With Irish, anything is possible...including the impossible!

Will wonders ever cease?

Lav once described me as "intellectually superior, and therefore behaviourally indifferent." Which means that, for all my intelligence, little affects me emotionally, since I can distance myself from most things. How true that summation is I'm not quite sure, especially these days, but I find it amusing that I connect deeply with the twins in Peter Greenaway's masterpiece A Zed and Two Noughts, who, at one point in the film, admit that they have endless troubles "distinguishing between pleasure and grief". And indeed, for years now, I have gone along with Sartre's notion that he never had a sad day in his life - even when he was crying, it was in some way a kind of distorted euphoria.

The protagonist of Greenaway's The Draughtsman's Contract is described as "at once arrogant and naive". That too is something to which I relate; arrogance is never ignorant - though people can often be both - for arrogance, in the way I understand it to mean, is a self-conscious trait, and naivety is therefore a natural if not dangerous compliment to it.

Greenaway's films have been criticised at times, underneath praise for their individualistic flamboyance, for having no soul, for being emotionally empty or lacking in weight. And though I can see where people might find such shallowness, I must disagree. For, even with the layers of intense lighting, studio artificiality, and a showy, decorative tendency for the vulgar, for the baroque, for the grotesque, I almost cried the other night at a scene The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, an absolute masterpiece if ever I've seen one.

I see in Greenaway's films much appeal for me personally: allegorical use of mise-en-scene; endless self-reflexivity; a deep, overbearing self-consciousness and -awareness, which dwarfs any would-be accusation of self-importance and/or pretentiousness; an unashamed attempt at sophisticated, intellectual art; an assumption and faith in the sophistication of the audience; a disciplined control of camera which commands attention; a constant, knowingly artificial style.

And themes with which I connect: the finality of death, dismemberment, landscape, high-brow vulgarities, individuals against the state, institutionalised societies, lists, the repeated visual and verbal motifs executed through witty rhetoric.

And an aesthetic exploration of: the verticality and horizontality of the frame; compositional symmetry; exaggerated, artificial colour; extreme and varied lighting; unconventional narrative; an imagistic cinema (as opposed to a writer's cinema); illustrated text; a new filmic grammar.

His is a highly creative, always imaginative and deeply personal and determined mind, who can make one film out of three films (ZOO) or one film out of nothing (Windows, H is for House). I'd liken him to a cinematic Italo Calvino or Jorge Luis Borges.

FIGHTING ELEGY
(First Viewing)

In Okayama in the mid-1930s, Kiroku attends high school and boards with a Catholic family whose daughter, Michiko, captures his heart. He must, however, hide his ardor and other aspects of his emerging sexuality, focusing his energy on a gang he joins, breaking school rules, and getting into scuffles (he tells her, "Oh, Michiko, I don't masturbate, I fight"). He comes under the influence of a young tough nicknamed Terrapin, and together they lead fights against rival gangs. Gradually, Kiroku and Terrapin align themselves with the right-wing Kita Ikki, and Kiroku becomes a stand-in for the attitudes of Japanese youth who embraced the imperialism leading to World War II.

What I like most about Seijun Suzuki is he is willing to do different things in his pictures. I described the dual images on screen in GATES OF FLESH and in this he did the same. In one particular scene in a classroom a teacher is on the left side of the screen and the students are on the right. As the teacher and students interact, the person speaking is visible while the other is blacked out. I thought it was very original and worth a shot so my hat again goes off to Seijun Suzuki for his originality. The story was also in some scenes the funniest I've seen in Japanese cinema. However, from only 2 pieces of his work, I'm not overly impressed with Seijun Suzuki.

Some of the story was touching and made me sympathetic towards the main character. However, the movie as a whole I felt was dull and I wouldn't have any desire to see it again.

Pride & Prejudice (2005)

Yeah, Afs recommended it to me so I pushed it to #4 on my 260-something long queue on Netflix. And let me add, this is not usually the type of movie that I watch. I consider it a "chick flick".

