Wim Wenders

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Buttery Jeb
Just in it for the game.
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 10:55 pm

Re: Wim Wenders

#101 Post by Buttery Jeb » Sat Aug 29, 2015 12:24 pm

criterionsnob wrote:This Janus trailer for the Wenders retrospective includes Pina and The Million Dollar Hotel, which are not part of the current Janus retrospective tour.
It also doesn't showcase Buena Vista Social Club at all, event though it's mentioned on the Janus poster.

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Lowry_Sam
Joined: Mon Jul 05, 2010 3:35 pm
Location: San Francisco, CA

Re: Wim Wenders

#102 Post by Lowry_Sam » Wed Oct 28, 2015 9:22 pm

For those in the SF Bay Area, The Castro Theatre is presenting the new 4K DCPs as double features each Monday in November. From their calendar:
EVERY MONDAY IN NOVEMBER
WIM WENDERS — PORTRAITS ALONG THE ROAD
Wim Wenders is cinema’s preeminent poet of the open road, soulfully following the journeys of people as they search for themselves. During his over-forty-year career, Wenders has directed films in his native Germany and around the globe, making dramas both intense and whimsical, mysteries, fantasies, and documentaries. With this retrospective of nine of his films—from early works of the New German Cinema (Alice in the Cities, Kings of the Road) to the art-house 1980s blockbusters that made him a household name (Paris, Texas; Wings of Desire)—audiences can rediscover Wenders’s vast cinematic world. Presented by Janus Films and the Wim Wenders Stiftung.
Nov. 2:

THE GOALIE’S ANXIETY AT THE PENALTY KICK 7:00
Minutely rendered from Peter Handke's novel, goalkeeper Josef Bloch (Arthur Brauss) kills a young woman for no good reason and wanders off into the German provinces, less to escape the police than to find himself. As Wenders himself has stated, the visual idiom of Alfred Hitchcock’s films provided the model for his debut film. With cameraman Robby Müller and editor Peter Przygodda, he set forth a collaboration that would weld this team together for years. (1971, 100 min, in German with English subtitles, 4K DCP)

+ ALICE IN THE CITIES 8:50
After failing to find the Real America, German photojournalist Philip Winter (Rüdiger Vogler, in his first WW film) reluctantly agrees to shepherd abandoned 9-year-old Alice (Yella Rottländer) from New York City to Europe to find her grandmother, located in a remote village. During their search together, their initial mutual dislike gradually transforms into a heartfelt affection. Often compared with Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid, Wenders refers to this as his first film, because it was here that he discovered the genre of the road movie. (1974, 112 min, in German with English subtitles, DCP)
Nov. 9
KINGS OF THE ROAD 6:00
Bruno (Rüdiger Vogler) repairs film projectors and travels along the inner German border in his truck, child psychologist Robert (Hanns Zischler) is fleeing from his own past. Together, they take an existential journey through a German no-man’s-land, from the Lüneburg Heath to the Bavarian Forest. Wenders began the film without a script and instead scouted a route out beforehand: through all of the little towns along the Wall that still contained a movie theater in this era of cinematic mass extinction. (1976, 175 min, in German with English subtitles, 4K DCP)

+ THE AMERICAN FRIEND 9:05
In this gripping adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel Ripley’s Game, and unlikely friendship develops between terminally ill frame maker Jonathan Zimmermann (Bruno Ganz) and unscrupulous art smuggler Tom Ripley (Dennis Hopper), who learns of Zimmermann’s illness and exploits it for his own murderous purposes. The cast includes not only fellow directors Hopper and Gérard Blain but also filmmakers in many of the supporting roles of gangsters, such as Hollywood legends Samuel Fuller and Nicholas Ray. (1977, 126 min, in German, English, and French, with English subtitles, 4K DCP)
The detailed calendar ends on the 15th, but the calendar listing for Nov. mentions:

Nov. 16: Paris, Texas & The State Of Things
Nov. 23: Wings Of Desire & Faraway, So Close
Nov. 30: Until The End Of The World (Director's Cut)

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gorgeousnothings
Joined: Fri Mar 20, 2015 12:29 pm

Re: Wim Wenders

#103 Post by gorgeousnothings » Thu Nov 05, 2015 11:52 pm

The Brattle Theatre in Cambridge is showing the retrospective, and one of the screenings is a Wim Wenders Shorts Program that doesn't seem to be listed on the Janus page.
(1968/69) dir Wim Wenders [82 min; DCP]
Includes Wim Wenders’ early short films: SAME PLAYER SHOOTS AGAIN (1968), SILVER CITY REVISITED (1969), POLICE FILM (1969), ALABAMA (2000 LIGHT YEARS) (1969), 3 AMERICAN LPs (1969).
Perhaps if a box set comes out these would be included.

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DeprongMori
Joined: Fri Apr 04, 2014 1:59 am
Location: San Francisco

Re: Wim Wenders

#104 Post by DeprongMori » Wed Dec 02, 2015 2:08 am

Just saw Until the End of the World for the first time last night, on the big screen at the Castro in SF. It was the full 295 minute "director's cut". I suspect this release will be a revelation for people who have seen the film before in a truncated version as this one is projected full frame (1.44:1 from my calculations from the screen grabs). I can't imagine this being matted down to 1.78 or 1.85 as all previous releases have apparently been (even the recent DVD "director's cut"), as the imagery is just gorgeous and the film itself seems perfectly framed with the more open image.

