Bow down to Robert Altman...

I feel like I've seen Buffalo Bill, but can't remember

corn's a poppin' looks unreal btw

Quintet is terrible, like a bad episode of battlestar galactica

Is that the sci-fi one with Paul Newman? If so, yeah, didn't even finish it.

Buffalo Bill is maybe his funniest film, sort of presents William Cody as the vainglorious Johnny Carson/Larry Sanders/opera diva of his milieu; Newman v wacky.

HealtH I remember being a watchable minor work; def not surprised it was beyond President Reagan's grasp.

Fool for Love I thought was meh at the time, dunno if it was botched as I'd never seen the Shepard play.

Boo to the omission of Jazz '34, Kansas City, and Pret-a-Porter.

The series continues through the first half of January, sched not yet posted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzejNljcss0

A Perfect Couple is this weird hybrid Romantic Comedy/Concert Film/Musical. You can get a good sense of it by looking at the trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doxVbo9Z9G8

complete NYC MoMA retro schedule now up, thru Jan 17

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

Holy cow. That'd comprise the next 1.5 months of my life if I lived in NYC. HealtH!

And another Altman biography. Do I need to read another Altman biography? I suspect I might.

Countdown gets much better when James Caan leaves for the moon. Duvall is good, but then he almost always is.

(The NASA press liaison is played by a pre-"Hi guys" Ted Knight, which retrospectively ruins all those scenes.)

Of course I can't make Jazz/KC. Maybe I'll take time off.

seeing Images and TLG over the weekend

Images was a chore. Lots of portentous shots of Susannah York through glass beads and shit.

sez you!

Images is no match for 3 Women.

John Simon called out Susannah Yorke for being in "an unfortunate period of pregnancy" (or something along those lines) in her Images nude scene.

Images is clearly a precursor to 3 Women though. Sure it's a half-failed variation on Repulsion, but I like York, and Ireland.

what was really annoying is that the principal characters have the names of other actors in the cast. cutesy.

Shared by Criterion on FB today...

https://scontent-a-dfw.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfp1/v/t1.0-9/10377540_10155004409535565_8755197253931025184_n.jpg?oh=860c321f19726ff9aee54f180ccbf6c2&oe=5508B0B9

My fancy friends invited me up/got me tickets for "Nashville" and "3 Women" at MoMA this weekend. "Nashville" was fine but "3 Women" which I haven't seen in years was so wonderful

I still like 3W .. up til those last 5 minutes.

went to The Long Goodbye w/ my friend and his teen son (it's his fave movie). It was my first time seeing it since hiking up to Marlowe's apartment in Hollywood Heights. There's only one real good shot of the lengthy stairs, when Gould runs down them after Mark Rydell leaves with his coterie and wounded girlfriend.

I had to bag A Perfect Couple when i got a late party invite, but it's on DVD.

I plan to watch The Long Goodbye and Inherent Vice back to back

Fortunately the MoMA print of TLG was excellent; Images had faded, brownishly.

Nashville and 3W both looked wonderful

Also, I learned that the MomA theatergoer is... a very particular type of theatergoer (blech! ptooh!)

They are legendary, you got off easy if no one punched you or was eating plums.

Saw Kansas City for the first time tonight; lovely print. My fave performance was Miranda Richardson's, with some blissfully dazed line readings; J J Leigh was committed but a little shticky, and Belafonte was an appropriately feral Mr Big. Production designed and jazzed up the wazoo, but a little wanting in the drama department.

Hal Willner spoke beforehand, admitting to serving as musical supervisor while totally "loaded -- the end of a 20-year run." He was sitting directly behind me with Altman's widow and Annie Ross.

Steve Buscemi also did an intro, mentioned Bob glowering at him because he was shooting video of him at work.

Annie Ross? Is she in it?

I forgot, she was in Short Cuts. Last time I went to see her at the Metropolitan Room she was in a terrible mood.

ah, i've never seen her live. She was dressed like an 84-year-old jazz star last night though. Colorful ensemble.

committed but schticky is JJL's MO.

Belafonte is v good in that role, idk his acting career v well, anything else of note?

But sometimes it adds up to more, like in Miami Blues. xp

I've only seen HB in about 4 other films, out of which I can recommend the whole package (singing and youthful beauty) in Preminger's Carmen Jones, and the noir he did with Robert Ryan, Odds Against Tomorrow. For laughs I liked his Godfather spoof in Uptown Saturday Night.

Belafonte also good the same year in the horrifying White Man's Burden.

