Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Goodbye to Neo-General Chat 3D)

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Bunch of anime today.

29. Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door (2001, Dir. Shinichiro Watanabe) - Like the main show there's not much I can really add to the conversation here. I could understand people being disappointed that it doesn't continue the plot of the main series (And show what Jet and co. are up to after Spike's death. I'd have loved to see their reactions to that.), though on its own merits this is a very fun and well animated little caper.

30. Cowboy Bebop: Ein's Summer Vacation (2012, Dir. Shinichiro Watanabe) -

Wut.

31. Cowboy Bebop: Don't Bother None (2012, Dir. Shinichiro Watanabe & Presumably a large bottle, multilingual of booze) -

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsfkp3TKqIk&t=35s[/youtube]

Uh, seriously, wut? Both of these shorts are kind of bizarre for something made so long after even the Bebop movie came out. I've got nothing here.

----------------------------

Some series…

Gun x Sword (2005) - On the planet “Endless Illusion", we follow a widowed mecha pilot and drifter named Van, who seeks revenge for the murder of his wife at their wedding (Its very Kill Bill. Van even continues to wear his wedding suit throughout the entirety of his journey. It also easily doubles as a Sergio Leone-esque duster.), and Wendy, a young girl who's brother seems to have been kidnapped. Wendy starts tagging along with Van as they seek the man they believe to have done both of these things, who is only known as “The Claw", because he has a giant claw hand.

It's a fun little ride, though it seems like it got pretty heavily overshadowed by the director's next work which came out the year after- Code Geass. Still the way Gun x Sword combines tributes to mecha history (Most notably with the “Eldora V" crew of old men, who were 70's style super robot pilots in their youth and now spend their days drinking in a dusty saloon and thinking back on the female member of their crew who has died) with the space western elements is cool- like the villain of the first episode runs a gang called the “Wild Bunch" and during a card game even draws the “Dead man's hand". Even the pairing of Van and Wendy seems to evoke stuff like True Grit.

Anyways the revenge quest is fun and for a dude with a moniker as goofy as “the Claw" he ends up being a strangely ambiguous villain who we never get a full read on (Is his rattling about achieving world peace and love for all humans genuine or not? I couldn't quite tell if he bought into it, but his followers seemed to). I think the show never seemed to have quite much to say about the actual revenge element though- once Van actually kills the Claw and thwarts his Instrumentality-esque plan, everyone that's still alive just kind of goes back to their old lives, Van goes back to wandering random towns until he reunites with Wendy again years later by chance, and things in general seem better or worse other than not being tanged I guess. I wish there was just a little more going on here by the end of it, though I still had a lot of fun with the show.

Rayearth (1997) - While I previously compared the original Magic Knight Rayearth series to its contemporary Vision of Escaflowne, the Rayearth OVA then naturally is analogous to the Escaflowne movie since it largely reimagines the original series, following some of the same basic plot points while drastically changing other key aspects around. Here the biggest difference isn't the Magic Knight girls going to a fantasy world, but rather beings from the fantasy realm of Cephiro invading the Earth with monsters and mecha (A premise very reminiscent of the later episodes of Aura Battler Dunbine).

There are some other weird changes, such as the character Eagle becoming the brother of Princess Emeraude in the OVA, whereas in the series he was an unrelated foreign invader from an entirely different planet and far more sympathetic (He was also noticeably in love with another man in the series and that aspect seems to be cut entirely here). If I remember correctly, the character that was Emeraude's brother in the actual series is no longer actually related to her in the OVA either which is an odd change.

There's also the main character Hikaru, who goes from energetic hothead to someone who gets bullied in school over giving an umbrella or something to someone else who forgot theirs, I dunno. This whole part of OVA!Hikaru's backstory was kind of weird to me.

I'm still pretty shocked by what they did to poor Ascot most of all though, who goes from being a kid villain with a plethora of animal friends that changes sides once he develops a crush on one of the main girls to his OVA incarnation, who is a fucking psychotic murderer child who murders for the hell of it and dies an ignominious death in battle (At the hands of the girl his TV counterpart has a crush on, no less). WTF.

Despite the ostensibly more serious presentation (Noticeably muter color palette, no scenes with super deformed chibi versions of the characters for comic effect, basically no comedy in general, superficially bleaker subject matter), this honestly seems like the way less substantial version of the story that just doesn't stand up on its own merits. If you liked the original version of the anime then the OVA is kind of interesting to look at as a supplement, but that's about it.
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32. The Alphabet Murders (1965, Dir. Frank Tashlin) - Fairly standard Hercule Poirot mystery with occasional flourishes- I'm thinking mainly shot/reverse shot dialogue section with the mirrors toward the film's beginning where a talking character's mouth is reflected “onto" the face of who they're talking to (And naturally when we cut to the other character it holds true for them as well). It's neat.

Image

Also its funny how often Poirot just gets fuckin' owned over the course of the 90 minute runtime. He gets arrested like three times, gets knocked out from behind like two or three times, and at one Miss Marple herself waltzes in for a single shot and inadvertently implies he's an idiot. It's great.

33. Mazinger Z vs. Devilman (1973, Dir. Koichi Tsunoda)
34. Mazinger vs. The Great General of Darkness (1974, Dir. Tomoharu Katsumata)
35. Great Mazinger vs. Getter Robo G: The Great Space Encounter (1975, Dir. Masayuki Akehi)
36. UFO Robo Grendizer vs. Great Mazinger (1976, Dir. Osamu Kasai)
37. Grendizer, Getter Robo G, Great Mazinger: Decisive Battle! Great Sea Beast (1976, Dir. Masayuki Akehi) - The longest of these films falls just short of 45 minutes, the shortest at about 24. They follow a similar formula- hero Mazinger robot fights a new enemy and loses, teams up with easy another robot or someone from tangentially related franchise and wins. None of them are particularly good and really only interesting to people who are huge nerds about the mecha genre.

I'm glad I watched these because I don't have a huge amount of experience with pre-Zambot 3 robot anime, but man it really makes me appreciate how for all of his flaws as an artist and storyteller that Yoshiyuki Tomino really was a trailblazer in his own with stuff like Zambot and Gundam.

38. Wind from the East (1970, Dir. Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Gorin, & Gerard Martin) - I don't know whether this is genuinely better or if I've just been beaten into submission by the Dziga Vertov Group, but I found this one slightly more enjoyable than stuff like A Film Like Any Other or Pravda. Well, "enjoyable" is a strong word, but I guess I had an easier time getting through this one at least. No, I don't have Stockholm syndrome, but let me tell you how great my captors are and how they are some excellent people…

Ostensibly this is Godard doing a western, but instead of the western the footage more often shows the production of a western film, while the sound and narration goes on about political issues of the day, political filmmaking, etc. Little to nothing is said about the western itself, though there is a fair amount about Sergei Eisenstein, about his film Battleship Potemkin glorifying the past instead of the present, about Marxism and so on and so forth etc. Why would anyone make a western anyways, when you could be supporting the class struggle and sitting in on a strike with factory workers? It's that kind of film.

Having seen several of Godard's from this period now, they can be tiring and preachy if not occasionally interesting. Like when Godard (Through his mouthpiece in Anne Wiazemsky) goes on about how political films about class struggle more often than not show the oppression and not how the oppressed fight back or struggle back, that's an interesting talking point and something I wonder about even with praised stuff that I even enjoy, like David Simon's The Wire and whether it is just defeatist cynicism about the modern world or not. I also don't know if that talking point from Godard is particularly accurate, or complete bullshit but it has me thinking about what I'm watching at least.

Thing is too, I don't think Wind from the East really shows that "struggling back" either- it describes it sure (Though it kind of feels like from the perspective of an outsider), but here I think Godard's divorcing of image and sound kind of works against each other here. Who, specifically, is supposed to be moved to action by this? The kind of person that will understand why Godard goes on about the supposed ideological flaws of Battleship Potemkin, a movie which came out over 40 years before this one? Up to this point I think the intent of the film is noble but perhaps misguided at the very least in its more radical approach o form compared to that of "Nixon Paramount" of Hollywood and that classical method that is derided here.

The last segment has Godard and friends breaking away from what little pretense this still being a western was left to not only argue in favor of terrorism but straight up showing you how to make homemade molotov cocktails, so you could throw them at crowded streets. I think he's officially lost it at this point, and Truffaut himself was particularly enraged by and went after Godard in his famous letter where he admonishes him.

Wind from the East is a kind of interesting film to dissect and think about, not only because of the intent behind it but because of how it and these other Dziga Vertov Group films seemed to fail at reaching the audience they wanted to and in something of a bitter irony seem to instead only be of interest to academic types these days. Having said that I won't pretend that I understood all or even most of what was going on here either. Too constrained by bourgeoisie ideology I guess.
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Ah, Agnes Varda died. RIP. [sad]
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39. Struggles in Italy (1971, Dir. Jean-Luc Godard & Jean-Pierre Gorin) - Yeah I'm totally going for the obvious joke here: The real struggle was making it through all 60 minutes of this film. This is Godard at his most tedious and most circular, never getting around to saying much at all. The IMDb description for the movie describes this as the story of “how and why a supposedly revolutionary Italian girl has in fact fallen prey to bourgeois ideology", but I would be shocked if anybody could come up with that description of the movie on their own after having watched it.

So much footage of close ups of people talking or putting on a sweater is repeated, the dual audio tracks of both French and Italian playing together at once was tiresome, and the insert shots of single-color screens got a bit annoying. The talk about montage is a little stronger (As the intersection between film and politics is probably in Godard's wheelhouse more than just talking about politics itself) and Godard's attempt at constantly recontextualizing that repeated footage is admirable, but ugh this is the low point so far of the Dziga Vertov Group period for me- and its not without stiff competition in A Film Like Any Other.

The class struggle I have with these films continue…

EDIT: I need to add a major amendment here. The very last disc of the Godard + Gorin boxset that I've been watching a lot of these movies from contains an extended special feature where a film historian/professor by the name of Michael Witt talks about these films at length, and emphasizes the collaborative nature of these movies in a way that I have absolutely not given enough credit toward (Though Godard was still a major figure of course). Struggles in Italy in particular he says was probably more Gorin than Godard.

It's a good featurette though Witt occasionally says something questionable things, the most noticeable of which to me was the talk of the lady reading feminist literature in British Sounds...while never even mentioning said lady was conventionally hot and naked for the entire segment. It just seems relevant to bring up if you're going to argue Godard as straightforwardly endorsing the feminist argument the character is putting forth.

40. What Price Hollywood? (1932, Dir. George Cukor) - A waitress at Hollywood's famous restaurant The Brown Derby gets a chance at stardom after a chance run-in with a famous director. She rises as he falls, she falls in love with another man, and the director, still in love with her, commits suicide.

If that sounds familiar its because this was basically remade a few years later as the original version of A Star is Born in 1937. I think the reason the '37 version took off was because its story had a much stronger sense of structure- the motif of the Star on the Walk of Fame, no real love triangle (And therefore no kind of dumb ending where the actress character immediately remarries a dude upon learning of the other man's suicide. Her committing to her acting craft is a much stronger beat to end on.), and the characterization in general is much stronger. Still, A Star is Born '37 is taking a lot from this movie- the basic plotline, some scenes, Hollywood's general attempt at self-critique (Which is kind of funny to compare to Godard's critique in something like Wind from the East that I just watched. Cukor is not exactly going on about “Nixon Paramount" here.) etc. Ironically of course, Cukor himself would go on to remake A Star is Born in 1954.

This is an interesting film to take a look at if you've seen the other versions of A Star is Born.
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41. Vladimir & Rosa (1971, Dir. Jean-Luc Godard & Jean-Pierre Gorin) - Godard's satirical look at the trial of the Chicago 8 and the American justice system in general.

This one has a sense of playfulness that I haven't quite seen in some of these other Dziga Vertov Group movies, such as the Judge in the film taking notes during the trial on a Playboy centerfold. In general this film just seems more coherent than a lot of the others, perhaps being more in line with the later 60's work than anything else. It helps that, you know, Godard has even somewhat returned to a more clear narrative here in a way that a lot of these other DVG films didn't (Even if they sort of had narratives on a technicality, as much as something like “nameless college students rambling on and on" is much of a narrative).

Of course none of this isn't to say that the kind of preachy propaganda aspects aren't here in Vladimir & Rosa either, because they are, but done in a far more sensible way than something like Struggles in Italy IMO.

42. 78/52: Hitchcock's Shower Scene (2017, Dir. Alexandre O. Philippe) - A documentary about the famous shower scene in Hitchcock's classic film Psycho, as you can guess from the title. A lot of the documentary is just people fanboying about how great the scene is, and as a film nerd it is fun to hear people talk about it because it is great. I think the most insightful thing about are when specific aspects are talked about in detail- such as how the film foreshadows it several times in the beginning of the movie (Such as through several references to hotels well before Marion Crane gets there), to specific cuts that Hitchcock and co. use (There's even some jump cuts in there that I've never noticed before), and there's a pretty decent interview with Janet Leigh's stunt double, Marli Renfro, and it is very fun to hear her talk about her experience with it.

The film is far from perfect however. Philippe claims this is the first documentary to be dedicated to a single scene in a feature film- I'm not sure if that's absolutely true or not, but even if that's the case how could you never play the entirety of the shower scene at any point in the documentary? Why aren't you opening with that at least, before breaking it down? The movie is barely around 90 minutes as it is, its not like there wasn't time.

There's some specious comparisons made througout the film too. For example, one commentator tries to compares the impact of the shower scene to Ned Stark's death in Game of Thrones which I just found to be really silly, even as a fan of the show. For starters, on a formal level alone the GoT scene is nowhere close to being even a fraction as sophisticated as the shower scene. The GoT scene is just a decent twist in a recent, prestige television show- and one that isn't that surprising in retrospect considering that a big Hollywood actor like Sean Bean committing to multiple years of work on a television would actually be far more unusual and uncommon than just committing to just a single season. Not that there aren't major exceptions to this (Such as Martin Sheen being on all seven seasons of The West Wing.), but that's what they are- exceptions.

