I've never seen any, but snapped up "Local Hero" today on DVD to watch at some stage.
― Tom May (Tom May), Sunday, 22 February 2004 20:19 (twenty years ago) link
― Girolamo Savonarola, Friday, 27 February 2004 13:33 (twenty years ago) link
― udu wudu (udu wudu), Friday, 27 February 2004 23:44 (twenty years ago) link
― David Nolan (David N.), Saturday, 28 February 2004 00:43 (twenty years ago) link
― Robomonkey (patronus), Thursday, 4 March 2004 21:42 (twenty years ago) link
― Eric H. (Eric H.), Friday, 5 March 2004 04:19 (twenty years ago) link
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Friday, 5 March 2004 04:20 (twenty years ago) link
droll comedy about unemployed Scots who hatch a hairbrained caper to steal some sinks.
the ringing phonebox is the best bittersweet ending since Midnight Cowboy
― schbomp, Thursday, 15 April 2004 18:24 (twenty years ago) link
― schbomp, Thursday, 15 April 2004 18:27 (twenty years ago) link
He surfaces in New York this week, after a screening of Housekeeping!
http://www.filmforum.org/films/forsyth.html
I hope the new print means a DVD is forthcoming.
If they take audience questions, the first one I can think of is "What happened to you?"
― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 11 April 2010 15:42 (fourteen years ago) link
Along with The Conformist, I treasured my VHS copy of Housekeeping for years. The novel's just okay.
― Throwing Muses are reuniting for my next orgasm! (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 11 April 2010 19:59 (fourteen years ago) link
Comfort and Joy isn't as well known as Local Hero, probably not even as well known as Housekeeping, but it's on my short list of favourite films from the '80s.
― clemenza, Saturday, 17 April 2010 23:42 (fourteen years ago) link
housekeeping is a film that stays with you. i saw it once, in the early 90s, and images from it haunt me still.
anyone like breaking in?
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Monday, 21 May 2012 18:39 (eleven years ago) link
housekeeping is a film that stays with you
I remember liking Housekeeping.
That is, in fact, the ONLY thing I remember about it.
― Count-Dracula-Down (Eric H.), Monday, 21 May 2012 18:41 (eleven years ago) link
Forsyth said at that FF appearance that he wanted to make the film so people would read the novel.
― World Congress of Itch (Dr Morbius), Monday, 21 May 2012 18:51 (eleven years ago) link
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-18393597
― piscesx, Monday, 11 June 2012 18:14 (eleven years ago) link
havent read the book, maybe i will now, the movie is p great
liked this title card image/font/etc
http://images02.olx.co.uk/ui/5/31/10/1268305288_69743110_1-Pictures-of--DVD-HOUSEKEEPING-1987-Christine-Lahti-Sara-Walker-Andrea-Burchill-Bill-Forsyth.jpg
― johnny crunch, Saturday, 14 July 2012 22:06 (eleven years ago) link
is this movie on DVD?
― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 15 July 2012 06:08 (eleven years ago) link
Housekeeping is available as a Sony MOD DVD-R via the WB Shop (or more correctly, the company they sub-contract to.) They also have Being Human in the Warner Archive line, and I imagine That Sinking Feeling will eventually pop up in the MGM line.
I have the Housekeeping disc: Great film, quality transfer. I believe it got the restoration treatment in the last 5-8 years. It was on itunes at one time as well.
― Don't Feel Like Santana, But Oye Como Va To Them (C. Grisso/McCain), Monday, 16 July 2012 03:08 (eleven years ago) link
i dvr'd it off sony hd channel, think it's showing a few more times this month at least
― johnny crunch, Monday, 16 July 2012 14:43 (eleven years ago) link
that sinking feeling is basically 'bottle rocket' 15 yrs early & scottish, p good
― johnny crunch, Saturday, 27 April 2013 17:30 (ten years ago) link
^^trudat. I liked that scene where that guy starts airguitaring (with a real pick!) and then he and his mates begin singing "Holiday In The Sun".
― Sheela-Tubb-Mann, You Real Know-It-All (C. Grisso/McCain), Tuesday, 30 April 2013 20:48 (ten years ago) link
YES! He's enthusing about buying a Les Paul and wahwah and amplifier and "I've already got the plectrum!"
― Sir Lord Baltimora (Myonga Vön Bontee), Tuesday, 30 April 2013 22:19 (ten years ago) link
for Britishers (and anyone else who can use iPlayer) Comfort And Joy is available to watch until Feb 9th.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01gxqg8/Comfort_and_Joy/
― piscesx, Monday, 3 February 2014 11:52 (ten years ago) link
One of my 30 or so favourite films ever. I wrote about it a few years ago:
https://www.facebook.com/notes/if-they-move-kill-em-steven-jeff-phil-count-down-their-favorite-films/30-comfort-and-joy-bill-forsyth-1984/220608311300362
I have a used VHS that I got a store-closing sale. Watched Defense of the Realm recently, the only other film I think I've ever seen Bill Patterson in.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 5 February 2014 17:53 (ten years ago) link
not Truly Madly Deeply, or Gilliam's Munchausen?
― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 5 February 2014 17:58 (ten years ago) link
No, haven't seen either. Looked at his IMDB page, and he was also in The Killing Fields and Chaplin--again, haven't seen them.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 5 February 2014 22:41 (ten years ago) link
Love Bill Patterson, and this film.
My mum texted me all excited a couple of days ago to tell me that she'd heard on radio forth that they're releasing That Sinking Feeling with the original dialogue in April. I'd tried to get her it for christmas but it was £££ on amazon, and had the anglicised soundtrack.
― sktsh, Thursday, 6 February 2014 00:07 (ten years ago) link
My first viewing of Housekeeping in more than 15 years. Forgot about the leisurely opening, the quiet laying out of the comfortable and stifling family relations. It's part of the film's strange, quiet power that Christine Lahti seems initially miscast; she's so vibrant. That sequence in the forest with the frost-covered grass and the impression that invisible children are listening is special.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 3 August 2015 00:16 (eight years ago) link
Bordwell on Forsyth (Antwerp confab) plus Lancaster, JLG
http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2015/08/03/watch-those-hands-or-burt-jean-luc-and-bill-come-to-cinephile-summer-camp/
― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 5 August 2015 18:34 (eight years ago) link
Gregory's Girl is getting the 4K treatment, and next month in NY there's some rare 35mm screenings of the others:
http://www.movingimage.us/programs/2019/09/27/detail/five-by-forsyth/
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 25 August 2019 07:16 (four years ago) link
masterful
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fGEDN3LUFg
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 25 September 2019 11:51 (four years ago) link
amazing... I watched That Sinking Feeling before breakfast and it was taken down less than an hour later. :/
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 25 September 2019 12:00 (four years ago) link
How did you feel the comedy transvestism played these days, Morbs?
― Ward Fowler, Wednesday, 25 September 2019 12:26 (four years ago) link
I abhor trigger aesthetics, so fine
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 25 September 2019 12:40 (four years ago) link
also it's done way more benignly than any US film of the era would do it
dialogue explicitly echoes Some Like It Hot ("i'm a girl" "i'm a boy")
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 25 September 2019 12:59 (four years ago) link
Jonathan Murray:
An unhelpful attitude about Forsyth involves the patronizing critical notion that his films, while they have delighted many, are constrained by their obvious and sympathetic interest in the quirks of human identity and activity. A Bill Forsyth film, the argument goes, struggles to wrench its creative energies away from the small-scale (albeit charming) actions of harmless Walter Mitty types. The compliments routinely offered Forsyth’s films are often double-edged for this reason. “Gentle,” “wry,” “quirky,” “quaint,” “whimsical”—this is the rhetoric of (undeserved) diminution. Forsyth, to quote Jonathan Rosenbaum, all too often ends up dismissed as “a lowercase filmmaker” within histories of late-twentieth-century cinema.
Forsyth has been aware of this dilemma since his career’s earliest stages. At the time of Local Hero’s release, he said, “I feel insistently misunderstood . . . All the films I’ve made, I’ve always had a much darker side than most people have perceived.” It’s easy to see how such a superficial misreading might play out in the case of Local Hero. Its comic ensemble could be neatly pigeonholed as baffled (Mac), barmy (Happer), and bucolic (the folk of Ferness). But when the central characters of Forsyth’s cinema are properly considered, a far more complex picture emerges. Local Hero’s entire plot, for example, arises from and is resolved by the aspirations and actions of a protagonist (Happer) who suspects, but fails to fully understand, the compromised nature of his mental health. A similar structural premise shapes the plots and themes of both Comfort and Joy and Housekeeping. ...
https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6600-local-hero-our-man-in-ferness
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 2 October 2019 15:00 (four years ago) link
Re: Comfort and Joy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_Ice_Cream_Wars
― Let them eat Pfifferlinge an Schneckensauce (Tom D.), Wednesday, 2 October 2019 15:06 (four years ago) link
the only forsyth films i haven't seen are, i think, housekeeping and that sinking feeling.
the others are all actively bad films to some extent or another
― Seany's too Dyche to mention (jim in vancouver), Wednesday, 2 October 2019 20:49 (four years ago) link
ptui!
trivia:
https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6615-10-things-i-learned-local-hero
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 3 October 2019 15:36 (four years ago) link
After watching Local Hero and Comfort and Joy half a dozen times in the past year, procured myself a copy of the BFI Blu-ray of Housekeeping and watched it. Very satisfying.
― Jaime Pressly and America (f. hazel), Wednesday, 20 April 2022 02:10 (two years ago) link
Christine Lahti gives one of my favorite performances of any decade
― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 20 April 2022 02:16 (two years ago) link