Walkabout and The Man Who Fell To Earth are awesome movies. Performance was really entertaining even though I think it’s one of this dumbest movies ever; it had Jagger though and that great scene where the naked actress is dragged around the floor naked. Roeg makes the absurd and stupid wildly sexy, there’s no denying that’s what makes me coming back for more.
His best movie? Man, it’s hard to choose the best one since the guy is like a complete auteur. In honesty, I’ll say his entire film canon is his best movie (it’s one big film).
The ones I like the most I guess, cuz they’re the ones I own, are probably:
I should be a more avid reader but Bret Easton Ellis, Kurt Vonnegut, and Vladimir Nabokov have such an awesome collection of words typed out that I can hardly think of reading anything more.
Niolas Cage is an awesome guy and an awesome actor, but he isn’t what we’d call an intellectual man or a arty man. He’s a man’s man in the old fashioned way of saying it. He likes action and he likes comics. So if you were the biggest action/comic nut around and you get the power to be in as many cheesy action/comicbook movies as you can be you’re telling me you wouldn’t? Fuck no, you’d be in paradise baby.
Don’t fault him for being a true blue American human being.
I have a few things to add to this that I’m just going to rattle out. They may not be the most informed, maybe a little instinctual, but maybe I can clarify later.
I don’t think changing the timline of a movie’s narrative is going to bring any sort of change. That’s a stylistic thing, not a technical thing. If every author wrote as strangely post modern as Joyce or “The House of Leaves Guy” (I forget his name) or if movies were all jumbled up like Inarritu in his 21 Grams mood or Nolan in his permanent mood, then we’d all be in for the same homogenized doo doo.
Lets get down to brass tacks, fuckin with the timeline isn’t going to do much but make people go, “oh what a neat trick.”
In fact I’d throw narrative or character development or symbolic tricks out of the window. Anything to do with content. The surrealists and music video directors have made it quite clear that all that shit does is make giggle.
I read somewhere up there that the Dogme movement ‘hopefully’ isn’t the movement we are all waiting for. Maybe not, but it definitely was Von Triers’. What the Dogme movement DID do is clarify WHERE we need change in modern mainstream cinema. I’m saying mainstream because I haven’t seen the thousands of fucking movies there are released every year. There could be a mini-movement in an industralized city in eastern africa right now. We don’t know or at least I don’t.
OK. What Von Trier and his Dane Pack cleared up would make Dryer proud: That it’s the artifice of cinema that should be exposed. We’ve lived far too many damn years under this idiotic spell that movies are illusion and that we should be carried away by formulaic stories. Break down sets, break down exposures, break down all the visual eye candy bullshit that directors hide behind.
Like, he’s saying that artists should cut the shit and challenge THEMSELVES. It has to do with content amigos. It has to do with the fact that movements bring nothing NEW to the table, they merely shine a light back on what mattered. That’s not to say we should all make “Weekend” or “3 or 4 things I know about her”. That’s the error right there, why the Dogme movement failed, because assholes just copy the godddam style. Soderbergh for a while did copy more than the Dogme style and did make some heady movies, but they are still bullshit movies. All of them. They’re entertaining and somewhat smart but bullshit. Come on. Traffic? Solaris? He’s got the right intentions in places but he has zero pelotas.
I mean making movies with BALLS. Like Von Trier, like Todd Solondz, like Morris, like Moore, like uh there isn’t many that come to mind. There’s more I’m sure. HARMONY KORINE! Before Mr. Lonely I guess.
Entertaining, innovative directors there are. Sofia Coppola, Jonze, Gondry, etc.
Very few with balls.
Kaufman! He has balls. A little too subtle with his balls. But it works. Being John Malkovich and Adaptation are some of the more ballsy commentaries of filmmaking I’ve seen but he’s too hollywood somehow.
I’ve lost my train of thought, maybe I’ve said balls too many times. I need a cold shower.
Marie Antoinette is a flick that would’ve probably been seen years from now as the movie that captured our generation. Like a Chinatown caliber allegory of our blase youth. At least my generation, I’m twenty-one. And I mentioned Chinatown cuz it used the 30s to get the 70s just like… you get the picture. I think I just needed to clarify that for myself I think.
There’s the potential Marie Antoinette will be a lot more highly regarded once Sofia builds up a bigger list of movies. I think people will also see how great of a time capsule it is. After all just around the bend of the new millenium all kids cared about were Ipods, Playstations, Paris Hilton (hint hint), pretty people and all that nonsense. If that kind of portrait is accidental or not, who cares, I saw it in there and so did a few others. That interpretation will catch on.
