Edouard de Castro

Favorites list: movies or directors (unordered, in construction…)

The master of the surreal and the weird. He abandoned objective realism, made visuals and music dominant over narrative. He is more interested in iconography, style than in real characters. His talent for producing disquiet seems more subversive to many as it inches its way into the mainstream. I like his “poseur”, charlatan manners. Although he often uses (and abuses) the same archetypes in his movies, I like their ambiance, esthetics and poetry (+ the good looking women!).

Favorite movies list

Wild at Heart (1990) Over the top road movie, splendidly grotesque : young lovers Sailor and Lula run from the variety of weirdos that Lula’s mom has hired to kill Sailor. The trashy is beautiful and the beautiful is trashy. (I like “this snakeskin jacket symbolizes my individuality”, Mr. Reindeer and his girls, Willem Dafoe`s Bobby Peru, the “what do you faggots want?” to a local gang, the good witch Glinda “Don’t turn away from love” in the ‘perfect’ happy end, the final “Love me tender” song) dialogs
Inland Empire (2006) (First Lynch DV movie, shot on grainy, often blown-out and distorted consumer-grade video [Sony DSR-PD150]!) An actress gets a dream role that quickly devolves into a nightmare. Shifting identities! Hollywood a place where dreams come to die? Hallucinatory brilliance! Caution: 3h long long experimental epic/puzzle! could be painfull for some. (I like: hookers who sing “The Loco-Motion”, Laura Dern dying between oblivious chatty homelesses, the musical happy ending)
Mulholland Dr. (2001) An hollywoodian Dream noir with 2 beautiful women… (I like Rita/Camilla and Betty!, the incompetent hit man, the overwhelmed director, the sad and dark love story) on wikipedia
Eraserhead (1977) A nightmare vision of a world of industrial decay with unique industrial and organic visuals. Caution: unbearably weird (monster baby!), dark and slow for many people! (I like the verbose dialog!, the fast paced action!, the nice background ‘sound’!, Jack Nance’s hairdo!) review

After George Lucas saw Eraserhead (1977), he offered Lynch the chance to direct Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983) but Lynch turned him down. Lynch felt the film would be more Lucas’ vision than his own.

... too bad! would have been funy!

http://www.davidlynch.com
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000186
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lynch
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/02/lynch.html

Formerly known as the king of the ultra-low budget film and the one-man film crew. Voluptuous, fun and beautiful “low” – “mauvais genre” cinema that doesn’t take itself seriously; culturally incorrect. Adept of hard-edged stylized violence, he makes trashy crowd-pleasing independent and studio films with fairly low budgets and fast schedules by Hollywood standards, using creativity not money to solve problems.

Favorite movies list

Sin City (2005)
Co-directed with Frank Miller, Quentin Tarantino (“special guest director”).

Frank Miller’s Sin City comic book brought to life and pumped with steroids.

Sin City is one of the few fully digital live action motion pictures. It was initially shot in full color, and was converted back to high-quality black and white. Colorization is used on certain subjects in a scene, such as cars, police lights, girl eyes, lips, or clothing (and the Yellow Bastard!).
To me it’s Trash/”mauvais genre”-culture poetry: sublimating violence and grotesque of comic books into pure cinematographic “pleasure” through voluptuous formal beauty. The form is so pure it becomes substance and emotion in itself.

The movie is not about narrative but about style. It internalizes the harsh world of the Frank Miller “Sin City” comic books and processes it through computer effects, grotesque makeup, lurid costumes and dialogue that chops at the language of noir. The actors are mined for the archetypes they contain and are rotated into a hyperdimension. We get not so much their presence as their essence; the movie is not about what the characters say or what they do, but about who they are in our wildest dreams.

Sin City trailer

Planet Terror (2007)
(part of ‘Grindhouse’ anthology film)

A throwback to the Grindhouse exploitative cinema (paracinema) of the 70s; the perfection in Z movie style, with zombies and hot chicks. Grade-Z “movie language”, cheesiness and gore as poetical material; sublimating the “lowest” form of cinema into a dark and trashy fairy tale.

