Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Cassavetes - The Greatest

I just now noticed that there are several Cassavetes films available via streaming. That means that 1)that NWI Criterion list was not totally accurate and following that, 2)my top ten list isn't quite accurate. Any of these Cassavetes films would have made it onto my list:

Shadows
Faces
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
A Woman Under the Influence
Opening Night

These have all been released via Criterion and are available via NWI. I love all of these films and highly recommend them, especially Chinese Bookie and Woman Under the Influence.

Also available via NWI, but not Criterion releases, are Minnie and Moskowitz (which is one of my favorite RomComs of all time and has been out of print on DVD for several years) and A Child is Waiting, which I've been meaning to see for a long time, but I'm almost afraid to watch because of Kramer's interference. Cassavetes said, "The difference in the two versions is that Stanley's picture said that retarded children belong in institutions and the picture I shot said retarded children are better in their own way than supposedly healthy adults. The philosophy of his film was that retarded children are separate and alone and therefore should be in institutions with others of their kind. My film said that retarded children could be anywhere, any time, and that the problem is that we're a bunch of dopes, that it's our problem more than the kids'. The point of the original picture that we made was that there was no fault, that there was nothing wrong with these children except that their mentality was lower."

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