Why is that when Criterion releases a DVD with extra materials it’s a special edition, but when a book is released with essays and relative criticism it’s homework?
Just finished reading Hart Crane “The Bridge,” “White Buildings” and “Key West”. Reading Lorca “Book of Poems”. Just finished “Herzog on Herzog”, the man is an absolute poet. Also, Proust “Swann’s Way”. Finished “White Noise” by Don Delillo not too long ago.
Surprised that “Ash Wednesday” by Ethan Hawke really was pretty good.
Favorite all time:
Delillo: Underworld
Chabon: Wonder Boys
Garcia Marquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude
Salinger: Most anything.
Faulkner: Light in August
Joyce: Portrait of the Artist
Want to Read:
Delillo: Great Jones Street
Joyce: Ulysses
Sherwood Anderson: Winesburg, Ohio
Chekhov: Short Stories
My heart of silk
is filled with lights,
with lost bells,
with lilies and bees.
I will go very far,
farther than those hills,
farther than the seas,
close to the stars,
to beg Christ the Lord
to give back the soul I had
of old, when I was a child,
ripened with legends,
with a feathered cap
and a wooden sword.
My heart of silk
is filled with lights,
with lost bells,
with lilies and bees.
I will go very far,
farther than those hills,
farther than the seas,
close to the stars,
to beg Christ the Lord
to give back the soul I had
of old, when I was a child,
ripened with legends,
with a feathered cap
and a wooden sword.
Bob Hope is undoubtedly one of the great comedians. I don’t know that he ever made any “great” films.
Woody Allen has talked about how his character is essentially just Bob Hope, but no one ever makes the connection because Hope is this tall, good looking gentile and Woody is a short New York nebbish.
The Big Lebowski
Bottle Rocket
Jules et Jim
Citizen Kane
Broadway Danny Rose
The Fisher King
Paper Moon
Goodfellas
Badlands
This is Spinal Tap
City Lights
You could swap “Lebowski” with Barton Fink, “Broadway Danny Rose” with “Manhattan” or “Sweet and Lowdown”, and “Jules et Jim” for “The 400 Blows”
She had the face of a silent movie star,
all moon-eyed and sepia.
I could never tell if I was the
Hero or
the Heavy.
I put on some swell performances—
crummy ones too—
but she seemed to believe
them all.
Or maybe she just
wanted to be in pictures.
Everybody wants to be in pictures.
All I know is I needed a girl.
Nobody wants to see a picture show
without a girl in it.
That’s rule number one.
I twirled my cane and laughed.
She held my arm.
The editor was to cut
between us strolling along the deck and
the waterfall ahead of us
plunging down
into the rocks.
We pretended that when we’d
get to the brim we’d just keep floating,
beyond the edge, into the sky.
I always thought the rumor about Malick doing “Catcher in the Rye” was tantalizing…There’s no way it could be true. It’s too much of a twee alienated fan boy’s wet dream
It’s cumbersome, but I love taping movies off TV and DVDs.
I think it’s senseless that movies were originally the 1:33 aspect ratio, than switched to widescreen because of television. Now television is switching to widescreen because of movies. I think 1:33 is the perfect aspect ratio for a film. Scorsese said something about how he never figured out how to frame a close up in 2:35. And, of course, there’s the famous Fritz Lang quote about how 2:35 is only good for funerals, trains and snakes.
I love widescreen, but I wish more people who either shot in 1:33, or combine aspect ratios as appropriate for the shot.
I only bring this up because most VHS are pan and scan, which makes it a more suitable medium for films pre-1954.
Is this not what Criterion Collection does? Takes a very abstract, ephemeral art form and associate it with a feeling? Vis a vis pretty packaging and the hero-ization of directors? People lust over these DVDs just as the would a cigarette or a new car.
I feel that perhaps the more self-aware of us, the urbane, left-leaning blue state, city dwellers use art as a way to control the frame of our lives the way some may use money or violence. It’s a way to status and power. Hence the popularity of the “top ten” list. We come to this forum to communicate with like-minded people, who we may not be able to find in the real world, and the touchstone for us are films.
