RMeingast Posted September 4, 2012 Share Posted September 4, 2012 The latest article by MoMA curator Charles Silver has come out as MoMA is showing films in their "An Auteurist History of Film" series all year. This week's film is Fellini's "La Strada" with Anthony Quinn and Giulietta Masin: http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2012/09/04/federico-fellinis-la-strada Past blogs (on past films) by MoMA Film Department Curator Charles Silver here: http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/category/auteurist-history-of-film If you live in New York City, you can view the movies at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
misswonderly3 Posted September 4, 2012 Share Posted September 4, 2012 TCM aired *La Strada* earlier this summer, but I missed it. Too bad, I love Fellini. Lucky New Yorkers, they live in a cultural paradise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swithin Posted September 4, 2012 Share Posted September 4, 2012 I live in NYC (aka a cultural paradise) and haven't been at MOMA for years -- even though I could walk there! I keep meaning to visit. I do go to my local cinema, which is the Film Society of Lincoln Center's theaters, though I missed a screening of Terence Davies' House of Mirth last month, which I very much wanted to see. Davies is my favorite contemporary director. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMeingast Posted September 5, 2012 Author Share Posted September 5, 2012 > {quote:title=Swithin wrote:}{quote}I live in NYC (aka a cultural paradise) and haven't been at MOMA for years -- even though I could walk there! I keep meaning to visit. I do go to my local cinema, which is the Film Society of Lincoln Center's theaters, though I missed a screening of Terence Davies' House of Mirth last month, which I very much wanted to see. Davies is my favorite contemporary director. Yes, lots of choices in NYC... Film Society of Lincoln Centre a good place too: http://www.filmlinc.com/nyff2012 I just follow MoMA on Facebook and wanted to share the information. Funny, it's like you live in a house made from gold with 1000 rooms, and you haven't been in one of the golden rooms, but will get around to it someday... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sprocket_Man Posted September 5, 2012 Share Posted September 5, 2012 > {quote:title=Swithin wrote: > }{quote} > I live in NYC (aka a cultural paradise) and haven't been at MOMA for years -- even though I could walk there! I keep meaning to visit. At $25 per adult admission, you'd need to pick your visits carefully (unless you go only on Fridays, when it's pay what you like). I practically lived there when I was in college thirty-five years ago, but couldn't afford that now (I remember spending a long afternoon sitting in front of Picasso's Guernica, in conversation with an old MGM publicist who'd worked under the studio's publicity chief Howard Strickling). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonasEB Posted September 5, 2012 Share Posted September 5, 2012 I live, I don't know, 1,000 or so miles west of NYC so this is all irrelevant to me but... Really, someone please pick another Ozu film for once. As great as Tokyo Story is, the continuing value placed on it has continued to propagate some silly things about him. For instance, this article... http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2012/07/10/yasujiro-ozus-tokyo-story ...repeats the tatami mat thing...which is false - there were simply practical reasons for doing it that way and Ozu just liked the way it looked. Ozu's treatment of the film's characters...false - Ozu isn't taking anyone's side here, not the old or the young. It repeats that Tokyo Story is indebted to Make Way For Tomorrow...false - Ozu never said this and, again, treats his characters and story in a very different way from the one-sided McCarey film. Less pertinent, Ozu wasn't a significant army officer, he was supposed to make propaganda films in Singapore (but he didn't, he played Tennis and watched the cache of American films that were banned in Japan instead - so, yes, technically a "bad soldier.") Ozu's fondness for Ernst Lubitsch isn't remotely "improbable"; he's a comic filmmaker at heart and Lubtisch was a major early influence (as he was for most Japanese of that generation.) Spirituality isn't completely absent from Ozu's films but in general they only surface in small gestures and don't define the works. Ozu was concerned with day to day life and relationships, not something so lofty as spirituality. In general, this still smacks of Paul Schrader's Bresson/Dreyer/Ozu "transcendental" thing, the Ozu whom I'm extremely familiar with doesn't fit in with this at all. If I were curator, I'd push for Good Morning instead, it'll shatter all illusions about the man's work in an instant. The late color comedies in general, including one of my favorites, Equinox Flower, give a very clear picture of Ozu. Or you have the lovable scoundrels who populate his early silents. Or the much more emotionally violent Tokyo Twilight and Hen in the Wind. None of these are placid the way articles such as these make them sound; they are full of goofiness and elation as well as anger and despair. Tokyo Story itself has more humor than most people realize. Sorry 'bout that - end rant! