The Finalist Round looks scarcely any better than the Academy Award nominations. I expected more from the MUBI global cineastes. Seems exactly like a corporate film critic’s poll of nominees—White, male, Euro/American-centric. Sad the stranglehold they seem to wield over opinion and taste, no matter the number of choices available. Where’s the new Bela Tarr, the new Lars von Trier, the new Terrence Malick. HUGO no less. Seems as if everyone has squeezed into their tuxedoes and ball gowns just to sit at their computer keyboards to make their preliminary decisions. What a stuffy list. Surprised Woody Allen didn’t make the cut. The token Iranian is classic, but better than nothing I suppose. Someone should institute the MUBI Stephen Spielberg Award, or the Jack Valenti Award, give it to . . . hmmm . . . I know, Clint Eastwood.
I realize I sound terribly arrogant, but it’s actually disappointment which is bearing these oh-so sour grapes.
Fascinating thread, and proof of what films can do—even less than perfect films—perhaps especially foreign films from countries and historical settings which are not within the modernist paradigms. We seem to be discarding the film itself for the issues which the film aimed to uncover, in these discussions I have to be careful not to fall into bluster concerning my knowledge (or lack of) concerning the culture, the historical setting, to remember it’s fiction, and to admit just how much I don’t know about the situations (hence a byproduct of films for me can become a search for specific education, along with self examination). Islam is a vast subject, social/religious fundamentalism vs more individually moderate interpretations (supposed Sufi-like exceptions to authoritarian creed) is another vast area of discussion. Often, modern cosmopolitan thought can have its own fundamental strictures which we rarely view as such, yet we hardly ever think of ourselves as fundamentalists.
The Clay Bird does bring up many interesting ideas, largely through Tareque Masud’s heavy-handed use of rhetoric. I’d probably have much-preferred that Masud would have employed imagistic tools to do some of the heavy lifting. I agree with Kuxa Kanema when he opines “The “mad” boy with tinnitus Rokon, is for me the most interesting character in the film.” Here is one that truly listens to his own conscious, who is “outside” the popular behaviors and beliefs. Oddly, unless I missed a big story point, he never discloses his secret friend who brings him sweets, and one assumes comfort in a painful habitat. Is this secret ally a specter existing outside the materialist religious leaders and students at the madrasa, perhaps intimating a look at a personal relationship with the divine? A mystic as it were? Did Rokon inhabit a faith imperceptible to those surrounding him—those equipped with discipline, power, an entire social order, even the ability to withdraw the lowest cultural status? He may have also been the most convincing actor with a range at least as wide as any adults in the movie. When the crueler madrasa boys found his hideout and began tossing stones, it brought real suspense to me wondering what psychic state Rokon’s close-up would inhabit. Selfishly, I was hoping he wouldn’t completely crack under the intrusion, lose that magnanimity his privacy had afforded him up until this scene. I became invested in the film.
Another point in the thread is why so many countries chose to use children in their films. I would point out that it may be a function of censorship. In strict countries such as Iran, I’ve noticed that for 20 years or more there have been many movies in which the protagonist is a child, DEVANDEH (The Runner, 1990) being a good example. Film makers can embody many themes inside the lives of children which lend to interpretation an important vagueness when being examined by censors, be they religious or secular. Their representative clay can be molded with many subtleties, some almost hidden depending on the light, the angle, the wish upon the viewer to see what may, or may not, be there. Child character-driven films are also able to refrain from many of the stickier adult issues which seem to incite censors. For instance: whether a woman can be photographed without a hijab even in her art directed home environment? Sex lives? Respect for religious law? Portrayal of certain social failures?
I should mention that I really liked the madrasa location. It’s weathered, intricate buildings, narrow alleyways, cramped sleeping dorms, the river ghat, the majestic trees owing a look of restriction as if they were sentinels always guarding the children from running afoul of an unseen authority. One more notable ingredient I found in The Clay Bird was the use of music performed on camera. Bangladeshis, I believe, have a long history of singing and pageantry in village life (East Bengal, Raj India, Nawabs, Mughals etc). The use of song as something of a chorus to the director’s aims wasn’t used perhaps with a deft hand, but the music itself was so warm and inspiring to the villagers (and viewer), that we can surmise the function of other arts as well on political/historical situations and how they impact personal freedoms. Something more pleasing than rhetoric to this viewer. Hope it’s okay to throw my 2 cents in, I’m so happy to have seen The Clay Bird and I look forward to more new views from The Cup’s competitors, and more needed images and ideas to reflect upon.
Looking for titles of films which concern or feature butoh dance. There seems to be a paucity on MUBI so far, can you help? I know I saw some on You Tube, but the provenance is sketchy. One amazing dance in South America that Jonas Mekas recorded, don’t know title or if available.
I’ve always wondered how there could be “an embarrassment of riches,” but these choices are making it clear. So many I haven’t even heard of (exciting), and some I’ve wanted to see for years (drool is beginning to run down my chin), and some I’ve just seen due to the Cup’s choices and availability—The Naked Island last night (starry eyed gratitude). Thanks Risselada and all. Cuba vs Palestine is very cool.
I’m going to guess that it’s dangerous to base an entire film on being clever, every frame. Technique, acting, story boarding forward, let alone backward, dialogue, narration, all clever. I think Woody Allen has probably tried it, Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Jacques Tati, Mel Brooks, others I’ve forgotten or don’t know. Usually it’s a bust. The list of successes is very short, and rarefied. Cleverness in comedy is of course it’s life’s blood, but generally pacing is used to go in and then out of this constant ingenuity. The audience gets tired, the jokes aren’t funny after a while. So, how in the hell did Oldrich Lipsky’s HAPPY END do it? It was as charming and funny at the end as the beginning, maybe more so as it takes a little while to understand what we’re watching, and in which direction. Once we’re in sync with the director it’s a delight until the last frame. I wouldn’t want to dissect the movie scene by scene, I’d get dizzy and start talking in tongues, but the narrator’s lines had me captive, especially when they seem in counterpoint to the action from one cut to the next (former, but not really). Just how talented was the Czech New Wave roster of talent in the mid 1960’s? Lipsky isn’t a household name, and this little gem is barely written about in the few resources I have on Czech film, but what a treat it turns out to be. Like getting drunk on sloe Gin, I’ll probably not do it again, but the screening was a joy. The entry from Morocco has a fast and strong foe.
Yes, the madcap Marx Bros seem to come close, but usually have a romantic subplot around between handsome star-crossed lovers. Often one or both sing a song which causes us to remember how long ago these films were made and how music has changed. Seems like it’s a holdover from vaudeville’s variety show format. And as you pointed out, Harpo always provided a non-story harp recital in fright wig and hat. Chaplin and Keaton normally had non-comedic interludes as well, but most of those were also silents, removing a rather important ingredient (I rescind my first use of them as examples except perhaps in some early one-reelers). I still think Oldrich Lipsy pulled off a marvel, and though it looks rather effortless, I’ll guess it had more than its share of difficulties.
