Frank Mackee, good show Simon! Everyone in that film is beautifully written.
And Zachary you are right to praise Squid and the Whale… I would also add MARGOT in Margot at the Wedding, a lovely antidote to all those kooky on the outside but conservative on the inside rom com types.
And the main mall cop character in OBSERVE AND REPORT, like Margot, with the guts to go all the way where most characters stop short.
The film that came out alongside 2 or 3 things on Criterion last month, MADE IN USA, is a better place to start than 2 or 3 things. Without a pretty girl in cool outfits running around, Godard can get mighty pretentious, meaning I dont understand AND pedantic. But also the girl is a bit frumpy and has a kid, for gods’ sake. UN-cool. The best is PIERROT LE FOU, because you need Belmondo to add the extra dimension of self reflexive faux cool masculinity that provides just the right framework for Godard’s duller political hang-ups and abstractions.
DOGVILLE worked better because of Nicole Kidman, who brought 8 layers of extra subtext about stardom and false fronts (the lavender marriage, etc.) and the way stardom and fan worship is one bulletproof glass partition away from sexual slavery.
Interestingly, DOGVILLE also came out the same year as MONSTER, and the Aileen/Charlize split and Nicole/Grace funhouse mirror each other.
To give away all your power positioning and wander off into the woods naked but for your latex bruises and false teeth is to be St. Francis of Assisi, the temporary Hollywood-sanctioned way. To be forced to do it out of economic necessity is to be a bum. But here is where Lars Von Trier’s Dogville, released the same year, comes in. Dogville in a sense reverses the equation posited in Monster: What if instead of donning the pounds and false teeth, Charlize suddenly appeared in Aileen’s central Florida hometown as her tall and lovely self? What if the town was cut off from the world where Charlize was recognized as a goddess of the silver screen, and what if if this tall, blonde, ethereal version of Charlize was put in the position of a dependent child, forced to submit to the wishes of men such as Aileen’s string of abusive father figures in order to provided her with food and shelter? (2003)
Spawn of Opie in MANDERLAY just doesn’t have the same star wattage, and so the film becomes more of an attack on American bipartisan conservo-liberalism, which barges into situations it barely understands, makes snap judgments on cultures centuries older than itself, then slinks silently out of town as the catastrophes wrought by “good intentions” come pouring down like collateral damage and unemployment.
Gringo, I don’t think you’re right about the art film status quo, which reflects a kind of bourgeoisie sentimentality about the “little people” – as in neo-realism like the Bicycle Thief and/or sumptuous historical period pieces, the kind of stuff that wins best actress oscars. Dogville has nothing to do with America but everything to do with Americana, which it so sweetly savages.
Gringo, I don’t think you’re right about the art film status quo, which reflects a kind of bourgeoisie sentimentality about the “little people” – as in neo-realism like the Bicycle Thief and/or sumptuous historical period pieces, the kind of stuff that wins best actress oscars. Dogville has nothing to do with America but everything to do with Americana, which it so sweetly savages.
Hmmm, interesting and well put my Gringo friend. But I’d disagree about Americana, it’s code for a kind of bucolic small town “just plain folks” idealism common especially before World War Two and the launch of the nuclear family/suburbia, when multi-generational families lived in big houses etc. And big city media put the small town family on a pedastal, NOT condescendingly but patronizingly, maybe, if it was Ben Hecht writing it… but not Clifford Odets or Barton Fink, for example, or even Orson Welles (ala Magnificent Ambersons)
The torturing of women thing is psychological, in that it shows the true underpinnings of capitalism and religion, the virgin jumping into to volcano… woman as the playing field, bloodied by the spiked shoes of patriarchy’s endless scrimmage!
WR Mysteries of the Orgasm – Interesting but dated, as has been said… damn that 50% off!
THE FURIES – I think they released it because they had rights to the book or thought it would be an interesting comparison, but the movie doesn’t stack up so good on its own, aside from some great acting by Walter Huston and Babs.
