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Marc |
Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 1:23 am |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
Posts: 8424
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Tire,
I dig alot of Wait's songs. But, I see him in a theatrical context. He has created a persona and he serves that role well. Is he really a skidrow loser? No. Does he write great songs from the perspective of an imagined skidrow loser? Yes. |
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Ghulam |
Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 1:29 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4742
Location: Upstate NY
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Saw Luis Bunuel's Belle de Jour (1967) for the third time. Every time I see it, I enjoy it more than the previous time. (Spoilers) The story of a pretty young woman (Catherine Deneuve), married to a handsome and wealthy young man, whom she loves but cannot have sexual relations with, but can have sex with strangers in a brothel where she gets employed, has a psychologically nuanced story which holds you in enthrallment. Two very brief flashes of childhood sexual molestation are offered as possible cause of why she was sexually turned off by her husband. This was years before the relationship between childhood incest and future psychological problems was studied in depth. The patrons visiting the brothel have their own sexual hangups of diverse kinds. Because of her love for her husband she is in her own way trying to overcome her problem by finding ways to assuage her guilt by abasing and humiliating herself, constantly asking for forgiveness and bringing on herself real or imagined punishment. Again, the fact that the child victim of incest considers herself to be "guilty" or dirty although she is innocent was not known until recent years, and yet a flash lasting but a few seconds shows a little girl at a eucharist ceremony in church refusing to accept the wafer offered by the priest, as if she was not worthy of it. There are many dream sequences and often it is difficult to know if a particular event was real or a dream, as if for Bunuel they were the same, because one's mind is solving problems both in dreams and in real life experiences. |
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Marc |
Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 1:35 am |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
Posts: 8424
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I was a rock critic for a Colorado paper in the mid-70s. I was assigned to interview Waits prior to a performance in Denver. Tom arranged to have me
interview him in the bar of a Denver flophouse hotel. We met at noon. He had a drink in front of him. He wore a tattered sharkskin suit. He thought he was gonna get over on some naive Colorado music critic geek. I started the interview off with the usual jiveass bullshit but then I hit him with a suckerpunch by comparing him to Bukowski. Keep in mind this was way before Bukowski had become a huge celebrity in the mainstream. Up to that moment, Waits had been doing his nicotine and booze tainted growl. When he realized I was a fellow Bukowski freak, he dropped his schtick and got real. His voice changed. He stopped playing the bum and became who he really was...a suburban white cat with really cool taste in literature. |
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tirebiter |
Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 1:50 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4011
Location: not far away
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Yeah, he's genuinely talented, but after the first two albums he affected the throaty growl and the air of dissipation and was more about image than content-- well, that's not fair. The music lost some of its impact because it was packaged with the boho hobo hardware. I saw him in '77 and loved it, but he'd already turned to the Dean Martin-esque "golly-I-sure-am-stoned" persona. This reminds me of Hunter S Thompson's decline: the fake "Hunter S Thompson" ate the real HST. |
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billyweeds |
Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 5:36 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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mo_flixx wrote: Back to the Tarantino thread...
I forgot to mention John Dahl as another of the young generation of directors who seem to possess genuine talent. Too bad his last movie (JOY RIDE) wasn't so hot.
I liked Joy Ride much better than Red Rock West, though not as much as The Last Seduction. In any case, JR is worth it for Steve Zahn. |
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burritoboy |
Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 10:26 am |
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Joined: 14 Apr 2005
Posts: 17
Location: Chicago
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On first viewing, I had the same general reactions. Now, I'm not so sure. I sense that the vignettes do form some vague sort of overall narrative, though I'm not so certain what it is. The end vignette with Taylor Mead and Bill Rice, I think, is trying to tell us something important - two aging heros of the Beat era (particularly Taylor Mead), the nostalgic sense of that vignette yet the willingness of the two characters to move foreward nevertheless. The other vignettes tend to revolve around various forms of mild social conflict, usually increasing in seriousness of conflict, while the last two seem to move towards more understanding or acceptance.
