by ·Comments Off on My Winnipeg (2007, Guy Maddin)

Another Maddin masterpiece… I loved it. Slow start as he dreamily navigates his home town, telling stories, showing off landmarks, talking of snow and sleepwalkers. Trying to escape, he decides to film his way out, rents his old house and hires actors to play his family, except for his real mother (ha, “really” 1940’s noir queen Ann Savage) and of course, Maddin himself (ha again, really Darcy Fehr of Cowards Bend the Knee). So the premise is a lie, and the real-life actors are a lie, and yet he got this to be classified a documentary – I love it!

The parts about Maddin’s childhood are as veiled as usual – there’s the hair salon and siblings and pet dog, and some could-be-true anecdotes about straightening the hall rug and a fear of birds, but we also get his mother’s unlikely starring role in long-running TV drama “Ledge Man”. And there’s the traditional dead father, this time represented by a mound of earth under the living room rug, which the brothers use as a sort of beanbag headrest when watching TV. When Guy leaves home, things become sadder and more personal, showing city landmarks destroyed to build corporate malls, discussing the demise of the local hockey team and eventually the stadium. Very wonderful final segment imagines a character called Citizen Girl, representing the proud past of Winnipeg, who turns back time and resurrects the city’s history – as moving as anything in Guy’s filmography so far.

This is being called Maddin’s most accessible work. I guess the plot is more straightforward than most, and there’s less incest and horror than in my own starter pic Careful, but I’d still give that title to Saddest Music… it’s got stars and songs and an engrossing story and it’s right hilarious.

by ·Comments Off on That’s Entertainment II & III

Double-feature on Turner Classic! Part two has mostly-good somewhat-exciting clips from MGM musicals introduced by Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. Kelly directed the lame host segments, where he and Fred walk around some giant colorful shapes and dodgy video effects (and also tromp through Paris for a while). Whole thing is quite wholesome. It’s not all musical numbers – there’s a clip from A Night at the Opera and tributes to Frank Sinatra and Hepburn/Tracy – just a big nostalgic lovefest

Things learned:
– Eleanor Powell is pretty amazing.
– Anything with Judy Garland has gotta be worth watching.
– I like Jimmy Durante.
– Cabin in the Sky looks good.

Apparently I was wrong in thinking these MGM musicals were on TV all the time in the 70’s, but they certainly were in the 90’s when part III came out, so they spiced it up with behind-the-scenes shots, scenes from rare films and scenes cut from more popular films. Very good idea, and the selections are given better setup with more historical context, making the whole thing seem less random. Written and directed by the editing team of the first two movies. Guess I always wondered why J. Rosenbaum picked part III of this series for his great films list without I or II, but the first two are merely compilations of film moments so if you have access to the source films there’s very little of value there. Part III is full of original content… an alternate camera angle on a dance number showing how the set was deconstructed mid-scene to make room for camera movement, some Judy Garland scenes from a movie in which Betty Hutton replaced her a few days into shooting, a censored scene of Lena Horne in a bathtub and some unused vocal tracks from Show Boat before they were dubbed by a different singer. Scenes are introduced by Horne, Mickey Rooney, Esther Williams and other surviving stars from the era. Neat stuff. I only technically watched three quarters of it, but I’m gonna cheat and take credit anyway.

by ·Comments Off on Terence Davies double-feature

I’d like to watch more double-features by filmmakers with whom I’m not familiar… gives a better immediate sense of who they are than watching one movie, then a couple years later managing to catch another, and so on. I’ve already watched Terence Davies’s 2000 The House of Mirth but I completely don’t remember it. Must’ve been late at night on DVD or cable… the only evidence that I’ve seen it at all is my 8 rating on the IMDB, which I may have just clicked by accident one day while looking up Eleanor Bron movies. Anyway, since Of Time And The City isn’t out here, I grabbed his other two most acclaimed features Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) and The Long Day Closes (1992).

Both movies consist of beautifully shot sketches of memories. Distant Voices (the first half) was actually made as its own movie – about three siblings growing up under their father Pete Postlethwaite’s wrath. It was deemed too short to release, so the second part, Still Lives, was written and shot after – now father is dead from cancer and the kids are grown, moving out on their own and getting married. Episodes are shown in random-associative order, all superbly shot. Lots and lots of singing – movie is basically a musical… “takes a worried man to sing a worried song”… “in the bleak midwinter”… “there’s a man coming round taking names”… “when irish eyes are smiling”… tons more, all sung by the cast in bars, on the street or at home.

