Watched Häxan to kamikaze into the horror challenge; after focusing on arthouse cinema this month I'm ready to melt my brain with cheap schlock.

I thought Häxan was a funny & whimsical "documentary" about witchcraft, exceeded my expectations with its mockery of inquisition/witchcraft. It benefits from good attention to detail and excellent special effects especially considering the age (bite me CGI). The sensationalism is cheap fun but either lacks depth or has become cliché until the last chapter (1/7th) switches suddenly to dismissive (overly simplistic) explanation. I'm curious about the commentary. The film starts out tongue in cheek then ends up beating you over the head with it's agenda but I'd recommend it.

Watched Sisters with lower expectations (because the plot seemed odd). Reading the inset booklet cued me in to a lot of fun homages in this film. The plot structure is unique in that this is a mystery where from the beginning it's shown who the murderer is. The narrative is told from a reporter who enters and exits the main action or is told in flashbacks both suggesting voyeurism (maybe a comment on popular news media). Right from the start there's effective music and suspense. I enjoyed the surrealism as the move progressed with thick stylization getting more deliciously complex.

So I wound up closing the challenge with two megalomaniacs followed by the Prince of Peace: RICHARD III, MR. ARKADIN and KING OF KINGS. The two megalomaniacs were both from 1955 and both directed by their stars, Olivier and Welles, respectively.
KING OF KINGS (1927) was an interesting counterpoint to JIGOKU and also filled with somewhat bizarre imagery as only silent DeMille could give us. KINGS offered the Resurrection scene in two-strip Technicolor.

I missed only three checklist items: a film from the 2000s and two of the spine number groupings.

But I did see 29 films; one more and I would have achieved one a day for the month. Only a handful of others in the challenge beat my total.

The best of the 29: SCARLET EMPRESS, WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS, HARD-BOILED, WINGS OF DESIRE, TOKYO DRIFTER.

Best first-time viewings: WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS, WINGS OF DESIRE, TOKYO DRIFTER.

Most surprising discovery: WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS

I watched two of John Woo’s Hong Kong action films: THE KILLER and HARD-BOILED. I’d always considered THE KILLER the better of the two, with more layered characters and a more cohesive plot and less over-the-top shooting and violence. Well, I changed my mind after re-viewing them. THE KILLER gets downright silly in its last half-hour as they stop the action for long sappy man-to-man dialogue exchanges with absurd platitudes about friendship and the poor woman kept a helpless damsel-in-distress the whole time. HARD-BOILED streamlines things and keeps up a steady, escalating flow of action, all staged for maximum cinematic spectacle, with dialogue and platitudes sharply reduced and the woman given a more central role in the action. A much more satisfying film this time around.

Directors with multiple films on my list:
Hitchcock (2)
Welles (2)
Woo (2)
Mizoguchi (4)

The Mizoguchis were the biggest disappointment, although I do want to see them again. I suspect they’ll get better a second (or third) time.

The only ones I actively disliked were THE RISE OF CATHERINE THE GREAT and BIG DEAL ON MADONNA STREET.

I kind of finished with a wimper, but I did fit in Seven Samurai as well as both of the commentaries. I think Seven Samurai was a good movie, but for me it wasn't great. The quality of the acting, cinematography, direction, and story are truly superb. I also can appreciate how this was (and still is) a major influence on modern moviemaking. However, just because of that doesn't make it one of the best movies of all time, IMHO.

There were a few things that took me out of the movie. I think the peasants emotions and they way they acted were too overplayed. I know that we were supposed to feel the plight of these peasants and get into their state of mind, but my god there is only so much crying, wimpering, and cowardness I can handle. It was overdone in my opinion. The other thing was the one guy with the sad face. After a while I could hardly look at him anymore. It reminded me of looking at that Keystone Light commerical guy who could do the crazy face and you only want to look at him for maybe a few seconds and then be done with it.

Most of the fight scenes were as well done as they could be (Kikuchiyo's final battle was simple, yet fantastic.) However, the larger battle sequences looked to me it looked like a lot of running around and when people would actually attack people with spears, unless it was set up in a close shot, it didn't look very realistic to me. I understand that this was 1956 and the technology to do massive realistic battle scenes like in Braveheart or Gladiator, for example, was not possible, but having some people point some sticks around in the air or *near* a person seemed a bit silly.

The music was decent, but it never really elicited an emotional response to enhance the on-screen action. Music is such a big part of movies, I was really expecting a lot more. Compared to, say, any of the Dollars Trilogy movies it really pales in comparison.

