kal
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Post by kal on Mar 2, 2024 11:10:10 GMT
Thought it might be fun to have a separate thread to the main one which is great but by nature very broad, and indulge in some unadulterated pretentious film wankery for those inclined.
So to kick things off, I’ve shamefully only recently discovered Bob Fosse is the absolute shit. Caberet and All that Jazz have almost immediately become two of my all timers. Basically musicals for people that don’t like musicals but do like really gritty 1970s films like Taxi Driver and French Connection. Strong recommend if like me he’s a blind spot for you.
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MolarAm🔵
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Post by MolarAm🔵 on Mar 2, 2024 11:14:29 GMT
I'm going through Ingmar Bergman things that I have not yet seen. Currently up to The Seventh Seal, which... huh, this is actually pretty great. Why had I not watched this before.
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Post by brokenkey on Mar 2, 2024 11:18:08 GMT
Did you know Singing in the Rain uses there term "Triple Threat"?
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kal
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Post by kal on Mar 2, 2024 11:42:27 GMT
Also I watched Priscilla.
It’s REALLY stayed with me. I enjoyed it at the time but a few days later and I think it’s a fantastic piece of filmmaking. It’s not really the film I was expecting. It’s so subtle and patient. It could have been so melodramatic but it completely swerves it, and just has the lightest touch applied to such heavy subject matter.
The casting is brilliant physically (especially the size difference) but also they both put in brilliant performances. She’s particularly brilliant.
But Coppola is the star. Incredibly beautiful movie and so powerful without ever being forceful, which is really unusual.
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MolarAm🔵
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Post by MolarAm🔵 on Mar 2, 2024 11:56:08 GMT
Also I watched Priscilla. It’s REALLY stayed with me. I enjoyed it at the time but a few days later and I think it’s a fantastic piece of filmmaking. It’s not really the film I was expecting. It’s so subtle and patient. It could have been so melodramatic but it completely swerves it, and just has the lightest touch applied to such heavy subject matter. The casting is brilliant physically (especially the size difference) but also they both put in brilliant performances. She’s particularly brilliant. But Coppola is the star. Incredibly beautiful movie and so powerful without ever being forceful, which is really unusual. Is there much Elvis on the soundtrack? I assume not, because it doesn't really feel like Coppola's thing, but I'm slightly wary. |
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Post by Reviewer on Mar 2, 2024 11:56:29 GMT
Citizen Kane is genuinely one of my favourite films.
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geefe
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Post by geefe on Mar 2, 2024 11:57:25 GMT
Musically I like some of Elvis but...yeah dude seems unpleasant. Something his fans need to wrestle with.
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kal
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Post by kal on Mar 2, 2024 12:14:04 GMT
There’s basically no Elvis music, but the soundtrack is amazing (although really it’s almost cheating to make a film set in the 60s).
It’s not a positive portrayal of Elvis, but it’s also not negative in the way I was expecting. Again, this is a very subtle film. It would have been very easy to portray the highs and lows in melodramatic fashion. Films like this usually go there to create drama, What’s Love got to do with it, Walk the Line etc. This isn’t that kind of film.
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Post by Wizzard_Ook on Mar 2, 2024 12:22:05 GMT
I really need to get back into the habit of watching films. Used to have a really vast blu ray collection of all things world cinema but over the last 10’years or so I kinda just fell out of it. Too many distractions and I kinda baulk at the running times of some films these days.
Listened to Paul Thomas Anderson on the Adam Buxton podcast last week and might give his films another watch and catch up on a couple I’ve missed over the years.
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Post by Reviewer on Mar 3, 2024 15:38:08 GMT
I’ve found the best way is just pick something off a streaming service that you know is decent. Don’t worry too much about browsing for hours for the perfect film as you’ll just end up with a big watch list that you never watch.
Also accept that you might end up watching it over a couple of sessions, but you might end up doing it all in one.
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Post by harrypalmer on Mar 3, 2024 19:06:53 GMT
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Post by Dougs on Mar 3, 2024 19:51:59 GMT
What an excellent idea.
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kal
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Post by kal on Mar 3, 2024 20:08:19 GMT
I’ve mentioned it before but the lists are my favourite feature of Letterboxd. I’ve discovered some really great films through them.
