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melvinthemopboy3 posted:This is what really caught me off guard watching Days last night. Even though he doesn't have much in the way of dialogue, Richard Gere has some intensity in the film, which is something I've never noticed in him. I just watched the Criterion Blu Ray of Days of Heaven recently, and before I that I hadn't seen the film in probably 20 years. Before the re-watch I probably would have said that the Richard Gere role was played by Warren Beatty. It's been a couple weeks since I watched it and I still see Warren Beatty in the film instead of Richard Gere. I think this means I can't distinguish between late '60s/early '70s prettyboy actors with occasional real acting chops.
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# ¿ Jul 23, 2010 00:56 |
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# ¿ Mar 28, 2024 22:06 |
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Egbert Souse posted:On that note, what's a good starting point for Ozu? Tokyo Story?
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# ¿ Aug 3, 2010 02:05 |
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Green Vulture posted:Why not? Soderbergh's version is superior in...well, every way. I realize I'm in the minority when I say that, but I always thought Tarkovsky's Solaris was mind-numbingly dull; no matter how much I tried, I just could not get into it.
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# ¿ Aug 23, 2010 22:30 |
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FitFortDanga posted:
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# ¿ Sep 2, 2010 00:00 |
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FitFortDanga posted:IFC has acquired the adorable family comedy Shoah, which may indicate a future Criterion release.
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# ¿ Nov 3, 2010 22:45 |
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FitFortDanga posted:I bet there's an awesome gag reel.
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# ¿ Nov 3, 2010 22:52 |
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The Lucas posted:It's out of print in the US so some people would like a chance to watch it >: (
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# ¿ Nov 4, 2010 03:21 |
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zenintrude posted:Anyone think we'll ever see any Sofia Coppola on Criterion? As for Godard, I think he's one of those directors where people who really like film as a subject in and of itself get more out of his films than general audiences, particularly if you're talking about his early films (up until the late '60s/early '70s), which are the ones that tend to get talked about the most in general film discussion. A lot of the films mentioned here---like Pierrot le Fou and Alphaville (both from 1965) are a bit difficult to digest if you're trying to approach them as straightforward narratives the way you'd approach your typical Hollywood film. Definitely not for everyone, but you can see why he's one of those filmmakers that other filmmakers seem to like so much.
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# ¿ Mar 7, 2011 03:16 |
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FitFortDanga posted:Gates of Heaven - yes
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# ¿ Apr 5, 2011 21:21 |
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Peaceful Anarchy posted:The people speculating Cat People are talking about Schrader's Cat People, not the original. There's already a two pack with the original Cat People and Curse of The Cat People from Warner, though not in Blu. Skwirl posted:I'm not sure who said it first, but "All sufficiently graphic war films are anti-war." Of course I think Saving Private Ryan is anti-war, so what the gently caress do I know. I think there was a shift in how `anti-war' films were constructed more or less in the period after Vietnam, but most specifically following the slew of Vietnam war films made in the '80s (e.g. Platoon (1986) and around then). The shift was from a sort of bare `war is hell' message (like in the war films I mention above) to a sort of `love the warrior, hate the war' message that you see in films like Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down (2001). In these films a great deal of time is spent depicting the filmmaker's notion of the gritty realities of war and how they're terrible, but at the same time enormous importance is placed on the valour and honour of individual soldiers. So while the overt message is theoretically anti-war, they still engage in the sort of grand mythologising of the warrior that you see in what most people would consider `pro-war' war films (e.g., the big Holllywood war epics from the studio era). This seems to have crept in and become more or less part of the default mode of representation in mainstream American cinema.
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# ¿ May 23, 2011 01:45 |
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Archyduke posted:Don't you suppose that 'La Grande Illusion' is still guilty of some of that mythologizing? Pierre Fresnay and von Stroheim's characters both have sort of a martial solemnity and dignity that, if it clashes with the abstraction of modern warfare, still feels kind of elegiac for an older generation of soldiers.
