The cinema thread

[sam_tem]

guys, it's definitely red > blue >> white

i watched drugstore cowboys last night. i couldn't recommend it to anyone, but it was enjoyable to see the groundwork being laid for my own private idaho with the cinematography, music, etc.

like jarmusch, i really don't like any of the movies gus van sant has been making in the 00's. the pacing and cinematography is certainly enjoyable, but this has been the standard arthouse reaction to hollywood for a long time now and it's just become one big cliche. it's like he's dressing up a bad movie in artsy digs rather than hollywood glamour and at the end of the day it's still just a bad movie.

and i loved proposition. i really enjoy the whole western genre, but there just aren't many that held up well over time. i wouldn't say not having a connection with the characters is necessarily a fault since it's part of the genre. you give a quick flashback and move onto the merciless killing without emotion. i really dislike the majority of character driven westerns but maybe that's because most of them are clint eastwood films.

[MASUGNEN]

Wait, Is white the one about the Polish immigrant who travels home hidden in a suitcase , Is it the same movie where he meets a older man while playing music on the subway who asks him to assist in suicide???

It's the White. It's stupid, as the Red (which however is stunningly beautiful). Blue is the only one in the trilogy I alltogether fancy. Watch Amator for an early Kieslowski masterpiece, the best metafilm I've seen.

Yesterday Andrei Rublev, tonight Saragossa Manuscript. Perhaps Drugstore Cowboy aswell.

[Faust]

Since we are on topic of bashing movies artsy people are supposed to like, can someone enlighten me about Twin Peaks? Was that an 80s thing? I watched half of the first season, but I'm about to give up. Should I just keep going waiting for some grand finale, or what? Granted, the dancing midget is priceless, but the rest, hmmm....

[MASUGNEN]

Twin Peaks is by far my favourite television series. As a child, when it originally was televised in Sweden, I was always banned from the living room when the bird appeared and Badalamenti's synth reverbed. I've now compensated and watched the series at least once every year since Y2K.

As series it really is a failure. Intended as non-endning, never-resolved, Lynch & Frost continously gave away control to assistants, the public lost interest and the series had to end.

To endure the weak second season I guess you have to haven fallen in love with Twin Peaks, the society, its inhabitants, the woods, the mystery, the overall tone. Of course it isn't as strikingly innovative watched today, but I think the original television audience never before had seen such a genre fusion. Twin Peaks is a classic murder story, it has supernaturalia, it's a soap opera, a comedy, you name it. BOB scared the hell of a whole generation.

How do you feel about Lynch's general oeuvre, Faust? Do you apprehend him as tighter in the film format?

[Faust]

Yea, no problems with most of his films - really love them. Again, later work more than earlier work. I could do without watching Blue Velvet ever again, but The Lost Highway and Mullholand Drive I could watch over and over.

[genevieveryoko]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Short_Films_of_David_Lynch

yeah some of the earlier films have tested my patience, like Wild at Heart (still worth watching though I think), but I really enjoyed the shorts...they are crazy of course but also short enough to really sink in...

[MASUGNEN]

The early Short Films are truely great, foreboding pioneer work. The Grandmother points directly to Eraserhead.

Eraserhead is a magnificent film. Straight Story compells me, also Dune thrills me. You know that Lynch was afterwards offered direction of Return of the Jedi? My favourite Lynch full-lengther is Lost Highway, followed by Mulholland Dr. and Blue Velvet.

Blue Velvet will grow on you, Faust. First time I saw it, it didn't do it for me, hardly anything. The second time I understood it as an ingenious psychoanalytic fairytale. It deepens still.

Its reception integrates into the message. The test screening was the worst ever – the audience thought it was to see Top Gun! Outside British cinemas protesters tried to stop ticket commerse.

Wild at Heart is so silly (as is the short The Cowboy and the Frenchman, "two clichées in one"). I've seen Inland Empire three times. Every time the film wins half an hour on me. Perhaps the sixth time I'll enjoy the whole movie. I find it unfocused and caricatural. The story really allows a terrific completement of Mulholland Dr., but I lose touch.

Twin Peaks-fanatized as I am, I actually regard Fire Walk With Me as more resolving than wanted. Preserve the mystery!

Gaaarmonboziaaa!

[MASUGNEN]

Saragossa Manuscript was a treat. I understand why it's Jerzy Garcia's, Martin Scorsese's and Luis Buñuel's favourite flick. It's quirkily layered, expresses the persona's narratological construction, its possibilities and risks.

Tomorrow Jan Troell's Land of Dreams (feat. Rollo May). And Drugstore Cowboy. And Monty Python. Perhaps. Soon X Files, the Twin Peaks epigon. I'm mediatized, idiotized.

[klangspiel]

don't care much for lynch's films (unless you have a certain tick / twitch ridden bearded clap-trap slovenian for company :) - and boy does he love his lynch).
almost always found them pretty dull :)
except maybe the first 3 feature lengths, in particular the elephant man which i have a terrible soft spot for, and the early animated shorts which have a strong resemblance to the surreal side of czech animation (svankmajer, barta, and the like). gotta admit though: i love lynch's personality especially the kinks of eccentricity that show up in the media once in a while.

rewatching sokurov's telets (taurus) at the moment which is essentially a portraiture of lenin's last days. i much prefer this over the other two films he made about 20th century "dictators" - hitler (moloch) and hirohito (the sun). the typical, and by now almost text-book, sokurov-ian impressionistic imagery is at one of its best with this film. highly recommended if you're not one without patience for languid pace and what may seem like oblique cinematic diction.

[MASUGNEN]

Klangspiel!

I really appreciate your taste and thank you for many interesting recommendations.

How come you prefer Sokurov – the discipel – to Tarkovsky – the master? I find Sokurov foremost a unique aesthetician and a durée réelle-configurator. I love his work and his attitude. However, I find Tarkovsky's deep-sight in the human soul unparallelled. Perhaps Sokurov doesn't want to recapitulate, perhaps there's no need of an echo.

I must say I have a lot of Sokurov flicks yet to go, especially the earliest ones.

[MASUGNEN]

India Song is an apart treat, quite a unique movie, like its director is an author. I really recommend nearly all her books, favourably La pluie d'été, Dix heures et demie du soir en été, L'amant and the brilliant short story L'homme assis dans le couloir. L'amant is probably the best start.

[laika]

took myself on a cold and rainy date to see coco avant chanel
at the Paris; then came home and read marguerite duras, the lover, in the bath.
a suitable pair of activities, somehow.

[galia]

Did you like the film? This woman consistently makes biopics that look nice but amount to nothing more than big budget daytime tv movies, so I didn't see it. I find her too annoying as a director

[Faust]

Did you like the film? This woman consistently makes biopics that look nice but amount to nothing more than big budget daytime tv movies, so I didn't see it. I find her too annoying as a director

hmmm, sounds pretty accurate actually!

[laika]

Did you like the film? This woman consistently makes biopics that look nice but amount to nothing more than big budget daytime tv movies, so I didn't see it. I find her too annoying as a director

i did like it; i liked the outfits so much.
i know what you are so saying though--it's eye candy, really,
but i don't mind that sometimes...i do wish it hadn't stopped short at what was arguably the most interesting part of her life, but that would be a completely different film. it was basically the equivalent of Sofia's Marie Antoinette, if you know what i mean.