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| gromit |
 Posted: Mon Jun 08, 2015 12:43 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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Finally got around to watching some Fernando Arrabal films. Well, I only made it through 1 1/3 films. The Guernica Tree is an odd film. It depicts a fictional small town near Guernica resisting the fascist onslaught and finally succumbing. For some reason there are odd sexual scenes and dwarves and other sort of performance art style scenes. This is interspersed occasionally with actual newsreel footage of the Spanish Civil War. And then there's the main storyline of small town resistance. As expected dwarves don't make the best soldiers. It's a rather odd mishmash, and intermittently successful.
I got a kick out of the extras where Arrabal stands in front of Graumann's Chinese Theater and impishly asks tourists whether they have heard of Picasso's Guernica. It's an unexpected question and he gets to demonstrate American ignorance, for what that's worth. It's just an oddball way to promote his film Guernica Tree. Oddly he begins by asking folks if they speak French, then asks if they speak Spanish. I'm not sure why he opens asking about French and it's unclear if Arrabal speaks any French.
Next I made it through only a portion of Viva La Muerte. This is more of a surrealist film, but it's full of unpleasant images, such as watching surgeons operate, and I packed it in after less than 30 minutes. It seemed rather adolescent and purposeless, from what i watched. It concerns a boy growing up with a mother sympathetic to the fascisst and a father who is a commie. With lots of random junk tossed in and around the storyline. |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Mon Jun 08, 2015 7:07 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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| TCM is showing Fritz Lang's "Man Hunt," starting now (8:00). Highly recommended. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2015 2:53 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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There's still a lot of Lang I haven't seen. I have a few early silent Lang's I've been meaning to put on.
An interesting sidenote, re Guernica. Nelson Rockefeller tried to buy Picasso's famous painting. No sale. So he had a tapestry of the Guernica painting commissioned at the same large size (25' x 11'). Later he donated it to the UN where it hangs outside the Security Council. During the run-up to the Gulf War and for Colin Powell's speech, a large blue curtain was hung in front of the Guernica tapestry, to avoid having a bunch of warmongerers calling for war directly in front of a famous anti-war artwork. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2015 2:56 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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Last edited by gromit on Sat Jun 13, 2015 1:06 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2015 3:20 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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Last edited by gromit on Sat Jun 13, 2015 1:20 pm; edited 1 time in total
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2015 12:32 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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| I can't really recommend The Homesman, the recent western with Tommy Lee Jones and Hilary Swank, unless you are pretty keen on the whole revisionist western genre and have a high threshold of tolerance for embedded feminist commentary. The basic plot is the transport of three Nebraska pioneer wives, driven insane by the rigors of frontier life, back to a Methodist church in Iowa that provides a haven for such. Everything is over-the-top, and geographically confused (this happens when you use New Mexico and Georgia to stand in for Nebraska and Iowa). The OTT starts off with the lurid madness of the women, and then the usual cliched collection of western grotesques. The final scene of the movie is ludicrous and without the slightest plausibility, even as it seems to strive to make some kind of dramatic visual point about how women were undervalued in those times. That said, there are some good performances, notably from Hilary Swank as a strong and resourceful farmer who is facing spinsterhood and valiantly masking her inner desperation as she seeks to help the crazy women. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2015 5:34 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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Last night, or rather this morning at 1:30 a.m., as part of its "noir" run TCM showed "Nightmare Alley," which the commentator said some people consider Tyrone Power's best performance, though the studio wasn't happy with the casting (he'd never played a villain) and the audiences evidently weren't either. It was interesting, but I wouldn't want to see it again, although I think I dozed through some scenes. Power was a tout for a fake psychic, Joan Blondell, in a seedy carnival, and he marries a pretty coworker and sets off on his own after learning (stealing) Blondell's lucrative psychic tricks. But he gets greedy and pushes it too far by mixing in religion, and ends up drinking hard and losing his wife and working in another seedy carnival at the lowest freak level. There's a happy ending obviously tacked on--audiences didn't like the grim finish--but the book was a downer and the author was an alcoholic who committed suicide.
I don't understand why TCM shows some hard-to-find classics in the wee hours of the morning, and then never seems to show them again. I'm still waiting for "Went the Day Well?" to come back around. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2015 6:11 pm |
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Joined: 30 Oct 2014
Posts: 278
Location: Winnipeg: It's a dry cold.
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| I saw Nightmare Alley a few years ago on TCM. I liked it, but it was creepy. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2015 10:17 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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Nightmare Alley is terrific though kinda grim.