The last thing I wasn't too fond of was one of the peasants songs. I think it was the end one, but there was something about the beat and the way it was sung that just really bothered me. I know that is my own problem, but I didn't like it.

Ok, I focused on the negatives, which is a little unfair. I did like the movie, but it's probably one I will only watch maybe every 10 years or so. The actors who plays Kikuchiyo, the main samurai, the "silent" samurai, and the woodchopping samurai were all amazing! The cinematography, as I mentioned, was superb. The multiple cameras and the way they were intercut realtime was something I hadn't seen done quite that way. The slow motion was way ahead of its time and I (finally) can see the influence on directors like George Lucas - most notably in the wipes.

I almost did the same, but couldn't find my Haxan disc so did The Blob instead. Campy, but I love that period/genre, and am looking forward to watching it again with commentary tonight. Then started on Carnival of Souls but couldn't stay awake, and didn't finish until this morning.

So my grand total for the month ends up as two and a half.

As someone who considers SEVEN SAMURAI one of the greatest movies ever made (as in objectively great, like CITIZEN KANE, as opposed to "favorite" great like, say WEST SIDE STORY or IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD), I'd like to analyze your reaction to it, all in the hopes of being helpful.

Now, I first saw this film in high school (at a Times Square theater) and have seen it several times (six or seven) since, both on the big screen and on TV/video. I planned to watch the Criterion set for this challenge, but when I had a large block of time, I devoted it to things I hadn't already seen. So I've seen the film a lot, but not in about a decade, and am really attuned to its rhythms, its nuances, its style of acting, its emotional emphasis on the farmers over the samurai (which got reversed in the American remake, where the glamorous gunfighters got all the attention) and its music score.

I'm guessing, Numes, that you haven't seen a lot of Japanese movies. The style of acting that you describe in the portrayals of the peasants is not uncommon in lots of Japanese films. Not all--I mean there are plenty of films where stoic characters sit and talk and veil their emotions (think Ozu and Naruse)--but I watch lots of Japanese genre films and anime and sentai (Power Rangers) type shows and I see the kind of overplaying you mention quite frequently. Crew members on space ships in anime freak out all the time, in ways that real Japanese crew members never would. In sports series, athletes break down and cry in the middle of a game in front of a packed stadium! And I can't imagine that Japanese high school kids in real life yell and cry and slap each other in bursts of anger anywhere near as much as they do in anime. I've always figured that the creators of films and anime and TV shows use the opportunity to express emotions that they have to keep suppressed in everyday life. (John Cleese has talked about how seething emotions held in check just under the surface by Englishmen every day informed his portrayal of Basil Fawlty, someone who just bursts out with them. A similar principle, I believe.) I watched some Mizoguchi films about prostitutes for the challenge and was surprised at the melodramatic extremes in those films. I was previously used to his historical films which are more tempered. And Mizoguchi is considered on a par with Kurosawa as the two greatest Japanese directors. (I prefer Ozu to Mizoguchi myself.) So I think it's a style that one gets used to when seeing lots of Japanese filmed entertainment.

The guy with the sad face was meant to be comic relief. When you see this with a crowd, he always draws laughter.

I would argue that the battle scenes were much more realistic than we normally get in an "action" movie. In real battles, violence is messy. It's not clean and neat. In a battle like this one, the farmers were scared. They're not killers. They're not used to plunging spears into human flesh. It's a lot harder to do than pointing a rifle and pulling the trigger. If they can, they'll wait for one of the other guys in their group to plunge his spear in first. So there'll be a lot of jockeying around with the spears, a lot of awkward moves. In a situation like this, that's realism. (And I wouldn't call anything in GLADIATOR even remotely realistic.)

The music is not meant to enhance the action. Kurosawa didn't want the music to dominate the action or guide the viewers' reactions. Simply to support the mood that he was building. That sense of the farmers grinding on and the samurai and bandits coming and fighting and dying and going and being forgotten, while the farmers stay on. It's so unlike "epic" music. When I first saw it, I was so struck by the central theme that we hear because it was unlike any instrumental arrangement I'd heard before. I can hear it in my head now as I type this. A thing of simple beauty. As for the peasants' song at the end, I don't recall it. But I listen to a lot of Japanese music, so my reaction would be different anyway.

And just for the record, the "actor who plays Kikuchiyo" is none other than Toshiro Mifune, arguably the greatest film actor who ever lived.