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# ¿ May 23, 2011 02:03 |
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penismightier posted:Mythologizing seems inevitable. Even Paths of Glory, as deeply bitter it is about the whole experience of war, ends with a grand gesture of their comradeship and solidarity as soldiers. And Come and See, which is often called the greatest anti-war film, basically ends with "JOIN THE FIGHT" - it's got the same goddamn ending as Starship Troopers, practically. In a film like La Grande Illusion I think we're supposed to conclude that the old school military men were admirable only until they actually had to fight a war, at which point their otherwise admirable code of conduct became manifestly inappropriate and out of place. Contrast this with, say, Captain Miller in Saving Private Ryan, who we're more or less expressly told was an average nobody until transmogrified into a hero by warfare. On the one hand we see war destroying what we might otherwise consider virtue, and on the other hand we see war making manifest what would otherwise be hidden (or absent) virtue. I think there's a meaningful difference in there.
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# ¿ May 23, 2011 02:20 |
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penismightier posted:Honestly, you can't go wrong with any of those. Rules of the Game is, I think, the least impressive of them, whereas Nikkatsu Noir is very underrated, but you could basically just pick one at random and be thrilled. I can definitely see how Renoir's film may or may not `click' with a given audience, but it's absolutely one of the towering monuments in cinema.
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# ¿ Jul 13, 2011 23:32 |
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penismightier posted:I don't disagree with a word of this. But it's still the riskiest blind buy of them all.
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# ¿ Jul 14, 2011 00:31 |
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Egbert Souse posted:The Furies, Short Cuts (OOP), The Man Who Fell to Earth (DVD only), Vampyr, Mr. Arkadin, and Burden of Dreams all have books included.
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# ¿ Jul 29, 2011 01:14 |
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FitFortDanga posted:As usual, my take... Criterion putting out more Bergman is always good, but it's like more Criterion Kurosawa. It's nice to get them, but I find it difficult to get that excited about films which are so drat familiar and which are already available. Not to say that Criterion should only release obscure films or anything like that. I'm just saying it's easier for me to look forward to a release of something that I don't already have a copy of on my shelf and/or haven't seen in the past couple years.
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# ¿ Aug 15, 2011 23:09 |
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Bown posted:It's not like there are non-Criterion versions of the 5-hour F&A, though. Although I couldn't not be excited for it because I consider it basically the best film I've ever seen Like I said, this isn't an argument against the films themselves; I don't have anything in particular to say against any of the films just announced. I'm more or less just thinking out loud about my (apparently increasing) ambivalence to a lot of the Criterion catalogue. Which I think might have a lot to do with the increasing availability of just about everything. Back in the bad old days of VHS and broadcast television it was much more difficult to see much outside of mainstream Hollywood releases and the occasional old chestnuts. Even in the early years of DVD things were likely to come into and then back out of print and then become nearly impossible to obtain/view in any format. These days there are just a lot more options---things like Netflix and Hulu and so on, easy availability of releases from all over the world, and so forth. And while there's still variability between different releases of a given film, it's been a long time since I found myself having to worry whether I could locate a copy of Seven Samurai (or whatever) that isn't pan-and-scan and dubbed. So while I'm definitely in favour of Criterion doing a blu of the Kieslowski trilogy, it's not like the fact that a Criterion blu of it doesn't already exist had exactly been praying on my mind. If the films had been unavailable or were out there only in unwatchably terrible transfers or something I'd be more enthusiastic.
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# ¿ Aug 16, 2011 00:43 |
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Sheldrake posted:... welcome to the Godzilla franchise? Same basic cues, but a very different feel. SubG fucked around with this message at 01:54 on Oct 15, 2011 |
# ¿ Oct 15, 2011 01:52 |
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codyclarke posted:Just switching to grayscale, and not even adjusting brightness/contrast, it already looks 10x better: I'm not trying to argue that the original film is a monument to cinematography or whatever---although I do think it's a really good film---but one of the things it definitely has going for it, and something that seems to get obscured by Godzilla the pop culture icon, is a very distinctive look and feel. It's too bad to see Criterion contributing to that. I really don't think it's a big deal. I'm not one of the folks who gets all het up over Criterion cover art. It's more just weird to see them get poo poo like this wrong.
