Never Coming to a Cinema Near You - Arthouse Cinema 2014

there were sections like the night when the novelists invite women back to the apartment that weren't enveloping enough to really pay off, weren't transportive enough to feel distinct, to me.

this was prob the best sequence of the whole thing, & I don't disagree that it mightev benefited from going a bit further

*SPOILER*

I thought the Bogosian narration culminating in "and he lived miserably ever after" was a sort of both fait accompli and fig leaf. It's obvious from the first scene in the diner with the ex that this guy is probably irredeemable, so what are we watching for?

yeah i was kinda straining for a stylistic point of reference - something like il divo, maybe?, which i at least remember as being incredibly sumptuous, or perhaps some of those very sensual sequences in i am love -- either way something working with that very classical celluloid vocabulary a.r.p. is definitely involved with - but to me it kind of had the tenor of late night, the grim boisterousness of the suddenly hellbent cranky older guy, without feeling like that, without feeling weary and disoriented. even to use a slightly tired language, like the stoned sequence in a serious man; it felt slightly frustrating to me given that it should have been more involving.

narration kinda worked for me but, sure, it didn't need tying up.

"I am going to make certain the audience knows I disapprove of this fetid man by punishing him after the final image"

how far through sopranos are you, again?

just over a year. i am not going to do that quickly, there's too much.

ignatiy vishnavetsky gave an incredibly enthusiastic review to "listen up, philip" which made me pause b/c aren't he and perry friends? shouldn't he disclose that?

i have a strong allergy to behaviorist indie dramas with a "loose" camera style... it would take a truly spectacular film to overcome that. so i tend to avoid anything like "listen up, philip." somebody tell me if i should make an exception to that policy.

probably watch the color wheel if your interest is at all piqued; i do think he's doing quite sophisticated things as a writer while still vaguely resembling five other slackery mumblecore people. morbs otm re his interviews being maybe as satisfying as the films.

that last point doesn't inspire confidence!

ha. he's funny. i think i liked the last film more after listening to a museum of the moving image interview in which he talked structure; he's endearingly nerdy but also was talking about using things like bad taste & "likeability" of characters as ways to confound & jar. i don't know, i am kinda fascinated by what young americans are doing to try to make interesting movies, he is a horse in that race i think.

aren't he and perry friends? shouldn't he disclose that?

He and/or his principal crew are friends with a sizeable number of youngish critics in NY... possibly in part bcz he was a clerk at Kim's Video for years. I see him around Park Slope now and then, never met him (since he rented me stuff).

I don't loathe this film but it annoyed me... I do think he has talent but can be precious or misguided with it based on the early evidence. Try Color Wheel.

Hoberman takes the "difficult Jew" angle:

http://tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/186372/hoberman-listen-up-philip

really did not like the Cassavetesesque party scene btw

fwiw isn't ignatiy vishnavetsky chicago-based?

yeah, he still is, i believe; wasn't including him in the NY crowd.

to close the circle, I.V. used to work at odd obsession, a cinephile video store in chicago.

#vishnavetskygate

I'll watch it tomorrow and update you guys.

His second film (The Color Wheel) was funny and creepy in mostly good ways, but here he splits the worst speculative traits of Philip Roth into Jason Schwartzman and Jonathan Pryce, and you just want to inflict pain on both of them (even more than they're suffering onscreen)

This is the trick in most Roth fiction after The Ghost Writer, and the unpleasantness and self-absorption get refracted. Again, I haven't seen the movie -- yet -- but it looks as if Schwartzman is the perfect actor to play a Zuckerman type; the schmuck's been playing unpleasant self-absorbed variants for 15 years.

i have no use for schwartzman & thought this was better than anything else he'd been in, fwiw

this character makes his Rushmore and Huckabees twerps look like Gandhi

I know the Zuckerman stratagem from reading...reviews of Roth novels! (Nothing after Portnoy's for me.)

also i saw this '84 PBS adap of The Ghost Writer:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087331/

guess i shouldve started a Perry thread.

after Portnoy is when Roth gets funny!

well i'm from Newark so i thought the early novels were funny. Also we read "The Conversion of the Jews" in HS.

oh yeah, this film is on VOD, it shouldnt even be in this thread.