Recommendations of other Kurosawa/Mifune collaborations you should see:
YOJIMBO (the basis for A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS)
SANJURO
HIGH AND LOW
DRUNKEN ANGEL
THRONE OF BLOOD
THE HIDDEN FORTRESS

Also, Takashi Shimura, who plays the leader of the samurai, also plays Dr. Yamane, the paleontologist in the first GODZILLA. Same year as SEVEN SAMURAI.

No problem. Running the challenge got me much more involved in conversation and I enjoyed the conversation as much as anything else.

This will be my first year participating in the Horror Challenge and I'm looking forward to finally getting around to watching some classics that I've never seen (and all seasons of Dexter).

I hope I didn't come off as too disparaging against the movie, and I knew I would get some comments. I did like the movie. I gave it an 8/10 on IMDB. For me, though, it's not in the top tier of my favorite movies. It is one of my first Japanese movies (I watched The Hidden Fortress earlier in the challenge). It may be a culture thing on some of the items I talked about, and I do understand that. Regardless, though, whether or not it is a cultural nuance or filmmaking style of the culture, I was put off by some of those things I mentioned.

As for the fight scenes. I think one thing that comes to mind is when they are attacking the rider that they lead into the village. You are to believe that they are stabbing the horse with their spears and it just didn't look like they were doing anything that was affecting the horse or the rider. It looked like they were doing their best not to hurt someone because they were in a movie. That is not a generalization of all the battle/fight scenes, it is just one instance. Most of the other battle/fight scenes were very well done. The Gladiator comment was probably not well placed. I was just trying to compare it to something where you truly feel that people are getting hurt or killed. In a couple of those scenes it didn't feel very real.

I also am aware, via the commentaries, about Takashi Shimura and how he is widely regarded as one of the greats of all time. I can definitely see why! He was fantastic in Seven Samurai.

I also have Yojimbo and Sanjuro and was hoping to get to them in this challenge. I will probably watch them in November.

It's possible I was just expecting too much from this movie and was ultimately disappointed. I wasn't "blown away" like I thought I was going to be. Sometimes expectations result in letdowns even if it was a good movie. An opposite example is Hitchcock's Notorious that I watched for the first time last year. It isn't always referenced like Vertigo, Rear Window, or Psycho, but that movie was amazing and when I was watching I was just completely taken back by how great it was.

Looking Back
Going into this challenge, I was one of those who were somewhat intimidated by the elitist reputation of the Criterion Collection. I suffer from a particularly pronounced Impostor Syndrome, so for someone with my rather pedestrian taste in film I felt very tenuous about wading into these waters.

My thoughts on the auteur theory are well established, but what I haven't mentioned often is how I feel about cinephiles who casually insert trivia from a favorite director's filmography in their often-insightful, sometimes-pretentious glowing praise of films. I can do this on subjects about which I, too, am passionate...which is one more reason I felt completely out of my depth entering this challenge.

I came in only actually owning two official Criterion Collection DVD releases; I have a handful of qualifying titles in non-Criterion releases. I figured I could use this challenge as an excuse to finally go through all the bonus content on the two CC releases I owned, and if I felt like watching any of the other eligible titles, so be it. And I figured this could be a good time to finally get around to watching David Lean's pre-Bridge on the River Kwai directorial efforts.

I started, then, with The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou which I'd only seen once before, five years ago. At the time, I felt deceived into being lured by marketing promises of "a comedy starring Bill Murray!" into something far less familiar to my understanding of what that meant.

I followed that up with The Royal Tenenbaums, another Wes Anderson project that is one of my friend's absolute favorite films; he's glowed about it for years now and I decided to stream it from Netflix once I saw it was available. That kicked off a run of Netflix streaming for the month, though I did check out a couple of titles from my local library, including The Wages of Fear, which I checked out because another challenge participant mentioned it as one he was going to watch; unfortunately I did not get to viewing before having to return it. I definitely got my money's worth out of my Netflix subscription fee for September!

Some of the titles I got to fell short of my expectations; I realize that crossing time and geography require some contextual research to bolster one's understanding and appreciation of the film in question. Divorzio all'italiana (Divorce - Italian Style) I found sleazy more than anything else, for instance. La Jetee was interesting, though I suspect I won't remember it well; Sans Soleil made Chris Marker's photo-documentarian style a little more tedious to endure due to its length.

I failed to get to any of the Lean films (though I did watch the first eight minutes of Brief Encounter four different times; Netflix's upload stops there). On the other hand, I did finally begin exploring the works of Ingmar Bergman and I fell completely in love with them. It's out of my budget right now, but I have placed the Ingmar Bergman: Four Masterworks box set on my wish list. Jungfrukällan [The Virgin Spring] was disturbingly visceral; I'm glad I saw it, but if I ever scrounge up the money for the box set I suspect this disc will get much less play.

