WEEK 58

58. LATE MARRIAGE, dir. DOVER KOSHASHVILI, 2001

i'm still waiting for last weeks pick from netflix, will post more once i've gotten + seen it!

WEEK 57

57. OBJECTIFIED, dir. GARY HUSTWIT, 2009

FILM ORGY FAILURE: I got about 20 minutes into WHITE DOG before I had to turn it off. Not even my high regard for Samuel Fuller could redeem it. Was I hasty? I'd love a second opinion.

And Merry Christmas, by the way!

WEEK 56

56. WHITE DOG, dir. SAMUEL FULLER, 1982

these films fill you with thought.
i've started where i should end.
begin again.
i've caught up (almost), have fi-na-lly watched
the spirit of the beehive
and
the seventh continent
(yes, i was that behind).
if it is a choice between dinner + the spirit of the beehive,
take a break from technically edible food
a n d w a t c h,
this film nourishes you so much
you'll forget you forgot to eat.
it is one to own,
i could watch it a billion times more.
i've yet to see a haneke film i dislike,
something about the way he tells
the stories he tells
fills something in me
that wants stories to be told to me in that way.
quiet and loud,
things are told and other things are held back,
the right things given and the right things kept hush.
something about this one was not as precise feeling as other films of his
that i have seen
but there were so many moments
and ideas --
still it holds so much and unfolds more and more
once the screen is shut off.
these are quite different films
but for me they are the same here,
perhaps this is an effect of having seen them pretty much back to back:
they both,
like probably any film one could claim to like or to love,
tell us something
about who we are.
(i am having deja vu, i think i have been here before, sat at this keyboard before, said this before).
yes:
they tell us somehting about who we are.
well, they half tell it.
it is not spoken loud,
it is whispered,
or not really even that:
it is spoken to us in a language we don't quite know
but we can decipher a few words
and the words we can extract
are thrilling words, new worlds in words.
they are intriguing words or fragments and we want to get the rest,
so we pay close close rapt attention
hoping to get it in full
even if we never can
because some things can never fully be translated or understood,
like life and things that happen,
and this is something that is uncomfortable but also something we want to feel.
or i do, i should say.
they are both concrete and vague
the way things really are
the way things happen and aren't understood when they happen
and maybe never are.
sometimes movies try to explain so much
when all you remembered at the time
was the color of the curtains
and that you had a nose bleed.
end at the end:
these are films that fill you with thoughts.
they are too, too, too good for this little blurb.

(looking forward to white dog, still need to re-watch withnail + i)
p.s. yo! have we been doing film orgy for over a year?!

WEEK 55

56. WITHNAIL AND I, dir. BRUCE ROBINSON, 1987

WEEK 54

THANKSGIVING BREAK/ CATCH-UP TIME!
BE BACK IN 2 WEEKS!
____________
realism:
The pilgrims (who did not even call themselves pilgrims) did not come here seeking religious freedom; they already had that in Holland. They came here as part of a commercial venture. One of the very first things they did when they arrived on Cape Cod -- before they even made it to Plymouth -- was to rob Wampanoag graves at Corn Hill and steal as much of the Indians' winter provisions as they were able to carry. (Suppressed 1970 Speech of Wamsutta (Frank B.) James, Wampanoag.)

WEEK 53

53. THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE, dir. VICTOR ERICE, 1973

i have wanted to see this for so long.
everyone i know who has seen it goes on and on saying how mesmerizing it is.
i'm very very excited about this one.
although i am suddenly a bit behind in film orgy pics, nothing better than a film you desperately want to see to get you back in watching mode. yesssss.

WEEK 52

52. THE FILMS OF HILARY HARRIS, dir. HILARY HARRIS, 2006 (compiled)

Organism [1975]
9 Variations [1966]
Highway [1958]
Longhorn [1951]

WEEK 51

51. DAY FOR NIGHT, dir. FRANCOIS TRUFFAUT, 1973

jacques tourneur has been a film orgy revelation, first with CAT PEOPLE, and again with THE LEOPARD MAN. i thoroughly enjoyed last week's pick, from the brilliant opening shots through the clicking of castanets to the twisted (if tidy) ending. so moody and great fun.

this week: truffaut i've yet to see.