MASCULIN FEMININ – I love Godard in general, but this movie annoys me… Both Jean Pierre and Chantal Goya (?) seem here like people I would never want to spend more than a few minutes with in real life. I never thought Leaud and Godard were a good fit. Truffaut and Leaud, oui, avec Godard needs BELMONDO or at least Fritz Lang!
mon dieu! I posted twice. Let me add that the transfers on some of the old Criterion kind of suck by today’s standards, such as the early Seijun Sezuzuki releases of Branded to Kill and Tokyo Drifter
Drugs are simultaenously an artist/writer’s best and worst friend. You can see the fall-out of all the cocaine going around Hollywood in the wake of early 1970s cash rich films like Easy Rider, Godfather, French Connection, Exorcist, Jaws, and then going sour from too much coke-fuled megalomania and burn-out. Scorsese did New York, New York, Spielberg did 1941, Cimino did Heaven’s Gate, Coppola did One From the Heart, Hopper did The Last Movie and Friedkin did Sorceror and all that money flitered away like the gold dust at the end of Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Don’t forget the French they are crafty. We like Godard because we can read the subtitles. If an American tried to be that arrogantly political and post-modern we’d run them out of town on a rail. But when a little French Swiss guy does it, it’s adorable. Just like Jerry Lewis in reverse.
War of the Worlds works less as a sci fi film than a perhaps unconscious critique of America’s sophomoric obsession with youth and complete misunderstanding of world events. Having been invaded and conquered by Nazis makes a country more awake and cautious, while America still can’t believe Martians are destroying downtown, and then they panic like dogs when it finally gets through their skulls.
Spielberg is critiquing in my opinion, the type of man he helped create with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the responsibility-ducking Dreyfus.
Can anyone recognize this Hollywood insider quote, I cant remember names but it has to do with sex in cinema, a director gets a good performance out of his star by saying “When you walk down the street, you’re thinking about sleeping with -— , when you’re doing the dishes, you’re thinking about sleeping with -—, only when you’re sleeping or with -—- are you NOT thinking about sleeping with --.”
You get the idea? It was a comment on the production code, but also the cinema of desire, like the essence of the “Garbo look” but I’m not sure it was Garbo. Does anyone recognize it?
I love every frame of Antichrist – I think it’s one of the best films ever made, but not…
CHUNGKING EXPRESS (1994 – Wong Kar Wai)
I’ve seen this film three times and it’s made me want to puke each time.And now I can’t even listen to the Mamas and the Papas without getting nauseous— “California Dreamin” has become my post-conditioning Ludwig Van.
Nothing against Wong Kar, I’m sure if so many people love him he must have something going on, but I find his whole moping self-absorbed poseur thing unbearable, and all the gross eating and bulimia on display here is just too much for me. I can’t eat canned pineapple or even hear the word ‘salad’ anymore.
Yeah, I agree COOK, THIEF kind of sucks… it’s one thing to be truly radical, but PG’s brand is drowned in the kind of pretentious antagonism that art school kids do when they have nothing to say, but lots of money and creative friends to say it with. There’s a theory that Kubrick was sexually impotent, as impotency seems a consuming theme in so many of his films, and Greenaway’s themes are literal consuming but style for style’s sake and expensive images of children being force fed books and all that endless sadism and casual evil, it just smacks of laziness… a kid tryng to be shocking by shitting on the floor in the bathroom even though he’s already six. I saw a kid do that once! And Greenaway is like that kid if he grew up and went to graduate school.
I’ll give you an example of truly subversive out-of-the-box provocation, Eric Cartman feeding Scott Tenorman his own parents with Radiohead sneering in South Park. Or the wacky hysterics of Jodorowsky. Greenaway, Resnais, they’re just perfume ad directors trying to prove themselves Kubricks. Kubrick’s coldness has a soul, but I can’t find any soul in Marienbad or Cook, Thief.
Acidemic’s next issue is themed ‘The Nordics’ – this encompasses everything from Ingmar Bergman through to THEY CALL HER ONE EYE, I AM CURIOUS (YELLOW), GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, THOR, as well as Nordic depictions in Hollywood, films dealing with the ‘murderous Viking’ gene in America, (FARGO, THE BAD SEED, WHITE OLEANDER), especially in Alaska and Minnesota, as well as the blondes or ‘Nordics’ in alien conspiracy theory (i.e. George Adamski). We want to delve into what makes them different, why now (Hollywood is abuzz), and what is it about the Northern-most points of the hemisphere that is so mysterious and inviting?