My thoughts on each title I watched have been posted throughout this thread, and also appear in my list thread post; they're spoiler'd for size, not content, so feel free to peruse. (And most of them have pictures, too!)

One last thought: I really came to appreciate the Criterion website. I hit it up for those aforementioned pictures I inserted into my list thread post, and I love that they have archived all the essays they've ever published--including those dating back to the Laser Disc era. If you haven't made use of this feature, I highly advise it. Some of the essays I read were no more insightful than a Wikipedia entry, some were of that pretentious nature I mentioned earlier; but others were approachable and informative, and offered some great insight. Maurice Yacowar's Flesh for Frankenstein essay really helped me make sense of that film being selected for inclusion in the hallowed Criterion Collection.

At the end of the month, I really feel like I've become far more comfortable with Criterion. I made a deliberate point not to explore Asian cinema this year, not because it doesn't interest me but because I wanted to have a sort of regional focus. I may change my mind a year from now, but I'm tentatively planning to concentrate on Asian features in 2011.

I should point out that when I first saw SEVEN SAMURAI, it was mainly because I'd seen the western remake, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, a few weeks earlier and was curious to see the samurai film it was based on. SEVEN SAMURAI was a highly regarded film, but I didn't know much about it. The showing in New York I went to was not well publicized and it may even have been one of the first showings in the U.S. of the full three-and-a-half-hour cut. So it didn't have the rep among American film buffs that it would acquire over the years, so I didn't go into it with higher-than-normal expectations. In fact, within the decade, it came back to theaters in New York in a much more publicized run and the ads screamed "Restored, uncut version, First Showing in New York" or words to that effect. Which simply wasn't true. In fact, it had already played nationally on PBS in its uncut version around 1972, which was my second viewing, this time with my siblings. (Later that year, my sister and I went to see the western, RED SUN, which co-starred Mifune, one of the original Seven Samurai, with Charles Bronson, one of the original Magnificent Seven.)

I already knew that you were a fan of NOTORIOUS, having read an earlier post of yours stating that. It took me a while to truly warm up to NOTORIOUS. I used to favor NORTH BY NORTHWEST, PSYCHO and REAR WINDOW as my favorite Hitchcocks, because they were the most "entertaining." But as I've gotten older, NOTORIOUS just keeps getting better and better because it's an adult film about adult relationships. The moral dilemma Bergman finds herself in is just harrowing and thoroughly believable. Grant's a bit of a dick about it at first, as guys tend to be. And the anguished look on Rains' face when he learns that the woman he truly loves is in fact a spy is just a great emotional cinematic moment. Other Hitchcocks that have grown on me as I've gotten older: REBECCA, SHADOW OF A DOUBT, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, all because they have interesting characters and relationships. I'm less interested in crop-dusters and hanging off of Mount Rushmore or shower stabbings or murder clues discovered by long lens voyeurs. But the way Bruno looks at Guy in STRANGERS when he realizes Guy is not going to carry out his end of the "bargain" speaks volumes about human delusion and madness. That's art.

Many thanks to CardiffGiant for hosting the challenge!

I had a lot of fun... still trying to pack in horror themed Criterions today and will post most thoughts later.

I'd forgotten The Blob has two commentaries. And I don't remember listening to them before. Now I have to decide if I want to go ahead and listen to them or wait until Nov.

I think they "count" now in the Horror Challenge fwiw. I'm halfway through the first one right now and am really enjoying it, the film's producer and a film historian.

Yeah it's tempting, but I've finally convinced myself that I probably did listen to them when I first got the DVD 10 years ago. So I decided to stick to watching as much stuff as I can this month that I know is new-to-me, and then I'll check out those commentaries next month.

Here's my rant on Flesh for Frankenstein; spoilered for length:

Certainly an interesting observation. I would also add that the very dynamic of the nuclear family is clearly treated differently in this incarnation than others; these people are, let's be honest: twisted as hell. It suggests to me a conservative fear of "broken homes." The increasingly mainstream "non-traditional families" as they're cryptically called today weren't the threat to conservative values that they are perceived to be today; I think the commentary about anxiety stands today.

I think the satirical nature is still better on paper than in execution here. I get the idea (now that Yacowan has put it in my head). Even without getting into the detached sexual activity, I think a lot of people go through life trying to cast people in a default checklist of roles for their lives; mentor, friend, lover, boss, co-worker, classmate; most people feel the need to have someone in their lives that fit these labels.