WEEK 50

50. THE LEOPARD MAN, dir. JACQUES TOURNEUR, 1943

HAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPYYYY HHHHAAAALLLLOWWWWEEEEEENNNNNNN.
the best holiday.
and in celebration, a revisiting of jacques tourneur + val lewton (of the glorious cat people of posts of yore).
viva halloween!

WEEK 49

49. THE PUBLIC ENEMY, dir. WILLIAM WELLMAN, 1931

WEEK 48

48. WHITE NIGHTS, dir. TAYLOR HACKFORD, 1985

the poster tag line is killer.
today was not a very good day.
this may seem an ill-fitting film orgy pick in comparison with weeks 1-47, which kind-of-generally-but-i-guess-not-always follow the loose trend of enabling us to slowly but surely make it down our films-i-need-to-see-before-i-die lists.
white nights might not make the cut but
i haven't seen this since i was a kid, and i loved it then.
twyla tharp did the choreography,
and though i have a feeling it will feel very dated and/or convoluted in terms of narrative, good dance never goes out of style, and, not having seen it since i was maybe 8 or 9, i'm really in the mood for this mid-80s mikhail baryshnikov - gregory hines vehicle. this baby clocks in at over two hours, so my main concern: more dance, less KGB-impregnated plot.
{haneke discussion to come}

WEEK 47

47. THE SEVENTH CONTINENT, dir. MICHAEL HANEKE, 1989

i dropped the ball last week. i've yet to get my hands on a copy of LA CAPTIVE, though i intend to bypass netflix and rent it at the local video store tonight. discussion is definitely forthcoming.

there's a profile of michael haneke in the most recent new yorker. it got me thinking about his movies. it's also october, so i figured it might be appropriate to explore HORROR in all the meanings of the word. shall we look?

WEEK 46

46. LA CAPTIVE, dir. CHANTAL AKERMAN, 2000

lola. i loved when she sang "c'est moi, c'est lola," and visually the film was great to look at... perhaps it's unfortunate that my viewing of lola coincided with the mackenzie phillips announcement of (non-consensual) consensual sex with her father john phillips (whose album was, until this point, nowhere near underplayed in our home), because watching the subtly sexual dynamics between cecile the young girl and the adult men of the film was difficult. at the same time, i loved the symbolism here: cecile petite was clearly represenative of cecile grande a.k.a. 'lola' -- the men could get close to the naive/young/carefree child but not touch her, where cecile/lola the grown woman was touchable but did not allow anyone to become close. although juliet said she abandoned an attempt at choosing films in keeping with the feeling of the fallen idol, she couldn't have known before seeing lola that it would be a pretty great in-keeping-with choice. both films were so ripe with quite overt symbolism, which can often get hokey but in both films for me worked quite well --
i realize i never wrote about the fallen idol, which i loved. like juliet i was surprised by how much i enjoyed the film, i was not expecting the perfect marrying of suspense and humor and moral bottom line. the young actor playing phil was mesmerizing, i could watch him say "baines!" all day. the film falls in line with certain older films i've seen over the years that manage to use almost over-the-top visual symbols (in this: the befriending of the snake, various shots of the main characters positioned behind or by bars of some sort -- cages at the zoo, staircases, etc.) to make a point again and again, without ever becoming overly corny -- somehow it adds greatly to the visual appeal of the film without one's eyes rolling forever back in one's head.
the coupling of lola and the fallen idol turned out to be surprisingly right on the money.
i have yet to see part 2 of the double feature: when i put the film in my dvd player on wednesday night it would not move past the f.b.i. warning screen and jammed the dvd player until jarek swooped in hours later to miraculously remove it. i have yet to attempt it again for fear of re-jam, but am going to try once more tonight before sending it back for another. hope to watch in the next few days!
looking forward to la captive. i saw a chantal akerman short film in high school that blew me away and has been eluding me on dvd ever since. it had to do with two girls losing their virginity, i thought it was "je tu il elle," but i think i am wrong on that... any ideas?
oh, and 'jeanne dielman...' (1976) was one of the best film-going experiences i've had, certainly one of my most favorite films ever.