“Mauvais genre”: beautiful, funny and gross

Machete (2010)

Exploitation-style B-movie. Cheesiness and over-the-top violence with deadpan laughs and gratuitous nudity! Great fun (even despite the politically correct background “social commentary”)

note:
Rodriguez has stated that he is interested in eventually adapting all of Miller’s Sin City comic books!
He also announced that he had signed on to direct a remake of Barbarella...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Rodriguez

Developed an audacious fusion of pop culture and independent art house cinema; his films are thrillers that are distinguished as much by their clever, twisting dialogue as their non-linear narrative and outbursts of extreme violence. Quentin Tarantino IMDB page

What makes him infinitely more interesting than just another flash-in-the-pan filmmaker with a predictable Oedipal drive challenging the codes and conventions of the dominant, parent cinema is that he can’t be categorized as either mainstream or independent.
His style and content, is a glorious and often unruly mix of classic Hollywood, Hong Kong action cinema, comic book and television.
Is a master of film “language”.

Favorite movies list

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Wait for the creme. (col. Hans Landa to Shosanna).

A voluptuous hubristic uchronia, that feels more alive than history itself!!

Pulp Fiction (1994)
The lives of two mob hit men, a boxer, a gangster’s wife, and a pair of diner bandits intertwine in four tales of violence and redemption.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_Fiction

Kill Bill (2003,2004) vol. 1, vol. 2
“Mauvais genre” cinema brought to the level of art; poetry of violence, poetry of motion in the language of film.
Formal perfection with (in vol. 2) substance/emotion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_Bill

Revenge is a dish best served cold (old Klingon proverb)

Death Proof (2007)
(part of ‘Grindhouse’ anthology film)

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep and I’ve got promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep. Did you hear that butterfly? Miles to go before you sleep.
- (1st sentence is from “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost [American poet, 1874-1963], also refered in Telefon [Don Siegel, 1977] Cold War paranoia drama with Charles Bronson!)

All Tarantino’s obsessions mashed together in one gem – film… Not just an anthology / remake / homage to the 70s B-movies, but a flamboyant creation, with a voluptuous and beautiful film language. Formal perfection; outre – but lovable and substantial – characters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grindhouse_film

reference guide
quotes

Jackie Brown (1997)

(special guest director on Sin-City)

Greatest russian director (to me). “Contemplative”, “spiritual” cinema, unique cinematic style of incredibly long takes and slowly-pulsating rhythm! http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001789 http://www.andreitarkovski.org/english.html http://www.filmref.com/directors/dirpages/tarkovsky.html

favorite movies list

Ivan’s Childhood (1962)
Dark film of a twelve year-old orphan boy who acts as a scout for the Red Army as his zealous desire to avenge the death of his parents spurs him on to increasingly dangerous espionage missions behind German lines. The film skirts between the harsh world of war and the lost dreams of childhood.

Although there was, presumably, nothing ‘holy’ about the Russians Great Patriotic War, Tarkovsky shoots his movie like a religious epic. The aura of holiness around Ivan registers neither as religious bombast nor as patriotic myth-making, but rather as an awed respect for childhood mysteries.

Hauntingly beautiful scene: the apple cart with the two children (with the background in negative).

Solaris (1972)
Based on a novel by Stanislas Lem. A psychologist is sent to a space station situated over the ocean planet Solaris. When he encounters an eerie resurrection of his wife, Khari, who had committed suicide several years earlier, he begins to realise that an alien intelligence on Solaris has an ability to materialise man’s innermost thoughts.

Tarkovsky has gone way beyond SF conventions into poetry: “spiritual” fiction. It is about the limits of science, free will, personal identity, love and nostalgia.

Tarkovsky is not a science-fiction director, and only liked the story for its psychological aspects, not its technological aspects. He was forced by Lem to make a movie that stayed closer to the original story, and thus we got the best of both worlds.

Stalker (1979)
Two men, a writer and a scientist, engage the special mystic skills of a Stalker to guide them through the forbidden ‘Zone’, a damp, fecund, overgrown wasteland where a meteorite has fallen 20 years ago and the rules of nature are said to no longer apply. At the centre of the Zone, it is reputed, is the Room, a place where the deepest desires of one’s heart are said to come true. As the men approach the threshold to The Room, their fear and trepidation for the materialization of their answered prayers leads to profound revelation and self-discovery.
Spoiler: in the end (after ~3h of film) they give up, don’t enter the room and go back home!

... It could be viewed that it was Stalker who had created the Zone’s world in order to invent some sort of faith / hope.

