come anticipate "the saddest music in world" with me!

On Thursday, April 29, at 7:30 p.m., Guy Maddin will be present for a Pinewood Dialogue following a preview screening of his acclaimed new feature THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD. This screening takes place at the Chelsea 9 Theater, 260 West 23rd Street, Manhattan. Tickets are $18 public and $12 members. Click here to read Maddin's enchantingly eccentric production diaries in The Village Voice:
http://villagevoice.com/issues/0319/maddin.php.

i've been working on it for the past 4 years.

It's 1933 in Winnipeg and the Great Depression is in full bloom. To boost sales, beer baroness Lady Port-Huntly (Isabella Rossellini) announces a global competition to determine the saddest music in the world, and musicians across the globe pour into town to vie for the $25,000 prize. Broadway producer Chester Kent (Mark McKinney), with his amnesiac girlfriend by his side, represents the United States in the contest, but he soon finds himself embroiled in a family reunion as twisted as the competition himself.

http://www.usedwigs.com/graphics/maddin.jpg

In London (UK) on May 5, Great Lake Swimmers will represent Canada in a melancholic idol-style musical contest to find "The Saddest Music in the World." Including a half-dozen bands from across the world, the competition marks the UK launch of celebrated Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin's new film of the same title. The launch and competition takes place in London (UK) at the Café de Paris on Leicester Square at 8 pm on Wednesday, May 5.

I highly recommend his music. Yes, it is very sad. I will now school myself on Guy Maddin.

The current issue of Sight and Sound has a great feature with the most heartstopping stills. I was agog over my omelette as I perused them last Friday.

Good film. Madden introduced it in his awkwardly nervous way. Mark and Maria were there too. We were given free Sleeman beer as we walked in (a not-so-good Canadian beer - they sponsored the premiere). This was a bad idea as almost everyone (myself included) needed to pee at some point during the movie...

The occasional and overwhelming urge to kill everyone around you

The IFC website for Saddest Music has the trailer and a few shorts available, including Sissy Boy Slap Party, which just made my morning. You can also enter a drawing for an all-expense-paid trip to Winnipeg!

What did she say Guy Maddin is like?

I have this big theory that if you studied film history up until the 70s right before Star Wars came out and the blockbuster mentality set in, and if you knew how technology would develop over the next few decades, that you would assume that by this point, most films would be like "The Saddest Music In The World". But I don't really know enough about films to really say that with any authority, so feel free to igonre it.

Anyway I will definately keep my eye out for other of his films.

Did anyone else think that the father looked like Darren McGavin (the father in A Christmas Story)? There was an eerie parallel when he held up the glass legs - kind of like the Christmas Story father and his fishnet stocking leg lamp.

No, it didn't really. I was just really funny: all the commentary on America and it's consumerism. Like Mark Mckinney paying all the other countries to help him out. And the line where he asks the girls from indian to play as eskimos. It is like how America sees all its minorities as the same. But really there are no American characters in it. Mark Mckinney is a Canadian that went to NYC and developed some showmanship. All of it is just the way others perceive Americans.

i mean, most critics say his self-consciously "antiquated" appropriations don't have a distancing effect, but i did experience them that way.

For the most part, though, there are some great short-story-esque ideas, and some great filmic images and movements, and a lot of what might be a sort of postmodern pastichery -- as Nairn was talking about the way it treats the idea of "America", and you watch it unfold, and what it's saying is fairly obvious, but how it's saying it is really interesting.

it is nice that he uses rapid cutting in a way far removed from contemporary hollywood, at a time when most "art" filmmakers are using long takes.

but sometimes the cutting simply seems chaotic, capricious. there are only a few times in the film where there is really a powerful cumulative effect. the same almost goes for the different speeds, stocks, formats, etc. it almost verges on oliver stone-like "kitchen sink" stuff but maddin does ultimately have more discipline than that, and he has a very good sense of humor to boot.

