I want to dub this crowd reaction over good scenes in good movies. Everybody freaking out when the split screen hits in Carrie or when Jackie Chan jumps down through the light fixture in Police Story. _________________ Under New Management
A movie I hated as a teenage kid, which I adore now. Gallo takes every twee trope of '90s Sundance darlings and mixes it in a blender with his toxic waste narcissism to make one of the best American films of its era. Gallo threw everything against the wall, made insane choice after insane choice, and made it all work in his directorial debut.
Spoiler alert for a 22-year-old movie, but look at this genius (NSFW):
I love everything about this movie and this clip. One thing I really appreciated at the time is that he had the audacity to prominently feature prog-rock (classic Yes and King Crimson) when "cool" "hipster" music was all the rage see Pulp Fiction soundtrack.
A movie I hated as a teenage kid, which I adore now. Gallo takes every twee trope of '90s Sundance darlings and mixes it in a blender with his toxic waste narcissism to make one of the best American films of its era. Gallo threw everything against the wall, made insane choice after insane choice, and made it all work in his directorial debut.
Spoiler alert for a 22-year-old movie, but look at this genius (NSFW):
I love everything about this movie and this clip. One thing I really appreciated at the time is that he had the audacity to prominently feature prog-rock (classic Yes and King Crimson) when "cool" "hipster" music was all the rage see Pulp Fiction soundtrack.
Great point. This was the first time I had ever really heard prog rock growing up, and though I was ambivalent about the movie then, I got into King Crimson not long after seeing it.
And what a perfect song choice perfectly synched in that scene. Chris Squire's bass punctuating Billy Brown's tentative steps into the club with the camera half a step ahead of Gallo who goes slightly out of focus then comes back into focus with each step. Ridiculously good. _________________ Under New Management
I want to dub this crowd reaction over good scenes in good movies. Everybody freaking out when the split screen hits in Carrie or when Jackie Chan jumps down through the light fixture in Police Story.
Inject it as noise in political debates. Or pump it in as audience sound during Quarantine Sporting Events. Use it to punctuate good satire: (i) play it when Strangelove stands out of his wheelchair or (ii) when Tim Robbins comes home to his family at the end of The Player
A movie I hated as a teenage kid, which I adore now. Gallo takes every twee trope of '90s Sundance darlings and mixes it in a blender with his toxic waste narcissism to make one of the best American films of its era. Gallo threw everything against the wall, made insane choice after insane choice, and made it all work in his directorial debut.
Spoiler alert for a 22-year-old movie, but look at this genius (NSFW):
I love everything about this movie and this clip. One thing I really appreciated at the time is that he had the audacity to prominently feature prog-rock (classic Yes and King Crimson) when "cool" "hipster" music was all the rage see Pulp Fiction soundtrack.
Great point. This was the first time I had ever really heard prog rock growing up, and though I was ambivalent about the movie then, I got into King Crimson not long after seeing it.
And what a perfect song choice perfectly synched in that scene. Chris Squire's bass punctuating Billy Brown's tentative steps into the club with the camera half a step ahead of Gallo who goes slightly out of focus then comes back into focus with each step. Ridiculously good.
There's also this great scene - poignant, strange, and sexy as hell.
A movie I hated as a teenage kid, which I adore now. Gallo takes every twee trope of '90s Sundance darlings and mixes it in a blender with his toxic waste narcissism to make one of the best American films of its era. Gallo threw everything against the wall, made insane choice after insane choice, and made it all work in his directorial debut.
Spoiler alert for a 22-year-old movie, but look at this genius (NSFW):
I love everything about this movie and this clip. One thing I really appreciated at the time is that he had the audacity to prominently feature prog-rock (classic Yes and King Crimson) when "cool" "hipster" music was all the rage see Pulp Fiction soundtrack.
Great point. This was the first time I had ever really heard prog rock growing up, and though I was ambivalent about the movie then, I got into King Crimson not long after seeing it.
And what a perfect song choice perfectly synched in that scene. Chris Squire's bass punctuating Billy Brown's tentative steps into the club with the camera half a step ahead of Gallo who goes slightly out of focus then comes back into focus with each step. Ridiculously good.
There's also this great scene - poignant, strange, and sexy as hell.
Oh yes! Ricci was in this and The Opposite of Sex (which I liked better then, but still an underrated '90s indie) in 1998 and thought she was going to have a monster career. But Hollywood had other ideas, I guess.
For a guy who is a scumbag narcissist in real life, I love Gallo's empathy for his characters in the movie with these little performative asides, letting them show how they hope to be seen by themselves and others. The artificiality of the sound of Ricci's tapping ties into Gazzara's lip synching croon later on when you realize that Ricci is aware he's lip synching in the scene and plays along because Jimmy Brown opens up for just a few moments of performance. _________________ Under New Management
Stone cold '70s sci-fi classic Phase IV is finally getting the Blu-Ray treatment with the original Saul Bass ending that was cut out for theatrical release!*...but it's being sold in the UK, which means you'd need a region free Blu-Ray player to run it. But what better time to purchase a region free Blu-Ray player than if not to watch Phase IV whenever you want?
