Author Topic: Top 100 Club: 1SO  (Read 51319 times)

1SO

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Re: Top 100 Club: 1SO
« Reply #70 on: July 29, 2018, 01:07:30 AM »
Stage Door

After skimming the talk above, I decided to go for it.  I mean, Katherine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers and Lucille Ball in the same film?  Then adding in Eve Arden and Phyllis Kennedy to support?  It must be rollicking!
You named Phyllis Kennedy, and I had to look her up. I know her work, but until now not her name.


And it is.  A pretty smart script, Gold Diggers of 1933 without the music and an ending we wouldn't expect, it is full of fast talking' wise crackin' too smart for their own good women, just the way I like it. 
I like Hepburn's observation that they're all so consumed by making wisecracks instead of trying to get work.


Then when Rogers and Hepburn are in a room alone, the wit is so sharp, I thought they were juggling knives at first. 
I swim in this era of movies and that's one of the best written and performed scenes from this time.


The casting couch scenes were a wonderful two subversions of a trope, and I thought Weinstein would harm those scenes, but instead I can see him getting his comeuppance.
Adolphe Menjou is an actor you think would be typecast, but I've seen him play a wide range, including the original Walter Burns in The Front Page. (Cary Grant's role in His Girl Friday.) His butler, Franklin Pangborn, I saw in a documentary on character actors where Edgar Wright cited him as his favorite. He usually plays Hotel Managers who raise an eyebrow in suspicion, but I think this is his best work. He lives up to the hype of his ability to tiptoe backwards out of a room.


Unfortunately, I think that while Andrea Leads hit exactly the right tone and Rogers became appropriately demure, Hepburn couldn't carry it to the end.  In my opinion, she missed the proper tone and pulled me right out of the film when I was ready to go through it.  Now that I read the notes from Sandy and 1SO, I see that I'm in the minority here, but I calls it like I sees it.
Curious if you can pinpoint where she falters for you, though I can understand if you can't. I questioned her decision to stay at the ratty Footlights Club, especially when she didn't seem to be doing anything to improve it and the tenants. (Lucille Ball did more in flirting the butcher into promising to sneak some chicken into the lamb.)


Ginger Rogers is starting to become my female Jimmy Stewart, the person I will always watch just because she's in the film.
When the Unspooled podcast talked about Swing Time they were really blown away by Ginger Rogers, even though the Musicals are typically Astaire's domain. It's true though, and I continue to find obscure films where Rogers delights.

Dave the Necrobumper

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Re: Top 100 Club: 1SO
« Reply #71 on: July 29, 2018, 07:44:56 AM »
Kustom Kar Kommandos (1970 Kenneth Anger)

A short fetish film. Gently rub a fluffy cloth over the shiny body as it glistens in the studio lights. Dream Lover plays in the background. Finally you stop the rubbing, your ready, you get in, no shoes, just socks and start the engine. It was an interesting film, but I am not sure why it is essential.
Our culture is rife with stories that sexualize a person's love for their automobile. J.G. Ballard's Crash does it rather directly, as does Cronenberg's movie, but I felt both missed that connection. There's the Judas priest song "Turbo Lover" which speaks of sex in drag racing terms. (And that song took on new layers when lead singer Rob Halford came out.) I think Kustom Kar Kommandos does it best, and in a way that's more loving than sexual, and it makes the point with the most basic techniques - careful framing, glossy lighting, the right song.


And films like Gone in 60 Seconds. I agree it is very loving (although I can see that my write up implies sexual), and you have provided a very eloquent reason for its essentiality.
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One Man Band (2005 Andrew Jimenez)

Delightful "fight" between 2 one man bands' for the coin of a little girl. It keeps a nice pace to deliver it's punch line.
The music is by Michael Giacchino, and I see this as the point where he went from working for Pixar to showing what he could contribute to making a story better. I also like the creativity in making the two musicians completely different in style and then decking out their arsenal to a way that's extreme, but still plausible... as animation. (In live action it would look terrible.)


Don't have much to add on the other two shorts, but it seems you enjoyed them plenty.


