WEEK 8

8. TROUBLE IN PARADISE, dir. ERNST LUBITSCH, 1932
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the new year is rapidly approaching. i'm thinking a great deal in advance, making plans, etc. it's a good feeling!

my criteria for this week's film was simple: i have yet to see a lubitsch film, and so i picked the "best," or at least what is meant to be the director's personal favorite. precode, fun--the lubitsch touch for 2009.

WEEK 7

7. CAT PEOPLE, dir. JACQUES TOURNEUR, 1943

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be a good wife and
be happy

in the end,
we spend our lives alone


lines i remember from our last film.
i have seen so many films that tell such different stories, and yet sometimes i think, for the good ones, the foundation is always the same. it can be a family, a marriage, a crime -- when they end, to me they are always somehow about time, existence, mortality, and survival.
is it just me?
when i left the theatre after watching inland empire, all i could think was time. when i finished watching our last film, all i could think was time.
in the end, we spend our lives alone.

and we watch people slipping across the screen to forget this, to ignore hours and minutes, to forget the clock that needs winding.
or, maybe, we watch to remember.
often it seems it is in small moments that we gather the most information about a film. it's in could-slip-by-you-unnoticed scenes that the film whispers to us what it most wants us to know. for me this came in an autumn afternoon when the clock on the wall has stopped and must be wound. we are told here that time is always upon us, and we are simultaneously empowered by it and powerless in face of it. i really loved this moment in the film.
my house is freezing and as i'm sitting and typing and thinking about time and death i want to crawl under my quilt and watch something full of the fantastic and fright. i have seen the re-make of cat people, but never the original. i think it's going to be another gem.

WEEK 6

6. AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON, dir. YAZUJIRO OZU, 1962
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where does one start to talk about 3 women? it's a wonderous, singular movie, and to borrow sasha's words, there's just so much there. we watched it twice yesterday, with and without robert altman's commentary, and i'm still at a loss to adequately describe all its working parts--its lost souls, its color, its landscapes, its performances. it was born from a dream and feels like a dream to watch. it begs to be seen again and again.

it is cold and rainy here. i must be reacting to the weather, as i nearly picked jazz on a summer's day this week, but having been advised that it was perhaps too out of season a choice, i decided on an autumn afternoon. slow, melancholy, visually stunning. i've been meaning to see this for awhile.

WEEK 5

5. 3 WOMEN, dir. ROBERT ALTMAN, 1977

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about midway through watching our last film, i knew i wanted the next film to be 3 women. i have seen it already, but not for awhile, and, it is the sort of movie that having seen it once or twice means very little, it is brimming over, one is lucky to digest a very watery (yet, nonetheless thrillingly captivating) abstraction after the first or second viewing. i think watching the american friend made me think of 3 women not because there is plot-line similarity, but because there is a similar indefinable quality to the nature of the human relationships set before the viewer, one that simultaneously confounds us and mesmerizes us, and makes us want to understand, and to know more.

WEEK 4

4. THE AMERICAN FRIEND, dir. WIM WENDERS, 1977

WEEK 3

3. IMITATION OF LIFE, dir. DOUGLAS SIRK, 1959

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watching our last film got me thinking about melodrama, perhaps terrain i wanted the lost weekend to fully enter.
the dictionary definition here feels shockingly biased --
melodrama: a dramatic form that does not observe the laws of cause and effect, and that exaggerates emotion and emphasizes plot or action at the expense of characterization.
can perhaps also be thought of as the linking of music and drama, to enter a new realm?
melodrama as a concept makes me think of the artist charlotte salomon, born in berlin in 1917, and creating 769 paintings before her death in auschwitz in 1943. the bones behind her work were inspired by the teachings of a man she called 'daberlorn', and his ideas regarding the elevation of life to a form of theatre, 'a form of existence in art that has more meaning than mere life.'

here, douglas sirk's most successful and last commercial film. i've never seen it, have you?

WEEK 2

2. THE LOST WEEKEND, dir. BILLY WILDER, 1945
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wilder said that it was only after THE LOST WEEKEND that people started to take him seriously. and thank god that they did. a harrowing, alcoholic classic. let's watch.

WEEK 1

i have been meaning to see this for awhile. watch it with me. already seen it? see it again.

1. LORD LOVE A DUCK, dir. GEORGE AXELROD, 1966
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the aim of this blog will be to, week by week, implement a structure for film-viewing. this will, in turn, help to open thought that will then be applied to other areas. what we watch will inform what we want to read, what we want to make, what we think, etc. it will become self-sustaining, and life-sustaining (esp. in cold and colder winter months). JOIN IN. we will post the new film to be seen the first monday of every week. you will have a week until the next film is posted, hopefully this allows time to track down the film and watch. post to say that you saw it +/or reactions to the film in the comments section, as well as suggestions for future films and further reading, etc.