Film Slutch

WHY CAN'T I MAKE IT AS A RAP ARTIST?

Tue, 21 May 2013 23:13:00 -0500

“These guys definitely weren’t standing around bullshitting. They were beating drums, tearing it up, hurling horses over cliffs. They were all poets and knew what was going on.”

http://ozdavidson.bandcamp.com/

FREE MOVIE IDEA #21

Tue, 21 May 2013 19:09:05 -0500

In the aftermath of a town leveling TORNADO, a gang of LOOTERS embark on a lost weekend that begins with systematically picking through the remnants of their stomping grounds, then slowly dissolves into anarchic vandalism/abuse of plundered prescription drugs.

natural disaster times/ecstasy of evil/redneck trainspotting

TARK'S NOT HERE TO ENTERTAIN YOU

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:18:55 -0500

The film needs to be slower and duller at the start so that the viewers who walked into the wrong theatre have time to leave before the main action starts.

LUKAS MOODYSSON

Tue, 14 May 2013 21:59:00 -0500

Nothing prompts the eyes into a rolling fit more than a Swede poet vegetarian feminist. Too bad a Swede poet vegetarian feminist made a handful of some of the most honest, raw and empathic films to come out in the past twenty years.

Lukas Moodysson was a poète maudit from a young age, publishing books of verse in high school between Smiths album releases and meals of celery and toast. He wanted to reach a wider audience than poetry and novels could, so he learned to make films. His first outing, Fucking Åmål (1998) was a Dogme 95-esque portrait of two teen girls in love. Moodysson was pretty damned good at capturing youthful yearning, so great that famed Swede adulterer Ingmar Bergman proclaimed him a young master.

Moodysson’s movies have an air of spontaneity. They are shot with handheld digital cameras that seem to eavesdrop on the most intensely humorous, human moments. In Together (2000), the lenses zero in on a commune of Scandinavian hippies and the children suffering under their hippie bullshit. Together is a light and naturalistic ensemble jam, loaded with pathos and a shocking absence of meat. And ABBA.

Moodysson went on to make a Euro-harsher, Lilya 4-Ever, a harrowing demon hell ride about a Russian teenager, abandoned by her mother, who is kidnapped and sold into sex slavery. Watch it with lots of St. John’s Wort.

Hey hey, I like Lukas Moodysson quite a bit, y’see? He has a knack for showing faces full of feeling, he doesn’t shy away from harshing a mellow or two. You’ve got to harsh a few egg mellows to make a truth omelet. He is one of very few true heirs to the emotional realism crown of the gnome Mike Leigh and prick Cassavetes.

Moodysson has also dabbled in avante garde/deconstructionism with A Hole in My Heart and Container - two non-narrative films full of audio visual interruption and provocation. Mammoth, Moodysson’s first English language film, is a return to his naturalistic, tragicomic sensibility.

Lukas Moodysson is the outspoken blowhard I rolled my eyes at in high school. No wonder I’m an unemployed also-ran and he’s a poet of cinema.

(above: Moodysson flips off the Swedish film industry in a tuxedo and bear ears.)

The Hounds is a TV series about a band of broke musicians on the...

Tue, 14 May 2013 12:11:00 -0500

The Hounds is a TV series about a band of broke musicians on the road. Inspired by the early struggling years of The Band.

Think Down By Law, The Last Detail, The Last Waltz and Mean Streets as a comedy show.

LUKAS MOODYSSON’S TOP TEN (lover of the youth jam/human...

Mon, 13 May 2013 12:36:06 -0500

LUKAS MOODYSSON’S TOP TEN (lover of the youth jam/human tragedy combo spesh)

1. Bicycle Thieves (DeSica)

2. Fanny and Alexander (Bergman)

3. Gummo (Korine)

4. La Haine (Kassovitz)

5. The Last Picture Show (Bogdanovich)

6. Mirror (Tarkovsky)

7. On the Waterfront (Kazan)

8. Riff-Raff (Loach)

9. Secrets and Lies (Leigh)

10. Where Is the Friend’s House? (Kiarostami)

Moodysson Monday: Teen Lesbians, Commune Hippies, Russian Sex...