Yes, the live action version of the string back-up band would be very hard to make work.

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Dawn of the Dead (1978 George Romero)

Once again Romero has a black man as a central character, with no mention of his colour. It is a shame the female lead had so little to do, I wish she had not been relegated to more of a filler character.
In Dawn of the Dead, Romero had a lot of infighting with his group of strangers. With Dawn, he takes the Howard Hawks approach of everyone working together, doing what they do best. Peter emerges naturally as the leader, so his color is never an issue. Meanwhile Fran proves to be more capable than Stephen. That's what's so great about her character. The soldiers see Stephen looking cool in his flyboy outfit, piloting the helicopter and they assume Fran is just his girl, someone they're going to have to get out of trouble. But she wins them over, proving her worth to the group, while Stephen reveals himself to ONLY be good at flying. I would say bland, blonde, white Roger is more of a filler character.


Fran is a better and more capable person and clearly expresses a wish to do more, but is blocked by the over-protective men. I guess I just wanted her character to have a bigger part, and as she did not, I saw that as a sidelining of her character. While Stephen is also a bit of a filler character, he seems to get more screen time, and there are 2 other male leads.

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The setting of a shopping mall for the majority of the film was inspired, providing a range of scenes and some hidden surprises.
Never better.

I have read about the social commentary aspects of this film, and I can see some of them, the trouble is the film drags in several places, most notably in the TV studio, and about half way through the time in the mall. At over 2 hours long, it could do with 30 minutes cut.
One of the things that puts Dawn so high on my list is that section before the finale when they have the mall and they settle into a boring, suburban existence. It's THE all out zombie movie and Romero has a section where you feel the emptiness of this group living day-to-day to where the mall, their castle becomes their prison.


Yes the day-to-day time in the mall does provide a different view of their time in the mall, but still the movie needed to be shortened. Perhaps it is just I am more used to the shorthand way these sort of things are done in more recent films. It is the problem with watching many older films, the more modern approach to film-making can distort your view of older films.

Quote

It was interesting to see that Dario Argento did some work on this film.
He also has his own cut of the film, though I've never been interested in watching it. Love the synth music he contributed with Goblins.
Do you know he also has a Story credit on Once Upon a Time in the West? Argento, Leone and Bernardo Bertolucci. Three names you wouldn't expect to find working together.

I vaguely remember being surprised to see Argento's name on OUaTitW, but not Bertolucci's, missed that one. A varied group of film-makers.

One other thing about Dawn of the Dead. I had to smile at people's obsession with getting a TV in whatever apocalypse is occurring, it is something that happens a lot in older movies.

1SO

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Re: Top 100 Club: 1SO
« Reply #72 on: July 29, 2018, 10:29:08 AM »
With nothing but static on the TV, Roger takes to crashing the car in that crude video game as he’s literally becoming a zombie. There’s more joy on his face watching the explosion, colors and sounds than in playing the game.

I love that.

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Re: Top 100 Club: 1SO
« Reply #73 on: July 29, 2018, 11:55:23 AM »
Stage Door

After skimming the talk above, I decided to go for it.  I mean, Katherine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers and Lucille Ball in the same film?  Then adding in Eve Arden and Phyllis Kennedy to support?  It must be rollicking!
You named Phyllis Kennedy, and I had to look her up. I know her work, but until now not her name.


And it is.  A pretty smart script, Gold Diggers of 1933 without the music and an ending we wouldn't expect, it is full of fast talking' wise crackin' too smart for their own good women, just the way I like it. 
I like Hepburn's observation that they're all so consumed by making wisecracks instead of trying to get work.


Then when Rogers and Hepburn are in a room alone, the wit is so sharp, I thought they were juggling knives at first. 
I swim in this era of movies and that's one of the best written and performed scenes from this time.


The casting couch scenes were a wonderful two subversions of a trope, and I thought Weinstein would harm those scenes, but instead I can see him getting his comeuppance.
Adolphe Menjou is an actor you think would be typecast, but I've seen him play a wide range, including the original Walter Burns in The Front Page. (Cary Grant's role in His Girl Friday.) His butler, Franklin Pangborn, I saw in a documentary on character actors where Edgar Wright cited him as his favorite. He usually plays Hotel Managers who raise an eyebrow in suspicion, but I think this is his best work. He lives up to the hype of his ability to tiptoe backwards out of a room.


