Passages

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Professor Wagstaff
Joined: Tue Aug 24, 2010 11:27 pm

Re: Passages

#7701 Post by Professor Wagstaff » Mon Mar 18, 2019 3:43 pm


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colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: Passages

#7702 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Mar 18, 2019 5:10 pm

Very sad to hear about John Carl Buechler. He was most famous as a special effects artist for many films under Charles Band's Empire Pictures, perhaps most notably for the creature and transformation effects in the astonishing, and astonishingly gooey, Stuart Gordon take on Lovecraft, From Beyond, but also domino's favourite film TerrorVision and the notorious Jurassic Park-sploitation film Carnosaur in which Diane Ladd...
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...gives birth to a dinosaur via a self administered Caesarian using only her false fingernails! I'd like to see Michael Fassbender try and top that in the next Alien film!
Buechler directed a number of films, the most well known of which is Friday The 13th Part VII: The New Blood, which is the 'Carrie vs Jason' one in which the heroine with psychic powers battles zombie Jason. Unfortunately that film, despite having an R rating, came out during a media panic about violence, especially in slasher films, and suffered major reductions to all of its special effects sequences by the MPAA, with all of the original negatives for the footage destroyed (though workprint quality footage remained to be shown in the fantastically comprehensive seven hour Crystal Lake Memories documentary). It unfortunately really damages the film as it builds up over and over to these moments, only for them to be truncated.

Part VII is not as good as Part VI, but I much prefer it to Part VIII and Jason Goes To Hell! If nothing else it has a slimy psychiatrist (Terry Kiser, who a year later would be the dead body in Weekend At Bernie's!) manipulating his patient, pushing her mother into the path of Jason and eventually getting his much deserved comeuppance at the business end of a chainsaw (which of course ironically gets drastically cut down in the release we have now).

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L.A.
Joined: Thu May 28, 2009 7:33 am
Location: Helsinki, Finland

Re: Passages

#7703 Post by L.A. » Tue Mar 19, 2019 8:49 am


mteller
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 3:23 pm

Re: Passages

#7704 Post by mteller » Tue Mar 19, 2019 10:23 am

L.A. wrote:
Tue Mar 19, 2019 8:49 am
Marlen Khutsiev
I Am Twenty is absolutely marvelous.

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Kirkinson
Joined: Wed Dec 15, 2004 5:34 am
Location: Portland, OR

Re: Passages

#7705 Post by Kirkinson » Tue Mar 19, 2019 3:26 pm

July Rain is also quite good and on YouTube with English subtitles.

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MichaelB
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Re: Passages

#7706 Post by MichaelB » Sun Mar 24, 2019 8:23 am

Russian critic and documentary-maker Maya Turovskaya.

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Dylan
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 9:28 pm

Re: Passages

#7707 Post by Dylan » Sun Mar 24, 2019 11:59 am

Larry Cohen at 77. One of the major cult directors in cinema, Cohen still seemed so full of life and energy in his most recent interviews. I first saw The Stuff and Q: The Winged Serpent when I was in elementary school, and I still love them. Along with Scorsese and De Palma he was also one of the last directors to work with composer Bernard Herrmann, who scored Cohen's It's Alive. I also adore the television series Cohen created, The Invaders. R.I.P.

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colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: Passages

#7708 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Mar 25, 2019 12:08 am

I think the Larry Cohen film that I most like is the first that he directed, 1972's Bone, which is almost an exploitation Cassavetes (mixed with a bit of Pasolini) with the existential angst of a suburban Beverly Hills couple whose relationship is on the rocks getting embodied in the figure of Yaphet Kotto's home invader. It has been a while since I last saw it but I seem to remember particularly liking the rather bizarre twist the film takes in its final section to the husband leaving the house ostensibly to take his savings from the bank (to pay Kotto for killing his wife while he's out, whilst she for her part is trying to convince him to kill the husband once he returns) and ends up wandering around in an existential crisis. It also has a really striking opening of the husband doing a kind of car commercial in a scrapyard with dead people lying in the cars that is rather J.G. Ballard-esque.

And 1977's God Told Me To is astonishingly bizarre from start to finish, with shots captured verite-style of actors on the street throwing themselves to the ground in front of shocked passers by as they pretend to have been shot by a deranged sniper (Somehow I do not think that you could get away with doing that today! Bunuel did a very similar sequence in The Phantom of Liberty a couple of years earlier, and I wonder if the scene here was inspired by that film at all), on through the Andy Kaufman cameo going trigger happy in a St Patrick's Day parade, eventually to the way that the bizarre religious angle turns crazed with the explanation that:
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the Manson-style cult leader inducing people to homicidal outbursts is the extraterrestrial hermaphrodite reincarnation of Jesus born after Sylvia Sidney's character was abducted and raped by aliens back in the 1950s! (as shown through a jaw-dropping flashback sequence)
After that even Q - The Winged Serpent and islands of killer babies seem tame!

