Third Eye Film Society ~ View topic

Author

Message

< Third Eye Film Forums ~ Couch With A View

Syd

Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2015 7:22 pm

Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12944 Location: Norman, Oklahoma

bartist wrote:

Was thinking about actor resemblances today, having just watched Mia Wasikowska as the Oz woman who walks across the interior of Oz with a team of camels, in "Tracks." At end crawl, they show her real-life counterpart, who she looks very like.

Now watching this, which is Instant View on Netflix. Really absorbing movie.

Edit: It finally hit me who Mia Wasikowska was reminding me in film. Martha Plimpton, very strongly. (A compliment, since I had a thing for Martha Plimpton.) And Robyn Davidson, too. The guy playing the boyfriend looks a lot like the real-life photographer, too (although as near as I can tell, the photographer didn't have a beard).

_________________
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!

whiskeypriest

Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2015 7:26 am

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 6916 Location: "It's a Dry Heat."

yambu wrote:

Matewan, 1986, is perfect for Chris Cooper, who arrives in a freight car in Matewan, WVA, to begin organizing the local coal miners. He's a typical loan wolf Wobbly, a "Red" in the middle of the Red Scare of the Twenties. He doesn't say much, but he can speak to the heart when necessary.

David Strathairn seems like an oddball police chief, but he has a lion's courage. And he gets the best line of the show. Referring to some infamous goon, "I wouldn't pee on him if his heart was on fire."

One sour note was having to watch some boy wonder preach not one but two sermons. He's the reason why we don't seek out teenagers for wisdom.

It has been, well,probably 27 years since I saw it, but wasn't one of those sermons sort of a code?

_________________
I ask you, Velvel, as a rational man, which of us is possessed?

bartist

Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2015 10:27 am

Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6967 Location: Black Hills

Syd wrote:

Judgment at Nuremberg: This is the first time I've seen this in its entirety; I kept coming across it in the middle and had seen the last hour several times. Great movie, very well written, and full of fine performances, not only by Schell (who won the Oscar), Tracy, Clift and especially Judy Garland (who were also nominated), but also Dietrich, Lancaster and Werner Klemperer, who plays a fanatical and unrepentant Nazi judge. I would have gone for the death penalty for him just to make the world a better place. I'm a little surprised he didn't get an Oscar nomination himself. He's scary.

The sigboth and I recently watched this and were wowed by the ensemble. Shatner and Klemperer throw off a little "meta" amusement for viewers, post-sixties. The Clift scene made us both go pale....his misery and torment are palpable and deeply affecting. Schell's lawyerly zeal turns into cruelty at a certain point, it's as if he becomes what he is defending. My spouse had never seen Garland in a late-in-career performance and said, "Hey, she can act!" I had a similar reaction, first time I saw it. Ernest Lazlo's camera work is stunning, too, and feels somehow ahead of its time. I don't know if it was pioneering cinematography or not, but it felt like it when I watched.

_________________
He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days.

yambu

Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2015 3:45 pm

Joined: 23 May 2004 Posts: 6441 Location: SF Bay Area

whiskeypriest wrote:

It has been, well,probably 27 years since I saw it, but wasn't one of those sermons sort of a code?

Right you are, though I chose to be annoyed anyway.

_________________
That was great for you. How was it for me?

marantzo

Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2015 6:20 pm

Joined: 30 Oct 2014 Posts: 278 Location: Winnipeg: It's a dry cold.

I saw Judgment at Nuremberg when it came out and saw it a couple of times on tv. Good movie and also great acting with serious reality in the court.

_________________
Big bang, shmig bang; still doesn't explain how anything starts.

gromit

Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2015 3:05 am

Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9016 Location: Shanghai

Has anyone seen Phoenix a 2014 German neo-noir film directed by Christian Petzold? Apparently does some riffing on Vertigo, while set in post-war Germany

I liked his film Barbara about East Germany, and Phoenix also features Nina Hoss. Here was my mini-review of Barbara (2012):

Barbara, is a fairly strong film about (dis)trust and powerlessness in the former East Germany.

I was impressed with Nina Hoss who carries the film as Barbara, with her portrayal of a tightly wound professional trying to maintain her dignity in a quietly brutal system. Looks like Hoss is director Christian Petzhold's muse, having starred in 4 or 5 of his films. He certainly trusts her to make Barbara work.

There's a good moment where the head doctor confesses something from his past which would seem to put him on Barbara's side against the authorities, and she pauses and then simply asks him if the story is true. Trust doesn't come easily in a spyocracy.

Otherwise, the rebellious girl patient Barbara befriends/helps seemed like a counterpart of Mona from Agnes Varda's Vagabond, transplanted to the unforgiving East German regime.
Good film.

