Abel Ferrara - C/D

I remember finding The Funeral deadly boring. His version of the Body Snatchers is a snooze too. Dangerous Game is nearly unwatchable and New Rose Hotel IS unwatchable. Fear City is eh sub-Miami Vice level thriller and China Girl is only a little better. Bad Lieutenant is over the top, but great performance by Keitel none-the-less and it sorta works. Ms. 45 on the other hand was great and King of New York is even better.

Not seen Driller Killer (but I've heard goodish things) the Kelly McGillis one and he's got a couple of things on IMDB I'd never even heard of but that don't look promising. Anyway the guy is definitely prolific enough. That's certainly not his problem.

This is the only other movie I've ever seen Jerry Horne from Twin Peaks in (as the Commie speaker at the beginning)

Ha I REALLY REALLY loved King of New York and kept hoping that his other stuff was going to have that same spark.

Wait you are kidding, right? HE'S IN THE WARRIORS!

have been curious about Driller Killer for years, but I don't rent (or buy) many movies

Yeah he's in the kitchen late in the movie, IIRC. It's pretty neglible part (I don't think he even has a line.)

It's sad. KING OF NEW YORK, MS 45 and most of BAd LT are fricken great. DRILLER KILLER has an interesting cranky energy, and for NYCers it evokes a certain perverse nostalgia for the soil of yesteryear, but the rest...like Alex said. Although I really, really like his INVASION version.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a worse film,

classic for ms.45, king of new york, the addiction. the funeral is pretty good too. but,yeah, spotty. driller killer is mostly good as artifact. i liked the crime story pilot. i even have a soft spot for china girl and fear city. king of new york is the jewel in the dirty crown.

http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/1627/badlieutenantsplsh.jpg

love this film

While some of them saw small or tiny or non-existent U.S. releases, try finding an Abel Ferrara film made from 2002-2009 on DVD. It’s not easy. “The only thing you need to see them is the internet,” he said. “Go find the torrents. That’s my big distributor. You got to leave it to that. They’re all on there. I just don’t want to find the one I’m working on. That’s the only thing that scares me. But just go on the internet for the rest.”

http://www.vogue.fr/culture/portrait/diaporama/abel-ferrara-presente-go-go-tales/7082

Just watched King of New York and was disappointed. What is it that people think is so great about it? Dialogue is cliche. Acting is spotty except for a couple of scenes with Caruso. Some scenes are too long and others too short. Only saving grace is Walken but he alone does not carry the film.

http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/102

Really liked this as a read for its novelty - a lot of flighty chops which don't make it onto film writing, but I haven't seen it.

what ppl think is so great about King of New York is that it's bad, obv

Biggie Smalls liked it well enough.

yes, Generations Y & Z look to dead gangsta rappers as the vanguard of film culture.

isn't there a Larry Semon Film Festival for you to attend, or something?!?

I have my quota of semen for the week

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12250

hes got some miles on his for being 60

interesting they touch on a project w/ dafoe playing pasolini

cant imagine this 4:44 movie is good tho

the thing about KONY (whoa, makes you think) is not that it's not good but it's got this brutal momentum w/everyone in the film casting everything aside and trying to kill each other w/o regard for anything else and the actors kinda throw themselves into it really well imo and i love the OTTness and how everyone seems to be doing their own version of how to approach the material w/o much guidance. walken owns here, caruso is pretty exceptional, snipes and fishburne are great, victor argo is really good (as probably the only "decent" person in the entire film.) all of ferrara's films have this kind of energy, but i think this distills everything down to the basics nicely.

the graveyard scene is pretty tremendous, you think the film is going to take it from there in one direction but then walken shows up as if anticipating it and just finishes it there. not quite as awesome as the shotgun to the face at the end of 'to live and die in l.a.' but pretty dope regardless.

I really appreciate that you caught the levels of "owning," "great," "pretty exceptional," "pretty dope," "really good" ... the kind of discernment I expect from the minds of Cahiers du ILX.

done with film threads now I think, cept for the Snob ones

jesus spoilers for TL&DILA tho

SPOILER ALERT xxpost

morbs i really hope you don't keep that promise, you would be sorely missed.

by me especially

if i had a dollar for every time morbz stormed out of a thread (or type of thread) in a self-righteous huff, only to reappear to later to kvetch some more, i'd be in the 1% with enough to donate to another random ILXor to put him in the 1% as well.