What is there is the tone poem. The personal reflection of a girl born into wealth and fame. Sofia was exposed to the nature of filmmaking in its every angle from birth. She would get to hang out at Chanel on summer vacations from High School. She’s probably had presidential candidates and film moguls at her birthday parties. She’s gotten drunk with the princes of the industry. At some point that all probably felt really hollow. Maybe she felt that being born into that life doesn’t really fit with the person she would’ve liked to be. That’s not an alien idea.
She reflects on these themes of entrapment, isolation, boredom, and tragic love in her first to movies. She repeats them again in Marie Antoinette, but with such an insight into what its like. This wasn’t a boring chamber drama with monologues and Other Boylen Girl-esque bitch fights. It was kind of silent and apathetic and bored. Isn’t that what it would really be like? Isn’t Marie just the Paris HIlton of the old days? Wouldn’t it stink to be pushed into the limelight with so many eyes on you?
The opening of the movie has a fantastic circular connection to the ending: She wakes up early in the morning to get dressed by all these people only to end up persecuted for being the decadent princess she was compelled to be.
I have so much to say about this movie, I loved it quite a bit. If female filmmakers circle around their themes over and over and never quite exploit the logic that explains WHY? Then I’m some sort of female filmmaker. Transgendered art. Creepy or sexay?
I agree with you Jenny, wow, that’s it right on. I was never talking about vs. type stuff I was all about the style of communication. Except you coined the way of saying it, thank you. Yeah, there’s definitely going to be feminine inflections in the way the images are told and the way the story is portrayed if it’s a personal work.
As to how has it evolved? Man, I’m not sure how to answer that, even in relation to Marie… Toby, you mentioned the autobiographical film in contrast to the liner plotted film… hmm. The transition from Virgin Suicides to Marie Antoinette was a personal evolution.
“Rather she understood what she was trying to say in each scene, but let the effect come through the experience, that is to say, the mood of the actors, the preferred camera shot on any given day, the way she allowed her directing style to be guided by an internal voice that told her clearly what “felt” right for each scene.”
Yes, that’s what it’s all about. I run that through my head a lot before I ever shoot. If that will ever come through in the final product and it’s crazy but it does. It does come through depending on my mood, my choices, and all very subconsciously. I notice that I often dress the set or the characters with articles of my clothing, or with funny furniture I like, or something like that. I do it impulsively but then I notice whoa it’s all me, in every way or form. Hell, that makes me think about the whole, a director is sometimes just drawn to the project.
I’m off topic here. Only because you bastards really make me think. Kudos to all of you mugs. Keep talking!
I’m starting film school this Fall, so I don’t make anything ‘professional’ if that word even applies to cinema at all. The type of films I make are like video poems, which is to say, short montages that say what’s up with my life or my mood— like a diary? I make them every six months or every year. My goal with these videos is to chronicle my life and my thoughts and to keep it going well into old age.
It’s a modern way to keep a diary or a yearbook I think; also a very artistic one.
They’re really fun to do, I’ve learned a bit about production and editing and such but I can’t quite communicate myself with cinema as I can with like a short story or singing a song. Filmmaking is really hard work! Which is awesome! Man, my hat goes off to guys who can work the production stuff, the actors, and at the same time tell a heartful and compelling story.
So yeah, I’m learning by doing right now. They’re pretty little messes but I think I come through every frame somehow and that inspires me to keep going I think. It’s a sign I’m at least doing something right. I’m hoping that once I’m in film school with experienced people it’ll make the technical stuff easier and allow me to worry about the creative angle a bit more.
Once I know I’ve got a handle on things, then I’ll start thinking a bit more about how I can try and change a few things in the medium itself. I’m a patient person. Zen cinema baby.
http://www.youtube.com/ma1achi
I’m so anti putting videos on youtube cause of the shit quality, but I’ll live.
“Vincent” is the first short I ever did. I went out, bought 16mm film and went nuts. This is a bit about when I first moved out on my own.
“Yardstick Gentlemen” is a camera test turned music video. It was the first time I’d ever held a Canon XL2, which at the time was awesome.
“Humdrum Adoration” is a short I made in 24 hours for the Insomnia Film Festival. It includes an original score by my friend Roach and narration by myself.
…I’m currently editing my latest. It’s called “HYPNOTCHKA”.
They’re all relatively short (7 min. or less). Enjoy.
King Lear and Weekend by Jean-Luc Godard opened my eyes to not only how you can use cinema but art in general as well. Godard has the cinematic effect of Dylan on me; suddenly puzzles fall into place as ideas but never turn clear; they’re constant and ever changing.
