JonasEB

> {quote:title=ValentineXavier wrote:}{quote} > Wow, you folks really gave the newbie a caning, just for a misspelling. But, okay, it's a film 101 question. Anyone who knows Welles' films knows that *Touch of Evil* is his best film. I prefer The Magnificent Ambersons and Chimes at Midnight. : ) It doesn't matter if Citizen Kane is the best movie of all time or not. Most of us wouldn't consider it so anymore (most of us consider it futile or wrong to even name one film as the best ever.) This is the story of Citizen Kane's rise: In the post-war period, it became a beacon for Andre Bazin and other French critics as a pinnacle of modernism in film. It was viewed as a turning point by them, a model of the direction they believed film needed to move in. Thus its elevation. Ever since, more general film critics (and that's the majority of them - let's call them the "Crowther-ites") took up the hype when the film became a success on TV in the 50s. Ever since it has been placed in the same league as Gone With the Wind, Casablanca, and The Wizard of Oz, sold in the same manner, when it doesn't really fit in with them. ABC just ran a godawful Best in Film program last night, voted on by 500,000 Americans, that didn't feature Citizen Kane or any of Kane's contemporaries/descendants in film modernism for that matter. As bad as I thought the selections were, I applaud the fact that voters didn't give Kane lip service (the other usual suspects were present.) Citizen Kane is great, greater than the films featured on this show, but its legacy is misunderstood.

I think the Sontag/Berkeley thing is specifically about the big production in Gold Diggers of 1933 - A straight, serious minded piece but absurd in that it is dealt with in a way that is ludicrous in relation to the poor and lost people it is supposed to be representing. I don't think it can apply to the numbers in Footlight Parade though - it's musical-comedy, nothing serious or intended to be serious about it. > {quote:title=Stephen444 wrote:}{quote} > The exaggerated expressions of Warner Baxter, similar to the expressions seen in silent films. Not really, that kind of acting is commonly seen in any type of entertainment of the period. You could just as easily say it came from the world of the stage, which these movies descend from and are situated in. And comedy is always filled with exaggerated gestures in the first place. And there's nothing wrong with exaggeration if it's used in the right context. There are just as many performances from the silent era that are absolutely natural and subtle. Please don't perpetuate that falsehood.

> {quote:title=filmlover wrote:}{quote} > Paramont has announced they will be releasing four Westerns for Mar 31st on Blu-ray: > > Rio Lobo Dang, it's not a western but I wish they'd release Hatari! instead...

Must be the U.S. - Canada rights thing again.

I just saw Woody Allen's Whatever Works last week and if it's not the worst film he has ever made I think it's very, very close. And then there's this...http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0316768/ Mathew McConaughey and Gary Oldman play twins...and Gary Oldman's a dwarf, the entire family is except for McConaughey. Oldman looks creepy as hell and completely out of place here. Oldman's dwarf pal is a stereotypical Frenchman (and they ride these odd motorbike contraptions.) David Alan Grier for some reason looks like a doo **** singer out of the 50s and he only exists in the movie to be caught at a midget party having sex with Gary Oldman's dwarf girlfriend. *McConaughey recounts being part of a midget circle-jerk as a kid.* Mind you this is a serious minded drama about little people. The Room, eat your heart out (thanks Daniel Tosh!)

The Testament of Dr. Mabuse Our Daily Bread - This was originally intended as a sequel to The Crowd but I'm not sure if King Vidor felt that way by the time the film was released. In any case, I don't believe it's necessary to think of it as a sequel, in fact it's better to just take it on its own.

Fritz Lang in the 20s: I prefer Die Nibelungen above everything else he did. The great irony about the film is that it was Hitler's favorite but the second half completely eviscerates the nationalist properties of the source material (that message to the German people at the beginning was clearly a warning.) It is an anti-nationalist film. You go from the stateliness and order and classicism of Siegfried to the obsessive self-destruction and madness of Kriemhild. There's nothing else quite like the feeling of insanity of part 2, maybe only Greed comes close to replicating it. Dr. Mabuse is also wonderful but Metropolis, like Kubrick's 2001, seems too wrapped up in grandeur and spectacle, more impressive as a production than its pure vision or ultimate meaning (for the record I like both a lot.) The other films, as enjoyable as they are, are mostly minor Lang. I would actually consider Fritz Lang for the 1930s. M, Testament of Dr. Mabuse, Fury, You Only Live Once (unfortunately taken off of an upcoming TCM schedule,) and You and Me (or so trusted associates would have me believe; I would love to see this on TCM!)