Is this not what Criterion Collection does? Takes a very abstract, ephemeral art form and associate it with a feeling? Vis a vis pretty packaging and the hero-ization of directors? People lust over these DVDs just as the would a cigarette or a new car.
I feel that perhaps the more self-aware of us, the urbane, left-leaning blue state, city dwellers use art as a way to control the frame of our lives the way some may use money or violence. It’s a way to status and power. Hence the popularity of the “top ten” list. We come to this forum to communicate with like-minded people, who we may not be able to find in the real world, and the touchstone for us are films.
Across the Universe was maybe the worst movie I’ve ever seen. A complete bastardization of the music and a laughable screenplay. I’m not wild about Evan Rachael Wood and I hated the British guy.
Titus, on the other hand, I have on DVD, and probably takes itself too seriously. An incredibly disturbing movie (and play), and I agree with Harold Bloom that it would be best directed as a farce by Mel Brooks. That being said, there is some stunning cinematography and acting, if the screenplay (“by” Julie Taymor) is a little obvious and rips off Fellini too much.
Believe it or not I actually watched the whole thing. I was fascinated. Some really eye-opening stuff, and wonderful images. A bit heavy on the ominous synth though, and totally slanted to the left. Every time Gingrich or Reagan came on they played Darth Vader music.
Blood on the Tracks OR Desire – Bob Dylan
Elvis Presley – The Complete Sun Sessions
Bruce Springsteen – The River
Nuggets – Various Artists
The Sonics – Here are the Sonics
The Clash – London Calling
The Kinks – Lola Vs. Powerman
The Police – Outlandos D’Amour
I thought what Anne Hathaway said was articulate and insightful. However, I quote Eugene Morgan from “The Magnificent Ambersons,” one of my favorite speeches in all of drama, delivered with grace and delicacy by Joseph Cotten:
I don’t know that George is wrong about automobiles. With all their speed forward they may be a step backward in civilization. It may not be that they’ll add to the beauty of the world, or the life of men’s souls, but automobiles have come, and almost all outward things are going to be different because of what they bring. They’re going to alter war, and they’re going to alter peace. I think men’s minds are going to be changed in subtle ways…
The above could just as easily be applied (with some modifications) to the internet. I disagree, although I like the line, that the internet is a giant “bathroom wall” though I can see why Anne Hathaway might think that considering the things they write about her on Gawker and the pictures posted of her on Mr. Skin. I think the internet is the ultimate mechanism for a true cultural democracy. Anyone can make a film, write a blog, record music, etc. and find an avenue to distribute it to the world. It is only a matter of time before our own lives become our entertainment. Andy Warhol has his famous “15 minutes of fame” quote, but I don’t think this is true. I think in the future everyone will be famous to 15 people. Everyone will either be in a band, or make movies, or whatever, and they will have an audience of 15 on the internet. There will probably still be big movies and popular culture, but the creation of art and entertainment will become the entertainment itself. People will buy Bob Dylan album’s, then write their own pale imitations and post them on the internet.
It is true that it’s harder to ‘get lost’ in a film if you’re watching it on your computer. It’s taking something that’s meant to be seen in a cinema, an overpowering experience, and shrinking and shuffling it amongst windows on your computer screen until it’s just another task in the queue with your e-mail and facebook page.
The internet is not going to go away and Hollywood should just deal with it.
I got the idea for this from the “Movie that Changed Your Life” thread. I don’t know that any movie has “changed my life” per se, but there are a few that are almost like companions that accompany me wherever I am in life. Movies that are precious.
The 400 Blows – It was strange how much I could relate to the character of Antoine Doinel. Falling asleep while my parents were arguing in the other room, my mother waking me up late for school, the dynamics of their relationship, taking solace in the literary, in the cinematic. I saw it for the first time when I was 15 or 16, around Antoine’s age, and I started wearing a plaid windbreaker in allegiance with him. The music, the cinematography, the mise-en-scene all somehow aroused and rhymed with my deepest emotions, my spirit. I wanted to live this characters life, and, in a way, he was living mine.
