criterionforum.org

matrixschmatrix wrote:I'm not sure where to go next- At Long Last Love?

Based on your comments for What's Up Doc, absolutely (and you'd probably get a kick out of Nickelodeon as well)

Definitely Paper Moon as well.

Is Nickelodeon only available in this weird two-pack? Also, is At Long Last Love only available on Amazon, or am I just not seeing it anywhere else?

matrixschmatrix wrote:Is Nickelodeon only available in this weird two-pack? Also, is At Long Last Love only available on Amazon, or am I just not seeing it anywhere else?

Yes. Make sure you watch the color version of Nickelodeon and not Bogdanovich's revisionist black and white version-- that set's OOP too, so if you're interested, snatch it up!

They're not '70s, but Cat's Meow and They All Laughed are also great must sees with the second being OOP.

They All Laughed is my favorite film, so yes, obviously you should see it as well

Definitely watch Paper Moon as soon as possible. It's one of the loveliest, funniest American movies of the era. Wonderfully sweet and melancholy and nostalgic, and just as movie-obsessed as the other Bogdanovich pictures without being as self-conscious about it.

I just spent the night watching as many Toshio Matsumoto films as I could find and I have to say after experiencing them that he is one of the if not the best short/ experimental film makers I've ever encountered. His films play out like the best combination of Fischinger and Brakhage possible with more imagination and differentiation between each film, even as they often go over the same territory, then could be expected. Most of the films play around with optical printer techniques as if rediscovering how to capture motion. Sometimes like with Mona Lisa this seems to be playing with the idea of planes in film and the perceived depth one gets from them. The most radical and interesting though as those that leave familiar shapes behind entirely for something like a microscopic cosmos. This is best illustrated by White Hole which at one point literally examines our section of the universe before absorbing itself in the vacuum's flesh. Even with some of the more cliche films like the 2001 redux Metastasis it feels like the cliche itself is being invented in the film allowing it to seem wholly original. I just can't recommend this guy enough and now will have to check out Funeral Parade of Roses.

I've not seen Matsumoto's short films, but I've seen three of his features and at least two of them, Demons and Funeral Parade of Roses, are flat out masterpieces. Demons in particular was a revelation, like one IMDb review suggests, comparing it to the last 20 minutes of Sword of Doom stretched out to feature length still doesn't completely get across the incredibly bleak atmosphere and brutal world it inhabits.

Does Lester's Musketeers films count as one or two movies?

A quick look online says that they were originally intended to be toured as a single film, so I'm fine with them being voted for that way.

Cool, because it is basically impossible for me to think of them as separate identities given how much they dramatically depend on each other. More of them later (probably) though. Instead I want to talk about Robert Kramer's Milestones which is just absolutely shocking and confusing in the best possible senses. It's an absolutely amazing piece being the best of everything it tries to do with the editing and sound design in particular being far beyond most films. The element that got me the most though and which I am still spinning over several hours later is the reality or lack thereof of the film. There's seeds of Chronicle of a Summer here. Kramer seems to reach even further by fucking with not just the validity of the experiment but also that the experiment is anything more than a question. There's several moments, one most notably with a gun, that if they are not staged I am fully insane. These blatant fake outs give a strong sense of paranoia to the people on display so even though the narrative is rambled and repetitive there's this constant tension that is as disquieting as any thriller made this decade. Everything becomes a cause to question what is being viewed until finally as the viewer I couldn't help but feel like Christopher Walken at the end of The Dead Zone. There's disillusionment and then there's this apocalypse of idealism basically erasing it as a potential even for the past. Every cinematic technique is tied within the scene to make it seem all like a lie. For example these dialogues that we here that at first seem to be taking place in the now but eventually sync up more like a Popeye cartoon than reality making one hyper aware that the image is probably divorced in 'real' context from the sound which leads to further questions such as what is this combination doing and is there any reality present? Even if all the film were just a fiction striving to be reality, and somehow I just can't believe that, than it duplicates reality so thoroughly as to still be a betrayal of the concept assassinating all concepts of truth. It even goes beyond he verite imitation that nowadays is so blase into how these characters interact and evolve across the film in a real living way. For whatever fictions that are spun there is so much truth in most moments that they had to have happened somewhere if not here. That's a power to story telling not often explored and kind of dangerous, but in a good way at least here.

