The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009 film) June 2, 2008
Posted by Phineas in : Film, Irrelevant , 1 comment so farThe Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009 film) - Wikipedia
I would think a remake of this awesome movie would be a lot more fun if they would actually still set it in the 70’s. But I have a feeling it will be updated in a predictable boring way. I hope I’m wrong.
Der Golem April 26, 2008
Posted by Phineas in : Film, Music , add a commentLast night I saw the great film The Golem: How He Came Into the World at the Castro Theater in SF. It was scored by Black Francis which made it all the more amazing. The film is incredible — the set designs, the costumes, every visual aspect was just memerizing. Frank Black’s original songs and live performance were awesome. The emcee felt obliged/permitted to make what he must have thought were clever witticisms throughout the film. Really lame, un-comic material like “this scene is on youtube — heh heh.” Really stupid and annoying. That created this goofy atmosphere of incessant chuckling. This being the San Francisco International Film Festival, I would have expected a more reverent tone. We’re here to celebrate cinema, not make fun of things which are unfamiliar to us. OK, maybe the Castro is not where you go to be reverent, but still laughing at an outmoded style of acting, treating everything as camp is so missing the point of that specific movie. It’s an intelligent, thoughtful, beautiful film, not some silly relic from Grandma’s memento chest.
But all in all it was a really cool venue and great film and a fun way to see it. This makes the fourth time I’ve seen Mr. Black perform, I’m slightly embarassed to say.
Cinema Annoyances April 25, 2008
Posted by Phineas in : Film, TV , 3 commentsTwo for the “Cinema” category of “Pet Peeves”:
1) you know the thing where they show you a thing for a second, then fade to back real fast, then show you a thing, then fade to black real soon, over and over? Often times its a really interesting visual — you really want to see it, but they fade to black almost as soon as they show it to you. You know that effect? I hate that effect. Please make them stop doing that. If they think it makes you more curious, it doesn’t. It mainly makes me pissed off. It suggests to me that far from having anything interesting to show, they have nothing interesting to show, so they make uninteresting things seem important by taking them away from you. Sort of creating a scarcity of image, creating a demand by leaving you wanting more. I see it as cliched, uninspired, a trick to deceive you into believing there’s more where that came from, a tease. The more they do it, the more pissed off I become.
2) Really, really dark scenes. Perhaps it’s night time. Perhaps we’re in a dark room. Perhaps its some sort of dreamland or outerspace, but the filmmaker decides what’s really required is a really dimly lit scene. Newsflash: a dimly lit scene does not evoke darkness. It does not create or sustain an illusion of darkness. It diminishes any illusion at all — what I see in a dimly lit scene is my own living room, which is very far from being ominous or suspenseful. I see my own shape on the sofa, my own bowl of potato chips. I see a reminder to do some situps. I don’t care if you are David Lynch or Andrei Tarkovsky or Ingmar Bergman or the Coen brothers: dimly lit, dark scenes absolutely do not achieve the apparently desired effect.
Straw Dogs April 7, 2008
Posted by Phineas in : Film , add a commentJust watched the movie Straw Dogs (1971) with Dustin Hoffman. An amazing, intense and strange movie. Hoffman plays an American mathmetician married to a young British woman who relocate to her tiny village so he can work on a book. It’s a gothic sort of thing with these ominous menacing local characters in the town and working on repairing the couple’s garage roof.
The centerpiece of the film is a horrifying rape scene in which two of the workers rape the wife while the husband is away on a hunting expedition. The rape involves one man who believes that he loves her, and that they share an intimate history. As he rapes her, she fights back and resists, but clearly expresses contradictory responses. She responds with apparent pleasure in between fits of struggling and unequivocal resistance. This is obviously a source of controversy. The second worker intrudes upon the scene, and after the first one finishes, the second one rapes her. This rape appears to shock even the first rapist, and the woman this time screams and resists with no ambiguity of response.
So you have a really shocking sequence — a “good” rapist and a “bad” rapist. The “good” one sort of deluded himself into thinking he had a right to her body, that the experience was sexual and not violent, that he cared about her and she cared about him. That “bad” rapist was more of a classic violent act.
