" …cuando es muerte el beber
beben más, y desta suerte,
viendo que el ver me da muerte
estoy muriendo por ver."
– Pedro Calderón de la Barca
Aguaespejo
About Me
Latest Update
The Ladies Man
What a set! What movement! How can one savagely parody every possible filmic convention, every possible style of portraying emotion and still nearly move me to tears at the end? Throw narrative to the winds and extend every gag nearly beyond endurance and still have me slightly shocked and in awe? So crude yet mesmerizing? Is Jerry Lewis the promise of Cinema and I the beloved whose need ensures its stay?Favorite Films
Displaying 4 of 78 films
Lists
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Style
- Auteur-driven
- Zip, whiz, and energetic!
- Deliriously surreal
- Other-worldly
- Avant-garde
Wall
Displaying 4 of 69 wall posts.
David Grillo and Aguaespejo like this
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David Grillo
21May13
Where can you can find Ford as Vulgar Auteur? EFNY! My favorite Carpenter the first 30 minutes maybe the best thing out of hollywood in the 80's up there with the fighting scenes in Raging Bull and The corridors of The Shinning. (I still haven't gotten over how pleasantly surprised I was after seeing just a handful of his films. )
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Aguaespejo
21May13
Yup. You can make out jack. I've been meaning to go on an action binge for a while so this is good..
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David Grillo
21May13
you won't see satire this visceral outside of Bunuel accept Carpenter always puts the film (himself) on the line the fabric of the narrative is hanging like a thread from his images, you can see the film any which way (making it a favorite for conspiracy theorist as you will see) his satire seeps into symbolism, tongue and cheek, personalities, and all that is American or hollywood in his film and it is always grounded along with a big FU, the most encompassing Fuck You in all of cinema up there with Un Chien Andalou only Carpenters is incredibly grounded and direct. I can see how others may think differently though Carpenter has this Hitchockian quality in that you need to become obsessed with his films before you can appreciate them. ( my own experience of course)
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Aguaespejo
21May13
You had already sold me on it on your page David! The juxtaposition of the first and third still you'd chosen was really quite nasty in its satire indeed! Bunuel is one of my film gods so any comparison with him also means I just have to check this out...
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Shamus-
22May13
He won't like them. I'd say that Carpenter's films are ideologically pretty incoherent (politely dissenting from David G), although the sheer adrenaline rush of his films is unique. Also, his sense of composition and the use of colour is astonishing. Even listening to the notes of his typical industrial score makes me smile... I gonna go watch 'Christine' or something right now...
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Aguaespejo
22May13
Hey!! Let me watch them going in with as open a mind as is possible for me. I might surprise you yet ;) I have been eyeing those Johnnie To's on your ratings as well...
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S(chönhauser)Allee
22May13
if you were going to predict that i absolutely hated 'they live', i'd give you as much as you'd get for guessing that a potato is a dull conversationalist. but still tis true. also it's jean lucifer god-ard. (according to peter whitehead)
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David Grillo
22May13
Don't get it wrong though his films have plenty of depth he is a director who "films cinema" not to sound pedantic but it seems appropriate ( a phrase I read from Serge Danny)Carpenter is like this in my opinion "he doesn't capture reality but embellishes it". What makes Carpenter's cinema so impetuous and addicting is tied with Hitchcock. And like Hitch he is a master at influencing the audience controlling there perspective as well as manipulating it . Other aspects of his filmmaking bring up Hawks (sci fi and westerns) and even Ford but this is my opinion and I've been so enamored with his films.
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Aguaespejo
23May13
(I really appreciate the comments about Carpenter by Shamus and David. Will help keep my eye and ear open in the right direction)
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Aguaespejo
23May13
(Serge Daney is God's Own Critic and I don't mean that owlish French scoundrel when I say God) (Shit now I feel like if I dislike Carpenter you guys are going to hate on me and if I like it the gals)
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Bitė
21May13
add on everything said my special love for films starring sandra bullock, the fact i can watch lethal weapon whenever, that i'll watch every next final destination, that i go very excited when i watch the lord of the rings and that terminator (every part - but second especially) is one wonderful damn-human story which makes me cry a lot :D oh, and i've watched almost every film starring brad pitt (many of them at least 5x) :D
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Aguaespejo
21May13
Haha . Sandra Bullock I understand but Brad Pitt? Give me Cary Grant anyday ;) And I totally understand Lord of Rings but terminator? We can go on...I can open my closet of guilty pleasures too but it wont be a pretty sight!
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rischka
21May13
this 'exterior night' sounds fantastic! where did u see this?? also, i submitted that cottafavi to the database as it didn't look like anyone else has
Aguaespejo likes this
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Aguaespejo
21May13
I saw it on Fandor, but its on KG I think. Its great! Its so amateurish yet so effective at the same time...I was hooked! Thanks so much for doing that. If I knew how to attach stills I'd submit more...I need to figure out how to do that...
