Seen any good films lately? [3]

Die Hardon

Is that a reference to an actual film?

Wait.. I don't need to know.

No, it's German for boner.

Ah, like they call a cellphone a "handy"?



I'd agree with Stephen Fry, modern German is pretty camp.

off course, need I even mention Mark Twain's views on German?

Oh, here we go: http://german.about.com/library/blmtwain01.htm

Oh my god, I had no idea that was the German word for cell phone. That's one thing we didn't learn in college.

Any anime fans here? After watching everything else by Ghibli I finally came around to Grave of the Fireflies.

nuff said

Anime, you say?

Actually, I haven't been watching a ton of anime lately; I went on a binge after Otakon (the second-largest anime convention in the US) back in August, but I've been busy lately with a new job and moving house, among other things. But I'm looking forward to Ghibli's The Tale of Princess Kaguya and am still planning on getting around to my big Miyazaki Marathon to polish off the rest of his filmography that I haven't seen.

Grave of the Fireflies is one of those films that a ton of people told me I "had" to see to call myself an anime fan, but that I put off for ages because it seemed like it would depress me. And goddamn if it didn't. I know that "this is soooooo sad, you'll totally cry!" gets passed around as a selling point for some stories *cough*clannad*cough*, but Grave left me in a genuine funk for a couple of days. Although part of that was on me, undoubtedly. I still haven't worked up the courage to see it again, or to watch Barefoot Gen.

Spoiler:

Well suffice to say I haven't been to Otakon Ghost in the Shell is another classic I've only recently seen - apparently it was an inspiration for the Matrix.

Haha, sorry, I just sport of vomited out a bunch of anime talk since I don't get many opportunities to chat about it.

GitS was good, though for Oshii sci-fi flicks, I prefer Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade by a country mile. But the visual style and fight scenes in GitS are still phenomenal.

Yeah, that's something I especially liked about Ghost in the Shell. I am yet to watch any other Oshii sci fi stuff, although I'm tempted to now. Also please feel free to riff on anime stuff I'm just trying to think what equivalent there is to Otakon here...sadly there probably isn't much I'm not sure.

Yeah, I don't know what the con scene is like in Australia. Granted, I'm not very deep into conventions here in the US either. I've met quite a few people who go to half a dozen or more conventions a year all over the country (I'm not sure how they cover the travel, hotel, and registration costs). But Otakon is practically in my backyard, in addition to being really big, and was a transformative experience of sorts for me. I'd love to go to Anime Expo in LA if I ever get the chance; that's even bigger, though I've heard it's not as well-run. Japan Expo is a truly massive convention in France, and of course Comiket in Tokyo brings in something like half a million people twice yearly.

Semi-relatedly, have you ever seen Otaku no Video? It's a two-part OVA about the length of a feature film, from Studio Gainax, about fandom (particularly anime fandom) as well as the industry and life inside it. It's massively dated, and will make basically no sense if you're not familiar with '80s anime (especially the mecha stuff), but it's really funny and sometimes hits a little too close to home. The story is interspersed with staged interviews with Gainax employees as anonymous otaku. I first saw it during my first Otakon, where it's shown every single year (Otakon's name and slogan is inspired by Otaku no Video's subtitle: Graffiti of Otaku Generation). My brother couldn't make heads or tails of it, but I loved it and went back to see it again the next year (and also bought it on DVD in the dealer's room that second time).

Thanks for wanting to talk about anime and humoring me with my riffing.

No I haven't seen that, but it sounds really fascinating despite its date, I might have to check it out. Have you been to any of the big American cons - Dragon Con sounds good. Melbourne (where I live) has its very own comic con, and Peter Mayhew was actually a guest this year!

Unfortunately I haven't. I would love to go to Dragon*Con or maybe New York Comic-Con since those are both on the East Coast and thus easier for me to reach than something like SDCC. But I'd have to save up for a while to afford it.

I watched Interstellar earlier, pretty good and certainly a film best seen on the Big Screen, but I can definitely see why it was divisive

Spoiler:

Oh, don't mention Spielberg. The only time he evinced enough honest feeling to be called art was Schindler's List, and perhaps Lincoln.  Most of the time when I watch his movies I have to wince when I see yet another scene that screams "There goes Spielberg again, trying his damndest to make sure every scene looks like an honest-to-god movie..."

For pure entertainment he's fine, even great at times (Raiders of the Lost Ark) but he's too self-concious a director to make a  truly moving film in most cases.  I even felt Amistad was ruined by too much obvious staging.

Haven't seen Interstellar, have no real right to go off on a Spielberg rant here.  Just gotta unload sometimes.

Interesting looking back on this. If anything Sergio Leone is more staged than Spielberg, but I love nearly anything by him. Perhaps because everyone including him knows he's manipulating motifs like a composer, while Spielberg seems to think he's pulling it all off without the audience noticing?

I rewatched Mulholland Drvie, as I have a tendency to do from time to time.
And I still dont know what its about. Or more correctly different parts of it always seem to be about different things, every time I watch it.
I've been thinking of how best to describe it, doing so by conventional means; plot, character, structuring ect seems ludicrous as it doesn't have in any conventional sense any of these things, although its good at continually making you think it might have.

I think, the best way to describe it is to say imagine Holywood. Not just the physical place, with its famous landmarks, film makers, producers, stars and starlets, its money, its drugs, its egos, but also the world wide mythos that is Hollywood, the idea of Hollywood. Now imagine Hollywood was a living thing, and that thing had a dream. Mulholland Drive would be that dream.

