I’m an awkward newbie still exploring, I hope you’ll bear with me. But assuming I understand the principle of this, as Kenji so lucidly explains it,
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors 1 – Shine 0.
I didn’t exactly see either the day before yesterday, but the dynamic beauty of ‘Shadows’ has stayed with me for years, while ‘Shine – actually more recently seen – has already dissolved into the glossy limbo of fairly good-looking productions which didn’t matter very much (in that case, with music).
And duly attending to the second match:
A Matter of Life and Death 0 – Pather Panchali 1
(Can someone tell me how to get heavy type? I tried the only system I know and it didn’t work. I’m still learning the ropes here, and riskily trying to learn them while under way, so if I get tied in knots, it’s oh so visible. Help?).
Anyway, that required a little thought, since ‘A Matter of Life and Death’ , or at least large parts of it, is a fascinating, witty and most of all inventive construction and I’ll never forget the heavenly court whirling off into space. Pather Panchali keeps its camera on earth, and finds enough details in every cranny of its little corner of India to feed all the fantasy it needs. See the picture above. Case closed. [smile], if such things are permitted.
Kevin Smith is honestly the most unlikely person I ever heard to compare Luc Moullet to! Except, I suppose, that he often makes quirky comedies, but … ohhh how can I put this without causing offence on my first day – they have a point. He can be very wickedly sharp indeed. That said, ‘underrated master’ might be an overstated case: he’s more a professional Puck-figure, tweaking the establishment’s toes and puncturing pomposity. Sometimes it works ,sometimes it doesn’t, but the target was well-chosen as a rule. He also has no budget at all: I don’t imagine Kevin Smith is the richest of directors, but I doubt he’d shoot a sequence on Moullet’s average funding.
Try finding a thread on this complexity of a board! I’ll have to discover the teams as I go along, and trust the respective managers not to leave their best players on the bench.
Alas with all regret – there’s no pairing there where I’ve seen both and between now and 4 p.m. tomorrow … I feel that I’m letting you down but such is life.
Looks like there’s at least one film I have to see so that I can vote against it. (At least, that would be the principle, sigh). Since I’ve never heard of it, this is going to be tricky.
Mostly oldish ones – I caught a retrospective in Paris two or three years ago. ‘Anatomie d’un rapport’, ‘Genèse d’un repas’ and ‘Une Aventure de Billy le Kid’, plus ‘La Comédie du travail’ that someone lent me. The first is probably the best summary of Luc Moullet: very very self-deprecating and ready to write an essay on his relationship with next to no resources; the last is also sharp and funny. The second is badly in need of a remake: it’s such a simple concept (pick a very simple meal you had yesterday and follow the systems involved in getting the ingredients to you; you’ll find the global economy unfolds before your eyes), but it wouldn’t be the same now as it was in the mid-70s, obviously. ‘Billy the Kid’ is really a group of actors playing games, which is what a lot of European Westerns were in all honesty (you can see it in unexpected places). It’s too long to make that point, it doesn’t really work, but I confess I liked it.
How do you watch an omnibus film without treating it as a short-film competition? Looking at them as whole films, I suspect they work best when the standard is fairly even, which tends to mean: nothing dreadful, but nothing exceptional. ‘Paris vu par…’ has the added advantage of a really coherent concept and a group of directors who had some solidarity between them, and although it’s not a consistent masterpiece it makes sense as a film. ’L’Amore in città’ actually manages a certain amount of dialogue between its segments. And the ambitious late-sixties-experimental ‘Amore e rabbia’ crosses a small spectrum of, well, late-sixties experiment. None of its segments are masterpieces, but it’s interesting. A twenty-four carat diamond in the midst of real crap has something tragic about it (and that happens, too).
Chimes at Midnight would be at the top of my list, but I have to mention Derek Jarman’s ‘The Tempest’, a truly cinematic adaptation in that it does with the images a little of what Shakespeare does with the words. I think Shakespeare would have approved. It’s all but shadows and has melted into air, into thin air.