I saw Three Women recently and it was one of the greatest things I've seen, a sort of mystical surrealist horror coming of age buddy movie - how on earth is this the same director who did Gosford Park

well GP was considered an anomaly (really, mostly on the surface). Don't be fooled by period and decor.

Three Women - written by Altman, inspired by Persona
Gosford Park - written by the man who gave us Downton Abbey

also directed by the man who gave us O.C. and Stiggs

3 Women, according to Altman, came to him in a dream. He and his son were sharing a bed while his wife was in the hospital when he said he saw the whole picture in his head, although not Millie's tuna salad recipe, unfortunately.

speaking of sharing a bed: the glimpse of Pinkie's parents (if they are her parents) in a clinch is one of the most unexpected and touching images I've ever seen in a movie.

the scene of them visiting her in hospital actually made me straight up cry

I saw two hourlong TV plays he did for cable in the '80s yesterday: Precious Blood, a two-hander he directed on the stage first, with a dual-narrator/protag format and good performances, one by Alfre Woodard; and a more filmic one with a contrived scenario, The Laundromat, with Carol Burnett and Amy Madigan. Both minor, both worth seeing once.

Finally watched Buffalo Bill. I was 15 when it came out, and I either saw Nashville that year or the next. It was probably in and out of theatres pretty quick. (Seems to have gotten a re-release of sorts in '79, although I'm sure I would have seen it then given the chance.)

Took a while to find its way, but in the end I liked it. Better than A Wedding, I'd say--it's very much in the Bicentennial moment, with lots of carry-over from Nashville in terms of its meditations on celebrity ("'the' show business") and hucksterism and, um, America. (Also some specific echoes: it begins with an American flag, and the one operatic interlude, with the camera taking in the reactions of everyone in the room, reminded me of Nashville's "I'm Easy" scene.) Newman and Lancaster are obviously having a great time, and Joel Grey's malapropisms (or whatever they are) are very inventive. (Among Altman regulars, the only guy who seemed lost was Allan Nicholls.) I've never seen Little Big Man, but Altman's treatment of Sitting Bull's end of the story seemed very empathetic.

Lester Bangs compared Newman's Buffalo Bill to Dylan on the '74 comeback tour w The Band, especially the acoustic set: presenting himself as a battered Americana show biz legend, in "full scraggle"(don't have his books at hand, but that last phrase was in there). Really comes across on Before The Flood's acoustic side, esp. the seedy speedy anxiety over the finish line of "It's Alright Ma".
Quintet, Newman's (only?) other movie with Altman, is worth seeing too: post-climate change community, filmed in Toronto (?) Winter Olympic Village, where an ultimately deadly game of Quintet is proceeding. *Something* of a Philip K. Dick The Man In The High Castle/Cronenberg existenz vibe, though sloggier than either: it is chilly, baby, and too reserved for most 70s viewers, but still worthy seeing for Altheads.

Full scraggle is apt.

I got 20 minutes into Quintet a few years ago, and it's still on the shelf. I've always intended to give it another try, just not sure when.

Newman and Altman were tight bros who apparently just weren't able to get another project together off the ground. In Altman On Altman, Bob mentions "a script about a bear" he had in development with the Weinstein's as a vehicle for Newman and Naomi Watts, but it got stalled because the Weinstein's didn't think Watts was bankable and wanted her off the project (obviously this was pre-Mulholland Drive). Altman wouldn't budge and told them if they wanted her out, they had to tell her themselves.

As I do with everything from the early-mid '70s, I was trying extract some meaning from Buffalo Bill through the prism of Nixon, missing the obvious--like Nashville, it looks towards Carter, the careful construction of folksy personas and myths. (Accidentally so, I would assume--Carter was probably still a blip when it was being filmed.)

When the film ends on the group shot of the entire Buffalo Bill troupe, I'm surprised Altman didn't underscore the film's dim view of American history by doing what one of the characters suggested: doctor the photo so that Sitting Bull and Halsey were moved over with the other "inujuns."

Finally got around to seeing the documentary. It was kinda not great. What a complete waste of access to so many of his collaborators ("Don't, like, tell us anything about actually working with Robert Altman. Just define 'Altmanesque' in five words or fewer and then stare knowingly into the camera for a few seconds."). I'm glad I've seen most of his films since they inexplicably decided to show the endings of so many of his films. The home movie footage and comentary from his wife were the only things that made it at all worthwhile. To the extent that a career-spanning retrospective might function as an enticement to those who might not be familiar with a particular artist, I doubt this thing netted many new Altman fans as it didn't really explore what made him special.

Yeah, that doc was super disappointing.

I kinda wish I'd followed my initial impulse to shut it off in the middle of the minutes-long initially contextless intro of two dudes building a sand castle...