I’ll echo the Vertigo sentiments. I think that if there’s one movie that will topple Kane, it’s Hitchcock’s long-unknown classic. Vertigo has been picking up steam ever since it was rediscovered by the cinema world after Hitchcock’s death, and already it’s topped some lists.
But I don’t think that Kane will be going anywhere for a while.
I actually think this might dilute the marketing prestige, however. As stated in the New York Times coverage of this change, marketers for Academy Award nominees will have a harder time making their particular product stick out out 10 titles instead of 5.
I have mixed feelings about the entire change. While it might be nice to see some lesser-known titles make the running, I can imagine it becoming a place for “pity” and “obligatory” votes as well.
Some of you have not seen nearly enough poor cinema. Thank yourselves lucky, because some of the films listed here are pure cinema gold (and some are genuine classics!) compared to come of the absolute horrors I’ve sat through.
In no particular order:
- Epic Movie (take everything awful about modern-day epic films, parody them, and create a monstrosity)
- The Cheetah Girls (Don’t even get me started on this one. Matching costumes, awful dialogue, and an ending that cannot be believed: all of New York City stops and waits in suspense as four girls attempt to rescue a dog)
- Halloween: Resurrection (hilarious in all the worst ways possible)
- Deuce Bigalow: European Gigalow (I wish I could unsee this one)
- Manos: Hands of Fate (flies hitting the camera, the worst costumes and camera angles known to man, a complete lot of any semblance of plot)
- A Cinderella Story (Hillary Duff and Co. take the tween romance to new lows in this saccharine, pitiful film)
Although I don’t think it was AS bad as the rest of the lot, Indy 4 was a pretty awful flick. Any of Uwe Boll’s movies deserve special mention as well, for being face-meltingly-awful.
I watched The Cranes are Flying and Capturing the Friedmans today. Cranes was absolutely beautiful and heart-breaking in all the right ways, and the Friedmans was a great documentary rendering of how elusive and subjective the truth really is.
Aaron, while I can understand your sentiment, I don’t think expectations have much to do with how terrible a movie is. I certainly didn’t expect A Cinderella Story (or any other movie on that list) to be a motion picture classic. I think that disappointment can factor a lot into how one feels overall about a movie. But even if you hate a film like Crash or Forrest Gump, objectively they don’t even come close to being as horrible as Deuce Biaglow. I knew that each movie I listed was going to be terrible, and then each film on my list exceeded my worst expectations.
I do agree that H:R and Manos are entertaining on an extremely base level. But I do have to argue against your assessment that these films are forgettable – see The Cheetah Girls once with a few very young nieces, and the images will remained seared onto your retinas for quite some time. :)
I nearly fell asleep at a midnight showing of Kingdom of Heaven that I was dragged to by a few friends.
The only movie I fell asleep watching was at home, and it was No Country For Old Men. I dozed off for the last ten minutes or so, and woke up for the last scene, without the faintest idea what had transpired. I had to rewatch the last half hour the next day.
I don’t think that anything should be banned. However, to Auteur, who said “Nothing should be banned. Not Nazi hate propaganda, not porn of any kind, not snuff movies”:
Witkacy, I agree with you. However, Auteur suggested that snuff movies shouldn’t be banned, which is the taping of actual murder, something that believe should be censored. I was wondering if his/her freedom of thought and expression extended to something like child pornography as well.
Transformers is based on an action toy and cartoon line that has a tremendous following in one of the target demographics: young males.
People tend to associate the films of the summer with loud, brawling action flicks. It’s sugar, empty calories, no matter how awful the film is.
I think everyone is underestimating the power of the average bored teenager. When there’s not much to do, and a big, loud movie like Transformers come out, people will go to see it. Even if the movie isn’t their thing, if they have one friend that suggests it, they’ll all flock to the cinema just to hang out on a weekend and spend some time with friends. People here rarely go to the movies alone. It’s a communal thing, and there’s power in the group. I think we’ve all gone to movies that we wouldn’t have normally chosen based on the picks of our other friends and family.