_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.

billyweeds

Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2015 6:02 am

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City

Sorry, I have always considered Judgment at Nuremberg to be a huge piece of cheese with the kind of all-star cast that renders it plastic. Schell, Garland, and Clift all do excellent work but the rest of the cast (especially Lancaster) is grandstanding and cheap. Spencer Tracy coasts IMO. Stanley Kramer was more a socially conscious man than a director, and Abby Mann is as unsubtle a screenwriter as they come.

bartist

Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2015 10:35 am

Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6967 Location: Black Hills

I liked Inherit the Wind, On the Beach, and J at N, three films made three years in a row. Don't know how the first two would hold up to a re-viewing now, it's been decades since I saw them. My impression is that Kramer made films the general public liked more than the critics. I wasn't a critic, and I liked most everything I saw of his. I didn't find Lancaster's performance in J at N to be "grandstanding and cheap," but I can see how some might take it that way.

I wonder if the lack of subtlety arose partly from the need to write composite characters - there were actually 16 judges on trial - I think Klemperer stood in for at least 2 or 3 of the more unrepentant judges, so they lumped all the vileness into Col. Clink. Conversely, Lancaster stood for a couple of the more remorseful judges....I think there were excesses in the writing, like Marlene Dietrich's overly-satisfying story about how Jannings (Lancaster) humiliated Hitler at a party for hitting on Dietrich. And got away with it. So, yeah, there was some cheap and easy in the script for sure.

My only beef about the depiction of the legal proceedings was the point at which Tracy allows Schell to badger Judy Garland into a weeping wreck. It served a dramatic purpose, but a real judge would have stopped that verbal assault a little earlier. Especially after Schell's previous episode of tormenting Monty Clift, the poor gelded guy. Maine judges don't really go for lots of shouting and screaming at witnesses on the stand.

Maria was more famous in Europe than little brother Maximilian, until he had the Oscar under his belt, and I want to see White Nights again.

_________________
He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days.

billyweeds

Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2015 11:39 am

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City

You just reminded me of another thing I detested about J at N. The supporting turns by Garland and Clift were all too obviously positioned as Oscar nominations, which they duly received.

Maria Schell never quite made it as a top-level star, but if you get a chance to see her in The Mark, a 1961 beauty for which Stuart Whitman got an Oscar nomination (losing to Schell for J at N), catch it. Maria Schell, Whitman, and Rod Steiger are all A+ in this very sensitive treatment of child molestation. Whitman never quite goes all the way to being a molester, which annoyed Pauline Kael no end.

bartist

Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2015 10:18 am

Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6967 Location: Black Hills

Thanks, BW, "The Mark" is on my list.

Browsing through mid-Jan. to mid-March 2012 postings, I see that only Ghulam really liked "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia." And so did I. Following my usual practice of noting 3EFS reviews and then waiting 1-3 years to actually see the film. Perhaps my sense of pacing, in life, is more in synch with the pacing of this film. To me it was a very watchable slice of life in rural Turkey, beautifully shot, and rather dreamlike. Like many dreams, it is about what we don't understand.

_________________
He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days.

gromit

Posted: Thu Sep 17, 2015 2:57 am

Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9016 Location: Shanghai

Rocks in My Pockets (2014) is a Latvian animation film about the unstable and suicidal females in her family, including herself. The titular rocks being a drowning aid, something her grandmother hadn't considered in a failed attempt. The film is intended to be rather frank including discussing and depicting excretion which may occur after hanging (Tip: do your own neck-stretching while wearing adult diapers).

There are some good moments and creative images, but overall it's sort of an ugly warts-and-all exercise. The film covers 5 disturbed females in her family, and I liked best the section about the pretty smart cousin, as that had interesting details.

One problem I had with the film was that my disc started with English narration -- the whole film is narrated, characters don't speak -- and the director has a rather strong accent laden with wacky intonations. She's lived in NYC for a significant period of time, so her English is good, but her intonations and vowel sounds are almost bizarre. After 15 mins or so, I finally switched to the Latvian track -- mislabeled on my disc as Spanish -- and not surprisingly the director has a rather strong accent in her native language as well. I started thinking she might have been okay as her own voice in the film, but could have hired voice actors (or family members) for the other characters. One of the odder parts of the film is when the director in her strong accent does a different voice to imitate a character who is speaking/thinking.

Anyway, it's a personal film, about her actual family and their secrets and psychological demons. Some of the animation is rather basic -- personal demons look like overgrown aqua Matt Groening rabbits -- with some creative bursts here and there. After moving to NY in 1995, director/animator Signe Baumane worked with Bill Plympton for a few years, and he gets thanked in the credits. Plympton and Groening are probably good reference points for the rawness and at times frankness (and occasional ugliness) of the film.

Have to say I'm not terribly comfortable pondering the suicidal thoughts of others. It certainly didn't help that last Tuesday afternoon my neighbor on the 1st floor hanged himself in the wake of some rather sudden bad medical news. Not that we were close, but I knew him for 10 years and liked him/his family best among my many neighbors (I live in a old colonial villa/mansion that was carved into many small apts in the commie days -- on the 1st floor there is still a communal kitchen, plus a shared bathroom recently divided into stalls. Yes, I have my own bathroom and somewhat improvised kitchen inside my 2nd floor apartment).