EXCEPT I'VE NEVER BEEN OLDER and felt more like this board is a hueg waste of time.

quod erat demonstratum

how do you storm out of a thread?

After reading that essay above I am still unconvinced that KONY has anything to say.

Incidentally I just leared who Joseph Kony is today.

Her bad things about 4:44, except from those that think its amazing.

I'd like to see it, even if I've never been fully convinced of Abel Ferrara's talents.

35mm print in NYC Monday

http://www.ifccenter.com/films/ms-45/

oh sweet. obvs i can't see it but still.

i enjoyed his mulberry st doc.

his Depardieu film, taking off from the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case.

http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-abel-ferraras-welcome-to-new-york

it's amazing how ppl have talked themselves into thinking jokey sleaze like Ms. 45 is "great"

which part disqualifies it, the jokiness or the sleaze?

Is Deparnude coming to the U.S.?

it's definitely something, no? it's a mess, and he definitely hasn't developed his talents much yet (not unlike some of cronenberg's earliest stuff in that regard), but i do think it makes an impact that other films don't. the "knowingness" of it isn't very endearing.

i think he's talented and i like a lot of his films (and TV episodes!) but the way that e.g. the french appreciate him gives me pause. that is, as some kind of atavistic modern primitive who represents the soul of urban america or what have you.

As someone who's interviewed Ferrara in person (and likes a lot of his movies—seeing Bad Lieutenant at the Angelika when it was brand new, especially coming in the wake of the comparatively ultra-slick King of New York, was like being punched in the face), I gotta say his public image is exactly that. This Nick Pinkerton column from 2013 kinda sums up how I feel, particularly this bit:

Ferrara’s concern with the relationship between surface and subterranean truths is nothing new. In fact, the director’s greatest creation is a character called “Abel Ferrara,” a shambling, grizzled, reckless, perpetually drugged-up walking staph infection who just happens to have lined up financing for and successfully completed the shooting of twenty-some films since 1976—hardly a likely accomplishment if this persona was the whole truth and nothing but, though Ferrara is careful not to let the mask slip before his public.

he isn't the first director to have a persona that's kind of belied by his films.... i just watched the john milius documentary and the guy comes across as a fabulist and self-mythologizer and asshole. it's hard to take his persona at all seriously. for example, the first thing he says in the film is that he isn't a "pure cinema" guy, that he doesn't care about images, that he just wants to tell a story. which may be true but it doesn't explain the best qualities of his films by a long shot.

I still was not prepared for Ms 45 being a campfest, that's all.

Look at what we have here:

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/sep/04/pasolini-review-abel-ferrara-willem-dafoe-venice-film

got a NYFF ticket for it just now

looking forward to this one, although i worry a little about the "last days" vampirish approach to the biopic (last 24 hrs etc.)

pretty much none of his films have played my little town for over a decade, so this is another i'll probably have to see on DVD

ferrara is one of those dudes who took a while to earn the accolades (or just the scandal) he achieved pretty early (esp from the french)

Morbz look forward to anything you say on this.

Be of some interest to see how much space he gives to the various conspiracies surrounding his death and all.

i kinda don't see him being especially concerned w/ that, and i think interviews suggest same

ah got it, frankly I wondered if the Xan Brooks piece might've said anything but I despise him so didn't make it beyond the headlines.

did you guys like the last days on earth one?

not seen anything since Go Go Tales (and before that -- Mary? i think i saw and disliked?)

mary was pretty terrible

i roundly enjoyed the mulberry street doc, he's a born actor really

upset with IFC Films

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/venice-director-abel-ferrara-attacks-730624

got tickets to the thursday screening of pasolini. now the question is, to what ferrara films should i subject my sensitive and empathetic wife in preparation?

How about Accatone? Was just in Rome and hanging out at Bar Necci, which is now somewhat of a shrine.

I thought Last Days on Earth was terrible.

