Last Movie You Watched

[snyprrr]

Casablanca

Never actually watched it... on last night... nice, cozy snuggle movie... sentimental morphine...

[Karl Henning]

And now you'll get some of the jokes in The Cheap Detective.

[Bogey]

Casablanca

Never actually watched it... on last night... nice, cozy snuggle movie... sentimental morphine...

My favorite, with a nod to the Maltese Falcon.

[Octave]

My favorite, with a nod to the Maltese Falcon.

It's funny, watching the inferior but entertaining CONFLICT (1945, also with Bogart), the filmmakers had the temerity to place what looked like an almost-replica of the maltese falcon itself on a shelf in prominent view in one scene.  It was funny but 
I do admire their honesty in reminding us that they're pushing inferior product.

Re: CASABLANCA, there's Umberto Eco's remarkable little essay, for anyone who hasn't read it before.  He leads off referring to the movie as "mediocre" (one is tempted to stop reading) but it gets quite a bit richer (good-rich) than that.  The closing paragraph:

Thus Casablanca is not just one film. It is many films, an anthology. Made haphazardly, it probably made itself, if not actually against the will of its authors and actors, then at least beyond their control. And this is the reason it works, in spite of aesthetic theories and theories of film making. For in it there unfolds with almost telluric force the power of Narrative in its natural state, without Art intervening to discipline it. And so we can accept it when characters change mood, morality, and psychology from one moment to the next, when conspirators cough to interrupt the conversation if a spy is approaching, when whores weep at the sound of "La Marseillaise." When all the archtypes burst in shamelessly, we reach Homeric depths. Two cliches make us laugh. A hundred cliches move us. For we sense dimly that the cliches are talking among themselves, and celebrating a reunion. Just as the height of pain may encounter sensual pleasure, and the height of perversion border on mystical energy, so too the height of banality allows us to catch a glimpse of the sublime. Something has spoken in place of the director. If nothing else, it is a phenomenon worthy of awe.

Umberto Eco: Casablanca, or, The Clichés are Having a Ball

I disagree with his shortchanging the filmmakers' design of the film; but the larger 'archetypal' point still seems suggestive and useful to me.

[Bogey]

One of my favorite scenes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjbPi00k_ME

[Parsifal]

It's funny, watching the inferior but entertaining CONFLICT (1945, also with Bogart), the filmmakers had the temerity to place what looked like an almost-replica of the maltese falcon itself on a shelf in prominent view in one scene.  It was funny but 
I do admire their honesty in reminding us that they're pushing inferior product.

Re: CASABLANCA, there's Umberto Eco's remarkable little essay, for anyone who hasn't read it before.  He leads off referring to the movie as "mediocre" (one is tempted to stop reading) but it gets quite a bit richer (good-rich) than that.  The closing paragraph:Umberto Eco: Casablanca, or, The Clichés are Having a Ball

I disagree with his shortchanging the filmmakers' design of the film; but the larger 'archetypal' point still seems suggestive and useful to me.

I see someone has returned.  Made it through that pile of CDs already?

[snyprrr]

How bad IS Waterworld?? It looks just like ...Thunderdome. I can't watch...


What are your favorite cheezy post-apocalyptic 'primitive' world? Aren't there some howlers from the '80s?

[snyprrr]

IT'S GOT WHAT PLANTS CRAAAVE!!!

[The new erato]

[But then, I had spent the earlier part of the evening writing music.

Of the hearty and serious kind?

[Karl Henning]

Of the hearty and serious kind?

What a frivolous, fifth-form question!

[kishnevi]

I disagree with his shortchanging the filmmakers' design of the film; but the larger 'archetypal' point still seems suggestive and useful to me.

There are plenty of apparent cliches in CASABLANCA,  but not only are they artfully used, they're artfully subverted.  The corrupt Petainist policeman would turn the refugee couple over to the Nazis, and if he doesn't, the cynical American ex-lover would; Bogart and Bergman ought to run off together,  her husband thrown overboard.  But they don't.  They prove themselves people who despite their past choose to do the moral thing.  Of course, that itself is perhaps a cliche....

This reminds me that it's been much too long since I've watched CASABLANCA.

[snyprrr]

what is it bogart day here or something??? aug.1???

[snyprrr]

To Live and Die in L.A.

I never get tired of seeing William Peterson's face blown off. As a matter of fact there are 3-4 blown off faces in this one, probably a comment of the 'facelessness' of the '80s?

What is it about Friedkin that has me so obsessed? I think Friedkin's cypher is the blondish lesbian, that's makes sense for Friedkin in the '80s, no?

But the hero getting blown away right before the end is pretty wowsy, a very bleak '70s film given the 'Miami Vice' treatment.



Vice Squad, anyone?



Oh, and how bout that Annette O'Toole in Cat People? me--yowww!!

[Karl Henning]

Last night: "Murder by the Book," the Columbo episode which Spielberg directed.

[Sergeant Rock]

What are your favorite cheezy post-apocalyptic 'primitive' world? Aren't there some howlers from the '80s?

From 1970, No Blade of Grass. A group of Londoners, good people, turn savage almost instantly while trying to make it to the safety of a farm in Scotland as they run from a civilization destroying virus. This was Lynne Frederick's first film (she was the gold-digging last wife of Peter Sellers and notable as the human queen ant in Phase IV. She also had a part in the Hammer film Vampire Circus). The film is very cheesy (especially the sixties music and the marauding bikers) but horrifyingly realistic.

Sarge

[Karl Henning]

Escape from New York. (1981)

Kurt Russell, Donald Pleasance, Ernest Borgnine, Harry Dean Stanton. 'Nuff said.

[Karl Henning]

And I had completely forgotten that Isaac Hayes was in that....

[HIPster]

Blue Jasmine, last night. . .

Great cast and awesome performances by Cate Blanchett and Sally Hawkins.

[modUltralaser]

Rather good film with a strikingly gorgeous male lead.

[asin]B005152C82[/asin]

A director who had a firm grasp on the importance of the background, foreground, etc.

[asin]B005HK13S6[/asin]

This might be the greatest psychological character study put to film. The only other director who comes to mind, off hand, is Lynch, and he modeled himself after Bergman.

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[Bogey]

Jack the Giant Slayer

I was surprised.  Thought I would not care for it, but had a great time watching it with the kiddos.