godthedog

the mounds of human hair in 'night and fog' are pretty unnerving. if i had to pick a most disturbing scene of 'gummo', it would probably be the bathtub scene.

I was being sarcastic there. Godard and self-referential are kinda hand in hand. i was being sarcastic as well, pretending that the "color me embarrassed" remark was about godard and not about the name in your sig.

the arcade fire - funeral lucinda williams - car wheels on a gravel road jeff buckely - live at sin-e michael jackson - thriller

you should be embarrassed. not seeing the self-referentiality in godard...shame on you. SHAME.

tori amos - scarlet's walk not as bad as i thought it would be. but certainly nothing terribly special, and it sure as fuck didn't need to be over 74 minutes long. i think she's been going through some kind of mid-life crisis since about 2001 where she takes on these big projects convinced she's doing something really daring and thoughtful, when in reality she's had less and less to say since 'choirgirl'. the arcade fire - funeral only listened to it once so far, and it kinda went right through me. i like the lyrics in a big simplistic peter pan/flaming lips kind of way.

it's there, you just have to look REALLY hard. and orson welles's name is misspelled in your sig.

this is pretty good. pennebaker spoke here on campus a couple weeks ago for a documentary class i almost took. i adore this movie (especially the first 45 minutes or so), but if you thought the wandering shot in 'taxi driver' was annoyingly self-referential, you will probably loathe it. being metafilmic and self-referential is godard's whole schtick. if you can get all the way through this, i will give you several dollars. i've tried four times and still can't get past the second scene.

also the 123rd birthday of james joyce.

nope. the writer can only make it work on the page. if you have, say, a really understated, dramatic moment where paul giamatti is looking off into the sunset and thinking about how shitty his life is, there's a million tiny decisions that go into that: how do you want it framed--do you want a long shot of him against the empty landscape, or do you want a close-up that really focuses on his eyes? how do you want it lit--do you want it soft or harsh, lightish or darkish, etc. do you want to add music, to punctuate the scene, or do you want the shot to speak for itself? if you DO want music, what KIND of music? would it be more dramatic if you turn the music UP, or turn the music DOWN? is this even the kind of movie that should have a lot of music to guide the audience's attention, or should you be more subtle and focus more on the gestures and the visuals to set the tone? how do you want giamatti to act in this scene--do you want him to use his body a lot, or just his eyes? do you want him to move around a lot, or stay still? what's the most appropriate approach he needs to take, not just for his character but for the tone this scene needs? obviously giamatti has his own ideas, but you're the director and it's his job to do whatever you tell him to do. how long do you want the moment to last? if you make it too long, the audience gets bored or frustrated. if you make it too short, it just floats right past the audience & they don't take notice of it (especially if it's a scene with no dialogue). how IMPORTANT is this moment, how much WEIGHT do you want to give it? is this supposed to be a particularly dramatic moment, in and of itself, where the audience comes to realize how much pain he's really in? is this scene just supposed to be a chance to give the audience a breather to reflect on what's already happened before the NEXT big thing happens? how much do you want the audience to take notice of the scene? why is this scene in the script, what is it trying to say, and how do you convey that with sounds and pictures? there is someone in charge of each of these individual elements (the music, the picture, the acting, the editing), but it's the director's job to make all those elements gel together into something that works. you can have great music, great visuals, great acting, great editing, etc., and still be a bad movie if it doesn't all fit together in the right way. you can't just transcribe what the writer says, you have to know how to use all the options available to you (sound, framing, acting, pacing, etc.) to make the story really come to life. a good director can take a script apart and find out what the story's really ABOUT and what's important, and know how to tell the audience what's important: not only what's important in a scene and why, but what scenes are important and how to make them stand out. it's the director's job to say "okay, paul, i want you to be absolutely still in this scene, this is the calm before the storm." it's his job to say "hey, get my DP and tell him to pull back on the framing, if the camera's this close the point of the shot is lost, we really want to emphasize the space." stuff like that. a script can have something like, "Miles takes a step on the grass, stops. He looks out at the horizon, speechless, lost." that could justifiably go on for 3 seconds, or it could go on for 4 and a half minutes. it might have miles fighting back tears, it might have him staring blankly out into space. it might emphasize the HORIZON and miles's smallness, or it might emphasize miles's facial reaction TO the horizon. put simply, payne consistently made the right kind of decisions for his story, and there were literally no moments at all in 'sideways' that felt like missteps. i can praise the writing and the acting and the photography and the editing, but the way all of them fit together is ultimately to the director's credit. the producer obviously also has a lot of hierarchical power, but as i understand it, their decisions are mainly about logistics & making sure things run smoothly, not aesthetic decisions. like, it's not the producer's job to ask for another take because they think it was acted badly.

