alright so my day. i woke up at about 9:15, troy was running around trying to wake mark up to help him with some new fridge. i went for a walk, listened to mewithoutyou while i did. great walking music. came home, had shower and shake (coffee). nothing to do so i started watching hud.
hud is this amazing little gem of a film. paul newman and melvyn douglas rule all over it, acting wise. it was made by this director named martin ritt who's only other film of note was another newman western called hombre. so unusual that he pulled such a masterpiece as this off. it's just shot so beautifully, all the acting is dead on. there's music 3 times in the picture: the opening credits, the middle and right at the end. so effective. and the music is so nice...ugh. such a cheeky little film. i was watching it with ro and we were both commenting on how intensely unsettling paul newman is in it, and how amazing melvyn douglas is...all his lines just have so much conviction. and what lines! what a great script.
next up i watched a prairie home companion. such a strange little picture but really tastily done. the ensemble cast is pretty crazy: tommy lee jones, meryl streep, john c. riley, woody harrelson, lily tomlin, virginia madsen, kevin kline, lindsay lohan, maya rudolph...how altman manages to wrangle so many people still astounds me. i've heard that a lot of the time he'd leave actors to make certain decisions themselves in order to alleviate the pressure of him directing every single nuance of every single actor in his usually enormous ensemble casts...apparently this makes the actors feel great too, so everyone wins. the story itself was okay...it's more about the characters than the narrative. some of his camera moves are just...ugh. i have no idea how he manages to not get the camera in mirrors at times. see any of the scenes that take place in meryl streep/lily tomlin/lindsay lohan's dressing room.
there's mirrors everywhere, even opposing each other but somehow you never catch a glimpse of the camera as it goes around the actors. some of it must have been digitally enhanced but it's not obvious...either that or altman was really that good. he uses the dolly/pan/zoom effect almost constantly which gives the film a nice rhythm. i love seeing films like this because even if they're not the best the director has to offer, there's so much to look at in it...so much technique going on. i watched the behind the scenes stuff and shook my heap with bewilderment at seeing paul thomas anderson sitting next to altman on set. i knew he was the standby director for the whole film (for insurance purposes this was required...altman was quite sick) but just seeing him there the whole time was so cool. he must have been in heaven.
then i watched spartacus. a stanley kubrick film but not. more kirk douglas' film. the whole thing was a bit underwhelming. some amazing shots, great acting from douglas, surprisingly good pacing for a film of its' length...but something was missing. maybe i'm just not a sword and sandal epic kind of guy. maybe that's why i have no deep desire to see ben-hur. but strangely, a massive desire to see lawrence of arabia. i understand why spartacus is a marvel of filmmaking but i just don't buy into it fully enough to be like YEAH SPARTACUS WOOOOO I AM SPARTACUS HELL YEAH GO DOUGLAS y'know. ah well.
then i watched the two jakes. for a sequel to one of the best films ever, this sucked. i knew that going in but i didn't realise just how average it really could be. jack nicholson directed it. robert towne wrote it (so why did it suck? urrgh). so many unusual scenes that had context but not enough to be really valuable to the narrative. i don't understand how nicholson sat down after locking the final edit of it and went "yes, this film works" cause it just doesn't. chinatown...man, if you haven't seen chinatown, you gotta see it but it's like comparing...se7en to sheitan. seriously, that big of a difference...and for a sequel, that's bad.
then i watched platoon. i'd always known its' reputation. best picture winner etc. it started and i was like yeah, okay. war film. as it goes on it just gets better and better. it's like apocalypse now but more concise and realistic...and dramatically so. the scene that stuck with me the most is when kevin dillon's character bashes the head of a villager in and is threatening to do the same to a lady standing beside him...the savagery is just horrific. and shortly after, charlie sheen's character stopping some of his unit from raping a little girl. seriously intense stuff...wasn't expecting it. dafoe is great. this film demands a closer viewing, there's a lot in it.
then i watched picnic at hanging rock. peter weir is a master. how he's straddled so many genres to the ground is beyond me, his filmography reads like a dream. kind of like spielberg, but more understated. spielberg has been a little clumsy in his handling of the different genres but weir usually nails it. he rarely delivers lukewarm results. i'd always heard about picnic at hanging rock, even when i was quite young. always been interested in it. it's very creepy. understated and overstated all at the same time. it's uneven but not in a negative way. it's shot and edited really well. umbrella did a killer job with the restoration too.
then i watched easy rider. after reading everything about it in easy riders, raging bulls i had a lot of anticipation. it's pretty well made for a stoner kinda road movie. there's no real full on narrative to it to latch onto...just a bunch of places they go and a bunch of stuff they do. the style showed me where oliver stone got the visual style for a bunch of natural born killers. apparently dennis hopper took loads of drugs and went crazy during shooting. the film itself leaves me feeling a little...hollow. it comes from such a different era to me that it's obvious i wouldn't be able to fully get it. but it was better than i was expecting.
after 7 movies today, i'm feeling a little tired.
until tomorrow, bye.
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