12/19/12

Jimmy Show - Trailer



I was thinking about this movie yesterday and how unfair it is that it only has a 40% on RT yet is so damn good. Prob the best film I've seen on the portrayal of a loser (who isn't psychotic ala Bickle or Pupkin).

Tina Louise

11/11/12

Full Length Films @ Cinemension

* A History Of Sci-Fi Television
* Alphaville
* American Boy
* At The Circus
* Babes In Toyland
* Bluebeard
* Breathless
* Carnival Of Souls
* Chariots Of The Gods
* Charlie Chaplin Festival (The Immigrant, The Adventurer, The Cure, Easy Street)
* Crows, by Akira Kurosawa (from Dreams)
* Dementia 13
* Encounters At The End Of The World
* Faces Of Death
* First Spaceship On Venus
* Forbidden Planet
* Genghis Khan
* Godzilla's Revenge
* Horse Feathers
* Iphigenia
* It Has Begun
* Koyaanisquatsi
* La Jetee, by Chris Marker
* Lost Continent
* M
* Maya Deren Films
* Mothlight, by Stan Brakhage
* Night Of The Living Dead
* No Time For Sergeants
* One Week
* Plan 9 From Outer Space
* Planeta Burg/Voyage To The Prehistoric Planet/Voyage To The Planet Of Prehistoric Women
* Popeye The Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves
* Quatermass And The Pit (Five Million Years To Earth)
* Reefer Madness
* Robot Monster
* Samurai- Miyamoto Musashi Documentary
* Santa Claus Conquers The Martians
* Shadow Of A Doubt
* Shakespeare Behind Bars
* Stalin: Man Of Steel
* Stalker
* The Ape
* The Ascent
* The Beast Of Yucca Flats
* The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari
* The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser
* The Fog Of War
* The Haunted World Of Edward D. Wood, Jr.
* The Hoober-Bloob Highway
* The House On Haunted Hill
* The Last Man On Earth
* The Last Woman On Earth
* The Lost World
* The Many Faces Of Sherlock Holmes
* The Mark Of Zorro
* The Sad Flower
* The Three Stooges: Disorder In The Court & I'll Never Heil Again
* The War Game
* The Thing From Another World
* The Twilight Samurai
* Things To Come
* Throne Of Blood
* Vampyr
* Willard

The Mark of Zorro 1940 DVDRip Xvid

10/19/12

60's Commercials



Interesting how the worst aspects of commercialism become sociologically valuable over time.

9/8/12

Rid of Me Trailer HD



I streamed this tonight and it was a pretty good indy, quirky film about the breakup of a marriage, the awkwardness of the lead not fitting in with her husband's friends, and dealing with their meanness. It captured awkward and phony moments well, as in when people are just pretending to like you, forced conversation, etc. Worth the watch.

Inside The Actors Studio - Samuel L. Jackson

9/4/12

Painting Poems



Sarah Hohstadt sings the poems and music of Neil Hester.

5/20/12

Best Worst Movie - Official Trailer [HD]



Documentary about Troll 2, also on streaming (NF).

Troll 2 Trailer



A funny bad movie to stream on NF.

High Anxiety Trailer (1978)



A funny Mel Brooks movie I streamed recently on NF.

Drive - Movie Trailer (2011) HD



This is what I would call a 'stylized' thriller. Carey Mulligan is in it and Ryan Gosling (who looks super hot). The story began ok, but then just took a turn for the gore and the story became hollow. The soundtrack, however, is kick-ass. The film has a nice look to it but I don't think all the stylization aided the narrative. Roger gave this 3.5 stars. I'd give this 2. 1 for the story and an extra one for the look/soundtrack.

Glenn Gould on Animals

5/8/12

The Mill and The Cross (2011) Movie Trailer HD



Streaming on NF. This is one of the most visually arresting and beautiful films I've seen. It is inspired by the painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder's 1564 painting The Way to Calvary so the landscapes have a very painterly look to them and there's an interesting narrative. Not very much dialogue, just scenes telling a tale of these people's lives back then. There are some gory moments, but this very well could be a great film. Near-great at its minimum.

At Home with Glenn Gould (1959) 1/9

4/29/12

4/25/12

Den Brysomme Mannen (The Bothersome Man) - Trailer [english subtitles]



Just watched this very good Norwegian film that reminded me of Welles and also Antonioni with the shots. About a guy who lives in a zombie existence, where everything is pleasant but nothing is passionate. People go on in a robot-like existence. The ending I thought was a cop-out, but definitely worth the watch b/c it has both the dreamlike 'weirdness' that is also grounded in a gruesome reality and is much better than anything by Charlie Kaufman. To me, this seems like the sort of film he wished he could make. A good commentary on philosophical zombies. Also reminded me of Dark City a little. On NF streaming.