LUST FOR GOLD, 1st story: interesting, very loose narrative structure, moody and dreamy, beautifully photographed, so-so acting, some nice compositions, some lazy compositions. The backlit interiors of the beautiful daughter and others became something of a bore. Liked the music, even the weird chorus, though it could seem a cheap narrative trick to deliver period feel and a feeling of noble import, which is really the story’s business. I believe this film is titled Vilva Baii, and is directed by Mircea Veroiu from a story by Ion Agarbiceanu
LUST FOR GOLD, 2nd story sort of fractured its plots unintelligibly—lots of funerals, marriages, young wives to be. Why? Seems it hinged on one wife, and one old husband. Like a fairy tale, no need for another marriage at the end in truncated form with intimations of more. Like telling the same joke 3 times in a row, or was it 4. Kinda low on the suspense scale, was anyone ever surprised at anything? Sure could find lots of gorgeous actresses in 1974 Romania. Acting was so-so, some very dramatic blocking and composition. The main wife’s death scene was awful. I never felt the directors, either one, cared about the themes inherent in their stories. Perhaps there was a certain censorship at that time, lending ease of distribution to literary classics. At least Vilva Baii was clouded in a near phantasmagoria, sublimating the narrative somewhat in a world of dreams. The second story, Lada, had no such ruse and suffered. Directed by Dan Piţa. Question—what does “the pope’s sister” refer to. Is it a Catholic Pope? Does pope have another definition I don’t know? Surely she doesn’t need to marry an old, decrepit rich man if she’s the Catholic Pope’s sister. Sub-title goof?
Is this a compilation movie, since we have 2 separate directors and separate acting cores shooting 2 separate short films taken from similarly themed stories by the same author (Ion Agarbiceanu)? I like the first story and director’s work much more than the second director’s. So how do I vote? There are actually two films vs one film.
THE RUNNER—I have a soft spot for this film. I first saw it at the Fox Venice Theater in Los Angeles not long after it’s release. I believe the director (Amir Naderi) had come to L.A. and brought a print. It was the first Iranian film I’d seen and I liked it very much. Owing to the rather draconian censors in Khomeni’s Iran, the director’s last film as well as other of his works had been banned. I noticed that this one was released by The Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults. I then suppose, since his earlier films had been banned, that Naderi using children in his story was a necessity if he wanted his film to ever see the light of day—what we may call “a work-around.” Most film makers don’t need to work under such constraints. The political subtext of those in power abusing and harassing the lesser, marginal pockets of countrymen (portrayed by the child) isn’t terribly subtle, but seemed to please the censors. I found the shots exciting, the locales with constant flat horizons were an almost neutral background upon which to perform many of the films lonelier concerns—the child also being an orphan in need of everything and industrious enough to gain at least the basics of survival. It’s not flawless, and has some odd editorial decisions, but it often worked very well with a certain austere intention, or what seems to be intention. It was a film which felt necessary.
I admire both films, especially the first part of Lust for Gold and The Runner.
As for the role of women in Lust for Gold, premiere partie: there’s definitely an associative lineage within the mother/doyen of the Deadwood bar (Eliza Petrachescu) culled from a trans-gendered reading of Perry White, editor-in-chief of the Daily Planet; while her daughter’s coquette persona quietly screams and screams and screams within a synthetic admixture of equal parts Julie Christie from McCabe and Mrs. Miller gene-spliced with the assimilative Karen Thimm, provocative screen-stealer to Fassbinder’s meta-filmic romans à clef Petra von Kant, she of hairdo wizardry, who, former to Duhul Aurului’s release, held sway for taking home the Silver Sloat in Koblenz’s “Fascism in Every Home” film festival of ’72. I knew her at Columbia.
Now as our cameras pan across the littered foyer past the banners and drunken fans we see our next competitors warming up. On one side we see those sons and daughters of the fertile Ganges delta, Bangladesh. They’re oiling their projector rollers, sharpening their sprockets and attending to any last minute details which their months of training, now behind them, has alerted them to consider. Facing Bangladesh will be the historic Taiwanese team, with many international banners already hanging in their rafters, the team is sending its print through it’s last cleaning stages and soon the reels will be mounted and the dampers will open sending the zenon light out into our judges’ screening room.
Down among the dignitaries from each country, the judges are beginning to seat themselves and get settled. I think I see Graham Greene in the audience, his cravat always tied so jauntily, and who’s that making a fuss near the front aisles, if the camera will only pan to the ruckus, Oh it’s Manny Farber in rumpled corduroy jacket seemingly upset at someone who’s face we can’t make out . . . I see now, it’s Dame Pauline just waiting to be seated with her entourage. Just a few rows behind the bickering rivals, we can see James Agee offering a half-pint bottle to Taihei Imamura, a distinguished colleague from Japan, one of the Juggernauts in these competitions. As our cameramen pan the aisles we see just a few of tonight’s revered judges, there’s Andre Bazin talking to Henri Langlois with his guest for the evening Simone Signoret, in vintage Christian Lacroix. We’ll step away from the screening room for a minute and turn to our camera outside the lovely Dagmar Theater, where a trio of guests is just leaving their limousine, if we can get a tighter shot . . . yes, it’s Kuxa Kanema with YS and the grand poobah of tonight’s showing, Risselada. As they walk the red carpet beneath the marquee and onto the line at the ticket counter, they join Alamgir Kabir and Edward Yang, an honory critic in tonight’s competition. Well, we can hear the music volume beginning to diminish in the theater and so we’ll return as the the last guests are scampering to their seats and the lights dim down. Tonight seems to have all the makings of a fine competition between Bangladesh’s nominee, The Clay Bird by the late director, Tareque Masud who will be paring off against Taiwan’s nominee, Tropical Fish, a 1995 film by director Chen Yu-hsun. Well, sit back, turn off your cell phones and get ready for the second match in the MUBI CUP . . . roll’ it.
Bangladesh (The Clay Bird) 1—Taiwan (Tropical Fish) 0
Though I consider them about equally problematic, for very different reason.
Yes Risselada, I was just trying to be light in that awards screening mash-up. Sometimes I become rather frustrated at not being able to explain my thoughts as well as I’d like concerning the films I watch, so I let my mind go run around for a while. Hope it’s okay that I made that little romp public. There was no comparison implied between those forerunners of international criticism and this Cup other than both groups are personally enmeshed in viewing, digesting, molding interpretations and then making those opinions public. Both parties are lasso-swinging filmgeeks. I personally enjoy that Manny Farber was in attendance, but really each can name their own roster of critics who have engendered our current multi-media generation of critical writers and film hounds both in and outside the academic halls. They didn’t agree then, nor now. The Cup seems a great way to expose worthy films, film-makers and opinions on their work. I’m grateful. Just wish my choices would start eviscerating their foes.