WEEK 45

45a. LOLA, dir. JACQUES DEMY, 1961


45b. LA BAIE DES ANGES, dir. JACQUES DEMY, 1963

there's what's right and there's what's best; our lies fall all along a spectrum of harmfulness and utility. i feel like i say this a lot, but just being an ordinary, upright human being is difficult work. daily life bombards us with questions and choices for which we receive no concrete guidance and for which there are no clear answers.
LIFE! sometimes i don't know how we do it.

all this is to say i loved THE FALLEN IDOL. it blindsided me, actually, with how much i enjoyed it. sasha picked a perfect film to satisfy her fascination with morality; what's more, this film, plot-wise, is utterly gripping. i was so tense. i really loved it.

i was daunted picking this week's film. i wanted to follow a train of thought from THE FALLEN IDOL, but, finding that too difficult, decided to move in a different direction altogether. i'm trying something new this week, a DOUBLE FEATURE by jacques demy, whose work i don't know well enough. i have a soft spot for LES PARAPLUIES DE CHERBOURG; these two films preceded LES PARAPLUIES. two films might be a tall order, but let's give it a go.

WEEK 44

44. THE FALLEN IDOL, dir. CAROL REED, 1948.

i am thinking alot about morality, i am always thinking alot about morality.
i think this film will stroke the part of me that is obsessed with the constant ethical/ moral questions posed in everyday life, the small things that nonetheless keep me up at night.

i really loved julia. was amazed at the tying in of so much (motherhood -- human and country--, politics, citizenship, addiction, childhood, etc) in a way that illuminated all instead of (which easily could have been the case) becoming a jumbled and convoluted mess. the ending was perfect.

and: inglourious basterds!!!! i am hugely into quentin tarantino generally (i am constantly saying that jackie brown may be not just one of my favorite movies, but THE favorite), but regardless: yesyesyes!!! i loved it, too.

more to say, but running out the door. much written catch up in order these days. summer gets me behind, but it's getting colder and for film-viewing and just about every other activity that tops my activty-list, cold is good.

WEEK 43

43. LES BONNES FEMMES, dir. CLAUDE CHABROL, 1960

1. JULIA was a compelling movie, and it revived my interest in tilda swinton, who for me was veering dangerously close to overexposure. i'm reined in again. she is undeniable.
2. it was only after finishing the movie that i realized erick zonca also made THE DREAMLIFE OF ANGELS, a film i've always liked a lot. it's a movie that is decidedly slower, quieter than JULIA, but zonca shows in both a talent for rendering worlds that feel dark and real and riddled with difficulty. erick zonca: henceforth on my radar.
3. the common thing i've read about JULIA: that it is a direct descendant of cassavetes. this is a great compliment. i agree that it is true.
4. AN ASIDE: because this is a film blog, i'd like to mention INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, which rhan and i saw yesterday and which i thought was just great. an energetic, insanely violent revenge fairy tale that bears no resemblance to any sort of historical reality, nor is it meant to. critical opinion is divided. i loved it.

THIS WEEK: i need to see some claude chabrol.

WEEK 42

42. JULIA, dir.ERICK ZONCA, 2008

continuing for the moment in the recent-release category.
hoping juliet and rhan haven't seen this already...
just got home, hectic day, promisepromise to add on w. models & night train comments once i am fully awake and alert.

WEEK 41

41. NIGHT TRAIN, dir. JERZY KAWALEROWICZ, 1959

discussion of MODELS to come soon...

polish film noir this week. it's meant to be excellent.

WEEK 40

40. MODELS, dir. ULRICH SEIDL, 1999

i saw animal love a couple weeks ago. i really liked it, if one can say they really liked a film about people and their deeply dysfunctional relationships with their animals, and with themselves.
models may not be as traumatic a watch...
i am only partly through our last film. it has been extremely hot and we are (reasons financial and political, the lack of funding works well with environmental ethics in this particular case!) air-conditioner free. the fans aren't cutting it and i've been loathe to be inside. however, pretty into what i saw before the heat drove me out of the house and into the lake. will finish it up tomorrow and add-on, i promise!

WEEK 39

39. SHADOWS IN PARADISE, dir. AKI KAURISMAKI, 1986

IN THE LOOP: the trouble with having seen this film a week ago is that i'm forgetting the specifics. this is compounded by the fact that IN THE LOOP, even while i was watching it, had more good lines than i could possibly keep up with. solid performances, scathing insults, and a story whose basic points seemed scarily plausible. this is the kind of film that ordinarily might have slipped under my radar. i'm happy it didn't. i laughed a lot!

