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bartist
Posted: Fri Jul 26, 2013 7:42 am Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6958 Location: Black Hills
I recommended The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, but no one seems interested in relatively current DVD offerings.

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billyweeds
Posted: Fri Jul 26, 2013 8:20 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City
bartist wrote:
I recommended The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, but no one seems interested in relatively current DVD offerings.


I've read amazingly horrible things about this movie, but if bart likes it I have to rethink. Such is the power of Third Eye.
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bartist
Posted: Fri Jul 26, 2013 8:36 am Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6958 Location: Black Hills
That power may be questioned. It is really spectacularly stupid, which is sort of entertaining. I mentioned it mostly on the strength of Carrey's completely OTT performance as a self-mutilating street performer who aspires to the big nightclub stage. And the buddy story between Steve Buscemi and Carell is kind of sweet. There's also this funny scene where Buscemi decides to split with the act and go help impoverished Cambodians.

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Syd
Posted: Sat Jul 27, 2013 1:33 am Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12921 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
L'Atalante is one of those films that does well in the Sight & Sound polls, which mystifies me since the story is pretty lightweight. It does have innovative camerawork that is very influential, and fine performances by Dita Parlo and Michel Simon (famous for Boudu in Boudu Saved from Drowning, which I don't like, but I do like him here). Parlo is a country girl who marries the staid captain (Jean Dasté) of a canal barge, and their lifestyles don't fit, and the captain has a nasty streak of jealousy. The basic plot is boy gets girl, boy loses girl, Michel Simon brings girl back.

Director Jean Vigo died at the age of 29 a few months after completing the film, but the version we have isn't complete. The film was widely panned at the time. (If I understand correctly, Simon goes looking for the girl in Le Havre and finds her, although as near as I can tell, she's still in Paris.) Frankly, a story of the making of this film would be more interesting than the film itself. The film is still pleasant to watch, but its masterpiece standing eludes me.

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gromit
Posted: Sat Jul 27, 2013 9:05 am Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9010 Location: Shanghai
L'Atalante has an odd poetic quality, which juxtaposes nicely against the drab reality, altering everything into a lower class fairy tale. It's a film that rewards mutiple viewings. But the story itself isn't terribly important -- it's much more the vague lyrical way it's told.

You might want to try Vigo's Zero for Conduct which is more anarchic and subversive, and oddly more accessible and easier to see where Vigo is coming from. It's just 45 minutes or so.

Both films became very influential.

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gromit
Posted: Sun Jul 28, 2013 4:09 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9010 Location: Shanghai
I've been catching up on lesser-known Agnes Varda the past month or so. She has a nice ability to take two or three ideas and meld them together throughout a film. Maybe another way of putting it is that she doesn't take the simple or conventional approach but likes to fuse things together and follow where these experiments lead. I also like how she examines the lives of women, the choices they make, their loves and often their deaths.

For example, in Cleo From 5 to 7, we get the story of a woman worried and confronting her possibile mortality, combined with seemingly real-time unfolding of the story, which gives the feel of blending fiction and documentary together.

Kung-Fu Master is the story of an illicit romance between a woman and a young boy (played by Varda's son Mathieu). One of her more straightforward narratives, though it does oddly interweave some video game imagery into the film (which is where the title comes from). This film really looked and felt like late 70's or early 80's, and I was surprised it was actually from 1988. The only hint that it's from that late is the recurring mentions of AIDS.
Kind of a slight film, but not bad.

Jacquot de Nantes (1991) was completed the year after her husband Jacques Demy died at age 59 (of HIV, which explains all of those AIDS references in Kung Fu Master, filmed the year he was diagnosed positive -- and back in 1988, AIDS was essentially a death sentence). Jacquot de Nantes is Varda's tribute to Demy, portraying his childhood and burgeoning interest in film. But instead of a straightforward tale of youth, Varda adds in clips from some of Demy's films which recreate autobiographical details which Varda has just recreated. And then there are some clips of (a dying) Demy talking about his life and childhood, a documentary meta-comment on the story Varda is telling. So there are three levels: the main film portraying Demy's childhood, Interspersed with bits of Demy's films incorporating elements of that childhood, and an aged Demy recalling his childhood. It's really an affecting and interesting portrait, and the structure livens up what is otherwise a fairly nice but rather familiar tale (even if biographically accurate).

The Young Girls Turn 25 (1992) is a look at Rochefort and the famous movie Demy filmed there a quarter century earlier. Everyone returns except for director Demy and co-star Françoise Dorléac, Deneuve's sister who died young in a car accident. There are moments of Varda's impish humor as when she has the four remaining motorcycle riders from the film all sit together on one chopper as they introduce themselves (and the one missing rider who has passed away. Or when Deneuve says something to the camera in close-up, finishes and smiles, and then becomes a bit uncomfortable/peeved when Varda keeps the camera rolling, finally looking away out the window.