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# ¿ Oct 15, 2011 02:32 |
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Robert Denby posted:File name is wacky_skinnycows.jpg. No idea.
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# ¿ Oct 26, 2011 00:00 |
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GrandpaPants posted:Can someone sell me on Fanny and Alexander? I heard a lot of praise for it back when it was announced, but nobody ever explained why exactly. Different people have different ideas of what constitutes a purchase versus a rental, much less what constitutes a blind buy. I find myself more and more likely to buy something only if it's a film I keep going back to, or if it's a film that I don't expect to stay in print or available. I really couldn't justify Fanny and Alexander (1982) on either count, but your mileage &c. I also think Fanny and Alexander is a bit of a odd film for Bergman. I think Bergman at his best is a very economical filmmaker. I want to say `concise', but that's not quite the correct word. He tends to be evocative rather than descriptive; a scene is more likely to be punctuated by a pause or image rather than an action or a line. But despite this, his films tend to be very dense, with a lot packed into ever one of those pauses or images. Fanny and Alexander really doesn't feel like that, it's a lot looser, more open, and as a result it doesn't really feel like most of his other films. As I said, I think it's one of the great films. But I don't know that I'd generally try to sell Bergman as a blind buy, and even if I was I don't think Fanny and Alexander is one that I'd do it with. kaujot posted:I would recommend blind buying Three Colors over Veronique. You get a range of Kieslowski that way, as well as still getting your Irene Jacob fix. I think the only Kieslowski that I've gone back to is Dekalog.
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# ¿ Nov 1, 2011 22:39 |
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FitFortDanga posted:Three Outlaw Samurai - rental, I predict I'll like-but-not-love it FitFortDanga posted:Vanya - I like Malle. Not as much as Criterion seems to like him, but I'll give it a look. Rental.
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# ¿ Nov 15, 2011 23:42 |
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zandert33 posted:I think the movie is one of Gosha's better movies, and Criterion has had the rights to this one a long time, so it's good they are finally releasing it. I wonder if they own the rights to Tenchu as well, which is my favorite Gosha film. I think Gosha's early films (like the ones Criterion has done/is doing) are better than his end-of-career films, but he really hit his stride around the time of Tenchu/Hitokiri. I think at least some of this is due to his preference for playing at the darker end of the swordplay genre, and having directors like Kobayashi, Okamoto, and so on all making it a more mainstream approach let him move more in his own direction.
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# ¿ Nov 16, 2011 03:26 |
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Macrame_God posted:I'm must be somewhere near 150. I think I have a problem.
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# ¿ Dec 7, 2011 04:07 |
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Ernest Pintoff's immortal Dynamite Chicken (1971), marking the first collaboration between Criterion and the staff of Screw magazine.
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# ¿ Dec 14, 2011 00:45 |
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i am not so sure posted:FFD, I've heard of that film a lot but don't really know much of it. Please tell me about it, if you're this excited it must be good.
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# ¿ Dec 15, 2011 19:05 |
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TrixRabbi posted:I'm intrigued by everyone who thought it was Badlands. I just finished watching it and there's not a shot anywhere similar to that in the movie. At least nothing in the Purple/Orange sky area. Eh. Having not seen the film in years, it's the first thing I thought of when I saw that screenshot too.
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# ¿ Jan 13, 2012 03:05 |
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Dangerous Person posted:Say what you will about how much it represents the movie, but Godzilla has some nice packaging: If so, they totally missed the boat on not doing it with In the Realm of the Senses (1976) first.
