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Question for Benway: In Cannibal Ferox what, exactly, is the 'Ferox'? I've never heard of a Ferox, but it sounds pretty scary, I have to say.
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I don't think it means anything. Maybe it's something to do with "Ferocious". It sounds way cooler than the original title of "Make Them Die Slowly".
quote:Originally posted by Dr. Benway: It sounds way cooler than the original title of "Make Them Die Slowly".
That's not such a bad title - I'd rather see Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn and Helen Hunt in a film called Make Them Die Slowly than the same picture called Menopausal Chicks Go Shopping, even though the subject matter might ostensibly be identical.
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It works better when it obviously reflects the desire of the audience, as per your example. As it is, it's unclear whether it's the cannibals or the audience who want the victims to be made to die slowly. I suppose that the Ferox audience would want 'them' to die slowly, but they would first have to be drawn into some kind of escape-themed drama to generate some hope, that can then be rewarded with pessimism and brutality. [Cannibal Ferox] pretends to be about investigating and condemning the violence. In the shopping based example that you've given, the film would presumably be a less morally duplicitous celebration of violence and torture than Lenzi's effort, therefore "Make Them Die Slowly" wouldn't contradict any superfluous intellectual or dramatic tone that may have been affected. There would be no pretense of investigation, exposure, or condemnation - just a straining desire to revel in acts of extreme sadism.
[ 31.10.2005, 10:58: Message edited by: Dr. Benway ]
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I don't know - I think it'd work as an oblique commentary on the dire existences of the characters, the fleeting character of any sort of consolation and the inevitability of degeneration and death.
It would probably be good to see the three female leads in a montage shopping sequence in New York in the run up to Christmas: Diane Keaton trying on a hideously inappropriate dress and dissolving into a fit of the giggles, Helen Hunt laden with bags from exclusive Fifth Avenue boutiques and pirouetting in the first flurry of yuletide snow, Goldie Hawn amusingly trying on a Santa hat and twitching her nose Bewitched-style - and every so often you would glimpse a tv screen or the reflection of one in a window and looped scenes from Cannibal Ferox would be playing.
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not at all fantastically out there in choices but thanks to poverty etc netflix is reigning supreme at hosting a monday movie night. recent showings have been: paths of glory fantastic. i think. i've been drinking steel reserve, its like a malt liquor, in fact it is a malt liquor so think of those scenes in all your favourite hood films where they pour "some for they dead homiez" and thats what i'm drinking. brewed for a minimum of 28 days. in a can. not sure if the can is used in brewing. probably not. anyway. pbr can suck my dick. steel reserve is cheaper and stronger. having experienced brass monkeys 2 weeks ago (malt liquor plus OJ (rip) = poor mans mimosa/bucks fizz) i have learned of a brew called "ghetto coffee". it appears to be a brooklyn thing, or more specifically something associated with my mate from brooklyn. anyway, 40 of OE/colt 45 drink half. top up bottle with 20oz can of guinness. drink. will "fuck you up". is my next recipe for disaster.
i seem to have digressed and not mentioned anything to do with the films. paths of glory: excellent, beautifully handled, well crafted has the bonus line of "ready to kill some germans?" which is great when you have german scientists in your house. and they might think that you're a bit "out there" already. i think they might think i'm an english rick. er. anyway. fantastic film about how rank gets you out of trouble. brilliant lighting, excellent night scene , the march across the trenches into no mans land, kirk douglas and his chin. fantastic. that chin. what a chin. it could be a real life model of the depression made in space time by the gravity of a planet.
we also showed oldboy. note SPOILER FOLLOWS.
DO NOT SHOW THIS FILM TO PEOPLE WHO WORK WITH CASES OF INCEST AND FAMILIAL ABUSE. they have to walk out for a bit. this got massive thumbs up for lots of reasons, i didn't listen to them, and i'm sure you don't care about them, what i liked was obviously the hammer scene. the one that looked like he'd run too far too fast in street fighter. you know, it looked like a scene from a 2d scrolling beat 'em up. maybe double dragon, yeah double dragon. anyway. that one. i liked that it sounded like flesh hitting flesh. and that it was filmed like that.
in summary, jello shots, get you in the end, to the extent that you nearly break your hand sliding down a grass slope and off the wall at the end of said slope.