Again there are two layers to the film, the documentary of the 25th anniversary reunion and behind the scenes footage that Varda shot when the film was being made in 1967. I found some of the dance rehearsals of Deneuve and Dorleac et al without sound to be quite interesting viewing. It's a good documentary for fans of Young Girls of Rochefort. I like the way that the film became such a point of pride for the city, and the way the filming was such an event, sort of an extended street party for a couple of months. A very 60's style Happening.

I only watched half of Jane B. par Agnès V. It's rather playful and silly and borderline experimental, and it just didn't fit my mood that day.

I haven't rewatched them, but I'd rec two of Varda's late documentaries, The Gleaners and I, and The Beaches of Agnes (2009), completed when she was 81.
In both of them she manages to charmingly insert herself into the proceedings. She's made a number of documentaries and many of her films have elements of documentary or feel documentary/realist in approach. This dates back to her first film La Pointe Courte (1955), something of a precursor to the New Wave. And continues in her films such as Cleo and Vagabond.

Agnes Varda really is a major talent and has had an impressive almost 60 year run as a filmmaker. 85 and still going strong.

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Ghulam
Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2013 12:13 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 4742 Location: Upstate NY
.
"No" (2012) is set in Chile and deals with the referendum that dictator Pinochet had called in 1988 to legitimize his despotic regime. The battle in the movie is between rival teams producing the television campaigns for the referendum. Very well made. Best performance from Gael Garcia Bernal that I have seen so far. It was nominated for an Oscar.

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gromit
Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2013 2:30 am Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9010 Location: Shanghai
I have No set to go.
Tried to watch it the other week, but my Russian dvd edition had poor English subtitles.
And then I finally returned it a few days ago.
I was planning to follow it up with Pablo Lorrain's doc Santiago '73: Post-mortem.

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gromit
Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2013 2:35 am Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9010 Location: Shanghai
bartist wrote:
I recommended The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, but no one seems interested in relatively current DVD offerings.


I've heard some good things about IBW.
Not enough to get me to see it, because it's not likely my kind of thing. But it has generated some good buzz here and there.

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Syd
Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2013 9:38 am Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12921 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
Gromit: Cleo from 5 to 7 is the only one of those I've seen, but it's a great film. I still haven't seen Jacquot de Nantes.

Did you ever see her documentary on the Teddy Bear Project?

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gromit
Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2013 5:36 am Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9010 Location: Shanghai
I've heard of the Teddy Bear short and it sound slike another doc in which Agnes V inserts herself well into the proceedings. IIRC.

A few of the films I have provide an introduction by Varda. They start with basically 3 clotheslines of movie posters from her films going by in different directions.
And then when they all clear, it reveals Agnes V sitting at a table in a backyard and she talks about a given film. All rather homemade and ultra-low-budget from such a highly regarded figure. But it's more of the old AV pragmatism and charm and interest in real life.


Watched half of No last night.
What a terribly ugly looking film.
Someone wrote about how good the original 1980 material looks. But to me, that's just in comparison with the ugly 2012 film.

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Syd
Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2013 10:05 pm Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12921 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet is a fine heroic biography of Dr. Paul Ehrlich, showcasing his role in the conquest of diphtheria (along with Emil Behring, who actually discovered the antitoxin, though Ehrlich played a crucial role in its development as a practical cure), his development of the first practical cure of syphilis, his role in staining cells, including microbes (crucial to diagnosing diseased), and his side-chain theory. Edward G. Robinson is at his best as the good doctor, Otto Kruger just fine as Emil Behring, Ruth Gordon is Ehrlich's wife Hedi, Albert Bassermann is Dr. Robert Koch (the greatest of all bacteriologists who became a close friend of Ehrlich). I found the movie thoroughly absorbing.

Although the words "Jew" and "Jewish" are never mentioned, Ehrlich is attacked for his faith, and it's clear what that faith was. Ehrlich has a speech at the end where he is talking about the need to cure diseases of the soul as well as the body. This was 1940, the audience knew Ehrlich was Jewish, and it was pretty gutsy to make the movie anyway. It was, of course, banned in Nazi Germany. (Ehrlich is also criticized for having a Japanese assistant; this assistant happened to be the co-discoverer of Salvarsan.

It was also gutsy to make a movie about syphilis, although the movie never comes out and says it's sexually transmitted; you supposedly can get it from a drinking cup. There's an amusing moment when Frau Speyer (Maria Ouspenskaya) is hosting Ehrlich at a dinner party, she asks him what he's working on, he straightforwardly says "syphilis," and the camera scans shocked looks down the whole table (except for the Ehrlichs and Frau Speyer).

By an odd coincidence, Salvarsan and its derivatives were phased out a few years after this movie in favor of penicillin.

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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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Syd
Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2013 10:07 pm Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12921 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
double post.

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Syd
Posted: Wed Jul 31, 2013 12:28 am Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12921 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
Since I mentioned Ruth Gordon, who eventually won a Supporting Actress Oscar, I never realized she got more nominations for screenwriting (3) than for acting (2). She didn't get a nomination for Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet, nor did Robinson. To be fair, it was a very good year for actors.

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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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marantzo
Posted: Wed Jul 31, 2013 10:32 am Reply with quote
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I saw that movie quite a while ago and I have to agree with you. Very good and well done movie (is that redundant?)

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