Last Movie You Watched

[Szykneij]

Last night on Blu-Ray:

I found it just a little too contrived and convenient that all the "loose ends'' were neatly tied up at the end by the eidetic memory of pi Uhl {Paul Giamatti}, most especially, how Eisenheim {Edward Norton}, managed to pull off the greatest "illusion" of them all.

I enjoyed the Philip Glass soundtrack. It was an interesting musical choice -- not what one would expect for a movie set in late 19th century Vienna.

[George]

Last night on Blu-Ray:

I found it just a little too contrived and convenient that all the "loose ends'' were neatly tied up at the end by the eidetic memory of pi Uhl {Paul Giamatti}, most especially, how Eisenheim {Edward Norton}, managed to pull off the greatest "illusion" of them all.

Time to see The Prestige.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0482571/

[TheGSMoeller]

Time to see The Prestige.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0482571/

Both good films, and quite different from each other.

[Octave]

Re: ILLUSIONIST:

I found it just a little too contrived and convenient that all the "loose ends'' were neatly tied up at the end by the eidetic memory of pi Uhl {Paul Giamatti}, most especially, how Eisenheim {Edward Norton}, managed to pull off the greatest "illusion" of them all.[/color]

I remember liking the movie well enough, except for a portion of the end, with that sustained tracking arc of Giamatti grinning all well-played-sir like, which is just too much of a good actor being made to do a dumb stock thing.  No, no, no!  I yelled at the screen.  I do remember liking the storytelling and Glass score, though; filmmakers please give Philip Glass a rest, though!  His stuff works too well and it will make us totally sick of him.  Does he do it for the money?  Surely he doesn't need the money.  I wish we could

    I admire Tarantino in a way. I love his enthusiasm for trash, for the way he sees the good in it. The trash itself I don't like very much.

Yes, this!  I love his film-geekery and enthusiasm; I am partial to enthusiasm.  Energy is eternal delight, etc.

[Todd]

http://www.youtube.com/v/vzVhPCMAxWQ


So close.

[TheGSMoeller]

http://www.youtube.com/v/vzVhPCMAxWQ


So close.

I expect Netflix to crash that day. Won't stop me though. Even this trailer made me laugh.

[Papy Oli]

in the last couple of evenings :

King Of California - quirky with a loopy Michael Douglas



Derailed - average to good thriller, with some good twists and turns to keep the interest going.



Panic - WH Macy spot on as a professional killer's tortured soul.



Confidence - Hustle-light movie. Hoffman makes a convincing baddie though

[Octave]

Three by Roberto Rossellini:
1. STROMBOLI (1950)
2. VIAGGIO IN ITALIA [aka VOYAGE TO ITALY aka JOURNEY TO ITALY] (1954)
3. CARTESIUS (telefilm, 2 parts, 1974)

STROMBOLI and VIAGGIO each for the second time.  STROMBOLI made more sense to me this time around, and the end was stronger and more transcendent.  VIAGGIO was much, much stronger; I even experienced some of the same boredom and irritation with the movie as the first time I saw it (which might be an important part of the experience, at the risk of sounding like I'm saying "but that's the point"), not say it's a boring movie.  The ending, with the collision of the unhappy relationship melodrama (if that's what it is, at all) and the documentary aspect of the film, was breathtaking for me this time around.  I felt like weeping.  In a number of superficial ways, the film reminded me a lot of CERTIFIED COPY (Abbas Kiarostami, 2010); but my frustration with both movies, and the slow-burn emotional depth charge of their respective endings, partially triggered by the sound design (bells in both?  I cannot quite remember....amazing bells in VIAGGIO, as life comes rushing past), was awesome.  YMMV of course.  I've tried not to read anything on CERTIFIED until I see it again, but apparently there have been a wild profusion of theories about what this apparently simple little flick is about.  I got that feeling about VIAGGIO, without a doubt: even just the story itself seems to have resonant depths that remain mostly obscure, and the themes that undergird this little story and its characters, those seem almost bottomless.

One unfortunate thing about the nice restored print that I watched via Hulu Plus streaming is that it was the fully-Italian dubbed version, so you can't hear George Sanders and Ingrid Bergman---playing an English couple in Italy---speak English.  I am flabbergasted that the Criterion Collection would present this version of the film, as 1.) it is terrible to watch George Sanders act, playing an Englishman-to-and-beyond-stereotype---to archetype---without hearing his marvelous voice; and 2.) there is something essential to the story about these being English speakers in Italy.  Probably worth seeking out the English version, though having the leads speaking with others' voices doesn't ruin the experience.

CARTESIUS I was not crazy about, though part of that has to do with me finding the look of Rossellini's late educational (?) films for television to be ugly and uninteresting; I don't have a handle on its significance yet.  (He declared film to be dead then made this stuff?)  I actually find most of the (philosophiscal, historical) subject matter of these films very interesting; but I'd rather read about it.  Descartes' life and thought---the latter seemingly perennially subject to assault and derision, or maybe that's just my own bad luck---seems very dramatic to me; he's always been a favorite of mine in many ways, whatever the felicity of his actual arguments.

[Cato]

Last night we caught the famous 1947 crime movie Kiss of Death with Victor Mature as an ex-con trying to go straight and (stealing the movie) Richard Widmark as a giggling hit man.

It has the famous scene where Widmark's character kills an old lady in a wheel chair by tying her into the chair and then pushing her down a long flight of stairs.  People say the scene shocked audiences back in 1947!

[Karl Henning]

Where now, we throw momma from the train . . . .

[Bogey]

Last night on Blu-Ray:

I found it just a little too contrived and convenient that all the "loose ends'' were neatly tied up at the end by the eidetic memory of pi Uhl {Paul Giamatti}, most especially, how Eisenheim {Edward Norton}, managed to pull off the greatest "illusion" of them all.