Mon, 13 May 2013 12:11:00 -0500

Moodysson Monday: Teen Lesbians, Commune Hippies, Russian Sex Slaves.

Luis Bunuel’s later films featured long, uninterrupted...

Fri, 10 May 2013 18:40:50 -0500

Luis Bunuel’s later films featured long, uninterrupted takes so that the censors couldn’t make cuts.

Luis Bunuel wagged his Spanish cock at authority.

FREE MOVIE IDEA #20

Fri, 10 May 2013 18:37:00 -0500

A group of poles apart young COUSINS converge on Thanksgiving day at their grandparents’ massive spread of land. While playing army, they pin their GRANDFATHER’s purple heart pendant onto an old dog who runs away with it.

The cousins embark on a mission deep into a countryside warped by their own collective imaginations, to recover the invaluable war decoration before day’s end.

kidjamz/adventure/family

GLARING OVERSIGHTS IN MY MOVIE WATCHING HISTORY

Thu, 09 May 2013 18:19:00 -0500

Haven’t gotten around to seeing ANY Kurosawas (besides Dersu Uzala)

No Fassbinders (except Year With 13 Moons and one ep. of Alexanderplatz)

Besides Joan of Arc - haven’t been in the mood for any Dreyer yet in my life

Most Hitchcocks

Never saw Gone With the Wind as well as a grip of old noirs.

What are some shameful absences in YOUR seen lists?

My eternal plan is always to make a film that a Chinese lady...

Thu, 09 May 2013 12:56:02 -0500

My eternal plan is always to make a film that a Chinese lady from the countryside can understand without subtitles.

... NEITHER DO I WANT TO BE A THOUSAND-HAND BUDDHA

Thu, 09 May 2013 11:57:00 -0500

People think that I am very innovative, but in reality, I’ve been going in the same direction. I’m not one to develop myself horizontally, and be multi-faceted, neither do I want to be a thousand-hand Buddha. I stay true to my personality and the style that I’m used to, and see how I can delve deeper. My actors are the same, and my style stays pretty much the same. However, if you are a fan of my work, you will see that I’ve been changing and the changes are very subtle, not unlike the changes in one’s life. It’s not something that you can experience in a short time. You need to observe for a long time, and experience it. For example, one will not know how they will look like at age sixty, until they’ve reached that age. If you keep changing your looks by undergoing plastic surgery, then when you are seventy, how you look like isn’t a true reflection of how you should look like if you were to age naturally. I enjoy observing these changes in life, and in my work, I keep practicing the same style and am keen to see how much I am able to develop it further. It’s always been this way.

“Rossellini stands out from the rest of the so-called...

Wed, 08 May 2013 14:27:05 -0500

“Rossellini stands out from the rest of the so-called neorealists for his eye, his intervention as a strong and compassionate witness who knew how to photograph the air around things, and for his disregard of cinema as a spectacle. I took part as a spectator in Paisan and Rome, Open City and I may have learnt my way of approaching cinema from Rossellini, who worked in the most incredible confusion: expiring bills, romantic complications, conflicts, the war. I remember in Naples, during the shooting of Paisan, in the middle of the street, with the allies’ tanks parading behind our backs, and there he was, with his beret and the megaphone: the casualness of a god who’s creating an earthquake only to be able to photograph it. This is the true lesson that neorealism taught me.” — Federico Fellini

Artistic freedom means that the amateur filmmaker is never...

Wed, 08 May 2013 11:13:46 -0500

Artistic freedom means that the amateur filmmaker is never forced to sacrifice visual drama and beauty to a stream of words…to the relentless activity and explanations of a plot…nor is the amateur production expected to return profit on a huge investment by holding the attention of a massive and motley audience for 90 minutes…Instead of trying to invent a plot that moves, use the movement of wind, or water, children, people, elevators, balls, etc. as a poem might celebrate these. And use your freedom to experiment with visual ideas; your mistakes will not get you fired.

