that True grit might have been in unaccustomed company. I am warmest toward The King's Speech; I thought it should have had two best actor nominations. That way Christian Bale could've got his best supporting actor award without knocking the guy who really deserves it.

Robert

By the way, the irony highlighted by citygirl is how I've sold a few people on seeing The King's Speech: speech therapy for a king; who'd want to see such a movie -- but it's great. That Helena Bonham-Carter can be as beautiful as she is in movies is, of course, a bonus.

Robert

All of these movies are marginal at best, if that. Terrible acting. Bad directing. Infantile choreography. The American Cinema is anemically mediocre. I hated them all.

~ Lola

Well, chacun a son gout. Too lazy at the moment for accents, though, thanks to Salonistas, including Lola, I do know how.

Anyhoo. Tomorrow: going to see 5 BP nominees in a row. It's a thing my local cinema started last year. It's exhausting, but so worth it. I haven't seen any of these:

Toy Story 3
127 Hours
The Kids Are Alright
True Grit
The Fighter

So excited.

#208

Har! Get your hairy man-feet out of my girly shoes!

I haven't seen any of the movies Robert mentions, but I'm sure the choreography in King's speech was atrocious anyway.

#209

I heard good things about Toy Story 3. I await its arrival into my repertory theatre with forks and hope.

209: Of this list I've only seen True Grit, and I really loved it. So did my two boys.

The Dude as John Wayne. Hollywood never ceases to amaze with its choices. I knew this was a bad day to quit sniffing glue.

I haven't seen Toy Story 3 and likely won't; I'm still up in the air about 127 hours, but it is still playing not too far away. I want to dislike The Kids Are All Right because of the abuse the family dished out to the man, but it may have presented that well and may be deserving of attention for that.

I saw Biutiful yesterday. It is a long movie. I suspect that there is a lot in it, but to be sure I'll have to let reflection run its course.

I also saw the National Theater Live (sic) production of King Lear. I am not as enamored of it as the critics they cited in their ads. Getting to see a presentation of a Shakespearean play is, however, for some of us important enough that we'll accept Mel Gibson as Hamlet.

Robert

For me, anything by Kurosawa and Bergman (but, especially The Seven Samurai and The Seventh Seal).

I also love Jim Jarmusch's films. Has anyone seen Down by Law? Incredible film. The tempo is just mesmerizing.

Also, in no particular order:
My Dinner with Andre
8 1/2
All Monty Python movies
The Third Man
Apocalypse Now
Dead Poet's Society

Those last two you listed are all time faves of mine.

Others would include:

The Deer Hunter
Taxi Driver
Goodfellas
Pulp Fiction
Memento
The Matrix (only the first one)
Casino
Dr. Strangelove; Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
2001: A Space Odyssey
A Clockwork Orange
The Last Waltz
Rosemary's Baby
Alien
Chinatown
Network
Little Miss Sunshine (Proust & Nietzsche lovers can't help loving this twisted flick)
Being John Malkovich
Adaptation
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Lars and the Real Girl
Lost in Translation
Hard Candy (if you hate pedophiles and want them mercilessly castrated; oh my is this the film for you!)
The Machinist
Gran Torino (political correctness be damned)
Million Dollar Baby
Das Boot
Dogday Afternoon
The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly
The Outlaw Josey Wales
Midnight Run
American Beauty
October Sky
Full Metal Jacket
Easy Rider
Woodstock
The Song Remains the Same
Suspiria
Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff?
All About Eve
Sunset Blvd.
Rivers Edge
Badlands
The Thin Red Line
Scarface
Brazil

totally great list, Enrique. I loved Hard Candy for bringing Elllen Paige to my attention. I adore her.

I'm ready for my closeup now, mr de mille. Classic.

I agree with Apocalypse Now, but only the 79 edition. Coppola afterwards fucked up his masterwork with the redux and director's cut version. He never did understand his own movie and the later versions show it.

I've only seen the original version. But have y'all seen Hearts of Darkness, the documentary on the making of the film? Great back stories. Especially Coppola trying to direct Hopper. Hilarious.

Down by Law was excellent, as was Mystery Train. I also liked Jarmusch playing essentially himself in Blue in the Face.

