Bow down to Robert Altman...

something raucus, irreverent and lively

That's it exactly. And why I always have a hard time defending the film when people focus on the music or the alleged self-importance--I love most of the music, do think it has stuff to say (or at the very least reflects its moment in fascinating ways), but it's what Eric says that explains why I've watched it a zillion times, and you're either in sync with that or not. And if you're not, I can relate in terms of other films. I was as out of sync with Playtime as humanly possible.

morbsidizing

I was as out of sync with Playtime as humanly possible

:(

that said, i can totally understand tati as an acquired taste.

the weird thing about altman's "liveliness," and i don't mean this as a putdown, is that it feels held under glass. like he's set in motion something quasi-spontaneous but filmed it at a remove, in an almost anthropological way (at times). this is less true of mccabe & mrs miller which feels much more subjective to me.

xpost

i apologise for misrepresenting yr argument, amateurist, but i do find that yr often expressed hostility to the 'serious' (or the aspirationally serious) sometimes leads you to a very cramped, formally conservative ideal of what cinema can and should be. and really, you don't like bergman?

sometimes "self-important" is used as a synonym for "ambitious," it seems to me

you could say the same of tati, in fact, though i think his mise en scene is much more obviously and painstakingly "orchestrated"

xpost

ward, i wonder if that's just b/c of the positions i take in opposition to morbs and other folks here. certainly there are a lot of very intellectual forbidding films i admire, from eisenstein to straub/huillet. i just don't think seriousness in itself is necessarily a value.

i guess as a personal preference i like films that wear their ambitions lightly, but that's not always the case, viz. ivan the terrible / thin red line / etc.

I subscribe to the Raymond Durgnant theory. Movies that aim extremely high or movies that aim even more extremely low.

(Nashville probably doesn't exactly qualify on either count, tho it's trying for both.)

Durgnat

wait, what's his theory? i like durgnat a lot but i don't recall this.

Oops, I think I conflated something I once read Durgnat say about cinephiles (that they're constantly disappointed by cinema, or something similar to that) and a taxonomy by Adrian Martin, who wrote this in what still seems like a definitive article about canon-building:

Critics who are truly cinephiles, I believe, often champion extremes. They go for the highest and the lowest. They champion the most difficult, severe, rigorous, minimalist, experimental films; and, equally, they also champion the often despised, maligned and overlooked products of popular culture - like vulgar teenage comedies, gross horror, trashy exploitation, ultra-violent action, even pornography. At both extremes, cinephile critics look for excess and intensity. A piece of their aesthetic credo is summed up in the words of critic Paul Willemen, who once proposed "frenzy, madness, neurosis, extravaganza, monstrosity, etc" as "positive values" in a work of art. (2) What such critics usually do not like, on principle, is a certain middle-of-the-road, middlebrow cinema - or, more exactly, a middle-of-the-road taste in cinema, safe and predictable, between those two extremes of the highest and lowest.

The other Durgnat theory I subscribe to is, of course, that Hawks Isn't Good Enough.

everything but the blood hounds snappin' at your rear

Critics who are truly cinephiles

blech

i mean, good on adrian martin if that's his favored brand of criticism (and it's certainly an accurate description of a common-enough critical stance), but when he puts it like that--making it a litmus test for "true" cinephilia--he just sounds like a bully.

and jeez altman doesn't fit into either of those extremes; by martin's standards he'd be irredeemably middlebrow, stuck between straub and huillet and "massacre at central high."

Playtime feels like an excellent example of a film with a fairly banal 'big idea' - modern life is rubbish - that's transformed into something beautiful and profound by the originality of its mise en scene. The same is true of lots of Antonioni, imho.

the most obvious implicit meaning of playtime is /almost/ banal. it's not just that "modern architecture is dehumanizing and sterile," it's also that "human beings have the power to transcend the sterility of the modern built environment." but yeah it's not those ideas but rather the exhaustive/exhausting density of the mise en scene and the way the film teaches you how to watch it that makes playtime something unique and (to me anyway) joyous to experience.

re. martin's formula... one thing i like about dave kehr is that at one moment you think he's like one of martin's critics, favoring "body genre" films on the one hand, and poststructuralist art films on the other. but then you remember that he's also robert zemeckis's biggest fan. i'm wary of any formula for what makes the "best critics" (or the "best films" for that matter) but surely containing multitudes is a good bet...

i have to say that i like antonioni less and less as his films seem to get more and more portentous. i've always found "red desert" and "blow up" oppressive in their obvious desire to evoke matters of great significance while remaining coyly uncommunicative. and i think that just as he starts signalling his ambitions more obviously, antonioni's formal brilliance begins to abandon him (though not completely until after "the passenger"). it's not unidirectional though, of all his films i think i like the attenuated melodrama of "story of a love affair" and "l'avventura" the most.

i should add that i wouldn't be too quick though to posit playtime as "solely" a masterpiece of form since what tati is doing (and what a lot of terrific artists do) has some interesting implications for human perception/cognition. malcolm turvey is writing a book about this.

btw that should be invoke, not evoke

sorry for overposting. :(

Are you ever not in policing mode?