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# ¿ Jan 27, 2012 22:57 |
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The_Rob posted:I am looking into a couple of new Criterion films, and I was wondering what you guys thought of Bigger Than Life, and Branded to Kill. Bigger than Life looks really interesting because of the subject matter in the time period that they made it in, and Branded to Kill looks right up my alley. A Hitman in a cool japanese 1960's aesthetic with some interesting looking set pieces? yes please. I'm not trying to talk you out of it; it's absolutely one of my favourite films. But it's an aggressively difficult to digest film; I think this is one of the major conceits of the film---hyper-accentuating all the elements which define pop cinema of the era until their `natural' meaning and context is obliterated (which is a way of recontextualising them as critical, rather than purely diegetic, elements). If you're familiar with Japanese New Wave film in general, think of something like Oshima's In The Realm of the Senses (1976), except instead of (just) explicit sexuality, doing the same thing with all of the trappings and conventions of Bond films (which were huge in Japan at the time) or conventional Yakuza films. I'm not trying to draw a narrow comparison here---Oshima's film isn't very good and Suzuki's is loving incredible---but I'm just talking about the schtick of taking something and just loving running it into the ground stylistically. Really if you want a Suzuki film that's slick and cool you'd probably prefer Tokyo Drifter (1966) which is an inferior film but which is way the gently caress more stylistically accessible.
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# ¿ May 24, 2012 09:07 |
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Erdnase posted:Maybe this has been answered before but this thread is huge.
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# ¿ Jun 1, 2012 11:57 |
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Magic Hate Ball posted:If you like Altman you'll probably enjoy Tanner '88 (though have you seen Secret Honor?), and it's hard to nix Vampyr. Someone around here recently described it as being surprisingly David Lynch-y, which is accurate. It has that same off-kilter feel and I sincerely regret selling it a couple years ago. If anything, I see Dreyer influencing say the experimental films of Maya Deren, and Lynch being influenced by them. I'm not saying it's necessarily one or the other, mind you. I just see the lingering stillness of the striking compositions in Vampyr being influential on later experimental filmmakers, who added their new ideas about narrative (rather than just visual) composition, and that this is the `stuff' that is most striking about how Lynch constructs films. Unrelated to all that, has there ever been an R1 DVD or bluray release of Vadim's Blood and Roses, which is based on the same source material? With the release of Twins of Evil (1971) coming up making the all of the films in the Hammer Karnstein Trilogy available, the recent Image release of Crypt of the Vampire (1964), and the Blue Underground release of The Blood Spattered Bride (1972) from a couple years ago you've got a whole lesbian vampire film festival consisting entirely of films based (however loosely) on Le Fanu's Carmilla. With the caveat that Dreyer's film isn't very lesbiany.
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# ¿ Jul 10, 2012 04:40 |
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Shawn posted:So it looks like Hard Boiled and The Killer are long out of print on DVD. Does that mean Criterion lost the licensing, and there's no chance of a blu-ray other than this Dragon Dynasty Bullshit? Has anyone seen the transfers on these non-criterion blu-rays? Am I better off on the look out for the OOP DVDs? I haven't seen the Dragon Dynasty blu rays, but I understand they're pretty weak. None of the DVD releases are that great either. The Criterion DVDs are definitely not worth it unless you're after them for the collector value---and then you'd still have to worry about 90% of the copies out there being bootlegs. I could run through the pluses and minuses of the versions I own---which is a lot of them---but none of them are that great. My recommendation would be to rent them if you just want to watch them, and if you want to buy a copy either wait a few more years and hope for a better edition or just buy whatever version you can get on the cheap.
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# ¿ Aug 8, 2012 07:24 |
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SneakySneaks posted:Speaking of Japanese actions films who has the American rights for Violent Cop? That movie needs a good stateside release and it seems like something Criterion should at least look into to doing.
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# ¿ Aug 8, 2012 19:59 |
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Origami Dali posted:So, there's no extras on Heaven's Gate about how it largely helped tank the New Hollywood? Or how it bankrupted United Artists? And while any statement about the death of the New Hollywood movement is necessarily speculative, I think the emergence of the modern blockbuster with Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977) is the single most important proximate cause. Saying Heaven's Gate killed New Hollywood is like saying Touch of Evil (1958) killed classic noir; they're both fencepost films, but anybody (with the possible exception of a few producers with their heads so far up their asses their noses were in a different time zone) could have told you that the movement they were a part of was at an end while they were still in production.