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I watched NIGHT OF THE HUNTER last night, and I thought it was pretty good up until when the children are picked up by the foster mother. After that it was like whatever. I liked it when the boy threw a hairbrush and it bounced off Mitchum's head. FUNNY!
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I watched Mulholland Drive for the first time on Saturday night, and it seemed a lot less impenetrable than I'd been led to believe. It actually made quite a bit of sense to me, unlike - say - The Foreigner.
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yeah, it's easier on the mind than Lost Highway, which I still don't understand after having watched it around ten times. The lezzing up in Mulholland Drive is one of the most erotic things I've ever seen in the cinema.
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I took two of my mates to the cinema last night, for their birthday (it's on the same day). Selflessly, I took them to see Elizabethtown, as they like that sort of thing. This is exactly the sort of film I would usually despise and scorn. However, by starring the pretty-faced one I gladly handed my money over. I am shallow and worthless.
It was pretty much as I expected (ie rubbish), but I was amazed at how much this did not matter, as Orlando's face featured in 90% of the shots. He gets wet, goes topless, wears some really nice suits, looks really tall and lean and spends a lot of time doing quizzical puppy-dog looks. I could see myself buying the film and watching it with the sound down, and just gazing on that beauteous visage. If you like Cameron Crowe films (shmalz, lots of obtrusive music, unnecessary whimsy) than I guess you wouldn't mind. There is a bit- I am not making it up- where Kirsten Dunst says "men think in round rooms. Women think in boxes" (actually it might have been the other way round). The Kirsten Dunst character is pretty annoying generally.
The trailers included one for The Libertine, with a 17C Jonny Depp leering at the camera, intoning "ladies, I am up for it. All the time." I liked that.
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As I mentioned, I watched "Hardware" last night, and it's a hard film to rate because it's bad, very bad, but also watchable, but not in a 'so bad it's good' way, but more from a 'I'm glad that this film exists' angle. It's set in a post nuclear desert town, and some dude finds a robot head, who sells it to another dude who gives it to his girlfriend to use in her art scuplture things, but the robot head is programmed to kill people who break the laws of procreation. Because, in the future, the powers that be are trying to prevent over population. So, the disembodied head sees the couple boning and then 'self repairs' into a rapey shoestring Johnny 5 machine that terrorises the woman when her boyfriend goes out in the night. That's pretty much it.
It's watchable because it's so unlike any film ever apart from another favourite of mine called 'Phenomena' by Dario Argento. The director of Hardware previously directed music videos, and it really shows. Band members populate the cast, everywhere is flooded with dry ice, there are psychedelic/cyberpunk montages, and PiL music plays constantly. And, Whereas Argento used primary colours to light most of his famous films, here the fella in 'homage' to Argento lights everything in Red, and uses a red filter on the camera, so everything is red, all the time. You might think that using red lights and red filters would cause problems in being able to see anything, and you'd be right.
The machine is like something off robot wars. It lurches about with a drill and a circular saw, and looks pretty bad. It is also a metaphor, not only for America, but also Satan's minion Baal. There are lots and lots of abstract representations here, as you'd expect to find in a film written and directed by a 24 year old acid freak. Mostly they are concerning the bible, and I'm not really into the bible, but once you notice them you can play a little game, which distracts from the acting/script/MTV effects.
But as I said, it's watchable. It's like the last of the eighties sci fi horror films, before dystopia became sleek and cold. It's sweaty and bizarre and unique. It's more than the sum of its parts, which is probably why it's like a cult film or something.
[ 09.11.2005, 09:13: Message edited by: Dr. Benway ]
quote:Originally posted by Dr. Benway: I watched NIGHT OF THE HUNTER last night, and I thought it was pretty good up until when the children are picked up by the foster mother. After that it was like whatever. I liked it when the boy threw a hairbrush and it bounced off Mitchum's head. FUNNY!
