JonasEB
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Posts posted by JonasEB
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> {quote:title=WhyaDuck wrote:}{quote}
> Johnny Guitar, a real stupid movie.
No.
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Warner is pretty good about releasing their Golden Age properties on Blu-ray. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Fox, Universal, Columbia, and Paramount. Fox has shown a willingness to license out titles to companies like Criterion and Eureka/Masters of Cinema but if that's all, we're not going to get many of them.
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It's not its central theme but how about The Fortune Cookie?
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> {quote:title=JefCostello wrote:}{quote}
> That is true, but when we're talking about watching foreign films, it's those stylistic directors who we're usually talking about, and not the ones that made dumb sex comedies.
>
> These are the foreign films that are usually discussed and shown (not frequently) on TCM. I supposed that's what the dicussion was referring to.
I think it's a bad idea to discuss foreign films as if that's the case because it conflates two very different periods and approaches to movie making and kind of promotes the idea that a lot of so called "arthouse" films and filmmakers aim for deliberate artiness and importance when that's often not the case. They did but not any more so than the best American directors. Ozu was the most popular filmmaker in Japan in his heyday. He was reviled by a lot of younger Japanese filmmakers in the 60s for a supposed conservative outlook in his films' style and content (which is a _very_ simplistic interpretation of his work.) They were said to be "ordinary" and "mainstream" in the scope of Japanese films. I would compare his position to that of John Ford in the USA. Thematically they were both certainly interested in family and changing societies and they both worked in genres wildly popular with their respective countries - domestic drama for Ozu/Japan, westerns for John Ford/America (yeah, Ford did more than westerns, but for simplicity's sake.) Both had unique and clearly distinctive styles that shape their work...but Ozu would be viewed as deliberately arty...why? The visual nature of John Ford's films are as important as what we see in Ozu's films.
And so I think to say that foreign films place more emphasis on visual style than Hollywood films is more a product of our overt familiarity with our own movies. Ozu, like many Japanese filmmakers in the 30s and 40s, absolutely worshiped John Ford. It was striking to them just as Ozu would be striking to us but at the end of the day, the films still function the same way. I think it's important to emphasize the greater similarities between old Hollywood and their counterparts worldwide because the kinds of films made in the 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s really are quite approachable to the average person who enjoys classic movies.
To get people to watch a lot of these films, it's important to emphasize that most foreign films pre-1960 were studio productions, made in the similar types of physical conditions as Hollywood films (but with less money, less grandeur) and were in the so-called "mainstream" rather than specialty "art films" and that visually, there were American films that were as brilliantly cinematic and visual as anything the French or Germans could produce. They were understood and analyzed in precisely the same way. It isn't until the modernist filmmakers rise, the New Wave & Left Bank, Antonioni, New German Cinema, that we reach something very different (which produces the pretentious art fop & art film stereotypes) but most foreign films are still conventional, traditionally made works; most of the time a foreign film becomes popular in the US, it's definitely not of the modernist type. That's not to say they're bad, there are many fine films that aren't in the modernist/post-modernist mode of filmmaking (many of Louis Malle and Francois Truffaut's films for instance.) It's just important to clarify these distinctions so people might be more willing to embrace films from around the world.
Edited by: JonasEB on Jul 31, 2010 7:10 AM
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Looks like it's being put aside for August. Love is a Many-Splendored Thing, Die Hard 2, Can Can, Speed, Patton, and Butch Cassidy are the scheduled Legacy Nights for August.
They did the same thing with How Green Was My Valley last year.
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The Age of Innocence and Kundun, both underrated Scorsese films.
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The November schedule should be up by the end of the first week of August. It's hidden, you can't access it by a button on the schedule page. Here's how you do it...