I'm preoccupied with other areas, but I'll second Milestones as an absolute masterpiece. "The apocalypse of '60s idealism" is a pretty apt description. The Rouch comparison is certainly accurate, but I've always linked the film's sheer epic-scope-on-an-intimate-level approach to its narrative and structure (The film has what? Six storylines and 50 characters?) with Rivette's massive "improv-group" films of the period, although Kramer takes his project into a completely different direction.

the Man Who Would Be King (John Huston 1975) Distinctly old fashioned in its narrative and characterization, this throw-back to the glory days of studio era filmmaking is immensely entertaining. Bolstered by Sean Connery and Michael Caine's winning central performances as a pair of adventuresome crooks who hondle their way into power and glory (with special praise going to Caine's sardonic comic perf), this is big budget, smart-looking fun that feels epic in the best sense of the word and without suffering from bloat or tedious excesses. Also I barely recognized Christopher Plummer with that mustache!

Steelyard Blues (Alan Myerson 1973) A film I'd never even heard of until recently, this underseen and little-discussed counterculture film stars some of the most prominent politically left actors of the era in Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, and Peter Boyle in a tale of ragtag misfits who constantly rub up against the establishment for no particular reason except that man, like, screw the man, man. It's easy to see the appeal for young counterculture audiences and the film holds up better than one might expect from its parts. Fonda, in a Linda Ronstadt wig, is barely given anything to do in the film and I suspect she is only here at all as a favor to her frequent partner-in-crime Sutherland, who also produced. Peter Boyle steals the show as mental patient Eagle who has a thing for dressing up as Marlon Brando-- he not only imitates the predictable Wild Ones era Brando, though, but seemingly is trying to do Sayonara at one point as well! The plot is minor misdirection fluff about fixing up a junkyard airplane and jetting off where "the are no jails," and Sutherland is pleasant enough but after a while his anti-work ethic and pushback against his square brother, who is actually presented as a sane and decent human being who's greatest sin is wanting his misfit ex-con brother to have a normal life, wears thin and I started to feel old. Maybe if I saw this ten years ago or had been alive when it first came out, it'd connect with me on the level it wishes. As is, it's an interesting distraction and document of its time.

Wait, I just went through some of the old posts in this thread and I think we've all glossed over the single greatest opening line to any thumbnail review ever

bamwc2 wrote:Chatterbox (Tom DeSimone, 1977): Movies about talking genitals tend not to be very good

Hey! I thought The Unknown Known was pretty good...

domino harvey wrote:Wait, I just went through some of the old posts in this thread and I think we've all glossed over the single greatest opening line to any thumbnail review ever

bamwc2 wrote:Chatterbox (Tom DeSimone, 1977): Movies about talking genitals tend not to be very good

Is that the French one or its American remake? I get my talking box movies mixed up.

domino harvey wrote:Wait, I just went through some of the old posts in this thread and I think we've all glossed over the single greatest opening line to any thumbnail review ever

bamwc2 wrote:Chatterbox (Tom DeSimone, 1977): Movies about talking genitals tend not to be very good

Thanks. I was sad when that joke slipped by without any comments. I may have to retract it after I finally catch Mark Linn-Baker in his career defining role as Griffin Dunne's penis for the forthcoming 80s list.

knives wrote:

bamwc2 wrote:Chatterbox (Tom DeSimone, 1977): Movies about talking genitals tend not to be very good

Is that the French one or its American remake? I get my talking box movies mixed up.

Chatterbox is the American remake. The French original is the similarly punningly titled Pussy Talk.

And don't forget the actual pornographic version of the same premise: Angel Above - The Devil Below!

