First
of all, I'm going to include the links to reviews for works talked about in
"B" and "C":
From
now on links to reviews, if available, will be included in each segment like
with the first entry.
|
Daisies
(Vera Chytilová, 1966) Revisiting
this, I was a completely different type of film viewer who was finally able to
see its virtues. Anarchic and rich in invention, the change in my attitude to
the unconventional structure of films like this has been rewarding for being
able to appreciate their ideas and creation. The ideas themselves are also
completely more free spirited, imaginative and alive than the morose highbrow
films that I used to like while being ambivalent to films like this. I
celebrate having grown up through a film where two women don't grow up to snub
the dullness of society. A link to a review of mine here. |
|
Damsels
in Distress (Whit Stillman, 2011) Having
watched quite a few films this year about twenty or so white, middle class
people stuck without goals - seeing my first Mumblecore work too - I've not
been fond of them. In fact they feel stunted creativity and stale, not able to
say anything of interest as much as the characters. They're pleased with
themselves about this even though they, like my bad times with Joe Swanberg, completely negate the
importance of visual construction or real life cadence in characters' dialogue.
Damsels... did, with the sense of a
director who snubs any celebration view of adult infantilism while yet still
giving us young adults who are spritely and fun to be with. Its content could
have been just as bad as the other films - the dance numbers, the character who
doesn't know what colours are - but instead it feel sincerely sweet than being
stuck in a bubble. Its ability to do so is through subtleness and being able to
step out from these characters' lives while being at their side; its
significant this and the other film in this part which deal with the issue of
people lost in their lives are from directors who came long before Mumblecore
was even in gestation. |
|
Dario
Argento Reevaluation (Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971), Deep Red (1975),
Suspiria (1977), Inferno (1980), Tenebrae (1982), Phenomena (1985), Opera (1987)) Before
I somewhat found Argento contrived
and dull. Now those concepts have completely vanished. The films are pulpy,
lurid works, which is completely acceptable for me. They work well and the
unpredictability in them, where they go for broke like Phenomena, or the really interesting ones like Tenebrae undermine expectations, make up for any potential flaws by
the fact Argento has always tried to
make films that weren't cookie cutter material but something inherently
cinematic or interesting. Even Giallo
(2009) or The Card Player (2004),
in hindsight, while incredibly flawed films, were unpredictable and adamant in
breaking away from the generic natures of murder thrillers, and in his golden
period (mostly) represented above, the use of numerous cinematographic areas
and plot structure styles were always bold and inventive. Even to the point
that some of the films, like Deep Red,
play with you with your belief in what you can see on camera, where the eyes
are directed to, in making its plot stings as much questioning your ability to
perceive. And when he did suddenly put heavy metal in inappropriate places in
the scores, it wasn't as if other Italian directors were doing it the same as
he was either. Links to reviews for Four
Flies..., Inferno and Opera here, here and here respectively. |
|
Dark
Horse (Todd Solondz, 2011) Shares
with Damsels in Distress the same
mood of people left adrift. Damsels...
is optimistic for its female protagonists because they could go somewhere. cinematographic
man-child main character is still living with his parents past his thirties and
is egotistic, childish and short tempered, but Solondz is still empathetic to him even when the results of the
narrative say otherwise. It's strange Solondz
has become this dismissed figure now in American cinema when he's one of the
only few bold enough to be thoughtful to even the most morally reprehensible of
his characters. Happiness (1998) is controversial
for many aspects especially surrounding the father who is a paedophile, but the
real braveness of Solondz was to make
this character a fully formed human being alongside the others. Years later
with Dark Horse the quality of his
work is still strong, suggesting that the terrible marginalisation of him as a
director will at least have one virtue, in pushing him away from compromising
any films he'll hopefully make in the future. |
|
Daughters
of Darkness (Harry Kümel, 1971) I'm
reminded of an episode of a podcast I used to listen to, which stopped abruptly,
never releasing any more episodes a few years ago, where one of the hosts
trashed this film and most of the horror genre for their quality and not being
scary. Honestly, most horror cinema is bad, but bear in mind every genre (which
Drama technically is too) is just as full of bad work. And scariness is not a
necessary aspect of the horror film, and even the name of the genre may be
misleading. It's about taking reality and, through concepts of mythology or
human fears/desires, making them tangible, where even for an atheist their
everyday surroundings take on a phantasmagorical depth. What is the meaning of
this film? A woman encounters another who is more than likely a vampire, that's
it barring the potential referencing of Carmilla.