"policing mode"? what does that mean?

I think California Split is now my second-favourite Altman film--it has eclipsed McCabe and The Long Goodbye. There are a couple of parts that still bother me. Gould and Segal singing drunkenly as they leave the bar--that's a little too much of that word Οὖτις used above. The Bert Remsen shakedown is funny...but kind of mean, too easy, and obviously dated. And no, it's not a feminist landmark.

There's just so much amazing by-play, though. (My favourite line reading might be the way Gould says "They're playing pretty well, aren't they?" when Segal points out the Suns have won five in a row.) And if you like poker films, I can't think of anything except Roundersthat comes close.

I bet C. Grissom can answer this: when Segal shows up unannounced and Gwen Welles says she's "just reading my book," what's the book?

With Prentiss and Welles, especially Welles, I will say that--conceding that hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold was a tired cliche even 40 years ago--they have their moments. Welles' slow goodbye wave to Segal as she's up trimming the tree is nicely bittersweet.

i've heard that the version of california split (which i adore, forgot to mention it above) on DVD has some music cues changed from the original release b/c of rights issues. is that true?

re: California Split DVD edits (from dvdbeaver):

NOTE (as sent to us in email): Unfortunately, music rights problems have obliged Columbia to remove almost three minutes of footage and make several soundtrack alterations. Their end product is perhaps the most extreme home viewing travesty since those notorious early video transfers of The President's Analyst. The cut/rescored scenes are as follows:

1- 11m 42s. A 32-second shot has been cut during Bill and Charlie's initial conversation. This showed Bill scat singing while Charlie informed him that "I love to play poker with those redneck fish. Y'now, who think they're Nick the Greek. Love to get 'em steamed. Easy to beat. Suckers".

2- 31m 50s. A scene showing Bill and Charlie at the racetrack ends as Charlie says "Let's go see a man about a horse". This scene originally continued for an additional 8 seconds as the men walked off singing together.

3- 35m 30s. After Barbara (Ann Prentis) opens the door of her house, Bill and Charlie enter. Charlie then turns to a man standing in the doorway, gives him a coin, and says "Here you are, Mr Tenor". This will make no sense to anyone who has not seen the original version, which contained an additional 24 seconds of footage showing Barbara opening the door and finding 'Mr Tenor' singing 'Happy Birthday To You'. Bill and Charlie then appeared and joined him in the song (while Barbara insisted "It's not my birthday").

4- 52m 32s. As Bill enters the strip club where a poker game is taking place, we see a basketball-themed cartoon playing on a television. In the original version, we also heard the song ('Basketball Joe') that accompanied this cartoon. (Incidentally, this animated clip can also be seen - and heard - in Hal Ashby's Being There.)

5- 77m 20s to 79m 16s. The two Phyllis Shotwell songs - 'Goin' to Kansas City' and 'Me and My Shadow' - heard during Bill and Charlie's journey to Reno have been replaced with an instrumental piece. 'Me and My Shadow' provided one of the film's most striking moments. As Shotwell arrived at the line "We never knock, 'cause there's nobody there", Charlie gestured at a passing car and shouted "there ain't nobody there". Although this scene is visually unchanged on the DVD, Charlie's line has been removed from the soundtrack (at 79m 2s). Incredibly, Joseph Walsh can be heard describing this moment (which he refers to as "a miracle") on the commentary track!

6- 86m 46s to 88m 4s. As Charlie walks away from the poker table, the sound of Phyllis Shotwell singing 'You're Nobody 'til Somebody Loves You' has been replaced with Shotwell's rendition of 'The Lonesome Road' - a reprise of the song we'd already heard her singing a mere 85 seconds ago!

7- 90m 12s to 90m 53s. A shot of Bill playing poker no longer includes that Shotwell song heard dimly in the original.

8- 92m 9s. After Charlie leaves Bill at the blackjack table, a 1m 40s scene has been cut. This showed Phyllis Shotwell behind a piano singing 'Georgia On My Mind'. While Charlie struck up a conversation with a fellow gambler sitting near Shotwell's piano, Bill continued playing blackjack, and we saw that the woman dealing him cards was wearing a badge revealing her name to be Barbara (making her the last of this film's many Barbaras). Columbia's editing has Charlie return to the blackjack table only a few seconds after he left.
****
Here's what Altman said about the cuts (from an interview in StopSmiling magazine):

"And a lot of them weren't (released) because of music clearances, or certain copyright problems. We had to make adjustments. The cost of the music track on California Split was so high that Columbia just couldn't put it into video or DVD. That kept it out of circulation for years. Finally, Elliot Gould went in to find out why they weren't releasing it. When they told him it was because of music, he said "Isn't there something we can do about that?" So I made some cuts and took a couple of songs out. We got it into what they considered a reasonable budget. The picture wasn't hurt by it. And that's out now. It doesn't make any difference, the quality of these things. It's as good as anyone sees them..."