I'm going to keep watching Bogdanovich movies until I hit on one that's not an absolute goddamned delight, and having just watched Paper Moon, I'm uh definitely not prepared to stop. The wiki for this notes that Vincent Canby described it as having a saccharine sweet plot, and while it's not hard to imagine such a movie made from the same material, I think it avoids being that- Tatum O'Neal is marvelous in any number of ways, but one of them is in a total lack of the kind of unbearable playing to the audience that so often defines child actors- she's wonderfully lovable in large part because she's guarded, and her moments of (seemingly genuine) childlike glee stand out the more strongly. She presents the kind of kid I always picture Mick in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter as being, possessed of an adult's self possession with a child's straightforward ability to adapt to new circumstances and pick up on what's going on with people, and she's convincingly able to be the smartest person in the movie without ever feeling magical.

Ryan O'Neal's great, too, of course- I've only actually seen him in What's Up, Doc before this, so the changeover is pretty spectacular, but I was particularly impressed by his showman's body language here. We see Tatum performing in-character a few times, and it's always notable- her acting suddenly becomes the self-conscious declaiming one expects from child actors, without being over the top- whereas Ryan seems to be performing nearly all the time, for himself as much as anyone, and it comes out mostly through his walk and his gestures, keeping it from being just a ho-hum hamminess. Then too, we never get a full on 'aww' moment; the closest we come, with Ryan looking at the picture of Tatum on the moon, is undercut gorgeously by Tatum's utterly pokerfaced expression, and the end reinforces their bond without having them run into one another's arms. I particularly like that, by any practical consideration, Tatum should have stayed with her aunt- it takes confidence in the audience's identification with the leads to make the aunt an obviously sweet and wonderful woman.

I admire too that the movie lets Madeline Kahn be a real person, and not just a block between the leads- were it not for Imogene, it would be easy to like her altogether, as someone else using what she has at hand to make her way through the world. It helps that Kahn is someone who's almost impossible to dislike in everything, but I think it's more that, as with the O'Neals' characters, she's only intermittently good at what she does- this is a movie where you fall in love with skill and fallibility at the same time, and Kahn fits in neatly there. Not that it stopped me enjoying Imogene's open mockery of her, of course.

It's not hard to make filmic connections here- there's a lot that feels not far from The Kid, black and white past the fifties always feels a little like a self conscious reference to movies past, and of course Bogdanovich has to slip in a marquee with a Ford movie on it- but it doesn't feel like a pastiche, particularly. Honestly, even with the last couple of movies I've never really thought of him as one of the great cinematic artists, but at this point it's not hard to see why Baumbauch and Wes Anderson admire him so- he creates these worlds that are just interesting places to be.

matrixschmatrix wrote:Honestly, even with the last couple of movies I've never really thought of him as one of the great cinematic artists, but at this point it's not hard to see why Baumbauch and Wes Anderson admire him so- he creates these worlds that are just interesting places to be.

This is a really good description of what makes Bogdanovich in this period so essential. Bogdanovich once said that the reason Casablanca was so good was that every role, major and minor, was written with the actor who played it in mind, and if you start to look for it you can see that Bogdanovich is an expert at crafting his material to his material. One of the great joys of At Long Last Love or They All Laughed is that everyone is having such a good time inhabiting these insular worlds, and they all just fit. Everything and everyone is in their place, and I think it takes a real level of mastery to achieve something like that.

That makes sense- I've noticed in talking about his movies I tend to describe them in terms of the actors in them, which isn't normally how I'd approach a movie, but I think it's actually a reflection on Bogdanovich's particular skill that the pop so much. His movies don't feel like a machine designed to get you from point A to point B the way, say, Hitchcock's do, at least so far- they feel like you wandered in and happened across something interesting, but you probably could have found something else equally interesting if you'd taken a different turn.

It's interesting, though, as that's something one could equally say of Altman, but the effect is totally different- Altman creates worlds by having every goddamn person in the world have a chance to get a piece of story, while Bogdanovich is actually pretty zoned in on his characters. It also doesn't feel like he's making actor's showcases, things like Paris, Texas designed almost exclusively to create a character and focus your attention on him or her until he or she feels like a real person- there's pretty straightforward Hollywoodish plot material in all of his movies that I've seen. It's genuinely hard to say, beyond, as you say, that they just fit into place and imply a pattern that extends far beyond them.