Bottle Rocket – I had never seen this movie when my brother bought a DVD player in 2000, but I loved “The Cable Guy,” and specifically Owen Wilson’s hilarious date seen with Matthew Broderick’s ex-girlfriend (“What’s the story with the chicken man? You still waiting for the eggs to hatch?”) but I had heard faintly of a film called “Bottle Rocket” which he was in. I had no idea who Wes Anderson was, or anybody else in the film, and the DVD was like $26, which was a lot of money for a kid to spend on a bare bones DVD of a movie he’d never seen before. I bought the movie. Somehow I knew that I would love it. From first viewing it has been my favorite movie. It expresses with so deftly what male friendships are like. Childish, tumultuous, tender. I thought “Darjeeling” was a wonderful movie about the foibles of brotherhood, but, to me, Bottle Rocket is the most truthful, and funniest movie ever made about young guys who haven’t quite found where they fit in an often cruel world. Dignan is Shakespearean, a poet whose scheming is his art. Anthony is his guardian. There hasn’t been a character quite like Bob Mapplethorpe in any of Anderson’s films since, someone not suffering from detached hipster ennui, but a more humane pathos.
The Fisher King – Although I can only speak for myself, I think all men are, at different times, both Perry, the broken torch-bearer, naive, imaginative, spirited, and Jack Lucas, narcissistic, cynical, self-involved. Sometimes you prostrate yourself before a woman, sometimes they wait on you hand and foot and you repay them with indifference. This movie uses New York extraordinarily as a modern fairy tale setting, complete with towers and castles and hovels and knights.
Wonder Boys – To me, this movie celebrates a certain type of people who make and discuss books better than any other. I love movies about books, writers and writing: Barton Fink, Adaptation, Funny Farm, The Royal Tenenbaums, Jules et Jim, but there’s something about the peculiar Lebowski meets Rushmore mix of this film and its gallery of characters that inspires me to want to be a part of that campus literary life. Grady Tripp reminds me very much of my father, an aged pothead with a knack for words and tendency to never be impressed by the up and comers. I wish I could live in Professor Tripp’s house, and drive his car, and have his job, and someday, for better or worse, I probably will.
Badlands – Like Kit, the protagonist, I have a thinly veiled obsession with James Dean, but I don’t think any of Dean’s movies were good enough for him. The movies were great because he was in them. Badlands, on the other hand, is one of the movies of all times. There’s something about the subdued rhythm, the tone, of the film, that makes it endlessly inhabitable. To me, my favorite movies become almost like songs, in that I can put them on while I fall asleep, and companions, in that I love to have them in the room so I can hang out with them. The characters Kit and Holly, the gentle lilt of the film (in spite of it’s violent subject matter), are great companions. It is a beautiful song. There is a pop culture sensibility to the film, but it is subdued, not overwhelming. I love Kit’s self-consciousness. The way he records the record in the booth at the mall, how he dictates his teachings into the rich man’s dictaphone. There are some great lines too. “Suppose I shoot you? How’d that be?” and “I give you a dollar to eat that collie.” I don’t know what it means for a film to be constructed like a poem more than a drama, but this film is certainly an example. Love is strange indeed.
Jules et Jim – Somebody said something about how Jules et Jim represents the crux of Cinema, the fulcrum where films tipped from being static, slowly paced, studio productions, into quickly-cut, mellifluous, swiftly flowing films shot on location. Scorsese said he would have done anything to have made the first ten minutes of Jules et Jim, Goodfellas being his most flagrant attempt to do so. I love, love, love the first ten minutes of Jules et Jim, and they may be among the most exciting minutes in any film. They introduce the characters with such poetry and economy. I love the voice over narration in this film. The settings, the textures of the film are unparralleled in beauty (to me anyway). Truffaut accomplishes so much with so little, with such joie de vivre. The way he incorporates stock footage of WWI, the brothel, trains, is incredibly resourceful and wonderful. This is another film that serves a function similar to a song or a poem to me. The tempo is perfect, and again, I love the way the movie is showered with the literary. It’s full of books, and writers, and plays, and letters.
