Ash Ketchum

And with great Times Square footage, too (ca. 1956).

Trevor

I've been procrastinating my packing and watching about a film a day. This Shepitko set is amazing. Really moving films.

CardiffGiant

I finished up the Rashomon disc. I consumed every bit of the supplemental material. There's a longer breakdown on my list, but the commentary is great and feels conversational while having a good balance of an analytical and biographical approach. The commentary never gets bogged down in one or the other.

The introduction by Altman was pretty cool and it made me want to revisit some Altman films.

The trailer is laughable. Such a joke. I'm glad that Criterion included it, just so everyone can see how ridiculous marketing can be for a film...seriously...ridiculous.

I bought this last November and have yet to watch it. I really need to get on that.

popcorn

The transfer on Sweet Smell of Success is beautiful. Watched it a couple of months ago and was highly impressed. The story behind it was quite interesting too, especially when watched with Broadcast News. In a sense, they both dealt with the decline of different types of media delivery.

g.schweet

I can see why you didn't like them, if the Ozu set is your favorite. The two directors could not be more farther apart.

I prefer films that are playful and have a lot of style. I haven't seen the films for a while, but the look and comical nature Klein's films really stand out to me as being very unique. And I'm a sucker for visual gags, which his fiction films have in great number.

The low production values of Mr. Freedom and The Model Couple most likely put a lot of people off, but I actually like the "homemade" aspect of the props, sets, and costumes (and people e.g. the Red Chinaman ). They add to the absurdity and satiric humor. Everything is taken to the extreme, from the visuals to the political messages to the personalities of the characters (to the colors in Mr. Freedom).

Sorry I can't go into greater detail having seen them more than a year ago it's very hard to write about them.

ororama

Sorry. I actually like it too-just don't love it. This happens to be the one Mizoguchi movie that a few fans go overboard with their praise for-you see that more among Ozu fans (not anybody here). Just my opinion.

I certainly don't want to discourage anyone from watching anything during this challenge.

Travis McClain

Went to bed last night and watched From Russia with Love synced with the LaserDisc commentary track. The stuff with Peter Hunt and Richard Maibaum was terrific; Terence Young embarrassed himself soundly with an entirely needless anecdote about mistakenly dying his hair and rushing to proclaim his heterosexuality to Robert Shaw (employing a homophobic slur in the process). I suspect this was one of the notorious bits that incensed "Cubby" Broccoli. Given that it's a compilation-style commentary track, one wonders why Criterion felt that bit needed to be included in the first place.

After tossing and turning for a while, I wound up streaming Ansiktet [The Magician] from HuluPlus, my second Bergman film of this challenge and my seventh overall. I enjoyed it quite a lot, and found myself smiling at the commentary on duality and the way that self-proclaimed rational people can still desire to be wowed by the mystical, be it hocus pocus illusion or religion. The subplots of supporting characters called to mind Smiles of a Summer Night and All These Women, and I found the irreverence helped balance the weightier primary plot.

I then found a 15 minute featurette, a Visual Essay on The Magician by "Bergman scholar" Peter Cowie (must be nice work if you can get it!). Cowie provides a fairly thorough survey of the themes explored in this specific film, as well as Bergman's body of work at large. As I've only streamed the previous six Bergman movies I've seen, this was the first supplement of any kind I've been able to watch and I rather enjoyed and appreciated it. I really dig that HuluPlus offers these kinds of supplements.

Greg MacGuffin

Interesting. I was hoping I would get the chance to bust out my new copy of Broadcast News during the challenge and now I have a good excuse.

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

I'm planning and somewhat excited to start on The Horse's Mouth today. I know nothing about it other than a brief plot but it sounds like it'll be good.

MrTerrific

Watched Repulsion, Hopscotch and The Naked City today. LOVED all 3! This is what I love about these "challenges". The chance to watch movies I may have never watched otherwise and loving them.

