motion picture, it's called

Saturday, September 23, 2006

The Last Several Months of Viewing

American Classics:

Orson Welles' The Stranger (1946): (5/10)
Frank Borzage's The Mortal Storm (1940): (9/10)
Frank Borzage's Three Comrades (1938): (6/10)
Frank Borzage's Lucky Star (1929): (7/10)
Frank Borzage's Street Angel (1928): (7/10)
Nicholas Ray's On Dangerous Ground (1952): (9/10)
Rouben Mamoulian's Queen Christina (1933): (5/10)
Mark Robson's Isle of the Dead (1945): (6/10)
Mark Robson's Bedlam (1946): (5/10)
Anthony Mann's Border Incident (1949): (6/10)
Allan Dwan's Slightly Scarlet (1956): (5/10)
George Sidney's The Eddy Duchin Story (1956): (7/10)
Joseph L. Mankiewicz' People Will Talk (1951): (5/10)
Edmund Goulding's Nightmare Alley (1947): (8/10)
Elia Kazan's Baby Doll (1956): (8/10)
Frank Tashlin's Cinderfella (1960): (7/10)

Modern American:

Clint Eastwood's White Hunter, Black Heart (1990): (8/10)
Brian De Palma's Obsession (1976): (6/10)
Brian De Palma's Body Double (1984): (4/10)
Brian De Palma's Raising Cain (1992): (3/10)
Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974): (9/10)
Rachel Boynton's Our Brand is Crisis (2005): (6/10)
Alex Cox's Walker (1987): (9/10)
Scott Coffey's Ellie Parker (2005): (5/10)
Jay Duplass' The Puffy Chair (2005): (7/10)

Russian Animation:

Yuri Norstein's Tale of Tales (1979): (10/10)
Yuri Norstein's The Heron and the Crane (1974): (7/10)
Yuri Norstein's Hedgehog in the Mist (1975): (7/10)
Andrei Khrzhanovsky's Armoire (1970): (6/10)
Andrei Khrzhanovsky's The King's Sandwich (1985): (6/10)
Ivan Ivanov-Vano & Yuri Norstein's The Battle of Kerzhenets (1971): (8/10)
Alexander Alexeieff's A Night on Bald Mountain (1933): (8/10)

Others:

Jan Svankmajer's Sileni (2005): (3/10)
Oliver Assayas' Demonlover (2002): (7/10)
Luchino Visconti's Senso (1954): (7/10)
Yasujiro Ozu's Early Summer (1951): (8/10)
Eric Rohmer's The Baker of Monceau (1963): (8/10)
Eric Rohmer's Presentation ou Charlotte et son steak (1960): (5/10)
Maya Deren's Witches' Cradle (1944): (7/10)
Claire Denis' L'Intrus (2004): (8/10)
Yojiro Takita's When the Last Sword is Drawn (2003): (3/10)
Boris Barnet's Girl with a Hatbox (1927): (7/10)
Alex Cox's Three Businessmen (1998): (4/10)
Akira Kurosawa's The Bad Sleep Well (1960): (4/10)
Hou Hsiao-Hsien's A Time to Live, a Time to Die (1985) (9/10)

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Time Out from Blogging due to German Cultural Interference

Kids,

I was vacationing in Germany for the past several weeks - usually, on my vacations I watch a great number of movies. Not this one. Germans dub (yes, dub) almost all foreign language movies into German (which sounds like a horse talking and which I don't understand). It's interesting to note how the corporate practices of film distribution have almost entirely ruined German film culture. Almost all movies shown in Germany are American blockbusters. Thus, German filmviewers have little opportunity to see their own lives and experiences reflected on screen. Instead, they have the fakest and lousiest of American movies lying to them from the screen.

It makes sense that Germans now do not really include movies as part of their cultural capital (as used by Bourdieu). This is probably one of the greatest potential losses to worldwide film culture, since German cinema easily could be one of the greatest.

Anyways, I didn't see a single movie while in Germany. Sucked.