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Aguaespejo
21May13
OK Thanks! Ill investigate tinypic. I figured out how to do the screenshots...its the how to actually attach it to a MUBI post that I need to figure out...(What's the code to attach a pic from a hyperlink on MUBI forum by the way? When I removed the pic from my profile, I lost it)... And definitely do try and see Exterior Night. I'd love to know what you think...its very bizarre..very camp yet very compelling at the same time..Its definitely up your alley... Me I'll take a good Western over a film noir anyday and a good screwball comedy over both of those ;)
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Shamus-
20May13
By the way, you read Portuguese, right? Forgot to ask you this (I keep thinking of as this Tamilian) but here's what I wrote on my latest follower's wall on Pessoa's Book of Disquiet. Can you help me out here (no rush, though)- "I have Margaret Jull Costa's translation of 'Desassossego', and it is clearly superior to Zenith's more banal attempt (I've compared the two, side-by-side- the choices Costa makes are strikingly superior). Problem is, Costa's version has a much smaller selection of the book whereas Zenith's book has a vaster number of extracts. And Costa has not translated the poems- Zenith has and I think the poems seem much less exciting than they might otherwise be. It's enough to drive you crazy- have you read Pessoa in English? Do you recommend any better translations?"
Bitė likes this
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Shamus-
20May13
There can't be enough people loving Pessoa, Bite- he is a very strange writer- the only one who can actually talk about something called the 'soul'- when I read him, it's often as though he's expressed my very thoughts and rendered them articulately and poetically. It's strange but also comforting.
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Aguaespejo
20May13
I dont read Portuguese. Though given my love for Pessoa and Machado de Assis and my new found love for Manoel de Oliveira maybe I should learn.
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Aguaespejo
20May13
The only three translations I know are Honig/Brown, Jull Costa and Zenith. The Maritime Ode by Alvaro de Campos in Honig/Brown is quite fantastic, more in the overall phrase structure and rhythm than at the micro word for word level. ...Dont know if this helps...
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Aguaespejo
20May13
The Rabassa and Helen Lane both have their strengths and weaknesses depending on your preference...the former is supposedly more true to the language at the micro-level of de Assis while Lane reads more fluently (which is not necessarily as bad a thing as say Garnett's translation of Dostoevky, since the de Assisian irony benefits from a smooth unruffled surface)...
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Shamus-
20May13
Oh, didn't see that earlier post, Agua. I need to get the Honig/Brown version of Pessoa's poems, then. Thanks... Rabassa appears to be going pretty smooth as well- I read 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' a long time ago and I've been a fan of Rabassa's since then. As for Russian translations, I'm really starting to dislike Pevear-Volokhonsky- I read about 500 pages of their 'Anna Karenina' before I set it aside and picked up one of those old Soviet translations I own. It might not be as accurate but PV's deliberate stylistic blemishes was driving me mad.
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Aguaespejo
20May13
Oops I made a mistake Shamus. Helen Lane and John Gledson (not Rabassa) translated Casmurro not Bras Cubas. For some reason I had Casmurro (my personal favorite) in mind.For Bras Cubas Rabassa is best; the other out there is a travesty (which I guess you can guess from the translation of the title as "Epitaph of a Small WInner" Hunh?) If Anna Karenina by PV was driving you mad, try their Demons...will drive you batshit crazy
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Shamus-
20May13
Yes, well... I ordered the Lola copy of 'Casmurro'- the one by Gledson (even though I haven't read 'Bras Cubas'...) And you feel that way about PV also? Good. Their 'universal acclaim' and all, I thought there were no detractors. I have 'Demons' but not their version- I've learned. You may have already come across this, but what the hell- http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/nov/06/doctor-zhivago-boris-pasternak-translation
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Aguaespejo
21May13
Thanks for the Guardian article Shamus. I hadn't come across it. Pasternak's poems from My Sister: Life are some of my absolute favourites...belong to that special subset of poetry that can induce an ecstatic celebration of living. Necessary antidote to the darker ambiguities of a Pessoa! I haven't read Zhivago. Is it worth reading?
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Aguaespejo
22May13
Well I gave up after my second attempt which is why I asked. Seemed so much less vital compared to his poems, but it was probably wrong to keep his poems in view anyway...
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Shamus-
22May13
Nor have I, Rischka. I was always interrupted- and I have tried numerous times- I rented the dics twice but on both occasions the second disc refused to play. It used air very often when we still had TCM but I never got around to watching it, except once. I saw a little about 40 minutes, it was pretty depressing / horrifying. Every reaction of the viewer is coded into the texture of the film- it 'tells' you how to react to everything, in its extremely self-consciousness, big budget art movie kind of way. Anyway, it was bad and I turned it off... The novel is absolutely nothing like that, *needless* to say.
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Favorite Auteurs
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Wants To Watch
Displaying 4 of 71 films
Reviews
Displaying 2 of 2 reviews.
The Woman in the Window
There have been quite a few complaints about the “cliched” end so i thought I would add my bit. I feel indeed that this is one of the very few movies in which this particular cliche is rejuvenated… read review
Laura
Wonderful! A murder mystery and psychosexual melodrama. Can’t help feeling that Clifton Webb is indeed one step ahead of his audience about everything (his opinion of the detective in the end seem… read review
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