Floating Weeds

I wish I had the energy to write about this movie. I had to leave work today because I had such a bad migraine, and I still have it. I can't focus, and it's really hard for me to process this movie. Today's movie is Floating Weeds, directed by Yasujiro Ozu in 1959. It's a beautiful movie, and I know I'm going to watch it again if I can soon, when I can see it with a clearer mind.

Fargo

Like any girl who goes to a university, I took a class on women's literature. It's wasn't really a real women's lit class. We studied fairy tales and the roles women played in them, and read weird revisions of them. It was interesting, and it dealt a lot with women in the media. We were asked one day to talk about what women we admired in movies. My first thought was Clarice from The Silence of the Lambs, but someone said it before me, since she is always the first character to come to mind when you are asked these questions. No one took the one I thought of next - Marge Gunderson, from Fargo. "Why?" they implored. When most people think of The Coen Brother's 1996 small-town-murder-movie, they think of Minnesota accents and Steve Buscemi. "Marge was...the cop, right?" Right. I swear, my love of Marge has nothing to do with my unnatural feelings for the Coen Brothers. I even named two of my angelfish Joel and Ethan (only one is surviving today, and they were identical, so I just call him JoelEthan). There is something so great and new about her character. I love it. I love all parts of this movie, from the bumbling criminals and the weird tonal shifts from comedy to violence, sometimes coexisting in the same scene.

The Exterminating Angel

Luis Bunel is a fantastic surrealist director. He directed, if you recall, Belle du Jour. The first movie I ever saw by him was one of his first movies, Un Chein Andalou, which he directed with Salvador Dali. Just mentioning that he worked with Dali should explain something to you. As Ebert says, "Those seeking reason or explanations are in the wrong theater" (The Great Movies, web, below). Bunel directed The Exterminating Angel in 1962. It's a bizarre movie. If the mention Dali, surrealism, and lack of meaning or explanations are off putting to you, you will hate this movie. I like all of these things, so of course I found myself enjoying it.

E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial

After watching this movie and reading Ebert's essay, I feel like a bad movie...person. He writes about how his grandchildren are such good movie critics because they liked the Stephen Spielberg's 1982 movie E.T. and understood it. I didnt't really like this movie and when I saw it, I guess I was too stupid to understand it. It made me really sad, like watching The Lion King where I'd turn around and not look at the screen when Mufasa died and Simba curled up under his dead body. I remember a disastrous time when a 3rd grade teacher I had thought to show her whole class The Lion King, and then had sobbing, upset children on her hands for the rest of day. This is how I remember children reacting to sad movies. When I saw E.T., I was too upset by it to really like it. Why was he sick and dying? Who were those bad men? I wasn't really able to get it.

Duck Soup

Duck Soup is a Marx Brothers film from 1933. I guess I don't really understand the Marx Brothers. I don't really like comedy with puns, and physical comedy makes me sort of tired. I don't really like The Three Stooges either, there's just something about this sort of style that makes me exhausted. I think it's just personal taste that this fell sort of flat for me. I mean, it sort of grew on me, and I found a few moments funny, but otherwise I was sort of "meh". I'm sure this is movie blasphemy, but I wasn't in love, or even really in like with this film.

Dr. Strangelove

When my parents brought  home a 62" inch DLP TV, and got a DVR for the first time, I had mixed emotions. It was so large. My friend stood back and saluted the TV, saying, "Welcome to our lives, you big behemoth." Later, I sat down and looked through the free on demand movies. I found Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film Dr. Strangelove, and it was the first thing I ever watched on the giant screen. To be honest, I don't remember if I had ever seen it before then. I just remember being in awe - this shockingly funny and beautiful black and white movie taking up half of my basement, while I sat huddled up and small in the corner of the couch. I think it was a perfect way to watch a movie like this. Not because you need a big TV, but a sense of wonder. I was pretty astonished at how funny it was and how great the acting was. I remember laughing at General Turgidson chewing endless amounts of gum, the antics of Dr. Strangelove's gloved hand. I was skeptical of the TV at first. "Why would anyone need something so large?" For movies like Dr. Stranglelove. For masterpieces. Now, watching a Blu-ray of the movie, I'm happy to have access to the TV, to be able to watch this and all the other films of Ebert's books in full high definition.

Dracula

It's hard to talk about a movie like Tod Browning's 1931 Dracula. I keep starting this entry and deleting everything that I am writing! Am I sick of both the book and the movie? Has the 1931 film lost a lot of the shock that it had, now that modern audiences are more seasoned and used to horror? I love Bela Lugosi, but I don't feel afraid of him. To be honest, I mostly watch this movie for Renfield, the character who goes mad and becomes Dracula's servant. I love this movie, and I feel creeped out by it, but not nearly as unsettled as when I read Let The Right One In. What does this mean? I'm not quite sure, apparently. I think it's a great movie and I think Bela Lugosi is incredible. I'm not quite sure, I guess, how it holds up in our vampire-saturated culture.

