2000s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol. 2)

[A]

Yes, I try my best.

Ok, I posted the rest of the films with links to DVDs and stuff, but my post got deleted (fucking internet connection). I'm too frustrated to try again for now, but If there's any interest in this let me know, and I'll try again later.

[foggy eyes]

I've been a Kawase fan since I first saw Suzaku in 2001 or so. But I found Mourning Forest very problematic and her subsequent Nanayo mostly excruciating (with the exception of a few minutes here and there).

I don't go overboard on it either, but it did grow on me during/after a second viewing. Certainly one for others to consider, though, even though it doesn't come anywhere near my (or our) top 50...

[Michael Kerpan]

I watched Mourning Forest three times -- and found no increase in my affection -- unlike Suzaku and Shara. I doubt I will ever even _try_ to watch Nanayo again (except maybe for the closing moments).

[zedz]

I do however find a lot of merit in 'On Connait la Chanson'.

Thanks for an eloquent defence that makes me interested in revisiting the film. I'm actually much more impressed with Potter's use of the technique in Pennies from Heaven than in The Singing Detective, where it is more isolated and showy. The former series, I felt, was much more provocative about how popular music inflected and infected the decidedly unromantic and unmagical lives of folk in the Depression, and the alignment with the protagonist's occupation provided a stronger dramatic excuse for the gimmick. And those songs really were part of the collective unconscious. To a great extent they still are (but I'd argue that's the case for The Singing Detective as well).

Resnais's appropriation of the technique in On connait le chanson seemed closer in style to Pennies than The Singing Detective, but it also seemed to have much less satirical bite and psychological acuity. Twenty years after the fact, I kept hoping that Resnais would be able to bring something new to the table, but it all seemed rather cosy and complacent. But I tend to think that popular music is rarely well used in film, so I might just be a grumpy old bugger in this respect.

[zedz]

Bu jian "The Missing" (Lee Kang-sheng / Taiwan)
2 Disc Set with Tsai's Bu san: http://www.yesasia.com/global/the-missi ... /info.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I think that edition's been out of print for some time, but I was also very impressed by The Missing. It's heavily indebted to Tsai, as you'd expect, but it's still quite impressive. I think it even made my list last time around. I'll have to dig it out and rewatch it.

[Zazou dans le Metro]

[ But I tend to think that popular music is rarely well used in film, so I might just be a grumpy old bugger in this respect.

Have you not seen 35 Rhums where our Claire turns relationships on a sixpence to the strains of Lionel Richie no less?

[zedz]

[ But I tend to think that popular music is rarely well used in film, so I might just be a grumpy old bugger in this respect.

Have you not seen 35 Rhums where our Claire turns relationships on a sixpence to the strains of Lionel Richie no less?

Denis is probably the greatest exception to the rule. She can take something as banal as 'Nightshift' (post-Richie, mind you) and make it magical or something as magical as 'God Only Knows' and make it sublime in a completely different way. She can stick Neil Young in North Africa and make it work or create indelible cinema just by having a kid bop around to Donovan via the Animals in his bedroom. See also Olivier Assayas ('Tunic', 'Hero', 'Janitor of Lunacy').

[puxzkkx]

My Top two films from this decade are currently "The Brown Bunny" and "The New World", and I'd say most of the films I dearly love have a similar outlook on life as those two combined. This probably goes about all of the films on my Top 50. Life as suffering. Love, loss, death, but still as the last image in Malick's latest film: the camera looking up the trunk of a tree..

So I guess most people won't appreciate those kind of films.

I'm struggling here to combine these two films to share your outlook but all I can come up with is the camera looking up the trunk of Gallo's cock as he's being fellated but maybe I'm just one of those people who won't appreciate these kind of films.

"Trunk" is an apt word to use... rrrowwwrrr!
Shame about his face, though

[Zazou dans le Metro]

[ But I tend to think that popular music is rarely well used in film, so I might just be a grumpy old bugger in this respect.

Have you not seen 35 Rhums where our Claire turns relationships on a sixpence to the strains of Lionel Richie no less?

Denis is probably the greatest exception to the rule. She can take something as banal as 'Nightshift' (post-Richie, mind you) and make it magical or something as magical as 'God Only Knows' and make it sublime in a completely different way. She can stick Neil Young in North Africa and make it work or create indelible cinema just by having a kid bop around to Donovan via the Animals in his bedroom. See also Olivier Assayas ('Tunic', 'Hero', 'Janitor of Lunacy').

I stand corrected I was confusing my All Night Longs with my Nightshifts. There is also the incredible use of Denis Lavant and The Rhythm of the Night in BT that leads us to Modern Love in Carax's Mauvais Sang, who also throws in some Benjamin Britten for good measure. But generally you're right, I'm hard pressed to come up with many more spine tingling uses of pop in film (excluding commissioned soundtracks such as Scott Walker,John Cale and Tindersticks for the three culprits mentioned above). More often than not it's used desperately or mawkishly. Step forward 'Imagine' in Killing Fields.
Has there been a thread on this topic. I don't smell any. (Now there's a sly little Resnaism there to get us back to the original topic.)

[GringoTex]

Still Life - If only Jia hadn't shoe-horned his muse into the film via a horribly misguided and out-of-place bourgeoisie soap short, this would have been near-perfect at 70 minutes. Unlike the animation in The World, the "alien invasion" interludes are perfectly apt and integrated, and Han Sanming pushes aside Olivier Gourmet as the new king of non-expressive expressionism in acting.

