by ·Comments Off on Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972, Robert Fuest)

Happy SHOCKtober!

In early September I assembled a list of SHOCKtober contenders. So many promising horror films! Since it looks like my Mets might be in the postseason threatening SHOCKtober screen time, and since I’m usually a month behind on the blog anyway, I went ahead and started watching them, beginning with this sorry sequel to one of my faves from last year.

Phibes with raptor:

Opens with a full recap of the first movie, in case you missed it. And even though Vincent Price is embalmed and buried at recap’s end, sure enough he’s waking up right afterwards. This one’s got an interesting concept at least, as Phibes has taken his revenge for the death of his wife, but she’s still dead, so now he’s going after a fabled fountain of life beneath some ancient Egyptian tomb. Better, Phibes has a rival – an archaeologist named Beiderbeck (Robert Quarry, star of Count Yorga, Vampire, with a silly voice but okay sideburns) who has survived for centuries with a small vial of eternal-life water and now seeks the source.

Phibes jacked-in:

That all sounds promising, and Phibes 1 was heaps of fun, but I wasn’t feeling it this time. Less well shot (DP Alex Thomson later worked with David Fincher and Nic Roeg), less well written (Fuest cowrote with Robert Blees: Frogs, High School Confidential), and less interestingly designed (lot of people talking in front of plain white walls). Slower-paced scenes and a vaguely shabby feeling. I do enjoy when Price “speaks” by plugging a guitar cable into the jack in his neck, but the characters who move their mouths might as well have done the same, with all the dialogue-editing blunders I caught. The hapless cops from the first movie are even more hapless here, Terry-Thomas reappears as a new character, and minor characters are dispatched regularly via scorpion, snake, raptor (unconvincingly), sandblasting, crushing, telephone, etc.

Mouseover to see how one gets killed by telephone:
image

IMDB trivia reveals arguments, power struggles, rivalries, changes “for budget reasons” and a final script composed of two separate scripts “sort of stuck together”. So the movie’s disappointing but I guess it’s surprising it turned out as well as it did. Nice ending: Phibes floats away with his wife’s coffin on the enchanted river singing “Over the Rainbow” as time catches up with Beiderbecke outside, suddenly aging him to death faster than Bowie in The Hunger.

Phibes with Vulnavia with sousaphone:

There’s a new Vulnavia (Valli Kemp) since women are interchangeable. First dead archaeologist who attracts police attention is Hugh Griffith (Polanski’s What? and Fuest’s The Final Programme), dead guy’s cousin is Beryl Reid (The Killing of Sister George) and Beiderbeck’s woman is Fiona Lewis (Liszt’s neglected wife in Lisztomania).

by ·Comments Off on Film Fest Faves (FESTIFEST)

I happened to watch my first Hong Sang-soo movie right before his new one premiered, won the Golden Leopard and was featured on Cinema Scope’s front page, which gave me more emotional investment in all this. Before recently he was just a name – a repeatedly championed name, but still. So I’ve made a list of other currently-working(?) filmmakers whose names come up in magazines and festival reports but I’ve never checked out – including a few lingering overlaps with the 50 Under 50 list (Rodrigues, Alonso, Pereda) and a few overlaps with a similar list I made five years ago (Suleiman, Iosseliani, Lee). The goal: to watch at least one film by each, so next time I see their name I’ll have some context.

