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Author Topic: Top 100 Club: 1SO  (Read 51349 times)

1SO

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Re: Top 100 Club: 1SO
« Reply #90 on: August 02, 2018, 11:18:51 AM »

Sandy

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Re: Top 100 Club: 1SO
« Reply #91 on: August 03, 2018, 08:54:59 PM »
If you haven't noticed, I have a particular fondness for my round of Top 100 Club. It isn't just forcing you to watch my favorite movies or telling you once again why I love a particular film so much, it's being able to talk about a pice of cinema I had an unusually strong reaction to. People don't talk about Stage Door or One Two Three or No Name on the Bullet, and there are so many angles to these films. Plus, the group often gives me new ways to look at old favorites.

This is exactly why I love the movie club. I'm thrilled when I actually get to see something that matters to someone else and wants to talk about it.  :)

I put it on for a couple of scenes and saw that the person doing the captions wasn't trying very hard to get all the dialogue.

ha! so true.

I prefer Hepburn too, though I remember a time when I wasn't impressed by her. I don't know when the turn came. It was not Philadelphia Story or Bringing Up Baby. I think it might've also been Holiday. I haven't watched that one again in too long.

She's so stylized, I didn't give in to her persona until Holiday. I couldn't deny her presence any longer. Before that, it was a slightly detached admiration.

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Funny to me how Eve Arden is known for Grease and little else. She worked a lot in the 30s and 40s and I've seen a lot of her work. She's always good for a laugh.

I'm looking forward to my next encounter!


I have The Godfather here at my desk to watch. Life has been more than a bit hectic lately, but I will get to it soon!

Bondo

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Re: Top 100 Club: 1SO
« Reply #92 on: August 13, 2018, 08:08:37 PM »
American Dream (1990)

Were labor conditions better in the 1970s or 1980s? Judging by two documentaries covering strikes from Barbara Kopple, it could depend on how you want to interpret the lack of violence in American Dream. The coal company in Harlan County, U.S.A. hired people to intimidate the strikers while in American Dream, Hormel is comfortable simply ignoring them. While the lack of violence sounds like a win for the union, if it is a product of how completely defanged unions had become by that point, it is a pretty shallow one. In the three decades since, the balance of power has shifted even further away, and economic inequality has blossomed even further, that the film remains vital.

As noted, Hormel is in a certain respect an absent figure here. It includes footage of public statements but the center of the conflict isn't between Hormel and the union but rather within the union. In backgrounding Hormel, it arguably leaves out the kind of economic context that would allow the viewer to assess the validity of Hormel's push to lower wages.

That said, in the internal conflict of the union, I couldn't help sense a precognitive echo of the current ideological schism within the Democratic Party. The establishment structure of the union at international/national levels mirrors that of the more establishment party members, angling for more pragmatic and cautious approaches in consideration of a broader context and game theory. The activist side of the union, especially present in the local union here, operates much more emotionally on the concept of what is just. But too often it has an underpants gnome level of nativity. They have action X they opt to use and establish end point Z of winning the dispute without reductions in pay/benefit. Unfortunately the Y, the logic in how that action can actually produce that outcome, is just a bunch of question marks.

As I have often played the disliked scold warning of the cost of third-party voting or taking absolutist stances, I definitely recognized the frustration of the union establishment having to sit back and watch chaos reign as the idealists take control. I guess the question is, does someone watch this film and appreciate the wisdom of the union experts, or do they not want to hear that and choose to work from the logic that the reason things turned out poorly was lack of true faith from enough people. In a year where teacher strikes in places like West Virginia and Oklahoma have had positive effects, Kopple certainly could make another film about the state of labor, but notably, the target of those actions were state governments and not corporate employers, and I feel that labor progress of the 21st Century will have to primarily route through politics and not collective bargaining.

B+

1SO

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Re: Top 100 Club: 1SO
« Reply #93 on: August 14, 2018, 08:07:42 PM »
First of all, I like that you found the film. It seems to come and go from the internet and I know Martin has been searching for it whenever my month comes around.

I don't have much to add, though you bring up a particular richness in watching this particular strike implode from within. Do you think the doc stands on its own without Harlan County USA? I think that it does, but watching both films creates a fuller portrait, like watching Fitzcarraldo with Burden of Dreams.

