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bartist
Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2011 9:32 am Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6958 Location: Black Hills
I've seen The Future, my friends....

...and it looks surreal, with frequent incidents of time being stopped and rescued stray cats that talk and tell you sad things. I couldn't begin to tell you what the film is about, but you may somehow absorb a sense that your life doesn't have to follow a conventional script. It might say something about what young relationships do before they mature and settle compacently into armchairs, but I'm not sure. I can imagine some viewers here may find the film pretentious and obscurantist, but I can't quite dismiss it as such. Miranda July's cuteness may be a factor, so I'll recuse myself.


Agree Chastain is not "supporting" in Take Shelter. Miscategorized, for sure.

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Joe Vitus
Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2011 10:17 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston
carrobin wrote:
R.I.P. Ken Russell, whose Times obit includes a nice photo of Alan Bates and Oliver Reed. From the shoulders up, of course.


That's too bad. I wonder if this is what it will take to get his movies out on DVD in the States.

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bartist
Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2011 11:54 am Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6958 Location: Black Hills
What, "Altered States" is not out on DVD in the States?

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billyweeds
Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2011 12:09 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City
bartist wrote:
I've seen The Future, my friends....

...and it looks surreal, with frequent incidents of time being stopped and rescued stray cats that talk and tell you sad things. I couldn't begin to tell you what the film is about, but you may somehow absorb a sense that your life doesn't have to follow a conventional script. It might say something about what young relationships do before they mature and settle compacently into armchairs, but I'm not sure. I can imagine some viewers here may find the film pretentious and obscurantist, but I can't quite dismiss it as such. Miranda July's cuteness may be a factor, so I'll recuse myself.


Agree Chastain is not "supporting" in Take Shelter. Miscategorized, for sure.


I saw The Future and, I think, reported on it briefly herein. Pretentious for sure, and somewhat obscure, but not without value.
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Joe Vitus
Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2011 1:27 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston
bartist wrote:
What, "Altered States" is not out on DVD in the States?


Women in Love, Tommy
and, I think, Altered States are available. The Boy Friend is available on a cheapie Warners label. Otherwise, The Music Lovers, The Devils, Mahler, Savage Messiah, Lisztomania, Valentino, all from Russell's most productive period, are missing.

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gromit
Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2011 1:32 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9010 Location: Shanghai
The Devils is soon to be released.
I think Elgar is out of print (at least the BFI edition is)
Lots of his films are unavailable.
I'd like to see his 2 early BBC films on John Betjeman.

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Joe Vitus
Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2011 5:59 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston
Very good that The Devils will be coming out. Among his BBC films, the one I really want to see is the one that will never be released, because the family of Richard Wagner won't let anyone show it: Dance of the Seven Veils.

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inlareviewer
Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2011 6:03 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 05 Jul 2004 Posts: 1949 Location: Lawrence, KS
Oh, dear. So Ken Russell is departed. Who in the Fanny Hill will give us visions of flying wommyn wearing leather harnesses and rainbow hamburgers for earmuffs now? Siriusly, though, an iconoclast of near-incomparable power. Must dig up my ancient videotape of Women in Love and try not to miss Oliver Reed, as well.

Thanks to all who reminded me about Take Shelter, which I completely missed, about which in-town colleagues are divided, save for undiluted Chastain enamored-ness. That, of course, only doubles my determination to catch it.

Marc: I can see being underwhelmed by Melancholia, particularly if it came at the tail end of a festival. Given that I went expecting to be underwhelmed, there's some kind of logic at play there.

Meanwhile, just finished Marsha Maisie Mo Murine, admired it considerably, though not without some reservations. None of them apply to Princess Elizabeth of Olsen, whose inwardly coiled performance would be impressive, gripping and affecting -- her meltdown at the party killed me -- even if it weren't her film debut (in itself, a major achievement). She is most assuredly Going Places, Big Time, and this theatre dweller now longs to see her tackle, oh, Laura Wingfield, or Irina to Maggie Gyllenhaal's Masha and Anna Paquin's Olga, and if she can handle iambic pentameter, Cordelia, Ophelia and Viola lay before her. Of wommyn seen so far this year, only Ms. Dunst's post-Ullmann-eque investment in Melancholia surpasses Mary-Kate and Ashley's Far More Gifted Sibling for psychologically spurred, truthfully emotive acting devoid of detectable technique. She's a sure bet to be cited by that, um, other film society come January, and can't wait to see where her career takes her. Do agree that Sarah Paulsen's deeply felt turn as edgily protective sister Lucy, in its smaller scaled way approaching La Gainsbourg's magnificence as Kirsten's similarly maternal-by-necessity sibling -- and I apologize for overbeating the Lars drum, but Depressapocolyptia is seared into my brainpan in ways I may need to see a shrink about, certain situational analogies exist, and both films sport Brady Corbet as an smarmy agent of negative forces -- and Hugh Dancy's wonderfully unfussy work as British brother-in-law Ted, emanating buried attraction beneath the calm until he finally loses it at the dinner table, are invaluable. About John Hawkes as cult leader Patrick, have no ambivalence whatsoever -- a master of magnetism through menace, he made me want to reach through the screen and take him out with a kitchen knife, if not indeed a castration hook. Director/screenwriter Sean Durkin, also making an impressive debut here, is unquestionably inventive, most particularly in how subtly he transitions between flashback and present. However, that somehow seems a drawback, not in the potential confusion for the viewer -- clearly the deliberately intended result here -- but the gradual diminishment of full plausibility, by small degrees, as more details begin to emerge. At some point before the undeniably unsettling home invasion pivot, I found myself wondering exactly how this particular cult could have evaded Catskill and/or Federal authorities for so long, which means my mind had pulled me out of the experience, and I thought the ending at once suitably enigmatic and dissatisfyingly abrupt. Ultimately Manohla Mercy Mai Magdalene seemed to me not so much an extraordinary film, just a notably economical, inventive and intriguing one, the understated, tensile mood piece that Winter's Bone thought it was, and, if it only gave us Elizabeth Olsen, that alone would make it worth seeing.