I hope to get some thoughts down soon here on this sprawling film. I don't think it entirely works but is well worth the time and I found it engrossing throughout. The restoration is stunning. And by all means, see it projected on a large screen if you possibly can. So glad I did.

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Lost Highway
Joined: Thu Aug 29, 2013 7:41 am
Location: Berlin, Germany

Re: Wim Wenders

#105 Post by Lost Highway » Wed Aug 02, 2017 3:45 am

For anybody who happens to be in Berlin over the next few months, the Deutsche Kinemathek currently hosts an exhibition on Robby Müller which moved here from Amsterdam. It's small but beautifully curated and well worth it. It made me want to check out Wenders early films again, a couple of which I've never seen.

Unfortunately it's not English friendly but I also got hold of a German blu-ray box set which features 4K restaurantions of all the feature films by Wenders which I care to own. It contains the road trilogy plus The American Friend and The Goalies Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, which I watched last night. Never seen it before because it was previously unavailable due to music clearance issues. Its nihilistic existentialism and possibly problematic take on male/female dynamics are very much of it's time but I enjoyed it a lot and Müllers style, is already on display. They cleared some of the music rights, but in some cases Wenders recorded new songs to be able to rerelease the film, because rights for the likes of Elvis Presley were not affordable. I'll be working my way through the films chronologically.

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hearthesilence
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:22 am
Location: NYC

Re: Wim Wenders

#106 Post by hearthesilence » Thu Dec 21, 2017 2:24 pm

Posted on the Wenders Foundation's FB page:
Warming-up for the 4K re-release of Wings of Desire in 2018 !
We wish you a peaceful and playful winter break. See you then!


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therewillbeblus
Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm

Re: Wim Wenders

#108 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed May 27, 2020 3:45 pm

I recently watched The End of Violence, which was a dense exercise in finding humanity in a pit of anchored positions forced into change. The Byrne character's choice to disrupt his sheep-motions of governmental work, Pullman's break from his own profession, and the officer's personal attachment and following of gut-instinct against detached protocols, all point to a freedom in emerging from the conventions that act as mirages of constraints binding us to complacency. What I love about Wenders' later works, is that they use an inherently messy, challenging approach to self-reflexively tackle that process in human beings becoming self-aware and connecting as they escape from societal confines in norms. All three of these characters tap into the powers of their agency and engage in a process of contemplation for the weight of their actions on others (direct or indirect moral consequences, the power of intuition and empathic joining).

The only way to actually exhibit this in the way Wenders envisions appears to be to use esoteric filmmaking choices that break norms as well. Wenders' approach is somehow aggressively different yet also draws ethereal meditations in extended, ambient (sometimes apparently directionless) scenes that elicit a spirituality coexisting in industrial spaces. I think Land of Plenty is the best of Wenders' efforts in this respect, but his pattern of "road movies of the soul" strain my ability to make much sense of them beyond an unusual emotional response. I'm not sure that's a flaw though. While tighter films have balanced tonal shifts in more accessible means, Wenders doesn't seem to be interested in expressing his meditative comprehension of the world outside of looseness and a flood of tones constantly overlapping. The themes of violence are apparent in the film itself, but it's the acts of breaking from the mold and asserting one's potential in identity that violently rip from the expected, yet also end the violence those passive functions perpetuate when we are asleep at the wheel in mass. If we treat life as a "road movie of the soul" then spiritual experiences like the connection in Land of Plenty actually do take place, and maybe not quite as cinematic a storyline as in The End of Violence, but taken apart as minor gestures, it's a series of real, authentic positivity to be admired and to inspire.

Stefan Andersson
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2007 1:02 am

Re: Wim Wenders

#109 Post by Stefan Andersson » Sat Oct 30, 2021 4:33 pm

Hello!

Is there info online anywhere about the songs (and maybe the scenes they were heard in) included in the 1972 version of Goalie´s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, but not included in the restoration due to clearance issues?

I´ve looked online and only found brief references to songs by Elvis Presley and Rolling Stones.

Many thanks in advance for any links!

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DeprongMori
Joined: Fri Apr 04, 2014 1:59 am
Location: San Francisco

Re: Wim Wenders

#110 Post by DeprongMori » Mon Jun 27, 2022 11:05 pm

Stefan Andersson wrote:
Sat Oct 30, 2021 4:33 pm
Hello!

Is there info online anywhere about the songs (and maybe the scenes they were heard in) included in the 1972 version of Goalie´s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, but not included in the restoration due to clearance issues?

I´ve looked online and only found brief references to songs by Elvis Presley and Rolling Stones.

Many thanks in advance for any links!
In this excellent interview with Wim Wenders in Little White Lies about his film restoration process, he talks about the specific challenges they faced in clearing the music rights for The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick and how they handled the situation where they just couldn’t clear the rights.

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