Here's the link to the September schedule:
http://www.tcm.com/schedule/month/?cid=N&timezone=EST&oid=9/1/2010
As you can see, the date 9/1/2010 is at the end of the address, change the 9 to a 10, so you have 10/1/2010...
http://www.tcm.com/schedule/month/?cid=N&timezone=EST&oid=10/1/2010
...and you have the October schedule, which was posted earlier this month. Change it to 11, so it's 11/1/2010...
http://www.tcm.com/schedule/month/?cid=N&timezone=EST&oid=11/1/2010
...and you have the page for the November schedule. Right now there's still nothing there. When it pops up there will be a thread about it in general discussions.
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> {quote:title=finance wrote:}{quote}
> I've just been informed by Comcast that within the next 2 weeks, my condo will no longer get Fox Movie Channel. I called them, and was informed that Comcast will no longer offer FMC ANYWHERE. Anyone know anything about this? Is FMC going out of existence?
I don't believe FMC's days are numbered. They've posted the September schedule on their website (Fritz Lang's Return of Frank James and William Wellman's Yellow Sky are coming up!) and they appear to be producing more new FMC programming (some Avatar behind-the-scenes thing, FOX Legacy introduction for Mark of Zorro.)
I also have Comcast but haven't heard anything about them dropping the channel yet. I will be mad if they do; even with the all of the repeat programming it's still a useful channel.
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> {quote:title=JefCostello wrote:}{quote}
> Also, dialogue isn't as important to foreign films as it is to Hollywood movies.
That's not true at all because most foreign films are just like Hollywood films. Still, if we discount the mainstream French films and only count what the New Wave was doing then that in no way depreciates the words. 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her would be incomprehensible if you couldn't understand the narrator, actresses, and actors. Interestingly, the visual information in the average Hollywood film would be easier to read and understand sans dialogue than 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her would be.
> {quote:title=JefCostello wrote:}{quote}
> Style is what foreign directors tried to promote the most.
Filmmakers like Alain Resnais and Michelangelo Antonioni are/were exceptions to their nations' film production, just as Sam Fuller and Nicholas Ray were to ours. When Muriel or Red Desert were playing at the local theaters in Nice or Naples, you can bet there were five historical dramas, Biblical epics, or buffoonish Italian sex comedies playing at the same time.
Edited by: JonasEB on Jul 30, 2010 1:56 AM
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The only reason "film" is different from "movie" or "flick" is because it refers to the material used to make the thing whereas the others are just pseudonyms for moving picture/motion picture. Some people might use the term in a stupid way but it's not the word's fault.
Film is the name of the medium and rightfully so (you know, like "painting," "sculpture," etc.) Cinema is interchangeable and useful for describing the qualities of film. When people criticize a movie for not being cinematic, they mean it isn't using all of the potential qualities of the art form. You wouldn't say, "It's not movie-enough."
I use any of the words in conversation, mostly "film" or "movie," it just depends on how it fits together.
I hear people say "Action Film" at least as often as I hear them say "Action Movie." No difference.
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I wouldn't consider it a "favorite" but I thought I'd mention Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise. One of his better films in my book.
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> {quote:title=TC1943 wrote:}{quote}
> and they, in a sense, break apart. This is especially noticeable in darker scenes.
Do you mean that in areas of the picture that are very dark you notice blocks? That's a compression artifact that's inherent to the DVD. You might not have noticed it on the old TVs due to resolution, screen size, brightness, etc. but it's always there.
The black levels are a problem between the resolution of the DVD and the HDTV; like the picture details in general, the DVD can't take advantage of all of the color depth provided by the high resolution of the HDTV. It's just what standard definition material looks like on an HDTV.
I have several black and white films on Blu-ray and can tell you that those pull off deep blacks with ease and they lack compression artifacts.
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Some stuff I have in rotation right now...
The Carter Family - Anchored in Love:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFg3meaL60k
The Carter Family - Bury Me Under the Weeping Willow:
Leadbelly - Pick a Bale of Cotton:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiXLl7clwJE
Blind Willie McTell - Your Southern Can is Mine:
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I think auteur theory has become applied in the wrong way over the years. Every day on TV we see commercials that note "A FILM BY (insert name)" even if they aren't an "auteur" or even a decent director at all.