EF: Goodfellas but not Godfather?

218 b. you are tapping into a whole other genre there - plenty of pickings. Need I mention Herzog or Gilliam?

Here's an obscure little noirish movie, one of my favorites, filmed in my old neighborhood, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and perhaps the first movie in which Edie Falco appeared:

http://movies.netflix.com/Search?oq=&ac_posn=&v1=Laws+of+Gravity&sea...

216> thanks Murr. Classic, yes, and creepy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA9lFsiut2Q

Agree it's gotta be the original Apocalypse. The Redux material would've been better served as bonus material of "deleted scenes" for hardcore fans; makes the movie uneven in the extreme, unfocused.

Haven't seen the documentary. Sounds terrific.

Enrique, I can't recommend the doc enough. After seeing it, you'll wonder how the film ever got made. It really gives you a new perspective on it. Of course, then you'll be itching to watch it again right afterwards.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bca5vSNyg0s

Brando's skull looms out of the darkness like a planet. Fucking incredible scene from an astounding movie.

That's a great way to describe Brando there Murr.

I need to see that doc, bubba. All this Apocalypse talk is arousing me fiercely!

Going back to Ellen Paige, here's the trailer for Hard Candy. Delectably disturbing.

Seems everybody agrees on this original version of Apocalypse.
There is also a book by Coppola's wife about the "making of". Something like Herzog's Aguirre and Herzog epos.

I love movies and stories who have a great river as a scenery...

Then mention must be made of that movie about Che. What was it called? A chunk of which was spent on the Amazon. Also Oscar and Lucinda, with Ralph Fiennes and Cate Blanchett, unless I'm thinkiong of another movie altogether. They end up in a houseboat that falls apart up some river? One of these days when I'm rich, I'll hire a secretary to keep track of all this detritus I can't put a name to.

Either Motorpsycho Nightmare or Motorcycle Diaries. I think probably the latter.

Yes, The Motorcycle Diaries. Though in fact most of that was on land, I recall the Amazon.

Not a real river movie but not bad anyway

I have returned from my journey, and here is what I have to report, briefly:

(in order viewed)

Toy Story 3. Like Mr. Durick I may not have sought this one out, but Robert and everyone else, this movie was excellent and varied, funny and sad. I didn't expect that it would be a memorable action caper on its own. So creative.

127 Hours. I wouldn't have gone to see this if hadn't been nominated, but I am glad that I did. It is an extraordinary story and Franco did a fine job telling it, almost always all by himself. Now I am interested in the documentary.

The Kids Are Alright. Lovely, natural, funny. Oh, Annette Bening. Both she and Moore were amazing throughout, with natural chemistry and bringing out the contrast in the characters' personalities. And their comic timing...brilliant. But that one scene at the dinner table at Paul's house. If you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about re Bening.

True Grit. A real movie movie. Hailee Steinfeld is radiant in the bleak landscape. I've not seen the original and no desire to. I'm pissed that Steinfeld was nominated in Supporting instead of Best Actress. If that's not a lead role, what the hell is? Jeff Bridges suffers from the curse of making it look easy. His performance is so natural you wonder, why give him an Oscar for acting? He doesn't seem to be acting. It's as if he had born as Rooster Cogburn and Jeff Bridges doesn't exist.

The Fighter. Melissa Leo is indelible. Christian Bale should win Best Supporting. What a free performance, like Franco's in 127 Hours. Amy Adams also makes it look easy. I loved the characters, all of them. Mickey's seven crazy sisters are priceless. You just couldn't make that up. Mark Wahlberg will be overlooked because his role is quiet and his performance is quiet but he really brings you the heart of Mickey. Also, didn't seem to be acting.

How was the cinematography?

My guess is Steinfeld was nominated for Best Supporting just because it was thought she'd have a better chance at winning in that category. Silly, but things like that happen.

Not a connoisseur of cinematography, and I tend not to be able to imagine it without the art direction, so my opinions are kind of both of those.

True Grit was the strongest of the four live movies I saw yesterday, and it had a western landscape to help out, but it wasn't just that. It was cohesive, and drew your eye to...oh, I don't know what I'm talking about, but: True Grit. The greys and terrain for the tough. If you had to live in that kind of light, you'd be tough, too.