In any event -- Afs, my dear, you made it seem so depressing - and I was prepared to hang myself by hanging a noose beforehand. But in fact, I found it quite charming and even inspirational!

And the fact that Keira Knightley ("Pirates of the Caribbean" and sequels) stars in it, well...

The message in the movie is quite clear, and put into the most simplest/direct terms - how pride/arrogance/prejudice can lead us into misjudging people, and how that could almost cost you the love of your life.

I'm not gonna summarize the film here -- you can go to IMDB for that.

But besides the eye candy that helped to keep my attention, I thought the message was timeless, even if the setting and details weren't (18th Century England).

Before this, the only thing I knew about Jane Austen was that they used her name for the comedy "Mafia!". Before having seen the bonus features, I didn't even think that "Sense and Sensibility" would be related (haven't seen it, but I will now).

The story is a wonderful retelling of the classic "boy meets girl" (tho in this case it's girl-meets-boy(s)), but in a setting I wouldn't have dreamed about enjoying. The acting was very good, the eye candy was nice ( ), and I ended up enjoying a British period piece that I anticipated that I wouldn't. Especially being rated only PG (dammit! lol)

Geoff, did you notice you mentioned Keira Knightley and eye candy thrice in the review

I should fire my editor

I only wish you did not call me my dear! Goddess divine maybe?!

I didn't say the movie itself is depressing, quite the contrary, this is one of the best films I've ever seen. The fact that I've never come across such a love, that's what is depressing, because it makes you lovesick.

I see...

Well, I've (thought) I found such loves... but they haven't panned out.... so I guess I see what you're saying;....

What're you doing next Friday?

I've not any plans yet...

Poor cinéma. RIP.

In the order I watched them over the past two days, all for the first time, all on DVD:

Intervals
Peter Greenaway 1969 UK
Several shots of Venice intersect one another repeatedly, with an interval of black in sequence to Vivaldi's Four Seasons.
An abstract, experimental film about Venice, without shots of water - its presence is felt, but never acknowledged visually. The soundtrack becomes more and more sophisticated as it goes on, with a very odd and difficult structure which comes to prominence once Vivaldi's music comes at the end.

H is for House
Peter Greenaway 1973 UK
Greenaway makes what he calls a home movie: at a time when his children are learning the alphabet at theit country home.
H is for House, yes, but it is also for Happiness, for Heaven, for Hell, Holocaust, Home movie, Hitchcock, Hollywood. An absurd notion, as Greenaway puts it, of collecting contradictory and disparate lexis under one category, as the dictionary does. It has a rhythmic, musical and verbal wit, an irresistable charm: decidedly English, in setting, in its distinct vocabulary, in look and feel.

A Walk Through H: The Reincarnation of an Ornithologist
Peter Greenaway 1978 UK
A narrator recounts the 92 maps he was given in order to find reincarnation.
A series of maps recorded with a keen, roaming camera, capturing all the fascinations of a map's minutae - for all their recurring simplicity, their various clashes of colour, shape, size and visual density makes for a fascinating 40 minutes or so, intercut with footage of birds, as the narrator walks his way through "H" (heaven or hell?) and into his next life.

Water Wrackets
Peter Greenaway 1975 UK
A tale of a mysterious, mythical dynasty of water-living species, without their visual presence, shot against footage of water.
Greenaway, with Intervals, explored the notion of making a film without actors, without the human figure dominating the frame - is it achievable and how? Even so, that film had Venetians walking to and fro across frame, whereas this is a step further into abstraction: all we see are close-up images of water in natural, rural flow: streams, burns, rivers, with the banks and shrubbery engulfing and sealing the imaginary, distant and yet somehow familiar world - familiar because we see them all the time, distant because of the attention paid to them. A serene voice-over lends some coherence or narrative order, and the soundtrack, of wind through trees, of water through valleys, is at once warming and haunting.

