Thank you for making another great movie Wes, maybe I was wrong to immediately cancel my movie theater subscription after walking out of that Friendship showing, maybe movies are good.
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There was a dude in a maga hat at a screening of Cry Baby last night and Iâm really wondering what he got out of that movie.
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rewatched dragon gate inn with my OLED tv friends⌠so glad thereâs a beautiful 4k hdr version of this out there now that isnât stuck in the criterion piss filter zone⌠someone do new releases of a touch of zen and the young girls of rochefort next pls!
i think of this as being one of the all-time great sword movies⌠itâs full of like nonstop action and incident. and i think on first brush some people see the swordfighting as a little old school but imo it kind of has this intense physicality that makes it look and feel like idk Real People Swordfighting at a lot of points⌠imo king huâs films revel in the physicality of actors and i also adore his film âraining in the mountainâ, where there arenât even swordfights and itâs mostly about people running, jumping, and climbing.
there are shots where the villainous eunuchs are climbing and scaling the titular dragon gate inn where thereâs something almost magical feeling in the way people are just moving around⌠idk i just think king hu is one of the Legends and should probably be considered in the category of directors like kurosawa akira and john ford or whoever who have amazing landscapes in the movies they directed⌠i should get into john ford i bet heâs good
reminded me a little of movies built around central locations such as bacurau, die hard, the thing, night of the living dead as wellâŚ
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what the hell am I going to do about this wes anderson boxset coming out. thatâs going to come out to be like nearly 1tb in wes anderson 4k uhd remuxes. wes anderson of all things is whatâs going to sink me. I have the room now (though who knows by september) but what about the day after. and the day after that. this isnât sustainable, I need 32tb hdds to exist immediately
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I canât decide whether the twist in My Dead Friend Zoe is necessary or not. Like, the substance of the detail that is revealed is the entire point of the movie, and I donât think the narative really works if its revealed earlier, but Iâm also not sure the misdirection is justified except for the sake of having a twist. Iâm also not sure the reveal coinciding with the catharsis worksâit ends up feeling too pat in a film that largely avoids it.
Still, this is ultimately minor: I was fearing the film would be one of those where a stellar castâSonequa Martin-Green and Natalie Morales!âis led down by the writing, but thatâs not the case. A solid watch, if youâre into movies about veterans not doing great.
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I saw this theatrically right before the blu ray came out and I was assuming they were using the same source (it was touted as a new restoration). I should finally watch my disc to compare.
Likewise with Touch of Zen though someone else put that out.
King Hu on the big screen was a summer tradition for like three years straight. I miss that.
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did the horses in kagemusha get nominated for an oscar cause they should of been
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I watched two films this weekend! Feels like forever since Iâve done that. Companion is fun. It isnât trying for much more that entertainingly executing its premiseâa premise I did not expect, not knowing anything about the movie other than âSophie Thatcher from Yellowjackets is in it, and sheâs real prettyââbut I ended up digging it.
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I watched Gosenzo-sama Banbanzai (long life to the ancestors), an anime by oshii about the dissolution of a family due to being visited by the kids granddaughter from the future. theyâre also visited by âthe watchdog of timeâ who is trying to prevent this, bunmei muroto, the same name as the state agent guy after the main character in red spectacles, which seems to be reference to bunmei-kaika, a meiji era term for âcivilization and enlightenmentâ
she comes from a kodak blimp
heâs dispensed from a coca cola machine.
his piano looks like my desk
by the end the main character had turned into one of the tachigui mentioned in the documentary. this oshii guy is really something else
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prob my favorite of oshiiâs works
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our man flint - liked this more than any of the bond ones iâve seen⌠itâs been funny digging through spy stuff and realising how much of the genre is just played as an excuse for pop-surrealist imagery - frogmen in iowa, nuns rappel up walls etc. less the world as conspiracy than the world as rube goldberg machine, with ultimate victory going to whoeverâs able to most seamlessly go with the flow of whateverâs meant to be happening. idk if this is even strictly a parody as opposed to a determinedly light-touch version of the format but itâs funny how much the approach works better than the slightly stodgy and hysterical fu manchuisms of the bond movies, which always seem to have that point where they expect you to take the goofy geopolitics seriously and be genuinely spooked by the possibility of further imperial slippage. i like that james coburnâs hunched shoulders and enormous hands make him look like a harvey kurtzmann character in every shot. thereâs a great theme tune too.
at one point and quite offhandedly flintâs four live-in girlfriends get kidnapped and put in a hypnosis machine on the mad (well, fairly amiable) scientistsâ island, where they get deployed to fantasy suites themed after cavemen, roman times, mod, etc. as he finds each he stares urgently into their eyes and says âyou are not a pleasure unit!â whereupon they shake their heads and instantly become normal again. phew!!
on her majestyâs secret service - case in point⌠idk if any of the other ones do this but its very funny to me that this one really emphasises james bondâs status as an admiral in the british navy (??) presumably as reward for all the previous adventures. itâs like if they made john mcclane chief of police and he spent half of a movie running around in officer dress with gold frogging. thereâs a really intermineable adventure game sequence to do with like, all the navy guys trying to get through a reinforced door, and the climax is roger moore clinging to a slowly moving ball on the ceiling while the soundtrack blares dah-nah NAH NAHHH. however this one does have jaws in it which is enough to make it pretty enjoyable, and a nice submersible lair with sharkpit included. at the end james bond somewhat perfunctorily shoots the main bad guy in the dick.
