JJ thanks

Bwhahahahahahaha!!!!

I watched La Dolce Vita for the first time over the last two nights. Love! So beautiful and wacky and sad and funny.

I watched La Dolce Vita for the first time over the last two nights. Love! So beautiful and wacky and sad and funny.

If you haven't, you should see AMARCORD sometime. It's all those things, but from a different perspective (and involves small town life as remembered, rather than big city life as currently experienced).

81/2 is also great, but it's a lot more blatantly surreal/fantastic.

81/2 is also great, but it's a lot more blatantly surreal/fantastic.

I had an epiphany watching 8 1/2 and it's affected how I think about movies and art since. I realized that Fellini put his characters' memories and fantasies and their lives-as-lived and meta-commentary about filmmaking all on the same plane and let them ping off each other to great effect.

It wasn't a fantasy as I understood it, nor really surrealism. It was something more like extended metaphors or expressionism. The epiphany was simply that everything is taking place on the screen with the same value. The fantasies weren't set off as being distinct from the character's lives or memories. They all blended into a unity - and that just seemed like a great way to visually capture subjective, interior experience. I know that my day-to-day thoughts are constantly floating between fantasy and memory and focused activity, but I hadn't seen it on screen before.

This isn't unique to 8 1/2, of course, (in fact Flann O'Brien does it in At Swim-Two-Birds which I'm rereading right now) but you could see why so many other filmmakers since then have borrowed from it, particularly when they want to make an autobiographical statement. You see its influence on Stardust Memories, All That Jazz, Day for Night and many others.

Love Amarcord, which was Levinson's inspiration for Diner, btw.

side note: And Local Hero was the cited inspiration for Northern Exposure. (Which also has a lot of 8 1/2 moments, including a full on Fellini homage.)

I'm so provincial. If Munch wasn't an intellectual snob, I wouldn't recognize the names of those movies, but I do, because he grabs hold of that two years of college and rides, damn it.(But I've not seen them, even though I'm not one of those "I don't like to read while I'm watching," people either. I've seen some French films.) Even though I've not seen the source material, a lot of Northern Exposure scenes *looked* homage-ish, if that makes any sense.

Love Amarcord, which was Levinson's inspiration for Diner, btw.

I think it was actually I VITELLONI that inspired DINER (late teen/early 20-something guys hanging out and trying to avoid growing up). AMARCORD has such a loose, open structure that I can't imagine it being used as a template that way (or even the way 8 1/2 gets used by other directors).

Damn, I'm getting all verklempt about the Brattle Theater struggling to stay afloat. I saw so many Fellini movies there (along with many other classics), and I'm not sure that even if they survive that they'll be able to program the way they used to.

I think it was actually I VITELLONI that inspired DINER (late teen/early 20-something guys hanging out and trying to avoid growing up).

Yeah, I think you're right.

Could be both...Levinson's a major cineaste. (As many movies as I watch I doubt I've ever used that word before, ever. Feel that I should raise my pinkie in the air after typing it, even,)

At Swim-Two-Birds which I'm rereading right now

"My correct name is Good Fairy, said the Good Fairy. I am a good fairy."

...Yeah, I got nothing on Fellini, but I love that book.

I can't think of any notable movie-watching incidents with my parents, though my dad certainly loved Peter Sellers. Oh, but because I think it's neat: back in the day my mom was friends with a girl whose father worked at Grauman's Chinese Theater. So she got to go to a lot of cool premieres. To this day, she gets really irate about the cuts Kubrick made to 2001 after it opened.

"My correct name is Good Fairy, said the Good Fairy. I am a good fairy."

Heh. I love that section! The Pookha is so dapper and polite.