Tracy Letts and Carrie Coons plan a 24-hour movie marathon and I want them to adopt me:
11 a.m. The Magician
1 p.m. It's a Gift
2:30 p.m. Contempt
4:30 p.m. The Heartbreak Kid
6:30 p.m. To Sleep with Anger
8:30 p.m. The Devils
10:30 p.m. The Abominable Dr. Phibes
12:00 a.m. Fat Girl
1:30 a.m. Multiple Maniacs
3:00 a.m. Light Sleeper
5:00 a.m. Chungking Express
7:00 a.m. Wake in Fright
9:00 a.m. Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence
A wonderful lineup, but it's worth reading the whole article with Tracy Letts gushing about movies and Carrie Coons quipping about Letts. They seem like a darling couple: AV Club.
If you were planning any kind of movie marathon of any reasonable duration, what would it look like? _________________ Under New Management
I want to dub this crowd reaction over good scenes in good movies. Everybody freaking out when the split screen hits in Carrie or when Jackie Chan jumps down through the light fixture in Police Story.
Inject it as noise in political debates. Or pump it in as audience sound during Quarantine Sporting Events. Use it to punctuate good satire: (i) play it when Strangelove stands out of his wheelchair or (ii) when Tim Robbins comes home to his family at the end of The Player
The Crimson Kimono (1959) - Sam Fuller always brought it. For some stupid reason considered lesser Fuller, this LA-based neo-noir turns into an interracial love triangle melodrama as two cops - one white, the other Japanese-American - fall in love with the same Caucasian woman, an art student who has information in a murder case. Sold as a lurid tale, with impressive nuance writer, director, producer Fuller teases out unspoken forms of discrimination and has James Shigeta's character get the girl - a wonderful turn from Victoria Shaw - but quietly lose his war buddy and partner, played by Glenn Corbett, in the process. Heck, it even has implicit critiques of white people's cultural appropiation of Japanese culture - in 1959! Mickey Rooney's bucktoothed yellowface caricature in Breakfast at Tiffany's came out in 1961! The Loving v. Virginia case ending anti-miscegination laws was decided two years earlier in 1957.
None of this gets into Fuller's lean, muscular direction although there are a couple awkward cuts here and there. The ending sequence at a parade is particularly memorable, but its the screenplay and the performances from Ogata, Shaw, and Anna Lee - as an older alcoholic artist with some of the juiciest one-liners - that really make this one pop. It's on the Criterion Channel. Maybe I'm being silly and overrating this one - definitely check it out and then come back here and tell me I'm nuts. _________________ Under New Management
Working my way through Seijun Suzuki's Taisho Trilogy this month and I decided to start with Kagero-za, since the films have no narrative connection and hence don't need to be seen in order.
Kagero-za (1981) - this is from another planet. I don't think I'll ever understand this movie - and I plan to watch it several more times since it's a fun sex farce at its core in a surrealist film - but it turned into something beautiful beyond words in its finale that destroyed me. One of the greatest love stories ever told. _________________ Under New Management
Joined: 16 Jun 2005 Posts: 40345 Location: Dirty South
Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2020 9:30 pm Post subject:
Very interesting current list of Most Popular Movies on TVGuide.com's list that updates daily.....
1. The Ten Commandments
2. The Passion of the Christ
3. Ben-Hur
4. Contagion
5. Fifty Shades Freed
6. Fifty Shades Of Grey
7. Jesus Christ, Superstar
8. The Greatest Story Ever Told
9. King Of Kings
10. Showtime (this one really seems like an outlier?)
Very interesting current list of Most Popular Movies on TVGuide.com's list that updates daily.....
1. The Ten Commandments
2. The Passion of the Christ
3. Ben-Hur
4. Contagion
5. Fifty Shades Freed
6. Fifty Shades Of Grey
7. Jesus Christ, Superstar
8. The Greatest Story Ever Told
9. King Of Kings
10. Showtime (this one really seems like an outlier?)
So a lot of super horny sadomasochistic Christians worried about the pandemic? Makes sense to me.
Also, I kinda know the guy who co-wrote Showtime, Keith Sharon. Good to see his movie has legs even if it didn't blow the doors off the box office back in 2002. _________________ Under New Management
You can't easily track down a high quality, uncensored version of Ken Russell's masterpiece The Devils (1971) because the brass at Time Warner remain a bunch of feckless (bleep) somehow still scared of Catholics in this year of our lord and saviour 2020.
If you'd like to know more about the history of the controversy surrounding the film while also seeing some of the often censored footage in its uncensored state while hearing Russell, the film's writers, producers, and actors reminisce about the making of The Devils in a made-for-tv documentary from the late-90s, have I got a treat for you:
If you can track it down, Perfume: Story of a Murderer (2006) has one helluva social distancing sequence. An all-timer of self-quarantines.
