Guy Maddin: C/D

Sorry. Remind me of some titles?

short films: The Heart of the World, The Dead Father

IMDB entry: http://us.imdb.com/Name?Maddin,+Guy

"Careful" is maybe a good place to start.

I fell asleep during "Archangel" but that's not a criticism.

I'm going to see his newest this weekend, a filmed ballet of the Dracula story (which promises to be much better than the description sounds).

So: classic.

Watched Heart of the World for about the millionth time last night - still utterly mindblowing. And finally watched Gimli Hospital with Maddin's commentary track, which is great - especially the part about immigrant Icelanders abandoning their children in favor of taking their books overseas, because they were that devoted to literacy. And it's interesting that Maddin has an obvious love for silent films, but he is also very critical of certain aspects; he wanted to express the "hate" of his love/hate relationship with early 1900s film by putting in that (very questionable) blackface minstrel. Maddin said that he was bracing for some harsh criticism, but it never came. And also, Maddin explains that he had to enlist 13/14 year old girls for the nurse roles; later on, there's a scene where one young woman removes her dress, and then Maddin says immediately, "SHE'S 18!!".

Interesting about the love/hate thing...where does the hate come from? Is it the gender politics (and politics in general) of many silent movies that bothers him?

This film like some of his others doesn't approximate a silent film so much as it is a evocation of the experience of watching silent films in the late 20th/early 21st century. Between the "missing frames," "degraded" footage and the hallucinatory montage that hovers on edge of incomprehensibility....

If you want to see a dracula movie that authentically and willfully hovers on the edge of incomprehensibility (and is stunning and beautiful to boot), see Dreyer's Vampyr. I actually had an entire dream the other night in which I tried to piece together its plot! And I hadn't actually seen it for several years!

In that particular example, he was making a jab at the sometimes blatant racism in early 1900s film - which of course could backfire on him if people would confuse "racism" with "a statement about racism". In any case, it's really not easy to watch that scene. I'm not really sure Maddin is too concerned with gender politics, but I'd like to hear your thoughts.

http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/pfa_programs/guy_maddin/index.html

All of his films (including a new one that Casuistry has seen, I think) and some obscure personal favorites. Please add comment!

- 7th heaven
- la ronde
- the road to glory

7:50 La Ronde
Introduced by Guy Maddin. An all-star French cast in Max Ophuls's elegant romantic roundelay, “a wistful tribute to syphilis.”—Guy Maddin

Tales from the Gimli Hospital is fun, too, and not only because I know one of the people who starred in it. (I also had an insane crush on her but that's another story.)

Brand Upon The Brain flew off the rails about 15 minutes in. I really wanted to like it and I dug the live orchestra and sound foley, but it fails as a movie. It would have been great as a half-hour long piece, but it was so obviously padded out with reused footage and gratuitous boobage and wangage that I went through several layers of "hurry up and get to the point where I know what's going to happen is going to happen."

Pluses: the foley people and Barbara Steele as the narrator.

Sorry, I find the boobage and assage essential to contemporary b&w "silents." It might be 15 mins too long, but Cowards Bend the Knee was slighter.

how "reused" footage?

how "reused" footage?

Just a lot a repeated shots. Guy strumming the reeds. Evil mom's eye. I was ready to shout "FUCK. WE GET IT ALREADY"

It's called "montage," you might wanna see it in some '20s films.

It's finally playing near Boston at the end of the month, so I am going to see this.

Barbara Steele as the narrator, colour me JEALOUS

Really like his essay for I Married a Witch: http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/2924-i-married-a-witch-it-s-such-an-ancient-pitch

new one looks amazing! title change from Seances, per s1ocki above?

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-sundance-berlin-2015-guy-maddins-the-forbidden-room

sounds great

wow! cool!

no wait, Seances is a diff film, missed that in first graf

there are vampire bananas in this

http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/dreaming-bigger-cracking-the-forbidden-room-guy-maddins-inception-like-genre-explosion/

Kino Lorber to release in the fall

Sparks! excited

fuck fall! want it now >:[

Interview with GM and co-director Evan Johnson:

Fragoso: Have you both seen The Grand Budapest Hotel?

Johnson: Yep.

Maddin: When I first heard of ‘The Grand Budapest,’ I was worried.

Johnson: When we first saw it we were worried and a little horrified, because it begins nested. Right off the bat.

Maddin: (Laughs.) And I thought holy shit, ‘That fucker! That fucker Wes Anderson!’ We had been working on this for years and this fucker who already has a fan-base of hundreds of millions of people—and a coffee table book that’s through the roof….

But I only said ‘fuck Wes Anderson’ because I was scared he made the movie that we just finished ruining our lives making. When I went to see it, obviously, we were sloppy and all over the god damn place and he’s so formally pure.

Fragoso: Your lives are ruined?

Johnson: No, no. Not at all. We’re fine.

Maddin: No, not at all. I’m just used to taking regular rests, and I had to work hard to make this movie. So my routine was destroyed.

Johnson: It was financially difficult.

Maddin: Yeah and we went into overtime making this thing, so the money ran out a long time ago. So we’re struggling financially, but we’ll be okay.

Fragoso: It’s good to know you two won’t be homeless.

Maddin: It’s a grand tradition of filmmakers to go broke. Douglas Sirk was a bean farmer halfway through his career for awhile.