Penetrating the ZONE (SFMOMA article)

Andrei Tarkovski interview on Stalker [1981] (zakka.dk)

Andrei Tarkovski’s Polaroids

Jacques Tati is one of the great comic icons of French cinema, a Gallic equivalent of Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton, whose works as director, writer, and actor are regarded fondly by audiences as well as harder-to-please critics (embraced by France’s intellectual elite as vanguard Modernist works). There is little to no dialogue in his movies, and the action, frenzied but tightly choreographed, is invariably set to a breezy musical score. In his films he used state-of-the-art technology to critique a society being smothered by automation and gadgetry.

favorite movies list

Playtime (1967)
In a Paris that has been totally transformed into a soulless metropolis of glass and steel, Monsieur Hulot seems to have difficulty in coping with this new way of life. Contrast between “modern” efficiency and the stubborn messiness of reality! Nevertheless, no matter how inhuman their surroundings become, human beings will always remain human and, when they come together, can find a way to enjoy life (c.f. apocalyptic-funny restaurant sequence were “order” slowly disintegrate…). Tati attacks the modern world using humour, but he is the ultimate optimist, not a moralist.
The film that ruined Tati (rather than using Paris he built his own supermodernist ‘tativille’ artificial city)! A Painting come to life filmed by a director from an other planet! Shot on 70mm.

http://frenchfilms.topcities.com/nf_Playtime_rev.html

Tati sacrificed everything he had to make Playtime! He was years ahead of his time and his genius was not fully appreciated until after his death.

Traffic (1971)

laternamagika article

Mon Oncle (1958)

... at Villa Arpel (designed by Jacques Lagrange)

Jacques Tati IMDB page

The only film ever directed by the great British actor Charles Laughton.
A religious fanatic marries a widow whose young children are reluctant to tell him where their real daddy hid $10,000 he had stolen in a robbery.

Dream-like expressionistic tale of greed, innocence, seduction, sin and corruption (based on a 1953 depression-era novel by Davis Grubb).
A beautifull avant garde sophisticated oddity (both ignored and misunderstood at the time of its release) now considered as one of the greatest American films of all time.

Robert Mitchum as Harry Powell diabolical serial killer/Preacher and his love & hate hand tattoos!

IMDB link
Review by Tim Dirks at filmsite

Kubrick’s films, most of which were adapted from literary sources, are characterized by technical brilliance, inventive, often economical storytelling, and timeless wit. Unmistakable style (steadicam, mannered acting, deliberate pacing). Stanley Kubrick IMDB page

Favorite movies list

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Nightmare comedy (bases on the book Red Alert by Peter George); a deranged general obsessed with the corruption of his precious bodily fluids single handedly launches a nuclear Holocaust.
Dr. Strangelove is infused with the comic genius of Peter Sellers, here at the height of his powers. He plays three parts, the US President, an RAF officer and, of course, Dr. Strangelove.

Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove

I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration , Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids…
Base Commander Ripper

Barry Lyndon (1975)
http://ruthlessreviews.com/movies/b/barrylyndon.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Lyndon
The misadventures of a callous “social climber” (based on novel “The Luck of Barry Lyndon” by William Makepeace Thackeray): Rise and fall of an Irish adventurer within English society. Beautifull, cold, static and tragic 18th century painting come to life! The ritualization of behavior and the resulting loss of our humanity.
“For all of the pomp, the glamour, and the circus of distraction, our fates are tied to the soil, which will serve to erase the rigid lines we believe are so necessary to the human condition.”
Candlelit scenes were shot with a special Carl Zeiss 50mm f/0.7 lense
(yes!: f0.7! built for NASA for their Apollo moon-landing program).

Paths of Glory (1957)
The court martial and execution of three French soldiers in WW1.
The most uncompromising anti-war film in the history of the cinema (based on Humphrey Cobb novel).
The suicidal attack on an impregnable fortress named ‘Ant Hill’ in the film (against an unseen German enemy) was inspired by and loosely based upon the six-month bloodbath in 1916 during the Battle of Verdun for Fort Douamont, a French stronghold eventually captured by the Germans. (The same battle was frequently referred to in Renoir’s The Grand Illusion (1937)).
Due to the film’s raw, critical assessment of hypocritical French military and bureaucratic authorities who callously condemn and sacrifice three randomly-chosen innocent men with execution (for cowardice) for their own fatal blunder, it was banned in France and Switzerland for almost twenty years (until the mid-1970s) following its release.

