To my surprise (since I've been ignoring my queue), Amarcord is coming tomorrow.

So yeah, I'm also trying to get caught up on Italian cinema, but I probably won't be able to follow along with what everyone else is watching since I'll be really busy when I get back to school this weekend.

Uhhhh.

I dunno, I say just go with the flow. See what happens, you know?

I'm thinking we'll all be ready to move on if a discussion isn't happening or has stalled. As for deadlines, maybe let's try and watch the first movie by Sunday? Or maybe Wednesday?

Umberto D or Bicycle Thief first?

Let's watch The Bicycle Thief first. It's earlier and more famous. By next Wednesday sounds reasonable. Then we can discuss it in here. Sound good?

Umberto D and Bicycle Thief will be shipping tomorrow from l'Netflix, so whichever one you choose first is fine with me

So the french stuff will have to wait (but I'll get it, I promise!).

I'll try to see Bicycle Thief by the deadline, but my school takes anywhere from a couple hours to a couple weeks to sort my Netflix, so I'll be unreliable for this.

Just watched Blow-Up.
I did something I've never done before: the second the movie ended, I started it again. Watched it twice in a row.
So obviously, I really liked it.

On the "did it or did it not" question...I'm not on either team: I don't think I, or anyone for that matter, can say. As the film elucidated over and over, reality only exists in the context of its participants. Anything can be real if you choose to accept it: the mimes with their tennis match, the various things the lead thinks he has solved at various points in time, and the question of whether the murder really happened. All things are true when only looked at through a certain context. You never know what exactly going on in an image, even though a photograph, relative to the other arts, may appear as fact. Everything is relative, and nothing is ever confirmed as real unless experienced by every single source and angle there is, which is impossible. For example, the last "blow up" the lead looks at can be identified as a corpse if you're coming from his exact background and experience, but taken out of context, that's hardly a conclusion anyone would come upon.
Yes, this sort of seems like philosophical mumbojumbo, but that's what analysis of this film comes down to.

Oh, and I stand by my sentiment that Vanessa Redgrave is too tall.

Nice to see you enjoyed Blow-Up, snack. I think the point of Redgrave was supposed to be that she seemed out of place. Maybe her height was part of what made her seem suspicious? Or at least, not like all the fashion models that flock the rest of the scenes.

Hi Torri, nice list of directors, but please don't forget Pasolini. Everyone seems to forget him because he was a bit less legible. He never made it quite so big as the others, in part because his films for the most part tend to swing out of control (even for him) and get dirty. He reminds me, in terms of a modern equivalency - of Spike Lee, who has often been accused of losing control of his own films. They get too convoluted or fall apart at the end, etc. But as Far as Pasolini goes (and Lee for that matter) I don't mind that everything doesn't come together. It means he was trying things out that even he didn't always know where they were going. Very violent, very unsympathetic too. Even the Gospel is notorious for casting Jesus as a bit more demanding of a figure to love. Its sympathetic in the end to Judas's short-coming, and at moments suggests the imminent friction faith can cause. I really like his style, though, too, aside from even the substance. I've seen several of his films; more than of Visconti and Antonioni, even, and I highly recommend him even if you don't end up actually 'liking' his work.

Cheers guys and keep it up. Report back on Moolaade too, Jon!

Awww. No one hosted a giant (well comparitively speaking) Foreign Film Festival this year? Too bad, would have been the fourth one too, if my memory hasn't become too clouded.

Wahey! Dolce again!

In fact, on closer inspection your posts are gradually increasing in frequency and volume. By my calculation, you should be a full blown KJ poster again in about 6 months time.

torri, do you think we could hold off on this? Between school and trying to catch up on 07 films, I really don't have a lot of time to be watching Italian films right now. I mean, if you guys want to continue on, go ahead, but I don't think I have the time right now to participate.

Yeah, do it whenever you want.

I still haven't watched Bicycle Thief, even though I got it from Netflix on Friday.

I did watch Contempt, though...

Review! REVIEW!

So the Bicycle Thief just arrived....don't know how soon I'll get to watch it though.

seriously.

Just finished Amarcord. It was very good and all, but I don't think this would have been remembered at all had it been by anyone else but Fellini.
B

Between the Pacific Film Archive's French New Wave series running here in Berkeley at the moment and my Italian professor's penchant for Lina Wertmüller, I should be with you guys... but I'm not.

