The primary purpose of any commercial film, and by commercial I mean any film shown in a theatre where paid admission is
required, is to make money. Nobody spends 50 thousand, let alone 50 million dollars on a film to have it screen for free in the name of Art..
That applies to any film-maker be he Bergman or Hitchcock. Secondary reason is to entertain.
You want the audience to keep coming back and to recoup the money invested in the film.
Nobody wants to watch your vacation to Hawaii tapes or a bank surveillance tape. Not entertaining.
Other purposes of film include govenment propaganda, such as those shot during World War II , and educational like the ones they used to show in public schools.
Who goes to the movies expecting Art and Enlightenment? People go to the movies for entertainment.
Some are entertained by kung fu flicks, some are entertained by foreign movies.
Bergman, the auteurrs’ auteur :
“…for the first time I did not care in the least whether the result would be a commercial success”. Bergman here was referring to his film Persona, the implication being that commercial considerations were very much on his mind and in the way he made his first 26 films. But I’ll wager that secretly he was every bit as concerned about the commercial success of persona as he was about all his other films.
Film, Art and enlightenment can coincide, but rarely.
When I want Art I’ll go to the National Gallery. When I want to be enlightened I’ll read the Buddhavacana, or Kant.
When I want entertainment I’ll pop Persona, Solaris or Seven Samurai into the DVD player.
Liv Ullmann
Guilietta Massina
Rosalind Russell
Ginger Rogers
Sophia Loren
Katy Jurado
Rita Hayworth
Machiko Kyo
Meryl Streep
Maureen O’Hara
Loretta Young
Gene Tierney
Marlon Brando
Humphrey Bogart
James Stewart
Anthony Quinn
Henry Fonda
Toshiro Mifune
Karl Malden
Max Von Sydow
Fred Astaire
Gene Kelly
Laurence Olivier
Alec Guiness
To be considered overrated, a director would have to be highly rated by either the critics, the public or their peers. By that criteria, I would have to say that Martin Scorcese is, by far, the most overrated director of all time. I would put Spielberg at #2.
Spielberg is far more influential than Scorcese, but he wasn’t taken seriously before Schindler’s List. That means over half of his CV was not highly rated by critics.
Scorcese, meanwhile, has been a critic’s darling almost from the very get go. It’s easy to understand why he is overrated. He has a distinctive voice and his movies are very cinematic with his almost masturbatory use of camera movement.
3. How does Criterion decide which films receive the “Criterion treatment”?
We aim to reflect the breadth of filmed expression. We try not to be RESTRICTIVE or SNOBBY about what kinds of films are appropriate. An AUTEUR classic, a HOLLYWOOD BLOCKBUSTER or an independent B HORROR FILM has to be taken on its own terms.
To some, ‘foreign’ means any film not in the English language. To me it means any film not from the USA.
The nationality of the director or what language a film is shot in, makes no difference.
I consider films from Canada, Australia, UK, New Zealand, South Africa to be ‘foreign’ even if in English.
There is a difference between foreign film and foreign language film.
Mishima is an American (US) film shot in a foreign language (Japanese).
The Last Emperor is a foreign film (China-Italy) shot in the English language.
One of the all-time greats. It is impossible to make a list of “greatest films ever made,” no matter how you slice it, without at least a couple of his pictures in there: The Maltese Falcon, Key Largo, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Asphalt Jungle, The African Queen, Moby Dick, The Man Who Would Be King.
Fred Neil’s Everbody’s Talkin’ performed by Nilsson in Midnight Cowboy
Carole King’s Natural Woman performed by Aretha Franklin in Scarecrow
Orbison’s In Dreams in Blue Velvet
Written for the film :
Berlin’s Cheek To Cheek in Top Hat
Kern’s The Way You Look Tonight in Swing Time
Arlen & Harburg’s Over The Rainbow in The Wizard Of Oz
“Now imagine a film masterpiece in a Native American language, would the Academy place that as eligible for the Oscars’ Foreign Language film category”
A film has to be “foreign” (i.e. non-American) in order to be nominated for the Award, it also has to be in a language other than English. Foreign films where the majority of the dialogue is in English cannot qualify for the Foreign Language Film Award
Take auteur Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor, for example. The artistic thing would have been to shoot the movie in Chinese Mandarin, considering the movie takes place in China, the characters are Chinese, and that the film itself is a Chinese co-production.