Hate to pile it on, but I agree with what seems to be the majority of voters so far, that the caliber of The Forbidden Door is rather low. When I looked and saw that the director, Joko Anwar has made films which were awarded, or lauded at film festivals or by critics, I was amazed. In The Forbidden Door, it seemed the director didn’t have a clue how to bring that story (such as it is) to the screen in any meaningful way. Sure the actors weren’t top notch, but the screenplay itself held the central problems. If there isn’t one character in a film who is believable, you are in trouble, not one of these came to life, and all the dolly moves, crane shots and gallons of blood used won’t fix that. Certainly, there is a whole genre of horror films which use unbelievable premises and characters, but they’re generally the bottom of the barrel variety and if they have a following, it’s generally from kitsch or because the director was savvy enough to play it tongue in cheek, or so over the top that we know we’re in for a gore-a-thon, and happen to enjoy such things. In any event, this film tried to be everything—horror film, message film, art film, shocker, without an iota of humor. Anyway, I won’t belabor it. Not my cup of tea.
Egg (Yumurta) on the other hand had much I liked. The rather leaden pace is introduced from the beginning during the bookshop sequence, where the woman arrives on her way to a party and speaks to our protagonist, Yusuf, (played by Negat Isler), even offering him a bottle of wine in exchange for a book. He’s offered a filmic mixture of possible romance, possible fun, yet immediately, the story turns down any prospect of buoyant themes and immediately points us to the interior emotions and grief of Yusuf. The dreamy terrain, dismal weather, and soft sound track through most of the film were just right. I was never quite sure where ruminations departed from present tense story, each running through each in a controlled style of quiet observations. The scene toward the end of the large dog in the night darkened field was cathartic and somehow believable in the poetic parameters which Semih Kaplanoglu, the director had used throughout. Much was left merely hinted at: the relationship between Yusuf and Alyla, (Saadet Aksoy) the quiet young woman attendant to Yusuf’s late mother, was always an unanswered question, even at the end, though it had been partially resolved. I enjoy atmospheric films which leave some story lines and eventualities unexplained. It seems to be a popular story technique in many more recent films, and of course, has precedents going back to early cinema, Perhaps haarkening back to Renoir’s Partie de Campagne as a moody progenitor, if not in story arc, then in the fugue of elements being shown and not shown, giving credit to the viewers to create meaning for themselves. Another, more modern associative stylist might be Theodoros Angelopoulos. A light touch, it might be called. The acting by the two principle characters was very engaging, and the use of scenic town and countryside and also ambient weather was additionally important to the successes I saw in Kaplanoglu’s method. It takes a rather sure and accomplished director to plot out such a movie, choosing to keep it away from the melodramatic dirge, yet not flipping entirely over to a totally objective style of storytelling either. I hope to look into more of Kapaoglu’s films as well as Negat Isler’s work.
’ . . . mediocre movies may actually be worse than bad movies, and thus Ron Howard is the worst director of all time." I beg to differ, believing that there’s many a mediocre director as middlin’ as Ronnie. Not that he isn’t firmly planted in the heap, but we’re talking about a long list of often times celebrity figures with many polished awards on their fireplace mantles (and many MUBI fans), though I grant you Hollywood from the last 30 years is fecund ground to pick and choose those plums.
If you don’t agree with some of my reasons for taking a dislike to The Forbidden Door, please disregard them. On second thought, there probably was some definition of humor in the movie, it just wasn’t mine. I won’t argue with a fan of Francis Mankiewicz (one of two on MUBI), a Québécois director whose Les Bons Débarras is one of the most sadly unrecognized great films of which I know. That it is difficult to view, even today, especially in subtitled form, is the film world’s undeserving loss. If it hasn’t already been included in previous MUBI Cups, I hope that it will be in the future.
How about the male nurse, Benigno, in Almodovar’s TALK TO HER (played by Javier Cámara)? There’s certainly sympathy involved in my view of the character, but then again he did impregnate a comatose young patient in a hospital and deny it all.
Czech Republic (Happy End)-1, Morocco (A Thousand Months)- 0 Now it’s tied
Liked both films, but I’ve never seen one uniquely designed in this style, and so well accomplished within its set framework as HAPPY END, and that’s saying something.
Odd, but I find myself ruminating on A Thousand Months more now due to some of these thread comments. Bensaïdi’s quote on the changing emphasis he liked to employ during his work, from the core to the peripherals, also helped me watch his style change throughout, but not really the themes—i.e., hypocrisy in those who outwardly follow the stringent village ethics, be they religious, tribal, familial, marital, gender-based, romantic, in opposition to modernity’s offerings. We’re guided through many characters, each possessed by a need to break with bondage of tradition on the verge of modernization (the beauty of the lights going on at sunset all at the same instant). It could be from need: the grandfather selling the chair; or it could be from desire: the teenaged girl using lipstick, smoking cigarettes and going to progressive political rally’s as much for the adrenaline rush of defying authority as for a larger political necessity.
I have a problem with the ending of the film, feeling the director’s choice of a conflagration, although cinematic, was an all too-easy method of solving a difficult problem. He chose the wedding sequence in the tent as his setting for resolution, however we really only address the grandfather’s guilty secret being publicized (returning to the chair, and its weight of symbolic resonance). A drunken brawl, pandemonium, and a wagon filled with new beginnings escaping into the night seemed to fulfill the director’s aims. However, I felt cheated to some degree. In essence the story called on a big, beautiful tent fire—call it an Atlas Mountain Village “Death Star” explosion—as a vague consummation of all the interesting questions posed by the film, many just left dangling as the wagon clangs its wheels along the packed dirt road through the darkness toward exile in Marrakesh or Casablanca or Fez. As we know, in the history of Morocco, this approaching liberalism would be met with a rise in fundamentalism, contrary to the hope of the film, perhaps giving its tone a bittersweet feel, even in light of some of its humor and near-absurdist havoc.
None of this means I disliked the film, on the contrary I liked it very much and am grateful I was able to see it. But I did wonder if his story became expansive with too many characters. Granted they showed different examples of village life, and also personified different tics of moral quandaries. It’s just difficult in a 2 hour film to sum up all those persons, particulars, problems, let alone solutions for each (story solutions, not necessarily intellectual or psychological answers). Perhaps I feel the film may have benefited from a smaller cast of integral characters. Such a limitation may have tightened the focus of the story on the major participants, allowing more depth in presentation, characterization, and more clarity in story resolution.
I like both (again). I even like everyone’s reasons for their individual votes (not again). However . . .
Kyrgzstan (White Mountains) —0 United States of America (Public Housing) —1
I’m a sucker for Melis Ubukeyev’s White Mountains, since it plays to many of my knee jerk positive reactions: fascinating B & W cinematography; wilderness settings with pretty single women remaining after the young men have been killed in one massacre or other, tilling the ground for ROMANCE; a story so lean it could be a silent movie; a male protagonist about as smart as a stump; Soviet propaganda toward education and modernization—the same modernization which will bring the culture we find so exotic and interesting to be lost forever except in museums. This movie didn’t have one but two lovely, expressive women actors, certainly the young girl in braids (did they have hair extensions in Kyrgyzstan’s back woods in 1918?), as well as her blind mother, glowingly ensconced in mourning togs like a deposed queen awaiting fate. Countryside shots, either the steepes-like meadows, or the craggy mountain heights, were captured powerfully. And the assorted authority figures with whips, rifles and fur hats lended just enough suspense throughout to carry our anxiety. The ending was very good indeed. Whether the silhouette shots were designed, or were merely the product of a bad dupe’s high contrast, it worked. And it was blessedly short in length.
