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And then there was all that political stuff? Were they trying to link the Dance Academy to the Radical politics of the 70's? The Academy feels very much like some sort of feminist collective. And there are illusions to their dancers sprinting off to join the underground. The protagonist flees from an old-timey church-cult in the Midwest. Are they trying to equate the self-destructiveness (and plain old destructiveness) of those political movements with the self-destructiveness of the Witches Coven? By trying to radically alter themselves they only descend into fuckery and perpetuating the old order? I have no idea what I'm writing about at this point! All of this feels rather purposeless and fetid.
The political context dealt with several issues. One was radicalized and egoistic feminism created by times of extreme patriarchy and
finally purging that toxic femininity from within.
Another important one was grief and quilt left by nazi era and WW2 and how divided and messed up Germany did not make peace with it's past and how that made it impossible to heal up. I don't think there was a message involved, but the themes were there just for the emotional, ideological and mythological trip.
 
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anyone see the film, The Strange Color Of Your Body's Tears (2013 France)? Its a mix of horror/mystery/art (I guess)
 
Nope, whats it about? Good or what?
It's a murder mystery. The story plays out in weird sequences. Doesnt help its in a different language. It is visually stunning though and there's a good soundtrack. Guess the genre is called Giallo.

Been a while since I watched it and I think I got the gist of it, but its kind of haunted me since. Just thought I'd ask you guys about it. Here's a trailer:
 
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anyone see the film, The Strange Color Of Your Body's Tears (2013 France)? Its a mix of horror/mystery/art (I guess)
I walked out of a screening after 40 minutes or so. For me it was just too postmodern and too full of disconnected ideas.
 
The whole "elevate the horror genre" has led to a lot of pretentious bullshit and indicates a lot of disdain for horror tropes and customs that are in fact perfectly suited for making intelligent and thematic films.

The better examples I think tend to be the reverse, artier films that actually take on horror tropes for their own ends, stuff like Under The Skin and Berberian Sound Studio for example aren't really conventional horror but they IMHO clearly respect horror elements they include putting heavy emphasis on them.
 
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Just finished This Gun for Fire. Very likable. Not purebred film noir but more of an old school suspense/action movie with a dark side. Alan Ladd was dynamite in every scene. This should have made on my SMC top-10 list of best killers.

I like to think of Ladd's performance in that film as a forerunner for Alan Delon in Le Samurai. That same pretty-boy, slightly-off, driven-by-destiny flair -- though Delon is obviously more stoic while Ladd is more, how would you say, human?

The only moment that kind of twangs with me is when they're hiding away from the cops and he goes "Look, a kitten!" and gets all chirpy about it:D

I also really love Veronica Lake's spirited performance and their interaction in that movie, one of my favourite heroines in film.

That old guy who owns the Chemical Plant also kind of reminds me of Montgomery Burns<45>

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Not purebred film noir but more of an old school suspense/action movie with a dark side.

Definitively have a good sense of style going to it. I think there is a disparity going on between how hard-edged and "noirish" it can seem -- vs how "intimate" it can seem when Veronica and Ladd are sharing the screen together. A combination of two disparate elements to create a new impression.

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I enjoyed the new Suspiria a lot.

Listen Yotsuya, we all know that you run a video-rental-store in real life. This is obviously just an attempt at damage-control from your end, a fiendish deception to save the movie's reputation so that more people will buy/rent it from you. I mean, what is more likely, you actually liking Surpiria, or you faking a review so to increase the movie's profitability? Having seen Suspria myself due to @chickenluver's trickery, I think the answer is pretty obvious.;)
 
Recently watched Us by Jordan Peele, and my dog is a mediocre.

It does nothing interesting, and a terrible second movie for Jordan after a stellar first movie. I guess he had years to perfect the first script, but this one just felt hollow, boring ad not worthwhile, the twist was seen a mile away, and imo Id rather it have been complete shit than the pretentious wallop it turned out to be.


Really disappointed. 5/10, maybe a 6/10 for some really cool shots/moments, but man this felt like a whole lot of setups and just super underwhelming payoffs.

Also felt like he was doing everything in his power to keep the main characters alive to subvert the "blacks" always die in horror movies, but then the black characters in horror movies, and in real life, are known to avoid danger, not try and see if its still there.
 
Oh! A SMD sighting!! I must contribute something.

Avengers: Endgame was good, but not as good as Infinity War -- not even close, altho the final battle had me tear up at one point (when they all appeared I was like, 'omg'). I didn't really feel too bad about Stark dying, but it was a cool way to end it, "I am Iron Man."

What else did I watch... oh yeah, that awful Bad Times at the El Royale or whatever. I didn't finish it and left early.

