Letterboxd 4v3r4n orinow https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/ Letterboxd - orinow Cocoon k1a2v 1995 - ★★★★ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/cocoon-1995/ letterboxd-review-899881706 Wed, 28 May 2025 01:27:06 +1200 2014-02-05 No Cocoon 1995 4.0 49473 <![CDATA[

6u532b

Z powodu bolesnych doświadczeń z przeszłości, stara 70-letnia para żyje oddzielnie. Pewnego dnia schodzą się. Ale spotkanie, która mają nadzieję, że uleczy ich przewlekły ból, nie przynosi oczekiwanych rezultatów. fw

--1st-- debiut...

A short, silent, black and white story about life, survival, death; animals, objects, trees; young and old. It is mostly an aggregation of a bunch of good photos, which is not surprising, as Ceylan is also a photographer. IMDb

Koza (Cocoon) is a wordless, non-narrative succession of mystical, pastoral images. The three human characters are an old man, an old woman, and a young boy, who wander among the natural wonders and give the camera soulful looks.

mubi.com/en/pl/films/cocoon

Cocoon (Koza), the first short film by Turkish director Nuri Ceylan, was selected in the Cannes competition in 1995. Both the director's parents acted in this film. Ceylan is perhaps best known for the feature film, Three Monkeys, which won him Best Director award at Cannes in 2008. He retuned to Cannes again with Once Upon A Time in Anatolia, which won him the Grand Jury Prize in 2011. Rate it and share it!

www.filmsshort.com/short-film-pages/cocoon-nuri-bilge-ceylan.html

]]>
orinow
Close Ties 2b5q1v 2016 - ★★★★ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/close-ties/ letterboxd-review-899876694 Wed, 28 May 2025 01:16:30 +1200 2017-03-05 No Close Ties 2016 4.0 425354 <![CDATA[

ciężkie doświadczenie życiowe żony, refleksja męża i oficjalne przeprosiny...

--1st-- debiut...

Przeżywające kryzys małżeństwo z wieloletnim stażem usiłuje ratować swój związek. fw

Barbara i Zdzisław są małżeństwem z 45-letnim stażem. Osiem lat temu Zdzisław zostawił Barbarę i zamieszkał z kochanką. Niedawno zdecydował się wrócić do żony. Barbara przyjęła go z powrotem. Powrót do wspólnego życia w jednym mieszkaniu okazuje się jednak dla małżeństwa trudny. Zdzisław proponuje zorganizowanie jubileuszu ich związku. fw

Barbara i Zdzisław są małżeństwem z 45-letnim stażem. Osiem lat temu Zdzisław zostawił Barbarę i zamieszkał z kochanką. Niedawno zdecydował się wrócić do żony. Barbara przyjęła go z powrotem. Powrót do wspólnego życia w jednym mieszkaniu okazuje się jednak dla małżeństwa trudny. Zdzisław proponuje zorganizowanie jubileuszu ich związku. Film znalazł się na shortliście do Oscara w kategorii Documentary Short Subject.

dafilms.pl/film/11555-wiezi

Barbara i Zdzisław są małżeństwem z 45-letnim stażem. Osiem lat temu Zdzisław zostawił Barbarę i zamieszkał z kochanką. Niedawno zdecydował się wrócić do żony. Barbara przyjęła go z powrotem. Powrót do wspólnego życia w jednym mieszkaniu okazuje się jednak dla małżeństwa trudny. Zdzisław proponuje zorganizowanie jubileuszu ich związku.

filmpolski.pl/fp/index.php?film=1240124

]]>
orinow
Time After Time 404k62 1994 - ★★★ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/time-after-time-1994/ letterboxd-review-888327822 Thu, 15 May 2025 07:19:14 +1200 2025-05-14 No Time After Time 1994 3.0 1116238 <![CDATA[

miniodyseja schodzenia pod ciężarem grawitacji...

A puppet equipped with suction cups slides along different surfaces.

mubi.com/en/pl/films/time-after-time-1994

www.nespolo.com/ita/cinema-dettaglio.php?id=49

www.gamtorino.it/en/archivio-catalogo/time-after-time/

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Ugo_Nespolo

]]>
orinow
A Minecraft Movie 112w1i 2025 - ★★★ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/a-minecraft-movie/ letterboxd-review-888198896 Thu, 15 May 2025 03:17:04 +1200 2025-04-12 No A Minecraft Movie 2025 3.0 950387 <![CDATA[

perypetia utopii komputerowej gry jako przestrzeń wykuwania nowej przedsiębiorczości w czasach de-industrializacji lat 70-tych i aktualnych... "matka Stiflera" jako vice-dyrektor szkoły, w swoim emploi z "American Pie"... ;)

Grupka ludzi trafia do gry komputerowej "Minecraft". Próbują oni wydostać się z tej kwadratowej krainy, a pomaga im kultowa postać - Steve. fw

Witamy w świecie Minecrafta, gdzie kreatywność nie tylko pomaga tworzyć, lecz jest niezbędna do przetrwania! Czworo nieudaczników - Garrett "Śmieciarz" Garrison (Jason Momoa), Henry (Sebastian Hansen), Natalie (Emma Myers) i Dawn (Danielle Brooks) - zmaga się z codziennymi problemami, kiedy nagle tajemniczy portal wciąga ich do Nadziemia - dziwacznej krainy pełnej sześcianów, w której najważniejsza jest wyobraźnia. Aby wrócić do domu, będą musieli zapanować nad tym światem i ochronić go przed złymi stworzeniami, takimi jak pigliny i zombie. W tym celu wyruszają na magiczną wyprawę z nieoczekiwanym towarzyszem - doświadczonym graczem Stevem (Jack Black). Ta przygoda zmusi całą piątkę do wykazania się odwagą i odkrycia w sobie cech, dzięki którym każde z nich jest na swój sposób kreatywne. Są to te same cechy, które pomagają żyć w prawdziwym świecie. fw

A Minecraft Movie is a 2025 American fantasy adventure comedy film based on the 2011 video game Minecraft by Mojang Studios. It was directed by Jared Hess and written by Chris Bowman, Hubbel Palmer, Neil Widener, Gavin James, and Chris Galletta, from a story by Allison Schroeder, Bowman, and Palmer. The film stars Jason Momoa, Jack Black, Danielle Brooks, Emma Myers, and Sebastian Hansen. In the film, four misfits are pulled through a portal into a cubic world, and must embark on a quest back to the real world with the help of an "expert crafter" named Steve.

Plans for a Minecraft film adaptation originated in 2014, when game creator Markus Persson revealed that Mojang was in talks with Warner Bros. Pictures to develop the project. Throughout its development, A Minecraft Movie shifted between several directors, producers, and story drafts. By 2022, Legendary Entertainment became involved, and Hess was hired as director with Momoa in talks to star. Further casting took place from May 2023 to January 2024. Principal photography began later that month in New Zealand and concluded in April 2024. Mark Mothersbaugh composed the score, and Sony Pictures Imageworks, Wētā FX, and Digital Domain provided the film's visual effects.

A Minecraft Movie had its world premiere at Empire, Leicester Square in London on March 30, 2025, and was theatrically released worldwide on April 4. The film received mixed reviews from critics, and has grossed $910 million worldwide against a budget of $150 million, becoming the second-highest-grossing film of 2025 and the second-highest-grossing video game film of all time. A sequel is in development.

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/A_Minecraft_Movie

Four misfits are suddenly pulled through a mysterious portal into a bizarre cubic wonderland that thrives on imagination. To get back home they'll have to master this world while embarking on a quest with an unexpected expert crafter. IMDb

Four misfits find themselves struggling with ordinary problems when they are suddenly pulled through a mysterious portal into the Overworld, a bizarre, cubic wonderland that thrives on imagination. To get back home, they'll have to master this world while embarking on a magical quest with an unexpected, expert craftier. Together, their adventure will challenge all five to be bold and to reconnect with the qualities that make each of them uniquely creative-the very skills they need to thrive back in the real world. —Anonymous

]]>
orinow
Lumière! 6l4l5t 2016 - ★★★★½ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/lumiere-2016/ letterboxd-review-850845722 Tue, 1 Apr 2025 10:34:38 +1300 2025-03-27 No Lumière! 2016 4.5 411003 <![CDATA[

108 wizytówek nowej sztuki zachwycającej ruchem...

Dokument opowiada o początkach kina i eksperymentach, które stały się podwalinami dzisiejszej kinematografii. fw

W 1895 roku Louis i Auguste Lumière wymyślili kinematograf i nakręcili pierwsze w historii filmy, takie jak: "Wyjście robotników z fabryki" czy "Polewacz polany". Z czasem, usprawniając pracę kamery, doskonaląc kompozycję kadru, wprowadzając duble i śmiało eksperymentując z efektami specjalnymi, położyli podwaliny pod dzisiejszą sztukę filmową. Spośród nakręconych przez nich ponad 1400 produkcji, Thierry Frémaux wybrał 114 obrazów, wśród których znalazły się klasyczne arcydzieła, jak i zaskakujące, nieznane dotychczas filmowe odkrycia. Wszystkie one – zrekonstruowane cyfrowo w jakości 4K – zostały zebrane dla uczczenia wspaniałego dziedzictwa braci Lumière. fw

Spis filmów Braci Lumière w filmie "Bracia Lumière" w kolejności emisji.

1. Wyjscie robotnikow z fabryki.
2. Wyjscie robotnikow (inna wersja).
3. Wyjscie robotnikow (inna wersja).
4. Wyjscie robotnikow (inna wersja).
5. Wyjscie robotnikow (inna wersja).
6. Wyjscie robotnikow (inna wersja).
7. Sniadanie dziecka.
8. Polewacz polany.
9. Gra w karty.
10. Wjazd pociagu do Ciotat.
11. Zawalenie muru.
12. Wjazd pociadu do Prechratte.
13. Place
14. Place Belechourre.
15. Powodz.
16. Place du Pont.
17. Gra w bule.
18. Karmienie kota.
19. Pierwsze kroki dziecka.
20. Zabawa z rybka.
21. Tanczace dzieci Kohler.
22. Alexander Promio - angielska plaza, lowienie krewetek.
23. Obiad dzieci.
24. Kapiel dzieci w La Ciotat.
25. Zabawa dzieci robotnikow.
26. Parada wozkow dzieciecych.
27. Wniszenie metalowej czesci.
28. Ladowanie kotla.
29. Robotnicy naprawiajacy ulice.
30. Wyjecie koksu z kopalni w Cardaux.
31. Praczki nad rzeka.
32. Rybacy. Rzeka drzy. Polow sardynek.
33. Konie w galopie wiozace drabiny.
34. Konie ciagnace ciezki ladunek.
35. Garnizon kirasjerow.
36. Skoki na trampolinie.
37. Kapiel w Saonie.
38. Wyscig Lyon-Genewa-Lyon.
39. Wyscig robotnikow w workach.
40. Goscie ojca Braci Lumiere podczas gry w bule.
41. Film z Clos de Plages. Gra trik trak.
42. Odjazd powozu.
43. Wspinaczka po lodowcu.
44. Akrobaci z trupy Kremo.
45. Pokaz akrobatyki ikeryjskiej.
46. Kamera w windzie na wieze Eiffela.
47. Ogrod Touriles.
48. Powrot na Champes Elysees.
49. Lodz Paryskiego Towarzystwa Rzecznego.
50. Schody na most Alma.
51. Place de la Concrode.
52. Katedra Notre Dame.
53. Postoj w Marsylii.
54. Felix Mesguih - rodzinna idylia.
55. Targ owocowy.
56. Przechodniowie i krowy z dzwoneczkami.
57. Taniec hiszpanskich zolnierzy na biwaku.
58. Port w Barcelonie.
59. Panorama Gran Canale krecona z lodzi.
60. Londynskie kino Lumierow.
61. Przechodnie na moscie Westminster z widokiem na Big Ben.
62. Pierwsze kino w Niemczech.
63. Praca strazakow w Irlandii.
64. Panorama tureckiego miasta krecona z Bosforu.
65. Tzw. Turcja azjatycka, Karawana wielbladow.
66. Port w Jaffie ukazany od strony starowki.
67. Piramidy. Sfinks i grobowiec Kefrena.
68. Bej Tunisu w otoczeniu swity schodzacy po schodach.
69. Relacja z koronacji cara Mikolaja II.
70. Nowojorski Broadway.
71. Przemarsz 5 tysiecy chicagowskich policjantow.
72. Gabriel Veyre - Meksyk, anegdota koni.
73. Wietnamskie dzieci zbierajace monety przed pagoda kobiet.
74. Wciaganie krowy na statek (wersja 2).
75. Constant Griel - Japonia, walka na miecze.
76. Polewacz polany (kolejna wersja).
77. Opiekunka dziecka i zolnierz.
78. Mecz pilki noznej.
79. Klotnia robotnic.
80. Zakochany w worku.
81. Zabawa kapeluszem, przybieranie znanych postaci.
82. Trening strzelcow alpejskich.
83. Wspinaczka na mur strzelcow alpejskich.
84. Drwal meloman.
85. Balerina La Bossi.
86. Mechaniczny rzeznik.
87. Ubijarka ziemi.
88. Wejscie nurka na statek. Pierwsz prob adaptacji 20 mil podwodnej zeglugi.
89. Ruchome platformy.
90. Most laczacy Manhattan i Brooklyn.
91. Kopalnie ropy w Baku.
92. Wodowanie statku.
93. Marynarze wioslujacy w lodce.
94. Wypadek samochodowy.
95. Akwarium ze zlotymi rybkami.
96. Kolysana silnymi falami lodz.
97. Wspinaczka z rakami na lodowiec.
98. Dlugi szereg strzelcow w Chamonix.
99. Palacze opium.
100. Gabriel Veyrne - meksykanska smierc w pojedynku.
101. Widoki z gory balonj na uwiezi.
102. Odplyw statku.
103. Wesoly szkielet.
104. Wezowy taniec (kolorowy).
105. Bitwa na sniezki.
106. Gabriel Veyre - operator kamery opuszczajacy wioske w Wietnamie.
107. Rozwieszacze afiszow.
108. Feliciene Lewrye pisanie od tylu.
Bracia Lumière zrobili 1422 filmy.

My w dokumencie mielismy okazje obejrzec 108.

www.filmweb.pl/film/Bracia+Lumi%C3%A8re-2016-789585/discussion/Spis+film%C3%B3w+Braci+Lumi%C3%A8re+w+filmie+%22Bracia+Lumi%C3%A8re%22+w+kolejno%C5%9Bci+emisji.,2927771

]]>
orinow
Photon i5xa 2017 - ★★★★ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/photon/ letterboxd-review-849915653 Mon, 31 Mar 2025 10:11:15 +1300 2025-03-22 No Photon 2017 4.0 455550 <![CDATA[

od fotonu do fotonów w kole dziejów Boltzmanna, podróż przez wszystkie fazy eksperymentu organizacji rzeczywistości, poezja natury w surrealistycznych kategoriach i wizualizacjach...

[od fotonu do fotonów w kole dziejów Boltzmanna, podróż przez eksperyment organizacji rzeczywistości, naukowa poezja natury w surrealistycznych kategoriach... fw]

Trzyczęściowa historia przedstawiająca tworzenia się materii, informacje dotyczące powstawania życia oraz futurystyczną wizję świata. fw

Film "Photon" jest swoistym podsumowaniem ludzkiej wiedzy na temat życia i ewolucji. Wizualizuje to, co wiemy dziś na temat procesu tworzenia się materii. Nie jest to jednak film stricte przyrodniczy ani naukowy, w formule znanej widzom choćby z Animal Planet, ale oryginalna, ciekawa w odbiorze forma fabularyzowanego, dynamicznego przedstawienia teorii naukowych dotyczących funkcjonowania wszechświata.

Pierwsza część filmu traktuje o powstawaniu materii, gwiazd i planet. Niezwykle realistyczna wizualnie historia przedstawiona jest tutaj przez narratora: postać będącą aktorską interpretacją postaci noblisty Richarda Feynmana oraz wybitnego polskiego psychiatry, Antoniego Kępińskiego. Na ekranie widzimy w tej roli Andrzeja Chyrę.

W drugiej części narrator wyjaśnia, co dzisiaj wiemy (i czego nie wiemy) na temat powstawania życia. W jaki sposób uformowały się złożone systemy cząsteczkowe? Dzięki kilku przykładom zaczerpniętym z codzienności przeciętnej rodziny, poznajemy biologiczne podłoże emocji, źródła przemocy i alkoholizmu, naturę tzw. wolnej woli. W filmie zobaczymy przekrój mózgu w chwili podejmowania prostej, rutynowej decyzji. W świetle najnowszych badań naukowych pojawia się interesujące pytanie: czy tak naprawdę sami decydujemy o czymkolwiek? Takie sprawy, dotyczące bezpośrednio wszystkich ludzi, ukazane zostają na przykładzie jednego dnia z życia Wojciecha i jego żony, Emilii.

W ostatnim akcie filmu przyszłość ukazana jest w formie programu telewizyjnego, oglądanego przez wspomniane małżeństwo. Przewidywania oparte są na obecnych trendach futurologii. Internet stopniowo ewoluuje w stronę specyficznej formy sztucznej inteligencji, być może nawet świadomości. Podczas gdy Emilia i Wojciech zasypiają przed ekranem, film sięga dalej, odważnie prognozując dalsze łączenie człowieka z technologią. Narracja jest tutaj niezwykle realistycznymi "ujęciami" przyszłych baz danych, miast przyszłości. Widzimy nie tylko znane z filmów sci-fi metropolie, ale również mniejsze obszary miejskie. Jak może wyglądać Płock albo Lublin za 500 lat? W dalszych prognozach film ukazuje zaskakujące rozwiązania architektoniczne oraz samo replikujące się maszyny.

Jaki będzie koniec wszechświata fw

]]>
orinow
Nosferatu ox33 2024 - ★★★½ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/nosferatu-2024/ letterboxd-review-849901293 Mon, 31 Mar 2025 09:59:36 +1300 2025-03-19 No Nosferatu 2024 3.5 426063 <![CDATA[

Dracula w wschodnim wąsem, reinterpretacja w czasach wojny po czasach zarazy, zdjęcia, klasyczne nawiązania do Murnaua i Coppoli...

Straszliwy Nosferatu zakochuje się w młodej kobiecie. Powodowany rosnącą obsesją wampir sieje wokół grozę i strach. fw

www.filmweb.pl/reviews/recenzja-filmu-Nosferatu-25634

]]>
orinow
Barefoot Gen 2j4p4k 1983 - ★★★★½ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/barefoot-gen/ letterboxd-review-821201710 Thu, 27 Feb 2025 09:54:41 +1300 2025-02-24 No Barefoot Gen 1983 4.5 14087 <![CDATA[

dojrzeć do brutalnej dorosłości w mgnieniu oka rozbłysku nuklearnego słońca... przerażająca sekwencja wybuchu bomby atomowej i dalsze upiorne konsekwencje bytowania w post-apokaliptycznym piekle... niezwykłe obrazy rodzinnego ciepła i dziecięcej odwagi oraz takowych - smutku i bezradności, dystopia...

Gen Nakaoka mieszka z rodziną w Hiroszimie podczas II wojny światowej. 6 sierpnia 1945 roku na miasto spada bomba atomowa. fw

Jest lato roku 1945. Od rozpoczęcia wojny amerykańsko-japońskiej minęły 3 lata. Gen jest małym chłopcem, który wiedzie spokojne i zadowalające życie w Hiroshimie. Niestety całe jego życie zmienia się w dniu kiedy jego rodzinne miasto, tak jak wiele innych w Japoni, zostaje zbombardowane. Zaczyna brakować jedzenia, co sprawia, że rodzina Gena zaczyna głodować. Szczególnie źle znosi tę sytuację matka chłopca, która jest w ciąży. Gen i jego młodszy brat Shinji poświęcają każdą wolna chwilę by pomóc
matce i ojcu w pracy i zapewnić rodzinie przetrwanie w tym trudnym czasie. fw

A powerful statement against war, Barefoot Gen is a disturbing story about the effect of the atomic bomb on a boy's life and the lives of the Japanese people. IMDb

An historical anime: Barefoot Gen tells the story of a boy's struggle to survive the nuclear fallout of the Hiroshima Bombing. Based on real events, Barefoot Gen is a story of courage, survival and a harrowing experience not for the faint-hearted. IMDb

- The author of the "Barefoot Gen" manga, Keiji Nakazawa, said that 70% of the story is based on true events from his experience of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

- Gen was named after the "genki" (vitality of spirit) and "genso" (element), as Keiji Nakazawa wanted him to represent the element of the human spirit.

- Keiji Nakazawa compiled the script in one week.

[...]

www.imdb.com/title/tt0085218/trivia

Barefoot Gen (はだしのゲン, Hadashi no Gen) is a 1983 Japanese adult animated war drama film loosely based on the Japanese manga series of the same name by Keiji Nakazawa. Directed by Mori Masaki and starring Issei Miyazaki, Masaki Kōda and Tatsuya Jo, it depicts World War II in Japan from a child's point of view revolving around the events surrounding the bombing of Hiroshima and the main character's firsthand experience of the bomb.

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Barefoot_Gen_(1983_film)

Barefoot Gen (はだしのゲン, Hadashi no Gen) is a Japanese historical manga series by Keiji Nakazawa, loosely based on Nakazawa's experiences as a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing. The series begins in 1945 in and around Hiroshima, Japan, where six-year-old Gen Nakaoka lives with his family. After Hiroshima is destroyed by the bombing, Gen and other survivors deal with the aftermath. The series was published in several magazines, including Weekly Shōnen Jump, from 1973 to 1987. It was adapted into three live-action film versions directed by Tengo Yamada, which were released between 1976 and 1980. Madhouse released two anime films, one in 1983 and the other in 1986. In August 2007, a two-night live-action television drama series aired in Japan on Fuji TV.

Cartoonist Keiji Nakazawa created Ore wa Mita (translated into English as I Saw It), an eyewitness of the atomic-bomb devastation in Japan, for Monthly Shōnen Jump in 1972. It was published in the United States by Educomics in 1982. Nakazawa began to serialize the longer, autobiographical Hadashi No Gen (Barefoot Gen) in the June 4, 1973 issue of Weekly Shōnen Jump. It was canceled after a year and a half and moved to three other, less-widely-distributed magazines: Shimin (Citizen), Bunka Hyōron (Cultural Criticism), and Kyōiku Hyōron (Educational Criticism). The series began to appear in Japanese book collections in 1975.

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Barefoot_Gen

Made me homesick

I just watched this film for the first time yesterday. I signed up for a free 1 month trial DVD delivery, and filled my queue with Anime. There is so much more than Robots and Vampires. Robots and Vampires have their place and in Anime they can often have deep meaningful stories.

This film is definitely one I will add to my collection. The subject is very important. We usually Hiroshima from an American point of view. It is important to see it from a Japanese view. the movie actually doesn't seem to make a point to say that the US was bad. I don't think an American film would be so non-judgemental.

Watch this film for it's real (and sometimes over the top) emotions.

The home life of the family and the interactions between the parents and children reminded me so much of parts of my life in South Korea for the past 12 years. though differences exist between Japan and Korea, some basics are similar. Nowadays the common life shown in the film is fading. I think it will be a good reminder of how things were. IMDb

]]>
orinow
House Party 272x1v 1990 - ★★★½ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/house-party/ letterboxd-review-819261114 Tue, 25 Feb 2025 02:58:41 +1300 2025-02-19 No House Party 1990 3.5 16094 <![CDATA[

hip hop duo Kid ‘n Play, rapowanie, muzyka i kawałek czarnego dorastania, NFR...

Kid został zaproszony na imprezę do domu swojego przyjaciela Playa. Niestety po bójce w szkole ojciec Kida nie chce go puścić. Jednak ten nie poddaje się i kiedy ojciec zasypia wykrada się z domu. Wkrótce okazuje się, że parę nieprzychylnie nastawionych do niego osób postanawia dać mu nauczkę... fw

House Party is a 1990 American comedy film directed by Reginald Hudlin. It stars Christopher "Kid" Reid and Christopher "Play" Martin of the hip hop duo Kid 'n Play in their film debut, Paul Anthony, Bow-Legged Lou, and B-Fine of Full Force, and Robin Harris (who died of a heart attack nine days after the film was released, making House Party his penultimate acting role).

The film was written and directed by Reginald Hudlin, based on his award-winning Harvard University student film. The film grossed over $26 million in its run at the box office with its widest release being 700 theaters.

--cult--
Upon its initial release, the film garnered critical acclaim and has since become a cult classic.

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/House_Party_(1990_film)

The lead roles were originally written for DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince.

The lead roles were originally written for DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince.

Kid decides to go to his friend Play's house party, but neither of them can predict what's in store for them on what could be the wildest night of their lives. IMDb

www.imdb.com/title/tt0099800/trivia

Kid (Christopher Reid) has three things going for him - a tall fade, a wide grin and a way with women. But three equally powerful things are against him, trio "Full Force," as the pumped-up punks who want to put on end to Kid's fun, an over-protective father (Robin Harris), and the very beautiful best friends who want Kid to choose between them. What's a Kid to do?

www.filmaffinity.com/en/film489030.html


NFR

Written and directed by Reginald Hudlin, “House Party” stars Kid and Play of the popular hip hop duo Kid ‘n Play. With his parents out of town, Play announces to his friends that he is hosting an epic party at his house. His best friend, Kid, is the most eager to attend, knowing that his high school crush will be there. After Kid gets into a fight at school, his father punishes him and bans him from going to the party. Determined to go, Kid makes his way to the biggest and most memorable party of the school year with some hilarious stops along the way. “House Party” also stars Paul Anthony, Bow-Legged Lou and B-Fine (from the hip-hop group Full Force), and Robin Harris, Martin Lawrence, Tisha Campbell, A.J. Johnson, and John Witherspoon. Funk musician George Clinton makes a cameo. In a 2022 interview with the Library of Congress, Hudlin recalls: “The day we shot the big dance number in ‘House Party’ is easily one of the best days of my life. We had all the enthusiasm in the world, all the commitment in the world.”

www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/descriptions-and-essays/

]]>
orinow
Edge of the City 262wz 1957 - ★★★★½ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/edge-of-the-city/ letterboxd-review-818702469 Mon, 24 Feb 2025 12:07:53 +1300 2025-02-23 No Edge of the City 1957 4.5 35129 <![CDATA[

kombinacja niekłamanej afirmacji etosu warstwy społecznej i bezkompromisowej krytyki stosunków ekonomiczno-etnicznych, film, napisany specjalnie dla Sidney'a Poitier'a, film na podstawie sztuki (słuchowiska), NFR...

--1st--
- debiut reżyserski...

Alex North (John Cassavetes) jest dezerterem, ukrywa się przed policją i wojskiem. Przyjeżdża do Nowego Jorku i pod zmienionym nazwiskiem zatrudnia się w przedsiębiorstwie kolejowym. Alex stara się nie zwracać na siebie uwagi innych, jego słabość wyczuwa jednak sadystyczny Charles Malik, znęca się nad nim i wyszydza. Czarnoskóry robotnik, Tommy (Sidney Poitier), staje w obronie Alexa, co jeszcze bardziej rozwściecza nadzorcę. Ten incydent jednak łączy Tommego i Alexa, mężczyźni zaprzyjaźniają się. Wydawałoby się, że życie Alexa zmienia się na lepsze, ma przyjaciół, poznaje dziewczynę. Niestety Maik odkrywa jego tajemnicę, prowokuje bójkę, w której ginie Tommy. Alex jest jedyną osobą, która mogłaby przedstawić prawdę policji, jednak czy się odważy...

Film Martina Ritta zdobył nominację British Film Academy Awards w kategorii najlepszy film 1957. fw

Edge of the City is a 1957 American Film Noir drama directed by Martin Ritt, adapted by screenwriter Robert Alan Arthur from his 1955 teleplay A Man Is Ten Feet Tall.

Axel Nordmann (John Cassavetes), who evidently has been a drifter for a while, finds himself at Hudson Yards in New York, looking for work. He knows a guy who knows a guy, and so he gets hired as a stevedore unloading freight from trains that pull into the Hudson Yards station. He first comes under the supervision of a cruel, vicious foreman, Charlie (Jack Warden), who bullies Axel while also demanding a kickback on his salary. However, Axel makes friends with Tommy Tyler (Sidney Poitier), a black man and another foreman at the station. Axel leaves Charlie's crew and s Tommy's.

Axel and Tommy become best buddies, with Tommy and his wife Lucy (Ruby Dee) going so far as to match up Tommy romantically with a friend of theirs named Ellen. However, Axel has a secret. When he was hired, he gave his name as "Axel North." When a man recognizes Axel at a club, he hurriedly exits. Finally, Axel tells Tommy: he is a deserter from the Army. Unfortunately for everyone, Charlie asks around and finds out Axel's secret.

tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/EdgeOfTheCity

Two New York City longshoremen Axel Nordmann (John Cassavetes), with a mysterious past, and Tommy Tyler (Sidney Poitier), an easy-going freight car loader who's growing friendship is threatened by Charles Malik (Jack Warden), a notably repellent punk.

www.filmaffinity.com/en/film288099.html

Edge of the City is a 1957 American crime drama film directed by Martin Ritt in his directorial debut, and starring John Cassavetes and Sidney Poitier. Robert Alan Aurthur's screenplay was expanded from his original script, staged as the final episode of The Philco Television Playhouse, A Man Is Ten Feet Tall (1955), also featuring Poitier.

The film was considered unusual for its time because of its portrayal of an interracial friendship, and was praised by representatives of the NAA, Urban League, American Jewish Committee and Interfaith Council because of its portrayal of racial brotherhood.

In 2023, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant."

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Edge_of_the_City

www.wikiwand.com/pl/articles/Cz%C5%82owiek,_kt%C3%B3ry_pokona%C5%82_strach

- Written specifically for Sidney Poitier.

[...]

www.imdb.com/title/tt0050347/trivia

The budding friendship of two NYC longshoremen is threatened by a notably repugnant co-worker. IMDb

Drifter Axel North has just arrived in New York City, having traveled from city to city throughout the country. Given the name Charlie Malick as a by an acquaintance named Ed Faber, Axel is able to get a job working as a stevedore in Charlie's gang on the dockyards. Little did Axel know that Charlie is corrupt, requiring payola for that job, and is a racist. It is solely because of the color of his skin that Charlie hates his fellow gang boss, Tommy Tyler, a black man. It is also because he can see that Axel is a little wet behind the ears that Tommy tries to befriend him to get him out from under Charlie's thumb. Due solely to the reason that he is a drifter, Axel is slow to warm and open up to Tommy, eventually providing some basic information: that he is originally from Gary, Indiana, that his real surname is Nordmann, and that the only person he has ever really loved in his life was his older brother Andy, whose death exacerbated the already strained relationship he has with his police officer father. Axel is even slower to warm to the idea of a girlfriend, Tommy and his wife Lucy's friend Ellen Wilson who they are trying to match up with Axel. Although Axel says he is trying to find something in his life, in reality he is currently running away from a specific issue from his past. It is when Axel's past may catch up with him that he starts to return to his shell and contemplates running away as was his routine, despite having friends for the first time in a long time. An incident with Charlie and Tommy may bring all their issues to a head. IMDb


Edge of the City was Martin Ritt’s remarkably assured directorial debut. Beautifully poised and paced, it’s one of the most mystically homoerotic films of the 1950s, evoking profound alliances across race, class and sexuality that broadly reflect Ritt’s own persecution at the hands of the Hollywood blacklist. Written by Robert Alan Aurthur, and based on his television play A Man is Ten Feet Tall, the story essentially details a burgeoning and beautiful friendship between Tommy Tyler, a New York dock worker played by Sidney Poitier, and Axel Nordmann, a closeted gay man played by John Cassavetes, in two of these actors’ earliest leading roles.

Edge of the City is also, as the title suggests, a portrait of a city – one of a series of late noirs that were obsessed with mapping the expanse of the city in fresher and more jagged ways. These crime films released in the late 50s turned their attention to undisclosed elements of urban life, and often adopted a more documentary style, reflecting the growing influence of Italian neorealism. Ritt’s film takes place at the edge of classical noir and this grittier urban style – every scene feels slightly improvised, and the camera always seems somewhat hand-held. While there is a clear narrative throughline, Ritt is more interested in moments than story, and just as interested in the relationship between his actors as between the characters. At times, this feels like a portrait of Poitier and Cassavetes’ friendship as much as fictional film, paving the way for Cassavetes’ own body of work, which started a couple of years later.

Ritt focuses all this naturalism on the New York docks, where Tommy and Axel meet for the first time. From the moment they cross paths, Ritt evinces an incredible sensitivity to the way that men talk, move, fight, walk and dance. All the dock scenes appear to be shot on location, with extras drawn straight from the street, with the exception of Tommy’s nemesis, Charlie Malick, played by Jack Warden, whose racism sets some of the major plot points in motion. While Ritt’s involvement in leftist and communist circles was a matter of conjecture at the time, his depiction of this friendship leaves no doubt of his sympathies, since it’s one of the most natural and dignified visions of working-class solidarity filmed in America this decade.

Part of the dynamic of the friendship stems from how differently these two men interact with the world. Tommy is an extrovert, sharing his views with Axel as soon as they meet. Axel, however, is much more circumspect – his character and motivations take more time to emerge, which throws all the small details of the docks into relief as he gradually gets to know Tommy in this shared space. Since the friendship starts at work, Axel is able to deflect discussion of his private life for some time, turning the first act into a portrait of a relationship we rarely see depicted with this much nuance in American cinema – the work friendship. Ritt is alive to the ways that men, in particular, can build a more reparative masculinity through shared labour, depicting the docks as a place where Tommy and Axel can relearn what it means to be a man. The sheer act of working together gives them an unspoken bond, an openness to each other’s differences, that makes their subsequent friendship more open too.

This friendship makes Edge of the City one of the great blue-collar films (it must have been an influence on Paul Schrader’s Blue Collar). For the first act, we see this blue-collar world through Tommy’s eyes, from the perspective of a black man staying buoyant in a white working-class environment. Tommy is Axel’s boss, and appoints himself as Axel’s mentor as well, sharing his wisdom about the job, the city and hardship more generally, as if prescient that Alex is marginal too, despite being white. Here, as throughout the film, Ritt is acutely sensitive to the pitfalls of black stereotypes – it would be so easy for Tommy’s power over Axel to turn into mere role reversal, just as it would be easy for Tommy turn into a mystically empowered black man and thus succumb to the magical negro tropes common at the time.

