Last movie watched...

[JamesC]

The Hateful Eight.

Absolutely loved it.

[richerthanyou]

Jackie Brown. Anyone who hasn't seen this gem by now, go out and get it. Brilliant soundtrack. Great story. Fantastic acting. Top notch film.

[Hawkmumbler]

The Hateful Eight.

Absolutely loved it.

Off to watch it tonight, very much looking forward to it.

I'm mildly annoyed by this recent trend of "hating" on Tarantino and his style of film making. Very snoby.

[I, Cosh]

When I was a kid, Peter Greenaway was a pretty big noise in our house. Up there with David Lynch as someone whose films my parents would make a point of watching or even making an infrequent trip to the big city to see. Even with the teenage boy's enthusiasm for the faintest glimpse of muff I found him impenetrable in a way that Lynch's weirdness wasn't. Until watching A Zed and Two Noughts earlier in the week I'd never attempted to revisit him as an adult.

I wouldn't say it was especially enjoyable as a story but I found it absolutely fascinating as an example of what you can do with cinema.

On the one hand there's no getting past the fact that this is almost the archetypal arthouse film. Long scenes of people talking in a series of non-sequiturs while looking in different directions; painstakingly staged scenery; random cuts to accelerated footage of decomposing fruit and animals; minges everywhere (and a healthy dose of boaby); barely comprehensible narrative which is largely ignored in favour of mood. If you asked a lazy panel game comedian to come up with a routine about arthouse cinema, I don't think this would be far off the mark.

If you can handle that then it's definitely worthwhile seeing what's actually onscreen. Initially, you notice this in the very deliberate way shots are staged. There are an above average number of amputations in this film, so symmetrical compositions take on a meaning of sorts! Greenaway's films are full of tableaux vivants, usually allusions to or direct recreations of famous paintings. I don't really understand the point of these scenes or, in the vast majority of cases, know what's being referred to. I'm far more impressed by things like the frequent use of deliberately non-naturalistic lighting to reflect mood or mental states as that seems to be more in line with the idea of doing things which you can't do in other media.

What I really started to notice was the film using the full breadth and depth of the frame in ways that I'm not used to seeing. Characters appear at one point and walk all the way across the screen before disappearing into the distance. Rather than show an event then cut to another character's reaction, things frequently happen in the foreground and background simultaneously. Sometimes this is arranged in such a way that the viewer can see multiple planes while the characters don't, sometimes not. One funny scene creates the effect of a horizontal divide as of balcony and ground.

Despite the layers of guff that are spoken (it's really not a film where there's any value in talking about the performances) there is also an underlying absurdist humour. Whether it was unwitting, cheap casting or a post-modern masterstroke, the majority of the best lines - "Crocodiles are not immortal." - are given to the bemused zoo attendant played by Jim Davidson.

I'm pretty ignorant of the wilder shores of modern cinema so perhaps I'm missing a lot but, to me, it really highlighted how little most films do beyond simply illustrating a story when there are so many possibilities for telling it in different ways. Obviously it would've been better if I'd had much of a clue what was going on but you can't have everything. I guess my ideal film would be some sort of ungodly hybrid where the downbeat sci-fi of Sumshine is made with visual aesthetic on a par with Enter the Void. While I'm waiting, maybe I'll watch some more Greenaway or check out the director's commentary.

TL;DR Better than both Crashes.

Alternatively: ZOO? POO more like.

[I, Cosh]

Then I watched Fury Road again. Still amazing.

[Mardroid]

Jackie Brown. Anyone who hasn't seen this gem by now, go out and get it. Brilliant soundtrack. Great story. Fantastic acting. Top notch film.

I agree. I like that film a lot. When I happened across a CD of the soundtrack at a charity shop I snapped it up. It might be one of my favourite album's.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

Jackie Brown. Anyone who hasn't seen this gem by now, go out and get it. Brilliant soundtrack. Great story. Fantastic acting. Top notch film.

I agree. I like that film a lot. When I happened across a CD of the soundtrack at a charity shop I snapped it up. It might be one of my favourite album's.

It's gotta be said, Tarantino has an excellent taste in music. I own every single Tarantino Movie Soundtrack. I get excited about New Tarantino soundtracks in much the same way as my sisters used to get excited about those NOW!XX albums.

Not only are they great tunes, they're worked into the movies really well, in much the same way that Sorcese had done before him. Tarantino is a shameless palagarist, but I don't hold it against him.

