What the heck, here’s another classic Kung Fu epic starring the great Gordon Liu. This film influenced Quentin Tarantino quite a bit and the ShawScope opening banner seen on this trailer is the one used at the beginning of Kill Bill. It came from a print of this film. Here’s the trailer – This is essential Kung Fu, Check it out!
Gordon Liu as Pai Mei from Kill Bill
In the mood for some imaginative, entertaining, kick ass kung fu? Then check out Dirty Ho starring the great Gordon Liu. I had the pleasure of working on a film Mr. Liu appeared in, Kill Bill. He was in both parts of KB and to me is especially memorable in his portrayal of Pai Mei. But here is the trailer from Dirty Ho.
Here is a biographic film about the late, great Lee Marvin, put together by his friend and collaborator the great director John Boorman. It’s fascinating stuff especially the parts about Lee’s WWII experiences. Thanks to Lars Nilsen, the film guru over at Weird Wednesday for turning me on to ths cool film. There are several parts so keep watching.
Francis Coppolla kicked back with his best pal Akira Kurosawa after a hard day of filming and they hoisted a couple of glasses of Suntory whiskey, at least that’s what these commercials want you to believe. I think they were friends! I think if you want to be a great director you need to get some Suntory whiskey right now and start drinking! Also you need some killer shades like Akira is wearing. Kom Pai!
P.S. Check out the ice clinking in the glass sound effects, they make it all happen for me.
Here’s a little sample of The Sex Life Of Robots by the mad genius Michael Sullivan , a stop motion epic he’s been working on for 20 years or so.
Sex Life of Robots – video powered by Metacafe
TCM has done it again, screened a somewhat obscure film I’ve never seen. The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane is a stylish thriller (sort of), a psychological fairy tale chess game, the board pieces consisting of a precocious blonde angel, sexy, innocent brilliant, deadly, an evil Prince, sadistic, pederast, coward, bully, with pretensions of refined debauchery, a teen aged limping magician, complete with top hat and cape, accomplice, lover, confidant, defender of his lady’s virtue, a large village policeman, slow, good natured, (later to write Jacques Brel is alive and living in Paris) and a racist Queen of a landlady, driving in her Bentley like the wicked witch.
Beautifully directed and photographed TLGWLDTL feels like a EuroHorror film, not quite a giallo ( no black gloved killers) but definitely closer to the Italian style of filmmaking than the American. Complete with a glimpse of a nude 13 year old Jodie Foster ( really her older sister Connie, body doubling her) that was cut out of the American release. Martin Sheen is excellent as the pervert neighbor who covets Jodie’s nubile body, but Jodie is amazing, a captivating, mesmerizing performance that dispels the incredulity this tale could easily raise. It’s worth watching sheerly for her genius. She has a magnetic, feral/angelic quality that makes it hard to take your eyes off her. The camera loves her would be one way to express it but it seems to me that some people can project their thoughts through the Cinema Eye (the camera lens) much more powerfully than others. Is that Acting? I think it’s more a psychic phenomena than a learned craft. The director,Nicolas Gessner, a Hungarian, does an excellent job. A true Euro director. He understands Film and manipulates it beautifully. One of the things I look for in a great filmmaker is a memorable image for the last shot of a film. True Cinema creators always have this, and this movie has a beaut.
The score is interesting, Chopin concerto played as source from a record, and wah wah guitar funk, so 70’s, another aspect that draws comparison with the Italian thrillers of that era. This film also serves as an example of how to make an excellent film with basically one location and only a few actors, it’s a great lesson in restrained resource filmmaking. It was based on a novel and the author(Laird Koenig) wrote the screenplay, so there was a lot of thought put into the story before the cameras rolled, you can tell. It won a Sci Fi award but I think Jodie should have gotten an Oscar for her work.
