my favourites as a child, watched in theatres &/ or whenever they were on television (this was long before i had access to a VCR):
2001: A Space Odyssey (saw the theatrical re-release when i was 5; i suppose that set the tone for what was to follow)
Planet of the Apes (the whole series except the 5th – which i now enjoy, but especially the first and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes
Young Frankenstien (1st film i saw 3 times in the theatre)
Flash Gordon (1980; 2nd film i saw 3 times in the theatre)
The Exorcist (a big event when my family huddled together to watch the TV premiere)
Soylent Green
any Woody Allen movie that came on TV (though i’m not much of a fan of his anymore)
The Empire Strikes Back
Logan’s Run
High Plains Drifter
to Clare Nina: the Exorcist, even edited for network TV (though not as much as it might be now) did scare the living hell out of me (no pun intended). i watched it every time it came on TV & it frightened me. when i finally got around to renting it & seeing it uncut, i taped it. by then i was no longer a child, but it still crept me out in places. i bought the ‘Version You’ve Never Seen’ cut on DVD when it came out, having missed it in the theatre. by this time i was over 30 & had seen the “version i had seen” at least a dozen times, plus other, more intense films since, so i could handle it better. but look how many times it took – and only 20 years!
another movie i was obsessed with as a young child was King Kong. as a pre-teen i was pretty damned obsessed with Superman the Movie & Superman II, as well as the Star Trek movies. i was also rather young when i first saw Psycho – uncut – on late night TV (my father swore it was missing nude shots & knife penetration from when he saw it in the theatre, but i later realized Hitchcock’s power of suggestion had worked as well on my father as it had millions of other moviegoers). that one unsettled me bigtime but, once again, every time i knew it would be on, i made a point to watch it…
this is one of the worst ideas (and there are many, many of them) to ooze out of Hollywood ever. maybe Zoe Lund’s spirit will appear in the nun get up and destroy them all the first day of shooting (and let Ferrara shoot it from a safe distance).
i’m currently juggling my 2nd viewing of Fukasaku’s Battles Without Honor & Humanity (Yakuza papers Vol. 1) and my 3rd viewing of Richard Stanley’s Dust Devil. my high esteem for both continues to grow…
Oscar nominations that should have been in a perfect world:
Best Actor – John Heard, Cutter’s Way; Jeremy Irons, Dead Ringers; Tony Leung, 2046; Hugh Jackman, The Fountain; Paul Giamatti, American Splendor; Christopher Walken, The Dead Zone; Harvey Keitel, The Bad Lieutenant; John Hurt, 1984
Best Actress – Maggie Gyllenhall, Secretary; Maggie Cheung, Clean; Samantha Morton, Morvern Callar; Theresa Russell, Bad Timing; Laura Dern, INLAND EMPIRE; Isabelle Adjani, Possession
Best Foreign Film – 2046, Possession, Querelle
Best Picture – The Fountain, Last Tango in Paris, INLAND EMPIRE
Best Special FX/ Visual FX – any or all of the 3 X-Men films
Best Director – any nod at all for Alejandro Jodorowsky, Pier Paolo Pasolini, or Dusan Makavejev
and many editors & cinematographers have been neglected. i could go on & on… but since i feel the Oscars are a joke anyway..
anyone please feel free to correct me if any of the above were nominated & i’m in error.
Oscar nominations that should have been in a perfect world:
Best Actor – John Heard, Cutter’s Way; Jeremy Irons, Dead Ringers; Tony Leung, 2046; Hugh Jackman, The Fountain; Paul Giamatti, American Splendor; Christopher Walken, The Dead Zone; Harvey Keitel, The Bad Lieutenant; John Hurt, 1984
Best Actress – Maggie Gyllenhall, Secretary; Maggie Cheung, Clean; Samantha Morton, Morvern Callar; Theresa Russell, Bad Timing; Laura Dern, INLAND EMPIRE; Isabelle Adjani, Possession
Best Foreign Film – 2046, Possession, Querelle
Best Picture – The Fountain, Last Tango in Paris, INLAND EMPIRE
Best Special FX/ Visual FX – any or all of the 3 X-Men films
Best Director – any nod at all for Alejandro Jodorowsky, Pier Paolo Pasolini, or Dusan Makavejev
and many editors & cinematographers have been neglected. i could go on & on… but since i feel the Oscars are a joke anyway..
anyone please feel free to correct me if any of the above were nominated & i’m in error.