Windows
Peter Greenaway 1974 UK
In 1973, a narrator reveals to interior shots of panes and frames, 37 people died as a result of falling out of windows.
John Pym says of this, and quite rightly too, that it is "an example of making something out of nothing". For Greenaway, an artist with a tremendous imagination and obsessive drive, this results in short films that never really outstay their welcome (as short films so often do), blessed with a wit - both visual and audial, or visual because of audial - similar to the anonymous eclecticism of an Italo Calvino novel. Whatever of the original reason why he made this - appalled, he claims, of the statistics coming from South Africa of the time regarding mysterious deaths of people falling from windows. Juvenile and obviously made before his breakthrough into the maintained sophistication of feature films, it nevertheless it remains an important work in the context of his career thereafter, presenting in it four themes he himself recognises as having remained with him ever since: statistics, eclecticism, landscape, and death.

Dear Phone
Peter Greenaway 1976 UK
14 men, each with the initials HC, are caught up in various incidents involving telephone boxes.
Greenaway wishes to make an imagistic cinema, a filmmaker's cinema, as opposed to that wretched or neglectful, or lamentable or reductive usage of the medium: the writer's cinema - he argues that we've only seen 100 years of illustrated text, where the script provides the main bulk of a film, with little use made of what makes it unique. Here, then, he turns that on its head, filming actual text itself, first crudely scribbled writing and then finally moving towards (almost like a final draft of a script) typewriting. All instances involve phoneboxes, and all lead, in some way or another, from one to the next, not so much as a story, but definitely a cohesive narrative (all protagonists have the initials HC). In between, we have shots of that forgotten icon of Britishness: the red phone box. Shot in early mornings, by serene beaches, along rural lanes, popping out above high walls, alone or in pairs, behind obstacles and other geographical contexts, these lonely, almost empty shots, have a decidedly witty and complex air about them, much like the English setting of H is for House, with all the playful rhetoric and verbal repetition of a Calvino novel.

The Draughtsman's Contract
Peter Greenaway 1982 UK
In 17th Century aristocratic England, a draughtsman is hired to produce 12 drawings of a country estate before it changes hands, so long as he can have his way with the lady who owns it.
A delightfully acted film, a finely written film, a fast-paced romp and a visually disciplined one at that. Thematically dense, of course, as Greenaway's first venture into feature filmmaking, and so it is less abstract than his early shorts, but made with an arthouse flair which is a pleasure to watch: it's fresh, it's certainly original, it's rewardingly intellectual, and endlessly rewatchable. The most prominent question it raises (because cinema is an art for raising questions) is does a painter, or an artist, paint what he sees or what he knows; and what starts as a rather eccentric blend of list-making (the protagonist goes through the rules for his twelve paintings with arrogant naivety) and matter-of-fact eroticism turns eventually, through a convoluted structure of events, into a ludicrous murder mystery.

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover
Peter Greenaway 1989 France / Netherlands / UK
A vulgar thief dines every night with his vulturous cronies and beautiful wife at an elegant restaurant, but it all goes tits up when the wife has a fling with another diner.
A very entertaining film, an often vulgar film (it opens with a man having shit poured over him), an always witty film, and an extremely well-acted, -written and -scored film (Michael Nyman's music takes it to emotional heights it would otherwise struggle to reach). Gambon relishes in his role as the Frank Booth-like villain, Mirren is astonishingly sexy in her costume design. It's an unashamedly artificial affair, with costumes changing colour according to the room in which they're shot, and the lighting is excessive; the camera crabs from one location to the next with all the distanced strain of Godard (La Chinoise and Weekend come to mind), at once flawless and demanding. Eroticism, food, violence and general vulgarities have never been blended with such an individualistic flair; and the first death in the film somehow, despite the self-consciousness and -reflexivity throughout, feels very (and tragically) real.

