PHILIP POWERS

Day 304-365

Sunday 29 April-30 June 2018

 'New Hosting at 100 Greatest Films Ever'2018

A Philip Powers Project

At the halfway point, when the website was given a Red Malware notice, I was thinking, "This has gone so wrong. There's nothing to do but buy new hosting." So, I did. Please go to the link.

Day 304

Sunday 29 April 2018 11.10pm

 The Wild Bunch  1969

A Sam Peckinpah Film

At the halfway point I was thinking, How is this a great film? At the three-quarter mark I was still asking that question. Then, the last thirty-minutes provides a conclusion of the themes - not the storyline - that makes sense of all the different codes of honour at play in the four different major groups in the film.

Within any group there are different people who have an allegiance to something or another, or have a definition of what loyalty looks like, or what honour looks like. In The Wild Bunch they're all bad people except that some are less bad than others, and some are worse than others. In that mix of different codes that people live by, the film leaves it to the viewer to peel away the levels of selfishness in every single character, to find the person or the people or person who is least bad or most honourable.

Everyone in the film is a bad person and almost everyone dies, but for three main characters. Thornton and Sykes have the least blood on their hands and they team up at the end. Harrigan, who is the American equivalent of the Mexican General, presumably pays out the greedy posse of players who are heading back to collect their bounty and now will have a successful, and content, life now that Pike Bishop and his crew are all dead. Ike Thornton is conflicted by what he's doing and who he's been in the past and what Pike has meant to him in the past. They were formerly partners. Where this story picks up, it is every man for himself - and boy - and woman. The Wild Bunch takes no prisoners. Literally, there are no prisoners. You're either dead or free or free-and-on-the-run.

Its amorality is just as significant in 2018 as it was in 1969 or 1699. There will always be groups of people fighting other groups of people where the line between good and evil - often - doesn't exist. It's all about degrees of evil. It's like this during civil wars. It's like this in world wars. It's like this in politics and the workplace. It's like this as people fight against people who don't believe the things that they believe. It's a merciless war when a group of religious believers think their faith tells them to exterminate anyway who doesn't believe what they believe. It's mercenary when a group of people have no faith and have only their self-interest and their personal creed to determine their actions.

The self-appointed Mexican General is the equivalent of Harrigan, the man in charge of getting rid of the robbers who threaten the railroad that the people he is working for are building. Then there are the people caught up in the circumstances in which they have grown up or in which they now live - the Mexicans and the Indians - at odds with the American invaders. Then there are the people who are trying to make a living using the only skill they have - the gun - once their particular war is over. They're people without a conscience, like Bonnie, Clyde, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, who are so absorbed in their greed for wanting more than they have, that it doesn't give them any more pause than the General or Harrigan regarding who gets killed in the crossfire. Amongst all the scenes and all the dialogue where loyalty is held as the one thing that can measure a man, there's nothing - no scenes or dialogue - about all of the innocent people who were gunned down in the opening battle in the streets where dozens of bystanders were nameless and meaningless victims.

In the modern world of the 20th and 21st century - the world of business sitting alongside powerful nations - all but a few acting like bullies - nothing has changed. For all the sophistication of the post-industrial world, it is still a dog-eat-dog world where self-interest goes hand-in-hand with corruption.

The Wild Bunch illustrates how most people throughout history show by their actions that they are the very essence and definition of greed. And with power, greed becomes corruption.

Survival of the smartest and the strongest is the lesson to be learned - with a sidebar that advocates keeping your word if you give it. Every single person in the film stays true to the code - or the lack of it - they live by: man, woman and child.

Day 303

Sunday 29 April 2018 2.56pm

 'Rossellini 1945 & 1948' 2018

I saw Rome: Open City when I was studying film at NSW University in 1983. The film didn't mean anything to me and didn't have any great impact on me. It was a world and a war that had happened forty years ago. Today, it is a war that happened 75-80 years ago. I only know more about what happened in Europe in the Second World War because of research I've had to undertake to better understand what was happening in Europe between 1932 and 1945 because of my 100 Greatest Films Ever project.

Last night I showed myself a double-bill of two Roberto Rossellini films. One - Rome: Open City - was made in Italy during WWII (1944-45), and the other - Germany Year Zero - was made amongst the rubble of Berlin. Both are superb. Both are extraordinary. And both have an insider's view of what it was like to live during those years 1944-1945 and after the defeat of Hitler when average German citizens are trying to find a life that has food, electricity and meaning.

I would like to know more about what was happening in Rome during the last year of WWII. It's apparent from Rome: Open City that Italy had an underground movement that was working against the Fascists.

As for post-world war two Berlin, I saw some amazing footage in Billy Wilder's film A Foreign Affair (1948), of the devastation that reduced parts of Berlin to a series of broken buildings and hollow shells. That is nothing compared with what Rossellini photographed to make his brilliant and heart-breakingly sad film about what Hitler brought upon his own people through his megalomaniacal desire to conquer Europe and England.

What's particular interesting is that Hollywood made dozens and dozens of war films about the underground working against the Nazis. Some of the occasionally felt realistic but a lot of them were melodramas and many of them soap operas. There's no comparison with these two Rossellini films which are very realistic. There's a  brutality and cinema verité to the film that has an enormous impact which Hollywood's Hays Code (which was never seriously challenged to around 1952, ironically with a Rossellini film, The Miracle [1952]) would never have allowed in an American film. The matter-of-fact way in which it explores the plight of the Italians and the attitude of the Nazis makes it one of the most important films ever made.

Day 303

Saturday 28 April 2018 11.23pm

 'Desperation insists I watch two Rossellini films tonight'   2018

I have to watch two Roberto Rossellini films tonight, Rome Open City (1945) and Germany Year Zero (1948) so that I can watch Journey to Italy (1954) tomorrow and tick it off the list. I need to see five of the Critics 2012 Top 100 Films every week for the next 9 weeks.

The luxury of watching one or two films by any given director - with an additional two or five or nine - has passed me by.

Day 303

Saturday 28 April 2018 3.47pm

 Les enfants du paradis  1965

A Marcel Carné Film

What a wonderful film. It has one of the saddest and funniest of scripts I've come across and has a scope as high and wide and long and deep as life itself. Strangely, it has very few children in it and it isn't about anyone under the age of twelve. I thought it would be about children who go through some kind of hardship who find happiness or are destined for sadness, possibly affected by the ravages of WWII. Obviously, that was completely wrong. I only knew the title and that it was equal #73 in the Critics Poll and #224 in the Directors Poll. I haven't any idea of the significance of the title at this point because these are my first thoughts, my initial response - my immediate reaction - to the film.