Also, IMO Ned Stark was an incredibly unsympathetic character, unlike Marion Crane. His first scene in the show is literally executing a guy for the terrible crime of not wanting to be eaten by zombies and trying to warn everyone of an upcoming zombie apocalypse that Ned doesn't believe, because he's an idiot. He's the parent in a slasher movie that doesn't believe the teens that Jason and Freddy are lurking about. That Ned ends up getting executed in the same way himself is much deserved karmic justice. Marion has far more relatable motivations (Wanting a marriage society wouldn't be thrilled with, being looked down upon for being an aged woman (For the time anyways, I guess being around 30 was considered "old" for a woman.), having financial troubles etc. She may be a thief but that she still decides to return the money she stole and gets killed for a different reason anyways is far more twisted and challenging than what happens to Ned.


Also...I'm not sure a seeming main characters dying partway through a movie is itself really much of an invention of Psycho anyways. Something like Horror of Dracula killed off the protagonist of the novel in a twist two years before Psycho came out, though I certainly think Psycho executed the idea way better (Excuse the pun). I'm sure there are older examples we can find too. A little more nuance in the documentary here would have been appreciated, especially because I don't think it actually takes away from the impact of what Psycho did.

A more interesting comparison is done with people screaming in terror at the shower scene to Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, where according to movie mythology that these first audiences back in 1895 legit thought the train was coming through a wall to crush them. David Thompson even repeats this in the film, though as far as I'm aware these reactions have never actually been verified- more legend than anything.

Philippe seems to be trying to carve out documentaries about films as a niche for himself- previously he directed the monumentally stupid The People vs. George Lucas, a celebration of idiotic Star Wars fanboys and their baseless entitlement, and he has a documentary about Alien coming out soon and says he has another one in the works about The Exorcist. I hope he improves a bit from what he did here.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Neo-General Chat III: Dream Warriors)

Post by Eva Yojimbo »

Well, you've been busy, and sadly I don't think I've seen (m)any of these, including the Godard/Gorin's you're getting into. Sounds like I haven't been missing much. I think I saw What Price Hollywood? but if so I don't remember anything of it by now. Cowboy Bebop is the shit of course, and I've always thought the feature film was grossly underrated. Yeah, it kinda feels weird after the series, but if you actually watch it before the series finale it works just fine. It may even be the series at its moodiest and most atmospheric and, after the series ending, perhaps the most melancholic. I'll give your reviews a better read later when I have more time.
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None of the Godard/Gorins are great masterpieces but after how abysmal A Film Like Any Other was most of the rest have seemed a lot better in comparison. If I had to rank them in Godards' overall body of work most of them would be in a midtier with stuff like La Chinoise and 2 or 3 Things and stuff like that (With maybe Le Gai Savoir being the border between the mid tier and the low tier). Clearly not on the level of Contempt/Weekend/etc., but overall not quite the disaster I was prepared for. For the most part. Struggles in Italy was pretty rough.

I debated watching the Bebop movie before the series finale but settled on production order for this first watch. Whenever I rewatch it I'll try inserting it into the series. Of course you lose the possibility of whacky theories like "The movie is Spike's dying dream in episode 26" that way though.
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Man, I have a hard time imagining putting any 70s Godard on the same tier with 2o3T, and that's not even a film I particularly liked. But maybe you've inspired me to give these another shot. I never did get that blu-ray box set anyway, and I think the set I do have doesn't have all of those films. Still, it's hard to find the inspiration to watch them when I still have the rest of 90s/00s/10s Godard to get through, and so far his post-80s stuff is shaping up to be some of my favorite films ever. I almost feel I do them injustice by comparing him to his 60s work as it's so different, and in some ways I even prefer them. Part of me wonders if they had come first if they wouldn't be hailed as masterpieces the same way his 60s stuff is. I mean, the only reason I can think of why Contempt is a masterpiece and Passion isn't is because the former came first, but on any other levels of comparison the latter is just as impressive and, in some ways, even more so. He's seriously one of the few filmmakers I think could conceivably crack my nigh-impenetrable top 3 of Hitch/Bergman/Kurosawa.

I don't think it kills the Bebop film to watch it after the series, it's just a bit weird and anti-climactic is all. Wacky theories be damned as I care more about the best sense of continuity and climax. It's just hard to recover from the series' ending. The opposite is true of, say, NGE where you can't come back from the film, but the series' ending feels incomplete. Funny talking about this as I'm reminded of similar things I've said about certain albums I feel are badly sequenced where they have one song that should've ended the album because you just can't emotionally recover from it.
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Eva Yojimbo wrote:Man, I have a hard time imagining putting any 70s Godard on the same tier with 2o3T, and that's not even a film I particularly liked. But maybe you've inspired me to give these another shot. I never did get that blu-ray box set anyway, and I think the set I do have doesn't have all of those films.
Well I did throw out the possibility these movies gave me Stockholm syndrome for a reason. [laugh]

It could also just be low expectations being rewarded. And even then there are those few movies that I did find to be as bad as their reputation suggests, but then again I did not expect to be as engaged by something like Wind from the East. I also suspect I'll rank most of the 80's/90's above even the best of the DVG films.

I would say maybe don't make them a priority if you don't like what you have seen from them so far, but if after finishing 80's/90's/10's Godard you're curious, maybe try giving them another look? I still think its probably Godard's worst period of work either way. Of course if you watch them and still end up hating all of them I'd enjoy reading any rants you have to make about them- I'm not so attached that I'd be offended or anything. [laugh]
Part of me wonders if they had come first if they wouldn't be hailed as masterpieces the same way his 60s stuff is. I mean, the only reason I can think of why Contempt is a masterpiece and Passion isn't is because the former came first, but on any other levels of comparison the latter is just as impressive and, in some ways, even more so. He's seriously one of the few filmmakers I think could conceivably crack my nigh-impenetrable top 3 of Hitch/Bergman/Kurosawa.
I've been wondering about why film culture's divorce from Godard was as clear cut as it was because even toward the end of the DVG period he's starting to return to narrative and make kind of watchable films. Even today though you still have people saying Weekend was the last thing of interest he did despite the vast majority of his career encompassing everything he's made since Every Man for Himself (Which I haven't seen yet, though I have seen the Dick Cavett episode where he talks about it. Hard to imagine Godard appearing on a talkshow like that today, though I would love to see someone like Jimmy Fallon even begin to try to talk to him lmao).

BTW, are you aware that Godard had a huge public debate with Pauline Kael? I had heard about this before it was only recently that I found a transcript was available. It's kind of neat to see Godard openly talking about people like Coppola, Scorsese and De Palma here (He rightfully rips into the script of Dressed to Kill lmao).
I don't think it kills the Bebop film to watch it after the series, it's just a bit weird and anti-climactic is all. Wacky theories be damned as I care more about the best sense of continuity and climax. It's just hard to recover from the series' ending. The opposite is true of, say, NGE where you can't come back from the film, but the series' ending feels incomplete. Funny talking about this as I'm reminded of similar things I've said about certain albums I feel are badly sequenced where they have one song that should've ended the album because you just can't emotionally recover from it.
Yeah there's definitely a sense of finality to Bebop's TV ending. It's why I even had to wait a few days before watching the movie.
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43. Tout va Bien (1972, Dir. Jean-Luc Godard & Jean-Pierre Gorin) - Godard and Gorin return to exploring May 1968's effects, in this film through a strike at a factory and the marriage between a New Wave-turned-commerical film director (Yves Montand) and a still idealist reporter (Played by, of all people, Jane Fonda. How she got roped into working with the Dziga Vertov Group I'll never know).

This film has even more a narrative bent than the previous films (Though its still a narrative by Godard standards). I think the biggest change here is that there's actual striking imagery again, which the DVG previously tried to stay away from. I'm thinking of course of the kind of diorama of the factory we see a few times (Which kind of reminds me Wes Anderson, come to think of it. I seem to recall a similar shot in Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou at least.), and the wonderful tracking shot in the supermarket at the end.

I think Fonda and Montand are both pretty good here too, though because its Godard he doesn't exploit their star power in the way a conventional director would, instead putting most of the emphasis the striking characters and even the manager their fucking with (Who has his own little soliloquy where he defends capitalism, though I doubt we're meant to agree with him).

Not much else to say about this one.

44. Letter to Jane: Investigation of a Still (1972, Dir. Jean-Luc Godard & Jean-Pierre Gorin) - The final release of the Dziga Vertov Group (Sort of, depending on how you view Ici it Ailleurs). After finishing filming on Tout va Bien, Jane Fonda was invited by the North Viatnamese government to for a photoshoot with its rebels. Godard and Gorin became aware of this, and in this film deconstruct one of the famous “Hanoi Jane" picture from the shoot, originally printed in the L'Express magazine.

Image

Stylistically the film is pretty simple and even minimalistic- its largely the above photo with occasional cuts to other still photographs (Such as the expression on Jane's face being compared to one her father Peter Fonda gives in a shot from “future fascist John Steinbeck's" The Grapes of Wrath (Why Steinbeck is a called a fascist is beyond me, to say nothing of the fact that the film is John Ford's). They also call it a low angle in the photograph used is also compared to stills of shots from Orson Welles' early movies such as Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons) while Godard and Gorin talk over it. Again it feels like a bit of a lecture (Though one I was engaged by. Perhaps you could also compare it to something more modern like a podcast.), with a Powerpoint to go alongside it.

I've seen some reviews call this film a kind of misogynistic attack on Jane Fonda, and I'm not entirely sure I buy into that argument since while there is some condescion toward her Godard and Gorin seem to take more issue with her being a movie star rather than a woman, and how celebrity activism is arguably more about the celebrity themselves than who they're actually trying to help (The “knowing" face she gives here particularly comes under attack as self-aggrandizing “performance". I'm not sure I buy it. It is compared unfavorably to Marie Falconetti's performance in The Passion of Joan of Arc and again I'm not sure I see the connection). The main evidence here is how Jane is framed in the photograph, while the Vietnamese are kept out of focus. That's a perfectly interesting point, but it does seem like the editor of the magazine should be the recipient of this letter then, and not really Jane Fonda herself.

Godard and Gorin talk about one article describes Jane as “lecturing" the Vietnamese, but Godard and Gorin point out that her mouth is closed in the photograph. That what she's actually doing is “listening" here, and then they go on about how if we want to peace in Vietnam we need to also listen to the Vietnamese so we can understand the “kind of peace" they even want to begin with. Unless I'm vastly misunderstanding something, this seems like agreement from Godard and Gorin with what Jane is doing.

Anyways I found this whole short pretty interesting (If not questionable in some of its arguments), and the idea of deconstructing a single photograph interesting. Still, with that in mind I have to wonder if the analysis isn't somewhat tainted by the fact that they're not using the full version of the picture.

Image

Here is the L'Express page for comparison. Unfortunately I could not find a larger version easily online.

Image

Notice how its been flipped. Personally speaking I tend to look at images starting from the left and scanning toward the right (Likely because that's how reading text is taught to us in America), so the fact that Fonda is on the right of the original image means I'm seeing the Vietnamese before I even get to her. Other people may scan images differently (Particularly those in cultures that read from right to left), but its worth talking about, I think, if we're really going to deconstruct a still image.

Also, it doesn't seem like Fonda dominates the image as much here in general when most of the rest of the Vietnamese are not cropped out. This again, I think, gives credit to the idea that the argument should be against L'Express modifying the image, instead of how Godard/Gorin modified it even further in their film with further cropping, and less on Fonda herself.

45. Tokyo Chorus (1931, Dir. Yasujiro Ozu) - I decided to change things up a bit by returning to good old Ozu. This is another another of his family comedy/dramas, following an insurance agent who loses his job after standing up for a colleague who then tries his best to make ends meet for his family.

The thing that struck me about the movie though was how much of Ozu's style was already in place (Very still shots, no particularly flashy camerawork, etc.). The only stark difference that I noticed between the look of this film and a later sound one like like Early Summer is the presence of intertitles. I realize Hollywood was already in the sound era by this point but it does kind of feel like Ozu is already anticipating how he'll be making sound films.

Also one last thing I'll say is that the story makes for an interesting contrast with I Was Born, But.... Now Tokyo Chorus focuses on a father's relationship with employment from the father's perspective, whereas the latter focuses on the perspective of a father's children and their realization that their dad has to be subservient to another. The children of both films end up frustrated with their fathers' decisions, though they go down different paths. The IWBB dad remains a kissass, but the freespeaking TC dad losing his job means he can't afford to buy his son a bicycle despite promising to. He's even chided as being a liar by his kids. Sometimes you just can't win I guess.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Neo-General Chat III: Dream Warriors)

Post by Eva Yojimbo »

Raxivace wrote:I would say maybe don't make them a priority if you don't like what you have seen from them so far, but if after finishing 80's/90's/10's Godard you're curious, maybe try giving them another look? I still think its probably Godard's worst period of work either way. Of course if you watch them and still end up hating all of them I'd enjoy reading any rants you have to make about them- I'm not so attached that I'd be offended or anything. [laugh]
Yeah, that's probably how it'll work out. I am something of a completionist when it comes to my favorite directors anyway. But I can't think of another director I love who had a period or series of films that I dreaded watching so much.
Raxivace wrote:I've been wondering about why film culture's divorce from Godard was as clear cut as it was because even toward the end of the DVG period he's starting to return to narrative and make kind of watchable films. Even today though you still have people saying Weekend was the last thing of interest he did despite the vast majority of his career encompassing everything he's made since Every Man for Himself (Which I haven't seen yet, though I have seen the Dick Cavett episode where he talks about it. Hard to imagine Godard appearing on a talkshow like that today, though I would love to see someone like Jimmy Fallon even begin to try to talk to him lmao).

BTW, are you aware that Godard had a huge public debate with Pauline Kael? I had heard about this before it was only recently that I found a transcript was available. It's kind of neat to see Godard openly talking about people like Coppola, Scorsese and De Palma here (He rightfully rips into the script of Dressed to Kill lmao).
It's a good question with several plausible answers. Part of it may have been the culture change. The 60s were the decade where the counter-culture was mainstream, and Godard's artiness and subversiveness and irony and philosophy/metafiction fit right into the general zeitgeist of the time. By the 80s, that's no longer the case. Godard is just another arthouse guy, and less accessible than most. "Less accessible" because 60s Godard is more extroverted and engaged with its time, while 80s Godard is very introverted and largely engaged with his favorite themes. I once said that 60s Godard is like a great modern novelist, and post-80s Godard is like a great modernist poet, and just like in literature the latter seems to have a more niche appeal.

