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Thread: Oscar's Cinema Journal 2005

  1. #811
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    Il posto is also famous and was shown widely here. I have a copy of Singing Behind Screens, but I found it very boring.

  2. #812
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    I liked Il Posto just a tad less than I Fidanzati. Olmi is still an unknown quantity outside Italy because of inadequate distribution. Maybe he belongs right up there with Rossellini, Antonioni, Visconti, Fellini and Pasolini. I hope we'll be able to form a firm opinion about this in the near future.

    Wed Dec 14th (cont.)

    Smiles of a Summer Night (Sweden, 1955) Criterion dvd

    Ingmar Bergman (Persona, Saraband) was miserable because of personal and professional disappointments in the mid-50s. After directing some films that bombed at the box office in Sweden, he needed a hit. Smiles of a Summer Night wasn't only a hit in his country but it's his first film to receive international recognition. The producers from Svensk Filmindustri took it to Cannes without telling the director. It was awarded a special prize there.

    Smiles of a Summer Night was not Bergman's first comedy. It was his first period comedy, set at the beginning of the 20th century. It was inspired by plays by Moliere and Marivaux he had directed for the stage and gives the impression of a Renoir or Lubitsch picture. It involves several mismatched couples and the games they play to create more suitable realignments. But it's got that unmistakable Bergman imprint. A couple of examples.

    Much more so similar films, Smiles of a Summer Night is concerned with characters, particularly male ones, confronting humilliation. There a scene in which a conflicted theology student is derided for being sexually impotent. In another scene, a countess faces the camera and exclaims:
    Men are horrid...vain and conceited.
    And they have hair all over their bodies.
    He comes to me at night, driving me insane with caresses.
    He talks about his horses, his women and duels.
    About his soldiers and his hunting_talks and talks and talks.
    Love is a loathsome business.
    In spite of everything, I still love him.
    I'd do anything for him...
    just so he'll pat me in the head and say: "That's a good dog".


    Smiles of a Summer Night is witty and fun, set as the title implies during the very short Swedish summer. But it's biting and acerbic when it needs to be, reflecting themes we have come to recognize as characteristic of Ingmar Bergman.

  3. #813
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    Thu. Dec 15th

    Walk the Line (USA, 2005) AMC CocoWalk

    S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (Cambodia/France, 2003) dvd

    Writer/director Rithy Panh, emigrated to France from his native Cambodia in 1979. His career as a documentarian has been dominated by a singular focus on the genocide that occured in Cambodia in the late 70s. In this regard, Panh's career is comparable to that of Patricio Guzman from Chile and Claude Lanzmann from Israel. As a matter of fact, Panh's approach resembles Lanzmann's, particularly the technique used in Shoah of having those who committed atrocities demonstrate or re-enact in great detail how things were done. Pahn has two survivors of one particular "interrogation center", a former highschool known by the code S21, confront several of their jailers. The Khmer Rouge regime's detailed records, including photographs, serve as a useful tool to document what happened and stimulate repressed memories. Pahn's film is outstanding, an inspired examination of evil.

  4. #814
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    Fri Dec 16th

    Syriana at AMC CocoWalk

    Sat Dec 17th

    White Heat (USA, 1949) TCM

    White Heat was perhaps the last of the great gangster films of the golden era of Hollywood. The gangster genre gained prominence in the early 30s with films like Scarface and Public Enemy, starring James Cagney. He and director Raoul Walsh collaborated on several films during the 30s and 40s culminating in Cagney's last signature role in White Heat. Cagney is gang mastermind Cody Jarrett, an epileptic with a mother fixation and delusions of grandeur. He is at the center of a fast-paced, exciting picture. There's action from beginning to end_car chases, explosions, shootouts, fights, prison escapes, you name it. Walsh became famous for these (even though he had proven he was so much more than an action-oriented director in pictures like Me and My Gal and The Strawberry Blonde). Cagney's portrait of the flamboyant gangster is reason enough to watch White Heat even if you're not a fan of the genre.

  5. #815
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    Sat Dec 17th (cont)

    I Know Where I'm Going (UK, 1945) dvd

    The 18 films that resulted from the collaboration between Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger constitute the most amazing body of work in the history of British cinema. The consistent quality and variety of genres and themes in their filmography is beyond compare. This year I finally caught up with two of their films I had never seen before, Tales of Hoffman and this film starring Wendy Hiller. She plays a materialistic and practical 25 year old who's traveling to the Scottish Isle of Kiloran to marry a millionaire she doesn't love. A week-long gale prevents her from making the crossing. In the same predicament, Torquil (Roger Livesey), an earthy native of the area on an 8-day leave from the Army. Michael Powell's love for the Scottish Isles and folklore inspired the film. He weaves local legends and customs gracefully into an unlikely romance. Some of the dialogue is in Gaelic, the local language. Powell and Pressburger skillfully combined on-location with studio scenes so that they're impossible to tell apart. I Know Where I'm Going is the type of film that inspires devotion.