The film's humour and consistently witty lines and comebacks, alone, make this a standout for 1945. It's very amusing and has an interesting backdrop, people in the world of physical theatre. It has a universal theme: people can only fall in love with the person they fall in love with and it may not, is often not - even mostly not - reciprocated. The law of the jungle is that the person you desire may not desire you leaving you to settle for second best. The beautiful person may also be looking for their beautiful person and find it in you, but because it is only skin deep, it has no foundation. It's like building a house on the sand. Some people can't allow themselves to fall in love and drfit with the tide, like a piece of straw, accepting whatever they need to do to survive, satisfying their sexual hunger and not engaging their emotional and intellectual needs.

If the plot was described in basic terms it would sound like any number of a thousand film melodramas and would be enough to make one roll one's eyes - and pass it over - because of its clichéd nature. It features villains and aristocracy and low-lives and has lovers who will never get together; lovers who are living with people that they don't love while the person they do love is in other circumstances. The backdrop is life in the theatre and the struggle between pantomime and the development of a more drama or comedy-based theatre. The two men are actors. One is renowned as a great mime (Baptiste) and the other is a dandy (poor and out of work, with aspirations to be a great actor - Frédérick Lemaître), a womaniser who will only ever love himself. The two women are a beautiful woman (Claire Garance) who most men immediately fall in love with on first sight but who is unable to give her love to anyone; and a sweet, loving woman (Nathalie) who loves a man (the mime - Baptiste Dubureau) but the mime is so in love with the other woman (Garance) that he will never love her back. Garance is forced into a loveless marriage with a count (Édouard de Montray) to save herself from going to prison for something that she didn't do. This takes her away from Lemaître who desires her and Baptiste who loves her. Among the mix of people living on the Boulevard du Crime are several supporting characters, including a thief and murderer (Pierre François Lacenaire) and the directeur des Funambules who runs around fining everyone who works for him who breaks his rules. The two people who are convinced that it is not within them to love, find that love eventually breaks through their cold and hardened heart. When Lemaître encounters Garance in Part 2 he realises he's in love with her. It's not reciprocated. When Garance encounters Baptiste at a performance of Othello, with Lemaître, she realises that she loves Baptiste, who has always been desperately in love with her. When Baptiste realises Garance loves him he leaves the bewildered, faithful Nathalie, and runs after Garance, trying to catch up with her in the thronging streets of Paris.

Day 302

Friday 27 April 2018 11.10pm

 'Watching the children of Paradise'   2018

I'm watching the film, Les enfants du paradis (1945) - as in right after pressing Publish - about which I've felt uneasy for many months despite not being sure why. At the same time I've been excited to see it. Even moreso when I bought the DVD from JB Hi-Fi three weeks ago and saw that its running time is over three-hours and that it was made in 1945. It makes me wonder where they shot it and where the war was at this particular point in time in France (because it has location scenes with enormous crowds filling the streets). That's all I know about the film. I don't even know who directed it, which is unusual. Usually I only know two things about a film: its title and its director (and sometimes a third thing: its length). I have no idea who is in it, where it is set, its premise, whether it's set in wartime France or whether it is a comedy or drama. I presume it's a very serious film with serious subject matter based on its title. Here I go.

Day 302

Friday 27 April 2018 11.45pm

Intimate Lighting 1965

An Ivan Passer Film

Ivan Passer was a director who I knew well because of three films in particular: Silver Bears (1977) with Michael Caine, Cutter's Way (1981) with Jeff Bridges & Lisa Eichorn and Creator (1985) with Peter O'Toole, all of which I liked. Creator was a really unusual and very likeable little film.

The film is a slight concoction about a brother and his wife visiting his brother and his wife, and their father, in the country. The local orchestra is preparing for a concert. The music to be performed is a violin concerto by the Czech composer Jirovec. The players are mostly a pretty ordinary bunch of musicians, but everyone applies themselves to their task or role with commitment and energy. Three of the amateur players are the two brothers (viola and cello) and the father (violin).

The big question on everyone's lips is whether or not the soloist will arrive in time to have a run-through with the orchestra before the performance. No one knows.

Day 301

Thursday 26 April 2018 11.26pm

'David Stratton's A History of Cinema - Week 11'   2018

Tonight was the second last week of my twelve-week film course. I thought that I wasn't going to be able to get to it because my wife had taken some leave from work and booked us to have three days and two nights in Sydney's beautiful Blue Mountains at High Garden, a lovely house on Air Bnb. I contacted Mr Stratton - explaining my situation - to ask him what the film was going to be this Thursday evening in case it was something that I had already seen and knew well [like The Ipcress File (1965) and The Bedford Incident (1965)] as my wife would prefer it if I stayed in the Mountains with them instead of going to my course.

His response was that he was exploring Eastern Europe this week and that he'd chosen a Czech film, but it was not Milos Forman's Lásky jedné plavovlásky (The Loves of a Blonde, 1965). He hoped that was enough of a hint to make it worthwhile for me to attend. What surprised me, however, was that by chance he knew someone driving down to the course that afternoon who would be able to give me a lift down and back. I jumped at the chance and had a wonderful opportunity to chat with him about the films in our lives. For ninety-minutes down and ninety-minutes back we talked film non-stop.

I was glad I accepted the ride because the film clips Stratton showed from Mexico, Poland, Sweden, Rumania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, the USSR and Czeckoslavakia were very interesting. Amongst others, we were treated to clips from Luis Buñuel's Simon del desierto, Karlek 65, Konchalovsky's Piervij Utchitelh (The First Teacher), Bundarchuk's Wojna I mir (War and Peace), Makavejev's Covek nije tica (Man is Not a Bird), and Skolimowski's Walkover.

Stratton did something unusual tonight and chose to show an episode from a film called Perlicky na dne (Pearls of the Deep). It ran about 20-minutes and was called The Restaurant at the end of the World. It's one of the most surreal pieces of filmmaking I've seen. A bar is closed because there's a wedding function going on upstairs. A crowd of people are spread out on the street across the door and windows begging to be let in for a beer. The manager refuses. It's surreal because it involves an unusual congregation of people, a surprising death and the bride makes an unexpected choice at the end. She goes out into the rain and runs and turns around and around, shown in a series of slow motion images shot with what appears (to me) to be a very slow shutter speed giving it an other-worldly quality.

The main film, Intimate Lighting, Ivan Passer's only Czech film, was a film that I would almost certainly never have the opportunity to see again.

Day 300

Wednesday 25 April 2018 11.24pm

 'Early to Bed, Early to Rise'  2018

Unwell today, as I was for the last 48 Hours. We're in the Blue Mountains. Got up here around three p.m. Mostly I rested and read my book, Vertigo: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic by Dan Auiler. I'm not going to attempt to watch a Rossellini film tonight - or any film, 

despite the dire circumstances of even completing my challenge

- after my girls go to bed tonight. Although I only go to bed before midnight once or twice a year, this is one of those nights. Swollen gut, sucrose-allergy and gluten-free issues have added up to a terrible three days. I need to have an early night and try and get back to feeling better.

