Johnny Guitar

Mercedes McCambridge is so nasty, that it's a relief when Joan Crawford finally guns her down. As usual with Ray, a tormented love story. Johnny Guitar is gun crazy and crazy for Vienna, but the Dancing kid is not too happy with it, robs a bank and creates trouble. The scene where Vienna is alone playing the piano all dressed in white in a red room is one of the most amazing ever, with McCambridge and the lawmen dressed in black after her. The dialogue is sharp and full of subtext and the film truly wonderful.

Moi, un noir

After watching the 1st dvd from the Jean Rouch box, I had very high expectations for this film. It is a very different one from the short documentary on rituals, and the fabulous lion hunting one. Rouch follows a few immigrants from Niger getting by in Abidjan, in the new area of Treichville, mostly Edward G. Robinson and his friends Lemmy Caution and Dorothy Lamour (!). Edward G. Robinson is the narrator, and after a while really got on my nerves.

Christian Marclay - Video Quartet

Exhibition at the Barbican, featuring this amazing piece of video art. 4 Screens, side-by-side, a collage made of Hollywood films and using the source soundtrack, no dialogue but only based on music and sound. Marclay creates something totally new. The music slows down, picks up, slows down again with clips changing fast, often doubling across screens, completing each other or creating repetition. Simply amazing!

Divorce Italian Style

So, Marcello Mastroiani (looking a bit dumb as the Baron Cefalu, with a thin moustache) wishes to be up to no good with his much younger cousin but his ugly (she has a tache!) and very annoying wife is on the way and he has to find a tricky way to get rid of her. Decent Italian comedy, quite funny at the beginning, particularly when Marcello is daydreaming about ways of killing his wife, but the humours wears off slightly after a while, and it gets a bit tedious.

Orson Welles: One-Man Band

To finish disc 2 of F for Fake, excerpts from '60 Minutes' with Clifford Irving back on the program nearly 30 years after it was found that his autobiography of Howard Hughes was a fake, and how he lied on '60 Minutes'. And this feature length documentary of the unfinished films of Orson Welles, containing lots of interesting excerpts, including an amazing sex scene in a car from 'The other side of the wind'. The man worked on so many films he never finished, always due to lack of money/falling out with his producers, that I wonder if he really wanted to finish them at all. Nice shots of LA too.

Almost True: The noble art of forgery

Decent documentary from the Norwegian Film Institute, about Elmyr de Hory. Obviously not as amazing as F for fake.

'Im a stranger here myself' Nicholas Ray

Just watched this very rare documentary on the great master, not looking too well in the early 70's, but still an imposing figure.

"My heroes are no more neurotic than the audience. Unless you can feel that a hero is just as fucked up as you are and that you would make the same mistakes as he would make, you can have no satisfaction when he does commit an heroic act. Because then you can say 'hell, I could have done that', and that's the obligation of the film maker, to give an heighten sense of experience to the people who come and pay to see his work."

F for Fake

Received the May batch of Criterion DVDs today and dived in this one. Orson Welles looks good and has a wonderful voice. Wonderful essay about art, its value, and forgery. Amazing characters, De Hory in Ibiza, very cool, Oja Kodar is a babe, amazing shots of Orson in foggy Paris, and the editing is fantastic.

They Live by night

Bowie (Farley Granger, whom for once I liked), escapes jail, meets Keechie, robs a bank and falls in love with her. They want to live like everybody else, the cops think he will never be like everyone else, obviously they are doomed. A tragic love story, magnificiently directed by Nicolas Ray, with lots of amazing close-ups.

Finian's Rainbow

Here is another film I didn't like at all. The last film left to watch from the Warner musicals box, and I know why I left it as the last one, bad feelings about that one. Coppola seems to have fond memories of it, as his first commercial film. I fell asleep after only 20 minutes (tired from playing squash), woke up intermitantly only to see some bad acting and annoying soundtrack. It's 1968, the genre is long dead, society has changed, Coppola tries to incorporate 60's themes, bunch of hippies, racial themes, etc but I could not care less, 0.5/10 for the shot of the flowers just after the ouverture, it goes downhil from there on.

video store? in North London

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Originally uploaded by Autoportrait 7.

Obviously reminded me of something...

I heart huckabees

Saw that one in the afternoon. Hmmm, thats the type of film that really gets on my nerves. Cheap philosophy, David O. Russell obviously thinks he is very clever, in a Charlie Kaufman kind of way (it reminded me of Eternal Spotless of whatever). What bugged me most was the sound, characters laughing annoyingly at stupid stories involving Shania (prononced Chennai) Twain and chicken salad sandwiches. 2/10, beurk!

One-arm swordsman

In the first film of the trilogy directed by Chang Cheh, Fang Gang has his right arm cut off by his master's daughter, is beaten up by two stupid fat guys, learns to fight with his left arm. His old master has big problems with his rival who has designed a metal thingy that allows his disciples to easily kill the old master's team in a very sneaky way. Fand Gang, comes back, kicks the shit out of everybody... and leaves... Beautiful cinematography in the Shaw Brothers studios and the music is quite good.