Instead, there’s something more subtle at play here. Time and again, Tommy communes with Axel by showing him to stay buoyant as a marginal person, as if acknowledging that Axel is marginal in a way that he can’t articulate. Both characters are always shot against fractured fragments of the city, which always appears as a marginal space in the background of their shared dock scenes. One of their first work traditions is to have lunch in the most peripheral parts of the dock they can find – one day they’re on the top of a train carriage, another day they sit right on the tip of the dock itself, poised on a narrow precipice of space as they looking out into the bay. In this marginal space, Tommy declares, they’ve discovered “Freedomsville.”

Axel himself is also defined as marginal, cloistered and closeted from the beginning of the film, although it’s quite hard to know how to read these characteristics for the first two acts. Initially, it feels like he might be an iteration of the new “adolescent” character type that was starting to sweep American cinema in the wake of Rebel Without a Cause. In one of the earliest scenes, he phones his parents in Gary, Indiana, after not having spoken to them for some time. There’s clearly a rift between generations here – his father refuses to speak to him, his mother begs him to come home, and, when he hangs up, bemoans: “What did we do to him? What did we do to make him like this?” Yet this scene also evokes a silence that goes beyond mere adolescent angst, as Axel intones a false confession to his parents, pouring his heart out, while holding his hand over the receiver, so that they cannot make out his words.

This elliptical scene is also the most expository for some time, since Axel’s character remains quite emergent after this. The mystery of the film is largely the mystery of his intentions, and yet the revelation that he’s an army deserter never feels proportionate to his liminality, the way he seems to perpetually exist on the edge of things. Instead, I gradually sensed that Axel was a closeted homosexual, and that leaving the army was just one part of his tacit rejection of traditional masculine institutions. At first, I wondered if I was reading too much into the film, but I learned that this was indeed Ritt’s intention, and that he had to tread a fine line to get the censors to approve the film, splitting the difference between homoerotic and homosocial content more finely than just about any other film noir released during this era.

As a result, Axel’s sexuality is largely a matter of implication. We learn that the only person he ever loved was his brother, who he rhapsodises in the same Tommy uses to describe his wife, recalling that “sometimes we didn’t even have to talk to each other.” Conversely, he’s completely alienated from his own father, recollecting that “I could never talk to my old man. In my whole life, we probably said three things to each other – good morning, good night, and go to hell.” In any case, being an army deserter means he might as well be homosexual – this was the most dramatic secret that a man could openly it to in a Hollywood film at this time, while desertion was still the most vivid way that the mainstream media could dramatise male shame. It’s apt that Axel’s hometown, his centre of shame, is also the name of a man – Gary, Indiana – that would in turn become the pen name of a prominent gay male writer forty years later. Watching Edge of the City, I wondered whether Gary Indiana had Axel’s story in mind when he settled on his nom de plume in the early 80s.

This latent homosexual desire makes for a beautiful and complex friendship with Tommy. To some extent, Tommy denies Axel’s inclinations by trying to set him up his friend Ellen Wilson, a teacher played by Kathleen Maguire. Ritt reserves some of his most dextrous directing for the subtle ways in which Axel displays his disinterest in Ellen, despite his equally strong desire not to offend Tommy. Axel first meets Ellen in a basketball court, a traditionally male domain, and from there indicates, in all kinds of subtle ways, that he sees her more as a friend. This trope is quite familiar to gay and straight audiences alike in the early 21st century, but it’s quite touching to see it play out in this more closeted mode, especially as Axel doesn’t quite seem to know his own mind, repeatedly trying and failing to love Ellen in deference to Tommy.

Yet Tommy doesn’t quite know his own mind either. He organises a double date at his house so that Axel and Ellen can have dinner with him and his wife Lucy, played by Ruby Dee. Despite chastising Axel when he doesn’t show enough attention to Ellen, Tommy peels off with him after dinner for cigars. Smoking, listening to music, they’re both caught off-guard by a gaze that lingers too long – so long that it takes us out of Hollywood convention and into a different kind of realism. And in many ways the film is this gaze – a beautiful portrait of male friendship in which one party yearns for more, and the other understands and empathises, even if they don’t quite reciprocate. It’s a vision of heterosexual and homosexual desire communing and living side by side, mediated through racial tolerance – a profoundly intersectional of identity from a director who was repeatedly harangued and blacklisted for his own leftism.

Call it a romantic friendship, then, or a tribute to the romance of friendship, bathing everything in the film in an mystically emergent hush, since Tommy doesn’t exactly not reciprocate Axel’s feelings either. In fact, there’s something compensatory about the way Tommy insists upon setting Axel up – as if he has to work extra hard to deny the closer and quieter moments between them, which recur whenever women recede into the background. You might say that it’s an effort to genuinely envisage bisexuality, or the romance between a homosexual man and a bisexual man – or that it’s disinterested in labels altogether, instead envisaging a deep communion between working men that transcends both sexuality and race. There’s no vocabulary, at this time, for what Eve Sedgwick would call Axel’s shame consciousness, but Tommy can inchoately gesture towards it: “If you’re scared, you’re dead.”

No surprise, then, that the docks turn cruisey with only the slightest shift in inflection. We see this cruisiness most emphatically after Axel’s one big argument with Tommy, which he processes with a long, lingering, languorous walk along the river, followed by a burnished sequence that ends with him starting up at Tommy’s apartment window – a shot that is embedded somewhere deep within the closing act of William Friedkin’s Cruising, released in 1980. Yet the scene doesn’t end here, as Axel asks Tommy to him for a continuation of the walk. This ends ends with his closest approximation to coming out, which occurs at the site most conspicuously shot on location. Peering over the edge of Mount Morris Park in Harlem (not yet renamed Marcus Garvey Park), his voice muffled by ambient noise, and bleached by ambient light, Axel describes a wandering yearning that suffuses his very soul.

As this coming-out walk attests, Edge of the City is fascinated by proximities and alliances that could only exist in movement at this point in time – whether through manic movement, fugitive movement, or a fluid combination of the two. Jazz provides that cruisey momentum for large stretches of the film, gathering black and white, straight and gay, into reparative trajectories that seem to continue right into Cassevetes’ own films. Some of these scenes could be taken straight from Cassavetes’ first couple of films, while his role as Axel must have fuelled his own directorial sympathy for marginal figures, people living deep in the shadows.

Yet Edge of the City never simply uses Tommy as a prop either – never subordinates him to a mirror for Axel to discover his own sexuality. Instead, that discovery exists beyond the horizon of the city, as does the racial equality that Tommy and Axel momentarily glimpse together. In the traumatic third act of the film, Charlie’s rage at Tommy gets the better of him. The two fight with grappling hooks, and Charlie ends up murdering Tommy, leaving his body dumped unceremoniously on a pile of crates while Axel is trapped behind a metal grate – and while all of the other dock workers look on, and then return to their job without uttering a single word.

This modern-day lynching is a rebuttal to any idealised version of white working-class men, insisting to the audience that proper working-class solidarity can only occur as part of a broader alliance across sexuality and race – as part of a reparative masculine project that we briefly glimpse through the most powerful source of movement in the film; namely, the movement of the film itself, as it grows ever lighter and more nimble on its feet. And Ritt uses this movement to set the audience a challenge in the closing scenes, which start with Axel deciding to return to his parents, and reconcile with their institutions, rather than speak out about Tommy’s death – in effect, to return to the closet, and from there deny racism exists.

Yet we now have an incredible scene in which Lucy, Tommy’s wife (now his widow) calls out Axel on his hypocrisy. She points out that fleeing New York, and refusing to “rat out” Charlie, means that he is adhering to a masculine code of honour that has brought him nothing but shame. She also insists that returning to institutions can only occur at the expense of black folk – and of black women in particular, the man collateral damage for the trauma of trying to envisage a cross-racial masculinity. This prompts Tommy into the fastest trajectory of the film – out of Lucy’s apartment, and onto the street, where he’s pursued by Ellen, who, in a more conventional film, would encourage him to leave both Lucy and Tommy behind for their love. Yet Lucy cannot do this, partly because it’s not that kind of film, and partly because Axel is homosexual. And so Ellen just reiterates Lucy’s advice – that Axel must act in some manner.

This ushers in the last scene of the film, which hangs suspended between two types of action. First, Axel tells the police that Charlie committed the crime, but it’s clear he can’t rely on them, since he heads down to the docks himself. Then, he seeks out Charlie, although he can’t be searching for straight-out revenge, since he’s also informed the cops, who are on their way. Instead, Axel seems to be searching for an answer, a masculine alliance, an intersectional politics, that can’t quite exist in his own time and space. After a brutal fight, he drags Charlie’s prone body (it’s not clear if Charlie is dead or alive) straight towards the camera, which in turn pans back as Axel looks directly at the audience, as the dock workers follow his defiant gaze.

In this final moment, Axel reaches towards the countercultural vocabulary of the next generation as a way of grieving Tommy and envisaging future alliances – a counterculture that Cassavetes would quickly embrace once he stepped behind the camera, as Axel seems to be yearning to do here. For Axel finally yearns for a confrontation with power that remains beyond the purview of the film – the edge of the city is a temporal as well as a spatial threshold, the fate of those marginal figures who exist on the cusp of generations, ahead of the old guard but without the quite achieving the ideological apparatus of the new guard. Ten years later, desertion would be seen as a radical gesture, a badge of pride for the counterculture – for now, it’s less certain of its destination, or even its meaning, existing, like the film, as a profound gesture of departure, a frustration with the outer limits of the present.

cinematelevisionmusic.com/2021/07/21/ritt-edge-of-the-city-1957/


NFR

“Edge of the City” features superb performances by John Cassavetes and Sidney Poitier in a psychological drama set among New York City railroad workers. Based on a live television drama written expressly for Poitier by Robert Alan Aurthur, “Edge of the City” follows Cassavetes as a troubled Army deserter who finds trust in others, maturity in himself, and reintegration into society after Poitier, playing a stevedore foreman, befriends him. Praised by the NAA for its message of racial brotherhood, this first feature of blacklisted television director Martin Ritt offers finely delineated performances by Ruby Dee, Kathleen Maguire and Jack Warden. Critic Stanley Crouch called the film “one of the highest of the high points in Poitier’s career,” noting “an almost heartbreaking effect in his absolute freedom from the stereotypic, moving with such vitality through so many more moods than would be expected of a Black character then or now.” Added to the National Film Registry in 2023.

www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/descriptions-and-essays/

]]>
orinow
Cyrano de Bergerac 2rv4b 1950 - ★★★★ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/cyrano-de-bergerac/ letterboxd-review-814508295 Thu, 20 Feb 2025 07:25:41 +1300 2025-02-18 No Cyrano de Bergerac 1950 4.0 43386 <![CDATA[

w życiu nic minie wyszło nawet moja własna śmierć... człowiek wszelakich zalet i pięknego wnętrza bez szans na powodzenie u pięknej ukochanej... przez tak prozaicznie duży nos... NFR

--1st-- pierwsza amerykańska wersja sztuki,
--1st-- pierwszy hiszpański aktor, który otrzymał Oscara w kategorii najlepszy aktor...

Francja, 1640 rok. Charyzmatyczny poeta i filozof, a także doskonały szermierz Cyrano De Bergerac (Jose Ferrer) nieszczęśliwie zakochuje się w pięknej Roxanne (Mala Powers). Jego problemem i zarazem kompleksem jest... nienaturalnie duży nos. Ona zaś wyznaje mu, że kocha pewnego przystojnego chrześcijanina. Cyrano wykorzystuje ten fakt i aby zdobyć serce ukochanej postanawia posunąć się do drobnego oszustwa, co jednak przynosi tragiczne skutki. fw

Cyrano de Bergerac is a 1950 American adventure comedy film based on the 1897 French Alexandrin verse drama Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand. It uses poet Brian Hooker's 1923 English blank verse translation as the basis for its screenplay. The film was the first motion picture version in English of Rostand's play, though there were several earlier adaptations in different languages.

The 1950 film was produced by Stanley Kramer and directed by Michael Gordon. José Ferrer received the Academy Award for Best Actor for his starring performance as Cyrano de Bergerac. Mala Powers played Roxane, and William Prince portrayed Christian de Neuvillette.

The film lapsed into the public domain in the mid-1980s. In 2022, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant."

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Cyrano_de_Bergerac_(1950_film)

Film wszedł do domeny publicznej w połowie lat osiemdziesiątych.

www.wikiwand.com/pl/articles/Cyrano_de_Bergerac_(film_1950)

The charismatic swordsman-poet and provocateur in 1640s Paris helps a young guardsman woo the woman he loves, complicated by the politics of the nobility and the war with Spain. IMDb

, 1640: Cyrano, the charismatic swordsman-poet with the absurd nose, hopelessly loves the beauteous Roxane; she, in turn, confesses to Cyrano her love for the handsome but tongue-tied Christian. The chivalrous Cyrano sets up with Christian an innocent deception, with tragic results. Much cut from the play, but dialogue not rewritten. IMDb

NFR

Produced by Stanley Kramer and directed by Michael Gordon, this was the first U.S. film version of Edmond Rostand’s 1897 French play, and the screenplay used a 1923 English blank verse translation by Brian Hooker. Though critics felt the film suffered from its low budget and appearing too much a stage production, José Ferrer’s star-making performance received much acclaim. For his performance, Ferrer won the Oscar for Best Actor, becoming the first Hispanic actor to win the award. Preserved at the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Preservation funded by Myra Teitelbaum Reinhard, UCLA class of '58, in loving memory of her grandfather Nathan, father Ben and uncle Harry Teitelbaum. Preserved from the 35 mm. nitrate original camera negative and a 35 mm. acetate fine grain master, in cooperation with Paramount Pictures. Laboratory services by YCM Laboratories. Sound services by DJ Audio and Audio Mechanics. Special thanks to Barry Allen, Eric Aijala, Martha Stroud, Peter Oreckinto and John Polito.

www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/descriptions-and-essays/

]]>
orinow
20 Feet from Stardom 1j5an 2013 - ★★★★ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/20-feet-from-stardom/ letterboxd-review-812956596 Tue, 18 Feb 2025 12:10:12 +1300 2025-02-17 No 20 Feet from Stardom 2013 4.0 159014 <![CDATA[

o krok od sławy czyli dziewczyny z chórków, wielkie artystki tła, bez których nie byłoby największych, wzloty upadki, próby gwiazdorskie, Merry Clayton - oryginalna oraz Lisa Fischer - arcy-znakomita, The Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter, mnóstwo innej muzyki, NFR...

Darlene Love
rockhall.com/inductees/darlene-love/

Millions know their voices, but no one knows their names. This film shines a spotlight on the untold true story of the backup singers behind some of the greatest musical legends of the 21st century. Triumphant and heartbreaking in equal measure, the film is both a tribute to the unsung voices who brought shape and style to popular music and a reflection on the conflicts, sacrifices and rewards of a career spent harmonizing with others. Backup singers live in a world that lies just beyond the spotlight. Their voices bring harmony to the biggest bands in popular music, but we've had no idea who these singers are or what lives they lead – until now.

www.filmaffinity.com/en/film405920.html

20 Feet from Stardom is a 2013 American documentary film directed by Morgan Neville and produced by Gil Friesen, a music industry executive whose curiosity to know more about the lives of background singers inspired the making of the film. Using archival footage and new interviews, it details the behind-the-scenes experiences of such backup singers as Darlene Love, Merry Clayton, Lisa Fischer, Judith Hill, Jo Lawry, Claudia Lennear, and Tata Vega. The film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 86th Academy Awards, 23 years after In the Shadow of the Stars (1991), a similar documentary that focused on the of an opera chorus, won the same award.

Lisa Fischer has said of backup singing: "I reject the notion that the job you excel at is somehow not enough to aspire to, that there has to be something more. I love ing other artists." She added: "Some people will do anything to be famous. I just wanted to sing."

In 2023, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." It is the eighth film designated in its first year of eligibility, as well as the second most recently released film in the Registry.

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/20_Feet_from_Stardom

Backup singers live in a world that lies just beyond the spotlight. Their voices bring harmony to the biggest bands in popular music, but we've had no idea who these singers are or what lives they lead, until now. IMDb

The backup singer exists in a strange place in the pop music world; they are always in the shadow of the feature artists even when they are in front of them in concert while they provide a vital foundation for the music. Through interviews with veterans and concert footage, the history of these predominately African-American singers is explored through the rock era. Furthermore, special focus is given to special stand outs who endeavored to make a living in the art burdened with a low profile and more personal career frustrations, especially those who faced the very different challenge of singing in the spotlight themselves. IMDb

- The film was a financial success, grossing over $5 million internationally on a $1 million budget.

[...]

www.imdb.com/title/tt2396566/trivia/

A treat for the ears and an education in the music business

I had never heard of the performers, but have apparently enjoyed their contributions thousands of times. Praise to the producer and director for their headliner contributors. I saw the film at the Minneapolis - St Paul film festival. Merry Clayton came to the screening and sang for us after the showing. That girl still has the pipes. The story about her audition with the Rollings Stones was a hoot. The soundtrack is wonderful. Lisa Fischer has an amazing voice - blew my socks off. Hope the movie comes to a theater near me, so I can hear it again. I thought the director did a wonderful job of balancing the contributions of the headliners with the life stories of the singers. It was a treat to hear them do their thing out in the spotlight. IMDb


Gimme Shelter 1970
letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/gimme-shelter-1970/

NFR

Directed by Morgan Neville and produced by Gil Friesen, “20 Feet from Stardom” uses archival footage and interviews sharing behind-the-scenes experiences, and shining the spotlight on backup singers, including Darlene Love, Merry Clayton, Lisa Fischer, Judith Hill, Jo Lawry, Claudia Lennear, and Tata Vega. Archival footage includes performances with Sting, David Bowie, Ray Charles, Michael Jackson, Elton John, Tom Jones, Ike & Tina Turner, Luther Vandross, and more. A highlight of the film includes an interview with Mick Jagger telling the story of how Merry Clayton came to sing the iconic background vocals on “Gimme Shelter.” Added to the National Film Registry in 2023.

www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/descriptions-and-essays/

]]>
orinow
Stand by Me 3211s 1986 - ★★★★ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/stand-by-me/ letterboxd-review-811856037 Mon, 17 Feb 2025 11:48:12 +1300 2025-02-16 No Stand by Me 1986 4.0 235 <![CDATA[

nigdy nie miałem takich przyjaciół jak wtedy gdy miałem 12 lat... wędrówka w poszukiwaniu zwłok zamordowanego chłopaka... odyseja w kierunku dorosłości i rytuały przejścia, dzieci i chłopaków... --model-- wzorcowy film o dorastaniu... na podst. Stephena Kinga...

śmieszna sekwencja powszechnego rzygania w opowieści o Lardass i zawodach w jedzeniu na czas o raz osobistej zemście jednego grubaska... ;)

Czterech nastolatków wyrusza w podróż do miejsca, gdzie rzekomo znajdują się zwłoki ich rówieśnika. fw

Film oparty na opowiadaniu Stephena Kinga "Ciało". Czterech nastolatków: Gordie (Wil Wheaton), Chris (River Phoenix), Teddy (Corey Feldman) i Vern (Jerry O'Connell) dorasta razem w fikcyjnym miasteczku Castle Rock w Oregonie. Pewnego dnia Vern podsłuchuje rozmowę starszego brata, z której dowiaduje się, że grupa starszych dzieciaków znalazła przy torach zwłoki zaginionego chłopca, ale nie poinformowała o tym policji. Przyjaciele postanawiają samodzielnie odnaleźć ciało, przekonani że dzięki temu staną się sławni. fw

A writer recounts a childhood journey with his friends to find the body of a missing boy. IMDb

It's the summer of 1959 in Castlerock, Oregon and four 12 year-old boys - Gordie, Chris, Teddy and Vern - are fast friends. After learning of the general location of the body of a local boy who has been missing for several days, they set off into the woods to see it. Along the way, they learn about themselves, the meaning of friendship and the need to stand up for what is right. IMDb

--top--
- Rob Reiner considers this the best film he has ever made. trivia

-The vomit used in the "Lardass" story was made from cottage cheese and blueberry mix. Some of the audience in behind the scenes also got sick too.

[...]

www.imdb.com/title/tt0092005/trivia

Stand by Me is a 1986 American coming-of-age drama film directed by Rob Reiner. Based on Stephen King's 1982 novella The Body, the film is set in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Oregon in 1959. Stand by Me stars Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, and Jerry O'Connell as four boys who set out on a journey to find the dead body of a missing boy. The film's title is derived from the 1961 song of the same name by Ben E. King, which plays during the film's closing credits.

Stand by Me received positive reviews upon release and was a commercial success. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and for two Golden Globe Awards: One for Best Drama Motion Picture and one for Best Director. Rolling Stone has called Stand by Me "a staple of youthful nostalgia" and "the rare movie that necessarily gets better with time".

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Stand_by_Me_(film)

]]>
orinow
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford 4w2lu 2007 - ★★★★½ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/the-assassination-of-jesse-james-by-the-coward-robert-ford/ letterboxd-review-809124359 Sat, 15 Feb 2025 03:43:00 +1300 2017-08-15 No The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford 2007 4.5 4512 <![CDATA[

anatomia reguły i paradoksu fenomenu bohatera, oblicza fascynacji idolem, osobiste dramaty ciemnych aspektów pełnionych rol, ktoś zawsze tak i ktoś zawsze nie...

Legendarny Jesse James przyjmuje do szajki Roberta Forda. W tym samym czasie stróże prawa próbują dopaść nieuchwytnego przestępcę. fw

Film ukazuje prywatne życie i publiczne wyzyski wyjętego spod prawa Amerykanina, charyzmatycznego i nieprzewidywalnego Jessego Jamesa (Brad Pitt). Planuje on swoją kolejną wielką napaść i rozpoczyna wojnę ze swymi wrogami, którzy polując na niego pragną zdobyć nagrodę pieniężną i chwałę. Jednak największe zagrożenie dla jego życia może go spotkać ze strony tych, którym ufa najbardziej. fw

Robert Ford, who has idolized Jesse James since childhood, tries hard to the resurgent gang of the Missouri outlaw, but gradually becomes resentful of the bandit leader. IMDb

Taking place in Missouri in the early 1880s, the film dramatizes the last seven months in the life of famed outlaw Jesse James, beginning with the Blue Cut train robbery of 1881 and culminating in his assassination at the hands of Robert Ford the following April. In the time between these two fateful events, the young and jealous Ford befriends the increasingly mistrustful outlaw, even as he plots his demise. IMDb

--top--
- Brad Pitt's personal favorite of the movies that he has acted in.

- Nick Cave's score was written before the film was shot.

www.imdb.com/title/tt0443680/trivia

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is a 2007 American epic revisionist Western film written and directed by Andrew Dominik. Based on Ron Hansen's 1983 novel of the same name, the film dramatizes the relationship between Jesse James and Robert Ford, focusing on the events that lead up to the titular killing. It stars Brad Pitt as James and Casey Affleck as Ford, with Sam Shepard, Mary-Louise Parker, Paul Schneider, Jeremy Renner, Zooey Deschanel, and Sam Rockwell in ing roles.

Photography started on August 29, 2005, and ended in December 2005. Filming took place near Calgary, Canmore, and Edmonton, Alberta, and Winnipeg, Manitoba. To achieve the visual style he wanted for the movie, Dominik took influences from many sources, including still photographers, images clipped from magazines, stills from Days of Heaven, and even Polaroids. The original edit of the movie was envisioned by Dominik to be "a dark, contemplative examination of fame and infamy", reaching more than three hours in runtime. This was opposed by the studio and the film was edited repeatedly.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford had its world premiere at the 64th Venice International Film Festival on September 2, 2007, and was theatrically released in the United States on September 21, 2007, by Warner Bros. Pictures. The film received positive reviews from critics, who particularly praised Pitt and Affleck's performances and Roger Deakins' cinematography, but was a box-office bomb. At the 80th Academy Awards, it earned two nominations: Best ing Actor for Affleck and Best Cinematography for Deakins. Affleck was also nominated for a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a Critics' Choice Award for Best ing Actor, while Pitt won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor.

It has since gained a large fan following, with many of them organizing re-releases of the film under the "Jesse James Revival" banner.

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/The_Assassination_of_Jesse_James_by_the_Coward_Robert_Ford

www.imdb.com/title/tt0443680/trivia

]]>
orinow
The Theory of Flight 4jv42 1998 - ★★★★ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/the-theory-of-flight/ letterboxd-review-809107661 Sat, 15 Feb 2025 03:04:26 +1300 2010-06-24 No The Theory of Flight 1998 4.0 76857 <![CDATA[

Podczas wykonywania prac społecznych Richard poznaje Jane. Oboje szybko się zaprzyjaźniają i razem zaczynają realizować swoje marzenia.fw

Richard (Kenneth Branagh) rezygnuje z kariery malarza, by oddać się swojej pasji, lataniu. Pewnego razu chce skoczyć na lotni z dachu budynku, w którym pracuje jego dziewczyna Julie (Holly Aird). Zdenerwowana partnerka porzuca go, zaś on sam zostaje skazany na 120 godzin prac społecznych. Władze wyznaczają go do opieki nad 25-letnią Jane Hatchard (Helena Bonham Carter), cierpiącą na rzadką chorobę, w wyniku której stopniowo traci kontrolę nad mięśniami. Oboje szybko się zaprzyjaźniają. Łączy ich pragnienie realizacji marzeń. On chce wznieść się w powietrze skonstruowaną przez siebie maszyną, natomiast ona pragnie poznać smak miłości fizycznej...Film został nagrodzony Kryształową Gwiazdą na Festiwalu Filmowym w Brukseli. fw

The Theory of Flight is a 1998 British comedy drama directed by Paul Greengrass from a screenplay written by Richard Hawkins. It stars Helena Bonham Carter and Kenneth Branagh.

It premiered at the 23rd Toronto International Film Festival on 11 September 1998. Bonham Carter plays a woman with motor neurone disease, and the film deals with the sexuality of people with disabilities.

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/The_Theory_of_Flight

Two miserable people find happiness together: a man dreaming of flying, and a woman dreaming of living. IMDb

A dreamer who aspires to human flight is assigned public service after one of his attempts off a public building. This leads him to meeting a young woman, who is dying of motor neuron disease. The strong-willed woman its her wish to be de-flowered before her death. The man, struggling to maintain his relationship with his girlfriend, declines, but offers to help pay for a gigolo to do the deed. The following events play off the inherent comedy and drama of the circumstances. IMDb


A story of unlikely love and friendship, The Theory of Flight takes a warm and witty look at a man and a woman brought together by the sheer power of fate. Academy Award® nominated actors Helena Bonham Carter and Kenneth Branagh star in this journey of the heart, based on a true story, that pairs a frustrated artist and a fiercely driven young woman who, together, find the strength to challenge the boundaries that imprison them - body and mind.

Richard (Branagh) is a troubled man whose dreams of taking flight have landed him on the wrong side of the law. In lieu of jail time, he is sentenced to community service. Thus it is that Richard meets Jane (Bonham Carter), a feisty woman with progressive Motor Neuron Disease, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's Disease or ALS, as her caretaker. Far from what he expects, Jane is a constant revelation. Unbowed by the devastating nature of her disease, Jane is at once witty, petulant, acerbically honest and tenaciously ionate.

Clearly a woman on a mission, Jane is determined to experience love and a mature sexual relationship before it is too late. When Jane enlists Richard's help in achieving this unusual goal, the result is a series of humorous and poignant escapades in which they each come to understand something about the pursuit of fulfillment on one's own . Equipped with a ferocious mental tenacity, Jane finds in Richard the strength to challenge the limits of her handicap and she, in turn, inspires Richard to find direction in his otherwise drifting existence.

www.filmaffinity.com/en/film848035.html

]]>
orinow
9½ Weeks k1j2s 1986 - ★★★★ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/9-weeks/ letterboxd-review-809096180 Sat, 15 Feb 2025 02:36:20 +1300 2009-10-31 No 9½ Weeks 1986 4.0 10068 <![CDATA[

Atrakcyjna rozwódka, Elizabeth, poznaje maklera, Johna, z którym wikła się w perwersyjny romans. fw

Elizabeth (Kim Basinger) jest rozwiedzioną trzydziestolatką. Pracuje w galerii sztuki w Nowym Jorku. Na zakupach spotyka przypadkiem przystojnego Johna (Mickey Rourke). Kolejne spotkanie aranżuje mężczyzna. Stopniowo wciąga on Elizabeth w coraz bardziej niebezpieczną grę erotycznych prowokacji i uzależnień. Budują perwersyjny związek - każde z nich szuka w partnerze odpowiedzi na własne pragnienia i fantazje. fw

Elizabeth jest rozwiedzioną trzydziestolatką. Pracuje w galerii sztuki w Nowym Jorku. Na zakupach spotyka przypadkiem przystojnego Johna. Kolejne spotkanie aranżuje mężczyzna. Stopniowo wciąga on Elizabeth w coraz bardziej niebezpieczną grę erotycznych prowokacji i uzależnień. Budują perwersyjny, sadomasochistyczny związek. Każde z nich szuka w partnerze odpowiedzi na własne pragnienia i fantazje, co początkowo potęguje namiętność pomiędzy nimi, lecz niszczy autentyczne uczucie.

www.wikiwand.com/pl/articles/9%C2%BD_tygodnia

Elizabeth, an attractive art dealer, enters into a relationship with John, an enigmatic Wall Street broker. After some ionate beginnings, the couple will embark, by his desire, in a series of increasingly strange erotic games that will confuse Elizabeth, as she loves him but is unaware of John's true feelings.

www.filmaffinity.com/en/film465672.html

A New York art gallery curator starts a torrid love affair with a suave stranger who keeps pushing her boundaries. IMDb

An erotic story about a woman, the assistant of an art gallery, who gets involved in an impersonal affair with a man. She barely knows about his life, only about the sex games they play, so the relationship begins to get complicated. IMDb

www.imdb.com/title/tt0091635/trivia

9½ Weeks is an American erotic romantic drama film from 1986, directed by Adrian Lyne, and starring Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke. Basinger stars as a NYC art gallery employee who has a brief yet intense affair with a mysterious Wall Street broker. The screenplay by Sarah Kernochan, Zalman King and Patricia Louisianna Knop is adapted from the 1978 memoir of the same name by Austrian-American author Ingeborg Day, under the pseudonym "Elizabeth McNeill".

The film was completed in 1984, but did not get released until February 1986. Considered too explicit by its American distributor Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the film was heavily edited for release in the United States, where it was a box office bomb, grossing $6.7 million on a $17 million budget. It also received mixed reviews at the time of its release. However, its soundtrack sold well and the film itself became a huge success internationally in its unedited version, particularly in Australia, Canada, , , and the United Kingdom, making $100 million worldwide.

--cult--
It has also acquired a large fanbase on video and DVD and has developed a cult following.

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/9%C2%BD_Weeks

]]>
orinow
Jacob's Ladder 673vn 1990 - ★★★★½ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/jacobs-ladder/ letterboxd-review-809088847 Sat, 15 Feb 2025 02:16:54 +1300 2009-10-20 No Jacob's Ladder 1990 4.5 2291 <![CDATA[

body horror...

Weterana wojennego z Wietnamu dręczą niepokojące koszmary nocne i narasta w nim poczucie bycia szpiegowanym. fw

Jakub Singer (Tim Robbins) walczy z dręczącymi go koszmarnymi wspomnieniami z wojny w Wietnamie. Z dnia na dzień czuje się coraz gorzej, dookoła siebie widzi demony. Gdy spotyka przyjaciół z batalionu, dowiaduje się, że ci również doświadczają tego rodzaju wizji. Mężczyźni przypuszczają, że przyczyna zbiorowej halucynacji tkwi w wydarzeniu, które miało miejsce w Wietnamie w delcie Mekongu. Podejrzewając wojsko o przeprowadzanie tajnych eksperymentów, byli żołnierze postanawiają dochodzić prawdy w sądzie... fw

Jacob's Ladder is a 1990 American psychological horror film directed by Adrian Lyne, produced by Alan Marshall and written by Bruce Joel Rubin. It stars Tim Robbins as Jacob Singer, an American infantryman whose experiences during his military service in Vietnam result in strange, fragmentary visions and bizarre hallucinations that continue to haunt him. As his ordeal worsens, Jacob desperately attempts to learn the truth. The ing cast includes Elizabeth Peña and Danny Aiello.

Jacob's Ladder was made by Carolco Pictures ten years after being written by Rubin. Despite only being moderately successful upon its release, the film garnered a cult following, and its plot and special effects became a source of influence for various other works, such as the Silent Hill video game series. A remake was released in 2019.

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Jacob%27s_Ladder_(1990_film)

www.wikiwand.com/pl/articles/Drabina_Jakubowa_(film)

Mourning his dead son, a haunted Vietnam War veteran attempts to uncover his past while suffering from a severe case of dissociation. To do so, he must decipher reality and life from his own dreams, delusions, and perceptions of death. IMDb

Jacob Singer is trying to make sense of his fractured life and memories. Plagued by hallucinations, flashbacks, and conspiracies, he struggles down a path to enlightenment from these manic strains. With nothing but from friends and loved ones will he be able to push through the haze of his PTSD. IMDb

www.imdb.com/title/tt0099871/trivia

]]>
orinow
Indecent Proposal 1j3b2k 1993 - ★★★½ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/indecent-proposal/ letterboxd-review-809080385 Sat, 15 Feb 2025 02:00:18 +1300 2009-10-25 No Indecent Proposal 1993 3.5 4478 <![CDATA[

Ekscentryczny miliarder proponuje Davidowi milion dolarów za jedną noc z jego żoną. fw

Diana (Demi Moore) i David (Woody Harrelson) są bardzo szczęśliwym i młodym małżeństwem. Jednak mają pewien problem, brakuje im pieniędzy i grozi im eksmisja. Dlatego też postanawiają jechać do Las Vegas i wygrać trochę pieniędzy. Jednak Diana wpada w oko pewnemu miliarderowi (Robert Redford), który składa jej niemoralną propozycję, ma z nim spędzić jedną noc. Diana jest w potrzasku. Z jednej strony chce zasilić budżet, ale nie chce zdradzać Davida i choć jej mąż mówi, że się zgadza to ona nie jest pewna. Co postanowi Diana? Czy zgodzi się na tą ,,niemoralną propozycję", a jeśli tak to czy ich małżeństwo będzie wyglądać tak samo? fw

A billionaire offers $1,000,000 to a young married couple for one night with the wife. IMDb

A happily-married young couple, David Murphy and Diana Murphy have started their respective careers, she as a real estate broker, he as an architect. She finds the perfect spot to build his dream house, and they get loans to finance it. When the recession hits, they stand to lose everything they own, so they go to Las Vegas to have one shot with their last $5000 at winning the money they need. After losing at the tables, they are approached by a suave billionaire and high-stakes gambler, John Gage, who offers them a million dollars for a night with Diana. Indignant but already seduced, Diana and David reluctantly agree. They say money can't buy love. Though the couple agrees that this is a way out of their financial dilemma, it threatens to destroy their relationship. Can the husband and wife survive John's ultimate test? IMDb

Indecent Proposal is a 1993 American erotic drama film directed by Adrian Lyne and written by Amy Holden Jones. It is based on the 1988 novel by Jack Engelhard, in which a couple's marriage is disrupted by a stranger's offer of a million dollars for the wife to spend the night with him. It stars Robert Redford, Demi Moore, and Woody Harrelson.

