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lady wakasa
Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2005 11:18 am Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 5911 Location: Beyond the Blue Horizon
censored-03 wrote:
the Dziga Vertov Group


I hope you're planning to talk about this...
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Befade
Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2005 12:28 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 3784 Location: AZ
ehle and Marj.............I hate to bring this up.......but on more reflection about Melinda & M..........I had to wonder, "Was Woody influenced by Mulholland Drive? Was he trying to create a Naomi Watts type character who has quite different personas? After all, Radha does resemble Naomi."
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Earl
Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2005 12:37 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 09 Jun 2004 Posts: 2621 Location: Houston
Befade wrote:
ehle and Marj.............I hate to bring this up.......but on more reflection about Melinda & M..........I had to wonder, "Was Woody influenced by Mulholland Drive? Was he trying to create a Naomi Watts type character who has quite different personas? After all, Radha does resemble Naomi."


Pure conjecture on my part: Woody has probably been contemplating the premise of Melinda & Melinda since at least Crimes & Misdemeanors. Remember Alan Alda as the egotistical TV exec who explains to his minions the difference between tragedy and comedy? "Comedy is tragedy plus time," he says. He further opines that people couldn't joke about Lincoln being assasinated right after it had happened, whereas now "But other than that, Mrs Lincoln, how was the play?" gets a laugh.

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Befade
Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2005 1:58 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 3784 Location: AZ
Earl............I would bet both things were in Woody's mind.....just the comedy/tragedy idea had been around longer. Let's ask him.
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Marj
Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2005 8:35 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 10497 Location: Manhattan
Earl - If that's conjecture I'd say it's really good. I'd also venture to guess that this is an idea filmmakers have been trying to do something with since the beginning of time.

Of course combining tragedy and comedy is as old as the silents. Maybe it's just better to stick with that rather than this half baked attempt by Woody Allen. Or if not, at least make it full baked!
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Joe Vitus
Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2005 2:48 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston
"If it bends it's funny; if it breaks, it's not."

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censored-03
Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2005 3:59 am Reply with quote
Joined: 24 May 2004 Posts: 3058 Location: Gotham, Big Apple, The Naked City
lady wakasa wrote:
censored-03 wrote:
the Dziga Vertov Group


I hope you're planning to talk about this...

Lady W and others who may be interested, the Dziga Vertov Group was initially supposed to be a larger "group" than it actually turned out to be. In the beginning director Jean Luc-Godard was impressed by the writings of a young editor for Le Monde (a radical French newspaper, particularly during the ‘60’s) named Jean-Pierre Gorin. Gorin as well as a writer was a student of film. Influenced by the younger generation Godard wanted to start making a new type of film that was more politically informed and linear, less “professional” in appearance and form. Along with a few other things, a radical leftist leaning film-making style was what he and Gorin combined their talents to invent. Together they loosely formed what would come to be called the Dziga Vertov Group, named after the often forgotten but very influential early Russian film-maker (Man With A camera) who’s own works often could be described as radically inclined. Their plans were to incorporate a few of the various more radical if not communist film people of the “New Left” in France. Godard said that they must “start anew”. He and Gorin often talked about the overemphasis of image over sound in the films of the day and they hoped to change this, among other things. The early works of the “group” were mostly films by Godard (Pravda, British Sounds) with Gorin and a few others getting little credit. The team collaboration idea really didn’t work; next Gorin and Godard found themselves writing and creating together without much outside influence from the various 60’s types that they felt were really holding them back, including a clouding of mind by drug use and other bourgeois “liberal” influences. Together, now in earnest, they came out with a number of films from 1969 through 1975, the better known being Vent d'est; Lotte in Italia; Tout va bien; and Letter to Jane. Since I haven’t seen all of their films from this period, but still quite a few, I would say for me the quasi-western Vent d’est is one of the better examples of this period in their Dziga Vertov Group collaborations. As the younger Gorin was trying to influence Godard into abandoning the auteur film-making that he had become famous for and instead replace it with a much more reductive and less derivative quality, one that at the same time would be more spatially informal. The two film-makers eventually went their separate ways, especially as the more pungent political radicalism of the 60’s turned into the now famous mellowed-out “me generation” of the 70’s. Some critics have mentioned in hindsight that the films that came out of this period by the Dziga Vertov Group have the feel of political naivete along with an aggressively arrogant attitude. I like to think the enjoyable and ( for those days) timely subversion and minimalism of these films alone has had an overall positive influence on many film-makers that have come since. A film like Letter to Jane, wherein Gorin and Godard spend most of the film discussing a photo of Jane Fonda with the Viet Kong, is to me a mesmerizing and influential film, one that will later be echoed by any number of more tolerated documentaries. I say tolerated because even in the anything goes days of the late 60’s and early 70’s the films of Godard/Gorin were still considered anything but conventional or at times even acceptable. Many of these films had a beauty of simplicity combined with what some would call an immature and over-serious hope for change through cinema. These films may not hold up well now on their lean political merits alone, but I think they do on the whole in there sheer ballsy energy and dismissal of the status-quo of film-making. Whatever that status-quo may be at any given time, films like these from the Dziga Vertov Group should be a freeing influence for any new film-maker who might be in the mood, if for nothing else, to change an art form for the hell of it, also just for the excitement of la difference.