What an incredible experience! To see this amazing movie on a screen, a brand new 35 mm print in glorious, luminous Black and White! A religious experience! L’Immortelle is a superbly beautiful flm! I read an interview with Robbe -Grillet where he complained about the crew of this film. They were very professional, they didn’t want to do the unorthodox things he asked for, like jump cuts, dark scenes etc. He bad mouthed them pretty well. But the movie is so beautiful that he should forgive them. I watched Trans-Europe-Express right after and it didn’t look one quarter as good. I’ve read several of Robbe-Grillet’s novels, some I think are great, others I don’t like as much but when he is on, his stuff is among the most creatively inspirational of anything I’ve encountered. Maybe that’s part of his being such an innovator. He goes out on these creative limbs, exploring new ground in storytelling and it is so liberating! I feel such boundless inspiration because (as Robbe-Grillet so ably demonstrates) anything is possible.
L’Immortelle was shot in Turkey (Istanbul), the locations are like nothing I’ve ever seen, the film is like a puzzle, a recollection, a dream, a fantasy of oriental splendour, a Frenchman’s postcard view of Istanbul from inside a shuttered hotel room, an occurance on a dark road outside of town, a beautiful mysterious woman. In this film Robbe-Grillet captures the complex, overlapping reality he built the Noveau Roman (New Novel) on. Quite an achievement for his first film. There is a belly dancing scene that is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen on a silver screen. The Middle Eastern music is amazing as well, I hope a soundtrack is available. Robbe-Grillet said that he spent a lot of time on the sound and you can tell. A dense montage of sounds, backgrounds, insects, street sounds, atmospheres, truly a rich sonic palate that works beautifully. I hope this film will travel and be shown all across the world, it’s been very hard to see for a long time and it deserves to be screened. It’s a real piece of Cinema that I think should be seen in a theater if possible. Bravo to the French Cultural arm of the French Embassy for striking the new 35mm prints and making them available to theaters here in the USA, imagine a government that takes Art seriously. Incroyable!
Melvile reading about his feud with Truffaut
Here is a clip of Jean Pierre Melville appearing in Jean Luc Godard’s 1st feature À Bout De Souffle (USA Breathless). Melville was a hero to the young directors of the New Wave. He also had a reputation for being somewhat of a tyrant. I heard an interview with the cameraman from Army Of Shadows, Pierre Lhomme. He said that only during the restoration of the film, 35 years after it was made, did he realize what a great film it was. Before that there were too many bad memories associated with the various sequences and seeing them would bring these on set recollections rushing back. It was only after all those years that he could be objective. Also the star of that film, Lino Ventura, had huge fights with Melville on the set of Le Deuxième souffle(1966) and vowed never to speak to him again. Nevertheless when Melville called him to be in Army Of Shadows Lino came and from what I hear the director and his star never spoke directly to one another through the entire film! “Tell the actor to do it again!”, “Tell Melville I’m ready.” etc. Astonishing when you see the incredible performance Lino gave. But here is Melville playing a famous novelist being interviewed at the airport by a throng of reporters. And because it is is a French film, he mainly talks about chicks.
Mr. Cool -Maestro of the Nouveau Roman
They’re screening two rare Robbe-Grillet films at the Billy Wilder Theater on Friday Nov.7. L’IMMORTELLE and TRANS-EUROPE EXPRESS.
Scene From L’Imortelle ( The Immortal Woman)
These films are almost impossible to see so go if you can, I’ll be there. Here’s the details. I’ve been reading a lot of Robbe=Grillet’s novels recently, very inspirational stuff, creatively inspirational. The way he plays with plots making intricate patterns out of genre plot devices. “Generators” he called them, elements of genre storytelling that are now part of our collective unconscious from years of pulp magazine writings, grade B horror films, film noirs, etc. I’ve never seen these films so I can’t write about them. But they are showing Last Year At Marienbad on Sunday Nov. 9th, an influential structural film Robbe-Grillet wrote that was directed by Alain Resnais. I’ve seen that one. I went to see it at the Bleecker Street Cinema back in the late 70’s. There was a sign at the door to the theater, it read something like this.”Dear Patrons, The catalog lists the running time of this film as 107 minutes. We’ve timed the print we have at 93 minutes but we can’t tell what’s missing.” That should give you an idea as to what the film is like. It’s very cool, definitely worth seeing, there’s a famous long shot of a formal garden, people stand here and there in tuxedos and gowns and their shadows were painted in.
A Famous Image That Conveys Robbe-Grillet’s Prismatic Approach To Storytelling
Renoir In Action
Here is an incredible interview with Jean Renoir. He talks passionately about tapestries, image making, technical perfection, philosophy. What a great artist, genius, human being.