Dramatizations of rape in film are obviously fraught with complications. What’s the right way to do it, if at all? I thought it was incredible that Peckinpah was willing to dramatize it this way. A gang rape is not one crime, it’s multiple crimes. And each crime has its own kind of violence. Morally we wish to make no such distinctions. To draw out such distinctions is rare and daring and frankly dangerous.
The Thrill Of It All March 22, 2008
Posted by Phineas in : Film, Irrelevant, Music , add a commentI’m enjoying the heck out of the Roxy Music DVD “Thrill of It All: A Visual History 1972-1982″
I read about it in The New Yorker and don’t have a whole lot to add to that. But it’s just beautiful. I love Eno’s various machines, hairstyles and blouses. I also enjoy how incongruous the low-tech video production quality is juxtaposed with these energetic, brilliant, outrageous musical compositions and performances. The songs all rock. Plus I think Bryan Ferry is flirting with me.
Love Story February 23, 2008
Posted by Phineas in : Film, History, Irrelevant , 4 commentsLast night I watched that corny old film Love Story (1970). I love watching films from the 70’s, I guess because I grew up then, and I enjoy relearning all the cultural information coded into the texture of the film, beyond just what the story wants me to know. The fashion, the modes of speech, the clothes, cars, hairstyles, attitudes. This is true of films from any period, but extra true of a period one has lived through.
Anyway, it was a cornball fest with somewhat interesting cultural revelations. Things such as — the characters represent these supposedly modern young people and liberated woman who don’t believe in God and shockingly choose a civil ceremony for their wedding in which they shckingly write their own vows. Yet in spite of the modern new world they live in, when she is diagnosed with the un-named fatal disease, the doctor lies to her and says everything is OK but reveals to the husband that she’s dying, and encourages him to conceal it from her, which he does.
Jesus! So in 1970 it was considered perfectly ethical to lie to patients about their diagnosis and deny them a chance to seek a second opinion? When did the AMA get together and rethink that? I believe that nowadays the doctor tells the patient the diagnosis, even if it’s a woman. Sometime between 1970 and 2008 they got that straight, but I don’t remember it happening.
The other weird bit of cultural information was the use of profanity. They say “goddamn” and “dammit” and “bullshit” a whole lot, in strangely inoccuous ways. Cheerfully, with a smile on their faces, while politely holding the door open for the other or passing the sugar. In one scene she’s leading a children’s choir in a church preparing for a Christmas play, and she says to one of the children, “Don’t bullshit me.” I’m not a prude or much of a Christian, but I believe that a person talking this way to children in a church would be considered a little bit harsh and disrepectful today. Yet we’re supposedly charmed and in love with this carefree young woman.
I’d be interested to learn about how the use of profanity has changed in time. To me all those words, which I use daily, have an edge to them and indicate some degree of harshness, anger or something. To use them in this soft and cuddly way strikes me as very false, but I remember this sort of thing from movies from this time. It’s as though either real people or just film writers were suddenly free to use them, so they overused them, diluting the meaning. And now that we’re over that, they have settled back to their original harsh meanings and usage. Or something.
Anyway, it was a dumb movie, but was still fun to watch with your goddamn girlfriend.
Children of Men January 8, 2008
Posted by Phineas in : Film, Music , add a commentI watched this film on cable the other day. It was enjoyable. I always enjoy the bleak, near future sci-fi stories. But the main thing that thrilled me was a long sequence featuring King Crimson’s “In The Court Of The Crimson King” for no obvious reason other than it sounded cool.
May All Your Fights Be Food Fights November 1, 2007
Posted by Phineas in : Film, Irrelevant, Timewaster , add a commentAn Alternative History Of Mississippi October 12, 2007
Posted by Phineas in : Art, Dreams, Drugs, End Of The World, Film, Irrelevant, Katrina, Lies, Music, Timewaster , add a commentThe Exterminating Angel August 27, 2007
Posted by Phineas in : Art, Film, Irrelevant , 1 comment so farGod what a great film. Saw it again the other night. I remember seeing this on television once many years ago, coming into it in the middle, completely clueless as to what it was, who it was by, but becoming thoroughly mesmerized and fascinated by it. It’s such a brilliant thing.
Bonus: There’s a bear in it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exterminating_Angel_%28film%29