It was Pete Postlethwait’s breakout year – he was in two other reasonably big films. Davies in the DVD commentary: “It’s hard to believe that one man could’ve caused so much suffering and that all these years later I would make a film about it.”
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Mom, Tony, (dad), Eileen and Maisie
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Eileen (center) was in Aki Kaurismaki’s I Hired a Contract Killer. On left is a friend – loud, outspoken Mickey (good singer, too).
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Married life doesn’t always work out… old friend Jingles looks upset.
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Davies is annoyed that viewers thought the Christmas scenes gave sympathy to the father. He says his father deserves no sympathy. Seems from the commentary like everything actually happened in his life as we see it. Creative liberties are taken, of course… fewer siblings keeps things easier to follow, events and timelines are shuffled, but the movie is a mining of his real life. Reactions from family members to the film were mixed.
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Davies also has a wonderful voice on the commentary. I could listen to him all day. If he did EVERY dvd commentary, people might actually listen to the things. After watching the movie I assumed influence by Alain Resnais, but he says the structure is influenced mainly by T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets.
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Won a whole pile of awards, including at Cannes and Toronto, but lost the European Film Awards to Kieslowski and Wenders, oh well.
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The Long Day Closes is the same kind of thing, but in a shorter timespan and focusing on one kid (young Terence Davies, or “Bud”), his relationship with mother, home life, church and school. Still plenty of singing, though not as much as the other film, and now punctuated by audio clips from classic movies (the kid is happiest at the cinema). Subjective shots through his eyes, memory adding a dreamlike quality to certain scenes, rain and snow are so constant that sometimes they occur indoors.

Exquisite between-scene transitions… this is halfway through one of ’em.
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I’d say there’s less story here than in the other movie, more impressionistic. I don’t usually love nostalgic childhood reminiscence movies, but that’s because most aren’t as gorgeous as this one.

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By the time I got to the DVD commentary I’d already heard the one from DV,SL so I took it for granted that everything in Long Day Closes refers to a specific, sharply remembered incident in Davies’ real childhood. Liberties are taken, of course, like how the Christmas dinner table here seems to be out on the street.

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August 2012:
If there’s any film that should be watched on 35mm in theaters, it’s this one, and unbelievably, I got a chance. It was playing in Seattle, so Katy grudgingly agreed that we could go. Looked amazing. Nobody else in the theater but us. Katy mostly didn’t like it, dozed through the last 20 minutes, but responded to the audio clip from Tammy and the Bachelor.

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by ·Comments Off on Sabrina (1954, Billy Wilder)

I liked this a whole lot, unexpectedly. Starts out in crisp black and white with moonlight shining on Audrey Hepburn’s mooning face, and only gets better. Not as much clever dialogue as Indiscreet, but a higher-quality film overall with just as much starpower, in its way – young beautiful Audrey versus super-suave Humphrey Bogart. Nominated for a pile of oscars, but trounced by On The Waterfront. Remade in the 90’s for some silly reason.

Audrey is the chauffeur’s daughter at the mega-rich Larrabee estate, has always been in love with wild, womanizing William Holden (normal-looking white guy from Sunset Blvd. and Executive Suite). She goes to Paris for two-year culinary training, comes back all fashion and sophistication. Holden falls for her before she even gets home – her dream come true. They go out, and dance at a family party, but he is supposed to marry a hot girl from another rich family as part of a family business merger (Larrabee develops super plastic made of sugarcane and her family owns a cane plantation) so big brother and super business-whiz Bogart incapacitates Holden by tricking him into sitting on wine glasses, then takes Audrey out for a few days to keep her away until the wedding. One place they go: a play of The Seven Year Itch, which is the next film Wilder would make.

But Audrey is awesome, has glowing moonlight cat eyes, and is now a master chef, so Bogie falls for her himself, and at end he cancels all appointments to catch up with the boat aboard which he’s shipped her off to Paris. Romantical!