As for Wiseman’s Public Housing, it contains none of my knee jerk favorite attractions. Instead it is long; verbally laborious; filled with talking heads, or talking two shots; redundant in thematic overkill; impersonal, and wearing its liberal-progessive heart on its sleeve. However, if it’s purpose was to rouse the ire of viewers toward the denunciation of a nation’s systematic racism, generationally ingrained until dreams of happiness are denuded of all options excluding only illegalities, governmental resource rosters, bottom-level occupations, crack addiction, alcoholism, not withstanding the rare denizen who “gets the hell out outta there,” but feels the projects’ personal repercussions even in success. If this was the the film’s goal, even if I didn’t like watching it, then the documentary as film was very successful.
5 stars _ Holding hands with Nora Gregor when her husband is away entertaining guests
4 stars _ Kissing Elizabeth Shue by the pool wet with Tequila
3 stars _ Kissing Louise Brooks as her millionaire boyfriends looks on jealously
2 stars _ Kissing Susan Tyrell just back from closing the local Stockton bar
1 star _ Kissing Magdalena Flores in a hut with morning breath
Don’t know if this is the proper place for my question, but I’m having a difficult time viewing VIMEO, the buffering and streaming seemed to stop after an hour of The film from Malaysia, and I don’t get the YouTube option in my country. When I tried to play with the Vimeo link, I had to start over. Don’t believe there’s an option of scrubbing forward. I have Adobe Flash 11 something (most current), is it totally my problem to solve or are there tricks which I can apply? I’m certainly not a wirehead, or a torrent guru that’s for sure. Any help is appreciated. If this is the wrong place to ask, can someone inform me of a better one? Thanks.
I’m going to guess JJ is correct about Mubians, which opens a wide door about just how important any of these films are anyway, or any films, art, dance, music, at least the way we watch/assay them. If it’s merely entertainment, or a forum to advertise our opinions on other people’s work. Why all the fucking interest with MFA & PhD programs in film studies? Why the modern cultural references to film in every situation, globally? It’s a short leap from L’Atalante to video games if it’s all “for my own selfish reasons that make me very happy.” Is the idea merely to watch as many movies as we can, to amass the longest list—bragging rights? Are these threads merely metaphorical penis extensions for the likes of the guys, since most of the women in the Cup aren’t quite so demanding of wearing a verbal plume for all to admire. Hell, we’re still on this thread and the bout was closed yesterday. Why not just watch a big loop of Titanic until we become one with the couch. And the worst of it is—KK may be right.
Nice image Ruby, before his ear was broken. My guess is that dancing yourself to death at that altitude with or without coca leaves is a pretty interesting way to transition into whatever may or may not be beyond, your brain probably continues to get lighter and lighter with lack of oxygen bringing on hallucinations and eventual ? ? ? For some reason I think of Aldous Huxley taking LSD intravenously at his end. Liked La Nación Clandestina a lot.
The Killer Inside Me (Michael Winterbottom, 2010). Edgy, violent, sexy, schizoid, disturbing, everybody’s dirty. Jim Thompson original material. What’s not to like . . . oh, that. Remake of a good Burt Kennedy film.
Deep Crimson (Arturo Ripstein, 1996, Mexico). Edgy, violent, sexy, schizoid, disturbing, everybody’s dirty. Ideas borrowed liberally from The Honeymoon Killers (1969) which borrowed liberally from a true story crime spree. What’s not to like . . . oh that.
The Croupier (Mike Hodges, 1998, UK). Edgy, sexy, schizoid, stylish, everybody’s dirty. From the director who gave us Get Carter, an older heralded neo-noir.
Devil in a Blue Dress (Carl Franklin, 1995) Edgy, sexy, schizoid (Mouse), period piece, everybody’s dirty. From Walter Mosely published source material.
The Secret in Their Eyes (Juan José Campanella, 2009, Argentina) Edgy, sexy, first person, flashbacks, lots of dirty tricks, everybody’s dirty. From Eduardo Sacheri novel.
I don’t care much who wins because selfishly I’ve been able to watch both of these amazing gems. Hate to be overly positive tonight, but this Cup is a great program and those persons who found the films and made copies available to stream in flash (or download) deserve many props. I’ve looked for some of these titles for years, and others I’ve never even heard mentioned, intensifying surprises I’ll not soon forget.
Now I can go back to disagreeing with everyone’s opinions.
The First Annual Mubi Awards for 2011, finalists round over 1 year ago
The Finalist Round looks scarcely any better than the Academy Award nominations. I expected more from the MUBI global cineastes. Seems exactly like a corporate film critic’s poll of nominees—White, male, Euro/American-centric. Sad the stranglehold they seem to wield over opinion and taste, no matter the number of choices available. Where’s the new Bela Tarr, the new Lars von Trier, the new Terrence Malick. HUGO no less. Seems as if everyone has squeezed into their tuxedoes and ball gowns just to sit at their computer keyboards to make their preliminary decisions. What a stuffy list. Surprised Woody Allen didn’t make the cut. The token Iranian is classic, but better than nothing I suppose. Someone should institute the MUBI Stephen Spielberg Award, or the Jack Valenti Award, give it to . . . hmmm . . . I know, Clint Eastwood.
I realize I sound terribly arrogant, but it’s actually disappointment which is bearing these oh-so sour grapes.
Go to Comment
World Cup Film Intro: The Clay Bird over 1 year ago
Fascinating thread, and proof of what films can do—even less than perfect films—perhaps especially foreign films from countries and historical settings which are not within the modernist paradigms. We seem to be discarding the film itself for the issues which the film aimed to uncover, in these discussions I have to be careful not to fall into bluster concerning my knowledge (or lack of) concerning the culture, the historical setting, to remember it’s fiction, and to admit just how much I don’t know about the situations (hence a byproduct of films for me can become a search for specific education, along with self examination). Islam is a vast subject, social/religious fundamentalism vs more individually moderate interpretations (supposed Sufi-like exceptions to authoritarian creed) is another vast area of discussion. Often, modern cosmopolitan thought can have its own fundamental strictures which we rarely view as such, yet we hardly ever think of ourselves as fundamentalists.
The Clay Bird does bring up many interesting ideas, largely through Tareque Masud’s heavy-handed use of rhetoric. I’d probably have much-preferred that Masud would have employed imagistic tools to do some of the heavy lifting. I agree with Kuxa Kanema when he opines “The “mad” boy with tinnitus Rokon, is for me the most interesting character in the film.” Here is one that truly listens to his own conscious, who is “outside” the popular behaviors and beliefs. Oddly, unless I missed a big story point, he never discloses his secret friend who brings him sweets, and one assumes comfort in a painful habitat. Is this secret ally a specter existing outside the materialist religious leaders and students at the madrasa, perhaps intimating a look at a personal relationship with the divine? A mystic as it were? Did Rokon inhabit a faith imperceptible to those surrounding him—those equipped with discipline, power, an entire social order, even the ability to withdraw the lowest cultural status? He may have also been the most convincing actor with a range at least as wide as any adults in the movie. When the crueler madrasa boys found his hideout and began tossing stones, it brought real suspense to me wondering what psychic state Rokon’s close-up would inhabit. Selfishly, I was hoping he wouldn’t completely crack under the intrusion, lose that magnanimity his privacy had afforded him up until this scene. I became invested in the film.
