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| Syd |
 Posted: Mon Feb 26, 2007 11:01 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12929
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| Just checked. The Painted Veil was shot in Guangxi, which is the province east of Yunnan and is on the coast. Guangzi and Yunnan both border Vietnam, and Yunnan also borders Laos and Burma. Sounds like it might be fairly rough territory, too, although more than 40 million people live in each province. I'll have to see The Painted Veil on DVD. |
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Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter! |
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| Rod |
| Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2007 1:10 am |
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Joined: 21 Dec 2004
Posts: 2944
Location: Lithgow, Australia
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My video store just got rid of all its videos. The death of the video era is at hand. Stand, please, and salute it. It gave us much pleasure while it lasted. No longer did we have to pay through the nose to get shitty 16mm prints of films or risk being mugged to attend a midnight screening at some ratty rerun house.
Anyway, I bought a load of them from the store; From Here To Eternity, The Bedford Incident, Bringing Out The Dead, The Devils, Halloween, The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, Some Like It Hot, Big Trouble In Little China, The Charge of the Light Brigade (Errol Flynn version - they also had the Tony Richardson one, but I didn't get that because I know the tape's stuffed) and Juggernaut. They won't last long here either; I'll just transfer them all to disk ASAP. |
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A long time ago, but somehow in the future...It is a period of civil war and renegade paragraphs floating through space. |
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| ehle64 |
| Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2007 2:27 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 7149
Location: NYC; US&A
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Gus Van Sant got Kim Fucking Gordon to say; "do you say I'm sorry, I'm a rock-n-roll cliche"
for fuck sakes people. nicolas cage? mel gibson?? what the fuck kinda film society am i involved in. |
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It truly disappoints me when people do something for you via no prompt of your own and then use it as some kind of weapon against you at a later time and place. It is what it is. |
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| ehle64 |
| Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2007 2:41 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 7149
Location: NYC; US&A
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| I need to go to Utah, and I need a jet heater. |
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It truly disappoints me when people do something for you via no prompt of your own and then use it as some kind of weapon against you at a later time and place. It is what it is. |
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| mo_flixx |
| Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2007 2:56 am |
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Joined: 30 May 2004
Posts: 12533
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Syd wrote: Just checked. The Painted Veil was shot in Guangxi, which is the province east of Yunnan and is on the coast. Guangzi and Yunnan both border Vietnam, and Yunnan also borders Laos and Burma. Sounds like it might be fairly rough territory, too, although more than 40 million people live in each province. I'll have to see The Painted Veil on DVD.
BTW, China seems to be aware of the tremendous tourism potential of Yunnan. I hope things won't change too fast there. |
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| ehle64 |
| Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2007 3:42 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 7149
Location: NYC; US&A
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holy shit, after watching Last Days just now, I was wondering what the fuck Harris Savides was shooting, and lo and behold, up jumped ZODIAC. this flick is gonna be great.
or @ least look as though it is. . . |
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It truly disappoints me when people do something for you via no prompt of your own and then use it as some kind of weapon against you at a later time and place. It is what it is. |
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| Rod |
| Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2007 3:51 am |
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Joined: 21 Dec 2004
Posts: 2944
Location: Lithgow, Australia
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I feel your pain, Ehle.
Last Days has stayed lodged like a harpoon in my brain. Sublime stuff. Plus it's got "Venus In Furs". |
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A long time ago, but somehow in the future...It is a period of civil war and renegade paragraphs floating through space. |
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| ehle64 |
| Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2007 3:52 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 7149
Location: NYC; US&A
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| just stop! it's perfect. please watch the dvd extras if ya can. |
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It truly disappoints me when people do something for you via no prompt of your own and then use it as some kind of weapon against you at a later time and place. It is what it is. |
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| ehle64 |
| Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2007 5:31 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 7149
Location: NYC; US&A
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| Jynx |
| Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2007 9:13 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 750
Location: Nowheresville
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I've been avoiding Last Days b/c I thought it would be another The Doors filled with every rock-n-roll cliche' you can shake a wanker at. Although I hold Gus and Oliver in high esteem for different reasons, and being the biggest Doors fan you'll ever meet, I thought Oliver totally phuced up that movie. Kilmer was brilliant, but it was so one-dimensional it made my stomach hurt. As with most rocker bio's, it seems as though someone read a book and picked the coolest, shittiest, trashiest, funniest, things they did and incorporate it into a film, like there isn't a person behind the persona.
I guess I need to pick it up.
Zodiac reviews are good but more than one has said it is too long. Anything with Jake, Robert and Mark, ACK! I'm stoked for this movie, along with Black Snake Moan, The Number 23, Breach and (dare I say it) Wild Hogs.
Key-riced, I need more hours in my day. |
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"I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass ... and I'm all out of bubblegum." |
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| Jynx |
| Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2007 9:15 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 750
Location: Nowheresville
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ehlegoroundincircles - I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVED Elephant!