On Hamlet – there’s a German short which was touring last year, called ‘Die Tragöden aus der Stadt’ (Tragedians in the City). A very witty take on the prince. Asta Nielsen’s silent Hamlet is supposed to be intriguing, but I haven’t seen it.
I was intending to watch Chungking Express again, but not before this kicks in. On current impressions
Chungking Express 0 – Kanal 1
and that’s the only pair I can vote on: couldn’t you have paired Uzak with either the Mambety or the Sembene?
To be honest I have enough on my plate with films I want to see for other things …. my film-programming is my own personal idiosyncracy (yes, it frustrated Oscar-fixers and Cine-Nobel juries too). I don’t use netflix and youtube is fairly crap. Chungking Express IS programmed, and soon (I’ve seen it, or I’m almost sure I’ve seen it, but not since the age of steam-trains, or at least steam-email); nonetheless I’m not going to (re)see it before the deadline expires.
Umm – I know I’m coming late to the party, but I have kind of a problem here. It’s an odd situation, I thought, when ‘Cléo de 5 à 7’ is played as Belgian – but I do see the argument, I’m sure you had the debate, and I’m sure she’s more use up there. OK. The problem comes a little way down. How come France (which I love and for which I shall root, don’t misunderstand me) gets to play ‘Pierrot le fou’? If ‘Pierrot’ is French, so is ‘Cléo’. If ‘Cléo’ is Belgian, ‘Pierrot’ is Swiss. You can’t have it both ways!
OK, OK. Specially as I don’t see a Swiss team, so what’s new? Schmid, Tanner anyone? And they could have fielded one hell of a captain, poached quite honestly from the neighbours.
Hell yes to Portugal – they’d have the oldest player on the pitch, at least! And I’m sure Greece and Scotland could make a case. I’m toying with the idea of the Independent Republic of Liverpool FC – we have Alex Cox and Terence Davies, Chris Bernard of ‘Letter to Brezhnev’, a little batch of silent directors and … John Lennon! We’d give the Netherlands a run for their money.
Well the telephone rang, it would not stop
It was President Kennedy calling me up
He said, My friend Bob, whadda we need to make the country grow?
I said, My friend John, Brigitte Bardot,
Anita Ekberg, Sophia Loren …. country’ll grow!’
So this is an issue?
I was trying this new toy four days ago, and gave up putting anyone in when I found I couldn’t have everyone. But it seems to work unpredictably, because I can’t even get the people that I could get four days ago today. But:
Hiroshi Teshigahara, who sparked my strike
Wojciech Has
and Pedro Costa weren’t there four days ago either.
I’d agree with David Ehrenstein on this one, and add that being Rivette he’s also interested in what this experience might have been like to a strong-minded young woman with absolutely no expectations of moving in such circles in the normal course of things. She has to have been stubborn, there’s no reason to assume that she wouldn’t find the adventure exciting, she’s to some extent protected from the social ‘realities’ by her extraordinary conviction and increasing restriction is increasingly tragic.
Kenji, two things: first – don’t take this hard but … what was all that about red-headed Hebrideans about? And second does this mean a DVD now exists?
Well well. That’s the last one, except ‘Merry-go-round’, that I haven’t been able to locate somewhere (however shakily). Order goes out today. Thank you.
There was no budget for huge battle-scenes, but it hardly seems to matter. The small battles aren’t exactly self-conscious ‘representations’, more metonymy. My impression was of a film very concerned with immediate sensation: what it might have been like to live in that world. Dark alcoves and bare rooms and immense richness, especially of textile, in certain regal circumstances; rough joshing and highly self-conscious chivalrous civilisation; saddle sores, chilly mornings, the rarity of a soft bed; eating on the hoof and banquets when the opportunity offered; going anywhere takes hours and an army spends almost all its time on the way to places.