Submissions should be between 500-4000 words. Due by July 26, 2011. Submissions not necessarily pertaining to Nordics are welcome and will be considered.
Send all queries and submissions to: erichk9@aol.com
I saw this on the Daily Show… it’s funny the extent which the military will go to let those of us who choose continue to believe we’re #1 in the universe. Frankly, aliens from space is a given, based on any scientific speculation you care to name, the universe is so vast it’s inevitable, and the very last minute way the ‘real’ story goes from the discarded weather balloon with atomic bomb radiation victim Japanese pilot prisoners, which is the old version of this story, is updated to this far-fetched Stalin and Mengele variation, shows the military wants us to be aware on one level or another, we’re being ridiculous in our refusal to accept the truth: everything we know is wrong!! Firesign Theater!
What are the best written film characters of the past ten years? almost 3 years ago
Hello everyone, my first time posting.
Frank Mackee, good show Simon! Everyone in that film is beautifully written.
And Zachary you are right to praise Squid and the Whale… I would also add MARGOT in Margot at the Wedding, a lovely antidote to all those kooky on the outside but conservative on the inside rom com types.
And the main mall cop character in OBSERVE AND REPORT, like Margot, with the guts to go all the way where most characters stop short.
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Godard - Pedantic and Pretentious? almost 3 years ago
The film that came out alongside 2 or 3 things on Criterion last month, MADE IN USA, is a better place to start than 2 or 3 things. Without a pretty girl in cool outfits running around, Godard can get mighty pretentious, meaning I dont understand AND pedantic. But also the girl is a bit frumpy and has a kid, for gods’ sake. UN-cool. The best is PIERROT LE FOU, because you need Belmondo to add the extra dimension of self reflexive faux cool masculinity that provides just the right framework for Godard’s duller political hang-ups and abstractions.
Go to Comment
Why Dogville and not Manderlay? over 2 years ago
DOGVILLE worked better because of Nicole Kidman, who brought 8 layers of extra subtext about stardom and false fronts (the lavender marriage, etc.) and the way stardom and fan worship is one bulletproof glass partition away from sexual slavery.
Interestingly, DOGVILLE also came out the same year as MONSTER, and the Aileen/Charlize split and Nicole/Grace funhouse mirror each other.
To give away all your power positioning and wander off into the woods naked but for your latex bruises and false teeth is to be St. Francis of Assisi, the temporary Hollywood-sanctioned way. To be forced to do it out of economic necessity is to be a bum. But here is where Lars Von Trier’s Dogville, released the same year, comes in. Dogville in a sense reverses the equation posited in Monster: What if instead of donning the pounds and false teeth, Charlize suddenly appeared in Aileen’s central Florida hometown as her tall and lovely self? What if the town was cut off from the world where Charlize was recognized as a goddess of the silver screen, and what if if this tall, blonde, ethereal version of Charlize was put in the position of a dependent child, forced to submit to the wishes of men such as Aileen’s string of abusive father figures in order to provided her with food and shelter? (2003)
Spawn of Opie in MANDERLAY just doesn’t have the same star wattage, and so the film becomes more of an attack on American bipartisan conservo-liberalism, which barges into situations it barely understands, makes snap judgments on cultures centuries older than itself, then slinks silently out of town as the catastrophes wrought by “good intentions” come pouring down like collateral damage and unemployment.
Go to Comment
The Auteurs' Fake Criterion Covers over 2 years ago
Freakin’ A, the mighty Observe & Report!
I came up with this model first before going for the one below, which could be the outer sleeve if they went deluxe treatment. AND THEY SHOULD!!!
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The Auteurs' Fake Criterion Covers over 2 years ago
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Why Dogville and not Manderlay? over 2 years ago
Gringo, I don’t think you’re right about the art film status quo, which reflects a kind of bourgeoisie sentimentality about the “little people” – as in neo-realism like the Bicycle Thief and/or sumptuous historical period pieces, the kind of stuff that wins best actress oscars. Dogville has nothing to do with America but everything to do with Americana, which it so sweetly savages.