I’ve been to Tribeca Film Festival twice, and I really loved my experience with it. The first time I went was in 2004, and I only was able to take in two films. Last year, I actually saw eleven movies at Tribeca, including Let the Right One In, Idiots and Angels, Battle for Terra, Eden, Tropa de Elite, and a bunch that still deserve some sort of distribution (aka Love, Pain, and Viceversa, an intriguing film from Mexico). The number of people at Tribeca isn’t that daunting, but the program is huge and can be hard to navigate. I wasn’t able to take in any of the panel discussions, although I did make it a point to see a short collection as well as one of the many documentaries playing at Tribeca.
What I loved about Tribeca were the Q&A sessions after each of the screenings. It was great to be able to digest a film with the filmmakers, actors, and other cast and crew right after a viewing.
In New York City there are dozens upon dozens of small festivals all the time. The New York Asian Film Festival and the Hola Mexico Film Festival both are currently running, and Lincoln Center often has their own mini-festivals literally every day of the year. Not to mention the New York Film Festival and other biggies that come here. It’s great to live in such a large city that has a large group of cinephiles.
I love the cinematheque section of the website. I think it would be great to have all of the films available online that are selected, and there should be official forum threads that link directly into discussing the various collections. I think it’s great to rotate them in and out, and I love the fact that there are free movies to view. There should be more of this on the site.
I just saw Moon today, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I loved how at its essence, Moon boils down to a character study more than a science fiction film, exploring all the dimensions of the protagonist, Sam Bell. The minimalist and stark sets really complemented the feelings of loneliness and isolation a 3-year solitary mining contract would produce. I thought that Gerty would end up coming off as a HAL-lite, but Sam’s robotic companion had dimensions and personality that I didn’t expect. His little smiley expressions had us laughing through the film. I don’t think it’s the greatest film of 2009, but it’s a fine little picture, and extraordinarily created, considering the budget was a mere $5 million.
“id rather talk about obscure films and directors also. problem is, they’re obscure. not many people have seen them or heard of them, so the conversation gets limited from the start. not as many people can chime in with opinions. which is why we end up spinning our wheels about godard/bergman/fellini/tarkovsky over and over again, which is also bad.”
I think it might be a good idea to perhaps start some sort of personalized huge meta-recommendation thread, where people can say, “Hey, I’ve like this film and this film, and I’m looking for something similar…” or “Hey, I’d like to get into post-apocalyptic movies from the 1960s from France,” etc. etc., and then the other members of the forums will provide recommendations of some of the more obscure films. It might get people watching more, which, in turn, would get others talking about specific film.
I think another reason why discussion stagnates about specific movies (as opposed to IMdB) is that since many of the people here are well versed in filmic language and watch movies carefully, everyone “gets it” from the get-go. Most of the threads on big sites like IMdB boil down to, “I didn’t understand this aspect of the film, HELP.”
Perhaps we can start film clubs on the boards. Or have a thread exclusively discussing one of TheAuteurs’ cinematheques. The free ones are especially tempting, since everyone can watch every film in the collection without pay.
Just tossing out some ideas on how we can diversify the chatter here.
What I’ve found on this forum (having joined only a week or so ago) is a lot of complaining about the lack of intelligent discussion threads. And no one doing anything to change that.
As a new poster to this particular forum, I feel like I don’t have the confidence on my own opinions yet, or my footing within The Auteurs’ community to start new threads. Even for a film studies major who has poured over some of the more acclaimed movies of the years past, this forums at first seems daunting. There are people here that have watched more movies than I probably ever will, and are more educated on their favorite pasttime than some of us can ever hope to be.
For those complaining about how banal this forum has become, why not start new, thought-provoking threads? Instead of being negative, why not be positive?
I find it interesting that IFC just posted a Top 50 Greatest Trailers of All Time List:
http://www.ifc.com/news/2009/06/50-greatest-trailers.php
I thought that Garden State’s trailer was actually better than the movie itself.
The Shining’s trailer will go down as one of the best trailers in history.
And a personal favorite of mine, Citizen Kane’s playful trailer is so full of youthful energy and vitality from Orson Welles, it’s hard not to love it. He’s clearly excited about his first motion picture; you can hear it in his narration in this behind-the-scenes look at the Mercury Theater Group.
