Posts by Christian Taylor3

Larry Cooper40 said:Any idea which of these are getting a wider theatrical release?

I’m definitely not going to squeeze everything I want to see into a single week.

It’s been confirmed that all the movies mentioned above (except for Fantastic Mr. Fox, and probably Crazy Heart too) will be hitting theaters, along with Legion, Ricky, and Everybody's Fine. So we shouldn't miss the ones that'll likely only show up at the Film Festival, specifically: Marco Bellocchio's To Win, Miroslav Momčilović's Waiting for..., Alain Resnais' Wild Grass, Brillante Mendoza's Kinatay, Carlos Sauro's Don Giovanni, and Theodoros Angelopoulos' Dust Time.

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I hope the person who started this thread isn't too offended, but let's be honest: half-baked info isn't really information at all. 🙂 All the titles:

Movie Mania - A Showcase of Great Cinema

January 28th – February 4th, 2010
AMC, Downtown

Right here, over there, around here and right about there. 🙂 Highly recommended, obviously.

James Turner3 said:Man, that first reply was just so incredibly predictable; honestly, the second I caught a glimpse of the thread title, I knew someone was going to have to say something exactly like that.

Of course it’s predictable, that’s kind of the whole point—it’s designed to follow trends, much like how American cinema is pretty much predictable by design, right? 😁

Anthony Smith3 said:I’ll sign off on that... but then again, maybe if we actually started greenlighting movies across different genres—including disaster flicks, since there are plenty of scripts out there perfectly suited for our neck of the woods—the whole film industry might actually start improving.🤷

I don’t have any real beef with American cinematic disasters, but let's be realistic here: even at the top tier of the US indie scene, budgets rarely break the million-dollar mark. I’ve said it before and I'll say it again—it is a total nightmare trying to build a solid financial foundation for a feature film when you're working with those kinds of numbers. Honestly, the only people who can actually pull off a coherent production on that kind of scratch are Matanić, Brešan, and Ivanda. If you want proof, just ask the knight how much money he was actually working with on his sets. A quick summary of the forest.I mean, honestly, looking at how things are going with Milić and Rukavina, who knows exactly how many more projects they’ll actually end up filming? VidovgradBy the way, both of those titles are pretty clearly genre films, and honestly, it feels like that trend really started picking up steam with the previous one. Applying for that competition. We really need to ground things in reality here. If we’re talking about making a disaster movie, we have to ditch any delusions of grandeur right from the jump. We simply don't have the budget for that kind of megalomania—it would be nothing but a massive drain on our time, energy, and money, to say the least. If anyone is actually dead set on pulling off an American disaster epic, they seriously need to sit down and study the work of Alfonso Cuarón.Children of Men, The Road by John Hillcoata John Hillcoata, why not him? Smallpox faith. So, if you're bringing up Goran Marković, I guess the point is that you don't actually need a massive budget for CGI to pull off a total disaster of a movie.

brightcobra said:I was honestly just trying to gauge whether there was any actual interest in this, because let's face it, you can't really have any kind of success if nobody is watching. I didn't mean anything by it, truly.

Son, just hang in there. Topics. There’s a massive amount of useful stuff on there, really. All you have to do is actually pay attention and use your brain, obviously. I’m rooting for you. 🙂

Emily Campbell4 said:ha ha ha ha😂

I don't know why you're laughing, considering you're basically the eternal optimist of this group. 🙂 But seriously, we're going to see some decent American films eventually—this endless flood of incredibly boring stuff can't possibly last forever. Then again, I wouldn't exactly bet my life on those disaster flicks either. I mean, who's actually footing the bill for those? 🤷 Forget the disaster movies; we really need to start leaning into intriguing stories (and maybe some actual genre work while we're at it?). Thank God (or the devil, take your pick), there's no shortage of inspiration out there if you just bother to look around.

Look, American cinema is already a total train wreck on its own—so what's one more disaster to add to the pile? 🤷

Amanda Nguyen5 said:Look, this guy Tasha just puts out some pretty pictures and calls it a day. That's really all there is to it.

I usually just skip right past his stuff.

Taschen isn't just about aesthetics, and it’s certainly not this being hailed as the film book of the year.

Yellow Submarine is absolute garbage. Bringing back yellow submarine vibes is basically bringing back pure trash.

Garbage or not, that's really a matter of opinion. The reality is that Yellow Submarine is the only book of its kind available here in the States. For instance, I found Visionary film: the American avant-garde, 1943–2000 by Adams Sitney to be an incredibly tedious and exhausting read, yet I don't feel the need to call it garbage or dismiss someone else's hard work and the entire community of avant-garde fans just because that specific movement doesn't happen to be my cup of tea 🤷. So, I'll be skipping your take on this (at least regarding the book itself 😁).