Other films close to my heart:
Paper Moon
City Lights
This is Spinal Tap
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Citizen Kane
Breathless
Woody Allen films (Manhattan, Broadway Danny Rose, Annie Hall)
Films that start with alarm clocks going off and the the protagonist slapping them and then following the protagonist through his morning routine. What a lazy, unimaginative way to start a film.
Favourite Movie About Music. about 3 years ago
Yeah, The Kids Are All Right has got to be one of the best, weirdest documentaries I’ve ever seen.
Shoot the Piano Player
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Favourite Movie About Music. about 3 years ago
Oh, and Elvis On Tour is pretty amazing
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Books about 3 years ago
Why is that when Criterion releases a DVD with extra materials it’s a special edition, but when a book is released with essays and relative criticism it’s homework?
Go to Comment
Books about 3 years ago
Just finished reading Hart Crane “The Bridge,” “White Buildings” and “Key West”. Reading Lorca “Book of Poems”. Just finished “Herzog on Herzog”, the man is an absolute poet. Also, Proust “Swann’s Way”. Finished “White Noise” by Don Delillo not too long ago.
Surprised that “Ash Wednesday” by Ethan Hawke really was pretty good.
Favorite all time:
Delillo: Underworld
Chabon: Wonder Boys
Garcia Marquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude
Salinger: Most anything.
Faulkner: Light in August
Joyce: Portrait of the Artist
Want to Read:
Delillo: Great Jones Street
Joyce: Ulysses
Sherwood Anderson: Winesburg, Ohio
Chekhov: Short Stories
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ANY TAKERS FOR A WRITING WORKSHOP? about 3 years ago
I’d like to be a part of this
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Our Favourite Poems- for a site anthology about 3 years ago
My heart of silk
is filled with lights,
with lost bells,
with lilies and bees.
I will go very far,
farther than those hills,
farther than the seas,
close to the stars,
to beg Christ the Lord
to give back the soul I had
of old, when I was a child,
ripened with legends,
with a feathered cap
and a wooden sword.
-Lorca
Go to Comment
Our Favourite Poems- for a site anthology about 3 years ago
My heart of silk
is filled with lights,
with lost bells,
with lilies and bees.
I will go very far,
farther than those hills,
farther than the seas,
close to the stars,
to beg Christ the Lord
to give back the soul I had
of old, when I was a child,
ripened with legends,
with a feathered cap
and a wooden sword.
-Lorca
Go to Comment
11 Great Directors Choose 11 Great Films about 3 years ago
Bob Hope is undoubtedly one of the great comedians. I don’t know that he ever made any “great” films.
Woody Allen has talked about how his character is essentially just Bob Hope, but no one ever makes the connection because Hope is this tall, good looking gentile and Woody is a short New York nebbish.
Go to Comment
Bob Dylan's thoughts on film about 3 years ago
I read somewhere that “Shoot the Piano Player” is Bob’s favorite movie.
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Best Film About Film? about 3 years ago
The Life Aquatic I would argue is about filmmaking in a lot of ways (besides the obvious fact that they’re documentary filmmakers)
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What's your Top 10? about 3 years ago
The Big Lebowski
Bottle Rocket
Jules et Jim
Citizen Kane
Broadway Danny Rose
The Fisher King
Paper Moon
Goodfellas
Badlands
This is Spinal Tap
City Lights
You could swap “Lebowski” with Barton Fink, “Broadway Danny Rose” with “Manhattan” or “Sweet and Lowdown”, and “Jules et Jim” for “The 400 Blows”
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What's your Top 10? about 3 years ago
Hell yeah to whoever said “Joe Vs. the Volcano”. That’s a great movie. Doesn’t get enough credit.
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Film quotes you love about 3 years ago
It’s a sad and beautiful world.