Day 300

Wednesday 25 April 2018 3.01pm

'Anzac Day 300'  2018

Today, of course, is one those milestones when you're working on a year-long project. There's forty-five films still to see from the original hundred. It's easy to count how many days left and easy to work out how many weeks left:

Sixty-five days   & 

65 ÷ 7 =

9.28571429 weeks

_____________________________________________

Forty-five films

Five films per week

In forty-three weeks I've only watch fifty-five of the Top 100 Films in the Sight and Sound/BFI 2012 Critics List.

I've seen a lot more than that when you count all the other films I've seen by director's of one or two films on that list a hundred films.

This now an uphill battle.

Wednesday 25 April 2018 2.44am

 'Below Tarkovsky's Stalker'   2018

This afternoon after returning three Fellini films to Lane Cove library I borrowed two of the three Roberto Rossellini films I have been able to track down, Rome - Open City (1945) and Journey to Italy (1954). I already found a copy of Germany Year Zero (1948). I'm planning on ticking off the Rossellini films next week as well as watching Les enfants du paradis (1945).Before picking the girl's up from school and while they were eating dinner and watching The Voice Blind Auditions, I started to watch the seventy-five minutes of Stalker (1979) again from the time when the three characters rest and the Stalker dreams. There is something sitting below the surface that is out of focus, but it is to do with what the room represents and who the Stalker represents. Sometimes I think the Stalker is a Christian trying to lead someone to heaven or paradise, or some place where wishes comes true and yet the room never delivers (according to the dialogue between the three characters) the happiness that should come from getting the desire of one's heart. Therefore, it can't be heaven. All the characters don't believe in happiness and have never seen a truly happy man and the one person they know reached the room and received abundant riches killed himself a couple of days later.I paid close attention to the voiceover during the Stalker's dream, the voiceover after the dream when he's lying by the creek with his eyes open, and the images Tarkovsky shows as the camera glides over the creek's shallow water revealing numerous objects on the creek-bed. I also paid close attention to the dialogue between the Writer and the Professor and how the Professor turns out to be a terrorist and the Writer suddenly loses his antipathy for the Professor when they discover the Professor has a bomb and intends to destroy the room and turns his venom towards the Stalker. There's are clues which must explain why the Writer sides with the Professor at this point. The Writer represents creativity - obviously - and the Professor - equally obviously - science and knowledge.I then started writing notes comprising about two thousand words, hopefully towards an essay that I can publish about the allegory or the illustration that Tarkovsky has in mind.Finally, it is time to wrap-up and go to bed, because in eight-hours the girls and I leave for Leura for a three-day holiday my wife's organised, starting today, with the ANZAC Public Holiday.

Day 299

Tuesday 24 April 2018 4.48pm

 'A Very Big Dumb Movie'  2018

A John the Dotz Film

As far as films go that operate on the level of King Kong vs military forces, or Godzilla vs military forces, Rampage (2018) set the scene perfectly as it attempts to recreate a Ray Harryhausen-style film. He used to pit little human beings against big - oversized - creatures, and although it was awful and not any worse than Rampage, they were hardly any better. The scripts were hackneyed. The characters weren't people you actually recognised as people you knew, let alone believe could be real. No one's behaviour was like you'd expect because everything was wooden or plastic.

I'd say the same thing about Mysterious Island and Jason and the Argonauts as I do about Rampage: "you've got reasonable effects, so let's work out how to add a really good story AND good DIALOGUE". If you can do both you've got a film that might entice viewers to leave the comfort of their television sets and go in greater numbers to a cinema or theatre. If you can't, then you've got this.

It's not even a so-bad-that-it's-good film. Earthquake was one that wasn't, but The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno were. Rollercoaster not so good. Black Sunday, pretty damn good - THE BEST OF THIS PERIOD. The Charlton Heston stadium-one ranked with Earthquake.

Day 299

Tuesday 24 April 2018 1.53pm

 'A Very Little Horror Film' 2018

A Blumhouse of the Rising Sun Production

Every so often, along comes a film that brings something different or even (unspeakably and wonderfully) new to the horror genre. There's twenty really great examples. And then there are films like Truth or Dare (2018) which bring a lot of energy to the cumulative effect of ideas. Scream and Saw and Halloween were quite well done. Also Hard Candy. More recently, It, ranks with The Shining.

What sounded like thirty teenagers sitting thirty rows behind me (I'm in row six) wailed and breathed heavily at least twenty times. But the gags were old-hat. Final Destination and Urban Legend and I Know What You Did Last Summer are masterpieces compared with this film.

The saving grace after the disappointment that it couldn't resolved itself was.. SPOILER... that it was unleashed via the internet - to everyone who knew anyone with an internet account - with a warning. As the pool size of the world increased it means that everytime your group says Truth Truth Dare, it will makes it's way back to YOU for your next Truth or Dare in a couple of hundred years as long as everyone keeps saying Truth (or Dare). Nice end. It takes it from a ** film to a **½ film.

Day 298

Monday 23 April 2018 4.43am

 STALKER  1979

An Andrei Tarkovsky Film

This two-hour-and-thirty-nine-minute-film reduced me to tears during the final ten minutes even though I don't know the intention of the writers or the director. I was disconcerted because I don't - didn't - know the beliefs of the creator of the film and I don't know what he wants me to believe and I can see three different possibilities as I have the ability to understand life on this planet.

Stalker offers an argument for all three, being 1) good or 2) evil; or 3) being sidetracked from living life because we think there's a final place at which we can arrive, which is a) heaven or b) hell.

I don't know what Tarkovsky wanted me to feel or believe when the film ended. I don't know what he believes or believed. I only know that it took me on a journey where I could see that the main character was more of a guide than a stalker. If the guide has an agenda, to direct someone towards a room at the end of the journey, which delivers what they want; or a room at the end which reveals that the room at the end of the journey doesn't deliver what they want; then Tarkovsky delivers both. The third result, explained by the dialogue, "when they see the room they want me to lead them out of, back to where they came from", it could mean that the room delivers nothing - its empty - there are no deliveries on certainty and the promises that certainty should deliver. The journey ends with there being no God and no Hell.

Stalker offers three interpretations of who the guide is and what is at the end of the journey. The room at the end is one of three options, 1) heaven, 2) hell or 3) nothing.

The second or third option is the most likely (according to what I perceive as Tarkovsky's personal belief). I say that because when you reach the end of the journey and there is either hell or nothing, you'd most probably go back to trying out all three of the possible options again, hoping for a different outcome - your version of heaven.

