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03-07-2004, 11:25 PM
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#1531 of 3711 
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Member
Location: St. Louis, MO
Join Date: Feb 2000
Local Time: 01:34 PM
Local Date: 07-24-2008
Posts: 10,381
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Quote:
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The world seems unreal afterwards.
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That's the intended effect and atmosphere. That's why the film opens with the narration The Indians say that on this river, God never finished his creation. Then the Spaniards descend down the mountain through the clouds as if from another world.
And handheld was really out of necessity. He only had something like 250k DM to shoot on location in the Amazon with a fairly large cast.
And to Steve's recommendations I would add Heart Of Glass, Even Dwarfs Started Small & Nosferatu: The Vampyre.
I know what I'm gonna do tomorrow, and the next day, and the next year, and the year after that. - George Bailey
2002 Sight & Sound Challenge: 313 Last Watched: Time of the Gypsies
Last 10 Films Watched:
The Last Winter - B+ / Waiting for Guffman - B
21 - C / The Bank Job - B
Irma La Douce - C+ / Children of Heaven - A
Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D - B / The Furies - B+
Pee-Wee's Big Adventure - A- / Trafic - C+
DVD BEAVER My Collection
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03-08-2004, 06:54 AM
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#1532 of 3711
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Member
Join Date: Apr 2000
Local Time: 08:34 AM
Local Date: 07-24-2008
Posts: 8,305
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The Collection (Blu-Ray High Definition/DVD)
Pre-orders - BLU-RAY: Adventures of Robin Hood, Beowulf, Cool Hand Luke, Dark City, Dawn of the Dead, The Doors, Dr No, For Your Eyes Only, From Russia With Love, The Godfather Collection, How the West Was Won, The Hunt for Red October, Iron Man, JFK, Kill Bill 1 & 2, LA Confidential, Live and Let Die, The Mist, Nightmare Before Christmas, The Omen, Pale Rider, The Sixth Sense, Starship Troopers, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, The Thing, Thunderball, Transformers DVD: Icons of Horror: The Hammer Collection, Popeye the Sailor Vol #3, Road House, Rodan/War of the Gargantuas, Warner Gangster Collection Vol #4
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03-08-2004, 07:10 AM
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#1533 of 3711
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Member
Join Date: Dec 2000
Local Time: 09:34 AM
Local Date: 07-24-2008
Posts: 12,518
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Quote:
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And to Steve's recommendations I would add Heart Of Glass, Even Dwarfs Started Small & Nosferatu: The Vampyre.
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Ditto, although the first two are very strange and definitely not for all tastes. Herzog's latest, Invincible, is also a solid movie.
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03-08-2004, 07:49 AM
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#1534 of 3711
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Member
Join Date: Apr 2000
Local Time: 08:34 AM
Local Date: 07-24-2008
Posts: 8,305
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The Collection (Blu-Ray High Definition/DVD)
Pre-orders - BLU-RAY: Adventures of Robin Hood, Beowulf, Cool Hand Luke, Dark City, Dawn of the Dead, The Doors, Dr No, For Your Eyes Only, From Russia With Love, The Godfather Collection, How the West Was Won, The Hunt for Red October, Iron Man, JFK, Kill Bill 1 & 2, LA Confidential, Live and Let Die, The Mist, Nightmare Before Christmas, The Omen, Pale Rider, The Sixth Sense, Starship Troopers, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, The Thing, Thunderball, Transformers DVD: Icons of Horror: The Hammer Collection, Popeye the Sailor Vol #3, Road House, Rodan/War of the Gargantuas, Warner Gangster Collection Vol #4
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03-08-2004, 09:35 AM
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#1535 of 3711
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Member
Location: Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexíco
Join Date: May 2002
Local Time: 08:34 AM
Local Date: 07-24-2008
Posts: 11,311
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What are you tryin' to prove?! What does it prove?
Brother Joey LaMotta (Joe Pesci) to aspiring boxer Jake (Robert DeNiro)—specifically about Jake insisting that his brother keep punching him in the face, but in the context of Martin Scorsese’s partially fictitious account of his life, Raging Bull, it is a general question as to the meaning of LaMotta’s life.
In particular Jake alienates everyone around him, including the only two people (his wife and brother) who have any interest in him as a person, as Jake struggles for success and upon attaining it loses everything.
The story of DeNiro gaining 50 pounds in order to play the retired boxer is by the legendary—so much so that the latest person to follow his example was Charlize Theron in her role in Monster
For me this is one of Scorsese’s finest films. Even for those who are alienated by the story, I consider it is still a must-see film, if only for the technical prowess of the camera work and the acting of Pesci and DeNiro.
