Tag: Film

Ingmar Bergman – Woody Allen on

”The Seventh Seal” was always my favorite film, and I remember seeing it with a small audience at the old New Yorker Theater. Who would have thought that that subject matter could yield such a pleasurable experience? If I described the story and tried to persuade a friend to watch it with me, how far would I get? ”Well,” I’d say, ”it takes place in plague-ridden medieval Sweden and explores the limits of faith and reason based on Danish – and some German – philosophical concepts.” Now this is hardly anyone’s idea of a good time, and yet it’s all dealt off with such stupendous imagination, suspense and flair that one sits riveted like a child at a harrowing fairy tale. Suddenly the black figure of Death appears on the seashore to claim his victim, and the Knight of Reason challenges him to a chess game, trying to stall for time and discover some meaning to life. The tale engages and stalks forward with sinister inevitability. Again, the images are breathtaking! The flagellants, the burning of the witch (worthy of Carl Dreyer) and the finale, as Death dances off with all the doomed people to the nether lands in one of the most memorable shots in all movies.

A digression here about style. The predominant arena for conflict in motion pictures has usually been the external, physical world. Certainly that was true for many years. Witness the staples of slapstick and westerns, war films and chases and gangster movies and musicals. As the Freudian revolution sank in, however, the most fascinating arena of conflict shifted to the interior, and films were faced with a problem. The psyche is not visible. If the most interesting fights are being waged in the heart and mind, what to do? Bergman evolved a style to deal with the human interior, and he alone among directors has explored the soul’s battlefield to the fullest. With impunity he put his camera on faces for unconscionable periods of time while actors and actresses wrestled with their anguish. One saw great performers in extreme close-ups that lingered beyond where the textbooks say is good movie form. Faces were everything for him. Close-ups. More close-ups. Extreme close-ups. He created dreams and fantasies and so deftly mingled them with reality that gradually a sense of the human interior emerged. He used huge silences with tremendous effectiveness. The terrain of Bergman films is different from his contemporaries’. It matches the bleak beaches of the rocky island he lives on. He has found a way to show the soul’s landscape. (He said he viewed the soul as a membrane, a red membrane, and showed it as such in ”Cries and Whispers.”) By rejecting cinema’s standard demand for conventional action, he has allowed wars to rage inside characters that are as acutely visual as the movement of armies. See ”Persona.”

Through a Life Darkly
Woody Allen reviewing The Magic Lantern by Ingmar Bergman

Trainspotting – Desultory Quotes

Mark “Rent-boy” Renton: [narrating] Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life… But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?


Mark “Rent-boy” Renton: [narrates] When you’re on junk you have only one worry: scoring. When you’re off it you are suddenly obliged to worry about all sorts of other shite. Got no money: can’t get pissed. Got money: drinking too much. Can’t get a bird: no chance of a ride. Got a bird: too much hassle. You have to worry about bills, about food, about some football team that never fucking wins, about human relationships and all the things that really don’t matter when you’ve got a sincere and truthful junk habit.


Diane: You’re not getting any younger, Mark. The world’s changing. Music’s changing. Even drugs are changing. You can’t stay in here all day dreaming about heroin and Ziggy Pop.
Mark “Rent-boy” Renton: It’s Iggy Pop.
Diane: Whatever. I mean, the guy’s dead anyway.
Mark “Rent-boy” Renton: Iggy Pop’s not dead. He toured last year! Tommy went to see him.
Diane: The point is, you’ve got to find something new.


https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117951/quotes/

Loss of WWI Youth – Chariots of Fire Speech

Master of Caius: I take the war list, and I run down it. Name after name which I cannot read, and which we – who are older than you – cannot hear without emotion. Names which will be only names to you, the new college, but which to us summon up face after face, full of honesty and goodness, zeal and vigor, and intellectual promise. The flower of a generation, the glory of England – and they died for England, and all that England stands for. And now, by tragic necessity, their dreams have become yours. Let me exhort you: Examine yourselves. Let each of you discover where your true chance of greatness lies. For their sakes – for the sake of your college, and your country – seize this chance. Rejoice in it, and let no power or persuasion deter you in your task.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082158/quotes/?ref_=tt_trv_qu

Drip Painting, AI, and Life – Ex Machina Quote

Nathan: [points to painting] You know this guy, right?

Caleb
: Jackson Pollock.

Nathan
: Jackson Pollock. That’s right. The drip painter. Okay. He let his mind go blank, and his hand go where it wanted. Not deliberate, not random. Some place in between. They called it automatic art. Let’s make this like Star Trek, okay? Engage intellect.

Caleb
: Excuse me?

Nathan
: I’m Kirk. Your head’s the warp drive. Engage intellect. What if Pollock had reversed the challenge. What if instead of making art without thinking, he said, “You know what? I can’t paint anything, unless I know exactly why I’m doing it.” What would have happened?

Caleb
: He never would have made a single mark.

Nathan
: Yes! You see, there’s my guy, there’s my buddy, who thinks before he opens his mouth. He never would have made a single mark.