I will be at Thursday screening too if you want to meet, Adam. Are you there Thurs as well, Dr. M.?

he wants Ferrara films, not Pasolini films.

Thurs 10/2, yes

Well, I cant suggest any of those.

Let's all meet for a post-show cocktail.

i'm down.

king of new york is the "safest" ferrara i can think of but i haven't seen the more recent films. keep in mind this is a young lady thought the herzog bad lieutenant was too brutal.

obv the OG for her, then. She knows Pasolini meets an unhappy end, yes?

(VP, u know that BASEBALL PLAYOFFS will be running all days & nights that week)

don't shoot any car radios!

omg did u just spoil the end of pasolini

i'm trying to toughen her up anyway, it's a cold world

Go Go Tales is pretty innocuous Ferrara, it's Runyonesque.

In that case, let's have a beer at a sports bar of your choosing, Dr. M.

new rose hotel is kinda awesome.

Pleasantly surprised by Pasolini... many touches of the poetic, solid portrayal of a man of ideas by Dafoe. It doesn't all work, but Ninetto Davoli is instantly recognizable as a lead character in PPP's unmade film, same elfin face and presence. Of the ten films I've seen by Ferrara, only the third I've liked a lot.

Ferrara was pretty funny and direct in the Q&A, gently mocking Amy Taubin for speechifying and getting into it with a guy who wanted a more politicized slant on the murder.

i thought it looked great too. and the tony joe white music cue was fantastic.

i also liked it when ferrara and another gentleman got into an aging hipster-off over who saw _salo_ first and where.

yeah, yeah... the clips of Salo in this are the most I've ever seen of it. (I've only seen six Pasolinis i think)

Interesting that the screenwriter credit was the guy who wrote Gomorrah, wish someone had asked about that.

interview w/ Nick Pinkerton:

Well, me and Willem and the Americans—our native tongue is English, we read Pasolini in English. Willem speaks better Italian than me, but even he’s not gonna attempt to relate certain ideas—you’re talking philosophy, you’re talking poetry… And we’ve barely got it together in the language that we have. So we’re not gonna do those scenes—the Furio Colombo interview, the other interview—we’re gonna do those in English, man. But when he’s with the kid [Pino “The Frog” Pelosi, played by Damiano Tamilia], and the kid is speaking Italian, that language that that kid is speaking, you’re not gonna get that speaking English. You can’t translate that. You can’t drop that into American. What’d he be, a rapper or something? I don’t know what the fuck he’d be speaking. He’s a street kid, y’know? Thank God Willem speaks enough Italian, and can speak Italian well enough, that he can get that kid’s talking back, which to me is more important at that moment. It’s a stretch, but the audience has to stretch to the imagination of the filmmakers. I’m not gonna reduce our imagination, you gotta come up to the plate when you wanna watch a movie.

Is Welcome to New York going to see the light of day in the U.S.?

In the U.S.? Right now it’s a war with these people, these guys think they can just cavalierly take our film and do what they want with it just because they bought it. Just because you buy the Mona Lisa doesn’t mean you can put a moustache on it. It’s my job to protect that film, so we’ll see what’s gonna happen. But it’s out, it’s on the Internet, steal it, man.

http://filmcomment.com/entry/interview-abel-ferrara-pasolini-ifc-lieutenant

from H'wood Reporter via Keyframe:

“Abel Ferrara issued a cease and desist letter last week addressed to IFC Films and its global distributor Wild Bunch against the U.S. release of his film Welcome to New York.” IFC has responded and Ferrara has shot back in a statement the Hollywood Reporter has made public today.... “Ferrara says the message of the film is ‘no means no,’ referring to the infamous hotel rape scene. In an edited version of the film, the infamous hotel rape scene is turned into a flashback, leaving the maid’s credibility open to interpretation. In Ferrara’s original film, the guilt of Gérard Depardieu‘s character is apparent, and the director shows zero sympathy toward men in power who have an abusive relationship with women. As of now, IFC will release the edited version of the film as planned, and Ferrara tells THR he will pursue legal action against both IFC and Wild Bunch for releasing a version of the film he didn’t approve.”

