There was a retrospective of Ritwik Ghatak’s films a couple of years ago in Tokyo. I caught Reason, Debate and a Story which was really awesome. In pretty good condition too, not too jumpy but very high contrast (maybe it looked like that originally?). Anyway, great film from a great Indian filmmaker who isn’t Satyjit Ray.
Regarding a billion Bollywood Sh*t lovers – An equal proportion of Americans (probably) find Michael Bay the ultimate in cinema and won’t ever consider an alternative, so yeah, I think Xanadrew should stick with the opinion that a billion people could be wrong.
Personally, I love all forms of cinema, and if people find great entertainment value in Transformers 2, or 10,000 wild dancing girls in lieu of a plot that’s fine with me. But I don’t think as many people around here would attack someone if they made an offhand remark about mainstream Hollywood crap while actively searching for an alternative.
Or maybe they would? I’m new round here. Don’t listen to me….
Reason, Debate and a Story had some music but it felt much more like ‘music is an integral part of Indian culture’ than ‘lets dance, smile and amuse the masses!" if ya see what I mean. It’s certainly not a musical though.
It’s a very surreal film and the musical interlude (and weird ninja dance thing at the beginning) actually fit in perfectly and felt like it had a point, other than a way to spend 20 minutes between major plot points.
(Actually it might not have been a weird ninja dance. I seem to recall it being one, but that’s the joy of seeing films once on the big screen then never again for years – your mind adds to the entertainment value immensely).
You’ve watched a set of films that span a 7 year period at the beginning of Godard’s career and have come to the conclusion that he’s ‘weak’, he lacks characters and that the semi-important statements in these 50 year old films are ‘dated’. Ha ha ha!
Oh wait, someone told you that 1960-1967 was Godard’s ‘best’ period and you concluded that if you don’t like this stuff then you’ll certainly hate the rest?
So you don’t like Godard, does it really matter? Should every filmmaker dumb his vision down to the lowest common denomiator in order to please everyone? What the heck is wrong with taking risks, being different and trying something original?
Godard’s post 1967 films, for the most part, don’t resemble anything from his so-called ‘highlight years’ so I’d certainly watch a few films from later on to be comfortable with my Godard is Weak assertion. Just as I wouldn’t write off Sam Raimi after Evil Dead 1&2 but go and watch A Simple Plan first.
But in the end there are so many great directors and films out there. Most likely there are more films out there that you’ll love than you could ever possibly watch in your entire lifetime. Nobody need “point you in the right direction” and tell you why you should like something you don’t (but I will try cheese sometime, only once mind you).
I loved it. I think people should just try to relax, enjoy themselves and maybe show the film to their children. Most of the criticism I’ve read seems to be along the lines of ’It’s not as good as Totoro, and that was made for children too’. Well, come on, how many kids films are as good as Totoro? Not many. But do we trash every one which comes out becuase ’It’s not as good as Totoro’? No. So, once we’re over that, lets look at the film on it’s own merits.
I’ve seen people complain that too much is left unexplained. And that’s true, but personally I like the way the film stays focussed on the two kids, while all the complicated, important stuff which needs dealing with is dealt with off-screen by the grown ups. Whereas Miyazaki wants Sen in Spirited Away to take control of her life and make decisions, here he lets five year olds be five year olds; content to play with their toys, hang out together and eat ham. Yeah, maybe half the population of the town was wiped out in the flood but to the kids it’s a chance for adventure and to see some weird new fish. So long as their not left alone in the dark for too long, they’ll be OK.