- Maya Deren

TSAI MING-LIANG'S BIG BIG BRAINS

Mon, 06 May 2013 23:44:56 -0500

I always hoped that the audience would find these small, subtle details in my movies because you don’t see them elsewhere in other movies. Movies nowadays are all about stories. They’re in a hurry to impress you with a storyline. Within your lifetime you have to hear thousands and thousands of stories. We often forget to reflect upon the small things in our lives. That’s why, I believe, my movies are important. To me the most important thing is not whether the audience likes my movies, or whether they are liked more by festival audiences than the general public; the most important thing to me is whether the movie is important to me. People may fall asleep with my movies; but, when I see kung fu movies, I fall asleep as well.

Tsai’s lens is gold lens.

Sun, 05 May 2013 21:48:03 -0500

Tsai’s lens is gold lens.

Local H is a single malt jam shot intravenously by me about once...

Sun, 05 May 2013 12:40:00 -0500

Local H is a single malt jam shot intravenously by me about once a year.

If you ‘Stami up I’ll never stop.

Sun, 05 May 2013 11:35:47 -0500

If you ‘Stami up I’ll never stop.

Sunday Hangover Cure-All: 9 Ibuprofen a fizzy drink and light...

Sun, 05 May 2013 11:32:39 -0500

Sunday Hangover Cure-All: 9 Ibuprofen a fizzy drink and light the candles for Kiarostami. Menudo for the soul.

LET'S GET LOCAL HERO ON CRITERION

Thu, 02 May 2013 10:17:00 -0500

suggestions@criterion.com

PETITION:

The film Local Hero is a cult classic with many staunch supporters. It’s a mellow comedy about a Texas oil man who travels to northern Scotland to buy out a village and falls under its spell in the process. The movie subtly comments on the state of consumer culture and environmental awareness in the early 1980s. Not much has changed, it still has very timely things to say. Al Gore named Local Hero as his favorite film.

It’s a gorgeous looking movie with a wonderfully evocative score by Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits fame. It would look and sound amazing given the old Criterion deep Swede massage and refurbishment.

As for legacy - Local Hero stands in the echelon of humanist comedies, alongside the works of Renoir, Truffaut, and Hal Ashby. Watch this film and fully realize its potential as a crucial addition to the Crite collection.

Other reasons I wish the folks at Crite would drop every other current project and focus solely on Local H:

1.) Scotland needs more Crite love.

2.) Writer/director Bill Forsyth is THE premiere Scottish auteur.

3.) Its influence can be felt everywhere from Northern Exposure down through Lost in Translation, The Wind Will Carry Us and Michael Winterbottom’s The Trip.

4.) Film enthusiasts have come from all over the world to make a phone call in the red telephone box which is featured in the film. The phone box was in fact originally put there only as a prop for the film and then removed, but as a result of public demand a genuine telephone box was installed a few meters from the original spot.

5.) The current DVD version of Local Hero is abysmal. Just ABYSMAL.

6.) “As he drains his beer, Kaurismäki asks me a question.
“What happened to the great Scottish director who made some beautiful films in Scotland. Bill Forsyth?”
He stopped making films, I tell him, because of some bad experiences in Hollywood.
“Why the hell did he go there? Anybody with his intelligence should have known that it’s bullshit. I saw his first film in Hollywood, Housekeeping, which I liked very much. I saw it in London and he was there, and in that moment I knew that he was too clever and too kind to go to Hollywood.
“I never saw anybody who was swallowed by Hollywood come back. The Coca-Cola machine is swallowing everybody. Hollywood’s a machine which eats European directors. Partly because of Bill Forsyth I made my theory that everybody should make their films in their own country. I am a good man to describe Finland, and he is a good man to describe Scotland, and so on. Why the hell should we go around and make some pudding?”“

E-mail Criterion and suggest Local Hero today:
suggestions@criterion.com