Toy Story 3 is a whole nother story, visually, and animation just gets better and better.

ETA: 234, I know, but it's just so obviously wrong. Besides, Melissa Leo is pretty tough competition in Supporting. Will Steinfeld have more of an edge than she would have because it was a lead role? I don't know. I mean Best Actress is Best Actress. It should be stiff competition all the time, but I stand by my Portman prediction.

Melissa lives up the road from me, is the local favorite. I like her too. We need more crusty workingclass types in Hollywood, and everywhere else.

Glad to hear, citygirl, you liked Christian Bale's performance. I agree on the Melissa Leo, but I found those disgusting sister skanks too cartoonish, not believable at all to me as real characters -- which would be my only critique with The Fighter.

Hope you all get to see Christian Bale in The Machinist someday. It's got Crime and Punishment allusions galore.

I found them quite believable. I have encountered these kind of ladies, but never seven sisters at a time.

As a long-time David O. Russell fan, I want to see the fighter... my worry is, is this the one he did for the critics? Is there a commercializing dumbing down going on? It's my fear from the press on it.

My wife and I have been big Melissa Leo fans ever since the first day Tim Bayliss walked into the Baltimore Homicide Unit Squad Room.

We sit up and take notice when she is in something. I hope she wins whatever she's up for. She deserves it.

Pietro, when next you see Ms. Leo, tell her how much we love her work.

Yeah, I understand she's in Treme now, but I've not yet watched the first season. I was a bit disappointed not to see her in The Wire. I heard an NPR interview where she said David Simon hadn't paid her any attention until her Oscar nom last year.

>239 geneg:. Yes, me too, since Homicide. And then she was in a movie (of course I can't remember the name of it) in which she's a down-at-heels mother with an errant teenage son, living hard by an Indian reservation in northern New York who gets involved in smuggling to survive. She got an Oscar nomination for that a few years ago.

In fact, I haven't actually run into her yet, but if I do, I'll give her your regards.

We get a good number of famous people up here, so-called weekenders. There's a town where De Niro has a house on a big spread, and keeps a lot of local painters, carpenters, landscapers, etc., busy so that when he comes up with his entourage for a week in the autumn, when the leaves are at the peak, everything will be just so. But M. Leo actually lives here, I think (she's listed in the phone book), except when filming in faroff places and attending award ceremonies(!)

Yippee!!! The Oscars are tonight. As usual I host a little, teeny Oscar party. (Sometimes I'm the only attendee.) This year a friend will come.

So. I have now seen all 10 Big Picture contenders plus Blue Valentine, which should have been one (instead of 127 Hours, imo). And I'm more confused than ever.

They were all so different and mostly excellent.

God, Best Actress is a hard one for me. I've not seen N. Kidman in Rabbit Hole b/c the closest place showing it was in NJ. But of the other four...Michelle Williams is really sticking with me, like Portman did. Bening was great but I can't help but think that Portman and Williams had better roles, but to be fair, Williams made the role. Jennifer Lawrence in Winter's Bone, a movie I highly recommend btw, is natural and subtle and restrained and completely convincing. So. While I had Portman on top, now I can't choose. Maybe I'm rooting a bit for Michelle Williams....

Inception...I just loved it, and of course I didn't completely understand it. The more I see of Ellen Page the more I like her. Cotillard was lovely, elegant and real,as usual.

In my mind, the real contenders for BP are The Social Network, Black Swan, The Fighter, Inception (for sheer audacity and execution) and mebbe True Grit and Winter's Bone. The King's Speech is a contender and I loved it, but it didn't stay with me. The Kids Are Alright was lovely and funny, but it's not BP. Ditto Toy Story 3, and Franco was great in 127 Hours, but it's not BP either. If it were up to me: The Social Network (and maybe Winter's Bone). But the Fighter was so good...Never been so indecisive in my life. No, I'm sticking with TSN.