Go to Comment
Why Dogville and not Manderlay? over 2 years ago
Gringo, I don’t think you’re right about the art film status quo, which reflects a kind of bourgeoisie sentimentality about the “little people” – as in neo-realism like the Bicycle Thief and/or sumptuous historical period pieces, the kind of stuff that wins best actress oscars. Dogville has nothing to do with America but everything to do with Americana, which it so sweetly savages.
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The Auteurs' Fake Criterion Covers over 2 years ago
Any reasons for this harsh judgment, Stevie? Too dark and morally ambiguous for ya?
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Why Dogville and not Manderlay? over 2 years ago
Hmmm, interesting and well put my Gringo friend. But I’d disagree about Americana, it’s code for a kind of bucolic small town “just plain folks” idealism common especially before World War Two and the launch of the nuclear family/suburbia, when multi-generational families lived in big houses etc. And big city media put the small town family on a pedastal, NOT condescendingly but patronizingly, maybe, if it was Ben Hecht writing it… but not Clifford Odets or Barton Fink, for example, or even Orson Welles (ala Magnificent Ambersons)
The torturing of women thing is psychological, in that it shows the true underpinnings of capitalism and religion, the virgin jumping into to volcano… woman as the playing field, bloodied by the spiked shoes of patriarchy’s endless scrimmage!
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Your Favorite Godard Film? over 2 years ago
Le petit sol? Estas serio?
Pierrot Le Fou!!!!!
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What Criterion Blind-Buys Do You Regret? over 2 years ago
WR Mysteries of the Orgasm – Interesting but dated, as has been said… damn that 50% off!
THE FURIES – I think they released it because they had rights to the book or thought it would be an interesting comparison, but the movie doesn’t stack up so good on its own, aside from some great acting by Walter Huston and Babs.
MASCULIN FEMININ – I love Godard in general, but this movie annoys me… Both Jean Pierre and Chantal Goya (?) seem here like people I would never want to spend more than a few minutes with in real life. I never thought Leaud and Godard were a good fit. Truffaut and Leaud, oui, avec Godard needs BELMONDO or at least Fritz Lang!
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What Criterion Blind-Buys Do You Regret? over 2 years ago
mon dieu! I posted twice. Let me add that the transfers on some of the old Criterion kind of suck by today’s standards, such as the early Seijun Sezuzuki releases of Branded to Kill and Tokyo Drifter
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The Auteurs' Fake Criterion Covers over 2 years ago
Bravo, Anggelo! Bravo! I love the Shanghai Express cover. I may have to print it out and use it to house my century’s old VHS
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Films I should see based on my Tastes over 2 years ago
Sam Fuller rocks, in any color.
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Films I should see based on my Tastes over 2 years ago
And those oppressed by prejudice seeing it everywhere even when it’s not there, ala THE CRIMSON KIMONO
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The 60-70's and drugs over 2 years ago
Drugs are simultaenously an artist/writer’s best and worst friend. You can see the fall-out of all the cocaine going around Hollywood in the wake of early 1970s cash rich films like Easy Rider, Godfather, French Connection, Exorcist, Jaws, and then going sour from too much coke-fuled megalomania and burn-out. Scorsese did New York, New York, Spielberg did 1941, Cimino did Heaven’s Gate, Coppola did One From the Heart, Hopper did The Last Movie and Friedkin did Sorceror and all that money flitered away like the gold dust at the end of Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
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Cahiers names War of the Worlds as one of the best of the decade?? over 2 years ago
Don’t forget the French they are crafty. We like Godard because we can read the subtitles. If an American tried to be that arrogantly political and post-modern we’d run them out of town on a rail. But when a little French Swiss guy does it, it’s adorable. Just like Jerry Lewis in reverse.
War of the Worlds works less as a sci fi film than a perhaps unconscious critique of America’s sophomoric obsession with youth and complete misunderstanding of world events. Having been invaded and conquered by Nazis makes a country more awake and cautious, while America still can’t believe Martians are destroying downtown, and then they panic like dogs when it finally gets through their skulls.
Spielberg is critiquing in my opinion, the type of man he helped create with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the responsibility-ducking Dreyfus.
