by ·Comments Off on The Scenic Route (1978, Mark Rappaport)

Dry Detached Experimental Arthouse Cinema but with a bit of dramatic heat, via heightened music, color, poses.

Estelle narrates from her notebooks. “I pretended I was malleable… I know it’ll happen again.” Her troublesome sister comes to stay, and they juggle two men between them – mostly Mustache Paul but also Estelle’s ex Jack, counting down until at least one of these men gets murdered.

They seem to have no life or interests besides men and each other. They all disco dance in the living room, because it is 1978. Eventually Paul tries to sister-swap, creeping into Estelle’s bed, not having listened to the backstory to realize this is how you get stabbed.

Mostly the movie isn’t a straight narrative but a Ruizian carousel of framing games. The DP has range, shot this and Girlfriends, Q: The Winged Serpent, The Dead, and Freddy vs. Jason. Mustache Paul is better known as a writer of Meet Joe Black.

by ·Comments Off on Two by Mark Rappaport

Rock Hudson’s Home Movies (1992)

Would’ve been a neat essay film about Rock’s secret gay life as interpreted through his film scenes, but a few things lost me. Putting made-up words into Rock’s voice is one thing, but why show the Rock-voice narrator onscreen, who is that guy supposed to be?

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Two For The Opera Box (2021)

I prefer these 15-minute pieces – this one’s not as deep as Turhan Bey, just examining the reuse of props and sets in classic Hollywood, particularly a theater with distinctive opera boxes that showed up in different films for decades.

by ·Comments Off on Memorial Day shorts 2022

Owl (2019, Kelly Reichardt & Christopher Blauvelt)

A beautiful bird, silent in low light, turns its head in every possible direction.

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Leagues (2015, Lucrecia Martel)

Low POV shots through tall grasses as a motorcyclist bitches at some kids that they can’t let their cows eat on community land. The kids go indoors where they learn about measurement and ownership of land. This felt like an educational piece even before the onscreen text told us that things are bad for Argentinean kids. Martel killing time before Zama.

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A Therapy (2012, Roman Polanski)

One of of those auteur advertisements for a fashion brand, but this one is… good. I mean every minute of this is better than any minute of Carnage. Helena Bonham Carter arrives for her therapy appointment and sets to recounting her dreams (“doctor, what does it mean?”) while Ben Kingsley becomes transfixed by the fur coat she entered with, walking to it unseen by his patient and trying it on.

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The Stendhal Syndrome or My Dinner with Turhan Bey (2020, Mark Rappaport)

Joan Crawford in Humoresque, “the greatest closeup ever made.” Mark references his own Rock Hudson movie. While researching orientalism he discovered Turkhan Bey, an Austrian-Turkish-Jewish-Czech actor. Discussion of stars and their admirers, the possibility that Mark is the last person in history to swoon over Bey before his work is forgotten. This was charming, with Mark’s casually delivered voiceover and carefully composited picture – the first of his cinema-history video-essays I’ve watched.