Best Actor: It will go to Colin Firth, who will be deserving, and if I were in the Academy I would probably vote for him. On a personal level, I like Jesse Eisenberg. I've not seen Biutiful so I cannot comment on Javier Bardem other than to say he is a very sexy man. Also, I'd like to say that Mark Wahlberg should have been nominated.

Best Supporting Actor: I'd probably give it to Christian Bale, but yesterday John Hawkes in Winter's Bone snuck in there. Rush will probably win it. Ruffalo is suffering from the makes-it-look-easy curse. Maybe he was playing himself? Don't know. Andrew Garfield should have been nominated.

Best Supporting Actress: Leo. Steinfeld should have been nominated in Best Actress, but I guess that's her producer's choice. But she could steal this from Leo. I've not seen Animal Kingdom.

Art Direction: Inception
Cinematography: Inception or True Grit
Director: Aronofsky (Black Swan) or Russell (The Fighter) or the Coens (True Grit) or Fincher (TSN) or Hooper (The King's Speech)

Adapted Screenplay: Sorkin hands down, but I wouldn't be offended if the Coens took it. Those were two that impressed me most.
Original Screenplay: I'm leaning towards The Kids Are Alright.

Okay, I'll shut up now.

Oh no no no, please continue, thou citycineaste ...

Have you ever watched the Independent Spirit Awards on IFC? They're always fun, like a garage band version of the Oscars, replete with celebrity "F" bombs.

I hear Leo is getting some grief over pimping herself on twitter or facebook or somewhere? The Academy, apparently, holds a dim view of self-pimping, the condescending hippo critters!

Obviously, she needs to join Le Salon, where self-pimping is part of everyday life.

Aren't they supposed to pimp themselves? I believe the term is "campaigning for the Oscars."

No, I don't currently have IFC or else I certainly would.

I should be putting all of this on my temporarily stalled blog (hectic at work, I'm at work now). I'm going to give myself a deadline of April 1 to have it up and running. Apropos, no? And, thank you, EF, for your support on this. I finally figured out that it doesn't have to be perfect initially, as long as it eventually becomes so.

I think Academy voters expect more individual kinds of pimping - packages of movies delivered with accomplanying bling, invitations to special events, offers of babysitting and backrubs. Advertising to the whole trade... well, that makes the whole Oscar thing seem so tawdry!

Let's send her an invite to the salon, Nathan!

You're welcome, lawyergirl. You might consider forgetting about blog perfection. No such thing. By definition, blog's are never complete, but always in progress, under construction, bells and whistles and posts and links and gadgets added to and subtracted, endless choices, so don't stall yourself, okay?, with this idea of the perfect blog. Could work as an ironic blog title: "The Perfect Blog". April 1st is on my calendar.

I'm so sure, A_M, when everybody knows there's nothing sordid or corrupt about the Oscars.

Who's Nathan?

ncgraham

Thanks. And I thought I knew everyone's secrets!

Did you seriously just call me workinggirl?

No, not that I'm aware of. I called you "lawyergirl" I believe.

Dig this. An ad, it seems, attached to the Oscars.

http://libri.dvd.it/narrativa-straniera/penso-dunque-chi-sono-memorie-di-un-anno...

Does that mean, Piero, we'll be seeing you in the audience tonight?

I did not see Piero in the audience.

And, thank you, EF, for rescuing my honor, altho I do believe that some misguided people would think that to be a workinggirl is more honorable than to be a lawyergirl. Not that you asked, but many lawyers are decent, thoughtful, ethical people who are trained to tell people not what they want to hear but what they need to hear to protect their (the people's) own interests.

Just sayin'. I mean, I know you didn't ask. It's kind of a reflex at this point. Preemptive strike.

Yeah, but citygirl, we do try to weed those folks out of the profession before too long, right?

Shhhh. Somebody's got to keep a decent image or else we won't be able to walk the streets, except around here, the DC area, where well, you know.

(Check out the usage of vagueness to obscure my meaning.)

Well, this guy is a lawyer, too.

Obviously, you can find a rotten example or 20 of any profession. If the guy is going to be scuzball, he'll be one whether he's a teacher, lawyer or general contractor. If scuzballs are smart and ambitious, they will find a profession in which they can yield dirty power.