1: Edvard Munch (Peter Watkins)
2: Den-en ni Shisu (Terayama Shuji)
3: Godfather Part II (Bearded fat bloke)
4: Reason, Debate and a Story (Ritwik Ghatak)
5: Celine and Julie go Boating (Jacques Rivette)
6: Chinatown (Polanski)
7: The Enigmar of Kasper Hauser (Herzog)
8: Gekitotsu! Satujinken (Ozawa Shigehiro) (guilty pleasure, I know…)
9: Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Hooper)
10: Lancelot du Lac (Bresson)
“Interesting to think about how overwhelmingly this genre is dominated by the States…”
“High School Film” is an very popular genre in Japan too. I’ve got no statistics, but I reckon it probably comes close to if not exceeds America’s output as a percentage of all films made in the country. Mostly because it very often crosses over into the ‘sports’ genre.
10 Recent movies off the top of my head…
(these are not necessarily recommendations. I’ll post some of those later when I’m more awake)
Waterboys
Gambatte Ikimashoi
Swing Girls
Rookies
Crows Zero
Gokusen
Gakko no Kaidan
Lily Shushu no Subete
Drop
Battery
….
There’s plenty of bad things to say about Kurosawa films. It’s just difficult to work up the effort to hate them in public because they’re all so damn good.
Um…lets see…Richard Gere is kind of crap in Rhapsody in August… Ah heck, I guess I’m just the wrong person to think up critisicm of Kurosawa. Anyone else want to try?
Godard? Oh yeah, Godard’s 60s films are all very nice. I agree with watching him chronologically, although that make take a while so you might want to jump around a bit. Godard’s career takes some quite drastic changes so even if you don’t like the 60s films, there are people who prefer his later stuff (later meaning post-Dziga Vertov Group, although I’m sure there are a couple of nutters out there who think that’s his best stuff).
If you’re interested in analysing Godard’s whole career and can’t find any Dziga Vertov films (tricky to get hold of apart from Tout va Bien which doesn’t really count) you might just want to skip them and watch Ici et ailleurs, his first (I think) collaboration with Anne-Marie Melville in which he analyses footage he shot for a Dzgia Vertov film and questions his own direction and motivation signalling the start of the next phase of his career. It’s quite interesting to listen to a supposedly ‘egotistical’ director criticize his own films so viciously. Certainly makes ‘Letter to Jane’ a bit more palatable.
Then watch Histoire(s) du Cinema to see what Godard’s up to nowadays.
And then everything else.
And if you still don’t ‘get it’, don’t worry too much about it. There’s plenty more genius directors with wild eccentric careers to work through if you look hard enough.
Yeah I’m not sure of Disney’s reasoning there. “American kids call their parents Mom and Dad”? Well, er, so do most Japanese kids ya know. There are kids out there in America, Britain, Japan, Australia who refer to their parents by their first names and (looking in from the outside) there’s a slightly different feeling to the mother-son relationship when they do (in the movies as well as in ‘real life’).
But apparently Disney thinks it’s ‘inappropriate’. Like Kiki drinking coffee from the giant pot marked Coffee – “How about some hot chocolate?”. Ha ha ha.
As someone who needs a region free/PAL-NTSC player to run both Criterion and Masters of Cinema DVDs I find myself leaning towards MOC as the company with most interesting titles that I really want to buy. A good commentary is a nice extra, but there are plenty of better ways to convey information and a bad commentary is just a waste of space (and tends to push the price up) Actually I prefer to turn off my TV and enjoy a good MOC book.
I do like Criterion’s Eclipse series though. Seems to me a good way to get lots of good films in high quality at low prices.
I wish the BFI’s Blu-Rays were all region free. They keep releasing such good stuff. Looks like I’m gonna have to import a region free Oppo Blu-Ray one of these days.
Seeing films the moment they come out, or better still at film festivals before much hype has been built up. Then all you have is the description of the movie on the festival website to go by. Choose one which sounds good, assume all descriptions are written by the filmmakers who’ll be trying their best to sell the product and (in the case of non-premieres) don’t go searching for reviews from other film festivals.
I completely agree that hype can spoil a film, a book, music, anything! You really have to focus on not letting it affect your senses. Otherwise you end up criticizing a movie ‘cos it’s “overrated”. Which is kind of silly really.