I thought it was amusing enough at first but wasn't at all bothered with another "look at this pretentious asshole" movie so was genuinely delighted when it expanded out. Thought it was really good.

so all you people saw this but didnt start a thread bcz it wasn't MARVEL or what?

did someone say marvel

you started this marvel-lous conversation.

we have this thread.

not really arthouse but Dear White People was okay. keeping on the sundance tip I was actually surprised at how good Whiplash was.

Guard's high up for me on both those films. But I am excited about LUP.

i have no time to see any of these movies. the next movie i see might be the new godard in two weeks.

nice having an all purpose art-film thread, i think, though i will jump into an a-r-p thread if there's one too. but here we can digress. tonight i saw olivier assayas at the multiplex. i feel like maybe he was going to maps to the stars. buying a ticket like a regular joe. v handsome.

oy vey

Pryce gives the worst I'm-a-writer performance since Frank Langella in Starting One Evening. It's not his fault so much as the dialogue. From his complaining about "the innate ineffability" of human emotions" to "Every looking at the girls here brings a cascade of emotions" this is Chayefsky levels of pseduo profundity.

*Starting Out in the Evening

I agree with schlump that the movie could've been crueler, channeling the true Roth -- the Roth of Sabbath's Theater.

Boy, I love film festivals. That is all.

cautiously optimistic about Dumont goes comic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZ_-U6msBio

^My most anticipated viewing of 2015 (full TV version please)

love the look of the actor playing principal detective

...however, aside from the nearly lush 'scope cinematography i was generally annoyed by this.

Go see Winter Sleep, tho.

btw WF, i think there's only one version of Quinquin

Todd, no!!!!

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/todd-solondz-plots-sort-sequel-742966#

xpost

Thanks Morbs, can't remember why I thought otherwise. You'll be delighted to hear that, according to Sight and Sound, Dumont is working on a second series of Quinquin and a 'rock and roll musical' based on the early life of Joan of Arc!

Are we doing a poll this year

i'll be skipping those, Ward

Its a comedy Morbs.

so anyone, ie Frederik, seen Ostlund's pre-Majeure films, like Play f'rinstance?

http://www.filmlinc.com/films/series/in-case-of-no-emergency-the-films-of-ruben-oestlund

i don't really "get" bruno dumont, although i thought hors satan was fairly interesting.

Yeah, Play is a must-see. Amazingly composed shots, almost all of them, so unlike pretty much everything else in Scandinavian film. Probably my favorite Scandinavian film of the decade, I think. Would be pretty interested in hearing what people outside of Europe gets out of it's politics, though, it's... complicated.

My conservative friend went up to NYC to catch all of those, but he had seen PLAY before and said it was essentially about how Sweden needs to stop immigration.

should i go see leviathan today or tomorrow?

Hogg's collective is presenting a screening of Akermann D'Est tomorrow.

https://www.ica.org.uk/whats-on/nos-amours-chantal-akerman-16-dest

Harun Farocki season @ Goethe in Feb:

http://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/lon/ver/en13760253v.htm

Two programmes of Straub-Huillet in March:

http://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/lon/ver/en13760246v.htm

Lots of nice things on at the Glasgow Film Festival this year:

http://www.glasgowfilm.org/festival/whats_on

They're offering five tickets for £32.50, not a bad deal. I've gone for:

-Jodorowsky's Dune (otherwise unavailable to view in the UK)
-A Pigeon Sat on a Branch
-Li'l Quiquin
-Jauja
-From What is Before (new Diaz, 5h38m)

Thanks for the heads-up, picked up the brochure for this and forgot about it.

Stephen Cone's Black Box is out on a bunch of platforms this week and is really good. Grad students spook themselves adapting something like a V.C. Andrews novel. Not a horror movie at all.

i should see that, if for no other reason than to support independent chicago filmmaking

I didn't either. The Loneliest Planet did it better.

― Vulvacura (Eric H.), Monday, January 19, 2015 10:39 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i thought that film walked a thin line between hauntingly terse and pretentious, but ultimately i liked it

Best of luck with From What Is Before. Saw it tonight, it is good, but very long indeed.

I didn't either. The Loneliest Planet did it better.

― Vulvacura (Eric H.),

if you mean "shots of Gael Bernal"