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# ¿ Aug 16, 2012 00:46 |
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Origami Dali posted:I wasn't aware we were being so literal and comprehensive. So UA became a distribution label for Transamerica and later MGM instead of disappearing completely, who cares? As a renowned production company, they were toast. But to say that the failure of Heaven's Gate (along with One From The Heart) didn't play a role in putting the decline of a movement into warp speed... right. We all know effects-laden blockbusters were a safe and profitable out for the studios, but that ain't the whole picture. To put this further into perspective, if you look at fencepost film at the other end of the era, Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (1967) was initially nearly universally panned and didn't make a dime in the limited release Warner first gave it (in August of 1967). After some critical support (most notably by Pauline Kael) it was re-released in February of 1968, where it went on to be a commercial success. And of course it is now generally considered one of the most important American films of the second half of the 20th Century. My point here is that Bonnie and Clyde came out on the ragged edge of when there was an audience to discover and support it. From there we find an increasing mainstream acceptance of the then-alternative sensibilities Penn's film represented, from counter-cultural anthems like Easy Rider (1969) to the domesticated subversion of films like Kell's Heroes (1970). And this isn't something that you only see in the confines of New Hollywood---the rise of the blaxploitation film and (major) mainstream success of films like Shaft (1971) reflect the same general trends in what kind of material resonated with audiences. I don't plan on charting out all of the cultural currents of this historical moment, but it's easy to see that by the time Heaven's Gate was released in 1980 this was changing. This is the same year that The Empire Strikes Back was released, the highest grossing film of the year. Smokey and the Bandit II was a major mover at the box office, as was the original Friday the 13th (the first of the `big' franchises which arose to ride on the coattails of Carpenter's Halloween (1978)). And that's just highlighting the business' general shift from film-as-film to film-as-franchise. There's all the other cultural shifts in terms of acceptance of violence-as-spectacle, the changes in our conception of female sexuality on screen, the huge adjustments to the image of masculinity, and on and on. My point is that all of this was going on completely independently of the production of films like Heaven's Gate, and by 1980 the end of New Hollywood was already a fait accompli.
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# ¿ Aug 16, 2012 02:17 |
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Origami Dali posted:To keep this from veering too far off topic, I'll offer this. Regardless of the cultural and financial shifts at play in the entire life cycle of the New Hollywood (of which, once again, I'm well aware), I'm confident Heaven's Gate would have been as much of a disaster in 1973 as it was in 1980, or any other time for that matter, because it's simply a bloated mess of a film. The critics knew it, the audiences knew it, and it took a beating. To think that it was just a victim of circumstance is to render it, and all films, qualitatively blank. But that last bit is definitely for another thread.
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# ¿ Aug 16, 2012 03:19 |
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Origami Dali posted:I said it largely helped. Just forget it dude.
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# ¿ Aug 16, 2012 04:45 |
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Origami Dali posted:I can't believe I've spent this much time talking about Heaven's Gate, of all loving movies. I mean this isn't directed at you specifically, but there seems to be some kind of incredulity that Criterion is releasing the film, along with a bunch of very predictable jokes that are of roughly the same vintage as the film itself. I think this is kinda silly in its own right, but it's particularly silly given that it doesn't have much, if anything, to do with the film itself, rather than popular opinion (and misconceptions) about it. I'm not raging against the negative opinions of the film---you are of course free to dislike any film you want to---and I'm not trying to champion it as a landmark of filmmaking or anything like that. The whole easy dismissal of the film as a punchline just feels really weak and lazy to me.
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# ¿ Aug 16, 2012 06:52 |
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Zogo posted:I've found this Heaven's Gate discussion interesting and realized that in my head I've been conflating Days of Heaven, Gates of Heaven and Heaven's Gate all into one movie. I really should watch all three of them to remedy this.
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# ¿ Aug 17, 2012 01:12 |
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# ¿ Mar 28, 2024 22:06 |
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ZackHoagie posted:Who the gently caress are you reading, Bonnie and Clyde gets lavish praise even to this day.
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# ¿ Nov 1, 2012 20:05 |