Oscar nominations that should have been in a perfect world:
Best Actor – John Heard, Cutter’s Way; Jeremy Irons, Dead Ringers; Tony Leung, 2046; Hugh Jackman, The Fountain; Paul Giamatti, American Splendor; Christopher Walken, The Dead Zone; Harvey Keitel, The Bad Lieutenant; John Hurt, 1984
Best Actress – Maggie Gyllenhall, Secretary; Maggie Cheung, Clean; Samantha Morton, Morvern Callar; Theresa Russell, Bad Timing; Laura Dern, INLAND EMPIRE; Isabelle Adjani, Possession
Best Foreign Film – 2046, Possession, Querelle
Best Picture – The Fountain, Last Tango in Paris, INLAND EMPIRE
Best Special FX/ Visual FX – any or all of the 3 X-Men films
Best Director – any nod at all for Alejandro Jodorowsky, Pier Paolo Pasolini, or Dusan Makavejev
and many editors & cinematographers have been neglected. i could go on & on… but since i feel the Oscars are a joke anyway..
anyone please feel free to correct me if any of the above were nominated & i’m in error.
just rewatched Bowling for Columbine; Heston was scary. but i’ve loved him as an actor my whole life. Moses, El Cid, Taylor, Thorne, Neville, Vargas, Dundee, Colby… he was great as all those & more…
Kurt Kren is awesome, as is Otto Muehl. they’ll definitely make you forget Miike in terms of shock value. EYE Magazine published a long essay i wrote on the Aktionists in 1997. i’m posting it on my blog soon. that was before i’d seen every film. i now have all of them.. except Rudolf Schwartzkogler’s Self-Mutilation.. which is as blunt as truth in advertising for a film is likely to get it seems. anyone have a copy?
Muehl, Kren, & co-conspirator Otmar Bauer are also in my all-time favourite film, Sweet Movie.
yr the 1st cat on Auteurs & the first (of many, many) folks over 15 years to comment to me on Muehl, Pasolini, & Makavejev, & manage to offend me with yr comments on all 3, so, a (semi-) apology for the following:
i wrote a lengthy Sweet Movie essay years ago (Video Eyeball, Vol. 2 No 2, 1998) which Makavejev himself amazingly loved. i also wrote a lengthy piece on the Aktionists (EYE Magazine Fall 1998), which was well-reviewed by the NYT when there was a Aktionist exhibit in
NYC, and a i penned a piece on Pasolini’s more extreme work (Video Eyeball, Vol. 2, No.3, 1998).
i find yr comments ill-thought out. and yr information and context you provide exceptionally poorly-researched. you’re spewing forth purely visceral reactions, why not just leave it at that instead of deriding these filmmakers by questioning “whether it’s art”?
Sweet Movie was never “hip” til Criterion released it last year & it was reviewed all over the web. have you watched Makavejev’s or Pasolini’s other films? if you believe in free expression, then it doesn’t matter whether you “call it art” or not. and if you truly believe in it, it shouldn’t concern or offend you that many (including myself) do.
if you really want answers to these questions beyond “this is gross, i don’t like it, why does it exist, i don’t have to call it art – but hey, i’m all for free expression!… except..” (all completely valid 7 totally subjective reactions), real sociological answers to yr questions about what & why these horrid things (to you; some to me as well – i still call it art though) are on film… you’d do well to read my thoughts on the matter.
seriously, as not all reviews from hard copy mags have been transcribed to my blogs yet (though my sweet Movie piece [which you’d doubtfully read’’…] is), i think you’d really do well to research the lives of Pasolini, Makavejev, & Muehl – the cultures & conditions they grew up in, the significance of their work in socio-economic, political, and psychological terms. the thread or timeline you try to assemble to sort through this “what next” argument i covered in my Aktionist essay & others have done so as well (more eloquently than i) is way off. trace the history of extreme art, performance art…. are you familiar with the dads movement/ Yves klien? do you realize Hermann Nitsch began actionism performance in the mid-50s? do you know why? do you know what Otto Muehl’s life in the 40s was like? do you know about a young Dusan Makavejev co-founding the trremendously influencial Yugoslavian ‘new film’ movement around 1957? did you know Otto Muehl & Kurt Kren began making these films in 1959, well before Makavejev & a few years before Pasolini? you implu Muehl & Makavejev were cinematic contemporaries. they weren’t. Muehl & Kren had all but finished making the films by the time they appeared in Sweet Movie in 1974. you know Pasolini was a Catholic Marxist homosexual tormented endlessly by the Pope for the same subtle anti-clericism Bunuel was famed for at the same time? only then did Pasolini go all out extreme – but still his films were impeccably crafted. read the crew list on salo & tell how many work on major Hollywood films today – no less than 4. and speaking of Bunuel, you do know he made anti-clerical fims starting in 1930 with L’Age D’Or right? and he slit a pig’s eye for Un Chien Andalou in the Roaring 20s?