All that said, I think perhaps 80s Godard would've been more palatable had the 60s lead directly into them, and had there been more of a bridge rather than a decade-long complete break from narrative. Though I still find it strange that people who love, say, 2O3T or Vivre sa vie couldn't like Sauve qui peut, or people who loved Contempt couldn't love Passion, or people who loved Pierrot le fou couldn't love Prenom: Carmen. Stuff like Hail Mary, Helas pour moi, Detective, King Lear, and Nouvelle vague may be more unique, though. What's most striking to me about many of these later Godard films is that he seems to be reaching for some kind of "sublime aesthetic" the way that Kubrick, Malick, Dreyer, and a few others have done. And, like with most attempts at the sublime, it tends to polarize people who either feel he achieved it, or just find it silly.

I had seen him on Cavett--and can I just take a moment to lament that we no longer have people like Cavett around? I adore him as an interviewer. Probably the closest we have/had was Charlie Rose, and we see how that turned out--and had heard about his feud with Kael, but have never read the transcript. I'll definitely have to give that a read.
Raxivace wrote:43. Tout va Bien (1972, Dir. Jean-Luc Godard & Jean-Pierre Gorin) -
Yeah, this, Comment ca va? and Numero deux were all 70s Godard films with at least some narrative elements, and TVB was probably the one that felt most like a narrative. Jane Fonda was a huge political activist in the 60s and she met a lot of the leftist French intellectuals during her visit there; undoubtedly Godard was one of them. I couldn't find my review of TVB, but I think I gave it a 6/10 at the time, and the only two things that have really stuck with me are precisely those two shots you mentioned. I did find, though, where franz and I discussed this film, 2O3T, and Godard in general in the old General Chat V thread.
Raxivace wrote:44. Letter to Jane: Investigation of a Still (1972, Dir. Jean-Luc Godard & Jean-Pierre Gorin) -
I watched this one after TVB (naturally) and really don't remember much, but I really enjoyed reading your thoughts on it. I'll just say that if Fonda's activism was a "performance" to just enhance her celebrity, then give the lady an Oscar. She seemed far more dedicated to activism than just about any other celebrity I could name (maybe Bono is another). She may have spent more time doing that than actually acting. I think we agree on pretty much everything here, though. The original image definitely puts Fonda on a more "even ground" with the Vietnamese. She's in focus, but they dominate the left and center of the image. I'm not sure if we "read" images similarly to how we "read" literature. I think some scientific studies have been done with this in terms of tracking eye movement/focus, but I've never actually looked them up. My own feeling is that it depends on a lot of factors. In a photo like that, I think the first instinct of most is to see the thing in focus first and then take in the context second; but I don't think what we "see" first necessarily determines any photos biggest impact. Often, an initial point of focus merely serves to lead the eye towards what the photographer really wants us to see, and in a small way enacts a kind of "drama" where we explore the full "story" and merely use that initial focus as a starting point. Where we end up can be just as important as where we start.
Raxivace wrote:45. Tokyo Chorus (1931, Dir. Yasujiro Ozu) -
Like most of Ozu's silent "comedies" I enjoyed but didn't really love this. I think the thing I remembered most about this is how like with I Was Born But... there was this bittersweetness to the comedy, some darker, dramatic elements underneath the lightness. Still, it's hard not to compare it unfavorably to IWBB.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Neo-General Chat III: Dream Warriors)

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Eva Yojimbo wrote:Yeah, that's probably how it'll work out. I am something of a completionist when it comes to my favorite directors anyway. But I can't think of another director I love who had a period or series of films that I dreaded watching so much.
I was going to suggest a Francis Ford Coppola comparrison but I guess even his post-Apocalypse Now work seems more mediocre rather than downright awful.
It's a good question with several plausible answers. Part of it may have been the culture change. The 60s were the decade where the counter-culture was mainstream, and Godard's artiness and subversiveness and irony and philosophy/metafiction fit right into the general zeitgeist of the time. By the 80s, that's no longer the case. Godard is just another arthouse guy, and less accessible than most. "Less accessible" because 60s Godard is more extroverted and engaged with its time, while 80s Godard is very introverted and largely engaged with his favorite themes. I once said that 60s Godard is like a great modern novelist, and post-80s Godard is like a great modernist poet, and just like in literature the latter seems to have a more niche appeal.
I guess that's true. I guess by that point in the 80's the era of Spielberg/Lucas is well under way too, even if their audiences aren't the same.
All that said, I think perhaps 80s Godard would've been more palatable had the 60s lead directly into them, and had there been more of a bridge rather than a decade-long complete break from narrative.
Well the thing is that I do think there is more of a bridge than was given credit for in the DVG era, since Vladimir and Rosa at the very least has a narrative. Sort of. And British Sounds and Wind from the East have narrative in the sense that documentaries have narratives.
I had seen him on Cavett--and can I just take a moment to lament that we no longer have people like Cavett around? I adore him as an interviewer. Probably the closest we have/had was Charlie Rose, and we see how that turned out--and had heard about his feud with Kael, but have never read the transcript. I'll definitely have to give that a read.
Yeah I've been really pleasantly surprised by how good these Cavett interviews are as they pop up on Criterion releases and the like. Good stuff- made it all the funnier to me when he popped up in that one Nightmare on Elm Street movie.

Even ignoring the obvious grossness that Rose was involved with, I feel his interviews that I've seen weren't quite as good. Like when it comes to filmmakers I never really get the impression that he often tried to really seriously engage with their work, whereas I think Cavett at least made an honest attempt with people like Godard.

Apparently even Kurosawa appeared on Cavett at some point. I should watch that some day.
Yeah, this, Comment ca va? and Numero deux were all 70s Godard films with at least some narrative elements, and TVB was probably the one that felt most like a narrative. Jane Fonda was a huge political activist in the 60s and she met a lot of the leftist French intellectuals during her visit there; undoubtedly Godard was one of them. I couldn't find my review of TVB, but I think I gave it a 6/10 at the time, and the only two things that have really stuck with me are precisely those two shots you mentioned. I did find, though, where franz and I discussed this film, 2O3T, and Godard in general in the old General Chat V thread.
Ah that would probably explain it then. The kind of film Tout va Bien is still seems way out of her wheel house though.
I'll just say that if Fonda's activism was a "performance" to just enhance her celebrity, then give the lady an Oscar. She seemed far more dedicated to activism than just about any other celebrity I could name (maybe Bono is another). She may have spent more time doing that than actually acting.
The impression I got was that Godard and Gorin were more saying the Vietnamese were the ones getting Fonda to perform and were exploiting her celebrity, not necessarily that Fonda wasn't well intentioned. Their talking points here might be confused me a bit though.
I think we agree on pretty much everything here, though. The original image definitely puts Fonda on a more "even ground" with the Vietnamese. She's in focus, but they dominate the left and center of the image. I'm not sure if we "read" images similarly to how we "read" literature. I think some scientific studies have been done with this in terms of tracking eye movement/focus, but I've never actually looked them up. My own feeling is that it depends on a lot of factors. In a photo like that, I think the first instinct of most is to see the thing in focus first and then take in the context second; but I don't think what we "see" first necessarily determines any photos biggest impact. Often, an initial point of focus merely serves to lead the eye towards what the photographer really wants us to see, and in a small way enacts a kind of "drama" where we explore the full "story" and merely use that initial focus as a starting point. Where we end up can be just as important as where we start.
Well I could have googled actual science here, shame I was too lazy lol.

Your point about focus is valid. Even in the original photo while the bigass hat is the thing that attracts my attention first, it still ultimately points us to Fonda.
Like most of Ozu's silent "comedies" I enjoyed but didn't really love this. I think the thing I remembered most about this is how like with I Was Born But... there was this bittersweetness to the comedy, some darker, dramatic elements underneath the lightness. Still, it's hard not to compare it unfavorably to IWBB.
Why is "comedies" in quotes here?

But yeah I do agree IWBB is the better film.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Neo-General Chat III: Dream Warriors)

Post by Eva Yojimbo »

Raxivace wrote:
Eva Yojimbo wrote:Yeah, that's probably how it'll work out. I am something of a completionist when it comes to my favorite directors anyway. But I can't think of another director I love who had a period or series of films that I dreaded watching so much.
I was going to suggest a Francis Ford Coppola comparrison but I guess even his post-Apocalypse Now work seems more mediocre rather than downright awful.
Yeah, and I rather liked his Dracula.
Raxivace wrote:Well the thing is that I do think there is more of a bridge than was given credit for in the DVG era, since Vladimir and Rosa at the very least has a narrative. Sort of. And British Sounds and Wind from the East have narrative in the sense that documentaries have narratives.
Yeah but that's a pretty rickety bridge! Even of the 70s films that had narrative they were quite different from 60s and 80s Godard. When are you going to check out Numero deux?
Raxivace wrote:Even ignoring the obvious grossness that Rose was involved with, I feel his interviews that I've seen weren't quite as good. Like when it comes to filmmakers I never really get the impression that he often tried to really seriously engage with their work, whereas I think Cavett at least made an honest attempt with people like Godard.
Oh I absolutely agree Cavett was better. Rose could be a bit daft sometimes and I never got the sense that Cavett was trying too hard or had no idea what he was talking about. I remember rolling my eyes once when Rose asked Magnus Carlsen what he felt when he touched chess pieces. I sooo wanted him to reply with "well, Charlie, touching chess pieces gives me a massive boner."
Raxivace wrote:The impression I got was that Godard and Gorin were more saying the Vietnamese were the ones getting Fonda to perform and were exploiting her celebrity, not necessarily that Fonda wasn't well intentioned. Their talking points here might be confused me a bit though.
Well, if that's the case then I don't know what the problem would be. Using celebrity to bring wider attention to world problems is one of the few things celebrity is actually good for.
Raxivace wrote:Why is "comedies" in quotes here?

But yeah I do agree IWBB is the better film.
Because they were part dramas too. Like, I know IWBB has comedic elements, but it feels "darker" than a lot of dramas do in its own way... perhaps BECAUSE it starts out so light. I couldn't remember if the other two Ozus in that set were quite as dramatic, though.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Neo-General Chat III: Dream Warriors)

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Eva Yojimbo wrote:Yeah, and I rather liked his Dracula.
Yeah that one is probably the best of the lot I've seen, though I'm still pretty iffy on Keanu's casting (Sorry Anakin). Godfather 3 has its moments too.
When are you going to check out Numero deux?
Pretty soon. Today I'll be watching a film by a different director, though one that Godard admired. Can you guess which director?
Oh I absolutely agree Cavett was better. Rose could be a bit daft sometimes and I never got the sense that Cavett was trying too hard or had no idea what he was talking about. I remember rolling my eyes once when Rose asked Magnus Carlsen what he felt when he touched chess pieces. I sooo wanted him to reply with "well, Charlie, touching chess pieces gives me a massive boner."
lol

I was watching Rose's interview with Werner Herzog the other day and it very much seemed like he was trying to talk around Herzog's movies more anything that was actually about them. That kind of dumb chess piece question sounds similarly silly.
Well, if that's the case then I don't know what the problem would be. Using celebrity to bring wider attention to world problems is one of the few things celebrity is actually good for.
Yeah even though I liked Letter to Jane this is one of the aspects of their argument that legit confuses me.
Because they were part dramas too. Like, I know IWBB has comedic elements, but it feels "darker" than a lot of dramas do in its own way... perhaps BECAUSE it starts out so light. I couldn't remember if the other two Ozus in that set were quite as dramatic, though.
I'll be watching that third film here soon too (Passing Fancy IIRC) and I'll let you know what I think.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Neo-General Chat III: Dream Warriors)

Post by Eva Yojimbo »

Raxivace wrote:
Eva Yojimbo wrote:Yeah, and I rather liked his Dracula.
Yeah that one is probably the best of the lot I've seen, though I'm still pretty iffy on Keanu's casting (Sorry Anakin). Godfather 3 has its moments too.
Keanu's weird casting in just about anything, but I thought he was serviceable in Dracula. Godfather III is really good but is hurt by S. Coppola's non-acting and by the comparisons with I and II. Otherwise it's a solid 8/10 or so.

Speaking of Dracula, I don't know if I ever talked about this film, but it's up there with the two Nosferatus as the best adaptation of the story I've seen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpFkDSQtzp8
Raxivace wrote:
When are you going to check out Numero deux?
Pretty soon. Today I'll be watching a film by a different director, though one that Godard admired. Can you guess which director?
Perhaps if you give me another clue. I like guessing games.
Raxivace wrote:
Because they were part dramas too. Like, I know IWBB has comedic elements, but it feels "darker" than a lot of dramas do in its own way... perhaps BECAUSE it starts out so light. I couldn't remember if the other two Ozus in that set were quite as dramatic, though.
I'll be watching that third film here soon too (Passing Fancy IIRC) and I'll let you know what I think.
IIRC, Passing Fancy was the most pure comedy of the three, but it's been a long time.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Neo-General Chat III: Dream Warriors)

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Eva Yojimbo wrote:Speaking of Dracula, I don't know if I ever talked about this film, but it's up there with the two Nosferatus as the best adaptation of the story I've seen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpFkDSQtzp8
I'm not familiar with this version but if you remind me of it once we get closer to October I'll give it a watch.
Perhaps if you give me another clue. I like guessing games.
Hmmm...

This director made another film, different than the one I'm watching, but it has a number in the title. That number is greater than 5, but less than 2001.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Neo-General Chat III: Dream Warriors)

Post by Eva Yojimbo »

Raxivace wrote:
Eva Yojimbo wrote:Speaking of Dracula, I don't know if I ever talked about this film, but it's up there with the two Nosferatus as the best adaptation of the story I've seen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpFkDSQtzp8
I'm not familiar with this version but if you remind me of it once we get closer to October I'll give it a watch.
I'll try to remember. FWIW, it's not scary even by classic-film standards of scary. Much of its done as a ballet, but it's shocking how well it fits.
Raxivace wrote:Hmmm...

This director made another film, different than the one I'm watching, but it has a number in the title. That number is greater than 5, but less than 2001.
First thought that came to mind was Hitchcock with The 39 Steps, but the "another film" seems to suggest someone less prolific, and the 5/2001 cutoffs I'm sure are significant somehow. Another thought: maybe Howard Hawks? 20th Century would fit the bill and make sense of the 2001 clue.
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Hawks is a great guess, but no cigar. It ain't Hitchcock either.

