All things Cult Cinema

[wilder]

a 35mm print of Variety played for me alone

only i was there for this occurrence, in this movie city with a metropolitan population of sixteen million

At the NYFF screening of Transit,  I looked around at the nearly packed house and went ‘this is the difference between NY & LA’. Had the same thought when I saw Margarethe von Trotta's Marianne & Julianne, off of polka’s recommendation, at the Spectacle Theater in Brooklyn (a converted former-bodega, so minuscule, but there was only standing room after the 30 or so card table chairs had filled).

My own memory of LA jives with your experience. Screenings at The Egyptian, for stuff like The Night of the Hunter or Sweet Smell of Success, movies clearly within the classic Hollywood lane, beget a smattering of people, but non-genre, off-the-beaten-path-repertory has so much harder a time. I don’t remember much even showing, tbh, outside of The Silent Movie Theater (Cinefamily / now Fairfax). NY has its own gross problems, but less this one. Very curious how eward will fare.

fwiw, I kind of doubt you’d like it even on this end - the state of being alone in a crowded room seems like an integral part of the jenkins worldview.

[jenkins]

the state of being alone in a crowded room seems like an integral part of the jenkins worldview.

nailed it i mean i don’t feel comfortable when i fit in

[WorldForgot]

Would be interested to hear you elaborate on this…

Well, you know, these movies are flaunting skin in every scene. (Which is funny, because like you mentioned there are no sexual x-rated pay-offs).  They're also shooting the women differently and devising tropes that show off the playmates without ridiculing them the way the men get dragged. They're these buff or strutting ideals of the powerful hetero-male, so much so that it helps with the whole vibe that this is an action movie farce.

I could have just said drag, but the tone seems to always mock the men in drag -- and it's never the women agents getting dressed like men. It's a "disguise" trope we've see a bunch, ala Some Like It Hot, but wrapped up in so much beefcake that either Sidaris is pandering or merely having a laugh about "how funny" it is to see men in drag. Considering the era, I felt like it was the latter, but didn't mind. Everyone's oiled up and hot, anyway.

Will probably watch more of his films in the coming year. They went well with friends and drinks.

FAB Press is republishing the long-OOP book 'The Ghastly One: The 42nd Street Netherworld of Director Andy Milligan', with newly added material.

Pre-orders will include a one-off printing of a 300-page book of previously unpublished Andy Milligan scripts.



There's an interesting interview with the author, Jimmy McDonough, up at Diabolique Magazine

This is so exciting. Hoping to submit to the Milligan contest on ByNWR.

[jenkins]

August 27, 2019

Philippe Mora's documentary Brother Can You Spare a Dime? (1975) on blu-ray from VCI



Brother Can You Spare a Dime? is the chronicle of an unforgettable piece of American history - twelve crazy, painful seesaw years, from the Wall Street crash to Pearl Harbor.

By juxtaposing contemporary news and documentary footage with extracts from Hollywood classics such as Golddiggers, Lady Killer and Wild Boys of the Road, director Philippe Mora offers us an immediate, intricate and evocative scrapbook of the 1930's. Somehow there are uncanny echoes of some of our current preoccupations: strikers at Ford's, mass unemployment, breadlines, vigilante gangs and failing fortunes...

Two heroes emerge: James Cagney, the rough diamond, hood-with-a-heart-of-gold star of the Movies, the little man who won't be beaten, and Franklin D. Roosevelt himself: tough yet benign, stepping into the breach with confidence and determination, yet imperceptibly crumpling under the weight of responsibility as he leads America through her most difficult years until the final humiliation of Pearl Harbor.

Songs and images stick in the mind: fortunes dwindle, the small man's savings disappear, even the banks go bust; men lose their jobs and join the breadlines to the haunting title song of Brother, can you spare a dime?; hobos and okies take to the road while Bessie Smith sings Nobody loves you when you're down and out; a ragged child huddles against the bleak landscape as Woody Guthrie sings the Dust Bowl Blues; an abandoned cat shivers on the ledge of a flooded home... Only Hollywood offers an escape from reality for these are the Golden Years of Bogart, Cooper and Dietrich. We glimpse Gable and Vivien Leigh at the screen test of Gone with the Wind; George Raft dances a languorous tango with Carole Lombard; Shirley Temple dimples and Chaplin jokes while Busby Berkeley fills the screen with his lavish extravaganzas...and the marathon dancers stumble on... As Ginger Rogers says: It's the depression, dearie...

figured you'd covered this one. just heard about it again another way and i'm like dying to see it now. same director as:

From Academy Award Winning Producer David Puttnam (Chariots of Fire, Midnight Express, The Killing Fields) comes the most controversial documentary (that was BANNED at the Cannes Film Festival) about Hitler ever made. Utilizing intimate color home movie footage shot by Eva Braun, it presents the private life of a dictator, going on picnics and joking with friends, displaying an affable face to the man labeled as the Devil incarnate by history. The film interweaves rare propaganda films, which presented Hitler as he wanted to be seen, consoling war widows and frolicking with young children. Director Philippe Mora combines these materials together to form an unintentional autobiography of Hitler's rise and fall, from the formation of the Nazi state through the end of WWII. Mora lets the images speak for themselves, leading to misinterpretations and its bans in Germany and Israel. But it is one of the most fearsome anti-Nazi films ever made. As the opening credits state, ''If Hitler is dehumanized and shown only as a devil, any future Hitler may not be recognized, simply because he is a human being.''