Another point in the thread is why so many countries chose to use children in their films. I would point out that it may be a function of censorship. In strict countries such as Iran, I’ve noticed that for 20 years or more there have been many movies in which the protagonist is a child, DEVANDEH (The Runner, 1990) being a good example. Film makers can embody many themes inside the lives of children which lend to interpretation an important vagueness when being examined by censors, be they religious or secular. Their representative clay can be molded with many subtleties, some almost hidden depending on the light, the angle, the wish upon the viewer to see what may, or may not, be there. Child character-driven films are also able to refrain from many of the stickier adult issues which seem to incite censors. For instance: whether a woman can be photographed without a hijab even in her art directed home environment? Sex lives? Respect for religious law? Portrayal of certain social failures?
I should mention that I really liked the madrasa location. It’s weathered, intricate buildings, narrow alleyways, cramped sleeping dorms, the river ghat, the majestic trees owing a look of restriction as if they were sentinels always guarding the children from running afoul of an unseen authority. One more notable ingredient I found in The Clay Bird was the use of music performed on camera. Bangladeshis, I believe, have a long history of singing and pageantry in village life (East Bengal, Raj India, Nawabs, Mughals etc). The use of song as something of a chorus to the director’s aims wasn’t used perhaps with a deft hand, but the music itself was so warm and inspiring to the villagers (and viewer), that we can surmise the function of other arts as well on political/historical situations and how they impact personal freedoms. Something more pleasing than rhetoric to this viewer. Hope it’s okay to throw my 2 cents in, I’m so happy to have seen The Clay Bird and I look forward to more new views from The Cup’s competitors, and more needed images and ideas to reflect upon.
Go to Comment
Butoh in film/on film over 1 year ago
Looking for titles of films which concern or feature butoh dance. There seems to be a paucity on MUBI so far, can you help? I know I saw some on You Tube, but the provenance is sketchy. One amazing dance in South America that Jonas Mekas recorded, don’t know title or if available.
Go to Comment
Butoh in film/on film over 1 year ago
Thanks Girlfriend in a Coma, I’ve read that the husband dances for his wife, or in grief. I’ll find it and watch.
Go to Comment
2012 MUBI World Cup - match announcements over 1 year ago
I’ve always wondered how there could be “an embarrassment of riches,” but these choices are making it clear. So many I haven’t even heard of (exciting), and some I’ve wanted to see for years (drool is beginning to run down my chin), and some I’ve just seen due to the Cup’s choices and availability—The Naked Island last night (starry eyed gratitude). Thanks Risselada and all. Cuba vs Palestine is very cool.
Go to Comment
2012 MUBI World Cup - match announcements over 1 year ago
Kenji, I wouldn’t want to have to chose between ONIBABA and NAKED ISLAND, I find the caliber of such movies very rare.
Go to Comment
2012 MUBI World Cup Film Discussion: Happy End over 1 year ago
I’m going to guess that it’s dangerous to base an entire film on being clever, every frame. Technique, acting, story boarding forward, let alone backward, dialogue, narration, all clever. I think Woody Allen has probably tried it, Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Jacques Tati, Mel Brooks, others I’ve forgotten or don’t know. Usually it’s a bust. The list of successes is very short, and rarefied. Cleverness in comedy is of course it’s life’s blood, but generally pacing is used to go in and then out of this constant ingenuity. The audience gets tired, the jokes aren’t funny after a while. So, how in the hell did Oldrich Lipsky’s HAPPY END do it? It was as charming and funny at the end as the beginning, maybe more so as it takes a little while to understand what we’re watching, and in which direction. Once we’re in sync with the director it’s a delight until the last frame. I wouldn’t want to dissect the movie scene by scene, I’d get dizzy and start talking in tongues, but the narrator’s lines had me captive, especially when they seem in counterpoint to the action from one cut to the next (former, but not really). Just how talented was the Czech New Wave roster of talent in the mid 1960’s? Lipsky isn’t a household name, and this little gem is barely written about in the few resources I have on Czech film, but what a treat it turns out to be. Like getting drunk on sloe Gin, I’ll probably not do it again, but the screening was a joy. The entry from Morocco has a fast and strong foe.
Go to Comment
2012 MUBI World Cup Film Discussion: Happy End over 1 year ago
Yes, the madcap Marx Bros seem to come close, but usually have a romantic subplot around between handsome star-crossed lovers. Often one or both sing a song which causes us to remember how long ago these films were made and how music has changed. Seems like it’s a holdover from vaudeville’s variety show format. And as you pointed out, Harpo always provided a non-story harp recital in fright wig and hat. Chaplin and Keaton normally had non-comedic interludes as well, but most of those were also silents, removing a rather important ingredient (I rescind my first use of them as examples except perhaps in some early one-reelers). I still think Oldrich Lipsy pulled off a marvel, and though it looks rather effortless, I’ll guess it had more than its share of difficulties.
Go to Comment
2012 MUBI World Cup Voting, Match #1: Iran (The Runner) vs. Romania (Lust for Gold) over 1 year ago
IRAN (The Runner) 1 ROMANIA (Lust for Gold) 0
LUST FOR GOLD, 1st story: interesting, very loose narrative structure, moody and dreamy, beautifully photographed, so-so acting, some nice compositions, some lazy compositions. The backlit interiors of the beautiful daughter and others became something of a bore. Liked the music, even the weird chorus, though it could seem a cheap narrative trick to deliver period feel and a feeling of noble import, which is really the story’s business. I believe this film is titled Vilva Baii, and is directed by Mircea Veroiu from a story by Ion Agarbiceanu
LUST FOR GOLD, 2nd story sort of fractured its plots unintelligibly—lots of funerals, marriages, young wives to be. Why? Seems it hinged on one wife, and one old husband. Like a fairy tale, no need for another marriage at the end in truncated form with intimations of more. Like telling the same joke 3 times in a row, or was it 4. Kinda low on the suspense scale, was anyone ever surprised at anything? Sure could find lots of gorgeous actresses in 1974 Romania. Acting was so-so, some very dramatic blocking and composition. The main wife’s death scene was awful. I never felt the directors, either one, cared about the themes inherent in their stories. Perhaps there was a certain censorship at that time, lending ease of distribution to literary classics. At least Vilva Baii was clouded in a near phantasmagoria, sublimating the narrative somewhat in a world of dreams. The second story, Lada, had no such ruse and suffered. Directed by Dan Piţa. Question—what does “the pope’s sister” refer to. Is it a Catholic Pope? Does pope have another definition I don’t know? Surely she doesn’t need to marry an old, decrepit rich man if she’s the Catholic Pope’s sister. Sub-title goof?