Bernard Herrmann is one of my favorites. His music for much of Hitchcock’s films fits so perfectly with the themes and moods of those particular movies. Vertigo’s main theme, in particular, has that hypnotic, spiraling quality that the movie’s main motifs and themes of madness reflect.
List threads can be interesting when they’re taken beyond the idea of a list.
When people simply list two or three movies in a row, it’s a tiresome exercises. When people list those movies, and provide paragraph-long+ anecdotes and commentary, all of a sudden the list thread can be a very interesting mechanism for debate and discussion.
More often than not the “Why?” question is missing in many of the list threads.
I agree with Lona. It’s actually more difficult to think of something as “foreign” that’s in your own language. To further back up her point, Maria Full of Grace is a film that constantly gets me confused. I always think of it as foreign, even though it was jointly produced between Columbia and the United States, therefore making it partially domestic.
Hollywood has always been a huge, dominant force in the world cinema scene. America’s films have forced their way into other people’s cultures, whether we like it or not, and therefore, everything other than a movie in English is “foreign.”
I’m interested – do people from countries outside of America call American films “foreign films,” or “American films?”
Another thing I’d like to bring up, that’s a bit tangential, but interesting nonetheless.
There’s a lot of hate around these parts of the “gateway films,” as I’d like to call them. The American pseudo-mainstream cult cinema that actually gets people interested in higher intellectual film in the first place. I know plenty of college and high school students that made their way into art, indie, and world cinema after watching and loving movies from Tarantino, Tim Burton, Donnie Darko, etc. etc. Even if you hate them, they do offer more of an exploratory experience than the typical Hollywood movie. I know that Slumdog Millionaire gets a lot of flack on these forums, but it was a movie that won the Academy that predominantly had subtitles! And a lot of mainstream America watched it!
I think after the mini-article in Wired talking about this website, as well as more publicity of the website as a whole, we’re going to have a larger influx of people who love these “gateway films” and might be interested in diving a bit deeper into cinema on the whole. And a lot of the “hate” and “cringe” threads might scare them off. I feel like there’s an overwhelming aura of negativity around this site. What makes it worse is that “hate” threads often are list threads, without any meaningful critique or reasons why a poster hates the film they listed. Someone genuinely curious about getting into film might hit these threads and deactivate their account.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t rant about movies we don’t like, or pander to this new audience. I’m just saying that those rants should be backed up by critique. By discussion, even. By meaningful opinion and commentary. Just saying, “Wahhh, I hate Crash because it’s pretentious garbage blahblahblah,” is not a good jump-point for a debate or interesting conversation.
I’d had to say 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days. Although parts of the movie do take place during the daytime, a large amount of the film is centered on the harrowing nocturnal journey of two girls and an illegal abortion in Communist Romania.
I think there’s plenty to love about Sunrise. The camerawork, especially. A lot of the shots and tracking movements in Sunrise seem almost Steadicam-like in flow. There was a tremendous amount of invention and artistry going on behind the surface for those poetic takes. I’ve always been fond for Murnau’s ability to tell a wonderful story while foregoing intertitles. The Last Laugh has this, as does Sunrise.
I have mixed feeling about the dating sequence myself. Yes, it can drag for a bit, but I feel like it’s needed, to show the couple realizing what they had. The husband’s guilt, their shared love coming back to the surface… I just felt like the entire thing was really beautiful in execution.
What a horrific job they did cutting that trailer. It looks like a mess. And the climax of the thing, with the cuts to black screens… yeeesh. I don’t know the original film this is based on, but I’m a fan of Natalie Portman and Jake, so we’ll see what happens.
I have a fondness for Ebert. I definitely don’t agree with him all the time (Watchmen receives a four-star rating? Give me a break…), but he seems to have a genuine love of film. Something you don’t see much of anymore. His tastes are probably broader than a lot of other critics, but he still is one of the few that doesn’t seem jaded.
He gets a +10 in my book for including that hilarious Robot Chicken Michael Bay-a-thon clip at the bottom of his post.
Ettore Scala’s La familia is a little-known Italian flick that shows how a nuclear family grows, thrives and survives through several decades and generations. I’m also a big fan of Zhang Yimou’s To Live, which is one of those epic, generational sagas and details how a family a nuclear family manages their way through Mao’s reign and communism.