The Bogdanovich that I'm only discovering now for the first time is At Long Last Love, and it's a sheer delight, as promised. Of course, lucky me, I got to experience it for the first time with the new definitive cut Blu-ray. But is the film really all that different in that form? I'm struggling to understand the hate that the film has gathered from apparently all corners but this one (see for example its current IMDb rating of 4.7). Was the theatrical release just poorly edited or was it more the public getting (inexplicably) sick of Cybill Shepherd? A little bit of both? Because one thing that struck me about the definitive cut was just how well edited it was, in the sense of knowing precisely how long to dwell on the final shot of a scene before cutting to the next one. Or perhaps the film was just too old fashioned? Unlike a film like The Artist, which feels more like a modern winking homage to silent film than one that had actually been unearthed from the silent era, this feels authentically like a musical that could have come from the Freed unit in the '50s, but for the cast of recognizable '70s stars. Other scattered thoughts: How well does Burt Reynolds fit into a musical? About as well as Frank Sinatra does into Guys and Dolls. And has Chris Parnell made an entire career out of channeling John Hillerman in this movie? The jury is still out.

Trying to follow up on some of Cold Bishop's Shaw Brothers recommendations, while also continuing to explore Golden Harvest's output. I couldn't pass up this Lo Wei double feature, where he essentially made the same plot premise twice for each studio.


Five Brothers (Lo Wei, 1970) - This is better than most ensemble cast Kung Fu movies I watched, but still not terribly great. Lo Wei and Chang Pei Pei give nice performances, but overall the film felt a bit flat though for the most part competently handled. The real standout here is the fight scenes though, the blocking is really incredible here. I feel like my words never do accurate justice to these scenes, so if no one minds, I'm gonna try on my bordwell hat for a minute.

Here's one shot from the film that dazzled me...



The shot immediately start with Chang Yi throwing a bunch of baddies off of him.




A new enemy enters from the right foreground, and Chang Yi slashes him splashing red blood across the entire shawscope frame onto the white wall behind him.




Another group of opponents emerge from the open space on the left. Chang Yi dispatches with them punctuated by a spurt of bright red blood. He then dodges back right to avoid some falling furniture.



Another assault from the right, this time Chang Yi sends them tumbling into the foreground.



Chang Yi impales an enemy to the left on his sword, drives him and the action closer towards the camera and then flips him over.



Then two more enemies pop up in the foreground covering most of the frame, and Chang Yi jumps up filling to gap above/between them and slashing his sword across the frame. The shots ends with the two enemies spinning towards camera revealing their wounds with a final visual burst.

So we get swordplay, hand to hand combat, several blood effects, a triggered prop fall, and acrobatics all happening in a single shot without a moment of downtime all carefully timed to create several bursts of color throughout the shot utilizing the foreground more and more as the shot progresses. Seems like quite a bit of planning and practice went into these shots, Lo Wei and Sammo Hung really did some stunning work here.

The Invincible Eight (Lo Wei, 1971) - Lo Wei considered this his best wuxia film up to this point, and in most areas it's a major improvement. This time around there's a much larger female presence in the equation, we get comic TV star Lydia Shum along with Golden Harvests 2 new action talents Nora Miao and Angela Mao. Though the overall concept is the same, Lo Wei wastes much less time dropping us right into the thick of the drama while economically developing characters as we catch up with the plot. The whole thing basically acts as one continuous event right from the opening scene and there's very little down time. His staging and direction is also significantly more interesting than the previous effort. The only downside is the fighting is a lot more based around editing and trampoline stuff. The staging is just as good, but much briefer. Unfortunately while Lo Wei is wonderful at moving crowds through a frame, his editing style is very plain and comes no where close to the sublime aerial battles being fashioned by King Hu and Joseph Kuo around this time. But overall its a really exceptional wuxia flick.

I guess your appreciation for the former is going to come down exactly to how much value you can place on carefully-choreographed action scenes, as the movie really is the action. No frills, no pretensions, only the most basic narrative information... the focus is on one magnificently blocked and unobtrusively shot action scene after another. I can see some people getting fatigued during the film, but it probably helps coming to it after a long string of "New Wuxia" swordplay films.