Just a few notable film books released in 2009:

Furnish a Room: surveying film books of 2009

- “Farber on Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber” (Library of America, $40)
- “Everything is Cinema; The Working Life Of Jean-Luc Godard” (Metropolitan, $40)
- “Robert Altman: The Oral Biography” (Knopf, $25)
- “Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of ‘Fitzcarraldo’” (Ecco, $25)
- “Paul Newman: A Life” (Harmony, $30)

The Best Movie-Related Books:

- Conversations with Wilder by Cameron Crowe
- Getting Away With It: Or: The Further Adventures of the Luckiest Bastard You Ever Saw by Steven Soderbergh
- The Name Above The Title by Frank Capra
- An Open Book by John Huston
- Scorsese on Scorsese (Directors on Directors) by Ian Christie
- Who the Devil Made It: Conversations with Legendary Film Directors by Peter Bogdanovich
- Martin Scorsese: Interviews (Interviews With Filmmakers Series) by Peter Brunette
- Hitchcock's Notebooks: An Authorized And Illustrated Look Inside The Creative Mind Of Alfred Hitchcock by Dan Auiler
- Hitchcock (Revised Edition) by Francois Truffant
- The Kid Stays in the Picture by Robert Evans
- Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman

Other useful links:

Furnish a Room: surveying film books of 2009
Best film books of 2009
Must-Own Film Books (including some suggestions from the comments)
The Absolute Best Film Books of 2009, Part II
Cinemabooks.net
Cinema Books



Used and Out-of-Print Film Literature
Updates from Cinema Books


Hong Kong cinema titles


Film & Cinema Books

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Happy New Year to everyone—wishing you all the best and hoping your 2010 is filled with plenty of great reads.

🙂

@Amanda Nguyen5

Sorry about my previous post, I’m clearly celebrating a little too hard right now 😁. Anyway, the Dumont shipment should be arriving in early January.

Mark Wood79 said:They definitely have plenty! And the prices are great—$20 for a Renoir, or $15 for a Ford or Truffaut, which is practically nothing. Since the company is based out of Cologne, shipping shouldn't be too bad either. So we're looking at roughly $67 everything included. Have you ever ordered through them before?
You can find some Taschen books locally through Barnes & Noble. For instance, there's a Renoir one for $63. (You can find them at stores in major cities like Chicago or NYC, and they have locations all over the country).

I haven't read that Kubrick one you're asking about, unfortunately.

I haven't ordered online, but back when I was visiting Chicago, I picked some up:



I’m honestly a little intimidated to even step foot into a high-end boutique like that. 😁My plan is to grab a few more things toward the end of January. Honestly, the cheapest way to do it is just to walk into one of their physical stores—though you don't even have to go to an official one, since pretty much any decent bookstore in the US carries most of the Taschen catalog. That way, you completely dodge the shipping fees, customs, and sales tax (plus, you might even get a refund on the tax if you play your cards right). Besides, nobody is going to pull you over at the state line to check your book haul.

It’s probably a lost cause, but I figured I’d ask anyway. Has anyone here actually pulled the trigger on this absolute monstrosity? 😲

"I think the title says it all: 'Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made.' This is something so fantastic, that I want to stay alive at least till this book comes out this fall. This is the ultimate obsessive book on Kubrick with respect to his research and thoughts on a film he never made. Documentation, the script, his notes, landscape photos, costumes, you name it and it's all in this incredible book. I saw parts of it at the TASCHEN office, and it's superb. Really superb."

There's even a little clip if you want to see it in action:



The big film book everyone's been buzzing about all year. It’s large enough that you could practically use it as a coffee table—it might even be bigger than Mrs. Kubrick 😁 herself. Price tag: $550.00 😢

Thank God they offer plenty of options so us broke folks can afford 🙂something else
instead.

@Mark Wood79

Of course I'm not going to get worked up about it, so why would I? 🤷 Besides, those PDF previews are mostly just there to give you a quick look—you know, skim the table of contents on your laptop to see if it's actually worth your time before you pull the trigger and buy it. To be honest, about 90% of the PDFs floating around this thread are already sitting on my actual bookshelf (all bought legally, I promise). I always appreciate everyone else's suggestions, but at the end of the day, I'm the best judge of what I actually want to read. 🙂

I haven't gotten my hands on *World Film Directors: Volume One 1890-1945* or *Volume Two 1945-1985* yet, nor have I read them; I'm currently hunting down some decent reviews.

Speaking of which, I've got a little something arriving for Christmas:

*Bambi vs Godzilla* by David Mamet
*William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade*
*Conversations with Wilder*, by Cameron Crowe (though my copy somehow ended up with a friend. Pro tip: never lend books, especially not to friends or acquaintances)
*John Ford* by Joseph McBride and Michael Wilmington
*Cronenberg on Cronenberg*, by Chris Rodley
*Notes on the Cinematographer*, by Robert Bresson
*Who the Devil Made It?*, by Peter Bogdanovich

🙂

It's kind of like being at a wedding 😁 where I basically hand out a checklist to my friends and family ahead of time: No socks, no CDs, no DVDs—just give me books! 🙂 It's no wonder they all affectionately call me "The Book Nazi." 😬

Mark Wood79 said:I guess I still mostly remember him from his work back home on those old regional productions...