A relationship is really just the dynamics shared between two people, and those dynamics evolve; the nature of a given relationship evolves with those dynamics. What this film's criticism is, then, is that too many people have a "checklist" approach, rather than an "organic" approach to viewing and understanding relationships.

If you look at Baron Frankenstein's sexuality, it's not about connecting with his partner. We know he's married his sister, but their relationship is about her leaving him to himself, and him occasionally indulging her desires. He takes his unnamed female creation, but makes no effort to connect with her; she may as well be a blow-up doll for all the regard he has for her. It seems to me that this is a post facto indictment of the "free love" movement, arguing that by giving of oneself so freely and randomly, people have reduced sexuality to a baser level where the only connection between partners that matters is a literal, physical connection.

This reminds me of the story behind the chorus to Elvis Presley's version of "Blue Christmas." Someone at the studio insisted that it have backing vocals, and Elvis resisted, so they deliberately had the Jordanairs perform in what they thought would be such a bothersome fashion that the studio would never let the recording see the light of day. In this instance, art took common aesthetics as far as the artist thought was necessary to enter the realm of the absurd; little did they suspect that the distinctive chorus would instead become iconic.

I see the commentary on violence as being along these lines; it's intended to mock the escalating level of violence in Hollywood, by trying to out-gratuitous its contemporaries. It's hard to evaluate how well the film succeeded this far removed from its original context.

I definitely agree with this. I feel a lot like I felt when I first saw Eyes Wide Shut and American Beauty; I'm told there's a lot going on to appreciate, but it eluded me on first viewing. Subsequent viewings of Eyes Wide Shut have made me fall in love with the film; I didn't completely hate American Beauty when I finally returned to it earlier this year. If I do decide to give this film another viewing, I think I'll settle for just trying to see if I can respond more favorably to it than "not caring for it," which is where I am now.

You're welcome. I had a good time hosting it and I enjoyed discussing the films with everyone as much as I did watching the films.

As I've mentioned, this was a busy month for me and I didn't get through the amount of films that I wanted to. In retrospect, Revanche was the best film that I saw; I gave it the slight edge over the Monterey Pop Festival Box Set only because I already expected to love it considering that I love most of the musicians featured. Revanche is a definite purchase in November and I recommend it to anyone (and, if you have Netflix, you can preview it on Instant).

I also was able to rewatch Slacker, which was unexpected and I liked it much more this time around. Additionally, I liked High Noon more this time than the last time I watched it...and, it's always good to revisit Citizen Kane...the older I get, the more that film moves me.

Hopefully, next year is a little less crazy, but I watch Criterion's regularly throughout the year. I was contemplating starting a thread in the Reviews and Recommendations for Criterion-related titles. What does everyone think? The Reviews and Recommendations section is a virtual dead zone, but I've appreciated this discussion throughout September. If everyone thinks it's worthless or unnecessary, then I won't get one rolling, but if others are interested, please let me know and I could start/continue the upkeep on that one as well. It could be something that us Criterion fans can go to occasionally throughout the year and post our thoughts on recent content that we have viewed. I would also keep a direct link in my signature to help encourage others to join in the reviews and recommendations.

Here's my problem: I rarely, if ever, visit the Reviews & Recommendations sub-forum and the few times I have contributed remarks, it's been like talking into an abyss. The only response I remember getting at all was in an Eyes Wide Shut thread and the remark was something about how big a thread bump it was, because the thread had been dormant for about a decade.

Also, while I feel comfortable exploring the Criterion Collection now, I won't be in a position to go adding any to my library for a while. There are a few titles I can check out from the library, and of course I can check out discs or stream films from Netflix. With the latter option, though, I'm not able to hold the tangible package and essay booklet, which I think is necessary for a complete evaluation of the release; I feel a bit cheated because I only actually got my hands on the full content from a handful of titles (2 owned, 3 checked out).

Plus, I'm trying to commit to participating in each monthly challenge, and that means I'll have less impetus to really explore the Criterion releases (though, of course, various titles qualify for various challenges, and I will make a more conscious effort to find that content than I have in the past). And with a finite amount of eligible material for next September's challenge, I want to keep from gorging during the non-Challenge months.

If I happen to think about it and find a thread about one I actually have seen, I might contribute my two cents. But like a lot of members, it's just not a part of this forum I think to frequent so you probably shouldn't count on my participation. I will, however, go looking for threads about the titles I have reviewed and see if there's any use for my remarks there.