The film received a mostly negative response from critics for the contrivances and implausibilities of its story. It also sparked controversy, with feminists arguing the film's premise promotes prostitution and the treatment of women as property. Despite this, the film was a box office success and grossed nearly $267 million worldwide on a $38 million budget, becoming the sixth highest-grossing film of 1993.

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Indecent_Proposal

]]>
orinow
Blood Diamond 1f2m39 2006 - ★★★★ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/blood-diamond/ letterboxd-review-808338576 Fri, 14 Feb 2025 04:49:26 +1300 2010-09-27 No Blood Diamond 2006 4.0 1372 <![CDATA[

Przemytnik z RPA i rybak z ludu Mende wyruszają na poszukiwanie różowego diamentu, który mógłby zmienić ich życie. Tłem akcji jest wojna domowa w Sierra Leone w latach 90. XX wieku. fw

"Krwawy diament" to historia przemytnika z RPA Danny'ego Archera i Solomona Vandy'ego, rybaka z ludu Mende. Chociaż obydwaj mężczyźni pochodzą z Afryki, ich życiorysy były dotychczas zupełnie ze sobą niezwiązane - aż do chwili, gdy wspólnie postanowili wyruszyć na poszukiwanie rzadkiego różowego diamentu, który mógłby zmienić życie każdego z nich. Odsiadując wyrok za przemyt, Archer dowiaduje się, że Solomon - który został odebrany rodzinie i zmuszony do pracy na polach diamentowych - znalazł i ukrył niezwykły kamień. Z pomocą Maddy Bowen, amerykańskiej dziennikarki, której idealistyczne przekonania stają się coraz mniej radykalne w miarę pogłębiania się romansu z Archerem, obydwaj bohaterowie ruszają na wyprawę przez tereny ogarnięte rebelią. To podróż, która może uratować rodzinę Solomona, a Archerowi dać drugą szansę, na którą, jak mu się zdawało, nie mógł już liczyć. fw

Blood Diamond is a 2006 American political war thriller film directed and co-produced by Edward Zwick and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly, and Djimon Hounsou. The title refers to blood diamonds, which are diamonds mined in war zones and sold to finance conflicts, and thereby profit warlords and diamond companies around the world.

Set during the Sierra Leone Civil War of 1991–2002, the film depicts a country torn apart by the struggle between government loyalists and insurgent forces. It also portrays many of the atrocities of that war, including the rebels' amputation of civilians' hands to discourage them from voting in elections.

The film's ending, in which a conference is held concerning blood diamonds, refers to a historic meeting that took place in Kimberley, South Africa, in 2000. It led to development of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, which sought to certify the origin of rough diamonds in order to curb the trade in conflict diamonds; the certification scheme has since been mostly abandoned as ineffective.

The film received positive reviews, with praise directed toward the performances of DiCaprio and Hounsou. The film grossed $171 million worldwide and received five Oscar nominations, including Best Actor for DiCaprio and Best ing Actor for Hounsou. DiCaprio received a nomination for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama (also nominated that year in the same category for The Departed). In addition, DiCaprio and Hounsou were nominated for Outstanding Male Actor in a Leading Role and Outstanding Male Actor in a ing Role at the 13th Screen Actors Guild Awards.

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Blood_Diamond

www.wikiwand.com/pl/articles/Krwawy_diament

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Sierra_Leone_Civil_War

A fisherman, a smuggler, and a syndicate of businessmen match wits over the possession of a priceless diamond. IMDb

A story following Archer, a man tortured by his roots. With a strong survival instinct, he has made himself a key player in the business of conflict diamonds. Political unrest is rampant in Sierra Leone as people fight tooth for tooth. Upon meeting Solomon, and the beautiful Maddy, Archer's life changes forever as he is given a chance to make peace with the war around him. IMDb

]]>
orinow
The Last Samurai o332o 2003 - ★★★½ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/the-last-samurai/ letterboxd-review-808335173 Fri, 14 Feb 2025 04:42:06 +1300 2010-03-20 No The Last Samurai 2003 3.5 616 <![CDATA[

Kapitan Nathan Algren w niewoli u samurajów poznaje ich zwyczaje i znajduje spokój, którego od dawna szukał po wojnach z Indianami. fw

Film opowiada o tym, jak żołnierz-weteran Wojny Secesyjnej, Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise), pod koniec 1876 roku przypływa do Japonii, aby szkolić żołnierzy imperatora Meiji. Ma to być przełamanie wiekowej tradycji, w której ochroną terytoriów zajmowali się wynajęci do tego wojownicy - samurajowie. Wojsko ma być narzędziem do uzyskania przewagi cesarza nad władcami lokalnych prowincji, którzy są niechętni wszelkim zmianom, a zwłaszcza idei zjednoczenia kraju. Zupełnie nieoczekiwanie dla samego siebie, Algren wplątuje się w konflikt zbrojny owych przywódców z cesarzem. W trakcie jednej z potyczek Amerykanin zostaje ranny i pojmany przez wojowników. Podczas tego uwięzienia poznaje odwieczny kodeks honorowy samurajów i ich lidera imieniem Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe). To wydarzenie zmienia jego poglądy i sprawia, że od tej pory wie on już po czyjej stronie konfliktu ma stanąć. fw

--1st--
- First film released on HD DVD...

Ostatni samuraj (ang. The Last Samurai) – amerykański film kostiumowy z 2003 r. w reżyserii Edwarda Zwicka z Tomem Cruise’em w roli głównej.

Fabuła filmu została oparta na wydarzeniach związanych z Buntem Satsumy w 1877 roku, na czele którego stał Takamori Saigō (1828–1877), oraz rosnącymi wpływami zachodnich mocarstw w okresie restauracji Meiji.

www.wikiwand.com/pl/articles/Ostatni_samuraj

The Last Samurai is a 2003 American epic period action drama film directed and produced by Edward Zwick, who also co-wrote the screenplay with John Logan and Marshall Herskovitz from a story devised by Logan. The film stars Tom Cruise, who also produced, along with Timothy Spall, Ken Watanabe, Billy Connolly, Tony Goldwyn, Hiroyuki Sanada, and Koyuki Kato in ing roles. The film's plot was inspired by the 1877 Satsuma Rebellion, led by Saigō Takamori, and the Westernization of Japan by foreign powers.

Cruise portrays Nathan Algren, an American captain of the 7th Cavalry Regiment, whose personal and emotional conflicts bring him into with samurai warriors in the wake of the Meiji Restoration in 19th century Japan. The character of Algren is very loosely based on Eugène Collache and Jules Brunet, both French Imperial Guard officers who fought alongside Enomoto Takeaki in the earlier Boshin War.

The Last Samurai grossed a total of $456 million at the box office and became the sixth-highest-grossing film of 2003. It received praise for the acting, visuals, cinematography and Hans Zimmer's score but criticism for some of its portrayals. It was nominated for several awards, including four Academy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and two National Board of Review Awards.

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/The_Last_Samurai

Bunt Satsumy (jap. 西南戦争 seinan-sensō; „wojna na południowym zachodzie”) – ostatnia i najpoważniejsza rewolta byłych samurajów z prowincji Satsuma, reprezentujących upadający system feudalny (bakuhan-taisei, „system siogunatu i domen”), przeciwko nowemu rządowi cesarza Meiji. Bunt trwał od 29 stycznia do 24 września 1877 r. na Kiusiu (Kyūshū). Przywódcą był Takamori Saigō (1828–1877).

www.wikiwand.com/pl/articles/Bunt_Satsumy

In 19th century Japan, Nathan Algren, a US army captain, is hired by the Japanese emperor to train his army in the modern warfare techniques. Captain Algren finds himself trapped in a struggle between two eras and two worlds. IMDb

In the 1870s, Captain Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise), a cynical veteran of the American Civil War, who will work for anyone, is hired by Americans who want lucrative contracts with the Emperor of Japan to train the peasant conscripts for the first standing Imperial Army in modern warfare using firearms. The Imperial Omura (Masato Harada) cabinet's first priority is to repress a rebellion of traditionalist Samurai, hereditary warriors, who remain devoted to the sacred dynasty, but reject the Westernizing policy, and even refuse firearms. Yet, when his ill-prepared superior force sets out too soon, their panic allows the sword-wielding samurai to crush them. Badly wounded, Algren's courageous stand makes the samurai leader Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe) spare his life. Once nursed to health, he learns to know and respect the old Japanese way, and participates as advisor in Katsumoto's failed attempt to save the Bushido tradition, but Omura gets repressive laws enacted. He must now choose to honor his loyalty to one of the embittered sides when the conflict returns to the battlefield. IMDb

--1st--
- This not only marks the first time Ken Watanabe starred in an American-made movie, but it is the first time he spoke English in a movie.

www.imdb.com/title/tt0325710/trivia

]]>
orinow
Legends of the Fall 6b3k2e 1994 - ★★★½ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/legends-of-the-fall/ letterboxd-review-808329936 Fri, 14 Feb 2025 04:31:17 +1300 2009-11-16 No Legends of the Fall 1994 3.5 4476 <![CDATA[

Samuel, najmłodszy syn pułkownika William Ludlowa, wraca ze studiów wraz z piękną narzeczoną, która oczarowuje pozostałych braci. Wkrótce wybucha I wojna światowa. fw

Pułkownik William Ludlow (Anthony Hopkins) żyje na rancho na zapomnianej przez ludzi ziemi u podnóża Gór Montana, gdzie wychowuje swych trzech synów z dala od okrutnych i krwawych wojen z Indianami. Alfred (Aidan Quinn) najstarszy z nich, jest odpowiedzialny i pełen dystansu; Samuel (Henry Thomas) ukochany beniaminek jest wrażliwym idealistą, a średni - Tristan (Brad Pitt) to duch niespokojny i nieposkromiony. W tym męskim świecie pojawia się Susannah Finncannon (Julia Ormond), kobieta piękna i inteligentna, która rozpalając w braciach pożądanie i ducha rywalizacji, zmienia na zawsze ich życiowe losy.fw

Legends of the Fall is a 1994 American epic historical Western drama film directed by Edward Zwick, and starring Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins, Aidan Quinn, Julia Ormond and Henry Thomas. Based on the 1979 novella of the same title by Jim Harrison, the film is about three brothers and their father living in the wilderness and plains of Montana in the early 20th century and how their lives are affected by nature, history, war, and love. The film's timeframe spans nearly 50 years from the early 20th century; World War I, through the Prohibition era, and ending with a brief scene set in 1963. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards and won for Best Cinematography (John Toll). Both the film and book contain occasional Cornish language , the Ludlows being a Cornish immigrant family.

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Legends_of_the_Fall

In the early 1900s, three brothers and their father living in the remote wilderness of Montana are affected by betrayal, history, love, nature, and war. IMDb

In early twentieth century Montana, Colonel William Ludlow (Sir Anthony Hopkins) lives in the wilderness with his sons, Tristan (Brad Pitt), Alfred (Aidan Quinn), and Samuel (Henry Thomas). Eventually, the unconventional, but close-knit, family encounters tragedy when Samuel is killed in World War I. Tristan and Alfred survive their tours of duty, but, soon after they return home, both men fall for Samuel's gorgeous fiancée, Susannah (Julia Ormond), and their intense rivalry begins to destroy the family. IMDb

www.imdb.com/title/tt0110322/trivia/

]]>
orinow
WarGames 6t6f67 1983 - ★★★★ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/wargames/ letterboxd-review-808321560 Fri, 14 Feb 2025 04:13:03 +1300 2012-10-07 No WarGames 1983 4.0 860 <![CDATA[

Poszukując nowych gier, młody haker nieświadomie włamuje się do wojskowego systemu operacyjnego. Przez przypadek uruchamia program, który stawia armię USA w stan najwyższej gotowości bojowej. fw

Pasją Davida (Matthew Broderick), ucznia jednej z amerykańskich szkół, są komputery. Jest on na tyle zaznajomiony z nowymi technologiami, iż bez problemu potrafi włamać się do szkolnego systemu informatycznego i poprawić sobie oceny. Jednak największym zainteresowaniem darzy on komputerowe gry wojenne. W poszukiwaniu nowych gier zupełnie przypadkowo podłącza się do komputera Pentagonu, który w początkowej fazie projektów służył jako symulator globalnej wojny atomowej. Wkrótce okazuje się, że gra z komputerem staje się rzeczywistością. Jak w takiej sytuacji przekonać główny komputer odpowiedzialny za obronę kraju, żeby odróżnił grę od rzeczywistości? fw

WarGames is a 1983 American techno-thriller film directed by John Badham, written by Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes, and starring Matthew Broderick, Dabney Coleman, John Wood and Ally Sheedy. Broderick plays David Lightman, a young computer hacker who unwittingly accesses a United States military supercomputer programmed to simulate, predict and execute nuclear war against the Soviet Union, triggering a false alarm that threatens to start World War III.

The film premiered at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival, and was released by MGM/UA Entertainment on June 3, 1983. It was a widespread critical and commercial success, grossing $125 million worldwide against a $12 million budget. At the 56th Academy Awards, the film was nominated for three Oscars, including Best Original Screenplay. It also won a BAFTA Award for Best Sound.

WarGames is credited with popularizing concepts of computer hacking, information technology, and cybersecurity in wider American society. It spawned several video games, a 2008 sequel film, and a 2018 interactive series.

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/WarGames

David Lightman is a young hacker, a computer expert capable of bying the most advanced security systems and deciphering the most hermetic secret codes. One day he accidentally connects his computer to that of the US Department of Defense, in charge of the nuclear defense system. Thinking that what he has found are new computer games, David plays checkers, chess and other more intriguing games such as Global Thermonuclear War with the supercomputer. Thus, unwittingly, David triggers a dangerous situation that is difficult to control. With the help of his girlfriend and another computer scientist, he will try, in a race against the clock, to avoid World War III.

www.filmaffinity.com/en/film553168.html

A young man finds a back door into a military central computer in which reality is confused with game-playing, possibly starting World War III.IMDb

A young computer whiz kid accidentally connects into a top secret super-computer which has complete control over the U.S. nuclear arsenal. It challenges him to a game between America and Russia, and he innocently starts the countdown to World War 3. Can he convince the computer he wanted to play a game and not the real thing? IMDb

- The studio had the Galaxian (1979) and Galaga (1981) arcade machines delivered to Matthew Broderick's home. He practiced for two months to prepare for the arcade scene.

- Hacking wasn't actually illegal when this movie came out. That didn't happen until the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 and further expanded by the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986.

- A video game version of this movie was made in 1984 for the ColecoVision, Commodore 64 and Atari 8-Bit Computer. The game started out greeting you as Professor Falken and you would play a game of Global Thermonuclear War. Your objective was to stop nuclear war from occurring by protecting the country with various military vehicles and weapons in a set time limit without reaching Defcon 1.

- The film is still a favorite in Silicon Valley. Google held a 25th anniversary screening in 2008. trivia

www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/trivia

www.wikiwand.com/pl/articles/Gry_wojenne_(film_1983)

]]>
orinow
Blue Thunder g6t5s 1983 - ★★★½ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/blue-thunder/ letterboxd-review-808315062 Fri, 14 Feb 2025 03:58:23 +1300 2009-10-20 No Blue Thunder 1983 3.5 6341 <![CDATA[

Oficer policji, desygnowany do przetestowania prototypu nowoczesnego śmigłowca, trafia na spisek mogący zakłócić bezpieczeństwo publiczne. fw

"Błękitny Grom" to nazwa zmodyfikowanego i najeżonego elektroniką helikoptera, zaprojektowanego do pomocy dla policji z Los Angeles. Do oblatywania dostaje go policjant Frank Murphy. Jednak pomiędzy nim a pułkownikiem Cochranem narasta konflikt zapoczątkowany jeszcze w Wietnamie, do tego dochodzą jeszcze przekupni gliniarze, handel bronią i śmierć przyjaciela. fw

The cop test pilot for an experimental police helicopter learns the sinister implications of the new vehicle. IMDb

Blue Thunder is a specially modified helicopter. It is for police work, but is armed and designed to counter street insurgencies. Its makers want to show what it will do, but have to train Los Angeles Police pilot Frank Murphy to fly and use it in order to allow it to operate in the city. Murphy and the project pilot have differences going back to Vietnam. The conflict between them continues to heat up as Murphy begins to suspect that Blue Thunder is more than has been disclosed. IMDb

www.imdb.com/title/tt0085255/trivia

The Blue Thunder helicopter itself did exist as two copies of modified French Aérospatiale Gazelles.

A spin-off television series, also called Blue Thunder, ran for 11 episodes in 1984.

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Blue_Thunder

www.wikiwand.com/pl/articles/B%C5%82%C4%99kitny_grom

]]>
orinow
Dracula 5a1d5p 1979 - ★★★★ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/dracula-1979/ letterboxd-review-808311656 Fri, 14 Feb 2025 03:50:45 +1300 2011-05-15 No Dracula 1979 4.0 33521 <![CDATA[

Hrabia Drakula przybywa do angielskiego Whitby, gdzie obejmuje w posiadanie zaniedbany zamek. Wkrótce umiera jedna z mieszkanek miasteczka. fw

In 1913, the charming, seductive and sinister vampire Count Dracula travels to England in search of an immortal bride. IMDb

When a ship is wrecked off Whitby, the only survivor, Count Dracula, is discovered lying on the beach by the sickly young Mina Van Helsing, who is visiting her dear friend Lucy Seward. Lucy, her fiancé Jonathan Harker (a solicitor), and her father Dr. Jack Seward (who manages the local asylum) attempt to make the Count feel welcome to England. The Count quickly takes the life of Mina, and proceeds to romance Lucy, with the intention of making her his greatest bride. Soon after the death of Mina, the Sewards call her father Dr. Abraham Van Helsing to come to their home. As Lucy falls deeper under the spell of the Count, Dr. Van Helsing almost immediately comes to understand that his daughter fell prey to a vampire and discovers the culprit to be none other than the Count himself. Dr. Van Helsing, Dr. Seward, and Harker work together to foil the Count's plans to take Lucy away to his native Transylvania. IMDb

www.imdb.com/title/tt0079073/trivia/

Dracula – horror z 1979 roku, będący adatacją powieści „Drakula” Brama Stokera oraz sztuki teatralnej Hamiltona Deane’a i Johna Balderstone’a. Film był nominowany do nagrody Saturn w kilku kategoriach.

Treść

Akcja filmu, w odróżnieniu od innych ekranizacji powieści Brama Stokera toczy się wyłącznie w angielskim hrabstwie Whitby. U wybrzeży tego hrabstwa rozbija się statek. Jedynym ocalałym jest tajemniczy hrabia Dracula, który przybył tu w interesach z Transylwanii. Zaprzyjaźnia się z doktorem Sewardem oraz jego rodziną. Wkrótce jednak znajoma doktora – Mina umiera nieoczekiwanie z upływu krwi. To dopiero początek tajemniczych zgonów...

www.wikiwand.com/pl/articles/Dracula_(film_1979)

Dracula is a 1979 gothic horror film directed by John Badham. The film starred Frank Langella in the title role as well as Laurence Olivier, Donald Pleasence and Kate Nelligan.

The film was based on Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula and its 1924 stage adaptation, though much of Stoker's original plot was revised to make the film more romantic, as d by the tagline "A Love Story". The film received mostly positive reviews and was a moderate box office success. It won the 1979 Saturn Award for Best Horror Film.

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Dracula_(1979_film)

Statek rozbija się u wybrzeży Whitby. Jedynym ocalałym jest tajemniczy hrabia Drakula (Frank Langella), który przybył z Transylwanii z zamiarem kupna rezydencji w Carfax Abbey. Zaprzyjaźnia się z doktorem Sewardem (Donald Pleasence), bardzo szanowanym mieszkańcem, jego córką Lucy (Kate Nelligan) i jej narzeczonym Jonathanem Harkerem (Trevor Eve), a także ich znajomą Miną (Jan Francis)Trevor Eve. W tym samym czasie, w wyniku dużej utraty krwi, ginie Mina i prawdopodobnie nie jest to zbieg okoliczności. fw


Nosferatu (1922)
letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/nosferatu/

]]>
orinow
After the Rain 4176l 1999 - ★★★★½ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/after-the-rain/ letterboxd-review-808305836 Fri, 14 Feb 2025 03:37:23 +1300 2011-06-18 No After the Rain 1999 4.5 15319 <![CDATA[

Rōnin ze swoją żoną zostają uwięzieni w gospodzie podczas ulewy. fw

Akcja filmu rozgrywa się w erze Kyoko (1716-1735), podczas której kraj leczy rany po ekstrawaganckich ekscesach poprzedniej ery Genroku. Misawa Ihei (Akira Terao) jest bezrobotnym samurajem, biegłym w sztukach walki, lecz nie radzącym sobie z osobami stojącymi wyżej na drabinie społeczeństwa feudalnego. Podczas podróży zmuszony jest wraz z żoną Tayo (Yoshiko Miyazaki) zatrzymać się w skromnej gospodzie nad rzeką, w której przebywają drobni handlarze, czekający na możliwość kontynuowania podróży . Nie mogąc znieść ich kłótni o najdrobniejsze sprawy, Ihei codziennie opuszcza gospodę i wbrew prośbom żony pojedynkuje się za pieniądze. Za wygrana w walkach kupuje sake i żywność, która następnie rozdaje. Jego żona w tym czasie szyje kimona.

"Gdy poznasz tę historię, wprawi cię w pogodny nastrój" - brzmi jeden z zapisków Akiry Kurosawy dołączonych do scenariusza. fw

Czasy Wojny Cywilnej i pełna ekstrawagancji Era Genoroku minęły. Zmęczona niarem powierzchowności ludzkość wchodzi w nową erę, z nadzieją powrotu do starych wartości. Pada deszcz. Grupa podróżników, nie mogąc przebyć wezbranej rzeki, zebrała się w małej wiejskiej oberży. Jest wśród nich ronin - Ihei Misawa - samuraj nie mający pana, który świetnie opanował sztukę walki. Towarzyszy mu żona. Sensem jej życia jest miłość do męża. On natomiast żyje by nieść pomoc bliźnim. Deszcz wciąż pada. Między podróżnymi narasta napięcie. Ihei postanawia stanąć do walki z mistrzami lokalnych szkół tego rzemiosła, w zamian za zapłatę i pożywienie. Za zarobione pieniądze zaprasza wszystkich podróżnych z oberży na przyjęcie. W końcu deszcz ustaje. Ihei stara się nie dopuścić do pojedynku między dwoma młodymi samurajami. Shigeaki, pan tych ziem jest pod wrażeniem umiejętności Iheja. Zaprasza go do siebie i proponuje posadę mistrza walk na swych ziemiach lennych.

Ihei, który nie miał dotąd szczęścia do pracodawców, nie wierzy własnemu szczęściu. Jednak inni mistrzowie sztuki walecznej w służbie Shigeakiego uważają, że jest oszustem i że posada należy się jednemu z nich. W czasie lekcji walki, zorganizowanej przez Shigeakiego, odbywającej się na oczach całego dworu, Ihei pokazuje swój kunszt, lecz przypadkiem uderza mistrza, który czuje się głęboko dotknięty. Dowiedziawszy się, że Ihei walczy za pieniądze, doradcy Shigeakiego zawiadamiają Ihei, iż nie może ubiegać się o tę posadę ponieważ wiedzą o tym, że walczy za pieniądze Tayo buntuje się. Broni męża tłumacząc, że robi to by pomóc ludziom będącym w potrzebie. W rezultacie małżeństwo decyduje się ruszyć w dalszą drogę. Shigeaki, który domyśla się powodu odejścia Iheja, stara się go dogonić...

www.sfp.org.pl/film,8046,1,Po-deszczu.html

During a downpour, a generous ronin and his ing wife are stranded at a country inn. The ronin comes to the attention of a lord who wants to hire him as an instructor for his men, who treat the ronin with disrespect. IMDb


Ame agaru (jap. 雨あがる; Po deszczu) – japońsko-francuski film, który powstał na podstawie opowiadania Shūgorō Yamamoto (1903–1967). Zdjęcia kręcono w prefekturze Shiga. Na ekrany kin wszedł w roku 1999, polska premiera odbyła się 27 października 2000 roku.

Akira Kurosawa jest autorem scenariusza do tego filmu, miał zamiar również go wyreżyserować. Był już gotowy scenopis, dekoracje i kostiumy, ale jego niespodziewana śmierć (6 września 1998 r.) wstrzymała prace nad filmem. Dzieło dokończył wieloletni asystent reżysera Takashi Koizumi. Starał się on dochować wierności cechom twórczości swojego mistrza. Zdecydował się zrezygnować z ekspresyjnego sposobu opowiadania na rzecz spokojnej i klarownej narracji. Gotowy film został zadedykowany pamięci Kurosawy, o czym informuje otwierająca go sekwencja czarno-białych zdjęć starego mistrza.

Dzieło łączy duchowość zen z mentalnością Zachodu.

www.wikiwand.com/pl/articles/Po_deszczu

After the Rain (雨あがる, Ame agaru) is a 1999 Japanese and French film. The story is based on the last script written by Akira Kurosawa and is directed by his former assistant director of 28 years, Takashi Koizumi. It was awarded a Japanese Academy Award in 1999. It was chosen as Best Film at the Japan Academy Prize ceremony. It was Japan's official submission for Best Foreign Language Film at the 73rd Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/After_the_Rain_(film)

www.imdb.com/title/tt0181960/trivia

]]>
orinow
Raising Arizona 4r6y1z 1987 - ★★★★ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/raising-arizona/ letterboxd-review-807639115 Thu, 13 Feb 2025 08:06:44 +1300 2025-02-06 No Raising Arizona 1987 4.0 378 <![CDATA[

słodko-gorzka satyra ns smutną niemożność mimo płomiennej chęci, w świecie gdzie bogatemu obradzają pięcioraczki a biedny nie tylko jest podejrzany ale i bezpłodny, ustosunkowanie motorem szans...

[słodko-gorzka satyra ns smutną niemożność mimo płomiennej chęci, w świecie gdzie ustosunkowanie jest motorem szans... fw]

eg. stereotypizujące dowcipy o Polakach ("Wchodzi Polak do baru, w rękach trzyma gówno i mówi - patrzcie, w co omal nie wdepnąłem")

Recydywista H.I. McDonnough i policjantka Edwina pobierają się. Po ślubie okazuje się, że Edwina nie może mieć dzieci. Para decyduje się porwać jednego z pięcioraczków szacownego obywatela stanu Arizona. McDonnough'owie próbują utrzymać przestępstwo w sekrecie, podczas gdy prawowity ojciec usiłuje odzyskać potomka, a H.I. ma problemy z kumplami z więzienia. fw

H.I. (Nicolas Cage) and Edwina (Holly Hunter) met and fell in love when she took his mug shots, every time he was arrested for a convenience store robbery. That kind of life is all behind H.I. now, since he married Edwina and they want to raise a family. But when they find they can't have kids, Edwina convinces H.I. to kidnap one of a set of quintuplets -- his real mother will never miss him, she figures, and five babies are just too much for one person to handle.

www.filmaffinity.com/en/film535744.html

Raising Arizona is a 1987 American crime comedy film written, directed and produced by Joel and Ethan Coen. It stars Nicolas Cage as H.I. "Hi" McDunnough, an ex-convict, and Holly Hunter as Edwina "Ed" McDunnough, a former police officer and his wife. Other of the cast include Trey Wilson, William Forsythe, John Goodman, s McDormand, Sam McMurray, and Randall "Tex" Cobb.

The Coen brothers set out to work on the film with the intention of making a film as different from their previous film, the dark thriller Blood Simple, as possible, with a lighter sense of humor and a faster pace. Raising Arizona received mixed reviews at the time of its release. Some criticized it as too self-conscious, manneristic, and unclear as to whether it was fantasy or realism. Other critics praised the film for its originality.

The film ranks 31st on the American Film Institute's 100 Years...100 Laughs list, and 45th on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies" list. Raising Arizona was released in the United States on March 13, 1987.

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Raising_Arizona

When a childless couple--an ex-con and an ex-cop--decide to help themselves to one of another family's quintuplets, their lives become more complicated than they anticipated. IMDb

Recidivist hold-up man H.I. McDonnough and policewoman Edwina marry, and then discover that they are unable to conceive a child. Desperate for a baby, the pair decide to kidnap one of the quintuplets of furniture tycoon Nathan Arizona. The McDunnoughs try to keep their crime secret, while friends, co-workers, and a feral bounty hunter look to use Nathan Jr. for their own purposes. IMDb

- The Coen brothers wrote Holly Hunter's character specifically for her.

[...]

www.imdb.com/title/tt0093822/trivia

]]>
orinow
Miracle Mile r305g 1988 - ★★★★½ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/miracle-mile/ letterboxd-review-807010286 Thu, 13 Feb 2025 08:49:12 +1300 2025-02-11 No Miracle Mile 1988 4.5 24739 <![CDATA[

... a jeśli to tylko plotka, albo - nie jesteśmy już ludźmi... beznadzieja ucieczka przed fatum wrogo przekroczonej masy krytycznej, i wszystkie obrazki odwołanej cywilizacji, rzadko spotkana rozpiętość tonalna, film niemal w czasie rzeczywistym...

Młody mężczyzna dowiaduje się, że za siedemdziesiąt minut jego miasto zostanie zniszczone przez pociski nuklearne. fw

A young man hears a chance phone call telling him that a nuclear war has started and missiles will hit the city within 70 minutes. IMDb

A young man meets and falls in love with a young woman at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. This area is known as Miracle Mile, and the whole movie takes place there. They make a date, which he misses, and while he is searching for her, he accidentally finds out that we (the United States) are about to start a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. He frantically searches for her so that they can escape Los Angeles. IMDb

- It took Steve De Jarnatt eight years to get this movie made.

--1st--
- The first American film shot by cinematographer Theo van de Sande.

- There are some loose connections with the Terminator films:

The first of two movies with Earl Boen which end in nuclear war. The second would be Terminator 3: Bunt maszyn (2003).
This movie has a character named after Harlan Ellison, who is also given a writing credit for Elektroniczny morderca (1984) after he sued James Cameron for stealing his idea.
Brian Thompson appears in this film, and was one of the punks in the first Terminator movie
Jenette Goldstein appears in Terminator 2.
Earl Boen starred in the first three Terminator movies.


Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)
letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/terminator-3-rise-of-the-machines/


www.imdb.com/title/tt0097889/trivia/

Miracle Mile is a 1988 American apocalyptic thriller film written and directed by Steve De Jarnatt. The film stars Anthony Edwards and Mare Winningham. Its plot depicts the panic surrounding a supposed doomsday brought on by a sudden outbreak of war and its oncoming nuclear holocaust, taking place in a single day and mostly in real-time. The title is named after the Miracle Mile neighborhood of Los Angeles where most of the events take place.

Miracle Mile spent three years in production limbo until De Jarnatt optioned it himself, buying the script for $25,000. He rewrote it and the studio offered him $400,000 to buy it back. He turned them down. When he shopped it around to other studios, they balked at the mix of romance and nuclear war and the film's downbeat ending. At one point, it nearly became the script for the eventual separately made Twilight Zone: The Movie. Before Anthony Edwards was cast, production nearly began with both Nicolas Cage and Kurt Russell. Of the script, Edwards said, "It scared the hell out of me. It really made me angry too ... I just couldn't believe that somebody had written this." John Daly of Hemdale Films gave De Jarnatt $3.7 million to make the film.

Edwards later recalled:

That was a script that everybody wanted to make, but they wanted him to change the ending. It was this great adventure, but they wanted it to have a happy ending. But he stuck it out, and luckily he stuck it out long enough that I was old enough to play the part. [Laughs.] So I got to do it, and we did it at a time when there really was no green screen for special effects. You had to shoot what was there. It's amazing how dated that film looks now, because of our ability to do things technically now. I mean, it really looks antiquated. Mare Winningham is one of the greatest actresses ever. It was eight weeks of night shooting, though, so you'd be driving home from work at, like, 6 in the morning, having had a wrap beer, and then you're suddenly going, "Oh my God, what do people think of somebody having a beer at 6 in the morning whenever everyone else is on their way to work? [Laughs.]

The following locations in Los Angeles were used: Johnie's Coffee Shop; La Brea Tar Pits; Miracle Mile District; Pan-Pacific Auditorium in the Fairfax District.

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Miracle_Mile_(film)

]]>
orinow
Testament 3l344l 1983 - ★★★★ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/testament/ letterboxd-review-806185282 Tue, 11 Feb 2025 12:34:31 +1300 2025-02-10 No Testament 1983 4.0 21259 <![CDATA[

przelotny błysk ludzkiego złońca w samym środku nie dość uważnie konsumowanego szczęścia, początkiem zmian wszystkich rzeczy najważniejszych i tych zupełnie nieważnych... powolny nieuchronny rozpad wspólnoty, począwszy od intelektualnej i emocjonalnej, kończąc na materialnej...

Po wybuchu bomby atomowej życie mieszkańców niewielkiego miasteczka ulega diametralnej zmianie. fw

W pewnym amrykańskim miasteczku życie toczy się powoli i spokojnie. Mieszkańcy spacerują, mężczyźni koszą trawniki, dzieci grają w klasy na ulicy. Tom Wetherly uwielbia jeździć na rowerze. Pewnego dnia obywatele miasteczka widzą jednak na horyzonie coś co wygląda jak... grzyb atomowy. Powstaje panika, nie wiadomo, co się dzieje, TV milczy, radio podaje zdawkowe informacje. Tom nie wraca do domu... fw

The life of a suburban American family is scarred after a nuclear attack. IMDb

- Kevin Costner has said that he has never forgotten this film and the powerful influence it has had on him. Costner would later star during the 1990s in such post-apocalyptic movies as Wodny świat (1995) and Wysłannik przyszłości (1997).

--1st--
- Film debut of Lukas Haas.

