You guys have voted, and you chose Academy Award-winning (Best Foreign Film,1973 ) as the film to kick this thing off!



The film is Luis Buñuel's scathing and surrealistic political comedy masterpiece about a wealthy group of friends repeatedly prevented from beginning their elaborate dinner by increasingly strange events. No matter how hard they try to enjoy the meal and the privileges money affords, everything from closed restaurants to terrorists conspire to thwart their pleasures...and soon it seems that the violence is even pervading their dreams.

It also received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

So get a hold of the movie as soon as you can and make sure to stop by with your reviews and general thoughts!!

My own review will be coming in shortly.

Yay! Now I just have to get my hands on the movie...

You should change it to 'Indie'. Otherwise it looks like we're gonna be watching Raiders of the Lost Ark over and over again.

Can i change my mind on this one?? It's looking increasingly difficult to get hold of

Has it been released on DVD in your country at all?? Hmm, one of the reasons i pushed for this particular Bunuel film is because I thought it would be one of the easiest to get a hold of.

Maybe, if you really can't get it you can be special and have the special task of watching Viridiana instead.

You failed!

I have a couple more places to try tomorrow, if i can't find it there i'll give up and wait for the next one.

Yes.. for companion reading, I suggest 'Theory of the Leisure Class'..
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Ok, so on with my thoughts...

I think this is definitely Bunuel's most accessible film (well, maybe except for his version of Robinson Crusoe). Although I think the work he did while in Mexico (Exterminating Angel, Olvidados, Viridiana) is a bit better, this is one of his funniest films. Bunuel continues to explore some of the same issues and themes he explored throughout his life. Here he explores how for humans, and especially the upper middle class appearances mean everything. And how they use appearance to hide their dirty little secrets, which in this film include adultery and drug trafficking.

Keeping with the appearance theme, one of the best scenes in the film shows a priest who has come to one of the couple's home hoping to work as a gardener dressed as such. When the door is opened and he comes in he is quickly turned away and the maid told not to let strangers in the house so easily. When he comes back dressed as a priest a couple of minutes later, the couple quickly apologizes and is warmly welcomed. Again towards the end of the film when an old woman comes by looking for a priest, the woman in the couple seems to completely forget she has a priest in the house since he is now dressed as a gardener again. The clothes make the man.

The film has the usual surrealist touches typical in a Bunuel film.A lot of the situations are not only illogical, but impossible. But the characters in the film accept all implausibilities as if they were the most normal thing in the world. And after a while the audience does too. Towards the end of the film four dreams are shown intertwined with scenes from the couples going on about their lives. In typical Bunuel fashion, it's pretty difficult to tell the dreams from reality at first since the dreams are not necessarily any less illogical than reality. The funniest of these scenes shows a house being broken into as the three couples begin to dine. It leads to a shootout, but Fernando Rey's character manages to get away at first by hiding under the table. His greed, however, gets the best of him and he can't help but reach out for a piece of meat to dine on. So what does someone do after waking up from such a dream? In this film...go straight to the fridge.

I have no doubt that Luis Bunuel's view of the world and humanity wasn't exactly positive. But what separates him from someone like Lars von Trier is that ha managed to find the humor in the worst of situations. He sees the hypocrisy in the world, and the irony of our actions and realizes that more often than not most of us fall victim to it. Though there's little to like about most of these characters they are not shown as villains but people who cannot overcome their own inner instincts. By the end of the film the silliness of the situations has become, well...charming.

So has anybody gotten the film somehow yet?

I have the film. I'll watch it next week probably.

Came via Netflix. I'll watch today or tomorrow.

I think i might have to admit defeat on this one

I could always get my hands on Moolaade instead

I got it. I am watching Caramel and then it. What's the time-frame on this. Are people going to begin watching it next week? I like to watch it while the fresh comments and responses are coming in. I think providing a big time frame (like begin watching it next week with a two week watching period) works best to get everyone on the same page.



Maybe there's a legal downloadable version?



Oh yes! Please do! We would love to have you, and I think you'll really like the film.

I've seen it several times already. One of my favorites. I need to get ahold of more Bunuel though, the stuff that was probably closer to what inspired Lynch and his ilk.

If you can get a copy, you should really check out Exterminating Angel or Los Olvidados!!

What other films by him have you seen?

I'd have liked to participate, but I just can't get my hands on it. Maybe the next round then : )

That's a damn good idea! I'll look into it.

Watched it.
Really, really enjoyed it, and am really, really confused.

hehehe how so?

Ehh...there were a few little bits and pieces that I wasn't sure how to react to, but I think I "get" most of it after I let it sink in.

I'll type up some thoughts eventually, but for now, has anyone else seen it yet? Hurry along people!

Andalusian Dog and L'Age D'Or.

I'm going to see it tomorrow.

It's next on my netflix queue. I MAY watch it on wednesday.

I just finished wathcing it. I LOVED IT. This was my second Bunuel movie today. I first watched Robinson Crusoe ( a fairly good movie), and then Le discret charme de la bourgeoisie.

The film has moments of wonderful clarity and inventiveness (well, duh) but, goddamnit, try as I might...

Look, there's real value in Bunuel's structural madness and dramatic illogic, but I can't sit here and pretend that I found the movie a terribly pleasurable experience. I didn't. Spending 100 minutes watching Luis knock down the bowling pins that populate this script is often audacious, but not illuminating or particularly funny.

So much seems like by-the-numbers Bunuel, as well. The priest wants to be a gardener. Funny. Once. But waiting 80 minutes for his inevitable act of moral and ethical hypocrisy is not. From the moment he's introduced, it doesn't take a PhD to figure where it's headed.

Some of the dream sequences are terrific, though. And Bunuel shoots everything without interference; his camera just observes, in a manner that reminds me of a network sitcom. And as the dreams overlap and get weirder while the mise-en-scene stays stubbornly, unnoticably flat, you might even start to think that Bunuel was really on to something.

Directors of modern mind-fuck pictures seem to think that the surreal needs to be matched with wild camera flourishes. Not the case.

In any case, the soldier's story scared the shit out of me.