Mass-media makes this pretty tricky though – I find moving to another country helps.
I remember watching Croupier during it’s half-a-week or so run in London the day it came out (being a Get Carter fan). I thought it was a great film, not the best I’ve ever seen, but certainly entertaining. Of course with no real release everyone quickly forgot it. A couple of years pass by and suddenly it’s an arthouse hit in the states, Clive Owen is a God, ‘the next James Bond’, hype upon hype upon hype… And now I don’t really want to watch it again since I’m pretty sure it wasn’t THAT fantastic. Blair Witch is another example, I imagine the few people who caught a late-night screening on a whim at a festival (without having seen the website) were blown away.
Last time I watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s (a much loved film here in Japan), the Japanese family I watched it with thought Mickey Rooney was hilarious. A very odd movie-watching experience.
Actually I seem to recall a show on TV recently where they gave a top ten (Japanese TV does love it’s ranking shows) of Hollywood stars trying to play Japanese. I think Sean Connery won to much hilarity.
I was stuck at home one winter coming down with a cold when I watched Repulsion and Memento. The next day I had a fever, the walls were closing in on me, drifting in and out of cold-medicine induced sleep being unable to recall how long I’d been my apartment. The films didn’t make me sick per se, but they certainly made the experience a lot more unpleasant.
-
“Did someone above actually call Man Bites Dog a documentary??? Maybe you also like that documentary called the Blair Witch Project?
How can we be on the bottom of the second page without a mention of Robert Flaherty. Nanook of the North is foundational and holds up well even with its dated romanticism."
-
Well, Nanook acted out Flaherty’s instructions in order to relatively accurately replicate his life. The guys in Man Bites Dog acted out the directors instructions in order to relatively accurately replicate the activities of a serial killer. Obviously Nanook is quite a bit more realistic than Man Bites Dog (mostly being based on Flaherty’s actual observations) but is one of them really ‘not a documentary’?
And what is a documentary anyhow? Is it a record of real people in a certain time and place? Then Breathless is a pretty good documentary of Paris 1959. Heck, Mean Streets is a pretty good documentary of a time when Robert De Niro was a young amazingly talented actor.
Ah, whatever. I’m gonna stop there.
Back on topic and I’ll recommend most of Heddy Honigmann’s work as some of the best ever documentaries.
But there are also directors like Herzog. Watching interviews, listening to commentaries and reading about his weird life seems to enhance the experience of watching his films.
Chimes of Freedom
Jokerman
Tangled up in Blue
Idiot Wind
Not Dark Yet
Girl from the Red River Shore
Visions of Johana
Ballad of a Thin Man
Like a Rolling Stone
Masters of War
Blind Wi….What? Only 10!!?
How about:
Highway 61 Revisited
Time out of Mind
Blood on the Tracks
Freewheelin’
Another Side
Blonde on Blonde
Bringing it all Back Home
John Wesley Harding
Oh Mercy
Bob Dylan
How many films does The Auteurs host altogether? I note that the impressive film list of 226 pages drops to a not-so-impressive 8 when I click on ‘available to watch in your country’, but I also note that in the list view sorted by ‘Views’ that there are quite a few large gaps – presumably of films available in other areas (it’d be nice to be able watch some Japanese films by the way…).
I always recommend the site to my friends, but it’d be nice to know how many films are actually available in say the US or the UK for example so I can be a bit more specific in my recommendations.
A few of my all-time favourites (although there are far too many to list – I think I only watch movies with downbeat endings for some reason). I probably I saw these when I was young and impressionable and used to love it when movies were brave enough not to cop out at the end. Not that I still don’t enjoy it now, but I like happy endings occassionally too nowadays.
Get Carter
Time Bandits (spent a great deal of my childhood coming to terms with that one).
Ran
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (OK, so I did laugh the first time – I was a morbid kid).