The reviews for Cedar Rapids were sort of wishy washy, but I wanted to get out, and I wanted to add justification for my being at that end of town. The substance of the movie was as naive as the substance of a teddy bear, but the movie was as sweet as a teddy bear can be, and it was funny in an in your face kind of way (I heard people in the audience guffaw). I'll let others deliberate on the derivation from Candide. Sweet funny -- that's pretty good.

Robert

Saw Barney's Version yesterday and enjoyed it immensely. I can't recall another movie I've seen with such perfect casting: Paul Giamatti as Barney, Dustin Hoffman as his workingclass/cop Jewish father, Minnie Driver, the libertine best friend the supercomposed woman who played Barney's third wife, even his doctor and the police detective. It was funny and true and off-the-wall. And I got a kick out of the Montreal setting, since I somewhat know that city and could identify its streets and scenery (they were filming there the last time I visited).

I really should actually read Mordecai Richler. I think I write like him. Or maybe like the scriptwriter who adapted this as a movie.

>262 copyedit52: yeah, I really enjoyed it as well, when I was expecting something sort of pious and insipid. Richler has his ups and downs, but besides Barney's Version and of course Duddy Kravitz, I remember St. Urbain's Horsemen being really good, and suspect that it and Joshua Then and Now may have something to say to you as an autobiographer, although that is at a fifteen-or-so-year remove.

The adapter, Konyves, has certainly earned his stripes. I wonder how long he'd been polishing that adaptation when opportunity knocked?
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0465480/

Barney certainly seems a step up from those others, Slick. I did have the feeling the screenplay was part of what made it such a flowing movie, despite all the details that could otherwise have bogged it down. But then, again, I really should read Richler before concluding.

And yes, Martin, I think I am particularly attuned to first person, memoir type things. In the movie, either because of Richler or Konyves, or both, the anecdotal style gives it a jazzy feel--one story after anotherm vignettes almost--which neverthless come together and blend into a satisfying whole. And that's been my obsession now for years.

I thought Giamatti did a phenomenal job of portraying Barney at all ages.

It`s shallow, but I can`t get over this huge grudge that an ugly toad like Giamatti, I mean the characters he plays, gets all these fantastic looking chicks. It irks.

It's make-believe, Lola. In real life that only happens if you're rich.

>268 copyedit52: but yeah, it's like they think we'll be all repulsed and horrified if it happens the other way round but we totally won't and they should know that.

Is this Giamatti cat the old Baseball Commish? can't be he be dead. Maybe a scion of the Giamatti family? As I see it, unprepossessing (a PW word) guys get good looking women all the time, Quality women aren't moved by pelf or good looks, are they?

He's the son of that old and now dead commish.

You could say he's Bart's brat.

well, I finally saw Black Swan. What a load of shite. Her dancing was dreadful - she looked like a clothes horse. ok, I know she's not a real dancer, but they could have used body doubles of something.

my favourite moment was the Gloria Swanson look Portman gave to the camera during her performance of the black swan, all eyeliner and purple contacts. Talk about tacky. LOL

>273 QuentinTom: Thank you. That movie was dreadful.

>267 LolaWalser: And thank you. It's never the other way around.

They did use a body double for what little `tricky`stuff they showed--pirouettes and fouettes mostly. But she was so obviously NOT a ballerina it hurt to watch. Her muscles were all wrong, that fake gym stuff, and she moved like a truck.

I'm a better dancer than she is. You should see my fouettes.

show me your entre-chats !

#277

Salty dog!

oooooooer missiz

It's a beautiful (but still cold) Saturday morn. Animal Crackers is on the tube.

"You go Uraguay and I'll go mine."

If anybody is interested in the characterization of a beleaguered 66 year old Korean woman, they should see Poetry. The performance is a tour de force, and the resolution is exquisite in its aptness.

Robert

dear 267, or the Irked. I confess that I am ugly and my wife is beautiful.

Slate article: I've Seen Every Woody Allen Movie

Author claims there's something to be learned from the entire body of work.

Care to discuss?

It restates the negativeness of the universe. The hideous lonely emptiness of existence. Nothingness. The predicament of Man forced to live in a barren, Godless eternity like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing but waste, horror and degradation, forming a useless bleak straitjacket in a black absurd cosmos.