13 frightened girls - unfortunately not that watchable to me but has a really good bit early on where as a reward for passing her latin test, one of the tiny seeming boarding school heroines is allowed to drive the bus that takes everyone to the airport. and thereâs a spider in the bus, and to remind you itâs a william castle movie itâs portrayed through a crazed giant overlay zoom, and then she screams and yanks the wheel and the whole bus ploughs off the side of the hill!! and then the movie continues as though nothing happened.
the testament of dr mabuse - good tense crime thriller that is again enlivened by sense of charged proximity to stuff offscreen, the âgenius of crimeâ automatic-writing endless conspiracies blindly from his cell and the urbane educated men falling into their own apocalyptic fantasies as a result⌠its funny to me that lang apparently hated my favourite scene in the movie: the one where mabuse posthumously appears as a crazy Invasion Of The Saucer Men looking entity with pulsing, veiny brain and huge painted-on eyesâŚ!!! itâs so startling in the context of the rest of the film but i think works so well as the secret, horrible center the rest of the movie orbits around
to live and die in la - i keep writing the title as to live and shave. great escalating carchase that feels like it made the whole gta series redundant, or moreso. you know willem dafoe is evil bc he burns all his ab-ex paintings and devotes himself to mimetic neorealism (currency counterfeiting).
deadlier than the male - jumpscare early on when you realise the title song is being sung by scott walker. has a good bit at the end involving the villainâs human-sized, voice-controlled electronic chess set and some fun evil henchwomen torturing people with cigarettes and outrageous accents. the funniest thing to me is the b-plot involving the middle aged heroâs nephew, whose girlfriend keeps asking âwhatâs your uncle like?â, nosing around his personal reserve whiskey bottles, trying to get alone time with the mysterious uncle etc. a level of uncle-curiousness rarely seen on film.
in like flint - not beating the allegations of being a million times more haphazardly paced than the first one and less charming as a result. similar to deadlier than the male the plot involves the terrifying enemy-within potential of women-only spaces (spas, hairdressers etc) - the eventual revelation that the whole thing is being masterminded by an all-office lady cabal of magazine owners, cosmeticists, publicists etc weirdly makes it feel like a dryrun for the 2020s paranoia over âhr ladiesâ. although in this case it turns out to be a front for creepy 1950s type generals representing the less mod face of the cold war.
has some good plantasia-style synth doodling at the start. favourite line - âgosh, mr president - if youâd autograph your golf ball for me, iâd put it right next to my picture of batmanâ.
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am trying to work out which one you actually watched. Commander Bond is in The Spy Who Loved Me, and thereâs a shark tank and Jaws
OHMSS is tonally a lot different to the others. plus you wouldnât forget our man from Hong Kong going up against Telly Savalas
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Watch the Ipcress File - one of the Bond producers wanting to make the anti-Bond
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thatâs right, i confused the two post connery ones people said were alright, i heard that oneâs better but i think my deep antipathy to skiing based action sequences put me off trying (which made it funnier that spy who loved me also starts with a different skiing based action sequence)
also i watched the ipcress file and forgot to post about it! i did like that one alot, then skipped the second and tried watching the ken russell one, billion dollar brain - which was muddled but he did his best to fill every scene with random decorative murals in the background and it had a good 60s evil computer voice, so i forgave
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I just watched Modesty Blaise, billed as the female Bond. got jumpscared by the theme (20 seconds in)
a very loose adaptation of the long-running newspaper comic. Monica Vitti stars as Modesty, the career criminal mastermind roped into working with British intelligence to defeat the extremely camp Gabriel, rival criminal mastermind. Gabriel lives on a Hitman level island with terrifying dungeons textured with ERROR
she is accompanied by her sidekick, cockney Terence Stamp. the antagonists and protagonists hang out a lot, snack, swap clothes, both outmanoeuvre the British spies to steal the diamonds en route to The Shiekh (whom Modesty is the adopted son of)
many scenes just happen with little explanation or payoff, Modestyâs contact in Amsterdam calls her Jaqueline and dismisses the idea that she is Modesty. people spring into action with no introduction or obvious motivation, then disappear. that Pinter touch
bad but entertaining, about 40 minutes too long, shot awfully. looks a lot like the cast and crew had a jolly, holidaying and making a film
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couldnât believe how authentically Lynchian Caught by the Tides was
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Iâm trying an experiment where I listen to movies on my commute as if they were radio shows. I canât see my phone at all. Iâm not trying to watch anything. I have a hard time deciding to rewatch something Iâve seen, so Iâm interested in what I can grasp from just listening.
I tried it first with Nashville. It was wild tracing the voices and trying to imagine who was talking to who. Fast cut are a bit difficult to translate into audio so it wound up rolling off as a stream of consciousness.
This morning, I tried There Will Be Blood. The first twenty minutes have no dialogue. Itâs just the mechanical sound of digging, metal machinery, a babyâs cries, and atonal strings. The sum effect of it all led my mind toward abstraction. Here they are in the womb of the earth and out comes fluids and life. Dialogue between Sunday and Plainview is great to listen to. Iâm starting to get a crazy idea in my head to create There Will Be Blood (radio edit).
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Currently in the middle of Battles Without Honor Or Humanity: Proxy Wars and, dang, these folks love choppin off their own body parts.
I really like how the film is shot: Interior shots where everyone is really close together, and then chaos happens. Thereâs no leadup to the violence either, it just kind of smash cuts to it.
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a friend of mine did this with Kubrick where he would just walk the city listening to the films as audio
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