Jackie Brown is great.

Psycho was on ITVsomethingorother the other night. Haven't seen it in years. I must watch more Hitchcock, I've only ever seen this, North by Northwest and The Birds. A couple of Hitchcock biopics seem to have been released in the past few years. Can anyone recommend any?

[ThryllSeekyr]

Since it was Australia Day yesterday, I guess those cable network people had put this a film as old as my self on fox-Classics channel as y father tuned into to this last night. While was planning join him and not sit at the computer like I ended doing trying to complete filling in my registration details so I could finally pay for a pdf for another game manual I was interested in looking at. (The Pathfinder Beginners Box Set at only about 9 dollars as download only and regretting it to find it's like they wanted to make something more akin to the very first edition of Dungeons & Dragons. It looks that simple even with fresh coat of paint and only three player races. I'm still not sure it was aimed younger children, since there Munchkin seems more fitting for them...) and missed some of the more memorable parts of this classic piece of cinema.

Starring Jenny Agutter.....

When she during her prime and may be she still is, but I can't get over her natural gods looks that were common with the women of that period combined with the atypical sun-kissed complexion of a British back-packer which also reminds me of Megan Fox before her face lift which wasn't really a bad thing, but I don't think she needed one.

David Gulpilil.....

Who I think was in a another Australian film called Storm Boy (The very first film I recall being taken to with the rest of my first grade school so long, long ago now.) and Crocodile Dundee and other films from our land. Personally I have and always will find the Aussie Natives quite frightening to behold in their element. Those ones are just not civilised what they seem more scruples about them, they make up for this by tracking and hunting you down if you wander too far into lands left untouched by civilisation. Into the outback...

They're probably honest as the day is long, but will still spear you as soon as look at you.

Actually, I'm over exaggerating my own xenophobic fears of unfamiliar. All my life, I've never ventured far into the outback or been to Alice Springs and any where north of that place including the very tip of Darwin. I've only been to other major cities of this land. So, I mot probably never seen literal barely clothed Aussie Native in their element. Maybe a half-half playing one of those large tubular wooden wind instruments on a street corner or park stage.

Those are the ones, I have encountered may times and don't get on well with unless they are smarter than the norm and work in the public service. where they put on a polite demeanour, but you think there is still there is this something of ancestry which in them is lot closer to the surface than mine might ever be.

In I am as equally fascinated (For the same interest I have in northern tribal peoples like the Celts ) and terrified out of comparison to my own sheltered existence. I only respect  these people from a distance they can't chuck a spear at me from, and their culture within touching distance.
that may offer my only link to past.

Before, I waffle on further.....

Not sure if anybody outside Australia knows understands the entire meaning of a Walkabout outside of what it's just saying. As this is big hint, but means more to the indigenous people who send they're young men out into the unknown places as part of their introduction to manhood and I think they do this individually. Otherwise, they don't benefit from it if they survive. Although this lacks team work. So, That may not be quite right either.  This could take any length of time up to one or two years. I might also assume that they don't do this with the women, and it's just a male thing. I read that this attitude is quite common everywhere, but less amongst white settlers and others of certain European stock.

When I say less, I'm not sure how much less, but I'm pretty sure I was born into world where women were already liberated more than I had first thought when I younger. I'm sure no woman around me would take that type of treatment and then there are those that venerate females as the Earth-Mother. Mind you, this doesn't prove that women were treated any worse than anybody else or better. I'm just thinking that in what seems like such s less sophisticated culture, there might not be so much room for people to take roles they weren't born for, unless a emergency calls for it. This is just speculation on my part.

Anyway, the whole idea of walkabout and the way it was presented to seem so much like reversed alternative to you know who. Especially with how things panned out. Just watch it and see.

I haven't much more to say about the film expect it one of those rare ones that was filmed in a special way that would place it in a rare class of it's own. The outback scenes which is where it is all at, give journey the young British/Australian resident girl, her younger brother and the native boy a sense of the surreal to those who aren't used to this sort of thing. Everything looks more vivid and real than the more urban locales. Which gave me though when I try consider what a walk through the less frequented part of my town.

John Mellion briefly appears in this film in the beginning after something bad happens which I won't spoil for you.  Yet presented a such absurd occurance and then they just move on like nothing's happened. Perhaps the true meaning of this scene has gone other my head. It kind of pans out like a scene from Star wars - A New Hope back on Tattoine before ObiWan, Young Luke and the droids head off to Mos-Eisly.