(the conceit of the film IS hilarious and clever. and i like how the ethnic types in the contest were just that--not so much real people as the sorts you would find in Central Casting ca. 1933. remember "africa" being a country? and the "robust" spaniards?)

(Though at the same time, there were unexpected emotionally resonant scenes in "Saddest", even though overall, that wasn't what it was about.)

(And actually, the only Lynch that I've deeply enjoyed -- and I haven't seen all that much -- was On The Air.)

If that makes any sense.

maybe if i saw it again i'd discover that the editing was less capricious than i first thought. but i've had similar reactions to other maddin films.

the latter idea would be asinine if i had any idea what it meant for a film to have a "point."

It's just a film.

I like that.

This is in no way my favorite movie ever but I'm finding it really interesting that the reasons people have been dismissing it are the same reasons I enjoyed it.

There are several singularly uninteresting back stories brought forward

But yeah, back stories are almost always uninteresting. Characters, plots, these are all uninteresting. They are shells upon which the interesting stuff hangs. And it's nice when they're treated as shells.

>"Saddest Music" would have probably been a less interesting movie if it had succeeded in being more emotionally, hm, "there".<

Funny, I found the final scene with Chester banging on the piano quite moving both times. As Maddin said, he figures it all out a few minutes late... (btw, Chester is named after Cagney's character in "Footlight Parade," and Mark McK said he had to restrain himself from "doing Cagney" throughout.)

Maddin has said he's fascinated by the use of "dead" styles and genres, which is why he uses pastiche to make personal films. He also cites Lynch as a major influence.

Jonathan Rosenbaum's fine review:

http://www.chireader.com/movies/archives/2004/0504/051404_1.html

I think amateurist was pretty much OTM with his comments upthread. There were only a few really touching moments near the end (with the brother), and the 'inventiveness' of changing visual forms from shot to shot wore off pretty quick. The set design was incredible (esp. the father's house all grown up, the repeated but unstated everything's buried in snow gag) and the general lack of establishing shots to create spatial distortion was a nice change of pace. I understand his point comment much better now - at some point this just stopped adding up to anything, kind of just riffing on the same gag for two hours without taking it anywhere.

I find Maddin's working methods infinitely more involving than the film itself (I can't wait to watch the making of). Do his other films rely on a more restrained palette of effects and methods? I really think that aspect (so self-conscious and distancing) hurt the film as a viewing experience.

Saw this last night, and thought it was amazing. I wonder if the discussion here doesn't somehow focus itself too much on Maddin and style -- a lot of the things I was responding to in this actually did come from the writing, ideas, content, and performances, and (with this being the first Maddin film I've watched) I was thrilled to see how much his style doesn't distance you from that stuff at all.

I tried watching this recently and couldn't get through it. I probably should've stuck with it but the faux early film styling was irritating, mostly because it wasn't very convincing. is that supposed to be part of the point? maybe I should take a run at cowards bend the knee.

define "convincing"... other film styles are just as artifice-laden as his, they're just what you're used to.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0293113/

^^ really beautiful!! shot on dv, if i remember right, making the 'silent movie' stylization even more present, obvious and knowing, but the seamlessness of it renders it transparent, yeah

Beer legs!

define "convincing"... other film styles are just as artifice-laden as his, they're just what you're used to.

"convincing" meaning he could've done a better job of emulating the older production styles he's obviously striving to reproduce. I don't mind fakery, just make it good fakery. it seemed half-assed, like seeing a cheap commercial that tries to look like the 50s by shooting video in b&w. maybe the lack of total committment is supposed to provide some intentional brechtian distance, but it would be a lot more impressive if the film actually convinced me it was shot in the 1920s. why not go all out and actually use a hand cranked camera?

or maybe this was just the wrong place to start.

He does used hand cranked cameras all the time, I thought.

But I think "being inspired by" and "trying to reproduce faithfully" are two entirely different things.

Apparently I missed my brief chance to see My Winnipeg here. Dammit.