Unfortunately, I think that while Andrea Leads hit exactly the right tone and Rogers became appropriately demure, Hepburn couldn't carry it to the end.  In my opinion, she missed the proper tone and pulled me right out of the film when I was ready to go through it.  Now that I read the notes from Sandy and 1SO, I see that I'm in the minority here, but I calls it like I sees it.
Curious if you can pinpoint where she falters for you, though I can understand if you can't. I questioned her decision to stay at the ratty Footlights Club, especially when she didn't seem to be doing anything to improve it and the tenants. (Lucille Ball did more in flirting the butcher into promising to sneak some chicken into the lamb.)


Ginger Rogers is starting to become my female Jimmy Stewart, the person I will always watch just because she's in the film.
When the Unspooled podcast talked about Swing Time they were really blown away by Ginger Rogers, even though the Musicals are typically Astaire's domain. It's true though, and I continue to find obscure films where Rogers delights.

I had to look up Phyllis Kennedy myself, of course.  And Eve.  And, Sandy, I had to go through many old files in my head to remember where I knew Eve from.  Of course, Grease, the movie I watched so often as a middle schooler.

I was wondering if Menjou was the one to play Zigfried in the film Funny Girl, because the type was so set and he looked familiar.  No, the great actor had died by then.

The part in which I am disappointed in Hepburn isn't until the end, after she finds out that Kay dies. Her performance on the stage was spot on, but Hepburn's performance just before and just after that was pretty painted on, in my opinion.  Clearly, others saw it differently. But it left a sour note at the end of the film for me.  Apart from that, Hepburn was at her glorious best.  I love her character.
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1SO

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Re: Top 100 Club: 1SO
« Reply #74 on: July 29, 2018, 11:23:15 PM »
During their review of Mockingjay, the Filmspotting hosts praised Jennifer Lawrence's ability to come off as a bad, visibly uncomfortable actress during her propaganda scenes. When I heard that I thought of the Hepburn scene you're talking about. It also reminds me of a great moment in the indie film Living in Oblivion (1995). We hear two people attempting a scene and the performances are off. The writer/director blames the actress, but to my ears it sounds like the dialogue is the problem. Then in a moment between set-ups the actors rehearse the scene with no pressure to perform. This time, even though not a word has been changed, the scene comes off as amazing.

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Re: Top 100 Club: 1SO
« Reply #75 on: July 30, 2018, 12:13:53 PM »
One thing that can often be said about me is that I hate when movies are moving slower than they need to, but here is the 2nd film this week where the pacing was a problem.


Perfume: Story of a Murderer

I picked this one because I have been reading a book about magical realism and the novel this is based on is one of the author's primary texts to write about, especially as the genre (or mode?) expands beyond its Latin American roots. So, since I kind of knew the general direction of the story, the question became how far the movie would go in depicting the increasingly weird events of the plot. Well, I'm happy to say that it goes all the way, at least as far as I know.
Yeah, if that was your question then you have to like the answer. One of my favorite things about the story is that it literally goes to the farthest possibilities. There's a lag for me somewhere around Alan Rickman's introduction, but the final two events are masterful and make up for the few scenes right before.

This might be agreeing with you to where I'm giving the impression the film is so high on my list because of the ending, but I love the methodical approach to what is a person with a super power. The Dustin Hoffman scenes are like Remy looking to prove his mastery of cuisine in Ratatouille, and I love the mysterious destruction Grenouille leaves behind him. It's like how energy can only be transferred and his gift comes with a terrible cost he's largely unaware of, that increases as his powers increase. Something that ties into that finale.

I think that methodical thing was interesting to some degree, but maybe not as much as you. I did like the trail of death, though. It's such a great little detail and perhaps my favorite thing about it is that he has no idea it is happening.
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Dave the Necrobumper

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Re: Top 100 Club: 1SO
« Reply #76 on: July 31, 2018, 02:16:44 AM »
By the way who is next in line?