>284 A_musing: but sometimes there's sex.

Saw for the third time the Japanese movie SHALL WE DANCE? Wonderful. Felt miserable about the exquisite people who are suffering so much. But they will rebound, if anything's certain, they will rebound.

And laughter, thank dog.

I've almost always enjoyed Woody Allen movies and some are among what I consider to be the best, most important movie experiences, on a personal level. But I've never thought about why. Off the top of my head, I'd just say that they're funny and/or thought-provoking and great examples of writing and auteurism, which I don't think is a word.

But now I consider again. I don't relate to the quote Sam is jokingly passing off as his own in 284, but there must be something that makes me say that Allen is a genius and an important one.

284-5: and sometimes there's straightjacket sex

I don't know about auterism, but there IS autism, a bleak, lonesome, knoweverythingnessaboutnothingthatmattersism, that permeates every purmutation of permeation, rendering even the sex within the straightjacket undundant.

#290

Huh?

284, 285, etc.

You seen to have a rather limited understanding of autism.

Given that today is World Autism Awareness Day, it might be a good today to start rethinking what you think you know.

I have a daughter with both autism and Down syndrome. Fairly well documented 'round these parts.

Jesse, I love your fiery passion and obvious defense of the developmentally disabled -- I'm in your corner -- but I'm fairly positive Rick did not mean to offend us in any way. Dude is a flamboyant writer -- I've actually read his stuff -- and he's a damn good writer, imo, and while his post could obviously be construed as insensitive and demeaning and pejorative (and regrettably, it probably is), I don't think he meant it that way; I think, rather, because he's such a word-play aficionado, he got a bit carried away (had he been drinking?) with the word-play riffing off of "auterism."

I'd be shocked to find out he was purposely attempting to offend those closely connected with autistic individuals, such as maybe yourself and definitely I. And maybe it's not my appropriate place to get in the middle of this, but in this instance, since it's been an awfully strange day in le salon, I've decided, for better or worse, to make it my place to get in the middle of this. I doubt Rick had any idea today was World Autism Awareness Day. But I do doubt his intention was to piss anybody off.

I'm sorry if I've pissed people off by intervening also. I dig you Jesse, and I also dig Rick.

No problems, whatsoever. Probably just a knee-jerk reaction on my part to a flippantly made comment. I've been known to make a couple of those myself.

I don't dig Rick. I don't dig Rick AT ALL, and I've been abandoned by wolves and raised by Communists. Ricky would do well to use some less "flamboyant" communication style while he makes himself familiar with and to total strangers--even in the wilderness of the interwebs. Or maybe ESPECIALLY on the tone-deaf 'webs. It's like watching a blind man stagger about a room strewn with eggshells and rice paper.

Ah, sweet Lola strikes again.

Best stay away from the Hellfire crowd, Rick. Though you're certainly welcome here.

Oh, and, um, the naughtyhottie no longer digs Hellfire, sweet Lola.

edited to add by "sweet" I mean "bitter" and another word that starts with "b" and rhymes with "itchy".

Actually, Rick, now that I consider it, by all means, why not remain a member and add even more irksome fuel to the fire of Hellfire ;-)

Oh dear. Something tells me I ought to feel positively CRUSHED, and yet...

But I still dig the Salon. Unless you'd like me to leave...? :)

No need to leave. I honestly don't care what you feel right now. But it's the heat of moment too, feelings can change.

Hey Rick, one last thing, there is legitimacy to what Lola has said. Send me a pm and we'll talk about appropriate decorum in the threads.

I honestly don't care what you feel right now

No kidding. I'll spare you my feelings and share a thought or two. My opinions, such as they are, are generally right out there for all to see. I don't pretend affection and friendliness where I don't feel it. I've a sharp tongue? Perhaps. But no malice, and I don't strike in the back. I can't even imagine the mind of someone who prods another to be "irksome" to them, and in this forum context, of all silly things...

by "sweet" I mean "bitter" and another word that starts with "b" and rhymes with "itchy".

Oh, sweet irony. Honey, when it comes to bitchiness I got NOTHING on you.