  6. #816
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    Sun Dec 18th

    Brokeback Mountain (USA, 2005) at Regal SoBe

    The Bad Seed (USA, 1956) dvd

    William March's novel The Bad Seed was a bestseller, the theatrical adaptation won a Tony and the main actors were brought to Hollywood for the movie adaptation. It's a story about an 8 year-old serial killer raised in a normal environment with loving parents. Turns out her grandmother was an infamous psychopath and the "bad genes" were pased on to her. The Bad Seed was also a hit at the box office. Over the years it became a camp classic. Director Mervyn Leroy's movie is basically a filmed play, with theatrical acting rendered campy by frequent close-ups. The result is perversely and addictively watchable. My kids were thoroughly fascinated, so much so that they disagreed with my assertion that, at 129 minutes, The Bad Seed is half an hour too long. What I really liked was the chillingly restrained, Oscar-nominated performance from Patty McCormack as the born-evil blonde girl with pigtails.

  7. #817
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    Monday Dec 19th

    The Fugitive (Mexico/USA, 1947) TCM

    John Ford and his Mexican counterpart Emilio "El Indio" Fernandez co-directed this adaptation of Graham Greene's novel "The Power and the Glory". It's set in an unidentified Latin American country where the Catholic Church refused to support a military dictatorship. All the priests left or where executed except for a nameless one played by Henry Fonda. There's another fugitive in the plot, an American murderer called "El Gringo". Their fates are intertwined, along with that of a police lieutenant played by Pedro Armendariz who's abandonment of religion to support the government constitutes a form of self-denial. Dolores del Rio plays the lieutenant's devout ex-girlfriend. The Fugitive is a fable with a strong Christian subtext. Good performances from all involved. What makes it truly special are Ford's visual compositions and the magnificent lighting and lensing by the great Gabriel Figueroa. Never released on video. Thanks Turner Classic Movies!

  8. #818
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    Pardon my ignorance, Oscar, but what does Turner Classic Movies mean, cable TV?

  9. #819
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    Yes, it's a cable channel owned by Ted Turner and a treasure for film buffs. They have an amazing collection, with a concentration on American films made between 1930 and 1970. They also show some silents, foreign-language films, shorts, and self-produced docs about actors and directors (the last one about neglected director Oscar "Budd" Boetticher). Commercial-free of course and they strive to show films in the correct aspect ratio (no pan-and-scan).

    Tuesday Dec. 20th

    The Family Stone (USA, 2005) AMC CocoWalk

  10. #820
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    Well, it's not for me because I don't have TV, not cable and hardly anything else to watch. I don't see how you find time for it all.

  11. #821
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    Wed Dec 21st

    Aprili (USSR, 1961) dvd
    Falling Leaves aka The Month of St. George (USSR, 1968) dvd

    Until today, the only film I had ever seen by veteran Georgian director Otar Iosseliani was his last, Monday Morning. It's one of the best undistributed films I've seen in recent years. Now, four of the movies he made before emigrating to France have been released on dvd. Iosseliani's work is, in my opinion, a synthesis of three major influences: Jacques Tati, Alexandr Dovzhenko (Earth, Arsenal, Ivan), and Czech New Wave (Milos Forman, Jaromil Jires, etc).

    Aprili combines Tati's emphasis on visual gags and expressive sound design with Dovzhenko reverent eye for natural landscapes. It's about a young couple having difficulty finding in the city the privacy required for intimacy. In the rural outskirts of the city, new housing developments are being built. Our couple moves into an apartment there and begin to furnish it, but increasingly they find themselves disatisfied with their surroundings, the pursuit of material possesions and the destruction of the natural landscape by rapid urbanization. Aprili is almost devoid of dialogue.

    For about ten minutes, Falling Leaves gives the impression of being a documentary about artesanal wine-making in rural Georgia. Then it focuses on Otar and Nico, two young men from the village who get hired as technicians at a state-run winery. They are opposites as far as personality and values. For instance, unlike Otar, Nico fraternizes with those under his supervision and gives them certain freedoms. Major conflict arises when Nico refuses to certify that a vat contains wine of sufficient quality to bottle. Nico is pressured by management to give his authorization in order to meet production quotas. He refuses to betray his values. Falling Leaves reminded me of anti-establishment Czech films like Firemen's Ball and Daisies.