This is now the latest Bogart movie I’ve seen – he’d be dead in under three years. Normal-looking William Holden is apparently a huge star, but I can’t say he stood out in this… certainly likeable enough. Head chauffeur John Williams had juicy roles in two Hitchcock movies around the same time, later in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter as Tony Randall’s boss who dreams of being a gardener.

by ·Comments Off on Happy New Movie Year 2009!

Wow, I wrote too much last year so I’ll keep this short. How am I doing on my ongoing quest to see every great movie?

– My 2008 goal to watch movies I already had (mainly purchased, never-watched DVDs but also rented/copied DVDs and downloads) was not a complete success, somewhere around a third complete. I’m allowing myself to start buying DVDs again with the condition that I watch at least one off the shelf for each new one I acquire… seems reasonable.

– Filmmaker-oriented goals, to see all the movies by Rivette, Resnais, Marker, Bunuel, were well explored and advanced in 2008, but are on hold now, since I’ve decided to ban all foreign-language films (except theatrically and in certain other cases) until I’m at least halfway through my long-long-delayed French lessons.

– Made my list of movies I definitely have to watch in 2009, but I overdid it as always, so it’s 270 titles long. Still, unrealistic goals are better than no goals at all.

– And of the best-movies-ever lists that I often refer to, I’m up five to 211/250 on the IMDB list (will never hit 100% as long as Crash 2004 is still on there), up fifty to 500/1000 on the They Shoot Pictures list, up forty to 380/1000 on the Rosenbaum list, up a mere five on the 1977 list, and up one percent (242/519 from 205/450) on the Criterion/Eclipse list (the hardest one to keep up with).

There are other new years goals and resolutions and lists and everything, but they ain’t movie-related so they are of no concern here.

by ·3 Comments

As usual, only counting just-released movies I saw in theaters in 2008.

1. Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant)
More youth poetry from Van Sant – nailed it this time.

2/3.
Wall-E (Andrew Stanton)
There Will Be Blood (P.T. Anderson)
TWBB is better than Wall-E in many ways, but I’m feeling more generous towards the lovestruck robot than the miserable oil-baron right now. They were both the visual and story delights of the year.

4. Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind (John Gianvito)
The only movie I watched three times this year.

5/6/7.
Let The Right One In (Tomas Alfredson)
Don’t Touch The Axe (Jacques Rivette)
The Edge of Heaven (Fatih Akin)
Three exquisite foreign flicks.

8. Youth Without Youth (Francis Ford Coppola)
FF Coppola’s universally ignored return to cinema. Due for a major critical re-evaluation sometime after his death, I imagine.

9. Milk (Gus Van Sant)
I had my problems with it, but it’s still great, and wins points for being extremely relevant.

10. Ashes of Time Redux (Wong Kar-Wai)
Both of Wong’s least-liked films (see My Blueberry Nights below) opened to empty theaters this year, and I’ve gotta say I enjoyed them both. Even his worst work still has a gorgeous power to it at times.

—–
Honorable Mentions:

Flight of the Red Balloon (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
Encounters at the End of the World (Werner Herzog)
Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (David Fincher)
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu)
Opera Jawa (Garin Nugroho)

—–
Special Categories:

The Edward Burns Memorial Award, given to the movie I saw this year which I have already mostly forgotten, is mercifully awarded to Namibia: The Struggle For Liberation

The Alien Resurrection Award, given to a movie I liked which nobody else did, goes to My Blueberry Nights

The Kyle Cooper Award, given for greatest achievement in opening or closing credits: Michael Clayton

The Big Ehh Award, given for the least enthusiastic reception of an eagerly-awaited movie: Be Kind Rewind

The Batman Begins Award, given to a movie which everyone else must have been tripping while they watched because I can’t see what’s so great about it, goes to The Dark Knight – and what’s more, given the academy award buzz the movie has garnered, this will hereafter be renamed in its honor The Dark Knight Award!

by ·1 Comment

1. Five by Jacques Rivette:
– Love on the Ground (1984)
– The Story of Marie and Julien (2003)
– Duelle (1976)
– Noroit (1976)
– La Belle noiseuse (1991)
Rivette movies take me to a unique place – he is closer to the dream world of David Lynch than he gets credit for. These were each excellent in their own way, and taken as a whole, they easily catapult Rivette onto my top-five favorite filmmakers list, if he wasn’t already there from Out 1 and Celine & Julie.