i just bought tori amos's 'scarlet's walk', out of morbid curiosity, and am about to listen to it. pray for me that it doesn't suck like i'm afraid it will.

thank you. <thumbs up, cheap pop>

this thrills the hell out of me. it's been playing at the EXACT same big first-run regal theater in manhattan for something like four months, and it just refuses to lose business. a friend of mine tried to go see the late showing there friday night, and it was sold out. and it wasn't just the award nominations, it's been going steady here the whole time.

i could never get into ESP like i could his other 60s stuff. something about it just seemed really bland.

if that's the case, then there's maybe 20 people on the continent that can be said to "like" miles davis. "yeah, i totally dig the hell out of miles." "oh? do you have 'olympia 11 octobre 1960'?" "well, i've got part 1..." "you don't even have both parts of 'olympia 11 octobre 1960'? you fucking POSEUR! don't you ever talk about 'digging' miles, you obviously have no idea what the FUCK you're talking about!" and so on.

i want to sing "to kill a hooker" to your aunt while i have anal sex with her.

lucinda williams might turn me into a country fan. 'car wheels on a gravel road' is REALLY growing on me, and i'm having a hard time figuring out reasons that it's so good that don't directly relate to its countryness.

the idea that anyone would bother to report an infant death in a hospital at auschwitz is kind of funny. oooh, they also have the real story behind kristallnacht.

indeed. it's like a dog chasing its own tail running along a moebius strip.

this seems like a veiled insult to me, implying that the entireity of his collection is a bunch of safe and boring choices.

i myself have no interest whatsoever in why my mom doesn't like rap music.

'spider-man 2' has WAY more sentimental schmaltz than ANY of the "best picture" nominees. it's a very good kind of schmaltz that works and gives the movie that extra heart it needs, but the big speeches are far more cheesy and sentimental than anything in 'million dollar baby', 'ray' or 'finding neverland'. "prestige pictures" are very different from "artsy stuff." prestige pictures are usually epic in scale, sort-of character based, and very conventional in form. 'lawrence of arabia', 'gladiator', 'unforgiven', etc., are prestige pictures. what most people call "artsy stuff" tends to toe the line on visual style, have characters who aren't necessarily goal-oriented or individualistic or special, and be experimental in form. 'waking life', 'mulholland drive', etc., are artsy. the most "artsy" of the best picture nominees by far is 'sideways', and that's the black sheep of the bunch.

This is one of the bigger movie award shows though, which award show do you suggest having any credibility? eh...none that i can think of. i appreciate the oscars' publicity for occasionally bringing attention to a movie that needs it (which has been a regular trend of theirs since the mid 90s or so). the screenplay nomination for 'before sunset' will get people talking about it and get people seeing it, and that makes me very happy. i could give a shit if it actually WINS...well actually i do, but only inasmuch as that would get it more attention. the award isn't any indication that it was actually the BEST screenplay of the year, because the oscars' history has shown to be a terrible indicator of that. would anyone who knows what he's talking about say that 'titanic' was the best movie of 1997? or that 'gladiator' was the best movie of 2000? or that 'ordinary people' was the best movie of 1980?

the only thing more irritating than watching the oscars is listening to people bitch incessantly about the oscars as if they meant something.

http://forums.thesmartmarks.com/index.php?...0entry1758436

there so needs to be a feature of you deconstructing every '36 chambers' track on the main page.