What it is about is the sensation of being isolated in long corridors. Sat in a
bedroom that's not your own as someone, a potential threat or nocturnal lover,
is drifting in slowly. The countryside and roads choked in mist. The
claustrophobia of a bathroom and the remnants of something horrible happening
in one. Most good taste films just sit on a soapbox and babble incontinently or
to the point of boring the viewers with the incredibly obvious. The lower taste
genre works like horror, action, even erotica/porn only suffer because the hack
work in them is targeted more often than that in good taste films, but at their
best, if one is willing to admit oneself to "bad taste", they can
show new sides of human life, for any potential flaws or questionable perversions
they have, that rarely get shown when they need to be. Not only political and
social commentary, but also the ability to view ordinary things taken for
granted in unperceived ways. That's why a film like this deserves more to say
about and why I view the kinds of film I do. |
|
David
Cronenberg (The Brood (1979), Scanners (1981), eXistenZ (1999)) And
speaking of intelligence in horror cinema we get to Cronenberg. My view of him now as a director of drama and
adaptations needs to be thought about, somewhat beset with disappointment with
the first viewings, but the director of body horror films with profound food
for thought still stands strong. When dealing with his work the sense that they
exist in their own worlds become apparent; for its flaws, Scanners is still one of the best films of its kind, and it feels
as much as a work set in an alternative Canada as an exploitation film. The
sense of being forced to view one's body and mind in ways you didn't before
takes place after watching many of his films including in those mentioned
above. |
|
The
Day the Earth Caught Fire (Val Guest, 1961) Trying
to grasp a rock solid mine of wealth in British cinema is of yet unattended,
with the sense of an inferiority complex dangerously close, but a film like
this suggests that great films did exist from my country even in unexpected
places. An end-of-the-world scenario that's compelling for how the characters
behave and act as the planet drifts closer and closer to the sun, the sense of
desperation mixed with hope felt. What features in the best British films is
the lack of hesitation in going with these mixed thoughts that people have, the
internal having always been a key area of British art at its best. The hope the
characters show here is not for the sake of the Queen or country, just the hope
for another day or for it to end quickly to not suffer. |
|
Decoder
(Muscha, 1984) The
power of noise to overthrow governments has not come into fruition as this film
speculated. Instead, in a bizarre twist director Muscha would have never expected, noise and pop melody have made a harmony
bed in some areas of music and produced peculiar offspring of immense listening
delight. But what Decoder is still relevant
for and is its true message, alongside its complete disregard for mainstream
acceptance, is people getting together to create regardless of what society
thinks. The characters in this use their creativity to knock fast food restaurants
down a peg, then the whole society, but the film itself is the creation of
artists, people who have lived immensely in such young lives, and musicians who
wanted to express themselves without compromise. And they not only did so, but
beautifully, embraced the past for the added depth to their subversion too,
where Metropolis (1927), film noir,
and William Burroughs are amongst the
many pieces of the final work. A link to the review here. |
|
Destricted
[US Cut] (Various Directors, 2006 Onwards) The
Destricted project went with a
whimper when it came about many years ago, although to my surprise, an American
release version with new contributions alongside the previous shorts came to
light. I need to see the few shorts that were excised for the new ones, but now
it's a shame that a work willing to deal with pornography and sex was not taken
to be anything of real interest. The potential hypocrisy of the excuse for
cumshots and penetration could have happened, especially as some of the artists
used existing porn and (literally in one case) scratched their own inclusions
onto them, but the only real flaw for this project is that Gaspar Noe is turning into such a heavy handed and pretentious
director for me (unfortunately) as I keep rewatching his films again. I hated a
lot of the shorts in the original version of Destricted, but while there are a
few I need to resee, the only one that is still bad is his which has
inadvertedly showed up all of his worse flourishes in a repititious work of
brutality. But others, including ones I previously liked, shine further. Matthew Barney is willing to break the
taboo of flesh and industrial machine becoming one, and the fact that amongst
the new inclusions, one director decided that just the images of lips pressing
against glass and smearing coloured liquids around it was inherently erotic
showed that the project was far from the boring failure I once thought it was.