2. The Life of Birds (1998, David Attenborough)
Haven’t even finished this yet, and I never wrote anything about it, but some of my happiest times this year were sitting on the couch watching amazing videos of birds with Katy.

3. The Golden Coach (1953, Jean Renoir)
I mostly loved watching this for Anna Magnani, until that final scene when the whole movie hit me at once. Ooh, that final scene… I scanned back and watched it again… and again…

4. Brand Upon The Brain! (2006, Guy Maddin)
Maddin’s best film yet (or do I say that about all of them?). Will check out My Winnipeg in the new year… I expect it’ll be Maddin’s best film yet.

5. My Terence Davies double-feature of two days ago, Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) and The Long Day Closes (1992)

6. The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom (2007, Adam Curtis)
I thought this was fascinating, but apparently it’s all in the presentation because whenever I tried to tell people about it they tuned me out. I scanned back to the intro and watched it again… and again…

7. Judex (1963, Georges Franju)
Wasn’t expecting this to make a top-ten… I didn’t even think it was supposed to be very good. Happiest surprise of the list.

8. Ordet (1955, Carl Dreyer)
I don’t know where to put this on a list, because it seems above judgement. My liking it or disliking it is entirely beside the point. Nevertheless I liked it… very much.

9. The Devils (1971, Ken Russell)
Movie on the list which I most need to rewatch, since my video copy was so poor.

10. Faces (1968, John Cassavetes)
So intense, makes me sure that I need to rewatch the Cassavetes movies I did not like, because I was probably wrong about them.

11. The Milky Way (1969, Luis Buñuel)

12. Ruggles of Red Gap (1935, Leo McCarey)
13. The Smiling Lieutenant (1931, Ernst Lubitsch)
Two comedies I watched with Katy and have mentioned every week since, much to her confusion since she thought they were just pretty good.

14. Lovers on the Bridge (1991, Leos Carax)

15. Three by Chris Marker: A.K. (1985) and Chats Perches (2004) and Remembrance of Things to Come (2001)
I watched more than fifteen Marker films this year, and these were the standouts.

16. Tabu (1930, FW Murnau)
A visual poem, one of my favorite Murnaus yet.

17. Stavisky (1974, Alain Resnais)

18. Artists and Models (1955, Frank Tashlin)

19. Tales of Hoffmann (1951, Powell & Pressburger)

20. Redacted (2007, Brian De Palma)

–
Honorable Mentions:
At Five in the Afternoon (2003, Samira Makhmalbaf)
French Cancan (1953, Jean Renoir)
Guelwaar (1992, Ousmane Sembene)
Harlan County USA (1976, Barbara Kopple)
Holy Mountain (1973, Alejandro Jodorowsky)
Je t’aime, je t’aime (1968, Alain Resnais)
Manufactured Landscapes (2006, Jennifer Baichwal)
Mix-Up (1985, Francoise Romand)
My Night at Maud’s (1969, Eric Rohmer)
The Mystery of Picasso (1956, Henri-Georges Clouzot)
Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (2006, Sophie Fiennes)
Stuck (2007, Stuart Gordon)
Woyzeck (1979, Werner Herzog)

–
Bonus: Ten Favorite Shorts
1. The Wizard of Speed and Time (1979, Mike Jittlov)
2. Outer Space (and the rest of the Cinemascope Trilogy) 1999, Peter Tscherkassky
3. The Film To Come (1997, Raoul Ruiz)
4. Presto (2008, Doug Sweetland)
5. A Valparaiso (1963, Joris Ivens)
6. Le Franc (1994, Djibril Diop Mambety)
7. Mirror of Holland (1950, Bert Haanstra)
8. Life and Death of 9413: A Hollywood Extra (1928, Florey & Vorkapich)
9. Ten Thousand Years Older (2002, Werner Herzog)
10. Neighbors (1920, Buster Keaton)

–
And this year’s Annual WTF Awards, given to movies I think I’m supposed to have liked but couldn’t figure out why, go to horror Them, documentary Derrida, french arthouse thing The Regular Lovers, extreme satire The Ruling Class, avant-garde headache Presents and two shorts by Michael Robinson.

by ·Comments Off on Brandon’s Top Ten Retrospective Screenings of 2008

These were all theatrical (film) screenings of non-current movies.