THIS WEEK: deadpan and beautiful. i love aki kaurismaki. i'm excited to see this.

WEEK 38

38. IN THE LOOP, dir. ARMANDO IANNUCCI, 2009

posting a current film for a change, shock-value. and, i thought it might be nice for juliet and rhan to emerge post- or in-the-midst-of sopranos viewing into a new james gandolfini vehicle. looks to have potential. let's see how it goes.

i thought i would get to re-watch atlantic city by today. i didn't. however,
i did:
1. watch animal love (dir. ulrich siedl, 1995).
2. swim in the lake 4x throughout the week.
3. eat many, many grapes.
4. make a felted "sheepskin."
5. finish the 2nd season of madmen.
6. get through the work week.
etc.etc.etc.
none of this alleviates my guilt not having (re-)watched. my primary memory of the film is of susan sarandon washing herself with lemons at a kitchen sink in front of a window. a nice image, but not enough to post about. i remember liking it, but not much else. i went on a walk tonight to think about what to post, and wondered, "is the impetus to re-watch a film directly tied to the memory of the first time one saw it? if one remembers a film well after having seen it once, if it sticks in the mind vividly, is one more likely to want to watch again?" it would seem the opposite should be true -- the lack of memory should drive a desire to re-create memory. a hole wants to be filled. yet i think the more i love a film, that is, the more i remember having loved it, the more likely i am to want to rewatch it,
again and
again and
again.
i must have liked atlantic city, but i don't remember having loved it.
i should re-watch to be sure.

WEEK 37

37. ATLANTIC CITY, dir. LOUIS MALLE, 1981

LA TRUITE is one of the stranger films I have seen in recent memory, though it was compelling throughout, in no small part due to Ms. Huppert (I second the love, Sasha). I've rerun certain elements of the film in my mind--her "PEUT-ETRE JAMAIS" shirt, the trout handling, the ending lines in particular. I am honestly at a loss. I can't decide whether it was important or forgettable, though I think I might have experienced it as both in about 30-70 proportion. Perhaps this is one to revisit (and Joseph Losey in general).

THIS WEEK: My love for Louis Malle has grown up in the past couple of years. Here's one I've never seen.

WEEK 36

36. LA TRUITE, dir. JOSEPH LOSEY, 1982

at a loss for what to post this week, i was saved by jarek (thanx).
he knows of my undying love for isabelle huppert.

[more film response to come].

WEEK 35

35. A MAN ESCAPED, dir. ROBERT BRESSON, 1956

LOLITA was even better and more darkly funny than I had remembered, and it is one of the few films I can think of that is perfectly cast. James Mason, yes, Sue Lyon, absolutely, and Peter Sellers, God yes--but today I find myself fixed on Shelley Winters most of all. I used to say that Lolita was my favorite novel--I hesitate to now, as it's been so long since I've read it--and from my experience of the book I cannot imagine anyone playing Charlotte as well as Shelley Winters did.* I feel this goes for everyone else in the movie, too; it's such a rare pleasure for an adaptation, especially of a book you love, to feel so satisfying and so right. Kubrick (and Nabokov) did that here.

This week: Robert Bresson. A filmmaker I've wanted to explore more deeply after having seen L'ARGENT some time ago.

*Certainly not Melanie Griffith. That remake just irritates me.

WEEK 34

33. LOLITA, dir. STANLEY KUBRICK, 1962


to be watched, to be under watch, under surveillance, under the imposed and self-constructed morality of others, what does this do to a person? to selfhood?
the tenant for me was layered in questions. first, the question of human-ness, of the maintenance of sanity, of the lines that separate me from you and how easily they are blurred and lost. beneath that, the sense that sanity, and nearly, the soul, is easily eroded or comporomised when one does not feel safe, when information is passed too freely in the name of some moral code, resulting in power for some and near terror for others.
it was so funny.
and so terrifying.
i found myself laughing solidly for 5 minutes, and then suddenly feeling nauseous with strange fear.
i think if i had not already known of polanski's relationship to the holocaust, of being a child of survivors and i think a survivor himself, i would have felt that this film, with deep roots in what it is to be an outsider, to feel watched, lied about, out of control, came from someone who understood the power of whispers that become petitions that become plans. it was not an accident that the first woman we see booted from the apartment had a disabled child: physically weak, she made visible the weakness that comes from being prey. or, she is prey because of her weakness.
and all of this rolled into a murder mystery, which for me was a great backdrop, but i guess not where i ultimately found focus. i'm interested in who simone choule is to the film (real or imagined), and how she fits into what the film was about to me (which maybe is or is not what it was about to juliet!), but i haven't quite gotten that far in thinking about it yet. will make an addendum to this post once i carve out some more quiet-pondering-the-tenant time. i thought about the film periodically since i saw it, and solidly this morning while walking our dog. still haven't fully gotten where i want to be in my thinking of it, but had to post a new film nonetheless.