Repulsion
Surely that would have to be “A Neverending Story” then followed by “Another Neverending Story”. Or as it should have been in the first place to avoid daft comments by fools: The Neverending story – Chapter 2.
If I sit through The Other side of the Underneath will I find out what the title means?
Quality control leads to nice safe films which pander to everyone and are instantly forgettable. Hollywood’s full of quality control. That’s why we have sites like the Auteurs to lead us towards films we might not otherwise know about.
Seeing that a movie “nobody’s” ever heard of actually has several fans is a nice, positive way to tempt me into spending a few dollars on something I might otherwise avoid.
And really, I don’t care how many people dislike a film. I come here looking for films I’ve never heard of, and especially films which aren’t nice safe ‘crowd-pleasers’. The majority of the films here didn’t make billions at the box office and you can safely assume there’s a large population of film-goers who scream murder if their forced to think during a movie. Not to mention the other large crowd of haters that rate a movie as ‘bad’ because it upset their social/religious/lifestyle principles.
If I watch it and don’t like it, then I can head to the forums where there’s no shortage of ‘hated it/loved it’ arguments going on.
Mubi is just daft. But I really didn’t like The Auteurs either. I thought it was a horribly pretentious name which really had nothing to do with the goals of this site, lead to blatant abuse of the word throughout the forums and didn’t really add to any understanding of Auteur theory. This is a site for lovers of world cinema, and the new name should reflect that.
In amongst the news which sent shockwaves throughout the Auteurs community (except through those of us that don’t care) was the announcement that lots of Agnès Varda films would be available to watch here at Mubi soon (Did it say the 18th? I forget). Are these still on the way? When can I expect to follow up on Lion’s Love?
So now I can watch films from the Auteurs in my comfortable living room with my family on my big TV easily without having to lug my computer downstairs every time. And this is a bad thing? Hmmm…
A whole generation of geeks squinting at their monitors trying to watch great art – now that sounds like something to worry about.
Also from the article:
>For two-year-old Mubi, this deal opens up its 1000 curated high-quality classic, indie and foreign titles
1000 titles? Wow. A quick check reveals we get about 250 here (I think). Does Europe really have a 1000 films available on Mubi already? That’s awesome.
PS3 streaming is a great step. Not everyone can hook their computers up to the TV, you know. All the films here look fantastic on the big screen and the PS3 is one of the most popular VOD streamers out there. Makes sense to me (although, not owning a PS3 I’ll still have to get films to my TV via ‘fair use’…).
Viewing Cinema Differently Based On Cultural Background almost 4 years ago
Apu trilogy on DVD:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Apu-Trilogy-DVD-Smaran-Ghosal/dp/B00007JGHS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1248269767&sr=8-1
Now don’t be giving me any of that ‘Region free DVD players don’t exist in my part of the world’ stuff…
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Indian Films...or lack thereof almost 4 years ago
There was a retrospective of Ritwik Ghatak’s films a couple of years ago in Tokyo. I caught Reason, Debate and a Story which was really awesome. In pretty good condition too, not too jumpy but very high contrast (maybe it looked like that originally?). Anyway, great film from a great Indian filmmaker who isn’t Satyjit Ray.
Regarding a billion Bollywood Sh*t lovers – An equal proportion of Americans (probably) find Michael Bay the ultimate in cinema and won’t ever consider an alternative, so yeah, I think Xanadrew should stick with the opinion that a billion people could be wrong.
Personally, I love all forms of cinema, and if people find great entertainment value in Transformers 2, or 10,000 wild dancing girls in lieu of a plot that’s fine with me. But I don’t think as many people around here would attack someone if they made an offhand remark about mainstream Hollywood crap while actively searching for an alternative.
Or maybe they would? I’m new round here. Don’t listen to me….
Go to Comment
Indian Films...or lack thereof almost 4 years ago
Reason, Debate and a Story had some music but it felt much more like ‘music is an integral part of Indian culture’ than ‘lets dance, smile and amuse the masses!" if ya see what I mean. It’s certainly not a musical though.