I say that because nature has instilled humanity with a desire to survive that trumps our desire to die. Built into our DNA is an instinct that makes us react in a way that gives us the best chance of self-preservation. Lacking that desire, whittled down over a few decades, it gives me the chance to ask the question, what if you don't care anymore if it is just a matter of too much smoke and too many mirrors.

My first thought now is that I can't see why Tarkovsky's films (Mirror, Stalker and Andrei Rublev) appears on the Top 100 List. If I was voting, I wouldn't think to include any film by Tarkovsky in my Top Ten. Or if I'd only seen one film by Tarkovsky, I still can't see myself voting for it in my Top Ten.

I'd also want to know how and where the voters saw their Tarkovsky film and why any of them rank in their Top Ten Ever. It's got to be part of a plan from someone with another agenda to push Tarkovsky's films higher in the final Top 100. I'm GOING TO TO LOOK AT THE ETHNICITY OF THE NAMES OF THOSE VOTERS. Is it a worldwide vote or a vote favouredby a specific group within the larger group of voters?

[By the way, the word desire is fraught with problems, because it gives us an outcome, a few verbs and a few nouns. The ones that interest me are

DIE  RESIDE  RIDE  SIRE  SIDE  RISE  DIRE  SEED  IRE  SEE  REED  SEER  DESIRE ]

What Stalker tells me from the title is that ANYONE who has a belief and wants to convince someone else of the way of thinking, is a stalker.

1) Jesus is a stalker
2) Satan is a stalker
3) the believers of both Christ and Satan (Christians and Satanists) are stalkers.
4) anyone who follows you around surreptiously (hoping you don't notice) is a stalker.

The larger picture of the film is that the guide and the two followers are either seeking the wrong thing and the guide is leading them towards an end that is not what they want (likely), the guide is leading them towards somethiing that will be to them what they want, toying with them, the guide is showing them something that they reject now because it seems unfathomable is real but repeatedly rejected; the guide is a true-believer who wants to guide other people to the same belief they have, whether Christian, Muslim or Anything.

After the 2h52m many things occurred:

The room - heaven - can't deliver their desires. It's a fable. It's a concoction made between a scientist and a writer with a desire to create the destiny that they want for themselves.

It's not what the Christian God offers. I don't know which religion offers that.

Satan, or who Satan is in any other religion, always offers people what they want, when they're emotional, desperate and exhausted.

The Stalker reveals this while pointing towards a true saviour. The true saviour is within reach at times and so distant at other times.

The Stalker can be the guide towards safety, the guide towards fulfilling all desires, the guide to show them that none of it can be believed, or the guide that shows there are extremes which are very, very bad and very, very good.

Stalker offers a guide to something of value, something that confirms life's worthlessness or something that makes you a 'boot'.

If you're the boot when you're playing Monopoly, then you're the boot. Your fate is in the throw of the die... Appropriate...

Day 297

Sunday 22 April 2018 3.16am

 Mirror  1974

An Andrei Tarkovsky Film

I pretty much have no idea what's going on in this film. I have to admit that I thought it might turn out to be a film that connected the dots, or at least had a premise, a problem, a solution and a climax.

Apparently not!

The Mirror felt a lot like a 1960-1967 - or somewhere in between - Jean-Luc Godard film, but far less interesting. With my (previous) opinion of Godard that's saying something. Then again, to renounce the previous statement in the spirit of Andrei Rublev, who blames himself for all misunderstandings, the Godard films were a reflection of a one-dimensional, or - at best - two-dimensional thinking by Hollywood. Godard was reflecting the influence of American films on his own experience and thinking, as they illustratehis own being.

It was like trying to read a Saul Bellow book or Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man or anything stream-of-conscious. And yet, I wasn't bored. Not at all. The images and the situations were interesting and they were going to take me to a resolution that would explain the previous 99-minutes.

Apparently not!

The only thing that clued me into thinking anything with an inkling about where the film had set its goals was the fact that in the opening titles a separate credit was given for poems to another Tarkovsky, who wasn't Andrei. And the narration credit.

This is where I have to fall-on-my-sword and admit that knowing nothing about a film before seeing it, is not always - 100% of the time - a good thing. I entered the world of The Mirror and thought I was going somewhere:

Apparently not!

I thought it was heading to a particular place which the film had no intention of taking me.

At the end - you can nearly always pick the last shot in a film (before the credits or FIN) - I'd experienced some very interesting observations about life, and taken in fragmented memories about someone growing up in someone's family. The disjointed sequences and the seemingly unrelated scenes were like a carefully constructed film about the fragmented nature of a dream of one's childhood, but then, even the dream's own relativity - to itself - fell apart, beyond my comprehension.

I have no idea what The Mirror is about (except for *). I'm sure a second viewing will give me more of a hint. I feel like I'm in the same situation as when I watched Solaris for the first and only time, where I would fall asleep for ten or fifteen minutes here and there, wake up, watch a bit and feel like I hadn't missed a thing because I was still as baffled as at any previous point of being jolted awake - by a muscle that had also fallen asleep - from my sleep as I was after the first twenty minutes - which I suspected would have been the case if I'd been awake through the entire watching-the-film experience.

[* the film is autobiographical, to some degree, I deduce. It has poetry by someone (credited) other than the director. Maybe a brother or parent? It tells two - fragmented but related - stories. One showing a boy in the 'now' and one showing the boy's father in the 'past'. The mother in the now looks a lot like the mother of her (former) husband as we see her in the 'past'. There's other very strange scenes like the first scene in Andrei Rublev (with the balloon) and the doctor who misses his turn-off and comes across the woman (the main character). He then asks her for a screwdriver to unlock his medical bag because he forgot the key.]

I remain bemused and have a feeling that to have any understanding of anything in this film I should have done some research prior to pressing PLAY.

Day 296

Saturday 21 April 2018 11.14pm

 Running Scared  1986

A Peter Hyams Film

My wife felt like watching a film like Die Hard (1988) tonight as she comes to terms with unwinding from a stressful working week. But it can't be Die Hard because you can't return to the well to often. That means, no Lethal Weapon (1987), no Speed (1994), no Beverly Hills Cop (1984), The Fugitive (1993) or U.S Marshals (1998), and puts us in the land of knock-offs and rip-offs.

I chose a selection of films with that brief in mind and then added Limitless (2011), which I thought was a pretty good attempt at a sci-fi thriller. I also chose The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (2009)as another non-action option. Action-options were Taken  (1984), Under Siege (1992), Unknown (2011), Rush Hour 1 (1988), 2 (2001) and 3 (2007), or Running Scared.

