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Syd
Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2023 11:43 pm Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12887 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
Rewatching The Hidden Fortress I was thinking about how when you have a Disney film the hero has to prove himself worthy of the princess. Here the princess proves herself worthy when she saves a woman from her fief who had been forced into prostitution by the enemy. Her general proves his worth when he casually rescues the same woman (although he was already doing that by saving his princess, his willingness to save the ex-prostitute says a lot.

Not one of Kurosawa's best but Mifune and the Princess are pretty damn hot. The peasants who are the protagonists are fairly annoying.

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bartist
Posted: Wed Apr 19, 2023 10:00 am Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
Sorry to hear Netflix is ending its DVD service, this September. I subscribed some years ago and it got me through a couple years when the nearest rental store was distant.




Almost half a million fake accounts here now. Someone should ask Marc to give one of us admin status so the Augean stables can be cleaned. And maybe have open registration for a while so oldtimer members who lost their PWs can rejoin if they want to visit. A 3rd E alum wrote me a while back, mentioned they could no longer get on here. We could put a couple film buff questions in the sign up form, so spammers who know nothing about film can't readily complete the form. In what film does Paul Newman lustfully watch a car being washed?

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Syd
Posted: Wed Apr 19, 2023 6:38 pm Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12887 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
I've had the Netflix DVD service for something like 25 years. That adds up to a lot of movie reviews. I noticed that my queue is starting to look sparse,

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bartist
Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2023 1:21 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
Syd wrote:
I've had the Netflix DVD service for something like 25 years. That adds up to a lot of movie reviews. I noticed that my queue is starting to look sparse,


If this has hits a paywall for anyone, LMK and I'll post a screenshot.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/21/netflix-dvd-rentals-movies-forgotten-streaming/

It's worse than just losing Netflix - streamers like HBO Max which had a decent store of older titles are now paring down too. Until nine years ago I lived in a city with an outstanding public library DVD collection (linked to a state film archive, which loaned titles to a regular library cardholder), and I really miss that out here in the sticks.




Quote:
Once you get into the back catalogue of the studio era, the situation’s even more dire. A scalding little film noir such as “Act of Violence” (1948), directed by a newcomer named Fred Zinneman and starring an impossibly young Janet Leigh and a terrifying Robert Ryan, begs to be discovered by a new generation but will languish unwatched and forgotten. Even a bona fide Best Picture winner such as Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rebecca” (1940) is nowhere to be legally found, although the inferior 2020 remake is right there on Netflix.

This is bad news not just for film culture but for cultural history. A movie that is no longer seen ceases to exist, and so does the society it reflects — its values, beliefs, meanings. As streaming video becomes the norm and DVD and Blu-ray shrink to an audience of connoisseurs, collectors and Criterion junkies (guilty as charged), the past recedes to a curio, and our entertainment choices constrict to an endless and eternally profitable Now. Sure, you can find many otherwise unavailable titles on YouTube (including, for the time being, the 1940 “Rebecca”) — but mostly in bootleg prints that quickly get whack-a-moled into oblivion by corporate gatekeepers....

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bartist
Posted: Tue May 09, 2023 8:38 am Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
Triangle of Sadness is a takedown of the wealthy and social class boundaries that is worthy of Bunuel at his best. Maybe not Ostlund's best work so far ( I am a big fan of his previous film, Force Majeure) but it gets my vote as one of best films of 2022. The humor is dark, often unhinged, and sometimes hilariously so. A quid pro quo involving pretzel sticks, a post mortem psychoanalysis of a donkey, a matriarchal social order established by a restroom cleaner, Woody Harrelson as a drunken Marxist luxury liner captain, an astonishingly gross descent into sickness and chaos during a storm, a woman who has only three words....all morsels of disruption to be enjoyed. As I said, Bunuelesque, and possibly a good double feature with The Exterminating Angel.

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Syd
Posted: Tue May 09, 2023 6:36 pm Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12887 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
Oh, good. I love The Exterminating Angel.

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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: Wed May 17, 2023 8:33 am Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12887 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
The Boy and the Beast (2015) is a film that I was surprised to realize I'd seen before without putting it in the spreadsheet of films I've seen. It's by Mamoru Hosada, who directed Mirai, which I reviewed above, and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. I don't know if I reviewed this one, so let's go.

In the city of the beasts, the current leader is ready to retire to become a god, although he first has to find a successor and choose what god he's going to be. The obvious choice for a sucessor is Iōzen, a leonine beast who is popular and has two children. He is challenged by the bearlike Kumatetsu, who is potentially more powerful, but undisciplined (it is revealed that he is self-taught), surly and has no children or pupils, and one requirement to be accepted as leader is to show that you can raise and teach children and Kumatetsu quickly shows that finding an compatible student is going to be a real challenge.

Ren is a 9-year old human child whose mother recently died and his father has not been in contact since the divorce. Since Ren is an only child, he stands to have a good inheritance, and he doesn't like his potential guardians who will not let him live by himself. So he runs into Kumatetsu, and follows him into the city of beasts, where, since Ren is strong-willed (and in many ways like Kumametsu) agrees to become his pupil, and, of course, after the initial challenges, they bond, and after a while Ren realizes he has picked up a lot of skills and has something he can teach Kumametsu, namely discipline.