GADS! I wish I lived near you so we could have a movie night, going to the video store and picking up all kinds of flix and making a night of it! |
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"I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass ... and I'm all out of bubblegum." |
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| Rod |
| Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2007 9:14 pm |
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Joined: 21 Dec 2004
Posts: 2944
Location: Lithgow, Australia
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Pandaemonium
Julien Temple, who once upon a time did Absolute Beginners and Earth Girls Are Easy, works here from a script by Frank Cottrell Boyce, who later wrote 24 Hour Party People and Tristram Shandy. The loopy creativity of both artists in full flower in this near-brilliant film that performs a skewed study of talent and the volatile intricacies of friendships between artists, through the prism of the relationship between Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Linus Roache) and William Wordsworth (John Hannah). Guy Lankester's Lord Byron at the beginning offers Coleridge ₤100 to publish the fragment of Kubla Khan even though it's unfinished, and states he would have paid Wordsworth the same amount to leave his last poem unfinished (it helps that I fully agree with that assessment; I love Coleridge and find Wordsworth a bloody bore). Temple and Boyce warp the story of the two men somewhat, presenting a tale of emotional and artistic vampirism (on Wordsworth's part, as he gains attention from his proximity to Coleridge whilst quietly judging and rejecting his friend's visionary impulses and aiming right for the heart of the establishment, whilst Coleridge is destroyed by his laudanum addiction. Standing between the two men is Dorothy Wordsworth (Emily Woolf), dependent on her brother and ferociously attracted to Coleridge despite his being married (to Samantha Morton's Sarah, a nascent feminist who actually wishes to be an earth mother). Temple and Boyce draw all sorts of parallels - between Coleridge's sense of nature and modern environmentalism; him and his friends as proto-hippies; between his self-destructive creativity and modern figures as Kurt Cobain; and in the Wordsworth/Coleridge codepedency a strong parallel to Mick Jagger and Brian Jones. The film goes overboard right at the end, overdrawing Wordsworth's duplicity, and whilst the film celebrates Coleridge writing The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, doesn't say anything about his darkest and most influential poem, Christabel. But it remains a very impressive film. Roache and Woolf are brilliant. Might make a perfect, invigorating, theme-deepening double bill with Last Days. |
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A long time ago, but somehow in the future...It is a period of civil war and renegade paragraphs floating through space. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Wed Feb 28, 2007 10:01 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9016
Location: Shanghai
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Lord, it took me three nights to completely watch Juliet of the Spirits. I can't remember falling asleep on a movie two nights in a row before. It's a longish 2 1/4 hours, so I only managed about 45 minutes a night.
I first saw this 20 years ago in a film course. But the print then was poor and very dark. While the Criterion print looks great.
But again I had a decidedly mixed-reaction to the film.
There are some good dream images in the film, and some special Fellini moments, but overall the film seems very indulgent and often tries too hard (as though Fellini was too self-consciously trying to top himself or create Felliniesque moments). Anyway, I'm sure the costume designers had fun, especially creating all of those totally insane hats. The use of color in JotS is pretty jazzy and wild, so I wonder if Fellini had an influence on Pedro Almodovar.
Juliet is a pretty unwieldy feminine counterpart to 8.5, starring the woman Fellini was actually cheating on. Something rather creepy about all that. Perhaps by way of explanation, there is a scene towards the end where the party guests play a game called "psychodrama" where acting out your worst fears and experiences is supposed to be therapeutic. Of course it doesn't work as well as intended when, like Juliet of the title, you are already hallucinating and losing your grip on reality.
Juliet reminded me how rambling an indulgent Fellini films can be, even including 8 1/2 and Amarcord which are two of my favorites (along with I Vitelloni which is more structured).
There is a nice extra on the Criterion disc. A 20 minute interview with Fellini, hosted by the actor who plays the magician in 8.5 It's from 1966, and interesting just to hear Fellini express himself in English, let alone recalling an acid trip and describing the way he thought about color while making JoftheS. |
Last edited by gromit on Thu Mar 01, 2007 1:33 am; edited 1 time in total
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| Marj |
| Posted: Wed Feb 28, 2007 5:11 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 10497
Location: Manhattan
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Gromit,
I agree with you're overall reaction to Juliet of the Spirits. I remember watching it in a film class too and having the same reaction at the time. In fact, I remember most of the class did as well. As a result, I've never had any desire to revisit the film which could be laziness on my part. Or it could be that there are just so many other good films to catch up on. |
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| Nancy |
| Posted: Wed Feb 28, 2007 7:43 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4607
Location: Norman, OK
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Syd wrote: Joe Vitus wrote: Am I the only person excited that that they've found and restored the original Chicago?
Nancy is. She has the original play.
Yes, and I've read it too. Can't wait to see the movie. (The original version, that is.) |
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