1. George Kuchar film program at Eyedrum
Mr. Kuchar himself talked about the films, which Andy projected for us on 16mm. I’d never seen any of the Kuchar brothers’ films before… a revelation!

2. Eraserhead (1977, David Lynch) at the plaza
Unbelievable on the big screen… no wonder it was a midnight cult flick.

3. “To Hell with Hitler!” at the plaza
Clay’s collection of WWII cartoon shorts for an appreciative audience.

4. What Is It? (Crispin Glover) at the plaza
More for the full in-person experience than the film itself

5. Phantom of the Opera (1925) at the Rome GA Film Festival
With live music by The Alloy Orchestra

6. Zorns Lemma / Lemon / Scorpio Rising at Emory
Extreme avant-garde flicks for an unappreciative audience… I was mesmerized both by the films and their reception.

7. Canyon Cinema program at Nashville Film Festival
A tamer version of the avant-emory screening, worth the whole drive to Nashville just for the Martin Arnold and Len Lye selections.

8. X: The Man With X-Ray Eyes (1963, Roger Corman) at the plaza
With live music by Pere Ubu

9. Forest of Bliss (1986, Robert Gardner) at Eyedrum
An entrancing feature, courtesy of programmer extraordinaire Andy

10. Four-way tie between my next favorite Emory screenings:
– Written on the Wind (1956, Douglas Sirk)
– Pather Panchali (1955, Satyajit Ray)
– Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors (1964, Sergei Parajanov)
– Story of Floating Weeds (1934, Yasujiro Ozu)

by ·Comments Off on Indiscreet (1958, Stanley Donen)

A lighter picture from the year of Vertigo and Touch of Evil. It’s Ingrid Bergman’s second Hollywood film after returning from her European Exile From Hollywood (where she’d met Jean Renoir, just back from his Hollywood Exile From Europe – she starred in his Elena And Her Men). Cary Grant, right between An Affair to Remember and North by Northwest, was still a household name. Movie about a potentially scandalous love affair starring two lead actors who had publicly scandalous love lives at the time must’ve added up to big box office bucks.

Based on a play, and you can tell since most of the big scenes take place in the same location. Rich actress (Bergman) meets rich NATO diplomat (Grant), they date and fall in love. Only catch is he claims to be married – not true, but an escape clause for someone who never plans to settle down. There’s lots of talk of “making love” (which we all know only meant “kissing passionately” in 1958, since sex-before-marriage wasn’t invented until the mid 60’s) and late-night sneakings-around. Katy points out that Cary seems awfully comfortable lounging in her bed during one visit. There is one time when they’re in bed “together”, actually a clever split-screen effect during a phone conversation.

Cary’s secret finally comes out in a convoluted final scene. He’s leaving town for months, plans to surprise Bergman on her birthday the night after he supposedly left. She finds out about the surprise and about his single status, plans to humiliate him by having Another Man (actually the servant in a robe) lurking in her bedroom at the appointed hour. All cleared up at the end, she forgives his huge lie because he decides he wants to marry her after all. So there’s never any actual scandal except among the six characters in the movie. Good, light movie with some snappy dialogue, mostly worth watching for the star acting.

Director Donen (still alive, sued The Gap this year for their classic-film-thieving marketing) had made three comedies the year before, would put out Charade five years later. Writer Norman Krasna was also behind Let’s Make Love and the stories for Lang’s Fury and Borzage’s Big City.

No big, memorable moments by the supporting cast, which means I probably won’t recognize ’em next time I see ’em. Skittish servant David Kossoff, who pretends to be Bergman’s suitor in the final scene, had been in a bunch of British films with interesting names in the 50’s (The Bespoke Overcoat, A Kid For Two Farthings). His pushy wife Megs Jenkins was in Green For Danger, a late 40’s film of The Monkey’s Paw, and something called The Gay Dog. Then there’s Bergman’s ever-present sister (Phyllis Calvert, later in Twisted Nerve) and brother-in-law (Cecil Parker, the colonel in Quartet, also appeared with Bergman in Under Capricorn).