[...]

www.imdb.com/title/tt0086429/trivia

Testament is a 1983 American post-apocalyptic drama film co-produced and directed by Lynne Littman and written by John Sacret Young, based on Carol Amen's 1981 short story "The Last Testament". The film tells the story of how a small suburban town near the San Francisco Bay Area slowly falls apart after a nuclear war destroys outside civilization. The cast includes Jane Alexander, William Devane, Leon Ames, Ross Harris, Lukas Haas, Roxana Zal and, in small roles shortly before their rise to stardom, Kevin Costner and Rebecca De Mornay. It was one of the films, along with The Day After and Threads that portrayed life after a nuclear war, mostly in response to an increase in hostility between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Originally produced for the PBS series American Playhouse, it was given a theatrical release instead by Paramount Pictures on November 4, 1983 (although PBS did subsequently air it a year later). Alexander was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance.

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Testament_(1983_film)

]]>
orinow
The Day After t3i 1983 - ★★★★ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/the-day-after/ letterboxd-review-805953369 Tue, 11 Feb 2025 08:27:29 +1300 2012-10-17 No The Day After 1983 4.0 7012 <![CDATA[

film w dialektycznej dykcji "walki o pokój"...

Wybucha konflikt nuklearny pomiędzy siłami NATO i Układu Warszawskiego. Jednymi z ofiar są mieszkańcy miejscowości położonej obok bazy rakietowej. fw

Połowa lat 80'. W Niemczech Wschodnich trwa kryzys, wojska Układu Warszawskiego blokują granice Berlina Zachodniego. Dochodzi do eskalacji konfliktu. Wojska UW najeżdżają Niemcy Zachodnie. Siły NATO, nie mogąc powstrzymać ich w sposób konwencjonalny, decydują się na użycie broni nuklearnej przeciwko oddziałom wroga; zaraz potem Sowieci zrzucają bombę atomową na regionalne dowództwo NATO. Następuje zmasowany atak atomowy z obu stron. Po wystrzeleniu kilkuset rakiet z głowicami atomowymi przez obie strony następuje zawieszenie broni. Jednak zniszczenia są przerażające. Miasta leżą w gruzach, z nieba spada pył radioaktywny, ocaleli ludzie masowo zapadają na chorobę popromienną i umierają. Nie działa elektryczność. brak jest łączności, szerzy się anarchia, dochodzi do samosądów. fw

The effects of a devastating nuclear holocaust on small-town residents of eastern Kansas. IMDb

The frightening story of the weeks leading up to and following a nuclear strike on the United States. The bulk of the activity centers around the town of Lawrence, Kansas. IMDb

www.imdb.com/title/tt0085404/trivia

The Day After is an American television film that first aired on November 20, 1983, on the ABC television network. The film postulates a fictional war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact over that rapidly escalates into a full-scale nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union. The action itself focuses on the residents of Lawrence, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri, and several family farms near American missile silos. The cast includes JoBeth Williams, Steve Guttenberg, John Cullum, Jason Robards, and John Lithgow. The film was written by Edward Hume, produced by Robert Papazian, and directed by Nicholas Meyer.

More than 100 million people, in nearly 39 million households, watched the film during its initial broadcast. With a 46 rating and a 62% share of the viewing audience during the initial broadcast, the film was the seventh-highest-rated non-sports show until then, and in a 2009 Nielsen TV Ratings list was one of the highest-rated television films in US history.

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/The_Day_After

]]>
orinow
When the Wind Blows 6c314w 1986 - ★★★★ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/when-the-wind-blows/ letterboxd-review-805266054 Mon, 10 Feb 2025 12:18:20 +1300 2025-02-09 No When the Wind Blows 1986 4.0 10857 <![CDATA[

głębokie przywiązanie do wolnego modelu życia i epickie wyparcie nuklearnej zimy jako dowód niezłomnego ruch oporu, interesujące zdjęcia kombinowane - animacja w live-action stopklatkach...

Animowany film science - fiction. Ironiczna, pełnometrażowa, animowana opowieść, przedstawiająca przygotowania angielskiej pary emerytów do nadchodzącej nuklearnej zagłady. Żyjący na prowincji staruszkowie mogą oprzeć się jedynie na własnych zatartych wspomnieniach z drugiej wojny światowej oraz rządowym podręczniku. Ich naiwna wiara w "nadchodzącą potęgę" i nierozumienie faktów powodują, że bohaterowie są nam bliscy, a film staje się ważnym i poruszającym ostrzeżeniem.

A naive elderly British rural couple survive the initial onslaught of a nuclear war. IMDb

- This movie was part of a cycle of movies about nuclear war and the risks of nuclear energy. Other movies included: Chiński syndrom (1979), Silkwood (1983), Testament (1983), Threads (1984), Gry wojenne (1983), Nazajutrz (1983), Atomowa kawiarnia (1982), Projekt Manhattan (1986), Bum! Koniec świata (1982), Special Bulletin (1983), Raport (1987), Boso przez Hiroszimę 1 (1983), Rules of Engagement (1989), Listy martwego człowieka (1986), Pamiętnik kobiety, która trwa (1981) and Reakcja łańcuchowa (1980).

- Just three years after this film was released in , the Berlin Wall came down quite peaceably, and only three weeks later the Cold War was over.

www.imdb.com/title/tt0090315/trivia

A old British couple, Jim and Hilda, who live in the countryside, believe in the fact that the Government will always know what it is doing. However the world is fast heading for the Third World War between the US and the Soviets. Jim prepares for it by building a shelter using Goverment pamphlets however both of them still believe that the war will be fought like the Second World War and they can't fully understand that the war will be fought with nuclear weapons. All too soon, war breaks out and Jim and Hilda survives a nuclear blast. They stand back and wait, they believe, for help from the Government and for things to get back to normal in a couple of days, little knowing that help isn't on its way, and that, unknown to them, Jim and Hilda are slowly dying from the "fallout" radition poisoning and they will probably not survive...

www.filmaffinity.com/en/film920396.html

When the Wind Blows is a 1986 British adult animated disaster film directed by Jimmy Murakami based on Raymond Briggs' graphic novel of the same name. The film stars the voices of John Mills and Peggy Ashcroft as the two main characters and was scored by Roger Waters. The film recounts a rural English couple's attempt to survive a nearby nuclear attack and maintain a sense of normality in the subsequent fallout and nuclear winter.

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/When_the_Wind_Blows_(1986_film)

]]>
orinow
Sound of Freedom 4v3w6c 2023 - ★★★★½ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/sound-of-freedom/ letterboxd-review-801182074 Thu, 6 Feb 2025 11:44:21 +1300 2025-02-03 No Sound of Freedom 2023 4.5 678512 <![CDATA[

powrót z piekła pedokanibali, bestii czyhających lubieżnie na własne przedłużenie... monumentalnie ponury koszmar braku nadziei wobec ostatecznej woli pożądliwej mocy... film oparty na wydarzeniach... półkownik 5 lat...

Honduras. 9-letnia Rocia (Cristal Aparicio) i jej młodszy brat Miguel (Lucás Ávila) zostają zauważeni przez lokalną miss piękności, która kusi ojca dzieci obietnicą zaistnienia w show biznesie oraz ogromnymi pieniędzmi. Kobieta zabiera je na casting pod pretekstem wykonania profesjonalnych zdjęć. Gdy rodzic po nie wraca, odkrywa, że pokój hotelowy jest pusty, a dzieci zniknęły bez śladu. Porwane rodzeństwo zostaje uwięzione wraz z innymi w kontenerze i wysłane statkiem do Kolumbii. Tymczasem agent z Departamentu Bezpieczeństwa - Timothy Ballard (Jim Caviezel) - całe dnie poświęca na wychwytywaniu pedofilów. Gdy w Internecie natrafia na ofertę sprzedaży dzieci - udaje mu się dorwać jednego z nich, dzięki któremu ratuje Miguela. Chłopiec opowiada mu swoją historię prosząc o odnalezienie jego siostry. Sfrustrowany i przekonany, że może zrobić coś więcej, niż tylko złapać kolejnego dewianta, Tim postanawia działać pod przykrywką. fw

--półkownik--
Jeden z największych filmowych fenomenów współczesnego kina! Zamrożony przez mainstreamowych dystrybutorów przeleżał na półce 5 lat. Wykupiony dzięki publicznej zbiórce i mobilizacji dziesiątek tysięcy widzów trafił z początkiem lipca do amerykańskich kin i wywrócił letni box office do góry nogami. Bez typowej dla Hollywood, idącej w miliony dolarów promocji, ale za to z rozchodzącą się wirusowo opinią, że to „film, który każdy powinien zobaczyć”, wspiął się na szczyt rankingów ocen i oglądalności.

Sound of Freedom. Dźwięk wolności to prawdziwa historia Tima Ballarda (w tej roli znany z Pasji Jim Caviezel), byłego agenta rządowego USA, który rezygnuje z pracy, aby poświęcić życie ratowaniu dzieci przed losem gorszym niż śmierć. Mimo tematyki twórcy nie szokują drastycznymi scenami, a ładunek emocjonalny przekazu budują w sposób subtelny, choć jednoznaczny. Być może to zadecydowało o tak znakomitych ocenach filmu wśród widzów i tak ogromnym ich zaangażowaniu w oddolną promocję dzieła. Obok Caviezela, w roli Katherine
Ballard, na ekranie widzimy zdobywczynię Oscara Mirę Sorvino (Jej wysokość Afrodyta), a także Billa Campa (Gambit Królowej, Joker, Lincoln) wcielającego się w postać „Vampiro” – głównego pomocnika Ballarda.

rafaelfilm.pl/sound-of-freedom/

The incredible true story of a former government agent turned vigilante who embarks on a dangerous mission to rescue hundreds of children from traffickers. IMDb

www.imdb.com/title/tt7599146/trivia

Sound of Freedom is a 2023 American Christian thriller film directed and co-written by Alejandro Monteverde, and starring Jim Caviezel, Mira Sorvino, and Bill Camp. Caviezel plays Tim Ballard, a former U.S. government agent who embarks on a mission to rescue children from sex traffickers in Colombia. It is produced by Eduardo Verástegui, who also plays a role in the film. The plot centers around Ballard's Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R.), an anti-sex trafficking organization.

The film was released on July 4, 2023, by Angel Studios, and was a sleeper hit, grossing $250 million against a $14.5 million budget to become one of the most successful independent films in history. It received mixed reviews from critics, while audience reception was highly positive.

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Sound_of_Freedom_(film)

www.wikiwand.com/pl/articles/Sound_of_Freedom._D%C5%BAwi%C4%99k_wolno%C5%9Bci

]]>
orinow
Inside Llewyn Davis 6r6m4l 2013 - ★★★★½ Invaders from Mars 6r3k4i 1953 - ★★★★ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/invaders-from-mars/ letterboxd-review-795456983 Sat, 1 Feb 2025 03:54:54 +1300 2025-01-30 No Invaders from Mars 1953 4.0 20424 <![CDATA[

pojawiają się kosmici, przetwarzają najbliższych w obcych z zimną, materialistyczną, autorytarną aparycją, film oczami dziecka, osadzony w atmosferze paranoi zimnowojennej... jeden z pierwszych i modelowy film sci-fi lat 50-tych, definiuje poetykę i kinematografię filmów sci-fi, surrealistyczny kolor, ekspresjonistyczne dekoracje, teatralność, NFR...

W spokojnym, małym amerykańskim miasteczku ląduje statek kosmiczny. Naocznym i jedynym świadkiem tego zdarzenia jest mały chłopiec. Nazajutrz ojciec sprawdza opowieść syna udając się na miejsce lądowania UFO. Po jakimś czasie wraca całkowicie odmieniony z dziwnym znamieniem na szyi: kontrolę nad jego umysłem przejęli kosmici. Marsjanie opanowują również umysły dwóch policjantów, a następnie kolejnych przypadkowych osób. Osamotniony w walce chłopiec próbuje ściągnąć kogoś na pomoc. Z odsieczą przybywa armia Stanów Zjednoczonych. fw

A young boy learns that space aliens are taking over the minds of earthlings. IMDb

- In one scene, Dr. Kelston refers to the "Lubbock Lights" and to a "Captain Mantell." These were-real life U.F.O. events that created a nationwide sensation in their day. The photographs shown by Dr. Kelston are actual photographs of the Lubbock Lights that appeared in newspapers and magazines.

- The genesis of this film was when the wife of writer John Tucker Battle woke him up one morning to recount a vivid and disturbing dream she had of Martians invading Earth. He had her tell him as much as she could recall, and he developed the rest of the story from there.

- The special effects department used condoms to create the "bubbles" on the walls of the underground tunnels.

--1st--
- This was actually one of the first science-fiction films in the 1950s. The film was produced until 1952 and released in early 1953.

- This film was shot on the new single-strip EastmanColor negative. Cinecolor Labs then produced the trailers and release prints in the three-color SuperCinecolor process. When Cinecolor went bankrupt, the original elements and printing matrices were seized and sold for salvage.

--1st--
- Film debut of Richard Deacon.

--last--
- Final film of actress Helena Carter.

[...]

www.imdb.com/title/tt0045917/trivia

Invaders from Mars (1986)
letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/invaders-from-mars-1986/


NFR

The 1950s arguably produced the most classic science fiction films, fed by post-World War II paranoia over the hydrogen bomb, rapid technological change, fear of Soviet expansion and Communist infiltration of American society. Directed by William Cameron Menzies with cinematography by John Seitz, the film features stunning sets and photography in Supercinecolor. This indie classic helped create the visual language of science fiction cinema and was a significant entry in the canon of ‘post-war paranoia’ cinema. Projects ranging from “Star Trek” to “The Iron Giant” to “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” bear the thematic fingerprint of this film. Restored by Ignite Films in collaboration with the George Eastman Museum, National Film and Sound Archive of Australia and the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Added to the National Film Registry in 2024.

www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/descriptions-and-essays/

]]>
orinow
Hobo with a Shotgun 295g1x 2011 - ★★★½ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/hobo-with-a-shotgun/ letterboxd-review-794570431 Fri, 31 Jan 2025 05:28:51 +1300 2025-01-29 No Hobo with a Shotgun 2011 3.5 49010 <![CDATA[

to miasto pełne jest śmieci... ekstremalna wściekłość obywatelska jako reakcja na ekstremalną przemoc nieformalnych władców, film na podst. fałszywego trailera filmu z roku 2007... elementy autotematyczne (filmowiec kręcący tandetne filmy pełne okrutnej taniej przemocy, upokarzający Hobo'a)...

Włóczęga nie może znieść bezprawia panującego na ulicy. Kupuje strzelbę i postanawia rozprawić się z bandytami. fw

Bezdomny (Rutger Hauer) żyje w mieście pełnym przemocy. Miastem rządzi Drake (Brian Downey), brutalny psychopata, który uwielbia zabijać dla zabawy i zaspokojenia swoich chorych potrzeb. Wszyscy boją się Drake'a, łącznie z policją. Pewnego dnia bezdomny mężczyzna kupuje strzelbę i postanawia zaprowadzić porządek w pełnym chaosu mieście. Sam staje przeciwko zwyrodnialcom i dzielnie walczy o zaprowadzenie ładu. fw

Hobo with a Shotgun is a 2011 exploitation black comedy action film directed by Jason Eisener and written by John Davies. Based on Eisener's fictitious trailer of the same name from Grindhouse (2007), it is the second feature-length adaptation of a fictitious Grindhouse trailer, following Robert Rodriguez's Machete (2010).

Hobo with a Shotgun premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 21, 2011, on March 25 in Canada, and on May 6 in the United States. The film received mixed reviews from critics.

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Hobo_with_a_Shotgun

A homeless vigilante (Rutger Hauer) blows away crooked cops, pedophile Santas, and other scumbags with his trusty pump-action shotgun.

www.filmaffinity.com/en/film963049.html

archive.org/details/Hobo-with-a-Shotgun

A homeless vigilante blows away crooked cops, pedophile Santas, and other scumbags with his trusty pump-action shotgun. IMDb

A vigilante homeless man pulls into a new city and finds himself trapped in urban chaos, a city where crime rules and where the city's crime boss reigns. Seeing an urban landscape filled with armed robbers, corrupt cops, abused prostitutes, and even a pedophile Santa, the Hobo (Rutger Hauer) goes about bringing justice to the city the best way he knows how - with a 20-gauge shotgun. Mayhem ensues when he tries to make things better for the future generation. Street justice will indeed prevail. IMDb


Hobo with a Shotgun (2007)
letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/hobo-with-a-shotgun-2007/

]]>
orinow
Hobo with a Shotgun 295g1x 2007 - ★★½ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/hobo-with-a-shotgun-2007/ letterboxd-review-793860656 Thu, 30 Jan 2025 10:12:56 +1300 2025-01-29 No Hobo with a Shotgun 2007 2.5 215624 <![CDATA[

fałszywy trailer filmu z roku 2011, pod tym samym tytułem...

A vagabond with a 20-gauge shotgun (changed to a 12-gauge for the actual movie) who becomes a vigilante. IMDb

Incorporated into Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's double-feature, Grindhouse (2007), Jason Eisener's "Hobo with a Shotgun" is the fifth and final fake trailer. Available at selected theatres in the United States and Canada, Eisener's segment follows a ragged vagabond-turned-vigilante, who, with his high-power, 20-gauge shotgun rids the streets of the scum of the Earth. Who dares to stand in the way of a hobo with a shotgun? IMDb

Only screened at theatres in Canada
This faux-trailer only screened with Grindhouse in select theatres (mainly in Canada) and the only trailer that selected through a contest (Winner of Robert Rodriguez's South by Southwest Grindhouse trailers contest). IMDb

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LlazPgxKrA


Hobo with a Shotgun (2011)
letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/hobo-with-a-shotgun/

]]>
orinow
Powwow Highway 2j1x59 1989 - ★★★★ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/powwow-highway/ letterboxd-review-793746787 Thu, 30 Jan 2025 08:02:33 +1300 2025-01-28 No Powwow Highway 1989 4.0 63587 <![CDATA[

duchowa, w pamięci, rumakiem i dosłowna po Ameryce, zardzewiałym gruchotem, podróż mentalno-materialna do korzeni, jeden z pierwszych filmów pokazujących Indian w realistycznej, komiczno-tragicznej dykcji, (Criterion - online), independent buddy road film, NFR...

[duchowa, w pamięci, rumakiem i dosłowna po Ameryce, zardzewiałym gruchotem, podróż mentalno-materialna (święte miejsca i święto Powwow) do indiańskich korzeni, NFR...]

Akcja filmu dzieje się współcześnie w rezerwacie plemienia Czejenów w Lane Deer, stan Montana. Buddy i Philbert udają się razem w tygodniową podróż poprzez równiny Ameryki, telepiąc się setki mil międzystanową autostradą w porozbijanym Buicku, rocznik 64, ochrzczonym "Protector". Buddy Czerwony Łuk jest przystojnym i politycznie agresywnym działaczem indiańskim - człowiekiem pełnym gniewu, pasji i oddanym bez złudzeń walce o interesy swego ludu. Philbert Bono to wielki i potulny samotnik - outsider marzący w cichości ducha o tym, by zostać potężnym wojownikiem z legend indiańskich. fw

Powwow Highway is a Native American 1989 independent comedy-drama film from George Harrison's HandMade Films Company, directed by Jonathan Wacks. Based on the novel Powwow Highway by David Seals, it features A Martinez, Gary Farmer, Joanelle Romero and Amanda Wyss. Wes Studi and Graham Greene, who were relatively unknown actors at the time, have small ing roles.

In 2024, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Production

Filming was done on location on Native American reservations in Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Powwow_Highway

The road-movie genre gets a lyrical twist shot through with Native American spirituality in this bittersweet portrait of two Cheyenne men on a journey through the American West and their own identities. Buddy Red Bow (A Martinez) is struggling, in the face of greedy developers, to keep his nation on a Montana Cheyenne Reservation financially solvent and independent. Philbert (Gary Farmer), his easygoing friend, pursues Native wisdom and lore wherever he can find it—even on “Bonanza.” As the two set off on a journey to bail out Buddy’s imprisoned sister, Philbert’s gentle faith challenges Buddy’s hard-edged view of the world, and together they face the realities and dreams of being Cheyenne in the modern-day U.S.

www.criterionchannel.com/powwow-highway

Jonathan Wacks' Powwow Highway (1989) takes a lot of trappings of a holiday road movie, but leaves them behind when needed as we explore the characters and relationship of two Cheyenne men struggling in to hold onto tradition in a world controlled by colonizers. This may be the first holiday film we've covered where the only person who says "Merry Christmas" is the villain. Christmas in Powwow Highway exists as a colonizers' holiday, but perhaps one held in tension as well.

www.lostincriterion.com/e/holiday-special-2024-powwow-highway-1989/

Two Northern Cheyenne men take a road trip from Montana to New Mexico to bail out the sister of one of them who has been framed and arrested in Santa Fe. On the way, they begin to reconnect to their spiritual heritage. IMDb

Cheerful Philbert embarks on a spiritual quest by bartering for a car in Lame Deer (Montana). Jaded activist Buddy asks for a ride to Santa Fe, New Mexico to help his sister Bonnie, who's been arrested on trumped up charges. The trip weaving reality and vision detours with vignettes of Native realities and ends with a collision of cultures, corporate, and federal interests. Based on the David Seals book. IMDb

- George Harrison's film company, Handmade Films, founded in 1978, produced Powwow Highway. Reportedly, this was his favorite film Other films that Harrison's company produced included Life of Brian, Withnail & I, and Mona Lisa. trivia

--1st--
- Film debut of Wes Studi.

www.imdb.com/title/tt0098112/trivia/

Why is it so rare for American cinema to authentically explore the righteous anger of the oppressed and marginalized as well as this 1989 film?

The mountainous, dry-expanse of the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Lame Deer, Montana is lit by sunlight the deep hue of honey. Kids play amongst rusting box springs. A gaggle of scruffy dogs run across dusty sloping streets. Homes have a desolate pall. Hollowed out cars dot the horizon. A hazy, dimly lit bar; the neon hiss of the red Budweiser logo cuts through the dark. It is in this bar that you learn this is a film constituted of real faces. Faces that wrinkle when they laugh. Faces that are freckled, pockmarked, aging, gorgeous in their prosaicness. Hollywood has trained viewers to heed youth. One composed of poreless, veneered smiling faces, and algorithmically defined beauty that lacks the charming imperfections of aliveness. But Powwow Highway is alive in ways that are electric and true.

One of these real faces in Powwow Highway, the 1989 independent film marking its 35th anniversary this year, is that of Buddy Red Bow (A Martinez). He moves around the pool table, cue in hand and curses about the government that protects the “monstrosities” of pipelines tearing the environment asunder, whilst playing against Louie Short Hair (poet, musician, and activist John Trudell). When Red Bow leaves, in the narrow doorway he exchanges greetings with Philbert Bono (Gary Farmer) who walks in at the same time. The brevity of their exchange belies their importance to the narrative as its leads and the depth of the connection they will nurture for the rest of the film; which may be slim in runtime but glimmers with deep feeling. As the film continues it becomes quickly apparent how biting it is in its commentary and understanding of what it means to be Native American in modern times; an identity defined by complexity and the contradiction of being treated with indignity on land that is truly yours, to be marginalized in your own home. When Philbert saddles up to the bar, a commercial is playing on a small television. A white man decked in a Native American headdress sells cars on a used lot; there’s something both galling and bold in how white people sought to obliterate the existence of Native Americans only to use their sacred dress as a way to sell poor placeholders for the freedom they desire back to them.

Red Bow and Philbert are a study in contrasts. Where Philbert is soft-natured, Red Bow is hard-edged. Philbert carries his large frame with a bubbling, jovial approachability; whilst Red Bow has a direct intensity that bends to no man. But where their differences truly lie is how each man reckons with their heritage in opposing ways even if they are both rooted in a deep love for their community. Philbert cares about charting the history of the Cheyenne people. He speaks about Cheyenne community icons and mythologies with aplomb, finding truths hidden within the fabulistic. He gorges on sweets and trash food as if to soften the harrowing nature of modern reservation life with the most fleeting of cheap pleasures. Red Bow is more concerned with the material dynamics of his people. He’s even considered a dangerous “radical” by the federal government. The past isn’t his focus for either lessons or truths. All that matters is the material reality of the people on the reservation and what to do about this barbed reality right now.

Consider this. Red Bow in his second scene. He’s at a meeting about a strip-mining program on reservation land for which the company’s stooge (Geoffrey Rivas) is in attendance to make the pitch. While everyone sits — both council and the people living on the reservation attending the meeting — Red Bow stands, leaning against the wall. A Martinez crafts a gaze that doubles as a glare and a dare. The lobbyist speaks about how “profitable” this decision would be for the reservation. It would create jobs. It would make their lives easier. Even as it degrades the land they so want to protect. Red Bow isn’t having it, “You get what you want and we get the shaft.” The lobbyist smoothly affirms that they’re in fact on the same side. Red Bow gets closer, his steps assured as he moves through the rows of people. “I know what side you’re on. Seventy five percent of our people living below the poverty line and you tell us stripping off what’s left of our natural resources will change that. This ain’t the American dream we’re living, it’s the third world.” Meanwhile, Philbert buys what he calls his “pony”. A beat-down, rusted to high heaven, true hoopdie of a car, which he procures with a jug of liquor, a baggie of weed, and a couple bucks. Director Jonathan Wacks and cinematographer Toyomichi Kurita use this moment to show a vision Philbert sees in his mind’s eye. When he looks out to the oasis of beat down cars he sees instead amber-lit galloping horses. This car may be in rough shape but it allows him a measure of freedom and autonomy. Qualities both Red Bow and Philbert are searching for from different angles.

What brings these men together is an unexpected call Red Bow receives from his estranged sister, Bonnie (Joanelle Romero), who has been falsely imprisoned after a pound of weed was found in her trunk when cops pulled her over for no discernible reason. Red Bow enlists Philbert, with his new ride, to road trip down to Sante Fe, New Mexico to get his sister out of jail and back with her two young children that he didn’t even know she had. Powwow Highway isn’t a cudgel to force audiences to bear witness to the realities and histories of modern Native American life. It’s far more soulful than that. It carries the true spirit I would like to see in modern independent cinema. It’s lovingly down-to-earth, sharply crafted, and tenderly emotionally realized. It’s a film with a beating heart composed of such great, humane characterization I was in awe the first time I watched it thanks to my boyfriend stumbling across it one day last year on the Criterion Channel, where it is still streaming. It’s a film so damn good I have to wonder why I never heard of it before.

Powwow Highway was filmed across Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, and Santa Fe. As Red Bow and Philbert make their way across the expanse of the South West they come across other Native Americans, confront the interpersonal dynamics that reverberate with racism, and find joy in the process of community engagement. But the most important thing each man confronts is themselves and their relationship to each other as a proxy to their larger community.

Coming across a Sioux couple on their journey, Philbert learns of a powwow happening in Pine Ridge he’s eager to attend. Red Bow isn’t interested, to put it mildly. They link up with Red Bow’s friend, Wolf Tooth (Wayne Waterman) and his wife. The first thing Wolf Tooth asks Philbert when they’re introduced is if he was involved in Wounded Knee or Ogala. Wolf Tooth and his family have decided to leave the poor conditions of the reservation after his shop was turned over by a group of straight up goons given a modicum of power and arms by the government, “We’re moving to Denver. It’s gotta be better than this.” The powwow is occurring in an auditorium. The sounds of chatter and laughter fill the air. The seating is packed with a variety of faces, young and old. Full dress. Chanting. Drumwork. Faces painted. Food served. Connections nurtured. Philbert makes a beeline to the food line, pilling up his plate to a hilarious almost troubling degree. What’s intriguing for me at the on-set is what Red Bow wears: his purple heart he gained in war and a shirt for AIM, the American Indian Movement, a powerfully radical and leftist group that was founded in 1968. As Philbert enjoys the festivities, Wolf Tooth gets into it with Miller (Adam Taylor) and his squad who turned over his shop. Red Bow cuts through the noise to defend Wolf Tooth, only to be forcibly pushed against the wall. “Let’s go have a talk, Red Bow,” Miller says with a voice laced with the possibility of violence. And just as Miller says “Red Bow” a thick blade is thrown and lands between them with a thump in the wall behind them. The knife between them is a warning shot protecting Red Bow. The camera cuts to the source of the knife: a Vietnam veteran named Jimmy played by Graham Greene. He was a prisoner of war for thirty-one months. He speaks in a dramatic, stumbling stutter. But nothing can mask his hurt.

Before Red Bow goes to speak with him, Miller warns Red Bow, “Get out of town, Red Bow. All you AIM sons of bitches are gonna rot in prison like your pal, Peltier.” Off-hand comments like this demonstrate how Powwow Highway swims through the history of these people. This may be a fictional film but the history it evokes is very real. The film led me on a cinematic journey that has proven fruitful. Miller’s comment led me to watch the documentary Incident at Ogala (1992), which chronicles the death and fallout of two FBI agents getting killed on the Pine Ridge reservation for which Leonard Peltier, a Native American and AIM member would be the only person (wrongfully) convicted with a life sentence for this crime. I gobbled up the documentary Trudell (2005) which chronicles the life of poet, actor, musician and AIM member John Trudell who makes a brief appearance in Powwow Highway. The Grahame Greene thriller, Clearcut (1991), which shows the actor playing a man willing to bring great violence to the white people involved in pillaging his people’s lands was a standout in this cinematic journey. What Powwow Highway demonstrates to me is how differently authentic stories about the marginalized, with their cinematic involvement, treat history and the responsibility of artists. For the artisans behind Powwow Highway, I see the belief that snakes its way through the greatest works of the black, brown, and indigenous cinematic image-makers: that you’ve got to put everything on the line — your people’s history, interiority, and desires. That you must impart lessons to the public about your people’s history because film offers something vital — they are portals to greater understanding. Films such as this are rarities, so artists have to give it their all. Let’s be honest, films have never been just entertainment. Even the fluffiest, most inconsequential seeming films have contexts, histories, and politics they are informed by. Powwow Highway — like black radical films I love including The Spook Who Sat By the Door (1973) and Top of the Heap (1972) — is entertaining and enlightening as it weaves historical dimensions into the emotional reality of the film.

When Red Bow finally goes to Jimmy, their conversation is rich with history and complication. Jimmy speaks as if sentences are painful to finish. He shakes. His face drips with frustrated tears. Jimmy asks Red Bow if he’s going to dance in the powwow. “I don’t dance. I hate these goddamn things. You think a few lousy beads and feathers was a culture or something.” “No,” Jimmy says, “You got m-mean.” Red Bow’s face is hollowed out by realization from Jimmy’s words. That perceptive comment leads Red Bow to actually dance in the powwow. First, self-consciously. Then he and Philbert lock eyes. A demure smile spreads across his face and he moves with full bodied emotion. But Red Bow dancing in the powwow feels too abbreviated despite its impact. It deserves a beat or two more than perhaps its budget could allow. Nonetheless, it is an impactful scene bristling with the beauty and connection of this community. Red Bow and Philbert in this moment can’t conceive of the heart-fueling adventure that will follow as they make strides to get Bonnie out of jail.

I won’t go deep into the ending of the film. I want those who are just discovering Powwow Highway to get the opportunity to be revved up and entranced by this beautiful road trip and spiritual journey. Its ending glints with such radical joy, unapologetic anger, and surprising fierceness. That it ends on such a righteously hopeful note is just one of its supreme pleasures. Watching Powwow Highway I couldn’t help but think afterwards about Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon from last year. (I wrote about Lily Gladstone’s performance and the nature of white empathy in the film for Vulture.) That film is pure prestige with the heft of runtime and reputation ensconcing it from more in-depth criticism about what it misses. White directors — especially the work of sacred cow white directors transfixed in the amber of a glorified past a la Licorice Pizza and Babylon — predominantly create work blasted from history and context. Even period pieces are disinterested in infusing the work with historical context that acknowledges and reflects upon the present moment. But for films that authentically display the worlds and lives of marginalized people, history is always at your doorstep. One of the most damning qualities about Killers of the Flower Moon is that it refuses to do what Powwow Highway excels at: hold the beauty and boldness of Native American anger to the light in order to chart the truth of America’s sins.

angelicabastien.substack.com/p/in-powwow-highway1989-native-american

NFR

Along with women and other people of color, Native Americans were treated with indifference or worse by Hollywood for many decades: they were given few opportunities to direct, and even films with Native American plotlines tended to
perpetuate stereotypes. The indie classic “Powwow Highway” became one of the first to treat Native Americans as ordinary people navigating the complexities of everyday life. In part a witty buddy road movie, critics noted that “Powwow Highway” also contains reflections on the relationship of Native Americans to land and their search for a spiritual core to maintain their Native American heritage in American society. Based on the novel of the same name by David Seals, the film features Gary Farmer and A Martinez. Added to the National Film Registry in 2024.

www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/descriptions-and-essays/

]]>
orinow
Querelle 67311m 1982 - ★★★½ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/querelle/ letterboxd-review-791944153 Tue, 28 Jan 2025 12:27:14 +1300 2025-01-27 No Querelle 1982 3.5 42135 <![CDATA[

ostatni film reżysera, Criterion...

Brest - francuski port, gdzie rozgrywa się akcja filmu, to miejsce magiczne, kipiące zmysłowością....

Na ląd schodzi ze statku młody marynarz, o imieniu równie niezwykłym, jak on sam: Querelle - co w dosłownym tłumaczeniu oznacza kłótnię lub sprzeczkę. Portowe życie, którego uroki zaczyna właśnie poznawać, jest jak kiepska sztuka. To nieczysta, przewrotna, ale i fascynująca gra, w której miłość splata się z nienawiścią, przemocą i cierpieniem. Piękny Querelle staje się w owej grze jedynie pionkiem... fw

www.wikiwand.com/pl/articles/Querelle

A handsome sailor is drawn into a vortex of sibling rivalry, murder, and explosive sexuality. IMDb

www.imdb.com/title/tt0084565/trivia

Querelle is a 1982 English-language arthouse film directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. The film stars Brad Davis and was adapted from French author Jean Genet's 1947 novel Querelle of Brest. The plot centers on the Belgian sailor Georges Querelle, who is both a thief and murderer. It was Fassbinder's last film, released shortly after his death at the age of 37.

