So What? Movie that you last watched, Vol. XIX.

I really enjoyed this. It verged on being too hipsterish but never crossed the line too much.

It was almost like Before Sunrise but with cool black people in San Francisco and it takes place after they've already drunkenly hooked up when they were strangers.

And yes, that is Wyatt Cenac from The Daily Show.

 

It says the title up at the top of it.

I believe what I posted was actually from a site with an option to watch the trailer when you clicked on it.

 

(repost because I don't want anybody to miss this film)






Drama/Mex by Gerardo Naranjo

I found the next Wong Kar-wai, and he's a Mexican! The most exciting new filmmaker I've seen in a long long time. He wears his Godard and Cassavetes on his sleeve and mixes it with machismo, sand, futbol, and alcohol. Puro mexicano.

 

Added to my netflix queue. De Toth is so hit and miss that I only watch his films based on recommendations.

 

Day of the Outlaw is indeed great. There's a moment, about twenty minutes into the movie, that, in any other film, would be the climax, but here is used as the impetus for an entirely different set of events. And the way De Toth illustrates this change is simply tremendous. Ryan and Ives both deliver stellar performances as well.

And yes, De Toth is "hit and miss" but so were Ford and Walsh, among others. When you make as many movies as those guys did, you're bound to make a stinker every now and then. De Toth, like a lot of classic Hollywood directors (including Walsh, Borzage, Leisen, etc.) is yet to receive an historical reassessment.

Additionally, 1958 was a pretty good year for De Toth. In addition to Day of the Outlaw, he also made the very good Two-Headed Spy with Jack Hawkins. It anticipates the approach and style of The Spy Who Came In From the Cold by several years.

Edit: What do the three above-mentioned directors have in common? They all wore eye-patches!

Also, for more on De Toth, read this excellent article by Fred Camper.

 

Where the ******** have you been?

 

Nothing like going back to revisit an old friend. I'd picked this the Criterion disc as soon as it came out but have just gotten around to watching it this week (I must've seen it twenty times when it was on it's first theater run). While there's much art damage in it, the film never seems to suffer from preciousness. Oddly enough for something shot so impossibly cheap, for the life of me I can't figure out how this only cost $23K, there are some really top notches pieces of photography. Even though "Slacker" offers a distilled slice of a very specific time and place, it doesn't get bogged by it and is quite universal.

 

I can verify that it really only cost $23k from production to post-production to the screen. As opposed to the myth that El Mariachi cost $7K.

 

Any idea how much that one really cost? I remember reading those stories about Rodriguez partly funding it by selling his own blood.

 

I mean I've tried guesstimating the math on this (16mm 100' = ~2-4 minutes @ ~$25.00/roll + ~$50.00/processing per 100'; actors got $100/ea. IIRC). I mean I love the film as is but when put in context of how impossibly cheap it was, well I'm speechless.

I've been really intrigued by films made by folks "on the cheap" lately. Having been involved in the spending of vast gobs of cash for a couple of minutes running time, I have great respect for those who can craft art of the basest clay.

 

He lab ratted himself out to a pharma firm and got paid $7000 which he used to buy a camera and film stock. I don't know how much he spent in Mexico shooting it (the baddy gringo in the film put up some money too). He sold it to Columbia based on a trailer he edited together out of the footage (at this point he couldn't even develop all the footage because he didn't have money to). Columbia gave him a couple hundred thousand to finish the film. It's an awe-inspiring story, but El Mariachi is not a $7K film.

 

I remember grad students at UT Austin sinking $30K into 20 minute films. And they almost always sucked. They spend even more at USC and NYU. I spent $3K on an 8 minute film and it sucked, too. It takes a lot of work and money to make a lousy film.

 

But sometimes even the lousiest of films can become poetry. Just ask Phil Tucker.

 

I don't know any grad students at NYU and AFI who've spend less than 30,000. Hell most of the people I know who graduated AFI spent around 50,000. That was probably the average. There are ways to get film stock for free though. I've known people who have saved thousands from getting free stock from Kodak and stuff like that. It tends to be easier nowadays with HD cams and the fact that Kodak wants to promote movies done in film. For obvious reasons.

 

Pickup on South Street ~ S. Fuller

I enjoyed this, although I don't think punching a girl in the face is a strong basis for a relationship.

Q

 

5 animated stories about...well, fear, I guess. 2 are exceptional, 1 very good, but the other two fall flat for me. Some genuinely sketchy moments.

 

Timely, no?

 

Check out "traitor" that's a good movie. I dug the ending it's on Netflex and other places.