The one many speak of is Larry Clark's
and its with good reason; while its having its cake and eating it by being an
actual porn sex scene too at the end, to have the participants, and those who
didn't get filmed in that final sequence, open up honestly about sexuality or
project themselves is fascinating and rich. What results is incredibly awkward,
clumsy and untitilating, but also erotic and titillation at the same time, the
contradictions put forward equally in a way that really shows complexity in the
subject really seen. The best of the work in Destricted does so too alongside it. |
|
Dialogos
(Ülo Pikkov, 2008) Of
the many benefits of being a writer for Videotape
Swapshop, alongside being part of a group of friendly people writing
reviews of the kinds of things we want to talk about, and people like to read,
is the idiosyncratic personalities of my co-writers, especially the obscurer or
out-there references they make in their write-ups. Never in a co-writer's
review of Belladonna of Sadness (1973) did
I expect him to make a reference to an obscure, abstract Estonian animated
short, but that reference is why the humorous ditty called Dialogos has managed to get on this list. Both a testament to the
littlest works having the most value, especially when they're clearly handdrawn
and carefully thought up, and the joy of unbridled weirdness and visual puns
just for the sake of them. |
|
Django,
Kill… If You Live, Shoot!/Death Laid an Egg (Giulio Questi, 1967-8) Not
what is to be expected with either the spaghetti western or the giallo, a
political director taking these genres and twisting them inside out. Django,Kill..., despite being the more
famous one, is weaker in comparison with the gem that is Death Laid An Egg, but both of them completely disorientate your
perceptions for either type of sub-genre. A review for Death Laid An Egg can be found here. |
|
D-Grade
Martial Arts Films They're
sloppily made. Dubbed with ridiculous English voice acting.
"Preserved" on DVD from fuzzy VHS or old film reels. They have been
forgotten and left in the martial arts segment in second hand DVD racks. But
like a few other things I've talked about previously, I've fallen in love with
these films for their creativity, rack shackle nature, and the fact that they
still have slivers of quality despite this, ie. good martial artists and some
creative fight ideas. Unlike Western martial art films which, for the most
part, don't let the martial arts themselves stand out, or have any idiosyncrasies
to them, films from the East like the ones I saw, while sloppily made, still
allow the skills of the actors to be seen, and even for cultural ideas to be
dissected in such conventional plots in fascinating ways. And when these films
get ridiculous, they surpass most American films for going for broke in their
bizarreness. For
two examples I reviewed on the blog, look into Snake Fist of A Buddhist Dragon(1979) and Strike of Thunderkick Tiger (1982). |
|
Don’t
Go Near the Park (Lawrence D. Foldes, 1981) In
terms of the kind of American pulp cinema I'm getting attached to in their
richness, there and what is accidentally said in them, as I do with nineties
anime and D-list martial arts films, its westerns or films like this, peculiar
hybrids in exploitation cinema that cannot be easily defined in a category or
simply explained. A film that feels like a sixties movie, suddenly becomes
seventies in the middle, but was made in the early eighties. More tangents than
a forked road. Managed to get on the Video Nasties list for a reason I cannot
understand. The ending moment has imprinted slides in my mind for reasons I
cannot explain. Badly added lazers. And yet it feels far more of an American
film than most Hollywood films in its tone, the accents and gestures of its
(badly acting) cast, the setting and what odd directions it goes into. Just a
strange, strange film. |
|
Dragon
Lord (Jackie Chan, 1982) I
may prefer this to even an acclaimed film like Police Story (1985). I like how its protagonist stumbles into the
