ILX Film Club, The (1924-2019)

Yes, fuck all canal barges.

Alba can you tell which ilxors are hating I'll bully them for you.

Ha ha I was just making a glib comment after seeing the spreadsheet and noticing tha it placed relatively well in the S&S top 100s but nowhere with ILX.

I think that applies even more to Beau Travail but I was looking at the early films.

Gonna watch Beau Travail in a proper theater next week -- my first non-DVD/streaming experience w/it!

While everyone's gearing up, a reasonably engaging quiz:

Try this quiz - https://t.co/yyLpPtjiKP pic.twitter.com/fdHFKTXEpL

— DVDBeaver (@DVDBeaver) February 11, 2023

66/100. I raced through it, probably wouldn't have done much better if I'd taken my time (I either knew it or guessed--though I would have gone back and changed a few guesses based on subsequent answers).

more mainstream:
https://www.cinenerdle2.app/

68/100. Projectionist but no professor. But what's wrong with being a projectionist?

Wtf, I'm boycotting this quiz

Reasoning?

Putting professors above projectionists!

Ah!

96/100 and only because I accidentally put Jacques Rivette when I meant François Truffaut

Check out the big brain on Brad!

77/100 -- a couple of dumb mistakes on movies I've seen, a couple of lucky guesses on movies I haven't seen

71, though at least half were guesses.

(Some of them informed guesses, though.)

76. About five films I did see and couldn't place grr

88. Nailed every one I knew, every guess I guessed wrong

Oh and messed up Spike Lee . Just couldn't place that image in that film somehow

84/100!

I guessed on most of the contemporary Asian stuff, which rarely payed off. And I got the Black female directors all switched around. The only film I've seen that I miscredited was Death of Mr. Lazarescu.

I just exchanged texts with my friend who actually is a projectionist but did not mention this quiz.

I got 89. several of them were guesses based on what I know about the filmmakers’ visual aesthetics or the time periods from the images. I got several directors mixed up - Mizoguchi and Kobayashi, Kazan and Wyler, Etrice and Saura and others. I guessed Larisa Shepitko’s The Ascent correctly only because I have recently seen stills from it on twitter, but I haven’t watched it. Also still have yet to watch Djibril Diop Mambéty’s films, a few of which are on Kanopy, or Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman

My projectionist friend told me about this yesterday:
https://framed.wtf

oh, it's a one-per-day thing, like wordle

Yes. I only started doing it yesterday.

But I like, I like.

I love Framed but I get annoyed every time a Marvel movie zilches my overall record

Will we be using this thread for discussion of films that are not on your list but are still, say, Morbius favorites?

Just the ones on the list, think there are several which wouldn't be there without his influence.

just downloaded sherlock jr, which i think just sneaks in as public domain. only i seem to have an entirely silent one and i can her neighbours clanking around

Looking through the list, some of my favourite directors, Louis Malle, Miloš Forman, Roy Andersson, Sidney Lumet, are either missing entirely or have a single entry, think this is probably A Good Thing on a personal level, more to explore, less so to those whose favourites are more well-represented I suppose, though otoh everyone likes talking about their favourites.

xp There are many different options for watching Sherlock Jr on YouTube with different soundtracks.

To your last post: that is sort of the whole good and bad of lists in a nutshell.

I've watched the first hundred.

For those who have MUBI, try to catch The General over the next 3 days before it gets yanked

I really am going to be forced to watch Holiday on the Buses huh

Whose first place vote was that?

Is Holiday on the Buses the same as Mexican Bus Ride?

Man those MUBI Leaving Soons are torture. I rewatched THE GENERAL recently and maybe still have it saved on my cable box so I think I will pass on that and watch a few others.

i never her.

finished Sherlock Jr as it was only 44 minutes long. (this was an archive.org download rather than youtube. ogg video in fact, only 100MB, 400x300 but perfectly watchable)

is that a recognised meaning of the work sheik?

yes -

2 usually sheik : a man supposed to be irresistibly attractive to romantic young women

lots of things that are now cliches, probably a lot different back in 1924. the suitcase jump kinda spoilt it - everything else was at least possible

THE GENERAL also avaiable in several other places, Amazon Prime, Criterion and... wait for it... Tubi. https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/the-general

Actually I have to be careful here as I have been fooled before. Oftentimes something will show up there as being on Amazon Prime but in fact it is only there with a subscription, a subscription to MUBI.

Is Holiday on the Buses the same as Mexican Bus Ride?

― The Windows of the URL (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 12 February 2023 17:27 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I like to think so.

As Mark S likes to tell me, the first On The Buses film was the highest grossing film at the box office that year.

Pfunkboy was Holiday on the Bus's #1 vote

I knew it would be him, that wacky pfunkboy.

hes a menace

> I knew it would be him, that wacky pfunkboy.
> ― Toshirō Nofune (The Seventh ILXorai)

letterboxd, the vexing and sometimes OK film logging website

The professor in the film class for which I was a TA showed this film in a pan-and-scan version (1995-6, so probably on videodisc). I was shocked but it provided a good excuse to talk to the students about Scope and aspect ratios.