A Zed and Two Noughts
Peter Greenaway 1985 UK / Netherlands
The wives of two zoo-ologists, who happen to be twins, are killed in a car crash. The driver, who lost a leg and wants to lose the other, has an affair with both. Thematically dense, intellectually engaging and always challenging film, in its audacity, in its originality, in its merging of high art and avant garde tendencies with fictional narrative conventions. It's a collection of ideas or preoccupations in two chaotic hours, with arresting imagery, cinematography which demands and commands attention, and a dark and perverse tale of emotional weight. One might say it lacks soul, one might say it packs quite a punch - it depends on how close you hold Greenaway's thematic obsessions: death, decay, amputation, twinship, the uniqueness of so-called freaks, and an obsessive need to acquire information in order to understand life. Formally, on top of this - 'this' being essentially three different films in one - are explorations of the verticality and horizontality of the frame, compositional symmetry (to reflect the twins), the artificiality of the medium, and an obsessive experiment into litghting; Vierny's cinematography captures 26 different uses of light - moonlight, daylight, candlelight, car headlamps, etc. It's quite a masterpiece, really.

I've also watched Chaplin's Shoulder Arms, Triple Trouble, The Bond, The Adventurer and A Woman of Paris; the latter is a masterpiece.

By the way, The Draughtsman's Contract, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover and A Zed & Two Noughts might be the best three films I've seen this year.

They're astonishing.

THE GREAT ESCAPE
(First Viewing)

The Nazis, exasperated at the number of escapes from their prison camps by a relatively small number of Allied prisoners, relocates them to a high-security "escape-proof" camp to sit out the remainder of the war. Undaunted, the prisoners plan one of the most ambitious escape attempts of World War II. Based on a true story.

My first McQueen film and while I wasn't overly impressed with him as an actor, the film was terrific! A fantastic cast with a blend of comedy and action for 3 hours. What I really loved most about this film was every shot seemed to be executed so precisely, nothing was left to chance. The characters were also beautifully shot in the center of the frame. I was really reminded of Kuroawa's style while watching this.

The next time I'm in Blockbuster I'm going to check out BATTLE AT THE BULGE and THE DIRTY DOZEN (none of which I've seen). I've seen PATTON but remember hating it. I've also seen THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI and loved it. BTW, what happened to the 2-disc THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI Collector's Edition DVD that was suppose to come out last month Can anyone recommend any other classic war movies along these lines?

DEAD SILENCE 1/2
(First Viewing)

After receiving a weird package with the doll named Billy, Jamie's wife is murdered and he believe's Mary Shaw and Billy are behind it. Destined to find out the truth, Jamie goes to the town of Raven's Fair where the ventriloquist Mary Shaw used to perform and is buried. But Jamie is in for more than he expected.

Leigh Whannell & James Wan who brought us the SAW franchise should stick to just that, the SAW franchise. I'm glad I didn't buy into this movies marketing because of this to actually pay money to see it in theaters. The 2 biggest problems with the film: predictability and killer dolls. As soon as I saw the main characters father in the film, maybe 20-30 minutes into the picture, I already had the ending figured out. So basically I'm watching the movie for another 60-70 minutes waiting for what I already know is going to happen. The original SAW ended with a nice twist because I didn't see it coming. However, this time around, with all of the quick ending to give a quick microwaved version of how the story knots up perfectly, I yawn and say to myself lame. Secondly, any horror movie involving killer dolls cannot be taken seriously. Literally, pick them up and punt them across the room. Break them, they're either plastic or wood. They're dolls for crying out loud! So, as you can see, I don't think dolls make for good killers. SAW was much more original and suspenseful than this rip off of a story from the movie TALES FROM THE HOOD.

"The Next Voice You Hear" (1950) - stars James Whitmore (he played Brooks, the old librarian in "Shawshank Redemption") and Nancy Davis (better known as Nancy Reagan, wife of Ronald Reagan).

They're an average American couple living in suburbia in post WWII America. They have a 10 year old son who delivers newspapers to earn some extra money and they're expecting another baby. He drives an old car that needs work and she cuts coupons to save on their grocery bills. In other words they're EVERYDAY Americans.

One night their lives are changed forever. So are all the other Americans' lives. So are all the humans' lives on earth. God speaks to them on radio. This goes on for six nights in a row at the exact same time each night. I won't spoil anything by revealing what happens next.

Its a fascinating study of faith and our values. Its dated by today's standards but its definitely worth watching. It doesn't get played much on tv (I have a rare VHS copy) and its not been released on DVD so if you ever see it listed on your cable make sure to record it!!

