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| Trish |
 Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2007 6:35 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 2438
Location: Massachusetts
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definitely check it out Billy - especially since you like Matt Damon - he was perfection- brilliant (underacting - acting if you know what I mean)
he had to play this guy who kept just about everything underwraps - yet unbelievably you can see the emotion, the thoughts - his insides so to speak in the subtlest, most sublime expressions |
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| Earl |
| Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2007 7:04 pm |
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Joined: 09 Jun 2004
Posts: 2621
Location: Houston
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Les Poupées Russes (The Russian Dolls)
This is the sequel to L'Auberge Espagnole and, if you liked the first movie, then this one will be another whimsical treat. The Russian Dolls does a splendid job of telling the story of this group of people five years after the events of the first movie without being merely a remake. These characters have grown and continue to change in interesting ways. Most of the action takes place in Paris, London and Saint Petersburg with a few quick detours to other spots.
Note: While The Russian Dolls works best as a companion piece to L'Auberge Espagnole, it likely wouldn't stand on its own too well. It's necessary to know where these characters have come from in order to appreciate where they're going.
Many thanks to Mo for bringing the sequel to my attention several months ago. I think she may have been the only one here who has mentioned it and I've been looking for it ever since. It finally made it to the top of my rental queue this weekend. |
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| Rod |
| Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2007 9:43 pm |
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Joined: 21 Dec 2004
Posts: 2944
Location: Lithgow, Australia
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By way of getting myself revved up for Grindhouse, I watched the whole of Kill Bill in one sitting last night, an impressive feat even for this major league couch potato. One of these days I'm going to have to sit and down and chart the recurrent pathology of fatherless sons, rape-revenge fantasy, and violence witnessed by children, that runs like a subterranean stream through Tarantino's films. But I'm not going to try that now. Suffice to say this work's the funniest and most humane comedy American cinema has produced so far this decade. Humane? Am I kidding? Despite the atrocity spectacle that is much of the film’s sick joke, it is, in the end, about intensity of emotion, which is given enormous validity.
Watched as a whole, the rhythm shift of Vol. 1 to Vol. 2 makes perfect sense, and the narrative reveals is deepest motive; the film slowly strips away the giddy absurdity and design wonderment to end up as not much more than a marital tiff. And more than that Kill Bill's the best film I can think of for portraying the eruptive results of a bad marriage between strong people, and the awful damage they can do to each-other, and trying to avoid doing it to their children. The humour value that’s central in Tarantino in how he sets a carefully-wrought sense of realism colliding with a delirious fantasy world, like billiard balls he’s knocking about. The film devolves slowly through layers of violence and sadism, through to more intimate bitch-fights, and finally shows its hand when the Kiddo clan is shooting each-other with toy guns, and the amusing anecdote of B.B.’s stomped goldfish, where the film’s angle on life and death shrinks for apocalyptic choreography to a tale about a dead goldfish that puts everything in a kind of absurdist perspective. Even if Quentin never entirely announces the progression from fantasy to reality - he's too canny to lose an audience by getting Lit major about it - nonetheless the film still finishes up with the affecting image of a runaway single mother and her child in a motel room, trying to survive, an image which poked its head through Pulp Fiction too, in the tale of Butch.
If Rear Window is the movies' greatest metaphorical study of pre-wedding nerves, Kill Bill is the same for post-marital fallout. |
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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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| marantzo |
| Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2007 9:49 pm |
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| The last act of Kill Bill II was a collosal bore. |
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| RodneyWelch |
| Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2007 9:27 am |
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Joined: 08 Apr 2007
Posts: 9
Location: Elgin, SC
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Grindhouse is pretty damn good -- a cheapo drive-in double-feature on a $100 million budget. The first one, "Planet Terror," was a gross-out zombie shocker full of dripping pustules, switchblade hypodermics and Rose MacGowan with a machine gun for a leg. Not so much gory as gooey and silly, and very much ooze-by-numbers Rodriguez. The second one, Tarantino's "Death Proof," was tremendously exciting: Kurt Russell plays a badass stuntman killer who meets his match with a posse of daredevil stuntwomen. A brilliant, edge-of-the-seat homage to chase movies like "Vanishing Point," girl-power slutfests like "Faster, Pussycat! Kill, Kill!" and, in one scene, even the director's own "Reservoir Dogs" -- only this time it's a lot of girls sitting around the table talking dirty. A small Tarantino masterpiece that had the same effect on me as the first "Kill Bill" -- as soon as it was over, I wanted to ride it again..
Inland Empire -- I loved this movie in such a strange way that I'm thinking of having the ticket laminated. It restores my faith in film as art. No one who sees it will grasp it immediately or maybe at all, and everyone who sees it will have a different experience from everyone else. Personally I think it's a kind of extended essay on the relationship between actors and their roles and between people and cinema. Beautiful, sad, boring, crazy, obtuse, bizarre, confusing, abstract, genuinely mysterious.
On DVD: For the past few months, I've been trying to rent every Fassbinder DVD available, partly as a prelude to the arrival of Berlin Alexanderplatz on DVD and partly because I just had this hankering to know all about him. I still have about ten or so movies to go, I think -- he made something like 40 before checking out on an ill-fated coke binge at the ripe old age of 36.