-Down By Law
It’s like, how much more black could it get? And the answer is, none. None more black.
-Spinal Tap
Suicidal paranoiacs will say a lot of things to get laid.
-The Fisher King
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Write a poem about 3 years ago
HISTRIONICS
She had the face of a silent movie star,
all moon-eyed and sepia.
I could never tell if I was the
Hero or
the Heavy.
I put on some swell performances—
crummy ones too—
but she seemed to believe
them all.
Or maybe she just
wanted to be in pictures.
Everybody wants to be in pictures.
All I know is I needed a girl.
Nobody wants to see a picture show
without a girl in it.
That’s rule number one.
I twirled my cane and laughed.
She held my arm.
The editor was to cut
between us strolling along the deck and
the waterfall ahead of us
plunging down
into the rocks.
We pretended that when we’d
get to the brim we’d just keep floating,
beyond the edge, into the sky.
Go to Comment
Which movies would you like to see on The Auteurs? about 3 years ago
I hated In Bruges
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Last movie you saw and rate it about 3 years ago
Night on Earth : 8
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You choose the book to make into a film. Then choose the director. Go! about 3 years ago
I always thought the rumor about Malick doing “Catcher in the Rye” was tantalizing…There’s no way it could be true. It’s too much of a twee alienated fan boy’s wet dream
Go to Comment
Biggest Quality Shifts about 3 years ago
Owen Wilson
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VHS & the Video Store Experience about 3 years ago
It’s cumbersome, but I love taping movies off TV and DVDs.
I think it’s senseless that movies were originally the 1:33 aspect ratio, than switched to widescreen because of television. Now television is switching to widescreen because of movies. I think 1:33 is the perfect aspect ratio for a film. Scorsese said something about how he never figured out how to frame a close up in 2:35. And, of course, there’s the famous Fritz Lang quote about how 2:35 is only good for funerals, trains and snakes.
I love widescreen, but I wish more people who either shot in 1:33, or combine aspect ratios as appropriate for the shot.
I only bring this up because most VHS are pan and scan, which makes it a more suitable medium for films pre-1954.
Go to Comment
Century of the Self about 3 years ago
Is this not what Criterion Collection does? Takes a very abstract, ephemeral art form and associate it with a feeling? Vis a vis pretty packaging and the hero-ization of directors? People lust over these DVDs just as the would a cigarette or a new car.
I feel that perhaps the more self-aware of us, the urbane, left-leaning blue state, city dwellers use art as a way to control the frame of our lives the way some may use money or violence. It’s a way to status and power. Hence the popularity of the “top ten” list. We come to this forum to communicate with like-minded people, who we may not be able to find in the real world, and the touchstone for us are films.
Go to Comment
Century of the Self about 3 years ago
Is this not what Criterion Collection does? Takes a very abstract, ephemeral art form and associate it with a feeling? Vis a vis pretty packaging and the hero-ization of directors? People lust over these DVDs just as the would a cigarette or a new car.
I feel that perhaps the more self-aware of us, the urbane, left-leaning blue state, city dwellers use art as a way to control the frame of our lives the way some may use money or violence. It’s a way to status and power. Hence the popularity of the “top ten” list. We come to this forum to communicate with like-minded people, who we may not be able to find in the real world, and the touchstone for us are films.
Go to Comment
Julie Taymor about 3 years ago
Across the Universe was maybe the worst movie I’ve ever seen. A complete bastardization of the music and a laughable screenplay. I’m not wild about Evan Rachael Wood and I hated the British guy.
Titus, on the other hand, I have on DVD, and probably takes itself too seriously. An incredibly disturbing movie (and play), and I agree with Harold Bloom that it would be best directed as a farce by Mel Brooks. That being said, there is some stunning cinematography and acting, if the screenplay (“by” Julie Taymor) is a little obvious and rips off Fellini too much.
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Century of the Self about 3 years ago
Believe it or not I actually watched the whole thing. I was fascinated. Some really eye-opening stuff, and wonderful images. A bit heavy on the ominous synth though, and totally slanted to the left. Every time Gingrich or Reagan came on they played Darth Vader music.
