cool movies i've seen - new thread

[dmolson]

Godard's Contempt, a Criterion release, hits the streets today. Reading snippets about this production, and the cast of Fritz Lang-Jack Palance-Brigitte Bardot makes me curious... A good investment?

[Harvey Chartrand]

Dan-O,
Steer clear of Contempt!
It's overrated dreck and I have nothing but contempt for it. It's put me right off Godard's films (except for Breathless and Alphaville).
I hate Contempt because it starts off great, then stops dead in its tracks, while Michel Piccoli and Brigitte Bardot bicker in the kitchen for an hour.
The film never recovers from this protracted 'interlude,' in which Bardot chastises her hubbie for pimping her to horny producer Jack Palance.
So it's the film's structure (or lack thereof) that sets me against it, despite that great cast (which also includes Fritz Lang).
I wouldn't mind seeing Weekend and Pierrot le Fou, though. All these French New Wave films (however much they vary in quality) take me back to a better time and place.

[jaime marzol]

.............

godard:
have seen WEEKEND, liked it a lot. ALPHAVILLE, didn't like.

he made a version of KING LEAR starring woody allan! any one seen this? my local vid store has ROGOPAG, has any one seen this? would like to see CONTEMPT only bacause of the cast, and have heard GODARD'S PASSION is good. any comments?

[jaime marzol]

..................

THE LAST DON mini series, from puzo book, is out on dvd. i expected it to suck, it didn't. not bad at all.

THE DOORS, the 2 disc set. the tranfer looks great, the supplement doc pretty darn good. have not heard SAP yet, but it's there.

[ChristopherBanks]

Just found this thread...

"The Lost Weekend" is fantastic. One of my all-time favourites. Jane Wyman's character is a fool if she thinks he's given up drinking at the end of that story.

And flashing forward, I saw "One Hour Photo" recently at the movies and thought it was really good. Robin Williams is really making an effort to diversify of late.

[Harvey Chartrand]

Modern cinema begins and ends with The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Director Peter Jackson's style is definitely Wellesian. (A Welles double appears in Jackson's Heavenly Creatures [1994].)
Also in my Top 10: John Schlesinger's masterpiece about the dark side of Hollywood — The Day of the Locust (1975), with Karen Black, William Atherton and former Welles associates William Castle and Paul Stewart in bit parts.

[jaime marzol]

..............

harvey, i'm glad you posted this. i saw some preview for a LORD OF THE RINGS movie that looked great. i almost rented one but backed out convinced it was just another crappy movie with a great preview. which film do you recomend i try first? there are 3 out now, right?

saw DAY OF THE LOCUST years and years ago, need to see it again. if there is any art there i will be aware of it now.

some one here recomended the new MOULIN ROUGE as a wellesian treat, but that one still scares me. will feel like a fool if i rent it and it sucks.
...........

[Harvey Chartrand]

Jaime,
Make sure you rent The Fellowship of the Ring Special Edition DVD with 30 minutes of extra footage seamlessly integrated into the rest of the film, bringing the length up to 3 hours or so.
TLOR is a trilogy but Part 3 won't be out for another year.
Obligatory Welles reference follows: Orson narrated the trailer for Ralph Bakshi's animated (rotoscoped) feature of The Lord of the Rings (1978), which ends abruptly as Frodo and Sam Gamgee approach Mordor (because Bakshi ran out of money).

[Cole]

There are very few non-Welles movies that I would describe as being “Wellesian.” In my mind, such a claim borders on heresy. I’ll have to look for T-MEN in a video store since this is the second time I’ve noticed that Jaime M. has described the movie as being “Wellesian.” I saw the first part of the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy and thought it was very much in the tradition of a Spielberg or Lucas film. Didn’t remind me much of any Welles film. Maybe that last bit at the end where one of the “good guys” is still fighting with about 4 arrows in his chest. That might fit in with Welles’ sense of humor, though I think in LORD OF THE RINGS the humor was unintended. I think I’ll wait to watch the second part once it’s out on VHS. Or maybe when it can be viewed with a hand-held Palm Pilot. With some films you can’t tell just how small they really are until you’ve seen them on a very small screen.

