Author Topic: 1SO Rebuilds His Top 100 of All Time  (Read 235240 times)

ses

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Re: 1SO Rebuilds His Top 100 of All Time - McCabe & Mrs. Miller
« Reply #260 on: November 03, 2010, 02:24:00 PM »
20 years ago, McCabe & Mrs. Miller was my first Altman.  Looking for a western, I found a slow, strange, mostly inaudible mood piece.  Since then I’ve watched over 20 Altmans.  I like most of them.  The bad ones can be painful.  As for masterpieces, there’s Nashville (easily) and Short Cuts.  I’m a big fan of Brewster McCloud.  And I’d now put McCabe & Mrs. Miller right up there… possibly above all of them.

Um, The Long Goodbye?

You going to the Drive In event this Sunday jbizz?
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jbissell

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Re: 1SO Rebuilds His Top 100 of All Time - McCabe & Mrs. Miller
« Reply #261 on: November 03, 2010, 02:29:03 PM »
20 years ago, McCabe & Mrs. Miller was my first Altman.  Looking for a western, I found a slow, strange, mostly inaudible mood piece.  Since then I’ve watched over 20 Altmans.  I like most of them.  The bad ones can be painful.  As for masterpieces, there’s Nashville (easily) and Short Cuts.  I’m a big fan of Brewster McCloud.  And I’d now put McCabe & Mrs. Miller right up there… possibly above all of them.

Um, The Long Goodbye?

You going to the Drive In event this Sunday jbizz?

I'd like to but I have obligations.

'Noke

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Re: 1SO Rebuilds His Top 100 of All Time
« Reply #262 on: November 03, 2010, 02:35:18 PM »
I agree with all of this.

The review I mean, not so much the rankings.
I actually consider a lot of movies to be life-changing! I take them to my heart and they melt into my personality.

1SO

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1SO Rebuilds His Top 100 of All Time - 8 1/2
« Reply #263 on: November 06, 2010, 01:45:23 PM »
Marathon Update

8 1/2
If what you have to say is interesting, it must be so for everybody.  How can you not care if audiences understand?

8 1/2 is a film no movie fanatic could hate…
Didn't like 8 1/2. Fellini pisses me off.
How do you solve a problem like Fellini?

I've been thinking for the last 3 days how to write this review.  With The Third Man it was easy.  I didn't think it was a good film and had some clearly defined points to back up my opinion.  But 8 1/2 is much more frustrating because I do see the greatness in it (this time).  There's a complex mixture of philosophy, debate, religion, self-analysis, and cinema love.  You can see what an influential picture it is, and if this isn't the birth of meta-cinema, it's certainly one of the clearest examples.

I mostly found myself admiring the lighting, the clothes, the compositions and Marcello Mastroianni playing one of the most engaging detached characters I've seen.  (I hate passive leads, but he's really magnetic.)  Every now and then I felt like I understood what Fellini was going for, and sometimes I thought his direction was marvelous.  But for the bulk of the film, I felt like the parade kept passing me by.  Like Fellini himself was grasping for something, even though he didn't quite know what.  While that's probably what helps to make 8 1/2 such an enduring film - the incompleteness that allows an audience to bring their own opinions in - it left me alienated a lot.  Sometimes I enjoyed the magic, but more often I felt like the trick was being played on me.  Like people couldn't see past the pretty suit and realize this film doesn't know where it's going.

There's a continuing debate on these boards about screenplays where every line is calculated to fit into a very precise puzzle.  (Happens every time Christopher Nolan makes a film.)  Some complain that it doesn't factor in the music of chance.  That the structure is put together like a swiss watch, choking out all signs of life and humanity.  Fellini films (and this one in particular) are the opposite of that.  I (along with Bondo, Gotham and others) love the swiss watch screenplay.  Really admire its structure.  And that makes it difficult to enjoy something like 8 1/2, which caters more towards members like Sam and w@w.  Both approaches are valid - and I don't care for the constant sniping when one type debates the other.  I love some of the unstructured screenplays, but I definitely gravitate towards the swiss watch.  Probably why I don't love 8 1/2.  Though at least on a 2nd watch I do see its appeal.


While this is not a Top 100 Film for me, I have more respect for 8 1/2 than I did before, and I'm not done with Fellini yet.
To see my complete Fellini Ranks Click Here.

Next Up:
The Apartment
« Last Edit: July 02, 2013, 10:34:47 PM by 1SO »

MartinTeller

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Re: 1SO Rebuilds His Top 100 of All Time - 8 1/2
« Reply #264 on: November 06, 2010, 02:00:05 PM »
Like Fellini himself was grasping for something, even though he didn't quite know what.... this film doesn't know where it's going.

Well yeah, that's the beautiful meta-ness of it.  It's a film about being crippled by creative blocks.  Guido (and by proxy Fellini, as Mastroianni is perhaps the most transparent director surrogate ever) is unable to commit to anything, not just regarding his film, but throughout his personal dealings.  I'm not sure if he ever makes a firm decision on anything in the entire duration of the film.

I will say that it took two aborted attempts before I finally watched it all the way through.  I've watched it completely through three times now, and each time my opinion of it improves.  It's probably one more rewatch away from supplanting Nights of Cabiria as my favorite Fellini.

zarodinu

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Re: 1SO Rebuilds His Top 100 of All Time
« Reply #265 on: November 06, 2010, 02:22:45 PM »
I hate Fellini, never got any of it, and the style irritates me.   
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sdedalus

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Re: 1SO Rebuilds His Top 100 of All Time
« Reply #266 on: November 06, 2010, 02:44:28 PM »
8 1/2 was one of the first big foreign art movies I ever saw, along with The Seventh Seal and Rashomon.  I've never found it anything but totally enjoyable and easy to understand (sex and writer's block, what more does one need?).  I have no idea why it would generate such animus or confusion.

I also think its screenplay is as precisely calibrated and structured as any Christopher Nolan film.  Everything that happens in 8 1/2 is essential to its meaning, though very little happens in its plot.
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1SO

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Re: 1SO Rebuilds His Top 100 of All Time
« Reply #267 on: November 06, 2010, 03:06:51 PM »
sdedalus, you've simplified 8 1/2 down to its core, but within the film there are numerous encounters and bits of character behavior that remain alien to me.  Dialogue like...

"Catholic consciousness!  Just think what Suetonius was in the time of the caesars!  No, you set out to denounce, but you end up an accomplice.  I’m sure you see the confusion and ambiguity."

This is from a discussion that is neither about sex or writer's block.  You're two elements are in the movie, along with a half a dozen other big ideas.  And while everything is calibrated and structured, it's structure is thematic and not story based, which creates a different kind of film.  You can bring up the unholy mess that is Rob Marshall's Nine.  It's much more structured, yet it misses or discards all the themes and is a worse film because of this (and a bunch of other reasons).

'Noke

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Re: 1SO Rebuilds His Top 100 of All Time
« Reply #268 on: November 06, 2010, 03:28:41 PM »
I'm wondering whether I go for more the swiss watch or the let it breathe type of movie.
I actually consider a lot of movies to be life-changing! I take them to my heart and they melt into my personality.

1SO

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Re: 1SO Rebuilds His Top 100 of All Time
« Reply #269 on: November 06, 2010, 03:30:24 PM »
I'm wondering whether I go for more the swiss watch or the let it breathe type of movie.
I've seen you enjoy both times of films equally as far as I can recall.