Went the Day Well? is a classic. |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2015 10:32 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: NYC
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| Glad someone else has seen "Went the Day Well?" I didn't have any trouble staying awake for that one, though it was on at 2 a.m. And then I lay awake for a while thinking about it. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2015 1:24 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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Watched Fritz Lang's 4 Around The Woman (1921). I had trouble keeping track of the characters. It didn't help that in the very beginning one character we are introduced to almost immediately puts on a disguise, while another arrives just off a boat and once he shaves his beard looks identical to his brother (played by the same actor). And somehow I didn't catch on that the diamond exchange takes place in the backroom of a seedy bar, so I didn't realize the character called Old Upton (The Jeweler) was the rough-hewn bar owner. At least everyone buying and selling jewelry has a beer in front of them. Finally I realized it was a "diamond exchange" -- meaning everyone is fencing stolen merchandise.
Later to add more confusion there is a character the sometimes-disguised husband confesses something to who immediately heads off to blackmail the guy's wife and try to lech on her. Once I figured out who everyone was and what was going on, it wasn't terribly interesting. The twin brother mistaken identity plot is largely just a misdirection to keep things moving and pad out the story. I guess the bad guy gets punished, but getting shot to death for some mild attempted blackmail seems rather harsh. And it only concerns reputation since the husband knows already, and it seemed like it was going to fail since the wife tells the blackmailer to get lost.
The seedy/underworld characters are kind of interesting.
And there were some rather 1920's touches -- wild hats for the ladies, a big worry about reputation and keeping up appearances (something which has completely gone out the window this millennium after being whittled down for decades), everyday child labor, the only black character as comic relief, making wide rolling eyes and such. |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2015 9:44 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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Tuesday night, TCM was showing some "rarely seen" films that had been dug out of the vault, and one was "Ladies in Retirement," another meaningless title to be added to my "what were they thinking?" list. The fact that Ida Lupino and Elsa Lanchester were among the ladies, however, made it worth a look. It was actually a late Victorian noir, with Lupino as the housekeeper for a wealthy elderly lady who had been on the stage--though nobody had an accent, the atmosphere was definitely English, with elements of "Night Must Fall." Louis Hayward, a small-time criminal who is related to Lupino, shows up and charms the old lady with his knowledge of Gilbert & Sullivan, but Lupino's real problem is her sisters--Lanchester and Evelyn Keyes, who have been kicked out of an institution where they haven't been following the rules. Actually, neither of them seems particularly crazy--Lanchester "cleans up the riverbank" by bringing in armloads of grasses and wood, while Keyes is mostly clumsy and curious--but they irritate the elderly homeowner to the point where she tells Lupino that she has to send them away. Lupino, of course, has no choice but to strangle her with her pearls, and tells everyone that she's gone away to visit a friend for an unknown period, then tries to forge her name on a letter to the bank. Meanwhile Hayward, who is getting cozy with the pretty young maid/cook, has his suspicions, and things slowly but creepily heat up--is the house haunted, or is it Hayward's practical jokes? Will the nuns who often drop by get curious enough to ask the wrong questions in town? Will Hayward find the body? Lupino is tough and graceful throughout, doing what she has to do to keep her sisters safe. The ending is somewhat open-ended, though it doesn't look good for Lupino--who has, nevertheless, left her sisters happily insisting that "we can take care of ourselves."
I'd like to see that one again. |
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| Ghulam |
| Posted: Fri Jun 19, 2015 1:14 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4742
Location: Upstate NY
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The Swedish We Are The Best! is a delightful little movie about three teenagers who decide to form a punk rock band in spite of the fact that they do not have any instruments or much talent. There is no formulaic success story here, just a celebration of adolescent dreams and whimsies.
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| gromit |
| Posted: Fri Jun 19, 2015 5:45 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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Decided to stick with 1920's Lang a bit.
Spies (1928) is fairly complicated with lots of characters and plots. A number of things are unlikely and unexplained.
The mastermind is Haghi who runs a bank and commands a bunch of futuristic gadgets. He even seems to have a primitive twitter feed on his wall, which is more impressive on film since it also translates into English (predating google translate by 75 years).
Just why Haghi is in the spy biz or what he hopes to gain isn't terribly clear. The final twist is rather ridiculous, especially since it's based on a prior unlikelihood. Between the over-emotive acting, the unlikely escapes and convoluted plotting, I can see why this film has been somewhat forgotten. There's some very good set design and costumes. And some clever moments. So it's sort of a mixed bag. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat Jun 20, 2015 11:22 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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I'm watching Joss Whedon's home movie version* of Much Ado about Nothing, I have mixed feelings about filming it in a modern setting, but it's worth it just to see Beatrice's reaction when she overhears that Benedick loves her entirely. (There's a wonderful scene earlier when Benedick has already been taken in, and Beatrice comes out to invite him to dinner, and he convinces her that he is quite mad. It's Amy Acker's reaction that makes it work.
There are a lot of casting problems, but I like Clark Gregg as Leonardo. Don John's partner Conrad is now Conrade, a woman and his lover. The change works spectacularly. I immediately had a crush on Riki Lindhome.
*Whedon filmed it in his house. It's a nice house. |
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