Tales from Cinematic Motions

[auto-da-fey]

No--to girl--I respect Scorsese's Christ movie a lot. On the Gibson front, my lady still resents me for seeing it in the theater and thus directly contributing to Mel's profits, even though we weren't yet together at the time.

But really I just came back to add one more bit of bitching: holy fuck Roland Joffe. The Killing Fields wasn't that great, but it was still a powerful movie. So I wondered, how did it come to this? I mean, Captivity goes beyond violating the lessons of Film School 101, it violates Film Phonetics or even Film Potty Training in its unbearable incompetence (i.e., an 8mm snuff movie-within-the-movie of a young boy killing his mother, (diegetically) filmed by one camera but full of POV cuts and edits). Then I looked at his IMDB page: oh yeah, The Mission sucked, then he hit the skids--by the end of the 90s, he was directing episodes of MTV's Undressed. Pretty sad for a twice-Academy-Award-nominated director (undeserved in both cases, I'd say), but hope beckons: he's in post-production on his new movie, Finding t.A.T.u.! That should make up for a lot! Or at least for his Demi-Mooronic Scarlet Letter, though probably not Captivity. he'd have to make the next Citizen Kane to counterbalance this one.

[Bernard]

Demi-Mooronic

Excellent.

[auto-da-fey]

The Wild Bunch (After reading some McCarthy and seeing Unforgiven last winter, I'm ready to give the Western genre, one I've traditionally hated, another go. This is supposed to be Peckinpah's best, right?)

dude, yes, you're gonna love this movie, at least i think so. i thought it was great.

have you seen any of leone's stuff? as far as i'm concerned, most of the pre-60s westerns suck, but leone's stuff is great.

I'd take Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid over The Wild Bunch, but yeah, if you don't dig the latter there's no real sense moving further into Peckinpah, IMO.

And I'm with Andrew on Leone, but WTF about pre-60s westerns? Steeped in noxious racial ideologies, absolutely, but you could (and should) say the same about American culture in general. To just toss out the collected works of John Ford--not to mention Anthony Mann or the occasional western from Howard Hawks or Nicholas Ray (Johnny Guitar, dude!), though, seems really unfounded to me. A lot of this stuff is less great than its canon-sanctioned reputation would suggest, I'd agree, but there's still a lot of value there.

[girl]

Johnny Guitar is a favorite of mine.

[Andrew_TSKS]

i haven't seen "johnny guitar", but--and i know this will be met with shocked gasps--i hated "the searchers". so yeah.

[dominic]

Johnny Guitar is a favorite of mine.

that's because it's awesome.

[Greg Nog]

I saw No Country For Old Men on Friday.  I liked it just fine, but I don't think I can really appproach it objectively; it was entertaining enough, but it was so unbelieveably faithful to the book that I feel unable to judge it on its own merits.  Instead, it kind of felt like a two-hour game of "This is different; that is not."

[Bernard]

Johnny Guitar is a favorite of mine.

that's because it's awesome.

Thirded. And how great is the music!

[hannah]

The Wild Bunch (After reading some McCarthy and seeing Unforgiven last winter, I'm ready to give the Western genre, one I've traditionally hated, another go. This is supposed to be Peckinpah's best, right?)

dude, yes, you're gonna love this movie, at least i think so. i thought it was great.

have you seen any of leone's stuff? as far as i'm concerned, most of the pre-60s westerns suck, but leone's stuff is great.

I'd take Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid over The Wild Bunch, but yeah, if you don't dig the latter there's no real sense moving further into Peckinpah, IMO.

And I'm with Andrew on Leone, but WTF about pre-60s westerns? Steeped in noxious racial ideologies, absolutely, but you could (and should) say the same about American culture in general. To just toss out the collected works of John Ford--not to mention Anthony Mann or the occasional western from Howard Hawks or Nicholas Ray (Johnny Guitar, dude!), though, seems really unfounded to me. A lot of this stuff is less great than its canon-sanctioned reputation would suggest, I'd agree, but there's still a lot of value there.

And Budd Boetticher, and John Ford again, and Anthony Mann again... good discussion here: davekehr.com/?p=88

[hannah]

king vidor, sam fuller...

[Bernard]

Speaking of, they're supposed to be comig out with a DVD release of White Dog sometime soon - I just ordered a VHS copy from ebay.

[justinh]

I had an American Indian Cinema class once, and we watched all those old westerns and then the instructor would rip them apart (his name:  Eric Buffalohead, for the win).  The Searchers has some ridiculously amazing cinematography.  The most ridiculous thing we watched was Little Big Man, staring Dustin Hoffman, which is kind of like the Passion of the Christ, only with Indians and general 70s goofiness. 

[auto-da-fey]

Little Big Man, staring Dustin Hoffman, which is kind of like the Passion of the Christ, only with Indians and general 70s goofiness. 

That's an awesome description. Speaking of American westerns, anyone seen Soldier Blue? It's this 1970 movie with Candice Bergen, pretty unmemorable except for a seriously graphic massacre of an Indian village by U.S. soldiers at the end that fucked with my head more than anything else I've ever seen, literally. I saw the film when I was about 11, and the scene had baby-killing, rape-murders, and this cavalcade of atrocities that actually brought me to tears and physical revulsion. To this day I've been wary of revisiting it, even though I'm sure in my jaded adulthood I could stomach it, and I'm kinda curious how I'd respond today--I wonder if it comes off as crass exploitation or potent political message (the 1970 Kent State/American Indian Movement context presumably having brought it this in its theatrical run).

[justinh]

Yeah!  We watched that, too.  I remember it being pretty gnarly, but after a semester of watching Indians get massacred, these things kind of lose their shock value.  However, that was years ago, and honestly I can't quite place what I was feeling at the time.

[FreddyKnuckles]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0811080/

[nonotyet]

god dammit why

[YojimboMonkey]

On the plus side, they totally nailed the Mach 5.  On the minus side, everything else about the idea.

[dieblucasdie]

Yeah, the Wachowski brothers need to be put down.

[FreddyKnuckles]

did you see the little guy playing speed though. hahaha

[YojimboMonkey]

I watched The Man Who Would Be King last night.  I don't really have anything deep to note about it, but it was a good adventure movie, beautifully shot, and starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine.  I'd never seen it before and it was really pretty fun. 

[auto-da-fey]

I'm not interested in the Wachowskis' movies at all, but I do like that one of them is now apparently female--trans-visibility is always a good thing.

Also Justin that class sounds pretty great.

[Greg Nog]

I have zero alliance with or interest in the classic Speed Racer that so many folks seem to have watched when young, so I'm quite curious about this new live-action movie.

[nonotyet]

I'm not particularly in allegiance with the cartoon, I am just sick to death of everything everywhere being remade/updated/whathaveyou/etcetera.

[FreddyKnuckles]

It has john goodman, christina ricci, the guy from lost, and a convincing little weiner kid.  How could it go wrong?!

[nonotyet]

//

for excessive and inexplicable crankiness