Maybe Von Trier would be the person to carry off a modern-day Joan? She wouldn’t look like Rivette’s version, for sure, but he has a very strong sense of sacred madness.
Dreyer’s shadow has been heavy on all subsequent Joans. Perhaps it would be heavier on Von Trier since he’s Danish, and also (independently, I’m sure) possibly closer to Dreyer than Bresson or Rivette are, but he hasn’t adopted Dreyer’s intense calm, on the contrary. I think there’s space between them. Besides, no one as far as I know has yet tried what Kenji was suggesting, a contemporary – or at least 20th century – Joan-figure. (Wait, I forgot: Marcel Hanoun has, and beautifully – but in an experimental, non-narrative context.) It would be a somewhat dangerous undertaking; it would need a strong mind and no temptation to instrumentalise her. I’m not sure I’d trust Von Trier with it, but I think engagement with the character would keep him in clear water.
In the Entrepôt in Paris, with Hanoun in attendance … A charming man, deeply committed to what he does on a very thin shoestring, and wryly amused at what happened to his brief sixties reputation as ‘The Other Godard’. If I knew a way to get hold of it permanently, I would.
I must say, I hadn’t been exactly doing a census of reviews, but when I finally went to see it on Tuesday night I’d imbibed the impression that I’d see something violent and irreverent, but [I should say and, at least regarding the ‘irreverent’ part] also highly intelligent. Particularly – it’s what I’m most interested in at the moment – intelligent about cinema and war films and languages. The least I can say is that I was not disappointed. Tarantino is a very savvy operator. If one really ‘needs balls’ to say that publicly, fine, I have the balls and the cannon, but I’d need to check the target because my unscientific impression was that the critics were in favour
The World-War-II film has developed into a very recognisable genre of its own, big enough to have plentiful sub-genres certainly, but with rules about what it shall bring in, what it shan’t, what it can twist in terms of reality and what it can’t, who must be entirely sympathetic and heroic and who need not be; who must survive and who need not and how the non-survivors need to go; what particular figures shall look and sound like etc. ‘Inglorious Basterds’ isn’t sending that up (have you seen it, or are you guessing from the trailer?); obviously Tarantino has loved it as he’s loved most kinds of cinema that he’s ventured into, for better or worse. But he occasionally shamelessly refuses it – most obviously, by allowing himself a fantasy ending so blatant that there’s no way in the world anyone can believe he’s making a history film, which is the impression almost every World-War-II film wants to give, even the most cynically geared to telling a story the audience will enjoy. He occasionally subverts it, as with the manner of the ending: the hero who survives is very inglourious, the villain survives in Mephistophelian fashion (but deprived for ever of the chameleon-powers he’s relied on) , Shoshanna the Resistance heroine can be romantic, successful and tough as the story must have her and still be eliminated, and yet not as a victim …
This is a film about the-war-on-film, including how it was (or wasn’t) on film at the time, something he’s very well-informed about in terms of titles and genres, though once again he freely invents in the framework. It keeps its distance, it teases the clichés. That includes drawing attention to some of the idiocies that everyone takes absolutely for granted, such as the assumption which ruled until recently in the Anglophone war-film – which, by historical necessity, was more likely than any other to be set outside its own space – that everyone who needs to communicate will speak a form of ‘convenience-English’. The French critics got the point instantly. It seems the English ones had more difficulty, as if we still believe that it’s not improbable that French peasants in World-War-II-land speak English on demand. (OK, languages are my pressing agenda at the moment, and it’s one which Tarantino launches into with extraordinary fervour, much to my delight. But the combination of information and invention was generally very stimulating.)
I vary with Tarantino: loved ‘Jackie Brown’, enjoyed ‘Pulp Fiction’, am largely indifferent to ‘Reservoir Dogs’, and hated ‘Kill Bill I’ with a passion which prevented me ever setting eyes on ‘Kill Bill 2’. This is definitely on the up-side. Oh man-of-the-400-coups, the young Nouvelle Vague would have recognised it!