Wow, what changed my life? I think Truffaut’s Bed and Board and Gondry’s The Science of Sleep helped me see my inner Doinel/Stephane. I have no doubt in my mind that if I hadn’t seen these movies I wouldn’t be the dude sitting before this screen. I never saw these movies as a coda to live by (like the cool ass dudes in Melville movies), it was more like they helped define bits of my personality. The gizmos, the attire, the curiosity, our instiable love for women: Doinel/Stephane/Ordonez.
There are also movies that set the scene for me: Sofia’s Lost in Translation, Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, Wes Anderson’s Rushmore. Anytime I watch one of these flicks I have a delicious dialectic between the way I see my world and how they see theirs. Moods.
Love is divided into three parts (without any sort of religious resemblance): Brooks’ As Good As It Gets, Wong Kar-Wai’s Fallen Angels, Woody Allen’s Manhattan.
Heartache: Curaon’s Y Tu Mama Tambien, Sofia’s The Virgin Suicides, Chabrol’s Les Bonnes Femmes.
The reason filmmaking is want I want to do for the rest of my life and why women are so deeply rooted in life and cinema for me in a very reflexive loving and and caring way that only the woman i love can ever truly and completely understand oh and by the way this movie is almost proof that cinema has a living breathing sarcastic poetic and brutal soul:
i don’t know enough about formats and technology to even try and predict the future of filmmaking. i’ve always had this idea of a folk cinema that is deeply tied to the roots of the artist and his community. the city is the tree and the stories it carries are in its leaves, all the artist does is pick up the leaves and be impacted; only to have it impact the artist’s work.
with the net, there can be citywide, statewide, nationwide, worldwide communities that quilt the stories of their homes. the group i’m in, REMAP LA is a UCLA group of amigos that are trying to spearhead something along those lines. we’re trying to give roots to this post-modern beast that is our home.
anything we do now we always could do but it was either to expensive or too time consuming. with digital filmmaking, making movies can become an artistic expression like any other. which is a nice thought. the net will do for film what photography did for painting. web 2.0 is all about intercommunications, right? where it will go from there (have political power like godard says film will never have again or the ability to sway society) i don’t know. we just have to do it i guess.
it certainly will not kill off big cinema. i always get a kick out of people who think that. i mean, julian schnabel still sells million dollar paintings and my little sister paints. she gets brownie points from mom. are you guys ok with that? making movies for brownie points and working your day job?
p.s. apparently wong kar wai and wim wenders can’t ride with the “big guys” either since their last few flicks don’t carry an inch of entertainment or artistic value. and cassavettes, well, he’s dead. so lets see him make something now.
I am a big fan of Born Into Brothels, it’s probably one of the major reasons why I joined REMAP LA. We don’t quite have the funding to teach kids filmmaking (or nearly the experience (in my case)) but we’ve been doing good things with photography.
By the way I like Kar Wai, Wenders, or Cassavettes.
I’m not sure where you got yer sources but all of Sofia’s movies have thought out written screenplays. Marie Antoinette? Hardly any of it was improvized considering they had limited time to use Versailles and the mass amount of extras, that wouldn’t make any sense. I guess they can come up with a new scene to shoot quickly but aside from that what feels improvized (structurally) about her movies?
This is besides the point, people, talk more about folk cinema!
My best bet for the win is ‘Synechdote, NY’. I made the dumb mistake of reading the screenplay before the movie and man with a screenplay like this one Kaufman would have to be an madman idiot to screw this one up. It’s going to be a masterpiece.
However, iIf he does eff up:
I’m all for Desplechin’s flick winning cuz ‘Rois et Reines’ is a total fave of mine and has the best Mathieu Almaric performance ever. He break dances for the love of dog.
I definitely agree with Akira Kar-Wai lets get more film from Peru, Chile, Colombia, Argentina or all the other country in Latin America besides Brazil and Mexico, joder, there’s so much. It would be wrong to label them by country though wouldn’t it? Since there’s so many movements within each nation within each culture within each frame of mind and all that.
I’ll look ‘em up and get back on that. A category I’d suggest though is Music Video (lets face it some of these guys are the pioneering filmmakers with their little short masterpieces; get some Floria Sigismondi or Patrick Daughters or Jonathan Glazer or Cunningham).
Another good one is Cinema of the Future or Controversial Cinema or The Truth 24 fps.
oh man, the kite runner. somehow marc foster has the talent of rendering anything beautiful he touches to precious crap. i don’t think i’ve ever seen a movie of his that i’ve remembered more than a second after i saw it. total abc channel movie.
i saw 4 MONTHS but man i wasn’t entirely impressed, i think it’s the low budget aesthetic these movies purposefully implement that is starting to bug me. it didn’t have to look that way and the documentary-style just made it look less realistic.
realistic movies.
that’s getting to me.