Probably his best recent credit was not for directing but for having written the screenplay for that excellently claustrophobic thriller Phone Booth, which also has shares similar themes of sniper threat and an antagonist appearing almost from out of nowhere to push the other characters into confronting their own casually cruel behaviours.

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dwk
Joined: Sat Jun 12, 2010 6:10 pm

Re: Passages

#7709 Post by dwk » Mon Mar 25, 2019 2:00 pm


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CSM126
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Re: Passages

#7710 Post by CSM126 » Mon Mar 25, 2019 4:12 pm

dwk wrote:
Mon Mar 25, 2019 2:00 pm
Joseph Pilato
Captain Rhodes is an all-time great horror villain, and Pilato’s over-the-top, stark raving madman performance is just… amazing feels like an understatement. It’s a masterclass in scenery-chewing insanity. Unforgettable, and one of my favorite parts of any Romero dead movie.

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domino harvey
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Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

Re: Passages

#7711 Post by domino harvey » Mon Mar 25, 2019 4:13 pm


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colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: Passages

#7712 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Mar 25, 2019 5:16 pm

CSM126 wrote:
Mon Mar 25, 2019 4:12 pm
dwk wrote:
Mon Mar 25, 2019 2:00 pm
Joseph Pilato
Captain Rhodes is an all-time great horror villain, and Pilato’s over-the-top, stark raving madman performance is just… amazing feels like an understatement. It’s a masterclass in scenery-chewing insanity. Unforgettable, and one of my favorite parts of any Romero dead movie.
Very much seconded, Pilato overwhelms Day of the Dead with his performance in an amazing manner, especially in that big dining hall scene (NSFW) (although that scene is fantastic not only for that performance but for the way that it has enough room to provide fantastic acting moments for every other actor in it even whilst Pilato is letting loose! I really like the comments that Roger Avary makes in his commentary track on the Anchor Bay edition of the film that really that scene is almost a satire about having to constantly calm the nerves of the people in charge of the financing by providing just enough results for them to keep funding you, or things proceeding 'as normal' in the short term until the next 'funding review', just pushed to an extreme! With Sarah not quite understanding that you have to continually butter people up with positive (rather than negative) slanted progress reports! And the irony that Dr Logan is just as insane and delusional in his own way as Captain Rhodes, just not as aggressive to others! I also love that the scene brings up the futility of there being no escape from the situation but then it diverts into an 'easier' discussion about the people on the front line not having the proper equipment to 'do their job properly', which was all I could think about back when the same thing came up during the Iraq War. If only everything was properly funded, we could have dealt with that existential threat easier and faster and been home in time for supper!), and of course Captain Rhodes gets the most spectacular send off and best final line (NSFW) of any character in the original trilogy!

However I think that as much as being an insane character Captain Rhodes is the epitome of the authoritarian trying to bluntly and brutally maintain discipline and structure of an old world order after the command structure has disappeared, but is going much too far too quickly perhaps because of his own fear of having no superiors to answer to any more and needing to overcompensate for that. Rhodes ends up embodying the entire structure of society going manic in the face of disaster, as well as the fears we might all have in seeing authority figures being unable to cope whilst still trying to act as if they are in charge and resorting ever more quickly to more extreme methods to keep people in line. Captain Rhodes is both a fantastic villain (the threat from within threatening to tear everything apart that has to be enormous in scale to match up in equivalency to the threat from the outside) and strangely tragic too, though I think that the character gets the end that he would have wanted!

It is a little upsetting that (like another Romero actor, John Amplas) Pilato never again got a role of that kind of scale, but on the other hand he shows that you only need one such role to make an indelible impact!

His other major acting role was a few years earlier in 1980's 'snuff film...or is it?' horror Effects.

It was also interesting to find out from watching the recent Best of the Worst episode on it again in the wake of Jan-Michael Vincent's passing, that Pilato (and PJ Soles from Halloween!) briefly turn up at the beginning of Fred Olen Ray's Alienator! Though I was also reminded of that section of the video where the Red Letter Media team repeatedly avoiding talking about the Star Wars Holiday Special by going off into digression after digression, including a rather strange anecdote about running into a drunk Joe Pilato at a poorly attended horror convention! ("Your Joe Pilato story ended with no interaction with Joe Pilato?")
Last edited by colinr0380 on Tue Mar 26, 2019 7:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Reverend Drewcifer
Joined: Sat Mar 09, 2013 5:16 pm
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Re: Passages

#7713 Post by Reverend Drewcifer » Tue Mar 26, 2019 5:58 pm


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hearthesilence
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:22 am
Location: NYC

Re: Passages

#7714 Post by hearthesilence » Tue Mar 26, 2019 6:01 pm

The Beat is one of my favorite bands from the '80s. Terribly sad he's gone.