Lisandro Alonso (La Libertad, Los Muertos, Liverpool, Jauja)
Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Rust & Bone, Dheepan)
Marco Bellocchio (Good Morning Night, Vincere, Blood of My Blood)
Rachid Bouchareb (Days of Glory, Outside the Law)
Jean-Claude Brisseau (Exterminating Angels, Girl From Nowhere, Secret Things)
Antonio Campos (Afterschool, Simon Killer)
J.C. Chandor (A Most Violent Year, All Is Lost, Margin Call)
Isabel Coixet (Elegy, Secret Life of Words, My Life Without Me)
Anton Corbijn (Control, The American)
Lav Diaz (Norte, From What Is Before, Century of Birthing)
Mati Diop (Atlantiques, Snow Canon, A Thousand Suns)
Jacques Doillon (Just Anybody, Ponette, Le petit criminel)
Xavier Dolan (Mommy, Tom at the Farm, Heartbeats, I Killed My Mother)
Bruno Dumont (Lil Quinquin, Hors Satan, Hadewijch, L’Humanite)
Pascale Ferran (Bird People, Lady Chatterley)
Bahman Ghobadi (Nobody Knows About Persian Cats, Turtles Can Fly, Half Moon)
Amos Gitai (Kadosh, Kippur, Free Zone)
Philippe Grandrieux (Un Lac, A New Life, Sombre)
James Gray (Two Lovers, The Immigrant, Lost City of Z)
Eugene Green (Portuguese Nun, La Sapienza, Le Pont des Arts, Toutes les nuits)
Jose Luis Guerin (Memories of a Morning, Guest, In the City of Sylvia)
Lucile Hadzihalilovic (Innocence, Evolution)
Andrew Haigh (Weekend, 45 Years)
Mia Hansen-Love (Father of My Children, Goodbye First Love, Things To Come)
Otar Iosseliani (Adieu plancher des vaches, Jardins en automne, Chantrapas, Winter Song)
Benoit Jacquot (School of Flesh, A Single Girl, A Tout de Suite, Diary of a Chambermaid)
Jiang Wen (Devils on the Doorstep, Let the Bullets Fly, The Sun Also Rises)
Miranda July (The Future, Me and You and Everyone We Know)
Naomi Kawase (The Mourning Forest, Shara)
Andrei Konchalovsky (The Postman’s White Nights, Inner Circle)
Nadav Lapid (Policeman, The Kindergarten Teacher)
Pablo Larrain (Tony Manero, Post Mortem, No, The Club)
Lee Chang-dong (Poetry, Secret Sunshine, Oasis, Peppermint Candy)
Sergei Loznitsa (Maidan, In the Fog, Austerlitz)
Jodie Mack (a bunch of shorts)
Lech Majewski (Onirica, The Mill and the Cross, Glass Lips)
Brillante Mendoza (Captive, Kinatay, Serbis)
Bennett Miller (Capote, Moneyball, Foxcatcher)
Lukas Moodysson (We Are The Best, Hole In My Heart, Lilya 4ever, Container)
Darezhan Omirbayev (Student, Kairat)
Ruben Ostlund (Force Majeure, Play, Involuntary)
Nicolas Pereda (Summer of Goliath, Greatest Hits, Minotaur)
Nicolas Philibert (To Be and To Have, Nenette, In the Land of the Deaf)
Joaquim Pinto (What Now? Remind Me, Fish Tail)
Rafi Pitts (The Hunter, It’s Winter)
Joao Pedro Rodrigues (Last Time I Saw Macao, To Die Like a Man)
Ira Sachs (Love is Strange, Keep the Lights On, Little Men)
Ben & Joshua Safdie (Heaven Knows What, Good Time)
So Young Kim (Treeless Mountain, In Between Days)
Paolo Sorrentino (Il Divo, This Must Be The Place, The Great Beauty, Youth)
Elia Suleiman (The Time That Remains, Divine Intervention)
Bertrand Tavernier (Coup de torchon, Sunday in the Country, Life and Nothing But)
Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit (Mary is Happy, 36)
Tran Anh Hung (Norwegian Wood, Cyclo, Scent of Green Papaya)
Joachim Trier (Oslo August 31)
Denis Villeneuve (Polytechnique, Incendies, Prisoners, Sicario)
Peter Von Bagh (Socialism, Helsinki Forever) edit: R.I.P.

Oh man, this list is longer than I thought it’d be.
I may have no choice but to tackle ’em film-fest style.
A festival of filmmakers who show up regularly at festivals… a FESTIFEST.

EDIT Dec. 2015: I still like the FESTIFEST idea, and am keeping the name, but when this season’s Sundance slate was announced I changed focus from the above list. Now when a new film is announced by a director I’ve heard about but never seen, I’m prioritizing watching one of his/her previous films. For example, Robert Greene’s Kate Plays Christine was announced, and I haven’t seen anything by Greene as director, so I watched his Actress from last year. Don’t think I’ll add those to the bottom of this list as the year goes on, because I have enough trouble keeping track of things.

by ·Comments Off on Autumn Tale (1998, Eric Rohmer)

Last of the Four Seasons, and the only one I had to watch at home (in HD, at least) since I missed the theatrical screening. Still a total pleasure. Maybe the happiest of the four, with no heartbreaking decisions to make, just a will-they-or-won’t-they with a couple that’s obviously good for each other.