‘sweeney todd’ was pretty bloody and fun and grim as far as musicals went though, man, there was so much blood. tim burton is a sick, sick man no? but it was filled with many great moments. oh and wow, believe it or not "iron man’’ was so the shiz. robert downey jr. is finally getting all the big star status exposure he deserves and that’s way cool in my opinion. speaking of him his performance was awesome in ZODIAC!!! check this movie out. nobody has seen this freaking flick and it’s by far david fincher’s most masterful and poetic odes to murder and how it fascinates us and how we can be consumed by the pursuit of truth. beautiful fucking picture.
I’m also starting film school in the fall. A bit on the outskirts of hollywood (the valley) but heck it’s all the same right?
I’m a bit young at this, so I can’t really tell ya what kind of movies I make, since I never really find out until I make one.
I write and I direct. I suppose I can act too but I’d rather see you up on the screen. That’s right, you. If any of you guys are out here in the west coast or LA, in the vicinity I guess, we should get together and get working on something. I know a couple spots out here where the wine’s good and there’s lots of interesting folks to talk to. A little drink and a little adventure really helps me get the noggin whirling. Don’t know about you.
Just post on my wall if you’re interested. I have a link to my YouTube site too. I have a couple of short films up there and my new one is hustling its way into the right compression. If there’s on enemy we’ve got in the net is the quality of the image. I suppose we should worry about the content first right?
You’ve all made this philistine very very happy. Tears Up
I recommend a movie by Todd Rohal called “The Guatemalan Handshake”, which is a total effing southern fried comedy masterpiece. It’s like Napoleon Dynamite as directed by Terrence Malick.
I highly recommend the short films of Kenneth Anger. I couldn’t imagine a lot of music videos being made without an influence from him. Very cool aethete.
The Good The Bad and The Ugly. The Ninth Gate. La Dolce Vita. Punch Drunk Love. Pierrot Le Fou. The 400 Blows. Babel. Knife in the Water. Dead Man. Catch Me If You Can. 25th Hour. The Fountain. Crouching Tiger.
To any of you who like short films or japanese women or feel a little bit isolated in modern metropolitan culture or like great music or miss movies made in black and white or love cinema; those who have it scrawled all over the walls of their minds.
Well. I present to you all a movie I made with such an appreciation. In order to remember that making films is loving cinema completely. I’m very excited about it and I’m very happy to be telling everyone on TA about it. This is nice.
My short film HYPNOTCHKA:
http://www.vimeo.com/1149406
I dedicate this film to G A R A G E. The brand-spanking-new cinema collective coming soon to TA. We’re like toast, we jam up, we jam down, and we’re very tasty.
Dark Water is more of an example of how you can make a movie completely unscary or unentertaining in every concievable way. Salles just didn’t function very well doing genre horror. He made an awkward attempt at making it a tender mother/daughter story too. Weird.
Good Horror? Cannibal Holocaust, Suspiria, The Vanishing (not really horror but still suspenseful), Funny Games and The Orphanage. Guillermo Del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone was pretty spooky and was also a good period drama. I haven’t seen Cronos but that might be a sure bet too.
When I say "A Perfect Film", What One Film Pops Into Your Head First? about 4 years ago
La Dolce Vita. I’m in love with it, with that kind of adoration I can only see how perfect it is.
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Nicolas Roeg about 4 years ago
Walkabout and The Man Who Fell To Earth are awesome movies. Performance was really entertaining even though I think it’s one of this dumbest movies ever; it had Jagger though and that great scene where the naked actress is dragged around the floor naked. Roeg makes the absurd and stupid wildly sexy, there’s no denying that’s what makes me coming back for more.
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Your favorite Woody Allen's film? about 4 years ago
His best movie? Man, it’s hard to choose the best one since the guy is like a complete auteur. In honesty, I’ll say his entire film canon is his best movie (it’s one big film).
The ones I like the most I guess, cuz they’re the ones I own, are probably:
Manhattan, Annie Hall and Love and Death.
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Who do you read? about 4 years ago
I should be a more avid reader but Bret Easton Ellis, Kurt Vonnegut, and Vladimir Nabokov have such an awesome collection of words typed out that I can hardly think of reading anything more.
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Who else dislikes Nicolas Cage? about 4 years ago
Niolas Cage is an awesome guy and an awesome actor, but he isn’t what we’d call an intellectual man or a arty man. He’s a man’s man in the old fashioned way of saying it. He likes action and he likes comics. So if you were the biggest action/comic nut around and you get the power to be in as many cheesy action/comicbook movies as you can be you’re telling me you wouldn’t? Fuck no, you’d be in paradise baby.