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Querelle

Conjured from the unholy meeting of two iconoclastic queer artists, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s final film audaciously raises Jean Genet’s controversial novel to the level of myth. In an expressionistic soundstage vision of a French seaport town—bathed in fiery hues and complete with phallic spires—a strapping sailor and unrepentant criminal (Brad Davis) comes ashore to arouse ion, rivalry, and violence among the libidinal denizens drawn into his orbit. Enacted with dreamlike stylization by a cast of international stars, including Jeanne Moreau and Franco Nero, Querelle finds Fassbinder pushing his taboo-shattering depiction of gay desire to delirious extremes.

www.criterion.com/films/27974-querelle

www.criterionchannel.com/querelle

Querelle: Erogenous Zones



The final film of a great director always bears an outsize burden, inviting scrutiny of how it relates to the career it completes. Did the filmmaker achieve a summational masterwork or deliver a misfire? Did the movie herald a bold new direction or merely rehearse the familiar? The age of time encourages this kind of retrospective evaluation, as distance further clarifies an oeuvre’s concerns and contours, its propositions and pleasures. Filmographies, however, can be mercurial things, refusing to snap into focus when the last piece of the puzzle is set in place, resisting a consensus of closure.

Querelle (1982), the final film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, feels at once inevitable and unprecedented. It is a movie the director was born to make, but one delivered in the most curious of manners. If there is much in Fassbinder’s famously prolific career that anticipates his swan song, Querelle is nevertheless startlingly odd. Radically nonnormative in both form and content, it is a postmodern melodrama grounded by a sweaty, seething, meaty eroticism—a confrontational sexuality that remains bracing. In contrast to today’s cinematic landscape, where queer representation is largely a matter of respectability politics and sex scenes are subject to prudish pushback, Querelle is a movie that fucks.

Fassbinder embraced provocation from the start. Emerging from the Munich experimental-theater scene of the 1960s, he developed a filmmaking strategy that combined two modes aimed 
at estrangement: a deadpan approach to acting indebted to Bertolt Brecht, and a formal boldness inspired by the French New Wave, notably the shallow-space construction and reflexive camera work of Jean-Luc Godard. Fassbinder’s debut feature, Love Is Colder Than Death (1969), proposes a gangster film whose meager plot is subsumed by a prevailing atmosphere of lassitude in shabby, blindingly lit interiors, a mood that intermittently gives way to bursts of violence and novel visual flourishes. These mannerisms had already found their groove by Katzelmacher (also 1969), a movie that sharpened Fassbinder’s eye for aestheticized alienation and introduced one of his perennial figures: the outsider whose class or cultural status disrupts the prevailing social order.



Another landmark of Fassbinder’s early career, The Merchant of Four Seasons (1971), is vitalized by his potent engagement with the midcentury melodramas of Douglas Sirk. Fassbinder reworks Sirkian tropes—flamboyant mise-en-scène, calculated hysteria, oppressive social forces—in the tale of a fruit vendor whose existence slowly comes undone. 
In the span of a few short years, Fassbinder achieved a visual style so sophisticated that film critic Manny Farber compared shots from Merchant to the paintings of Fra Angelico, noting 
an aesthetic leap accompanied by a maturing emotional investment in the plight of outcasts, pariahs, and minorities.

Fassbinder was unabashedly queer in both his life and his work. Several of his strongest films deal directly and unapologetically with queer characters and their demimondes. The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) is a wildly inventive chamber piece about a bitchy fashion designer’s obsession with a young woman who aspires to model. 
Fox and His Friends (1975) offers a scurrilous critique of class relations among gay men. In a Year of 13 Moons (1978) presents a devastating, cumulatively magnificent portrait of a transgender woman’s love and loss. And in Querelle, Fassbinder transforms a novel by Jean Genet into the horniest of his hothouse melodramas, conjuring a fever dream of devious sailors and salacious leather daddies that confounded audiences upon its release but would become one of his most influential films.

Published in 1947, Genet’s Querelle of Brest is set in the French port town of Brest, where a constellation of sailors, thugs, and denizens of the sexual underworld make their moves amid a languid fog that envelops the proceedings in a haze of eroticized delirium. The novel opens with one of Genet’s habitual conflations of crime with the oceanic force of gay eros: “The idea of murder frequently evokes the idea of sea and seafarers.” The author goes on to summon a densely metaphoric paean to the sailor’s uniform as a disguise, as a mythological garb that “enables him to . . . personify the Great Bear” and “allows him to move and act as part of a fragmentary mirage.”

Sustaining this poetic intensity for some three hundred pages, Querelle of Brest is itself a fragmentary mirage, less interested in conveying a narrative than in using its slight premise—the plotting and execution of crimes small and large, the forging of alliances and the disclosing of betrayals, the consummation and frustration of devouring ions—as a pretext for Genet’s obsessions. Rhetorical flamboyance, albeit of an intensely focused, singularly complex kind, is the novel’s strongest protagonist and most persuasive raison d’être. What leaves its mark on the reader is the sense of being adrift in a linguistic miasma, of merging with an ecstatic gaze, of negotiating one’s relation to a complex orchestration of voice and address. Like the melodramatic stratagems of Fassbinder, the lyricism of Genet’s Querelle is inextricable from its bold reflexivity. The opening encomium to the sailor’s costume, for example, is subjected to a metacommentary on the very next page, criticizing it as “facile prosody” and framing its motivation as “an argument in favor of the author’s natural proclivities.” The novel, Genet confides, will proceed “under the compulsion of some curious inner motivation.”



Querelle the novel reads like an emanation of its author’s psyche; Querelle the film externalizes a complementary set of proclivities, compulsions, and inner motivations. That Fassbinder would be drawn to adapt Genet’s work is no surprise, given his own long-standing interest in crime, betrayal, subcultural codes, and a manner of cinematic storytelling that is at once melodramatic and cerebral, emotionally blunt and fiercely experimental. Fassbinder’s approach to adapting Querelle is, in a sense, nearly perfect, and if the way he proceeds may be considered, from a conventional cinematic perspective, inherently flawed—well, it’s a very queer film.

Fassbinder’s first and most inspired conceit is to quite literally stage the material: the film takes place on a single, flagrantly artificial set. The narrative is limited to interconnected zones that establish “Brest”: a ship docked at port, upon which sailors mill about under the watchful, lustful eye of Lieutenant Seblon (Franco Nero) and from which they disembark to peruse their pleasures; and the port itself, which is dominated by La Feria, a brothel flanked by two immense stone phalli and overseen by madam Lysiane (Jeanne Moreau). Radiating off La Feria is a geometry of ramparts and alleyways scrawled with obscene graffiti where much of the action transpires. These architectures suggest painted Styrofoam; the trees neatly lining the surroundings appear no more natural than a troop of plastic soldiers; the sun that bathes the exteriors in a viscous, honeyed glow is a perfectly round, perfectly implausible disc that looks pasted onto the soundstage with a glue stick.

Within this emphatically antinaturalistic set, Fassbinder mounts a correspondingly manufactured drama. Querelle (Brad Davis)—a handsome, murderous sailor whose brother, Robert (Hanno Pöschl), is having an affair with Lysiane—arranges an opium deal with the madam’s husband, Nono (Günther Kaufmann). Querelle enlists and then kills an accomplice in the exchange, is sodomized by Nono, gives a hand job to a debauched cop, and enters into an alliance with a laborer who has murdered his coworker. Various jealousies, betrayals, obsessions, and transgressions unfold—all of which are presented in a mise-en-scène of crystalline beauty, and none of which seem aimed at soliciting the viewer’s sympathy.



Querelle is not a movie one falls into; it is a weird object one confronts at a distance. The movie enacts the most unusual—and alienating—synthesis of Fassbinder’s Brechtian, Godardian, and Sirkian influences. The blatant artifice of the production design is mirrored by the performances. In the novel, Querelle is a diabolical avatar of Genet’s obsession with rough trade, a flaming creature aglow with lethal eroticism. In the film, Davis gamely struts his oiled torso but largely seems bewildered by the greasy scenario he finds himself in, wandering through fields of orange chromatism in a daze, pantomiming brawls as if rehearsing a regional production of West Side Story. His character may lend the movie its name, but the movie itself has no center, no real protagonist, no essential drama.

This displacement of Querelle as the obscure object of desire anchoring a lurid, hallucinatory melodrama is of a piece with the film’s overall effect. Querelle’s prodigious aesthetic force overwhelms its human dimension. Or, perhaps more accurately, the movie enlists its ostensible drama as the scaffolding for aesthetic gambits. Fassbinder turns all his bugs into features. The post-dubbed dialogue, much of it conspicuously out of sync, heightens the pervasive dissociation and powerfully contributes to the movie’s extraordinary soundscape. Characters are just as likely to declaim slabs of Genet’s text as they are to engage in conversation. Lieutenant Seblon supplies a running voice-over, at times from the perspective of an omniscient narrator commenting on the action or the film’s personages, at others from within the diegesis as he confesses his ardor for Querelle to a Sony tape deck. That gadget exemplifies the film’s insouciant approach to history, which freely mixes midcentury French naval iconography with early-eighties pop culture. A Suzuki motorcycle can now and then be heard revving offscreen, while inside La Feria a video-game console emits electronic bleeps when Moreau isn’t crooning “Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves”—a ballad that was nominated, 
not entirely without justification, for a 1984 Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Original Song.

No such knock can be leveled at Peer Raben’s superb score, whose key motif, repeated throughout, begins with notes of menacing instrumentation that dissolve into a sustained choral swell. This refrain is accompanied several times by an annihilation of the narrative via a blinding white screen, upon which are printed excerpts from Genet’s novel, as well as a pair of quizzical extratextual commentaries, one by Plutarch and another credited as deriving from “‘Portrait of Saint-Just’ by Paganel.” Querelle never lets you forget you are watching a movie, just as the rhetorical strategies of Genet’s novel insistently point back to themselves.

Cutting through these formal devices is the dense materiality of sex. Whereas Fassbinder’s previous depictions of queer characters were groundbreaking for their matter-of-factness, Querelle is hyperconscious about how it evokes the pulse and throb of queer desire. Beyond the images of explicit carnality—Nono pinning Querelle to a table and taking him from behind, Querelle sliding his hand down a pair of tros to stroke the tumescent cop—the entire film is suffused with a tense, lascivious exaltation. I have never seen another movie where the cut and buff of a leather trench coat, quite aside from the person wearing it, felt so palpably horny. Mustachioed hunks, coy twinks, and gender-indeterminate extras flit around the margins of the story like so many patrons idling around the weirdest bathhouse ever. While the plot may be thin, the narrative could be diagrammed as an elaborate roundelay of characters spying, lurking, stalking, and sizing one another up—an arabesque of cruising, the gay art of furtive pursuit and seduction.

Querelle channels the preoccupations of its director’s career and pushes them to new extremes. But is it a great film? Since its posthumous release, it has been met with a mixed reception. Vincent Canby of the New York Times, long one of Fassbinder’s most vocal American champions, considered it “a detour that leads to a dead end” and “the result of hundreds of bold choices, some of them intelligent, but almost all of them wrong.” A later appraisal by Richard Brody in the New Yorker argued the opposite, locating in the film a “heightened, brazen modernity [that] points to new and influential paths” the filmmaker would not live to explore. But others would. The movie’s combination of voluptuous stylization and confrontational sexuality would flower in the New Queer Cinema of the nineties. Todd Haynes is an ardent student of Fassbinder’s work, and his breakthrough feature, Poison (1991), offers its own riff on Genet in the form of an experimental triptych. The punk provocations of Gregg Araki—notably his Teen Apocalypse Trilogy, which consists of Totally F***ed Up (1993), The Doom Generation (1995), and Nowhere (1997)—are less overtly indebted to Querelle but carry on its legacy of unabashed queerness and formal risk-taking.

The New Queer Cinema rose amid, and grappled with, the unfolding AIDS crisis. Querelle can now be seen, like the also initially maligned leather-bar noir Cruising (1980), as marking a final cinematic efflorescence of gay sexual abandon before the cataclysm. With its serial-killer tropes and tortured self-loathing, Cruising is no one’s idea of “positive representation,” but the anger it provoked in gay audiences upon its release has largely been replaced by a fascination with its status as a time capsule of an orgiastic underground long gone. Querelle, a movie of the mind, indexes no such historical particularities, yet its impact on visual culture has been decisive. Photos taken by Roger Fritz during the production have been exhibited in prestigious galleries in Berlin and New York. The homoerotic kitsch of artists Pierre Commoy and Gilles Blanchard is Querelle-adjacent, notably in their fondness for the uniforms of 1940s French sailors, a motif also embraced by the legendary fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier, who has cited Fassbinder’s film as an abiding influence.

What are we to make of Querelle today? The neophyte viewer is likely to find more questions than answers, an invitation to explore the riches of Fassbinder’s filmography. And for those returning to its strange pleasures, Querelle remains as seductive, intractable, oneiric, and onanistic as ever.

www.criterion.com/current/posts/8500-querelle-erogenous-zones

]]>
orinow
Chimes at Midnight 3m6p3o 1965 - ★★★★½ Berlin Alexanderplatz 3e2b21 1980 - ★★★★½ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/berlin-alexanderplatz/ letterboxd-review-790394166 Mon, 27 Jan 2025 08:25:36 +1300 2025-01-01 Yes Berlin Alexanderplatz 1980 4.5 43189 <![CDATA[

bądź czujny... bo jam częścią tej siły, która wiecznie dobra pragnąc, wiecznie czyni zło, historia pozawolitywnej i pozarozumowej pracy nad rozwojem zła, aktualne portrety niemickie, aktualny w kwestii niemieckiej... Criterion...

Berlin, lata dwudzieste. Franz Biberkopf (Günter Lamprecht) jest niezwykłym człowiekiem. Potrafi być łagodny i uczuciowy, ma wielkie serce i szlachetną naturę, ale bywa porywczy i brutalny, a jego emocje potrafią zmieniać się w przemoc. Włóczy się po Berlinie bez perspektyw, wytyczonych celów i pracy. Właśnie - po czterech latach odsiadki - opuścił więzienie, do którego trafił za nieumyślne spowodowanie śmierci. Teraz chce zacząć nowe życie, choć to niełatwe, kiedy nie ma się przyjaciół. Franz wierzy jednak, że ich ma: wśród nich jest jego była dziewczyna Eva (Hanna Schygulla), dziś luksusowa prostytutka. Niestety nikt nie umie albo nie chce mu pomóc. Bez pracy i współczucia, boleśnie samotny Franz odchodzi donikąd, gdzie pociechą jest tylko alkohol. Po kilku tygodniach postanawia, że nie podda się tak łatwo. Znów jest pełen nadziei. Spotyka Reinholda (Gottfried John) tajemniczego i fascynującego kryminalistę i sutenera. Może nawet demona. Pod wpływem niezrozumiałego magnetyzmu Franz całkowicie składa swoje życie w jego rękach. Znów łamie prawo i znów przegrywa, zdobywa jednak coś wyjątkowo cennego: czystą i piękną miłość słodkiej Mieze (Barbara Sukowa). Reinhold nie zamierza jednak zrezygnować z zemsty na dawnym przyjacielu... fw

In late-1920s Berlin, Franz Biberkopf is released from prison and vows to go straight. However, he soon finds himself embroiled in the city's criminal underworld. IMDb

TV Series (1980). 14 episodes. This film is a 15-1/2 hour episodic exploration of the character of Franz Biberkopf, "hero" of Alfred Döblin's acclaimed novel, as well as the Alexanderplatz area of Berlin that he inhabits. Franz is an ex-convict that when released into the day's cruel and indifferent society slowly loses his mind. Set in Berlin in the 1920's.

www.filmaffinity.com/en/film341343.html

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s controversial, fifteen-hour Berlin Alexanderplatz, based on Alfred Döblin’s great modernist novel, was the crowning achievement of a prolific director who, at age thirty-four, had already made over thirty films. Fassbinder’s immersive epic follows the hulking, childlike ex-convict Franz Biberkopf (Günter Lamprecht) as he attempts to “become an honest soul” amid the corrosive urban landscape of Weimar-era . With equal parts cynicism and humanity, Fassbinder details a mammoth portrait of a common man struggling to survive in a viciously uncommon time.

www.criterion.com/films/839-berlin-alexanderplatz

epizody

www.imdb.com/title/tt0080196/episodes

Berlin Alexanderplatz (German: [bɛʁˈliːn ʔalɛkˈsandɐˌplats]), originally broadcast in 1980, is a 14-part West German crime television miniseries, set in 1920s Berlin and adapted and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder from Alfred Döblin's 1929 novel of the same name. It stars Günter Lamprecht, Hanna Schygulla, Barbara Sukowa, Elisabeth Trissenaar and Gottfried John. The complete series is 15 hours (NTSC and home media releases expand the runtime by half an hour).

In 1983, it was released theatrically in the United States by TeleCulture, where a theater would show two or three parts per night. It garnered a cult following there and was eventually released on VHS and broadcast on PBS and then Bravo. In 1985, it was transmitted in the United Kingdom on Channel 4.

epizody

"The Punishment Begins"

Berlin, 1928. Franz Biberkopf is released after serving four years in Tegel prison for killing his girlfriend Ida. After settling into his old apartment he visits Minna, Ida's sister, and rapes her. In a flashback we see Franz kill Ida with a cream whip after correctly suspecting she was about to leave him. Franz later runs into his old friend Meck and has a drink with him in Max's bar, a local place. There he meets Lina Przybilla, a young Polish woman, who moves in with him. He receives notification from the Berlin police that he is barred from living in certain Berlin districts and surrounding municipalities, under the threat of a fine or imprisonment. Biberkopf places himself under the supervision of a charity called Prisoners' Aid, to which he must report once a month while remaining in employment. By doing this, he is able to remain in Berlin.
"How Is One to Live if One Doesn’t Want to Die?"

Franz is self-employed hawking necktie holders on the street, but has trouble making enough money and does not consider himself an orator. After turning down the opportunity to sell sex education manuals, he is talked into selling the Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter and wearing a swastika armband. In the subway, Franz is confronted by a Jewish man selling hot sausages, but denies being antisemitic, and Dreske with two other men also known to him. Dreske ires Lenin and the Soviet Union, but Franz responds by decrying revolution and 'their' Weimar Republic. At Max's bar, Dreske and his friends sing "The Internationale” to provoke Franz, to which he responds by singing the 19th-century patriotic songs "The Watch on the Rhine and "Ich hatt' einen Kameraden". At the top of his voice, Franz accuses them of being loudmouths and crooks, before almost collapsing. The other men return to their table. Outside, Franz meets Lina. He rambles about what has just happened; the men he has just met cannot understand life and do not know what it is like to be in prison.
"A Hammer Blow to the Head Can Injure the Soul"

Lina is now troubled by the dubious nature of the job Franz is fulfilling. She introduces him to a family friend, Otto Lüders, who turns out to be an ex-con he knows from prison, but Franz thinks Otto is a good man. With him, Franz begins selling shoelaces door-to-door. In the first apartment, Franz spends time with a widow whose deceased husband he closely resembles. Later, to Otto, he reports having sex with the widow. The next day, Otto goes to the widow's home and expects the same, but she feels threatened and rejects him. Otto demands money and steals from her. When Franz goes back to the widow, happily expecting another tryst, she slams the door on him. Franz vanishes. Lina distraught, searches for him with Meck. They wake Otto in the early morning, but Meck recognises that his is full of lies and hits him. Franz is found in a flophouse by Otto, who is immediately threatened with a chair. Otto offers him a share of the money Franz realises has been extorted from the widow, but wanting to go straight, he pours the contents of a chamber pot over Otto. Meck gets Franz's location out of Otto, but Franz had left soon after the earlier incident. Meck persuades Lina that Franz wishes to be left alone, and suggests she live with him.
"A Handful of People in the Depths of Silence"

Franz goes on an alcohol binge as a former medical orderly, Baumann, looks after him in rooms in a building opposite the one occupied by the prisoners' charity on which he depends for his liberty in Berlin. Franz wanders the streets in a delirious state; outside a church he takes a coal delivery man for a pastor. When he comes round after another binge, Baumann tells him he has been lying in a stupor for three days. Franz now feels that neither God, Satan, angels or other people can help him. After various thefts in the building become known, Baumann tells Franz he will not be with him for much longer, though the occupants of the neighbouring rooms are soon arrested. Franz strikes up a conversation with the vendor who offered him the sex education manuals, and discovers Meck is now selling clothes on the street and apparently doing well. Meck its to Franz that he had been living with Lina until she left him.
"A Reaper with the Power of Our Lord"

Franz, after several fleeting encounters, has finally become reacquainted with Eva. Eva, for whom he used to pimp, feels a deep affection for him, and has paid the rent for his old rooms in his absence. At Max's, Meck introduces Franz to Pums, the ringleader of an illegal enterprise. He also meets Reinhold, one of Pums's men. Reinhold is tired of his woman, Fränze, and wants Franz to take her off his hands. Franz has her come over and has sex with her. She returns to him after she cannot find Reinhold. Reinhold then employs the same plan with his current woman, Cilly, whom Franz accommodates after provoking a row with Fränze. Reinhold, after with the Salvation Army, has had enough of "broads" and is desperate to end his involvement with his current woman, Trude, but Cilly is angry when this is explained to her by Franz, and she briefly considers Franz worse in his treatment of women than Reinhold, possibly unaware of Ida's murder, but she persuades Franz to tell Trude about Reinhold's nature. They are reconciled.
"Love Has Its Price"

Franz explains to Reinhold that he wants Cilly to remain with him. Franz gets sucked into Pums's gang when he is drafted for a job as a last-minute replacement for Bruno, who gets beaten in the street. Franz ends up as a lookout as Pums, Reinhold, and Meck pull a robbery. In the getaway truck, Reinhold becomes suspicious of Franz because of a car that seems to be following them. Reinhold throws Franz out of the back of the truck.
" — An Oath Can Be Amputated"

Franz has survived the car accident, but his right arm has been amputated. He recuperates for a time with Eva and Eva's lover Herbert. Herbert agitates against Pums's syndicate, so the boss decides to take up a collection to help with Franz's medical costs. Franz goes to a red light district and encounters a pimp who offers him a woman he calls the whore of Babylon.
"The Sun Warms the Skin, but Burns It Sometimes Too"

Franz gets involved in an illegal enterprise with Willy, whom he met at a cabaret. Eva and Herbert drop by to see Franz and bring a young woman, Emilie Karsunke, whom they offer as a new lover. Franz and the tender-hearted woman, whom he nicknames Mieze, fall for each other. However, their spell of love is broken when Franz finds a love letter from another man.
"About the Eternities Between the Many and the Few"

Eva explains to Franz that Mieze just wants to work to him as Franz cannot do so due to his missing arm. He reconciles with Mieze. Franz goes to Reinhold's and tells him how he has become a pimp. Reinhold is disgusted by Franz's stump of an arm. Franz is inspired by a communist rally, during which Franz daydreams. After the meeting, Franz and Willy playfully debate a militant worker about the merits of their "dishonest" work. The two then meet Eva and Herbert, wherein Franz mockingly recounts the lessons he's learned about power and the state at the meeting, before more seriously soliliquizing about the role of order and authority versus a more limitless power.
"Loneliness Tears Cracks of Madness Even in Walls"

As Mieze cannot have children, Eva tells her she will have a child with Franz that Mieze can then raise. Mieze is delighted, to the point that Eva asks if she is a lesbian. Eva also tells Mieze she's concerned that Franz is getting into trouble with "rogue" Willy, when he should be attending to those who took his arm. At Max's bar, Franz listens as Willy espouses Nietzschean ideas while Max pleads with a Marxist to keep politics out of the bar. Franz drunkenly wanders the streets at night repeating snippets of the conversation before declaring he has no use for politics. Franz takes a taxi to the Tegel prison, where he falls asleep on a park bench before being accosted by a police officer and, now very drunk, making his way back home. The next day, Mieze asks Franz to stay out of politics, and he again declares he has no interest. Mieze its she has taken a rich client and; Franz is horrified as he thinks Mieze wants to be rid of him, until Mieze describes the agreement made with Eva for Franz's baby. After Mieze leaves, Eva arrives and asks if Franz wants to have the baby, and the two have sex. Responding negatively to a lecture from Herbert on his increasing drunkenness, Franz returns home and Mieze and he agree to get drunk. Mieze's rich client arrives. Franz finds out that she is going away with him for three days and weeps in despair.
"Knowledge Is Power and the Early Bird Catches the Worm"

Franz goes to Reinhold and tells him he wants to get involved with Pums again. Reinhold still has his suspicions but Franz is allowed to assist the gang with a job. Mieze is upset that Franz is earning money because she thinks Franz wants to be independent of her, but Franz reassures her. Franz brags to Reinhold about Mieze's devotion and decides to show him what a fine woman she is. In the apartment, Franz has Reinhold hide in the bed when Mieze arrives. She reveals she is in love with another man. Franz is angered and beats her cruelly, but Reinhold saves her and Franz throws Reinhold out. Mieze goes out to Franz and the two reconcile, though she has been bloodied by him. Franz and Mieze take a trip outside Berlin, where he explains to her he simply wanted Reinhold to see a true woman.
"The Serpent in the Soul of the Serpent"

Franz introduces Mieze to Meck. Reinhold blackmails Meck to set up a meeting for him with Mieze. Meck takes Mieze on a drive to Bad Freienwalde and delivers her to Reinhold. Reinhold takes her for a walk in the woods, where she resists his advances. Mieze wants to know more about Franz, and Reinhold reveals it is because of him that Franz lost his arm. Mieze is horrified at this revelation. Reinhold strangles her and leaves her in the woods.
"The Outside and the Inside and the Secret of Fear of the Secret"

Franz tells Eva that Mieze has left him. Eva reassures him, though she is a bit concerned herself. A robbery pulled off by Pums's gang goes wrong and Meck burns himself with a welding torch. Franz takes Meck to his apartment to bandage his wound. Meck tells Franz that Reinhold is a bad guy, but Franz claims he has a good heart. Meck takes the police out into the woods and helps them find Mieze's strangled body, telling them he helped to bury her. Eva brings Franz a newspaper that relates Mieze's murder. Franz lapses into demented laughter, claiming he is pleased that at least Mieze did not leave him as he had thought. Once he stops laughing, he vows to kill Reinhold.
"My Dream of the Dream of Franz Biberkopf by Alfred Döblin, an Epilogue"

In a fantasy sequence, Franz walks along a street of the dead with two angels. He finds Mieze, but she disappears from his arms. Reinhold is in prison for the crimes committed by a man whose identity he has acquired. He is anguished that his cellmate and lover is being released. Franz is taken to an asylum. Much of the rest of the episode takes place in his imagination. Franz's being run over by the car is re-enacted with different characters taking on the roles of victim and driver. In a striking sequence, Franz and Mieze are treated like animals being slaughtered in an abattoir. On a nativity set, Franz is raised on a cross as the other characters watch. An atom bomb goes off in the background and the angels clear the dead. The surreal imagery ceases suddenly and Franz is at Reinhold's trial testifying to his good character. Reinhold is sentenced to 10 years for manslaughter. Eva tells Franz she has lost the baby. The film concludes with Franz as an assistant gatekeeper at a factory. He is alert to his job but not to war on the horizon.

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Berlin_Alexanderplatz_(miniseries)

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s controversial, fifteen-hour BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ, based on Alfred Döblin’s great modernist novel, was the crowning achievement of a prolific director who, at age thirty-four, had already made over thirty films. Fassbinder’s immersive epic follows the hulking, childlike ex-convict Franz Biberkopf (Günter Lamprecht) as he attempts to “become an honest soul” amid the corrosive urban landscape of Weimar-era . With equal parts cynicism and humanity, Fassbinder details a mammoth portrait of a common man struggling to survive in a viciously uncommon time.

www.criterionchannel.com/berlin-alexanderplatz

archive.org/details/berlin-alexanderplatz-s-01-e-14-my-dream-of-the-dream-of-franz-biberkopf-by-alfr

www.moma.org/calendar/events/2321


Berlin-Alexanderplatz: The Story of Franz Biberkopf (1931)
letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/berlin-alexanderplatz-the-story-of-franz-biberkopf/

]]>
orinow
Miller's Crossing 134d44 1990 - ★★★★ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/millers-crossing/ letterboxd-review-789193630 Sun, 26 Jan 2025 11:22:34 +1300 2025-01-21 No Miller's Crossing 1990 4.0 379 <![CDATA[

film o filmie, Ameryka o Ameryce, parodystyczna satyra na stosunki społeczno-branżowo-kinematograficzne, zabawnie przerysowane maniery adekwatnych protagonistów... Criterion

Gangster Caspar planuje zabić bukmachera Berniego. Nie zgadza się na to lokalny boss Leo, co doprowadza do wojny. fw

Rok 1929. Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne) jest prawą ręką irlandzkiego bossa, Leo (Albert Finney), jednego z najbardziej wpływowych ludzi w mieście. Przypadek sprawia, że obaj mężczyźni zakochują się w tej samej kobiecie, siostrze Berniego Bernbauma (John Turturro). Tymczasem konkurencyjny gang wydaje na niego wyrok śmierci. W ramach wcześniejszych rozliczeń zadanie to musi wykonać Leo. Zakochany gangster zdaje sobie sprawę, że odmowa doprowadzi do wojny. W rozgrywce chce posłużyć się Tomem, jednak nie wie, czy może mu jeszcze zaufać. fw

Miller's Crossing is a 1990 American neo-noir gangster film written, directed and produced by Joel and Ethan Coen, and starring Gabriel Byrne, Marcia Gay Harden, John Turturro, Jon Polito, J. E. Freeman, and Albert Finney. The plot concerns a power struggle between two rival gangs and how the protagonist, Tom Reagan (Byrne), plays both sides against each other.

In 2005, Time chose Miller's Crossing as one of the 100 greatest films made since the inception of the periodical. Time critic Richard Corliss called it a "noir with a touch so light, the film seems to float on the breeze like the frisbee of a fedora sailing through the forest".

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Miller%27s_Crossing

- In the script, the film takes place in 1929. trivia

--1st--
- This was the Coen Brothers' first collaboration with Steve Buscemi and John Turturro.

www.imdb.com/title/tt0100150/trivia

Tom Reagan, an advisor to a Prohibition-era crime boss, tries to keep the peace between warring mobs but gets caught in divided loyalties. IMDb

Tom Reagan (played by Gabriel Byrne) is the right-hand man, and chief adviser, to a mob boss, Leo (Albert Finney). Trouble is brewing between Leo and another mob boss, Johnny Caspar (Jon Polito), over the activities of a bookie, Bernie Bernbaum (John Turturro) and Leo and Tom are at odds on how to deal with it. Meanwhile, Tom is in a secret relationship with Leo's girlfriend, Verna (Marcia Gay Harden), who happens to be the sister of Bernie. In trying to resolve the issue, Tom is cast out from Leo's camp and ultimately finds himself stuck in the middle between several deadly, unforgiving parties. IMDb

Coen brothers gangster masterpiece
It's the Prohibition era. Leo O'Bannon (Albert Finney) is an Irish mob boss who controls the city. Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne) is his right hand man. Verna (Marcia Gay Harden) has the boss wrapped around her little finger. Only Leo doesn't know that Verna is also sleeping with Tom. Italian rival Johnny Caspar (Jon Polito) wants to kill bookie Bernie Bernbaum (John Turturro) who's been taking advantage of him. Tom tries to get Leo to give up Bernie but he's Verna's brother and Leo refuses. Leo and Johnny go to war. Leo kicks Tom out when he reveals his affair with Verna. Tom goes to work for Caspar and he's commanded to execute Bernie in the woods at Miller's Crossing.

It's the third big great movie from the Coen brothers and they show a real mastery of the cinematic arts. It is beautifully shot, ultra violent, and the actors are some of the best around. It is hard-boiled gangster noir and one of the best for fans of the genre. The mannerisms and dense dialog can put off some people and may lose some who don't pay enough attention. There are no good guys in this story. It is strictly anti-hero stuff. That may also put off some people. The audience is asked to pull for Gabriel Byrne even though he's still a gangster, just a more reasonable one. IMDb

A Roaring Twenties gangster saga that only the Coen brothers could concoct, Miller’s Crossing marries the hard-boiled sensibility of classic noir fiction with the filmmakers’ trademark savory dialogue, colorful characters, and finely calibrated set pieces. Gabriel Byrne brings a wry gravitas to the role of Tom Reagan, the quick-thinking right-hand man to a powerful crime boss (Albert Finney). Tom’s unflappable cool is tested when he begins offering his services to a rival outfit—setting off a cascade of betrayals, reprisals, and increasingly berserk violence. The Hopperesque visuals of cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld, majestically elegiac score by Carter Burwell, and vivid ing performances from John Turturro and Marcia Gay Harden come together in a slice of pulp perfection that crackles with sardonic wit while plumbing existential questions about free will and our own terrifying capacity for evil.

www.criterion.com/films/29604-miller-s-crossing

www.criterionforum.org/Review/millers-crossing-the-criterion-collection-blu-ray

Miller’s Crossing: Marvelous Americans

Cahiers du cinéma: Do you [Dashiell Hammett’s] The Glass Key? The end?

Jean-Luc Godard: Not very clearly. I’d like to reread it.

Cahiers: At the end, a woman who has hardly featured in the story suddenly recounts a dream.

Godard: The Americans are marvelous like that.
“Let’s Talk About Pierrot,” October 1965

September 1990 saw the U.S. releases of three noteworthy American gangster movies: Martin Scorsese’s concussive, definitive, multidecade mob story Goodfellas; Abel Ferrara’s simultaneously white-hot and icy-cold contemporary drug-lord parable King of 
New York; and Joel and Ethan Coen’s Prohibition-era corkscrew Miller’s Crossing. Of the three, the Coens’ film—a terse and lyrical fable of violence, loyalty, and existential unease that draws on the hard-boiled fiction of Dashiell Hammett—is the most enigmatic and the most haunting.

These qualities are due to the character at the center of Miller’s Crossing. Goodfellas’ carousing, wildly irresponsible Henry Hill is a simple man; the aspiring philanthropist and vicious killer Frank White, in King of New York, is a man with a dream; in Miller’s Crossing, Tom Reagan is a . . . what?

In a sense, he’s a prototype of the Coens’ variation on a familiar literary and cinematic trope, the Man Alone. In what many have called “Coen country,” this figure is sometimes one who is slowly made to realize that the world he once considered his home is either ing him by or just flat-out ending: see the title character of Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), or Larry Gopnik in A Serious Man (2009), or Eddie Mannix in Hail, Caesar! (2016). The Dude of The Big Lebowski (1998) doesn’t seem to mind much that the world ed him by a long time ago. Ed Tom Bell in No Country for Old Men (2007) understands that the ending of worlds is just in the nature of things: “You can’t stop what’s coming.” As far as Rooster Cogburn in True Grit (2010) is concerned, he is the world. (These latter two characters were originated by two redoubtable American writers—Cormac McCarthy and Charles Portis, respectively—whose worldviews are unusually suited to that of the Coens.) In each of these films, the audience can easily understand where these men are, as they say, coming from. That’s not at all the case with Tom Reagan.

