Re: The 1978 Mini-List
Posted: Tue Oct 03, 2023 11:46 am
Conversely, I will now put that in my queue
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domino harvey wrote: ↑Wed Jun 19, 2013 10:53 pmHouse Calls (Howard Zieff 1978) If Glenda Jackson's earlier romantic comedy for Melvin Frank, A Touch of Class, briefly flirted with late-period screwball romances from the 40s, here she's on board for a flick bringing back the gentle sex comedies of the sixties within an era when anything goes. House Calls is a pleasant surprise: A good-hearted and likable embodiment of a subgenre rendered superfluous by the death of the Code. Jackson's divorcee and Walter Matthau's widower make a winning couple with their tinged barbs and adult expectations and the characters get into plenty of zany situations that could stand with the best of their antecedents-- the Code-mocking "One foot on the floor" scene is as good as anything in any sixties sex comedy, though it could never have existed in one! Art Carney also gives a fine comedic supporting performance as a senile Chief of Staff overseeing Matthau and company-- it's a solid comic role that somehow avoids all opportunities for maudlin emotion by never succumbing to emotion in the first place! Though I'd never heard of it before, apparently the film was a huge hit when it first came out (and even inspired a long-running TV series), and it's easy to see why, as it's all quite charming
I've added all of these, thanks!the preacher wrote: ↑Wed Oct 04, 2023 11:56 amA few requests, swo:
Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? (Ted Kotcheff)
House Calls (Howard Zieff)
Raíces de sangre (Jesús Salvador Treviño)
Las palabras de Max (Emilio Martínez Lázaro)
Soldados (Alfonso Ungría)
Eskimo Limon (Boaz Davidson)
Così come sei (Alberto Lattuada)
Schwitzkasten (John Cook)
A lot of this plays well in 3D if you cross your eyes just right!knives wrote: ↑Thu Oct 05, 2023 7:48 amOn a very different track I’ve been following the Al Jarnow recommendations from the list throughout the year. I’ve liked them all well enough, but only just found one I truly loved in Cubits. This very short short does two genius things. First, it provides a nice primer for small kids on what is a cube and secondly it’s a telling of its own making. Got to get kids started on reflexive structural cinema early.
This might pair well with Shirley Clarke's Trans (also from this year), on Disc 2 of Milestone's Magic Box set and also streaming on Criterion Channel. Where Rainer's dance film is elegant and spare, Clarke's is boisterous and otherworldlytherewillbeblus wrote: ↑Mon Sep 04, 2023 8:13 pmYvonne Rainer's work (whose film this year, Trio A is a mere ten-minutes and can be watched on YT - FYI)
I just revisited this yesterday - it was my first Blier a long time ago, and wanted to see how it played now that I've finished his filmography. I didn't like it nearly as much as the first time around, almost entirely for its structural failures - always a risk with Blier, who more or less adopts the same mysterious yarn-ball-unraveling narrative approach to the bitter end. This time around, Blier doesn't keep up the momentum during his later-act shift to the summer camp, and while the thematic perversity of where this goes is pretty brilliant (Pauline Kael's full review adds a lot of appreciation to exactly why the child-bearing-child vehicle makes sense), the last hour is mostly a slog, at least if you've seen it and know where it's going. The first section still works well though, and the film is well-worth checking out for that aspect alone - as well as how Blier fine-tunes and tones-down his similar ideas from Going Places to here! (And of course for the bewilderment that this won the Foreign Language Oscar stateside)swo17 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 05, 2023 1:39 amPréparez vos mouchoirs [Get Out Your Handkerchiefs] (Bertrand Blier)
This won the Oscar for Best Foreign Picture this year. The Cohen Blu-ray features a helpful introduction in which Richard Peña explains that there are two things about this movie that modern audiences might take issue with:
1. There is a lot of talking.
2. The movie starts off with a man offering his wife to a stranger because she is bored of him. You shouldn't do that with your wife.
But if you can get past those two things, you're in for a wholesome, old-fashioned romp!
I thought Perceval was just okay the first time too, but upon a rewatch I agree with knives - this is among his very best films. It's difficult for me to describe exactly why this film works so well, but it has something to do with Rohmer's sincere adoration for the text coupled with the playful irony with which he approaches dismantling the myth of human constructs of institutional ideology in valor, love, religion, morality, faith, and egocentric existential purpose. The film is wildly entertaining, and somehow both lucid in its gentle farcical portrayals while remaining ambiguous on the intention of the feeling behind them, which can read as cheeky or genuinely solemn, sometimes in the same shot.knives wrote: ↑Mon Sep 04, 2023 7:57 pmHopefully you do. On Perceval, it’s actually my favorite Rohmer! I think the stylistic daring is very successful and in general find Rohmer at his best when doing formal experiments such as his Zack Snyder preceding George Eliot biopic. That’s not to say Perceval exists in a vacuum. It shares a lot of traits with a few other European experimentations from the period. I find it especially reminiscent of some of de Oliveira’s work. Rohmer seems to be taking several cues from early medieval British paintings offer no perspective and in general losing all sense of three dimensions. This isn’t just a topic appropriate aesthetic either. It seems to be connecting to the film’s concern with early Christianity tying itself to myth as a way establishing its borders.geoffcowgill wrote: ↑Mon Sep 04, 2023 5:08 pmAnd maybe I should re-appraise Perceval too, but it was just such a stylistic departure from what I've expected and loved from Rohmer, and not one that I thought was very successful. I'll have to check out the others, but I guess I just hadn't found myself too compelled to watch Watership Down or The Driver.