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/abel-ferrara-responds-ifc-fire-783614

he made a movie about Dominique Strauss-Kahn?

ah noted upthread sorry

IFC version opens here Friday

"I wouldn't even accept the concept of an R-rated film—and I live in and work in Europe, so that doesn't exist [here]. These people, IFC, put out unrated films. That's their fucking thing. And Wild Bunch as a European-fucking distributor...c'mon man. Blue is the Warmest Color, Nymphomaniac, all these films, ya dig? And they [IFC and Wild Bunch] know who I am. We've made five films together. They [IFC and Wild Bunch] grew up watching my films. They know I don't make R-rated films. And this subject matter, this story, the way I shot it, you cannot. I wouldn't have made it, I wouldn't have done it. They're tyrants. They act with impunity. It's not going to fly with me, or people who have any sense of the truth."

http://flavorwire.com/510822/its-criminal-and-my-names-on-it-abel-ferrara-on-his-strauss-kahn-inspired-welcome-to-new-york-his-battle-with-distributors-and-pasolini/view-all

I like able more and more these days. Wish him luck with this. Fuck those guys.

Aghhhh! ABEL! I like ABEL.

wasn't aware of Pasolini and have just been gifted the DVD. excited.

This is one of those threads that, when it gets bumped, I assume it's because its subject has died, so - good news!

the dsk one wasnt too bad, showed a degree of restraint that i did not think ferrara capable of

also props for depardieu for twice showing his balls

Watched KONY tonight - clearly an anti-Goodfellas/Scorcese (or probably wouldn't make it onto a 'Martin Scorcese presents..' thing). Post-Scarface yet more subdued than that (then again anything next to Scarface is subdued, althoug its to do with its terrific use of night-time) and better than a lot of that - I mean just so much fun and outright bizarro stuff (Caruso giving Snipes first aid LOL, Larry and his gang cutting a deal while watching Nosferatu, those parties and the amount of hip-hop blasting thru, the weird theatre show with the small amount of applause at the end, the singing at the fundraiser). Loved almost all of the cast too.

Those Hong Kong action films have been on my mind a bit lately even before coming to this, and although its nowhere near as kinetic it has a similar level of the disposable to it (Walken just blasting Caruso off after the funeral as some kind of peak).

Caruso giving Snipes first aid LOL

Haha yeah, and shot-to-shit Larry Fishburne going to town a few feet away. It has that hyper-stylised thing where ppl can be riddled with bullets in every vital organ and still kicking, but a single gut shot means death 5 mins later.

I really loved this. Some of the rain shots near the end were gorgeous.

He did a documentary called Napoli Napoli Napoli which I saw in Porto at, like, the only edition of some weird film festival. I remember little of it, except a scene where Ferrara puts on a show in a female prison and there's all these middle aged ladies from Naples looking bemused as he goes through a punk rock cover of "King Of New York".

A couple of his lesser-known movies, The Addiction and Body Snatchers (which I remember being pretty good, though I still prefer the 1978 Donald Kaufman version), are streaming for free on Hulu now.

For a minute read the bump and thought Ferrara had a new movie about Joseph Kony (KONY2012). Which, location aside, would be in his wheelhouse.

monthlong NYC retro in May! Uncut European versions!

https://www.moma.org/calendar/film/5065

Also, Kino Lorber has picked up his latest movie, which stars Willem Dafoe as Pasolini.

Saw it at NYFF in 2014 (see above). Took almost five years...

He's finished another with Dafoe since, also 3 documentaries and a short.

never seen king of new york before maybe now is the time

jeez yeah

totally outstanding cast, Walken is great of course, there's nice work from Lawrence Fishburne and Wesley Snipes, and an actually extremely good supporting performance by David Caruso of all people.

They should screen KONY twice - once as is, and once with the DVD commentary track running. Listen to Ferrara call his own work fascist!

KONY is fairly easy to see anytime, ie who cares

Thought for second there that Ferrera made a Joseph Kony bio pic that he now considers fascist.