Here's another hint, though this should make it pretty easy: the film with the number came out in the same decade its title suggests. Naturally, this excludes the Hawks film you've mentioned.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Neo-General Chat III: Dream Warriors)

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I guess I like guessing games without being good at them as that clue just confused me, LOL. I'm trying to think of films with titles that suggest decades and I'm drawing a blank... Europe '51 from Rossellini, maybe?
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It's not Rossellini... The last clue may have been too misleading on my part though.

Okay I'll give you one last hint. If you don't get it from this I'll just tell you: The film with the number had a big remake within the current decade.
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Well, right now I gotta eat, but I'll ponder this one a bit and see if I can come up with an answer some time between now and tomorrow morning.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Neo-General Chat III: Dream Warriors)

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I'm lost, I can't figure it out. Just tell me Rax! With spoiler tags so Jimbo still has the option to guess. [wink]
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maz89 wrote:I'm lost, I can't figure it out. Just tell me Rax! With spoiler tags so Jimbo still has the option to guess. [wink]
Mizoguchi. The number thing was supposed to lead you to 47 Ronin (Because it was made in the 40's) but I guess the hints sucked lol. And 5 and 2001 were just red herrings, though at least one that immediately should have discounted Kubrick.

The movie I actually watched was Story from Chikamatsu though.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Neo-General Chat III: Dream Warriors)

Post by Eva Yojimbo »

OK, I couldn't guess so I just looked. I don't know why Mizoguchi didn't even cross my mind as one of of Godard's favorites, but I'm glad you're getting around to that one. Can't wait to hear your thoughts. That's one I'm really looking forward to rewatching on blu-ray as the print I watched of it kinda sucked.
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46. A Story from Chikamatsu (AKA The Crucified Lovers, 1954, Dir. Kenji Mizoguchi) - A lord's wife, unloved by her much older husband, runs off with her servant who has fallen in love with her. She in turns falls in love with him. The lord is pissed, the people are pissed as adultery is a crime, and chase is given. Many lives are ruined as a result.

This is a very fine, beautifully crafted film (So beautifully done in fact that I didn't even realize the key scene with the boat on a lake was made on a damn soundstage until I watched one of the special features. It makes me wonder if similar scenes in Sansho the Bailiff were done the same way), though I feel like I've missed a lot of subtext here since my familiarity with Japanese theater is basically nil. Even the name calls attention to the film's origins, as Chikamatsu was a playwright and this is an adaptation of one of his plays.

Still, the film is a strong feminist statement about how denying the sexual agency of women not only hurts individual women, not only women as a group, but men and the rest of society as well.

I don't have much else to really say about this but the Criterion blu-ray is absolutely gorgeous.

47. Numero Deux (1975, Dir. Jean-Luc Godard) - I'm gonna defer to Jimbo again here.
Eva Yojimbo wrote:Numero Deux - Jean-Luc Godard - 6.5/10

The start of Godard's experiments on video is a fascinating one, even if not totally successful; in fact, it may not be a stretch to say that this film is radically experimental even by Godard's standards. Most of the film is shown on two (sometimes more) monitors in different positions on the screen. This allows Godard to juxtapose images from various contexts at will in a tremendous variety of ways. It comes across almost like the cinematic equivalent of a fugue. So what does Godard show? One of his classic concerns, politics-namely Marxism--is present here, but in far less of a didactic and annoying way than in La gai savoir or Tout va bien; much the same for his omnipresent linguistic playfulness and puns (Godard himself even explains in the film his love for puns, in that it's the slippery spot where two meanings converge and fall over each other; a particularly meaningful notion in a film that's all about the convergence of dualities).

Thankfully, Godard HAS brought back the narrative aspect, but here it's downplayed tremendously and is, in large part, just a vehicle for Godard's primary obsessive theme here: sex. Namely, it's portrayed in the marital troubles of Sandrine and Pierre; the former has an affair, the latter "punishes" his wife by anally raping her, and the two spend the rest of the film trying to reconcile while teaching their children matterof-factly about sex (featuring copious casual nudity and actual sexual acts). Even here, the notion of sex as two dualities coming together is eminently relevant to the film's concept, and with these events played out obliquely with so many others alongside it, via the monitors, it opens up so many vistas of possible interpretations on how one is commenting on the other.

Yet, for all this substance and radical daring, I feel that the film is more interesting to discuss, more interesting in concept, than to actually watch. Godard is capable of creating ravishingly beautiful cinema even when his aesthetic is that of cinematic chaos (like Weekend), and here the video just leads to the drabbest, documentary-like images as possible. So one gets the feeling that all of the original techniques and ideas here could've been put to much better use had Godard better material to start with. His long, diatribe/monologue that opens the film doesn't help matters either, as it comes off as little more than pretentious ranting on the nature of the film business and his difficulties in getting films made.


I largely agree with the gist of what Jimbo is saying, though I think I was less engaged by what was actually going on than he was. Part of me wonders how much of this was because of the subtitles I had in the version I found- I noticed several typos, which makes me wonder if there were larger problems afoot in the translation.

The most interesting thing about the movie to me though is how the usage of multiple monitors in the film seems to be fully absorbed by the internet at this point as a valid presentation technique for videos.



This example here (By no means the first even among online videos or even the most popular) is a race between 10 “casual" YouTubers and a single speedrunner in a heavily modified version of the video game Super Mario 64. This version of the game allows for online co-op, where the 10 YouTubers are able to play together on a single file at the same time, whereas the speedrunner is competing on his own.

The left screen shows the 10 YouTubers and constantly intercutting between them. The right screen is single, uninterrupted feed of the speedrunner just decimating the game. Formally, it does seem like a descendant of what Godard is doing in parts of Numero Deux, even if not in a direct way. The guys behind the channel “HoboBros Jr." don't seem like the art film types to me (In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the inspiration for things like this was found more in how console video game multiplayer modes used to use split screens on a single TV), though whether they realize it or not, what they are making here resembles what was once an experimental technique by Godard. They are using that technique to solve a filmmaking problem- how does one show 11 different perspectives in a race?

This channel went on to create several more Super Mario 64 videos like this, adding in different challenges and competitors and conditions. Eventually the YouTuber team got good enough to necessitate a second speedrunner, which of course means that the speedunner footage must then cut between two different perspectives on their side.

These are more practical problems being solved whereas Godard is using them for more obtuse, artistic purposes that I don't really understand the nuances of. Still, it is interesting to consider the possibility of such an artfilm as an ancestor to even goofy internet videos like this- or if not an ancestor, at the least the fact that despite the content being worlds apart from each other, that there's a broad stylistic similarity.

I guarantee you that nobody else on this fucking planet has ever compared a Godard movie to a Super Mario 64 speedrun before.

48. Salt and Fire (2016, Dir. Werner Herzog) - Some scientists get captured by what appear to be terrorists, and then everyone kind of sits around a bunch. Then they go to a desert near a volcano and sit around some more, but this time with kids who are going blind.

Herzog man, what happened? You did two documentaries this year and they were both pretty good, but this? This is just terrible. This is visually very uninspired for the most part, only getting better once we get to salt desert which is cool, and Herzog can fall back on his typical vistas- its simple but works well enough. What really kills this movie though are the performances. They're just completely stilted- all of the adult characters are written as loquacious, philosophical intellectuals but the performances don't sell that at all. Poor Veronica Ferres here just rushes through her dialogue. Gael Garcia Bernal is also present and is similarly out of his element.

The leader of what appears to be terrorists is Michael Shannon and like, Michael Shannon seems to have some kind of internalized anger or rage and Herzog of all people, the man that once tamed Klaus Kinski, should be able to tap into that heated charisma of his. Herzog doesn't have him playing that kind of character at all though, instead trying to have him play calm but regretful leader type and Shannon really struggles playing that. To me he seems best at characters that feel and are trying to not to think about what they're doing in life, not characters that are so consciously self-critical. It just comes off as unnatural.

The kids honestly turn in the best, most consistent performances here.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kill la Kill (2013-2014) - Kuribo has been pushing me to watch this for a while, and I finally got around to it. It's pretty fun little revenge story, perhaps not too dissimilar to Gun x Sword, though the big difference is that this is from Gurren Lagann director Hiroyuki Imaishi and is similarly frantic and over the top. I think the biggest difference to me though is that I don't think there's as much thematic tape holding Kill la Kill together as there is in Gurren Lagann- it largely feels just like a fun, fanservice heavy action show with a lot of style and some memorable characters. Which is fine, and makes it very watchable at least.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Neo-General Chat III: Dream Warriors)

Post by maz89 »

I saw Darkest Hour and Dunkirk, and thought both of them were just okay. I liked that both films are set in the same time period and feature the same conflict from different perspectives. Anyway, the former became a propaganda piece culminating with a somewhat silly scene in the Tube that showed Churchill bonding with the common folk (lol). The latter had some well shot sequences and some good editing but not much else. Felt hollow there in the end.

I have seen none of the films that you've seen, Rax, so I'm afraid I can't comment. When will you get out of this Godard madness?
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Neo-General Chat III: Dream Warriors)

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maz89 wrote:I saw Darkest Hour and Dunkirk, and thought both of them were just okay. I liked that both films are set in the same time period and feature the same conflict from different perspectives. Anyway, the former became a propaganda piece culminating with a somewhat silly scene in the Tube that showed Churchill bonding with the common folk (lol). The latter had some well shot sequences and some good editing but not much else. Felt hollow there in the end.

I have seen none of the films that you've seen, Rax, so I'm afraid I can't comment. When will you get out of this Godard madness?
Yeah Darkest Hour was kind of whatever, though I liked Dunkirk's editing style.

Godard madness probably won't end until I've seen all of his features. There's still quite a few to go:

-Ici et Ailleurs (1976)
-Coment Ca Va (1978)
-Every Man For Himself (1980)
-Sauve la vie (qui peut) (1981)
-Passion (1982)
-First Name: Carmen (1983)
-Hail Mary (1985)
-Detective (1985)
-King Lear (1987)
-Keep Your Right Up (1987)
-Nouvelle Vague (1990)
-Germany Year 90 Nine Zero (1991)
-Les Enfants jouent à la Russie (1993)
-JLG/JLG: Self Portrait in December (1994)
-For Ever Mozart (1996)
-In Praise of Love (2001)
-Notre Musique (2004)
-Film Socialisme (2010)
-The Image Book (2018)

"Sauve la vie (qui peut)" should not be confused with Every Man For Himself, which is "Sauve qui peut (la vie)" in French. As far as I can tell that has only had three or four public screening over the last 40 years and never a DVD release, which means technically I'll probably never be able to actually finish Godard Madness 2019, which is a bit annoying.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Neo-General Chat III: Dream Warriors)

Post by Eva Yojimbo »

Raxivace wrote:46. A Story from Chikamatsu (AKA The Crucified Lovers, 1954, Dir. Kenji Mizoguchi) - This is a very fine, beautifully crafted film... ...the film is a strong feminist statement about how denying the sexual agency of women not only hurts individual women, not only women as a group, but men and the rest of society as well.
You can save these two sentences and copy/paste them for just about any Mizoguchi film. What did you think of it in comparison with Ugetsu and Sansho? I think I told you my own thoughts before, but I thought it took the beauty of the former and the more realistic setting of the latter and mixed them to great effect... not that Sansho was an ugly film by any means, but I feel its power was more dramatic than formal/stylistic. Still I don't think any Mizoguchi (few films period) can touch Ugetsu for its haunting beauty.
Raxivace wrote:47. Numero Deux (1975, Dir. Jean-Luc Godard) -
The comparison to modern-day uses of multiple video screens was interesting. The first thing I thought was the use of screen-by-screen instant replay in sports. I always thought that, if someone weren't watching a game, and turned it on at that moment, they wouldn't know which was the replay and which was the live action. I think more than anything I was just fascinated by all the potential uses for. It must've been how Eisenstein felt when he started experimenting with editing and all the things that could be said/suggested by juxtaposing successive images, while Godard was experimenting with all that could be said by juxtaposing simultaneous images. But, yes, much more interesting to talk about/contemplate than actually watch.

BTW, Comment ca va? isn't a bad one either. It's mostly just a duller, uglier version of Contempt.
Raxivace wrote:"Sauve la vie (qui peut)" should not be confused with Every Man For Himself, which is "Sauve qui peut (la vie)" in French. As far as I can tell that has only had three or four public screening over the last 40 years and never a DVD release, which means technically I'll probably never be able to actually finish Godard Madness 2019, which is a bit annoying.
Whoa, how did I never realize this existed? [gonemad]
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Neo-General Chat III: Dream Warriors)

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Eva Yojimbo wrote:You can save these two sentences and copy/paste them for just about any Mizoguchi film. What did you think of it in comparison with Ugetsu and Sansho? I think I told you my own thoughts before, but I thought it took the beauty of the former and the more realistic setting of the latter and mixed them to great effect... not that Sansho was an ugly film by any means, but I feel its power was more dramatic than formal/stylistic. Still I don't think any Mizoguchi (few films period) can touch Ugetsu for its haunting beauty.
Chikamatsu is probably my least favorite of the three, though its still a great film in its own right. I think I just will always have a slight bias for Sansho being my first, though I think Ugetsu probably the best overall. Hard to go wrong with any of them though.
The comparison to modern-day uses of multiple video screens was interesting. The first thing I thought was the use of screen-by-screen instant replay in sports. I always thought that, if someone weren't watching a game, and turned it on at that moment, they wouldn't know which was the replay and which was the live action. I think more than anything I was just fascinated by all the potential uses for. It must've been how Eisenstein felt when he started experimenting with editing and all the things that could be said/suggested by juxtaposing successive images, while Godard was experimenting with all that could be said by juxtaposing simultaneous images. But, yes, much more interesting to talk about/contemplate than actually watch.
Do you have an example of this sports thing?

But yeah it really does feel like the full potential of this hasn't really been scratched at all.
BTW, Comment ca va? isn't a bad one either. It's mostly just a duller, uglier version of Contempt.
Well I couldn't even find a download of this one so I had to buy the blu-ray. Luckily I can experience all that dull ugliness in pristine HD. [laugh]
Whoa, how did I never realize this existed? [gonemad]
Yeah I was pretty surprised by this myself. According to IMDb it combines footage of Every Man for Himself, something called Old and New from 1929, an Andrzej Wajda film called Man of Marble, and Buster Keaton's Cops of all things.