That Girl TV show theme song

4/24/12

HIDDEN LOVE (L'Amour Cache) Theatrical Trailer



Another interesting film on streaming albeit not as deep as Secret Sunshine. Depicts the mother/daughter relationship in a Bergman-like way.

Secret Sunshine



A film available on NF streaming. Great film depicting grief in a realistic manner.

MST3K - Favorite Moments - Lost Continent

4/20/12

Mighty Joe Young (1949) - Movie Trailer



Loved this as a kid. Watched it every Thanksgiving with King Kong and Son Of Kong, along with Godzilla marathons.

4/11/12

2001 A Space Odyssey Opening in 1080 HD



If there is a greater cinematic opening, I don't know of it. I admit I am envious of those who have never watched this, as I would love to see this again for the 1st time.

Toshiro Mifune Tribute

3/25/12

3/20/12

Sylvia Plath Part 5/11



A funny scene from the cheesy movie Sylvia. Watch the 1st 3 mins or so where Ted screams, "Alright, I fucked her! Holding her ass!"

I get tickled.

The Desert of the Tartars - A Tribute

3/15/12

The Orange Cat (1986 - 2007)



Cat commits suicide? Wow. 21 years. Death acts in strange ways. They loved her even though not friendly.

3/11/12

Apollo Schneider: 8/30/07-3/9/12



Rest in peace, my sweet little angel, my Bub, my Little Boy. Your mommy and I will always love you.

3/7/12

Ingmar Bergman Interview (4/6): Life, Death, and Love

“Shame” review

The greatest critic who ever has lived or ever will live reviews Shame.





Damn, he’s the sexiest, manliest, most brilliant, most intelligent, greatest human being who’s ever lived.

2/11/12

Bela Tarr's TURIN HORSE


I just saw Tarr's latest (and probably last) movie at The Lincoln Film Center. The movie is much better than his "Man From London" and after "Satantango" it is his most daring work, and in many way it is the closest to the latter.
Out of all the movies he made, this one carries the simplest narrative (and one can argue maybe too simple): description of 6 days in the life of a poor farmer and his daughter. Stormy winds hit their old house and the stable where a horse is kept.
The film opens with a nice long tracking fluid shot where the camera sometimes comes too close to the horse from a low angle and at times it tracks the horse and the farmer from a distance. Day one starts, and the daily "rituals" are shown: getting water from the well, help the half-paralyzed man dress and undress, eating boiled potatoes...etc. Those acts are repeated daily, each day from a different camera perspective but with almost no variation in content. To describe the hard life they live, Tarr succeeds in creating horror from those mundane activities, there are few shots each morning when the father wakes up with a horrifying facial expression; it surpasses in effect any possible dialogue that the character can say. And add to this example many others that also work brilliantly: pealing the boiled potatoes and eating them every day with bare hands; even eating is torture for the characters. Very little words are spoken, but no dialogue is needed with Tarr strong images and actually almost all of what is said doesn't add to the narrative, including the voice-over narration (a la Satantango).
This movie has some of Tarr most haunting images: the mummified facial expression of the farmer that is shown every morning, eating potatoes (reminded me of Van Gogh's potato eaters), the final scene of the movie is a scene that lingers even after the light is out. None of those images are as strong as or as catalytic as the whale scene in W.Harmonies but the abundance/repetition of images in Turin Horse has a cumulative effect.
In Satantango Tarr manipulated time and memory by pushing the limit of cinema storytelling in a seven-hour-long movie, here he tried to achieve this "engraving" and "time condensing" effect with the persistence and repetition of his images. It works -to a lesser degree than Satantango- now I'm 6 hours after the screening and still left with clear visual memories of those six days the characters lived. It is very interesting how this movie does not need to any dialogue, one can watch this movie with no subtitles and still get the same experience.






Turin Horse is like Bergman's Passion and Shame, ominous things occur with no explanation but we know they're adding their weight on the character. In Turin Horse, we don't know why the horse stopped eating, why the well got dry...etc but we feel this ominous feel of entrapment and death. One very strong -and horrifying- image in Turin Horse is when the light went off, not only the gas light, but the actual day light in the middle of the day, that was done brilliantly with no visual or sound effects.

One of the negative things in the movie was the introduction, why did Tarr link this story to a time (1889), a place (Turin), and a historical figure (Nietzsche) ?? Actually one can argue that though this is mentioned in the first scene, there is nothing that states clearly that this the actual "turin horse"; what is said is "nobody knows" (see the first scene below). This relation to the Nietzsche incident can't be taken seriously unless Tarr is explaining why the latter went mad (him realizing the fate of the horse and its owners), this would be a long, and weak stretch. The other explanation is that being an absurd -and not that funny- joke. Had Tarr kept the time and place unrevealed (like in W. Harmonies) this would have added more depth to the narrative and the apocalyptic events (especially towards the end, when fire and light stop to exist) could have been attributed to the present or the future of mankind, as seen by Tarr.