The paths of glory lead but to the grave

A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Film adaptation of Anthony Burgess’ 1962 satiric, futuristic novel of the same name.
The luridly-colorful set designs (by John Barry), costume design (by Milena Canonero), the synthesized electronic score (by Wendy Carlos) the colorful and innovative cinematography (by John Alcott), and the hybrid, jargonistic, pun-filled language of Burgess’ novel (called Nadsat – an onomatopoetic, expressive combination of English, Russian, and slang), produce a striking, unforgettable film that is still disturbing nowadays.

Lolita (1962)
Adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov book.

The Shining (1980)
Horror / Thriller; adaptation of Stephen King novel.

Spaces and storytelling in kubricks the shining

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
“Science fiction”, screenplay with Arthur C. Clarke.

I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that
HAL 9000

The master of “poetic realism”, Marcel Carné was a prodigy who created the greatest films in French history (with the help of poet Jacques Prévert). Marcel Carne IMDB page Marcel Carne wikipedia page Marcel Carne French wikipedia page

favorite movies list

Les enfants du paradis (1945)
(Children of Paradise/The Boulevard of Crime)
Fresque sur le Paris romantique des années 1840.
The tale of a beautiful courtesan, Garance, and the four men who love her in their own ways: a mime, an actor, a criminal and an aristocrat.

Drôle de drame (1937)
(Funny Drama or The Strange Adventures of Doctor Molyneaux)
Avec Louis Jouvet, Michel Simon, Jean-Louis Barrault!
In Victorian London a serial killer murders women. Pr Molyneux and bishop Archibald Soper are searching for him while suspecting each other… “Bizarre, bizarre, vous avez dit bizarre…“

Drôle de drame is an extraordinary mix black comedy and farce, quite unlike anything in French cinema at the time. Although it presents a typically French stereotyped view of the English, the film makes an intelligent satire of the middle classes, making great capital out of their little hypocrisies and double standards.

Hotel du Nord (1938)
“Atmosphère ? Atmosphère ? Est-ce que j’ai une gueule d’atmosphère ?“

Quai des Brumes (1938)

“T’as de beaux yeux tu sais“

Stop motion genious (director, producer and writer)

Coraline (2009, USA)

The perfection in stop-motion animation. Poetic, voluptuous and dark (from a Neil Gaiman ’s book; music by Danny Elfman)

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993, USA)

Groundbreaking stop-motion animation musical (story from Tim Burton, music Danny Elfman) Henri Selick also made James and the Giant Peach (1996).

The film is an adaptation of a poem from Tim Burton (parody of the famous “Night before Christmas” poem by Moore that Burton wrote and illustrated while employed at Disney!). A ghoulish tale with wicked humour and stunning animation (the first feature length stop-motion animated film in history).
Jack Skellington, king of Halloweentown, discovers Christmas Town. He decides to hijack Christmas holiday for himself, in good spirit, but doesn’t quite understand the concept!...
Edgar Allen Poe and Dr. Seuss in a blender! Heart-warming, magical and enchanted despite its ironic and creepy dark tone.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107688
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nightmare_Before_Christmas

The ultimate film geek, a true passion for detail-driven cinema, full of visual “presentation”. A coherent but eccentric cinematic language and sensibility (thanks Owen Wilson as a writter!?), an enclosed cinematic world with a style and affect that is entirely his own (obsessive compulsive / idiosyncratic cinema!?). Wes Anderson IMDB page

The opposite of politically correct / social realism cinema! Liberating, sophisticated and moving (in its “lightness”). Pretentiously bizarre for douches.

favorite movies list

Rushmore (1998)
The life of a nerdy teenager whose sole ambition is to indefinitely continue to attend Rushmore Academy, a private school, and tries to romance a teacher.
“Art-house” comedy with a melancholic tone.
The film is of it’s own world. The character’s motivations and behavior are far fetched, but this forms a perfect film “mechanic”.

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
Wes Anderson masterpiece (with Rushmore). The aventures of a rich and overachieving screwed-up clan (New York intellectual bourgeoisie). Fable about failure and family.

