Multiple Cinegasms

[Occident]

L'Aventurra and L'Eclisse = Fine

Zabriskie Point = Maybe

Red Desert = Hell no.

[Murrrk]

Oh, I'm w/ you on Red Desert. Sucky. So's Blow Up. I deleted the post where I sang the praises of the first two you mention. (I didn't actually sing.) But I can't watch Eclipse ever again. Bad memory association. Which sucks, 'cause I hear the Criterion transfer's amazing.

[auto-da-fey]

If I was going to pick an Antonioni: The Passenger every time.

I could see myself agreeing with this.

& Zabriskie Point is SO underrated! ...Watch it w/ the sound off some time.

But this, no. I thought maybe seeing it on the big screen would help, but not even that. And I don't get the sound thing--you mean to cleanse it of its terrible dialogue? Because I didn't mind the music.

[girl]

Really Whit?  The Passenger?  *yawn*  It wouldn't make any list of mine. . .

[auto-da-fey]

Really Whit?  The Passenger?  *yawn*  It wouldn't make any list of mine. . .

Well, I did mean in the context of "if I was going to pick an Antonioni," not that I was going to pick one, so I'd sort of say about *yawn* as a reaction what Murk said about "academic prose" elsewhere. I mean, this dude is not exactly renowned for slam-bang action, you know?

Excessive qualification aside, I do like The Passenger an awful lot.

[Occident]

I'd have it in my top 100.

[dieblucasdie]

RE:  The AFI list.  The wikipedia one is the old one; CBS just aired a NEW one tonight.  Apparently "The Apartment" IS still on it.

I think the main critique I'd make of it is stolen from the gf just now:  "70s autuer cockslapping."  The list is *heavy* on Scorcese, Coppola, Allen, Lucas, etc.  Not just the films they made, but the films they like.  It's especially fucked up when you look at the "Golden Age" movies that made the cut, and their view of women.  You've got "Sunset Boulevard" and "All About Eve," but no "His Girl Friday" or "Woman of the Year."

[Occident]

Fuck the 70's Golden Age. As we get further away from it the more that Scorsese, Spielberg, Coppola, Lucas are positioned as that periods masters.

Well screw.

Give me Altman, De Palma, Ashby any day. At least Altman and De Palma kept taking risks.

[dieblucasdie]

Oh, I agree.  By "Golden Age" I actually meant Hawks-Capra-Ford era, etc.

Also on the AFI list:

"On The Waterfront" and "The Graduate" fell out of the Top Ten in favor of "Raging Bull" (At #4!) and "Vertigo."   

[Murrrk]

Hold on! On the Waterfront with its crass politics may have a great performance, but The Graduate IS the single most overrated movie in history - Kael's actually right on about this (for once). I'll grant you that Raging Bull is ridiculously overrated.

But Vertigo! Vertigo might be one of the best five films ever made, period!

[auto-da-fey]

Fuck the 70's Golden Age. As we get further away from it the more that Scorsese, Spielberg, Coppola, Lucas are positioned as that periods masters.

I'm not willing to dismiss Scorsese or Coppola, but yeah, does anyone outside AFI-list-level criticism take Lucas or Spielberg seriously as filmmakers?

Altman's risks certainly stopped paying off long before he stopped taking them, though, and I don't see Ashby or DePalma as any more risk-prone than Scorsese or Coppola, especially if we bracket the question of actual aesthetic success. I mean, New York, New York and One from the Heart are both more adventurous than Coming Home or really anything Ashby ever did.

[auto-da-fey]

And I'm more Murk than blucas on Vertigo.

[girl]

Excessive qualification aside, I do like The Passenger an awful lot.

Fair enough.  I mostly like Blow-up because of David Hemmings, and I mostly like David Hemmings in Camelot.  Also, my computer keeps freezing up.  (spinning color wheel of death)  Also, I've been drinking for like six hours now.  Also, Lawrence of Arabia is a great movie.  Seriously.

[Occident]

Vertigo is a great film. With you on the Graduateas well.

I like Kael. I seldom agree with her but I find her passionate ramblings hell compelling. The rantings of a "demented bag lady" as Alan Parker -or was it Oliver Stone? - put it, but fun rantings none-the-less.

[dieblucasdie]

Hence the  .  Seems like a lateral move.  I love "Vertigo," and Brando in all his incarnations (including the french-fry in his beard on "The Critic"), but "Raging Bull" moving from the 20s (about where it belongs, if that) to #4 is pretty WTF.

I do kinda love "The Graduate," though.  Mainly for Anne Bancroft.  Hoffman has made a career out of showing up in the right place at the right time.  Sort of the anti-Ed Norton.

The other thing I realized watching the special was how many effin' mediocre films made it there thanks to performances by one, Jack Nicholson. 

xposts

[girl]

"warning there have been 40,000,000 replies since you started posting".

In my head, I think the entire decade of the 70's is overrated, but when I really stop to look at the movies, there are some awfully good ones there.  Still, if I could pick just one decade, it'd be teh 40s.  I'm a big fan of noir.

[dieblucasdie]

"warning there have been 40,000,000 replies since you started posting".

In my head, I think the entire decade of the 70's is overrated, but when I really stop to look at the movies, there are some awfully good ones there.  Still, if I could pick just one decade, it'd be teh 40s.  I'm a big fan of noir.