Played with a desolate quietude by Gabriel Byrne, Tom Reagan, confidant to city fixer Leo O’Bannon (Albert Finney), always seems to have something eating at him. The movie’s opening scene is a typically blunt and funny depiction of the business these American gangsters have chosen. It is, as many great Coen scenes are, simultaneously dry and broad. A couple of ice cubes drop into a whiskey glass, depicting a familiar mode of social lubrication; a raspy offscreen voice says, “I’m talking about friendship, I’m talking about character, I’m talking about—hell, Leo, I’m not embarrassed to use the word—I’m talking about ethics.” About two-thirds of the way into this proclamation, the Coens cut to a medium close-up of the speaker, Johnny Caspar, played by Jon Polito, one of cinema’s greatest portrayers of double-talking sleazebags and a Coen rep player throughout the 1990s. The unctuousness he oozes from his pores and through every strand of his pencil mustache is the joke’s immaculate punch line.

But the cloud over Tom Reagan’s head, as he endorses Caspar’s notion to rub out a parasitical fixer known in this section only as Bernie, grounds the movie’s solemn mien to an extent that nothing, not Caspar’s ridiculousness or anything else, can fully displace it. Leo is a tough guy who knows how things work, but he’s not particularly sophisticated—Tom corrects his mispronunciation of joie de vivre—and he’s a little naive. We eventually learn that he’s blinded by love, or something like it. He’s smitten, dazzled, by a bombshell named Verna (Marcia Gay Harden, tough and tender in equally potent measure)—who’s also Bernie’s sister. It’s with this Verna that Tom himself is conducting a desultory, booze-mediated, self-loathing affair. This does not make Tom sentimental. Just the opposite. He’s all for getting rid of Bernie. “Think about what protecting Bernie gets us,” he counsels Leo. But Leo doesn’t think. He feels.

Tom feels too. But mostly what he feels, it seems, is a lip-biting disgust. With himself, with Verna, with the money he owes to an ever-unseen bookie (this movie’s God figure), with the entire world around him. Except Leo. One senses that it’s not so much that he likes Leo as that he envies him—for his ability to feel things other than, well, disgust.

Bernie Bernbaum, played with terrifying intensity by John Turturro, is an object—not even a subject, in the final analysis—to inspire disgust. He shows up twenty-five minutes into the movie and is immediately repellent. That Bernie is Jewish is not unremarked upon by the characters around him. He is referred to as a “sheenie” and a “Hebrew” again and again. But he’s no victim. Between his lightning-speed, improvisatory venality and his equally brisk line of patter—he’s one of those characters you know is lying because his mouth is moving (and if he’s not lying, he’s making awful threats)—Bernie doesn’t just seem irredeemable; he is irredeemable. This shudder-inducing character is not an anti-Semitic depiction as such—but his conception is definitely what one might call impious, and the discomfort it arouses is entirely deliberate. The liberal use of epithets describing Jewish and Irish characters tamps down the viewer’s inclination to romanticize or sentimentalize these characters—something they are prone to doing themselves, what with all the “Danny Boy” singing and such.

As it happens, Tom’s act of mercy with respect to Bernie is almost his ruin. At one point in the movie, Tom is said to be “straight as a corkscrew.” That also applies to the story the Coens craft here. The initial dynamic between Tom and Leo is derived from the relationship between Ned Beaumont and Paul Madvig in Hammett’s 1931 novel The Glass Key. After the break with Leo, precipitated by Tom’s bitter confession to him about the affair with Verna, the story comes to resemble that of Red Harvest, the 1929 Hammett book that pits an unnamed detective—“the Continental Op”—against two warring gangs in a town known as Poisonville. He manipulates them into wiping each other out.

But Tom’s not as cool a player as the Op. At every turn, just as the viewer thinks Tom has wised up and is handling things, a new wrinkle, or just a literal fist to the face, bollixes things up. The fact that he vomits on his way to the site where he didn’t shoot Bernie shows he didn’t count on the corpse that lies there in Bernie’s place, shot in the face to make him unidentifiable. The way lousy luck seems to follow Tom around every corner is something experienced by several Coen protagonists, including unlucky barber Ed Crane in The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001) and A Serious Man’s Larry Gopnik. But the specificity of the misfortunes Tom faces, and the frustration they cause him, is a tie that practically binds Miller’s Crossing to Inside Llewyn Davis.

When all s and scores are settled, Leo expresses his gratitude to Tom. It was Tom’s “play,” his ostensible betrayal of Leo, that set the stage for the purge that ends at one very lonely funeral, where Tom is told to drop dead by the other mourner there with Leo.

Miller’s Crossing was the third feature film cooked up by Joel and Ethan Coen, and while it was largely very positively received by critics, one could say it kicked off the ponderous pondering concerning whether or not these guys were putting us on.
Their first movie, Blood Simple (1984), is a tight and nasty neonoir with an especially mordant sting in its tail. But their second, Raising Arizona (1987), is something like an ultrafrantic Looney Tunes cartoon with biker movie and spaghetti western DNA spliced in. Miller’s Crossing is for sure an engrossing motion picture, but what else is it? A pastiche of Dashiell Hammett plotlines? An homage to classic thirties American gangster pictures? A send-up of said pictures? The morsels of absurdity and absurdism that fleck the film (the scene in which Caspar demands that the mayor make his non-English-speaking cousins from the old country aldermen, for instance) could conceivably throw one off-balance.

But if the Coens’ subsequent career has taught us anything, it’s that we would be mistaken in thinking that they’re trying to trip us up. Their ethos has a kinship to Puck’s exclamation, “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” They depict that condition in all the modulations that can make good movies. The tones and tropes we encounter in their films are components of a genuine sensibility—one they don’t feel compelled to explain to journalists. As collaborators, perhaps they do not even need to explain it to each other—their being brothers means their senses of humor and of what works in narrative are things they formed side by side.

Looking at Miller’s Crossing today, one is most impressed by its sheer density. The way the script adores idioms of the thirties criminal world: phrases and words like “let it drift,” “dangle,” “What’s the rumpus?,” “I’ll see where the twist flops,” “don’t smart me,” “take it on the heel and toe,” “jungled up,” and of course the immortal “I’m sick of getting the high hat.” At an angle off that idiom, there’s wisdom in the adages. The dry way that Johnny Caspar’s malevolent henchman the Dane (J. E. Freeman) says to Tom, “You ever notice how the snappy dialogue dries up once a guy starts soiling his union suit?” (A funereal variation on the great line “The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter,” from The Maltese Falcon, both Hammett’s book and the movie.)

In an interview, cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld recalled that he and the Coens agreed that the movie should look “handsome.” That meant using long lenses and shallow focus. It meant magisterial New Orleans locations, streets and alleyways in which both gangsters and ghosts of gangsters walked. It meant the burnished feel of the interiors, down to the floorboards through which Leo sees telltale wisps of smoke in his bedroom. Such visual details enrich the movie’s great set pieces, which mix dread and slapstick with remarkable brio. Leo’s bravura response to his attempted assassination—not just the way he dispatches his would-be killers from underneath his bed, but his “just try me” rage as he runs into the street, tommy gun blazing. The slow, steady walk into the forest where Bernie will deal with a fate he’s not entirely sure he can wheedle his way out of. Tom’s exasperated invasion of a crowded ladies’ room to confront Verna. (The startled attendant is played by none other than Albert Finney in drag.) The movie’s sound, too, is handsome, imposing. Carter Burwell’s score, drawing on Irish themes, or Irish-sounding themes, evoking the old country of Tom and Leo, is orchestrated Aaron Copland–size. The movie’s silences are deep. The noise of a trolley car ing behind Tom as he is about to enter another building where he’s due for another date with destiny bears down like the chug of a 
mammoth locomotive.

As in The Glass Key, there is a dream recounted in Miller’s Crossing. But it’s not at the end, it’s smack-dab in the middle of the picture. And the dream isn’t recounted by a minor character but by Tom himself. It’s after a conversation with Verna in which Tom asks the burning question “What did I want?” The couple are in bed, Tom sitting at its edge, Verna still under covers. Both are as unguarded as they’ll get in this movie. Tom broods and smokes. “What are you chewin’ over?” Verna asks.
“A dream I had once. I was walking in the woods, I don’t know why. Wind came up and blew me hat off.”

Verna somehow feels she can finally make some kind of meaningful connection with Tom here. So she riffs: “And you chased it, right? You ran and ran, finally caught up to it. And you picked it up. But it wasn’t a hat anymore. It had changed into somethin’ else, somethin’ wonderful.” This only has the effect of closing a door. “Nah,” Tom says, wearily. “It stayed a hat. And no—I didn’t chase it.” Tom draws from his cigarette. “Nothin’ more foolish than a man chasing his hat.”

Is Miller’s Crossing, finally, the story of a man chasing his own hat? The movie opens with the image of a hat on a forest floor; its final shot is of Tom Reagan, his hat as firmly on his head as it will ever be, with nowhere to go, nowhere to be. Maybe as much of a riddle to himself as he is to us.

www.criterion.com/current/posts/7686-miller-s-crossing-marvelous-americans

The Coen Brothers’ Miller’s Crossing (1990):
Criterion Blu-ray review

I wrote a review of the Coen Brothers’ third feature, Miller’s Crossing (1990), soon after it was first released. I loved this dense, richly textured homage to the classic gangster movie at the centre of which is an enigma. The plot is complex and endlessly twisty as it revolves around a character who expresses almost nothing – he keeps his feelings so tamped down that we can never be sure why he does what he does, or even at times just what it is that he’s doing. For me, everything abruptly came into focus with the film’s final shot; it suddenly all made sense. I sent that review to Film Quarterly and in due time received a polite and thoughtful rejection, the gist of which was that finding such a “key” is a dubious critical step, that it’s unreliable and reductive.

And yet, thirty-odd years later – and almost two decades since I last watched Miller’s Crossing (on DVD) – I find it happening all over again. I can follow the story’s events more easily because I’ve been here before, but that final shot still tells me something which clarifies (and in a sense “explains”) what has happened. This is the opposite of that final shot in Citizen Kane (1941) which purports to “explain” the life and personality of Charles Foster Kane, but explains nothing and makes a joke of the quest to understand the man. Should I distrust my own intuition? I haven’t come across other reviews which offer the same interpretation, so perhaps my own mind, emerging from the Coens’ feverish tragicomedy, has invented this apparent insight out of thin air. But then composer Carter Burwell, in an interview on Criterion’s new Blu-ray, makes a comment about his approach to the score which suggests he saw exactly what I see…

There’s no way to dig into this without talking about specifics of the film’s plot and themes which might be considered spoilers, so reader beware.

Miller’s Crossing marked a major development in the Coen Brothers’ filmmaking. Their first feature, Blood Simple (1984), was a tight, ferocious, low-budget neo-noir which channelled Jim Thompson better than any actual adaptation of his novels. Their follow-up, Raising Arizona (1987), was a broadly comic mash-up of genres barely held together by a screwball plot. But Miller’s Crossing is bigger, evoking golden age studio movies rather than the independent fringe. Although it is still playing with genre, it has formal qualities which give it an elegance absent from the earlier, scrappier movies. In a way, this makes it harder to read, because beneath the elegance there is still a feeling of comic irreverence. Are the Coens’ mocking the classic gangster genre, or embracing it and repurposing its tropes, deconstructing something familiar to reveal or create something new?

The brothers say that their script owes a lot to the stories of Dashiel Hammett, both in of the narrative itself and in the manner of its telling; they avoid providing interior information. We only know the characters through their words and actions, neither of which give the audience a reliable idea of what is happening. In this tale of gangsters and gang war, of political corruption and the intersection of individual self-interest and social conflict, as viewers we react to seemingly familiar incidents without necessarily knowing what the actual motives behind them are.

The characters talk about, and are perpetually concerned with, loyalty. These gangsters have a code which supposedly defines their behaviour, but being flawed people their reality fails to live up to their ideals. In the opening scene (which echoes the beginning of The Godfather [1972]), Italian boss Johnny Caspar (Jon Polito) petitions the more powerful Irish boss Leo O’Bannon (Albert Finney) for redress of a perceived wrong. Caspar keeps returning to the issue of ethics as he explains that Bernie Bernbaum (John Turturro) has been interfering with Caspar’s betting on fixed fights, cutting into his take. But Bernie is under Leo’s protection because the latter is romantically involved with Bernie’s sister Verna (Marcia Gay Harden). He refuses to sanction Bernie’s death, thus initiating fractures in the uneasy balance of power between the gangs.

Leo’s adviser and fixer Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne) tells him he should give Bernie up in order to maintain the peace, but Leo puts his personal loyalty before the code. The path to a war between the Italians and the Irish is set. Things are further complicated by the fact that Tom is also having an affair with Verna, a betrayal of the boss to whom he otherwise shows unwavering loyalty. Once someone ends up dead – Leo’s man Rug Daniels (Salvatore H. Tornabene) bumped off in an alley – the violence escalates, with Tom caught in the middle. It all gets very complicated before Leo’s enemies are defeated and we see that Tom has played the gangs against one another like Toshiro Mifune in Yojimbo (1961).

Underlying the mechanics of the gang war is a depiction of male fragility, all the rules, the code, the “ethics” existing in order to protect the egos of these gangsters. Visually, one of the symbols used to increasingly comic effect is hats – they come off, they’re pulled down low over the eyes, they’re grabbed by the wind. Caspar, perpetually concerned with his own status, is always suspicious that everyone else is “giving him the high hat”, asserting their dominance, putting him down. These suspicions provoke him to violence, striking out to reassert his masculine authority. These hats act as both shields and containers, protecting their wearers from insult while simultaneously holding in volatile, destabilizing emotions. (The Coens, however, insist that “a hat is just a hat”.)

Issues of masculinity shape the characters’ personal as well as “professional” lives – Tom’s betrayal of Leo with Verna causes a seemingly irrevocable rift, although it eventually leads to the destruction of Caspar’s gang and the restoration of Leo’s position as the man who runs the town. Their emotional triangle is reflected in a second triangle, one involving three men which is key to unravelling the web of conflicts tearing the town apart: Caspar’s lieutenant, the Dane (J.E. Freeman), is involved with Mink (Steve Buscemi), who in turn has something going with Bernie. This triad needs to be destroyed before stability is regained, but it points towards that revelation which I see in the film’s final moments.

At the funeral for Bernie (whose death at the start might have spared everyone all the subsequent conflict and violence), Leo tells Tom that he’s going to marry Verna and as they walk away from him, Tom watches them go, pushes his hat down hard over his forehead as if clamping a lid on his own feelings – and the camera dollies in as he tilts his head and his eyes stare out from under the brim, weighted with what appears to be a deep sense of loss and melancholy. But it’s not Verna he’s lost; it’s Leo. It seems that all he’s done, all the plotting and manoeuvring to save Leo from his own poor decisions, has been done out of an unexpressed, unrequited love.

Everything Tom has done to manipulate and guide the action makes sense and takes on a sense of agency when seen in this light. That final look in Tom’s eyes carries the weight of the film, the cost to himself of all he’s done for the object of his desire which has nonetheless been irrevocably lost to him as a consequence of his actions. And yet … if you search “Miller’s Crossing gay subtext” you get a lot of hits referring to the Dane-Mink-Bernie triad, but little or nothing mentioning Tom. The Coens have mentioned in interviews the mirroring of the gay triangle and the heterosexual triangle (Tom-Verna-Leo), but the question of why Tom would risk so much to have a relationship with his boss’s mistress, a woman he actually doesn’t seem to have any particular feelings for, isn’t addressed. Could it simply be that Verna is the closest he can come to having a physical relationship with Leo? Not to mention her unfaithfulness with him seems likely to provoke rejection from Leo, thus removing Tom’s “rival”.

Although nowhere in the disk extras is any of this acknowledged by the Coens or the actors, Carter Burwell mentions that as he was trying to find the musical tone he needed for the score, he settled on the idea that this was a romance between Tom and Leo, an idea which unsettled the Coens until they actually heard the score. Woven through the Irish airs, which could so easily have seemed parodic, is a thread of romantic melancholy which works perfectly with the sombre visuals and the generally understated performances (Polito and Turturro are the big exceptions, the former going large to compensate for suspicions of inadequacy, the latter as an expression of absolute self-confidence which is toxic) to give the film its distinctive tone – neither parody nor pastiche, but rather a romantic tragicomedy which uses the tropes of the gangster movie to explore a particular type of masculinity.

www.cageyfilms.com/2022/02/the-coen-brothers-millers-crossing-1990-criterion-blu-ray-review/

]]>
orinow
The Trial 2l425o 1962 - ★★★★½ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/the-trial/ letterboxd-review-788944256 Sun, 26 Jan 2025 08:03:32 +1300 2025-01-22 No The Trial 1962 4.5 3009 <![CDATA[

pionowe struktury zakonu władzy i poziome połacie zdegenerowanej antropologii, pęd ku iluzji materialnemej wieczności i kult funkcjonariatu instytucjonalnego bóstwa, eksperymentalne zdjęcia, Criterion...

Skromny urzędnik państwowy zostaje niespodziewanie aresztowany, a następnie powiadomiony, iż wytoczono przeciwko niemu proces. fw

An unassuming office worker is arrested and stands trial, but he is never made aware of his charges. IMDb

Josef K wakes up in the morning and finds the police in his room. They tell him that he is on trial but nobody tells him what he is accused of. In order to find out about the reason of this accusation and to protest his innocence, he tries to look behind the facade of the judicial system. But since this remains fruitless, there seems to be no chance for him to escape from this Kafkaesque nightmare. IMDb

- It has been reported that Orson Welles dubbed 11 voices in the movie. trivia

The Trial (French: Le Procès) is a 1962 drama film written and directed by Orson Welles, based on the 1925 posthumously published novel of the same name by Franz Kafka. Welles stated immediately after completing the film: "The Trial is the best film I have ever made". The film begins with Welles narrating Kafka's parable "Before the Law" to pinscreen scenes created by the artists Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Parker.

Anthony Perkins stars as Josef K., a bureaucrat who is accused of a never-specified crime, and Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider and Elsa Martinelli play women who become involved in various ways in Josef's trial and life. Welles plays the Advocate, Josef's lawyer and the film's principal antagonist.

The Trial has grown in reputation over the years, and some critics, including Roger Ebert, have called it a masterpiece. It is often praised for its scenic design and cinematography, the latter of which includes disorienting camera angles and unconventional use of focus.

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/The_Trial_(1962_film)

A feverishly inspired take on Franz Kafka’s novel, Orson Welles’s The Trial casts Anthony Perkins as the bewildered office drone Josef K., whose arrest for an unspecified crime plunges him into a menacing bureaucratic labyrinth of guilt, corruption, and paranoia. Exiled from Hollywood and creatively unchained, Welles poured his ire at the studio system, the blacklist, and all forms of totalitarian oppression into this cinematic statement—a bold, personal film that he himself considered one of his greatest. Dizzying camera angles, expressionistic lighting, increasingly surreal locations—Welles unleashed the full force of his visual brilliance to convey the nightmarish disorientation of a world gone mad.

www.criterion.com/films/28115-the-trial

The Trial: Crime of the Century



Franz Kafka’s The Trial, the unfinished tale of a man living under arrest and prosecution for an unspecified offense, is perhaps the iconic author’s most paradigmatic text. Following its posthumous publication in 1925, and its translation into English by Willa and Edwin Muir in 1937, The Trial became, in turn, one of the paradigmatic texts of the twentieth century, an emblem of the “nightmare of history” from which none of us, dreaming or awake, has ever managed to escape. That it was successfully filmed by the exiled Hollywood wunderkind Orson Welles should be legendary in its own right.

Yet, almost as if the movie itself were guilty of some indefinable crime, the reputation of Welles’s The Trial (1962) has been regularly overshadowed, in critical appraisals, by the monuments that precede and follow it. I mean, of course, Touch of Evil (1958) and Chimes at Midnight (1966), the two films that best demonstrate how Welles’s mastery had survived, even expanded, following the humbling destruction of The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) and It’s All True (partially shot in 1941 and 1942 and never finished). In the 1970s, when—hard as it is now to imagine—Welles’s later career needed rehabilitation, advocates as influential as François Truffaut and James Naremore took pains to set The Trial aside as a misstep, while biographer Charles Higham called it “an agonizing experience.” Peter Bogdanovich, wrangling with the director in one of their taped conversations, its that it “simply isn’t a picture I really like to see . . . All the others I could see joyously over and over.” As recently as 2012, Jonathan Rosenbaum—one of the handful of critics sympathetic to the film, alongside Peter Cowie, Roger Ebert, and David Thomson—extended the view that “it has never found a very secure and comfortable place within [Welles’s] oeuvre.”

What was The Trial’s crime? Had it fallen into an abyss between Welles’s and Kafka’s divergent sensibilities? Was Anthony Perkins miscast as Kafka’s persecuted everyman? Was Welles antagonistic to the material? He didn’t do himself any favors by suggesting he’d chosen the book flippantly, from a list of literary works to adapt handed him by producer Alexander Salkind. Yet Welles also regularly called the film his happiest experience. “You know why I defend it,” he told Bogdanovich. “I suppose because it’s my own picture, unspoiled in the cutting or anything else . . . The producers were heroic and got it made, and there isn’t anything I had to compromise.” A doubter might chalk this up to petulance, yet Welles never relented on his regard for the movie. “Say what you like, but The Trial is the best film I ever made,” he told Cahiers du cinéma in 1965.



The situation is intricately ironic. Kafka left The Trial, like his other novels—The Castle and Amerika (known also as The Man Who Disappeared)—unfinished. Welles, notorious for uncompleted projects, brought this one to the finish line. Yet his absolute commitment to Kafka’s disjunctive and oblique novel induces a vertiginous experience for which many critics, let alone audiences, were hardly prepared. The two artists may seem to be polar opposites—Kafka the earnest, self-abnegating martyr, the starvation artist, barely known in his lifetime; Welles the Falstaffian raconteur, bluffing magician, and eater of worlds, his artworks obscured by an aura of rumor and charisma. These outward differences cloaked the deeper resonance that animated the project. They also dictated the awkward first impression that has tended to restrict The Trial from the shortlist of Welles’s masterpieces, completed, wrecked, or otherwise.

If Welles’s artworks were inevitably distorted by their creator’s aura, so, too, were Kafka’s, in the decades following his death in 1924. With the ascent of technocratic bureaucracy, Kafka’s reputation as an advocate for humanity against monolithic forces of conformity and repression made him a secular saint—an emblem of individual feeling in the face of the machine. Following the Holocaust, Kafka seemed a kind of archetypal Jewish victim and seer (never mind, in this viewpoint, that he wasn’t killed by Nazis; he would have been). Like Anne Frank, the author conveniently wasn’t around to complicate this sanctification, or to add further writings that might disappoint his celebrants. Kafka the poster child for artistic sensitivity is easier to embrace than the deeply ambivalent, vain, wry, self-pitying, neurotic, jealous, and elitist Josef K. who is the protagonist of the novel (or the similar K. of The Castle).

A distracting amount of attention was given to Welles’s alterations to the book’s chapter order, and its ending—an order and an ending that were, by definition, provisional, since the manuscript Kafka left behind existed only in fragments, frozen into a false authority by his literary executor Max Brod. Another distraction concerned the film’s concluding imagery: the smoke of the final explosion resembled a mushroom cloud, an unavoidable impression that Welles hadn’t intended and a form of “symbolism” he detested. Yet by the time the atom-bomb echo was drawn to his attention on set, logistical circumstances made it impossible to substitute anything better.

If Welles didn’t also regret his declaration (offered in interviews to Cahiers and the BBC) that he’d altered Kafka’s ending to make it less ive in light of the death camps, he ought to have. The suggestion—defensive yet pompous—combined with his insertion of an all-seeing supercomputer, which gives a slightly Rod Serling feel to one scene (Welles had the instinct to cut most of the computer material out just before the Paris premiere), gave an impression that the director had appropriated Kafka as a vehicle for his own topical themes. Yet the opposite is true. Welles lent his powers to Kafka’s text with a responsiveness bordering on the devotional. “A challenge I was very happy to accept,” he booms in a 1981 dialogue with students in an auditorium at the University of Southern California, filmed by Gary Graver for the documentary project Filming “The Trial.”

Welles was a better reader of Kafka than most of the director’s critics, especially those who rejected Anthony Perkins’s performance. In the USC talk, the director seems rueful at the possibility that he’d hung his star out to dry: “Perkins got very bad press, all over the world, and the entire blame for that is mine . . . He played the character that I saw as K., and paid the price, because nobody else sees it my way. I find in the book repeated indications that K. is a pusher, on his way up the bureaucracy. Not Mr. Zero in the adding machine, not little Mr. Nobody, not the poor little faceless ant, but a young man very anxious to get ahead in this awful world, and doing his best to do that, and therefore in a state of real neurosis, because he is both terrified of, and anxious to conquer, the same thing.” Here, Welles’s breathtaking eloquence is equaled by his insight. Having instructed Perkins to play it as “dark comedy,” Welles said, “we roared when we made it—you can’t imagine the hysterical laughter.” This corresponds to Kafka, who giggled as he read The Trial to his delighted friends.

The resonance between these two artists hides in plain sight. Welles’s films obsessively rework a two-character system, where a powerful and worldly mentor, sponsor, or villain ensnares and beguiles a more innocent, more gullible man; the arc of this universe bends toward betrayal. From Charles Foster Kane/Jedediah Leland in Citizen Kane (1941) through the two policemen in Touch of Evil and the two directors in The Other Side of the Wind (which Welles began work on in the 1970s and which was completed by others in 2018), Welles scarcely broke with this design. Instead, he found in it variations as splendid as Chimes at Midnight’s fallible, saintly Falstaff and the chilly, opaque title character of Mr. Arkadin (1955). (This is why The Third Man works as an emblem of Wellesianism, though Carol Reed directed it.)



Anyone knowing Kafka, from the story “The Judgment” to the relationship between the land surveyor and the sleepily monstrous Klamm in The Castle, will see the resemblance. There’s father-son energy in this mix, yet the more that relation is displaced into other frameworks, the better it illuminates the ballet between power and enthrallment. Welles lived longer than Kafka and felt more complicit with the father’s position; in his films, he plays the callow, impressionable son just once, in The Lady from Shanghai (1947). In The Trial, the role he took for himself, as the Law’s tyrannical, bedridden representative, enjoys only a scattering of scenes—yet by dubbing so many other characters’ voices, Welles manages to perfectly “embody” the everywhere-but-invisible quality of the advocate’s insinuating influence.

Welles also accentuated Kafka’s subterranean perversity. The sexual puns in the initial scene of arrest in K.’s rooms—the substitution of pornograph for phonograph, the strange dispute over the word ovular—originate with Welles, as does the development of the languorous, teasing encounter with his fellow boardinghouse occupant, Miss Bürstner, played by Jeanne Moreau. She’s just the first of the temptresses Welles hurls at Josef K. Presented with the specter of female desire, the character whiplashes between diffident preening and nerve-racked indifference. As reported by Welles’s late-life confidant Henry Jaglom, Welles and Perkins never needed to directly communicate the homosexual subtext of which both were aware. The insertion of a centerfold into the courtroom’s law books, on the other hand, comes from Kafka: “I got all the dirty eroticism of the rest of the movie out of that one thing,” Welles told Bogdanovich.

This atmosphere of polymorphous-perverse unease may have added to a sense, in 1962, that Welles had mishandled Kafka’s book. But again, Welles was ahead of a wave of twenty-first-century scholarship and retranslation, which freed Kafka’s texts from Max Brod’s revisions, as well as the religious tone played up by his first English translators, to better reveal the blunt, searching strangeness of his texts—and a few suppressed sexual allusions. Here, Welles anticipates writers like Michel Foucault, Slavoj Žižek, and Roberto Calasso, who employ Kafka as a lens on how unsatisfiable appetite binds humans to systems of disciplinary power.

Welles’s interrogation of Kafka’s subtext wouldn’t mean much if the director hadn’t found a cinematic language equal to the novelist’s distinctive effects: those careening yet gnomic set pieces; the tonal vertigo that seems to excavate the underside of ordinary existence; and, above all, the serene, dreamlike juxtapositions and jumps, so incontrovertibly lucid, that give Kafka’s writing its crazy power. Who better than Welles, really, to depict the discontinuous spatiality that caused Jorge Luis Borges to compare Kafka to the Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea? Preparing to shoot, Welles drew up designs for elaborate sets he wasn’t allowed to create—some of the sketches survive, possessing an expressionistic power perhaps most closely approximated in the final film by the slatted cage that houses the sinister court painter Titorelli (William Chappell). 
Yet Welles’s employment of found locations, including the vacated Gare d’Orsay train station in Paris, worked better than any sets could have done. The movie shatters multiple European cities into fragments, crushing together antiquity and modernity, and claustrophobia and barren enormity, to form a labyrinth that grips K. as tightly as the teeth of a vise. The Trial, one of the few films where Welles controlled every editorial decision, shows that among his many talents he was one of the greatest editors in cinema.

The musical score, too, crushes eras together. This temporal insight Welles also drew from his study of Kafka: “In my reading of the book . . . I see the monstrous bureaucracy which is the villain of the piece as not only Kafka’s clairvoyant view of the future, but his racial and cultural background of being occupied by the Austro-Hungarian Empire.” Like George Minafer in The Magnificent Ambersons, another occupant of a decaying castle he can exit but never leave, K. is a bug smashed, as if in the pages of a book, between historical eras.

In hindsight, we can now place The Trial less outside the continuum of Welles’s interests than as the middle film in a loose trilogy, with Mr. Arkadin and The Other Side of the Wind: all three present labyrinthine, fractured, phantasmagorically subjective worlds, and conclude that, despite the plethora of doors and ages one may through—quite easily, despite the onition of the doorkeepers—no exit is possible, since the inside and the outside, the prisoner and the warden, are one and the same. (The Lady from Shanghai is The Hobbit to this Lord of the Rings.) Of the three, only The Trial is whole and intact, and, though the two others originate with Welles and The Trial with a book plucked from a list, it is the least archly baroque, the most fulfilled, in authentically Wellesian . When Bogdanovich mutters, “I told you I liked it better the second time I saw it,” Welles, sensing victory at hand, commands, “See it a third time!”

www.criterion.com/current/posts/8256-the-trial-crime-of-the-century


The Trial (1948)
letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/the-trial-1948/


The Castle (1994)
letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/the-castle-1994/


The Castle (1997)
letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/the-castle/

]]>
orinow
Light Sleeper v3v3v 1992 - ★★★★ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/light-sleeper/ letterboxd-review-783842365 Tue, 21 Jan 2025 11:27:20 +1300 2025-01-20 No Light Sleeper 1992 4.0 36351 <![CDATA[

chcącemu dzieje się krzywda, odyseja człowieka którego każdych ciał spotkać przez ciemną noc zła które przynosił a pracy swej nienawidził, nieoczekiwane meandry życia, film osobisty, [unofficial] Lonely Man trilogy II...

John LeTour jest dilerem narkotykowym z Manhattanu doświadczającym kryzysu wieku średniego. Kiedy jego szefowa decyduje o zawieszeniu działalności, pojawia się dla niego szansa na zmianę. fw

John LeTour (Willem Dafoe), dealer narkotyków z bogatej dzielnicy Nowego Jorku, zaczyna odczuwać wyrzuty sumienia, widząc rezultaty wykonywanej "profesji". Przełomem staje się przypadkowe spotkanie wielkiej miłości sprzed lat, którą wciąż mocno kocha. Ona jednak ma do niego wielki żal, że przez niego zaczęła zażywać narkotyki. fw

A drug dealer reconsiders his profession when his boss plans to go straight and an old flame reappears. IMDb

A drug dealer with upscale clientele is having moral problems going about his daily deliveries. A reformed addict, he has never gotten over the wife that left him, and the couple that use him for deliveries worry about his mental well-being and his effectiveness at his job. Meanwhile someone is killing women in apparently drug-related incidents. IMDb

Writer/director Paul Schrader has said that this is the final film in his trilogy of loners who hate their jobs. Taksówkarz (1976) and Amerykański żigolak (1980) were the other two films. trivia

Light Sleeper is a 1992 American crime drama film written and directed by Paul Schrader and starring Willem Dafoe, Susan Sarandon, and Dana Delany. Set in New York City during a sanitation strike, the gritty neo-noir film stars Dafoe as a high-class drug dealer battling a midlife crisis before becoming embroiled in tragic events following the chance encounter with a former girlfriend. While under-performing at the box office, the film was regarded favorably by critics.

Background

Schrader has described the film as a "man and his room" story like American Gigolo and his most famous screenplay which became the basis for Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver. In this film his character is dealing with anxiety over his life and the external forces that threaten it. Light Sleeper also shares with American Gigolo an ending reminiscent of Robert Bresson's Pickpocket, in which the imprisoned hero is shown contemplating a new and hopefully better existence.

The movie was still in the process of fundraising when production began, so Schrader financed the first three weeks of pre-production using his own money. Light Sleeper was the first artistic collaboration of Willem Dafoe and Paul Schrader, who met during filming of Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ. Dafoe and Schrader later collaborated in Affliction (1997), Auto Focus (2002), The Walker (2007), Adam Resurrected (2008), Dog Eat Dog (2016) and The Card Counter (2021).

Schrader had originally intended to use songs from Bob Dylan's album Empire Burlesque, but Schrader and Dylan could not agree on which songs to use and Schrader decided to use songs by Michael Been instead.

Light Sleeper premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 1992 and was released in the US on August 21 that same year, earning $1 million at the box office. It gained mostly positive reviews and received various nominations, including the Independent Spirit Award. Willem Dafoe was awarded the Sant Jordi Award as best actor. In a telegram, German filmmaker Wim Wenders congratulated Schrader, stating that his direction was in a league with that of Japanese director Yasujirō Ozu, who both Wenders and Schrader ire. In a 2005 interview, Schrader called Light Sleeper his most personal film.

Reception

Light Sleeper received positive reviews from critics. It holds an 87% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 45 reviews, with a rating average of 7.50/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Light Sleeper requires patience, but delivers commensurate rewards -- and boasts an absorbing performance from Willem Dafoe." Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 70 out of 100, based on 22 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Film critic Roger Ebert wrote, "Schrader knows this world of insomnia, craving and addiction. And he knows all about people living in a cocoon of themselves. […] In film after film, for year after year, Paul Schrader has been telling this story in one way or another, but never with more humanity than this time”.

Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly wrote Light Sleeper is "[…] a small but absorbing mood piece […] even when the film doesn't gel, one is held by Willem Dafoe's grimly compelling performance”.