Is this a compilation movie, since we have 2 separate directors and separate acting cores shooting 2 separate short films taken from similarly themed stories by the same author (Ion Agarbiceanu)? I like the first story and director’s work much more than the second director’s. So how do I vote? There are actually two films vs one film.
THE RUNNER—I have a soft spot for this film. I first saw it at the Fox Venice Theater in Los Angeles not long after it’s release. I believe the director (Amir Naderi) had come to L.A. and brought a print. It was the first Iranian film I’d seen and I liked it very much. Owing to the rather draconian censors in Khomeni’s Iran, the director’s last film as well as other of his works had been banned. I noticed that this one was released by The Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults. I then suppose, since his earlier films had been banned, that Naderi using children in his story was a necessity if he wanted his film to ever see the light of day—what we may call “a work-around.” Most film makers don’t need to work under such constraints. The political subtext of those in power abusing and harassing the lesser, marginal pockets of countrymen (portrayed by the child) isn’t terribly subtle, but seemed to please the censors. I found the shots exciting, the locales with constant flat horizons were an almost neutral background upon which to perform many of the films lonelier concerns—the child also being an orphan in need of everything and industrious enough to gain at least the basics of survival. It’s not flawless, and has some odd editorial decisions, but it often worked very well with a certain austere intention, or what seems to be intention. It was a film which felt necessary.
I admire both films, especially the first part of Lust for Gold and The Runner.
Go to Comment
2012 MUBI World Cup Voting, Match #1: Iran (The Runner) vs. Romania (Lust for Gold) over 1 year ago
As for the role of women in Lust for Gold, premiere partie: there’s definitely an associative lineage within the mother/doyen of the Deadwood bar (Eliza Petrachescu) culled from a trans-gendered reading of Perry White, editor-in-chief of the Daily Planet; while her daughter’s coquette persona quietly screams and screams and screams within a synthetic admixture of equal parts Julie Christie from McCabe and Mrs. Miller gene-spliced with the assimilative Karen Thimm, provocative screen-stealer to Fassbinder’s meta-filmic romans à clef Petra von Kant, she of hairdo wizardry, who, former to Duhul Aurului’s release, held sway for taking home the Silver Sloat in Koblenz’s “Fascism in Every Home” film festival of ’72. I knew her at Columbia.
Go to Comment
2012 MUBI World Cup Voting, Match #1: Iran (The Runner) vs. Romania (Lust for Gold) over 1 year ago
No offense intended, especially to Shih Tzu.
Go to Comment
2012 MUBI World Cup Voting, Match #2: Bangladesh (The Clay Bird) vs. Taiwan (Tropical Fish) over 1 year ago
Now as our cameras pan across the littered foyer past the banners and drunken fans we see our next competitors warming up. On one side we see those sons and daughters of the fertile Ganges delta, Bangladesh. They’re oiling their projector rollers, sharpening their sprockets and attending to any last minute details which their months of training, now behind them, has alerted them to consider. Facing Bangladesh will be the historic Taiwanese team, with many international banners already hanging in their rafters, the team is sending its print through it’s last cleaning stages and soon the reels will be mounted and the dampers will open sending the zenon light out into our judges’ screening room.
Down among the dignitaries from each country, the judges are beginning to seat themselves and get settled. I think I see Graham Greene in the audience, his cravat always tied so jauntily, and who’s that making a fuss near the front aisles, if the camera will only pan to the ruckus, Oh it’s Manny Farber in rumpled corduroy jacket seemingly upset at someone who’s face we can’t make out . . . I see now, it’s Dame Pauline just waiting to be seated with her entourage. Just a few rows behind the bickering rivals, we can see James Agee offering a half-pint bottle to Taihei Imamura, a distinguished colleague from Japan, one of the Juggernauts in these competitions. As our cameramen pan the aisles we see just a few of tonight’s revered judges, there’s Andre Bazin talking to Henri Langlois with his guest for the evening Simone Signoret, in vintage Christian Lacroix. We’ll step away from the screening room for a minute and turn to our camera outside the lovely Dagmar Theater, where a trio of guests is just leaving their limousine, if we can get a tighter shot . . . yes, it’s Kuxa Kanema with YS and the grand poobah of tonight’s showing, Risselada. As they walk the red carpet beneath the marquee and onto the line at the ticket counter, they join Alamgir Kabir and Edward Yang, an honory critic in tonight’s competition. Well, we can hear the music volume beginning to diminish in the theater and so we’ll return as the the last guests are scampering to their seats and the lights dim down. Tonight seems to have all the makings of a fine competition between Bangladesh’s nominee, The Clay Bird by the late director, Tareque Masud who will be paring off against Taiwan’s nominee, Tropical Fish, a 1995 film by director Chen Yu-hsun. Well, sit back, turn off your cell phones and get ready for the second match in the MUBI CUP . . . roll’ it.
Bangladesh (The Clay Bird) 1—Taiwan (Tropical Fish) 0
Though I consider them about equally problematic, for very different reason.
Go to Comment
2012 MUBI World Cup Voting, Match #2: Bangladesh (The Clay Bird) vs. Taiwan (Tropical Fish) over 1 year ago
Yes Risselada, I was just trying to be light in that awards screening mash-up. Sometimes I become rather frustrated at not being able to explain my thoughts as well as I’d like concerning the films I watch, so I let my mind go run around for a while. Hope it’s okay that I made that little romp public. There was no comparison implied between those forerunners of international criticism and this Cup other than both groups are personally enmeshed in viewing, digesting, molding interpretations and then making those opinions public. Both parties are lasso-swinging filmgeeks. I personally enjoy that Manny Farber was in attendance, but really each can name their own roster of critics who have engendered our current multi-media generation of critical writers and film hounds both in and outside the academic halls. They didn’t agree then, nor now. The Cup seems a great way to expose worthy films, film-makers and opinions on their work. I’m grateful. Just wish my choices would start eviscerating their foes.
Go to Comment
2012 MUBI World Cup Voting, Match #3: Indonesia (The Forbidden Door) vs. Turkey (Egg) over 1 year ago
Indonesia (The Forbidden Door) 0 —Turkey (Egg) 1
Hate to pile it on, but I agree with what seems to be the majority of voters so far, that the caliber of The Forbidden Door is rather low. When I looked and saw that the director, Joko Anwar has made films which were awarded, or lauded at film festivals or by critics, I was amazed. In The Forbidden Door, it seemed the director didn’t have a clue how to bring that story (such as it is) to the screen in any meaningful way. Sure the actors weren’t top notch, but the screenplay itself held the central problems. If there isn’t one character in a film who is believable, you are in trouble, not one of these came to life, and all the dolly moves, crane shots and gallons of blood used won’t fix that. Certainly, there is a whole genre of horror films which use unbelievable premises and characters, but they’re generally the bottom of the barrel variety and if they have a following, it’s generally from kitsch or because the director was savvy enough to play it tongue in cheek, or so over the top that we know we’re in for a gore-a-thon, and happen to enjoy such things. In any event, this film tried to be everything—horror film, message film, art film, shocker, without an iota of humor. Anyway, I won’t belabor it. Not my cup of tea.