On the subject of Straub and Huillet, the very wonderful ‘Dalla Nube alla Resistenza’ also has connections to classical Greece, via Pavese, and its atmosphere. It succeeds in being both analytical and mysterious; a beautiful film.
WORLD CUP VOTING: CAUCASUS + UKRAINE v AUSTRALIA (GROUP 6) over 3 years ago
Hallo, am I activated now?
I’m an awkward newbie still exploring, I hope you’ll bear with me. But assuming I understand the principle of this, as Kenji so lucidly explains it,
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors 1 – Shine 0.
I didn’t exactly see either the day before yesterday, but the dynamic beauty of ‘Shadows’ has stayed with me for years, while ‘Shine – actually more recently seen – has already dissolved into the glossy limbo of fairly good-looking productions which didn’t matter very much (in that case, with music).
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WORLD CUP: VOTING- UNITED KINGDOM v INDIA (GROUP 6) over 3 years ago
And duly attending to the second match:
A Matter of Life and Death 0 – Pather Panchali 1
(Can someone tell me how to get heavy type? I tried the only system I know and it didn’t work. I’m still learning the ropes here, and riskily trying to learn them while under way, so if I get tied in knots, it’s oh so visible. Help?).
Anyway, that required a little thought, since ‘A Matter of Life and Death’ , or at least large parts of it, is a fascinating, witty and most of all inventive construction and I’ll never forget the heavenly court whirling off into space. Pather Panchali keeps its camera on earth, and finds enough details in every cranny of its little corner of India to feed all the fantasy it needs. See the picture above. Case closed. [smile], if such things are permitted.
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Luc Moullet over 3 years ago
Kevin Smith is honestly the most unlikely person I ever heard to compare Luc Moullet to! Except, I suppose, that he often makes quirky comedies, but … ohhh how can I put this without causing offence on my first day – they have a point. He can be very wickedly sharp indeed. That said, ‘underrated master’ might be an overstated case: he’s more a professional Puck-figure, tweaking the establishment’s toes and puncturing pomposity. Sometimes it works ,sometimes it doesn’t, but the target was well-chosen as a rule. He also has no budget at all: I don’t imagine Kevin Smith is the richest of directors, but I doubt he’d shoot a sequence on Moullet’s average funding.
EDIT: Hurrah the bold-type worked!
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WORLD CUP VOTING: CAUCASUS + UKRAINE v AUSTRALIA (GROUP 6) over 3 years ago
Hi Kenji. Honoured to be here.
Try finding a thread on this complexity of a board! I’ll have to discover the teams as I go along, and trust the respective managers not to leave their best players on the bench.
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THE AUTEURS FILM WORLD CUP: PHASE 3 (THE GROUP STAGE FILMS) over 3 years ago
Ahem
Alas with all regret – there’s no pairing there where I’ve seen both and between now and 4 p.m. tomorrow … I feel that I’m letting you down but such is life.
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Luc Moullet over 3 years ago
Way back where, pray tell? I.m an old-fashioned girl. And I was going to say a hobgoblin but he doesn’t look like one.
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THE AUTEURS FILM WORLD CUP: PHASE 3 (THE GROUP STAGE FILMS) over 3 years ago
Looks like there’s at least one film I have to see so that I can vote against it. (At least, that would be the principle, sigh). Since I’ve never heard of it, this is going to be tricky.
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Luc Moullet over 3 years ago
Beginning of the ’90s? You mean 1590s? Or are you talking about ice-hockey? I know nothing about ice-hockey.
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Luc Moullet over 3 years ago
Ahhhh umm, ok. Ummm, ahemm, never ’eard of it, was it worth watching?