Writing for Time Out Film Guide, Geoff Andrew said the film is a "stylish film…But the story meanders, and it echoes Taxi Driver and American Gigolo so closely that Schrader is working less than fresh variations on over-familiar themes”.

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Light_Sleeper

]]>
orinow
The Story of Film 343o5s An Odyssey, 2011 - ★★★★½ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/the-story-of-film-an-odyssey-2011/ letterboxd-review-782323723 Mon, 20 Jan 2025 08:15:37 +1300 2025-01-15 No The Story of Film: An Odyssey 2011 4.5 45571 <![CDATA[

historia kina drogami innowacji i nowatorstwa - "a story of innovation, because innovation fuels cinema", film w dictum rewolucyjnym...

900 minut najprawdziwszej filmowej magii - to efekt wieloletniej pracy Marka Cousinsa, reżysera, krytyka filmowego i człowieka, którego serce najmocniej bije w kinie. "The Story of Film - odyseja filmowa" to, jak nazwa wskazuje, projekt przyglądający się rozwojowi kinematografii. Jego niezwykłość polega na tym, że stworzył go ktoś, kto język kina ma w małym palcu i doskonale go rozumie, a właściwie - mówi nim. Opowiadając o pełnej przypadków, intrygujących faktów i wiekopomnych epizodów historii filmu, reżyser nie stoi na pozycji patrzącego chłodnym okiem dokumentalisty, ale inkorporuje kinowe style i chwyty. Dlatego film Cousinsa nie jest przezroczystym, estetycznie "szkolnym" referatem, ale najprawdziwszą przygodą, podróżą przez czas i przestrzeń. Ten projekt to efekt ogromnej pracy. Podzielony na 15 części materiał prowadzi przez 120 lat pogmatwanych dziejów taśmy filmowej (a potem - karty pamięci). Kompetencja i rozmach tego projektu zachwyca, ale zaczarowanym kluczem do serc widzów nie jest tu szkiełko i oko, a wrażliwość twórcy. Podczas seansu łatwo zrozumieć, że dla Cousinsa kino jest wszystkim. A jego pasja i miłość są zaraźliwe. fw

A comprehensive history of the medium and art of motion pictures. IMDb

www.imdb.com/title/tt2044056/episodes

Covers six continents and 12 decades of film. trivia

The Story of Film: An Odyssey is a 2011 British documentary film about the history of film, presented on television in 15 one-hour chapters with a total length of over 900 minutes. It was directed and narrated by Mark Cousins, a film critic from Northern Ireland, based on his 2004 book The Story of Film.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Film:_An_Odyssey

- 1895-1918. The world discovers a new art form
- 1918-1928. The triumph of American film and the first of its rebels
- 1918-1932. The great rebel filmmakers around the world
- The 1930s. The great American movie genres and the brilliance of European film
- 1939-1952. The devastation of war and a new movie language
- 1953-1957. The swollen story : world cinema bursting at the seams
- 1957-1964. The shock of the new, modern filmmaking in Western Europe
- 1965-1969. New waves sweep around the world
- 1967-1979. New American cinema
- 1969-1979. Radical directors in the 70s make state of the nation movies
- The 1970s and onwards. Innovation in popular culture around the world
- The 1980s. Moviemaking and protest around the world
- 1990-1998. The last days of celluloid, before the coming of digital
- The 1990s. The first days of digital : reality losing its realness in America and Australia
- 2000 onwards. Film moves full circle and the future of the movies

www.librarything.com/work/691975

The Story of Film: An Odyssey (2011)

www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3foyEVX3ztw3GutiJvOwyRs-eacSdPtj


Hollywood (1980)
letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/hollywood-1980/


Cinema Europe: The Other Hollywood (1995)
letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/cinema-europe-the-other-hollywood/

]]>
orinow
A Place to Stand 683ii 1967 - ★★★★½ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/a-place-to-stand/ letterboxd-review-782251334 Mon, 20 Jan 2025 07:15:58 +1300 2018-11-03 No A Place to Stand 1967 4.5 243307 <![CDATA[

od natury do kultury, od przemysłu do obyczaju, od człowieka do człowiek, Ontario miejsce do życia dla wszystkich i o każdej porze, impresja, poliwizja...

A multi-image large-format film showcasing life in Ontario without narration and dialogue. IMDb

A Place to Stand is a 1967 film produced and edited by the Canadian artist and filmmaker Christopher Chapman for the Ontario pavilion at Expo 67 in Montréal, Québec, Canada. For the film, he pioneered the concept of moving panes, of moving images, within the single context of the screen. At times there are 15 separate images moving at once. This technique, which he dubbed "multi-dynamic image technique" has since been employed in many films, notably Norman Jewison's 1968 film The Thomas Crown Affair. Jewison has credited Chapman as the creator of the edit style. The technique can also be seen more recently on television in the series 24.

It is said that most of the editing decisions were worked out in an ant's spreadsheet book and the pencil edit plan resembled flow charts.[citation needed] Chapman has remarked that at one point in the editing process he stood there in the room, bits of footage hanging from clips all around him. He felt crushed by the force of his vision and was a breath away from quitting. Even at the first screening, Chapman was exhausted and unsure but as he left the room, Steve McQueen watching at the back, grabbed Chapman and told him that he was blown away by the film.

The 18-minute film used 70mm stock and was projected onto a 66 by 30 foot screen. It contains no dialogue, but only music by a 45-member orchestra and a 15-member choir. Its theme song, "A Place to Stand, a Place to Grow", written by Dolores Claman and Richard Morris, and orchestrated by Jerry Toth, enjoyed great popularity on its own. Commissioned by the Ontario Department of Economics and Development from the Toronto commercial design studio TDF and premiered at the Expo 67 Ontario Pavilion on April 28, 1967, it was seen by some two million at Expo 67 itself and later by a further estimated 100 million in North America and Europe in cinema release. It was nominated for an Academy Award in two categories: Best Documentary Short Subject and Best Live Action Short Subject. It won the latter prize, which Chapman accepted on April 10, 1968.

The film won the Canadian Film Award for Film of the Year at the 20th Canadian Film Awards in 1968. In the same year it was screened at the 18th Berlin Film Festival as part of Young Canadian Film, a lineup of films by emerging Canadian filmmakers.

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/A_Place_to_Stand_(film)

This short was originally screened at the Ontario Pavilion at Expo '67 in Montreal, Canada. trivia

Commissioned by the Ontario Government for the Ontario Pavilion at Expo 67, the film shows (without a storyline or narration) life in Ontario; the places, the industry, the culture and the people. Approximately 90 minutes of footage is shown in it's 18 minute running-time by using the groundbreaking and innovative "multi-dynamic image technique". The technique allows up to 15 s of images of various sizes and formats simultaneously projected onto a single large screen. IMDb

Multi Image Expo'67 Oscar Winner Holds Up Solidly
A Place To Stand stands the test of time due to its intelligent use of split screen images, some stunning photography and an unforgettable theme song....the only element that needs primping is the narrative, which has the antiseptic feel of a bureaucratic rubber stamp (in this case, the Ontario Tourist Board). This oscar winner delighted Expo '67 and the sequel in '68 "Man And His World" in Montreal and is totally obscure today. Picked up a vhs wide-screen copy for personal use from a friend in the business and was thrilled as any World's Fair film completist must be. As the closing theme lyrics cheerlead "Give us a place to stand, and a place to grow, and we will build Ontario!!!!" IMDb


poliwizja

In the Labyrinth (1967)
letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/in-the-labyrinth/


nowatorska poliwizja zastosowana w filmie

The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/the-thomas-crown-affair/

]]>
orinow
The Thomas Crown Affair 6a2q6p 1968 - ★★★½ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/the-thomas-crown-affair/ letterboxd-review-782241298 Mon, 20 Jan 2025 07:06:41 +1300 2025-01-19 No The Thomas Crown Affair 1968 3.5 912 <![CDATA[

atrakcyjna multi-poliwizja...

Milioner przygotowuje napad na bank w celu manifestacji swojej pogardy wobec społecznych norm. fw

Thomas Crown (Steve McQueen) to jeden z najbogatszych obywateli Bostonu. Jego wielką pasją są przestępstwa. Przygotowuje duży skok na bank, nie dlatego, że potrzebuje pieniędzy, lecz tylko po to, by zburzyć istniejący układ społeczny. Dla Thomasa jest to tylko gra, a pieniądze to namacalny dowód jego zwycięstwa. Agencja ubezpieczeniowa wysyła swoją najlepszą agentkę, Vicky Anderson (Faye Dunaway), by zajęła się tą sprawą. Vicky postanawia spotkać się z Crownem i przyłączyć do gry, którą prowadzi. fw

The Thomas Crown Affair is a 1968 American heist film directed by Norman Jewison and written by Alan Trustman. It stars Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway, Paul Burke and Jack Weston. In the film, Vicki Anderson (Dunaway) is hired to investigate the culprits of a multi-million dollar bank heist, orchestrated by Thomas Crown (McQueen).

The film was nominated for two Academy Awards, winning Best Original Song for Michel Legrand's "The Windmills of Your Mind". A remake was released in 1999.

Production

A pioneering split screen photography technique used to show simultaneous actions was inspired by the breakthrough Expo 67 films In the Labyrinth and A Place to Stand. The latter debuted the use of Christopher Chapman's "multi-dynamic image technique" of images shifting on moving panes. Steve McQueen was on hand for an advance screening of A Place to Stand in Hollywood, and personally told Chapman he was highly impressed; the following year, Norman Jewison incorporated the technique into the film by inserting split screen scenes into the already finished product.

The film also features a chess scene, with McQueen and Dunaway playing a game of chess, silently flirting with each other. The game depicted is based on a game played in Vienna in 1898 between Gustav Zeissl and Walter von Walthoffen.

McQueen performed his own stunts, which include playing polo and driving a dune buggy at high speed along the Massachusetts coastline.

Vicki Anderson's car, referred to as "one of those red Italian things", is the first of only ten Ferrari 275 GTB/4S NART Spiders built. Today, this model is one of the most valuable Ferrari road cars made. McQueen liked the car very much, and eventually managed to acquire one for himself. The dune buggy was a Meyers Manx.[citation needed] McQueen owned one.[citation needed] Crown's two-door Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow carried the Massachusetts vanity license plate "TC 100" for the film.

Sean Connery had been the original choice for the title role, but turned it down — a decision he later regretted. Johnny Carson also turned down the role.

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/The_Thomas_Crown_Affair_(1968_film)

A debonair, adventuresome bank executive believes he has pulled off the perfect multi-million dollar heist, only to match wits with an insurance investigator who will do anything to get her man. IMDb

Four men pull off a daring daytime robbery at a bank, dump the money in a trash can and go their separate ways. Thomas Crown, a successful, wealthy businessman pulls up in his Rolls and collects it. Vickie Anderson, an independent insurance investigator is called in to recover the huge haul. She begins to examine the people who knew enough about the bank to have pulled the robbery and discovers Crown. She begins a tight watch on his every move and begins seeing him socially. How does the planner of the perfect crime react to pressure? IMDb


remake

The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)
letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/the-thomas-crown-affair-1999/


poliwizja wzorowana na filmach

A Place to Stand (1967)
letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/a-place-to-stand/

In the Labyrinth (1967)
letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/in-the-labyrinth/

]]>
orinow
Out 1 2176s 1971 - ★★★½ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/out-1/ letterboxd-review-763678148 Mon, 6 Jan 2025 10:07:58 +1300 2025-01-05 No Out 1 1971 3.5 94528 <![CDATA[

gestaltowanie i spiskowanie w poszukiwaniu minionego czasu...
metafora rozdyskutowanego chaosu po '68...

Kronika prób prowadzonych przez dwie trupy teatralne, przygotowujące się do wystawienia tragedii greckich Ajschylosa, "Prometeusza w okowach" i "Siedmiu przeciw Tebom". Perypetie bohaterów, zarówno postaci scenicznych, jak i zaprzątnietnych codziennością aktorów, stanowią odbicie zagadkowej historii tajnego bractwa w Paryżu. fw

Following the May 1968 civil unrest in , a deaf-mute and a con artist simultaneously stumble upon the remnants of a secret society. IMDb

Out 1, also referred to as Out 1: Noli Me Tangere, is a 1971 French mystery film written and directed by Jacques Rivette and Suzanne Schiffman. It is indebted to Honoré de Balzac's La Comédie humaine, particularly the History of the Thirteen collection (1833–35). Known for its length of nearly 13 hours, the film is divided into eight parts of approximately 90–100 minutes each.

The vast length of Out 1 allows Rivette and Schiffman, like Balzac, to construct multiple loosely connected characters with independent stories whose subplots weave amongst each other and continually uncover new characters with their own subplots. A truncated 4½-hour version exists, and its Spectre subtitle was chosen for the name's ambiguous and various indistinct meanings, while the Noli me tangere ("touch me not") subtitle for the original cut is clearly a reference to it being the full-length film as intended by Rivette.

The film's experimentation with parallel subplots was influenced by André Cayatte's two-part Anatomy of a Marriage (1964), while the use of expansive screen time was first toyed with by Rivette in L'amour fou (1969). The parallel narrative structure has since been used in many other notable films, including Krzysztof Kieślowski's Dekalog and Lucas Belvaux's Trilogie, which includes Un couple épatant, Cavale and Après la vie, to name a few. Each part begins with a title in the form of "from person to person" (usually indicating the first and last characters seen in each episode), followed by a handful of black and white still photos recapitulating the scenes of the prior episode, then concluded by showing the final minute or so (in black and white) of the last episode before cutting into the new episode itself (which is entirely in color).

Out 1 has won consistent critical acclaim since its release, and further received 13 votes in the 2012 Sight & Sound critics' poll of the greatest films ever made, resulting in a final ranking of 127th, and 17 votes in the 2022 critics' poll, resulting in a final ranking of 169th.

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Out_1

"Out 1" is a very precise picture of post May 1968 malaise - when Utopian dreams of a new society had crashed and burned, radical terrorism was starting to emerge in unlikely places and a great many other things. Two marginals who don't know one another stumble into the remnants of a "secret society": Colin, a seemingly deaf-mute who all of a sudden begins to talk and Frederique, a con artist working the "short con" (stealing drinks and tricking men who think she's a hooker out of their money). Meanwhile, there are two theater groups rehearsing classic Greek dramas: "Seven Against Thebes" and "Prometheus Bound". A member of the Moretti group es a note to Leaud about "The 13" which sends Leaud on a search for "The 13". His search brings him eventually to Bulle Ogier's shop in Les Halles "L'Angle du Hasard." Berto follows much the same path when she steals a cachet of letters from Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and tries to get money from their owners for their return. These twin activities reactivate "The 13", which had been dormant for years, revealing, among other things, that the two theater groups were once one. IMDb

]]>
orinow
Cinema Europe 63050 The Other Hollywood, 1995 - ★★★★★ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/cinema-europe-the-other-hollywood/ letterboxd-review-763057871 Mon, 6 Jan 2025 00:50:16 +1300 2024-12-31 No Cinema Europe: The Other Hollywood 1995 5.0 43319 <![CDATA[

3 dekady niemego kina Europy, cytatami ważnych filmów i wspomnieniami kluczowych twórców, kontynuacja "Hollywood (1980)"...

Spojrzenie na epokę kina niemego w Europie, od narodzin filmu do połowy lat 30. XX wieku, gdy dźwięk zaczyna święcić pierwsze triumfy. fw

Kolejna edukacyjna seria twórców "Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film" - tym razem przybliżająca największe dokonania kina europejskiego. 6-godzinna lekcja tylko dotyka najważniejszych dokonań potężnej europejskiej kinematografii. A wędrówka rozpoczyna się już od historycznych dokonań braci Lumiere, by później skupić się głównie na kinie skandynawskim, niemieckim, francuskim, brytyjskim, włoskim i rosyjskim. Narratorem cyklu jest słynący głównie z filmowych adaptacji dramatów Szekspira, Anglik Kenneth Branagh. fw

Documentary mini-series about the rise and fall of the European silent film industry.IMDb

Cinema Europe: The Other Hollywood (1995) is a documentary film series produced by David Gill and silent film historian Kevin Brownlow.

It is a follow-up to their 1980 documentary film series, Hollywood.

The six-part mini-series focuses on the origin of European cinema, from its infancy as a novelty created by French inventors Auguste and Louis Lumière to its flourishing as the pinnacle of film-making in the silent era and as a serious commercial contender against America (that is, until the surge of the Nazis).

The important series contains much rare footage and offers an even-handed analysis of the specific strengths and weaknesses of the various national film industries during this first flourishing of film as art.

Episodes

I - "Where It All Began" (Introductory Episode)

October 1, 1995
Highlighting the world's first public presentation of films in Paris, the silent film industries in Denmark and Italy, the comedies by Max Linder and Ernst Lubitsch, Abel Gance's J'accuse and the onset of World War I.

II - "Art's Promised Land" (Sweden)

October 8, 1995
Including Ingeborg Holm, Terje Vigen and The Phantom Carriage by Victor Sjöström and Greta Garbo's star-making performance opposite Lars Hanson in Mauritz Stiller's Gosta Berling's Saga. Directed by Michael Winterbottom.

III - "The Unchained Camera" ()

October 15, 1995
Featuring The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Battleship Potemkin by Sergei Eisenstein, Metropolis, Die Nibelungen by Fritz Lang, Joyless Street starring Greta Garbo, F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu, Emil Jannings, The White Hell of Pitz Palu featuring Leni Riefenstahl and Louise Brooks becomes a star in G. W. Pabst's Pandora's Box and Diary of a Lost Girl.

IV - "The Music of Light" ()

October 22, 1995
Highlighting Abel Gance's masterpieces, Napoleon and La Roue.

V - "Opportunity Lost" (Britain)

October 29, 1995
Exploring the early career of Alfred Hitchcock.

VI - "End of an Era" (Finale)

November 5, 1995
Focusing on the arrival of sound films, The Jazz Singer, The Blue Angel, and the onslaught of World War II.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_Europe:_The_Other_Hollywood

www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuLciUkp6WHFzPYMrgCJQw2zBWAHy1_MY

Cinema Europe: The Other Hollywood (1995) is a documentary series produced by David Gill and silent film historian Kevin Brownlow. Chronicles the birth of European cinema, from the Lumiere brothers to World War I, and then the first golden age of Swedish cinema, from the formation of Svenska Bio to the departure for Hollywood of Stiller and Sjöström. The French build the first studio, invent the traveling shot, and experiment in sound. Max Linder becomes the first comedic star. The Italians do spectacle and early realism. Germans invent film propaganda and have Lubitsch. The Danish cinema is rich before the war. An affectionate portrait of Swedish cinema appreciates its cinematography, led by Jaenzon, its conversion of novels into film, and the emergence of a production company that owned its own theaters. This is a marvelous documentary series and required viewing for film buffs.

Where It All Began (introductory episode). Highlighting the world’s first public presentation of films in Paris, the silent film industries in Denmark and Italy, the comedies by Max Linder and Ernst Lubitsch, Abel Gance’s J’accuse and the onset of World War I.

cinephiliabeyond.org/cinema-europe-hollywood/

www.silentera.com/video/docCinemaEuropeHV.html

Chronicles the birth of European cinema, from the Lumiere brothers to World War I, and then the first golden age of Swedish cinema, from the formation of Svenska Bio to the departure for Hollywood of Stiller and Sjöström. The French build the first studio, invent the traveling shot, and experiment in sound. Max Linder becomes the first comedic star. The Italians do spectacle and early realism. Germans invent film propaganda and have Lubitsch. The Danish cinema is rich before the war. An affectionate portrait of Swedish cinema appreciates its cinematography, led by Jaenzon, its conversion of novels into film, and the emergence of a production company that owned its own theaters. IMDb


Hollywood (1980)
letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/hollywood-1980/


The Story of Film: An Odyssey (2011)
letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/the-story-of-film-an-odyssey-2011/

]]>
orinow
Céline and Julie Go Boating 655e73 1974 - ★★★½ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/celine-and-julie-go-boating/ letterboxd-review-754816554 Tue, 31 Dec 2024 11:55:44 +1300 2024-12-30 No Céline and Julie Go Boating 1974 3.5 27019 <![CDATA[

... jednak następnego dnia... satyrowanie na rozczarowanie, czyli rozpęd byka - lot indyka, przedrzeźnianie rzeczywistości w sposób podobno śmieszny, nowofalowy surrealizm improwizowany na wszystko co ma związek ze stosunkami społęcznymi oraz kino nieadekwatnej ekspresji, Criterion...

Magiczna i niezwykle ciepła opowieść o przyjaźni dwóch kobiet: bibliotekarki Julie (Dominique Labourier) i tajemniczej Celine (Juliet Berto). Poznały się pewnego dnia w parku. Celine gubi po drodze różne rzeczy, a Julie podąża za nią, by jej oddać zguby. Gdy ją wreszcie dogania, Celine zaczyna opowiadać barwne historie pełne przygód i pięknych miejsc. Wszystko jest jak we śnie i żadnej z nich nie przeszkadza, że te historie są tylko wytworem wyobraźni. Kobiety szybko połączyła więź przyjaźni. Postanawiają wspólnie rozwikłać tajemnicę pewnego nawiedzonego domu. fw

A mysteriously linked pair of young women find their daily lives preempted by a strange boudoir melodrama that plays itself out in a hallucinatory parallel reality. IMDb

- It is a misconception that most of the film was improvised by the actors. Jacques Rivette provided structure but did not let his actors "go wild", instead he let them write. A single scene was improvised, where Celine, played by Julie Berto, brags to her associates about her rich American friend. The rest of the scenes where shot from scripted material, mostly thanks to participating actors. The film is collaboration by several authors, including actors Berto, Labourier, Ogier and Pisier. Rivette's involvement in the writing was to give structure to all the contributions, tightening things up. trivia

Céline and Julie Go Boating (French: Céline et Julie vont en bateau: Phantom Ladies Over Paris) is a 1974 French film directed by Jacques Rivette. The film stars Dominique Labourier as Julie and Juliet Berto as Céline.

Themes

Magic is one of the themes of the film. Céline, the stage magician, does her magic tricks in a nightclub performance. Magic seems to come too from Julie's Tarot card readings. Finally, "real" magic comes from the design of a potion, which enables both women to enter the house and take charge of the narrative.

At the start, the two women are leading relatively conventional lives, each having jobs (Julie, a librarian, is more conservative and sensible than Céline, a stage magician, with her bohemian lifestyle). As the film develops, Céline and Julie separate from the world by leaving their jobs, moving in together, and gradually becoming obsessed with the mysterious and magical events in the old house.

In one scene, according to critic Irina Janakievska, Julie is playing Tarot cards, with one of the cards interpreted as signifying that Julie's future is behind her—exactly when we see Céline, wearing a disguise, observing Julie from one of the library desks. As Céline draws an outline of her hand in one of the books, Julie echoes that as she plays with a red ink pad.

Another noticeable aspect of the film is its use of puns. For instance, the title Céline et Julie vont en bateau has other meanings from that of taking a boat ride: "aller en bateau" also means "to get caught up in a story that someone is telling you" or, in English, getting taken up in a "shaggy dog story".

www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Celine_and_Julie_Go_Boating

Film skupia się na losach dwóch dziewczyn – Céline (Juliet Berto) i Julie (Dominique Labourier) – przeplatając fragmenty z ich codziennego życia z halucynogennymi scenami wodewilowymi.

Obraz otrzymał Nagrodę Specjalną Jury na MFF w Locarno, głównie ze względu na poetykę przywodzącą na myśl Alicję w Krainie Czarów Lewisa Carrolla, był też porównywany z czasem do znacznie późniejszego filmu Davida Lyncha Mulholland Drive (2001).

www.wikiwand.com/pl/articles/Celine_i_Julie_odp%C5%82ywaj%C4%85

Whiling away a summer in Paris, director Jacques Rivette, working in close collaboration with his stars and coconspirators Juliet Berto and Dominique Labourier, set out to rewrite the rules of cinema in the spirit of pure play—moviemaking as an anything-goes romp through the labyrinths of imagination. The result is one of the most exuberantly inventive and utterly enchanting films of the French New Wave, in which Julie (Labourier), a daydreaming librarian, meets Céline (Berto), an enigmatic magician, and together they become the heroines of a time-warping adventure involving a haunted house, psychotropic candy, and a murder-mystery melodrama. Incorporating allusions to everything from Lewis Carroll to Louis Feuillade, Céline and Julie Go Boating is both one of the all-time-great hangout comedies and a totally unique, enveloping cinematic dream space that delights in the endless pleasures and possibilities of stories.

www.criterion.com/films/29639-celine-and-julie-go-boating

Synopsis

Whiling away a summer in Paris, director Jacques Rivette, working in close collaboration with his stars and coconspirators Juliet Berto and Dominique Labourier, set out to rewrite the rules of cinema in the spirit of pure play—moviemaking as an anything-goes romp through the labyrinths of imagination. The result is one of the most exuberantly inventive and utterly enchanting films of the French New Wave, in which Julie (Labourier), a daydreaming librarian, meets Céline (Berto), an enigmatic magician, and together they become the heroines of a time-warping adventure involving a haunted house, psychotropic candy, and a murder-mystery melodrama. Incorporating allusions to everything from Lewis Carroll to Louis Feuillade, Céline and Julie Go Boating is both one of the all-time-great hangout comedies and a totally unique, enveloping cinematic dream space that delights in the endless pleasures and possibilities of stories.

www.criterionforum.org/Review/celine-and-julie-go-boating-the-criterion-collection-blu-ray

www.criterionchannel.com/celine-and-julie-go-boating

Céline and Julie Go Boating: State of Play

n Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974), play is a life force, pleasure a form of liberation. Drawing inspiration from cartoons, Hollywood musicals, and the vaudeville shenanigans of early screen comedy in the vein of Buster Keaton and the Marx Brothers, Jacques Rivette’s fifth feature film, a masterpiece of modern cinema, wields laughter—women’s laughter—like a weapon for shattering conventions.

We first see Julie (Dominique Labourier) perched on a park bench, consulting a book on magic as she draws runic symbols in the sand with the heel of her shoe. She is iring her surroundings—billowing trees, a cat on the prowl, squealing kiddies—when the waifish Céline (Juliet Berto) appears, wrapped in a green feather boa, shuffling along like the muttering White Rabbit running late for his appointment in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Julie jumps to the rescue when this strange, flighty woman drops her sunglasses. She whistles and yoo-hoos to no avail before Céline launches into a full sprint and Julie follows after her, initiating an extended, wordless chase down the rabbit hole and through the streets of Montmartre. Theirs is a connection felt rather than rationally understood.

The plot resists easy summarization, unfolding as a series of playful vignettes that forge a mystical connection between the two women, soul sisters in nearly literal . Věra Chytilová’s Daisies (1966), another frolicking fantasia of merged female identities and a great favorite of Rivette’s, is a clear touchstone. As is Howard Hawks’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), a film that explores the performance and consumption of gender roles to determine what it means to be a woman. In Céline and Julie, we’re plunged into a girlish, colorful world of cats and tarot cards, dolls and candy. Reality here is dictated by dream logic, spiked with fantastic, supernatural forces—it is the elaboration of an alternative existence, the possibility of an otherwise. Over the course of three and a quarter hours, we spectators are folded into the narrative, but Rivette keeps us on our toes, asking questions, searching for meaning.

A tragic love triangle in the style of a classic Hollywood melodrama plays on eternal loop in a mansion on 7 bis, rue du Nadir-aux-Pommes. As Céline and Julie grow closer, they experience flashbacks of scenes from this house of fiction and, like sleuths—or curious moviegoers—embark on a quest to fill in the missing pieces. Hard candies, like Marcel Proust’s madeleine, allow the women to watch the story in fragments, and to enter it as well, each by turn in the guise of the child’s nurse. A coherent narrative is achieved over repeated “viewings,” revealing the murder of an innocent child, Madlyn, with a jarring, traumatic image: a bloody handprint on a white pillow.

Unlike his French New Wave contemporaries—Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, and Eric Rohmer—Rivette did not shoot to counterculture fame right out of the gate, and his work never attained mainstream popularity. He was an immensely private figure, elusive even to his close collaborators, and a reluctant interview subject. In Claire Denis and Serge Daney’s documentary profile of the director, Jacques Rivette: Le veilleur (1994), Rivette is reserved and pensive, a hesitant speaker who is prone to bursts of enthusiasm when asked the right question. He casts his eyes down often, unsure not because of a lack of knowledge but out of caution, perhaps, that he may not say what he really means. He was something of an autodidact. An obsessive cinephile, he was known to attend the Cinémathèque française with regularity, always nestled in the same seat. During his tenure as editor in chief of Cahiers du cinéma, from 1963 to ’65, he looked to thinkers outside the realm of cinema—philosophers, composers, anthropologists—to diversify the magazine’s content. His film oeuvre is a reflection of these qualities. Behind a seemingly impenetrable, hermetic facade of extreme duration and slippery formal conceits lies a powerful, promiscuous fascination with film history, literature, and the theater. In their disregard for the boundaries of mainstream cinema, his films embody a spirit of unmoored creation. His greatest commercial success, Céline and Julie carries a reputation as the “lightest,” most accessible entry in Rivette’s muscular body of work. Indeed, there’s no denying the pleasures of its gleeful chaos and rambunctious heroines, who feel true and recognizable despite their ambiguity. Filled with pranks and high jinks, tall tales and pointless diversions, the film might easily be labeled “frivolous,” a word that brings to mind both the days of five-cent nickelodeons, when moving pictures were considered cheap spectacles, and the kind of insults commonly reserved for women and their women things. Yet Céline and Julie recasts these very precepts.

“A magician and a librarian, respectively, Céline and Julie are no strangers to the pleasures of fiction and make-believe.”

Rivette’s singular approach to filmmaking would seem to complicate the notion of auteurism—the idea that the director is the true author of a film—which his fellow Cahiers critics helped bring to the fore of modern film culture and criticism. “I detest the formulation ‘a film by.’ A film is always [by] at least fifteen people,” Rivette said in a 2007 interview with Les inrockuptibles. “Mise-en-scène is a rapport with the actors, and the communal work is set with the first shot . . . It’s a collective work, but one wherein there’s a secret too. For that matter, the actor has his secrets as well—of which the director is the spectator.” In the opening romp through Paris, the manner in which Rivette’s handheld 16 mm camera captures Berto and Labourier’s antics comes across as free and spontaneous, as though the two of them were simply unleashed onto the city and told to play cat and mouse.

Rivette had recently kicked off the richest and most radical phase of his career with L’amour fou (1969) and Out 1 (1971), two works that flout convention in both their long run times and their reliance on actorly improvisation to generate complex modes of performance. The palpable chemistry between Berto and Labourier in Céline and Julie was no fluke—the two women were friends in real life, and after Rivette and Berto’s previous project, a Phantom of the Opera–inspired period piece set to star Jeanne Moreau, fell through for lack of funding, the filmmaker had decided on something “on the contrary very cheap, as easy to make as possible, and fun to do.” Intrigued by Berto and Labourier’s friendship, Rivette used that existing rapport as a sort of raw material in which to anchor the film’s more puzzling qualities.

There’s a gravity to Céline and Julie’s friendship. The way the duo stumble their way into a taxi after Céline is expelled from the house of fiction brings to mind the breathless, dazed exhaustion that comes after a night at the discotheque—that same tender backseat slump onto the shoulder of a comrade. Their connection casts female love and camaraderie as both universal and particular; to women viewers especially, their friendship will seem intuitively familiar, yet it remains mysterious and sealed off to intruders, who will never quite understand how they communicate and what exactly they mean to each other. The most intimate friendships both jump off the page, so to speak, and remain private affairs. Rivette uses the forms of magic and telepathy to demonstrate this elusive bond. Céline invents a story about her new friend for a group of coworkers, claiming that Julie is an American heiress with a heart-shaped pool. Without having heard this conversation, Julie talks about the same pool in a later chat. On another occasion, Julie emerges from the kitchen holding Bloody Marys, just as Céline is yawning about her craving for the drink.

Rivette dialed back the nearly unmitigated improvisation of Out 1 for this film, opting for a more structured but still intensely collaborative method. He worked closely with Berto and Labourier, as well as actors Marie- Pisier and Bulle Ogier and writer Eduardo de Gregorio, to develop the characters and map out the story’s twists and turns. The nature of the experience encouraged a rare kind of commitment from the main players—Berto and Labourier moved in together during this period: “We got up early in the morning and told each other our dreams, which the film depended on,” Berto explained in an interview. “We wrote our lines each morning and evening . . . [and we always] knew what stance we had and why.” Despite Rivette’s meticulous orchestration, it is the authentic, living, breathing expression of their friendship that Berto and Labourier constructed that keeps the film from crumbling into mere conceptual play.

A magician and a librarian, respectively, Céline and Julie are no strangers to the pleasures of fiction and make-believe. “Life is full of happy endings when you pretend,” sings Jerry Lewis’s goofball aspiring children’s author in Frank Tashlin’s Artists and Models (1955), a film that Rivette and de Gregorio saw together in the summer of 1973. Céline appears at Julie’s library and bangs around in the kids’ section. “The children are very noisy today,” a colleague of Julie’s observes. We see Céline tracing her hand in the pages of a large picture book, and Julie at her desk, mindlessly making thumbprints with an ink pad. There’s a humorous eccentricity to this behavior, but Rivette exalts these childlike tendencies as virtues, and as implicit disavowals of the strictures of masculine fantasy.

Céline and Julie Go Boating is a film of binaries, doubles, and parallel worlds. Actors have multiple interiorities in Rivette’s work. He uses the complexities embodied by his performers to create characters with inner worlds that clash and coexist in the open. Céline and Julie are interchangeable, and they flaunt this ability in a way that, again, knowingly subverts the male gaze. After answering a phone call from Julie’s childhood beau Guilou (Philippe Clévenot), Céline shows up at the park to meet him wearing a curly brown wig; a floppy, wide-brimmed hat; and a virginal white dress. Even in a film with countless bellyache-inducing gags, this moment stands out as a delectable mockery of starry-eyed, painfully straight, old-fashioned romantics. Guilou has returned with the intent of marrying Julie, yet he falls for Céline’s disguise. As he whispers sweet nothings and muses about the couple’s soon-to-be-realized marital bliss, Céline spouts random nonsense through a toothy grin—and still Guilou fails to recognize the trick. Ultimately, the prankstress pulls down her suitor’s pants midwaltz, leading him to rescind his proposal. “You’ve become an absolute monster of vulgarity!” Guilou seethes.