Also an all-timer outbreak movie that posits maybe humans shouldn't associate with one another at all: Ebola Syndrome (1996).
This is a notoriously nasty Category III Hong Kong flick, so make sure to not watch it on a work laptop:
George Romero's The Crazies (1973) - a critical and commercial flop on its release, it gained a bit of cult status in the 80s and 90s, but only seems to have received a positive critical reassessment over the past decade.
Both a perfect encapsulation of Nixon-era paranoia and a great pandemic watch now, The Crazies is one of Romero's best, a chaotic story about a secret military bioweapon accidentally leaked into a small Pennsylvania town after an airplane crash the government tries to keep quiet. But the virus turns infected people into raging psychopaths who eventually do harm to themselves or others or are driven insane - you can see the influence on a number of later films, but especially 28 Days Later. The military descends to quarantine the town too late, there's constant miscommunication, bungled timelines, and resource delays all while faceless soldiers in gas masks and hazmat suits try to enforce a quarantine perimeter and keep the peace through increasingly violent and eventuality outright homicidal means.
The clever central conceit is that those who are infected show no outward physical signs instead gradually mentally degrading, but under the stress of the situation and given fear of government overreach among a well-armed rural population who's infected and who's just fearful become indistinguishable in the chaos. Everything here is on the nose reflecting 1970s touchstone events from the Kent State shooting to the local priest lighting himself on fire all against the threatening backdrop of bureaucratic incompetence and indifference, a justified public distrust of the government, and a trigger happy, faceless military violently bungling their "rescue" efforts of a local population, this is a bleak, nasty social satire you'd come to expect from Romero.
It's his first color film, the acting is super rough even for a Romero film, most of the characters are bland non-entities, the scale of the production clearly strained the picture as the FX quality can vary greatly from shot to shot even in the same scene, but I still think some of the tense action setpieces, some of the thoughtful, idiosyncratic, humane touches the director adds, the attention to detail when it comes to a viral contagion (super rare in movies before this), and the overall grimy, angry, wry tone really elevate lThe Crazies into the upper echelon of Romero's work. Check it out on Prime.
Monterey Pop (1968) - D.A. Pennebaker's great concert film, it's filled with an eclectic mix of great performances from Otis Redding to Janis Joplin to Simon and Garfunkel, it's a time capsule not only to the heights of the hippie '60s, but to 2019 when we could still go out and gather together at concerts. A fun quarantine watch for a lazy weekend morning, especially if you're missing good live music.
Janis, Keith Moon, Otis, and Jimi didn't have to go so hard, but they did. All gone too soon. _________________ Under New Management
A less uplifting quarantine watch, Abel Ferrara's 4:44 Last Day on Earth (2011), which predicted social distancing: _________________ Under New Management
One of these days after Richard Carpenter kicks the bucket we'll get a remastered version of Todd Haynes' first movie, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, as a special feature on a Blu-Ray with one of his other films. Tonally it would be a clash with Haynes' Wonderstruck (2017), but what a cheeky pairing of miniature storytelling it would be:
Wonderstruck's dioramas:
Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story _________________ Under New Management
I want to dub this crowd reaction over good scenes in good movies. Everybody freaking out when the split screen hits in Carrie or when Jackie Chan jumps down through the light fixture in Police Story.
Inject it as noise in political debates. Or pump it in as audience sound during Quarantine Sporting Events. Use it to punctuate good satire: (i) play it when Strangelove stands out of his wheelchair or (ii) when Tim Robbins comes home to his family at the end of The Player
Very interesting current list of Most Popular Movies on TVGuide.com's list that updates daily.....
1. The Ten Commandments
2. The Passion of the Christ
3. Ben-Hur
4. Contagion
5. Fifty Shades Freed
6. Fifty Shades Of Grey
7. Jesus Christ, Superstar
8. The Greatest Story Ever Told
9. King Of Kings
10. Showtime (this one really seems like an outlier?)
Seen 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9 years ago -- all average IMHO except for 10 Commandments & Ben Hur. From a Christian perspective the standard is Zeffirrelli's "Jesus of Nazareth"
For those who like Contagion, Outbreak and alike -- Stream the 1971 movie "Andromeda Strain"
One of these days after Richard Carpenter kicks the bucket we'll get a remastered version of Todd Haynes' first movie, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, as a special feature on a Blu-Ray with one of his other films. Tonally it would be a clash with Haynes' Wonderstruck (2017), but what a cheeky pairing of miniature storytelling it would be:
Wonderstruck's dioramas:
Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story
Haynes also made one of the greatest self-quarantine movies of all time, Safe, now streaming on the Criterion Channel. _________________ Under New Management
I want to dub this crowd reaction over good scenes in good movies. Everybody freaking out when the split screen hits in Carrie or when Jackie Chan jumps down through the light fixture in Police Story.
Inject it as noise in political debates. Or pump it in as audience sound during Quarantine Sporting Events. Use it to punctuate good satire: (i) play it when Strangelove stands out of his wheelchair or (ii) when Tim Robbins comes home to his family at the end of The Player
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