lolita was on tv the other day and i watched about 30 seconds before turning it off. i've never seen it and have wanted to watch it fully ever since.

ADDENDUM, 9 JULY 2009: my initial reaction to THE TENANT was to place it in line with the other polanski films i have seen from around the same period--repulsion, chinatown, rosemary's baby. polanski was fascinated by the descent into madness. i am tempted to draw a clear line between the work and the real madness of his own life, but ultimately this seems too tidy a conclusion. i wonder what he has said on the subject? (juliet)

WEEK 33

33. THE TENANT, dir. ROMAN POLANSKI, 1976

______

gene hackman bangs his boot heel against the train station counter: a perfectly brilliant image to end a film peppered with brilliant images. very glad i saw this one. solid.

and now, THE TENANT, a film i've started but never finished. we here at film orgy seem to gravitate towards films of the 1970s. hope this is new to you, too.

WEEK 32

32. SCARECROW, dir. JERRY SCHATZBERG, 1973

i'm all caught up.
it was radradrad to watch black orpheus, belatedly, in such close proximity to le samourai! not to become habit (i plan on consistency in weekly viewing once again from this point forward), but a great, great color palette jump from one film to the next.
i loved the gray shades in samourai, gray gray and blue gray and then suddenly sudden blue blue, real blue, bright blue, deep blue, train blue. the film felt to me like a study in concentration, of what it is to be focused, to move distinctly. i thought i should live in that room with steel-gray walls and doors and curtains and bedspreads of shapes, mainly squares, that only focus one's attention further. i should buy a trench coat and a hat and speak little, if at all, and carry a wire full of keys that hold escape from the places that attempt to break my concentration.
i also just wanted to wear the keys as a necklace, they were beautiful.

never seen scarecrow. maybe you have. if not, i guess the time is now.

WEEK 31

31. LE SAMOURAI, dir. JEAN-PIERRE MELVILLE, 1967

i have seen two jean-pierre melville films (bob le flambeur, le doulos) and enjoyed them both a great deal; i am excited to see this one. much like sasha, i fell into a tv trap for awhile, but now i am back. oh, it's so good to be back!

WEEK 30

30. ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG, WHITE PAINTING, 1951. **NO FILM POST THIS WEEK**

i am behind in film viewing. i feel a big white space. i've been developing blisters in the garden, i've had my nose in a book reading hazy and bone slicing descriptions of the bloody hallucinations and pits of war, i've been lazily staring at the wall semi-paralyzed at all that needs doing. it's time to catch up. i realized late last night that it was my week to post and rather than put another stone on the grand pile i've been collecting of things past due, i thought it better to re-up. i am watching too much of the wire. no, there is no such thing.
XX

WEEK 29

29. BLACK ORPHEUS, dir. MARCEL CAMUS, 1959

WEEK 28

28. THE LAST METRO, dir. FRANCOIS TRUFFAUT, 1980

i saw only 4 movies while i was away.
when i got home, we excitedly resumed & finished the 4th season of the wire.
last night we scurried around town, going to multiple video stores to find the disks containing the 5th season.
while looking at new releases, the box for the last metro caught my eye.
today i baked recipe-less cookies on a whim. they turned out pretty well, at least edible.
i'm posting the last metro on a whim, as well; i don't know much about it.
despite the whimsy contained in this first-post-back, i don't think the movie itself will be whimsical. it will likely far beat this post in quality to the degree that the post might beat it at whimsy. i must still be a bit jet-lagged, despite no time zone change. brooklyn - lagged. anyway, glad to be back to film-trading w. juliet!