Apparently someone tried to reconstruct the film from memory using clips of the four films mentioned above but eh, it's not really the same thing IMO.

There are two curious reviews for this movie on Letterboxd though. One of them appears to be in French and is from February. The other one is in English and from early 2016, but suggests it might have only been the second or third time the film had even been screened. I'm not sure how that lines up with the article about the reconstruction suggesting that the film was disassembled though.

Odd to have such a mystery in regards to a living director's work.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Neo-General Chat III: Dream Warriors)

Post by Eva Yojimbo »

Raxivace wrote:Do you have an example of this sports thing?

But yeah it really does feel like the full potential of this hasn't really been scratched at all.
No since I'm just going on memory of the games I watched. They've changed the format over the years too. When I was young they used to do a much more "even" split screen, but now they usually either make the replay or live-action screen bigger depending on what's going on. I wonder if maybe people got confused by making them the same size.

The only thing I question about it is whether or not it's even possible for a viewer to really process suggested meanings intuitively when so much is happening simultaneously; and then I also wonder how much of that is due to natural cognitive limitations VS convention. I compared Godard's usage to fugues, and in a way that's a telling comparison. For about the last 400 years music became increasingly homophonic (just one melodic "voice" at a time), while before then the dominant convention was polyphony (multiple simultaneous melodic voices). Did the latter become preferred because it was simpler/easier to mentally process, or is it now easier to process just because it became conventional?
Raxivace wrote:
BTW, Comment ca va? isn't a bad one either. It's mostly just a duller, uglier version of Contempt.
Well I couldn't even find a download of this one so I had to buy the blu-ray. Luckily I can experience all that dull ugliness in pristine HD. [laugh]
[laugh]
Raxivace wrote:
Whoa, how did I never realize this existed? [gonemad]
Yeah I was pretty surprised by this myself. According to IMDb it combines footage of Every Man for Himself, something called Old and New from 1929, an Andrzej Wajda film called Man of Marble, and Buster Keaton's Cops of all things.
That sounds... weird. Reading through that first article a bit it reminds me of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon ... in_Shaolin Though of course Godard wasn't doing it for monetary gain.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Neo-General Chat III: Dream Warriors)

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Eva Yojimbo wrote:The only thing I question about it is whether or not it's even possible for a viewer to really process suggested meanings intuitively when so much is happening simultaneously; and then I also wonder how much of that is due to natural cognitive limitations VS convention. I compared Godard's usage to fugues, and in a way that's a telling comparison. For about the last 400 years music became increasingly homophonic (just one melodic "voice" at a time), while before then the dominant convention was polyphony (multiple simultaneous melodic voices). Did the latter become preferred because it was simpler/easier to mentally process, or is it now easier to process just because it became conventional?
The thing you say about fugues sounds like the opposite of what happened in film editing, which has become increasingly convoluted (And IMO much harder to make sense of) in mainstream film as "intensified continuity" has taken over. Bordwell marks the turn to this beginning at around Bonnie and Clyde, though I feel like it's gotten out of control since like Michael Bay and the lesser Paul Greengrass movies and the like started gaining popularity.

Perhaps in some eras "chaos" in different forms is a popular art aesthetic (Regardless of if people are really processing suggested meanings from it.On another forum I posted, there's a famous thread that's hundreds upon hundreds of pages long arguing that Bay is a serious artist for example. Even if he's intending to imbue his films with social commentary, how many people are really getting it? Or does it even matter?) and in some more controlled clarity is more popular. It's a broad topic I really wouldn't know how to begin to answer, even before getting into hypotheticals like how split-screen would fit into it.
That sounds... weird. Reading through that first article a bit it reminds me of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon ... in_Shaolin Though of course Godard wasn't doing it for monetary gain.
This sounds waaaaaay more calculated than the Godard movie, though I personally I find these "I'm going to make art but seal it away for a hundred or whatever years" stunts very self-aggrandizing and silly.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Neo-General Chat III: Dream Warriors)

Post by Eva Yojimbo »

Raxivace wrote:
Eva Yojimbo wrote:The only thing I question about it is whether or not it's even possible for a viewer to really process suggested meanings intuitively when so much is happening simultaneously; and then I also wonder how much of that is due to natural cognitive limitations VS convention. I compared Godard's usage to fugues, and in a way that's a telling comparison. For about the last 400 years music became increasingly homophonic (just one melodic "voice" at a time), while before then the dominant convention was polyphony (multiple simultaneous melodic voices). Did the latter become preferred because it was simpler/easier to mentally process, or is it now easier to process just because it became conventional?
The thing you say about fugues sounds like the opposite of what happened in film editing, which has become increasingly convoluted (And IMO much harder to make sense of) in mainstream film as "intensified continuity" has taken over. Bordwell marks the turn to this beginning at around Bonnie and Clyde, though I feel like it's gotten out of control since like Michael Bay and the lesser Paul Greengrass movies and the like started gaining popularity.

Perhaps in some eras "chaos" in different forms is a popular art aesthetic (Regardless of if people are really processing suggested meanings from it.On another forum I posted, there's a famous thread that's hundreds upon hundreds of pages long arguing that Bay is a serious artist for example. Even if he's intending to imbue his films with social commentary, how many people are really getting it? Or does it even matter?) and in some more controlled clarity is more popular. It's a broad topic I really wouldn't know how to begin to answer, even before getting into hypotheticals like how split-screen would fit into it.
That's a good point, and it seems the shift towards intensified continuity is predicated mostly on the Eisensteinian notion that more editing equals more drama/excitement, perhaps because it's less immediately comprehensible. Just like I'm sure if one were thrust into a real life situation of life-and-death stuff it would be so chaotic that you couldn't process everything going on either and would just be operating on instinct and intuitions. Still, I've never been entirely convinced that more editing necessarily means more intensity than long takes. One thing I like about video games is how gameplay often mimics long takes, and I think there's something to be said about the intensity of staying with a scene and "refusing to blink" at what's happening.

Man, that Bay document is long. Do you remember the gist of it? But, yeah, it's a good question about intention VS comprehension. I don't think there are any easy answers to this stuff. But I remember one thing I told maz when we were discussing the themes of TLOU is that I do think there's a difference between works where there will be certain themes just due to the nature of mimetic art (it's impossible to make narrative art that's about nothing, or that couldn't analyzed to be about something); and works where those themes seem a crucial and intentional aspect, whether that's in how it's crafted (ala Hitchcock) or in the fact that those themes are directly broached (Godard, NGE, Metal Gear Solid). Still, even among the artists and works that don't make themes a crucial aspect I do think whatever themes arise naturally from the works can be done to differing degrees that make us care or not, and that's a very subjective thing.
Raxivace wrote:
That sounds... weird. Reading through that first article a bit it reminds me of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon ... in_Shaolin Though of course Godard wasn't doing it for monetary gain.
This sounds waaaaaay more calculated than the Godard movie, though I personally I find these "I'm going to make art but seal it away for a hundred or whatever years" stunts very self-aggrandizing and silly.
Yeah, undoubtedly more calculated, but similar in the rarity and the intention of making something that almost nobody would ever see/hear.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Neo-General Chat III: Dream Warriors)

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Eva Yojimbo wrote:That's a good point, and it seems the shift towards intensified continuity is predicated mostly on the Eisensteinian notion that more editing equals more drama/excitement, perhaps because it's less immediately comprehensible. [...] Still, I've never been entirely convinced that more editing necessarily means more intensity than long takes.
Yeah when I think of scary situations I've been in in real life (Life when my brother has seizures) the incomprehensibility only lasts for like a moment- it feels far shorter than like an action scene in a Jason Bourne movie where most of the time I can't follow what's even happening. In real life, if anything it feels like I'm laser focused in on what's going on and the rest of the world is what gets closed off.

That feels more like a long take in a film to me, though that's mostly my subjective feelings about personal events.
Just like I'm sure if one were thrust into a real life situation of life-and-death stuff it would be so chaotic that you couldn't process everything going on either and would just be operating on instinct and intuitions.
This immediately made me think of this video.



Truly a trauma we can all relate to.
One thing I like about video games is how gameplay often mimics long takes, and I think there's something to be said about the intensity of staying with a scene and "refusing to blink" at what's happening.
I'll be curious to know what you think of Metal Gear Solid V when you get to it. In the cutscenes Kojima adopts a single-take aesthetic that doesn't even cut into gameplay, continuing the "single take" if you don't die or whatever.
Man, that Bay document is long. Do you remember the gist of it?
Eh its something like "Michael Bay is actually an iconoclast, all of the stuff people say they hate about his films are actually his critique of American culture". Like they would point to Megan Fox's character being named "Mikaela Banes" as a riff on Bay's own name to mean...something, I don't even remember the exact point.

I mostly shared the link because I think its interesting that people even tried a lengthy interpretation of Bay's movies, not because I find the arguments themselves particularly convincing. Even if we accept that Bay's intent to satirize American culture...Bay still isn't able to make me care.
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49. Ici et Aielleurs (AKA Here and Elsewhere, 1976, Dir. Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Gorin, and Anne-Marie Miéville) - This originally started as a Dziga Vertov Group film called Until Victory, which was to be pro-Palestine revolution propaganda. Godard and Gorin had creative disagreements on how it should go, the revolution ended up failing anyways, and the raw footage remained shelved.

After the Dziga Vertov Group dissolved, Godard returned to the footage alongside Miéville, and made something fairly different from it. Here he contrasts the Palestinian revolutionaries with footage of a normal family, to talk about images and sound, how they can supersede each other etc.

Some called the film a critique of the DVG group's ideology and its methods, and its not hard to see some of the film as that. Particularly when Godard's voice over talks about how the world is not simple and cannot be so neatly divided into two groups (Such as poor always good rich always bad, or vice versa even). Mievelle even asks why one woman was interviewed for Until Victory and was to pretend be pregnant, asking Godard if she was only interviewed because she was pretty. The largest point though was Mievile pointing out how all of the revolutionary rhetoric Godard and Gorin were so obsessed with (The sound) caused them to miss what their images had captured (That these people were doomed, fighting a losing fight etc.).

I shouldn't have been surprised by its appearance but the actual Holocaust footage used in this film was pretty haunting. I still can't stop thinking about those empty eye sockets.

EDIT: Gonna have to give props to the Every Man For Himself blu-ray here, as one of the special features talks about this film briefly and really helped clear up my thoughts on it, which is why I've gone back and edited this. I still need tons of help with these Godard movies it seems.

50. Deadly Detention (2017, Dir. Blair Hayes) - Imagine The Breakfast Club but set in an abandoned prison “because of a possum infestation in the school" and with a slasher villain coming after the kids and you've got this movie.

Actually, as far as cheesy horror movies go it isn't the worst thing ever, though the villain is pretty predictable. I can't decide though if I love or hate the twist of him being so terrible at killing others that nobody actually ends up killed in the film at any point point. That combined with his motivation revealed to be wanting revenge for the suicide of his teenage daughter that some might find an insensitive take on the subject and I could see some people being really turned off by this film.

51. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018, Dir. Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, & Rodney Rothman) - Holy hell this was good. The visual style was absolutely amazing. The gags weren't just quips, some were even visual (TGI Spidey's just killed me), and while I didn't read the comic arc this was based on I found the whole conceit of the alternate universe Spider-Mans coming together to be fun and clever. They even fit in the mecha anime version (Though I was kind of bummed to see the Evangelion homage aspect of the character significantly reduced.)! They'll almost certainly do another Miles Morales movie (And they should), but honestly I would watch a movie about any of the Spiders from this movie if they put this much love and care into the craft of it.

Also props to the trailers for hiding the twist of the Peter Parker from Miguel's universe getting killed. Good job, trailers.

Tbh this is probably the best Spider-Man movie since Raimi's Spider-Man 2. Maybe even better, I'd have to watch both again.

52. Spider-Ham: “Caught in a Ham" (2019, Dir. Miguel Jiron) - A bonus short for Spider-Verse that plays up the Looney Toons and Hannah-Barbera influences on the Spider-Ham character.



It's pretty cute. I wish they would do more shorts like these- you could do a cool film noir thing for Spider-Man Noir, a mecha anime homage for Peni Parker, and I dunno what you could do for Spider-Gwen but I bet it would be cool.

53. License to Kill (1989, Dir. John Glen) - It had been a while since I last saw a Bond, so I put this one on.

Actually I think this movie works pretty well, particularly if you think of it as more of a sort of sequel to On Her Majesty's Secret Service (It works better than Diamonds Are Forever does as a sequel anyways). While the main plot follows Bond getting revenge for the death of Felix's (From Live and Let Die) wife, I think the subtext is that he's actually reliving the trauma of his own wife's death (The fact that he's been widowed is even brought up in the movie despite having no actual bearing on the direct plot) and is hwy he's being particularly violent and insubordinate here (Its interesting to remember that the title refers to Bond's “license to kill" being revoked because he's lost his marbles and gone rogue for a bit).

Now I'm not say this puts License to Kill on the level of like, Taxi Driver or something but it is a bit more subtle than the kind of writing I've come to expect from these movies, since they never explicitly state anything I'm saying here but it very much seems like the implication which surprised me.

Also, there's a young Benicio del Toro as henchman in this movie which is fun, but yet another henchman in this movie is played by Everett McGill of all people, who you may remember as Big Ed Hurley in Twin Peaks. Very unexpected.

54. Dishonored (1931, Dir. Josef von Sternberg) - A kind of proto-noir where Marlene Dietrich tries to capture enemy soldiers and the like through seduction and the like, before seeming to fall in love with one, helping him escape, and getting executed as a result. Pretty fun pre-Code thriller with a bit a heavier ending than I expected, though I perhaps given the title I should have expected it.

55. Shanghai Express (1932, Dir. Josef von Sternberg) - Another Dietrich thriller, ostensibly about a train hijacking though more focused on the character drama. This isn't bad a film but I have to be honest it didn't really personally land for me very well.

