Recently Watched Films 2015

[surfer]

PT Anderson - Inherent Vice (2014)

And so we begin our day with whole octopus ("an animal that decorates its lair and has been observed at complicated play"), which your monger will half, and separate the head and its connective tissue. Throw that on ice before you tenderize the shit out of it with a hammer. Surf check at the Lane, which is a zoo, Middle Peak firing. Cruise along West Cliff, smell the stink of rotting kelp at Mitchell's in the unseasonable heat. Recall the Bigfoot Lodge in the city with its 8ft wooden bear carving http://www.bigfootlodge.com/ Lunch tacos at El Palomar which survived the earthquake, and get pulled into Hoffman's for a pour of absinthe https://www.facebook.com/events/1406568746227113/ by Swedish Seppy. He practically has to yell at you over the Goth band doing Joy Division covers. Apparently the Fang tried to land a pontoon boat north of town at 4-mile beach, but capsized in rising surf and the cargo, 80 pounds of Mexican stinkweed, floated ashore:



http://www.ksbw.com/news/central-califo ... z/22201878

although they didnt capture all of it. Some of it floated down to a place in Beach Flats neighborhood owned by Jose "Xilo" Xilonzochilt whose mother got put away for selling a "pedaso" to an undercover cop with Xilo was out trying to land the pontoon boat.

http://www.ksbw.com/news/central-califo ... n/26370074

Xilo is now being represented by this guy Darst, who, when not engageing in petty acts of surf vandalism (http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/201303 ... leboarders) is a practicing attorney although "It's unclear what type of law he practices." Xilo is apparently hiding out at the Sunny Cove Motel



Off the record, the boat you should be interested in is Escape



owned by a Forrest Hayes who worked for Google's secretive "X" division, and was given a fatal toes over the nose dose of SE Asian heroin by escort Alix Tichelman ("a jew who wants to be a Nazi", BDM etc etc) and may or may not be working for Chick Planet Massage via http://seekingarrangement.com/



see also: http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/genera ... santa-cruz

When you are ready to bake your octopus, hack into chunks, oven (peka od hobotnice without the peka) at 275, slow and low for 90 minutes with diced new potates, zucchini, leeks, carrot. Then add white wine take off cover and reduce liquid, test at third round of absinthe. Eat, take some for the nudists at Privates beach, locked gate access, bring card. Go for swim. Fall alseep in the sand knowing you are precious cargo that cant be insured because of, you know.

Chill Out Cafe is open where "We Roll the Fatties" http://www.chilloutcafesantacruz.com/. Get breakfast

[Dohol]

Best post ever.....

[Hayao Yamaneko]

*applauds*

[jon abbey]

definitely more entertaining than the book, if only because it was so much shorter.

[surfer]

Added some irrelevant details to make it longer and less interesting to Jon

[Dan Warburton]

Best post ever.....

Put me down for the breakfast slam. Will try to include links to local eateries in subsequent reviews, Doug

Meanwhile..



Gordon Douglas, Them!, 1954

This scared the shit out of me when I was about ten, and it's still pretty frightening until the wacky Dr Medford shows up, with great lines like "We haven't seen the end of them. We've only had a close view of the beginning of what may be the end of us." Anyway, any film that features Los Angeles storm drains is OK with me (Chinatown, Terminator II, Repo Man..)




Saul Bass, Phase IV, 1974

Dialogue is rather weak - one wonders if Bass was trying to outdo Dr Medford - but the photography and sound are terrific. Those little ants are a helluva sight scarier than the big ones from 20 years earlier. Check out the alternative ending (if you know the film already) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beLpsWaUDNk - awesome.




Ingmar Bergman, The Virgin Spring, 1960

You haven't lived until you've seen Max Von Sydow wrestling a birch tree. What a fabulous film. Even Wes Craven would agree, as he remade it (sort of) in Last House On The Left - though for my money the rape and murder scenes here are way more powerful




Werner Herzog, How Much Wood Would A Woodchuck Chuck, 1976

"The Language of Capitalism", as Werner calls it. Christ, it's a weird country, the USA




Peter Bogdanovich, What's Up Doc?, 1972

Well, I had to put Madeline Kahn in instead of Streisand. I love Madeline Kahn. But to fair, Barbra does a good job in this screwball comedy (Bogdo knows his Hawks for sure, but Cary Grant has more personality than Ryan O'Neal). I'm also a sucker for San Francisco car chases...




William Friedkin, Jade, 1995

...and there's another good one here, if you can tear your eyes away from Linda Fiorentino. Put me down for a breakfast slam there. Actually, the plot's a bit of a ragged mess (the Director's Cut version doesn't add much, apart from a few extra secs of tits'n'ass) - if Billy F and Joe Eszterhas had managed to agree on anything, you might have ended up with a damn good film. As it is, I'll give it 6/10 (9 for the car chase)


(words to follow just as soon as I can tear myself away from those burritos)..