I’m a big fan of Zhang Yimou. In college, I took a class titled Chinese Film, and we got to view seven of his films. I actually haven’t seen Raise the Red Lantern, although everyone tells me I should.
Road Home, Not One Less, Ju Dou; they’re all very political. I’d even say that Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles has a social message behind it. Out of his newest movies, Hero is probably the only wuxia movie he’s made with some substance. I’m always amazed by his wonderful use of color. Take Road Home, for instance. The “present” in the storyline is black and white, the past, vivid color. For that film, which is loaded with political and social underpinnings, it works perfectly. Nobody can question the sheer visual beauty of the mise-en-scene in Zhang’s Hero and House of Flying Daggers.
My absolute favorite movie by him that I’ve seen is To Live. I’m so happy to see it being talked about on the boards a bit more. Even though it’s one of his best, I feel that so few people have actually watched it. It’s just epic, daring, heartbreaking. It punches you in the gut with raw honesty. When we screened it in our film class, people were gasping, crying, studying each shot. It was great.
I’m a big fan of Zhang Yimou. In college, I took a class titled Chinese Film, and we got to view seven of his films. I actually haven’t seen Raise the Red Lantern, although everyone tells me I should.
Road Home, Not One Less, Ju Dou; they’re all very political. I’d even say that Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles has a social message behind it. Out of his newest movies, Hero is probably the only wuxia movie he’s made with some substance. I’m always amazed by his wonderful use of color. Take Road Home, for instance. The “present” in the storyline is black and white, the past, vivid color. For that film, which is loaded with political and social underpinnings, it works perfectly. Nobody can question the sheer visual beauty of the mise-en-scene in Zhang’s Hero and House of Flying Daggers.
My absolute favorite movie by him that I’ve seen is To Live. I’m so happy to see it being talked about on the boards a bit more. Even though it’s one of his best, I feel that so few people have actually watched it. It’s just epic, daring, heartbreaking. It punches you in the gut with raw honesty. When we screened it in our film class, people were gasping, crying, studying each shot. It was great.
I myself am not the hugest fan of auteur theory. So many people go into the making of a film. And while some directors are involved so heavily in their work, that they could be the “author” of it, everyone always forgets everyone else that was involved in the project.
I think as movies get more and more expensive, and require more and more people to film, you’re going to lose more of the “auteur” sense in mainstream and even arthouse cinema. And maybe that’s not a bad thing. Film is a collaborative art; let’s appreciate it as such sometimes.
I don’t think there is. The two mediums are so incongruous in nature, and more often than not, the films are throwaway cash-ins just to make money for a particular franchise.
The only interesting video game movie I’ve seen is probably Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. It was pretty awful in a lot of ways, but it had some ambition. There was an extreme uncanny valley effect going on, however, and the film made so little money and cost so much that it nearly bankrupted Square Enix.
WHICH FILM WOULD TOP CITIZEN KANE ON THE AFI LIST IN THE FUTURE? IF ITS POSSIBLE almost 3 years ago
I’ll echo the Vertigo sentiments. I think that if there’s one movie that will topple Kane, it’s Hitchcock’s long-unknown classic. Vertigo has been picking up steam ever since it was rediscovered by the cinema world after Hitchcock’s death, and already it’s topped some lists.
But I don’t think that Kane will be going anywhere for a while.
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Oscar's Best Picture Nominees Will Expand to Ten almost 3 years ago
I actually think this might dilute the marketing prestige, however. As stated in the New York Times coverage of this change, marketers for Academy Award nominees will have a harder time making their particular product stick out out 10 titles instead of 5.
I have mixed feelings about the entire change. While it might be nice to see some lesser-known titles make the running, I can imagine it becoming a place for “pity” and “obligatory” votes as well.
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Ten Worst Movies You've Ever Seen? almost 3 years ago
Some of you have not seen nearly enough poor cinema. Thank yourselves lucky, because some of the films listed here are pure cinema gold (and some are genuine classics!) compared to come of the absolute horrors I’ve sat through.