Just watched In A Year With 13 Moons. Not a hell of a lot to look at visually; it's a drab and often dull picture, and it is saddled with those interminable long takes where people talk endlessly without much purpose; Fassbinder's circuitous improv dialogue seems to suit him more than the film. Still, it's as solid a film as the director ever made about sex and politics. The story is about confused identity -- in which a man, now named Elvira, has a sex change operation to hopes of pleasing another, then considers becoming a man all over again -- but Fassbinder isn't just talking about sex roles. Elvira's former lover is a concentration camp survivor who made a fortune after establishing a whorehouse. Images of humiliation, dismemberment, and mutilation -- particularly an unbearably long scene in a slaughterhouse -- and suicide abound throughout, suggesting what it means to be a postwar German; to not know who you are in a country where a Nazi past casts a shadow over modern life. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2007 10:25 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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Oh my God ... a New Member.
What to do?
Should we show him the secret keystrokes, or wait until after a second post?
Do we buy prescription drugs from him?
What do we do?!? |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2007 10:36 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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marantzo wrote: The last act of Kill Bill II was a collosal bore.
I thought it was psychologically intense. The section with Madsen was a colossal bore. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2007 10:46 am |
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| To me it was talk, talk, talk and repetitive bullshit talk on top of that. Tarantino is good at the sharp snappy banter and stuff like that. Psychological and philosophical discussions are beyond his depth. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2007 10:47 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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Okay, I'm much more composed now.
Welcome, Rodney.
Interesting group of films you start off with.
I'm waiting for Inland Empire to turn up here.
The Bills killed my enthusiasm for Tarantino, but I'll still give that a whirl.
Like your take on 13 Moons, though I wouldn't use the words drab or dull. That was my introduction to Fassbinder, and what a full throttle one it was. I liked the way that spaces were broken up my doorways and mirrors, visually depicting a fragmented identity. I can still remember most of the film, the images were so powerful.
Actually, my first exposure to Fassbinder was really 2 or 3 episodes of Berlin Alexanderplatz way back circa 1982 when it first aired on PBS in the US. Very well done. Looking forward to the Dvd. I've seen about a dozen Fassbinders now, with another 4 or more dvd's sitting around. In A Year With 13 Moons is my second favorite Fassbinders, eclipsed only by Veronica Voss. |
Last edited by gromit on Mon Apr 09, 2007 10:49 am; edited 1 time in total
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2007 10:48 am |
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| Rodney, nice blog site. At first I thought you were another incarnation of our member Rod from Australia, but I guess not. Welcome. |
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| Rod |
| Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2007 10:50 am |
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Joined: 21 Dec 2004
Posts: 2944
Location: Lithgow, Australia
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Yes, Rodney Welch is the name I write pornography and episodes of Neighbours under.
Greetings, Rodney. |
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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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| lady wakasa |
| Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2007 10:53 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 5911
Location: Beyond the Blue Horizon
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RodneyWelch wrote: Inland Empire -- I loved this movie in such a strange way that I'm thinking of having the ticket laminated. It restores my faith in film as art. No one who sees it will grasp it immediately or maybe at all, and everyone who sees it will have a different experience from everyone else. Personally I think it's a kind of extended essay on the relationship between actors and their roles and between people and cinema. Beautiful, sad, boring, crazy, obtuse, bizarre, confusing, abstract, genuinely mysterious.
Welcome, Rodney. Nice to see you here.
Inline Empire was my favorite film last year, although I've only seen it twice. There are a few conversations about it somewhere around here if you search for them. I wish movies like that were what defined the term "Oscar winner."
There have been some conversations about Grindhouse in the past few days (haven't seen it yet); and given your Fassbinder quest, you might want to check out the archived Fellini forum. Not saying they're the same, but I vaguely remember a bit of discussion about Fassbinder somewhere in there. Of course, I could be imagining the whole conversation... age will do that to you.
But welcome. I'm looking forward to finding out more about your movie likes. |
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| lady wakasa |
| Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2007 10:54 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 5911
Location: Beyond the Blue Horizon
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| ...And whatever you do, don't go Behind the Curtain. You may never make it out again. |
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| RodneyWelch |
| Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2007 11:05 am |
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Joined: 08 Apr 2007
Posts: 9
Location: Elgin, SC
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Actually I think all or some of you knew me as philostrate back inthe NYT days. I've only just become aware of this site. I wondered where everyone went.
Anyway -- I dunno, I just flat did not really like the look, color, palette, composition in general of "13 Moons," but it is a problem common to his color films. They look garish and deliberately off-putting in a way that becomes annoying after awhile. Fassbinder always seems to want to disturb or upset conventional viewing expectations, and I think he sometimes goes for deliberate ugliness. I always prefer him in black and white; it suits the griminess a lot better I think. On the other hand, I loved the look of "Berlin Alexanderplatz," which in the new release is blown up to 35 mm, giving it a graininess which A.O. Scott in yesterday's Times found quite appealing.
"Veronika Voss" and "Lola" are on tap for this week. |
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| bart |
| Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2007 11:13 am |
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Joined: 05 Dec 2005
Posts: 2381
Location: Lincoln NE
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| Philo/Rodney -- I'm guessing the timing of your arrival (with the demise of the NYT forums taking place today) is not a total coincidence? |
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