[puxzkkx]

I thought Han was atrocious and Zhao was quite good... actually her scenes were the only ones I found moving in Still Life, esp. the party scene

[Michael Kerpan]

Well, I liked _both_ strands of Still Life -- and felt they were complementary (and both reasonably necessary). And I liked both lead performers.

[zedz]

Has there been a thread on this topic. I don't smell any. (Now there's a sly little Resnaism there to get us back to the original topic.)

There's a niggling memory of such a thread, but a quick search didn't reveal anything. It might just be that the topic has popped up a few times before in unrelated threads. If nobody can come to the rescue, I'd support a "Great Uses of Popular Music in Film" thread along the lines of that "great camera movements" one.

By the way, that search came up with an old Music Lists Project thread that never seemed to go anywhere and which I must have missed completely at the time. I think I like domino's suggestion best.

[Gropius]

Hmm... take it I'm going to be the only person actually to include Pas sur la bouche on my list, then (albeit in the lower reaches)?

Just browsing through various critics' lists, and I see that Jonathan Rosenbaum put Pas sur la bouche at number two on one of his end of year lists, so it does have other defenders.

[domino harvey]

He also inexplicably loves the deplorable Down With Love, so

[knives]

He also inexplicably loves the deplorable Down With Love, so

I thought it was cute. Like a Sirk movie brought to maximum perversion.

[domino harvey]

Sneering "Oh weren't the early sixties just darling" elitism from filmmakers with no understanding of what made the sex comedies of the era so worthwhile. Truly one of the worst, most infuriating movies of the 2000s

[Perkins Cobb]

Sneering "Oh weren't the early sixties just darling" elitism from filmmakers with no understanding of what made the sex comedies of the era so worthwhile. Truly one of the worst, most infuriating movies of the 2000s

No, actually a clever, mildly amusing reclaiming of all those unwatchable Doris Day/Rock Hudson movies of the early 60s.

[domino harvey]

The fact that you consider Lover Come Back "unwatchable" goes a long way towards explaining why you think Down With Love is "clever"

[Cronenfly]

I don't remember enjoying Down With Love that much myself, but here's a fine defense from the Onion A.V. Club. It does assume that the film is loving homage rather than sneering condescension, however, and invoking The Good German and Far From Heaven in doing so does little for me personally, as I abhor both of those movies. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Far From Heaven is a much more appropriate target for scorn than Down With Love, as I felt Haynes' approach there was much more elitist/smug (unintentionally or not) with regards to its Sirkian source material. Haynes may be Sirk's biggest fan outside of Fassbinder, but in making everything that's implicit in Sirk so thuddingly explicit he ruined any value the exercise may have had. Then again, I'm not the biggest fan of Fear Eats the Soul either, but I still feel that movie easily outperformed Haynes' on every level. Safe is a much more successful picture in melding a Sirk-style woman's picture with concerns obviously closer to Haynes' chest. I just can't see why he made such a leaden, misguided museum piece like Heaven after Safe, but perhaps working on a smaller scale was more beneficial to his artistry than his larger productions as of late (that is, if you see a marked decline in his work from Safe onwards like I do). I know that this doesn't make me out to be much of a Haynes fan, but I still have hope that he can make another movie on the level of Poison or Safe (even Velvet Goldmine would more than suffice).

[LQ]

Goodbye, Dragon Inn - I loved this movie, such a great Tati-like humor to it with an underlying sadness. There are shots that Tsai lets linger too long, but it never detracted from the experience for me and I'm eager to see more of his work now - this was my first Tsai

This was my first Tsai as well and I reallyreally liked it, although I think one- just one- labored stairwell descent could've been cut It was mindblowingly gorgeous and magnificently composed, all fine angles and drenched colors accentuated by the bewitching lighting, and captured by the most exquisite cinematography. One arresting shot after another. And yes, the balance between quiet humor and sadness is perfect, masterfully restrained.
I wish I could've seen it on the big screen, preferably in a decaying movie palace of yore. I was really impressed and I and look forward to seeing more of Tsai's work.

[zedz]

This was my first Tsai as well and I reallyreally liked it, although I think one- just one- labored stairwell descent could've been cut

But. . . which one?!

I wish I could've seen it on the big screen, preferably in a decaying movie palace of yore. I was really impressed and I and look forward to seeing more of Tsai's work.

The cinema I saw it in wasn't old and decaying, but it was drastically underpopulated (about 30 people at the start; maybe a dozen at the end), with people restlessly coming and going throughout the film. And it was raining torrentially when I left. One of those near-perfect screening / film dovetails.

[knives]

Where do you go that has as many as thirty people at a screening?

[swo17]

zedz is part of the thirty-strong film literati that personally screens every film in existence from the auspices of a secret bunker located seven miles beneath the Earth's surface somewhere in the Malaysian islands, in order to collude and declare how long each title will languish in obscurity before finally being released to DVD. Though word on the street is they're talking about kicking him out after leaking that Out 1 memo.

[puxzkkx]

Cronenfly, I agree with you re: Far from Heaven. I think the film is really clumsily done - smug and elitist "look, I know who Douglas Sirk is" sensibilities, a really poor command of the themes - basically the whole thing was glaringly obvious. And he chose actors who were 100% unsuited to that kind of acting.

I haven't loved any of the Sirk I've seen - quite the opposite in fact - but I haven't seen "All That Heaven Allows" yet and I'm quite excited to. I quite like "Fear Eats the Soul", which uses a really simplistic approach to great effect... one of those films were straightforward direction illuminates qualities in the material that might have been overcome with the use of avant-garde bells & whistles