WEEKS 25 - 27

MON. MAY 18
THE LIMITS OF CONTROL, dir. JIM JARMUSCH, 2009
another film in which the museum site is nearly a lead character as much as the lead character; preferred summer hours. --SASHA


SUN. MAY 17
SUMMER HOURS, dir. OLIVIER ASSAYAS, 2008
loved it loved it, and so perfect to have seen directly after an afternoon spent overwhelmed at the met. --SASHA

TUES. MAY 11
THE ORDER OF MYTHS, dir. MARGARET BROWN, 2007
an excellent documentary about mardi gras in mobile, alabama, which to this day remains segregated. remarkably even-handed and surprising. i'm still thinking about it. --JULIET


WED. MAY 5
ANOTHER WOMAN, dir. WOODY ALLEN, 1988
a low-quality image from a pretty high-quality woody allen film. just saw this one tonight.
--JULIET

WEEK 24

24. OPENING NIGHT, dir. JOHN CASSAVETES, 1977

"OH YEAH, AND WHERE DO YOU LIVE?"

CALIFORNIA SPLIT exhibits some sort of sneaky genius. it tells the truth about people trying to make it, about desperate people, normal people, extraordinary people, the people you notice, the people you don't. it's moving and terribly funny. elliot gould is number one.

so much of the power of this film, like others by robert altman, is owed to sound--the way the talking overlaps and fights for the floor, suggesting a universe of equally valid, individual, human voices. you pull for bill and charlie from the first moment of the first scene, and you never stop pulling for them, even as you wish desperately for them to stop while they're ahead. and i guess, eventually, they do--or at least one of them does. the ending is such a heartbreak, though the kind you find in real life at every turn. it's a perfect ending. i love this movie.

for the interested, a glimpse into how the film was meant to end here.

for this week, a no-brainer. a cassavetes film i am excited to finally see all the way through.

FILM ORGY UPDATE: sasha will be spending the next month in new york, and as such we're going to take a break from our usual back-and-forth posting until she returns. instead, we'll be updating a month-long film log, perhaps with some brief commentary to boot, to give you some insight into what we're watching and what we think. see you soon.

WEEK 23

23. CALIFORNIA SPLIT, dir. ROBERT ALTMAN, 1974

____
i guess the thomas crown affair was not my all-time favorite
though i basically liked watching faye dunaway and steve mcqueen
the opening song drove me crazy (& the choral repeat 40 minutes in was nearly enough to make me cover my ears!), and the split screens and fade outs turning into hyper-detail and color were a little out of my thrill-zone. yeah, it felt dated.
glad enough to have seen the original, and was fairly entertained, but had quite a bit more fun watching the remake years ago. liked where they took the hats.
ahhhh. watching this made me think about writing. why good criticism is so hard to come by: it is easiest to write well about something that you hated or something that you loved, much harder to write well about something you didn't hate or love. most things are somewhere in the middle, or somewhere slightly more or less than middle, and to be able to write interestingly about the mediocre is a super-skill, one that i do not do not do not possess. watching something that doesn't fire me up in one direction or another, speaking to the things about which i felt not much, i sort of melt into not just an inability to say something new, but also a near inability to say anything at all, or to even maintain proper syntax-recall (i.e. "ahhhh.", run-ons, etc.)
watching the middle and trying to write is clearly an exercise to try out more often. so, for this rememberance if nothing else, good to have seen it.
never seen california split, but hear it's super. robert altman, for me, is a general do-no-wrong.

WEEK 22

22. THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR, dir. NORMAN JEWISON, 1968

______

the thing about warren beatty, besides his being easy to look at, is that he's totally winning. there's something very c'mon, guys! about him. also, he is a disconcertingly natural actor, which is to say it's hard to tell if he's doing anything at all...but then again i like him every time i see him, so he must be doing something. these are my thoughts about warren beatty.

i enjoyed heaven can wait, found it entertaining, though things work out alright in the end for everyone except jack warden, which left me feeling a little blue.

i am in the mood for something stylish and fast. and so, the thomas crown affair. enjoy.

WEEK 21

21. HEAVEN CAN WAIT, dir. WARREN BEATTY & BUCK HENRY, 1978

----
happy 72nd birthday, warren beatty.

