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| gromit |
 Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2009 9:17 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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I should check, but I thought it was primarily Moscow, with Odessa and Kiev mixed in. I thought the idea was to be a slice in time film about life and filmmaking in the Soviet Union at that time. That is, a bold national statement, not something limited to one locale.
Kino (I'm pretty sure) issued the film as Michael Nyman's Man with A Movie Camera. Which is a really awful idea. Nyman had done a recent score for the film. Maybe it was some rights issue and a restored version had to credit him or some crap. I found it offensive.
I usually find that I can choose some old music that meshes better with the film than the traditional piano solo accompaniment found on most silent film dvd's. I've had some really lovely coinciding events. I really should have kept track of some of the best. |
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| lady wakasa |
| Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2009 9:28 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 5911
Location: Beyond the Blue Horizon
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gromit wrote: I should check, but I thought it was primarily Moscow, with Odessa and Kiev mixed in. I thought the idea was to be a slice in time film about life and filmmaking in the Soviet Union at that time. That is, a bold national statement, not something limited to one locale.
Kino (I'm pretty sure) issued the film as Michael Nyman's Man with A Movie Camera. Which is a really awful idea. Nyman had done a recent score for the film. Maybe it was some rights issue and a restored version had to credit him or some crap. I found it offensive.
I usually find that I can choose some old music that meshes better with the film than the traditional piano solo accompaniment found on most silent film dvd's. I've had some really lovely coinciding events. I really should have kept track of some of the best.
I'm pretty sure it's Odessa with other cities mixed in. I saw it as part of Al Nigrin's Rutgers film festival (or whatever it is he's calling it these days) and it stuck out because it *wasn't* primarily Moscow. I also think that this is the kind of thing you'd have to find some academic papers to clear up, and those are probably not going to be online.
I thought Kino's version had both the Nyman and Alloy scores - I know one of the DVDs does, and there are so many blasted versions wandering around - but today isn't going to be a good day to look that up. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2009 9:48 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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Anyway, it's a mix of several U.S.S.R. cities.
That we know.
I don't recall, or more likely probably couldn't recognize, the details/differences. |
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| Ghulam |
| Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2009 10:27 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4742
Location: Upstate NY
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I first saw Alain Resnais' Last Year in Marienbad in 1962 in London and was swept off my feet, while wondering what it all meant. It got the top prize at the Venice Film Festival. Now at last it is available on DVD. It is as much a creation of the director as of the writer Alain Robbe-Grillet, a leading figure in the "new novel", who was nominated for an Oscar. The movie is set in a luxurious if eerie hotel filled with well dressed aristocrats busy with their parlor games, concerts and plays in a very mirthless way. A man is trying to remind a woman that they had an affair last year, and she had promised to elope with him this year. She cannot remember him but he shows her a photograph of hers in his possession. Is she the same woman, or was he referring to some other woman? Was it in this hotel or some different hotel? If she does not recall him, why is she so wrapped with his words and his memories of last year? And what about the other man with her (husband or lover?). The narration remains mysterious and dream-like, not differentiating memories from fantasies. It is reminiscent of Resnais' earlier Hiroshima mon Amour in its spurning of chronology and its being obsessed with the topic of memory. The earlier film says "Don't forget!" The latter film asks "Is memory an illusion?" Fascinating movie.
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| Syd |
| Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2009 11:40 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Before anyone gets fussy about articles. Man with a Movie Camera, The Man with a Movie Camera, The Man with the Movie Camera, etc. are all correct titles. Russian doesn't have articles so you can translate it all sorts of ways.
I did a review of a nine-minute segment years ago and commented that it looked like it had less plot that Entr'acte, which had less plot than Un Chien Andalou (which doesn't exactly have a plot at all, but seems to). I'm pleased to see my impression was correct. All three films do have a trajectory. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2009 11:50 am |
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Good description of the movie, Ghulam. I saw LYiM in '62 also, in NYC. After I saw the movie, being the brash 21 year old that I was, I walked to Dwight Macdonald's apartment block, no security then, and went up to his apartment to see what he thought of the movie. He wasn't in and I had a nice little conversation with his daughter at the door. I said that her father must have a lot of fans coming up to see him and she said, "No, you are the first one." I phoned him that evening and we had a little discussion about the movie.