Double Indemnity

Double Indemnity, written and directed in 1944 by Billy Wilder, is an early and classic noir film. Like all noir films, I saw it first in a class. Our class was an hour and a half long - the movie is almost two. My professor fast-forwarded through the parts he thought we ok to cull, explaining them to us as he did it. We also had to read the book, so I feel like I didn't ever really miss that much. Somehow, this is true. Watching it again, I felt like I had seen it really recently. I really like this movie, though, so I was happy to watch it again.

Do The Right Thing

Embarrassing confession - I really don't know Spike Lee. I often heard professors mention his production company, but to be honest I can't think of anything I've seen by him. I'm really glad that I watched this. I don't know if I ever would have picked it out on my own without this project, although if it wasn't for this project, I'd just be watching "My Strange Addiction", so...


Do The Right Thing was written and directed by Spike Lee in 1989, and the plot is a bit too elaborate to summarize. I'm not sure I can, without just going on and on. It is, I guess, in a sentence, the story of a one city block in Brooklyn, and the racial tensions and conflicts that go on there.

Detour

I first watched Detour in a film noir class that I took. I doubted that it could be any good when the professor popped in a ratty VHS tape and told us it was about an hour long. How good could a movie that is 68 minutes long be? Pretty good, actually. Later, on vacation in Buena Vista, Colorado, I saw this in a box set at Alco. Alco is some sort of horrible discount store, like a really crappy K-Mart. Everything inside is dusty and off-brand, shelves half-collapsed everywhere. It was the only general store we could find in the town, and we needed some blank DVDs and hangers, which they had. We browsed the strange selection of movies, and there it was - Detour, boxed with three other noir films I never heard of. It was about $4 for the set, so I begged Anthony to buy it for me because I promised him that Detour was beyond worth it. Like me, he was doubtful. Only $4? Finally, months later, I was able to sit down with him and watch it. I think he agrees with me now :)

The Decalogue

It is rare to see long-form story done so well. We're used to seeing it on TV. Most of those aren't that well done, though. There is an art to being able to tell a long story and wrap it up at some point. To end it. We don't often see things like that anymore, in a world where to be a "good television writer" means to shoot for syndication so you don't have to work anymore. Over the last three days, I watched The Decalogue, a ten-part, made for TV series directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski in 1988. In my mind, 'made for TV' is a dirty phrase. Only the worst things are made for TV, like that horrible remake of The Shining I watched when I was a kid. That defines 'made for TV'. Television is where you can go to commit that sort of blasphemy. This series is nothing like that. I had so many bad feelings going into this, but I came away really surprised.

The Next Three Days...

For January 15, 16, and 17, I'm going to be watching The Decalogue, a series of ten, one-hour Polish films (er, TV shows, really) from 1988 directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski. The films are based off of the Catholic Ten Commandments. I'll do a post about all of them when I am done watching, but after the first three today, I am already really surprised by how much I am loving these.
Hope everyone is having a nice, relaxing weekend!

Days of Heaven

It's difficult to describe a movie that is mostly image, like a living, breathing painting. Terrence Malick's 1978 film Days of Heaven is like this. I've always heard that Malick isn't a filmmaker - he is an artist, a poet, a philosopher. I read this story about him online, from the set of The Thin Red Line (which I saw a long time ago, when I was not mature enough to understand it). Someone described that they were about to set off a huge explosion for a big scene, and there were airplanes taking off, trucks everywhere, and they were ready to go. Suddenly, Malick saw a hawk in the sky. Everything stopped. "Oh, look it's a red tail hawk. Look, John, John, get the camera, there it is." They sat around, holding off the big scene, so they could film the hawk. He didn't care about the script as much as he did the images of the movie. I thought of that story while I was watching Days of Heaven. The plot is held at a distance from the viewer, and we are left with mostly images. It was truly a beautiful work of art. Had I had any money left from buying Blu-rays earlier today, the Criterion edition of this would be on its way to me already.

Late Night.

I'm just getting home and sitting down to eat dinner - a Blockbuster near my house is closing, and I had to go and purchase many Blu-rays.
Due to this distraction, I haven't watched Days of Heaven yet. But I'm going to! I'm just going to eat dinner, which is ready, and then start it. I just thought that my post might be a littler later tonight than usual.
I'm sort of a purist about things, so I just wanted to make it clear that even if my post is late, I will have watched the movie today (before midnight). Hahaha, this seems stupid now that I've said it. It's how I am. The Blu-rays I bought all came in DVD boxes...so I feel like I need to buy some "real" cases for them so they "match" my other Blu-rays. So you can rest assured that I am actually this weird about everything.