Weevil

[lavender]

 

[Weevil]

I'm thinking we need to talk movies again. I'm bored and stuck at home waiting for the fucking AC people to get here.

So. Wanna talk about film?

Yes - this should be done on ICQ, BUT Weevil doesn't have IMs.

Okay. What do you think of Auteur criticism? An important aspect in realizing film as a valid art form or pretentiousness on a level previously unimagined?

I tend to go with the second one, if for no other reason that it came out of France.

 

[lavender]

 

[Weevil]

I would have to agree.

What do you think of Dogme 95?

Ehhh, the movie or the movement it spawned?

 

[lavender]

 

[Weevil]

The movement. You do know what I'm talking about right?

If I didn't then wouldn't I have been absolutely clueless as to the question?

 

[lavender]

 

[Weevil]

Pretty basic stuff. Well, about the movie I have nothing to say. About the movement I'm both intrigued by it's capabilities of examining how film can more accurately depict life, on the other hand I think it's an ugly, ugly way to shoot films.

 

[lavender]

 

[Weevil]

What's your favorite Jack Nicholson role?

I ask this because I revisisted One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest this weekend.

Ooh, don't make me just choose one.

But it's tough to say. I have to say that I'm honestly disappointed with the Man's career. It seems like sometime recently he decided to stop making films and just attend Laker games professionally.

If I had to choose at gunpoint I'd be at a loss between Batman and that one he recently won the Oscar for. Or did he? I'm not sure, you know the movie I'm talking about.

 

[lavender]

 

[Weevil]

He won the Oscar for As Good As it Gets.

My two favorites of his are Cuckoo's Nest and The Shining. I thought Nicholson just played Nicholson in As Good as it Gets. He was really good in Terms of Endearment, even though I don't particularly care for that sob story.

I mean, the fact that the man has made just so many awesome, awesome films makes me really pissed that he seems to have taken the easy way out. Sure, we've all thought about dropping our jobs and nailing Lara Flynn Boyle but we stick it out.

 

[lavender]

 

[Weevil]

Anyways, as to dogme 95, I've never been all that enamored of a movement that is so limiting. I've always thought that making movies should involve the most possible freedom available. I've always assumed that was optimal for great, involving art to be made.

When I first heard of it it sounded like the result of taking a weed conversation way, way too seriously.

 

[Weevil]

He's done about a film a year. He recently did The Pledge. He has money, he has no need to work.

Yeah, I didn't think all that much of it.

Either way, I'd always thought he should make another Batman. Aside from Robert Wuhl, was their a better movie in all of the 80's?

 

[lavender]

 

[Weevil]

Hell yes, there were better movies in the 80s.

Ordinary People
Raging Bull
Gandhi
Amadeus
Kiss of the Spider Woman (one of my faves)
Brazil (another fave)
The Last Emperor

And these are just Academy nominated films.

Better than Batman?!?!

Obviously you were never a nine year old boy.

 

[lavender]

 

[Weevil]

You are right about that one. But, how can you say that Batman was better than Brazil?

No artistic reasons. Just subjective reasons. I see that movie and I'm a nine year old boy again.

 

[lavender]

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

The Auteur system exists in France because their film industry is subsidized by the government and is not concerned with making 100 million per pic. It existed somewhat here in the 70s when a Coppola could say "Fuck you" to a studio and turn out an "Apocolypse Now." Unfortunately, Cimino also said "Fuck you" to a studio and turned out "Heaven's Gate", and bye-bye American Auteurs.

I believe that a successful Auteur system is a cycled, short-lived trend, like the European and New York "Salons" that creep up and vanish every generation. They start slow, and innovatively, and produce wonderful work, but the moment EVERYONE become an Auteur you sink the fucking boat and we're stuck with a decade of Police Academy movies.

The "most freedom available" is fine when the movement is the size of basement speakeasy. The moment it become Roseland "the most freedom available" will become "too many unchecked egos", and, eventually, films that premit too much Auteur control will go out of style and lose greenlight capability.

As for stars doing mainstream crap and Volvo voice-overs, it's a business, man. You think they're here to starve for you just so you can feel hip watching movies you, me, and ten other people appreciate? Welles did "Third Man" to pay for "MacBeth". Woody did "Antz" to up his cache for his own projects. Deniro did "Rocky and Bullwinkle" because -- okay, nobody really understands why the fuck he did that, but you get my point.

 

[lavender]

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

Exactly.

And I am SO looking forward to Spider-man. It had better not suck. I'm still recovering from "Phantom Menace".

 

[Laurel]

Anyways, as to dogme 95, I've never been all that enamored of a movement that is so limiting. I've always thought that making movies should involve the most possible freedom available. I've always assumed that was optimal for great, involving art to be made.

The whole purpose of the movement supposedly was to make films that were closer to reality, that were more "real" than others by filming life as it is. However, I don't think a novel that is an unedited day-to-day transcription of a guy's life is any more "real" than one which cuts out the bathroom trips and grocery shopping. Film is even more limited in how it can show things than books. The limits of the medium demand that a filmmaker use lighting, effects, edits, multiple cameras, etc. etc. to simulate reality as we experience is through all of our senses. I acctually watched a good bit of that Harmony Korine movie shot in the Dogme 95 style and it was the most tedious piece of shit ever.

Of course, even the dogme'ers know this. They broke their own rules at their discretion. Van Triers uses titling to break up the sections in "Breaking The Waves", and he may even be using artificial light sources as well...I'd have to watch it again more carefully. I think the movement's one of those that's meant to have an impact on other styles and other filmmakers, but I don't think it was ever meant to be taken literally.

 

[Rambling Rose]

*swoon*

Such panache.