Re: Vinegar Syndrome et al.
Posted: Sun Jan 07, 2024 5:21 pm
Today's Cinématographe asnnouncement is Red Rock West Blu-ray.
A standard edition of DARYL UHD has appeared at Hamilton book for $27.95 (They also have the standard UHDs of eXistenZ for $29.95 and The Prophecy Trilogy for $44.94)
Michael Wilmington wrote:Mailer's 1984 novel-from which he scripted and directed this charmingly cracked nightmare comedy-was a self-conscious existential thriller, full of ruminations on machismo and thick with seedy, rotten characters whose collective morality might have lodged easily in the belly of a flea.
The movie, in turn, is a self-conscious modern film noir, an ominous romantic farce fueled by the fear of homosexuality. Like the book, it's suffused with nightfall melancholy, the sour dread of late-morning hangovers, chewed-up honor and nameless fears sneaking under the sunlight. It's a story that dances through death's darkness and ends in a cackling blaze of witches' laughter.
And where the novel had gorgeous metaphors, the film-thanks to cinematographer John Bailey-has darkly gorgeous visuals. There are stark Edward Hopperesque streets here, plumed with mist and achingly clear gray daylight, briny night scenes washed in windy threat.
Mailer's three previous film-making efforts-those harsh, semi-improvised '60s works-didn't hint at the suave surface here. Even when the pace seems off or the staging a bit clumsy, Mailer and the actors get an edgy feel into nearly every scene.
The dialogue is a brew of Hemingway tough talk laced with oddball Joycean jive and rhetorical flourish; the cast chews into these lines with an insidious savor...
Some will find Tough Guys Don't Dance ludicrous; others will complain that it lacks big studio movie flash. True-but why mourn the absence of an expertise mostly made to distract audiences from the emptiness of the story they're being told?
Whatever else you can say about this film, it's alive with ideas and a rich, strange view of the world. Even at its most awkward moments, Mailer's brilliance shines out of nearly every scene.
Perhaps the movies should be grateful for the compliment he's paid them-albeit with tongue partly in cheek. Stealing time that might have been reserved for another big novel, Mailer diverts it into a homage to the films he loved as a young man. He almost revives the soul, as well as the surface, of film noir, making it again a dark, lucid mirror of society's corruptions, wicked hypocrisies and evil glamour.
That's some lovely critical prose by Wilmington, perfectly capturing why the film is more than Bad-Movie-Fodder (though it is that as well). Thank's for digging that up heartthesilence!hearthesilence wrote: Mon Jan 15, 2024 6:40 am FWIW, Tough Guys Don't Dance will be screening from a 35mm print this Wednesday, Friday and Sunday night at Roxy Cinema with an introduction by Mailer's son, Michael Mailer, at Wednesday's screening.
I'm not sure if I'd see it again, but I thought it was a good campy dark comedy, and a completely strange mix of things that seem at odds with each other - to be honest, I'm not sure if the film would be all that interesting if everything was executed with sharp precision and professionalism or if every element was thoroughly clumsy and amateurish. I get the impression that the producers thought they had a potential Blue Velvet on their hands when they agreed to finance it (Isabella Rossellini and Angelo Badalamenti's involvement doesn't seem coincidental), but even with Mailer directing his own novel, the filmmaking for better and worse lacks Lynch's skill and consistency in vision.
FWIW, the late Michael Wilmington reviewed this when it was originally released, and while other supporters like Dave Kehr and Vincent Canby recommended it with the caveat that it's enjoyably bad, Wilmington was one of the rare critics who had a much higher opinion than that. An excerpt:
Michael Wilmington wrote:Mailer's 1984 novel-from which he scripted and directed this charmingly cracked nightmare comedy-was a self-conscious existential thriller, full of ruminations on machismo and thick with seedy, rotten characters whose collective morality might have lodged easily in the belly of a flea.
The movie, in turn, is a self-conscious modern film noir, an ominous romantic farce fueled by the fear of homosexuality. Like the book, it's suffused with nightfall melancholy, the sour dread of late-morning hangovers, chewed-up honor and nameless fears sneaking under the sunlight. It's a story that dances through death's darkness and ends in a cackling blaze of witches' laughter.
And where the novel had gorgeous metaphors, the film-thanks to cinematographer John Bailey-has darkly gorgeous visuals. There are stark Edward Hopperesque streets here, plumed with mist and achingly clear gray daylight, briny night scenes washed in windy threat.
Mailer's three previous film-making efforts-those harsh, semi-improvised '60s works-didn't hint at the suave surface here. Even when the pace seems off or the staging a bit clumsy, Mailer and the actors get an edgy feel into nearly every scene.
The dialogue is a brew of Hemingway tough talk laced with oddball Joycean jive and rhetorical flourish; the cast chews into these lines with an insidious savor...
Some will find Tough Guys Don't Dance ludicrous; others will complain that it lacks big studio movie flash. True-but why mourn the absence of an expertise mostly made to distract audiences from the emptiness of the story they're being told?
Whatever else you can say about this film, it's alive with ideas and a rich, strange view of the world. Even at its most awkward moments, Mailer's brilliance shines out of nearly every scene.
Perhaps the movies should be grateful for the compliment he's paid them-albeit with tongue partly in cheek. Stealing time that might have been reserved for another big novel, Mailer diverts it into a homage to the films he loved as a young man. He almost revives the soul, as well as the surface, of film noir, making it again a dark, lucid mirror of society's corruptions, wicked hypocrisies and evil glamour.
I assume there’s another film called this, because I can’t imagine VS releasing a Dean Martin/Robert Mitchum western
domino harvey wrote: Tue Feb 01, 2011 2:22 am I really hope you all appreciate my Christlike sacrificial devotion to justly forgotten Westerns in this thread.
5 Card Stud (Henry Hathaway 1968) There are certain actors that rarely if ever show up in westerns, usually for good reason. Roddy McDowall is not a name I'd associate with the genre-- though, browsing IMDB to confirm my suspicions, this wasn't his only western. Regardless, while his sniveling adult screen persona lends itself well to playing the heavy, he is hopelessly miscast here. But at least the film he's miscast within is so terrible that no one will ever know. How can Dino palling around with Robert Mitchum's gun-toting preacher go wrong? Because everything in this movie goes wrong. Hathaway is a decent hired hand with no authorial touches, but even he's better than whatever is supposed to be happening here. Westerns can't really sustain mysteries and this one gives up the answer long before it thinks it does. The only thing separating this from some cut-rate western TV show from the same era is (insert covert mumbling)
And I know women rarely fare well in westerns anyway, but hadn't they suffered enough without pinning on their sex a black hole of talent like Katherine Justice?
Clearly I should not be allowed to operate heavy machinery todayTechnicolorAcid wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 1:36 am Don’t know why this is in the Technical Issues thread
What A Disgrace wrote: Mon Feb 05, 2024 4:42 pm There's plenty of reasons to keep the 101 Films edition of Phase IV. All of the supplements, including the essential selection of short films, remain exclusive to the 101, while Vinegar's supplements are themselves all seemingly unique.