Here are the rest of the film offerings for the rest of the new wave series (focusing on Jean-Pierre Léaud - dunno if anyone is familiar with him. I am only casually and through what I hear at work)... anything anyone has seen and absolutely recommends? I missed Day for Night last week - I called too late for free tickets (I work at the museum that hosts the theatre that shows this stuff).... really, really unfortunate.

Thursday, January 31, 2008
6:30 p.m. Two English Girls
Léaud is a French writer entangled with two English sisters at the turn of the 20th century. “One of Truffaut’s most tantalizing romances. . . . Simultaneously introspective and passionate.”—Time Out. From a story by the author of Jules and Jim.

Friday, February 8, 2008
7:00 p.m. The Mother and the Whore
Léaud gives perhaps his greatest performance as a castaway from the sixties and the sexual revolution, waffling between two women, in Jean Eustache’s chronicle of disenchantment in post-1968 Paris.

Thursday, February 14, 2008
8:50 p.m. Masculine Feminine
Léaud stars as one of Godard’s “children of Marx and Coca-Cola”—the young people of Paris in 1965, choosing between la tendresse and politics.

Friday, February 15, 2008
7:00 p.m. Weekend
“Godard’s vision of bourgeois cataclysm. . . . A savage Swiftian satire, it traces a new Gulliver’s travels through the collapsing consumer society as a married couple set out for a weekend jaunt.”—Time Out. Léaud has a revolutionary cameo.

Sunday, February 17, 2008
1:00 p.m. Out 1: Spectre
The 240-minute “short” version of Jacques Rivette’s legendary epic, with Léaud as a self-styled detective.

Friday, February 29, 2008
7:00 p.m. La vie de Bohème
Aki Kaurismäki’s update of Henri Murger’s novel is “a fine, deceptively querulous comedy that mocks the conventions of art and romantic love while . . . exalting them as the only means of salvation.”—N.Y. Times. Léaud puts in a brief but pivotal appearance.

Friday, February 29, 2008
9:00 p.m. Irma Vep
Olivier Assayas casts Hong Kong icon Maggie Cheung as an actress suffering through ego battles and other disasters on a French indie film shoot, with a classically irascible Léaud as director.

To me, Irma Vep and Masculine Feminine seem like the MUST-sees, but probably just because I'm most familiar with them. So, help.

This is the only one I've seen. Don't miss it. It's wonderfully surreal and incredibly imaginative, if too overly political.

Oh, and Léaud played Antoine Doinel in Truffaut's "Doinel series" which started with The 400 Blows, which you should also see, if you haven't already.

Friday, February 8, 2008
7:00 p.m. The Mother and the Whore
Léaud gives perhaps his greatest performance as a castaway from the sixties and the sexual revolution, waffling between two women, in Jean Eustache’s chronicle of disenchantment in post-1968 Paris.

Thursday, February 14, 2008
8:50 p.m. Masculine Feminine
Léaud stars as one of Godard’s “children of Marx and Coca-Cola”—the young people of Paris in 1965, choosing between la tendresse and politics.

Friday, February 15, 2008
7:00 p.m. Weekend
“Godard’s vision of bourgeois cataclysm. . . . A savage Swiftian satire, it traces a new Gulliver’s travels through the collapsing consumer society as a married couple set out for a weekend jaunt.”—Time Out. Léaud has a revolutionary cameo.

Sunday, February 17, 2008
1:00 p.m. Out 1: Spectre
The 240-minute “short” version of Jacques Rivette’s legendary epic, with Léaud as a self-styled detective.

I would see these. The middle two, because they're awesome, the other 2 because they sound or are supposed to be awesome.

Whoops. Forgot about this.

I really liked Contempt, but for different reasons than Breathless.

Whereas I appreciated Breathless for the narrative, I found Contempt's narrative to be a distraction. I was, instead, intrigued by Godard's commentary on commercializing "art" for mass consumption.

And, Bardot is beautiful, of course.

I saw Blow-Up some days ago.

Except for the great score and some nice cinematography, I simply hated it.

Why does college ruin my ability to multitask?

Bergman is playing at my local classic-film-revival theatre - AFI Silver. I'm only home for a week, but maybe I can catch Winter Light or Through a Glass Darkly.

There's a class on Bergman I'll be taking next year. I'm looking forward to it.

Just got Rome, Open City...

I'll be seeing Contempt at Film Forum when I go back to NYC at the end of the week.