Bondo

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Re: Top 100 Club: 1SO
« Reply #94 on: August 15, 2018, 03:58:16 AM »
Ultimately I found it through interlibrary loan. It was quite the search as I've had it targeted for multiple rounds.

Anyway, yeah, I feel it certainly can work without any reference to Harlan County. What they offer together is a portrait of labor rights under attack from without and from within. And unions as troubled, but essential entities.

Sandy

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Re: Top 100 Club: 1SO
« Reply #95 on: August 17, 2018, 01:47:14 AM »
The Godfather



Kathleen Kelly: What is it with men and the Godfather?
Joe Fox: "The Godfather" is the I Ching. "The Godfather" is the sum of all wisdom. "The Godfather" is the answer to any question. What should I pack for my summer vacation? "Leave the gun, take the cannoli." What day of the week is it? "Maunday, Tuesday, Thursday, Wednesday." And the answer to your question is, “Go to the mattresses.”

Vito says women and children can be careless, so by all means, let me be careless in my words here. In a current state of machismo, chest thumping and string pulling, my step back in time isn't much of a leap. I recognize this nefarious nonsense: a world of might makes right, truth is irrelevant, loyalty is secret handshakes and greased palms, and corruption compounds on top of corruption. But why stop there? Women are mere vessels, men of reason are demoted, and family is the excuse for thick bloodshed. Well, well. Pardon me if I've had enough. Is The Godfather a masterpiece? Unequivocally. Do I hate this world with all that I am? Indubitably. Does it have the answers? Yes, in an ominous omen. Following the path of a miscreant, drives you further into malfeasance. The I Ching has the kinder, gentler answer, "Thus the superior man: if he sees good, he imitates it; if he has faults, he rids himself of them." When Vito wanted better for his son, it's a shame he couldn't envision this.
« Last Edit: August 25, 2018, 12:06:57 AM by Sandy »

oldkid

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Re: Top 100 Club: 1SO
« Reply #96 on: August 17, 2018, 10:44:44 AM »
I am unhappy about your review, Sandy, because it is all too true.
"It's not art unless it has the potential to be a disaster." Bansky

Junior

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Re: Top 100 Club: 1SO
« Reply #97 on: August 17, 2018, 10:52:03 AM »
Yeah, definitely one for the Toxic Masculinity Hall of Fame. It's a spectacular example of something that's terrible. Well said, Sandy, as always!
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1SO

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Re: Top 100 Club: 1SO
« Reply #98 on: August 17, 2018, 12:05:48 PM »
I don't want to overreact though I'm sure I will sound defensive about my favorite movie of all time. I think the time period the film is set in makes this a reflection of Toxic Masculinity rather than a celebration of it. The final image is a condemnation of that lifestyle.

Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: Top 100 Club: 1SO
« Reply #99 on: August 17, 2018, 01:11:00 PM »
I'd agree that I think this film is not celebrating toxic masculinity, but I do think that there are a culture of fans around it who love it who also exhibit the toxic masculinity of the characters in the film.

One of the reasons I don't like You've Got Mail is because of its misreading of The Godfather. The Godfather is not great because it has all these lines of life wisdom. I think the film has lots of thoughtful things to say, but they're not found in just citing lines from the film. It looks at the evils we justify in the name of family, the way the sins of the father carry over to the son, the look at the perpetuating cycles of violence in the criminal world. None of these are ideas that you can condense into a quippy movie line. It's conveyed through the drama of the characters, the juxtaposition of images with lines, and unspoken and inferred moments between characters given through fantastic performances. 

The I Ching is a book filled with a number of wisdom propositions, film is not good at that kind of thing. It's a completely different medium offering a completely different way of communicating ideas and concepts. We don't ask for heady character drama from our wisdom literature in the same way we don't ask for wise sayings from our character dramas. As with many things, I think we need to consider what the form and genre of a medium is before taking it to task for what it is not.

I've slowly soured on The Godfather, not because I think it's a bad film. Far from it. It is because as my tastes for character dramas have changed, I've come to realize that I do want to ask from more from them than what The Godfather provides, which is sometimes the voices of female characters in this criminal world (See The Immigrant or The Sopranos). That being said, I see the greatness in The Godfather film as works of film that tell very compelling stories and I think there's a lot to celebrate the film for what it is and then realizing in recent years that other similar works have emerged to fill the gaps of where The Godfather might be lacking for certain audiences.


 

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