It was one of those awkward moments when a film you thought was pretty good twenty years ago gets the complete non-response from the person sitting beside you. There were at least three really funny lines in the film. Nothing from her. She was watching The Shining (1980) or Schindler's List (1993). Whatever it was she was watching it wasn't what I was watching.

Now, I know, if you want to watch a film like Die Hard and you can't choose Die Hard, that limits the field to such an extent that if you take out The Fugitive and Speed, you're left with that peculiar moment when you burp and unexpectedly a little bit of food from an hour or two before - with quite a few intestinal juices attached - comes up into the back of your mouth. It's got that nice flavour and then it's suddenly a not so pretty replica of what was previously a really nice meal.

Other than a really good James Bond film, like Casino Royale or Skyfall, or Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark or Temple of Doom, or the best Jason Bourne film, or Salt, there's slim pickin's.

The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996) qualifies for the second tier, but after that it's knock-offs and rip-offs.

My wife chose poorly tonight, a film with Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines which I thought was good in 1986, and then again in 1988 and 1990. 22-years later it doesn't hold-up like it did then. As she said, "I thought it was lame."

The sequence where the chase was on the 'L' was amazing in 1986. The sequence at the end in the building with the high ceilings and the lifts and the shootout was quite satifactory in 1986. It all came off feeling like lame 'Beverly Hills Cop' mixed with a buddy-cop-film. But every chase and joke has been better done since then.

In 1986, Running Scared was bloody good movie (and if my memory serves me, it made $40 or $50 million dollars at the U.S. Box Office - 1986 - that's like $150 million in today's dollars). Everyone I knew then thought it had action and comedy, and (while it wasn't brilliant, it was damn good!)

We're so spoilt for action films now that Bullitt (1968) and The French Connection (1971) would be like going on a merry-go-round instead of the latest rollercoaster. My wife said after twenty-five minutes, "There's a lot of talk so far, when's the action going to start?"

So, next time the wife wants an action film like Die Hard, if she doesn't want to ACTUALLY watch Die Hard, she better pick a better chick flick than Bad Moms (2016).

Day 295

Friday 20 April 2018 5.17am

 Andrei Rublev 1966

An Andrei Tarkovsky Film

Over the course of three hours I discovered that this film was outside of the boundaries of everything I know about life. That's not such a broad statement to make because I was born in 1963 and live in Australia. But, it was also outside the bounds of what I thought films (obviously people, not films) would consider suitable subjects for a mammoth investment.

There are seven sections not including a prologue and a coda.

The prologue doesn't seem to belong to the rest of the film. I'm going to think about how it relates. The coda definitely belongs as it is the appreciation (and recognition) of all the artists who painted the walls and ceilings of churches anywhere, ever, throughout history.

There's the usual raping and pillaging but there's also a lot of time given to showing the faith - and the infractions - of believers in God and revealing details about his son, Jesus Christ, and who he was, and what he endured.

None of this makes much sense to me because I know the film was made in a Communist country under Communist rule. The Russian Orthodox Church is not something I'm familiar with in any way other than name. I know there's a Greek one and a Russian one. But in the USSR where does Christianity sit amongst any position the government takes? Presumably unfavourably.

Surely a film which quotes important pieces of scripture, from the Hebrew/Christian bible, is going to be banned. It also quotes other parts of the New Testament which are confusing and describe how the man is the head and the woman is subject to the man and the hierarchy of God, Jesus and the created beings.

Most confounding of all is that the film has - seemingly - thousands of extras, has extraordinary sets, and would require a separate army of cooks and servers to feed them all. In Russia, whether it is the 1920s, 1950s or 1960s, how does a person - a director - get to command such resources? How does a person get the money to pay for the costumes, the sets, the celluloid, the developing, and the food that a film of any length or breadth require?

Andrei Rublev is a film of such scope that I find it hard to fathom how it could possibly have the resources provided to produce it.

The script is so far-reaching that it also requires an answer to explain how a Communist State would approve of a script which required a degree of resources far beyond what any other filmmaking country or nation could muster, let alone pay for.

I'm in a state of bewilderment because I have seen a film which is so profound in what it depicts that I can't conceive how it was able to be made.

Then there is everything related to what it does, what it expresses and what it tells the viewers about. It especially makes me wonder about what Konchalovskiy and Tarkovsky believe. Do they have a Christian faith?

Day 295

Friday 20 April 2018 3.43am

 'Tarkovsky, the Russian'

I first heard of Andrei Tarkovsky twelve or thirteen (maybe 18 or 19) years ago. A friend of mine, Daniel - we both like science fiction - had heard of a science fiction movie that wasn't well-known outside of Russia. He found a copy and we set aside an evening to watch it. It was called, Solaris.

I found it so ponderous that the novelty of watching something that was (apparently) a brilliant, inaccessible, film wore off and I fell asleep.

That's where my first and only experience of Tarkovsky began and ended. I saw the first twenty-minutes, a couple of minutes in between snoozing, when my snoring work myself up, and the last ten or fifteen-minutes. It was a very boring film. Or so I thought.

Then I came across the list of the 100 Greatest Films Ever and I found Tarkovsky's name on that list, not for Solaris, but for three other films.

When I embarked on this project I found a collection of Tarkovsky's films on DVD and bought it. I sat the box in its own special space amongst all my movies and kept ignoring it for the last 295-days. When I say, 'kept ignoring it', that's exactly what I mean. I didn't forget about it. I knew it was there. I deliberately kept putting it off.

Then came the quandary in which I currently find myself: I need to watch five or six important films every week until the end of June 2018.

I knew Andrei Rublev went for three-hours, give or take. I realised I didn't have the films of another significant artist onhand. I googled the running times of Gertrud, Ordet, Kes, A Brighter Summer Day, The Mirror, Stalker and Andrei Rublev. With an ever-dimishing period to watch these films I had to make a difficult decision. It's getting to the point where I'm worried that I'm not going to achieve my goal.

This is where I decided to take Tarkovsky in hand and start a three-hour film at 11pm knowing that it wasn't going to be a film or a country in which I had any great interest.

And so, I thought, was the beginning of a slow and often torturous journey through what I knew was going to be hard yakka.

Not so! Pleasantly surprised. A film that wasn't about dictators dictating and armies wiping out other armies. It's a film about a personal lack of compassion or forgiveness, and holding ourselves to a standard of behaviour to which we believe God holds us.

Long? Yes!. Boring? No! Confusing? Yes!

It's also a film which tells the viewer what real forgiveness looks like, but holds us to the words on a page of a book in which some of us have - and many of us haven't - placed our faith.