Go to Comment
Quote Questions: Who said it? Where? about 2 years ago
Can anyone recognize this Hollywood insider quote, I cant remember names but it has to do with sex in cinema, a director gets a good performance out of his star by saying “When you walk down the street, you’re thinking about sleeping with
-— , when you’re doing the dishes, you’re thinking about sleeping with-—, only when you’re sleeping or with-—- are you NOT thinking about sleeping with--.”You get the idea? It was a comment on the production code, but also the cinema of desire, like the essence of the “Garbo look” but I’m not sure it was Garbo. Does anyone recognize it?
Go to Comment
Moderated
The Exoticization of America about 1 year ago
Don’t forget Godard made his own city into something completely alien and exotic for Alphaville.
A level of estrangement is so important, because without fresh eyes, we find the world stale
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you cringe when someone tells you they love this film... about 1 year ago
I love every frame of Antichrist – I think it’s one of the best films ever made, but not…
CHUNGKING EXPRESS (1994 – Wong Kar Wai)
I’ve seen this film three times and it’s made me want to puke each time.And now I can’t even listen to the Mamas and the Papas without getting nauseous— “California Dreamin” has become my post-conditioning Ludwig Van.
Nothing against Wong Kar, I’m sure if so many people love him he must have something going on, but I find his whole moping self-absorbed poseur thing unbearable, and all the gross eating and bulimia on display here is just too much for me. I can’t eat canned pineapple or even hear the word ‘salad’ anymore.
Go to Comment
you cringe when someone tells you they love this film... about 1 year ago
oh and another one – SPIDERMAN
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I Loathe This Film, and Yet... about 1 year ago
Yeah, I agree COOK, THIEF kind of sucks… it’s one thing to be truly radical, but PG’s brand is drowned in the kind of pretentious antagonism that art school kids do when they have nothing to say, but lots of money and creative friends to say it with. There’s a theory that Kubrick was sexually impotent, as impotency seems a consuming theme in so many of his films, and Greenaway’s themes are literal consuming but style for style’s sake and expensive images of children being force fed books and all that endless sadism and casual evil, it just smacks of laziness… a kid tryng to be shocking by shitting on the floor in the bathroom even though he’s already six. I saw a kid do that once! And Greenaway is like that kid if he grew up and went to graduate school.
I’ll give you an example of truly subversive out-of-the-box provocation, Eric Cartman feeding Scott Tenorman his own parents with Radiohead sneering in South Park. Or the wacky hysterics of Jodorowsky. Greenaway, Resnais, they’re just perfume ad directors trying to prove themselves Kubricks. Kubrick’s coldness has a soul, but I can’t find any soul in Marienbad or Cook, Thief.
Go to Comment
Call for Papers / Submissions: The Nordics - Bergman, Lindberg, Fargo, Dragon Tattoo, etc. about 1 year ago
Acidemic’s next issue is themed ‘The Nordics’ – this encompasses everything from Ingmar Bergman through to THEY CALL HER ONE EYE, I AM CURIOUS (YELLOW), GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, THOR, as well as Nordic depictions in Hollywood, films dealing with the ‘murderous Viking’ gene in America, (FARGO, THE BAD SEED, WHITE OLEANDER), especially in Alaska and Minnesota, as well as the blondes or ‘Nordics’ in alien conspiracy theory (i.e. George Adamski). We want to delve into what makes them different, why now (Hollywood is abuzz), and what is it about the Northern-most points of the hemisphere that is so mysterious and inviting?
Submissions should be between 500-4000 words. Due by July 26, 2011. Submissions not necessarily pertaining to Nordics are welcome and will be considered.
Send all queries and submissions to: erichk9@aol.com
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The Secret of Area 51 Revealed? about 1 year ago
I saw this on the Daily Show… it’s funny the extent which the military will go to let those of us who choose continue to believe we’re #1 in the universe. Frankly, aliens from space is a given, based on any scientific speculation you care to name, the universe is so vast it’s inevitable, and the very last minute way the ‘real’ story goes from the discarded weather balloon with atomic bomb radiation victim Japanese pilot prisoners, which is the old version of this story, is updated to this far-fetched Stalin and Mengele variation, shows the military wants us to be aware on one level or another, we’re being ridiculous in our refusal to accept the truth: everything we know is wrong!! Firesign Theater!
Go to Comment