The beasts do not generally accept humans since we can have a hollow where our heart should be, and Ren has to develop a heart--but one of Iōzen's sons also appears suspiciously human and we don't know his heart. And Ren grows up in the movie and the path to the human world reopens and starts drawing him.

Pretty good movie, more highly regarded in Japan than the US. Although Mamoru Hosada is not much like Hideo Miyazaki, I did think of Spirited Away and Mononoke Hime a bit, but also of coming of age martial arts films like The Karate Kid. The city of beasts, oddly, seems a lot like a human city as far as the residents engage in similar occupations. It's a different but the doorways are obviously used quite a bit.


Last edited by Syd on Sat Dec 23, 2023 9:17 pm; edited 1 time in total

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bartist
Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2023 8:51 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
Vivarium, a 2019 Irish film, appears to be a surreal/sci-fi take on the existential horrors of middle class life in a bland subdivision, and made me think of the classic Twilight Zone episode, "Stopover in a Small Town." Like most films about existential Hell, this one is pretty bleak, though not without some humor and visually arresting moments. Jesse Eisenberg (who seems to easily inhabit these sorts of indie film roles) and Imogen Poots are the couple who find themselves entrapped in the insipid and mysteriously empty subdivision, tasked with raising a creepy boy-like being who seems like Samuel Beckett's fever dream of childhood. Frustrating for the viewer is their seeming lack of experimentation after a couple attempts to break out... but then that is the point.

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billyweeds
Posted: Sun Jul 16, 2023 2:53 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City
Saw VIvarium a couple of years ago. Bleak is right, though well made. Did not realize it was an Irish film.
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Syd
Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2023 10:44 am Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12887 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
Michael Powell did a bunch of what are dismissed as "Quota Quickies" at the start of his career. These were films made to satisfy the requirement that a certain percentage of films shown in Britain were, well, British. These were generally short (an hour or so), but not necessarily bad. This is Michael Powell we're talking about, after all, and they gave him the experience needed to make his "major" films, which started off with the excellent "The Edge of the World" and probably ended with "Peeping Tom", although his last film was apparently "Return to the Edge of the World" so he had a proper bookend.

I've got a disc from Netflix with three of these early films which I'll be reviewing over the next week or so.

The first of these is Red Ensign (1934) which reminded me a bit of "Breaking the Sound Barrier" in that we have an inventor who uses sometime disreputable means to realize his obsession. In this case, it is to restore British commercial shipping to a dominant position by inventing a new ship that can undercut foreign competition both by being larger and being more efficient. Other nations are subsidizing their own commercial fleets but Britain isn't at this point doing that but there is a quota bill coming up that will effectively do this (and also resembles the system that helped Powell make this film).

The inventor is David Barr (Leslie Banks) and his partner and one of his major financiers is June MacKinnon (the charming and lovely Carol Goodyear), the heiress of a co-founder and chief shareholder). The big problems he faces are

(1) this is the Great Depression and financing for speculative ventures is difficult to come by, despite June MacKinnon's wealth. Barr knows that if he gets the first ship built, then investors will flock in, but he needs funding for that first ship. He's also planning to build five, but soon ups that to twenty, which is one hell of an investment. This will also keep the workers at the shipyard employed for years, which is another reason Barr wants so many.

(2) Although David and June are obviously attracted to each other, her fiance is Lord Dean (Frank Vosper) who is not only chairman but one of the trustees of June's trust fund.

(3) This being a 1933 film, Barr also has a corporate rival, Manning (Alfred Drayton), who is invested in those same foreign fleets that are killing the British commercial shipping industry. Manning wants David's ships and is willing to use drastic methods to get it, both legal and illegal. He's not above corporate espionage.

Well done within an obviously constrained budget. You can understand how the subject appealed to Powell and his co-writers Jerome Jackson and L. du Garde Peach. Of course, they couldn't know that Barr's success would run into problems in a few years due to a mustached man on the mainland who took power in 1933.

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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: Sun Jul 23, 2023 10:47 am Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12887 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
By the way, the Red Ensign is the flag of the British commercial fleet. It is a red flag with the Union Jack in the upper left corner. Of course, in the film, it is black, white and grey.

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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: Sun Jul 23, 2023 7:03 pm Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12887 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
The Phantom Light is a vastly entertaining film about a 'haunted' lighthouse and a second, phantom, light that mysteriously appears sometimes as the main light goes out, which leads to shipwrecks. This is in a Welsh town where half the people are named Owen. We follow a new lighthouse keeper who succeeds a large number of previous keepers who have either died at their own hand or perhaps another's, or disappeared, or driven mad. We even have a ditzy girl who supposedly is a psychic investigator and a man who seems to be a reporter both of whom are suspiciously anxious to get to the lighthouse. There is also one of the previous keepers who is mad and cannot be removed till the next morning, so they have to spend the night in an isolated lighthouse with him. Good stuff.