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Bongo Heracles
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Post by Bongo Heracles on Mar 3, 2024 20:10:29 GMT
That’s a good shout. I watched it religiously from when I was old enough to sneakily get away with it but missed the first four series. I’ve seen most of the movies anyway but there are a few holes. I think I started watching at S5 when I was 13, so that would have been the series with dead ringers and rabid. It’s also why my favourite Eastwood movie is Play Misty For Me. I think it’s the first one of his I ever sat all the way through.
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Post by Chopsen on Mar 3, 2024 20:32:58 GMT
Awesome idea.
Also, I've just found a lot of the intros to the films have been put up on youtube. *Terrible* quality, but what can you do?
This was such an awesome idea for a series, I'm sad others didn't seem to want to copy the format. Though I'd somehow totally forgot that Mark Cousins took over from Alex Cox.
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Post by Vandelay on Mar 3, 2024 20:48:03 GMT
Watched The Kid the other day. I've seen one or two Chaplin before, but can't say much has stuck with me. I did enjoy this though. I particularly liked the dream sequence towards the end, which showed off a little more inventiveness with the direction, and the window smashing sequence was fun.
Should really get around to The Great Dictator at some point.
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kal
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Post by kal on Mar 3, 2024 21:16:15 GMT
I used to watch Modern Times loads as a kid and always had a soft spot accordingly. The Great Dictator is also good and probably his closest to what we’d call a proper film.
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MolarAm🔵
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Post by MolarAm🔵 on Mar 3, 2024 23:51:33 GMT
Just watched Riding Alone For Thousands Of Miles, a Zhang Yimou thing from 2004 that I hadn't yet seen. It's about an elderly Japanese man who goes to China to fulfil a promise made by his dying son.
It's not in the top tier of Yimou films for me, but it was sad and beautiful all the same. I sometimes shy away from this kind of thing because it's often pretty melodramatic and treacley, but this was a pleasing exception.
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Post by harrypalmer on Mar 4, 2024 11:56:45 GMT
I’ve mentioned it before but the lists are my favourite feature of Letterboxd. I’ve discovered some really great films through them. Yeah I'm all over lists on Letterboxd. I also follow a few critics and filmmakers to look through their reviews and lists: - Martin Scorsese - Sean Baker - Scott Derrickson - Adam Nayman - Mike Flanagan - Roger Avary - Christopher McQuarrie - Sean Fennessey - Ayo Edebiri |
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Post by 😎 on Mar 4, 2024 16:24:14 GMT
Not necessarily the most pseudy of pseud movies/directors, but has anyone watched Napoleon, and if so is it more Gladiator Ridley Scott or Robin Hood Ridley Scott (IE, worth watching or shit)?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 4, 2024 16:28:41 GMT
Mixture of the 2 so somewhere in the middle. It's OK. Could really do with being fleshed out more as it felt a bit greatest hits cobbled together.
Think it might be worth waiting for the directors cut as it felt rushed even at 2hr30.
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kal
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Post by kal on Mar 9, 2024 14:24:52 GMT
The Zone of Interest
Jonathan Glazer is an incredibly good filmmaker. Making a film about an atrocity that highlights how horrific the event was by avoiding it and instead showing the indifference to it isn’t a new trick, but I don’t think it’s ever been done quite so artfully and beautifully. Like Under the Skin and Birth this borders at times on being an actual art film, but who cares when it looks this pretty. Extremely powerful stuff.
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Post by Vandelay on Mar 9, 2024 15:06:49 GMT
Watched Nightwatching last night. It is a Peter Greenaway film about Rembrandt and mostly focuses on the painting of the Nightwatch. The film suggests there were hidden messages contained within the piece that pointed to a murder committed by the militia being depicted, as well as illegitimate children and the prostitution of underage orphans. The film also depicts Rembrandt's relationships with three different women.
It's quite oddly presented, with most scenes taking place on a stage with very theatrical looking sets. Often the camera is positioned from the viewpoint of a member of an audience in a theatre too, although there are lots of closeups of characters as well to contrast that.