Meh.  And I was looking forward to it when it came out.  Your review is spot on.

[Octave]

I just ran across mention of a new digital "print" (and the most recent restoration?) of Rossellini's JOURNEY/VOYAGE TO ITALY; it's now being shown around the U.S. with Janus as its distributor.  Here are some dates, in case any U.S. GMGers would like to see it on the big screen.  I regret it isn't booked anywhere near me, at least on the Janus list.

May 17 - 23
Pleasantville, NY - Jacob Burns Film Center

May 31; June 2 - 4; June 6
Chicago, IL - Gene Siskel Film Center

June 9
San Francisco, CA - The Castro Theatre

June 11
Cleveland, OH - Cleveland Museum of Art

June 15 & 16
Nashville, TN - The Belcourt

June 20 & 23
San Rafael, CA - Smith Rafael Film Center

June 21 - 23
Cambridge, MA - The Brattle Theatre

June 22, 24 & 27
Baltimore, MD - The Charles Theater

June 28
Los Angeles, CA - American Cinematheque

July 5 - 7
Portland, OR - Northwest Film Center

July 17 - 23
Hartford, CT - Cinestudio   

July 31
Kingston, ON - The Screening Room

Info:
http://www.janusfilms.com/journey/

[snyprrr]

I just ran across mention of a new digital "print" (and the most recent restoration?) of Rossellini's JOURNEY/VOYAGE TO ITALY; it's now being shown around the U.S. with Janus as its distributor.  Here are some dates, in case any U.S. GMGers would like to see it on the big screen.  I regret it isn't booked anywhere near me, at least on the Janus list.

Info:
http://www.janusfilms.com/journey/

I think The Arts should be left to The Italians.

[Octave]

I think The Arts should be left to The Italians.

Including the sadistic hipster-approved stuff, right?  The midnite art?
Cuckoo clocks for everyone else, per Harry Lime.



Speaking of which, I just saw a Japanese film that at times seemed to anticipate the color-scheme of SUSPIRIA by ~24 years.  It was GATE OF HELL (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1953), and the costumes and runaway Technicolor (?) looked incredibly beautiful, sometimes just amazing.  Also an assortment of unflashy but very beautiful "pillow" shots (not sure if that's a real term, except as applied to Ozu, but that's what I'll call them), for example a lamp being lit in the evening gloom.  These are very brief little shots but warm the cockles of my heart; they radiate and vanish like fireflies.  Also, in all the Japanese cinema I've seen, I cannot remember seeing Japanese classical music (here on the koto, iic) presented as a kind of ethical-aesthetic skill, or as an ideal soundtrack to nature, or as a freezing of time and attention.  It was a brief but special moment; I was reminded of the stilling of the room during and after the young boy's playing "Clair de Lune" at the end of TOKYO SONATA (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2008), the feeling of a whole room's listening being made palpable on the screen, with a bare minimum of emotive reaction-shot music-video prodding.*  A point of comparison might be any number of uses of opera or "the opera" in Western (not western) movies, like the emotional climax at a production of Offenbach at the Met in MARGARET (Kenneth Lonergan, 2011), a movie I mostly did not like at all, but that final moment seemed like a beautifully rendered melodramatic outpouring of what real opera, or music, can feel like.  Still, a very different music moment from the two Japanese examples I mentioned; in Margaret, the mother and daughter "leave" the room entirely: it's ecstatic.

The only flaw by my lights was that I felt like the story fell down somehow after the final great tragedy, if not before.   Fortunately that was almost no more than a coda.  Maybe it's because it ended up feeling more like a morality tale than a tragedy?  The origins of the story make me think that this was simply the film's fidelity to its literary sources, fair enough.  Apparently it won a couple Academy Awards (!) back in ~1954, including "Best Foreign Film".  I'm a bit surprised and heartened by this.

I saw a streaming version of (I hope) the recent restoration just released on Blu-Ray by Criterion; it seem that there's a Eureka Masters of Cinema UK edition which includes a 1955 text about this film, written by Carl Theodor Dreyer (!!!).  I must find that now!



* Of course, I'm going to have to remain agnostic re: the documentary value of any of this re: Japan and Japanese culture; that's too difficult.  Based on my conversations with the Japanese free-improviser Toshimaru Nakamura, I don't think it's far-fetched to see a similar and idiomatic or culturally-specific attitude common to these two films' presentation of music and its power.  Once I start trying to articulate it in terms of 'Japan'....that's when the difficulty becomes too much.  Best to pitch in the towel.  I wish Jo Jo Starbuck or Milk could offer some observations on their experiences listening to music with Japanese audiences.

[val]

"Before the Devil knows you are dead"

To me, the only remarkable thing in this movie is the performance of Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

[Karl Henning]

Finished Howl's Moving Castle yester evening.

[SonicMan46]

Well, we were at Costco's yesterday and I always check the Blu-ray section (before ending up in wine!) - never know what will be available; BUT picked up this twofer BD collection for $12 - I enjoy both films (already own the DVDs, so will sell cheaply or donate locally) -

[CaughtintheGaze]

Simply scrumptious:

[asin]B000M06KJ8[/asin]

[DavidRoss]

Simply scrumptious:

After her first two features I already had more of Ms Coppola's pretentious vapidity than I cared to experience again. Maybe I'm missing a good one here, but I'll probably never know.

[CaughtintheGaze]

It probably helps that I've not seen her other features. Visually it will stun you, and the use of a pastel color scheme was a stroke of genius. Dunst also really shines, as does the soundtrack.

Probably my favorite scene in the film:

https://www.youtube.com/v/Dbm5gIhcMjs