Four, actually. Check out The King of Marvin Gardens. Damn good movie. And The Fortune, by Mike Nichols, which I haven't seen.

How to Train Your Dragon



In one word? Adorable.

just finished daybreakers, which turns out to be a nearly classic genre exercise. had it gone through an extra couple drafts, it might've been. as is, just an unusually ambitious, mostly successful one. basic premise, vampirism has overtaken humanity, but there aren't enough humans left to feed the masses. vampire scientist tries to find a synthetic form of human blood, before everyone on the planet starves and turns into...something else. lots of good ideas are touched upon, then abandoned for less interesting ones. but even still, never boring, much smarter, more creative than most horror films, but not as good as it could have been. regardless, would recommend without reservation for anyone into sci-fi or horror.

thinking of missed opportunities, about to follow up with legion, which has a great cast, but is sure to be terrible, if word of mouth is to be trusted.

Sansho is the reason I said that. Terrible, bathetic movie. I understand it's a classic in a lot of circles, but I saw it on the big screen w/ a great audience and it did jack shit for me. Love Ugetsu though.

It's a lot less sentimental than just about all Kurosawa (decidedly Mizoguchi's inferior).

So you would disagree with this review then...


.

You think Mizoguchi is a better filmmaker than Kurosawa? And decidedly, no less? Hmm.

He's a greater artist. So is Ozu. Kurosawa is pretty simple minded. He's at his best with stick figure characters where he can work formally (Ran, Rashomon).

They're all pretty great artists. I don't know if one is markedly superior to the others, though I prefer Ozu and Kurosawa to Mizoguchi.

I agree w/ these parts, I guess.

What did K do better than Mizoguchi? The latter achieved epic cinema with much more subtlety, character delineation (as I mentioned, K's characters were fairly thin). It's been stated that the finale of 'Seven Samurai' —the battle in the rain and its ambiguous aftermath—is the only passage in his work worthy of comparison with Mizoguchi.

Maybe they just shouldn't be compared in that way? I've only seen two films by Mizoguchi, but he seems to be making a different sort of film than Kurosawa and one that's not necessarily better or worse. I think Yojimbo is one of Kurosawa's best films and better than the two films I've seen by Mizoguchi. But I wouldn't say it's necessarily more subtle than those films or any number of other films that I consider to be inferior.

Tony likes to judge Eastern art by Western standards.

He also likes to model his posting style after Jeff Daniels in The Squid & The Whale.

Kurosawa's films were often derided in Japan as being too 'Western'. He was heavily influenced by John Ford and Western Art in general. The American filmmakers most influenced by him were thrill merchants like John Sturges and George Lucas.

I'm not going to go down that hall of mirrors. I'm just giving Ogawa some perspective on where you're coming from.

You aren't too far off really. I do judge Narrative Art by the standards set by people like Homer, Shakespeare and Tolstoy. But that doesn't really have any bearing on comparing Kurosawa with Mizoguchi.




I wrote like this in school long before I saw The Squid and the Whale.

Oh!

It sort of does when you start talking about the epic nature and subtle character delineation of the work.

That's what they were aiming for. As I mentioned earlier, Kurosawa was heavily influenced by Western Art. The battle at the end of Seven Samurai has echoes of Moby Dick. Among Mizoguchi's early works were remakes of German Expressionist films and adaptions of O'Neill and Tolstoy.

Tony -- not trying to play a "gotcha game" here -- but how relevant do you think the artist's intent should be when one is evaluating his or her work?

Anyone who answers that question w/ anything other than "not at all" should be laughed at.

Really?

I mean, yeah, it's only decipherable on a superficial level that probably doesn't add up to much of anything but it's still an awfully influential factor no matter how it's interpreted, absorbed, acknowledged, etc.

It's definitely more complicated than I made it, but intent should never be a deciding factor in interpreting any type of art. And there's also a huge difference between the ethos and style of an artist - which can be seen as extensions of the art itself - vs. the intention of the artist in creating the work. Tons of amazing stuff to read on this subject, but my personal favorite is Roland Barthes' "Death of the Author".