Later, in a scene that recalls the climax of Dorothy Arzner’s Dance, Girl, Dance (1940), Julie takes Céline’s place at the nightclub, and intentionally blows an audition that might have catapulted Céline into globe-trotting fame as her seductive alter ego, Mandragora. Julie performs a musical number in an affectedly girlish voice before launching into a tirade against the audience of “cosmic twilight pimps” and their objectifying gazes, blowing a raspberry, and cackling with glee as she dashes offstage. Performance need no longer work in the service of men. Liberated and strengthened by each other, Céline and Julie are free to create their own adventures.

“For Rivette, the creative, generative impulse is the stuff of liberation.”

The world of play elaborated by Céline and Julie contrasts sharply with the drama unfolding inside the house of fiction, which sees another pair of women, Camille (Ogier) and Sophie (Pisier), duking it out in a game of subterfuge and manipulation over the affection of a widower named Olivier (Barbet Schroeder, also the film’s producer). These characters wear stuffy formal attire and speak in a stale, sophisticated manner that is dated and rigid in comparison with Céline and Julie’s tank tops, denim, and freewheeling drawls. Per de Gregorio’s suggestion, the melodrama was loosely based on two works by Henry James, The Other House and “The Romance of Certain Old Clothes.” The result is another mocking satire of old-school heterosexual mores, this time laced with simmering dread.

After ingesting the candies, Céline and Julie face the camera, eyes wide and munching on popcorn, as the interior story plays out like a movie being projected, or like a mind-screen made manifest. “Always the same thing,” Julie sighs, recognizing the conventions and overstated flourishes of the penny-dreadful women’s picture, with its stagy theatrics and desperate feminine infighting. Yet the drama, predictable or not, remains engrossing—a testament to the seductive powers of storytelling that relies on formula. There are still gaps in the action, though, and without any candies left, the ladies suit up in roller skates and skintight black costumes (inspired by the character of Irma Vep from Louis Feuillade’s 1915–16 film serial Les vampires) to infiltrate the library by moonlight in search of potion books with recipes for memory retrieval. It’s sort of an inexplicable diversion, considering Julie’s access to the place, yet we relish their escapades and puckish detective work. For Rivette, the appeal of a detective narrative lies not in its eventual resolution but in the very principle of investigation.

The Jamesian melodrama plays like a stumbled-upon theatrical performance, yet clues throughout the film hint at Céline and Julie’s subconscious involvement in the proceedings. There’s a picture of the mansion in a chest Julie owns that also contains dolls and trinkets from her adolescence. Images from both realms mirror each other in uncanny ways: Julie mends Céline’s injured leg at her apartment, and both women, in the role of Nurse Angèle, wash the wound on Camille’s hand; at the burlesque club, Céline wears a thick layer of face cream that resembles the zombiesque face paint that the mansion players put on in the final act. Waiting for Céline to emerge from the house, Julie knocks on a neighbor’s door and has an unexpected reunion with an old woman whom she seems to know intimately—her grandmother, perhaps, or a former nanny. “Do you the little girl next door?” asks Julie, possibly referring to Madlyn. “She was my age.” The woman reveals that the family moved away long ago, and that the house has been closed ever since. “Their nurse scared you,” she recalls.

“We must save the kid at all costs,” Julie declares. When she and Céline finally decide to enter the house of fiction together, their unity renders them immune to the mansion’s memory-washing powers. Their plan? Stick to the script, and while one of them plays the predetermined scene, the other will investigate. Naturally, the women fumble their lines, miss their cues, and giggle through the solemn drama. Try as they might, they can’t help but project their games onto the increasingly ghoulish events, transforming the story—and, in the process, themselves, from mere side characters into tangoing, troublemaking detectives.

By means of play, laughter, and friendship, Céline and Julie insert themselves into the text by their own movement, upending a sexist tragedy otherwise seemingly consigned to infinite repetition. In rescuing Madlyn, they actively confront buried traumas, saving themselves from the complacency of ive spectatorship and rejecting the rote performance of femininity that caters to patriarchal desire. Finally, with Madlyn in tow, Céline and Julie go boating. The film’s French title is Céline et Julie vont en bateau—a phrase that carries multiple meanings. They may be taking a trip, in either sense of the word. They may be caught up in telling or listening to a fantastic story. Rivette once called Scheherazade, the storyteller of The Thousand and One Nights, the “patron saint of everyone who tries to play with fiction.” Sentenced to a beheading at dawn, that fabled heroine staves off disaster by captivating the vengeful sultan with stories so incredibly compelling that he eventually, one thousand and one of them later, decides to spare her life. For Rivette, this creative, generative impulse is the stuff of liberation. And so we begin back where we started: the same park, the same bench. Only this time, Céline will chase Julie. The materials do not change, yet the possibilities are infinite, unpredictable, freeing.

www.criterion.com/current/posts/7316-celine-and-julie-go-boating-state-of-play

]]>
orinow
DC Showcase z4w6q The Spectre, 2010 - ★★★½ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/dc-showcase-the-spectre/ letterboxd-review-754441860 Tue, 31 Dec 2024 06:43:17 +1300 2019-09-11 No DC Showcase: The Spectre 2010 3.5 38180 <![CDATA[

Super-Duch dokonuje zemsty na zabójcach hollywoodzkiego producenta, ożywają zombie-lalki, samochód naprawia się jak Christine, dolary mielą córkę zabitego...

Kiedy znany producent filmowy zostaje zamordowany we własnym domu, detektyw Jim Corrigan rozpoczyna emocjonujące śledztwo. fw

Słynny producent filmowy, Foster Brenner, ginie w zamachu bombowym zorganizowanym w jego posiadłości. Policja niezwłocznie wszczyna śledztwo, które prowadzi detektyw Jim Corrigan mający romans z córką ofiary, Aimee Brenner. Początkowo nie trafia on na obiecujące tropy, ale po przesłuchaniu lokaja dowiaduje się, że Foster Brenner miał paru wrogów. fw

DC Showcase: The Spectre is a 2010 short animated film, directed by Joaquim Dos Santos and written by Steve Niles. Gary Cole played Detective Jim Corrigan, whose suspects are brought to justice by his alter-ego, the Spectre. The film, released on February 23, 2010 as a bonus feature on the Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths DVD, was the first of the DC Showcase series and was included on the compilation DVD DC Showcase Original Shorts Collection in an extended version.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC_Showcase:_The_Spectre

As Detective Jim Corrigan investigates a murder, The Spectre delivers horrific justice to the perpetrators. IMDb

]]>
orinow
DC Showcase z4w6q Jonah Hex, 2010 - ★★★½ https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/film/dc-showcase-jonah-hex/ letterboxd-review-754437739 Tue, 31 Dec 2024 06:38:48 +1300 2019-09-11 No DC Showcase: Jonah Hex 2010 3.5 41988 <![CDATA[

kiedy Hex z odstrzelonym policzkiem wymusza ujawnienie miejsca zwłok kochanków zmordowanych przez soloonową burdelmamę, zostawia ją samą pośród znajomych twarzy...

Madame Lorraine zabija przestępcę poszukiwanego przez Jonaha Hexa. Łowca głów postanawia wymierzyć jej karę. fw

Wyjęty spod prawa przestępca Red Doc odwiedza położone na uboczu miasteczko. Mężczyzna wydaje dużo pieniędzy, czym zwraca na siebie uwagę madame Lorraine. Kobieta kusi Red Doca swoimi wdziękami, po czym go morduje. Tropem bandyty podąża Jonah Hex, który zamierza zdobyć nagrodę za jego głowę. fw

When a ruthless brothel madame murders Jonah Hex's current quarry, the disfigured bounty hunter plans to make her pay. IMDb

DC Showcase: Jonah Hex is a 2010 short animated Western superhero direct-to-video short film directed by Joaquim Dos Santos and written by noted western comics writer Joe R. Lansdale, featuring the voice of Thomas Jane as disfigured bounty hunter Jonah Hex on the trail of a ruthless brothel madame who has murdered his latest quarry. The film, which was released on July 27, 2010 as a bonus feature on the Batman: Under the Red Hood 2-Disc Special Edition DVD, was the second of the DC Showcase series and was included on the compilation DVD DC Showcase Original Shorts Collection in an extended version.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC_Showcase:_Jonah_Hex

]]>
orinow
ADDED 514v70 --> Letterboxd https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/list/added-letterboxd/ letterboxd-list-11079784 Tue, 2 May 2023 01:50:41 +1200 <![CDATA[
  1. Hebrew Melody
  2. Aktion K
  3. Wild Grass
  4. Starlit Minute
  5. Miracles in the Sieve
  6. Elu maitse
  7. Człowiek ze studni
  8. Po całym ciele
  9. A potem nazwali go bandytą
  10. Bardzo krótki strajk. 14-15 grudnia 1981 roku

...plus 476 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

]]>
orinow
Keystone Cops a1062 https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/list/keystone-cops/ letterboxd-list-37470159 Tue, 26 Sep 2023 01:00:53 +1300 <![CDATA[

12 filmów Keystone Cops [ustalić kolejność]

The Keystone Cops (often spelled "Keystone Kops") are fictional, humorously incompetent policemen featured in silent film slapstick comedies produced by Mack Sennett for his Keystone Film Company between 1912 and 1917.

www.imdb.com/name/nm0465957/

www.wikiwand.com/en/Keystone_Cops

  1. Bangville Police

    The Keystone Cops #1

  2. Hoffmeyer's Legacy
  3. Mabel's New Hero
  4. In the Clutches of the Gang
  5. Making a Living
  6. A Thief Catcher
  7. Tillie's Punctured Romance
  8. Wished on Mabel

    The Keystone Cops #11

  9. Love, Loot and Crash
  10. Miss Fatty's Seaside Lovers

...plus 3 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

]]>
orinow
Cinema of Moral Anxiety (Kino moralnego niepokoju) 1976 6qh44 1981 https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/list/cinema-of-moral-anxiety-kino-moralnego-niepokoju/ letterboxd-list-31757135 Mon, 20 May 2024 02:11:30 +1200 <![CDATA[

References for research.
*
Kino Moralnego Niepokoju - Tadeusz Lubelski

akademiapolskiegofilmu.pl/pl/historia-polskiego-filmu/artykuly/kino-moralnego-niepokoju/321

  1. Wahadełko
  2. Top Dog
  3. Provincial Actors
  4. A Woman Alone
  5. Personnel
  6. The Scar
  7. The Calm
  8. Camera Buff
  9. Blind Chance
  10. Kung-fu

...plus 44 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

]]>
orinow
Obraz Polski i Polaków w filmie niemieckim oraz Niemiec i Niemców w filmie polskim po 1945 r. 36k2g https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/list/obraz-polski-i-polakow-w-filmie-niemieckim/ letterboxd-list-44518493 Fri, 22 Mar 2024 08:28:05 +1300 <![CDATA[

Andrzej Dębski
Obraz Polski i Polaków w filmie niemieckim oraz Niemiec i Niemców w filmie polskim po 1945 r.
www.polska-niemcy-interakcje.pl/articles/show/36


seriale
- Czterej pancerni i pies w reżyserii Konrada Nałęckiego (21 odcinków: 1965-1969, odcinek 20 wyreżyserował Andrzej Czekalski),

+ Stawka większa niż życie w reżyserii Janusza Morgensterna i Andrzeja Konica (18 odcinków: 1967-1968),

+ 11-odcinkowy serial Buddenbrookoowie (Buddenbrooks, RFN-Polska-Austria 1979), będący ekranizacją powieści Thomasa Manna

- [Z THE OGRE] Podróż do śmierci - Die Reise in den Tod - Wolfgang Panzer - 1996
www.imdb.com/title/tt0806910/

  1. Knights of the Teutonic Order

    --- Kino polskie ---

  2. Forbidden Songs
  3. More Than Life At Stake

    serial

  4. The Promised Land
  5. Bumerang
  6. Dziś w nocy umrze miasto
  7. When Love Was a Crime
  8. enger
  9. The First Day of Freedom
  10. Possession

...plus 92 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

]]>
orinow
Wojna/Okupacja/Powstanie Warszawskie 1939 2v5559 1945 https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/list/wojna-okupacja-powstanie-warszawskie-1939/ letterboxd-list-43931962 Sat, 9 Mar 2024 03:07:27 +1300 <![CDATA[

Polskie filmy poświęcone problematyce lat wojny, okupacji 1939-1945, Powstania Warszawskiego 1944 i losom powojennym żołnierzy i konspiratorów.

www.sppw1944.org/index.html?http://www.sppw1944.org/books/films_spis.html

  1. Kanal
]]>
orinow
Cezary Eugeniusz Król 56262j Polska i Polacy w propagandzie narodowego socjalizmu w Niemczech 1919 - 1945 https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/list/cezary-eugeniusz-krol-polska-i-polacy-w-propagandzie/ letterboxd-list-43149038 Tue, 20 Feb 2024 08:50:36 +1300 <![CDATA[

www.filmportal.de/search?search_api_fulltext=polnische+Wirtschaft

- Hart - strona
- drugi set z filmami = strona 73

  1. The Diary of Dr. Hart

    www.filmportal.de/video/das-tagebuch-des-dr-hart

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2XakiGiUqw

    www.google.com/search?q=Das+Tagebuch+des+Dr.+Hart&client=firefox-b-d&sca_esv=92641c2b9d8087ab&sca_upv=1&sxsrf=ACQVn09VUpSrrS_z-jWEZ3-Ziy6sg197IA%3A1708371984036&ei=ELDTZaboAfy7wPAPtMq-2A0&ved=0ahUKEwimsILKlbiEAxX8HRAIHTSlD9sQ4dUDCA8&uact=5&oq=Das+Tagebuch+des+Dr.+Hart&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiGURhcyBUYWdlYnVjaCBkZXMgRHIuIEhhcnQyBhAAGBYYHki0B1CuAliuAnABeACQAQCYAaEBoAGhAaoBAzAuMbgBA8gBAPgBAvgBAcICBxAAGB4YsAOIBgGQBgE&sclient=gws-wiz-serp

]]>
orinow
100/100 5w1n3v Epoka Polskiego Filmu Dokumentalnego https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/list/100-100-epoka-polskiego-filmu-dokumentalnego/ letterboxd-list-37756674 Fri, 6 Oct 2023 02:08:52 +1300 <![CDATA[

www.sfp.org.pl/_vault/_files/sfp_2017/100_na_100.pdf

11.
www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Pomnik+Grunwaldzki+1910


www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE9Dx0eTCzU

  1. The Musicians

    Kazimierz Karabasz

  2. Hear My Cry

    Maciej Drygas

  3. ABC Book

    Wojciech Wiszniewski

  4. A Few Stories About a Man

    Bogdan Dziworski

  5. Anything Can Happen

    Marcel Łoziński

  6. Such a Nice Boy I Gave Birth To

    Marcin Koszałka

  7. Storm in Poland

    Jerzy Bossak, Wacław Kaźmierczak

  8. Seven Women of Different Ages

    Krzysztof Kieślowski

  9. Family of Man

    Władysław Ślesicki

  10. Talking Heads

    Krzysztof Kieślowski

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

]]>
orinow
Miniatury filmowe do muzyki klasycznej 301m5f https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/list/miniatury-filmowe-do-muzyki-klasycznej-1/ letterboxd-list-37570727 Sat, 30 Sep 2023 00:57:30 +1300 <![CDATA[

1989 - 1997

Motto
„Gdybyście mi dali nawet najlepszy w Europie fortepian, lecz kazali mi grać na nim przed audytorium, które tego, co gram, nie rozumie, zrozumieć nie chce i wspólnie ze mną przeżywać nie umie – straciłbym chęć i radość muzykowania.” – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

61 autorskich filmów animowanych do muzyki klasycznej (55 filmów zrealizowanych na zamówienie Programu 1 Telewizji Polskiej S.A., 6 filmów niezależnych). Cykl adresowany jest przede wszystkim do widowni dziecięcej i młodzieżowej i ma na celu popularyzację muzyki poważnej w najlepszych polskich wykonaniach.

tvsfa.com/5185-miniatury-filmowe-do-muzyki-klasycznej-2/
tvsfa.com/kategoria/muzyka-klasyczna/

Miniatury filmowe, inspirowane muzyką klasyczną, obrazują najbardziej znane utwory Mozarta, Bacha, Chopina, Beethovena, Straussa czy Vivaldiego zabierając widza w niezwykłą podróż po świecie muzyki poważnej. Malownicze animacje oddające tempo i rytm muzyki, przedstawiają charakter największych dzieł światowej sławy kompozytorów. Różnorodność ich twórczości ukazują obrazy ilustrujące różne historie, miłość, radość czy nieznany baśniowy świat fantazji. Ciekawa propozycja nie tylko dla wielbicieli muzyki klasycznej.

pwm.com.pl/pl/sklep/publikacja/miniatury-filmowe-do-muzyki-klasycznej-4-dvd,,26198,ksiegarnia.htm

www.gandalf.com.pl/f/miniatury-filmowe-do-muzyki-klasycznej/

swiatmuzyki-sklep.pl/pl/p/Miniatury-filmowe-do-muzyki-klasycznej-4-DVD/121

swiatmuzyki-sklep.pl/pl/p/Miniatury-filmowe-do-muzyki-klasycznej-4-DVD/121

pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_Studio_Film%C3%B3w_Animowanych#Miniatury_Filmowe_do_Muzyki_Klasycznej

  1. Exsultate Jubilate Alleluja

    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  2. Kukułka

    Louis Claude Daquin

  3. Symfonia dziecięca

    Leopold Mozart

  4. Aria Królowej Nocy

    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  5. Kuplety Torreadora z II Aktu Opery Carmen

    Georges Bizet

  6. Rondo alla Turca z Sonaty A-dur KV 33

    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  7. Czarodziejski flet. Uwertura. Fragment

    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  8. Sonata F-dur KV 280. Adagio

    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  9. Badinerie z II Suity orkiestrowej h-moll BWV 1067

    Johann Sebastian Bach

  10. Flight of the Bumblebee

    Nikołaj Rimski-Korsakov

...plus 42 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

]]>
orinow
Dokument autotematyczny 554453 https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/list/dokument-autotematyczny/ letterboxd-list-37469563 Tue, 26 Sep 2023 00:19:33 +1300 <![CDATA[

35mm.online/
www.polishanimations.pl/pl/
www.polishshorts.pl/pl/
www.polishdocs.pl/

Dokument autotematyczny

To coś więcej niż jedna z wielu odmian gatunkowych filmu dokumentalnego.

Dokument autotematyczny w kinie polskim nie jest zjawiskiem incydentalnym ani czymś ostatnio modnym, lecz od dawna stanowi specialité de la maison uprawiania u nas tej dziedziny twórczości. Dokument refleksywny pojawiał się w zaawansowanej, dojrzałej formie artystycznej jeszcze w czasach PRL-u. Już wówczas był uprawiany z zastosowaniem zarówno obrazów nieruchomych (malarstwo, grafika, fotografia w roli tworzywa), jak i ruchomych.

Studia nad morfologią znaczeń przekazów wizualnych, ze szczególnym podkreśleniem użycia techniki repollero, poetyki dekompozycji oraz wideoartu, uczyniły nasze dokumenty autotematyczne (refleksywne), zjawiskiem prekursorskim w świecie. Lista „zasług” wypada po latach naprawdę okazale. Do szczególnie interesujących realizacji rodzimych dokumentów autotematycznych z tamtego okresu należy zaliczyć: „Polską Kronikę Filmową” wydanie (anty)jubileuszowe 1959 nr 52 A-B, Andrzeja Munka, „Album Fleischera” Janusza Majewskiego, „Zdjęcie” Krzysztofa Kieślowskiego, „Wizytę” Marcela Łozińskiego, analityczne filmy Warsztatu Formy Filmowej,
***
letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/list/warsztat-formy-filmowej/edit/
***
cd.
„Oj, nie mogę się zatrzymać!” Zbigniewa Rybczyńskiego, „Copyright Film Polski MCMLXXVI” Piotra Szulkina, „Videokasetę” Filipa Bajona, „Klaps” Krzysztofa Kieślowskiego, „Na planie” Jerzego Ziarnika, „Przerwane śniadanie braci Montgolfier” – dyplomowa etiuda Michała Tarkowskiego, „Pierwszy film” Józefa Piwkowskiego, „Ścinki” Zygmunta Dusia oraz fenomenalne, unikatowe w skali światowej „Ćwiczenia warsztatowe” Marcela Łozińskiego. Warto dodać, iż niemal w tym samym czasie, w którym powstały „Ćwiczenia warsztatowe”, Zbigniew Rybczyński nakręcił w Stanach Zjednoczonych poczęte z ducha najlepszych tradycji polskiej szkoły dokumentu autotematycznego mistrzowskie „Schody”.

Współczesność po roku 1989 przydała temu gatunkowi szereg nowych znaczeń, o czym świadczą między innymi: „Tren na śmierć cenzora” Krzysztofa Magowskiego, „Usłyszcie mój krzyk” Macieja Drygasa, „Ostatnie zdjęcia. Brulion” Andrzeja Brzozowskiego, „Żywe obrazy” Stanisława Różewicza, „Żeby nie bolało” Marcela Łozińskiego, „Film znaleziony w Katyniu”.

Józefa Gębskiego, „Historia pewnej kamery” Marii Zmarz-Koczanowicz, „Dokument…” Małgorzaty Szumowskiej, „Po-lin. Okruchy pamięci” Jolanty Dylewskiej, „Takiego pięknego syna urodziłam”, „Jakoś to będzie” i „Ucieknijmy od niej” Marcina Koszałki, „Portrecista” Ireneusza Dobrowolskiego, „Spotkania” Kazimierza Karabasza oraz „Ojciec i syn” i „Ojciec i syn w podróży” Marcela i Pawła Łozińskich.

www.sfp.org.pl/_vault/_files/sfp_2017/100_na_100.pdf

  1. Polish Film Chronicle 59/52AB
  2. Fleischer's Album
  3. The Photograph
  4. The Visit
  5. Oh! I Can't Stop!
  6. Copyright Film Polski MCMLXXVI
  7. Videokaseta
  8. Slate
  9. Na planie
  10. So it Doesn’t Hurt

...plus 20 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

]]>
orinow
Warsztat Formy Filmowej 56p3k https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/list/warsztat-formy-filmowej/ letterboxd-list-37470450 Tue, 26 Sep 2023 01:20:53 +1300 <![CDATA[

filmpolski.pl/fp/index.php?osoba=11116472

analityczne filmy WFF, należą do:
letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/list/dokument-autotematyczny/

]]>
orinow
Antologia polskiej animacji eksperymentalnej 5u3f4m https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/list/antologia-polskiej-animacji-eksperymentalnej/ letterboxd-list-37389140 Sat, 23 Sep 2023 00:14:57 +1200 <![CDATA[

Antologia polskiej animacji eksperymentalnej

Antologia przedstawiająca tytuły nie mieszczących się w głównym nurcie kina animacyjnego. Animacja eksperymentalna to szerokie pojęcie, którym określa się różne formy filmu animowanego, przełamujące konwencje formalne i narracyjne. Niniejsza antologia jest zbiorem kilkudziesięciu pozycji nie mieszczących się w głównym nurcie kina animacyjnego. Ważnym nurtem kina eksperymentalnego jest film abstrakcyjny, któremu poświęcona jest pierwsza płyta niniejszej antologii.

[...]

prospero.e-teatr.pl/film-animowany/3471-antologia-polskiej-animacji-eksperymentalnej.html

"Animacja eksperymentalna to szerokie pojęcie, którym określa się różne formy filmu animowanego, przełamujące konwencje formalne i narracyjne. Niniejsza antologia jest zbiorem kilkudziesięciu pozycji nie mieszczących się w głównym nurcie kina animacyjnego. Na trzech płytach znalazły się filmy abstrakcyjne i takie, w których manipulacjom poddane zostały obrazy fotograficzne, a także niekonwencjonalnie rysowane kreskówki. Niektóre realizacje są dziełem znanych twórców spoza środowiska filmowego, na przykład pisarza Stefana Themersona i jego żony Franciszki - malarki, projektanta form przemysłowych Andrzeja Pawłowskiego, czy fotografa Tomka Sikory. Są tu też utwory artystów należących do czołówki polskiej sztuki współczesnej: Józefa Robakowskiego i Jerzego Kaliny. Nie zabrakło też dzieł animatorów światowej sławy: Jana Lenicy, Waleriana Borowczyka, Zbigniewa Rybczyńskiego czy Jerzego Kuci. Zestaw filmów zawarty w Antologii Polskiej Animacji Eksperymentalnej jest na tyle różnorodny, że z pewnością każdy znajdzie w nim coś dla siebie." (Marcin Giżycki)

[...]

culture.pl/pl/dzielo/antologia-polskiej-animacji-eksperymentalnej

  1. The Eye & the Ear
  2. Once Upon a Time
  3. Cineforms
  4. Here and There
  5. Banner of Youth
  6. Somnambulists
  7. Dynamic Rectangle
  8. Test I
  9. Demons
  10. Stomp

...plus 30 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

]]>
orinow
Daniel Szczechura. Polska Animacja 37674 https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/list/daniel-szczechura-polska-animacja/ letterboxd-list-37366298 Fri, 22 Sep 2023 00:15:42 +1200 <![CDATA[

Album inauguruje monograficzną serię wydawniczą Narodowego Instytutu Audiowizualnego, prezentującą twórczość najwybitniejszych polskich animatorów. Na dwóch płytach znajduje się kilkanaście animacji oraz wyjątkowy dokument o Henryku Tomaszewskim – zrealizowany przez Daniela Szczechurę.

[...]

prospero.e-teatr.pl/katalog-tematyczny/1768-daniel-szczechura-polska-animacja.html

ANIMOWANE MYŚLI DANIELA SZCZECHURY

Daniel Szczechura to bez wątpienia jeden z największych mistrzów w dziejach nie tylko polskiej, ale i światowej animacji. Przed ćwierćwieczem – w 1990 roku – Międzynarodowe Stowarzyszenie Filmu Animowanego (Association Internationale du Film d'Animation – ASIFA) uhonorowało go Nagrodą Specjalną za nieoceniony wkład w sztukę i rozwój filmu animowanego.

[...]

www.polishdocs.pl/pl/czytelnia/2783/animowane_mysli_daniela_szczechury

  1. Hobby. Daniel Szczechura. Kilka filmów animowanych jednego autora
  2. Conflicts
  3. The Chair
  4. Graph
  5. Hobby
  6. Journey
  7. Gorejące palce
  8. Skok
  9. Fatamorgana 1
  10. Fatamorgana 2

...plus 8 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

]]>
orinow
Witkacy 4i3n5p https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/list/witkacy/ letterboxd-list-37026746 Sat, 9 Sep 2023 00:02:05 +1200 <![CDATA[

www.filmweb.pl/film/Stanis%C5%82aw+Ignacy+Witkiewicz.+Witkacy-1968-549474/relateds

fina.gov.pl/event/zniewolona-wyobraznia-witkacy-na-ninatece-17-24-wrzesnia/

www.mnw.art.pl/aktualnosci/filmy-zwiazane-z-witkacym-dostepne-w-ramach-przegladu-on-line-na-platformie-ninateka-pl,806.html

  1. Witkacy pod namiotem, czyli Szalona Lokomotywa w Teatrze Stu w inscenizacji Krzysztofa Jasińskiego

    www.filmweb.pl/film/Witkacy+pod+namiotem%2C+czyli+Szalona+Lokomotywa+w+Teatrze+Stu+w+inscenizacji+Krzysztofa+Jasi%C5%84skiego-1977-607954
    www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpqSkX-R4qU
    cyfrowa.tvp.pl/video/muzyka,witkacy-pod-namiotem,60772280

  2. Witkacy ID

    www.filmweb.pl/film/Witkacy+ID-2009-743387
    www.filmweb.pl/film/Witkacy+ID-2009-743387/discussion/OPIS+FILMU,2686066
    www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9ailCGvnVc

  3. Hamadria

    Hamadria 1981 - Jacek Schmidt
    www.filmweb.pl/film/Hamadria-1981-6016
    www.dailymotion.com/video/x82bcwg

  4. Farewell to Autumn
  5. Tumor Witkacego
  6. Blaga

    film dyplomowy
    filmpolski.pl/fp/index.php?film=1260090

  7. Witkacy
  8. Epilog

    www.filmweb.pl/film/Epilog-1988-406027
    vod.tvp.pl/filmy-dokumentalne,163/epilog,398888
    filmpolski.pl/fp/index.php?film=423332

  9. "Demoniczne" kobiety Witkacego
]]>
orinow
14 Bajek z Królestwa Lailonii Leszka Kołakowskiego 374x4t https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/list/14-bajek-z-krolestwa-lailonii-leszka-kolakowskiego/ letterboxd-list-36789874 Thu, 31 Aug 2023 05:57:40 +1200 <![CDATA[

Ekranizacja "13 bajek z Królestwa Lailonii dla dużych i małych" Leszka Kołakowskiego, wydanych po raz pierwszy w Czytelniku w 1963. Pierwotnie zbiór składał się z 14 bajek, z których jedna - "Wielki głód" - została zatrzymana przez cenzurę i wydrukowana została dopiero w 1995.

filmpolski.pl/fp/index.php?film=429234

Pomysłodawcą adaptacji oraz autorem scenariuszy i opracowania dialogów był Jan Zamojski.

www.wikiwand.com/pl/Czterna%C5%9Bcie_bajek_z_Kr%C3%B3lestwa_Lailonii_Leszka_Ko%C5%82akowskiego

tvsfa.com/3767-14-bajek-z-krolestwa-lailonii-leszka-kolakowskiego/

KRÓTKI METRAŻ #14. O NAJWIĘKSZEJ KŁÓTNI. Kiedy baśń przenika się z filozofią

film.org.pl/r/krotki-metraz-14-o-najwiekszej-klotni-kiedy-basn-przenika-sie-z-filozofia-225851

„14 bajek z królestwa Lailonii Leszka Kołakowskiego” w praktyce edukacyjnej

pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/kse/article/view/9458/9145

  1. Piękna twarz

    filmpolski.pl/fp/index.php?film=429234
    tvsfa.com/782-piekna-twarz/
    pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/kse/article/view/9458

  2. Czerwona łata
  3. O sławnym człowieku
  4. Wojna z rzeczami
  5. Garby

    filmpolski.pl/fp/index.php?film=4212569
    tvsfa.com/792-garby/
    pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/kse/article/view/9458

  6. O wielkim wstydzie

    filmpolski.pl/fp/index.php?film=4212570
    tvsfa.com/794-o-wielkim-wstydzie/
    pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/kse/article/view/9458

  7. O zabawkach dla dzieci
  8. Jak bóg Maior utracił tron
  9. Jak Gyom został starszym panem
  10. The Biggest Quarrel

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

]]>
orinow
Lista filmów z największą liczbą widzów w Polsce po 1989 4r63f https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/list/lista-filmow-z-najwieksza-liczba-widzow-w-1/ letterboxd-list-36231187 Sat, 12 Aug 2023 01:14:09 +1200 <![CDATA[

Lista filmów z największą liczbą widzów w Polsce

1 --- 66 - filmy polskie i zagraniczne

www.wikiwand.com/pl/Lista_film%C3%B3w_z_najwi%C4%99ksz%C4%85_liczb%C4%85_widz%C3%B3w_w_Polsce

  1. With Fire and Sword
  2. Pan Tadeusz
  3. Clergy
  4. Quo Vadis

    Aktualnie najdroższym polskim filmem wyprodukowanym po 1989 roku jest "Quo Vadis" Jerzego Kawalerowicza (z budżetem 76 140 000 zł).

    www.filmweb.pl/news/Film+o+Villas+najdro%C5%BCsz%C4%85+polsk%C4%85+produkcj%C4%85+po+1989+roku+Mo%C5%BCe+kosztowa%C4%87+100+milion%C3%B3w-151792

  5. Avatar
  6. Titanic
  7. The ion of the Christ
  8. Shrek 2
  9. Shrek the Third
  10. Letters to Santa 3

...plus 56 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

]]>
orinow
western polski 3m1kg https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/list/western-polski/ letterboxd-list-36141920 Tue, 8 Aug 2023 22:24:05 +1200 <![CDATA[

POLSKIE WESTERNY. Szlakiem bezprawia – od Bieszczadów po Teksas

film.org.pl/a/polskie-westerny-szlakiem-bezprawia-od-bieszczadow-po-teksas-152402

***

dodać
Szlakiem bezprawia. Człowiek znikąd (1983), reż. Józef Kłyk
www.filmweb.pl/film/Szlakiem+bezprawia%3A+Cz%C5%82owiek+znik%C4%85d-1983-822186

  1. Rancho Texas
  2. The Law and the Fist
  3. The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg
  4. Komedia z pomyłek
  5. Kwestia sumienia
  6. Wolves' Echoes
  7. Południk zero
  8. Dark River
  9. All and Nobody
  10. Dłużnicy śmierci

...plus 3 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

]]>
orinow
Lista filmów animowanych z największą liczbą widzów w Polsce 6k28f https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/list/lista-filmow-animowanych-z-najwieksza-liczba/ letterboxd-list-36231556 Sat, 12 Aug 2023 01:36:00 +1200 <![CDATA[

Lista filmów animowanych z największą liczbą widzów w Polsce.

1 --- 32 - filmy polskie i zagraniczne

www.wikiwand.com/pl/Lista_film%C3%B3w_z_najwi%C4%99ksz%C4%85_liczb%C4%85_widz%C3%B3w_w_Polsce

  1. Shrek 2
  2. Shrek the Third
  3. The Lion King
  4. Shrek Forever After
  5. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
  6. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
  7. Despicable Me 3
  8. Ice Age: The Meltdown
  9. Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted
  10. Minions

...plus 22 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

]]>
orinow
Lista filmów z największą liczbą widzów w Polsce przed 1989 z6t2e https://letterboxd.conexionsite.com/orinow/list/lista-filmow-z-najwieksza-liczba-widzow-w/ letterboxd-list-36201837 Thu, 10 Aug 2023 23:13:35 +1200 <![CDATA[

Lista filmów z największą liczbą widzów w Polsce:

1 --- 20 - filmy polskie
21 --- 26 - filmy zagraniczne

www.wikiwand.com/pl/Lista_film%C3%B3w_z_najwi%C4%99ksz%C4%85_liczb%C4%85_widz%C3%B3w_w_Polsce

  1. Knights of the Teutonic Order

    32 315 695 widzów

  2. In Desert and Wilderness

    30 989 874

  3. The Deluge

    27 615 921

  4. Nights and Days

    22 350 921

  5. Forbidden Songs

    15 235 445

  6. Mister Blot's Academy

    14 094 014

  7. Sexmission

    11 164 329

  8. Colonel Wolodyjowski

    10 934 145

  9. The Leper

    9 834 145

  10. Pharaoh

    9 453 934

...plus 16 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

]]>
orinow