To be honest, IMO the cuts don't change the move that much. In fact, what most bothered me was the absence of "Basketball Jones".

As for Welles' book, I'm sad to say I'd have to check. On a related note, Prentiss always looking for her TV Guide was a nicely observed bit of relatively benign crazy person behavior.

That's a lot--I'll have to take a look at my DVD. All of it was there last night; meant to mention "Basketball Jones." Maybe more copyright issues, but Prentiss always refers to it as "the Guide." Jack Riley from Bob Newhart has a great line: "Any chance you could go back there?"

The book is Justine.

First time for Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. Being a play, it's got the two obvious obstacles: visual staginess (which directors sometimes call attention to even more when they try to overcome it), and plot-revelations mechanically grinding away. But I liked it more as it went along, and really liked some of the performances. Best line--I'm sure many single the line out--is the best description of Facebook I've ever come across: "I'm happy, Goddammit!"

I love Tanner '88. Definitely the peak of that era, and among my favorite Altman projects more generally.

― The Ape In The Outhouse (Old Lunch)

As I've been going to all these Altmans at the Lightbox, I rewatched Tanner '88 at home. I liked it a whole lot five years ago, not as much this time. One problem, I think, is that the first viewing was on my old small TV, so the look of it didn't matter too much. Watching the Criterion on a big-screen TV, it really felt like what it is: a TV show, with the visual flatness of shows 25 years ago. Some of the photography wasn't very flattering--Veronica Cartwright got the worst of it.

One or two of the reporters seemed to disappear at some point, and certain subplots were elided or dropped. With the politics, I sometimes wasn't sure what was satirical and what wasn't (e.g., Bruce Babbitt).

It held my interest all the way, and there were great moments throughout. Pamela Reed's really good; Michael Murphy plays Michael Murphy, but that works out fine. I would move it down to Altman's second tier of films.

Going to try to force myself to watch Buffalo Bill, Quintet, and A Perfect Couple in the next couple of weeks, the last '70s films I haven't seen. I've got the first on VHS, the other two on DVD. At some point, I started and gave up on Quintet and A Perfect Couple within 15 minutes.

Geez, you can actually watch Health online (for now, anyway--was posted June 5).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnIuGroZpuc

Seems to be impossible to see otherwise.

http://www.joblo.com/movie-news/where-on-the-shelf-ishealth

From the wiki page on Health:

On June 12, 1982, U.S. President Ronald Reagan screened the film at Camp David during stormy weather. In his diaries that day, he called it "the world's worst movie".[33]

He disliked the pot smoking scene in 9 to 5 too -- said it would've been funnier if they'd been drunk instead.

(xpost) I can imagine Altman liking that quote so much he'd want it on his headstone.

obv RR never watched OC and Stiggs

or any of his own movies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af0Yei2sAbE

reagan was in some pretty decent movies! he's by no means the best thing about them, though.

Short Cuts was as strong as ever for me; I'd probably rank it third along with McCabe. There are so many moments and scenes that are on the short-list of Altman's greatest. My favourite serious one is where Lyle Lovett softens when he learns of the boy's death. Best comedic, probably Buck Henry and Lili Taylor picking up their photos.

Kael and Marcus have both written about what they see as the film's weakest character: Lemmon for Kael, Annie Ross for Marcus. I don't mind Lemon. He's too Lemony, I agree, especially as he recounts his long story, but the character's credible. (I seem to remember that Kael singles out his exit as especially annoying--I think that's his best moment.)

More inclined to agree about Annie Ross. Her songs are shrill, and the scene of her on the floor drinking after her daughter's suicide is the film's worst, I think.

The rest of the performances are all uniformly good-to-great.

Only those who have watched an edit of the film that completely deletes Andie MacDowell get to pick anyone other cast member as the weakest link.

No...she plays that character perfectly.

So does Annie Ross iirc.

Knew next to nothing about the radio show going into A Prairie Home Companion, other than I knew what Garrison Keillor looked and sounded like. Anyway, I guess it was an honorable film for Altman to go out on, and I liked bits of it here and there, but I was on the outside looking in for the duration. Didn't like the Kevin Kline framing device; Virginia Madsen worked a little better for me, especially the resonance of the final shot when viewed in context. Harrelson and Reilly are pretty entertaining, and Lindsay Lohan, who I only know as a cultural joke, is quite good.

There wouldn't be any tragedy to Lohan's story if she weren't a good, sometimes even great actress.

http://www.vanityfair.com/vf-hollywood/2014/08/robin-williams-popeye

Kino has Blurays of The Long Goodbye & Thieves Like Us out later this year

NYC MoMA to show everything

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/films/1525