So far the only film (that I've seen for the first time) that I've been disappointed in was Alphaville, which I just couldn't get into.

br26

Added Modern Times today. Definitely going to be getting more of Criterion's blu ray sets in the future, they're totally worth it (this was my first one). Probably going to look into getting The Great Dictator next.

Started watching The Blob the other day but got distracted after the first fifteen minutes or so. I should finish that during the weekend or maybe tomorrow.

Trevor

For the checklist uber-completest, I see that Criterion has at least one pre-1920 film, Pool Sharks on the W.C. Fields disc.

davidh777

I read the book in college! I know I've seen at least part of the movie.

Ash Ketchum

I've been on a real crime movie kick lately, triggered by the Nikkatsu Noir set and its first film, I AM WAITING (1957). So now I want to see as many b&w noir/crime films from the '50s as I can. I've watched three more from the Nikkatsu set, with one standing out as a heist film masterpiece, CRUEL GUN STORY (1964), with echoes of THE KILLING and a foreshadowing of THE GETAWAY. I'll do a separate post on that set when I'm done with the last one in it, A COLT IS MY PASSPORT.

So I dug out a few American ones from my collection that fit this challenge: NIGHT AND THE CITY, THE KILLING, and KISS ME DEADLY, with plans to look for my copies of ASPHALT JUNGLE and PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET this weekend. Plus other foreign ones, including Kurosawa's HIGH AND LOW and some of the Melville films.

I watched Kubrick's THE KILLING (1956) last night, for the first time in years, and just marveled at how well-crafted it is and what a great cast of character actors it had. This time I was mesmerized by the scenes of Elisha Cook, as George Peatty, one of the inside men working on the caper, sparring with his two-timing, floozy wife, Sherry, played by Marie Windsor. She's stringing him along until the money comes in and he knows she's playing him but tries to convince himself she's not. She knows he knows, but continues playing him with that honeyed voice of hers, knowing it will work. They're the only characters given extended scenes outside of the heist and they make the most of them in a case of perfect film acting.

I was very disappointed in Jules Dassin's NIGHT AND THE CITY (1950), which I'd never seen before, chiefly because I felt that Fox contract stars Richard Widmark and Gene Tierney didn't belong in a London underworld setting. Glamor girl Tierney has a small, thankless role and Widmark plays against type as a desperate pathetic loser who does nothing to engage the audience's sympathy. His comeuppance couldn't come fast enough for me. For a character like this to keep my interest he has to bring some wit and charm to the role. I don't have to like the character, but he has to keep me entertained. Which is pretty much what Widmark did so well in PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET. He played a lowlife in that one, but he had some charm and style. Harry Fabian in NIGHT AND THE CITY is just contemptible and weak. And the manhunt scene in the finale, echoing the one in Dassin's NAKED CITY, goes on forever. The film could easily have been 15 min. shorter to be more effective.

On the same tape as NIGHT AND THE CITY, I had another film with Widmark as a bad guy, THE STREET WITH NO NAME (1948), which I watched next and which I'd also never seen before. It's a great FBI procedural with heavy film noir elements and Widmark steals the show as a crime boss who's neither desperate nor a loser. I tend to associate Widmark with roles as authority figures (think HALLS OF MONTEZUMA and PANIC IN THE STREETS, two films made the same year as NIGHT AND THE CITY), which is why his performance in NIGHT threw me off. But in STREET, he's an authority figure--who just happens to be a bad guy--and he was really in his groove. Too bad it wasn't eligible for this challenge.

So now I'm on a real black-and-white noir/crime kick and I even bought the Eclipse set, "The Warped World of Koreyoshi Kurahara," motivated by how much I liked Kurahara's I AM WAITING.

Where's the Action/Crime/Noir Challenge? (I may just intermingle these films with the horror ones next month, just to get my crime/noir jones satisfied.)

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

I get a little more amusement out of the film by considering this is one of the things he did after he, as a jedi, went into hiding.