John Wick 3 was pretty good, but just like John Wick 2 I felt like it was missing that Marilyn Manson feel in the soundtrack that the first movie had that made it super sick.

My movie watching has been pretty low for a while... I haven't even been rewatching movies at all either, which is like a new thing in my life, lol. I used to rewatch my favorites all the time, have them playing in the background, but I just don't anymore.
 
The only moment that kind of twangs with me is when they're hiding away from the cops and he goes "Look, a kitten!" and gets all chirpy about it:D
Opening scene was great with Ladd slapping a smutty maid for mistreating a kitten.

That old guy who owns the Chemical Plant also kind of reminds me of Montgomery Burns45
Me too. At first he seemed almost too much of a comic book villain, but the rest of the movie caught up with the character with gasmasks and general weirdness.

Listen Yotsuya, we all know that you run a video-rental-store in real life. This is obviously just an attempt at damage-control from your end, a fiendish deception to save the movie's reputation so that more people will buy/rent it from you. I mean, what is more likely, you actually liking Surpiria, or you faking a review so to increase the movie's profitability? Having seen Suspria myself due to @chickenluver's trickery, I think the answer is pretty obvious.;)
We don’t do rental, so your theory just collapses like a house of cards.
<mma4>
 
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Been watching some of the not-so-well-known Noirs lately.

The Breaking Point by Michael Curtiz was fantastic.

ReAdaptation of Hemingway's "To Have and Have not" and i think it's superior to the Howard Hawks adaptation.

John Garfield and Phyllis Thaxter played one of the most believable married film couples i've ever seen in a 40s/50s Film.
Their "kids" are 2 of the best child actors i've seen in that Era.
Garfield plays the struggling working class bloke incredibly well.
Patricia Neal is one of the most interesting Femme Fatales.She's clearly longing for a real family life.
Juano Hernandez with one of the few non Butler roles for a black actor.

I just loved how Garfield pretty much admits he wants to bang Patricia Neal, but won't leave his wife...

The last shot of the Film is also an absolute gut punch.


He walked by Night was also really nice.
It kinda combines Noir with a police procedural.
It had a "Final chase in the sewers" before it became cool with "The Third Man".
John Alton with some amazing cinematography here.
Theres also one of the weirdest and strangely interesting antagonists of Film Noir here.
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ReAdaptation of Hemingway's "To Have and Have not" and i think it's superior to the Howard Hawks adaptation.
Sounds interesting. Apart from few scenes with Bogart and Bacall I didn’t care for To Have And Have Not that much. Especially the old drunkard character was almost unbearably sentimental.
 
The Mill and the Cross (2011)

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A cinematic re-staging of Pieter Bruegel The Elder's iconic painting from 1564 'The Procession to Calvary'. It looks at the artistic process behind the work, acting essentially as a kind of 'moving painting' while Bruegel (Rutger Hauer) occasionally offers some insight into it's composition. However, there is generally very little dialogue (the only other voices are those of Bruegel's wealthy patron, and the Virgin Mary). Instead, a regular, structured narrative is replaced by vibrant - but mostly wordless - tableaux which illustrate certain scenes from the painting, as well as the historical context behind it. There is a significant focus on the everyday lives of the Dutch/Flemish peasants at the time (as befits Bruegel's paintings of course), and their religious persecution at the hands of Catholic Spain. In this respect the director would seem draw on the idea that the Bruegel, in updating the scene to his contemporary Netherlands, was drawing parallels between the imperialist repression of the Romans and of the Spaniards. But of course there is an equal focus on the religious inspiration, and general humanistic feeling, behind the painting. Stylistically it's really interesting, and I think the approach works very well.

In order to tell the story and attempt to recreate the painting it uses a mixture of what seems to be live action location shots, painted sets and CGI. In it's use of tableaux to tell an artists story, it very much brought mind to Sergei Parajanov's The Colour of Pomegranates. Though the use of painted sets which, although they are pretty stunning, are also very self-consciously artificial reminded me of The Ballad of Narayama (the original 1958 version).
I like Bruegel Sr. a lot and Mill and the Cross was a positive experience when it came out. It didn’t quite capture Bruegel’s style. He does have humor and keen eye for the lives of common folks in his works, but those aspects didn’t work all the time in the movie. Lovely production anyways.

Btw, Raul Ruiz’s Hypothesis of a Stolen Painting is extremely fascinating movie with similar painting recreation aspect even if it deals with an imaginary painter in a very Borgesque fashion.
 