Muehl 7 Kren’s films 9you do know Kurt Kren actually directed most of them, right) were NEVER in thousands of theatres. those You Tube boots are probably the most they’ve EVER been scene. Sweet Movie did NOT play 1000s of theatres. maybe worldwide for a few weeks in 1975. a flick like DARK KNIGHT never reached 4500 theatres in the US nowadays. what are you talking about??
i think you are most certainly in need of vast gobs of clarification. you’re arguing from a position of weekness, like a crazed Bible-thumper.
just say “i hated it” and drop the faux need to “see what yr missing”, because with yr approach the more you try, the more you’ll continue to miss it. you admitted you don’t have the stomach for it & i’m 100% understanding of that. but yr misinformed & disinforming (to other readers here) rant prove you don’t have the intellectual rigor or grasp on this topic.
to Kid Law – Sweet Movie is NOT a film about vomit, or distributing it as art. SM provokes very subjective reactions; best to watch it yrself &/ or at the very least bear in mind that is ONE scene (and it is gross). but man if that becomes a benchmark for avoiding a movie, we’re all gonna be missing a lot of great movies because of “that scene” . "damn! why did i waste my time with Oldboy & Irreversible? those “one scenes” ruined the film for me"
Best soundtrack of 2007 about 4 years ago
INLAND EMPIRE
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TOP 5 Childhood Films about 4 years ago
my favourites as a child, watched in theatres &/ or whenever they were on television (this was long before i had access to a VCR):
2001: A Space Odyssey (saw the theatrical re-release when i was 5; i suppose that set the tone for what was to follow)
Planet of the Apes (the whole series except the 5th – which i now enjoy, but especially the first and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes
Young Frankenstien (1st film i saw 3 times in the theatre)
Flash Gordon (1980; 2nd film i saw 3 times in the theatre)
The Exorcist (a big event when my family huddled together to watch the TV premiere)
Soylent Green
any Woody Allen movie that came on TV (though i’m not much of a fan of his anymore)
The Empire Strikes Back
Logan’s Run
High Plains Drifter
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TOP 5 Childhood Films about 4 years ago
… in a good way though, i guess. i didn’t understand it at that age, but i did really enjoy it. a harbinger of things to come…
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TOP 5 Childhood Films about 4 years ago
to Clare Nina: the Exorcist, even edited for network TV (though not as much as it might be now) did scare the living hell out of me (no pun intended). i watched it every time it came on TV & it frightened me. when i finally got around to renting it & seeing it uncut, i taped it. by then i was no longer a child, but it still crept me out in places. i bought the ‘Version You’ve Never Seen’ cut on DVD when it came out, having missed it in the theatre. by this time i was over 30 & had seen the “version i had seen” at least a dozen times, plus other, more intense films since, so i could handle it better. but look how many times it took – and only 20 years!
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TOP 5 Childhood Films about 4 years ago
another movie i was obsessed with as a young child was King Kong. as a pre-teen i was pretty damned obsessed with Superman the Movie & Superman II, as well as the Star Trek movies. i was also rather young when i first saw Psycho – uncut – on late night TV (my father swore it was missing nude shots & knife penetration from when he saw it in the theatre, but i later realized Hitchcock’s power of suggestion had worked as well on my father as it had millions of other moviegoers). that one unsettled me bigtime but, once again, every time i knew it would be on, i made a point to watch it…
Go to Comment
Bad Lieutenant Remake almost 4 years ago
this is one of the worst ideas (and there are many, many of them) to ooze out of Hollywood ever. maybe Zoe Lund’s spirit will appear in the nun get up and destroy them all the first day of shooting (and let Ferrara shoot it from a safe distance).