Both People on Sunday and Lonesome came from out of nowhere so who knows what they could be looking at? No new news about The Wedding March yet but the announcement of the other two make me optimistic about a sooner rather than later release. I haven't seen the April Now Playing show but I did notice the Fragments and Unseen Cinema combo before Laila on the April schedule. I suppose the two and a half hour Unseen Cinema will be a compilation of shorts from the DVD set. Definitely curious to see what will be featured on Fragments.

10s - D.W. Griffith 20s - F.W. Murnau, Alexander Dovzhenko, Charlie Chaplin 30s - Josef von Sternberg, Jean Renoir, Yasujiro Ozu 40s - John Ford, Powell & Pressburger 50s - Nicholas Ray, Yasujiro Ozu, John Ford 60s - Jean-Luc Godard 70s - John Cassavetes, Rainer Werner Fassbinder 80s - Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Woody Allen 90s - Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Abbas Kiarostami 00s - Hirokazu Koreeda, Olivier Assayas, Gus Van Sant Couldn't help picking Ozu and Ford more than once, they're just that damn good (and Godard may get another spot when I see his later films.) And then there are people like King Vidor and Carl Theodor Dreyer who are among the greatest but never "owned" a decade the way others did.

Yasujiro Ozu & Setsuko Hara (and Chishu Ryu) Kenji Mizoguchi & Kinuyo Tanaka Jean-Luc Godard & Anna Karina D.W. Griffith & Lillian Gish Frank Borzage & Janet Gaynor/Charles Farrell Roberto Rossellini & Ingrid Bergman

http://criterionforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=330801#p330801 Criterion will be releasing Paul Fejos' Lonesome in the next couple of years! Along with People on Sunday, the Naruse silent set, and the Sternberg box, this indicates a new age in Criterion's reputation with silent films.

Double post. Edited by: JonasEB on Mar 17, 2011 7:15 AM

People on Sunday is a big deal but Criterion has just confirmed an even bigger release: They will be bringing Paul Fejos' Lonesome (1928) to Blu-ray & DVD later this year!

No, I know what I'm getting into and it doesn't make much sense to me to leave after you've established some free time and already paid for the thing. You've already spent an hour on it, an extra 30 minutes isn't going to make much difference to your day. Also, what if you walk out of a film halfway through and miss everything that validates what you might have had trouble with in the first part during the second half or last third?

Eh. Morocco is far and away the masterpiece on the list, fully deserving of "4 stars", followed by Shanghai and Hyde. The rest just aren't THAT great. I mean, Baby Face...no one watches that because it says anything or is aesthetically refined in the way Morocco is. It's only good trashy fun, which is fine, but Morocco is on an entirely different level. It's like comparing Un homme et une femme to Le Mepris - one is a middlebrow love story, the other is a landmark in modern film.

You can't talk about Citizen Kane without hearing Mankiewicz's name, this is an old story, no big deal. Mankiewicz had nothing to do with any of the visual aspects of Citizen Kane - the reason why the film is actually admired. It's the bold visuals of Welles and Gregg Toland that make the film, what really amplifies the depth of the film (not to mention Welles' crafting of the sound design, the editing, performance, among the general mise-en-scene.) Mankiewicz used the flashback structure again in A Woman's Secret and...it's no Citizen Kane to put it lightly (despite being handled by the other major star of the Wisconsin constellation, Nicholas Ray - this was a plain studio assignment for him and it shows.) It is clearly a simple structural device, nothing like what we see in Citizen Kane. His brother Joseph, a better if still problematic writer in general than Herman, also liked to use the flashback device and it too tends to lack real purpose. I wonder why that is... Herman Mankiewicz's forte was dialogue, wit, as a story man he isn't as impressive. That Mankiewicz's body of work doesn't reflect Citizen Kane in the way Welles' work absolutely does only affirms how much influence Welles had on the project. Mankiewicz wrote the shooting script (and that's an important distinction, the _shooting script_ - that doesn't mean there wasn't a ton of development and planning prior in which Welles was heavily involved) it doesn't change the fact that Welles is very much the creator of the film itself. No one else at the time could have done it.