  12. #822
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    Thu Dec 22nd

    The Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (USA, 2005) AMC CocoWalk

    Fri Dec 23rd

    The Honeymoon Killers aka Dear Martha (USA, 1969) dvd

    I only know of two masterpieces by one-time directors: Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter and this personal favorite of Antonioni and Truffaut. This is my third or fourth viewing and I never tire of it. The production story is almost as interesting as the real life story of the infamous "Lonely Hearts Killers" that is the basis of the movie. TV producer Warren Steibel (Firing Line) got $150,000 from a rich friend to make the movie. Steibel asked his best friend, music composer and film buff Leonard Kastle, to do research on the series of murders committed by Ray Fernandez and Martha Beck in the late 1940s. Then he asked him to write a script. Steibel and his rich friend loved the script and hired Marty Scorsese to direct. A week into production, all Scorsese had was a few master shots. It became clear to Steibel, it'd be impossible to get the picture made within budget with Scorsese helming it so Steibel fired him and asked Kastle to direct. Tony LoBianco and Shirley Stoler (the concentration camp guard from Wertmuller's Seven Beauties) are absolutely perfect as the lovers pretending to be siblings while preying upon lonely women in order to fleece them. The stunning b&w cinematography of Oliver Wood, Kastle's mise-en-scene and sparse use of Mahler's Sixth Symphony contribute to a fascinating portrayal of the passion-poisoned murderous couple. The Honeymoon Killers (a title imposed on Kastle by the distributor) is one of the best crime films ever made.

  13. #823
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    Sat Dec 24th

    King Kong (New Zealand/USA, 2005) AMC CocoWalk

    Tunes of Glory (UK, 1960) dvd

    Excellent military drama, directed by Ronald Neame (The Horse's Mouth) from a script by James Kennaway, the author of the source novel. Neame, a cinematographer-turned-director, was paradoxically known for de-emphasizing everything but the performances. The approach is certainly warranted when you manage to get the two best British actors of their generation, Alec Guinness and John Mills, to play the leads. The plot involves two middle-aged colonels, opposites in personality and background, disputing control of a Highlands Battalion in a snowy Scottish town. Tunes of Glory was made in color when most British films were being made in black & white; it's the use of color that belies Neame's background as a cinematographer. Otherwise, Tunes of Glory is the type of film that strives to remove the camera from the viewer's consciousness in order to emphasize the acting. If you liked Breaker Morant or Paths of Glory, you should avail yourself of this Criterion disc.

  14. #824
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    That's a good one.

  15. #825
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    Sun Dec 25th

    Love Finds Andy Hardy (USA, 1937) TCM

    There were 16 movies based on the Hardy family of characters from Aurania Rouvenol's play, all starring Mickey Rooney and most considered teen comedies. The three worth seeing are the ones with Judy Garland (who was 15 years old then). Andy finds himself with two dates for the Christmas dance and falling in love with a third girl. Plot also revolves around his attempts to put together enough money to buy his first car. This is my favorite Andy Hardy movie because Garland sings three songs and it's the only one also featuring a very young Lana Turner.

    Female Trouble (USA, 1974) Independent Film Channel

    A bit of counter-programming: my favorite John Waters movie and the first one to be shown at a first-run theatre.

    "To me, bad taste is what entertainment is all about. If someone vomits watching one of my films, it's like getting a standing ovation"
    Waters, in his autobiography "Shock Value".

    "Filthy! Repellent! Where do these people come from? Where do they go when the sun goes down? Isn't there a law or something? This compost heap is even dedicated to a member of the Charles Manson gang!"
    From Rex Reed's review of Female Trouble.

    The more famous Pink Flamingos is basically a compendium of gross-outs. The follow-up is superior in every respect and just as perverted. In Female Trouble, Waters adopts the structure of the biopic to create a seamless narrative, recounting the story of Dawn Davenport (Divine) from suburban teenhood to death in the electric chair. Waters cuts across a variety of subcultures to invent one of his own: "the filthiest people alive". Waters incorporates drag queen humor, porno, underground comix, Hollywood "B" movies, glam and pre-punk rock, Genet, drug culture, Russ Meyer and Kenneth Anger into a celebration of depravity that functions as a critique of the nature of celebrity in America. Divine doesn't eat shit on this one but, to compensate, plays a double role and gets to fuck him/herself. Also starring Mink Stole and Edith Massey.

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