Go to Comment
What are you watching now? over 3 years ago
i’m currently juggling my 2nd viewing of Fukasaku’s Battles Without Honor & Humanity (Yakuza papers Vol. 1) and my 3rd viewing of Richard Stanley’s Dust Devil. my high esteem for both continues to grow…
Go to Comment
most overrated oscar performances or robberies over 3 years ago
Oscar nominations that should have been in a perfect world:
Best Actor – John Heard, Cutter’s Way; Jeremy Irons, Dead Ringers; Tony Leung, 2046; Hugh Jackman, The Fountain; Paul Giamatti, American Splendor; Christopher Walken, The Dead Zone; Harvey Keitel, The Bad Lieutenant; John Hurt, 1984
Best Actress – Maggie Gyllenhall, Secretary; Maggie Cheung, Clean; Samantha Morton, Morvern Callar; Theresa Russell, Bad Timing; Laura Dern, INLAND EMPIRE; Isabelle Adjani, Possession
Best Foreign Film – 2046, Possession, Querelle
Best Picture – The Fountain, Last Tango in Paris, INLAND EMPIRE
Best Special FX/ Visual FX – any or all of the 3 X-Men films
Best Director – any nod at all for Alejandro Jodorowsky, Pier Paolo Pasolini, or Dusan Makavejev
and many editors & cinematographers have been neglected. i could go on & on… but since i feel the Oscars are a joke anyway..
anyone please feel free to correct me if any of the above were nominated & i’m in error.
Go to Comment
most overrated oscar performances or robberies over 3 years ago
Oscar nominations that should have been in a perfect world:
Best Actor – John Heard, Cutter’s Way; Jeremy Irons, Dead Ringers; Tony Leung, 2046; Hugh Jackman, The Fountain; Paul Giamatti, American Splendor; Christopher Walken, The Dead Zone; Harvey Keitel, The Bad Lieutenant; John Hurt, 1984
Best Actress – Maggie Gyllenhall, Secretary; Maggie Cheung, Clean; Samantha Morton, Morvern Callar; Theresa Russell, Bad Timing; Laura Dern, INLAND EMPIRE; Isabelle Adjani, Possession
Best Foreign Film – 2046, Possession, Querelle
Best Picture – The Fountain, Last Tango in Paris, INLAND EMPIRE
Best Special FX/ Visual FX – any or all of the 3 X-Men films
Best Director – any nod at all for Alejandro Jodorowsky, Pier Paolo Pasolini, or Dusan Makavejev
and many editors & cinematographers have been neglected. i could go on & on… but since i feel the Oscars are a joke anyway..
anyone please feel free to correct me if any of the above were nominated & i’m in error.
Go to Comment
most overrated oscar performances or robberies over 3 years ago
Oscar nominations that should have been in a perfect world:
Best Actor – John Heard, Cutter’s Way; Jeremy Irons, Dead Ringers; Tony Leung, 2046; Hugh Jackman, The Fountain; Paul Giamatti, American Splendor; Christopher Walken, The Dead Zone; Harvey Keitel, The Bad Lieutenant; John Hurt, 1984
Best Actress – Maggie Gyllenhall, Secretary; Maggie Cheung, Clean; Samantha Morton, Morvern Callar; Theresa Russell, Bad Timing; Laura Dern, INLAND EMPIRE; Isabelle Adjani, Possession
Best Foreign Film – 2046, Possession, Querelle
Best Picture – The Fountain, Last Tango in Paris, INLAND EMPIRE
Best Special FX/ Visual FX – any or all of the 3 X-Men films
Best Director – any nod at all for Alejandro Jodorowsky, Pier Paolo Pasolini, or Dusan Makavejev
and many editors & cinematographers have been neglected. i could go on & on… but since i feel the Oscars are a joke anyway..
anyone please feel free to correct me if any of the above were nominated & i’m in error.
Go to Comment
Charlton Heston over 3 years ago
just rewatched Bowling for Columbine; Heston was scary. but i’ve loved him as an actor my whole life. Moses, El Cid, Taylor, Thorne, Neville, Vargas, Dundee, Colby… he was great as all those & more…
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Charlton Heston over 3 years ago
oops. i can’t delete my duplicates!
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You put Visitor Q in the DVD player to clear a room. over 3 years ago
Kurt Kren is awesome, as is Otto Muehl. they’ll definitely make you forget Miike in terms of shock value. EYE Magazine published a long essay i wrote on the Aktionists in 1997. i’m posting it on my blog soon. that was before i’d seen every film. i now have all of them.. except Rudolf Schwartzkogler’s Self-Mutilation.. which is as blunt as truth in advertising for a film is likely to get it seems. anyone have a copy?
Muehl, Kren, & co-conspirator Otmar Bauer are also in my all-time favourite film, Sweet Movie.
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Films that are better than the books that they are are based on over 3 years ago
they’re both based on comix, but the X-Men films & especially Oldboy are both vast improvements on already strong premises.
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QUENTIN TARANTINO over 3 years ago
this topic is always a minefield….