It's a rocky road because what's on the page doesn't necessarily equate to what's actually on the screen. Auteur theory doesn't insist on the primacy of the director but it does insist that the director is the one most capable of creating true cinema.
Auteur theory arose out of a need to emphasize the visual aspect of cinema, which many of us consider the most important aspect of the medium. Most reviews looked at films as if they were novels or a stage performance. Cinema has more dimensions than both of them and they needed to be considered. Championing the director was a way to facilitate this viewpoint as the director is the person who is most often in control of the process of filming. It really wasn't meant to downplay the contributions of the screenwriter; think of it as two different things - the screenplay and the film created from the screenplay. Strangers on a Train is thus a Hitchcock film from a Raymond Chandler screenplay. Hitchcock has a unique and powerful mise en scene that distinguishes his work from what anyone else would be capable of creating, so auteur criticism is meant to emphasize how the director uses the visual to transform the material - to get at a purer idea of cinema.
It's often acknowledged that the director isn't simply the sole creator of a film; Val Lewton and David O. Selznick are examples from the production side of things. Michael Powell felt a reciprocal creative bond with Emeric Pressburger. He considered Pressburger's writing an indelible influence on his perception towards creating a film, so he wanted the two of them credited together as The Archers. Today, Charlie Kauffman is an example of a writer who is considered the clear visionary behind the films produced from his screenplays.
From an auteurist viewpoint, actors, cinematographers, editors, etc., what they do is at the discretion of the director's vision. We of course single them out for praise and recognition but they're all part of the director's visual architecture, his mise en scene. The blocking, the set design, lighting, editing, composition of the frame. Editors and cinematographers actually execute these things but it's under the vision of the director (certainly Thelma Schoonmaker and Raoul Coutard would agree.)
Screenwriters have been unfairly ignored but this happened even before auteur theory arrived (it's also worth noting that the people who devised auteur theory did talk about screenwriters from time to time.) According to the Academy, it's the producer who gets top honors on a film.
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On the Waterfront will never happen. It's one of the major studio films and Sony/Columbia will undoubtedly keep it for itself. As for A Place in the Sun, it is more likely that Criterion might someday release Josef von Sternberg's earlier adaptation of An American Tragedy. That has yet to receive a DVD release; I'm not sure if it has ever been issued on home video.
I wouldn't want Criterion to release every mainstream classic, it would just eat up resources that could be spent exposing a lesser known masterpiece like Leo McCarey's Make Way for Tomorrow to a new audience or bringing the Sternberg silents back from the grave.
I noticed you brought up Wild River in another thread. That and America, America are the Kazan films that deserve a good Criterion Blu-ray/DVD. Wild River could certainly be a possibility, Fox is leasing out titles to Criterion again.
Edited by: JonasEB on Jul 24, 2010 12:54 AM
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> {quote:title=misswonderly wrote:}{quote}
> I can definitely see both *Duel in the Sun* and *Johnny Guitar* as cult films. I can also see Nicholas Ray's consciously making *Johnny Guitar* the odd mix of western, noir, and Joan-o-drama that it is. But *Duel in the Sun* and King Vidor deliberately making it excessive with a view to comedy, I have a little more trouble with.
I don't think the intention was to be comedic in a mocking way or in the sense of parody but I do think there's an inherent strangeness that makes the whole thing really fun to watch (and for some people, flat out funny.) One scene in particular: Walter Huston preaching at Jennifer Jones, naked and only wrapped in a blanket, with Lillian Gish watching. That blend of extreme religion with the sexually heightened tone of the set, lighting, photography, and performers - Those elements reoccur throughout the film in ways that seem intentional. I think it does fit in as a King Vidor film, certainly in the light of other films he would go on to make like Beyond the Forest and The Fountainhead, but many others directed portions of the film, including Josef von Sternberg, and I see Duel in the Sun as akin to The Devil is a Woman; the narrative is frustrating, you could struggle with why the characters do what they do, but it's better to just let yourself go with the basic idea, logic, and style of the film and let things fall where they may.