Just trying to do my part to keep people from defecting to the Glenn Ford web site.

[Welles Fan]

Well, I have not seen The Two Towers, but I loved The Fellowship of the Ring Extended Edition DVD on my 51" screen in dts (though I did see the theatrical version of FOTR at the local 'plex).

Don't find it to be Wellesian (I'm not sure what Wellesian in a non-welles film even means).

Thought it very Tolkienian, though.

[jaime marzol]

.............

wellesian:
welles had a lot of admireres. among his more distinguished ones, aldrich, and mann. but as andrew sarris said, why watch the disciples when you can watch the real thing. but for me it's still a treat to be watching a film and find things in it that i know were inspired by a love for the work of my favorite director.

anthony mann's T-MEN is an excellent wellesian treat. i mailed a copy to store-hadji, a true, diehard welles fan, and he wrote me back how great it was, and how he'd now have to find more mann films. so maybe he too felt it was wellesian. i thought it was. well worth checking out.
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[Harvey Chartrand]

Welles was very impressed by William Castle's When Strangers Marry (1944), a mystery with Robert Mitchum, Kim Hunter and Dean Jagger. Castle was an associate producer on The Lady from Shanghai, which Welles originally envisioned as a low-budget noir. I've not been able to locate When Strangers Marry, nor has it ever been televised up here in Canada, to my knowledge. So I don't know how "Wellesian" it is, or if it influenced Welles at all. It seems to have influenced his choice of film projects — two B-pictures/film-noirs back-to-back (The Stranger [1946], The Lady from Shanghai [1948]).

I'm glad I was able to stir up a little discussion here. For a time, www.wellesnet.com was almost as busy as www.glennfordonline.com. (My interview with Glenn Ford will appear in the Feb-March 03 edition of Filmfax.)

[Welles Fan]

I watched Martin Scorsese's interview with that hopeless toady, James Lipton on Bravo® this week. He mentioned Welles as one of his great influences, along with Powell and Pressburger, Hitchcock, Ford, and others. Scorsese is one of the few directors I know of who can include something in a movie as an hommage to one of his favorite directors while still maintaining his own style. He mentioned that the shots of Travis's eyes in Taxi Driver were inspired by the shots of Robert Helpmann's eyes in P & P's Tales of Hoffman. Also, the use of the color red in the smae film was inspired by The Red Shoes. He seemed a bit embarrassed when Lipton asked about the overhead shots, as if they were a bit too overtly Hitchcockian.

Contrast Scorsese using some of his favorite directors' tricks with directors like Brian De Palma's attempts to essentially "be" Hitchcock.

[dmolson]

If you want a good back-seizing experience, catch the latest LOTR-TTs... Jackson's getting a lot of mileage out of his virtual no-name cast (if the Susskinds had done this 30 years ago, Brando would have been Bilbo, O'Toole as Gandalf, and Jack Wild as Frodo! and let's not forget OW as Saruman) but he's starting to bug me with his ever-expanding lookalikes coming out of the woodwork. I know the story is neo-epic in size, but he starts losing me when all the elfs are wearing the same frodo'n hairpieces so that none are distinquishable, or even memorable. And while the battle scenes are tremendously dark and invigorating, they seethe with unbelievability that is Ed Woodian (not Wellesian in my eyes). But a lot of people clapped when the credits rolled, so there is something to be said for story saturation. To me, it looked like a close relation to his 'The Frighteners', which was a weak follow-up to the grand 'Heavenly Creatures'... I'm sure the aft-mentioned Mr. Lipton, with the dye job dripping off his beard onto his lapel, will love to disect Jackson's latest offering. Yes, I'm rambling, but I'm just biding my time until the www.perrycomolovesmambo.com site opens -- bring your sweater and roller skate keys!

[jaime marzol]

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harvey, what i call wellesian is a film that i watch and reminds me of welles' directing style. you won't find anything wellesian in any castle film. castle was a hack. welles liked castle's film, yes. but welles did not like directors that had a style like his at all.

welles loved renoir, and ford. their styles are at the complete opposite end of the spectrum from welles. there is nothing even remotely wellesian in a renoir, or ford film.