Mal ,'Shindig'
A place to talk about movies--old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
1. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (possibly my favorite film of all time)
2. Gosford Park (Gets better on repeated viewings)
3. MASH (not only a great fim, a great influence in attitude and technique)
4. The Player (Just saw it recently--it holds up beautifully)
5. Nashville (amazing cast, so many of whom step way out of their comfort zones)
Oh, and Long Goodbye.
The Long Goodbye is one of my favorites too.
Hec and I are sharing a brain again. I need to see McCABE (and CALIFORNIA SPLIT and NASHVILLE) again (and THIEVES LIKE US period), but as of right now, THE LONG GOODBYE is my favorite Altman. Heh, given how much Elliot Gould mutters and asides, it was practically a dry run for POPEYE.
POPEYE is a flawed film. In his script, Jules Feifer was writing E.C. Segar's Thimble Theater comic strip, while Altman was attempting to film a Max Fleisher cartoon. The differences between the comic and the cartoon are too great that it could ever work.
The Fleisher cartoons, BTW, are a big influence on Altman's style of overlapping dialog, which is probably took on the project to begin with.
Hec and I are sharing a brain again
I didn't even mention how much I like Rudolph's Choose Me.
Hec's been stealing my brain, too.
I LOVE Choose Me. I assigned it to one of my screenwriting classes, and it got incredibly strong reactions. People either loved it or loathed it. One of my students almost quit the class, he was so furious that I would assign such a film.
I didn't even mention how much I like Rudolph's Choose Me.
Proof that Leslie Ann Warren could have been another Susan Sarandon if she'd gotten the right roles (I always thought they looked a bit alike anyway), among other revelations.
People either loved it or loathed it.
I kind of get that since Rudolph's other movies are so incredibly mannered. I thought I'd like Trouble in Mind, but didn't really. But the script is so tight and surprising on Choose Me and the performances are great. Damn, Keith Carradine's character is interesting. The slow series of reveals about him is just awesome storytelling.
We watched Brothers of the Head the other night. It was nicely shot, but overall we were kind of meh about it. They left out too many details, like how did they die?
People either loved it or loathed it. One of my students almost quit the class, he was so furious that I would assign such a film.
I've never known anyone personally to dislike CHOOSE ME, but I can see that, for the reasons Hec mentions. I rather like TROUBLE IN MIND (and EQUINOX, too) but Rudolph almost always tries too hard, where Altman's problem on occasion (which I think was also his gift) was that even when he was being ponderous/pretentious, his movies feel like they were effortless for him.