Random 10: Random Films for Comment - Week 11

Stalker is one of my all-time favourite movies. It's sort of a religious film without religion. The whole film's very hard to describe, but absolutely worth seeing.

I think I've seen both Bullets Over Broadway and The Lady Eve too, but it's been so many years I can't remember anything else except that I liked them both.

Edith Massey is great in Polyester.

Ken Loach is part of the reason the UK film industry is in the rut it is. Gritty working class dramas aint gonna have widespread appeal, and encouraging the production of them just means more money lost and more financiers, with lofty arty ambitions, getting involved in the film industry.

I went to a party held for him recently though, and it was pretty good.

loaches "ae fond kiss" was far from grity but also slightly formulaic. and when i say slihgtly i mean completely.

i wish i liked ossessione more

i think it's one of those films whose initial "what IS this?" value has been diminished by its pervasive influence

Ah damn, you know what? I didn't mean Ken Loach (though I think the same about him) I meant the star of My Name is Joe and ertswhile actor - Peter Mullan. After sitting at a table in Cannes with a bunch of stuffed suits verbally masturbating over his worth, when neither one of them would be able to tell you the first thing about Akira Kurosawa... argh!!!!! Fucking UK film industry.

i actually like ken loach, though his work is uneven.

i don't know if *i* could tell you much about akira kurosawa.

also your story surprises me because loach is basically eternally (well, after the early 70s or so) unfashionable, at least so it appears from my american vantage point

Nah, Loach is still a darling over here to those who don't recognise that theatre and cinema are two different mediums.

oh, that's an old canard. i don't buy it. theatricality is as legitimate a mode of expression for cinema as anything else. anyway i don't think "theater" is really the source of what makes loach unique ...and problematic for so many people.

this idea that the UK Film industry is on it's knees cos no-one knows anything about Kurasawa is a new and interesting one. I think it actually fails more spectacularly when it tries to make commercial films or tries to compete with Hollywood, no? Loach in uneven but has made many remarkable films. Peter Mullan has released 2 films and both are very good, expecially "The Magdalene Sisters". Orphans is not so much a "Gritty working class drama" as a surreal fantasy that happens to be set in working class Glasgow. I doubt that either of them were commercial failures since their budgets were probably pretty low.

I must see Stalker.

xp. Theatre and film are two different mediums, of course, and both can do many different things. they can both do special effects as well as gritty realism and so many more things.

i only just realized there were a shitload of american gangster movies in 1990/91. bugsy, king of ny, new jack city, goodfelas, millers crossign, godfather 3, billy bathgate, dick tracy, posibly more. whats up with that? belated cash-in on the untuochables sucess?

It was because of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Maybe not. I like Loach, anyway. To say that he is what is wrong with the British film industry seems particularly odd. We'd be much better off if we had more people like Loach, who make the films they want to make, and show what they want to show, than we would be with even more terrible cockney gangster films and saccharine romantic comedies. Showing the lives of ordinary people (in whatever way that's possible) is a legitimate use of cinema, and it's those who complain about films not having enough spectacle that are the problem with British cinema. (Not that spectacle is illegitimate, there's room for both). I think a lot of Britains greatest films have been more about realism than fantasy (Lindsay Anderson is my favourite director, so there's a touch of bias). Anyway, I don't like Kurosawa, so if Britain has forgotten him, that's fine by me.

yes, if anything something like Kes is extremely cinematic and wouldn't translate at all to the stage. You need to see the actors faces in close up in order to feel the power of the film.

And a live bird of prey in a theatre is asking for trouble.

stalker is across two discs all the time?

Fair comments chaps - to be honest, I probably didn't express my point as clearly as I should have. From *MY* experience of those involved in the UK film industry it seems to me that there are a lot of goons in it for the money/ the young girls/ the glamour/ the meeting famous people etc but they - overwhelmingly - carry a huge film naivity. That is what I meant by not knowing Kurosawa - but it could just as easily have been Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock or even Martin Scorsese. These are/ were not people who have an interest in cinema or wish to talk about it.

However, a large number *DO* enjoy theatre (being money people and all, and invariably from a well to do background - stereotyping perhaps, but that has been *MY* experience and I can only speak from that). I think is why shit like "The Magdelene Sisters" is produced. And I did find it shit: complete and utter cack that would be better suited to ties and tuxedos sitting in a theatre.

I like Lindsay Anderson a lot, for the record, and Bill Forsyth as well. I don't think the UK should try and battle Hollywood but I do think it would do well to learn from Roger Corman. Seeing as we have neither the money nor the indigenious talent to make "blockbusters", lower budgeted genre pictures would be a surefire way to success. But try telling someone whose interest in cinema begins and ends with their busty, teenaged personal asst. that they might want to check out "The Wicker Man" and see how far you get...

"lower budgeted genre pictures" like the cockney gangster pictures cited above? I think "The Magdalene Sisters" is a great film with an important subject, but thats just my opinion just like it's also mine that "The Wicker Man" sucks.

As long as Cockney gangster movies like Layer Cake or Snatch are playing multiplexes rather than 2 weeks runs in arthouse cinemas I think that it is commendable.

The Wicker Man is a classic and will continue to be seen as one long after Peter Mullan has disappeared.

I don't imagine I'd like the wicker man.

people always seem shocked, that I haven't seen it and tell me that I should see it.