And nothing to say to you ever again.

April is the cruellest month. Chill it everybody. We all need to STEP AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER WITH YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR!

HEAD FOR THE DRINKS CABINET AND MAKE A VALPROTINI NOW!!!!!!

What did Woody Allen do to deserve this?

I'm with the cat on this one, but as I have been called out, as I often am, I will respond. (Sorry cat.) I loved #284, and a few other things popped up and it was all funny, silly, et al etcetera. I am sure I know less about autism than most, but I have spent some time with folks who know about it and talk a lot about it, and it seems that autism is quite a variety of things. But that isn't the point. When it comes to life and its multiforms I take humor where I find it.
Midgets are my favorite. The limbless can be funny. Ugly and fat can be funny. Jokes about me by friends and students can be very sharp and funny. I had heart surgery at age 39 because of a dysfunctional valve, and if someone wrote flippantly about such a matter, I would laugh if possible (it would have to have a trace of funny). I got hit by a car a few years ago--broken upper arm and dislocated shoulder--I can't tell the story without laughing. I may have a short penis. I am an alcoholic trying to keep from getting drunk. This may be the worst. Give me jokes about alcoholics.
So, no, I wasn't at all thinking about autism (first wrote alchoholism, sad fuck that I am), but if I were I wouldn't worry about it. Compassion is an intimate matter...generally not for an open forum in this sort of case. For god's sake, on Hellfire there is talk of gobbling babies! I doubt i will ever eat a baby, but i did enter the conversation.
Also, on world women's day i gave no flowers. I hate world awareness days. I think they trivialize.
Meanwhile I think Jesse's criticism was rather kindly done, no ad hominem, short and to the point.
I think EF's response was generous.
I think Lola's response was generated by a dislike of me that I find interesting and odd--so far i find that of all bloggers Lola is the most like a blind man throwing rice paper at egg shells or whatever she said. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes she is very Lolier than thou. Once I felt a little hurt at something she wrote but i held my tongue and decided it did not matter what she meant either way and I ignored it. But I don't get the business about strangers and the way one should act, as this is all for strangers. She boasts about being open for all to see like it or not and criticises me for much the same thing.
Yet the only thing she wrote that I really think is foolish is: 'And nothing to say to you ever again.' I hope it's simply a tantrum. She is someone, like about everybody who posts here, who anyone can learn from.

So EF, should I still write you a private message? Yes, I should...

I should add that nonetheless I will certainly withdraw from hellfire as it's founder is the one who has such distaste for me.

> 306 No No No private messages. I love it when you do it in public.
Hey Rick, we are in the same time zone, the others are sleeping...

hey mac--great blog...

where are you in the zone?

probably in the O zone
Ghent Belgium - sunday afternoon- beautiful weather

24 yesterday, right? I talked to someone just outside Brussels yesterday. Here we have about 20 because of the cool sea.

Yes splendid weather.

My siesta is over. i have to watch my boy playing in a hockey match in half an hour. Grass hockey not ice hockey.

You live in Slovenia, don't you ? Beautiful country.

slovenia on the coast, in Izola, a town often considered the smelliest, lowdown, seediest, foreignermost, thugsville--which it hardly is. There has long been sardine canneries and such, but that's about to end. The fishy smell occurs but rarely anyway. Nonetheless, Izola's athletic fans are Ribari--fishermen.

I was wrong. I do have more to say regarding Lola.
She wrote: 'I don't dig Rick. I don't dig Rick AT ALL.'

shortly after, she wrote about herself: 'But no malice, and I don't strike in the back.'

Certainly not in my back, but I do considering going that far out of your way to make clear your feelings, with the added emphasis, to be malicious.

In the few exchanges I have had with Lola, I have found her 'generally right out there for all to see', and definitely not 'pretending friendlinesss', as she put it. All fine, but part of what I see is a stong tendency to be discourteous, even arbitrarily nasty, using the practice of manipulating arguments by choosing the playing field, so to speak. In other words, she loves to start an argument but cannot abide losing one, and so will not acknowlegde points made against her points. She will fly off or sideswipe (e.g., below what she erased was that I should think about her less--too easy a jibe, too weak, and hardly to the point when one has been needlessly malicious.) There's a certain Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard to the 'I am above it all, I don't care'.