At times it was quite a neat device, but I also came away thinking it likely would have been better as a stage production. I also came away finding parts of it quite difficult to follow and I probably need to rewatch it to get the full details of what happened. Not sure I would want to do that too soon though.
On the positive side though, as the credits rolled I was glancing at Rembrandt's Wikipedia page and has left me interested in finding out more about him. I suspect the central premise is about as accurate as the Da Vinci Code, but if a film based partly on fact can leave you interested in finding out more then it must be doing something right.
There is also a companion documentary that Greenaway did, called Rembrandt's J'Acccuse...! which sounds like it might be a better than the dramatisation, so might see if I can check that out.
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wunty
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Post by wunty on Mar 9, 2024 15:35:33 GMT
The Zone of Interest Jonathan Glazer is an incredibly good filmmaker. Making a film about an atrocity that highlights how horrific the event was by avoiding it and instead showing the indifference to it isn’t a new trick, but I don’t think it’s ever been done quite so artfully and beautifully. Like Under the Skin and Birth this borders at times on being an actual art film, but who cares when it looks this pretty. Extremely powerful stuff. That's enough to make me watch it. It's been on my radar since I first heard about it and I'm a big fan of Under the Skin. Will check it out. |
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Bongo Heracles
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Post by Bongo Heracles on Mar 9, 2024 21:13:58 GMT
I saw a brief, pre-Oscar interview with the guy who did the sound design and couldn’t help wondering how you’d do that without severe psychic damage.
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Post by barchetta on Mar 9, 2024 22:44:11 GMT
Saw Zone of Interest last month and it has stuck with me in a way no other film has for many years.
Above all else for me, the sound design was incredibly disturbing with the mechanations of industrialized murder a near constant presence.
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Post by harrypalmer on Mar 12, 2024 13:49:28 GMT
Messiah of EvilRadiance Films is absolutely killing it with their library of lovingly curated films hardly anyone has ever heard of! This one in particular intrigued me when I looked it up. It's an early 70s surreal horror with noiry giallo elements. A women travels to a remote Californian seaside town looking for her father after receiving some mad letters. It's a bit Argento, a bit Romero a bit Lovecraft. It doesnt make much sense but has a crazy visual flair and and hazy, dreamlike atmosphere. It's funny too. There are creepy/funny sequences that match anything by Romero. From the directors of Howard the Duck. www.radiancefilms.co.uk/products/messiah-of-evil-se
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Post by suicida on Mar 12, 2024 14:05:39 GMT
Found a couple of boxes of my old DVDs (the ones I kept when I gave the bulk of my collection to a charity shop before a house move) loads of films on the "Tartan Asia Extreme" and "Hong Kong Legends" labels from 20 years ago, decided to try picking up a few more cheap off ebay. Recently I've watched The Ring trilogy (the first one is still pretty great) and this has led me to falling down a rabbit hole and picking up some Blu-rays of classic Japanese and Chinese cinema
Recently watched a load of Akira Kurosawa films; Rashômon, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, The Hidden Fortress, Yojimbo, Sanjuro, and finally RAN. All lovingly restored for their Blu-ray release and utterly amazing. I'd seen a few before but watching them over several days really made me appreciate just how good a film maker he was. Mifune was such a great actor, too
Anyway, now I'm into watching seventies Japanese exploitation movies, done the whole Lone Wolf and Cub series, then Lady Snowblood, and just picked up the Female Prisoner #701 DVD box set off ebay for dirt cheap
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Post by harrypalmer on Mar 12, 2024 14:15:04 GMT
I grab those Tartan dvds anytime I see them in a charity shop! Hard to get.
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Zyrr
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Post by Zyrr on Mar 12, 2024 17:28:54 GMT
Still got a bunch of Tartan VHS tapes in the garage. In the Soup and The Cement Garden off the top of my head plus a few more, along with a decent number of DVDs.
I think I still have most of the VHS Connoisseur Kurosawa releases as well, although I've updated many of those to Blu-ray as I absolutely adore Kurosawa.
I only used to ever really buy 'films' - from the likes of Mike Leigh to Kieślowski to Fellini, etc. - but these days I'm much less fussy and buy any old shit.
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