― nick.K (nick.K), Thursday, 2 September 2004 20:02 (nineteen years ago) link
― cºzen (Cozen), Thursday, 2 September 2004 20:04 (nineteen years ago) link
― Japanese Giraffe (Japanese Giraffe), Thursday, 2 September 2004 20:15 (nineteen years ago) link
― amateur!!st, Thursday, 2 September 2004 20:16 (nineteen years ago) link
Pashmina OTM, and to follow on from him and flesh out my answer -- the reason I prefer Stalker is how expertly he creates the world of 'the zone' without resorting to any kind of cheap special effects, relying instead on more subtle effects of lighting and color to create that sense of foreboding. The shots of the undulating grass, the close-ups of the water with the submerged industrial detritus, the characters' physical disorientation and circular travels while in the zone, the encounter with the telephone -- all add up to one of the more eerie and unsettling films where nothing really overtly *scary* ever happens.
― Reed Moore (diamond), Thursday, 2 September 2004 20:28 (nineteen years ago) link
― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Thursday, 2 September 2004 20:29 (nineteen years ago) link
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Thursday, 2 September 2004 20:30 (nineteen years ago) link
sokurov's whispering pages is a fascinating spinoff of the mise en scene of stalker, but NOT a film for all tastes
― amateur!!st, Thursday, 2 September 2004 20:30 (nineteen years ago) link
A guy on this Antonioni mailing-list I am on detailed how, on a recent trip to London, he made a point to visit the park from Blow Up (photographer sees Redgrave/dead guy etc.) He said it was really remote and desolate, but he still felt the thrill of recognition while there.
― Reed Moore (diamond), Thursday, 2 September 2004 20:32 (nineteen years ago) link
― Reed Moore (diamond), Thursday, 2 September 2004 20:33 (nineteen years ago) link
― amateur!!st, Thursday, 2 September 2004 20:33 (nineteen years ago) link
An anonymous young man wanders through a dreamlike, decaying, 19th century urban labyrinth; he has a series of encounters, like fragments from some long-obliterated narrative (the incidents are in fact derived from Crime and Punishment and Gogol). In the film's most memorable sequence, he looks on as a series of people inexplicably launch themselves into a mysterious, bottomless abyss--it could almost be an image of Sokurov's own brand of cinematic black hole.
Charged with supernatural and psychic suggestiveness, Whispering Pages' narrative doesn't so much move as insinuate, accompanied by the haunting strains of Mahler's "Kindertotenmusik" and a faint cacophony of distant voices and sounds on the soundtrack. In long takes Sokurov's camera creeps insidiously through this timeless, spectral underworld, more attentive to atmosphere and texture than action. The sparse dialogue scenes might as well be the fill between the real action--Sokurov's uncanny extended transitions. Employing a vocabulary of mournful pans, slow-as-molasses dissolves, radically desaturated color, degraded, murky textures, speed shifts within shots, and warped perspectives and compositions care of a custom-built anamorphic lens, Sokurov takes the cinematic atavism he shares with Guy Maddin and the Brothers Quay to new extremes of dreamlike suspension. This formal archaism conspires with the trancelike acting, and the absurd gravity of the action to produce a genuinely mysterious, mesmerizing effect. Mainly filmed in a disused St. Petersburg factory, Sokurov's masterly film is an Industrial Gothic epitaph for a civilization in the throes of slow death.
― amateur!!st, Thursday, 2 September 2004 20:36 (nineteen years ago) link
er, that's "kindertotenlieder," but anyway
― amateur!!st, Thursday, 2 September 2004 20:37 (nineteen years ago) link
http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/antonioni/
― Reed Moore (diamond), Thursday, 2 September 2004 20:37 (nineteen years ago) link
xpost
i don't think i'd actually look forward to a new antonioni movie, but the short that played twice at the landmark century ("the gaze of michelangelo") was supposedly pretty interesting
― amateur!!st, Thursday, 2 September 2004 20:39 (nineteen years ago) link
― Reed Moore (diamond), Thursday, 2 September 2004 20:40 (nineteen years ago) link
It should be.
― Girolamo Savonarola, Thursday, 2 September 2004 22:13 (nineteen years ago) link
Anyway, Tarkovsky.. Nostalghia. Doesn't make sense, but I love it. I like that the woman just gets fed up and disappears from the film. Also, I am kind of disturbed yet fascinated by the fact that there's a reference (almost the same room, same bed) in Takashi Miike's Audition to this film. I don't know what to make of it. A very close second for me would be Andrei Rublev.
― daria g (daria g), Friday, 3 September 2004 05:42 (nineteen years ago) link
― amateur!!!st (amateurist), Friday, 3 September 2004 05:47 (nineteen years ago) link
but yeah after that the bell chapter of rublev is killer.
re: tarkovksy refs, loved the scene in uzak where the guy was flicking between stalker and porn!
― ambrose (ambrose), Friday, 3 September 2004 14:00 (nineteen years ago) link
wow, really? it struck me as a poor 'cover' of tarkovsky's original, with anything that would confuse americans removed. but maybe i'll re-read the book and watch it again.