I do, I do because it is that kind of behavior that drives people away. Even on this blog with her being the only nasty voice I've come across, it wouldn't take much of that to sicken me to the point of taking off. I am nauseated by the disingenuous intellect: I don't care, but I notice everything; not that I care, but I need to say it loud and hard...
We all have our reasons for spending whatever amount of time we do engaging each other on this site. I'd like the friction that arises at least to be real, and come from genuine convictions, as well as, even, good will.

Izola's athletic fans are Ribari--fish.

Not "fish"--"fishermen".

there is a nice short article on autism on Salon right now.

Aha, now see what I did in #315? I edited. Think you can learn to do so? Might save you the need for apologies and explanations.

>298 LolaWalser:. You were raised by commies, Lola? Me too!

On movies, on TV or elsewhere: any opinions on HBO's Mildred Pierce, the first two parts shown last week, the next installment to be shown tonight? I thought Kate Winslet was a vastly superior Mildred than Joan Crawford.

#319

Comrade!

I thought Kate Winslet was a vastly superior Mildred than Joan Crawford

Well. Well, now. Yes, I think I can picture that... I'm thinking of the episode of Extras where Winslet plays herself playing a nun... Yes, she could do Mildred.

I have decided I like plays better than movies.

I went to a movie theater yesterday to see a play sent on hard drive by the National Theatre in London. It was one of their two versions of Frankenstein. If it happens to play near you, see it. It opens with a longish period of a wiry person flopping about on stage, but it gets much better and leads to such questions as why did Mrs. Shelley subtitle it The Modern Prometheus?

Robert

#321

Regardless, drama is drama is drama.

323> Not according to Benjamin (one of Lola's commievaters?)

In any case, what matters to me:

Stardust Memories
To Have and Have Not
Anything with Dominique Sanda innit
The Ruling Class
Breaking the Waves
Amarcord
Marriage/Maria Braun
Himmel Ueber Berlin
probably more I can't remember
I liked Starship Troopers (nuking bugholes says it all)

What doesn't matter: Solaris (the original), only cannabis-induced mirth made it tolerable

I was talking about discourse on LT.

Jesse,

I intended no disrespect, was indeed only riffing.

rick

#321

Apples and oranges.

#324

cannabis-induced mirth

Woot!

**adding classified info to theoria's file**

File? What file? (innocent look).

Would it be too negative to list the most boring movies we ever saw? And did Lola scoot because she has a slow machine and needed a young thread, or has she flown this coop for other reasons?

Titanic. yes, i saw it. The least likely of friends visited me in an Iowa shithole and wanted to see it. I agreed to go. I hope he never forgets. Later he watched it with his mother because she wanted to see it.

Peter Jackson's King Kong. Snore....

The Coen Brothers' A Serious Man. Couldn't finish it for boredom (and frustration).

The Postman - Kevin Costner. Even though it was all Oregon scenery, I could not force my family to keep watching it.

costner is a magnum of chloroform.

I second The Postman. Much of the audience in the theatre had left by the time it faded to black.

I asked the above question about boredom because I was inspired, if that is the word, by theoria's mention of Solaris. And I gotta tell you--and perhaps brave the wrath of the cognoscenti--that Even Dwarfs Started Small by Werner Herzog is up there in the comatose (and not a good one) category, and the Wim Wenders movie with the friggen angel could be used for insomniac therapy instead of drugs.

Jeremy Irons twinbill: Damage and Lolita

Kevin Costner in anything makes me want to scream. Poor Susan Sarandon, to have him as a lover in Bull Durham!

This thread is a FPITA to load, but considering the topic (boring? moving pictures?!) it may as well not mar the shiny new one.

His secret is that on our best day, maybe not on our best day, we could do as well as he, no matter our training. american actors in general are louts that are unemployable, just about all of em.

Even Leonardo at the bow?

who?

Decapitated, in Titanic

mercifully

Nay, for it was not before filming.

knot a moment too soon

Ingmar, who knew his bergs, would've done it different