The Life Aquatic (with Steve Zissou) (2004)

French review

The Darjeeling Limited (2007)
Three brothers traveling across India in search of themselves. Quirky, aesthetically-pleasing bittersweet ride with deadpan humor.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

Adaptation of a Roald Dahl children’s tale about a charming and smart fox and his quest to be true to his animal nature. Cool retro-tech animation, great soundtrack (as usual in Anderson movies); an odd family-oriented movie!

The ‘crazy’ writer behind Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Being John Malkovich. Comically gloomy storytelling that often blurs the lines between reality and fantasy. His screenplays have breathed new life into mainstream American cinema. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0442109 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Kaufman

Favorite movies list

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) [see note below about Michel Gondry]
Directed by Michel Gondry, a gorgeous illustrator of Kaufman’s inner worlds.

Being John Malkovich (USA, 1999)
Directed by Spike Jonze
A little office door leads into John Malkovich’s mind!

Human Nature (USA, 2001)
Directed by Michel Gondry.
The ups and downs of an obsessive scientist, a female naturalist, and the man they discover, born and raised in the wild; Philosophical burlesque!

Kaufman will make his directorial debut with his next project: Synechdoche co-directed with Spike Jonze.

Screenwriter, film, commercial, and music video director noted for his inventive visual style and manipulation of mise en scène. His career as a filmmaker began with creating music videos (Oui Oui, Björk, The Chemical Brothers). Gondry has also created numerous television commercials. He pioneered the “bullet time” techniques! In his movies he utilizes many of the image manipulation techniques that he had experimented with in his music videos http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0327273 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Gondry

Favorites movies list

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
(writer Charlie Kaufman )

“Romance” film that uses a science fiction element to explore the nature of memory and love in the weird Gondry/Kaufmann style!
A couple undergo a procedure to erase each other from their memories when their relationship turns sour, but then fall in love again!
It is the antithesis of the typical romantic Hollywood fare, and at the same time one of the most “romantic” film I’ve seen.

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d. —Alexander Pope

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_Sunshine_of_the_Spotless_Mind

La science des rêves [The Science of Sleep] (2006)
A man trying to take control of his dreams because his life is slipping away. Densely packed with imagery and symbols as well as emotion and humor. Although the main character is pretty annoying it’s quite nice [but only if you’re in very ‘relaxed’/’zen’ mood].

Human Nature (2001) see under Charlie Kaufman (writer)

Note: upcomming Gondry’s movie: Master of Space and Time: Two mad scientists discover a way to control reality ! (... Gondry announced in an interview that he is no longer set to direct the project)

Note: I hated “Be Kind Rewind” (2008) !

Directed by Fred M. Wilcox
[with Leslie Nielsen, Anne Francis, Walter Pidgeon!]

To me, the best Science Fiction movie ever made. Kitch but represents the perfection in classical Science Fiction; seminal film displaying all the (naive… or not so) 1950s enthousiasm for science and ‘progress’... before the ‘postmodern’ attitude!
With an out-of-this-world “Electronic Tonalities” soundtrack (by Louis and Bebe Barron); the first all-electronic score for a motion picture! and a script loosely based on Shakespeare’s “the Tempest”.

Interstellar flights, robots, extinct advanced alien civilisation, machines to control physical reality with mental power…

Forbidden Planet @ SF filmsite
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049223

Science Fiction: transcendentalism of magic and religion, in an attempt to reconcile man with the unknown (Vivian Sobchack).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fiction_film

note: Leslie Nielsen ... yes, ‘the’ Leslie Nielson! (aged ~30) plays Commander John J. Adams!

The best musical ever made besides the Wizard of Oz (well, I also like kitch Indian musicals such as Devdas and especially Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge [The Brave Heart Will Take the Bride] or old – also kitch, by Jacques Demy – French ones such as Les demoiselles de Rochefort, Les parapluies de Cherbourg).

Pure joy and bliss. An autobiography of Hollywood itself at the dawn of its transition from silent pictures to sound (“talkie”).

IMDB page
Wikipedia page

Master of Japanese Animation. He is regarded as one of the greatest creators of animated films. http://movielink.imdb.com/name/nm0594503

Favorite movies list

Tonari no Totoro (1988)
(My Neighbor Totoro)
Two young daughters meet friendly wood spirits in postwar rural Japan. Simple (unlike some of his latest movies), poetical, enchanting.

Mononoke-hime (1997)
(Princess Mononoke)
Gods and demons locked in battle for the future of the forest (worth seeing just for its Forest Spirit, which takes animal form by day and roams the night as a diaphanous, Godzilla-like divinity).

Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (2001)
(Spirited Away, Sen,... Le voyage de Chihiro)
Sen is separated from her gluttonous parents and forced to work in a bathhouse frequented nightly by Japan’s pantheon of house and nature spirits!

Now one of America’s most respected directors; old-fashioned classically constructed dramas focused upon mature themes and characters. Powerfull and elegant. http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/03/eastwood.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clint_Eastwood http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000142

Favorite movies list

Gran Torino (2008)

Mystic river (2003)
(Adaptation of Dennis Lehane novel) Friendship, murder, revenge and betrayal.

White Hunter Black Heart (1990)
Based on Peter Viertel’s roman about the making of The African Queen (John Huston, 1951): in Africa, a director obsession with hunting and killing an elephant came close to demolishing his film project as well as himself.

Founder of surrealist cinema. His films show an unique mix of surrealist humor and social melancholy, combining a documentary sense with surrealist qualities into a loose, discontinuous form of narrative.

favorite movies list

Le fantôme de la liberté (France, 1974)
One of Luis Bunuel’s most free-form and purely Surrealist films, consisting of a series of only vaguely related episodes – most famously, the dinner party scene where people sit on lavatories round a dinner table on, occasionally retiring to a little room to eat.

Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie (France, 1972)
Surrealist satire: an absurdly comic and wickedly incisive portrait of the meaningless social rituals and polite hypocrisy of the upper middle class; as two couples and their two friends, including a drug-running South American ambassador, can’t conduct a dinner party in peace. Foiled by (among other things) botched scheduling, sexual desire, a theater audience, an untimely funeral, and armed revolutionaries.

Cet Obscur Objet du Desir (France, 1977)

Simón del desierto (Mexico, 1965)
(Simon of the Desert)
Simon is presented with numerous temptations by the Devil (always as a woman), culminating in his being brought back to earth, to a modern New York discotheque!

Un chien andalou
A 16 minute surrealist short film by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali!

http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/01/12/chien.html

(Black Cat, White Cat; Crna macka, beli macor)
By Emir Kusturica

Felliniesque farce set among the Gypsies and gangsters who roam a dilapidated stretch of the Danube, The film couldn’t be farther from the images of wartorn Balkans you’d expect. Over the top, baroque, fun and poetically uplifting.
A reckless, explosive production not bored with life, love and the possibilities of cinema (unlike most recent European ‘art’ film productions).

Caution: manic, carnivalesque style that could be exhausting for some people!

http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/1999/09/23/cat/index.html
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118843

Genius cartoonist whose very name defines a genre of Golden Age Cartoons. Greatest, wildest cartoons ever made. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000813 http://www.texavery.com

Favorite cartoons list

King-Size Canary (1947) A bottle of jumbo-gro turns a chase in to an escalating war of size. Suburban America, and then the World, are rampaged by four gargantuan domestic pets. video

Red Hot Riding Hood (1943)

video

Swing Shift Cinderella (1945)

Northwest Hounded Police (1946)

The Hick Chick (1946)

Dumb-Hounded (1943)

Magical Maestro (1952)

screenshots
http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/22/texavery.html
http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/22/texaverytales.html

Directed by Sofia Coppola

Sumptuous and “frivolously deep”! One of the few ‘costume’ movie (with Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon) that I like!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0422720

by Terry Zwigoff, based on a graphic novel by Daniel Clowes.
Life of Enid (Thora Birch) and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson), two cynical high school graduates teenage girls. Dramatic comedy about friendships, pop culture and teenage life.

Ghost World movie @ wikipedia
IMDB link

Note: The opening sequence of the movie includes a clip from the 1965 Bollywood musical Gumnaam a bizarre Sixties Hindu rock dance number! Jaan Pehechaan Ho [youtube video] by Mohammed Rafi. Frenetic dancing, campy scenery: Fantastically ridiculous (better than Tarantino’s Crazy 88’s in Kill Bill)!

Archetypal American “independent” film auteur. His films are hip, smart, slow, bittersweet, and always interesting (too arty and shallow for some). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jarmusch http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000464

Favorite movies list

Down by law (1986)
(with Tom Waits, Roberto Benigni)
Part nightmare and part fairy tale; an italian tourist (Roberto Benigni!) and 2 other haples men end up in prison, then escape… Slow and hilarious.