It’s a very surreal film and the musical interlude (and weird ninja dance thing at the beginning) actually fit in perfectly and felt like it had a point, other than a way to spend 20 minutes between major plot points.
(Actually it might not have been a weird ninja dance. I seem to recall it being one, but that’s the joy of seeing films once on the big screen then never again for years – your mind adds to the entertainment value immensely).
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Godard is Weak almost 4 years ago
You’ve watched a set of films that span a 7 year period at the beginning of Godard’s career and have come to the conclusion that he’s ‘weak’, he lacks characters and that the semi-important statements in these 50 year old films are ‘dated’. Ha ha ha!
Oh wait, someone told you that 1960-1967 was Godard’s ‘best’ period and you concluded that if you don’t like this stuff then you’ll certainly hate the rest?
So you don’t like Godard, does it really matter? Should every filmmaker dumb his vision down to the lowest common denomiator in order to please everyone? What the heck is wrong with taking risks, being different and trying something original?
I don’t like broccoli, what am I doing wrong!?
Go to Comment
Godard is Weak almost 4 years ago
Godard’s post 1967 films, for the most part, don’t resemble anything from his so-called ‘highlight years’ so I’d certainly watch a few films from later on to be comfortable with my Godard is Weak assertion. Just as I wouldn’t write off Sam Raimi after Evil Dead 1&2 but go and watch A Simple Plan first.
But in the end there are so many great directors and films out there. Most likely there are more films out there that you’ll love than you could ever possibly watch in your entire lifetime. Nobody need “point you in the right direction” and tell you why you should like something you don’t (but I will try cheese sometime, only once mind you).
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Searching for Ozu almost 4 years ago
Then get Late Spring and the Story of Floating Weeds/Floating Weeds Criterion set.
Then the silents.
Then the rest.
Hang on to them in case you don’t like them at first. It’ll all make sense 10 more years down the line.
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Ponyo almost 4 years ago
I loved it. I think people should just try to relax, enjoy themselves and maybe show the film to their children. Most of the criticism I’ve read seems to be along the lines of ’It’s not as good as Totoro, and that was made for children too’. Well, come on, how many kids films are as good as Totoro? Not many. But do we trash every one which comes out becuase ’It’s not as good as Totoro’? No. So, once we’re over that, lets look at the film on it’s own merits.
I’ve seen people complain that too much is left unexplained. And that’s true, but personally I like the way the film stays focussed on the two kids, while all the complicated, important stuff which needs dealing with is dealt with off-screen by the grown ups. Whereas Miyazaki wants Sen in Spirited Away to take control of her life and make decisions, here he lets five year olds be five year olds; content to play with their toys, hang out together and eat ham. Yeah, maybe half the population of the town was wiped out in the flood but to the kids it’s a chance for adventure and to see some weird new fish. So long as their not left alone in the dark for too long, they’ll be OK.
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Top 10 - 1974 almost 4 years ago
1: Edvard Munch (Peter Watkins)
2: Den-en ni Shisu (Terayama Shuji)
3: Godfather Part II (Bearded fat bloke)
4: Reason, Debate and a Story (Ritwik Ghatak)
5: Celine and Julie go Boating (Jacques Rivette)
6: Chinatown (Polanski)
7: The Enigmar of Kasper Hauser (Herzog)
8: Gekitotsu! Satujinken (Ozawa Shigehiro) (guilty pleasure, I know…)
9: Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Hooper)
10: Lancelot du Lac (Bresson)
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International High School Films almost 4 years ago
“Interesting to think about how overwhelmingly this genre is dominated by the States…”
“High School Film” is an very popular genre in Japan too. I’ve got no statistics, but I reckon it probably comes close to if not exceeds America’s output as a percentage of all films made in the country. Mostly because it very often crosses over into the ‘sports’ genre.