Repo Man aired as part of TCM Underground...which has been part of the channel for half a decade now. Nothing surprising here.

To add some moderation to the (overly) heated proceedings here... I'm perfectly fine with the new look of the website itself, once people get used to it I think they'll come around. The new design seems very user friendly to me. There were complaints about the absence of future show times but I've found them on several pages in the database - seems like a problem that will soon enough be ironed out. But I agree that there is little reason to change the former system of presenting the schedule which everyone here clearly liked a lot. Glad to hear the suggest a movie page is being worked on; it seemed like TCM was using many of our suggestions and I would be disappointed to see that feature disappear.

Where's the "Suggest a Movie" page??? I'd also like to see the 3 month (4, counting the hidden one) schedules restored and as accessible as they were before.

Looks like Warner has given up on doing right by its silent films. Expect The Crowd, The Big Parade, and Greed et al. to follow.

Le Mepris - Absolutely. Nino Rota's score for The Leopard. Brian Easdale's score for The Red Shoes. The little bits of music in Yasujiro Ozu's films. Julee Cruise's songs, written by Badalamenti and Lynch, for Twin Peaks (alright, save for the Fire Walk With Me it's TV but these songs are a crucial piece of the fabric of the show and far more penetrating than most film music.)

Best Picture only and only what was nominated each year. Any years not commented on are: 1) Selections I am fine with or 2) years with a slate of films that don't matter or 3) I just don't really care any which way (most commonly it's the latter two, particularly #2, than the former.) 1927/1928 - Seventh Heaven 1931 - I don't lean to any in particular; the Lubitsch, Vidor, and Sternberg films are fine. 1932 - A Farewell to Arms 1938 - Grand Illusion 1939 - Stagecoach 1941 - I'm perfectly fine with How Green Was My Valley winning this year. 1942 - The Magnificent Ambersons 1948 - The Red Shoes 1949 - A Letter to Three Wives 1952 - The Quiet Man 1959 - Anatomy of a Murder 1963 - America, America 1967 - The Graduate 1970 - Five Easy Pieces 1971 - The Last Picture Show 1973 - Cries and Whispers 1974 - The Conversation 1975 - Barry Lyndon 1976 - Taxi Driver 1979 - Apocalypse Now 1980 - Raging Bull, Tess, or The Elephant Man would be fine. 1986 - Hannah and Her Sisters 1990 - Goodfellas 1991 - JFK or Beauty and the Beast 1996 - Fargo 1997 - L.A. Confidential 1998 - The Thin Red Line 1999 - The Insider 2001 - Gosford Park 2002 - Gangs of New York or The Pianist 2004 - Mystic River 2005 - All four are absolutely better than Crash. 2010 - The Social Network

> {quote:title=gagman66 wrote:}{quote} > OK, But it looks like there hasn't been any updates on either *THE PHANTOM CHARIOT* or *THE WEDDING MARCH* in at least and year an a half? So are these still considered in the works? > > > *SJOSTROM, Victor - THE PHANTOM CHARIOT (Last Update: 10/09)* > > *STROHEIM, Erich von - THE WEDDING MARCH (Last Update: 08/09)* Criterion just takes a long time to get some things out. The Josef von Sternberg silents were acquired in 2007 but we didn't get the DVDs until 2010 (and they've had Shanghai Express, delayed because of missing material, ever since they released The Scarlet Empress many, many years ago.)

http://criterionforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=23 The "Distinct Certainties" seem reliable, the MGM/UA titles Criterion have been releasing over the last couple of years showed up here long before the formal announcement, so it's likely that they do have The Phantom Carriage (Chariot in this case.) Some more of Carl Dreyer's silents are also supposedly in the works (Master of the House?) A Blu-ray upgrade of Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries (starring Sjostrom and inspired by The Phantom Carriage) is expected this year. It would make perfect sense for Criterion to release Sjostrom's film at the same time.

> {quote:title=VP19 wrote:}{quote} > Looking forward to Linder, someone whom I've heard a lot about but have never seen. His style supposedly was a major influence on Chaplin. Ah, I hadn't noticed that! Abel Gance's J'Accuse will also be on in June.