The box office (money) was clearly on the film-makers minds when they decided to shoot the whole thing in English.
Ludicrous to have a bunch of Chinese actors speaking English with bad accents in a story about the Chinese emperor.
What is worse, is that while the leads speak English, the extras in the background are speaking in Mandarin.
Art? Film is one huge compromise. Bertolucci makes movies, that’s his job, no different than Billy Joel going on one more tour, or Tiger W playing one more game.
City Lights
Alexander Nevsky
The Wizard Of Oz
Frankenstein
Bride Of Frankenstein
Modern Times
Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde
Destry Rides Again
It Happened One Night
Animal Crackers
M
The Black Cat
Mr. Smith Goes To Washington
Freaks
Grand Illusion
Swing Time
The Hunchback Of Notre Dame
Dracula
The Public Enemy
The Blood Of A Poet
Top Hat
Mr. Deeds Goes To Town
Shall We Dance
Rules Of The Game
Duck Soup
The Raven
The Mummy
A Story Of Floating Weeds
Vampyr
I know who Forry was….I grew up reading Famous Monsters Of Filmland, Monster World, Screen Thrills Illustrated, and other Warren magazines, but have no idea on the number of his film appearances.. I think he was in The Howling, for one.
On its original French release, Play Time was acclaimed by critics. However, it was commercially unsuccessful, failing to earn back a significant portion of its production costs. One reason may have been Tati’s insistence that film be limited to those theaters equipped with 70-mm projectors and special stereo speakers (he refused to provide a 35-mm version for smaller theaters).
Results were the same upon the film’s eventual release in the U.S. in 1973 (even though it had finally been converted to a 35mm format at the insistence of U.S. distributors and edited down to 103 minutes). Though Vincent Canby of the New York Times called Playtime “Tati’s most brilliant film”, it was no more a commercial success in the U.S. than in France. Debts incurred as a result of the film’s cost overruns eventually forced Tati to file for bankruptcy.
Despite its disastrous financial failure, Play Time is regarded as a great achievement by many critics, who have noted its subtlety and complexity: it is not easily absorbed at one sitting. François Truffaut wrote that Play Time was “a film that comes from another planet, where they make films differently”. British critic Gilbert Adair has noted that the film has to be viewed “several times, each from a different seat in the auditorium” in order to view the many small, tightly-choreographed sight gags by several different actors, sometimes displayed nearly simultaneously on the huge 70mm screen. Nor is the humor restricted to human behavior alone — a gag may revolve around an everyday object or phenomenon such as the mundane hum of a neon sign.
The Brown Bunny is pretty bad.
Other bad cinemah: First Name: Carmen, Eros, Lightning Over Water, Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia, The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie…….
Um Filme Falado (Oliveira)
Aniki-Bobo (Oliveira)
Rapsodia Portuguesa (Mendes)
Viagem Ao Principio Do Mundo (Oliveira)
A Selva (Vieira)
Alice (Martins)
Daqui P’ra Frente (Ruivo)
A Flor Do Mar (Monteiro)
Casa De Lava (Costa)
Belarmino (Lopes)
Jack Elam
Ben Johnson
Slim Pickens
Dan Duryea
Walter Brennan
Dwight Frye
Jack Palance
Thelma Ritter
Basil Rathbone
Joan Blondell
Claude Rains
Dennis Hopper
Dianne Wiest
Tommy Lee Jones
Agnes Moorhead
Katy Jurado
Neville Brand
Charlie Is My Darling – The Rolling Stones (Whitehead)
Gimme Shelter – The Rolling Stones (Maysles)
Co*ksucker Blues – The Rolling Stones (Frank)
Eat The Document – Bob Dylan (Bob Dylan)
Dont Look Back – Bob Dylan (Pennebaker)
Beatles First US Visit – The Beatles (Maysles)
What should be the purpose of Film? almost 3 years ago
The primary purpose of any commercial film, and by commercial I mean any film shown in a theatre where paid admission is
required, is to make money. Nobody spends 50 thousand, let alone 50 million dollars on a film to have it screen for free in the name of Art..