"Lust in the Dust" is often used as a pejorative nickname but I think it aptly describes what the film is truthfully going for. It famously came up against the Hays Code and subsequently lost a lot of even more daring sexual material (and apparently, more of Walter Huston's character.) Selznick might have had other ideas towards respectable, grand entertainment but I believe the collaborators all knew that they were working with fundamentally trashy material and that it deserved as much raging passion, sex, and "heat" as they could fit into it.
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> {quote:title=C.Bogle wrote:}{quote}
> I must admit I've never considered either Agguire or Discreet Charm to be cult films.
> They're both very fine foreign films, with vastly different subject matter, but cult films?
> To each their own. When I think of cult films, things like Pink Flamingos, Eraserhead,
> Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill come to mind. It would be funny though to see people attending
> a midnight show dressed up as Fernando Rey and shouting the subtitles out loud.
A cult film is simply any film that you could say has a group of fans that receive the film in an unusual way. A Clockwork Orange was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards but its violent reputation has made it a magnet for certain types of people. The images from the film have become implanted in various subcultures. The Big Lebowski and Blade Runner don't appear cult like on the surface but nevertheless have become cult hits. Star Wars and John Hughes films could be considered cultish for creating either a uniquely rabid fanbase like the former or snatching the nostalgia market like the latter.
Duel in the Sun and particularly Johnny Guitar could be considered cult films because they have developed reputations for campiness among average movie watchers and particularly the average western fan. Both are seen as unintentionally humorous but that's not true; Duel is deliberately odd, sexual, and over the top while Johnny Guitar has a lot of inherent sarcastic humor. The rest is down to western fans who don't get melodrama/"Women's Film", which is a large part of what Johnny Guitar really is (other Nicholas Ray films have suffered from this same issue of interpretation.) Today, Johnny Guitar is rightfully considered a great film. Duel in the Sun is as well but it hasn't made the same inroads Johnny Guitar has. Nevertheless, that "campy" view of both still persists in many cases.
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> {quote:title=shonda925 wrote:}{quote}
> Good point....to me it also depends on the elements of the film. *The Dark Knight* gained "cult" status instantly due to the untimely passing of Heath Ledger......same with James Dean in *Rebel Without a Cause*.....Or you can have a movie thats so bad it's good, and is considered a cult classic........
I don't think anyone seriously considers The Dark Knight a cult film. Perhaps it is in the sense that you could consider Gone With the Wind or Avatar cult films (the unwavering insistence of fans that both are the greatest examples of film in their respective eras.) Its success was guaranteed before Heath Ledger died; Batman Begins was a critical and commercial hit, the revival of a dead film franchise, so expectations were already sky high for The Dark Knight. I don't believe Heath Ledger's death had nearly as much to do with the success of the film as some people say.
Although it is a masterpiece on its own merits, Rebel Without a Cause did have a cult-factor propelling it.
I suppose you can count me as one of those "odd people" who likes Duel in the Sun and The Fountainhead (the former isn't as aloof as it's reputed to be.) Most people approach them as camp but they're both superior cinematic works.
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> {quote:title=ValentineXavier wrote:}{quote}
> My pick for most underrated film of the 80s is Michael Cimino's *Heaven's Gate*, the 219m cut. Ridiculed by critics, even before its release, in part for its length. It was a flop. It is an excellent film, great cast, and actually could be a bit longer, to fill in a few gaps in the last 1/3 of the film.
A good choice. Now that Criterion has access to the modern MGM's film collection I hope they pick up Heaven's Gate for Blu-ray. Odds are that's the only hope it has.
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One favorite off the top of my head is Miklos Rosza's score for Nicholas Ray's King of Kings.