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Luc Moullet over 3 years ago
Mostly oldish ones – I caught a retrospective in Paris two or three years ago. ‘Anatomie d’un rapport’, ‘Genèse d’un repas’ and ‘Une Aventure de Billy le Kid’, plus ‘La Comédie du travail’ that someone lent me. The first is probably the best summary of Luc Moullet: very very self-deprecating and ready to write an essay on his relationship with next to no resources; the last is also sharp and funny. The second is badly in need of a remake: it’s such a simple concept (pick a very simple meal you had yesterday and follow the systems involved in getting the ingredients to you; you’ll find the global economy unfolds before your eyes), but it wouldn’t be the same now as it was in the mid-70s, obviously. ‘Billy the Kid’ is really a group of actors playing games, which is what a lot of European Westerns were in all honesty (you can see it in unexpected places). It’s too long to make that point, it doesn’t really work, but I confess I liked it.
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Omnibus Films That Work over 3 years ago
How do you watch an omnibus film without treating it as a short-film competition? Looking at them as whole films, I suspect they work best when the standard is fairly even, which tends to mean: nothing dreadful, but nothing exceptional. ‘Paris vu par…’ has the added advantage of a really coherent concept and a group of directors who had some solidarity between them, and although it’s not a consistent masterpiece it makes sense as a film. ’L’Amore in città’ actually manages a certain amount of dialogue between its segments. And the ambitious late-sixties-experimental ‘Amore e rabbia’ crosses a small spectrum of, well, late-sixties experiment. None of its segments are masterpieces, but it’s interesting. A twenty-four carat diamond in the midst of real crap has something tragic about it (and that happens, too).
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Adaptations of Shakespeare over 3 years ago
Chimes at Midnight would be at the top of my list, but I have to mention Derek Jarman’s ‘The Tempest’, a truly cinematic adaptation in that it does with the images a little of what Shakespeare does with the words. I think Shakespeare would have approved. It’s all but shadows and has melted into air, into thin air.
On Hamlet – there’s a German short which was touring last year, called ‘Die Tragöden aus der Stadt’ (Tragedians in the City). A very witty take on the prince. Asta Nielsen’s silent Hamlet is supposed to be intriguing, but I haven’t seen it.
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WORLD CUP: VOTING- CHINA V POLAND (GROUP 8) over 3 years ago
I was intending to watch Chungking Express again, but not before this kicks in. On current impressions
Chungking Express 0 – Kanal 1
and that’s the only pair I can vote on: couldn’t you have paired Uzak with either the Mambety or the Sembene?
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THE AUTEURS FILM WORLD CUP: PHASE 3 (THE GROUP STAGE FILMS) over 3 years ago
To be honest I have enough on my plate with films I want to see for other things …. my film-programming is my own personal idiosyncracy (yes, it frustrated Oscar-fixers and Cine-Nobel juries too). I don’t use netflix and youtube is fairly crap. Chungking Express IS programmed, and soon (I’ve seen it, or I’m almost sure I’ve seen it, but not since the age of steam-trains, or at least steam-email); nonetheless I’m not going to (re)see it before the deadline expires.
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WORLD CUP RESULTS AND STATISTICS (after first set of 16 matches) over 3 years ago
Umm – I know I’m coming late to the party, but I have kind of a problem here. It’s an odd situation, I thought, when ‘Cléo de 5 à 7’ is played as Belgian – but I do see the argument, I’m sure you had the debate, and I’m sure she’s more use up there. OK. The problem comes a little way down. How come France (which I love and for which I shall root, don’t misunderstand me) gets to play ‘Pierrot le fou’? If ‘Pierrot’ is French, so is ‘Cléo’. If ‘Cléo’ is Belgian, ‘Pierrot’ is Swiss. You can’t have it both ways!
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A theory about IB spelling... over 3 years ago
Haven’t seen the film yet but isn’t it a lot about language?