On that last note, if you notice, in most of the vignettes the characters will disagree as to their choice of coffee (in many of the vignettes, one of the characters will openly deride the others' choice of coffee+sweeteners+extras). In the last two, Bill Murray gets talked out of a literally horrific coffee addiction into agreeing to try tea and the last one, where they start by drinking coffee and agree to discuss drinking champagne. IE, there is hope of breaking beyond the routinized social conflicts into agreement and trying new things. |
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lshap |
Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 12:45 pm |
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Site Admin
Joined: 12 May 2004
Posts: 4248
Location: Montreal
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Burritoboy,
Not all the scenes ended with some conflict resolution. In fact, at least half the meetings created more conflict. Waits/Iggy Pop, Cate Blanchett, Molina/Coogan, the "Something Wrong" scene with the two old friends -- all those, plus more, ended on a worse note than they began.
Your point about the mismatched coffee preferences makes sense, but I think your attempt at finding some overarching theme to the film is more creative imagining on your part than conscious intent on the director's part.
And yeah, I agree with Billy that the Waits/Pop thing was hopelessly indulgent, on a scale with someone's home movies. |
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burritoboy |
Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 1:32 pm |
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Joined: 14 Apr 2005
Posts: 17
Location: Chicago
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[quote="lshap"]Burritoboy,
Not all the scenes ended with some conflict resolution. In fact, at least half the meetings created more conflict. Waits/Iggy Pop, Cate Blanchett, Molina/Coogan, the "Something Wrong" scene with the two old friends -- all those, plus more, ended on a worse note than they began.
Your point about the mismatched coffee preferences makes sense, but I think your attempt at finding some overarching theme to the film is more creative imagining on your part than conscious intent on the director's part.
And yeah, I agree with Billy that the Waits/Pop thing was hopelessly indulgent, on a scale with someone's home movies.[/quote]
You're misinterpreting me. Most of the segments do end with more conflict than they open with. The last two vignettes, however, do not. I would also say that the sequences generally increase in seriousness of conflict from sequence to sequence until the last two vignettes end in some reconciliation. The first few sequences (Benigni/Wright, Lee/Lee/Buscemi, Pop/Waits) are fairly frivolous conflicts mostly between casual acquaintances (not always though). The next ones ("Those things'll Kill Ya", "Renee", "No Problem", "Cousins", and "Cousins?") are generally much more serious conflicts between very long-standing friendships or between family members. "Jack Shows Meg His Tesla Coil" is a comedic break between the two most adverserial vignettes. Then we enter the two reconciliation vignettes. I'm not saying I entirely believe this explanation, but I do think that Jarmusch deserves more effort to understand what he's up to. |
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marantzo |
Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 3:43 pm |
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I found the film entirely enjoyable. These are almost existential encounters with conversations ranging from hilariously mundane (see I can use an oxymoronic phrase with the best of 'em) to painfully uncomfortable. Starting right from the first where the underplaying comedian, Wright get's the rather manic comic, Benigni (spelling can't be wright) to go to the dentist for him.
Why over-analyse (that can't be right either) the film when it is pretty well a fly by the seat of your pants vehicle that was shot over many years. |
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Marilyn |
Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 4:48 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 8210
Location: Skokie (not a bad movie, btw)
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I agree with you, Marantz, about Coffee and Cigarettes. The first sequence is such a send-up of intellectual pretension of the filmic variety that I was doubled over (and I don't like Benigni). I found most of the vignettes self-consciously about film, which made them very endearing as homage. |
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chillywilly |
Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 6:06 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 8251
Location: Salt Lake City
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billyweeds wrote: I liked Joy Ride much better than Red Rock West, though not as much as The Last Seduction. In any case, JR is worth it for Steve Zahn.
