Ho/NoHo M5
Subway platform, steel drum, familiar tune . . . Recognition (for full appreciation of irony, think about the pitch of a typical steel drum): "All about That Bass." Smile.
Macbeth (1948)
FF
The most praise I can give Orson Welles's film of one of the top 4 Shakespearean tragedies (top 5 if you include Antony and Cleopatra) is that the look of it is a match for the language. Every frame (shot not by Welles's go-to guy Gregg Toland, who died the year the film was made, but by John L. Russell) is like a rich charcoal drawing. The worst criticism I can level is that the wildly overacting Jeanette Nolan, playing a Lady Macbeth who seems constantly on the cusp of orgasm, should have gone over a cliff much earlier.Streamlined to a sub-2-hour runtime, the film sacrifices virtually all of the play's comedy, including the wonderful porter scene. And I gather the studio originally dubbed out the Scottish accents, though they're intact in this version.
Il capitale umano (Human capital)
FF
A lush, beautiful Italian Rashomon, wherein greed is not good, sanity is tenuous, and love may our may not be redemptive.Nothing very groundbreaking or earthshaking there, but it has an effective momentum and enough mystery to carry you along, though the way a critical discovery is plotted will make you scream out in annoyance at the unbelievable manipulation.
This movie took me back to the days when I used to screen entries for Film Fest New Haven, except that apart from the sheer fascination with how bad a picture could be for 75 whole minutes, I probably not have gotten past the first 10 or so.
Garbanzo Gas (2007)
AFA
My first trip ever to Anthology Film Archives, at Second and 2nd. Why, I'm not sure. The venue has two theaters and a sort of rec center lobby. Downstairs is a standard NYC art-house screening room; upstairs is a cavernous, rakeless auditorium (though the screen is hung high enough that the lack of rake is not problematic).This movie took me back to the days when I used to screen entries for Film Fest New Haven, except that apart from the sheer fascination with how bad a picture could be for 75 whole minutes, I probably not have gotten past the first 10 or so.
Then again, if I'd stopped that early, I'd have encountered only 2 of the plots, the one about the cow selected by lot to win an all-expenses-paid one-day "vacation" in a crappy motel before going to the slaughterhouse, and the one about 2 pathetic gigolos who ripped off their meal ticket so that they could see a boxing kangaroo on the motel TV but missed the match because they were fighting over the remote and are now going to kill themselves at checkout time.
I could tell you the other 2 plots, but then I'll have to lobotomize you. But I will say that every dollar of the budget is visible on the screen, and I'm pretty sure that number runs into 3 figures. Oh, and there's a Message: eat your vegetables, not your cows.
Factory workers in Montreal work, and things get made, and on rare occasion someone says something, and that something is always worth listening to. And then the little boy comes in and plays the violin, and smiles, and then it's over, and though you were sometimes bored, now you wish there were more.
And the acting: well, most of his actors are jobless, some are homeless, most have issues with alcohol and/or other drugs, one has demons from multiple stints in Southeast Asia (Vietnam Ron, with long gray scraggly hair, a long gray scraggly beard, and no upper from teeth, plays Cow in Gas), and one craps his pants with some regularity (as it were). That this troupe is a de facto loving family made me think of the movie gang in Scary Normal, of course, and that made me a lot fonder of Giuseppe than I could have been from just seeing his own work.
Que ta joie demeure (Joy of man's desiring)
AFA
The hell was that? It was sorta like if Frederick Wiseman made Modern Times. Or not.Factory workers in Montreal work, and things get made, and on rare occasion someone says something, and that something is always worth listening to. And then the little boy comes in and plays the violin, and smiles, and then it's over, and though you were sometimes bored, now you wish there were more.
Giuseppe Makes a Movie
AFA
A wonderful look at Giuseppe Andrews, the quasi-brilliant lunatic responsible for Garbanzo Gas. Say what you will about the laughably bad production values, dialogue, plotting, music, and acting, you can't question Andrews's enthusiasm or his dedication--Scorsese, I'm guessing, never cleaned up the ass of an incontinent senior actor, for example; Andrews apparently does so at least once a picture.And the acting: well, most of his actors are jobless, some are homeless, most have issues with alcohol and/or other drugs, one has demons from multiple stints in Southeast Asia (Vietnam Ron, with long gray scraggly hair, a long gray scraggly beard, and no upper from teeth, plays Cow in Gas), and one craps his pants with some regularity (as it were). That this troupe is a de facto loving family made me think of the movie gang in Scary Normal, of course, and that made me a lot fonder of Giuseppe than I could have been from just seeing his own work.
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