10 Recent movies off the top of my head…
(these are not necessarily recommendations. I’ll post some of those later when I’m more awake)
Waterboys
Gambatte Ikimashoi
Swing Girls
Rookies
Crows Zero
Gokusen
Gakko no Kaidan
Lily Shushu no Subete
Drop
Battery
….
Well, there are lots anyway. Take my word for it!
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just how good is this godard fellow anyway? almost 4 years ago
There’s plenty of bad things to say about Kurosawa films. It’s just difficult to work up the effort to hate them in public because they’re all so damn good.
Um…lets see…Richard Gere is kind of crap in Rhapsody in August… Ah heck, I guess I’m just the wrong person to think up critisicm of Kurosawa. Anyone else want to try?
Godard? Oh yeah, Godard’s 60s films are all very nice. I agree with watching him chronologically, although that make take a while so you might want to jump around a bit. Godard’s career takes some quite drastic changes so even if you don’t like the 60s films, there are people who prefer his later stuff (later meaning post-Dziga Vertov Group, although I’m sure there are a couple of nutters out there who think that’s his best stuff).
If you’re interested in analysing Godard’s whole career and can’t find any Dziga Vertov films (tricky to get hold of apart from Tout va Bien which doesn’t really count) you might just want to skip them and watch Ici et ailleurs, his first (I think) collaboration with Anne-Marie Melville in which he analyses footage he shot for a Dzgia Vertov film and questions his own direction and motivation signalling the start of the next phase of his career. It’s quite interesting to listen to a supposedly ‘egotistical’ director criticize his own films so viciously. Certainly makes ‘Letter to Jane’ a bit more palatable.
Then watch Histoire(s) du Cinema to see what Godard’s up to nowadays.
And then everything else.
And if you still don’t ‘get it’, don’t worry too much about it. There’s plenty more genius directors with wild eccentric careers to work through if you look hard enough.
Go to Comment
Ponyo almost 4 years ago
Yeah I’m not sure of Disney’s reasoning there. “American kids call their parents Mom and Dad”? Well, er, so do most Japanese kids ya know. There are kids out there in America, Britain, Japan, Australia who refer to their parents by their first names and (looking in from the outside) there’s a slightly different feeling to the mother-son relationship when they do (in the movies as well as in ‘real life’).
But apparently Disney thinks it’s ‘inappropriate’. Like Kiki drinking coffee from the giant pot marked Coffee – “How about some hot chocolate?”. Ha ha ha.
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Is Criterion's Crown Slipping almost 4 years ago
Including Masters of Cinema who release all their Blu-Ray’s region free and currently intend to only ever release them region free.
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Is Criterion's Crown Slipping almost 4 years ago
As someone who needs a region free/PAL-NTSC player to run both Criterion and Masters of Cinema DVDs I find myself leaning towards MOC as the company with most interesting titles that I really want to buy. A good commentary is a nice extra, but there are plenty of better ways to convey information and a bad commentary is just a waste of space (and tends to push the price up) Actually I prefer to turn off my TV and enjoy a good MOC book.
I do like Criterion’s Eclipse series though. Seems to me a good way to get lots of good films in high quality at low prices.
I wish the BFI’s Blu-Rays were all region free. They keep releasing such good stuff. Looks like I’m gonna have to import a region free Oppo Blu-Ray one of these days.
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Choosing What to See Without Knowing Anything About It almost 4 years ago
Seeing films the moment they come out, or better still at film festivals before much hype has been built up. Then all you have is the description of the movie on the festival website to go by. Choose one which sounds good, assume all descriptions are written by the filmmakers who’ll be trying their best to sell the product and (in the case of non-premieres) don’t go searching for reviews from other film festivals.
I completely agree that hype can spoil a film, a book, music, anything! You really have to focus on not letting it affect your senses. Otherwise you end up criticizing a movie ‘cos it’s “overrated”. Which is kind of silly really.
