Poll

What's your favorite film by Peter Greenaway?

Vertical Features Remake
1 (3.4%)
A Walk Through H
0 (0%)
The Falls
1 (3.4%)
The Draughtsman's Contract
2 (6.9%)
The Coastline
0 (0%)
Four American Composers
0 (0%)
A Zed & Two Noughts
0 (0%)
The Belly of an Architect
1 (3.4%)
Drowning By Numbers
2 (6.9%)
The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover
5 (17.2%)
Prospero's Books
2 (6.9%)
The Baby of Macon
0 (0%)
The Pillow Book
1 (3.4%)
8 1/2 Women
0 (0%)
The Death of a Composer: Rosa, a Horse Drama
0 (0%)
The Tulse Luper Suitcases
0 (0%)
A Life in Suitcases
0 (0%)
Nightwatching
0 (0%)
Rembrandt's J'Accuse
1 (3.4%)
haven't seen any
11 (37.9%)
don't like any
2 (6.9%)
other
0 (0%)
Goltzius and the Pelican Company
0 (0%)
Eisenstein in Guanajuato
0 (0%)
Walking to Paris
0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 28

Author Topic: Greenaway, Peter  (Read 3700 times)

Mandrake

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Re: Director's Best: Peter Greenaway
« Reply #10 on: October 25, 2010, 03:19:37 PM »
1 The Belly of an Architect - Brian Dennehy is a tour de force - watch it
2 TCTTHWAHL
3 The Pillow Book

pixote

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Re: Director's Best: Peter Greenaway
« Reply #11 on: October 25, 2010, 03:20:50 PM »
Vertical Features Remake!

pixote
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Mandrake

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Re: Director's Best: Peter Greenaway
« Reply #12 on: October 25, 2010, 03:23:40 PM »
Will say this - this guy is one of the most insane men working in the biz

verbALs

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Re: Director's Best: Peter Greenaway
« Reply #13 on: April 21, 2012, 04:46:17 PM »
1. The Draughtsman's Contract
2. The Cook etc....
3. A Zed And Two Noughts

...and for the fools suffering from something bizarre called Anglophobia, don't worry he's Welsh.
I used to encourage everyone I knew to make art; I don't do that so much anymore. - Banksy

worm@work

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Re: Director's Best: Peter Greenaway
« Reply #14 on: July 05, 2012, 07:42:20 PM »



A young draughtsman is contracted by the wife of a wealthy landowner to produce a set of twelve drawings of her husband's estate and the terms of the contract involve more than just money and drawings. Things start to go even more wrong once strange objects interfere with the impeccable sketches and the husband's body is discovered pointing to murder. 

A fun, bawdy, naughty murder mystery cum political farce filled with stunning cinematography, archly stylized dialogue filled with sexual innuendo and lovely and yet bizarre mise-en-scene. What it also ends up doing in the process is combine social satire with a commentary on the power and role of art/artists, on the relationship between mothers and daughters and perhaps most notably on the conflict between what we think we know and how unwilling we are to have that challenged by what we see. Neville's is committed by way of his art to the faithful depiction of material reality and through him and his paintings Greenaway compares (filmic/artistic) representation and reality.

The whole film is painterly in terms of its compositions. Greenaway seems so taken with formal symmetry and the rigor is very much an integral part of the film's plot and obsessions. I also love the gamesmanship of the plot and how he plays with our expectations with regards to murder mysteries by strewing clues all over the film, almost to the point where one is baffled by them and still refusing to give us any pat answers at the close. A film full of coded images and signs.
« Last Edit: July 05, 2012, 08:53:29 PM by worm@work »

pixote

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Re: Director's Best: Peter Greenaway
« Reply #15 on: July 05, 2012, 08:04:54 PM »
I remember liking that one more than I actually did:

 

The Draughtsman's Contract  (Peter Greenaway, 1982)
I generally avoid movies with this many wigs, but this wasn't bad.  I am all about the process of the drawings coming together and loved any shot looking through whatever that draughtsman contraption is.  The mystery at the center of things intrigued me at first, but I lost interest in it sometime before the end and just went back to admiring Greenaway's framing.  Unfortunately, I came away thinking less about the film I'd just watched and more about how I need to see La Belle noiseuse again.  Still, I can see this one improving with time, especially if I put more effort into considering whatever metaphors are being presented.  The statue guy should get his own movie.  Grade: B-

Definitely worth seeing, at the very least.

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worm@work

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Re: Director's Best: Peter Greenaway
« Reply #16 on: July 05, 2012, 08:12:35 PM »
With you on the statue guy :).

oneaprilday

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Re: Director's Best: Peter Greenaway
« Reply #17 on: July 05, 2012, 08:49:42 PM »
This sounds like something I'd love.  And having just recently caught up with A Zed and The Cook, the Thief, I'm eager to see more Greenaway!

Bondo

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Re: Director's Best: Peter Greenaway
« Reply #18 on: July 05, 2012, 09:12:18 PM »
@worm: I'm pretty sure that's basically what I wrote in my review, only with not so much French :D

Draughtsman's is in the Bondo Collection and is certainly an essential for Greenaway fans.

Also, apparently I never did a list

Baby of Macon
The Pillow Book
Drowning By Numbers
The Draughtsman's Contract
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover

A Zed and Two Naughts
8 1/2 Women
The Falls

The Belly of an Architect
« Last Edit: July 05, 2012, 09:16:47 PM by Bondo »

roujin

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Re: Director's Best: Peter Greenaway
« Reply #19 on: August 21, 2014, 01:48:38 PM »
1. The Draughtsman's Contract (1982)

 

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