CardiffGiant

For those looking to satisfy the "Watch a Short" requirement: Here are some suggestions

davidh777

That was... really nerdy

Travis McClain

Another rough night/morning, but at least I got in another movie. I just finished streaming L'heure d'été [Summer Hours], one of the remaining Criterion Collection titles on Netflix. My thoughts, from my list thread review:

In this 2008 French film, the matriarch of a family dies shortly after her 75th birthday, leaving behind an estate of valuable art created and collected by her uncle. Frédéric (Charles Berling) wishes to preserve it for his children and their cousins to inherit, just as it was preserved by his mother for he and his siblings...but Adrienne (Juliette Binoche) and Jérémie (Jérémie Renier) have different priorities.

It's a thoughtful dissection of the nature of inheritance; the value of sentiment vs. practicality; the tendency to wish to preserve; being left with things that mean little beyond their resale value. With a lot of stories of this nature, the subject of inheriting works of art would seem fanciful but peripheral. Here, however, the message is clear: the value of art is, of course, subjective as is the value of anything inherited. Does the vase matter because it was crafted by a specific artisan, or does it mean something else because of its association with the person who used to own it?

Psychologically, of course, most of us know that "they're just things," but the truth is that when you're face to face with just those things as the totality of the legacy of someone you knew and loved, it can evoke a compulsion to become their new custodian. Frédéric feels that desire and is wounded to discover his brother and sister do not share his values. As they look to their lives and careers in China and America, respectively, they feel freer to discard the remnants of their family history. It is Frédéric alone who is deflated to realize that his children will be the last generation of his family to have ever been to the home.

My family owned a business for twenty years. I grew up there, helping from time to time after school and in my early 20s I began working there myself while going to college. I became increasingly involved as my mother's health declined, but then when I developed Crohn's disease I, too, became increasingly unreliable. It was supposed to be for my brother and I to one day inherit, and when our cousins were born they, too, were supposed to have a claim on it. Instead, there came a day in 2007 when an unceremonious auction found a new owner for the property. In the span of two days, we emptied the building of all remaining inventory, donated to charity. Then, it was over.

The new owner has allowed the place to sit these past four years, and the only attention paid to it has been by vandals. Sometimes it angers me; sometimes I'm just grateful I'm no longer responsible for it. But I'm always acutely aware that the closing of the business and the sale of the property was more or less forced by my inability to take the reins. So as I watched Frédéric frustrated at not being able to buy out both his siblings and ensure that the family home stayed in the family, I found a specific kinship with the character.

I really liked the documentary style production values; only some minor source music is heard in the course of the entire film, for instance, which has the effect of amplifying the sense of reality. Artistically, I understand and even respect the choice to restrict our access to just the part of the narrative concerned with the inheritance--it keeps the film focused on an often overlooked part of the aftermath of death. The problem is that there are some stray threads that feel forced when introduced (such as a minor subplot involving Frédéric's daughter, Sylvie [Alice de Lencquesaing]). In theory, that scene sets up the final scene of the film but I honestly can't envision how excising that scene would affect the final scene or the rest of the film.

Trevor

March. Although I think I'll call it Action/Adventure.

Ash Ketchum

Awesome! I have some ideas for you when you start the discussion thread--or maybe sooner! I'll wait till after your wedding/honeymoon/move.

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

What do you call a prison escape movie, where all the things that would make it interesting are not in the film? Down By Law.

It takes 45 minutes to get to "Do you know how to escape?" "No". Then they get taken out of the cell for a walk and in the next scene they've already escaped. This, and them not doing anything in their cell but babbling about nothing, are some of the things indie movies just seem to love to do and it's also why I don't care for most of them. Deleted scenes in movies that are removed because they don't add anything or they break up the pace seem to be major parts of the indie stuff I watch. How many times do I have to watch a guy drive his car for 5 minutes, with the only angle being the one where I see their face as they mumble stuff to themselves?

I have about 30 minutes left of this film and I know it's just going to be more of the same and I won't get any enjoyment out of it.

I read that this supposed to be some sort of comedy but the only thing even slightly amusing is that the place they find out in the middle of nowhere ends up being exactly like their cell.