Go to Comment
Another off Topic/Your Favorite Albums about 3 years ago
Blood on the Tracks OR Desire – Bob Dylan
Elvis Presley – The Complete Sun Sessions
Bruce Springsteen – The River
Nuggets – Various Artists
The Sonics – Here are the Sonics
The Clash – London Calling
The Kinks – Lola Vs. Powerman
The Police – Outlandos D’Amour
Go to Comment
Internet Panic In Hollywood about 3 years ago
I thought what Anne Hathaway said was articulate and insightful. However, I quote Eugene Morgan from “The Magnificent Ambersons,” one of my favorite speeches in all of drama, delivered with grace and delicacy by Joseph Cotten:
I don’t know that George is wrong about automobiles. With all their speed forward they may be a step backward in civilization. It may not be that they’ll add to the beauty of the world, or the life of men’s souls, but automobiles have come, and almost all outward things are going to be different because of what they bring. They’re going to alter war, and they’re going to alter peace. I think men’s minds are going to be changed in subtle ways…
The above could just as easily be applied (with some modifications) to the internet. I disagree, although I like the line, that the internet is a giant “bathroom wall” though I can see why Anne Hathaway might think that considering the things they write about her on Gawker and the pictures posted of her on Mr. Skin. I think the internet is the ultimate mechanism for a true cultural democracy. Anyone can make a film, write a blog, record music, etc. and find an avenue to distribute it to the world. It is only a matter of time before our own lives become our entertainment. Andy Warhol has his famous “15 minutes of fame” quote, but I don’t think this is true. I think in the future everyone will be famous to 15 people. Everyone will either be in a band, or make movies, or whatever, and they will have an audience of 15 on the internet. There will probably still be big movies and popular culture, but the creation of art and entertainment will become the entertainment itself. People will buy Bob Dylan album’s, then write their own pale imitations and post them on the internet.
It is true that it’s harder to ‘get lost’ in a film if you’re watching it on your computer. It’s taking something that’s meant to be seen in a cinema, an overpowering experience, and shrinking and shuffling it amongst windows on your computer screen until it’s just another task in the queue with your e-mail and facebook page.
The internet is not going to go away and Hollywood should just deal with it.
Go to Comment
The Auteurs' Fake Criterion Covers about 3 years ago
This was a few pages ago, but I love the Glengarry Glen Ross.
The Die Hard is also great.
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11 great films hard to find or not available on dvd in USA--name your own or comment on these 11.. what are your great films hard find or not available in in US format? about 3 years ago
Ishtar
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The Most Important Films in Your Life about 3 years ago
I got the idea for this from the “Movie that Changed Your Life” thread. I don’t know that any movie has “changed my life” per se, but there are a few that are almost like companions that accompany me wherever I am in life. Movies that are precious.
The 400 Blows – It was strange how much I could relate to the character of Antoine Doinel. Falling asleep while my parents were arguing in the other room, my mother waking me up late for school, the dynamics of their relationship, taking solace in the literary, in the cinematic. I saw it for the first time when I was 15 or 16, around Antoine’s age, and I started wearing a plaid windbreaker in allegiance with him. The music, the cinematography, the mise-en-scene all somehow aroused and rhymed with my deepest emotions, my spirit. I wanted to live this characters life, and, in a way, he was living mine.
Bottle Rocket – I had never seen this movie when my brother bought a DVD player in 2000, but I loved “The Cable Guy,” and specifically Owen Wilson’s hilarious date seen with Matthew Broderick’s ex-girlfriend (“What’s the story with the chicken man? You still waiting for the eggs to hatch?”) but I had heard faintly of a film called “Bottle Rocket” which he was in. I had no idea who Wes Anderson was, or anybody else in the film, and the DVD was like $26, which was a lot of money for a kid to spend on a bare bones DVD of a movie he’d never seen before. I bought the movie. Somehow I knew that I would love it. From first viewing it has been my favorite movie. It expresses with so deftly what male friendships are like. Childish, tumultuous, tender. I thought “Darjeeling” was a wonderful movie about the foibles of brotherhood, but, to me, Bottle Rocket is the most truthful, and funniest movie ever made about young guys who haven’t quite found where they fit in an often cruel world. Dignan is Shakespearean, a poet whose scheming is his art. Anthony is his guardian. There hasn’t been a character quite like Bob Mapplethorpe in any of Anderson’s films since, someone not suffering from detached hipster ennui, but a more humane pathos.