Up next: J. Edgar, whose screener just came, then either The Artist or Hugo in the cinema, depending on time constraints and ticket availability.

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bartist
Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2011 7:34 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6958 Location: Black Hills
Quote:
...Ultimately Manohla Mercy Mai Magdalene seemed to me not so much an extraordinary film, just a notably economical, inventive and intriguing one, the understated, tensile mood piece that Winter's Bone thought it was, and, if it only gave us Elizabeth Olsen, that alone would make it worth seeing.


Second that, and I think you take home the gold in the Variant Title Names Olympics.

As for "flying wommyn wearing leather harnesses," maybe the Coens will someday bring back Maud Lebowski.

The Descendants opening here (Lincoln, Nebr.) Friday. Omaha got the official premiere last week on the 23rd.

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gromit
Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2011 12:19 am Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9010 Location: Shanghai
Joe Vitus wrote:
Very good that The Devils will be coming out.


March 19th from the BFI.

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Joe Vitus
Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2011 11:31 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston
gromit wrote:
Joe Vitus wrote:
Very good that The Devils will be coming out.


March 19th from the BFI.


Frustratingly, they want to include material deleted for censorship reasons (even before the movie's premiere) and Warner's refuses to let them. The materials are still there, Warner's just isn't giving permission for it's use. At least this will be the full, original release version, itself something of a lost film.

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carrobin
Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2011 6:03 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC
With a few days to go before heading back to my freelance 10-to-6 office work, I went to see "Hugo" today, and was bedazzled. It helped to be at the Ziegfeld Theatre, which I believe is the only theater in New York that's still a great one-screen wonder, and the 3D and sound quality were pretty near perfect, as is the film. I hope it doesn't lose potential viewers as a "kids' movie," because it's so much more than that--but if I'd seen it when I was a kid, I'd have been in a dazzled trance. Funny that just a couple of months ago TCM showed a batch of Melies films, which were astonishing in their inventiveness and variety; I'd always thought of him as the "Trip to the Moon" guy, which "Hugo" makes a central aspect of the mystery, but the undersea film really amazed me (and it also has a part in the story). Americans think the movies were invented in the USA, but of course, France had important pioneers as well; "Hugo" is quite informative about all that (I don't want to say "educational," though it is).

The textures are intriguing. Magic, mechanics, movies, dreams, illusions, fear and hope and love and loss--a wonderful mix of everything that makes movies great. The villain who breaks your heart, the hero thief, the old man with the magical secret, right down to the scary/cute doberman pinscher (I kept wanting to yell "Squirrel!"). And as a bonus for me, Richard Griffiths and Frances de la Tour. (She once asked me if I'd let her sign my playbill. She was Cleopatra to Alan Bates' Antony--as if I weren't going to ask her!)

All in all, a wonderful, beautiful movie of movies. I'd like to see it again.
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billyweeds
Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2011 6:32 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City
Hugo won the National Board of Review award as Best Movie of 2011 today.
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bartist
Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2011 12:34 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6958 Location: Black Hills
Manohla like.

http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/12/02/movies/ralph-fiennes-and-vanessa-redgrave-in-coriolanus-review.html?hpw

And I'm jonesing, because I've gone two whole weeks without seeing Ms. Chastain on a big screen.

Carro, I was feeling tepid about Hugo, but you are pushing me to the tipping point with your dazzled response. I don't get excited about 3D, but hoping local theater will offer the 2D option at some point (it opened without the option).

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whiskeypriest
Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2011 1:08 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 6916 Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
bartist wrote:
Manohla like.
You say that like it is a good thing.

I am actually more interested in seeing this than anything else this season. I figure if the Ackroydian shaky cam gets to be too much for me, I can close my eyes and listen. Nothing - nothing - sounds better than Shakespeare read right.

I guess I need to put Hugo on my list, along with Steven Spielberg's Whore House - I know what it is called, but I misheard it mentioned on TV the other day as such.

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