I think what I love about Lynch is that while no one does atmosphere and surrealism and unsettling anything like as well as him, he can do what other directors and writers do at the drop of a hat.
Take this sequence for example, its darkly funny, but largely mainstream in styling and direction. Its the sort of thing would not be out of place in any modern thriller with an ironic sense of humour-



And then you get a scene like this which no-one else but Lynch could ever make-



And all in the same film, and how they connect to each other? Well, Hollywood Dreams.

Another thing I love that Lynch does is he renders the everyday surreal but shifting the focus onto little things, emphasizing and exaggerating ticks, gestures, habits, quirks of personality until they fill the camera-



And of course Lynch's greatest gift- creating uncanny uncomfortable atmospheres out of nothing at all-



Thing is though, whilst I think everyone should see Mulholland Drive thats not a recommendation. I cant recommend it because I dont know what its about, or at least I only what the different parts of it are about to me at the time when I am watching them.
And if that sounds confusing, wait till you've seen the film! Yet despite the lack of recognisable points to muster round for a film the feel, the mood, the sentiments I find linger on long, long after the film has been watched.
I don't know if that constitutes a good film, but I suspect it might constitute art.

Oh no, Petty you're one of those Mulholland Drive fans.
{{{Why am I not surprised! }}}
Well I'll have to read through your thorough post then to try and understand why.

I've been watching Still Walking with my family. They seem rather bored by it, but we only got halfway through, and so the emotional payoff of the film has yet to fully deliver. For my part, I find it delightful and well-crafted and utterly real.

Dallas Buyer's Club was quite good, but the emotional (or moral?) one-sidedness of the main character vs. the establishment, while justified, felt a little cliche and unrealistic.
More importantly, that the main character would leave behind most of his (obviously) evil tendencies once he underwent his transformation, while a wonderful transformation to watch, left me with the sense that this was the kind of film that would win oscars, but that was a partially feel-good film that would win oscars. I thought of the movie Crash that got best picture in 2005 or so. The film, ultimately, didn't really deserve that award (it only has a 75% now on Rotten Tomatoes) but the appeal the film had for the Oscar-pickers (whatever they're called) was strong enough to overcome how obviously it was trying to appeal to the Oscars.
With the Dallas Buyer's Club, the movie was excellent, but there was still a taste of that same obviousness when I finished watching it.

P.S.
I agree about Amistad, and Spielberg in general. War Horse was the pinnacle of horrible, emotional Spielbergian manipulations for me.

Yup I am- though I am a Lynch fan I am not a fan of all his stuff, hated Lost Highway for example even though it is in some ways thematically similar to Mulholland Drive in that most of the film is the content of the main characters head.
There is a lot of Mulholland Drive, I just haven't pieced all of it together yet, but the simple surface plot is-

Spoiler:

Pettytyrant101 wrote:
I don't know if that constitutes a good film, but I suspect it might constitute art.

Pfft, yeah that's not a recommendation is it.
I get what you're saying though Petty.

For the record, I can add my condemnation (that's the opposite of recommend, right?). There are a lot of movies to see in life, and this one isn't really essential. It's interesting, but thousands other films are as well without screwing with your expectations so very much.

I like having my expectations screwed with in film. I dont want to know everything, or have it all spelled out. I want scenes to exist for what they inform thematically or emotionally or both, not jut for reasons of a straight A to B narrative.
And Mullholand Drive is about a lot of stuff, as well having a lot of room for the viewer to freely interpret certain scenes by their own experiences. Its creates feelings, moods and emotions and for me thats what art should do, and America doesnt have many proper art house film makers, you should cherish the fact you have such a talented one.
Picasso paintings for example are terrible from a realism stand point, he doesnt even know where the eyes are supposed to go on a face. But thats not the point of them.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:I like having my expectations screwed and mangled into nonexistencewithin film. I dont want to know anything, or have anything spelled out. I want scenes to exist for what they inform thematically or emotionally or both, not for any narrative reasons.

And Mullholand Drive is about a lot of random, weird stuff, as well having a lot of room for the viewer to freely interpret certain scenes by their own experiences. Its creates feelings, moods and emotions and for me thats what art should do, and America doesnt have many proper art house film makers (ahem, what.), you should cherish the fact you have such a weird one.
Picasso paintings for example are terrible from a realism stand point, he doesnt even know where the eyes are supposed to go on a face (as the Doctor tried to tell him). But thats not the point of them.

There, fixed that for you!

P.S.
Really though, don't overstep this point. America has more art house directors than any other country, right? So unless by "proper" you mean British or Canadian or French, I don't accept that statement for a second!

Sorry Forest I ant agree with that, there is a plot, there is a narrative, however unconventional. Things aren't spelled out but that does not mean they are absent.
Nor is anything that happens in it random, it all serves a purpose, even when on first viewing it might not seem so.
If you think Lynch is just a weird director I recommend you watch The Straight Story (base don a true story).

America has more art house directors than any other country, right? So unless by "proper" you mean British or Canadian or French, I don't accept that statement for a second! _forest

I have quite strict if personal criteria for art house, in my view there are a lot of chancers out there. For example despite the UK having a few I only think one of them genuinely is making art on film, Peter Greenaway. And in my estimations The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover is his masterpiece.



So if Lynch is the only Us director I rate as art then I am no less harsh on European directors meeting the standard.