Thanks for that reminder, billy. I forgot Zahn was in JR. Leile Sobieski (sp?) was also in that, but was less memerable. She was tons better in My First Mister, with Albert Brooks (who was wonderful in that movie, too)
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_________________ Chilly
"If you should die before me / Ask if you could bring a friend" |
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lshap |
Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 6:28 pm |
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Site Admin
Joined: 12 May 2004
Posts: 4248
Location: Montreal
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I don't really have an argument with either Marilyn, Marantz, or Burritoboy's positions. I can understand the film catching someone in the right mood and being alot more enjoyable than I found it. "Quirky" is an adjective often used to mask what would otherwise be considered flaws, but sometimes quirky can work on those terms alone, and this film was built upon a mountainous heap of raw, obtuse quirk. The other thing is I'm always impressed when someone discovers layers in a film that I missed, whether or not they really existed, as Burritoboy did. It makes me feel shallow and unobservant, a humbling thought I enjoy rolling around my head like a coughdrop on your tongue, until the feeling quickly melts away.
But aside from those equivocations, I think C&C left me more frustrated than turned off. There was a nifty premise and some potentially dynamic pair-ups, but it felt as if Jarmusch wasn't able, or willing, to put the work into polishing them up. I kept looking, looking, looking for some point to the exercise, some reason for this director to have mobilized enormous amounts of time, labour and cash to put this project out there. I still can't find any, nor can I find any real inspiration or even a serious attempt at...something. That's what's frustrating, more than any strong negative feeling about the film itself -- that with so many filmmakers and ideas vying for the same finite eyeballs, that a filmmaker can grab a few celebs, put 'em on camera and indulge himself with so little apparent effort. |
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burritoboy |
Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 8:54 pm |
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Joined: 14 Apr 2005
Posts: 17
Location: Chicago
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[quote="lshap"]I don't really have an argument with either [b]Marilyn, Marantz,[/b] or [b]Burritoboy's[/b] positions. I can understand the film catching someone in the right mood and being alot more enjoyable than I found it. "Quirky" is an adjective often used to mask what would otherwise be considered flaws, but sometimes quirky can work on those terms alone, and this film was built upon a mountainous heap of raw, obtuse quirk. The other thing is I'm always impressed when someone discovers layers in a film that I missed, whether or not they really existed, as Burritoboy did. It makes me feel shallow and unobservant, a humbling thought I enjoy rolling around my head like a coughdrop on your tongue, until the feeling quickly melts away.
But aside from those equivocations, I think C&C left me more frustrated than turned off. There was a nifty premise and some potentially dynamic pair-ups, but it felt as if Jarmusch wasn't able, or willing, to put the work into polishing them up. I kept looking, looking, looking for some point to the exercise, some reason for this director to have mobilized enormous amounts of time, labour and cash to put this project out there. I still can't find any, nor can I find any real inspiration or even a serious attempt at...something. That's what's frustrating, more than any strong negative feeling about the film itself -- that with so many filmmakers and ideas vying for the same finite eyeballs, that a filmmaker can grab a few celebs, put 'em on camera and indulge himself with so little apparent effort.[/quote]
Well, I actually think Jarmusch here is partially intentionally trying to deflate the whole concept of "ideas". Real life isn't about ideas (or very little is about ideas as ideas solely unless you're a world-class philosopher) - and sometimes it's about going for a cup of coffee. And sometimes going for a cup of coffee doesn't lead to anything hugely important at all (maybe the only thing you get out of it is "The velvet portrait of Lee Marvin is really awesomely cool!"). |
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Marilyn |
Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2005 9:33 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 8210
Location: Skokie (not a bad movie, btw)
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We tried to watch Auto Focus the other day. It should have been renamed Auto Pilot. What a flat, uninteresting look at a fascinating time in history and a man caught up in that time and its mores. |
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Marilyn |
Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2005 9:39 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 8210
Location: Skokie (not a bad movie, btw)
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I also tried to watch Lost in the Stars, a rather unusual musical set in South Africa with music and lyrics by Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson. It was based on Alan Paton's book Cry, the Beloved Country. The music was wonderful, but I just couldn't get into the film. Perhaps it was not the film's fault. I've been suffering greatly from allergies and haven't been able to concentrate on much of anything. |
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