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Tuesday, November 13th, 2007
So I go to turn on the tv this evening and see if anything's on, and AMC is playing Vertigo! Just starting. Excellent.
... Another Hitchcock film that I've seen before but long enough ago that a lot of it has passed out of my memory. It seems a whole lot like Rear Window, and not just because of Jimmy Stewart -- though his presence is a central part of both movies. I am liking it but not in the same way I love my favorite Hitchcock films. ...When all is said and done, not as good a film as Rear Window -- which in turn is not on the level of The Lifeboat and The Lady Vanishes (and well, basically every movie of his I've seen from between 1935 and 1951). And it occurs to me that what I mean when I describe a movie as "good" is the degree to which it takes possession of me, takes me outside myself -- which totally ties in with what I have been thinking about music and reading over the last few days.
posted evening of November 13th, 2007: 4 responses
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Monday, November 12th, 2007
Tonight we watched Elling, and really enjoyed it. Not too much to say about the movie I guess -- just that it is lovely and heart-warming, and that the two lead actors are hilarious.
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Sunday, November 11th, 2007
Tonight we watched What Have I Done to Deserve This?, an early movie of Almodóvar's -- well, "I watched" -- Ellen begged off about halfway through, saying it was not her cup of tea. To be honest not really mine either -- there was plenty of visual beauty in the film and some fine acting, and moments of genius; but watching the movie seemed on the whole more like a chore -- something to sit through because you want to catch bits of nuance and technique in his later movies -- than a pleasure. I had a similar reaction a couple of weeks ago to Godard's Band of Outsiders, that the movie just didn't come together as a coherent work of art, that it was not well-directed.
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Sunday, November 4th, 2007
An excellent line from the commentary track of Even Dwarfs Started Small, Herzog saying that the strictures of bourgeois propriety are "almost as monstrous and oppressive as the objects we surround ourselves with."
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Friday, November second, 2007
I want to be able to see the following four movies in a combined viewing, or at least close in time to one another: I think the middle two movies are better movies than the first and last; but they seem to sort of go together well. The movement from the final scene of Vagabond into Even Dwarfs would be pretty cool. Thinking about it, I am really liking this line-up as a quadruple feature. (Also, this video goes very nicely with the Herzog, though it does not really bring any of the others to mind.)
posted evening of November second, 2007: Respond
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Ellen and Sylvia are in town watching Bee Story; I am at home with Even Dwarfs Started Small. ... Minimalistic dialogue is great -- watching the movie with a fairly rudimentary grasp of German you can get a good deal of it without having to rely too much on the subtitles. (Here is the post that first alerted me to the existence of this movie -- looks from A White Bear's comment like I need to go back and watch with the commentary track turned on, that sounds pretty great.)
posted evening of November second, 2007: Respond
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Saturday, October 20th, 2007
I'm watching All About my Mother again tonight, for what I think will be the last repetition (for the time being); I am really getting the movement of it, and understanding the scenes individually and in combination. Just pausing the film to note what seems to me like a really brilliant detail -- at the end of the scene showing Manuela acting in an organ donation seminar, the camera pans to her son jotting notes, then back to Manuela. Then the view switches to black and white and you see the movie rewinding -- the camera pulls back and you see the black and white is the videotape playing for a group of nurses who are reviewing the seminar. But in those couple of seconds before the camera pulls back, the impression (at least the impression I get) is that the black and white photography and the rewind are occuring in the mental image of Esteban the story teller, writing a story about his mother. This ambiguity seems really neat to me.
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Friday, October 19th, 2007
Watching All About Eve tonight -- I am being blown away. I'm almost sure I've seen it before at some point, but have no memory of it at all. It is going to be really useful when I am rewatching All About my Mother -- I'm picking up a lot of the references that I totally missed before. Is it a commonplace observation that Susan Sarandon looks like and acts like Bette Davis? Because I am noticing that for the first time. (Ellen points out that Sarandon does not have the imperious persona, which I guess is true -- there were non-imperious moments when the likeness was jumping out at me.)
posted evening of October 19th, 2007: Respond
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Friday, October 5th, 2007
Tonight I was watching A Streetcar Named Desire and thinking about All About My Mother -- as I noted before I wanted to refamiliarize myself with the source material and then watch Almodóvar's take on it again. Really nice viewing experience -- I was able to start imagining that Brando and Malden and Leigh and Hunter were members of the same circle as Almodóvar's characters. Note: Brando seems too young for his character at points. Leigh does too, especially early in the film.
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Friday, September 28th, 2007
Ellen and I have been watching a lot of Almodóvar's movies -- first we saw Talk to Her, then Volver, and tonight All About My Mother -- fantastic stuff. I did not like All About My Mother on first viewing as much as I liked the other two on first viewing; but it was also the first of them to make me feel like I need to watch it again. I felt like I missed a lot of the complexity in the characters' relationships and the quickness of the dialog. I definitely want to watch it again this weekend, and then to rewatch both All About Eve and A Streetcar Named Desire in the near future before watching All About My Mother again. So I've got my movie-viewing mapped out a little ways forward.
posted evening of September 28th, 2007: Respond
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