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Joe Vitus
Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2008 8:52 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston
Heh, heh, heh.

And you're right, they have great chemistry. This has such a huge impact on the scene that follows, and is what helps to make it so disturbing. How much of that is luck, I wonder, and how much of the casting was based on Hitchcock knowing what they could do in a scene together?

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yambu
Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2008 11:26 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 23 May 2004 Posts: 6441 Location: SF Bay Area
billyweeds wrote:
.....It does, however, feature one of Spacey's best perfs, and that's saying something.
Billy, did you ever see Spacey in Bwy's The Iceman Cometh? I would have given anything. Anyone heard of a movie in the making?
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gromit
Posted: Sat Nov 22, 2008 3:10 am Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9010 Location: Shanghai
I've been watching a bunch of Nikkatsu Studio films.
They were a B picture factory that cranked out a lot of exploitation films and basically invented the Pink genre in Japan. Mostly I watched a few Seijun Suzuki films. he's sort of a Japanese Samuel Fuller. I'll try to remark on those more later.

But for now, I'd rec Crazed Fruit, the 1956 film which basically ushered in the Japanese New Wave. It depicts the lustful teens with leisure time flirting and fighting and boating. A youth culture removed from the family and acting like Westerners (the horror). Though, as in Suzuki's films, Americans are looked down upon.

Like the French New Wave, it makes a virtue of its own low budget. It also takes on naturalistic and impressionistic aspects of Renoir. Unfortunately, the director Kô Nakahira, only 30 when this was made, kind of got absorbed and ground down in the studio system. I would like to see the one or two other films of his which are respected.

Btw, Crazed Fruit is part of the Criterion Collection, so should be available, netflixable, etc.
I should add that the Donald Ritchie commentary is very good on Japanese cinema and culture, and provides interesting details such as that the older brother in the film, Yûjirô Ishihara, became a big singing and movie star, married the female star of the film, and was the actual brother of the writer, who became mayor of Tokyo in 1999.

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jeremy
Posted: Sat Nov 22, 2008 5:16 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 6794 Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)
Does Young@Heart count as a documentary.

Unless Man On Wire is a clear eyed exploration of obsession, like the grizzly man thing, I'm not sure I'm really interested in this pointless guy's, pointless escapades. Sure every few years he makes for an interesting 30 seconds on the news, but....Aren't documentaries supposed to be about something.

It can't be right that Man On Wire could win the Oscar becuase he walked from the top of one tower to its twin. Surely, there are better testaments to those erect, God challenging monuments to mammon and the American Way so tragically felled on the 11th of the ninth.

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billyweeds
Posted: Sat Nov 22, 2008 6:19 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City
jeremy wrote:
Does Young@Heart count as a documentary.

Unless Man On Wire is a clear eyed exploration of obsession, like the grizzly man thing, I'm not sure I'm really interested in this pointless guy's, pointless escapades. Sure every few years he makes for an interesting 30 seconds on the news, but....Aren't documentaries supposed to be about something.

It can't be right that Man On Wire could win the Oscar becuase he walked from the top of one tower to its twin. Surely, there are better testaments to those erect, God challenging monuments to mammon and the American Way so tragically felled on the 11th of the ninth.


You seem almost hopelessly mired in a tunnel-visioned attitude toward the achievement. But seeing the movie just might change your mind. No, it's not just a record of a guy walking on a tightrope. There's much more there, but I'm not sure you're programmed to get it, to tell the truth. And it can't be summed up in a quick catchphrase, so don't ask.
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jeremy
Posted: Sat Nov 22, 2008 7:33 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 6794 Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)
Over the years I have become increasingly cynical and irritated with respect to a certain type of documentary built around a stunt or a showman. With scant material stertched over pre-determined time slot, they have all the tension of perished rubber band. They usually strike me as hopelessly fake because they are framed around the false premise that what we are watching is in any way meaningful or heroic. Their manufactured drama is particulalry risible: "Algernon and his team survey the weather reports. They need the wind to drop belwo 8m/s. It's good news, the strom front is predicted to pass later thisafternoon...he makes one last check of his equipment; one lose bolt or frayed rope and he could plunge to his death on the jagged rocks below."

Unseen, I accept that I may be doing Man On Wire a disservice. The context and framing are everything. For me, it would have been much more interesting if he'd managed to splatter his innards over half a Manhattan block.

