Conversations 2010 #12

Conversations 2010 #12

Pete, The Human Experience doesn't appeal to me (I just watched the trailer), but only because it looks way too self-important.  Or at least it has been titled and marketed that way.  WE'LL GIVE YOU THE ENTIRE HUMAN EXPERIENCE IN 2 HOURS OR LESS!  Two documenatary film-making brothers discover the meaning of life and share it with us all.  Bah.  I am intrigued that it got favorable reviews from both Indiewire and First Things.  I'll check it out if it comes around.

Matt, you would know what I think of The Box if you actually read my posts here instead of skimming them for mentions of Fiddler on the Roof and Oklahoma!  I wrote about it last month.  Smiley face.

Jason, say it.  I've abandoned my blog.

Spike, where's that Meg Ryan piece I wanted on my desk yesterday morning?

Brandon, I did like HtTYD more than I probably made it sound like.  It's well-crafted, nice to look at (even in 2D), and a lot of fun.

Now, stuff I've watched.

Pulse is terrifyingly boring.  No tension and no scares.  Did I miss something?  Yes, I missed the second hour because I couldn't tolerate it any longer.

I really respect Mister Lonely, but I don't love it the way I love Julien Donkey-Boy.  I want to write more about it, but don't want to spoil anything.  

Passport to Pimlico is funny.  There aren't too many hold your belly and roll around on the floor moments, but there is a steady comic pace that keeps the smile on your face.  On my face at least.

Blast of Silence is in the pantheon.  Essential.

La Collectionneuse is another Moral Tale, the only one that I had seen before.

I'm going to watch Jarmusch's first feature, Permanent Vacation, soon because I'm curious to see if he lifted the title to that film from one of my favorite moments in Collectioneuse.

The 400 Blows is great.

One of my biggest regrets in relation to the Ithaca Hollywood video sale was passing over a few Truffaut films (even though I did pick up Piano Player) and at least half a dozen Chabrol films.  

Chabrol and Rohmer wrote one of the earliest serious assessments of Hitchcock.  Truffaut followed this up in the next decade with his Hitchcock interviews.  All of these men also respected Rossellini.  To simplify things too much and to ignore the very "Frenchness" of the New Wave, the films of the New Wave can clearly be seen as the various children spawned by the improbably perfect mating of Hitchcock and Rossellini.     

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I also watched some Popeye shorts and silent shorts with the girls, but nothing exceptional.

Lost is done.

I like and mostly agree with Jim Emerson's short asessment of the show's lapse "sideways" -  http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2010/05/just_a_few_lost_leftovers.html

Emerson: "But, still, the finale kind of redeemed a lot of the interminable padding of the last several years -- mainly by ignoring them and by re-framing The Island as a peak experience that bonded a group of people, even if the Thing Itself had no intrinsic meaning. You know, like being together in the army, or a college dorm, or a TV series for a few years..."

Kind of.  The positive "re-framing" does occur, but it doesn't really excuse all of the sub-par stuff that comes before or even the lameness of the ending itself. The Jimmy Kimmel kiss/punch/kiss montage worked just as well as a summation of the series as anything in the finale.

I'm in the middle of listening to the recent /filmcast discussion of the finale.  It's a good conversation.
http://www.slashfilm.com/2010/05/28/the-filmcast-bonus-ep-lost-series-finale-and-wrap-up-guests-katey-rich-and-myles-mcnutt/