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WORLD CUP RESULTS AND STATISTICS (after first set of 16 matches) over 3 years ago
OK, OK. Specially as I don’t see a Swiss team, so what’s new? Schmid, Tanner anyone? And they could have fielded one hell of a captain, poached quite honestly from the neighbours.
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WORLD CUP RESULTS AND STATISTICS (after first set of 16 matches) over 3 years ago
Hell yes to Portugal – they’d have the oldest player on the pitch, at least! And I’m sure Greece and Scotland could make a case. I’m toying with the idea of the Independent Republic of Liverpool FC – we have Alex Cox and Terence Davies, Chris Bernard of ‘Letter to Brezhnev’, a little batch of silent directors and … John Lennon! We’d give the Netherlands a run for their money.
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Bob Dylan's thoughts on film over 3 years ago
Dylan on film?
Well the telephone rang, it would not stop
It was President Kennedy calling me up
He said, My friend Bob, whadda we need to make the country grow?
I said, My friend John, Brigitte Bardot,
Anita Ekberg, Sophia Loren …. country’ll grow!’
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Favorite auteurs missing from the profile selection box. over 3 years ago
So this is an issue?
I was trying this new toy four days ago, and gave up putting anyone in when I found I couldn’t have everyone. But it seems to work unpredictably, because I can’t even get the people that I could get four days ago today. But:
Hiroshi Teshigahara, who sparked my strike
Wojciech Has
and Pedro Costa weren’t there four days ago either.
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Jeanne la Pucelle over 3 years ago
I’d agree with David Ehrenstein on this one, and add that being Rivette he’s also interested in what this experience might have been like to a strong-minded young woman with absolutely no expectations of moving in such circles in the normal course of things. She has to have been stubborn, there’s no reason to assume that she wouldn’t find the adventure exciting, she’s to some extent protected from the social ‘realities’ by her extraordinary conviction and increasing restriction is increasingly tragic.
Kenji, two things: first – don’t take this hard but … what was all that about red-headed Hebrideans about? And second does this mean a DVD now exists?
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Jeanne la Pucelle over 3 years ago
Well well. That’s the last one, except ‘Merry-go-round’, that I haven’t been able to locate somewhere (however shakily). Order goes out today. Thank you.
There was no budget for huge battle-scenes, but it hardly seems to matter. The small battles aren’t exactly self-conscious ‘representations’, more metonymy. My impression was of a film very concerned with immediate sensation: what it might have been like to live in that world. Dark alcoves and bare rooms and immense richness, especially of textile, in certain regal circumstances; rough joshing and highly self-conscious chivalrous civilisation; saddle sores, chilly mornings, the rarity of a soft bed; eating on the hoof and banquets when the opportunity offered; going anywhere takes hours and an army spends almost all its time on the way to places.
And I’ll soon be able to revise my impressions.
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Jeanne la Pucelle over 3 years ago
Maybe Von Trier would be the person to carry off a modern-day Joan? She wouldn’t look like Rivette’s version, for sure, but he has a very strong sense of sacred madness.
Go to Comment
Jeanne la Pucelle over 3 years ago
Dreyer’s shadow has been heavy on all subsequent Joans. Perhaps it would be heavier on Von Trier since he’s Danish, and also (independently, I’m sure) possibly closer to Dreyer than Bresson or Rivette are, but he hasn’t adopted Dreyer’s intense calm, on the contrary. I think there’s space between them. Besides, no one as far as I know has yet tried what Kenji was suggesting, a contemporary – or at least 20th century – Joan-figure. (Wait, I forgot: Marcel Hanoun has, and beautifully – but in an experimental, non-narrative context.) It would be a somewhat dangerous undertaking; it would need a strong mind and no temptation to instrumentalise her. I’m not sure I’d trust Von Trier with it, but I think engagement with the character would keep him in clear water.
Go to Comment
Jeanne la Pucelle over 3 years ago
In the Entrepôt in Paris, with Hanoun in attendance … A charming man, deeply committed to what he does on a very thin shoestring, and wryly amused at what happened to his brief sixties reputation as ‘The Other Godard’. If I knew a way to get hold of it permanently, I would.