¡Time is not my master!
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03-08-2004, 09:38 AM
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#1536 of 3711
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Member
Location: Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexíco
Join Date: May 2002
Local Time: 08:34 AM
Local Date: 07-24-2008
Posts: 11,311
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I’m in close agreement with your assessment of you latest films Jim—except for Andrei Rublev, which I like more and the Ivans, which I like less. And I probably like the first two parts of the Apu trilogy bit more than you—but that is only a minor quibble.
¡Time is not my master!
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03-08-2004, 10:36 AM
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#1537 of 3711
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Member
Location: Lexington, KY
Join Date: May 2001
Local Time: 09:34 AM
Local Date: 07-24-2008
Posts: 8,414
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Quote:
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That's the intended effect and atmosphere. That's why the film opens with the narration The Indians say that on this river, God never finished his creation. Then the Spaniards descend down the mountain through the clouds as if from another world.
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Of course it is. I never said it wasn't. I was just saying that it's nothing special enough to run out into the streets and proclaim, "GENIUS!!!"
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03-09-2004, 07:20 AM
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#1539 of 3711
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Member
Location: Lexington, KY
Join Date: May 2001
Local Time: 09:34 AM
Local Date: 07-24-2008
Posts: 8,414
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Who'd win: Aguirre or the Wicked Witch of the West?
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03-09-2004, 08:53 AM
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#1540 of 3711
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Member
Join Date: Nov 1998
Local Time: 08:34 AM
Local Date: 07-24-2008
Posts: 12,185
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he certainly was one of the first to do it so well.
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I strongly disagree. Other filmmakers were doing it as well, but not with the same SENSATIONALISTIC subject matter.
We see it still today. Was Showgirls talked about because of its craft, or the sexual sensationalism that was used? Much of Verhoeven's work falls close to that line.
Would Passion of Christ even be talked about nearly as much were it not for the amped up violence, instead taking on the subject in a much tamer manner?
You can push buttons with content that doesn't inherently make the film itself good (Passion may be good in many other areas but the huge BO does seem to stem from the violence at hand making the film more emotional for audiences). But by pushing those buttons you can play to a certain audience who will be emotionally stirred not by the filmmaking as much as the subject matter.
There is little doubt that BoaN made A LOT more money than Intolerance and BBlossoms. Of course DWG's shorts had been doing well before BoaN which is where he is credited for codifying the language really, yet those films were often MORE RACIST, more sensationalized than BoaN.
If 10 filmmakers are all doing the same thing and everyone goes to see DWG because they are subject to the cliche of "petting the dog" (good guys are nice to dogs, kids, women, bad guys kick dogs, hurt kids, rape women), he will codify the language because that is where everyone will be seeing this new grammar being invented by EVERYONE ELSE.
Vampires or Phantoms were popular, certainly more creative in their juxtiposition of protagonist and antogonist (often the lines between the two sides was blurred), they relied on good parallel editing and the same sort of tension building that DWG films were doing. What they didn't have was white men saving white women from A.Indians and black men.
At his least racist DWG had stories like a rich wheat baron cornering the market and putting all the farmers in the poorhouse, starving to death. The pleasant ending for that audience, the baron falls and is killed in a grain hopper.
His subjects played to the masses because they fell back on the ideals they wanted displayed, bordering on propoganda for poor and middle class white men, and not just in BoaN.
When other artists codify the language of their art, they usually do so by crafting it so well, ala Shakespeare. Of course the King James Bible is also noted with helped to codify the English language, but that falls more in line with DWG since it had a built-in audience no matter how well written it was.
In the same way lots of other filmmakers were using the same techniques to a similar degree of quality but their films had a smaller built-in audience so people came to identify these things with DWG.
In many ways its not so different from modern Disney and how strongly it has been implied that their films originated with foreign animation, copying not only plotlines by character styles and names (such as Lion King or Atlantis). American audiences will always know those things via Disney, but that doesn't make them the creative genius behind the work. Of course they argue that they never saw such films but some of the evidence is pretty damning. That gets off subject though. |
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03-09-2004, 09:21 AM
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#1541 of 3711
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Member
Join Date: Nov 1998
Local Time: 08:34 AM
Local Date: 07-24-2008
Posts: 12,185
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Somehow I seem to have forgotten to mention that I saw 2 films on the list recently, though its been weeks.
Umberto D
Loved it, very touching film. A masterpiece of Neo-Realism.
Wild Strawberries
So far I really like Bergman's work. It can lead in as dry but it always ends up engaging me in the characters. There is something about the mood he creates in his films that interests me I think.
That's 152 films down so far, not including a viewing of the wrong version of Thief of Bagdad. DOH!
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