sally potter's 'yes'

i enjoy potter's films and i enjoy defending them. they are pretentious, but she is able to do things for a lack of fear of being pretentious that no one else would do.

to clarify my last point: not that doing things other people don't do is a good thing in itself! i've attacked that sort of reasoning on ilx before. i think potter does some nice things. like writing dialogue in rhyming iambic pentameter!

not that that's NECCESSARILY a bad thing, i guess

and yes, half of her movies are about anglo-american women being seduced by exotic strangers!

but you know who is? lol coxhill! wtf?!

well said gear! it's the irony & winks, and there are so much of them now, that are pretentious.

anthony, tilda swinton is in the new jim jarmusch movie. she was also starring in the abortive new bela tarr movie. oh and constantine.

"You are doing something unusual, Harold!"

"I certainly am in a bar with other businessmen."

"This desert island is a bummer."

"I love being wealthy in the Hamptons."

"I'm saying a cliché in a different context, Pam."

"Boy, I sure do like intercourse."

"I'm thinking something incongruous to what I'm doing."

"Wanda, we are doing some nutty things in this picture!"

He’s not really a film critic but a quip-minded belletrist who happened into a lucrative gig and appears to have no inclination, now, to patch up the gaping holes in his knowledge of film. (Why learn anything about a subject that’s only there to be the object of one’s witticisms?).

I dunno, I think this is a pretty fair assessment of Lane. He's pretty broad and decisive for someone who doesn't seem to have the (film) experience to back it up. I love reading him--and his cultural commentary and book reviews are excellent--but his critical muscle is pretty paltry.

My free pass is the same night as band rehearsal. Meh.

2) Can those who love Orlando speak a little more specifically about why they like the movie so much?

RAGE looks a bit white elephant

it sounds a little desperate, doesn't it? sort of like that depalma iraq movie. got no financing? need to seem cutting edge? holed up in your tiresome haute-bourgeois milieu? try the web-verité approach.

in much happier news, sally potter's THE GOLD DIGGERS -- awesome and, yes, pretentious -- is coming out on DVD:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gold-Diggers-DVD-Sally-Potter/dp/B002KHMKJ0/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1257379574&sr=1-2

i don't mind the idea of some utube roshomon but why is it this glossy lookin thing with a top name cast shot with big bright backdrops, press release says "sum kids mobile phone" yeah whatever

So I saw Yes last night for the first time. It takes a while to get used to its theatrical conventions and meter (same with watching Shakespeare and Moliere), but then it kicked in and worked well. Specific "set pieces" -- soliloquies and duets, in this case -- had some outstanding dramatic verse writing.

Potter-isms carried over from Orlando: the character who turns and stares at the camera; the characters using a video camera in the course of the story.

Definitely in the same school as Jeanette Winterson -- either it'll hook you or it won't work at all. Worked for me.

feel cheated that amateurist never saw this

From "last (x) movies you saw":

hey if it's playing in your city I highly recommend THE PARTY, a very short (71 minutes) black comedy by Sally Potter. great cast: Patricia Clarkson, Bruno Ganz, Cherry Jones, Emily Mortimer, Cillian Murphy, Kristin Scott Thomas, Timothy Spall. I realize it came out in the UK in October but just opened here in the States.

― flappy bird, Tuesday, March 6, 2018 8:25 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Saw this tonight and really enjoyed it as well. Slightly contrived -- one-room, one-scene story. But the cast is excellent across the board, from Cherry Joans to Scott Thomas, Clarkson, and the rest.

I thought it was fun and piquant but deeply silly. The acting and camerawork was good, the script less so, the plot much less so

The script was horrible, I felt. There were a couple of lines I jotted down as examples of how painfully bad expository dialogue can be.

Let's hear em then

I didn't fancy this at all despite having many opportunities to see it (it seemed to get a really big push here for some reason, they've even had ads for the DVD release play in cinemas just now). Now I know it's only 71 minutes I guess I'll get it out the library at some point

the final twist is one of the stupidest in movie history but it's just about worth watching luvvies sending themselves and the last fifty years of the bourgie left up