Sat evening MoMA screening of King of NY will feature discussion w/ Ferrara and the Safdie brothers.

it's amazing how ppl have talked themselves into thinking jokey sleaze like Ms. 45 is "great"

― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Saturday, June 21, 2014 10:00 AM (four years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lmao of course

ms. 45 one of my favorite movies of all time

fair that you were surprised by the overt camp though

Saw The Addiction for the first time in ~24 years last night, better than I remembered. Lili Taylor is really committed... and Edie Falco! Julian Schnabel also showed up to extemporize about seeing them shoot the Walken scene in his loft.

If you attend a Q&A during this, be ready for some rambling.

Ferrara says his longtime writer, Nicholas St John, would send him the scripts in the mail totally unaannounced. He quit the biz after Dangerous Game and now teaches special-needs kids.

Having interviewed the man in 2003/4, yeah, no thanks.

His DP was remembering having a rough time being newly sober during Bad Lieutenant, and AF grinned "What, you don't like shooting up with the director?"

btw last night's aud was full of friends/sycophants who applauded every credit

Fear City is a pretty entertaining bad movie. Billy Dee Williams' detective has a lot of invective vs Italians I will not quote here.

Nick Pinkerton on Pasolini:

The title role is played by Willem Dafoe, who at the time of filming was five years older than PPP would ever be, and who shares something of the director’s furrowed facial structure. He also embodies Pasolini’s pained intelligence, fingers pressed to his temple as though keeping something at bay. The one big hurdle here is that, while playing one of the major figures of postwar Italian culture, Dafoe is a Wisconsonian with a limited command of Italian. He and Ferrara overcome this problem by not addressing it at all, seemingly making up the linguistic rules as they go along. In the two scenes where he sits for interviews, Pasolini gives his answers in English. He only speaks at length in Italian in the film’s last half hour, during his assignation with Giuseppi “Pino the Frog” Pelosi (Damiano Tamilia), the seventeen-year-old prostitute who is to date the only person to have done time for Pasolini’s death, and who has since testified that there were other parties involved. It’s a strange but ultimately effective choice, for Pasolini aspired to be a transnational figure, and it’s only in his dealing with the boy that the cosmopolitan gives way to the provincial. Pasolini belongs to the world, but it’s Rome that killed him. (Rather more bafflingly, in the version of the film screened at the New York Film Festival, the English subtitling of Italian scenes was somewhat erratic.)

Abel Ferrara has always been more comfortable playing the role of the hood rat than the intellectual—more Pino the Frog than Pasolini—though how much of this act is a hustler’s foxiness is anyone’s guess. His line of BS is obviously effective, as he's traveled Europe with hat in hand to scrape together enough money for Pasolini, which he cowrote with Maurizio Braucci, and the result is recognizably an Abel Ferrara film. The script employs the countdown-to-judgment, death-trip structure that Ferrara has used a number of times before: Bad Lieutenant, ‘R Xmas, 4:44 Last Day on Earth. It’s tempting to attribute this to Ferrara’s Catholicism—the sense that a man is defined by the end of his life, the ritualistic counting down of the Stations of the Cross. Whatever the case, in following his own creative intuition, Ferrara has arrived at something near Pasolini’s own thinking, as per the statement from the latter’s ‘Observations on the Sequence Shot’: “It is only thanks to our death that our life serves to express ourselves.”

http://www.reverseshot.org/reviews/entry/1899/pasolini

King of NY def has the orange-and-blue thing going on

worth a look on Friday it seems

https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review-tommaso-both-rues-and-relishes-the-power-of-the-artist/

Pinkerton:

https://www.artforum.com/film/nick-pinkerton-on-abel-ferrara-s-tommaso-2019-83200

pic.twitter.com/B04XUHibfe

— Jesse Hawken (@jessehawken) August 6, 2021

Best of Abel Ferrara's King of New York commentarypic.twitter.com/bgXeTBrR2F

— John Frankensteiner (@JFrankensteiner) September 11, 2021

This is not getting the love here, why not?

"Lookit his hair. That's the star of this film."

Not to stray from that ^^, but didn't realize he'd made another movie with Dafoe, following last year's Tommaso:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KKuxA4sPDk

Shit, according to Wikipedia, he's made six movies with Dafoe.