The special features on the Criterion Disc were cool though, particularly about Anna May Wong's career and how Shanghai Express fits into Hollywood representations of Asians and Asian-Americans (They didn't bring up The Bitter Tea of General Yen specifically but it got me thinking of it again too). I'm really getting the impression that while these von Sternberg/Dietrich movies are not bad, they really are more interesting to read and learn about than to actually watch.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Goodbye to Neo-General Chat 3D)

Post by Lord_Lyndon »

Saw some films:

Wendy and Lucy (2008)
Never Let Me Go (2010)
The Girl on the Train (2016)
Water for Elephants (2011)
The Motorcycle Diaries (2004)
The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)
The Hunt for Red October (1990)
This Means War (2012)
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010)
The Call (2013)
Devils on the Doorstep (2000)
Clash of the Titans (2010)
Wrath of the Titans (2012)
Immortals (2011)


I must say I liked all of these films except Immortals. That one was boring as hell. But at least it was visually stunning.
Have you seen any of these, Rax?
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Goodbye to Neo-General Chat 3D)

Post by Raxivace »

Lord_Lyndon wrote:The Motorcycle Diaries (2004)
This is the only one of this bunch I've seen. I quite liked it, and thought it paired interestingly with Soderbergh's Che films.

One day I'd like to try watching all three of them back to back.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Goodbye to Neo-General Chat 3D)

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Bunch of films today.

56. Comment ca va? (AKA How's It Going?, 1978, Dir. Jean-Luc Godard & Anne-Marie Mieville) - Like Jimbo was saying earlier, basically Contempt but with newspapers and news films and not as pretty or good. That isn't to say its bad though- even more than any of the other 70's films we're closer now to the characters feeling (And I think, acting) as actual characters and not simply mouthpieces for various ideological views. Not that there still isn't a lot of that here (There are a lot of traditional Godardian concerns about images, text, the relationship between them and if, how, and whether or not one even should contextualize the other etc.) or that that even is necessarily a bad thing, but it certainly makes the medicine go down easier when it seems like there are more traditional story elements present.

I forgot to mention this in Ici et Ailleurs but Godard has started using computers now, and its interesting to see try and make an image out of a word processor, especially since what he's using may have been hi-tech in his time but feels fairly old itself now.

And with that...I AM FINALLY DONE WITH GODARD'S 70'S FEATURES!!! HOORAY!!!! AMA about this amazing accomplishment.

57. My Fair Lady (1964, Dir. George Cukor) - The 1964 Best Picture Winner. Fairly stagey but otherwise decent musical. Not the best but certainly not down on the level of something like Gigi. Not even close to the best that Cukor has ever done either though (Even if you don't give him any credit for Wizard of Oz or Gone With the Wind). Not much to really say about it.

58. Quelques remarques sur la realization et la production du film 'Sauve qui peut (la vie)' (1979, Dir. Jean-Luc Godard) - A short film where Godard dicusses his proposal for the film that is to become Every Man For Himself. It's pretty neat hearing Godard talking through his thought process a little more directly, and even some of his talking points here will show up again in the two-part interview he would do with Dick Cavett. The one about slowing footage down “in order to see more" particularly stood out to me- here he uses the example of a soccer match, though in the EMFH clip on Dick Cavett it appears to be a couple in some kind of a fight.

Godard mentions Werner Herzog here, though obviously he's not in EMFH. Really makes me wonder what could have been.

59. Every Man For Himself (1980, Dir. Jean-Luc Godard) - Godard's return to commercial filmmaking is a strong one. It's like night and day compared to the 70's movies. The use of nature here is just beautiful too, and really reminds me of what he would go on to do with Helas Pour Moi. I also still can't get over the fact that he named the TV director character “Paul Godard" and made him the most unlikeable asshole possible- really stands in contrast to what Truffaut was doing with Day For Night.

I wonder if the whole prostitution storyline of the movie isn't a bit…muddled at times though. Like I wonder if something like the goofy Rube Goldberg human sex machine scene plays quite as intended today when things such as BDSM are becoming more open and accepted in society and "kinkshaming" is becoming heavily frowned upon.

Anyways this would make a fascinating double feature with Hitchcock's Marnie, I think. Still need to give that a rewatch at some point…

60. Godard 1980 (1980, Dir. Jon Jost & Don Ranvaud) - A short film where Godard is interviewed about his return to commercial cinema. Covers a lot of similar ground as the Dick Cavett episodes, though the interviewers here get Godard to open up about the Dziga Vertov Group stuff a bit and how he's different now as opposed to that period, which is interesting.

61. Oliver! (1968, Dir. Carol Reed) - The 1968 Best Picture Winner. I'm pretty torn on this musical adaptation of Oliver Twist because while I think the direction is superior to a stagey one like My Fair Lady I don't find the performances or the general story here to be engaging at all past the first few scenes.

Not much else to really say about it. While 2001: A Space Odyssey was this year and did have Best Director nomination (Which Kubrick lost to Reed here, which is ridiculous), it was also number 1 at the box office this year as well which I never realized before. Not that I expected the Academy to give it much love but I never realized it had that much public support at the time either- things sure have changed.

62. Midnight Cowboy (1969, Dir. John Schlesinger) - The 1969 Best Picture Oscar Winner. Actually this one is pretty good, following the story of a male prostitute and his friend. What's weird is how different it was than most of the other 60's winners, being a small film and not a big musical (West Side Story, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, Oliver!) or some kind of costumed period piece (Tom Jones, A Man for All Seasons, sort of Lawrence of Arabia). The only movies it has anything in common with here are In the Heat of the Night and The Apartment bizarrely enough- in that they're more frank about sexuality (The Apartment not quite as much but it's a part of the same larger conversation that Midnight Cowboy is continuing, I think) and how they seem to predict the smaller scale, grittier types of Best Picture Winners that the Academy people would go on to award in the 70's.

Cinematically there are good moments here. The dreams and flashbacks being kind of avant-garde is neat. The funniest thing here to me though is how the sex scene where Ultraman of all things is playing on television. That whole sex scene is pretty well constructed actually, as the couple continually rolls over the remote control, meaning the channels on the television change faster and faster as things heat up, but the Ultraman thing is just such a goofy part of it even if most people aren't going to think much of it.

63. The Wild Bunch (1969, Dir. Sam Peckinpah) - I'm sorry but I just can't stand Peckinpah's name. It makes him sound like a bunch of woodland critters standing on top of each other under a trench coach to pass as human so they can get into a movie theater or pay for a train ticket or something.

Anyways that doesn't matter The Wild Bunch is an excellent film, almost too excellent to even talk about. It really does feel like Peckinpah is trying to one-up people like Sergio Corbucci in violence (The machine gun in this film makes me think of the original Django at least), though he at least uses violence purposefully.

I don't know that there's much else for me to really add, though Ebert wrote a really great review for this.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Goodbye to Neo-General Chat 3D)

Post by Lord_Lyndon »

I think that Peckinpah is rememberd most for The Wild Bunch, but he made a number of excellent films.
We're talking about:
Straw Dogs
Pat Garret and Billy the Kid
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
The Ballad of Cable Hogue
Ride the High Country.

Brilliant director.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Goodbye to Neo-General Chat 3D)

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Lord_Lyndon wrote:I think that Peckinpah is rememberd most for The Wild Bunch, but he made a number of excellent films.
We're talking about:
Straw Dogs
Pat Garret and Billy the Kid
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
The Ballad of Cable Hogue
Ride the High Country.

Brilliant director.
Wild Bunch was my first of Peckinpah's so I'll make a note of seeing all of these at some point.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Neo-General Chat III: Dream Warriors)

Post by Eva Yojimbo »

Raxivace wrote:
Eva Yojimbo wrote:That's a good point, and it seems the shift towards intensified continuity is predicated mostly on the Eisensteinian notion that more editing equals more drama/excitement, perhaps because it's less immediately comprehensible. [...] Still, I've never been entirely convinced that more editing necessarily means more intensity than long takes.
Yeah when I think of scary situations I've been in in real life (Life when my brother has seizures) the incomprehensibility only lasts for like a moment- it feels far shorter than like an action scene in a Jason Bourne movie where most of the time I can't follow what's even happening. In real life, if anything it feels like I'm laser focused in on what's going on and the rest of the world is what gets closed off.

That feels more like a long take in a film to me, though that's mostly my subjective feelings about personal events.
If I think back to my own personal "intense" moments I think some felt more like long-takes and others more like montage, perhaps depending on what was actually happening. When my mom had her stroke it felt more like montage because I was rushing back and forth between trying to help her, calling 911, trying to gather up her medicine, calling my cousin/aunt to tell them what happened, etc. However, when we went through the tornado/flood it was more like long-takes because much of it was just standing/sitting around as what sounded like a freight train rolled by and then water started filling up to our knees and we had a long walk uphill to dry land. So maybe much of it depends on what all you're doing at the time and how much or how well you're just focused on one thing.
Raxivace wrote:
Just like I'm sure if one were thrust into a real life situation of life-and-death stuff it would be so chaotic that you couldn't process everything going on either and would just be operating on instinct and intuitions.
This immediately made me think of this video.

Truly a trauma we can all relate to.
[laugh]
Raxivace wrote:
One thing I like about video games is how gameplay often mimics long takes, and I think there's something to be said about the intensity of staying with a scene and "refusing to blink" at what's happening.
I'll be curious to know what you think of Metal Gear Solid V when you get to it. In the cutscenes Kojima adopts a single-take aesthetic that doesn't even cut into gameplay, continuing the "single take" if you don't die or whatever.
That does sound very cool. I've really been wanting to get back to gaming anyway and I keep forgetting that MGS is one of the franchises I really want to dig back into.
Raxivace wrote:
Man, that Bay document is long. Do you remember the gist of it?
Eh its something like "Michael Bay is actually an iconoclast, all of the stuff people say they hate about his films are actually his critique of American culture". Like they would point to Megan Fox's character being named "Mikaela Banes" as a riff on Bay's own name to mean...something, I don't even remember the exact point.

I mostly shared the link because I think its interesting that people even tried a lengthy interpretation of Bay's movies, not because I find the arguments themselves particularly convincing. Even if we accept that Bay's intent to satirize American culture...Bay still isn't able to make me care.
It's definitely possible to do deep-dive analyses into just about anything. Are you aware of that "Pokemon is just a dying dream of Ash" that was on the internet years ago? What I find that most such interpretations of seemingly-popular, shallow entertainment has in common is that they tend to take a small detail and then proceed to make a huge mountain of interpretation out of it and viewing everything through that one myopic lens without trying to account for alternate explanations. The difference between something like that and, say, NGE, is that with the latter it's possible to use dozens, even hundreds, of examples from the actual narrative or plot or style that supports an interpretation, too many for them to be coincidences or without meaning/significance. Of course, one can question exactly how many such examples it takes to make a case, but when your entire case rests on a detail or two that could have dozens of other possible reasons, you're probably on shaky ground. I don't know if all that applies to Bay, but it's just a trend I've noticed with similar interpretations.
Raxivace wrote:49. Ici et Aielleurs (AKA Here and Elsewhere, 1976, Dir. Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Gorin, and Anne-Marie Miéville) -
Interesting thoughts on this one. I didn't recall this being the result of Godard/Gorin disagreements, but at the time I just thought this seemed a pretty typical film of theirs from that time period, though perhaps made a bit more interesting because of the intense subject matter. Speaking of haunting holocaust footage, have you ever seen Resnais's Night and Fog? It's a short documentary but probably the most haunting film I've seen on the subject. It's easy to see how Resnais transitioned from that to Hiroshima, Mon Amour. He seemed very concerned at that time about how humans can cope with the horrors of such things.
Raxivace wrote:I still need tons of help with these Godard movies it seems.
LOL, You aren't alone! I know I've barely even scratched the surface of most of them. The problem with 70s Godard is that scratching their surface is about as fun as scratching a porcupine. :/
Raxivace wrote:Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018, Dir. Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, & Rodney Rothman) - Holy hell this was good. The visual style was absolutely amazing.
Man, you and other reviewers have me very hyped for this. You know I'm a Spider-Fan anyway, but I've been pretty disappointed in Spider-Man on film outside the first two Raimis (and the PS4 game, I guess).
Raxivace wrote:53. License to Kill (1989, Dir. John Glen) -
In retrospect, License to Kill seems like the first hint of where Bond would eventually go with Daniel Craig, but perhaps even grittier/darker. I'd never thought about it being a spiritual sequel to OHMSS, but you're definitely right about that. I just think that, style wise, it was so different from The Living Daylights and the latter seemed like such a classic Bond entry that was so much fun that I've always preferred it, but I might think differently if I revisited them now.
Raxivace wrote:54. Dishonored (1931, Dir. Josef von Sternberg)