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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: Sun Jul 23, 2023 7:37 pm Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12887 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
Correction: The third film on the disk isn't a Michael Powell film but a 1947 Lawrence Huntington film starring James Mason: The Upturned Glass.

To continue: I didn't like this film very much, perhaps because I'm not a big James Mason fan. (I've never forgiven him and John Gielgud conspiring to kill Julius Caesar.) Also you have an obnoxious voiceover by Professor Mason describing a murder that was done by a sane murderer instead of the psychopath murder he described in the previous class. The sane murderer is himself though he gives a fictitious name. He had a brief liaison (apparently not consummated) with a married woman who was mother of one of his patients, they had to break it off because her husband was coming home, and very soon after she dies, either a suicide or a murder. And Mason's character is convinced the woman's sister-in-law was the murderer and decides he has to take the law into his own hands. It's never apparent that she's responsible and I'm half expecting him to get a suicide note from his love after he commits murder.

Mason was a popular actor at the time, and often played villains since he wasn't all that likeable, which made him an obvious choice for an unsympathetic role like this. Unfortunately, I couldn't help but think how much better this could have been with a better actor. It may explain why he found himself in supporting roles, such as "North by Northwest," or being doomed as in in Judy Garland's "A Star Is Born."

Incidentally, there are some scenes in fog toward the end of the movie that suggest his soul finding its way to Hell. As it is, there are too many missed opportunities and unresolved subplots to recommend the movie. There is another world-weary doctor who gives Mason's character advice on how an idealistic obsessive is more psychotic than the world-weary doctor who comes off as being more psychopathic than Mason's murderer, who is pretty well off the deep end himself.

I've got a couple of Michael Powell "quota quickies" I recorded off TCM which I'll report on. I'm not expecting them to be up to his films with Pressburger but they should be interesting, and I've yet to find a Powell film that I didn't enjoy (although I had to return "Tales of Hoffman" which really, really needs captions.)

Incidentally, the title really doesn't have anything to do with the film despite one quote that suggests it may. There was a story that Mason and his wife wanted to make a film of, and it didn't work out, but they kept the title for the film. The film was co-written by Mason's wife, who also plays his victim. That must have been an interesting family.

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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 Aug 01, 2023 9:22 pm Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12887 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
Now going into a collection of Jacques Tati shorts, though of the first four he directed only one, which is of course the best even though it's his first directing effort. It's called "L'École des facteurs" (School for Postmen) and he plays a bicycling postman who has to make his rounds in time to deliver a package to airmail, and, of course, all sorts of misadventures occur. At one point, he attaches his bike to a truck, which soon takes off with him in hot pursuit, the bike gets loose, goes along its usual route with him following (and delivering an occasional bit of mail). As one woman comments, the postman's bike is so familiar with the route that it can travel by itself. And next stop is a cafe, and sure enough. Funny stuff.

I like "Gai dimanche!" (Fun Sunday) in which Tati and Rhum (apparently a well-known clown of the 1930's) are drifters who get a clever idea of becoming tour guides. They get a car by Rhum picking the rental yard's owner pocket and giving him the money back, pretend they are guides who are supposed to be giving them a tour, which they actually do and it's unique. I particularly like the scene where they stop at an in and they owner will serve them chicken and rice, and the rice gets done but he can't catch the chicken. So we have everyone in pursuit of the chicken in what resembles a foxhunt except there are no horses: The tourists are jumping the fences, etc.

"On demande une brute" features Tati as an out-of-work actor with a nagging wife, and the actor sees an ad for someone specializing in violent roles: i.e., wrestling promoters are looking for a sap to face their hulking champion. You've seen Chaplin doing this sort of thing, but this is reasonably funny.

"Soigne ton gauche"(Keep Your Left Up) features him as a farmer training to be a boxer so he can fight in Paris. He has a boxing manual that he consults during his training fight and that doesn't work too well. This sounds funny, but actually it's fairly tedious and really is lost potential.

For someone who has a considerable reputation as a director, Tati didn't direct very much: four movies and four shorts, and of the movies, "M. Hulot's Holiday" is brilliant, "Mon Oncle" is pretty good (and won an Oscar for Foreign Language Film), Playtime is sometimes brilliant in the first half then falls completely apart, and "Trafic" is actually pretty bad. He also did the screenplay for "The Illusionist" (the animated film) which I liked though it's rather slight. It's great if you want to feel wistful.

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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: Sat Aug 12, 2023 9:14 pm Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12887 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
As it turns out, the only films on the disk Tati directed are "L'École des facteurs", which is the best of the shorts, and "Forza Bastia", a film about the Bastia (Corsica) soccer team going to the UEFA Europa League soccer championships, which was never finished perhaps because they lost. I have no idea why Tati's daughter Sophie Tatischeff decided to complete it because it's pointless. One of the other films was directed by her after she restored "Jour de fête" and it won awards, but it seemed pointless to me, but apparently I had to see "Jour de fête" first. So why not put that on the disk?

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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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