Don’t fault him for being a true blue American human being.
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Which movies would you like to see on The Auteurs? about 4 years ago
Wow, uh, you guys have posted most of the movies I was thinking of (among other I’ve never seen (cool)).
Here I go: Marie Antoinette, Raging Bull, The Holy Mountain, Alice (Svankmajer), The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Babel, and Adaptation.
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2000-2010 about 4 years ago
I have a few things to add to this that I’m just going to rattle out. They may not be the most informed, maybe a little instinctual, but maybe I can clarify later.
I don’t think changing the timline of a movie’s narrative is going to bring any sort of change. That’s a stylistic thing, not a technical thing. If every author wrote as strangely post modern as Joyce or “The House of Leaves Guy” (I forget his name) or if movies were all jumbled up like Inarritu in his 21 Grams mood or Nolan in his permanent mood, then we’d all be in for the same homogenized doo doo.
Lets get down to brass tacks, fuckin with the timeline isn’t going to do much but make people go, “oh what a neat trick.”
In fact I’d throw narrative or character development or symbolic tricks out of the window. Anything to do with content. The surrealists and music video directors have made it quite clear that all that shit does is make giggle.
I read somewhere up there that the Dogme movement ‘hopefully’ isn’t the movement we are all waiting for. Maybe not, but it definitely was Von Triers’. What the Dogme movement DID do is clarify WHERE we need change in modern mainstream cinema. I’m saying mainstream because I haven’t seen the thousands of fucking movies there are released every year. There could be a mini-movement in an industralized city in eastern africa right now. We don’t know or at least I don’t.
OK. What Von Trier and his Dane Pack cleared up would make Dryer proud: That it’s the artifice of cinema that should be exposed. We’ve lived far too many damn years under this idiotic spell that movies are illusion and that we should be carried away by formulaic stories. Break down sets, break down exposures, break down all the visual eye candy bullshit that directors hide behind.
Like, he’s saying that artists should cut the shit and challenge THEMSELVES. It has to do with content amigos. It has to do with the fact that movements bring nothing NEW to the table, they merely shine a light back on what mattered. That’s not to say we should all make “Weekend” or “3 or 4 things I know about her”. That’s the error right there, why the Dogme movement failed, because assholes just copy the godddam style. Soderbergh for a while did copy more than the Dogme style and did make some heady movies, but they are still bullshit movies. All of them. They’re entertaining and somewhat smart but bullshit. Come on. Traffic? Solaris? He’s got the right intentions in places but he has zero pelotas.
I mean making movies with BALLS. Like Von Trier, like Todd Solondz, like Morris, like Moore, like uh there isn’t many that come to mind. There’s more I’m sure. HARMONY KORINE! Before Mr. Lonely I guess.
Entertaining, innovative directors there are. Sofia Coppola, Jonze, Gondry, etc.
Very few with balls.
Kaufman! He has balls. A little too subtle with his balls. But it works. Being John Malkovich and Adaptation are some of the more ballsy commentaries of filmmaking I’ve seen but he’s too hollywood somehow.
I’ve lost my train of thought, maybe I’ve said balls too many times. I need a cold shower.
Talk to me.
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2000-2010 about 4 years ago
Marie Antoinette is a flick that would’ve probably been seen years from now as the movie that captured our generation. Like a Chinatown caliber allegory of our blase youth. At least my generation, I’m twenty-one. And I mentioned Chinatown cuz it used the 30s to get the 70s just like… you get the picture. I think I just needed to clarify that for myself I think.
There’s the potential Marie Antoinette will be a lot more highly regarded once Sofia builds up a bigger list of movies. I think people will also see how great of a time capsule it is. After all just around the bend of the new millenium all kids cared about were Ipods, Playstations, Paris Hilton (hint hint), pretty people and all that nonsense. If that kind of portrait is accidental or not, who cares, I saw it in there and so did a few others. That interpretation will catch on.
What is there is the tone poem. The personal reflection of a girl born into wealth and fame. Sofia was exposed to the nature of filmmaking in its every angle from birth. She would get to hang out at Chanel on summer vacations from High School. She’s probably had presidential candidates and film moguls at her birthday parties. She’s gotten drunk with the princes of the industry. At some point that all probably felt really hollow. Maybe she felt that being born into that life doesn’t really fit with the person she would’ve liked to be. That’s not an alien idea.
She reflects on these themes of entrapment, isolation, boredom, and tragic love in her first to movies. She repeats them again in Marie Antoinette, but with such an insight into what its like. This wasn’t a boring chamber drama with monologues and Other Boylen Girl-esque bitch fights. It was kind of silent and apathetic and bored. Isn’t that what it would really be like? Isn’t Marie just the Paris HIlton of the old days? Wouldn’t it stink to be pushed into the limelight with so many eyes on you?
The opening of the movie has a fantastic circular connection to the ending: She wakes up early in the morning to get dressed by all these people only to end up persecuted for being the decadent princess she was compelled to be.
I have so much to say about this movie, I loved it quite a bit. If female filmmakers circle around their themes over and over and never quite exploit the logic that explains WHY? Then I’m some sort of female filmmaker. Transgendered art. Creepy or sexay?
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2000-2010 about 4 years ago
I agree with you Jenny, wow, that’s it right on. I was never talking about vs. type stuff I was all about the style of communication. Except you coined the way of saying it, thank you. Yeah, there’s definitely going to be feminine inflections in the way the images are told and the way the story is portrayed if it’s a personal work.
As to how has it evolved? Man, I’m not sure how to answer that, even in relation to Marie… Toby, you mentioned the autobiographical film in contrast to the liner plotted film… hmm. The transition from Virgin Suicides to Marie Antoinette was a personal evolution.
“Rather she understood what she was trying to say in each scene, but let the effect come through the experience, that is to say, the mood of the actors, the preferred camera shot on any given day, the way she allowed her directing style to be guided by an internal voice that told her clearly what “felt” right for each scene.”
Yes, that’s what it’s all about. I run that through my head a lot before I ever shoot. If that will ever come through in the final product and it’s crazy but it does. It does come through depending on my mood, my choices, and all very subconsciously. I notice that I often dress the set or the characters with articles of my clothing, or with funny furniture I like, or something like that. I do it impulsively but then I notice whoa it’s all me, in every way or form. Hell, that makes me think about the whole, a director is sometimes just drawn to the project.
I’m off topic here. Only because you bastards really make me think. Kudos to all of you mugs. Keep talking!
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2000-2010 about 4 years ago
I’m starting film school this Fall, so I don’t make anything ‘professional’ if that word even applies to cinema at all. The type of films I make are like video poems, which is to say, short montages that say what’s up with my life or my mood— like a diary? I make them every six months or every year. My goal with these videos is to chronicle my life and my thoughts and to keep it going well into old age.
It’s a modern way to keep a diary or a yearbook I think; also a very artistic one.
They’re really fun to do, I’ve learned a bit about production and editing and such but I can’t quite communicate myself with cinema as I can with like a short story or singing a song. Filmmaking is really hard work! Which is awesome! Man, my hat goes off to guys who can work the production stuff, the actors, and at the same time tell a heartful and compelling story.
So yeah, I’m learning by doing right now. They’re pretty little messes but I think I come through every frame somehow and that inspires me to keep going I think. It’s a sign I’m at least doing something right. I’m hoping that once I’m in film school with experienced people it’ll make the technical stuff easier and allow me to worry about the creative angle a bit more.
Once I know I’ve got a handle on things, then I’ll start thinking a bit more about how I can try and change a few things in the medium itself. I’m a patient person. Zen cinema baby.
http://www.youtube.com/ma1achi
I’m so anti putting videos on youtube cause of the shit quality, but I’ll live.
“Vincent” is the first short I ever did. I went out, bought 16mm film and went nuts. This is a bit about when I first moved out on my own.
“Yardstick Gentlemen” is a camera test turned music video. It was the first time I’d ever held a Canon XL2, which at the time was awesome.
http://edcommunity.apple.com/insomnia_fall07/item.php?itemID=896
“Humdrum Adoration” is a short I made in 24 hours for the Insomnia Film Festival. It includes an original score by my friend Roach and narration by myself.
…I’m currently editing my latest. It’s called “HYPNOTCHKA”.
They’re all relatively short (7 min. or less). Enjoy.
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Which film has changed your life forever? about 4 years ago
King Lear and Weekend by Jean-Luc Godard opened my eyes to not only how you can use cinema but art in general as well. Godard has the cinematic effect of Dylan on me; suddenly puzzles fall into place as ideas but never turn clear; they’re constant and ever changing.
Wow, what changed my life? I think Truffaut’s Bed and Board and Gondry’s The Science of Sleep helped me see my inner Doinel/Stephane. I have no doubt in my mind that if I hadn’t seen these movies I wouldn’t be the dude sitting before this screen. I never saw these movies as a coda to live by (like the cool ass dudes in Melville movies), it was more like they helped define bits of my personality. The gizmos, the attire, the curiosity, our instiable love for women: Doinel/Stephane/Ordonez.
There are also movies that set the scene for me: Sofia’s Lost in Translation, Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, Wes Anderson’s Rushmore. Anytime I watch one of these flicks I have a delicious dialectic between the way I see my world and how they see theirs. Moods.