I posted the Driller Killer commentary video on the old horror thread and it's funny too

He did a documentary called Napoli Napoli Napoli which I saw in Porto at, like, the only edition of some weird film festival. I remember little of it, except a scene where Ferrara puts on a show in a female prison and there's all these middle aged ladies from Naples looking bemused as he goes through a punk rock cover of "King Of New York".

― Daniel_Rf, Sunday, July 16, 2017 6:34 AM (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink

heres that scene btw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2GeLEhfUqo

Was rewatching some Entourage as a pandemic balm, and there’s a great moment when a Herzog-type director has been fired from a major film and Johnny Drama says he could call up Abel Ferrara.

This is one of those threads that makes me worry it's a death revive when it pops up.

A critic I love on a movie I love, even if he misnames her “Thanta.”

https://www.artforum.com/film/howard-hampton-on-abel-ferrara-s-ms-45-45920

They should screen KONY twice - once as is, and once with the DVD commentary track running. Listen to Ferrara call his own work fascist!

― grawlix (unperson), Tuesday, 2 April 2019

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQRzH9BAzks

Handy supercut but it leaves out the last few minutes of this commentary which is um... a vibe?

Not understanding how Keitel found those guys in Bad Lieutenant, I assumed he just picked up two guys and blamed it on them (because he's out of his mind) but wiki plot synopsis says they were the actual rapists

New Rose Hotel was great! Unusual structure; total rethinking of the cyberpunk aesthetic (which turned out to be more prophetic); Walken letting 'er rip. Was uncomfortable w/ A. Argento's presence but the trail of destruction her character eventually leaves has unforeseen connotations now. Glad I finally got around to this one.

KONY commentary with AF is just extraordinary, the least bullshit-y commentary imaginable. Incredible to think they got multi-million dollar funding from Berlusconi, nowadays he says you couldn't get a tenth of the budget from anyone. Took five years to write. AF is appalled at the suggestion any of it is improvised. KONY is the best truly good-looking sleazy movie ever. For much of the night time shots they used the 'Blue Congo' filter.

Anyone seen Sportin' Life (2020)? Anyone know where to find it?

Director's Statement:
I have been shooting predominately documentaries the past 10 years or so. Whatever the subject—Piazza Vittorio, Padre Pio—we also film the process itself... so our team and I are a part of it. The subject of my new documentary is the relationship I have to my work, to Willem Dafoe, and my music and art. These relationships are the starting point and I could not avoid facing what the world went through this year with the pandemic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLijhoL1_O4

Ferrara hit both NYC and LA for a massive retrospective of his films. It was amazing to see New Rose Hotel in 35mm, which was just a transcendent experience.

Go-Go Tales and Mary were in celluloid as well, and it’s astounding that American distributors were too stupid to pick them up. He mentioned that Silvio Burlusconi (whom he abhorred) financed two of his films, and it was presumably those

recently watched Dangerous Game for the first time and thought it was incredible.

It’s so sad that the brilliant China Girl has never had an HD release. Love it

Hey Eaxy -- I have a copy somewhere. Unfortunately my iLX email belongs to a hacker now - thus don't mail me there! - but you can find me on Bluesky
if you want to hit me up.

jorgevelez.bsky.social

I know about this guy and his hardboiled deal, but for whatever reason have never seen one of his films. I watched about half of "King of New York" (so far), and boy is it full of acting. Overacting, underacting, bad acting, weird acting ...

I watched King of New York. A few things I keep thinking about (I'm sure they're obvious, but still)

- David Caruso's wedding speech (he's legitimately good in this)
- Fishburne dying, shrieking, dancing
- Walken's weird delivery of 'my feelings are dead'
- The hospital cake
- Walken's uh, romance, on the tube train
- Schoolly D
- The mob boss pissing on Paul Calderon's foot in the shittiest of restaurant back rooms
- How much it appears to be in dialogue with Goodfellas (Scorcese in general)

What a strange, scuzzy film. Real.

I've been a huge fan of King of New York since the 90s but never seen anything else Ferrara directed until recently, when I caught up on a couple of his movies.