Hollis Frampton, (nostalgia), 1971

Hipped to this by Rosenbaum's review of the James Benning (see above). The idea of looking at one photo while listening to a description of another one was also explored by Jean Eustache (see reviews passim), but where his late short film became gradually wilder and wilder, with the spoken commentary bearing progressively less resemblance to the images before us, Frampton sticks to his stark minimalist agenda here, with each photograph, having been placed on an electric ring, gradually burning up and turning to ash. Very beautiful.




John Frankenheimer, The Train, 1964

Paul Scofield, best known as Sir Thomas More in A Man For All Seasons, plays a mean Nazi intent on smuggling the "degenerate" contents of the Musée Jeu de Paume out of France before the Allies arrive. OK, Burt Lancaster (Frankenheimer regular) doesn't exactly look like your average French Résistance fighter, but local colour is maintained thanks to Jeanne Moreau and the inimitable Michel Simon, whose crusty engineer (don't tell me Frankenheimer didn't know Gabin in La bête humaine) Papa Boule is killed off all too soon. There's a sort of Ealing Comedy vibe to it, but the ending is decidely bitter, as Lancaster surveys the bodies by the railway lines. They died for Art..




André Techiné, The Brontë Sisters, 1979

Though evidently shot in the right place - in no way can the French countryside substitute for the English countryside (as Polanski found out in Tess) - there's something decidedly wonky about this, starting with the title. The central character is Brontë brother Branwell - played very well by Pascal Greggory - whose drunken dérive seems to be the inspiration for his three sisters. Acting's very good (though Adjani's tomboy Emily is a bit hard to take, and it's most odd to hear the great Patrick Magee dubbed into French), but you're still left wondering where these amazing novels came from. The original cut lasted three hours.. maybe that would tie up more loose ends, but I'm not in a hurry to see it, to be honest.




Luis Bunuel, Abismos de Pasion ("Wuthering Heights"), 1954

Now this is a real trip - fuck the moors, we're in sun (and rain) drenched Mexico, with a gung ho macho Heathcliff (Alejandro here), lashings of hysterical acting (almost every scene features someone physically grabbing someone else) and plenty of de rigueur insect torture to boot. Great fun!

[dialectics of shit]

I loved both of these. Prior to viewing, I'd only seen The Draughtsman's Contract from Greenaway. Can't wait to continue the journey.


A Zed & Two Noughts (1985)


The Belly of an Architect (1987)

[surfer]

Listen Up Philip (Alex Ross Perry, 2014) - Excellent film and an important darker turn for Schwartzman who breaks away from the type-cast role he's been playing pretty consistently since Rushmore. The story orbits around two writers, black bitter holes who (have) are emotionally abusing and belittling every person close to them. Schwartzman plays the younger Philip who is publishing his second book and uses it as an opportunity to bludgeon everyone who has every doubted his ability or (in his view) stood in his way. His gargantuan ego and arrogance makes for a rather darkly funny first half. Elizabeth Moss gives one of the best performances in the film as his girlfriend. Soon he meets Ike (Jonathon Pryce) who plays a Philip Roth-esque very successful older writer who takes Philip under his tutelage and invites him to his country estate where he meets Ike's daughter played beautifully by Krysten Ritter (Melanie). Soon Melanie and her father Ike are digging at old wounds, Philip and she exchanging barbs and flirting. Etc etc. Its a wonderful ensemble performance, that, while less humorous in the second half, achieves a not insignificant amount of poignancy. Two problems, one is that there is a very intrusive and entirely unnecessary voice-over that mars some quiet and emotionally fragile scenes and camerawork. Two, despite a very good performance from Schwartzman, his character is a bit overwritten, both the affected language and his narcissism, sometimes to good comedic effect, and sometimes its all a bit belabored. Nevertheless, highly recommended.


"Don't make yourself more miserable than you need to be. Leave that to the women you love. That's what they're for." - Ike to Philip

[dialectics of shit]

Uzak (2002)

[Piano Mouth]

The Long Voyage Home - John Ford



I thought this was a Jean Renoir film, but I guess it isn't. Anyway, I really liked this film, great ensemble cast, John Wayne is in it, but he hardly has any lines until the end, and his character wasn't terribly huge. Really terrific scenes of physical nature but lacks a bit in character development I guess? Not to say that the dialog wasn't pretty awesome, and seeing all the shipmates interact with each other was fun both on sea and on land.

[Dan Warburton]

Have added a few words to the films I found screenshots of three posts above, if you're interested.



Takeshi Kitano, Outrage, 2010

The body count is impressive in this bloody tale of Yakuza double-crosses and gang war, but Kitano's sense of pace and space makes it a quite different experience from a Woo extravaganza. Just as funny, though - love the guy in the restaurant who gets his veggie lamen tastefully garnished with two severed fingers The genial and unflappable Kitano (eyes like pissholes in the snow) plays Otomo, and ends up getting iced himself, so I'm curious to find out how he appears in the sequel. A suivre..

[Dan Warburton]

Alberto Cavalcanti / Charles Crichton / Basil Dearden /Robert Hamer, Dead of Night, 1945

Classic Ealing Studios horror film à sketches, sometimes hilariously funny (Crichton's golf-obsessed chaps remind me of my dad), sometimes genuinely scary (Cavalcanti comes out on top with the schizo ventriloquist, helped by an awesome performance from Michael Redgrave). Love the ending.. it was all a dream.. or was it? Well worth checking out.