Magali:

Actually there’s a bit of craziness in the middle, when Isabelle reveals to the man she’s dating that she’s actually married. Isabelle (Marie Rivière, star of The Green Ray and The Aviator’s Wife) has posted a personals ad and attracted Gerald (Alain Libolt of Lady and the Duke, also thief Renaud of Out 1), then after screening him on a few outings, she admits she was acting on a friend’s behalf – prickly vineyard owner Magali (Béatrice Romand of A Good Marriage and Claire’s Knee) who is lonely but refuses to go looking for love.

Gerald & Isabelle:

Magali finally meets Gerald at Isabelle’s daughter Emilia’s wedding, where, not knowing of Isabelle’s plot, Rosine (Magali’s son’s girlfriend) also tries to hook her professor ex-boyfriend up with Magali. That fails immediately – after all the build-up, the two spend about thirty seconds together then the professor wanders off to talk with younger women. Magali misunderstands the Gerald situation and runs off angrily, then she and Gerald return to the wedding looking for each other, and all is well.

Rosine introduces Magali to the professor:

Interesting that all three leads are Rohmer regulars, since the other movies were mostly cast with unknowns. Maybe the Béatrice Romand-starring A Good Marriage should be my next Rohmer, since she was such fun to watch in this movie. This played at Venice alongside Run Lola Run, New Rose Hotel and Black Cat White Cat, winning best screenplay.

by ·Comments Off on Cover Girl (1944, Charles Vidor)

A breakout role for Gene Kelly, who was starting to come into his own after the draft-dodging nonsense in For Me and My Gal. He runs a nightclub, is best friends with dancer Rusty (Rita Hayworth, before Gilda and Lady From Shanghai) and comedian Genius (Phil Silvers, TV’s Sgt. Bilko). Obviously Gene and Rita like each other, but Gene has to make the first move because it’s the 1940’s and he’s not good with feelings, so when she becomes a popular magazine cover girl, he lets her run off to a larger theater instead of asking her to stay.

Eve Arden, the best part of One Touch of Venus (she’s the poyle in the erster), plays the same sardonic type here, cutting through the music-fantasy atmosphere whenever she’s onscreen. She works with businessman Otto Kruger (High Noon, Power of the Press), who has movie-padding flashbacks to when he almost married Rita’s grandmother. Now Rita is being pushed to marry her new theater manager Lee Bowman (I Met Him In Paris, House by the River), and there’s kind of an interesting ending, as Kruger gets her to leave him for Gene, leaving Lee to a life of romantic regret identical to Kruger’s.

Not very memorable songs (the weird “Poor John” sung by flashback-Rita is all that comes to mind) but a decent movie. Nice man-vs-reflection street dance number for Gene. Weird trick-photography montage at the end with all the popular magazines’ latest cover girls (IMDB says one had already been in numerous movies, one was Harold Lloyd’s daughter, and another would marry Jean Negulesco). Leslie Brooks, also with Rita in You Were Never Lovelier, is good as her dancer-frenemy. And Genius, well, he’s grating and horrible as a comedian, but as a buddy of Gene and Rita, I eventually came around to him.

Sequel Xanadu came out almost 40 years later.

by ·Comments Off on Television watched mid-2015

“TV is a nickname, nicknames are for friends, and television is no friend of mine.”

–
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt season 1 (2015)

Started out very funny and got into a nice groove, without ever becoming less weird. Looking forward to more seasons.

I know Kimmy from the restaurant framing story of They Came Together. Roommate Tituss Burgess is from Queen of Jordan, landlady Carol Kane from Scrooged and Annie Hall, employer Jane Krakowski from 30 Rock and boyfriend Ki Hong Lee of The Maze Runner.

Appearances by Jerry Minor and series creator Tina Fey as shitty lawyers, Tim Blake Nelson as Kimmy’s stepdad and Jon Hamm as Reverend Richard Wayne Gary Wayne. Surprisingly few 30 Rock writers on staff (I count three), plus Allison Silverman (Portlandia, Daily Show), Meredith Scardino (SNL, Colbert) and Emily Altman (Inside Amy Schumer).