That applies to any film-maker be he Bergman or Hitchcock. Secondary reason is to entertain.
You want the audience to keep coming back and to recoup the money invested in the film.
Nobody wants to watch your vacation to Hawaii tapes or a bank surveillance tape. Not entertaining.
Other purposes of film include govenment propaganda, such as those shot during World War II , and educational like the ones they used to show in public schools.
Who goes to the movies expecting Art and Enlightenment? People go to the movies for entertainment.
Some are entertained by kung fu flicks, some are entertained by foreign movies.
Bergman, the auteurrs’ auteur :
“…for the first time I did not care in the least whether the result would be a commercial success”. Bergman here was referring to his film Persona, the implication being that commercial considerations were very much on his mind and in the way he made his first 26 films. But I’ll wager that secretly he was every bit as concerned about the commercial success of persona as he was about all his other films.
Film, Art and enlightenment can coincide, but rarely.
When I want Art I’ll go to the National Gallery. When I want to be enlightened I’ll read the Buddhavacana, or Kant.
When I want entertainment I’ll pop Persona, Solaris or Seven Samurai into the DVD player.
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Where is the love for George Stevens? almost 3 years ago
Auteur or meticulous craftsman? I couldn’t care less. I’ll take Swing Time, or Shane over a lot of the crap that passes for serious cinema any day.
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Classic Actors/actresses almost 3 years ago
Liv Ullmann
Guilietta Massina
Rosalind Russell
Ginger Rogers
Sophia Loren
Katy Jurado
Rita Hayworth
Machiko Kyo
Meryl Streep
Maureen O’Hara
Loretta Young
Gene Tierney
Marlon Brando
Humphrey Bogart
James Stewart
Anthony Quinn
Henry Fonda
Toshiro Mifune
Karl Malden
Max Von Sydow
Fred Astaire
Gene Kelly
Laurence Olivier
Alec Guiness
Go to Comment
Who do you think the most overrated director is? almost 3 years ago
To be considered overrated, a director would have to be highly rated by either the critics, the public or their peers. By that criteria, I would have to say that Martin Scorcese is, by far, the most overrated director of all time. I would put Spielberg at #2.
Spielberg is far more influential than Scorcese, but he wasn’t taken seriously before Schindler’s List. That means over half of his CV was not highly rated by critics.
Scorcese, meanwhile, has been a critic’s darling almost from the very get go. It’s easy to understand why he is overrated. He has a distinctive voice and his movies are very cinematic with his almost masturbatory use of camera movement.
Go to Comment
ARE WE GETTING TIRED OF TALKING ABOUT HOLLYWOOD FILMS? almost 3 years ago
From the Criterion FAQs :
3. How does Criterion decide which films receive the “Criterion treatment”?
We aim to reflect the breadth of filmed expression. We try not to be RESTRICTIVE or SNOBBY about what kinds of films are appropriate. An AUTEUR classic, a HOLLYWOOD BLOCKBUSTER or an independent B HORROR FILM has to be taken on its own terms.
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WHO IS / WAS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL FILM ACTRESS EVER? almost 3 years ago
Ginger Rogers
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Maureen O’ Hara
![]()
Katy Jurado
![]()
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WHAT DOES THE TERM "FOREIGN FILMS" MEAN TO ALL OF YOU? almost 3 years ago
Foreign – not from your country. Greek films may not be foreign to a Greek, but they are to me.
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Best Dream Sequence in a film? almost 3 years ago
The Big Lebowski, complete with Saddam handing out bowling shoes, and Busby Berkeley like dance sequence.
The Wizard Of Oz, the entire film.
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which movie picks you up when you're down? almost 3 years ago
Woody Allen, Charlie Chaplin, Jacques Tati, The Marx Brothers.
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WHAT DOES THE TERM "FOREIGN FILMS" MEAN TO ALL OF YOU? almost 3 years ago
O/P
To some, ‘foreign’ means any film not in the English language. To me it means any film not from the USA.