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gromit
Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2005 5:13 am Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9005 Location: Shanghai
Well, viva la differance, but Letter To Jane gets pretty repetitive and boring. It's what you'd get if a French a political science professor decided to make a film of him and his buddy deconstructing a news photo of Jane Fonda. Very much a French film of that time. Indulgent and uninsightful.

Tout Va Bien at least starts somewhat promisingly with a media couple held hostage during a factory strike. A political farce ensues. But it ends up going nowhere and remains surprisingly shallow.

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Shane
Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2005 10:32 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 1168 Location: Chicago
Gromit, Yes I was asking if you thought it might be something you could pickup on, sorry.

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater gave me the name for what I've seen many times in people burned out from the Eighties, Samarataphobia!

I overwhelmingly agree with the merits of FTTTT and I've searched high and low for it, my fav scene is his walking away from the tombstone whistling, Pack up your troubles....which was also the end scene of Harold and Maud.

Thing is about the comidic edge is sometimes people push the time of mourning a bit a good example is a recently telvision proposed sitcom was called The Cell about a couple of inept terrorist sleepers living in Chicago. It was said to be in the vain of Hogans Heroes!

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Marilyn
Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2005 10:35 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 8210 Location: Skokie (not a bad movie, btw)
What's FTTTT?

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Shane
Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2005 10:41 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 1168 Location: Chicago
That should be Between Time and Timbuktu I've always remembered it incorrectly as From Time to Timbuktu. My bad.

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Shane
Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2005 10:50 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 1168 Location: Chicago
By the by I just found this in searching for more info.


Between Time and Timbuktu

or Prometheus-5

TPB David O'Dell,

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.& Jill Krementz

A "space fantasy" for television, created by David O'Dell

from works by Vonnegut,

and then given to Vonnegut to "fart around with" (his words).

An experimental television production of the Net Playhouse Special (WGBH)

which features Kurt Vonnegut's special blend of scientific expertise, wit and penetrating comment.

With photographs by Jill Krementz (wife of Kurt Vonnegut) as well as stills from the TV production.

Vonnegut does not count this as one of his own publications,

but he did write a preface for the book.

One of Vonnegut's most elusive titles, both because of its fragile "perfect-bound" construction and a first printing that one would suspect was smaller than those of his novels. This is a later trade paperback.

A very nice copy of this uncommon Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. title. Includes a cast list (Bob & Ray, Kevin McCarthy, Dolph Sweet and Page Johnson as "Hitler").

And it's a "flip book" too!

Delta / Dell trade paperback 1972 Fourth printing Good- cover is grubby with a stain at the bottom of the spine, spine is tanned., 1 cm tear edge of front cover

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Shane
Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2005 10:58 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 1168 Location: Chicago
A final word on movies made from Kurt Vonnegut's books, I found Slaughterhouse Five an amazing and sucessful attempt at a story I would have thought possible at the time, pre CGI. Also I gained a lot of respect for Nick Noltte when he brandished his skills so well in Mother Night. Both I consider top book to film adaptations.

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Shane
Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2005 10:59 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 1168 Location: Chicago
That should have been impossible. maybe it is.

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Ghulam
Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2005 11:49 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 4742 Location: Upstate NY
On second viewing, Pedro Almodovar's film noir Bad Education holds up quite well. The interplay of sin, guilt and revenge are quite powerful. While Bernal is remarkable in this movie, I became more aware of the extraordinary performance of Daniel Cacho as Father Manolo.
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