WEEK 10

10. BURDEN OF DREAMS, dir. LES BLANK, 1982
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werner herzog has said that the driving impulse behind his filmmaking is the simple desire to see things he has never seen before. this makes perfect sense to me.

this week, coming off the spare, quiet beauty of badlands:
something much more explicit, and i expect, in its own way, more violent--
a film about a filmmaker attempting the impossible.

WEEK 9

9. BADLANDS, dir. TERRENCE MALICK, 1973

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figuring out what to post this week, i felt like a sleuth following nowhere-yet-everywhere leads. i got it into my head that i wanted the film for this week to be the logical extension of the things i watched last week, and these parameters made me bounce around alot in figuring out what to choose.
after watching trouble in paradise, i wanted to go back further in time, and watch a silent film.
while mulling this over, i began to watch marnie, which made me abandon the silent idea and start thinking about posting a hitchcock film.
then i started watching sweeney todd, which i did not love, and thought of watching a musical i might find more interesting (like meet me in st. louis, which is constantly recommended to me and which i have yet to see).
then, last night, i re-watched the straight story, which made me change course once again, and think of watching either another david lynch film, something with harry dean stanton, or something with sissy spacek.
sissy spacek won out.
i have seen 1978's days of heaven, but not badlands. it's hard to find a sissy spacek related vehicle that i won't want to see, and if days of heaven is any indication, badlands will be visual insta-love.
here. it. is.

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

----
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