55. Shanghai Express (1932, Dir. Josef von Sternberg) -
I've seen the latter, which I liked OK but didn't love. Again, with Sternberg I tend to dig the style but the films don't do much for me otherwise. I think we're in general agreement about him/them. I still think his style is better suited to the silents than to sound, and my favorites remain the three silents I've seen.
Raxivace wrote:56. Comment ca va? (AKA How's It Going?, 1978, Dir. Jean-Luc Godard & Anne-Marie Mieville) -
Again we seem to be in agreement and I don't think I have much to add. I'd forgotten about Godard's use of computers in those films.
Raxivace wrote:I AM FINALLY DONE WITH GODARD'S 70'S FEATURES!!! HOORAY!!!! AMA about this amazing accomplishment.
So... how do you feel about the relationship of text and images? [laugh]
Raxivace wrote:57. My Fair Lady (1964, Dir. George Cukor) -
I remember really enjoying this one although I don't think we're too far off. Yeah, Cukor has made better and there's been better musicals and BP winners, but I'd say it's solidly in the upper-middle, lower-top tier of both.
Raxivace wrote:59. Every Man For Himself (1980, Dir. Jean-Luc Godard) -
For whatever reason, my review for this wasn't saved on our IMDb threads, perhaps it was in GC7, but we again seem to be in agreement. I think I posted that review somewhere in an Amazon discussion (of all things) so I might be able to find it... Ahhh, here it is:
"After a decade of treating filmmaking as a radical aesthetic playground in the 60s, and a decade of impassioned political and documentary experimental filmmaking in the 70s, Godard's Sauve qui peut, his "second first-film," is a sobered and even melancholic return to narrative. In a way this film feels like the hangover of the previous decades. While it has Godard's experimental narrative tactics galore--the anarchic use of disjunctive sound, the random "deconstructive" slow-motion photography, the elliptical editing--it's also his most humanistic, sympathetic film since Vivre sa vie, and perhaps his most personal ever. The political fervor has diminished to a trickle, and in its place is either abstract sound (like the music motif) or pregnant silence. The camera has an eerie calmness to it--static most of the time, shot from a longer-than-average distance--and the visuals has a burnished beauty. The narrative structure is even surprisingly lucid, with three sections (and a coda) focusing on three characters: one a filmmaker named Godard (hint), the second his ex-girlfriend, and the third a prostitute. All three sections are intriguing yet diverse, with only that nocturne-like tonal quality connecting them. Overall it's a brilliant return to form, one of Godard's most tonally subtle films and, dare I say it, one of his most accessible."
As for your comments, yeah, Godard wasn't very kind in his "self-portraits" on film, either treating them as assholes or bumbling fools or madmen (Keep Your Right Up, King Lear). As for the prostitution, I don't recall thinking that Godard was trying to kinkshame or suggest something negative about sex itself; his obsession with prostitution seemed almost wholly related to his metaphor of the business of filmmaking as prostitution; the constant threat of having to sell yourself--your soul, spirit, integrity, honesty, etc.--just to survive. He also saw a parallel with prostitution and Capitalism in general. I don't think Godard was every really interested in prostitution (or perhaps even sex, really) in itself or on any kind of personal/moral level.
Raxivace wrote:60. Godard 1980 (1980, Dir. Jon Jost & Don Ranvaud) -
Was this one of the bonus features on Sauve qui peut or something? I don't remember it, but if it was I'm sure I saw it.
Raxivace wrote:61. Oliver! (1968, Dir. Carol Reed) -
I mostly remember this thanks to how much worov (on the 2001:ASO board) raved about it, but also because he presented it as kind of like the antithesis of 2001:ASO. Basically, the kind of "normal great film" vs the "transcendentally all-time great work of art film." I thought it was OK but I don't think it made great use of Reed's talents.
Raxivace wrote:62. Midnight Cowboy (1969, Dir. John Schlesinger) -
I didn't really appreciate this back when I first saw it. My parents supported my classic film diet as a teen but they didn't really want me watching this, but I managed to convince them to. I remember not quite getting what the big deal was, either about why it was supposedly so salacious or considered to be "great" in general. I saw this before I developed a real appreciation for both erotic art and cinematic style and I really wonder how differently I might think about it now. I do remember thinking the acting/drama aspect was quite good, though.
Raxivace wrote:63. The Wild Bunch (1969, Dir. Sam Peckinpah) -
[laugh] @ your rant on Peckinpah's name. I've often thought something similar. In any case, yes, this is a flat-out masterpiece and, yes, Ebert's review of it is great. That ending still stands up as one of the finest pieces of montage in film history. Every film student should be made to study it alongside Battleship Potemkin's Odessa Steps.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Goodbye to Neo-General Chat 3D)

Post by Eva Yojimbo »

Lord_Lyndon wrote:Saw some films:

Wendy and Lucy (2008)
Never Let Me Go (2010)
The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)
The Hunt for Red October (1990)
Devils on the Doorstep (2000)


I must say I liked all of these films except Immortals. That one was boring as hell. But at least it was visually stunning.
Have you seen any of these, Rax?
I've seen these. Wendy and Lucy was quite charming. One of those small, quaint films that can feel like a breathe of fresh air if you've seen nothing but big-budget spectacles for a while. Old Joy from the same director is also very good. Never Let Me Go I found to be one of those films where its literary origins were very obvious and slightly annoying. Here's what I wrote on it:
Very early on while watching Never Let Me Go I was struck with the realization that I must be watching an adaptation of a novel. There's simply a certain quality that such adaptations have that original screenplays don't. They're marked by a certain stately elegance, a temporal broadness (for whatever reason, feature film screenplays tend to stay rooted in one time period), and, most of all, a feeling that the visuals are struggling to capture the original prose and say more about the characters than are possible through a camera lens. Other such films in the past decade that also had these qualities were Chocolat, The Hours, Atonement, The Reader and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Perceptive readers might note all of these films were nominated for Oscars as well, and there's a part of me that's surprised Never Let Me Go wasn't.

It turns out I was right, as the film was adapted from a popular novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. It's set in a dystopian alternate universe where people—clones, presumably—are born and bred to be organ donors. It begins in a closed-off school called Hailshom where Kathy (child: Izzy Meile-Small, adult: Carey Mulligan), Tommy (child: Charlie Rowe, adult: Andrew Garfield), and Ruth (child: Ella Purnell, adult: Keira Knightley) meet as children. Tommy is picked on for being bad at sports and art, but he's soon befriended by Kathy and later becomes lovers with Ruth. The trio eventually move out to The Cottages and get their first taste of the outside world, but are forced to split up afterward. Both Ruth and Tommy begin their donor duties, while Kathy becomes a carer. When the three are reunited, Ruth encourages Kathy and Tommy to seek a deferral by stating they're in love.

While the film has been labeled as a sci-fi romance, it's certainly more romance (or perhaps melodrama) than sci-fi. The latter aspect is wholly confined to the alternate world setting, which is particularly strange as it begins in 1950 and moves to the 1980s in a world that's only subtly different from our own. While perhaps more of a convention in literature, this makes for somewhat jarring cinema. I'm reminded of what Ebert said of Benjamin Button in that it was “a splendidly made film based on a profoundly mistaken premise… Everything comes after the beginning, and we all seem to share this awareness of the direction of time's arrow… the film's admirers speak of how deeply they were touched, what meditations it invoked. I felt instead: Life doesn't work this way."

It's strange in a medium like film where manipulating time is one of its two essential aspects (the other being images) that temporal integrity would be so important. Not so much chronological linearity, but a respect for (in _Benjamin Button_'s case) how a life progresses, or (in the case of this film) how history already progressed. Perhaps it's also about the integrity of images. We can imagine a world about a man who ages backwards or a world where people are grown to be donors in literature, but seeing them realized in concrete images adds an element of unrealism that negates any emotional or thematic impact that such a premise could make. Compounding the problem is an issue I alluded to above about film's inability to dig into the psyches of characters the way literature can. Literature can make us forget about its unreal setting to focus on the character relationships and emotions, while such a setting is always present in film around the corners of the frame.

If the film is worth seeing it's primarily for its cast of up-and-coming stars. Carey Mulligan gave a phenomenal performance in An Education a year ago, and Andrew Garfield was stellar in The Social Network, holding his own against Jessie Eisenberg's whirlwind lead. Unfortunately, neither are as good here. Carey is well cast as the doe-eyed Kathy, but her character lacks the personality and substance of her An Education role. Much the same could be said for Andrew Garfield and his Tommy. Both are the victim of bland screenwriting more than guilty of bad acting. Keira Knightley is the most well established of the group, and she's beginning to convince me she's more than a pretty face. Here, she's dressed-down for Ruth, playing the most interesting character with a wonderful ambiguity, always walking the line between a genuine friend, a mischievous pixie, and something more sinister.

One word that constantly comes to mind when I critique these adaptations is “professionalism". They all exude a confidence from filmmakers who know how to do their jobs well. The film is handsomely but not ostentatiously shot by DP Adam Kimmel. Of course, the English countryside always makes good fodder for idyllic imagery, but there's also a visual versatility, moving from muted colors to vivid sunsets, from cramped interiors to expansive exteriors, from lovely portraits to intriguing architecture. The costuming and makeup also deserve some praise, taking the characters from childhood, to adulthood, to their tragic conclusions. Director Mark Romanek, primarily known for the feature One Hour Photo and a string of music videos, stages the film with an assured pace and attentiveness.

But all the professionalism in the world can't replace genuine inspiration, and that's what's lacking on this film. There's never that moment that hooks us to the characters, never that moment that sells the love story that's so crucial to carrying us through the emotions. The film certainly tries, and I think its failure is due to that temporal disconnect that occurs when films leap over time to transition from characters as kids to adults. Again, literature lacks this problem since our deeper and more intimate observation of the characters trump our imaginations of their physical appearance, while in film we can't help but be aware of the startling juxtaposition of one character as a child, played by a child actor, being the same character as an adult, played by an adult actor.

If anything in the film is egregiously bad, it's the moments where big emotional outbursts join with big orchestral music to pound us over the head. The success or failure of such melodrama always depends on whether or not the film has pulled you inside it. For those acting as more distant observers (myself) it always comes off as manipulative and trite. For those for whom the film succeeds at pulling in, then these may be some overwhelmingly powerful moments. All I would argue is that I think the film fails to do what it should in order to pull us in. If the characters were more 3-dimensional, if the acting was more inspired, if the direction was more enthusiastic, or if the film spent a bit more time developing these relationships and finding that moment of connection, then I think it could've been something excellent instead of “a splendidly made film" that made me go “life doesn't work this way".
Perks I don't remember too much about. I think I remember enjoying it but didn't find it too special. Hunt for Red October was an old favorite from my childhood. My dad was a navy man and we shared an interest in submarines and fighter planes. For years, Hunt for Red October was one of the few great submarine films out there... probably still the best drama outside Das Boot (which is very different in style). Although we also loved Down Periscope, which was just a silly comedy. Devils on the Doorsteps was excellent. I also wrote a review for it back in the day but I think it's long gone now. I don't remember too much other than thinking it was great, though. Gave it an 8.5 IIRC.
Lord_Lyndon wrote:I think that Peckinpah is rememberd most for The Wild Bunch, but he made a number of excellent films.
We're talking about:
Straw Dogs
Pat Garret and Billy the Kid
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
The Ballad of Cable Hogue
Ride the High Country.

Brilliant director.
Of these I've seen Straw Dogs, PGABTK, and Ride the High Country. Of those I think Straw Dogs is the best. Extremely intense, very dark in an almost misanthropic way. PGABTK is really cool from a tonal perspective, at times reminding me of the best of John Ford. High Country is his most traditional western. I remember liking it but thinking it was a bit bland by Peckinpah's standards.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Goodbye to Neo-General Chat 3D)

Post by Lord_Lyndon »

Eva Yojimbo wrote:Wendy and Lucy was quite charming. One of those small, quaint films that can feel like a breathe of fresh air if you've seen nothing but big-budget spectacles for a while.
I agree. I read tieman's review and he said the film is a big statement on poverty and lives of underprivileged. He also said the capitalism requires unemployment rate of 20% so it can sustain itself. Or something like that. And that Wendy is a victim here even though current system wants us to believe that she is to blame for her condition. Again so that system remains status quo, so to speak.
Never Let Me Go I found to be one of those films where its literary origins were very obvious and slightly annoying.
So now I understand why the film left me and many others cold. Thanks for posting your review and analyzing what can be lost in adapting films from novels. I'm not much of a reader myself, so I couldn't have realized that without your help.
But there is something else I've been meaning to ask you. Maybe you can help me on this. It is not a question about formalism, but about content of the film and book. It's been bothering me ever since I saw this film. It has haunted me ever since. So... Never Let Me Go is basically a story about ''acceptance'' and ''accepting your destiny''. I get that. What I don't get is this: Why do the characters of this story accept their destiny without rebelling against system presented in the book? Isn't it human nature to fight for your life, for your existence till the very end? But no. Characters simply embrace the fact that they will die relatively young, only because someone who is deemed more important than them can get their organs. But how is this scenario possible? I know I'm missing something here, something the author wants to say. Maybe I don't understand human nature or essence of life. Maybe you can clarify this for me or at least give me your point of view.

And I do hope you will see Ballad of Cable Hogue one day, because it is one of those unconventional westerns, one of those rare gems. It is a comedy, not an action western.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Goodbye to Neo-General Chat 3D)

Post by Eva Yojimbo »

Lord_Lyndon wrote:So now I understand why the film left me and many others cold. Thanks for posting your review and analyzing what can be lost in adapting films from novels. I'm not much of a reader myself, so I couldn't have realized that without your help.
But there is something else I've been meaning to ask you. Maybe you can help me on this. It is not a question about formalism, but about content of the film and book. It's been bothering me ever since I saw this film. It has haunted me ever since. So... Never Let Me Go is basically a story about ''acceptance'' and ''accepting your destiny''. I get that. What I don't get is this: Why do the characters of this story accept their destiny without rebelling against system presented in the book? Isn't it human nature to fight for your life, for your existence till the very end? But no. Characters simply embrace the fact that they will die relatively young, only because someone who is deemed more important than them can get their organs. But how is this scenario possible? I know I'm missing something here, something the author wants to say. Maybe I don't understand human nature or essence of life. Maybe you can clarify this for me or at least give me your point of view.

And I do hope you will see Ballad of Cable Hogue one day, because it is one of those unconventional westerns, one of those rare gems. It is a comedy, not an action western.
I don't remember the film itself saying why the people just seem to accept their destiny, but, yes, in general people do tend to fight for their survival. I guess it would be possible in a world where this kind of thing just happened for people to be raised so differently that they would, indeed, just accept their fates. Human nature can certainly, at least to an extent, be overridden by social norms and programming. So while it may be human nature to fight for your life, with enough social (re)programming it would be possible for people to not do so.

All of Peckinpah's are on my list. Just more stuff I need to get around to. :)
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Goodbye to Neo-General Chat 3D)

Post by maz89 »

There is too much for me to catch up on here so I'm just going to say that I'm with Lyndon on his Ballad of Cable Hogue recommendation.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Goodbye to Neo-General Chat 3D)

Post by Raxivace »

RIP John Singleton. Jesus that came out of nowhere.

Boyz n the Hood is a classic of course, but I honestly had a soft spot for 2 Fast 2 Furious as well- for the kind of movie it is, its pretty fun. Really makes me sad I haven't seen more of his stuff.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Neo-General Chat III: Dream Warriors)

Post by Raxivace »

Trying to catch up on some stuff...
Eva Yojimbo wrote:So maybe much of it depends on what all you're doing at the time and how much or how well you're just focused on one thing.
Yeah I think is probably a huge point. Perhaps when you have to rely on others to come (Such as an ambulance or something) you can't help but imagine them driving toward you and maybe that contributes to the feeling of "montage".
That does sound very cool. I've really been wanting to get back to gaming anyway and I keep forgetting that MGS is one of the franchises I really want to dig back into.
Yeah I really enjoyed MGSV a lot. A lot of fans disliked the story because it kind of ends on an intentionally bitter and unsatisfying anti-climax but that's what I really enjoyed about it.
It's definitely possible to do deep-dive analyses into just about anything. Are you aware of that "Pokemon is just a dying dream of Ash" that was on the internet years ago? What I find that most such interpretations of seemingly-popular, shallow entertainment has in common is that they tend to take a small detail and then proceed to make a huge mountain of interpretation out of it and viewing everything through that one myopic lens without trying to account for alternate explanations. The difference between something like that and, say, NGE, is that with the latter it's possible to use dozens, even hundreds, of examples from the actual narrative or plot or style that supports an interpretation, too many for them to be coincidences or without meaning/significance. Of course, one can question exactly how many such examples it takes to make a case, but when your entire case rests on a detail or two that could have dozens of other possible reasons, you're probably on shaky ground. I don't know if all that applies to Bay, but it's just a trend I've noticed with similar interpretations.
Yeah I've heard that Pokemon example before. I think it doesn't hold up obviously but what's frustrating about it to me is that the lesson internet people took away from that is that all "It's a dream" interpretations are equally worthless. There are very much times where I think such interpretations seem applicable (As, at least, one mode of understanding a work) but "fans" dismiss them entirely because of an aversion to the idea.