Love is divided into three parts (without any sort of religious resemblance): Brooks’ As Good As It Gets, Wong Kar-Wai’s Fallen Angels, Woody Allen’s Manhattan.
Heartache: Curaon’s Y Tu Mama Tambien, Sofia’s The Virgin Suicides, Chabrol’s Les Bonnes Femmes.
The reason filmmaking is want I want to do for the rest of my life and why women are so deeply rooted in life and cinema for me in a very reflexive loving and and caring way that only the woman i love can ever truly and completely understand oh and by the way this movie is almost proof that cinema has a living breathing sarcastic poetic and brutal soul:
Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita.
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2000-2010 about 4 years ago
i don’t know enough about formats and technology to even try and predict the future of filmmaking. i’ve always had this idea of a folk cinema that is deeply tied to the roots of the artist and his community. the city is the tree and the stories it carries are in its leaves, all the artist does is pick up the leaves and be impacted; only to have it impact the artist’s work.
with the net, there can be citywide, statewide, nationwide, worldwide communities that quilt the stories of their homes. the group i’m in, REMAP LA is a UCLA group of amigos that are trying to spearhead something along those lines. we’re trying to give roots to this post-modern beast that is our home.
anything we do now we always could do but it was either to expensive or too time consuming. with digital filmmaking, making movies can become an artistic expression like any other. which is a nice thought. the net will do for film what photography did for painting. web 2.0 is all about intercommunications, right? where it will go from there (have political power like godard says film will never have again or the ability to sway society) i don’t know. we just have to do it i guess.
it certainly will not kill off big cinema. i always get a kick out of people who think that. i mean, julian schnabel still sells million dollar paintings and my little sister paints. she gets brownie points from mom. are you guys ok with that? making movies for brownie points and working your day job?
woo woo
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2000-2010 about 4 years ago
p.s. apparently wong kar wai and wim wenders can’t ride with the “big guys” either since their last few flicks don’t carry an inch of entertainment or artistic value. and cassavettes, well, he’s dead. so lets see him make something now.
haha.
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2000-2010 about 4 years ago
I am a big fan of Born Into Brothels, it’s probably one of the major reasons why I joined REMAP LA. We don’t quite have the funding to teach kids filmmaking (or nearly the experience (in my case)) but we’ve been doing good things with photography.
By the way I like Kar Wai, Wenders, or Cassavettes.
I’m not sure where you got yer sources but all of Sofia’s movies have thought out written screenplays. Marie Antoinette? Hardly any of it was improvized considering they had limited time to use Versailles and the mass amount of extras, that wouldn’t make any sense. I guess they can come up with a new scene to shoot quickly but aside from that what feels improvized (structurally) about her movies?
This is besides the point, people, talk more about folk cinema!
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2000-2010 about 4 years ago
double post oops
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Which film has changed your life forever? about 4 years ago
What other way could you look at Raging Bull, that scene alone says it all. That and lamotta in bed saying “come ova here baby, ’fore i beatcha.”
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CANNES Line-up about 4 years ago
My best bet for the win is ‘Synechdote, NY’. I made the dumb mistake of reading the screenplay before the movie and man with a screenplay like this one Kaufman would have to be an madman idiot to screw this one up. It’s going to be a masterpiece.
However, iIf he does eff up:
I’m all for Desplechin’s flick winning cuz ‘Rois et Reines’ is a total fave of mine and has the best Mathieu Almaric performance ever. He break dances for the love of dog.
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Suggest SECTION names for The Auteurs about 4 years ago
I definitely agree with Akira Kar-Wai lets get more film from Peru, Chile, Colombia, Argentina or all the other country in Latin America besides Brazil and Mexico, joder, there’s so much. It would be wrong to label them by country though wouldn’t it? Since there’s so many movements within each nation within each culture within each frame of mind and all that.
I’ll look ‘em up and get back on that. A category I’d suggest though is Music Video (lets face it some of these guys are the pioneering filmmakers with their little short masterpieces; get some Floria Sigismondi or Patrick Daughters or Jonathan Glazer or Cunningham).
Another good one is Cinema of the Future or Controversial Cinema or The Truth 24 fps.
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Current cinema about 4 years ago
oh man, the kite runner. somehow marc foster has the talent of rendering anything beautiful he touches to precious crap. i don’t think i’ve ever seen a movie of his that i’ve remembered more than a second after i saw it. total abc channel movie.
i saw 4 MONTHS but man i wasn’t entirely impressed, i think it’s the low budget aesthetic these movies purposefully implement that is starting to bug me. it didn’t have to look that way and the documentary-style just made it look less realistic.
realistic movies.
that’s getting to me.