**very, very disappointingly: netflix is still listing a "short wait" for satan's brew, and my lonely & single local video store was no help at all. they had various satan-related titles, but, alas, not this one, not even close. i hope to be able to watch the film this week, and belatedly post my response. the first time this has happened, and hopefully the last!

WEEK 20

20. SATANSBRATEN, dir. RAINER WERNER FASSBINDER, 1976

when a woman ascends the stairs featured two japanese actors i've realized i like a lot: tatsuya nakadai (also seen in the face of another) and ganjiro nakamura (also seen in an autumn afternoon). i love these men. also, there was something in the way this film was edited--these abrupt transitions to conversations already taking place--that i enjoyed throughout. a good film.

i will admit to mining a certain other blogger's aesthetic in selecting this week's movie, satansbraten, though i am also generally curious to see more fassbinder (and especially a fassbinder comedy). let's watch.

WEEK 19

19. WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS, dir. MIKIO NARUSE, 1960

-------
when one fights nature
one fights
himself
make the sand work for you, not against you
when the earth moves
it moves us
as well
when we fight blindly
the desires of dirt, water, sand and fire
we fight eachother and
ourselves
as well.
you can't fight it!
when you work with it
you learn who you are and
you become
more than you were before
and this world of dust is elevated,
too;
when you fight it
you make it evil
and you are reduced to nothing more than a bug
pinned to paper or
confined to a jar.
woman in the dunes
blew blew blew me
away.
i am still lost in just the visuals,
from the breathtaking opening credits of
black lines and black lines, through to the end,
let alone the music, things said,
and everything everything everything else.
if i was a gymnast
i would do somersaults and backflips
to see this movie
again
and again
and again.
--
living here is like building a house
on water when a boat
makes more sense...
it has to be a house or nothing
at all...
--
when i rented woman in the dunes from the video store
when a woman ascends the stairs was sitting
beside it on the shelf
and caught my eye.
similar titles.
this time the city
will be the star,
and how will it be different
from the sand?

WEEK 18

18. WOMAN IN THE DUNES, dir. HIROSHI TESHIGAHARA, 1964
_____

i've been meaning to see this film for a long time.

WEEK 17

17. SUSANA, dir. LUIS BUNUEL, 1951

_____

mondo cane made me feel like i was reading a
painfully outdated anthropology text
full of absurd exoticization
that makes you roll your eyes
feel sick
and want to cover yourself
in horror and shame.
i hated it.
ridiculous scenes of "crazed natives"
juxtaposed with the absurd but harmlessly painted
customs of white people in "civil society" --
the drunk germans didn't look their best,
but they were also not
breastfeeding pigs, missing limbs, or torturing whales.
it is one thing to show things as they are, without interruption or judgement, another to articulate this as the intention like a disclaimer to then be circumvented in order to shock and awe.
the turtle dying on the beach while the camera idly recorded was probably the only time this dual goal was actually accomplished, and probably the only moment i felt i was watching something perhaps worth my time, even as i wanted to sheild my eyes.
it's often painful to watch the truth,
but even more painful to watch the truth be manipulated
into disgusting lies.
this movie did nothing
for me.

i have high hopes, however, for susana.

WEEK 16

16. MONDO CANE, dir. PAOLO CAVARA, GUALTIERO JACOPETTI, FRANCO PROSPERI, 1962

_____

you've had the universe explained to you, and you're bored with it. you've had the human body explained to you, and you're bored with it. you can call me a lot of things, but i am not bored.

let's talk about dialogue: so many brilliant things come out of johnny's mouth in naked that i wish i had taken the time to write them all down. this is a dark, funny, spare movie, my first mike leigh, and one that i don't feel totally equipped to analyze just yet. its attitude towards sex and violence? i'm not sure. but i do know, overall, that i really enjoyed it.

after seeing romance and naked in quick succession, i joked that i was done with "squalor pictures" for awhile. and then mondo cane caught my eye. the italian progenitor of the aim-to-shock "mondo" movement of filmmaking, i am drawn to see it, though i am uncertain of its quality and suspicious of its aim. one more squalor picture to close out the month. happy february!