Last edited by gromit on Thu Sep 17, 2015 10:39 am; edited 1 time in total
_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.

bartist

Posted: Thu Sep 17, 2015 9:09 am

Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6967 Location: Black Hills

Sorry to hear about your neighbor. I hope his end was a more merciful one than whatever medical ordeal he was facing. Too bad most of the planet isn't as humane and civilized as Oregon.

_________________
He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days.

gromit

Posted: Thu Sep 17, 2015 10:20 am

Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9016 Location: Shanghai

I'm not terribly sure of the details and time frame. But another neighbor -- the Woman Who Is Wrong About Everything -- is a huge gossip and she said that she said he had thyroid cancer. I'm not sure how sudden it was or what his symptoms were, but suddenly about three weeks ago he was puttering around here in his pajamas clearly depressed. Apparently that was post-operation, and even his voice was weakened. He had been a very active guy, passionate about boxing.

We just called him The Boxer. He set up a makeshift gym in the garden, just behind the bomb shelter entrance, and almost every day he would workout on his improvised heavy bag (he put a stack of ten car tires over a cement pole formerly used for laundry lines -- and would punch on those). When I first came here there were a few years when a little guy would come by on the weekend and they would spar. He also would go to a boxing gym once or twice a week. Often I'd be heading out for basketball in the evening at the same time he was off to boxing. Partly he liked me because I was as into basketball as he was boxing.

He once showed me some photos he had of him with Muhammad Ali and a few other famous US boxers. And I once gave him a Dvd of a documentary about three Chinese boxers trying to make the Sichuan Province team. China Heavyweight (2012) by the same folks who made the very good Up The Yangtze. Though the title is odd as I'm pretty sure none of the amateur boxers featured are actually heavyweights. I think they just wanted a play on "heavy weight" as in: a large burden.

Anyway, I think not being able to continue his boxing exercise, and the prospect of not being able to be active, plus depression led to his final decision. I'm not sure how bad his prognosis was. But I think he just didn't want to be a sick person, or semi-invalid, or have his active life taken away. If indeed he had thyroid cancer, that sounds rather serious. Now that I think about it, Tuesday -- his last day -- was his normal boxing gym day, as that's my 7PM basketball night, and we'd always be heading out at just about the same time. Maybe just a coincidence, or maybe that led to extra-depression.

I don't like to contemplate or discuss methods of self-annihilation. And this film -- and my gossipy neighbor with her details -- put such ideas in front of me the past week or two.

_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.

bartist

Posted: Thu Sep 17, 2015 11:07 am

Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6967 Location: Black Hills

Yeah, I generally find the topic unsavory. It's all built on unknowns, because most of us cannot really know what such a profound depression is like. Sure, we will say we are "depressed" sometimes, and that usually means a state of gloom and melancholy that life has taught us will pass.

I have given method a bit of thought, more in the humane context of having some painful terminal disease and seeking euthanasia. And I always arrive at the same answer: drugs. Nembutal or heroin. Nembutal, taken orally, you combine it with an anti-emetic or it won't work in most cases because stomachs don't like nembies. Heroin, that's a drive to Denver. Nembutal, that's a drive to El Paso, where veterinary grade is smuggled across the river from where it's still legal in Mexico. I'm told you need to examine the tablets carefully, as there are fairly reliable markers of authenticity that it's the real Pfizer or whoever's product. I'm not convinced of that. Alas, there is no snort test like you see on Breaking Bad, for horse nemby.

IOW, we can't all move to Oregon, so we should be pushing for sane legislation in our states that move Oregon to us. Public policy will progress "one funeral at a time." Kind of a double meaning there. Every time someone dies horribly and without merciful options, it ripples out to people around them. And the other meaning: every time a self-righteous religion conservative dies, the demographic shifts towards a younger and more tolerant generation.

To bring this back to thread topic, I remember how Sir Ben and his wife took care of things in "House of Sand and Fog," and wondering if that was possible.

_________________
He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days.

carrobin

Posted: Thu Sep 17, 2015 11:57 am

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC

When I was a kid, an old man down the street shot himself--he and his wife were good friends of ours. I think he had some kind of disease, but of course nobody ever told me the facts. But it's something you don't forget.

When my dad died of Alzheimer's, my sister had to make the decision about whether to "let him go" or call in the medical troops when he got to the point where he was unconscious and could no longer even eat, and she chose to let him go, which she and I (and surely any rational person) would prefer. Even many doctors are starting to question the push to save lives at any cost when it comes down to that kind of unsalvageable situation. And I, for one, would want to be "let go" well before getting to that stage.

All times are GMT - 5 Hours

View next topic View previous topic Page 2310 of 2427 Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3 ... 2309, 2310, 2311 ... 2425, 2426, 2427 Next Third Eye Film Society Forum Index ~ Third Eye Film Forums

You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum