| Author |
Message |
|
| carrobin |
 Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2012 5:46 pm |
 |
|
|
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
|
marantzo wrote: The shot where he crashes through the roof and lands on a table that people are sitting at is one one of my all time favourite shots. The first time I saw it I think I actually said WOW!
Somehow I missed that. Are we talking about the same movie? The only scene in which he fell any distance was when he escaped from William Bendix through a window and fell into a street cart. |
|
|
| Back to top |
 
|
| marantzo |
| Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2012 8:32 pm |
|
|
|
Guest
|
| He goes through a window after being beat half to death, hits a awning and falls off and goes through a (i think it is) a glass skylight and crashes into a table where they are sitting. I thing eating supper or something. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2012 9:16 pm |
|
|
Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
|
Syd wrote: "Stool boom! From the parlor to the pool room, we're the center of a stool boom! Everybody knows our name! Working, making, never stopping, never sleeping. Working, building, some for selling, some for keeping. You will drool at the splendor of these magic stools!"
How did this admittedly hilarious excerpt from Guffman enter this thread? |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
| Syd |
| Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2012 11:03 am |
|
|
Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12929
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
|
billyweeds wrote: Syd wrote: "Stool boom! From the parlor to the pool room, we're the center of a stool boom! Everybody knows our name! Working, making, never stopping, never sleeping. Working, building, some for selling, some for keeping. You will drool at the splendor of these magic stools!"
How did this admittedly hilarious excerpt from Guffman enter this thread?
I was watching it and simply had to share. |
_________________
Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter! |
|
| Back to top |
|
| gromit |
| Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2012 12:15 pm |
|
|
Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9016
Location: Shanghai
|
Been enjoying Louis Malle's 1969 doc Phantom India. It's surprising how modern and undated most of it feels. Maybe that's due to the unchanging nature of India itself. Though I think the last decade has started to spur some significant changes.
Malle focuses on the villages and outcasts and mountain tribes. We hardly see a city or trappings of modern life. Much more likely to see an ox pulled cart than a motorized vehicle. About the only motor vehicle I can recall is the mobile medical van which will serve the remote Toda hill tribe. And they all dance and chant around the metal machine as though it were an animal sacrifice.
Maybe the one thing that dates it a little is some discussion of communism and there is a vague sense of revolution in the air. 1969. One of the questions is whether India might have its own Cultural Revolution. Though comparing India and China never gets one too far, and sometimes gets one too far off track.
And he uses basically a Marxist economic and class analysis on the religious activity around him -- though maybe in India that's fairly inevitable.
I like how Malle talks now and the about the intrusiveness and brazenness of the camera and how people react to it. As for temples and other off-limits sites, apparently a little money and patience gains them access almost everywhere.
Interesting film. Seven 50+ minute episodes. I have one part left. |
_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
|
| Back to top |
|
| bartist |
| Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2012 12:37 pm |
|
|
|
Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6961
Location: Black Hills
|
Quote: I've been coming to this circle for about five years, and measuring it. The diameter and the circumference are constantly changing, but the radius stays the same.
--also a Guffman fan (David Cross, as the UFO guy)
Gromit - the India of Malle's doc might be changing now, as you say. I have access to this doc, but my video plate is kind of full right now. If one watches only one episode, is there one that stands out? |
_________________
He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
|
| Back to top |
|
| gromit |
| Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2012 1:53 pm |
|
|
|
Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9016
Location: Shanghai
|
I can't find the episode breakdown on IMDb or the Criterion site. Kind of odd, since each part is titled and deals with two or three related ideas.
Part 6 "On the Fringes of Indian Society" was quite interesting, as they investigate two fairly isolated tribal groups, the Bondo and the Toda, along with Auroville a utopian commune. So it's more anthropological and the intrusion of the Indian state in these isolated "primitive communities."
Part 1 kind of sets the parameters and Malle wrestles with his approach to India and what it means to him
Part 2 he kind of gives up trying to categorize and interpret things, and let's spectacle and observation and immersion take over
Part 3 Religion and Ritual
Part 4 Politics and History
Part 5 an interesting look at the Caste System
Part 6 Ethnographic
Part 7 Bombay
It really depends what you are interested in.
1 & 2 are introductory. With some good spectacle. Part 3 is when it really hits its stride when he goes south and looks at outcasts and scornfully deals with the priests and faithful.
4. Politics and History sucked me in, as I like that stuff. Part 5 Caste System was quite good. 6 is really a side trip to tribal pre-Aryan India remnants, but I like that national geographic-y stuff.
This was mostly filmed 2 months in 1967 with some followup filming in '68 -- a very political period worldwide.
If I had to rec, I'd probably go with Part 5 Caste System and/or Part 3 Religion. Religion and ritual seems to get at the core of India. So those two episodes are probably the heart of the matter. |
_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
|
| Back to top |
|
| gromit |
| Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2012 3:33 pm |
|
|
|
Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9016
Location: Shanghai
|
Part 7 isn't essential, but makes a change from the rest, as Malle looks at the city, shantytowns, Muslims, wealthy Parsi, and industrialization, and a local pseudo-fascist/nationalist party.
Interesting, but a bit jumbled.
I got a kick out of how quickly Malle dismisses the urban elite, though it's probably easier for him to deride them since they are English-speaking. Like any good French Marxist. One comment wowed me. In 1967, 20 years after independence, a friend tells Malle that just an hour or so outside Bombay there are villages where they don't know that the English have left.
Some of Phantom India -- maybe all of it -- is available on YouTube it appears. But a lot of spectacle and festivals and landscape would certainly look better on a good size Tv screen.
One gripe is that sometimes Malle overnarrates instead of letting scenes unfold. |
Last edited by gromit on Tue Jan 24, 2012 10:31 am; edited 1 time in total
_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
|
| Back to top |
|
| bartist |
| Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2012 9:44 am |
|
|
|
Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6961
Location: Black Hills
|
| Thanks. Was a bit of an India buff when I was growing up (the Beatles contributed to this). Will look at 5 and maybe 6, as I like anthropological stuff. |
_________________
He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
|
| Back to top |
|
| gromit |
| Posted: Sun Jan 29, 2012 12:10 pm |
|
|
|
Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9016
Location: Shanghai
|
bartist wrote: Thanks. Was a bit of an India buff when I was growing up (the Beatles contributed to this).
This being 1967-68, Malle does run across some hippies and other white seekers in India. Mostly they look cool and issue platitudes about "finding themselves" -- but Malle doesn't really probe much. I think he's generally sympathetic to them, though he does wonder about their dedication. We meet one pair of hairy bearded Euros espousing harmony and spirituality. But later run across them again. One guy got dysentery and asked his parents to wire him money and airfare; the other plans to soldier on.
I would have liked more questions on what rituals they follow, how they found themselves, what truths they have learned, etc.
Malle saves his scorn for the Westernized Indian upper classes. Making fun of Indian suburbanites who have taken up yoga after it became a fad int he West. |
_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
|
| Back to top |
|
| gromit |
| Posted: Sun Jan 29, 2012 12:18 pm |
|
|
|
Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9016
Location: Shanghai
|
Re-watched The Saddest Music in the World. I had forgotten how rapidly Maddin tosses out the main themes in the film -- the accident and missing legs, the prophetic tapeworm, the musical contest.
I really think this is a great film.
I like how the competing songs/styles often blend together. A simple smart decision: instead of one band playing and then the other, they alternate back and forth. Which allows the blending.
I like the characters and how everyone has their own headstrong traits and flaws. I like the over-the-top melodramatic piling on of problems, as we have a father and his two sons, two women, and two love triangles.
Such a smart and fun film.
That must be my third viewing.
I'm a Maddin fan, and that's probably my favorite of his films, though they all are good. |
_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
|
| Back to top |
|
| bartist |
| Posted: Sun Jan 29, 2012 2:31 pm |
|
|
|
Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6961
Location: Black Hills
|
You had me at "prophetic tapeworm."
Pushing it to top of pile. |
_________________
He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
|
| Back to top |
|
| marantzo |
| Posted: Sun Jan 29, 2012 4:37 pm |
|
|
|
Guest
|
The Saddest Music In the World, if not the best Maddin is definitely up there with the best.
Isabella Rossellini came up to Winnipeg in the dead of winter to do the film. Guy had sent her the script and before finishing it she made up her mind that she had to do it. It was a more than usual frigid winter that year and they shot most of the film in a frozen abandoned wearhouse with no heating system. Everyone was freezing their ass off but Rossellini was completely unfazed by the cold. In one scene Maddin told the lead actor (I forget his name, but I'm getting old), to feel up Isabella's breasts. He was too nervous to do it, so she grab his hands and put them on her breasts. "See, there's nothing to it." They did the scene but it never made it to the final cut. Mark McKinney, that's his name, said he didn't mind that that scene was cut but he had a good story to tell his grandchildren about Rossellini and him when he felt her up. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Jan 29, 2012 5:38 pm |
|
|
|
Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12929
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
|
Ugetsu: It’s sixteenth century Japan, the time of the civil wars. A poor potter sees a chance to profit from the wars by selling his pots in the city, and when his first effort is successful, the vision of riches goes to his head. His neighbor accompanies him with visions of becoming a samurai, which is sort of difficult when you can’t afford armor or a sword. However, times are dangerous, armies are impressing peasants into service and raiding the towns for supplies, there are pirates on the lakes, and going into town means leaving their women and children unguarded, which is really not a good idea in times like these.
The story takes them to the height of fortune and disastrous depths, both from the chances offered by war. There are even touches of the supernatural. At one point we meet Lady Wakasa, who would later be a forumite.
This is my first Mizoguchi film, and it’s excellent in its storytelling, pace and direction. Mizoguchi was famous for his long takes, which work spectacularly. I was especially impressed by the black and white cinematography. This is one of the best-looking films I’ve ever seen. ***** of *****. |
_________________
Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter! |
|
| Back to top |
|
| Ghulam |
| Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2012 2:55 am |
|
|
Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4742
Location: Upstate NY
|
The Danish movie The Celebration (1998) won the Jury prize in Cannes. It is about a wealthy dysfunctional family with a horrible family secret. Yes, you guessed it right. Somewhat overdone. I did not care for it much.
. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
