Guy Maddin: C/D

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

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

I know what it is. I just don't like it when it's used to pad a half-hour movie out to 90 minutes.

OK, do I go see the live version narrated by Stephen Malkmus, Calvin Johnson, or Karen Black.

I'm leaning towards Calvin, since I think he would be funniest.

oooh toughie - Cal's probably a safe choice

Calvin seems most Maddinesque of the 3.

splain me??

is this brand?

Any word on this coming to the UK?

(And, out of that three, I'd go for Karen Black. I can't imagine who Maddin would get for a British show. Alan Bennet? Mark E. Smith? Fenella Fielding?)

Yes, Brand is finally coming in live format to Portland.

The Karen Black showing is explicitly part of the Gay Etc. Film Fest. Which makes it a bit less tempting.

As long as the foley artists are performing live, I don't think the Narrator matters all that much.

i would defly go to the karen black.

I am glad no one is pro-Malkmus.

I'll third Black.

I'm seeing My Winnipeg this weekend, followed hours later by the Kids in the Hall tour! Will I be Canadian by Monday morning?

Ann Savage, the femme fatale of Detour, plays 'Mother'!!

http://www.tribecafilmfestival.org/filmguide/16735781.html

my winnipeg is amazing.

favourite maddin for sure. one of the highlights of tiff 07 in a big way. i hope you like it.

Perhaps, when I am in Toronto, I will not have to wait forever to see new Maddin films.

my faves are still Heart of World & Saddest Music, but this is mostly super.

I ADORE My Winnipeg. Enjoy!

uh, you already saw it. never mind.

I've only seen Saddest Music in the World but love love loved it and am curious to see his next

this isn't actually his next, but you should see it if you get the chance. his best imo.

yeah, prob. my favorite, too...super funny and quirky, as usual, but from what i've seen, MW features his best and most vivid imagery. also really touching. I really liked how it played with truth and fiction. What was it like to see it w/ narration?

awesome but as far as i could tell, actually as far as he specifically said, the narration was the exact same script as the movie.

yeah, he's narrating it live tonight at the Tribeca fest. I'm determined not to research which of the MW events are fictional (aside from the obvious ones).

interview:

http://www.villagevoice.com/film/0817,talking-with-winnipeg-s-remarkably-well-adjusted-guy-maddin,422564,20.html

Just emerging from a no-movie funk and finally watched half of Cowards last night. I wish I had been paying attention and had gotten ticket for My Winnipeg. Speaking of Ann Savage, there is a chapter on her in the excellent but out-of-print Dark City Dames, although I haven't actually read that chapter, mostly read the one about Jane Greer and Rudy Vallee and Howard Hughes.

apparently Ann used to tour with her personal print of Detour.

My Winnipeg opens at IFC Center on 6/13.

Brand on Criterion next week... interview:

http://www.greencine.com/central/guymaddin/mywinnipeg

Once you drive out of Winnipeg, it's eight hours to Minneapolis or six hours to Regina which is just another Winnipeg. And so you're far from the places. Other artists from Winnipeg, more successful ones, often say the same thing. That unlike big cities, where there are lots of things to do and warmer weather, we don't talk our best ideas out into the cafe night air. You're stuck inside, and there's nothing to do but actually doing your stuff....

The 20s just looked cool. They still look cool to this day. It's one of the most durable decades in fashion terms and architectural design terms. There are some others that give it a good run for its money, but it's never gone completely away like some decades do now and then. So I always liked it but I never fell fully in love with 20s cinema until I started making movies myself, and I realized that when I'm putting together movies I tend to think of all books and movies as, more or less, fairy tales, the way all food tastes more or less like chicken. Everything is kinda like, relatively a fairy tale, or not so much. So my way into understanding something was to see something as a fairy tale. To be able to recognize allegories I would have to scrape away all the details, and see some archetypes briefly and see the way they related to each other. When I stripped away details and saw the way major characters were relating to each other, often I saw patterns that were repeated from Bible stories or fairy tales and things like that. When I'm constructing my own scripts I tend to do it that way. That enables you to get away with stylized performances. As a matter of fact, they're better when they're stylized. You don't want naturalism. Once you're stylizing you can level the playing field for a cast that may include really great actors and really not-so-great actors. I'm a bit of a product of natural selection. I've survived as a filmmaker because I kept adapting, using the features, the fins and feathers that stood me the best chance of surviving the environment in which I was working.

funny, i just wrote a thing about that!

I guess it's not up yet?

Glad you liked Baghead though!

as in, just wrote it 5 minutes ago!

the way all food tastes more or less like chicken

maybe this is why I couldn't get through saddest music. guy's got no taste!

Now My Winnipeg has come to Portland. Pfeh!

The Brand! Criterion DVD has six narrator tracks:

http://www.criterion.com/asp/release.asp?id=440

The forks.

The lap.

the cloven tofu.

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.