This film is included in the BFI's list of Top Kids' Films for Christmas 2005. Unwisely, I think.
Hardware was based on a 2000AD Future Shock Story. I immediately recognised this when I saw the film at the Edinburgh Festival (1990?) and was satisfied to see, some time later, that the filmmakers were obliged to acknowledge this debt and I think give credit or financial recompense to the original creators.
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Dust Devil is a mystic-horror classic. The Namibian locations are terrific - particularly the cinema half-submerged in bone-white desert sands.
Benway has neglected to mention one of the best bits in Night of the Hunter: when Mitchum tells 'the old story of Love and Hate' - lifted pretty much wholesale by Spike Lee in Do the Right Thing.
quote:Originally posted by Vogon Poetess: Orlando's face featured in 90% of the shots. He gets wet, goes topless, wears some really nice suits, looks really tall and lean and spends a lot of time doing quizzical puppy-dog looks.
this months gq (US) has a big fotospread of him.
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I love Dust Devil. I have an olde worlde VHS video copy of it knocking around somewhere at home. Ben is absolutely right about the Nambian locations, particularly the desert cinema - Stanley draws clear links between native magic and film (a local Shaman is also the cinema projectionist), and the desert itself makes an obvious methaphor for the loneliness of the central characters.
There's also an excellent bit involving a bathroom mirror.
Broken Flowers
Bill Murray in a Jim Jarmusch film. Like Ronseal, it does what it says on the tin, their respective shticks are present and correct. The innocent happiness of ethnic/newly immigrant American prole types. String of oddball characters in increasingly bizarre situations. Social discomfort and dislocation. Deadpan humour. The obliquely observed shabbiness of everyday America(na). You get the picture. I enjoyed it in a quietly amusing mood piece sort of a way, and Jeffrey Wright is (typically) very good as Murray’s neighbour.
[ 10.11.2005, 03:58: Message edited by: Boy Racer ]
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I done a review/comment on Broken Flowers a while back on Barbelith, so I will paste that in for your possible interest, BR.
quote:I'm just back from this movie, and went to see it rather half-heartedly mainly because I feel Bill Murray is becoming so frigging predictable in his recent movies. I almost feel it's an Emperor's New Clothes scam -- where reviewers praise his lugubrious profundity, I mainly see a guy whose main selling-point is the foldy, jowled, scarred face he's developed with age, and whose main schtick is just sitting behind that face animating it as little as possible. It could be seen as a Kuleshov editing effect: cut to an interesting, lively, vibrant actor as foil, cut back to Murray and by contrast his absence of response seems to be speaking volumes.
I don't entirely feel this cynical, but I could sympathise with someone who advanced that argument. I'm also almost persuaded by those who claim Murray is really doing something subtle and special in these recent performances. Overall I suppose I'm undecided whether he's become a great actor with his own unique tone, or whether he's going along with an enormous lucky streak whereby his face on its own just suddenly fits the indie-cinema mood, without him having to do much about it.
Anyway, I very much enjoyed Sideways, About Schmidt and The Straight Story, which this film most seemed to resemble, and in that respect I liked Broken Flowers. I like films that take us on a road trip round quirky corners of Americana, filled with detailed and telling mise-en-scene and nice little scenes of social edge or embarrassment.
It might sound a strange complaint but I felt disappointed by the lack of geographical sense -- Don mostly travels by airplane, and I got no impression of what area he was in, or what route he was taking. I don't know what state any of his encounters occurred in, or how far he travelled. The transitions between meetings were mainly covered by a shot of a plane, a few behind-the-wheel shots, maybe a shot of Don drowsing in a seat, and a series of fades to black. In a road movie, I like more sense of place and travel.
...
Oh yeah: an achievement to make me laugh at the sight of a pretty, nude girl. I'm glad that didn't get into the trailer, unlike most of the other good moments.
Recently I have seen
The Shining
Taxi Driver
Brighton Rock
French Connection
and tonite The Red Shoes
again if anyone wants me to say are they good or bad, I will say so.
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