As for pop songs on soundtracks, some people do it well, like Martin Scorsese - the brilliant tracking shot in Goodfellas where Ray Liotta whisks Lorraine Bracco through the restaurant to "Then He Kissed Me" by The Crystals. Of course, Scorsese also used original scores - Taxi Driver features Bernard Herrmann's last film score and Philip Glass contributed greatly to Kundun.
The way most films are made today you can't have the traditional film scores because we simply don't make films like that anymore. They just don't fit 90% of the time and in the cases that they do...I usually don't find the results inspiring.
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Yes, I saw the clips in the other thread you posted them in. The organ soundtrack is very nice for what it is but with a grand, opulent film like The Merry Widow you'd of course want an orchestra. Sounds great!
The only Stroheim's I've seen are Greed and The Merry Widow. Foolish Wives and Queen Kelly are both on Internet Archive but of course they're missing a lot of material and the intertitles are in Italian. Might pick up one of the Kino DVDs soon.
I completely forgot about Criterion and The Wedding March. I hope that comes out this year, guess we'll find out within the next two months.
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> {quote:title=gagman66 wrote:}{quote}
> There is some indication that THE MERRY WIDOW might be being held back for something better than a Warner Archive release. It was announced to be released earlier this year, but that never happened.
Rick Schmidlin, who worked on TCM's restoration of Greed, recently said that a DVD of his version of Greed could be in the works for December. Maybe this will be the beginning of the long awaited stream of silents that have been missing-in-action for so many years.
http://theplaylist.blogspot.com/2010/04/erich-von-stroheims-lost-masterpiece.html
Perhaps that September airing of Greed will precipitate the announcement of a DVD (or, wishful thinking, Blu-ray too) and...maybe a few others?
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You're looking for Erich von Stroheim's version of The Merry Widow. John Gilbert's family, the royal family, persuades him not to marry Mae Murray, a commoner. She marries a rich baron, he dies, and she inherits his estate. They meet again a year later. Gilbert and his cousin, the crown prince, come to Paris and get tangled up over her, leading to a duel. Gilbert misunderstands Murray's request that he not duel with his cousin, he believes she loves him...she doesn't. Gilbert is shot in the duel but survives. His cousin, upon ascending to the throne, is assassinated. Gilbert and Murray become King and Queen.
It's going to be on TCM a couple of times in the next two months, once for John Gilbert's day in August and again in September.
Excellent film.
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> {quote:title=JefCostello wrote:}{quote}
> Radio Days is a very underrated movie. I watched it several months ago without having seen it before, and wondered why it isn't considered one of Woody Allen's best films.
Gotta agree with that. Stardust Memories as well. The 80s was such a strong period for Woody Allen, I think his best.
?Black Orpheus? for dyslexics...
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> {quote:title=Kinokima wrote:}{quote}
> I agree JonasFB there is much more to foreign cinema than style. Sure a lot of foreign films excel in their style but just as many excel in their characters & story. I don't find most foreign film pretentious or trying to be artsy at all. I think sometimes that is just an excuse used not to give these films a chance. And sure you are not going to necessarily love every foreign film but I am sure no one likes every classic film either.
Yep. I'd say I'm an opponent of the term "art film" not because film isn't art (I think it's the greatest art form of the 20th century) but because any kind of film can reach that level. The only distinction is good and bad.
And I want people to appreciate the very particular kinds of films made in the 1960s just as much but those really are a very different beast than Grand Illusion, Seven Samurai, or La Strada (or Black Orpheus.) They can require a wholly different mindset and point of view to appreciate and it's something that you have to learn. People often recommend Breathless to those who want to widen their scope to films from around the world because it's a great, epochal film and it is...but I think that's one of the worst places to start. It's better to begin with Renoir, Kurosawa, 50s Bergman, etc. because we watch their films just as we would watch Minnelli's melodramas or Ford's westerns.