A few local roles from back in the day and... Before the Rain Milčet Mančevski You can't forget those brilliant episodes of Before the Rain Milčetin Mančevski. The Quiet American, Snatch, Eyes Wide Shut That’s more than enough to cement his status as one of the most successful actors to ever come out of this country. As for all that other stuff he churns out? Honestly, why wouldn't he? He does it for the paycheck. I mean, let's be real—what kind of idiot would turn down a guaranteed million-dollar fee per movie? 🤷 Take Višnjić, for instance. He’s been grinding away in Hollywood for ten years now, and honestly, aside from that one series, he hasn't really landed anything worth mentioning.

Mark Wood79 said:I don't know much about his private life, but I can't help wondering why Dennis Doyle3 is calling him such a total zero. Not that I'm trying to defend him or anything, I'm just genuinely curious why someone would go for such heavy-handed language...

I'm actually curious about that too, since Dennis Doyle3 always strikes me as one of the sharper minds on this board. 🤷 Honestly, it’s getting exhausting how the same tired arguments just keep circling back around like a broken record. It’s always this endless loop of bitterness and spite, obsessing over whether Šerbeđija was in some Mexican movie about El Paso, or some supposed nostalgia for the old days, or his work over at the Ulysses Theater. There’s always going to be some mediocre, failed writer lurking in the media—I’m looking specifically at you, Čadež—who feels the need to take cheap shots at Šerbeđija or go on these long-winded rants through open letters, blah, blah, blah. 🙄

goldenhound32 said:Just finished watching... it was alright. I'm actually glad I went in blind without knowing anything about it other than who directed it; it made it much easier to stay objective. It wasn't until halfway through that I finally realized which character from The Sopranos he was playing here. 7 out of 10.

He isn't playing him, he's just borrowing the voice. 🙂 And really, that's all you thought of it, just "okay"? 🤷

Caruso 😁

Jessica Rogers2 said:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rJ4YaUC1OY

Scott honestly has this knack for turning basically any single frame into a visual masterpiece, which I guess makes him one of those rare directors who actually knows what they're doing.

amberfalcon172 said:Bad replicant, briskhound2, bad replicant! 🙂

Flight of the Navigator!

🙂

Jerry Adams71 said:Ben Affleck actually pulled it off with GBG; he was surprisingly good. Maybe there's some real talent hiding under the surface after all...

Kudos to Affleck—I was just as impressed by GBG. This is definitely one I've been waiting for 😍

Michael Ortiz68 said:Robert Redford - strictly because of Ordinary People ☕

Heh, well, looks like we actually hit the same thought at the exact same time this time—you didn't beat me to the punch for once. 🙂

Robert Redford (from Ordinary People onwards). Personally, I’d put Redford up there with Clint Eastwood when it comes to directing.🙂As for other Honorable Mentions: Sean Penn, Mel Gibson, and Ron Howard.

Straw Dogs. I still can't wrap my head around that whole censorship mess over here in the States:

Censorship

Back in 1984, Straw Dogs actually became even more infamous in the US after the MPAA stepped in following the Video Recordings Act, mostly due to the violent rape scene involving Amy Sumner. The movie had already hit theaters in the US, grabbing an 'X' rating back in 1971, and later saw an 18 rating for a cut version in 1995. By 1999, a partially edited version of Straw Dogs was denied a license once again, because the MPAA felt there was a "clear indication that Amy comes to enjoy being raped".[17]

It wasn't until July 1, 2002, that Straw Dogs finally got the green light for unedited video and DVD release.[1] This version was totally uncut, which meant it included that second rape scene—the one where, in the eyes of the MPAA, "Amy is clearly demonstrated not to enjoy the act of violation".[18] Interestingly, the Board pointed out that “the cuts made for American distribution, which were intended to shorten the sequence, actually ended up making things worse regarding the first rape, leaving the audience with the impression that Amy actually liked it. The Board took the view in 1999 that the pre-cut version eroticized the rape and therefore raised concerns with the MPAA about promoting harmful activity.

The version they looked at in 2002 is pretty much the original uncut film, bringing back most of that undeniably grim second rape. Having that second scene provides the necessary context for the ambiguity of the first one, making it perfectly obvious that sexual assault isn't something Amy is welcoming.

🙂

Those censors at the MPAA are honestly just a step behind the rest of us. 🤷

Offtopic: Sorry, I really have to do this—it's a matter of defending Sam Peckinpah's honor. 😁 To the Emir Kusturica crowd over at The New York Times:

The American censor has requested he cut a scene from his latest film, Life Is a Miracle—a typical, high-energy romance set during the war—where a cat jumps on a dead pigeon.

"I simply don't understand. The pigeon was already dead; we found it lying in the street. No other censor has said a word. What is wrong with you Americans? You've killed millions of Indians and Africans, yet you lose your minds over the specific circumstances surrounding the death of a single pigeon. I'm touched that you care so deeply about the lives of Mexican birds, but you're insane. I'll never grasp how your minds operate."

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