In no particular order:
- Epic Movie (take everything awful about modern-day epic films, parody them, and create a monstrosity)
- The Cheetah Girls (Don’t even get me started on this one. Matching costumes, awful dialogue, and an ending that cannot be believed: all of New York City stops and waits in suspense as four girls attempt to rescue a dog)
- Halloween: Resurrection (hilarious in all the worst ways possible)
- Deuce Bigalow: European Gigalow (I wish I could unsee this one)
- Manos: Hands of Fate (flies hitting the camera, the worst costumes and camera angles known to man, a complete lot of any semblance of plot)
- A Cinderella Story (Hillary Duff and Co. take the tween romance to new lows in this saccharine, pitiful film)
Although I don’t think it was AS bad as the rest of the lot, Indy 4 was a pretty awful flick. Any of Uwe Boll’s movies deserve special mention as well, for being face-meltingly-awful.
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what did you watch today? almost 3 years ago
I watched The Cranes are Flying and Capturing the Friedmans today. Cranes was absolutely beautiful and heart-breaking in all the right ways, and the Friedmans was a great documentary rendering of how elusive and subjective the truth really is.
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Ten Worst Movies You've Ever Seen? almost 3 years ago
Aaron, while I can understand your sentiment, I don’t think expectations have much to do with how terrible a movie is. I certainly didn’t expect A Cinderella Story (or any other movie on that list) to be a motion picture classic. I think that disappointment can factor a lot into how one feels overall about a movie. But even if you hate a film like Crash or Forrest Gump, objectively they don’t even come close to being as horrible as Deuce Biaglow. I knew that each movie I listed was going to be terrible, and then each film on my list exceeded my worst expectations.
I do agree that H:R and Manos are entertaining on an extremely base level. But I do have to argue against your assessment that these films are forgettable – see The Cheetah Girls once with a few very young nieces, and the images will remained seared onto your retinas for quite some time. :)
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MOMENT OF TRUTH: HAVE YOU EVER GONE TO THE MOVIES AND FALLEN ASLEEP DURING THE FILM? almost 3 years ago
I nearly fell asleep at a midnight showing of Kingdom of Heaven that I was dragged to by a few friends.
The only movie I fell asleep watching was at home, and it was No Country For Old Men. I dozed off for the last ten minutes or so, and woke up for the last scene, without the faintest idea what had transpired. I had to rewatch the last half hour the next day.
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Should films and books be banned ? almost 3 years ago
I don’t think that anything should be banned. However, to Auteur, who said “Nothing should be banned. Not Nazi hate propaganda, not porn of any kind, not snuff movies”:
What about child pornography?
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Should films and books be banned ? almost 3 years ago
Witkacy, I agree with you. However, Auteur suggested that snuff movies shouldn’t be banned, which is the taping of actual murder, something that believe should be censored. I was wondering if his/her freedom of thought and expression extended to something like child pornography as well.
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Songs you strongly associate with certain films almost 3 years ago
“The Sound of Silence” – The Graduate
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Why is the public opinion so mixed up? almost 3 years ago
Transformers is based on an action toy and cartoon line that has a tremendous following in one of the target demographics: young males.
People tend to associate the films of the summer with loud, brawling action flicks. It’s sugar, empty calories, no matter how awful the film is.
I think everyone is underestimating the power of the average bored teenager. When there’s not much to do, and a big, loud movie like Transformers come out, people will go to see it. Even if the movie isn’t their thing, if they have one friend that suggests it, they’ll all flock to the cinema just to hang out on a weekend and spend some time with friends. People here rarely go to the movies alone. It’s a communal thing, and there’s power in the group. I think we’ve all gone to movies that we wouldn’t have normally chosen based on the picks of our other friends and family.
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Film Festival experiences... almost 3 years ago
I’ve been to Tribeca Film Festival twice, and I really loved my experience with it. The first time I went was in 2004, and I only was able to take in two films. Last year, I actually saw eleven movies at Tribeca, including Let the Right One In, Idiots and Angels, Battle for Terra, Eden, Tropa de Elite, and a bunch that still deserve some sort of distribution (aka Love, Pain, and Viceversa, an intriguing film from Mexico). The number of people at Tribeca isn’t that daunting, but the program is huge and can be hard to navigate. I wasn’t able to take in any of the panel discussions, although I did make it a point to see a short collection as well as one of the many documentaries playing at Tribeca.