Ebert's review of BROTHER, CAN YOU SPARE A DIME?

The notion behind another new Depression film, "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" was a good one: Why not put together a feature-length montage of the central images of the Depression? And so here they are, from King Kong to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but somehow the movie never quite knows what to do with them. There are songs and production numbers from the great 1930s musicals and newsreel footage of the rioting strikers at Ford, and animated sequences, and Will Rogers kidding FDR and Rudy Vallee singing the title song. But to what purpose?

The movie's only method seems to be ironic juxtaposition. If we see bread lines and then a production number like "We're in the Money," we're supposed to get the message. And we do, all right (just as we got it in 1967, when Bonnie and Clyde went to the movies and saw the same scene). But this same knee-jerk response is expected again and again in the film, until finally we get tired. The director, Philippe Mora, doesn't seem to have ordered his material or thought much about it. Some footage seems to have been put in just because it was there. And for moviegoers who didn't grow up during the Depression or aren't terribly familiar with its greater or lesser personalities, the movies offers little help. It's not a coherent documentary statement, but just a series of images.

We get a great deal more of Roosevelt than we really need, and James Cooney is also used as a motif throughout the film - turning up with one-liners wrenched from context to work as cheap gags. At the movie's end, Mora has Cooney watching "Citizen Kane" with a girl friend and wisecracking. And on the screen, Kane whispers "Rosebud," which thus serves for the second, not nearly so worthy time, as the symbol of a film's impenetrability.

James Cagney not James Cooney , i'm not sure who puts Ebert's reviews on the web

that's a bad Ebert review. that's Ebert missing the sensation of the movie. it's not about an American narrative it's about the feeling of America. are we on one path to one thing or do we never quite know what's coming our way and how it is? as a narrative movie this movie would mean one thing, that thing, for always, but as it is it means what the viewer thinks it means, and for me it means dense currents of the human spirit lead us toward where we did not know we would go

very into this movie

[jenkins]

On her wedding night, Remember “Mem” Steddon, daughter of a small-town conservative preacher, has a sudden change of heart. Abandoning her groom, she impulsively sneaks off their Los Angeles-bound honeymooner train in the middle of the desert. When she recuperates from dehydration, she finds herself on a film set and is cast as an extra. As Mem’s masterful art of deception drives her to fame, the left-behind husband returns, raging with jealousy and murderous revenge.

First published 1922 and adapted to screen the following year by Rupert Hughes himself, this “insider” story of Hollywood filmmaking traces every Hollywood trope from slapstick comedy to theatrical melodrama with love and deceit at every page turn. Hazing the lines between truth and fiction, Souls for Sale is a snapshot of Hollywood’s Golden Age, hailed by three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Sandburg as “the heart of moviedom by anyone who believes it.”

Souls for Sale is a 1923 American silent comedy-drama romance film written, directed, and produced by Rupert Hughes. Based on the novel of the same name also by Rupert Hughes, the film stars Eleanor Boardman in her first leading role, having won a contract with Goldwyn Pictures through their highly publicized "New Faces of 1921" contest just two years prior.

The film is notable for its insights into the early film industry. Among the significant cameos in the film are appearances by directors King Vidor, Fred Niblo, Marshall Neilan, Charlie Chaplin, and Erich von Stroheim, as well as a number of actors, producers, and other filmmakers. Souls for Sale includes rare behind-the-scenes footage of Chaplin and von Stroheim directing the films A Woman of Paris and Greed, respectively.

Writer/director Rupert Hughes was the brother of Howard Hughes Sr., and was responsible for introducing his nephew, Howard Hughes Jr., to the world of Hollywood movies.

[jenkins]

it's so good. this is the path

previously



originally

[wilder]

I see, it's on The Criterion Channel. Arturo Ripstein rips. Many iterations of this kind of tale are personal favorites of mine. Will def watch. Thanks for the heads up.