Egg (Yumurta) on the other hand had much I liked. The rather leaden pace is introduced from the beginning during the bookshop sequence, where the woman arrives on her way to a party and speaks to our protagonist, Yusuf, (played by Negat Isler), even offering him a bottle of wine in exchange for a book. He’s offered a filmic mixture of possible romance, possible fun, yet immediately, the story turns down any prospect of buoyant themes and immediately points us to the interior emotions and grief of Yusuf. The dreamy terrain, dismal weather, and soft sound track through most of the film were just right. I was never quite sure where ruminations departed from present tense story, each running through each in a controlled style of quiet observations. The scene toward the end of the large dog in the night darkened field was cathartic and somehow believable in the poetic parameters which Semih Kaplanoglu, the director had used throughout. Much was left merely hinted at: the relationship between Yusuf and Alyla, (Saadet Aksoy) the quiet young woman attendant to Yusuf’s late mother, was always an unanswered question, even at the end, though it had been partially resolved. I enjoy atmospheric films which leave some story lines and eventualities unexplained. It seems to be a popular story technique in many more recent films, and of course, has precedents going back to early cinema, Perhaps haarkening back to Renoir’s Partie de Campagne as a moody progenitor, if not in story arc, then in the fugue of elements being shown and not shown, giving credit to the viewers to create meaning for themselves. Another, more modern associative stylist might be Theodoros Angelopoulos. A light touch, it might be called. The acting by the two principle characters was very engaging, and the use of scenic town and countryside and also ambient weather was additionally important to the successes I saw in Kaplanoglu’s method. It takes a rather sure and accomplished director to plot out such a movie, choosing to keep it away from the melodramatic dirge, yet not flipping entirely over to a totally objective style of storytelling either. I hope to look into more of Kapaoglu’s films as well as Negat Isler’s work.
Go to Comment
2012 MUBI World Cup Voting, Match #3: Indonesia (The Forbidden Door) vs. Turkey (Egg) over 1 year ago
Risselada,
’ . . . mediocre movies may actually be worse than bad movies, and thus Ron Howard is the worst director of all time." I beg to differ, believing that there’s many a mediocre director as middlin’ as Ronnie. Not that he isn’t firmly planted in the heap, but we’re talking about a long list of often times celebrity figures with many polished awards on their fireplace mantles (and many MUBI fans), though I grant you Hollywood from the last 30 years is fecund ground to pick and choose those plums.
Go to Comment
2012 MUBI World Cup Voting, Match #3: Indonesia (The Forbidden Door) vs. Turkey (Egg) over 1 year ago
M. Zom,
If you don’t agree with some of my reasons for taking a dislike to The Forbidden Door, please disregard them. On second thought, there probably was some definition of humor in the movie, it just wasn’t mine. I won’t argue with a fan of Francis Mankiewicz (one of two on MUBI), a Québécois director whose Les Bons Débarras is one of the most sadly unrecognized great films of which I know. That it is difficult to view, even today, especially in subtitled form, is the film world’s undeserving loss. If it hasn’t already been included in previous MUBI Cups, I hope that it will be in the future.
Go to Comment
The Most Divisive Characters in Cinematic History over 1 year ago
How about the male nurse, Benigno, in Almodovar’s TALK TO HER (played by Javier Cámara)? There’s certainly sympathy involved in my view of the character, but then again he did impregnate a comatose young patient in a hospital and deny it all.
Go to Comment
2012 MUBI World Cup Voting, Match #4: Czech Republic (Happy End) vs. Morocco (A Thousand Months) over 1 year ago
Czech Republic (Happy End)-1, Morocco (A Thousand Months)- 0 Now it’s tied
Liked both films, but I’ve never seen one uniquely designed in this style, and so well accomplished within its set framework as HAPPY END, and that’s saying something.
Go to Comment
2012 MUBI World Cup Voting, Match #4: Czech Republic (Happy End) vs. Morocco (A Thousand Months) over 1 year ago
Odd, but I find myself ruminating on A Thousand Months more now due to some of these thread comments. Bensaïdi’s quote on the changing emphasis he liked to employ during his work, from the core to the peripherals, also helped me watch his style change throughout, but not really the themes—i.e., hypocrisy in those who outwardly follow the stringent village ethics, be they religious, tribal, familial, marital, gender-based, romantic, in opposition to modernity’s offerings. We’re guided through many characters, each possessed by a need to break with bondage of tradition on the verge of modernization (the beauty of the lights going on at sunset all at the same instant). It could be from need: the grandfather selling the chair; or it could be from desire: the teenaged girl using lipstick, smoking cigarettes and going to progressive political rally’s as much for the adrenaline rush of defying authority as for a larger political necessity.
I have a problem with the ending of the film, feeling the director’s choice of a conflagration, although cinematic, was an all too-easy method of solving a difficult problem. He chose the wedding sequence in the tent as his setting for resolution, however we really only address the grandfather’s guilty secret being publicized (returning to the chair, and its weight of symbolic resonance). A drunken brawl, pandemonium, and a wagon filled with new beginnings escaping into the night seemed to fulfill the director’s aims. However, I felt cheated to some degree. In essence the story called on a big, beautiful tent fire—call it an Atlas Mountain Village “Death Star” explosion—as a vague consummation of all the interesting questions posed by the film, many just left dangling as the wagon clangs its wheels along the packed dirt road through the darkness toward exile in Marrakesh or Casablanca or Fez. As we know, in the history of Morocco, this approaching liberalism would be met with a rise in fundamentalism, contrary to the hope of the film, perhaps giving its tone a bittersweet feel, even in light of some of its humor and near-absurdist havoc.
None of this means I disliked the film, on the contrary I liked it very much and am grateful I was able to see it. But I did wonder if his story became expansive with too many characters. Granted they showed different examples of village life, and also personified different tics of moral quandaries. It’s just difficult in a 2 hour film to sum up all those persons, particulars, problems, let alone solutions for each (story solutions, not necessarily intellectual or psychological answers). Perhaps I feel the film may have benefited from a smaller cast of integral characters. Such a limitation may have tightened the focus of the story on the major participants, allowing more depth in presentation, characterization, and more clarity in story resolution.
Go to Comment
2012 MUBI World Cup Voting, Match #5: Kyrgyzstan (White Mountains) vs. United States of America (Public Housing) over 1 year ago
I like both (again). I even like everyone’s reasons for their individual votes (not again). However . . .