I agree with you, but for me it's the screwball comedy.

[girl]

I totes didn't type "teh" on purpose in that post, by the way.  I should probably head toward bed sometime soon.

[Occident]

Fuck the 70's Golden Age. As we get further away from it the more that Scorsese, Spielberg, Coppola, Lucas are positioned as that periods masters.

I'm not willing to dismiss Scorsese or Coppola, but yeah, does anyone outside AFI-list-level criticism take Lucas or Spielberg seriously as filmmakers?

Altman's risks certainly stopped paying off long before he stopped taking them, though, and I don't see Ashby or DePalma as any more risk-prone than Scorsese or Coppola, especially if we bracket the question of actual aesthetic success. I mean, New York, New York and One from the Heart are both more adventurous than Coming Home or really anything Ashby ever did.

Yeah, but I didn't say Ashby took more risks. I stand by De Palma and Altman. And I'm not saying disregard Scorses or Coppola's work, more rather their becoming almightily canonical. And unimpeachable.

[dieblucasdie]

Yeah, that in the end, is what's infuriating about the AFI list:  "Let's Make a Canon!"  and re-write a Canon, while we're at it.

It was creepy how they talked about "Sullivan's Travels" with zero mention of Veronica Lake. 

[auto-da-fey]

In my head, I think the entire decade of the 70's is overrated,

I couldn't disagree with this more, but I don't have time to respond thoughtfully now. Maybe if the argument continues tomorrow. 

And Occident, I can sort of agree with that; neither Scorsese nor Coppola (nor anyone I can think of) are unimpeachable in my book, but they both deserve their towering reputations fully. And while I love De Palma greatly, I don't see him occupying the same tier (really, I think he swerved away from the radical course he was on with Greetings and Hi, Mom quite early). On Altman, I'm conflicted--dude's classics are more than matched by his drivel. But anyway, I'd take this cluster over any comparable cluster of classic Hollywood filmmakers, even if you threw Billy Wilder into the mix.

[auto-da-fey]

Meanwhile, another giallo thriller for me: Lenzi's 1972 opus Seven Blood-Stained Orchids. This one seems to have missed the memo about savoring the uncertainty of whether the hero is also the killer, because we know early on here that he isn't, and so it's sort of a nastier Agatha Christie knock-em-down-one-after-the-other suspense story. I had fun, but it didn't leave a mark on my psyche.

[dieblucasdie]

In my head, I think the entire decade of the 70's is overrated,

I couldn't disagree with this more, but I don't have time to respond thoughtfully now. Maybe if the argument continues tomorrow. 

And Occident, I can sort of agree with that; neither Scorsese nor Coppola (nor anyone I can think of) are unimpeachable in my book, but they both deserve their towering reputations fully. And while I love De Palma greatly, I don't see him occupying the same tier (really, I think he swerved away from the radical course he was on with Greetings and Hi, Mom quite early). On Altman, I'm conflicted--dude's classics are more than matched by his drivel. But anyway, I'd take this cluster over any comparable cluster of classic Hollywood filmmakers, even if you threw Billy Wilder into the mix.

And I'd disagree, with the Hawks-Capra-Ford, but at a certain point that's just a matter of personal preference.

I wouldn't argue that the '70s crowd *sucked,* (though I think that in things like AFI, sometimes the emphasis is placed on the wrong movies; I'll take my Pacino in some "Dog Day Afternoon" any day).  It's just annoying to see them get talked about as if they were the only good thing to ever happen in film. 

And I'm sorry, "The Searchers" wouldn't be nearly as well-regarded if Scorsese didn't beat off so publicly about it so often.

[auto-da-fey]

In my head, I think the entire decade of the 70's is overrated,

I couldn't disagree with this more, but I don't have time to respond thoughtfully now.

Although one quick thought is that I'd agree that it's mis appreciated--this might be in line with Occident's comments, actually, but the compulsion to create a 70s canon distorts the richness of that period. That is, isolating something like Mean Streets as a singularity when you also had, oh, Cisco Pike and Dusty and Sweets McGee and Scarecrow and etc., diverts attention from the fact that the whole texture of American filmmaking briefly shifted away from the stale, stodgy Doctor Zhivagos and shit like that.

[Occident]

I just don't think the seventies should be deinfed as the last great age of American cinema. American cinema is unfortunately the dominant cinema but hey.

I do think the 70's was remarkable AROUND the world and particularly in the body genres.

On De Palma: The overt radicalism -and what I think we're talking about here is the marxist/godard element - of his 60's work became well less ....overt. BUT, I think of fims like Dressed to Kill as one radical Hollywood thriller, and films like Body Double, Blow Out, Raising Cain and Femme Fatale are deceptively complicated texts. I think he's arguably the most 'avant garde' director working within the Hollywood studio system to this day, whether or not you wish to offer up Lynch is up to your discretion.

My main beef with the canonization of American cinema is the way it's been structured like Sarris "The American Cinema". That is to say the prizing of Sarris' notions of the auteur as the be all-end all. Which of course means that awesome metteur films like Huston's "Wiseblood" get largely forgotten about, and only the works of the pantheon directors get held up and stay up.