"stalker" is my favorite. i was half-awake when i started watching it, which seemed to help me pay attention, oddly. dream logic!
― el sabor de gene (yournullfame), Friday, 3 September 2004 22:30 (nineteen years ago) link
i thought it was brilliantly filmed and concise. 90 minutes happens to be the perfectlength for most stories, imho.
it was definitely not as (willfully) obscure as the original. but who cares? i'm allfor more clarity where possible. leave it to umberto eco adaptations or misbegottenthomas pynchon television pilots to leave people with brains agape,
and i've never seen a movie that justified four hours running time (re: the original).
― firstworldman (firstworldman), Friday, 3 September 2004 23:01 (nineteen years ago) link
http://www.ruscico.com/eng/films/105
Now is this the only current version available, or is there a Stateside version?
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 3 September 2004 23:28 (nineteen years ago) link
― amateur!!!st (amateurist), Friday, 3 September 2004 23:32 (nineteen years ago) link
http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 3 September 2004 23:37 (nineteen years ago) link
http://dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDCompare5/andreirublev.htm
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 3 September 2004 23:40 (nineteen years ago) link
― amateur!!!st (amateurist), Friday, 3 September 2004 23:41 (nineteen years ago) link
http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheTopics/DVD_Recommendations.html
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 3 September 2004 23:45 (nineteen years ago) link
― jed_ (jed), Monday, 30 May 2005 15:33 (eighteen years ago) link
― k/l (Ken L), Friday, 23 September 2005 13:35 (eighteen years ago) link
― Pashmina (Pashmina), Friday, 23 September 2005 13:41 (eighteen years ago) link
― t\'\'t (t\'\'t), Friday, 23 September 2005 13:52 (eighteen years ago) link
― t\'\'t (t\'\'t), Friday, 23 September 2005 13:53 (eighteen years ago) link
― N_RQ, Friday, 23 September 2005 13:53 (eighteen years ago) link
― t\'\'t (t\'\'t), Friday, 23 September 2005 13:57 (eighteen years ago) link
― Pashmina (Pashmina), Friday, 23 September 2005 13:58 (eighteen years ago) link
Nostalgia for the scene when he's trying to walk across the bottom of the swimming pool again and again.
Mirror for the mother washing hair dream sequence.
Didn't like The Sacrifice much.
― Thea (Thea), Friday, 23 September 2005 13:58 (eighteen years ago) link
― Thea (Thea), Friday, 23 September 2005 13:59 (eighteen years ago) link
― k/l (Ken L), Friday, 23 September 2005 14:09 (eighteen years ago) link
― caitlin oh no (caitxa1), Friday, 23 September 2005 14:24 (eighteen years ago) link
And while the animal stuff is unpleasant, the cow didn't actually get hurt - it was asbestos burning, not its skin. The horse did actually die, but at least it was shot and already dead by the time it fell down the stairs. It was also supposed to be killed anyway (not by the filmmakers, though I can't remember the exact situation), which doesn't excuse the violence or anything but is worth noting nonetheless.
My Name is Ivan/Ivan's Childhood is really, really fantastic, and you should see it if you've got the chance. It's harrowing, but there are so many amazing parts - it has a few scenes shot in a birch forest that are really a treat for yr eye. And Nikolai Burlyayev fucking owns Ivan. By the time he became the bellmaker in Rublev Tarkovsky said he was a real pain in the ass to work with (and you can tell in his acting) because he thought of himself as a big star after Ivan.
― Zack Richardson (teenagequiet), Friday, 23 September 2005 14:28 (eighteen years ago) link
― Pashmina (Pashmina), Friday, 23 September 2005 14:33 (eighteen years ago) link
― Thea (Thea), Friday, 23 September 2005 14:41 (eighteen years ago) link
― k/l (Ken L), Friday, 23 September 2005 14:53 (eighteen years ago) link
― k/l (Ken L), Friday, 23 September 2005 14:55 (eighteen years ago) link
― Thea (Thea), Friday, 23 September 2005 14:59 (eighteen years ago) link
― k/l (Ken L), Friday, 23 September 2005 15:04 (eighteen years ago) link
― Tripmaker (SDWitzm), Friday, 23 September 2005 15:07 (eighteen years ago) link
yes
― Thea (Thea), Friday, 23 September 2005 15:08 (eighteen years ago) link
probably the wrong thread for this, but I can't even get the first few pages of Last Witnesses out of my head. It's someone who was a young girl during the invasion talking about her mother's corpse being hastily chucked under some sand before she get's onto a cart loaded with other war orphans.
― calzino, Tuesday, 23 July 2019 14:56 (four years ago) link
Looks like the version of Andrei Rublev on youtube is the cut version, which omits the unpleasant killing of a horse (which was carried out for real in the shoot). The UK DVD also omits this due to UK censorship laws. I believe the US DVD is uncut.