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Perversity Is a Matter of Perspective over 3 years ago
Mao,
yr the 1st cat on Auteurs & the first (of many, many) folks over 15 years to comment to me on Muehl, Pasolini, & Makavejev, & manage to offend me with yr comments on all 3, so, a (semi-) apology for the following:
i wrote a lengthy Sweet Movie essay years ago (Video Eyeball, Vol. 2 No 2, 1998) which Makavejev himself amazingly loved. i also wrote a lengthy piece on the Aktionists (EYE Magazine Fall 1998), which was well-reviewed by the NYT when there was a Aktionist exhibit in
NYC, and a i penned a piece on Pasolini’s more extreme work (Video Eyeball, Vol. 2, No.3, 1998).
i find yr comments ill-thought out. and yr information and context you provide exceptionally poorly-researched. you’re spewing forth purely visceral reactions, why not just leave it at that instead of deriding these filmmakers by questioning “whether it’s art”?
Sweet Movie was never “hip” til Criterion released it last year & it was reviewed all over the web. have you watched Makavejev’s or Pasolini’s other films? if you believe in free expression, then it doesn’t matter whether you “call it art” or not. and if you truly believe in it, it shouldn’t concern or offend you that many (including myself) do.
if you really want answers to these questions beyond “this is gross, i don’t like it, why does it exist, i don’t have to call it art – but hey, i’m all for free expression!… except..” (all completely valid 7 totally subjective reactions), real sociological answers to yr questions about what & why these horrid things (to you; some to me as well – i still call it art though) are on film… you’d do well to read my thoughts on the matter.
seriously, as not all reviews from hard copy mags have been transcribed to my blogs yet (though my sweet Movie piece [which you’d doubtfully read’’…] is), i think you’d really do well to research the lives of Pasolini, Makavejev, & Muehl – the cultures & conditions they grew up in, the significance of their work in socio-economic, political, and psychological terms. the thread or timeline you try to assemble to sort through this “what next” argument i covered in my Aktionist essay & others have done so as well (more eloquently than i) is way off. trace the history of extreme art, performance art…. are you familiar with the dads movement/ Yves klien? do you realize Hermann Nitsch began actionism performance in the mid-50s? do you know why? do you know what Otto Muehl’s life in the 40s was like? do you know about a young Dusan Makavejev co-founding the trremendously influencial Yugoslavian ‘new film’ movement around 1957? did you know Otto Muehl & Kurt Kren began making these films in 1959, well before Makavejev & a few years before Pasolini? you implu Muehl & Makavejev were cinematic contemporaries. they weren’t. Muehl & Kren had all but finished making the films by the time they appeared in Sweet Movie in 1974. you know Pasolini was a Catholic Marxist homosexual tormented endlessly by the Pope for the same subtle anti-clericism Bunuel was famed for at the same time? only then did Pasolini go all out extreme – but still his films were impeccably crafted. read the crew list on salo & tell how many work on major Hollywood films today – no less than 4. and speaking of Bunuel, you do know he made anti-clerical fims starting in 1930 with L’Age D’Or right? and he slit a pig’s eye for Un Chien Andalou in the Roaring 20s?
Muehl 7 Kren’s films 9you do know Kurt Kren actually directed most of them, right) were NEVER in thousands of theatres. those You Tube boots are probably the most they’ve EVER been scene. Sweet Movie did NOT play 1000s of theatres. maybe worldwide for a few weeks in 1975. a flick like DARK KNIGHT never reached 4500 theatres in the US nowadays. what are you talking about??
i think you are most certainly in need of vast gobs of clarification. you’re arguing from a position of weekness, like a crazed Bible-thumper.
just say “i hated it” and drop the faux need to “see what yr missing”, because with yr approach the more you try, the more you’ll continue to miss it. you admitted you don’t have the stomach for it & i’m 100% understanding of that. but yr misinformed & disinforming (to other readers here) rant prove you don’t have the intellectual rigor or grasp on this topic.
to Kid Law – Sweet Movie is NOT a film about vomit, or distributing it as art. SM provokes very subjective reactions; best to watch it yrself &/ or at the very least bear in mind that is ONE scene (and it is gross). but man if that becomes a benchmark for avoiding a movie, we’re all gonna be missing a lot of great movies because of “that scene” . "damn! why did i waste my time with Oldboy & Irreversible? those “one scenes” ruined the film for me"
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Perversity Is a Matter of Perspective over 3 years ago
excuse my typos above. and i meant ‘dada movement’, not ’dad’s movement’.
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Best of Animation over 3 years ago
Broncstud: Bakshi’s definitely one of my favourite filmmakers. Heavy Traffic is my favourite film of his.
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