‘sweeney todd’ was pretty bloody and fun and grim as far as musicals went though, man, there was so much blood. tim burton is a sick, sick man no? but it was filled with many great moments. oh and wow, believe it or not "iron man’’ was so the shiz. robert downey jr. is finally getting all the big star status exposure he deserves and that’s way cool in my opinion. speaking of him his performance was awesome in ZODIAC!!! check this movie out. nobody has seen this freaking flick and it’s by far david fincher’s most masterful and poetic odes to murder and how it fascinates us and how we can be consumed by the pursuit of truth. beautiful fucking picture.
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Film quotes you love about 4 years ago
“Well, that was one goddamn hell of a show.”
There Will Be Blood (PT Anderson, 2008)
“I’ve been thinking what to do wit’ my future. I could be a mud doctor. Checkin’ out the eart’. Underneat’.”
Days of Heaven (Malick, 1978)
“I guess I’ve still got some healing to do.”
The Darjeeling Limited (Wes Anderson, 2008)
“Language is the house man lives in.”
2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (Godard, 1967)
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Film quotes you love about 4 years ago
do you think kubrick came up with sergeant hartman’s insults? or was that all from the book?
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Film quotes you love about 4 years ago
oh wait, i just remembered that what’s-his-name was allowed to improvise those scenes after kubrick saw his audition tape.
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Who's looking for eachother? about 4 years ago
I’m also starting film school in the fall. A bit on the outskirts of hollywood (the valley) but heck it’s all the same right?
I’m a bit young at this, so I can’t really tell ya what kind of movies I make, since I never really find out until I make one.
I write and I direct. I suppose I can act too but I’d rather see you up on the screen. That’s right, you. If any of you guys are out here in the west coast or LA, in the vicinity I guess, we should get together and get working on something. I know a couple spots out here where the wine’s good and there’s lots of interesting folks to talk to. A little drink and a little adventure really helps me get the noggin whirling. Don’t know about you.
Just post on my wall if you’re interested. I have a link to my YouTube site too. I have a couple of short films up there and my new one is hustling its way into the right compression. If there’s on enemy we’ve got in the net is the quality of the image. I suppose we should worry about the content first right?
Lets talk.
AIM: reactionarypaper
e-mail: tupertay@gmail.com
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TOP BERGMAN almost 5 years ago
Cries and Whispers and Winter Light.
I still consider Scenes from a Marriage a mini series since I like it a whole lot more than the movie version.
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Favorite underseen/unknown directors almost 4 years ago
You’ve all made this philistine very very happy. Tears Up
I recommend a movie by Todd Rohal called “The Guatemalan Handshake”, which is a total effing southern fried comedy masterpiece. It’s like Napoleon Dynamite as directed by Terrence Malick.
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Favorite underseen/unknown directors almost 4 years ago
O Toby, that sharp ol’ wit of yours.
I highly recommend the short films of Kenneth Anger. I couldn’t imagine a lot of music videos being made without an influence from him. Very cool aethete.
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Favorite score? almost 4 years ago
The Good The Bad and The Ugly. The Ninth Gate. La Dolce Vita. Punch Drunk Love. Pierrot Le Fou. The 400 Blows. Babel. Knife in the Water. Dead Man. Catch Me If You Can. 25th Hour. The Fountain. Crouching Tiger.
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HYPNOTCHKA by MAO almost 4 years ago
To any of you who like short films or japanese women or feel a little bit isolated in modern metropolitan culture or like great music or miss movies made in black and white or love cinema; those who have it scrawled all over the walls of their minds.
Well. I present to you all a movie I made with such an appreciation. In order to remember that making films is loving cinema completely. I’m very excited about it and I’m very happy to be telling everyone on TA about it. This is nice.
My short film HYPNOTCHKA:
http://www.vimeo.com/1149406
I dedicate this film to G A R A G E. The brand-spanking-new cinema collective coming soon to TA. We’re like toast, we jam up, we jam down, and we’re very tasty.
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Horror Foreign Films almost 4 years ago
Gah, double post.
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Horror Foreign Films almost 4 years ago
Dark Water is more of an example of how you can make a movie completely unscary or unentertaining in every concievable way. Salles just didn’t function very well doing genre horror. He made an awkward attempt at making it a tender mother/daughter story too. Weird.
Good Horror? Cannibal Holocaust, Suspiria, The Vanishing (not really horror but still suspenseful), Funny Games and The Orphanage. Guillermo Del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone was pretty spooky and was also a good period drama. I haven’t seen Cronos but that might be a sure bet too.
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