Day 294

Thursday 19 April 2018 6.11am

'Knocking Them Off, One by One' 2018

I am now so acutely aware of how many of the original 100 films, I set out to watch, remain unwatched, that I've moved into a phase of intensity that is unlike anything experienced so far. To finish the BFI Critics 100 - a very fine goal - I have to knock more than forty great films off in seventy days. You may well ask what I've done with the previous 295-days if I'm only just over the halfway point?

The answer is, that delving into one or two films often led me towards another six or seven other films. As I check my list I realised that I need to be knocking off five or six films a week from the original list. If I've spent three hours writing a blog entry then I still need to find a film which I can knock off the list.

Fellini week, for instance, ticked the box for 8½ (1963) and La dolce vita (1960), but I also watched La Strada [(1954)on the BFI Director's Top 100 list], Juliet of the Spirits (1965), Fellini's Casanova (1976) and Amarcord (1973). Writing notes to myself about these films so I can better understand Fellini takes time and now I'm aware I need to move more quickly through some of the films I already know well.

Today, at 4am, after over four-hours spent writing about Fellini, I chose Casablanca as one I could watch and write about because I know it so well. I've just finished my 8th, 9th or 10th viewing of it. Like Vertigo, Blade Runner and 2001 it remains a film that I have watched many times and still see the greatness. I believe many great films are happy accidents. The film that is screened in a cinema or that is finally put back together again, pieced together from various sources is often the result of outside forces that have changed the finished film considerably from the screenplay which was accepted when the budget was set and production began. I'm fairly certain that Singin' in the Rain, Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, Some Like it Hot and Sunset Blvd will live up to my memory of them as well.

It's just after 6am and the kids will be up any minute.

I want to say that Casablanca is one of Hollywood's most enduring films because of its two major Stars and the emotion (or lack of it) which they put into delivering the lines in the script. It is greater than most other American films made in the 1940s because it cleverly combines cynicism, romance, love, desperation, music and wit, with a story about one of the most terrible wars the world has known and the effect Hitler's Nazis had on many races around the world.

Because it is made before America became involved in the Second World War, it has a Newsreel quality to it, and shows itself to be largely ignorant of what Hitler's larger plan was and what was happening outside of France and Czeckoslavakia.

It is, and remains, a beautiful film because of its innocence. The disconnection - by distance - between Europe and Britain and the United States, makes it a film that can ignore the larger picture and concentrate on the smaller reality. It can focus on the panic that went through every European country that Hitler was targeting immediately and maybe targeting in the near future. It is also completely ignorant of what would happen to involve America in the war.

As such, it is one of numerous films made by Hollywood about what the writers thought they knew was happening in Europe before the American involvement. It dresses it up as a film with cynical people and cartoon Germans, everyone out for what they can get to help them have purpose for another day.

Casablanca features two cynics, and a woman torn between two men, and a man who will hopefully continue to inspire the European underground forces to work against Hitler's march across Europe. It plays pathos and sentimentality against the grim reality of people who have been dispossessed of their country and people who can see a way to make money out of this situation through trickery and connivance and its inevitable result: deceitfulness, which shows itself in characters who only care about their own future.

The film then weaves a romance amongst these circumstances, which - normally - will have the two people who most of the men and women in the audience find most attractive, together at the end. It doesn't deliver that denouement. Instead, Casablanca's final scene expresses, without words but through actions, a kind of individual honour that people must do. Despite their personal involvement, the man and woman who are in love - in the most complete sense that Hollywood has ever dished up - choose selflessness. They choose to do the right thing (intellectually) even though it feels like the wrong thing (emotionally).

Casablanca's main theme is that everyone is corrupt and if you're not corrupt then you've become too cynical to care anymore about addressing the minor corruptions that you know are going on around you every moment you are alive and breathing. Rick builds a world in which he can live, in which he can survive, around himself. He's like everyone else in Europe or the surrounding areas affected by WWII. He's trying to make a buck whilst keeping out of trouble. Whether it's the local authorities or the invading authorities he tries to keep his nose clean. He wants to run his business and stay out of trouble. One of his most revealing statements is, "I stick my neck out for no one."

That's how the survivors survive. Then there are the true-believers. Then there are the villains. Then there are the impassioned people who will fight against anyone who tries to take away their freedom.

In Casablanca's plot is every conceivable story about people and the way people react to the circumstances they are experiencing and enduring.

Most people in the world think they're not paid what they're worth, or not appreciated for what they do. Their bosses are answering to their bosses and everything is a delicately balanced series of dominos. Most people want more than what they have. Most people want to  rise above the position they currently occupy. Casablanca shows all three stations: 1) the workers 2) those who are workers but can conceive of rising to a higher level, and 3) those who have the power and wield it as they please.

Casablanca wraps it up - the entire bundle - in a nightclub which is often filled with beautiful music performed by wonderful musicians. The music, which (even more-so now than then) makes people access their emotions, draws out feelings. For Germans it is a song they see as their own. For the French it is a tune that defines who they are. For Bogart and Bergman it is a song that has become too painful to hear anymore.

I don't know how much attention the writers and director paid to the lyrics of As Time Goes By but everything you need to know about what is going on below the surface, for all of the essentially good people, is in its lyrics.

Day 293

Wednesday 18 April 2018 11.48pm

 Isle of Dogs  2018

A Wes Anderson Film

What a wonderful experience. A must-see film. I think only one or two - maybe three or four - new films each year fall into that category. A must-see film is a film where your life will be better or just different because of the experience. Like The Princess Bride or Apocalypse Now. Like Citizen Kane or Cinema Paradiso. Like Nuit et brouillard or 2001: A Space Odyssey. You may not agree with me that it is a must-see film but it is important to see it if I think it is important to see it. Like Paradise Road or Tokyo Story or Schindler's List. Like L'avventura or Pierrot le fou (or Breathless). Or Girl, Interrupted. Some films express an aspect of life in such a moving way, or with such an adventurous spirit, they deserve to be seen. Some because they have succeeding in breaking the rules  and in doing so are redefining film narrative.  Others because they are saying something so powerful, or so rarely able to be expressed.

[A tanget: As horrible as A Clockwork Orange is, it is one of the most unforgettable films ever made. There aren't too many films that are warnings against limiting the punishment allowed to be exacted on despicable human beings. For all the violence and disturbing images, it's a film that demands limitations on how humans choose to treat and punish people who have committed the most incomprehensible violence against other human beings.]