Dead Man (1995)
“Western”; a young man going west (both metaphorically and literally)!

Night on Earth (1991)
(LANewYorkParisRomeHelsinki)

A collection of five stories involving cab drivers in five different cities: Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome, Helsinki.

Broken flowers (2005)

Finish hip independent film author; “Deadpan ironist”. His movies have a unique downplayed humorous side that can also be traced to Jim Jarmusch, who has a cameo in Aki’s film The Leningrad Cowboys Go America.

Favorite movies list

The Match Factory Girl (1990)
(Tulitikkutehtaan tyttö)
Dark “comedy” of murder and revenge! “Cheerful” nordic humour! “Rich” dialogs! (I’m joking)...

The Man Without a Past (2002)
(Mies vailla menneisyyttä)
A man suffering amnesia (after being beaten up) tries to put his life back on track. Rebirth and resurrection; deadpan funny, weird and melancholic!

Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989)
A dreadful rock group and their manager, travel to America seeking fame and fortune… Grotesque and funny.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0442454

Polish born film director (and actor); celebrated Hollywood director until 1978 where he fled to Europe. A recurring theme in his work is the relationship between victim and predator (Death and The Maiden, Bitter Moon, Cul-de-Sac, Rosemary’s Baby). His films depict a world that is cruel, grotesque and filled with perverted sexuality, paranoia and dark humour. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000591

Favorite movies list

The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)
Humorous horror movie. A triumph of stylisation.

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
A woman dreams she has been impregnated by the devil. Heavily-influenced the horror genre with its psychological tone.

Bitter Moon (1992)
Story of a couple self destruction. Veers erratically from salacious erotica to black comedy to clumsy psychodrama.

http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/festivals/01/15/biff_polanski.html

by Kar Wai Wong
Haunting beauty.
Love-challenged tale that pushes atmosphere over narrative.

Ziyi Zhang !

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0212712

He is one of the principal originators of what is sometimes known as he “body horror” genre, which explores people’s fears of bodily transformation and infection! He is also known as the director who films “unfilmable novels”. Although he’s “trying too hard” to shock, his movies are dead-serious – funny, in a way!... http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000343

Caution: gratuitously (and pretentiously?) disgusting and “sick”, but interesting and out of the ordinary!

favorite movies list

Dead ringers (1988)
The lives and mutual murder/suicide of identical twin gynecologists!

Videodrome (1983)

Crash (1996)
(based on J.G. Ballard book)
... warm and uplifting … (maybe not).

eXistenZ (1999)

Note: David Cronenberg, as an actor, played a scary serial killer (Dr. Philip K. Decker) in Nightbreed (1990) (Directed by Clive Barker, based on his own novel “Cabal“) a very cool stupid horror movie where the mutants/monsters are the “good” ones and the humans (rednecks and the serial killer doctor) the “bad” ones!

Now very popular and mainstream, I like his quirky and fun movies. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000318 http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/03/burton.html

Favorites movies list

The Nightmare Before Christmas

See “The Nightmare Before Christmas” note

Ed Wood (1994)
The mostly true story of the legendary director, Edward D. Wood,Jr, hailed as the worst director (‘Plan 9 From Outer Space’, ‘Glen or Glenda?’ and ‘Bride of the Monster’) of all time, and his strange group of friends and actors: An ode to cinema!

Mars attacks (1996)
The Martians decide to attack our planet and devastate everything. Why? Because it’s fun!
Great Parody and hommage to the 1950s science fiction B-movies.

ACK, ACK ACK ACK!

Edward Scissorhands (1990)
Poem for suburbia…

Beetlejuice
A black comedy about a dead couple disturbed in the haunting of their house by a snobbish city family intent on redecorating.

Alice in Wonderland

the Stop-motion animation film (plasticine clay) from Nick Park.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_and_Gromit

Bestows generous blessings on all that’s good in Englishness, in moviedom, and, of course, in cheese! Epic, cute, smart, witty and funny: brilliant!

the world’s first vegetarian horror moviemovie

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0312004

@ Internet archive

Mostly old, bad and fun copyright free (full) movies to download (e.g.”Prehistoric Women”) but also few gems like George Melies 1902 famous Le voyage dans la lune !

www.archive.org/...

Directed by Juzo Itami.