The nationality of the director or what language a film is shot in, makes no difference.
I consider films from Canada, Australia, UK, New Zealand, South Africa to be ‘foreign’ even if in English.
Go to Comment
WHAT DOES THE TERM "FOREIGN FILMS" MEAN TO ALL OF YOU? almost 3 years ago
There is a difference between foreign film and foreign language film.
Mishima is an American (US) film shot in a foreign language (Japanese).
The Last Emperor is a foreign film (China-Italy) shot in the English language.
Go to Comment
What are your impressions of John Huston? almost 3 years ago
One of the all-time greats. It is impossible to make a list of “greatest films ever made,” no matter how you slice it, without at least a couple of his pictures in there: The Maltese Falcon, Key Largo, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Asphalt Jungle, The African Queen, Moby Dick, The Man Who Would Be King.
Go to Comment
Songs you strongly associate with certain films almost 3 years ago
Fred Neil’s Everbody’s Talkin’ performed by Nilsson in Midnight Cowboy
Carole King’s Natural Woman performed by Aretha Franklin in Scarecrow
Orbison’s In Dreams in Blue Velvet
Written for the film :
Berlin’s Cheek To Cheek in Top Hat
Kern’s The Way You Look Tonight in Swing Time
Arlen & Harburg’s Over The Rainbow in The Wizard Of Oz
Go to Comment
WHAT DOES THE TERM "FOREIGN FILMS" MEAN TO ALL OF YOU? almost 3 years ago
“Now imagine a film masterpiece in a Native American language, would the Academy place that as eligible for the Oscars’ Foreign Language film category”
A film has to be “foreign” (i.e. non-American) in order to be nominated for the Award, it also has to be in a language other than English. Foreign films where the majority of the dialogue is in English cannot qualify for the Foreign Language Film AwardGo to Comment
What should be the purpose of Film? almost 3 years ago
Scooter
Take auteur Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor, for example. The artistic thing would have been to shoot the movie in Chinese Mandarin, considering the movie takes place in China, the characters are Chinese, and that the film itself is a Chinese co-production.
The box office (money) was clearly on the film-makers minds when they decided to shoot the whole thing in English.
Ludicrous to have a bunch of Chinese actors speaking English with bad accents in a story about the Chinese emperor.
What is worse, is that while the leads speak English, the extras in the background are speaking in Mandarin.
Art? Film is one huge compromise. Bertolucci makes movies, that’s his job, no different than Billy Joel going on one more tour, or Tiger W playing one more game.
Go to Comment
Wondrous Films almost 3 years ago
The Wizard Of Oz
King Kong (1933)
Jaws
The Thief Of Bagdad
The Red Shoes
Mutiny On The Bounty (1935)
Singin’ In The Rain
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Your favorites of the...30s almost 3 years ago
City Lights
Alexander Nevsky
The Wizard Of Oz
Frankenstein
Bride Of Frankenstein
Modern Times
Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde
Destry Rides Again
It Happened One Night
Animal Crackers
M
The Black Cat
Mr. Smith Goes To Washington
Freaks
Grand Illusion
Swing Time
The Hunchback Of Notre Dame
Dracula
The Public Enemy
The Blood Of A Poet
Top Hat
Mr. Deeds Goes To Town
Shall We Dance
Rules Of The Game
Duck Soup
The Raven
The Mummy
A Story Of Floating Weeds
Vampyr
Go to Comment
Best title almost 3 years ago
The long and the short…..
The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed-Up Zombies !!? (Steckler)
Dr. Strangelove Or : How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (Kubrick)
The Fearless Vampire Killers, Or Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are In My Neck (Polanski)
The Saga Of The Viking Women And Their Voyage To The Waters Of The Great Sea Serpent (Corman)
The Englishman Who Went Up A Hill But Came Down A Mountain (Monger)
Attack Of The Flesh Devouring Space Worms From Outer Space (Martinez)
Night Of The Day Of The Dawn Of The Son Of The Bride Of The Return Of The Terror (Riffel)
M (Lang)
Z (Costa-Gavras)
D (Sawant)
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Anybody Else Celebrate The 4th By Watching Jaws? almost 3 years ago
As good as it gets.