Mass-media makes this pretty tricky though – I find moving to another country helps.
I remember watching Croupier during it’s half-a-week or so run in London the day it came out (being a Get Carter fan). I thought it was a great film, not the best I’ve ever seen, but certainly entertaining. Of course with no real release everyone quickly forgot it. A couple of years pass by and suddenly it’s an arthouse hit in the states, Clive Owen is a God, ‘the next James Bond’, hype upon hype upon hype… And now I don’t really want to watch it again since I’m pretty sure it wasn’t THAT fantastic. Blair Witch is another example, I imagine the few people who caught a late-night screening on a whim at a festival (without having seen the website) were blown away.
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Racism in Film almost 4 years ago
Last time I watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s (a much loved film here in Japan), the Japanese family I watched it with thought Mickey Rooney was hilarious. A very odd movie-watching experience.
Actually I seem to recall a show on TV recently where they gave a top ten (Japanese TV does love it’s ranking shows) of Hollywood stars trying to play Japanese. I think Sean Connery won to much hilarity.
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"Lawrence of Arabia" in 70 mm almost 4 years ago
Not strange at all. It’s one of my favourite movie-going memories too.
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Films that made you physically ill after watching almost 4 years ago
I was stuck at home one winter coming down with a cold when I watched Repulsion and Memento. The next day I had a fever, the walls were closing in on me, drifting in and out of cold-medicine induced sleep being unable to recall how long I’d been my apartment. The films didn’t make me sick per se, but they certainly made the experience a lot more unpleasant.
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What are the best documentary films ever? almost 4 years ago
-
“Did someone above actually call Man Bites Dog a documentary??? Maybe you also like that documentary called the Blair Witch Project?
How can we be on the bottom of the second page without a mention of Robert Flaherty. Nanook of the North is foundational and holds up well even with its dated romanticism."
-
Well, Nanook acted out Flaherty’s instructions in order to relatively accurately replicate his life. The guys in Man Bites Dog acted out the directors instructions in order to relatively accurately replicate the activities of a serial killer. Obviously Nanook is quite a bit more realistic than Man Bites Dog (mostly being based on Flaherty’s actual observations) but is one of them really ‘not a documentary’?
And what is a documentary anyhow? Is it a record of real people in a certain time and place? Then Breathless is a pretty good documentary of Paris 1959. Heck, Mean Streets is a pretty good documentary of a time when Robert De Niro was a young amazingly talented actor.
Ah, whatever. I’m gonna stop there.
Back on topic and I’ll recommend most of Heddy Honigmann’s work as some of the best ever documentaries.
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FACTS AND ADVICE YOU'VE LEARNED FROM FILM almost 4 years ago
Theo Angelopoulos’ movies
Greece has miserable weather and is only sunny in nostalgic flashbacks.
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Does the character/behavior of a director affect on how you see his work? almost 4 years ago
But there are also directors like Herzog. Watching interviews, listening to commentaries and reading about his weird life seems to enhance the experience of watching his films.
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10 Best Bob Dylan Songs over 3 years ago
Chimes of Freedom
Jokerman
Tangled up in Blue
Idiot Wind
Not Dark Yet
Girl from the Red River Shore
Visions of Johana
Ballad of a Thin Man
Like a Rolling Stone
Masters of War
Blind Wi….What? Only 10!!?
How about:
Highway 61 Revisited
Time out of Mind
Blood on the Tracks
Freewheelin’
Another Side
Blonde on Blonde
Bringing it all Back Home
John Wesley Harding
Oh Mercy
Bob Dylan
That’s 10 I could live with…
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How many Films are actually showing here? over 3 years ago
How many films does The Auteurs host altogether? I note that the impressive film list of 226 pages drops to a not-so-impressive 8 when I click on ‘available to watch in your country’, but I also note that in the list view sorted by ‘Views’ that there are quite a few large gaps – presumably of films available in other areas (it’d be nice to be able watch some Japanese films by the way…).
