Late Spring, only my second Ozu and the experience just got better than Tokyo Story
Watched The Hit. Weird movie in that all the performances were top notch, but the film as a whole fell apart.
Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm. It really felt underwhleming
In the Loop – Super great. Super funny.
murmur of the heart and chinatown. both brilliant!
Duplicity – meh
Mad Men Season 1
John Cassavettes’s Shadows
Thirst- Loved it.
london to brighton. and i’m going to watch either waltz with bashir, the holy mountain, or dancer in the dark later. woooohooo.
Kings and Queen – 8.5/10 Didn’t have too many expectations going in and can say I was very pleased. Some great editing to aid an excellent melodrama that never becomes cliche and stays interesting for its 2 hour 30 minute duration. I’m now looking forward to A Christmas Tale.
Sayonara CP 8/10
The Wild One 4.9/10
The Prefab People – loving bela tarr more and more these days….
Some crazy Maddin, “Twilight of the Ice-Nymphs.”
Eraserhead and Chinatown.
A Fistful of Dollars
and
Picnic at Hanging Rock
oh, yeah, the second half of In the Mood for Love
Fellini’s Amarcord on a big screen in its quasi-entirety (missed first three minutes of the show)… Finally!
Game 6, written by Don DeLillo
SPOILERS:
Disappointing because it could have been better, fuller, far more poignant. Watching Game 6 served as an experiment, I read the screenplay first. This production has a tell-tale history of seeking out backers, big names and that ever elusive “green-light”; so, the trimmed-budget, low-cost quality it bears was expected but overlooked. Although — considering the city where the plot is set, regarding the story entails our main character to taxi-hop place to place over a single day — the number of locations they secured is impressive.
The heartbreak comes via Michael Hoffman’s unwarranted cropping and storytelling decisions. There are scenes where the true impact of DeLillo’s language remains, emanating unbattered, exuding its strength over Hoffman’s chimerical, factious direction. For example, a scene in a bar has protagonist Nicky Rogan (Michael Keaton) watching a baseball game (the same from which the film gets its title) along with a cab driver and her grandson; DeLillo’s unique voice, his incomparable use of diction, his fragmented dialogue interpolates the space between our minds and our hearts, the way it’s meant to; and yet Hoffman seems all-engrossed with his camera, continually panning and zooming.
In simple earnestness, I am protective of DeLillo’s words: the sounds they make, how I hear them, the way I read them. I interpreted what I read, I have my own vision, albeit personal and specific; it’s certainly different than Hoffman’s. My favorite part in the script isn’t even in the finished product. And I don’t think it’s on the cutting-room floor. DeLillo wrote a monologue that Nicky tells to the gun in his hand, he speaks directly to the gun, as a person, then kicks open a door; that’s what I read. What I watched was Nicky walk straight to the door, pause, then kick it open; meaning: that’s how it was filmed. Perhaps the speech was shot, but no matter, they also filmed the scene without it. Of course, the speech appears in DeLillo’s novel Cosmopolis, released in 2003, prior to the final ‘04 revision of Game 6; so…I’m just confused all the more. Perhaps legal issues arose, but I haven’t read or heard anything implying it.
“Le-sigh.” Certain details of the villain were eliminated as well. So many years, so much effort to realize a production; DeLillo’s heartfelt work didn’t deserve such regrettable execution. The aforementioned speech is actually about movies, it should have survived the final cut; but thus is Hollywood, such things are in the hands of either the director or producer(s). The writer is brushed aside; unlike in theater where the author can shut down production [at any time] simply because the impending product is not in accordance with his or her original vision. The director, the actors, even the producer(s) have an obligation to the writer. A comparison between DeLillo’s screenplay and Hoffman’s hypostatization serves as a prime example of Hollywood’s axiom of entertainment-above-art; and it’s independent.
Tokyo Sonata and Les Amants du Pont-Neuf
The sad poem of a film called….Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.
The Kid Stays in the Picture
and
M
I watched El Topo by Jodorowsky. Still numb from it.
Tuesday Night: M
Last night: Swamp Thing
Tonight: Nashville
Kim So Yong’s debut, In Between Days, which is wonderful. A sensitive and observant take on a young Korean girl’s sense of displacement after immigrating to North America. A huge kudos to Kino for releasing this. Now I really need to track down Kim’s second feature, Treeless Mountain.
Enigma of Kaspar Hauser. Fuck that was amazing and painful.
The Bad Sleep Well
silent erotic fantasys from jean renoir- Le petite Marchande D’Allumettes & Sur un air de charleston
Cleopatra (Paramount 1934)
d. Cecil DeMille
w/ Paulette Godard
A Brighter Summer Day via laptop with a terrible torrent. One of the greatest endings in all of cinema. Yang has a way of making you connect and feel for every character, good or bad.
imitation of life ( the douglas sirk version) . It was pretty good
Simon
The Band’s Visit
quite simple, and quite wonderful