Isle of Dogs is a must-see for many reasons, none of which I will spell out right now. I'm so glad that my Dad was pushing to see this film because after seeing the style of animation in the trailer, and not finding the clips very amusing, I wouldn't have gone to see it by myself. But, my lifelong policy has been that I will see any film if someone else tells me they want to see it with me. I'll go to any film of any rating. It's all part of learning more about the things in life which make people tick. It's particularly true (for me) of people who work in other departments of filmmaking and get the chance to possibly direct just one film in their life. When that happens I want to know, so what was it about this film that drew you to it? There's an essay, maybe even a thesis in first films, and why they chose to film and make that story into their first film. So, here was an example of something that didn't interest me outwardly, but which I accidentally discovered last week in the March 26, 2018 issue of The New Yorker, was directed by Wes Anderson. I love reading Anthony Lane's reviews, and because I had no intention of seeing the film, scanned his review quickly - suddenly stopped reading - and then decided because Anthony Lane was making overtly positive comments I'd make sure that my father and I didn't miss this one. [Strangely, because I watched 8½ (1963) last night, I desperately wanted to watch The Player (Robert Altman) tonight and compare the two films. I almost talked myself out of seeing Isle of Dogs.]

Wes Anderson is one of the most unusual directors working in film over the last two decades. I saw his first major feature film, Rushmore, and enjoyed it enormously. It showed a man in his late-twenties with an unusual way of approaching, and telling, stories. I though a lot of The Royal Tenenbaums was amazing, but as a whole I found it didn't quite work for me. The same with The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Darjeeling Limited and more recently The Grand Budapest Hotel - which I probably liked the most of everything of his I've seen until now. I tend to love the first half of his films and then find I tire in the second half. It's probably just me.

I think of him as an off-the-wall director, and I don't always get to see his films on the big screen, although I think the only major one I've missed, looking down his list of films, is Moonrise Kingdom. Actually, the only other one I missed was The Fantastic Mr. Fox, which I own on blu-ray but haven't yet seen. And I didn't get to see his first feature film, Bottle Rocket, either.

With Isle of Dogs, his second animated feature film, he produces (another) one of the most unusual films I have ever seen. I am very curious to know where Wes Anderson's idea came from because it's a bizarre mix of styles. Whatever the inspiration it is brilliantly conceived and brilliantly executed. But why set it in Japan, without subtitles? And have the dogs bark in English, without subtitles? And why only translate the Japanese into English if an interpreter is handy?

Day 293

Wednesday 18 April 2018 4.13am

 'My Eight-and-a-Half Experience' 2018

So far I have watched Juliet of the Spirits, I vitelloni, La strada, La dolce vita, Casanova, Amarcord and half of Satyricon.

I watched half of Satyricon, some time ago, felt tired, pressed pause, went to bed, meant to come back to it, and never came back to it.

So, this is truly and coincidentally the eight-and-a-half movie by Fellini I've watched in the last twelve months which also happens to be called 8½. After my dislike of Casanova, yesterday, and my lukewarm response to Amarcord, tonight, and my strangely positive reaction to Juliet of the Spirits, previously, and my confusion regarding La dolce vita, I'd decided I was in the not-liking Fellini-films camp if it was that black and white. Tonight I felt the need to wave Fellini goodbye and do a double-bill, Amarcord and 8½, one after the other. I told Alison that I was going for the double-header. I had to clear Fellini out of my brain today and start catching up on the forty films from the Top 100 which I haven't seen yet, with just seventy-four days to go.

I've added so many films from the sideline that I've neglected the plan to watch the top 100 when the top 100 became a fundamentally wrong way of approaching the greatest films ever made.

My dilemma was whether to cast my net wider or stick with the initial 100 or 125 - or the ever-expanding two-hundred.

I only needed to watch La strada (202/26), 8½ (10/4), La dolce vita (39/37) and Amarcord (117/30) but I pushed the boundaries and watched another 4½. Five wasted nights but I felt I needed to get into the heart of Fellini at the beginning, in the middle and the latter period.

James left at 11.20pm and I told my wife at 11.55pm that I was going to finish Fellini tonight. It was probably going to be King Bad or King Great. We left it at that and she went to bed and I started writing about Amarcord.

How strange for me to be now, at 4am, celebrating the greatness of 8½. It is a great great film with one of the best scripts ever written, improvised, spoken or delivered. It is a phenomenom. It is almost beyond description and to describe it would be to quote half (or more) of the lines the film delivers. It is truly one of the greatest films ever made (let alone conceived, even accidentally). Less than twenty-four hours after seeing (what I thought was) one of the worst films ever made (Fellini's Casanova), I'm bewildered to have watched Amarcord (a pretty good film) and now had this response to 8½.

It's equivalent to someone making the best film about poets, or the best film about musicals, or the best film about religion or the best film about silence. With one exception. It's less about a subject and more about the universal act of creation, and the lies that human beings tell to the rank-and-file when they - the dictators  - want to be people who can be the being that makes an act of creation. It's a film about people who want to be in control of their life and (control or) direct the lives of others to deliver a product which is going to represent what they think of themselves, what they want others to think about - and believe about - them, giving an insight into the process of having an idea, making it real, and delivering it to the world, to convince them that what they're watching is real or a close approximation.

This has become the week I expected but which wasn't materialising. I thought it would be like Antonioni, Godard and Bergman, but it was fizzling out. Then La strada, then  La dolce vita, and now, 8½. It has become like the act of giving myself over to Godard and Antonioni - in previous fortnights - except that the pinnacle of Fellini's achievement is a film about the flaws in people who want to be God, the flaws in the mentality of people who want to be subject to someone who is great, and the flaws  in the relationships of that person - who is naturally  and obviously the greatest, most wonderful, most powerful person - with everyone with whom he comes into contact.

Day 292

Tuesday 17 April 2018 11.58pm

 'I Remember' 2018

Academy Awards

Best Foreign Language Film 1975 (and nominated in 1976 for Best Director & Best Story, Original Screenplay)

Golden Globes, USA

Nomination for Best Foreign Film

New York Film Critics Circle Awards & National Board of Review, USA

Best Foreign Language Film & Best Film and Best Director

Tonight, I invited my oldest friend, James, over to watch his favourite Fellini film, Amarcord (1973). I'd mistakenly thought he was a Fellini fan but he corrected that misconception by telling me that he neither loved or hated Fellini films, but largely felt indifferent to them, with the exception of Amarcord which he remembers being taken with, forty-five years ago. So, I pressed PLAY and went three-years back in time from Fellini's Casanova (1976) to another film which looks at a boy growing up in a small coastal town in Italy, a similar setting to I vitelloni (1953). The difference is that it explores the life - of Fellini, I presume - of a boy younger than the young men in I vitelloni. It takes us further inside his school and his family and the people that populate the town he grows up in.

It feels far more hit and miss than I vitelloni which was in essence a far more serious film. Amarcord is a comic observation of Titta's (Fellini, we assume) life and the things that he liked and disliked about growing up. There's an array of characters that are quickly but clearly drawn. There are no deep characterisations. It's all about Titta and how Titta sees the world. The camera is not particularly positioned to make it look like it's describing how he views life, but as he's the only fully developed character, and the other characters are sketches or caricatures, it stands to reason that what Amarcord gives us is Titta's perspective.