main plot involving villains by pure accident. I like how it takes sporting
events and make them as elaborate, brutal and wonderfully choreographed as
combat sequences. I like how playful it is, silly and flippant, for most of its
length but then has a brutal and stunning final conflict. In contrast to the
D-list martial arts films, which succeed in their bloody-mindedness, this feels
well thought out even if slight, and fully formed. It playfulness seems more
interesting than Police Story
because, instead of nearly killing himself in each insane stunt after the next,
Jackie Chan is allowed to be to
comedic goofball and athletic star far more here in the narrative, more
concerned for romance than throwing himself down ceiling lights for the sake of
the stunt. |
|
Dumbland
(David Lynch, 2002) Even
though its completely rudimentary animation and just strange for the sake of
strange, Lynch manages to make
something of interest. Maybe because it's so upfront about being this weird and
rudimentary looking. Knowing Lynch
created a comic strip called The
Angriest Dog In The World which reused the same panel over and over with
new text, the most basic of things for him can have such a peculiar effect on
the viewer. That and Dumbland is so
unbridled in how disturbing it is, the worst in people shown in a fittingly
crude form. The episode where the viewer is battered by all the noise and sound
of a street environment sums up the work as what it feels like to be trapped in
an everyday "normal" life where people become warped. |
|
Dünyayi
kurtaran adam aka. Turkish Star Wars (Çetin Inanç, 1982) The
true clusterfuck of cult cinema. I cannot avoid using such an abrasive word for
something like this film, even though it might be crude to do so, revisiting it
many years later. Atonal, messy, chaotic and random. Abrupt inclusions in the
editing that cause you to jump and split screen dismemberment that isn't done
properly. An oval shaped Death Star and Flash
Gordon (1980) music played in unexpected places. Gold painted cardboard
swords and punching rocks. It is everything done wrong in conventional
filmmaking, but becomes something magnificent for this reason. It cannot be
justified as a great piece of cinema, but it becomes inherently surreal in its
jumbled take on Turkish sci-fi heroes. I argue that, if techniques done in this
were done on purpose in other films, you could get an incredible work from it.
A review can be found here. |
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Raw screenshots harvested from
these local sources:
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http://deathstalker2.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/inferno_end.jpg
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http://blu.stb.s-msn.com/i/CA/DC1FDFC4C5FF3DE3321468C4D6D01F.jpg
http://carlosnightman.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/earthcaughtfire21.jpg
http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s314/araknex777/DVD%20SCANS%20AND%20SNAPSHOTS/vlcsnap-00015.png
http://realreeljournal.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/destricted3.jpeg
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbJGvLmKVNelUmbdlBVWdLpHCVURIZMOvXwhcoFHmCepFxlgNFj0hR4cgChUZvov6MigTkhbIlgCSpLba_DEc2m3qTYdjvsAOwNsp_gWss9PrickrffAbE3ER_VCH1ZF41Ktid5tL-6hw/s1600/Dialogos+by+%25C3%259Clo+Pikkov.jpg
http://content.internetvideoarchive.com/content/photos/6416/26949315_.jpg
http://www.allcluesnosolutions.com/products_pictures/Death_Laid_An_Egg_(M).jpg
http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/MPKRROOH45g/hqdefault.jpg
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-MkQzUi8AZDU/T0vb7kF4EEI/AAAAAAAAKFI/koodmJohCaM/don't_go_near_the_park_(1981).jpg
http://www.dvdactive.com/images/reviews/screenshot/2003/9/dragon_lord_r2_01.jpg
http://m5.paperblog.com/i/14/141850/dumbland-2002-610-L-CrPoKW.png
http://imagesturk.net/images/2013/09/26/cUG5V.jpg
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