Recent DVD Watching

I suppose I should post this - a pretty flat roundup of DVD's I've watched in the last few weeks. I need to try to write something up - but I'm thinking I want to do it a bit differently. I had been taking a class, and ended up writing about Cindy Sherman - specifically, about her film still series, and how she uses cinematic space (especially, offscreen space) in those stills. That got me looking through my DVDs, looking at specific examples of how films arrange space, and people in space. And then I started reading Bordwell's Figures Traced in Light: On Cinematic Staging... (And looking through his new Hollywood book.) So my head is full of staging, composition, activation of off screen space, the play of on and offscreen space (reading Metz and Burch, as context for the Sherman paper), the elements in a shot that draw your attention off screen - all that stuff. It's exciting! And a few of these films, listed below, are particularly excellent objects of examination. The way Altman's camera prowls the room in Secret Honor, creating his own level of affect to the play... or the gorgeous deep spaces and deep focus shots and widescreen compositions and stagings in The Apartment - I watched that a couple years ago, and liked it okay, but didn't feel exactly overwhelmed - but this time, paying close attention to what I could see - good heavens, what a beautiful film. Anyway - I might pursue some of those ideas. We'll see. For now, capsules...

Secret Honor **** - comments above. pretty awe inspiring movie. Altman is superb - and Hall gives a performance of many a lifetime.

Mr. Jealousy *** - nice film; I need to see Kicking and Screaming again - I saw it when it came out, liked it enough, but nothing more - but now, having seen this and the Squid and the Whale - and liked both fo them very much - I need to see K&S again.

The Apartment **** - see above for some of it. Wilder can be deceptive - sometimes his films are so well written they almost erase their appearance; when I was looking at this for the Sherman paper, slowing it down, looking at individual frames, I noticed just how fantastic it looks. Almost as if the words get in the way of the pictures. Take away the words and you see the pictures.

Marie and Julien **1/2 - recent Rivette; gorgeous looking film, all those weightless tracking shots, but a rather hopeless experience, since the DVD was badly fucked up. I don't know why Rivette films are not released theatrically in the United States, just as a matter of course. There should be something written into international law that Rivette, Rohmer, Godard, at least, should have their films shown as a matter of course. I should not have to try to pry something watchable out of Netflix.

Oasis **1/2 - strange but rather interesting Korean film about a dim-witted thug who falls in love with the daughter of a man he killed in a hit and run - who (the girl) happens to have cerebral palsy. This doesn't go all that well, but there you go. Some ill-conceived fantasy bits, but well made...

Forty Guns *** - finally got around to watching this; bought it at Christmas, and let it sit on the shelf since. (I bought 2 copies at Christmas: I was buying cowboy movies for my brother and was thrilled to find this, Winchester 76 and Seven Men From Now on DVD; I was more thrilled to find 2 copies of this - if I hadn't I'd have had to find something else to get him.) Finally righted that wrong a couple weeks ago - was not disappointed. She's a high riding woman with a whip all right.

Broadway Melody ** - another DVD I bought some months ago, and has been sitting on the shelf... very early talky, with intertitles explaining scene transitions - odd. Some okay music, very theatrical staging. Melodrama about 2 sisters, one pretty and talented, the other named Hank. Whatever they thought in 1929, in 2006, Hank is the only character with an ounce of life in her, but she suffers. Men prefer her sister's legs. Anyway, mostly interesting for the history, though a pretty well made film for all that.