by ·Comments Off on Golden Eighties (1986, Chantal Akerman)

A mall-set musical. Nobody respects horny young Robert, not his girl Lili at the salon across the aisle, not even his parents who run the clothing store where he works. Lili waits until Robert is about to marry her coworker Mado before running off with him. Meanwhile his mom has her own drama, bumping into long-lost American lover Eli, who wants her back, while she focuses on running her shop and barely gives him the time of day.

Reluctant salon owner Lili played the lead in a Vicente Aranda movie.

Jean (Jean-François Balmer of Cosmos) owns Lili’s hair place but she doesn’t love him, so he finally wrecks the place in a rage and sells his lease to the neighbors.

Robert’s mom Delphine, post-makeover, with Eli: American director John Berry, who made He Ran All The Way with fellow blacklistee John Garfield

Pascale Salkin (left, the girl who isn’t Maria de Medeiros in I’m Hungry, I’m Cold) bounces between plots, and is the only person in Golden Eighties to also star in The Eighties, which is somehow not out on video. Would-be fiancee Mado later appeared in Carnages. Nathalie “Conann” Richard played a nameless hairdresser coworker of theirs, and neighbor Sylvie who runs the snack shop was in films by Demy, Varda, Sautet, Ozon, Lelouch, etc.

Robert’s dad has the best voice of the men here (Charles Denner aka The Man Who Loved Women). Delphine Seyrig would only star in one more feature – Joan of Arc of Mongolia – before dying of cancer at 58.

by ·Comments Off on That’s Dancing (1985, Jack Haley Jr.)

Terrible host segments as usual, misguided efforts at diversity, then it settles down into a clip show of dance scenes from classic movies and all is well. Happy to see Bojangles Robinson, whose statue I drive past on the way to the movie theater.

by ·Comments Off on O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000, Coens)

Rewatched for the first time since theaters.

I’ve been reading the Adam Nayman book on the Coens:

Nothing in the film is “original” except for the reconfiguration of elements, which is why the opening citation is more honest than it seems and, in its way, a signifier not of smarminess but of humility. The nod to The Odyssey admits that any artist in the Western tradition owes some currency of debt to Homer, and that to mount any story about homecoming is to reconnect with the roots of storytelling itself – to return to the primal scene.

Nayman:

“If it’s not new and it never grows old, it’s a folk song,” quips the hero of Inside Llewyn Davis, which is O Brother, Where Art Thou?‘s spiritual sequel. Taken together, the two films clarify the Coens’ relationship to a musical genre founded on familiarity. For filmmakers perpetually interested in circles and circularity, the cyclical proliferation and popularity of folk and bluegrass standards – songs largely without cited authors, passed down and performed by different singers through the generations – serves as a potent analogue to their thematic preoccupations.

by ·Comments Off on Don’t Play Us Cheap (1972, Melvin Van Peebles)

A filmed version of his own play, which was a stage adaptation of his own novel, which he wrote in French then translated to English – he filmed first, opened the play with the same cast, then released the movie. Sounds exhausting. Instead of the final film in the Van Peebles box set, Criterion could just as easily have released this as a double-feature with To Sleep With Anger, each of them about a happy Black household infiltrated by forces of evil.

A couple of passing imps decide to stop in Harlem to ruin a party thrown by Esther Rolle of Good Times. Instead of going in together, Trinity arrives first and completely fails to wreak havoc then falls for the birthday girl. When he’s belatedly joined by Devil David (Avon Long, who discovered Lena Horne in the 1930s), they only succeed in chasing off the Johnsons, a late-arriving condescending couple and their giant son, whom everyone else is glad to see go.

It’s a musical, and I wish any of the songs was great – too gospelly for me – but there’s a cool bit at the end when everyone’s singing what’s on their mind at once, the whole party semi-harmonizing and semi-chaotic.

Lisa Thompson:

Van Peebles frequently overlaps two different images to make a contrast that is then commented upon in a third shot, such as on the dangers of evil or the inability to stay true to oneself. Van Peebles occasionally uses the same overlapping technique with sound, playing with dissonance and harmony as multiple characters sing their own signature parts, or a single character sings while the others join in a communal chorus.

–
Three Pickup Men for Herrick (1957)

Herrick needs three pickup men, but five showed up. The white boss picks the one white guy, then the tough looking guy, then the young guy, and the rejects walk back home. No dialogue, Light humming and harmonica on the soundtrack.

