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| Rod |
 Posted: Sun Dec 28, 2008 10:22 am |
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Joined: 21 Dec 2004
Posts: 2944
Location: Lithgow, Australia
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mo_flixx wrote: I think it will be a few years before Argento picks up an Oscar however. She's a little too over-the-top for most Academy members.
Ha ha - yes, just a wee bit. |
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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 Dec 28, 2008 11:31 am |
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I just watched Casino again last night. Actually only the last half, but it just gets better all the time. And for some reason I had forgotten the very last scene. Perfect!!!!!!
Stone was amazing. Unbelievable but true. All the performances were terrific. Everyone was at the top of their game and so was Scorsese. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Sun Dec 28, 2008 12:55 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Houston
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Marj wrote: Both Lawrence and McDonald would have been too old for the movie. And even with dubbing, I loved Deborah Kerr in the role. Indeed, I don't know when I've loved a dubbed role as much.
You're probably right about the age. Since Lawrence owned the rights, and was a very savvy contract negotiator (she dominated Rodgers and Hammerstein when hashing out the Broadway contract, and that ain't whistling Dixie; they had the shrewdest, most powerful theatrical lawyer on their side), it might have been arranged that if there was to be a movie, she would be the star of it. But, of course, she died.
I loved Deborah Kerr in the movie, too. The dubbing is good, particularly in the film itself. There was obviously some technical modulation of Marni Nixon's higher voice to be in synch with Kerr's. This was not followed through on the soundtrack album, however, where the difference between them is always noticable, and irritating. |
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You've got a great brain. You should keep it in your head.
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| Ghulam |
| Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2008 1:33 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Upstate NY
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This was my first visit with Luis Bunuel's The Phantom of Liberty (!974), and it turned out to be one of his best surrealistic movies. The narration is unconventional, a story is about to gel, when out of the blue some stranger appears on the scene, and his story is pursued and the previous story and the characters in it are forgotten. We thus have about 12 apparently connected but discrete stories. Thematically each episode progresses illogically in an absurdist or nonsensical way, e.g. parents go to the police station to report that their daughter is missing, but bring their daughter along with them. A family and their guests sit at a table in a room like a dining room but instead of chairs, they are sitting on toilets. When a man is hungry, he gets up and goes to a little room like a bathroom where he is served a meal. Challenging traditional conventions, the movie is subversive and critical of the establishment. It touches on a series of taboo subjects such as incest, fetishism, pedophilia, necrophilia, sadomasochism and mass murder. But the sense that prevails is the absurdity and meaninglessness of everything.
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2008 9:30 am |
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| Sounds like my kind of movie, Ghulam. |
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| Ghulam |
| Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2008 11:33 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Upstate NY
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marantzo wrote: Sounds like my kind of movie, Ghulam.
If you liked The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, you will love The Phantom of Liberty. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2008 11:37 am |
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| Belle de jour was the only Bunuel movie I didn't care for. |
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| mo_flixx |
| Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2008 1:08 pm |
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Joined: 30 May 2004
Posts: 12533
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| Ghulam |
| Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2008 1:16 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Upstate NY
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marantzo wrote: Belle de jour was the only Bunuel movie I didn't care for.
It may have generated unease in many smug husbands (present company excepted). |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2008 1:18 pm |
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No I haven't seen all the others. I think I have seen most, if not all of his most famous ones. Starting with L'Age d'Or of course.
If you google the title you can watch it on You Tube. COOL! |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2008 1:19 pm |
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Ghulam wrote: marantzo wrote: Belle de jour was the only Bunuel movie I didn't care for.
It may have generated unease in many smug husbands (present company excepted).
Not that. It was just a bore. And I wasn't married at the time anyway. |
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| Nancy |
| Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2008 2:22 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4607
Location: Norman, OK
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| The Phantom of Liberty is one of my favorites. I love the bit about the missing daughter. And the French postcards. I recommend it very highly. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2008 3:03 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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I hadn't seen the romantic comedy The Grass is Greener since it was released somewhere in the early 60s. I hadn't liked it at the time, but I was recently looking at the stars and the director (Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr, Robert Mitchum, Jean Simmons directed by Stanley Donen) and thought, "I might have been missing something forty some years ago."
Nope. It's a loser, directed by Donen as if in his sleep and acted without their usual style by Grant, Kerr, and Mitchum. Only Simmons is worth watching as the slutty dipsomaniac best friend of Kerr. Since she made this only a year after Spartacus and Elmer Gantry, it constituted a real change of pace for her at that time, and she steals the show. But it's not much of a theft, since the rest of the show is so lame. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2008 3:17 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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Memories of Underdevelopment (1968) is an interesting look at Cuba in the first decade of the revolution, with the story set in 1961. While his friends and relatives leave Cuba for the US, a late 30's intellectual stays in Cuba to see what happens. He drifts aimlessly, is contemptuous of the bourgeoisie while also wary of the revolutionaries, seduces a young girl, contemplates the fate of Cuba.
In a lot of ways, Sergio Corrieri's lead is reminiscent of Mastroianni in 8 1/2. Daisy Granados is charming as a Cuban Audrey Hepburn type. The film is an intriguing blend of European New Wave, documentary footage of Cuba in the early 60's, and some philosophizing on the fate of a people caught between various worldly pretensions and the reality of a small backwards island. As I think about it more, the lightness of the fictional romance plays well against the harsher background reality, and then the two converge.
Yambu would probably enjoy the glimpses of old-new Cuba, as well as the opening drum performance.
There's also a new sequel coming out in 2009, Memories of Overdevelopment, based on a novel by the same author of Memories of Underdevelopment. The new film focuses on an intellectual who left Cuba for the US and had to cope with trying to fit into an alien world. |
Last edited by gromit on Mon Dec 29, 2008 3:42 pm; edited 2 times in total
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| Marj |
| Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2008 3:18 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 10497
Location: Manhattan
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| I remember seeing it once and feeling such disappointment. The Grass is Always Greener seemed like a forties movie that lost its mojo. It was just dull and the expectations were so high. *sigh* |
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