My favourite Truffaut is probably Two English Girls, I'm a little surprised that Jules and Jim isn't on this list though. Any reason why it might be out of favour?

My parents also took me and my sister to a screening of Dr. Strangelove when we were like 8 and 10

My dad took me to 2001 at about this age, fair play as I took him to Koyaanisqatsi a few years on.

...and later the first film I saw with my long-term girlfriend-to-be was Powaqaatsi, feel free to let me arrange your movie nights with loved ones

I re-watched 400 in the past year. It's good and all but I wish it made me feel more of the emotions others report. (Jules & Jim makes me, um, feel things more reliably. And, yeah, that does feel like an increasingly uncool preference. Maybe music videos mimicking J&J has made it (more) twee by association lol)

Kind of agree with that, its a 4/5 for me. Good not great. Shoot the Piano Player is my favourite Truffaut, probably because it's adapted from a David Goodis novel.

When I think about 400 Blows I often imagine that I must be overrating it due to having seen it at just the right time/place, but nope, rewatching confirmed that it's a definite 5/5 for me as always. What I love most about it is that we never have any explanation from Doinel, just the world as he sees it, the limitless exploration of the city and later of course the vastness of the sea. Exposition or a voiceover would ruin it. The parents even join him in it briefly in that trip after he starts the fire. All of the adults are morally ambiguous, the film takes no position on them. I guess this is just how I felt as a child and that's why it all feels so spot on to me.

Some favourite bits:
* The audience of kids at the punch & judy show, Truffaut is just so great at sitting back and observing people
* Doinel in the police van watching the lights of the city and going into a kind of meditative state, then starting to cry
* The "inspiration" striking him, and the great idea is just to plagiarise Balzac, but also to build a shrine to him so it doesn't feel wrong.
* The interview with the prison psychiatrist at the end, I read that this is actually footage from his audition

Yes to all those points. It's remarkable to me how Child Léaud and Adult Léaud come across as such different people.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Some_Like_It_Hot_%281959_poster%29.png

Some Like It Hot, Billy Wilder, 1959

Morbsies #360
Sight & Sound Critics #38
Sight & Sound Directors #62

Another one I have seen many times and am very happy to see again.

My question for everyone - does Osgood know from the start?

I mean, he obviously does, and That Is The Joke, however I am surprised that lots of people seem to think it's idk that he's ditsy and odd or something?

Well yeah a Hollywood film from 1959 needs to have plausible deniability, so the alibi would be "this guy really wants to get with what he thinks is a sexy lady, he is so excited that even when the lady reveals herself to be a man he still wants it, even though obviously not really, he's just confused".

That's lame and not what Wilder means but he had to give ppl the out of interpreting it that way imo.

Watched this already, v much like a comfortable old slipper to put on. As great as it is it never really gets out of the light comedy mode (though the gangster killings are fairly brutal) - not to do it down at all, while it all looks very easy it does also tread a very delicate line, and the Monroe/Curtis scenes were a nightmare to film, so two hours of light fun is actually quite a success. I am surprised about how little queer discourse I saw out there about it, guess it isn't really that deep and is mostly played for laughs, but there's still a lot of scope there for commentary.

I always think about the hapless garage attendant who's killed thanks to Lemmon and Curtis.

This is a five star Wilder classic in the same league with Sunset Blvd and The Apartment. The scenes with Monroe and Curtis on the boat are very hot.

Trouble in Paradise (Lubitsch, 1932). A delight

https://i.postimg.cc/PJKHgrvJ/image.png

La Dolce Vita Federico Fellini, 1960

Morbsies #204
Sight & Sound Critics #60
Sight & Sound Directors #34

Only one in this stretch of 11 from Vertigo to Psycho that I haven't seen before

Just started watching. Three hours eh?

I liked it fine in college -- Fellini and I aren't simpatico. Nothing on earth could persuade me to watch it again until one evening during the pandemic when I said, "Fuck it." Still not a favorite but I appreciate it.

Fellini, Pasolini and Cassavetes are directors I learned about from Yummy Fur lyrics.

I enjoy La Dolce Vita, I like the buzz of it. The obvious trick is that for all its empty decadence it still manages to be alluring. A lot of that has to do with Mastroianni of course.

what's yr take on Cassavetes?

ha yeah that too.

I have never seen ...Chinese Bookie, assume that this will make more sense once I do get around to it - https://genius.com/The-yummy-fur-chinese-bookie-lyrics

I remember being slightly shocked that La Dolce Vita placed so low in the Morbsies, and that (iirc) that was the highest Morbsie placement of any Fellini film. It made me feel alienated from the ILX voting base.

This was the first European "art" film I ever saw, and it blew me away and I still think it's great. Many years later reading Dolce Vita Confidential by Shawn Levy enlightened me about some things I didn't fully understand about the film upon first viewing (and really about the whole Roman jet set scene of that time).

I prefer 8 1/2 but they're both sensational. The photography, the suits, the sunglasses, the tempo.

The after-party sequence in La Dolce Vita, where all the guests go outside in the early morning still in their evening gowns and dinner suits, is a masterful bit of film-making and captures that comedown 6am feeling better than anything else I know.