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I am angry, I am ill, and I'm as ugly as sin.
My irritability keeps me alive and kicking.
I know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit.
I know beauty and I know a good thing when I see it.
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Joe Vitus
Posted: Sat Nov 22, 2008 8:41 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston
Surely you can see why the story of someone whose innards weren't splattered all over the pavement of the World Trade Center, and who attempted to create something beatiful and celebratory on the site, might have emotional resonance for Americans.

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jeremy
Posted: Sat Nov 22, 2008 8:50 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 6794 Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)
Joe Vitus wrote:
Surely you can see why the story of someone whose innards weren't splattered all over the pavement of the World Trade Center, and who attempted to create something beatiful and celebratory on the site, might have emotional resonance for Americans.


No, innards.

If the tone of the documentary is as you suggest, it may be worse than I feared. The guys just a circus act who set his wire high; where's the beauty and what's he celebrating apart from his own ego.

Maybe there's a cultural thing going on here, look what happened to David Blaine when he decided to starve himself in a perspex box over the Thames.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950CE5DA1F3BF936A2575AC0A9659C8B63

_________________
I am angry, I am ill, and I'm as ugly as sin.
My irritability keeps me alive and kicking.
I know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit.
I know beauty and I know a good thing when I see it.
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billyweeds
Posted: Sat Nov 22, 2008 11:09 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City
Joe (and Jeremy)--I said it couldn't be summed up in a catchphrase, which is unfortunately what Joe attempted to do and got caught in Jeremy's innately unwelcoming trap. Petit was not just trying to create something beautiful, though it turned out that he did just that. He was more of a rebel than an artist, and the walk was more defiant than beauty-seeking. In other words, there were a bunch of reasons for the walk, and I submit that it's impossible to criticize the man or the movie without seeing it.
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gromit
Posted: Sat Nov 22, 2008 11:57 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9010 Location: Shanghai
I'm left wondering why a circus act can't be interesting and worthy of a doc. Seems to me that it's all about the personality, the motivation, the endurance, the technique and the beauty of pushing oneself. Let's see, human drama, yeah that seems worthy of a documentary. I'd watch a 90 minute doc on the French guy, dubbed Spiderman, who goes around the world climbing tall buildings with his hands (of course, it'd be pretty tough without them).

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Joe Vitus
Posted: Sun Nov 23, 2008 12:17 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston
I find his whole definition about wanting to perform on the world's smallest stage, and in illuminating the space between the towers which people weren't noticing. Maybe my reaction comes from my own artistic intersets: having been in the theater from 10 until about 23, writing now, having been raised in part by a visual artist.

But I think it has an emotional resonance beyond that. Anyway, I thought you were right from the beginning, Billy, that it can't be summed up in a catchphrase. I just wanted to say something.

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billyweeds
Posted: Sun Nov 23, 2008 1:03 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City
Joe Vitus wrote:
I find his whole definition about wanting to perform on the world's smallest stage, and in illuminating the space between the towers which people weren't noticing. Maybe my reaction comes from my own artistic intersets: having been in the theater from 10 until about 23, writing now, having been raised in part by a visual artist.

But I think it has an emotional resonance beyond that. Anyway, I thought you were right from the beginning, Billy, that it can't be summed up in a catchphrase. I just wanted to say something.


And I appreciate your saying it. But Jeremy seems determined to prejudge it, for whatever reasons.
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mo_flixx
Posted: Sun Nov 23, 2008 10:37 am Reply with quote
Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 12533
I finally saw "Cassandra's Dream." I'll have to go back to older posts here to read them.
"Cassandra's Dream" now makes it a trilogy for Woody Allen with his English films. Unless one wants to count Tom Wilkinson's speeches full of nervous tics, this film has _no_ comic elements.
I kept expecting a plot twist or two - something more involving the actress girlfriend perhaps - but no. This English tragedy owes a lot to _An American Tragedy_.
Like the other English films, this one is filled with wonderful locations and a great cast (Ewan MacGregor, Colin Ferrell, & Wilkinson).
Btw if this _is_ actually London (it's supposed to be), it looks like no part of London I've ever seen.
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billyweeds
Posted: Sun Nov 23, 2008 11:22 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City
mo_flixx wrote:
This English tragedy owes a lot to _An American Tragedy_.


Interesting you should say that about Cassandra's Dream, since Match Play was practically out-and-out plagiarized from An American Tragedy (or A Place in the Sun if you know it only from the movies).
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yambu
Posted: Sun Nov 23, 2008 12:40 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 23 May 2004 Posts: 6441 Location: SF Bay Area
Wellll....loosely similar, in the sense they both deal, exquisitely, with justice delayed.
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