What I loved about Tribeca were the Q&A sessions after each of the screenings. It was great to be able to digest a film with the filmmakers, actors, and other cast and crew right after a viewing.
In New York City there are dozens upon dozens of small festivals all the time. The New York Asian Film Festival and the Hola Mexico Film Festival both are currently running, and Lincoln Center often has their own mini-festivals literally every day of the year. Not to mention the New York Film Festival and other biggies that come here. It’s great to live in such a large city that has a large group of cinephiles.
I love the cinematheque section of the website. I think it would be great to have all of the films available online that are selected, and there should be official forum threads that link directly into discussing the various collections. I think it’s great to rotate them in and out, and I love the fact that there are free movies to view. There should be more of this on the site.
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Moon almost 3 years ago
I just saw Moon today, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I loved how at its essence, Moon boils down to a character study more than a science fiction film, exploring all the dimensions of the protagonist, Sam Bell. The minimalist and stark sets really complemented the feelings of loneliness and isolation a 3-year solitary mining contract would produce. I thought that Gerty would end up coming off as a HAL-lite, but Sam’s robotic companion had dimensions and personality that I didn’t expect. His little smiley expressions had us laughing through the film. I don’t think it’s the greatest film of 2009, but it’s a fine little picture, and extraordinarily created, considering the budget was a mere $5 million.
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ARE WE GETTING TIRED OF TALKING ABOUT HOLLYWOOD FILMS? almost 3 years ago
“id rather talk about obscure films and directors also. problem is, they’re obscure. not many people have seen them or heard of them, so the conversation gets limited from the start. not as many people can chime in with opinions. which is why we end up spinning our wheels about godard/bergman/fellini/tarkovsky over and over again, which is also bad.”
I think it might be a good idea to perhaps start some sort of personalized huge meta-recommendation thread, where people can say, “Hey, I’ve like this film and this film, and I’m looking for something similar…” or “Hey, I’d like to get into post-apocalyptic movies from the 1960s from France,” etc. etc., and then the other members of the forums will provide recommendations of some of the more obscure films. It might get people watching more, which, in turn, would get others talking about specific film.
I think another reason why discussion stagnates about specific movies (as opposed to IMdB) is that since many of the people here are well versed in filmic language and watch movies carefully, everyone “gets it” from the get-go. Most of the threads on big sites like IMdB boil down to, “I didn’t understand this aspect of the film, HELP.”
Perhaps we can start film clubs on the boards. Or have a thread exclusively discussing one of TheAuteurs’ cinematheques. The free ones are especially tempting, since everyone can watch every film in the collection without pay.
Just tossing out some ideas on how we can diversify the chatter here.
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ARE WE GETTING TIRED OF TALKING ABOUT HOLLYWOOD FILMS? almost 3 years ago
What I’ve found on this forum (having joined only a week or so ago) is a lot of complaining about the lack of intelligent discussion threads. And no one doing anything to change that.
As a new poster to this particular forum, I feel like I don’t have the confidence on my own opinions yet, or my footing within The Auteurs’ community to start new threads. Even for a film studies major who has poured over some of the more acclaimed movies of the years past, this forums at first seems daunting. There are people here that have watched more movies than I probably ever will, and are more educated on their favorite pasttime than some of us can ever hope to be.
For those complaining about how banal this forum has become, why not start new, thought-provoking threads? Instead of being negative, why not be positive?
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Can film trailers be an art themselves? almost 3 years ago
I find it interesting that IFC just posted a Top 50 Greatest Trailers of All Time List:
http://www.ifc.com/news/2009/06/50-greatest-trailers.php
I thought that Garden State’s trailer was actually better than the movie itself.
The Shining’s trailer will go down as one of the best trailers in history.
And a personal favorite of mine, Citizen Kane’s playful trailer is so full of youthful energy and vitality from Orson Welles, it’s hard not to love it. He’s clearly excited about his first motion picture; you can hear it in his narration in this behind-the-scenes look at the Mercury Theater Group.
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Who is the greatest film composer? almost 3 years ago
Bernard Herrmann is one of my favorites. His music for much of Hitchcock’s films fits so perfectly with the themes and moods of those particular movies. Vertigo’s main theme, in particular, has that hypnotic, spiraling quality that the movie’s main motifs and themes of madness reflect.