[Dan Warburton]

Bob Rafelson, The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1981

The steamy sex scenes are what most people tend to remember, but this is by far the least convincing of the five film versions of Cain's novel (that's including Julien Duvivier's Chair de poule (1963) along with Visconti's Ossessione (1943), Pierre Chenal's Le dernier tournant (1939) and of course the 1946 Tay Garnett Hollywood version with Lana Turner and John Garfield). First up, Jessica Lange's Cora is no femme fatale (Lana was too fatale for her own good, on the other hand), and we don't have any time to build up sympathy for Nick, which is essential. Michel Simon in the Chenal is much more convincing, and Juan de Landa in the Visconti (easily my favourite of the five) is genuinely endearing. As for Nicholson, well, he already looks a bit over the hill. But the worst thing is that the movie, despite being exquisitely shot by the great Sven Nykvist, completely runs out of steam with more than half an hour to go, and becomes a floppy mess.

[Dan Warburton]

Bruno Dumont, La vie de Jésus, 1996

Wow, just discovered the work of Bruno Dumont, and a great discovery it is too. Born and bred in the town of Bailleul, near the Belgian border (that's where this was shot), Dumont failed to get into film school at IDHEC (ha, shows what they know) and taught philosophy while working on short films for advertising before finally delivering this stunning feature debut at the age of 38. This tale of bored unemployed young men who finally resort to racist violence (hm, that image above is a bit of a spoiler, but never mind) would have been unthinkable just five years later. Noone sits around getting bored anymore, with YouTube, Facebook and n zillion online games to kill the time. Wonderful performances from non-actors - Christ, some of these guys are fantastically ugly, not to mention impossible to understand without subtitles (even for my wife, who's French) - terrific photography, a real feel (love) for the place, dreary though it is. Now looking forward to checking out more Dumont. Oh, I wouldn't worry about the title, if I were you..

[dialectics of shit]

^ Be sure to check out his latest work, the miniseries P'tit Quinquin.

^^ Complete forgot there was a sequel to Outrage; I don't think I saw it.

[walto]

Alberto Cavalcanti / Charles Crichton / Basil Dearden /Robert Hamer, Dead of Night, 1945

Classic Ealing Studios horror film à sketches, sometimes hilariously funny (Crichton's golf-obsessed chaps remind me of my dad), sometimes genuinely scary (Cavalcanti comes out on top with the schizo ventriloquist, helped by an awesome performance from Michael Redgrave). Love the ending.. it was all a dream.. or was it? Well worth checking out.

I used to be kind of obsessed with that movie--but not with either that comedy team (I forget their names, but they're in some other movies together, including at least one of those Maughm short story collection flicks, I think). And not with the Redgrave madman either. It was the 'It's happening again!!' aspect. The 'is it a recurrent nightmare or is it really happening?' stuff scared the shit out of me. Big effect on my adolescence. Used to be so afraid to watch it that I'd... have to watch it.

The next movie to have that kind of effect on me came years later, when I first saw Polanski's "The Tenant". Still shakes me up.

[Dan Warburton]

Edgar G. Ulmer, The Black Cat, 1934

Karloff and Lugosi square off in the cavernous cellar after a Black Mass! Yay! Terrific performances, great decor, bit heavy on the classical music soundtrack though.. what a shame Ulmer fell foul of Uncle Carl Laemmle and stole his son's bride-to-be, which led his being more or less banished from Hollywood and condemned to the world of B-movies. Noah Isenberg's Edgar G. Ulmer. A Filmmaker at the Margins is worth a read, if you're interested.

[Dan Warburton]

Werner Herzog, Echoes from a Sombre Empire, 1990

The chainsmoking chimp is definitely the highlight of an otherwise rather pedestrian (for once) Herzog documentary on Jean-Bedel Bokassa's regime, especially since we've all seen the footage of his absurd Napoleonic self-coronation. If you haven't, here's Werner's montage, tastefully accompanied by the same Schubert trio that Kubrick used for Barry Lyndon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPYeFF4OoXQ

[Dan Warburton]

Andre Singer, Night Will Fall, 2014

What would have happened if Sidney Bernstein's documentary on the liberation of the death camps (made with generous assistance from his pal Alfred Hitchcock) had been released when it was made, instead of being shelved at the insistence of a British government worried about Zionist fervour in Palestine? From the looks of it – and it's since been correctly finished off by the folks at the Imperial War Museum – it would give Alain Resnais' Nuit et brouillard a run for its money. Though images as powerful as these are not something you're likely to want to watch too often. Harrowing.

[Dan Warburton]

George Cukor, Gaslight, 1944

What a cracking film, really. Bergman should have got Best Actress for this (instead it went to Jennifer Jones in The Song of Bernadette, and I bet you've never heard of that one – I haven't), but at least she won something that year, as Casablanca got Best Picture. Charles Boyer's psychological headfuck torturer is cool too, and Angela Lansbury's chirpy and tarty in her debut. Another cameo from pianist Jakob Gimpel too, hoorah