And it ain't a fit night out for maaan or beast!

Couldn't stop thinking of those lines from Prufrock: Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, / The muttering retreats / Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels / And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: / Streets that follow like a tedious argument / Of insidious intent / To lead you to an overwhelming question . . . / Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" Am looking forward to seeing more of Hong's work.

What makes his cinema especially fascinating is it's stylistic exactitude, with just the right amount of light and shadow, the rest left to choices in camera placement and editing. Resulting in a strange, restrained, even contradictory, expressionism which relies in part upon a horrible clarity. One which reflects individuals' fever-dream reasoning, distorted and beyond logic, finding meaning and purpose in people, events and objects that would seem insignificant otherwise. Unable to discern reality from delusion. Not an ascetic, but a modernist mystic whose faith lies in the anxiety, paranoia and cruelty of humanity.

While not always transcendent, his work is no less spiritual in it's awareness of the mysterious and irrational forces that govern us. His aesthetics are precise and exact, yet give way to the world of sounds, senses and textures that we live in. In equal turns it can be gentle, ironic, darkly humorous, empathetic, tragic, or cruel - his cinema is not cold or austere, it is ALIVE.

Resale value of this car's gonna be nil after this trip.

What do you think we'll do with the Kaiser?

Cinema must be destroyed in order for it to be created.

It seems appropriate that he'd originally trained as an architect, for one of the more defining elements is his emphasis on space and structures. How they're subject to the elements, impose order, isolate and encompass all at once. I do not understand his work, having seen so little, but I now know I'm witness to something special. Great filmmakers should elude and lead us through the wild of their imaginations.

Having seen some of his early films recently, this sticks in my mind the most so far. We see workers, but the focus is mainly on the management as they attempt to assign blame to one thing or another while their superior continually berates them and demands answers. Focusing strictly on the faces we see every gesture, every movement. We feel the discomfort. It's Dreyer's Jeanne d'Arc in a Polish tractor factory.

Five minutes of Kieslowski giving actors the clap.

After having rewatched this last night, all I can think is: There was Hollywood and then there was von Sternberg.

Beautiful.

Excerpt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob_Q55FhzBo

Perhaps not as 'accomplished' as Vampyr; but like it, it's strength is reliance on it's being a chamber drama-horror hybrid. Along with the players, the film exhibits paralysis of movement & action. Confined to limited settings and heightening the character's inability to contend with the events. Causing them to 'react' rather than 'act', with a seriousness as though it'd been subtitled 'Mina Gets a Headcold.'

Sneak peek: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpR_hxnLD4s

Can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZchKXFpaDg

To see a Renoir film is observing an uncut diamond harvested from the Earth.

My entry into Toureur and I don't quite know what to make of it. Seemingly about 'nothing', there's little to suggest a past or future for these people, existing only in a fleeting present. Neither party can even summon more than momentary rage against one another and there is at times an unsettling coolness to their behavior. McCrea in particular wouldn't have been too out of place in a Bresson film.

Like Bresson, Dreyer, and Lang before him -- he captures the mystery which surrounds us and enables our being.

In his final film, Huston reminds us yet again that we are always trapped by our inner selves, the past and hidden longings and desires that determine the course of our being. It is in our coming together as a whole which alleviates these sufferings, if only for a short while.

Three films in one year? Holy f***.

Having seen an exceprt from the unfinished I, Claudius was painful. It had the potential to be one of his finest films.

It takes balls to make a romantic-comedy, where 99% of the interaction between the leads is antipathy and most of the driving action takes place off screen. Lubitsch showcases the pride and euphoria of youthful love and contrasts with the fear of lonliness in old age.

Between preparing for Christmas and paying the bills, blackmail is just another chore. Lucy is a prisoner in a hotel lobby, the post office, a pawn shop, and at home with images of bars and railings forever enclosing her. In trying to help her daughter she only deepens her own troubles. Taken pity on by an outsider who would profit from her misfortune his sacrifice only condemns her for good.

If anyone's interested, this is available on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo8oJPr-NBg

I really wish more of his works were added to the database and made readily available on DVD. He shouldn't be remembered just for four films out of approximately twenty-one features made in just over a decade. Regardless, in his 'horror quartet' it's fascinating to see his blend of black humor and drama; depiction of drive, obsession and their warping of social structures; his unique staging, camera placements and movement. I can only hope his other films are as amazing as the four.

I sense I'll see few faces as cinematic as Bancroft's in all it's grotesque humanity.

Can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXmMsOBrx9g

I can't wait to see this, if it's half as good as the original short.

A rehearsal and two performances. The first third like a negative image of a Caravaggio painting, a flourescently bright dressing room. Balibar and two fellow band members practice, leaving open a space open in the foreground, as if to invite us into the privacy of the moment. After this, the first performance. Shot completely as a close-up of Balibar's face, grey and hazy. Costa conjures up a Sternbergian Dietrich with her face and husky vocals. The film ends with an English-language song, but again space is placed between us and the subject. In this instance, however, both it and the sounds are lost in a galaxy of darkness. Reinforced by the individual lights which do not illuminate but rather act as seperate entities in themselves.