Fragoso: So that’s your next move.

Johnson: We’re doing it.

Maddin: We are farming beans.

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/maddin-johnson

John Ashbery & GM, coming to a NYC gallery this month

http://www.tibordenagy.com/exhibitions/john-ashbery-and-guy-maddin/

it's got movie stars

<iframe src='http://www.kinolorber.com/trailer_embed.php?id=2056' height='276' width='455' frameborder='0'></iframe>

http://www.kinolorber.com/film.php?id=2056

that is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwKvz-wA3I0

and it's 130 minutes long! Slant rave:

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/the-forbidden-room

It definitely feels very very long. Didn't much care for it, but it has some good scenes.

he also has this whatzit short (playing on a loop at NYFF, free, the next 2 days)

http://www.filmlinc.org/nyff2015/films/bring-me-the-head-of-tim-horton/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu45sAc6Jtc

not in my top 5 GM either, but very astonishingly busy.

this guy is so boring :(

Udo!

Maddin's one of those guys where I watch his stuff and am baffled at how it's done

i guess i just find a lot of his stuff so strenuously "wacky" and totally lacking in actual fun. "heart of the world" is cool, though.

also Jacques Nolot and Geraldine Chaplin (manically cracking a whip) show up

i laughed aloud at least 6-8x, incl at half a joke about a woman in a bathtub.

did you guys see it in 3d/should I? I've hated most 3d films I've seen

i laughed aloud at least 6-8x, incl at half a joke about a woman in a bathtub.

― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, October 21, 2015 3:04 PM (6 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I LOLd hard at the woman in a bathtub joke, not gonna lie.

I liked the movie quite a bit, though it has less resonance than My Winnipeg. I feel like complaining about the lack of resolution to the plot is miles away from the point, but damned if I didn't start to care about what was gonna happen to those guys in the sub.

In “The Green Fog — A San Francisco Fantasia,” commissioned by San Francisco Film Society and set to close the San Francisco International Film Festival’s 60th edition on April 16, Maddin and co-directors Evan and Galen Johnson explore what Maddin has called “a rhapsody” on the Hitchcock movie. Set to an original score by composer Jacob Garchik that will be performed live by the San Francisco-based Kronos Quartet, the 63-minute “The Green Fog” reimagines the movie through an assemblage of old studio movies and TV shows.

http://www.indiewire.com/2017/04/vertigo-remake-guy-madden-the-green-fog-interview-1201805968/

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/guy-maddins-green-fog

interview w/ Maddin and his 2 collaborators on Green Fog, which has opened in NYC

https://thefilmstage.com/features/guy-maddin-on-reinventing-vertigo-with-the-green-fog-male-gaze-and-the-bressonian-qualities-of-chuck-norris/

http://www.ifccenter.com/films/the-green-fog/

This was fine, but had way more Chuck Norris and "McMillan and Wife" than I anticipated.

how did I miss this last year? ... oh yeah, I'm always working 70+ hour weeks when the SF Film Festival is going on

I'll leave you for the night on an upbeat note! Here's the best scene of 2018: the sequence in Guy Maddin's The Green Fog in which a 'stache-less Chuck Norris sits in for the stretch of Vertigo where Scottie deals with the "death" of "Madeleine" https://t.co/ZkwlpF1tm7

— Matt Prigge (@mattprigge) January 28, 2019

Just saw The Green Fog at Glasgow Short Film Festival and absolutely loved it. It's bewildering and completely hilarious - I cried with laughter at a few points. I've never actually seen Vertigo, but that turned out not to hamper my enjoyment at all.

Mark McKinney as Chester Kent in The Saddest Music in the World looks totally like Preston Sturges.

And Isabella Rossellini's performance seems to be channelling both her mom and Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca.

Although "Cast of" video says her character is tribute to Lon Chaney.

And Mark McKinney made own decision to grow a mustache and "sew a merkin on his forehead."

Every one of these instrumentalists was thrilled to be a part of Maddin's delightful jape.

In just the nick of time Maria's scenes are completed, and she is duly whisked away to the aeroporto.

But young Maddin is convinced the colder the actors are, the more piquant their histrionics.

Obviously the Vaseline is a big element, we've used barrels of it on this film.

I don't use standard Vaseline, I use Lip Therapy Vaseline.

Like a rail-riding hobo, another film shoot has come and gone.

Watching this carefully keep seeing things I want to assume are references to other films:
when Roderick/Ross McMillan shows Fyodor/David Fox the photo of his wife reminds me a scene in The Shop Around the Corner, when Felix Bressart recognizes Margaret Sullavan and avoids telling Henry Fonda, or when Fyodor makes his speech before his contest performance he says "raging ocean" just like Jack Benny saying "outrageous fortune" in To Be or Not to Be.

Or Isabella's wig slip being reminiscent of Blue Velvet.

DO U SEE?

new:

Stump the Guesser

(19 minutes)

https://www.instagram.com/p/B7WGvBEAhSt/

Most of these streaming on the Criterion Channel right now.

But not all. Don't see The Heart of the World for one.

So The Green Fog rolled in last night and totally hit the spot.

How can I see some of Maddin’s most recent shorts? I live in the US.

Thought this would be an RIP Louis Negin revive.