Favorite Films

Thu, 27 Jul 2006 12:34:21 GMT

Footlight Parade. Sound cinema is just 4 years old. Busby Berkeley makes the imaginative leap to choreograph the camera as much as the actors and mise-en-scene. It also amply shows that James Cagney is not just a tough-guy actor. A new paradigm of musical cinema is birthed that is hardly topped until the brilliance of Gene Kelly in ...

Singing the Rain. Brilliant, a homage to the silent screen and the Busby Berkeley musical and simply the most 'pure cinema' experience you can get until ...

2001: A Space Odessey. Kubrick is a genius, basically, and this one is high mighty 'pure cinema' experience - don't even begin to think that DVDs and wide screen TV can match against a movie screen until you've seen this on 70mm like it's meant to be viewed -- 20 metres tall. Then there's his narrative cinema masterpiece ...

The Shining. You-tube promo reedits aside, the only other American director that matches Stanley directed the following ...

Raging Bull. Forget Mean Streets and Taxi Driver. This one is the real Scorcese/DeNiro deal. I saw it at the Cinema when I were a young lad and it seriously punched my brains out and showed me the real possibilities of Cinema. Glorious Black and White.

Honorable mentions:

Golddiggers of 33. Another Busby Berkeley number. We're in the money, the skies are sunny, we've got a lot of what it takes to get along ... in the middle of the depression.

Citizen Kane. Yeah Orson's radio work was the highlight of his artistically brilliant career, but not far behind was this much praised film. Despite this possibly being the most over-hyped film ever made, nonetheless it deserves its accolades. It did not win the Oscar. "How Green Was My Valley" did. As if.

Doctor Strangelove: Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb. Savage satire by Kubrick and Peter Sellars at the height of the Cold War.

Bedazzled. No not the version with Liz Hurley. The original with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. "You give me Inertia"...

Alphaville. "Breathless" and "Weekend" are bearable, but really this is Godard's only good film, and it's a SF pulp fiction number. Occupie. Libre. Occupie. And into the dustbin of history with you my French new waver.

Juliette Of The Spirits. Beautiful, Surreal, Fellini. No more need be said.

The French Connection. No, it's not a supposedly witty mispelling of 'fuck' by a vacuous fashion label, rather it's a great Hollywood film of the early 1970s starring Gene Hackmann. A long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, before the spectacular blockbuster phenonemon was launched with "Jaws" (not Star Wars), Hollywood was not at all afraid of "slow" films - even in a crime drama with a top-notch chase scene.

American Graffitti. The only good film that George Lucas ever made ("THX1138" is only half-decent), starring Ron Howard as one of a small group of boys nearly ready to become men in 1960s small-town America. It can be said that "Happy Days" was a spin-off from this film. After this brilliant film, with its startling soundtrack edited by Walter Murch, Lucas went quickly downhill.

The Conversation. Gene Hackman plays surveillence wunderkind Harry Caul as he spies on a very youthful Harrison Ford all directed by Francis Ford Coppola. More Walter Murch sound editing.

Breaker Morant. This brilliantly acted ensemble film tells the story of Australian Folk hero, Kitchener's scapegoat, and possible war criminal Harry 'Breaker' Morant. A poet, bon vivant and raconteur, who followed "Rule 303" through to the end while fighting the Boers on the Bushveldt of South Africa and who was sacrificed by the British Army to greater political ends. Starring Edward Woodward, Bryan Brown, and Jack Thompson, directed by Bruce Beresford. "Shoot straight you bastards, don't make a mess of it.".

Bladerunner. The director's cut vastly improves the original by ditching the narration. Beautiful melding of the film noir detective and science-fiction genres. Revolutionary, a pity that its many modern imitators are nowhere near as good. Welcome to the off-world colonies.

Gallipoli. The creepy political overtones later layered onto this film (and the event itself) in the late 1990s cannot detract from the fact that this film is basically Peter Weir's masterpiece.

Repo Man. Punks, suburban alienation, car stealing, reposession agents, aliens. What's not to like about this film? "Blammo! Eyes melt, skin explodes, everybody dead". Ask me for the Electro remix someday. "You hear the most outrageous lies about it."

Withnail and I. A cynical and witty take on the 1960s starring Richard E. Grant and the camberwell carrot.

Apocalypse Now. A fantastic adaptation of Conrad's "Heart Of Darkness", and a quote-mining gold rush.

At this point I'll desist. There are heaps more modern movies I'd love to go through. Just to list a few: Dark City; Donnie Darko; The Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind; Lost In Translation ... I could go on and on but I'm afraid my eyes will melt!

On Being Creative

Wed, 07 Dec 2005 23:40:55 GMT

We operate in two worlds:

(1) reality, which contains profundities and comedy unimaginably wild and deep, but on the surface is mostly deadly boring and

(2) fiction, which isn't too hard to make superficially appealing, but is difficult as hell to make profound or deeply funny.

Another useful quote from the article:

A Craftsman knows how to avoid accidents -- an Artist knows how to use them

Randy Thom, On Being Creative

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Xray Dubs - cinema tag

Favorite Films

On Being Creative