CardiffGiant

Sorry to hear that you're hitting some more rough times with Crohn's; I hope things get better soon.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the film. I watched this film while in the midst of making some very difficult inheritance decisions of my own and it does hit really deeply for those that have been in those situations.

What is sentimental and necessary and what is "junk"? Can anything from our loved ones be so easily given away? The items are "just possessions," but they have the power and ability to represent so much more to us.

It's been a few years since I watched Summer Hours, a Netflix pickup when it was first released and I felt the immediate need to buy it. I haven't visited it since that initial viewing, but reading your review/reaction makes me want to remedy that quite soon.

Travis McClain

Thanks. At least I've got these challenges to help distract me throughout my all-night flares. I might complain about them, but it's not until they get so bad I can't even watch a movie that I really freak out.

One thing I should have made more explicit in my response to the movie was that I think its narrow focus--only showing us what the characters discuss in relationship to the handling of the estate and not the grieving process itself--may make it hard for a lot of people to get into it. We're conditioned to see people break down and cry in the wake of death, and that doesn't really happen in Summer Hours; certainly not to the extent that would be familiar to most of us. It may seem cold, or possibly even lazy, but I think if you've actually had to make heads or tails of the physical leftovers of someone else's life, you may appreciate its focus.

As for me, I just finished streaming Premiers Désirs [First Desires]. My thoughts:

All I knew about this one going into it was that the cover art showing two mostly nude girls lying together was plastered all over the HuluPlus Criterion page every time I signed in and that was, eventually, enough to get me to take a chance on it. The premise sounds like it should have been a letter to Penthouse: three teen girls sneak away from their boarding school/summer camp/it doesn't matter in a boat and head to an island. They're caught in a storm and separated, and Caroline (Monica Broeke) is rescued by Etienne (Bruno Guillain). She awakens in a hut, nude and infatuated with having been rescued. Caroline mistakenly assumes that wealthy, wedded Jordan (Patrick Bauchau) was her savior and inserts herself into a sort of love triangle with him--egged on by his pianist wife, Julienne (Inge Maria Granzow, credited as Inger).

Caroline is reunited with the other girls, by the end of the third scene of the movie--but then spends most of the time ditching them, leaving them to their own coming of age story with some islander boys. There are plenty of threads that could have become interesting character developments, but they all come and go abruptly and it becomes obvious after a while that the film was largely just a pretext for photographer-cum-director David Hamilton to get young women naked on camera. It's a shame the story is so disjointed and thin, because the cast is fine and the Mediterranean environment is inviting. I really wanted to get lost in this movie, and instead I discovered that it was the movie itself that got lost.

Trevor

I've been thinking about this topic a lot lately.

Jen lost her first husband 8 years ago, and is always asking that I promise to live longer than her. I insist that I won't, as she's younger and statistically will have many years without me.

But anyway, between that, my high blood pressure, and being surrounded by death at work; I've been thinking a lot about what happens to my stuff if I die. My family and family-to-be aren't collectors, and will be tempted to just trash the stuff they don't understand or don't think is valuable.

I should come up with a committee of friends to take charge of specific aspects of my collections, keeping what they want, selling valuable things if Jen needs the money, but mainly just making sure that things find a good home.

Travis McClain

It's funny; I just had a conversation this morning with my grandmother about this very topic. She and my mom have been going through some stuff they want to sell, and they were both asking me to help find out information about some of it for them. Mind you, we used to run a consignment shop for 20 years and before that they worked for an auctioneer so they're well versed in the world of buying and selling collectibles and estate sales, etc.

At one point, my grandmother expressed how it always surprises her how many people inherit valuable stuff but don't know what they've got and don't make much of an effort to get top dollar for what they don't want to keep for themselves. And it occurred to me that if I died today, my own wife would have little idea what among my collections would be considered "the good stuff" (not that I have much in the way of anything special in the first place). I like to think that what we buy says something about who we are--our enthusiasms, our needs, etc.--but what does it mean if the ones closest to us don't know what to make of our artifacts when we're gone?