― van dyke parks generator (anagram), Tuesday, 23 July 2019 15:13 (four years ago) link
Oh, it is
― flappy bird, Tuesday, 23 July 2019 15:45 (four years ago) link
I think the film stands up fine without that horrible scene, so can't argue with that bit of censorship.
― calzino, Tuesday, 23 July 2019 15:45 (four years ago) link
I'm sure that's in the BFI version, maybe I have an earlier release or something. Anyway it's a distracting scene (you start wondering if it's as real as it looks and then you're out of the world of the film), so good riddance to it.
― crumhorn invasion (Matt #2), Tuesday, 23 July 2019 21:51 (four years ago) link
another thing is the bit in Ivan's Childhood showing real footage of Goebbels' dead kids is something I can understand in the context of the time, but there is no question that it is absolutely gratuitous and vile as well to say the least.
― calzino, Tuesday, 23 July 2019 22:35 (four years ago) link
Good piece:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/02/15/the-drenching-richness-of-andrei-tarkovsky
― pomenitul, Tuesday, 9 February 2021 15:10 (three years ago) link
As far as the issue of misogyny is concerned – the biggest sticking point in my appreciation of his work – I remember flipping through an English-language volume of Interviews that features a combative encounter with Irena Brežná, who takes him to task in very direct terms. At one point, he shifts the blame from men to 'the Lord', which is such a characteristically patriarchal gesture that I couldn't help but laugh at Ross trying to wrest Tarkovsky away from the clutches of the reactionary, imperialist Russian Orthodox forces that view him as their champion. Yes, Tarkovsky was akin to Dostoevsky in that his unflagging commitment to art attenuated the most backward-looking of his political stances, but his films so clearly aspire towards theological transcendence that his self-described agnosticism is hardly the automatic saving grace Ross makes it out to be.
Anyway, Tarkovsky has left an indelible mark on me, and there is no cinematic oeuvre I value more, but I don't know if I could still subject myself to, say, the bits of Nostalghia where the Italian translator's 'hysterical' unhappiness is revealed to stem from her refusal to be a God-fearing housewife and mother. The Mirror is perhaps the only film of his that treats its female characters with genuine respect yet the mother as (false) exception to one's shameless sexism is a classic trope in and of itself. I also think Ross sells Solaris a bit short: the 'return of the repressed' embodied by the living ghost of Natalya Bondarchuk points towards a kind of self-subversive guilt on the male protagonist's part.
― pomenitul, Tuesday, 9 February 2021 15:48 (three years ago) link
I really liked that Alex Ross piece, wouldn't mind more film writing from him.
― soaring skrrrtpeggios (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Friday, 26 February 2021 20:02 (three years ago) link
Mirror gets Criterioned.
https://www.criterion.com/films/28894-mirror
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 15 April 2021 16:14 (three years ago) link
Saw something about fiftieth anniversary of the premiere of Solaris.
― Ferryboat Bill Jr. (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 9 February 2022 13:44 (two years ago) link
I'll have to drive aimlessly on the freeway for 50 minutes in commemoration.
― Halfway there but for you, Wednesday, 9 February 2022 15:09 (two years ago) link
I’m going to stare at some algae drifting in my pond for this afternoon
― snarl self own (Karl Malone), Wednesday, 9 February 2022 16:05 (two years ago) link
gonna go see solaris tomorrow at the IFC
― i cannot help if you made yourself not funny (forksclovetofu), Wednesday, 9 February 2022 16:20 (two years ago) link
Ah fuuuuuuuuck really? Is it on widescreen (SovScope!)
― Johnny Mathis der Maler (Boring, Maryland), Wednesday, 9 February 2022 17:58 (two years ago) link
https://www.ifccenter.com/films/solaris/
― i cannot help if you made yourself not funny (forksclovetofu), Wednesday, 9 February 2022 22:30 (two years ago) link
never saw it before! or the remake for that matter. i hear soylent green is people.
Mods!
― Ferryboat Bill Jr. (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 9 February 2022 23:32 (two years ago) link
Anyone else read the book review/profile of Stanisław Lem in a recent New Yorker? Interesting life.
― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 9 February 2022 23:52 (two years ago) link
I want to, before I die, see both Solaris (the original) and Andrei Rublev on a widescreen. From what I have read they were both filmed in 180 mm.
― Johnny Mathis der Maler (Boring, Maryland), Thursday, 10 February 2022 00:07 (two years ago) link
xp That Lem profile was fascinating. I've only read his Futurological Congress and a few short stories (have only seen the movie of Solaris), but I've been meaning to dig deeper. Lots of science fiction gets called mind-bending, but no other book has bent my mind or made me laugh as hard as The Futurological Congress
― J. Sam, Thursday, 10 February 2022 01:26 (two years ago) link
i read the lem profile as well, promptly bought a book that is now somewhere in the middle of the pile
― i cannot help if you made yourself not funny (forksclovetofu), Thursday, 10 February 2022 02:11 (two years ago) link
Tarkovsky. Dancing. pic.twitter.com/UTckA4qLFi— Janus Films (@janusfilms) October 28, 2022
― koogs, Saturday, 29 October 2022 12:20 (one year ago) link