WEEK 15

15. NAKED, dir. MIKE LEIGH, 1993

_____

i saw two catherine breillat pictures last week, THE LAST MISTRESS and then, ROMANCE, for our blog. i now want to see everything breillat has touched.
i loved, loved romance. in a certain sense it seems perhaps a strange film to love, or at least not really a film you could blindly recommend to a passerby as a good one to watch. you'd probably have to really know someone before telling them to rent it. or, maybe going in cold is the only way. i loved the sterility of the scenes in her apartment with her untouchable mate, an early scene in her bathroom and shades of white and the only sound some sort of appliance humming.
let's try this again.
sometimes i feel i could write and write nonsensically about a film i have loved, without ever really being able to get to the heart of why i loved it. i rarely ever know anything about a film before i watch it, so i do not have background information at my disposal in the after-thought write. i half wish i had more to compare my response to, i have no idea if this was a well or poorly received film. however, although i love the idea of criticism, ideas and opinions on paper, i am terrified of reading reviews, i am terrified of my immediate response being shattered. the feeling of pure response (whether or not such a thing really exists) means everything to me, probably / certainly to a fault. i suppose we love things in relation to who and what we are, and to some degree it is impossible to criticize or applaud a film exactly because of this: it means something to us only to the degree in which it resonates with something about 'me', just 'me'. and of course, somehow great films are able to get inside us, all of us, grab something that in some way we all must share. this is getting sappy, and it is not my intent.
romance was sexually explicit, yeah. but the explicitness and the jarringness and what made me feel like i was watching something new and old -- a new expression of an old idea, the best thing -- was not the blatant sexuality but the blatantness of thought, of emotion and presence and detachment. the way the lead character expressed who she was, what it was to want what she wanted. why she did it, why she sought what she sought. the voice over, often only a few words, was for me, probably the most gripping part of the film.
i am still knocked over in thought after only one viewing, and at this point i think i could go on and on and ultimately say not much. proving further breillat's great feat in saying so much, with so few words, only hairs longer than an hour and a half. maybe that was really my intent. poor and ill-conceived written thought to prove the importance of a film. i'll take it.

i've seen naked years ago. i want to see it again. i think romance made me think of it once more.

WEEK 14

14. ROMANCE, dir. CATHERINE BREILLAT, 1999

_____

i loved i fidanzati. it was slow, quiet and sweet, and it reminded me (in the best way) of milos forman's czech films of the same era--loves of a blonde or the firemen's ball. it is honest about love. it is beautifully filmed. it is worth seeing more than once. we rented il posto, olmi's precursor to i fidanzati, but we ran out of time to see it before it was due back. no matter. next time we'll enjoy an olmi double feature.

onto this week: ROMANCE. i haven't been able to get breillat's fat girl out of my head since i saw it last month, and i'm curious about this earlier film, a watershed in her career. i anticipate a shock to the system.

WEEK 13

13. I FIDANZATI, dir. ERMANNO OLMI, 1963

________

from what i gather,
a film about
absence,
longing,
and desire.

a film i really want to see
and also
a film of convenience:
it is already at the top
of the netflix queue.

WEEK 12

12. WHO ARE YOU, POLLY MAGGOO? dir. WILLIAM KLEIN, 1966

______

two things about broken blossoms: (1) i am very glad to have seen it, and (2) i didn't like it at all. i expected a certain amount of racist ugliness in this film, and was prepared for it, but ultimately i found little else--visually, narratively--that overwhelmed or redeemed that ugliness. i wasn't so much offended as i was bored. the first film orgy film i've had trouble with. the only!

it is, however, as instructive to think about why you didn't like a movie as it is to figure out why you did, and thinking about movies is the basis of our whole enterprise here. so this is all good. i have a lot to learn about early film. i have a lot to learn about griffith. how did you feel about this one?

for this week, a film i know next to nothing about, a romp, a satire. i think it sounds fun.

WEEK 11

11. BROKEN BLOSSOMS, dir. D.W. GRIFFITH, 1919

_____
it has been a hectic week.
let's go back in time.
let's go far back.
to black and white.
and voicelessness.
90 minutes of silence, and noise.
hopefully the potential racial sterotypes
i've heard are in here
can be processed,
and in remembering
llian gish's participation in this and birth of a nation (1915)
one does not forget how amazing she is in night of the hunter (1955),
one of my favorite films.
sorry the post came so late,
i hope this one is worth the watch.