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Dr. Acula's appearances almost 3 years ago
I know who Forry was….I grew up reading Famous Monsters Of Filmland, Monster World, Screen Thrills Illustrated, and other Warren magazines, but have no idea on the number of his film appearances.. I think he was in The Howling, for one.
Go to Comment
Tati almost 3 years ago
Play Time.
On its original French release, Play Time was acclaimed by critics. However, it was commercially unsuccessful, failing to earn back a significant portion of its production costs. One reason may have been Tati’s insistence that film be limited to those theaters equipped with 70-mm projectors and special stereo speakers (he refused to provide a 35-mm version for smaller theaters).
Results were the same upon the film’s eventual release in the U.S. in 1973 (even though it had finally been converted to a 35mm format at the insistence of U.S. distributors and edited down to 103 minutes). Though Vincent Canby of the New York Times called Playtime “Tati’s most brilliant film”, it was no more a commercial success in the U.S. than in France. Debts incurred as a result of the film’s cost overruns eventually forced Tati to file for bankruptcy.
Despite its disastrous financial failure, Play Time is regarded as a great achievement by many critics, who have noted its subtlety and complexity: it is not easily absorbed at one sitting. François Truffaut wrote that Play Time was “a film that comes from another planet, where they make films differently”. British critic Gilbert Adair has noted that the film has to be viewed “several times, each from a different seat in the auditorium” in order to view the many small, tightly-choreographed sight gags by several different actors, sometimes displayed nearly simultaneously on the huge 70mm screen. Nor is the humor restricted to human behavior alone — a gag may revolve around an everyday object or phenomenon such as the mundane hum of a neon sign.
Go to Comment
WHAT IS YOUR PICK FOR THE WORSE MOVIE EVER MADE? almost 3 years ago
The Brown Bunny is pretty bad.
Other bad cinemah: First Name: Carmen, Eros, Lightning Over Water, Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia, The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie…….
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werecinema almost 3 years ago
To those already mentioned, I would add :
An American Werewolf In London (Landis)
(Were cinema related) Werecats :Wolfen (Wadleigh, of Woodstock fame)
Werewolf Of London (Walker)
Cat People (Tourneur)
Cat People (Schrader)
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What movies you will watch while going through a breakup or divorce almost 3 years ago
Scenes From A Marriage
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top 10 favourite films from your home country almost 3 years ago
Lusitania :
Um Filme Falado (Oliveira)
Aniki-Bobo (Oliveira)
Rapsodia Portuguesa (Mendes)
Viagem Ao Principio Do Mundo (Oliveira)
A Selva (Vieira)
Alice (Martins)
Daqui P’ra Frente (Ruivo)
A Flor Do Mar (Monteiro)
Casa De Lava (Costa)
Belarmino (Lopes)
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BREAKING THE FOURTH WALL almost 3 years ago
Bergman’s The Passion
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fourite character actors almost 3 years ago
Jack Elam
Ben Johnson
Slim Pickens
Dan Duryea
Walter Brennan
Dwight Frye
Jack Palance
Thelma Ritter
Basil Rathbone
Joan Blondell
Claude Rains
Dennis Hopper
Dianne Wiest
Tommy Lee Jones
Agnes Moorhead
Katy Jurado
Neville Brand
Go to Comment
top 10 favourite films from your home country almost 3 years ago
Maynila sa Kuko Ng Liwanag is a great movie.
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Your Top Musical Artist Documentaries (excluding concert films) almost 3 years ago
Charlie Is My Darling – The Rolling Stones (Whitehead)
Gimme Shelter – The Rolling Stones (Maysles)
Co*ksucker Blues – The Rolling Stones (Frank)
Eat The Document – Bob Dylan (Bob Dylan)
Dont Look Back – Bob Dylan (Pennebaker)
Beatles First US Visit – The Beatles (Maysles)
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Top 10 Favorite letters or numbers almost 3 years ago
ahh… number 9, number 9, number 9……number 6 : I am not a number
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