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Sunlight (1957)

I think the pretty girl married someone else because the guy she danced with at the restaurant said you can’t get married without money… but I don’t think restaurant guy was the hat guy who robs some lady and is chased by the cops and ends up at the wedding… maybe the older guy at the wedding is a different hat guy? Try paying attention next time?

by ·Comments Off on Sublime Frequencies double-feature

The James River Film Society, a mysterious organization which never emails me no matter how many times I submit my address to their subscription link, counterintuitively programmed a pair of hour-long Sublime Frequencies documentaries from director Hisham Mayet at a lovely large theater at noon on a beautiful Saturday, so I came out, along with as many as nine other people.

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The Divine River: Ceremonial Pageantry in the Sahel (2012)

Short riverboat setup, then it gets right into rocking and boogies down for forty minutes or so, each scene in a new location with a new musician or group. Apparently shot in Mali and Niger, there’s much dance, some cool structures and landscapes, and per the Sublime mission, no English translations or narration or titles. I figured the epic animal slaughter scene would be a good time to hit the restrooms – it’s also weirdly where the movie ended.

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Oulaya’s Wedding (2017)

More of a straight doc about a particular event, clearly explained to us. Group Doueh is a famed wedding band in Dakhla, a town on a coastline peninsula in Western Sahara, an area bordered by Mauritania and Morocco. The Doueh musicians’ own daughter is getting married, so they’re throwing the biggest party ever and inviting everyone. We get a behind-the-scenes look at the setup and prep in the first few days, then the event itself under a massive tent. Interviews with family and guests (spotlight on the gay male dancers). Plenty of music, so I could keep on bopping in my seat. We’ve long heard that Mdou Moctar and Tinariwen started as wedding bands, so the main attraction here was to see what these weddings are like.

by ·Comments Off on The Music Lovers (1970, Ken Russell)

Russell is the only person who should be allowed to make artist biopics. He loves the music, doesn’t care about historical truth, and never gets so caught up in plot that he forgets to make wonderful images.

Peter Tchaikovsky (Richard Chamberlain of The Last Wave) has got a boss who doesn’t like his compositions (Max Adrian, title star of Delius), a patron who does (Izabella Telezynskan of at least two other Russell biopics), a libidinous new wife (Glenda Jackson), and a gay lover he can’t be seen with (Chris Gable, Strauss in Dance of the Seven Veils). And I’d just like to point out that Peter’s playwright brother is Kenneth Colley, Life of Brian‘s Jesus. Ends downbeat, Peter dying in hospital after suicidally drinking cholera water, Glenda in a madhouse, both of them obsessed with the question of whether he ever loved her.

Ebert called it “irresponsible” and Kael called it “vile.” Russell wrote a piece in the Guardian, says his life was changed by Tchaikovsky’s music, and twenty years later he succeeded in honoring the man in film. “Great heroes are the stuff of myth and legend, not facts. Music and facts don’t mix. Tchaikovsky said: ‘My life is in my music.’ And who can deny that the man’s music is not utterly fantastic? So likewise the movie!”

by ·Comments Off on That’s Entertainment! (1974, Jack Haley Jr.)

When this was filmed almost all the featured performers were still alive (exceptions: Judy Garland & Clark Gable, who get nice tributes, and Jean Harlow & Maurice Chevalier). There are two more of these musical clip shows, which we’ve previously watched, now Katy wants a That’s Entertainment for Westerns.

by ·Comments Off on Don Juan (2022, Serge Bozon)

Tahar from A Prophet misses Virginie from Benedetta after their almost-wedding and becomes very sad, returns to his theater career where he keeps seeing her as different characters around town, then the actual Virginie arrives to act in his show. Nice-looking sophisticated movie full of song and dance, so I feel bad that I remember so little of it.

by ·Comments Off on Inu-oh (2021, Masaaki Yuasa)

Cursed Mutant kids meet up and share a musical connection. Tomona was blinded by the magic sword that killed his father, and Inu-Oh was born a mutant due to a deal his serial killer father made with a magic mask. Stories of mutants and curses are usually good, and Yuasa’s animation is playful and unusual, especially when visualizing how blind Tomona “sees” the world through sounds. But then after a half hour it abruptly becomes a hard rock musical… returning to sum up the kids’ stories at the end, but too late. And while some directors will shoot the plot scenes normally then make the style come alive during musical numbers, Yuasa does the opposite. The whole hour of rock & roll theatrics is full of repeated shots and movements and angles, third-rate early-MTV stuff.