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hearthesilence
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:22 am
Location: NYC

Re: Passages

#7715 Post by hearthesilence » Wed Mar 27, 2019 3:45 pm

Didn't know about this, but there was actually a concert documentary called Dance Craze on the 2 Tone movement released in 1981, and it features some wonderful footage of the Beat.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Passages

#7716 Post by mfunk9786 » Fri Mar 29, 2019 8:02 am

Discussion of Agnès Varda's passing moved here

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Dylan
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 9:28 pm

Re: Passages

#7717 Post by Dylan » Sat Mar 30, 2019 7:54 pm

Composer Maury Laws, who scored almost every Rankin & Bass film, my favorite being his wonderful score for Mad Monster Party.

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Rayon Vert
Green is the Rayest Color
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Re: Passages

#7718 Post by Rayon Vert » Tue Apr 02, 2019 10:38 am

Tania Mallet: Tilly Masterson in Goldfinger

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MichaelB
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Re: Passages

#7719 Post by MichaelB » Thu Apr 04, 2019 9:35 am

Cinematographer-turned-director Jerzy Wójcik.

He was never exactly a household name, and his directorial efforts are pretty much unknown outside Poland, but he had an extraordinary run at the turn of the 1960s, shooting masterpiece after masterpiece: Eroica, Ashes and Diamonds, Cross of Valour, Mother Joan of the Angels - and thankfully lived long enough to supervise their restoration a few years ago.

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MichaelB
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Re: Passages

#7720 Post by MichaelB » Thu Apr 04, 2019 9:40 am

Leading Georgian director Georgy Danelia, probably best known for Mimino (1977), Autumn Marathon (1979) and Kin-dza-dza! (1986). I've seen the first two, and have especially fond memories of Autumn Marathon, a wistful comedy about a man whose pathological niceness and inability to say no has trapped him in all manner of awkward situations, not least juggling a wife and a mistress - if Alan Bennett had scripted Billy Liar and for some reason had it translated into Georgian, it might have turned out a bit like this.

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colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: Passages

#7721 Post by colinr0380 » Thu Apr 04, 2019 11:49 am

Kin-dza-dza! is excellent (ignore the epic soundtrack in that modernised trailer!), sort of a comedy Stalker crossed with The Bed Sitting Room! I see that Danelia's last film was an animated remake of it in 2013 called Ku! Kin-dza-dza!

Ku being the most common word on the other world!

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Kirkinson
Joined: Wed Dec 15, 2004 5:34 am
Location: Portland, OR

Re: Passages

#7722 Post by Kirkinson » Thu Apr 04, 2019 4:32 pm

Danelia was wonderful. Autumn Marathon and Kin-Dza-Dza! are undoubtedly his best works of the ones I've seen, but his first feature, Seryozha (co-directed with Igor Talankin), and Don't Grieve, his only film actually set entirely (or even primarily) in Georgia, are also quite good. I'm still hopeful I'll be able to find subtitles some day for some of his other films.

Also please forgive me just a short digression to clarify that Autumn Marathon is in Russian, as were almost all of Danelia's films. He spent most of his life in Moscow and made most of his films for Mosfilm. I recall reading a fascinating late interview with him (which I fear I have very little chance of finding, as I read it Google-translated from Russian) where he talked a bit about not really fitting in anywhere since the end of the USSR. He had very few personal connections left in Georgia by that point, and felt like a stranger when he visited Tbilisi. On the other hand, though most of his family and friends and life were in Moscow, the sociopolitical tide there was turning against Georgians and other non-Russians. He recounted one anecdote of a woman approaching him and some of his friends in a restaurant, and assuming they were all Georgian (even though only he was) began ranting at them to get out of Russia and go back to their own country.

The interviewer asked him at some point about an old film reference book that referred to him as a "Soviet director," and whether he would prefer it updated to say "Russian" or "Georgian." He responded that he would prefer to keep it exactly as it was: his films were made in the Soviet Union and they were about the Soviet Union, and that was the most appropriate label.

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Kirkinson
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Re: Passages

#7723 Post by Kirkinson » Thu Apr 04, 2019 10:16 pm

I just realized there are more English-subtitled Danelia films on Mosfilm's YouTube channel than I realized. Seryozha, Afonya, Walking the Streets of Moscow, Mimino, and the older SD uploads of Kin-Dza-Dza! and Autumn Marathon (but sadly not the newer HD versions) are all English-friendly.

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DarkImbecile
Ask me about my visible cat breasts
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Re: Passages

#7724 Post by DarkImbecile » Sat Apr 06, 2019 10:16 am

Barry Malkin, Francis Ford Coppola’s longtime editor

j99
Joined: Wed May 27, 2009 10:18 am

Re: Passages

#7725 Post by j99 » Mon Apr 08, 2019 11:46 am

MichaelB wrote:
Thu Apr 04, 2019 9:35 am
Cinematographer-turned-director Jerzy Wójcik.

He was never exactly a household name, and his directorial efforts are pretty much unknown outside Poland, but he had an extraordinary run at the turn of the 1960s, shooting masterpiece after masterpiece: Eroica, Ashes and Diamonds, Cross of Valour, Mother Joan of the Angels - and thankfully lived long enough to supervise their restoration a few years ago.
Ashes and Diamonds and Mother Joan Of The Angels are two of my favourite ever films. RIP to him.

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