Dave the Necrobumper

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Re: Top 100 Club: 1SO
« Reply #77 on: July 31, 2018, 07:38:53 AM »
Black Hawk Down (2001 Ridley Scott)

Well I started watching this one as background to cooking dinner, not realising it was on 1SO's list (abet at 313). So the movie is 55 minutes in and the Black Hawk has just gone down. Have I been bored because of this, not at all. Even as background I have felt the tension rise, the sweat on the brow of the Somali working with the Americans to mark off where Aidid would be, the prep for the mission with the talk of superstitions and packing habits.

Without the heavy overuse of shaky-cam, or savage camera movements, Scott has provided a strong sense of the tightness and danger of the situation. A bit of a pause in the movie before I continue with the last 90 minutes.

Well finished it. Intense. My main complaint with the movie I had trouble telling a lot of the soldiers apart. I did like that the Somali's were treated as people, not evil bogeymen. Another highlight was Tom Sizemore's McKnight walking around casually and calmly with bullets flying everywhere. I was WTF, how could anyone do that, insane, I have an idea why someone in his position would do that, but WTF.

For tension this movie is up there with the best of them. Very glad I watched it.

Rating: 81/100

I keep bumping up the rating, because the movie is still bouncing around in my head. So many action films once the credits start to roll, the film is already retreating into the distance.

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Re: Top 100 Club: 1SO
« Reply #78 on: July 31, 2018, 09:11:10 AM »
There's a popular theory that a Ridley Scott film is only as good as its script. I mostly agree with it because it explains the difference in quality between The Martian and Exodus: Gods and Kings. Black Hawk Down is a pretty good script, mostly functional with rudimentary attempts to define the characters and no good ideas of how to jam the political landscape into as few scenes as possible. Scott's direction elevates the film to greatness, treating the mission as one large-scale action scene that never suffers from sameness and giving the only impending invasion sequence that can be favorably compared to the one in Apocalypse Now. He's aided greatly by a bunch of creative heavyweights working at their highest level.
Producer Jerry Bruckheimer
Cinematographer Slawomir Idziak (Three Colors: Blue)
Editor Pietro Scalia (JFK, Gladiator)
Production Designer Arthur Max (Prometheus, Gladiator)



I believe Bondo is next.

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Re: Top 100 Club: 1SO
« Reply #79 on: July 31, 2018, 11:23:43 AM »
Shoah



Silence.

It permeates so many moments of this film. Someone will tell a story of life in Auschwitz and then stop or the camera will take a moment to soak in the rubble of what remains of the site of these stories. There is so much unspeakable evil that drips in these moments, the weight of what happened is already unbearable. To be confronted with silence in order to reflect and absorb it is excruciating.

Silence also defines the moment when a Jewish survivor is surrounded by the Poles who lived in the village, each of them chattering away excuses as to why they could do nothing to prevent the extermination of Jews right outside their town.

The holocaust is a moment in history that is so hard to convey. Alain Resnais decades before Shoah found the task insurmountable in Night and Fog. Shoah runs nine and a half hours trying to capture a sense of it all by going from personal firsthand experiences of survivors all the way up to interviews with Nazis running the camps.

Claude Lanzmann conducts all the interviews and the way he presses into people, slowly teasing out the terrifying stories of the survivors or outfoxes the Nazis into revealing more information about how much they really knew about the camps gives the film these raw, intense moments of truth that are revelatory.

It’s simultaneously terrifying and fascinating to hear how language is used in order to create emotional distance from the Jews in order to make everything simply a process. The Final Solution is presented as an immaculate death machine and the way the efficiency of killing people is talked about is bone-chilling.

As a document capturing the past, Shoah is invaluable, a moving and important work that is a remembrance of one of the most horrifying events in history. It challenges the subjects as it delves into the dark truths that both the victims and the perpetrators work so hard to suppress. It’s a film that tries to talk about an unspeakable evil and might be the closest any film has ever gotten to representing the Holocaust. 

 

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