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ARE WE GETTING TIRED OF TALKING ABOUT HOLLYWOOD FILMS? almost 3 years ago
List threads can be interesting when they’re taken beyond the idea of a list.
When people simply list two or three movies in a row, it’s a tiresome exercises. When people list those movies, and provide paragraph-long+ anecdotes and commentary, all of a sudden the list thread can be a very interesting mechanism for debate and discussion.
More often than not the “Why?” question is missing in many of the list threads.
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WHAT DOES THE TERM "FOREIGN FILMS" MEAN TO ALL OF YOU? almost 3 years ago
I agree with Lona. It’s actually more difficult to think of something as “foreign” that’s in your own language. To further back up her point, Maria Full of Grace is a film that constantly gets me confused. I always think of it as foreign, even though it was jointly produced between Columbia and the United States, therefore making it partially domestic.
Hollywood has always been a huge, dominant force in the world cinema scene. America’s films have forced their way into other people’s cultures, whether we like it or not, and therefore, everything other than a movie in English is “foreign.”
I’m interested – do people from countries outside of America call American films “foreign films,” or “American films?”
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ARE WE GETTING TIRED OF TALKING ABOUT HOLLYWOOD FILMS? almost 3 years ago
Another thing I’d like to bring up, that’s a bit tangential, but interesting nonetheless.
There’s a lot of hate around these parts of the “gateway films,” as I’d like to call them. The American pseudo-mainstream cult cinema that actually gets people interested in higher intellectual film in the first place. I know plenty of college and high school students that made their way into art, indie, and world cinema after watching and loving movies from Tarantino, Tim Burton, Donnie Darko, etc. etc. Even if you hate them, they do offer more of an exploratory experience than the typical Hollywood movie. I know that Slumdog Millionaire gets a lot of flack on these forums, but it was a movie that won the Academy that predominantly had subtitles! And a lot of mainstream America watched it!
I think after the mini-article in Wired talking about this website, as well as more publicity of the website as a whole, we’re going to have a larger influx of people who love these “gateway films” and might be interested in diving a bit deeper into cinema on the whole. And a lot of the “hate” and “cringe” threads might scare them off. I feel like there’s an overwhelming aura of negativity around this site. What makes it worse is that “hate” threads often are list threads, without any meaningful critique or reasons why a poster hates the film they listed. Someone genuinely curious about getting into film might hit these threads and deactivate their account.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t rant about movies we don’t like, or pander to this new audience. I’m just saying that those rants should be backed up by critique. By discussion, even. By meaningful opinion and commentary. Just saying, “Wahhh, I hate Crash because it’s pretentious garbage blahblahblah,” is not a good jump-point for a debate or interesting conversation.
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Nocturnal Journeys almost 3 years ago
I’d had to say 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days. Although parts of the movie do take place during the daytime, a large amount of the film is centered on the harrowing nocturnal journey of two girls and an illegal abortion in Communist Romania.
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What should be the purpose of Film? almost 3 years ago
I don’t really think that film should have a purpose. It’s a medium. That’s like asking, what should the purpose of books be? Or of art, in general?
Film should just be the blank canvas upon which the creator creates. Simple as that, for me.
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SUNRISE almost 3 years ago
I think there’s plenty to love about Sunrise. The camerawork, especially. A lot of the shots and tracking movements in Sunrise seem almost Steadicam-like in flow. There was a tremendous amount of invention and artistry going on behind the surface for those poetic takes. I’ve always been fond for Murnau’s ability to tell a wonderful story while foregoing intertitles. The Last Laugh has this, as does Sunrise.
I have mixed feeling about the dating sequence myself. Yes, it can drag for a bit, but I feel like it’s needed, to show the couple realizing what they had. The husband’s guilt, their shared love coming back to the surface… I just felt like the entire thing was really beautiful in execution.
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Tati almost 3 years ago
Speaking of Tati, M. Hulot’s Holiday is on TCM today at 8:00 pm EST.
I haven’t seen any of his work.