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMeingast Posted September 5, 2012 Author Share Posted September 5, 2012 > {quote:title=JonasEB wrote:}{quote}I live, I don't know, 1,000 or so miles west of NYC so this is all irrelevant to me but... > > Really, someone please pick another Ozu film for once. As great as Tokyo Story is, the continuing value placed on it has continued to propagate some silly things about him. For instance, this article... > > http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2012/07/10/yasujiro-ozus-tokyo-story'>http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2012/07/10/yasujiro-ozus-tokyo-story'>http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2012/07/10/yasujiro-ozus-tokyo-story'>http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2012/07/10/yasujiro-ozus-tokyo-story > > Sorry 'bout that - end rant! I don't live near NYC either and probably will never visit there in my life, but I still follow MoMA... And I don't disagree with your comments. But you can make your comments there at the bottom of the webpage on the film: http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2012/07/10/yasujiro-ozus-tokyo-story Or you can email the blog author here: Charles_Silver@moma.org I'm sure they'd be glad to read your comments... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMeingast Posted September 5, 2012 Author Share Posted September 5, 2012 > {quote:title=Sprocket_Man wrote:}{quote} > > {quote:title=Swithin wrote: > > }{quote} > > I live in NYC (aka a cultural paradise) and haven't been at MOMA for years -- even though I could walk there! I keep meaning to visit. At $25 per adult admission, you'd need to pick your visits carefully (unless you go only on Fridays, when it's pay what you like). > > I practically lived there when I was in college thirty-five years ago, but couldn't afford that now (I remember spending a long afternoon sitting in front of Picasso's Guernica, in conversation with an old MGM publicist who'd worked under the studio's publicity chief Howard Strickling). > I think everything is expensive in NYC... But it's like anything else... If it's something you're interested in, you save your dough... The yearly membership is $85.00 and that includes the films as well as other things... And MoMA is a charity, so the membership fee is tax deductible. Think it's $50.00 a year for students... Pay what you like Friday nights 4 - 8 p.m. But unless I'm mistaken, it says $12.00 a ticket for adults and you can put that towards an annual membership: http://www.moma.org/visit/plan/#filmticketing Unless I missed something?? Is $25.00 for two people?? Or does that $25.00 include museum admission too for the day? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bildwasser Posted September 5, 2012 Share Posted September 5, 2012 I haven't been there in decades. The theater used to be on what I guess one would call the ground floor or basement. I presume it's still in that location. It was a good place to see movies and then slowly come out into the light of day again. One thing I remember is how small Dali's The Persistence of Memory was. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonasEB Posted September 7, 2012 Share Posted September 7, 2012 > {quote:title=RMeingast wrote}{quote}:And I don't disagree with your comments. But you can make your comments there at the bottom of the webpage on the film: > > http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2012/07/10/yasujiro-ozus-tokyo-story > I should, but I'd have to reword it in a more kindly fashion (I do takes mah Ozu seriously.) In the end it probably wouldn't help much - for the forty years we've been acquainted with Ozu's work, even with David Bordwell's focus on formalism since the 1980s and especially since Ozu's dramatic increase in popularity since around 2000, the old Donald Richie and Schrader concepts persist (not that they're completely without merit.) It has become concrete, like Kane (if not its Sight & Sound stature, then the unchanging perceptions about its accomplishments.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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