–
Inside Amy Schumer season 1 (2013)

Watched episodes right before and after seeing Trainwreck (making the film seem kinda tame in comparison). Outstandingly funny sketch show. Appearances by Michael Showalter, Michael Ian Black, Jon Glaser, show writer Tig Notaro, Amber Tamblyn, Rob Schneider, Dave Attell.

–
NTSF:SD:SUV:: season 2 (2012)

Loud and ridiculous. Guests: Alan Tudyk, Kimmy Schmidt, Bob Odenkirk, Bill Hader, Ray Liotta, Aubrey Plaza, Rob and Aziz.

–
Review season 1 (2014)

In which Forrest MacNeil (Andrew Daly of Delocated and The Informant!) gives star-ratings to life experiences as suggested by his viewing audience. The reviews destroy his life (sample questions: “what’s it like to get divorced?” and “what’s it like to run from the law?”) and tax his modest abilities (“what’s it like to be the life of the party?”). The show starts to get sour and depressing as Forrest sacrifices his well-being for the show, but you can’t take it too seriously, since he also sort of kills Fred Willard in space. With Megan Stevenson as his co-host, Jessica St. Clair as his (ex-)wife, James Urbaniak (American Splendor’s Crumb) as his producer, and appearances by Rich Fulcher and Lance Bass. Review highlights: road rage, orgy, pancakes, aching. Remake of an Australian show. Daly’s now in something called The Spoils Before Dying, which has an impressive cast.

–
also rewatched The Mighty Boosh season 1 and season 2, which seems to get better with repeat viewing.

by ·Comments Off on Girls season 3 (2014)

“Fedoras are worse than genocide.”

It’s starting to get rather sad-sacky for a comedy, isn’t it? There’s even an assisted-suicide storyline. I took less pleasure than usual in watching the four girls (and Ray) descend into career disappointment and make poor relationship decisions. Adam’s Broadway play was a nice development, and based on the final scene it looks like they’re changing things up next season.

Richard E. Grant is amazing as Jessa’s drug-addict buddy. John Cameron Mitchell is killed off, also killing Hannah’s book deal. Adam’s insane sister (Gaby Hoffmann) appears to be dating Laird (Jon Glaser).

Small roles by Amy Schumer, Kim Gordon (a rehab patient), Patti LuPone (as herself), Felicity Jones (Grant’s daughter) and Deirdre Lovejoy (Rhonda from The Wire; as Hannah’s aunt).

Absolutely the best scene:

by ·Comments Off on Two Features by Bill Plympton

As mentioned in the shorts post, Bill Plympton came to town, presenting his feature Cheatin’. I’ve always loved his work, but from vague memories of The Tune and I Married a Strange Person I’ve assumed his shorts to be far above the features. This week changed everything, as I caught up with the great Idiots and Angels on DVD and saw the beautiful Cheatin’ on the big screen.

Cheatin’ (2013)

I memorized the trailer, and rest of the movie did not disappoint.

Sure there’s a lot of cheatin’, but it’s all based on a terrible misunderstanding.

Bought on blu-ray, so will watch again and write more (with screenshots).

–
Idiots and Angels (2008)

First of all, any movie that uses “Kommienezuspadt” by Tom Waits is alright by me. Stylish as ever, a scribble-noir in shades of brown and gray with flashbacks and imagination sequences and inventive transitions – and no spoken dialogue.

It’s the kind of story that calls for animation. Bitter gun salesman wastes his evenings at a lonely bar until he starts growing angel wings. He’d like to get rid of the do-gooder, perpetually re-growing wings, and the man’s doctor and greedy bartender would like the wings for themselves. There’s a shooting, a resurrection, a spate of pub bombings, argument over a girl, and crazy bird dreams.

by ·Comments Off on Dog Days and more (1991-2008, Bill Plympton)

Bill Plympton came to town! I prepped by rewatching his Dog Days DVD, various shorts from other sources, and the feature Idiots & Angels.

Guard Dog (2004)

One of the first films he made without a film camera: colored pencil on paper, scanned into computer.

Guide Dog (2006)

Inspired by Charles Addams, a cartoonist who focused on death and violence. The DVD commentaries seem straightforward, but then he says he assumes he didn’t get complaints from blind people about Guide Dog because they didn’t see the film.