Nathan
: The challenge is not to act automatically. It’s to find an action that is not automatic. From painting, to breathing, to talking, to fucking. To falling in love…

Nathan: And for the record, Ava’s not pretending to like you. And her flirting isn’t an algorithm to fake you out. You’re the first man she’s met that isn’t me. And I’m like her dad, right? Can you blame her for getting a crush on you?

IMDB

RIP – Teresa Taylor

She eventually dropped out of high school and met the singer Gibby Haynes and the guitarist Paul Leary, who had founded Butthole Surfers in San Antonio in 1981, while renting them space in the downtown Austin warehouse where she was living. In 1983, they invited her to join the band on a tour of California.

During Ms. Taylor’s tenure, which lasted much of the 1980s, the band never scored a hit record. although it eventually found success atop Billboard’s Modern Rock Tracks chart with the song “Pepper” in 1996. But mainstream acceptance was very much not the point — as their name made clear.

Mixing a taste for Dadaism and Nietzsche with a cyclone-force howl, Butthole Surfers proved audacious even by punk standards. Concerts featured transgressive elements like naked dancers, bullhorns, garbage fires and morbid films of surgeries. “Their live shows were an assault on the senses,” the music site Rock and Roll True Stories observed in a 2021 retrospective.

Teresa Taylor, Butthole Surfers Drummer and a Face of Gen X, Dies at 60
In addition to playing with the audacious Texas band, she helped define the image of an aimless generation with her role in the 1990 film “Slacker.”

IMDB – Slacker

5 Movies for Pride Month

Selections mine. Taglines/summary via IMDB.

Desert Hearts 1985
While waiting for her divorce papers, a repressed professor of literature is unexpectedly seduced by a carefree, spirited young lesbian.

Torch Song Trilogy 1988
Arnold is a gay man working as drag queen in 1971 NYC. He meets a handsome bisexual man.

Paris is Burning 1990
A chronicle of New York’s drag scene in the 1980s, focusing on balls, voguing and the ambitions and dreams of those who gave the era its warmth and vitality.

Brokeback Mountain 2005
Ennis and Jack are two shepherds who develop a sexual and emotional relationship. Their relationship becomes complicated when both of them get married to their respective girlfriends.

Moonlight 2016
A young African-American man grapples with his identity and sexuality while experiencing the everyday struggles of childhood, adolescence, and burgeoning adulthood.

Waking Life – Quotes from


Waking Life


Soap Opera Woman
: Excuse me.

Wiley: Excuse me.

Soap Opera Woman: Hey. Could we do that again? I know we haven’t met, but I don’t want to be an ant. You know? I mean, it’s like we go through life with our antennas bouncing off one another, continously on ant autopilot, with nothing really human required of us. Stop. Go. Walk here. Drive there. All action basically for survival. All communication simply to keep this ant colony buzzing along in an efficient, polite manner. “Here’s your change.” “Paper or plastic?’ “Credit or debit?” “You want ketchup with that?” I don’t want a straw. I want real human moments. I want to see you. I want you to see me. I don’t want to give that up. I don’t want to be ant, you know?

Man on TV: A single ego is an absurdly narrow vantage from which to view this experience. And where most consider their individual relationship to the universe, I contemplate relationships of my various selves to one another.

Kim Krizan: Creation seems to come out of imperfection. It seems to come out of a striving and a frustration and this is where I think language came from. I mean, it came from our desire to transcend our isolation and have some sort of connection with one another. And it had to be easy when it was just simple survival. Like you know, “water.” We came up with a sound for that. Or saber tooth tiger right behind you. We came up with a sound for that. But when it gets really interesting I think is when we use that same system of symbols to communicate all the abstract and intangible things that we’re experiencing. What is like… frustration? Or what is anger or love? When I say love, the sound comes out of my mouth and it hits the other person’s ear, travels through this byzantine conduit in their brain through their memories of love or lack of love, and they register what I’m saying and they say yes, they understand. But how do I know they understand? Because words are inert. They’re just symbols. They’re dead, you know? And so much of our experience is intangible. So much of what we perceive cannot be expressed. It’s unspeakable. And yet you know, when we communicate with one another and we feel that we have connected and we think that we’re understood I think we have a feeling of almost spiritual communion. And that feeling might be transient, but I think it’s what we live for.

Boat Car Guy: Man this must be like… parallel universe night. You know that cat that was just in here? Just ran out the door? Well, he comes up to the counter, you know, and I say “What’s the word, turd?” And he lays down this burrito and he kind of looks at me, kind of stares at me and says, “I have but recently returned from the valley of the shadow of death. I’m rapturously breathing in all the odors and essences of life. I’ve been to the brink of total oblivion. I remember and ferment the desire to remember everything.”

Wiley: So, what did you say to that?

Boat Car Guy
: Well, I mean, what could I say? I said, “If you’re going to microwave that burrito, I want you to poke holes in the plastic wrapping because they explode. And I’m tired of cleaning up your little burrito doings. You dig me?”