Bad Lieutenant - This movie is extremely funny. It gets by on the magnetic performance of Keitel like KONY does with Walken (though KONY has a great supporting cast). That this movie was made while Ferrera was in the throes of addiction seems obvious upon reflection.

Ms. 45 - I really liked this movie, though it also feels extremely problematic. Maybe that is it's power - it is legit uncomfortable, the lurid sex and violence all mixed up, but somehow engages with real female rage (maybe). It's utterly disposable but also real? It's also cut like a horror movie, jump scares, etc., where the monster is NY circa 1981. My wife strangely liked it, maybe more than me.

SPOILERS - the most telling thing about Abel Ferrara is that after one graphic rape scene, he says, "you know what, this movie needs a second graphic rape scene right afterwards."

Both these movies have weird "happy" endings, Keitel finding redemption by following the nun's admonition to let the perpetrators go and the return of the lost dog.

Pasolini is v good

Driller Killer also extremely funny, would recommend

Harvey Keitel's arms outstretched moan-scream from Bad Lieutenant is how we express any mild displeasure in our household.

lol, I was doing that for a week after seeing it. *Breaks yoke when frying egg* > long existential moan/wail.

Both these movies have weird "happy" endings

spoiler, but

Been a few years since I've seen it, but doesn't Bad Lieutenant end with Keitel's character getting randomly popped while he is sitting in his car?

Not random; it’s related to the bets he keeps placing and losing the whole movie.

Yes, but he gets his redemption and goes to heaven like a good Catholic.

Very nice review of the autobiog.

https://archive.ph/it6dn

Watched The Addiction last night, nothing like seeing “Produced by Antony Blinken” followed by a couple minutes of mass graves and atrocity footage.

Bad Lieutenant - This movie is extremely funny.

huh

It's not a comedy, but it does have a lot of really funny scenes. Keitel and his horrible kids are amazing.

Yeah, if you don't find a lot of that movie so over the top it's funny than I dunno. What, are you taking it seriously?

*Bloody gym-body Jesus appears*. Oh, this is where shit gets real.

Lol, no.

Vinegar Syndrome is putting out what will presumably be the first decent (maybe even great) looking edition of New Rose Hotel. I just wish it wasn't so pricey.

"a new 2K restoration from the best surviving film elements"

New Rose Hotel wouldn't be worth buying on its own, but you get Ferrara's autobiography with that bundle, so I might go for it.

he seems to always be pouting

I didn't realize New Rose Hotel was so popular - they sold every single copy of their limited edition run in less than three days! I'm guessing there'll be a large standard edition run.

Now I regret missing the 35mm screening at Roxy Cinema that took place earlier this year (with Ferrara himself in person).

I'll eventually give this film another chance, but in all honesty, I didn't think Amy Taubin was wrong when I first saw this.

I'd never seen "Ms. 45" before, but boy was that movie great.

halfway through the Abel Ferrara memoir and it’s pretty great. It’s very nontraditional, semi chronological, bounces back-and-forth a bit in its timeline, but generally seems to be moving forward. It’s very insightful in terms of how he managed to scrape together the money for a lot of these films, and above all else it’s an absolutely fascinating story of him making his way through Fun City-era NYC. for all of his reputation as an unapologetic abuser of drugs, he clearly regrets it, and while he does note that a lot of it felt pretty damn good, he certainly doesn’t romanticize his drug war stories.

We watched New Rose Hotel and it is kind of the cyberpunk movie I've always wanted. Maybe I could have used a little more tech and neon, but the obvious cheapness fit well and I vastly preferred it to some blockbuster-style movie. Both Walken and Defoe are good even if it seems like they got the script five minutes before shooting. Asia Argento is not that good, some of it could be the language, but her stiltedness kind of works in the role.

And Ryuichi Sakamoto's in it (for about 30 seconds)!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWdMv6Tv3Lw

I love the look of NRH; cities reduced to hotel rooms, hallways, screens and bodies. One of Ferrara's best movies.

The look and music is so 90s.

His new autobio is supposed to be very good, and also sad.

It is indeed very good.

(the autobio, that is. Haven't seen NRH yet)