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"Brothers" (2009, Jim Sheridan) trailer almost 3 years ago
What a horrific job they did cutting that trailer. It looks like a mess. And the climax of the thing, with the cuts to black screens… yeeesh. I don’t know the original film this is based on, but I’m a fan of Natalie Portman and Jake, so we’ll see what happens.
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Roger Ebert responds to people calling him 'Out of Touch' almost 3 years ago
I have a fondness for Ebert. I definitely don’t agree with him all the time (Watchmen receives a four-star rating? Give me a break…), but he seems to have a genuine love of film. Something you don’t see much of anymore. His tastes are probably broader than a lot of other critics, but he still is one of the few that doesn’t seem jaded.
He gets a +10 in my book for including that hilarious Robot Chicken Michael Bay-a-thon clip at the bottom of his post.
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What film(s) do you think perfectly (or imperfectly) represents the American nuclear family? almost 3 years ago
Ettore Scala’s La familia is a little-known Italian flick that shows how a nuclear family grows, thrives and survives through several decades and generations. I’m also a big fan of Zhang Yimou’s To Live, which is one of those epic, generational sagas and details how a family a nuclear family manages their way through Mao’s reign and communism.
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Yimou Zhang criticism and praise. almost 3 years ago
I’m a big fan of Zhang Yimou. In college, I took a class titled Chinese Film, and we got to view seven of his films. I actually haven’t seen Raise the Red Lantern, although everyone tells me I should.
Road Home, Not One Less, Ju Dou; they’re all very political. I’d even say that Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles has a social message behind it. Out of his newest movies, Hero is probably the only wuxia movie he’s made with some substance. I’m always amazed by his wonderful use of color. Take Road Home, for instance. The “present” in the storyline is black and white, the past, vivid color. For that film, which is loaded with political and social underpinnings, it works perfectly. Nobody can question the sheer visual beauty of the mise-en-scene in Zhang’s Hero and House of Flying Daggers.
My absolute favorite movie by him that I’ve seen is To Live. I’m so happy to see it being talked about on the boards a bit more. Even though it’s one of his best, I feel that so few people have actually watched it. It’s just epic, daring, heartbreaking. It punches you in the gut with raw honesty. When we screened it in our film class, people were gasping, crying, studying each shot. It was great.
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Yimou Zhang criticism and praise. almost 3 years ago
I’m a big fan of Zhang Yimou. In college, I took a class titled Chinese Film, and we got to view seven of his films. I actually haven’t seen Raise the Red Lantern, although everyone tells me I should.
Road Home, Not One Less, Ju Dou; they’re all very political. I’d even say that Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles has a social message behind it. Out of his newest movies, Hero is probably the only wuxia movie he’s made with some substance. I’m always amazed by his wonderful use of color. Take Road Home, for instance. The “present” in the storyline is black and white, the past, vivid color. For that film, which is loaded with political and social underpinnings, it works perfectly. Nobody can question the sheer visual beauty of the mise-en-scene in Zhang’s Hero and House of Flying Daggers.
My absolute favorite movie by him that I’ve seen is To Live. I’m so happy to see it being talked about on the boards a bit more. Even though it’s one of his best, I feel that so few people have actually watched it. It’s just epic, daring, heartbreaking. It punches you in the gut with raw honesty. When we screened it in our film class, people were gasping, crying, studying each shot. It was great.
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ARE THERE STILL GREAT AUTEURS? OR IS CINEMA ALREADY DRAWNED INTO OMOLOGATION? almost 3 years ago
I myself am not the hugest fan of auteur theory. So many people go into the making of a film. And while some directors are involved so heavily in their work, that they could be the “author” of it, everyone always forgets everyone else that was involved in the project.
I think as movies get more and more expensive, and require more and more people to film, you’re going to lose more of the “auteur” sense in mainstream and even arthouse cinema. And maybe that’s not a bad thing. Film is a collaborative art; let’s appreciate it as such sometimes.
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Is there such thing as a good video game movie? almost 3 years ago
I don’t think there is. The two mediums are so incongruous in nature, and more often than not, the films are throwaway cash-ins just to make money for a particular franchise.
The only interesting video game movie I’ve seen is probably Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. It was pretty awful in a lot of ways, but it had some ambition. There was an extreme uncanny valley effect going on, however, and the film made so little money and cost so much that it nearly bankrupted Square Enix.
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