For me the movie was a literal and visual poem. It sort of reminded me of Poe's The Raven. I think it is a wonderful artwork and felt the same every time I saw it. I just drift along with it not worrying about the meaning, just letting it take me with it and experiencing its quiet haunting emotion. |
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| lady wakasa |
| Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2009 11:50 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 5911
Location: Beyond the Blue Horizon
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| Ghulam |
| Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2009 12:04 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4742
Location: Upstate NY
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| Gary, I am sure you recall that at the time of LYIM's release there were quite a few people who mocked the movie, but all the top critics had came thrrough. Your calling it a "literal and visual poem" says it in a nutshell. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2009 1:16 pm |
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| Yes I remember the critics response. Clueless. As you may have guessed Macdonald was the one whose opinion meant the most to me, though there were some that I hadn't read but later found to be not so bad. I had read Macdonald's review of LYiM in Esquire, but I couldn't remember what he said about it. That's why I wanted to talk to him. When I did talk to him on the phone he was very accommodating. He was very impressed with the film. When I told him I was on my way to Paris he told me about a place he stays at in Italy and if I went there to stay at that particular B&B and tell them that he sent me. Nice man. He was also a big fan of Hiroshima Mon Amour. He finally quit the movie critic gig because there were too many bad movies that he had to sit through. His reviews were always a pleasure to read and very funny. He would write things like Ben Hur was shot in butcher shop colour. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2009 1:33 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| I abhor, loathe, abominate, and despise Last Year at Marienbad. It is the ultimate litmus test for cinema snobbery, the supposed triumph of style over substance that leaves me (and puts me out) cold. But like they (and we) say, "Different strokes." |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2009 2:48 pm |
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| I remember your dislike of Last Year.... I chalk it up to an aversion to East German Vacation spas. Perfectly understandable. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat Aug 01, 2009 9:09 pm |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Leigh waited too long, so I watched Sita Sings the Blues by myself, which is a pretty good cure for the blues. It's very funny, and original, using styles of animation ranging from crudes, shaking line drawing (note to artist: watch the shaking). reproductions of seventeenth century Indian art, shadow puppets, clip art, multilevel animation and modern cartoons. It has parallel stories from the mistreatment of Sita by Rama, the callousness of Nina's Paley's husband to her (not a good idea to be callous to your wife when she's an animator), together with musical interludes sung by Sita with the voice of Annette Harshaw, and commentary on the Ramayana by shadow puppet commentators. The jokes come here because there are different versions of the story from the Ramayana, which contradict each other, and we see the contradictions illustrated while the commentators talk. For one example, there are a number of versions of how a king died or didn't die, so we see him die, pop up, die, stand up, have a heart attack, etc. Sita gets kidnapped by a king with ten heads and about as many arms, who seems to have been good except for this one instance. Monsters range through a forest including one eyed purple flying lampreys with bat wings, and cute one eyed demons, and the king is really upset when Rama kills the poor monsters,
Altogether it's an example of an artist experiencing a creative explosion, and it's a lot of fun. Since Paley ran afoul of copyright laws (including one that would have permitted her to play the songs for a pittance, but spend thousands to show the animated versions), she's turned into a bit of a free culture warrior, and is distributing it for free by download. You can watch it or download it here, http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/. (I actually have a DVD. I'm not sure how that worked out.) And all done for less than $200,000, including rent and cat food.
There's also a short called "Fetch," which at first looks appallingly badly drawn, which turns out to be part of the fun. All it is at first is a man playing fetch with a dog, and a line across the screen, but the line becomes a ceiling, a portal to another dimension, Paley plays tricks with perspective (the dog runs toward the screen and is suddenly ten feet tall), etc. Paley shows once again what you can do with simple tools.
Marilyn has a lot about this film on her web site, as does Roger Ebert; I believe Marilyn alerted him to the film. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| yambu |
| Posted: Sat Aug 01, 2009 11:04 pm |
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Joined: 23 May 2004
Posts: 6441
Location: SF Bay Area
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I require your help, moviewise. In September we will be driving from Memphis, down through Delta Blues Country, then into Cajun Land, and finally New Orleans.
There is a doc called Legends of the Delta Blues that is not netflix available. Nor is the great '87 PBS doc Eyes on the Prize, which I really wanted my son to see before we go. I would have him watch "Ghosts of Mississippi", but never "Mississippi Burning".
Re Cajun Country, I only know of Belizaire the Cajun, which I haven't seen. "Deliverance" is out.
For New Orleans, I would appreciate a good doc referral on the music. As for drama set there, "The Big Easy" is a piece of shit, IMO. |
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| ehle64 |
| Posted: Sat Aug 01, 2009 11:39 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 7149
Location: NYC; US&A
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| ehle64 |
| Posted: Sun Aug 02, 2009 2:14 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 7149
Location: NYC; US&A
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| I <3 Paul Rudd and his green eyes so much. But I find Jason Segel hott in very many ways. Also, I found I Love You, Man to be incredibly charming and LOL funny @ points. I encourage all of ye str8 men out there to embrace the bromance and seek out this treasure trove. p.s. hi Anwar! |
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