That sounds very good!

I own over 200 films that I haven't watched yet.

Films that you never see? I usually never buy a DVD without having viewed it first

What is the average cost of a cinema ticket there and what is average cost range for a normal DVD (not special editions and such)?

Serious Movies
From Here To Eternity (original)
Seargent York
Destination Tokyo
The Sand Pebbles

Comedic
Mr. Roberts (comedic yet serious, one of my all time favorites))
Stalag 17
Kelly's Heroes

That's including films recorded from TV.

svsg, the average price I pay at the cinema is £5. DVD is around £10. But I rarely buy DVDs unless they're in the sale.

And I've promised myself not to buy anything else until I've seen the ones I have.

By the way, Irish, if you want to kill two birds with one stone (and what beautiful birds they are), by enjoying a PoW movie and venture into some brilliant French cinema, check out Jean Renoir's The Grand Illusion.

McQueen wasn't a classicly good actor but he commanded a great presence on the screen. Definitely check out "Bullitt" and "The Cinncinnati Kid".


The two you intend to see ("Battle of the Bulge" and "The Dirty Dozen") are pretty good. I'm somewhat partial to John Wayne pictures so I'd recommend "In Harm's Way" (he plays an admiral in the Navy). Another great movie to consider is "From Here to Eternity" (although its not truly a war movie - its set in that era).

Irish, what about WHERE EAGLES DARE?

You'll hate it, but shit its awesome.

I enjoyed KELLY'S HEROES too, but damn that hippie soundtrack has aged badly this side of polyester.

Gotcha. Yeah I only have 1 of those. I'm making FULL use of the Blockbuster Total Access Program

SC & DC, thanks for the recommendations. Yes, I've seen FROM HERE TO ETERNITY and I did enjoy it. So, THE DIRTY DOZEN and BATTLE OF THE BULGE aren't on the same grand scale as THE GREAT ESCAPE, huh? What about THE LONGEST DAY or A BRIDGE TOO FAR? Other movies like that?

One more thing SC, I've seen about 3 John Wayne movies (STAGECOACH, THE SEARCHERS and one other one that I can't think of right now) and I was overly impressed with him either. Although, I would like to see RIO BRAVO.

I love The Dirty Dozen. Its got a lot of great actors in it (Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, John Cassavetes, Charles Bronson, Telly Savalas, Robert Ryan, Donald Sutherland, etc.), and personally I find it interesting. Its a great book, as well. Long, but great.

The Great Escape though, is probably one of my favorite movies. I love me some Steve McQueen.

Stalag 17 is good, too. Very funny.

I'll second RRA's Where Eagles Dare recommendation. Great film.

I watched Eraserhead on the Absurda DVD last night, for the first time since I bought it.

Best film ever.

ERASERHEAD is an experience that everyone needs to take in.

Hell, when Stanley Kubrick was inspired by it when making THE SHINING.....Lynch must have done something right.

Anyway, I always liked WHERE EAGLES DARE more than DIRTY DOZEN.

Now sure I enjoy DIRTY DOZEN, with old school man's man personalities like Lee Marvin (who did kick Axis ass in WW2) and Bronson and Brown and others.

But WHERE EAGLES DARE is a better film. If Americans picture the "Men on a Mission" WW2 action/adventure subgenre with DIRTY DOZEN, the British picture WHERE EAGLES DARE.

It was pitched and produced as Richard Burton's son as his old man's last major hooray as a film star...and Burton does kick ass.

Its funny how Clint Eastwood actually got paid MORE than Burton in order to be a glorified second banana to Burton, but he rocks.

It was MGM's biggest hit for 1969 (or whatever year it came out) and it still works.

Why? Maybe its because the film opens up during the mission. Mystery surrounds these group of men, and the lone American who's stuck in it for some reason, THEN we get a flashback to the briefing.

Yet the whole film sets up a rather simple conspiracy that actually pulled off without being silly or contrived...

WHERE EAGLES DARE (1969) - ****1/2