Tarr uses his regulars, it's nice to see Estike, the troubled little girl from Satantango now as a grown up woman. Vig's simple 4-bar soundtrack also works beautifully as usual. Overall I wish I could say that this movie is as good as all the movie I mentioned (except the Man From London) but W. Harmonies, Bergman's Shame and Passion, and even Satantango had all more accomplished narratives.
However if this is really tarr's final work, it is far better than Bergman's Saraband and Tarkovsky's Sacrifice.

1/25/12

The Penelopiad



Megan Follows- why isn't she a Hollywood icon?

Theo Angelopoulos Dead



Reports say he was killed by a motorcycle, at 76, and some reports claim it was a Greek donuteater. Fuck! No trilogy ending. Release The Dust Of Time on DVD in the USA! Release all his films!

1/23/12

Bill Cunningham New York Trailer



A good, solid doc that's been wildly overpraised, but which fails to get at the nub of the man. It plays it too safe.

1/14/12

Victor Erice's The Spirit of The Beehive

Erice is one of those directors that very little is known about them. He made three movies only, one of them is a documentary. The other two are "The Spirit of The Beehive" and "The South". Only Beehive (Erice's very first long-feature work) is available in the US (thanks to Criterion) and it is a superb work.
In one line, it's about Anna: a little girl who lives a traumatizing experience. But the film is an excellent study of childhood via Anna and her sister Isabel, one of the best I've seen. Adding to this is the superb (painting-like) cinematography and the visual settings that Erice used in the movie.
The cinematography was done by Luis Cuadrado who started to suffer from a blinding illness during the shooting of beehive, he ended up with total blindness a few years later.

I hope the movie will play one of these days on a big screen in NYC so I can watch it the way it is supposed to be watched. His other work (South) is supposedly a masterpiece too, Criterion should consider acquiring it, meanwhile I will not pay $100+ to get it from France or Spain.
The movie is available on Youtube (though not the way it should be watched), I re-watched it tonight on Hulu (on a big-screen TV).

Links for the DVD extra (Criterion) and the movie itself:

















Ulysses´ Gaze Best Scene

1/8/12

Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia




Though Ceylan's latest work is described as a movie about police procedural and a detailed trip to recover a corpse, it is intended by Ceylan to be about the psychological/internal/existential journey that the involved professionals (mainly a prosecutor, a police officer, and a doctor) will take during this trip. There are other interesting characters, like the criminal himself and the driver but they are relatively less developed. The film promises a rewarding experience, but this is not the case. Despite the effort to give those characters depth and a believable existential struggle (the whole point of this movie), the result is half-acceptable for the most developed ones (the prosecutor and the doctor, to a lesser degree the driver), at times cartoonish (the officer)...etc
After the first half and especially towards the last third the movie starts to lose focus, some scenes are not needed, some scenes are forced to give some depth (the doctor going through old photos of his ex-wife to "explain" his reaction towards one woman they met on the trip). Though I think it will be criticized but I'm glad that Ceylan left the motive behind the murder almost unexplored, and so is the criminal's character. (At some point it is hinted that he is not actually the killer) This would have even a much stronger effect on the movie if the characters were written with more complexity to achieve the existential trip that Ceylan wanted.

That doesn't mean the movie is bad, but it is not an excellent work. Ceylan still suffers (despite the help from his wife and his friend) content-wise. This is a major problem. Some moments are great and well crafted and executed, those were mostly some mundane ironies that are scattered in the movie (similar to those in climates and distant). Visually the film is stunning (maybe his best).
Visually this movie is very similar to tarr's work (usually I don't compare Ceylan's to Tarr's work but I couldn't escape the resemblance with the Man From London and Damnation despite those being in Black and White). Theme-wise it has a lot of Kiarostamian moments: the landscapes of The Wind Will Carry Us, the falling objects: in "Close Up" an empty bottle, in The Wind Will Carry Us a fruit, here an apple keeps rolling aimlessly and is tracked by the camera. The professionals and even the trailer above itself may resemble Tarkovski's Stalker, though is movie is not even close to Tarkovski's excellent work.

So overall, it is a major step up from Three Monkeys substance-wise and style-wise (less contrasted and less digitally manipulated), but it is not near Distant or Climates. Maybe Ceylan will never be able to make a third great movie again, unless it's a skeleton cast of 2 or 3 unprofessional actors with less ambitious stories, or maybe he won't at all.

A much milder disappointment than Three Monkeys.