There was an anime I saw last year called SSSS.Gridman which I did not particularly enjoy at an initial glance. The surface level plot revolves around people living in a computer world. As a part of the plot a girl realizes she needs to leave the computer world and at the end she does so- however the final shot of her is not becoming unplugged from some Matrix-esque device or anything like that, but its a LIVE ACTION scene of her waking up in her bed.

Of course you can argue a metaphorical reading of the live action scene (I.e. putting escapist adventures in the computer world behind you is like waking up from sleep. That's fine, though I would ask why the shot is done in live action in that case though), but I think that's hardly the only way to interpret such an ending.

For an artier example I've seen people very resistant to similar interpretations of Mulholland Dr....
Speaking of haunting holocaust footage, have you ever seen Resnais's Night and Fog? It's a short documentary but probably the most haunting film I've seen on the subject. It's easy to see how Resnais transitioned from that to Hiroshima, Mon Amour. He seemed very concerned at that time about how humans can cope with the horrors of such things.
I have not. I've thought about it a few times but its hard to hype yourself up for something like that.
LOL, You aren't alone! I know I've barely even scratched the surface of most of them. The problem with 70s Godard is that scratching their surface is about as fun as scratching a porcupine. :/
Hahaha, well, its made a little better when watching them roughly in order with Godard's career. And they have given me things to think about, so it wasn't a complete waste.

Definitely the most brutal filmwatching project I've done though.

BTW I heard an interview with Armond White the other day where he was talking about Godard. Apparently a theater in New York or someplace was holding a retrospective on the Dziga Vertov films, and White was whining that none of the "woke" young people of today went to see them. Having actually seen these films myself now this is the funniest fucking thing I've ever heard. Real mystery why young people aren't rushing out in doves see 50 year old agitprop, I just can't figure out why.
Man, you and other reviewers have me very hyped for this. You know I'm a Spider-Fan anyway, but I've been pretty disappointed in Spider-Man on film outside the first two Raimis (and the PS4 game, I guess).
I hope you enjoy it, I thought it was a lot of fun.
In retrospect, License to Kill seems like the first hint of where Bond would eventually go with Daniel Craig, but perhaps even grittier/darker. I'd never thought about it being a spiritual sequel to OHMSS, but you're definitely right about that. I just think that, style wise, it was so different from The Living Daylights and the latter seemed like such a classic Bond entry that was so much fun that I've always preferred it, but I might think differently if I revisited them now.
Yeah LTK is definitely a different film than The Living Daylights so I can understand being disappointed if you wanted more the latter. Do give it another try though at some point, you might like it more.
So... how do you feel about the relationship of text and images? [laugh]
Well you see Jimbo, sometimes the words and pictures go together. But other times? Other times they don't and that's fucked up.

For real though, my thoughts on this are a little different when it comes to nonfiction and a fiction.

In nonfiction its interesting to me how people seem to look for words to justify believing or disbelieving images. On the one end I think of something like 9/11 conspiracy theories. Apparently the implications of the Towers falling was just too great a burden to bear for some, and instead of accepting the simple truth people write loads and loads and loads of words to discredit the image. The image can be weakened, if we write enough words.

OTOH how much dumb nonsense has been spread over the years just because it was presented in the form of an internet meme? Just look at this racist anti-immigration meme about migrants jacked up on steroids coming into England.

Image

^People believed this utter garbage (And I'm sure some still do), even though this is a picture of fucking Australians. The truth of the image doesn't matter- just apply the right text to contextualize the image for whatever pre-existing beliefs the audience has and it becomes "evidence" that their beliefs were right to begin with. The text reinterprets the image in a way to reinforce the text- a snake that's devouring its own tail, but the snake says the taste is good.

And yet, what difference is there really between me and the 9/11 conspiracy theorist? We're both just people coming up with words to discredit images that have been produced, not creating counter-images of our own. Of course I think I'm right about this dumb meme nonsense and that the theorist is full of it when it comes to 9/11, but is there a real difference between the methods used?

In a way I can kind of understand what caused Godard to become skeptical of the power of images (Or lack thereof) and focus more on words during the DVG era, if apparently images are so weak that a few words can change them and their meaning entirely. I don't think that was the right approach still, like it or not images and accompanying text will still spread like a virus.

This is all a longwinded way of saying that we need more critical thinking- an understanding how images and text and their relationship of reinforcing and contradicting each other are use to emotionally appeal to us and manipulate us and prey upon are worst impulses. I tend to think this isn't a fault of images/text itself as much as them being just another tool that can be used for good or evil and everything inbetween.

When it comes to fiction films its interesting to me how often audiences seem to believe what characters say over what we actually see characters do. If we say a character is an honorable nice guy that's just too pure and good for this world then he must be even if the first thing we actually see said character do is murder an innocent man.

I don't give myself a pass for this because I remember back in the day when I would get frustrated by a show like Lost where I would believe what characters said over anything the show actually depicted. But why did I believe the words before all else? What lead me to that? I'm still not sure what put me on that path exactly. Still, this trend (Particularly in nerd properties) is something I've noticed in people posting and writing online and such where dialogue seems to be given priority over anything else.

I'm not sure any of this forms any kind of real coherent argument, but these thoughts have been racing through my head for a while and, perhaps ironically, these Godard movies helped give me some language to help talk about them a bit. I think its particularly relevant in an increasingly digital age too.

tl;dr version: lol idk, what even is an image anyways
He also saw a parallel with prostitution and Capitalism in general. I don't think Godard was every really interested in prostitution (or perhaps even sex, really) in itself or on any kind of personal/moral level.
That might be me putting too much emphasis on a feminist interpretation I read then (I think it was the Amy Taubin piece that comes with the Criterion blu-ray? It's been a while at this point since I read it at this point), which argued that it was meant to be seen negatively. IIRC the logic was something like this:

1)The Godard character is an asshole who talks about pedophilia
2)The first guy we see using a prostitute partway through a film explictly has the prostitute talk to an invisible "mother" and do various lewd things in front of her. This links this first guy to the Godard character's comments of pedophilia
3)Therefore we should understand the "Now let's add the sound" (Or whatever the line was) guy as also being an asshole because he's also hiring a prostitute to act out weird fantasies, and if the dude in 2 as sexually deviant and then we should understand this guy in 3 as that way too.

I seem to recall something about the prostitute being a hero for being stonefaced through all of this and being more interested in renting the apartment too.
Was this one of the bonus features on Sauve qui peut or something? I don't remember it, but if it was I'm sure I saw it.
Yeah its a bonus feature on the Criterion blu-ray.
I didn't really appreciate this back when I first saw it. My parents supported my classic film diet as a teen but they didn't really want me watching this, but I managed to convince them to. I remember not quite getting what the big deal was, either about why it was supposedly so salacious or considered to be "great" in general. I saw this before I developed a real appreciation for both erotic art and cinematic style and I really wonder how differently I might think about it now. I do remember thinking the acting/drama aspect was quite good, though.
I wouldn't put Midnight Cowboy at as an all-time masterpiece or anything but its definitely better than I expected, which is always a pleasant surprise with these Oscar winners.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Goodbye to Neo-General Chat 3D)

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63. Blonde Venus (1932, Dir. Josef von Sternberg) - Marlene Dietrich becomes a singer after her husband leaves the country to seek a medical treatment so she can support herself and her kid. She falls in love with Cary Grant (In one of his earliest roles). She gets addicted to the night life, and the law comes after her.

It's another decent Dietrich/von Sternberg, not much else to really say except that seeing such a young Cary Grant was neat.

64. The Fashion of Hollywood (1935, Dir. Josef von Sternberg) - A promotional short film detailing some outfits in Hollywood films of the time, one of which is a Dietrich film I haven't watched yet. Not much to really say about it.

65. The Caine Mutiny (1954, Dir. Edward Dmytryk) - The Caine is a Navy ship where the crew is pretty lax, but they get a new captain, Humphrey Bogart. Bogart wants to whip the crew into shape through strict discipline, but might be a paranoid wreck unfit to serve after all.

This is easily the best Dmytryk I've seen. Bogart is fantastic as the captain, and guy from Double Indemnity is great in the supporting role as well.

If I had a criticism of the movie I'm not sure the “Well actually Bogart is a hero and y'all are the ones who drove him to be like this. He like, served man." ending spiel from the lawyer character has much weight. It seems reminiscent of a similar argument used by Nicholson's character in A Few Good Men. The Turner Classic Movies intro talked a bit about concessions in the story that Dmytryk and co. had to make to the Navy to use their ships in filming, and it makes me wonder if this is one of them.

66. An Autumn Afternoon (1962, Dir. Yasujiro Ozu) - The final film of Ozu. This is sort of a remake of Late Spring, about a father that's very concerned that his daughter will get stuck taking care of him instead of getting married and moving on with her life.

This film is pretty famous for its camera never moving, which I think fits not only the age of the father character but where the daughter character is in her life: not moving much.

The World War II references are interesting, particularly the father character feeling glad that Japan lost. It really stands in contrast to something like the I Was Born, But… that was at the beginning of Ozu's career.

I wonder if the weird subplot about the golf clubs is supposed to tie into this WWII theme though, specifically because the brand of club is MacGregor- an American brand. I suppose to some extent it shows how Japan has changed since WWII at least, though I wonder if there's more to it. Also why was the salesman character so god damned pushy about getting the older son character to buy them?

This is a very good movie but I feel like there's a lot here I'm missing- I really should read that Bordwell book on Ozu at some point.

67. [REC] (2007, Dir. Jaume Balaguero & Paca Plaza) - A pretty dopey found footage zombie movie, similar to something like Diary of the Dead. It's fun for what it is- I like how once the main characters get trapped in the apartment building the film really does try and give you some sense of spatial logic (Perhaps like one the classic style Resident Evil games) before everything goes to hell and traversing through these areas we have some familiarity with become obstacles themselves. Oh we've seen this staircase a hundred times before in the movie, but now zombie lady is handcuffed to the base of it, can we inch past her without getting bit etc. It's very kind of game-y logic like that, especially with the first person POV that comes from it being a found footage movie. Despite that the film is still kind of disposable.

68. Chained (1934, Dir. Clarence Brown) - Joan Crawford is in love with a married man who's wife does not want to divorce despite knowing about the affair. Crawford goes on a cruise though and meets and falls in love with Clark Gable! What will happen!?

It's a pretty light but fun little movie. Akim Tamaroff of all people has a supporting role too which was neat to see.

---------------------------------------------

Also I watched an OVA.

Fire Emblem (1996) - This is a weird one. I've been playing the Fire Emblem video games on and off for the last few years, and had heard that there was an OVA adaptation of part of the first one. I waited to watch this until I played remake of the first game- well I beat said remake but forgot about the OVA until today and just watched it on a whim.

The OVA is two episodes long and doesn't even tell a complete story unfortunately. Its mostly the story of Prince Marth (Or "Mars" as he's called in the dubtitles on the version I found), and is his attempt to reclaim his kingdom after he's driven out of it. In the OVA, unfortunately, we only get the backstory of Marth fleeing the kingdom to begin with and then two early game missions- the first episode ends on Marth and co. battling pirates and the second revolves around them rescuing a priestess.

Its pretty choppy and lacks a real resolution, but since I'm assuming they were making this for people who were familiar with the games it makes enough sense. Actually I'd say its more watchable than other OVA adaptations of JRPG's made in the same time like the Chrono Trigger one or the Final Fantasy V sequel (Unfortunately it seems I never got around to writing a post about this one. Spoiler alert its bad.), though its still by no means a great work.

The only real notable lasting impact this OVA seemed to have is that some of the cast would retain their roles in later video games and such. The guy that voiced Marth in the Japanese version for example would reprise the role for Super Smash Bros. Melee and the later entries after that.

Bizarrely this OVA actually got a dubbed American release on VHS back in the late 90's, not only before any Fire Emblem games were actually officially sold here but even before Super Smash Bros. Melee was released. I guess, theoretically, there were in fact Americans who would have recognized Marth but wondered why such a character from such a random OVA was playable in a Nintendo fighter lol.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Goodbye to Neo-General Chat 3D)

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I missed this news before now but apparently Francis Ford Coppola has prepared a new "Final Cut" of Apocalypse Now and is releasing it in a new set at the end of August.

I'm pretty torn on this news. I'm very happy with my current blu-ray of the theatrical and Redux versions, and the creation of a fourth version of Apocalypse Now seems kind of unnecesary (Let's not forget that the workprint is still floating around out there. That still isn't in the most watchable state in the world and I definitely would have shelled out some money to see that cleaned up, though that will never happen).

Still, I can't help but be curious about the Final Cut. What could Coppola possibly think he can add at this point? Or is it all a cynical cashgrab? And what the hell ever happened to that video game adaptation that was supposed to come out?

Anyways this is curious and unexpected news.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Goodbye to Neo-General Chat 3D)

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Raxivace wrote:And what the hell ever happened to that video game adaptation that was supposed to come out?
Please tell me you are joking.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Goodbye to Neo-General Chat 3D)

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Faustus5 wrote:Please tell me you are joking.
Nope, it is/was a real thing. I even donated some money to it, though I feel like a bit of a dope for doing so now since the project seems to have died.

I don't think an adaptation to a different medium like videogames is such a heretical idea, if it was done well. Or at least not any more inherently scandalous than adapting Heart of Darkness as a Vietnam War film is, though I'm sure there were Joseph Conrad purists that were mad about that.
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