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| Joe Vitus |
 Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2012 4:16 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 14498
Location: Houston
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| It's a classic. I think I've only seen parts. A Holocaust survivor talked to us at our high school (very small school and only a handful of classes present, so we really got to have more of a discussion than usual in these situations) and he seemed torn between wanting these things to exist and be accessible and spending too much time emphasizing that part of history. I think that experience heavily influenced my opinion of all these documentary and fictional representations. |
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| yambu |
| Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2012 4:41 pm |
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Joined: 23 May 2004
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Location: SF Bay Area
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aShoah is probably what Chilly was talking about.
All tales told by victims and other eyewitnesses a generation later. Devastating. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2012 7:22 pm |
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No Chilly was referring to another TV production about that subject.
Voices from the List, a 77min video. Spielberg was involved. |
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| chillywilly |
| Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2012 11:40 pm |
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Location: Salt Lake City
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marantzo wrote: No Chilly was referring to another TV production about that subject.
Voices from the List, a 77min video. Spielberg was involved.
Yes, this is the one. I had forgot the name. Thanks for the lookup, Gary.
The Shoah Foundation was involved in the production.
I have not seen Shoah, but have heard it is quite thorough with lots of details about the entire history of the Jewish people during the Holocaust. |
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"If you should die before me / Ask if you could bring a friend" |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2012 4:29 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9016
Location: Shanghai
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Syd wrote: The final show of "At the Movies" was the best lists of 2011, and Ebert's was the most conventional of the lot. "The Tree of Life" was the only movie on more than one of the three top fives (it was on all three), the 4M movie was Christy's choice, while Yevgeny (SP?)'s top choice was "Mysteries of Lisbon," which I've never heard of.
Mysteries of Lisbon is the final film by Raoul Ruiz. He died this past August at 70.
He was a Chilean filmmaker, but spent most of his life exiled in Portugal and France, fleeing Chile after the Pinochet coup. His films are sort of story within story labyrinthine post-modern elusive things. Sort of like Borges on film.
I've only seen The Three Crowns of the Sailor (1983) which is a real trip and pretty great in parts. A doomed storyteller recounts a lot of weird Ship of the Dead and shore leave adventures which either happened or didn't happen, spiced with minor cross-currents, and at the end it seems we've been suckered into becoming the doomed sailor ...
Or something like that. It's not really the easiest to follow. Some of it is nicely imaginative, and you just go along for the ride. Some utter low budget effects work wonderfully. The film is a little uneven, but I thought pretty great.
This dvd cover gives some idea of the look and oddity of the proceedings:
I've heard great things about The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting. Even the title nicely conveys post-modern uncertainty, subjectivity, the elusiveness of truth, and how reality is merely based upon the stories we tell. I'd love to get my eyes on more Ruiz. Look forward to Mysteries of Lisbon, which with its journeys from Chile to Portugal to France clearly parallels Ruiz's exile -- though I suspect it has a lot of fantasy and fabrication.
Ruiz was prolific, like Herzog, directing many art house films, experimental films, documentaries and shorts. He also taught film theory. One of the great "undiscovered" directors of the past 40 years ... |
Last edited by gromit on Wed Jan 04, 2012 1:03 pm; edited 1 time in total
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| gromit |
| Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2012 5:06 am |
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yambu wrote: Shoah is probably what Chilly was talking about.
All tales told by victims and other eyewitnesses a generation later. Devastating.
Shoah is pretty remarkable.
About 10 hours long and I don't recall why but I only saw about half.
The part with the Polish underground leader who visited the Warsaw Ghetto and then went to London and the US to report is devastating. Basically, FDR sends him to talk to Justice Frankfurter, a close FDR ally and prominent Jew, of the horrors going on under the Nazis, and Frankfurter just can't fathom it and refuses to believe what he's told. For a liberal New Dealer, he became a crotchety conservative guy. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2012 5:58 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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At the risk of seeming Philistine, I think Schindler's List has it all over Shoah, whose length mitigates against it. Enough is enough, even when the subject and presentation are as worthwhile as this one.
Haven't seen Voices from the List, but will. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2012 6:41 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Houston
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| You're really going to put treacly Schlinder's List above Shoah on the basis of their running times??? |
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| knox |
| Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2012 12:57 pm |
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Joined: 18 Mar 2010
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| Thanks for the thoughts on Raoul Ruiz, Gromit. Hadn't heard of him, but Borgesian stuff I often like. Unless it's Alain Resnais, then not so much. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2012 2:19 pm |
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Joe Vitus wrote: You're really going to put treacly Schlinder's List above Shoah on the basis of their running times???
No. I much prefer SL anyway, but Shoah is too long to boot. |
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| jeremy |
| Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2012 5:48 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 6794
Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)
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I just saw the new Sherlock Holmes; not quite as good as I had hoped, but still fun. More later.
I don't suppose that I am the only one to notice that every film Guy Ritchie made when married to Madonna was rubbish, whilst those he made before he met her and after they parted are passable. She's a bit of a vampiress that one. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2012 7:42 am |
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Jeremy, I not only noticed it I wrote about just that about six months ago. He's lucky to be rid of her. Anyone would be.
I'll probably get a scolding from one of the Madonna admirers on here.  |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2012 8:15 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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What Madonna admirers are left here? Marc, I guess. Wade is no longer around.
For the record, I love some of Madonna's records. But her natural voice (unrecorded) is average to put it kindly. She sings tonelessly and often tunelessly. She is a product of the recording studio. She also has terrific taste in songs (though that may be her handlers more than her).
As an actress, she is the worst on the planet, and I'm including second-grade assembly pageants.
Her performance on Broadway in Mamet's Speed the Plow was the most inept I have ever witnessed in my life. Her supposedly "good" performance in Desperately Seeking Susan was the essence of mediocre. It was filmed while the bloom was still on the rose and critics were "desperately seeking" excellence in her acting; they were therefore swayed by the fact that she could form words. |
Last edited by billyweeds on Thu Jan 05, 2012 8:43 am; edited 1 time in total |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2012 8:43 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Houston
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| The only Madonna song I ever liked was "Material Girl." |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2012 8:45 am |
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Joe Vitus wrote: The only Madonna song I ever liked was "Material Girl."
See, here we disagree. I like "True Blue," "Holiday," "Like a Virgin," "Live to Tell," "Papa Don't Preach," "Vogue," and several others including "Material Girl.". But I don't kid myself that Madonna is the reason. It's the recording engineer who should be getting the raves. |
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