Hot Dog (2008)

Don’t know why I was harsh to some of these shorts in past posts, since the Plympton dog is one of my favorite animated characters. Think I overdosed on Plympton shorts a few years back and had to decompress.

Shut-Eye Hotel (2007)

Cops check in to Shut-Eye Hotel to figure out why clients who stay on the top floor wake up without heads. The culprit: a pillow with teeth. Bill says this was his first use of computer animation, but it didn’t work out financially, and he was testing out a color scheme he’d use in Idiots & Angels.

Spiral (2005)

“You think it’s easy bein’ abstract?” A circle, square and triangle are performing a repetitive abstract dance until the audience starts shooting at them. Inspired by an exasperating (and state-funded) screening of a Paul Glabicki short twenty years prior.

Santa, The Fascist Years (2008)

“They called it blitzenkrieg.” Narrated, animated newsreel of when Santa turned to weapon manufacture, invading neighboring countries to obtain raw materials. Nice Great Dictator reference.

The Fan and the Flower (2005)

Great love story from sitcom writer Dan O’Shannon.

How to Make Love to a Woman (1995)

First, finding the right woman. Then body parts, kissing, hugging, etc, all calmly explained by a narrator, always ending in grievous harm to the man onscreen.

Push Comes To Shove (1991)

Two guys hurt each other in ever more inventive ways.
Didn’t this used to run on MTV?
One of my favorites.

The Exciting Life of a Tree (2000)

Tree’s-eye-view of dangerous forest life.

Luv Race (2008)

Live event combining a dating game with a track race. Where’d this come from? Apparently a commissioned film, no credits. Chrome tried to translate the page at gauguins.com, came up with “Bill Plympton (Bill Plympton). This is the American NY resident, but is not Bill Clinton, you can find those.”

Also watched a couple musical segments from The Tune (1992) including No Nose Blues (“Talk is cheap, oh but so are you”) and Flooby Nooby (all puns, with a huckster singer who hilariously can’t handle the song’s whistling chorus) … a 2001 TV special for Cartoon Network called 12 Tiny Christmas Tales … and a great Weird Al video.

Don’t Download This Song:

by ·Comments Off on Cinétracts and other Chris Marker shorts

Cinétracts (1968)

I watched a collection containing roughly half of the Cinetracts, an anonymously-directed series of two-to-five-minute shorts. The first few seemed to be protest-photo montages, and I thought watching a bunch of these in a row would be tiresome so I spaced it out over a few weeks. Some are very different though, telling stories/poems with intertitles or scrawling words directly onto the photos, using different forms of movement and speeds of editing. Some use zooms and dissolves, bringing the photos to life, others are simply long takes of photos interspersed with titles, wordplay, pages from books.

Contributors supposedly included Godard, Marker, Resnais, Gorin, Philippe Garrel (same year he made Le Révélateur), Jackie Raynal (editor on half the Six Moral Tales), Jean-Denis Bonan (Jean Rollin’s editor at the time), Gerard Fromanger and Jacques Loiseleux (later cinematographer for Ivens, Pialat and Yves Boisset). Marker was busy – this project overlapped his SLON collective and Groupe Medvedkine.

Gary Elshaw has by far the most useful work on the Cinetracts online, even if it’s only about Godard’s contributions.

The purpose of the Ciné-Tracts, as with most of Godard’s 1968 film projects, was to offer a critically alternative source of ‘news’ or information in contrast to the commercially offered mediums available. … The state censorship of the media throughout the events of May necessitated communication along different lines than had existed before.

Other online writing on these tends to focus on determining which ones Godard made (and they can’t seem to agree).

–
Casque Bleu (1995)

Info dump by a cynical Frenchman who acted as a UN peacekeeper during one of the Yugoslav wars. He speaks rapidly in close-up, with occasional title cards for different topics and cutaways to a photo album.

“When you’re in a country at war, armed, and you have orders not to use weapons, in actual fact you are on the side of the aggressor, the one who’s trying to conquer the land.”

–
Description of a Struggle (1960)

Watched this again with much improved picture quality and English voiceover. Had been burning to see it again since watching Dan Geva’s Description of a Memory. Still great, but I think I prefer Sunday in Peking. Noticed this time when the voiceover said “bar kokhba,” which is apparently not only the name of a John Zorn music project.