In honor of Halloween here’s a post about an Art/Horror Omnibus film, Spirits Of The Dead(Histoires extraordinaires). I first heard about this film in an interview with Federico Fellini. Fellini complained that when he signed his contract, the producers told him the other two directors would be Orson Welles and Ingmar Bergman and when he found out that it was going to be Roger Vadim and Louis Malle he was depressed. He wished he hadn’t signed the contract. After reading this I became prejudiced against the film, I watched Toby Dammit, Fellini’s chapter but I never saw the other two, until last night. They ran it on TCM. I was impressed the Malle episode Metzengerstein was excellent, Jane and Peter Fonda playing feuding cousins in Medieval times, that fall in love with dire consequences. If you liked Malle’s surreal Black Moon you’ll dig this one. And Vadim’s William Wilson starring Alain Delon was powerful as well. mainly due to Delon’s magnetic presence, although Bridgett Bardot added a wonderful sexiness. These 2 episodes were period pieces. Malle’s was shot at old ruined castles in the countryside and Jane Fonda’s costumes are incredible. She also is an amazing equestrian, a pleasure to watch on horseback. Toby Dammit is a surreal masterpiece, full of artifice, like the cockpit of the plane sequence and the traffic jam created in a studio reminiscent of the opening of 8 & 1/2.
Also the image of the devil as a little girl with a ball, borrowed from Bava’s Operazione paura (Kill Baby Kill) and borrowed again by later filmmakers, is great. My main criticism is Terrence Stamp sticks his tongue out too often. I’m glad I finally saw the other chapters, I was blinded by my respect for Fellini but the Halloween Spirits Of The Dead opened my eyes.
Spirits Of The Dead Trailer
Newman Directs Woodward
Although there are probably millions of words being written about Paul Newman this very second due to his recent passing I felt inspired by seeing his 1968 directorial debut last night on TCM, Rachel, Rachel. Starring his wife Joanne Woodward and a lot of other great actors, most noticeably Estelle Parsons and Frank Corsaro, I mention Corsaro not only because of his fine acting but also because this is his only film role! He achieved fame as a stage director and as head of The Actor’s Studio, a legendary character.
Newman and Estelle Parsons on the Set
The story goes that Newman and Woodward shopped around for a director and didn’t get any takers. Newman had studied directing at Yale and decided to go for it. He created a rare and wonderful film, the sum effect being so much greater than all it’s parts. By this I mean that as I watched the film, there were parts that I thought great, parts I thought OK, maybe the direction seemed a little naive but at the end I was overwhelmed with the sensation of having just watched a great film. Due in a large part to the performance of Joanne Woodward, It is literally unlike any other film acting I have seen. She is such a unique talent, so unaffected, so true, it’s hard to put into words the way she works in this film. Once again at the end of the film I was overcome at how great she was in it. Not any one scene but the whole cumulative effect of the film, it’s magical. This is the kind of film that I wish would get made here in America more often, real people, real parts, no explosions or car chases. Just great characters struggling with their existence here on planet Earth at a particular time in a particular place. The stuff Life is made of, in this case in Connecticut in 1968. And it’s not just acting that makes this film great, there are some wonderful images as well, a date at his family’s dairy farm that James Olson takes Joanne woodward on, he makes her drive the tractor, she forks some hay on him from the hayloft. Things youngsters would do and here she is a middle-aged woman on her first date. Also the end sequence of Joanne and a baby at the beach , so beautiful, so moving. And a flashback scene of Woodward as a young girl sneaking into the basement where her father worked as a mortician. Seeing her father prepare a young boy’s body for burial. The way he tends to the dead boy, incredible. Paul was ably abetted by the great editor Dede Allen, here at the peak of her creative powers and it shows. Joanne Woodward was angry that Paul did not get nominated for an Academy Award for this film, she threatened to boycott the ceremony (She was nominated) but Paul talked her into it. Let’s all praise Paul Newman, he could have just acted in films and raced cars and enjoyed his life but he was an Artist, he had to struggle and make films and I salute him for that.
p.s. Here’s an article about the shooting of Rachel, Rachel, reminisces by the towns people that were there. It sounds like they had a great time. Article
