The cinema thread

[theetruscan]

the accattone is showing salo sunday night and i am pretty excited about finally being able to see it.

Ugh. That movie is simply abuse.

[hanajibu]

Great Faust

Saw Pedro Costa's Juventude Em Marcha (Colossal Youth), a very clever exercise in patience (the film pacing is very slow, with a quasi-documentary style), a rare kind of film in which happens more inside the viewer than in the screen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnSMbYzVrYE

i've got to call attention to this, as i am a big Costa fan... his films show so rarely in the states but NYC had a small retrospective of his work at Anthology Film Archives, I think two years back... that's where i caught "colossal youth", plus "no quarto da vanda/in vanda's room" (which is even more slowly paced, to the point of being dreamlike, than "colossal youth"...it's not quite "chelsea girls" set in lisbon slums but...), "ossos/bones" and "casa de lava". he's got a new film debuting at the NY Film Festival, called "Ne Change Rien", but i've got a class coinciding with the ONE screening and will miss it. he's a very special director with a very particular style, and i wish his works were better known and more easily accessed. i don't think american DVDs even exist.

and @ chameleon, loved "tenten/adrift in tokyo", a highlight of last year's NY Asian Film Festival, for me.

[klangspiel]

^ glad to see someone spreading the costa gospel :). he's certainly up there with the best of them, contemporary or otherwise. the films you mentioned pretty much covers it but i'll mention a few more:

i) the rabbit hunters and tarrafal - two "shorts" that i consider necessary companion pieces to colossal youth - together forming a triptych of sorts. they continue in the same line of thematic thought and approach by tackling pensively the dire dislocating post-colonial reality of a subsection of the cape verdean diaspora in portugal, notably through the perspectival existential limbo of a recurring character, ie. "ventura" - the very same lead from colossal youth.

ii) where does your hidden smile lie?
quite simply my absolute favourite film from costa. ostensibly a film (or "documentary", if you like) on cinema's most revered partnership - jean-marie straub and danièle huillet. it's more specifically a meticuluous observation of their working methodology through the guise of an intimate portraiture of what might be deemed their creative process. how certain ideas are born and generated concretely through an intense interaction in situ, in various contexts, but chiefly in an editing room for one of their later films, sicilia!.
it's essentially creativity, stripped down to its barest and most captious, captured literally and metaphorically in the form of a dialogue. a collaborative dialogic process between two individuals that never ever ends even outside of what might be considered their filmic activities.
what i love most about the film is how at once affectionate and cantankerous straub and huillet's relationship were. volatile stuff :). straub in particular was a highlight. such a hilarious crank of a personality that one. fucking insightful intellect as well.

i myself am looking forward to costa's latest. i caught the short version of ne change rien some time back and that looks like an excellent teaser of a prolegomenon to the full-length feature version. i'd admit though that i'm most likely going to be watching that as an opportunity to perve and oggle over jeanne balibar than anything of cinematic worth. :)

since we're on a portuguese cinema tangent, i thought it'd be good to mention another filmmaker from that part of the world - teresa villaverde. slightly younger and less celebrated than costa but very promising in the little she has managed to produce. her most acclaimed film to date is os mutantes which i thought was ok.
but her most recent which was a couple of years back, transe, really caught my attention big-time. a gorgeous film. hauntingly elliptical and gritty at the same time and filled with shots and scenes that are breathtaking and symbolically elusive. might appeal to the russophiles over here as well.

[swami]

STATE OF PLAY 2009
Not bad , Not very unlike most other Political thrillers. Russel Crowe delivers a great performance as usual.

[Servo2000]

hell of a movie

[Faust]

These guys' imagination never ceases to amaze me. What a trip.

[doldrums]

^ regret missing a Micmacs screening the other day...

[Jorge Hache]

These guys' imagination never ceases to amaze me. What a trip.

What a coincidence, i'm showing this movie right now to my students, they're between amused and confused

[H-R]

Has anyone seen/purchased/downloaded Rage (The movie with Jude Law in it)? Is it all marketing gimmicks with all the mobile release and whatnot? I am sort of curious to see Jude Law as a drag queen though..

[mamaboy]

im shure law would be great in drag......did anybody went to his club "the box " on les....i tried coupla times and could not get in...i ve heard its pretty sick

[CommieRabbit]

Just saw l'affaire farewell, and it was pretty damn good.

Better than I thought it would've been.

[galia]

I've just watched Fargo for the first time. Least boring Coen film imo, but those guys really aren't my cup of tea. This one was entertaning, so it wasn't so bad but O Brother was agonizing, even though the music was cool

[raddy]

what about lebowski?

[Faust]

we already had this discussion. apparently those who thought it sucked (moi) should watch it again. which i will... if i ever bring myself.

[galia]

Completely forgot about lebowski, found it really funny at the time, but I ws much younger then and Ihaven't seen it since. So I'll reserve my judgement on this one