I kind of find it amusing that both him David were in the most of Crocodile Dundee films together. Although, I can almost another film with Jenny and Michael York as the sequel where they both elope to escape the domed city and find that young native boy has became Peter Ustinov or is that what became of her younger brother.   

Anyway, the ending isn't a happy one for everybody as it turns out. I did miss ending as well as the beginning and a lot of in between, but I also decided to purchase the film through You-Tube for mere 28.00 , but it's in HD format and did search for my favourite scene. When Jenny goes au-natural while the males went hunting.  Yeah, I thought she was just over twenty years of age by my own calculations and it turns out she's a little younger. Yet presented in way that doesn't feel so sleazy as some may think.

[Mardroid]

What is the name of that Australian film where a young couple end up stuck out in a hostile jungle setting? It appears pretty and idyllic but ends up wearing them down and driving them crazy. Almost like everything was out to get them.

I used to think it was called 'Return to Oz' as that's what the presenter said at the start. I now realise he probably said "Now, we return to Aus..." as I later found out there was a sequel to Wizard of Oz that had that title already. As a kid I obviously focussed on the wrong part of the presenter's sentence.

There is a particular scene involving an eagle's egg which put me off of eating eggs for a while.

[I, Cosh]

Long Weekend.

[Tiplodocus]

When I was a kid, Peter Greenaway was a pretty big noise in our house. Up there with David Lynch as someone whose films my parents would make a point of watching or even making an infrequent trip to the big city to see. Even with the teenage boy's enthusiasm for the faintest glimpse of muff I found him impenetrable in a way that Lynch's weirdness wasn't.

Spot on. I was obviously a bit older when watching most Greenaway stuff but it's the staging that both elevates and condemns his films for me. 

I recall taking my mates to see PROSPERO'S BOOKS at the Cornerhouse in Manchistoh.  I turned round at the end to ask them what they thought and found they had left and gone to the pub half way through.

When I tracked them down in the LASS, the response was "Utter, utter, utter bollocks!".

When I taped it off the telly a few years later, this was the phrase I used to label the VHS cassette and it is still the first thing I think of when somebody mentions Greenaway.

[Tiplodocus]

perhaps I'm missing a lot but, to me, it really highlighted how little most films do beyond simply illustrating a story when there are so many possibilities for telling it in different ways.

If you haven't already seen it, there's a lovely little YOUTUBE series called EVERY FRAME A PAINTING which takes a bit of time out to examine film form (rather than just bang on about script and performances). 

[Tiplodocus]

A discussion somewhere on here prompted me to watch ALIEN 3 with Tiny Tips last night.

We opted for the Special Edition/Assembly Cut.  It really dragged for me. It must be an hour or so before the Alien actually kills anybody (the theatrical version has this down to about 40 or 45 minutes). Man those off screen deaths are still harsh but what else could they do if they wanted fresh direction?

The one advantage of the longer cut is, that for all the bollocks they spout, it does help you tell the convicts apart a bit better.  The lice infestation is a a cute idea and metaphor but shaved heads make it well hard for your audience to tell broadly similar characters apart.


Anyway, Tiny Tips' perfectly valid point was - "that would have been much better if it had been a FIRST film in a series".  So it starts with additional drama about do the convicts trust the stranger in their midst or does the stranger trust the convicts and you don't know who is good/bad/to be believed.

I'd never clicked before that the ending of Desolation of Smaug is pretty much the same as the ending here.


Do I get a ban for three posts in a row?

[TordelBack]

No, but possibly you deserve one for me wrecking my head for 5 minutes mentally comparing the ending of two pretty poor films.

There's Greenaway and there`s Greenaway, and I find he veers between the hypnotic and the unwatchable.  It`s difficult for me to distinguish between my youthful addiction to pretentious cinema and my coeval interest in nudie ladies, but there are some really enjoyable early Greenaways like Drowning by Numbers and The Cook, the Thief etc. that I still rate, where stylistic conceits managed to support and enliven characters, plots and errr nudie ladies - and others like Baby of Macon and The Pillow Book that you couldn`t force me to rewatch. 

[Tiplodocus]

The Cook, the Thief etc. and Draughtsman Contract were the two most accessible ones I watched.  I even used to go see Derek Jarman movies in same time frame. And one of those was a radio programme!