The Fisher King – Although I can only speak for myself, I think all men are, at different times, both Perry, the broken torch-bearer, naive, imaginative, spirited, and Jack Lucas, narcissistic, cynical, self-involved. Sometimes you prostrate yourself before a woman, sometimes they wait on you hand and foot and you repay them with indifference. This movie uses New York extraordinarily as a modern fairy tale setting, complete with towers and castles and hovels and knights.
Wonder Boys – To me, this movie celebrates a certain type of people who make and discuss books better than any other. I love movies about books, writers and writing: Barton Fink, Adaptation, Funny Farm, The Royal Tenenbaums, Jules et Jim, but there’s something about the peculiar Lebowski meets Rushmore mix of this film and its gallery of characters that inspires me to want to be a part of that campus literary life. Grady Tripp reminds me very much of my father, an aged pothead with a knack for words and tendency to never be impressed by the up and comers. I wish I could live in Professor Tripp’s house, and drive his car, and have his job, and someday, for better or worse, I probably will.
Badlands – Like Kit, the protagonist, I have a thinly veiled obsession with James Dean, but I don’t think any of Dean’s movies were good enough for him. The movies were great because he was in them. Badlands, on the other hand, is one of the movies of all times. There’s something about the subdued rhythm, the tone, of the film, that makes it endlessly inhabitable. To me, my favorite movies become almost like songs, in that I can put them on while I fall asleep, and companions, in that I love to have them in the room so I can hang out with them. The characters Kit and Holly, the gentle lilt of the film (in spite of it’s violent subject matter), are great companions. It is a beautiful song. There is a pop culture sensibility to the film, but it is subdued, not overwhelming. I love Kit’s self-consciousness. The way he records the record in the booth at the mall, how he dictates his teachings into the rich man’s dictaphone. There are some great lines too. “Suppose I shoot you? How’d that be?” and “I give you a dollar to eat that collie.” I don’t know what it means for a film to be constructed like a poem more than a drama, but this film is certainly an example. Love is strange indeed.
Jules et Jim – Somebody said something about how Jules et Jim represents the crux of Cinema, the fulcrum where films tipped from being static, slowly paced, studio productions, into quickly-cut, mellifluous, swiftly flowing films shot on location. Scorsese said he would have done anything to have made the first ten minutes of Jules et Jim, Goodfellas being his most flagrant attempt to do so. I love, love, love the first ten minutes of Jules et Jim, and they may be among the most exciting minutes in any film. They introduce the characters with such poetry and economy. I love the voice over narration in this film. The settings, the textures of the film are unparralleled in beauty (to me anyway). Truffaut accomplishes so much with so little, with such joie de vivre. The way he incorporates stock footage of WWI, the brothel, trains, is incredibly resourceful and wonderful. This is another film that serves a function similar to a song or a poem to me. The tempo is perfect, and again, I love the way the movie is showered with the literary. It’s full of books, and writers, and plays, and letters.
Other films close to my heart:
Paper Moon
City Lights
This is Spinal Tap
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Citizen Kane
Breathless
Woody Allen films (Manhattan, Broadway Danny Rose, Annie Hall)
Go to Comment
Things your're really sick of about 3 years ago
Films that start with alarm clocks going off and the the protagonist slapping them and then following the protagonist through his morning routine. What a lazy, unimaginative way to start a film.
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A Random Film You Like about 3 years ago
Joe Vs. The Volcano is probably one of the most beautiful fables in film, but it doesn’t get much love.
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