I always recommend the site to my friends, but it’d be nice to know how many films are actually available in say the US or the UK for example so I can be a bit more specific in my recommendations.
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FAVOURITE DOWNBEAT ENDING over 3 years ago
A few of my all-time favourites (although there are far too many to list – I think I only watch movies with downbeat endings for some reason). I probably I saw these when I was young and impressionable and used to love it when movies were brave enough not to cop out at the end. Not that I still don’t enjoy it now, but I like happy endings occassionally too nowadays.
Get Carter
Time Bandits (spent a great deal of my childhood coming to terms with that one).
Ran
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (OK, so I did laugh the first time – I was a morbid kid).
Repulsion
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films whose titles don't make sense to you over 3 years ago
Surely that would have to be “A Neverending Story” then followed by “Another Neverending Story”. Or as it should have been in the first place to avoid daft comments by fools: The Neverending story – Chapter 2.
If I sit through The Other side of the Underneath will I find out what the title means?
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Dislike Button about 3 years ago
Quality control leads to nice safe films which pander to everyone and are instantly forgettable. Hollywood’s full of quality control. That’s why we have sites like the Auteurs to lead us towards films we might not otherwise know about.
Seeing that a movie “nobody’s” ever heard of actually has several fans is a nice, positive way to tempt me into spending a few dollars on something I might otherwise avoid.
And really, I don’t care how many people dislike a film. I come here looking for films I’ve never heard of, and especially films which aren’t nice safe ‘crowd-pleasers’. The majority of the films here didn’t make billions at the box office and you can safely assume there’s a large population of film-goers who scream murder if their forced to think during a movie. Not to mention the other large crowd of haters that rate a movie as ‘bad’ because it upset their social/religious/lifestyle principles.
If I watch it and don’t like it, then I can head to the forums where there’s no shortage of ‘hated it/loved it’ arguments going on.
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people don't know directors about 3 years ago
I tend to remember the director’s name and completely forget which actors were in a film. It’s easier that way. Only one name for each film!
I guess having close to zero interest in celebrities’ personal lives makes it harder for me to remember who’s who.
My wife asked me the other day ’who’s Anne Hathaway, again?‘. Am I really that weird for responding without irony ’Shakespeare’s wife’??
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MUBI: VOTE about 3 years ago
I’d prefer another name.
Mubi is just daft. But I really didn’t like The Auteurs either. I thought it was a horribly pretentious name which really had nothing to do with the goals of this site, lead to blatant abuse of the word throughout the forums and didn’t really add to any understanding of Auteur theory. This is a site for lovers of world cinema, and the new name should reflect that.
Mubi…. ha ha ha…oops I died.
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Agnes Varda@Mubi about 3 years ago
In amongst the news which sent shockwaves throughout the Auteurs community (except through those of us that don’t care) was the announcement that lots of Agnès Varda films would be available to watch here at Mubi soon (Did it say the 18th? I forget). Are these still on the way? When can I expect to follow up on Lion’s Love?
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PS3 + MUBI + YOU about 3 years ago
So now I can watch films from the Auteurs in my comfortable living room with my family on my big TV easily without having to lug my computer downstairs every time. And this is a bad thing? Hmmm…
A whole generation of geeks squinting at their monitors trying to watch great art – now that sounds like something to worry about.
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Agnes Varda@Mubi about 3 years ago
Also from the article:
>For two-year-old Mubi, this deal opens up its 1000 curated high-quality classic, indie and foreign titles
1000 titles? Wow. A quick check reveals we get about 250 here (I think). Does Europe really have a 1000 films available on Mubi already? That’s awesome.
PS3 streaming is a great step. Not everyone can hook their computers up to the TV, you know. All the films here look fantastic on the big screen and the PS3 is one of the most popular VOD streamers out there. Makes sense to me (although, not owning a PS3 I’ll still have to get films to my TV via ‘fair use’…).
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