[jenkins]

wish i already owned this obvious gem

Bleak Street is the latest provocation from Mexican master Arturo Ripstein (Deep Crimson), a surreally entertaining neo-noir based on a true crime that shocked Mexico. Bleak Street tracks the nocturnal adventures and ill-fated encounter between two desperate old prostitutes and twin mini-luchadores. The Mexico City they traverse is a vice ridden dreamscape of crime, loneliness and poverty. The two ladies get mired in botched scams and unhappy relationships while the twins face a demanding life of family obligations and their wrestling careers. All these characters can do is journey ever deeper into the night, with no escape in sight, until fate brings them all together.

a letterboxd review

Bleak Street is a crummy, black-and-black, unsentimental view of desperation and woe on Mexico's Poverty Row. This tawdry tale was based on a real-life crime involving two mini-luchadore-wrestlers, who were poisoned by two sex-workers in 2003 Mexico. The vividness of this bas-relief comes from its appearance of having been shot through a filthy grave. It is unwavering in its commitment to the low-down, the fallen. Arturo Ripstein's best technique involves a Demy-ish tracking camera which wants to capture the languid energy of a scene in one go. The film, therefore, degrades as it goes along, giving it exactly the kind of tiredness and desperation in technique its story demands. This is a classic example of a film where a lousy technique does not equal a lousy movie. Look at how Ripstein, a very disciplined Buñuelian director, shoots two characters' ascension of stairs. It's like becoming aware of light after an extended period of nothing but tunnel-darkness.

bas-relief noun

art : sculptural relief (see RELIEF entry 1 sense 6) in which the projection from the surrounding surface is slight and no part of the modeled form is undercut (see UNDERCUT entry 1 sense 2)

[wilder]

Richard Stanley is such a character

[jenkins]

no yeah no yeah when this first came out i was like hey wilder this will be us and wilder was like ummmmm and i was like ohhhhhh like when i took my mother to see tangerine which i thought was marvelous and she said it made her sad and i was like ahhhhhh and you know what another time i mentioned how i wouldn't mind being the women in grey gardens and reelist was like please no



i watched this again and they say it's their destiny, their fate, and that, if you think about it, movies are made for them

i have the wellspring dvd it's oop and it might just die but i think it's a true cityperson moviepeople movie

[jenkins]

Der Riese (The Giant) , 1984, wr/dr Michael Klier, "A feature-length film composed entirely of security camera footage," "this film was shot without any camera crew. Everything shown is edited from automated surveillance camera footage."

[jenkins]

the art and concept

13 female filmmakers explore themes of the uncanny, the supernatural, and the sublime in a series of 13 short films featuring a killer twin, an interdimensional time traveler, a doomed magician, and other strange characters that exist within the confines of a decaying, early 20th-century building slated for demolition. 13 tales. 13 women. 13 Chambers.

[wilder]

May 12, 2020

Christian Drew Sidaris’ The Dallas Connection (1994) on blu-ray from Mill Creek, from a new restoration



Esteemed scientists in charge of a sophisticated, state-of-the-art, satellite weapon-tracking system are being assassinated before a major scientific convention in Dallas.

May 12, 2020

Christian Drew Sidaris’ Enemy Gold (1994) on blu-ray from Mill Creek, from a new restoration



While on a mission to stop a drug operation, three Federal agents accidentally discover gold from the Civil War. With the aid of a corrupt agent, a ruthless criminal kingpin will hunt them down, one by one.

[jenkins]

watched Carmen, Baby at the New Bev last night at midnight. great opening lines and i was magnetized by the gorgeous male lead with a lingering sense dread on his face, and the kind of outrageous female lead who is so strong too, oh and when the male lead had that knife fight related to gambling and killed that other guy

Radley Metzger

Early in his career, in the 1950s, Metzger worked primarily as a film editor and was a member of Local 771 of the IATSE.] He was employed in editing trailers for Janus Films (now The Criterion Collection), a major distributor of foreign art films, especially those of Michelangelo Antonioni, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut.

Under the pseudonym "Henry Paris," Metzger also directed several explicit adult erotic features during the mid- to late-1970s. These films were released during the Golden Age of Porn (inaugurated by the 1969 release of Andy Warhol's Blue Movie) in the United States, at a time of "porno chic", in which adult erotic films were just beginning to be widely released, publicly discussed by celebrities (like Johnny Carson and Bob Hope) and taken seriously by film critics (like Roger Ebert).

that is all gone now, you know. it's crazy it was happening but left

Blue Movie (stylized as blue movie; also known as Fuck) is a 1969 American film written, produced, and directed by Andy Warhol. Blue Movie, the first adult erotic film depicting explicit sex to receive wide theatrical release in the United States, is a seminal film in the Golden Age of Porn (1969–1984), and helped inaugurate the "porno chic" phenomenon.

Golden Age of Porn:

The term "Golden Age of Porn", or "porno chic", refers to a 15-year period (1969–1984) in commercial American pornography, which spread internationally, in which sexually explicit films experienced positive attention from mainstream cinemas, movie critics, and the general public.

imagine it today i can't even

[wilder]

watched Carmen, Baby at the New Bev last night

first original movie poster I ever bought