Btw, Raul Ruiz’s Hypothesis of a Stolen Painting is extremely fascinating movie with similar painting recreation aspect even if it deals with an imaginary painter in a very Borgesque fashion.
Cinematography by Sacha Vierny? Bookmarked

<Gordonhat>
 
I walked out of a screening after 40 minutes or so. For me it was just too postmodern and too full of disconnected ideas.
Hey I can understand that, I nearly stopped the film mid way through. But I feel toward the end it started to make sense. Maybe Im wrong, but I saw a subplot or another story behind the stories which I thought was very clever.
 
Hey I can understand that, I nearly stopped the film mid way through. But I feel toward the end it started to make sense. Maybe Im wrong, but I saw a subplot or another story behind the stories which I thought was very clever.
Good to know! It’s always a bit unfair to comment stuff one has not finished.
 
Another great SMC recommendation off my list:

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Manchurian badass aristocrat (Carter Wong) schemes himself on the throne of China. He fears a possible rebellion by Shaolin monks, so he infiltrates the monastery to learn their martial arts and has to deal with trials by the Bronze Men to complete his training and to get back to his court. Really interesting plot line with villain protagonist. Not many could pull that off as well as Carter Wong who is really ferocious and charismatic actor. Good action and great training gimmicks as expected.

Really nice Taiwanese production. In court scenes there's way more Peking opera influence than in Shaw Bros. movies which was refreshing.
 
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I tried to watch Too Old to Die Young. Way too blingy yet sedated for me. Top-3 directors who should cut back with the purple drank:

1) Refn
2) Panos Cosmatos
3) Craig Zahler

 
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Two most recent films I have watched are

The Canterbury Tales (1972)

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...by Pier Paolo Pasolini. For some reason I've ended up watching this before I have gotten round to his The Gospel According To St Matthew. But this was a pretty interesting film. Befitting the style of Chaucher's original text, it is a series of vignettes rather than a single coherent narrative. Obviously it doesn't cover all of the Tales, only a select few (and some aspects are Pasoloni's own addition), but it gets at the spirit of the original. Like most folks I first read/heard of Chaucer in high school, and in that setting the tales are pretty tame, stripped down...here Pasolini (who appears as Chaucher writing the tales in the film) gets at the vitality of the original work, even if it's not a perfectly accurate rendition of medieval England. Pasolini's film is a fundamentally "lower-class" work of art, and that's not a criticism in any way. It's filled with slapstick, bawdy humour and perhaps most importantly, lots and lots of sex...it is an extremely erotic film, which is something which is very much part of the original text but perhaps not so much the way it is taught too teenagers in school lol. It is an extremely vibrant film, full of life.

Zorba The Greek (1964)

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Brilliant film! Stars Anthony Quinn as Alexis Zorba, a carefree peasant and musician who takes Basil, an uptight young Englishman, "under his wing". Basil has come to Crete, ostensibly to restore his fathers mine, but hopefully to cure his writers block. Throughout the film Zorba teaches Basil about life in Crete, and about life in general. Despite some tragic elements - in fact it would be probably be better to say because of, or in the face of those tragic moments - it is a fundamentally life-affirming film. Anthony Quinn is particularly fantastic as Zorba, an almost Nietzschean character who is joyous, but more than a little mad.
 
I haven't watched many movies lately - while writing a Steve Jobs essay I got sucked into Sorkinland and rewatched The West Wing on Netflix and I was disappointed in how badly it held up on a second run-through, literally every season was a bit worse than the last and Martin Sheen was the only cast member who was genuinely awesome episode-to-episode and season-to-season - but @Rimbaud82 and @chickenluver, you guys will be sad to learn that I gave up on Twin Peaks: The Return. Life is too short and that season is too stupid. When the doppelgänger Cooper got shot in the woods and then came back to life is when I gave up. I literally turned it off the second he sat up. That was the last straw. Just too dumb with zero fucking payoff.

That said, even though I threw in the towel, I'd still be interested to hear what happens. Can one or both of you guys give me the quick gist of how it wraps up? Does original Dale ever come back or does he do his Rain Man shtick the whole fucking season? Does anything else happen in/with the Black Lodge and/or with Bob? Is there ever an intersection between the two Dales and the Great Northern?

And then this is just the most obvious place for me to post this: I had an interview this week and I've been officially hired to teach my first film class in the fall. It's an adjunct post, so I still have to spend the summer hoping with my fingers crossed that enough kids sign up for it for it to actually run come the fall, but it's a class at one of the bigger community colleges around me called "Film and Society" that runs through the cinematic and cultural history of America from the invention of cinema to today. It's literally the perfect first class for me and I'm stoked to come up with my syllabus and pick which movies to screen :D

Ayyy congrats man, don't forget to post that syllabus when it's ready :D
 
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