Crazy japanese movie about friends who try to learn the “ramen” (noodle) art in order to set up the perfect fast-food noodle restaurant…
Woven into this main story are a number of smaller stories about the importance of food (including novel uses of food as erotic toy!).

“For a few more noodles”

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092048

Director of eccentric, labyrinthine, mysterious films. Praised and detested. Always unforgettable for their originality of content and language. Baroque, pompous but beautiful and out of the ordinary. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000425

Favorite movies list

Drowning by Numbers (1988)
“Radical” puzzle/game film!

The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover (1989)

The Belly of an architect (1987)

Prospero’s Books (1991)
“Adaptation” of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

http://cityrag.blogs.com/main/2006/12/the_50_greatest.html

Sort and draw movie ‘maps’ by “people who like this movie might also like those movies” distance!

http://www.gnovies.com

type in a movie title, see ‘related’ films

recent, to be added?:

Mammuth
Funny People
Les beaux gosses

to be added?:

Cohen’s brother (Barton Fink, Fargo, the barber(the man who wasn’t there))
Casablanca
Gone with the wind
Wizard of Oz
Eric Rohmer
Juno
Curse of the cat people
Michael Mann (Collateral, Miami Vice)
The good, the bad, the ugly,
Monty Python (Life of Brian, the Holy Grail)
Robert Altman (The Player)
Soderbergh (Traffic, ~solaris, ?Schizopolis, ?Kafka)
no country…, Burn after Reading)
Young Frankenstein
Alexandre Nevski (Eisenstein)
Star Wars ep. IV
Alien I
Brazil
Jacob’s lader
Fellini
Metropolis
Le dictateur
Polyester (John Waters)
Casino Royal 1969
Himmel uber Berlin
Farrelly’s brothers (Dumb & Dumber, There’s Something About Mary, Me, Myself & Irene, etc…)
Metropolis
John Woo
Mika Kaurismaki (Amazon)
Lars von Trier (Idioten, Dancer in the Dark, Europa)
Russ Meyer
Groundhog day
Silent Hill
Pixar (Cars, The Indestructibles, Ratatouille)
favorite kid movies (matilda, James and the giant peach …)
favorite bad movies! (braindead, toxic avenger, bad taste, predator, AvP, Resident Evil ?)
...

Euro agenda

at ecranlarge.com

Mulholland drive: 14 sep 2010 ✓
Kick-ass: 15 sep 2010 ✓
Les Ailes du désir (Himmel uber Berlin/Wings of Desire): 22 sep 2010 ✓
Paris, Texas: 22 sep 2010
Metropolis (Fritz Lang): 3 oct 2010
(1492: 6 oct 2010) ✓
([tv]Lost saison 6: 6 oct 2010)
Forbidden Planet: 6 oct 2010 [Warner Home Video | Europe-France] ✓
Psychose: 19 oct 2010 dec 7 2010 ✓ (also: Rear window, the birds, vertigo)
(Dragons: 2 nov 2010)
Lost Highway: 3 nov 2010 ✓
Suspiria: 3 nov 2010 ✓
Twin Peaks : Fire walk with me: 3 nov 2010 ✓
Trainspotting: 9 nov 2010
(Evil dead: 17 nov 2010)
Mars Attacks!: 24 nov 2010 (got it oct 23!) ✓
The Killer inside me: 27 dec 2010 ✓

Machete: April 6 2011 ✓
Apocalypse now: April 27 2011 ✓
Taxi Driver: May 4 2011 ✓
8 1/2: May 17 2011 ✓
La cite des femmes: May 17 2011
Et vogue le navire: May 17 2011 ✓
Barry Lyndon: May 18 2011 ✓
Lolita: May 18 2011 ✓

Gone by the Wind: Oct. 19 2011
The wizard of Oz: Oct. 19 2011
North by north west (la mort aux trousses): Oct. 19 2011
West side story: Nov. 2 2011
Balade Trista: Oct. 26 2011
American graffiti: Nov. 15 2011
Being John Malkovich: Nov. 15 2011
Zazie dans le metro: Nov. 16 2011

another agenda: at commeaucinema.com

from Criterion

comming soon

USA releases!... (let’s hope it wont take forever before reaching europe!) :

The Night of the Hunter: link, November 16 2010
The darjeeling limited:link, Octobre 12 2010 (usa!)
Paths of Glory: link