Kyrgzstan (White Mountains) —0 United States of America (Public Housing) —1
I’m a sucker for Melis Ubukeyev’s White Mountains, since it plays to many of my knee jerk positive reactions: fascinating B & W cinematography; wilderness settings with pretty single women remaining after the young men have been killed in one massacre or other, tilling the ground for ROMANCE; a story so lean it could be a silent movie; a male protagonist about as smart as a stump; Soviet propaganda toward education and modernization—the same modernization which will bring the culture we find so exotic and interesting to be lost forever except in museums. This movie didn’t have one but two lovely, expressive women actors, certainly the young girl in braids (did they have hair extensions in Kyrgyzstan’s back woods in 1918?), as well as her blind mother, glowingly ensconced in mourning togs like a deposed queen awaiting fate. Countryside shots, either the steepes-like meadows, or the craggy mountain heights, were captured powerfully. And the assorted authority figures with whips, rifles and fur hats lended just enough suspense throughout to carry our anxiety. The ending was very good indeed. Whether the silhouette shots were designed, or were merely the product of a bad dupe’s high contrast, it worked. And it was blessedly short in length.
As for Wiseman’s Public Housing, it contains none of my knee jerk favorite attractions. Instead it is long; verbally laborious; filled with talking heads, or talking two shots; redundant in thematic overkill; impersonal, and wearing its liberal-progessive heart on its sleeve. However, if it’s purpose was to rouse the ire of viewers toward the denunciation of a nation’s systematic racism, generationally ingrained until dreams of happiness are denuded of all options excluding only illegalities, governmental resource rosters, bottom-level occupations, crack addiction, alcoholism, not withstanding the rare denizen who “gets the hell out outta there,” but feels the projects’ personal repercussions even in success. If this was the the film’s goal, even if I didn’t like watching it, then the documentary as film was very successful.
Go to Comment
What do star ratings mean to you? over 1 year ago
5 stars _ Holding hands with Nora Gregor when her husband is away entertaining guests
4 stars _ Kissing Elizabeth Shue by the pool wet with Tequila
3 stars _ Kissing Louise Brooks as her millionaire boyfriends looks on jealously
2 stars _ Kissing Susan Tyrell just back from closing the local Stockton bar
1 star _ Kissing Magdalena Flores in a hut with morning breath
Go to Comment
2012 MUBI World Cup Voting, Match #5: Kyrgyzstan (White Mountains) vs. United States of America (Public Housing) over 1 year ago
13 to 13 any numerologists in the crowd who can divine the numbers and see who will win the next level, or do we need Satan’s password?
Go to Comment
2012 MUBI World Cup Voting, Match #6: Bolivia (La nación clandestina) vs. Switzerland ((Absolutions) Pipilotti’s Mistakes) over 1 year ago
Bolivia (La Nación Clandestina)
- 0, Switzerland (Absolutions) Pipilotti’s Mistakes -1Go to Comment
2012 MUBI World Cup Voting, Match #6: Bolivia (La nación clandestina) vs. Switzerland ((Absolutions) Pipilotti’s Mistakes) over 1 year ago
Bolivia (La Nación Clandestina) – 0 / Switzerland (Absolutions) Pipilotti’s Mistakes – 1
Go to Comment
2012 MUBI World Cup - match announcements over 1 year ago
Don’t know if this is the proper place for my question, but I’m having a difficult time viewing VIMEO, the buffering and streaming seemed to stop after an hour of The film from Malaysia, and I don’t get the YouTube option in my country. When I tried to play with the Vimeo link, I had to start over. Don’t believe there’s an option of scrubbing forward. I have Adobe Flash 11 something (most current), is it totally my problem to solve or are there tricks which I can apply? I’m certainly not a wirehead, or a torrent guru that’s for sure. Any help is appreciated. If this is the wrong place to ask, can someone inform me of a better one? Thanks.
Go to Comment
2012 MUBI World Cup Voting, Match #5: Kyrgyzstan (White Mountains) vs. United States of America (Public Housing) over 1 year ago
I’m going to guess JJ is correct about Mubians, which opens a wide door about just how important any of these films are anyway, or any films, art, dance, music, at least the way we watch/assay them. If it’s merely entertainment, or a forum to advertise our opinions on other people’s work. Why all the fucking interest with MFA & PhD programs in film studies? Why the modern cultural references to film in every situation, globally? It’s a short leap from L’Atalante to video games if it’s all “for my own selfish reasons that make me very happy.” Is the idea merely to watch as many movies as we can, to amass the longest list—bragging rights? Are these threads merely metaphorical penis extensions for the likes of the guys, since most of the women in the Cup aren’t quite so demanding of wearing a verbal plume for all to admire. Hell, we’re still on this thread and the bout was closed yesterday. Why not just watch a big loop of Titanic until we become one with the couch. And the worst of it is—KK may be right.
Go to Comment
2012 MUBI World Cup Voting, Match #6: Bolivia (La nación clandestina) vs. Switzerland ((Absolutions) Pipilotti’s Mistakes) over 1 year ago
Nice image Ruby, before his ear was broken. My guess is that dancing yourself to death at that altitude with or without coca leaves is a pretty interesting way to transition into whatever may or may not be beyond, your brain probably continues to get lighter and lighter with lack of oxygen bringing on hallucinations and eventual ? ? ? For some reason I think of Aldous Huxley taking LSD intravenously at his end. Liked La Nación Clandestina a lot.
Go to Comment
What do you consider the best Modern Noir of the past thirty years? over 1 year ago
The Killer Inside Me (Michael Winterbottom, 2010). Edgy, violent, sexy, schizoid, disturbing, everybody’s dirty. Jim Thompson original material. What’s not to like . . . oh, that. Remake of a good Burt Kennedy film.
Deep Crimson (Arturo Ripstein, 1996, Mexico). Edgy, violent, sexy, schizoid, disturbing, everybody’s dirty. Ideas borrowed liberally from The Honeymoon Killers (1969) which borrowed liberally from a true story crime spree. What’s not to like . . . oh that.
The Croupier (Mike Hodges, 1998, UK). Edgy, sexy, schizoid, stylish, everybody’s dirty. From the director who gave us Get Carter, an older heralded neo-noir.
Devil in a Blue Dress (Carl Franklin, 1995) Edgy, sexy, schizoid (Mouse), period piece, everybody’s dirty. From Walter Mosely published source material.
The Secret in Their Eyes (Juan José Campanella, 2009, Argentina) Edgy, sexy, first person, flashbacks, lots of dirty tricks, everybody’s dirty. From Eduardo Sacheri novel.
Stormy Monday (Mike Figgis, 1988, UK) Edgy, sexy, corruption, violence, noir-ish kinda thing. With Polish music.
Go to Comment
2012 MUBI World Cup Voting, Match #7: Finland (The Way You Wanted Me) vs. Malaysia (Village People Radio Show) over 1 year ago
Finland (The Way You Wanted Me) 1 — Malaysia (Village People Radio Show) 0
Go to Comment
2012 MUBI World Cup Voting, Match #7: Finland (The Way You Wanted Me) vs. Malaysia (Village People Radio Show) over 1 year ago
I don’t care much who wins because selfishly I’ve been able to watch both of these amazing gems. Hate to be overly positive tonight, but this Cup is a great program and those persons who found the films and made copies available to stream in flash (or download) deserve many props. I’ve looked for some of these titles for years, and others I’ve never even heard mentioned, intensifying surprises I’ll not soon forget.
Now I can go back to disagreeing with everyone’s opinions.Go to Comment