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Jeanne la Pucelle over 3 years ago
Rivette played a priest, partly to save time if I recall.
You mean talk of the Antichrist, surely?
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Tarantino's main strength as a filmmaker over 3 years ago
I must say, I hadn’t been exactly doing a census of reviews, but when I finally went to see it on Tuesday night I’d imbibed the impression that I’d see something violent and irreverent, but [I should say and, at least regarding the ‘irreverent’ part] also highly intelligent. Particularly – it’s what I’m most interested in at the moment – intelligent about cinema and war films and languages. The least I can say is that I was not disappointed. Tarantino is a very savvy operator. If one really ‘needs balls’ to say that publicly, fine, I have the balls and the cannon, but I’d need to check the target because my unscientific impression was that the critics were in favour
Go to Comment
Tarantino's main strength as a filmmaker over 3 years ago
The World-War-II film has developed into a very recognisable genre of its own, big enough to have plentiful sub-genres certainly, but with rules about what it shall bring in, what it shan’t, what it can twist in terms of reality and what it can’t, who must be entirely sympathetic and heroic and who need not be; who must survive and who need not and how the non-survivors need to go; what particular figures shall look and sound like etc. ‘Inglorious Basterds’ isn’t sending that up (have you seen it, or are you guessing from the trailer?); obviously Tarantino has loved it as he’s loved most kinds of cinema that he’s ventured into, for better or worse. But he occasionally shamelessly refuses it – most obviously, by allowing himself a fantasy ending so blatant that there’s no way in the world anyone can believe he’s making a history film, which is the impression almost every World-War-II film wants to give, even the most cynically geared to telling a story the audience will enjoy. He occasionally subverts it, as with the manner of the ending: the hero who survives is very inglourious, the villain survives in Mephistophelian fashion (but deprived for ever of the chameleon-powers he’s relied on) , Shoshanna the Resistance heroine can be romantic, successful and tough as the story must have her and still be eliminated, and yet not as a victim …
This is a film about the-war-on-film, including how it was (or wasn’t) on film at the time, something he’s very well-informed about in terms of titles and genres, though once again he freely invents in the framework. It keeps its distance, it teases the clichés. That includes drawing attention to some of the idiocies that everyone takes absolutely for granted, such as the assumption which ruled until recently in the Anglophone war-film – which, by historical necessity, was more likely than any other to be set outside its own space – that everyone who needs to communicate will speak a form of ‘convenience-English’. The French critics got the point instantly. It seems the English ones had more difficulty, as if we still believe that it’s not improbable that French peasants in World-War-II-land speak English on demand. (OK, languages are my pressing agenda at the moment, and it’s one which Tarantino launches into with extraordinary fervour, much to my delight. But the combination of information and invention was generally very stimulating.)
I vary with Tarantino: loved ‘Jackie Brown’, enjoyed ‘Pulp Fiction’, am largely indifferent to ‘Reservoir Dogs’, and hated ‘Kill Bill I’ with a passion which prevented me ever setting eyes on ‘Kill Bill 2’. This is definitely on the up-side. Oh man-of-the-400-coups, the young Nouvelle Vague would have recognised it!
What’s a pablum?
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Greek mythology in films over 3 years ago
On the subject of Straub and Huillet, the very wonderful ‘Dalla Nube alla Resistenza’ also has connections to classical Greece, via Pavese, and its atmosphere. It succeeds in being both analytical and mysterious; a beautiful film.
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Greek mythology in films over 3 years ago
There’s also the film-within-the-film in Godard’s ‘Le Mépris’.
(Oops, sorry, missed your earlier mention.)
Tyrone Guthrie’s production of ‘Oedipus Rex’ could be added to the explicit-and-named OEdipus-es (Oedipi? Oedipoi?)
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