Minimal if any. But how does that have any bearing on the topic at hand? The Western influences are in the films themselves. Especially with Kurosawa who filmed explicit adaptations of Shakespeare and Dostoevsky.

Because you raised the issue of intent when you wrote a few posts above about the filmmakers' aims and influences. Mostly because I'm curious.

Influence could also be unintentional. I'm not going by what the filmmakers said but by what they put up on screen.

I take back what I said. Watched Sansho the Bailiff again last night. Ozu and Kurosawa are without a doubt superior to Mizoguchi.


Who stated this? And what kind of drugs were they taking?

Just re-pimping this for those who still haven't seen it.

Dave Kehr

I had never seen a single episode of this until yesterday when my girlfriend talked me into watching it. We watched the frist four episodes of S1 and it struck me as low brow high school/horror schlock. It gets better right?

It does, but not in the way that you want it to.

My gf and I tend to have similar taste and she insisted it gets much better and the 1st season is virtually a different show.

It does get better, but it's still low-brow high school/horror schlock

Vicki Christina Barcelona. - Pretty good, and a lot better than a lot of Allen's latest stuff. I see this one as a sort of return to form. Rebecca Hall was quite enchanting. I will be looking for her again. Javier was jsut about a Spanish Cary Grant, and well Scarlett does have that rack and those lips...


A Serious Man must have been really good, because Jess said that she liked it. The thing I got from it, was how fucking hilarious some of the scenes were. Comedy should always be subtle, and not forced. It plays so much better that way. Speaking of "return to form", that's just what this felt like too. A nice, quirky little Coen Bros. movie. It doesn't try to be anything more, which is plenty.

It tried to be quite a bit. It's one of their most ambitious and personal films.

Whenever I did get to sit down to an episode, I was always thoroughly entertained. There's more depth to some of it it later seasons. Not too much depth, mind you, but it's there.

Couple friends of mine have been trying to get me to watch it for a few years. It never looked very appealing but they swear by it.....I'll be curious to hear if it ever picks up for you Tony.

Buffy always looked hokey as I channel-surfed past it but finally got hooked on reruns after Ty Tabor raved for over an hour about it on the tour bus. The dialogue's witty, the characters are engaging; there are a few really unique episodes ("Hush;" "Once More w/ Feeling;" "The Body").

Maybe it's like "The Wire" for folks who way under 30.

I guess I meant it's pretty accessible, especially for folks who couldn't get Barton Fink, or Miller's Crossing,etc. Oh, I get that it's way-personal. I mean what the hell?! Was everybody in that town, in "the tribe", or what?

I love all of their films, I just feel they could make an incredible comedy, if they went all-out, which probably won't happen. "Arizona" was pretty close, though.

Ehhhh... no.

The next door neighbor who hunted was a goy.

and what a goy he was

So were the asians.

In the past week I had the pleasure of sitting down to watch "Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus" and "Youth Without Youth". They make a fine double bill...two films by two highly respected directors making very viable artistic comebacks, they being Terry Gilliam & Francis Ford Coppola. Epic in their scope, loaded with their respective directorial flourishes, both telling extremely imaginative tales with underlying metaphors about the nature of time, mortality, art, perception and enlightenment--all the while dismantling Hollywood cliches along the way, without the fiduciary support. Wish I had seen both before our polls' deadlines... two really high quality movies that should have gotten more buzz worldwide.

You see Coppola's Tetro, Ag?

Ogawa, did you see this yet? You'd probably like it. Just a guess.

Hadn't even heard of it. Sounds interesting, though. Downloading now. What did you think of it?

Didn't care for it at first but near the end I changed my mind... for now, at least. Deadpan fucked up-ness that is often as bleakly funny as it is unsettling.

It's getting a lot of comparisons to Haneke, but that's mostly for visual reasons, I gather (though there are others one could come up with.) I might watch it again right now or tomorrow.

haven't had the pleasure.