Letterboxd – Some Reviews this Week

POPULAR REVIEWS THIS WEEK

Fast X 2023
Written and directed entirely by AI.

Killers of the Flower Moon 2023
colossal.

Beau Is Afraid 2023
Ari Aster, if you read this, please DM me!! I would like to connect you to a prayer line! It is a phone number where anywhere from 4 to 13 menopausal, Afro-Caribbean, Pentecostal women from the church I grew up going to will pray with you and FOR YOU on the phone for however long you need. You just dial in. You don’t even have to speak! There is NO pressure. Let them pray for you! Ari, DM me! Please!!! Let these women lay spiritual hands on you! Contact me ASAP!

Scent of a Documentary – The A24 Candle Collection

A24 and Joya partnered to create a scented candle collection inspired by nine classic film genres: Horror, Western, Thriller, Noir, Adventure, Musical, Sci-Fi, Rom-Com, and Fantasy. Each Genre Collection candle sold separately.

A24 is the New York City-based entertainment company behind Minari, Uncut Gems, The Lighthouse, The Farewell, Midsommar, Lady Bird, Moonlight, The Witch, The Lobster, Ex Machina and more.

No 10 Documentary – lotus, lavender, vinegar, Chinese coumarin, blackcurrant, brandy, oakmoss

Inspired By: university library archives, weathered newspaper clippings, a timeline of the events. found footage, the opinion of an expert, competing narratives, court documents (newly unsealed), the fog of memory, time.


https://joyastudio.com/products/a24-documentary

Provocative Drama – Cassavetes on

When people were walking out of Husbands and Faces en masse I never felt bad about that because I thought that it was pain that was taking them out of the theater and I thought that it wasn’t the fact that the film was bad. It was that they couldn’t take it without changing their own lifestyles, which made both those films very successful to me. I thought at the time that Husbands was anti the lifestyle of almost everyone in America. We presented a lifestyle that went against their lifestyle. People walked out because they didn’t want to accept the fact that there could be anything wrong with the way they lived their lives.

It doesn’t matter whether audiences like it; it matters whether they feel something. I feel I’ve succeeded if I make them feel something — anything. The hope is that you don’t make it so easy for an audience that when they go to your movie they have nothing to think about except, ‘That was wonderful. Good. Next! What else are you going to entertain my great appetite with?’ I want to make you mad. Yeah, that’s going to take longer. And yeah, when we have it we’ll let you know, I mean. And we’ll put it there.

Cassavetes on Cassavetes
John Cassavetes, Ray Carney

RIP – Anne Heche

I liked this movie and it’s not a bad one to remember Anne Heche with. Recall her character, a therapist, saying, “I think I’m fucking my patients up worse.” (Paraphrased from memory.)


IMDB

Just as Amelia thinks she’s over her anxiety and insecurity, her best friend announces her engagement, bringing her anxiety and insecurity right back

The Video Archives Podcast with Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary

Longtime friends and filmmakers Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary will launch their first podcast next month on which they’ll revisit some of their favorite old B-movies and discover new ones.

Set to premiere July 19, “The Video Archives Podcast” will feature the duo rewatching and discussing movies pulled from the actual collection of VHS tapes that they used to recommend to customers when they worked at the original location of the iconic Video Archives movie rental store in Manhattan Beach, Calif., almost 40 years ago. It’s being produced with SiriusXM podcast subsidiary Stitcher.

Variety

You can check it out here: stitcher
Notes from an early episode:

After Show 01 – Video Vault: Women In Cages
Welcome to the Video Archives After Show, where Gala Avary brings you exclusive content, answers to your burning questions, and even more film discussion from Quentin and Roger. This week, we’re cracking open the Video Vault for a never-before-heard discussion of 1971’s Women In Cages. Originally recorded for the Video Archives pilot, Quentin and Roger discuss this Filipino exploitation classic, covering everything from an early Pam Grier knockout performance to an absolutely ginormous rat.

 

Shouting at the Screen – Comedian Wyatt Cenac and Musician Donwill

SHOUTING AT THE SCREEN
Hosted by Wyatt Cenac and Donwill. Come early for a DJ set by Donwill in Trees Lounge from 8-9pm.

Back in the days before live-tweeting, the only way to express your thoughts while watching a movie was to yell them out loud to the delight of your friends, and the disgust of some old people a few rows in front of you. Comedian Wyatt Cenac (HBO’s Problem Areas, Bob’s Burgers) and musician Donwill (Tanya Morgan, Adulting with Michelle Buteau & Jordan Carlos) invite you to join them as they recreate the kind of ridiculous, loud mouthed magic that is generally found in movie theaters owned by a guy named Magic.

Each show, Donwill, Wyatt and a guest will present a classic film from the wonderful world of 70’s era Blaxploitation and Black cult cinema. The hosts will be mic’ed up providing commentary, lovingly poking fun at some of these films’ more absurd and problematic moments while also celebrating an important bygone era of Black independent cinema, whether that’s sharing obscure trivia or creating drinking games to highlight a film’s surprisingly large number of wide brimmed hats.