There are some wonderful moments and some moments where the shouting in the family squabbles  could have been more restrained. It probably was allowed to go over the top because Fellini is into the overblow, larger-than-life, period of his filmmaking which was preceded by the twin lavish films: Roma (1972) and Satyricon (1969), and followed by the equally lavish: Casanova (1976).

I can imagine that Italian audiences would have found it very amusing to be depicted in this way, just as many Australians like Muriel's Wedding and The Castle, and many Americans like American Graffiti (1973) and Diner (1982). Looking back at a film made forty-five years ago, I found more in common with I vitelloni, made fifty-five years ago, released in the year of my birth.

Nino Rota, a long-time Fellini collaborator, has written one of his most delightful melodies and scores for Amarcord. Along with The Godfather, it contains his most beautiful music. And The Last Metro. And War and Peace. And Waterloo.

Of course, there are many directors who worked with the same composer several times: Joe Dante & Jerry Goldsmith, Franklin J Schaffner & Jerry Goldsmith, John Sturges & Elmer Bernstein, Alfred Hitchcock & Bernard Herrmann, Howard Hawks & Dmitri Tiomkin, Christopher Nolan & Hans Zimmer, Brian DePalma & Pino Donaggio.

There are, however, fewer relationships which are so strong that it's easier to count when they didn't work together than when they did. That relationship is so strong and defining that it sounds strange when another composer was used in a film (such as - with Spielberg - Thomas Newman in Bridge of Spies and Quincy Jones in The Color Purple; and - with Blake Edwards - Jerry Goldsmith in Wild Rovers and John Barry in The Tamarind Seed - but less so with Lee Holdridge in Micki and Maude).

The Fellini-Rota composer-director collaboration is one of the longest ongoing collaborations where, almost always, a famous film director works with the same composer. Notable associations where one composer has worked on the overwhelming majority of a director's output, ranging from the director's earliest feature films until one of them fell ill or died are:

Federico Fellini - Nino Rota (every film but the first)

Steven Spielberg - John Williams (all but three films, and a segment)

Tim Burton - Danny Elfman (every film)

Robert Zemeckis - Alan Silvestri (every film since 'Romancing the Stone')

Blake Edwards - Henry Mancini (all but three films, I think)

Joel and Ethan Coen - Carter Burwell (every film, I think)

 

Day 291

Monday 16 April 2018 1.34am

 La dolce vita  1960

A Federico Fellini Film

La dolce vita ranks 39th and 37th in the respective Critics' and Directors' Polls from 2012.

It's a significant achievement to rank in the Top 50 of both Polls. When I reached the end I think I understood the ground the film was exploring but to rank it as one of the Ten Best films ever made, which 33 critics and 13 directors did, was surprising. Of course, there have been a lot of surprises along the way. The most recognisable names on the directors poll were Mike Figgis, Richard Eyre and Greg Mottola. On the critics list, I only recognised one name: Roger Ebert.

At the end, I felt satisfied, but I was only whelmed by La dolce vita. I wasn't overwhelmed or underwhelmed, just a little confused but its universal standing. I can only imagine I'll be similarly confused at the end of 8½ (1963).

There are quite a few characters who say very pretentious things. Sometimes it's understandable because they're famous or because they're rich or because they seem to have too much time on their hands. Few of the characters are down to earth, Marcello is the most real of them all, however, even though he has pretentions. It's probably deliberate but the depictions of this kind of person are frequently caricatures. Maybe there's a blend of outrageous dialogue that had people in Italy rolling in the aisles while I was more quietly rolling my eyes. I don't know. I need to explore more about this film.

Since watching Juliet of the Spirits, I vitelloni and La strada, I have stared to read some articles (two actually - Richard Roud's book and the article in FILM) on Fellini, trying to understand what motivates him and what people see and like in his work. I've only read the bits of the articles that discuss the films I've already seen , not the ones which are on the list to see. But already, I get the fact that his films contain, for the most part during this period between 1953 and 1965, autobiographical elements. With that information it's an easy association to see that the Marcello character would represent a lot of things about Fellini himself. Especially so, because by naming the character after the actor playing him, it points to the fact that it represents something real - an in-joke, I'm guessing. Also, because that character - Marcello - lives in a similar world to where Fellini would have found himself in 1959. Already the winner of major awards - with numerous important award nominations - around the world for his work, he would have been mixing with the types he describes in this depiction of the rich and famous. Whether he is lampooning them, just identifying them for who they are, or neatly skewering them, presumably Marcello's world is almost exactly Fellini's world. Fellini, also presumably, would ask himself what he thinks of his own work and its value as a film, as a work of art and whether he sees himself as an artist or a pretender? The questions that Marcello the journalist, the reporter, one of the paparazzi, who is lucky enough to brush Italy's elite, asks himself are, a) could I write something worthwhile and b) could I be more than a writer of puff-pieces for "Fascists papers"?

In Fellini's world - especially as an artist who co-writes the films he directs - it makes sense that he wonders where he fits into the bigger picture. As a writer-director he's going to receive the success or the blame when anyone gives there opinion about his latest film, whether they're a friend, a colleague, a journalist, a critic or someone who saw it at a Film Festival or in a cinema. While he had acknowledgment for La strada and I vitelloni - both nominated for Oscars for Best Screenplay, and Nights of Cabiria nominated for Cannes' Palme d'Or, and by 1958, a three-time winner of the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists' Best Director award, he would have experienced his fair share of criticism as well. And criticism to artists is often felt and taken personally. At the very least, it makes you question whether film journalists giving you awards means that your a successful hack or someone with real artistic talent. Or whether Oscar nominations are pure tokenism.

Marcello in La dolce vita wants to be a writer and appreciates good writing and good painting and the good things in life but knows that he's just a man who writes stories about sensations. He's the newspaper equivalent of a hack. He wants to be more than what he knows he is deep down. But he probably can't.

Day 290

Sunday 15 April 2018 11.34pm

 'Not such a dolce vita'   2018

I started watching La dolce vita with my wife but after 75 minutes I could see she was struggling to stay awake. Not just because of its weirdness - the scene with the children who say they have seen The Blessed Virgin, floating in a field, her feet not touching the ground, for instance - but because of its aimless, meandering, episodic manner, and its length. I told her she could give up on it if she wanted and she did. It's not that she couldn't have watched it all under other circumstances. It's Sunday night, it's been busy, and she was going to snooze through most of it. Better to be a good husband and stop. We watched a couple of episode of The Good Wife, Season 5 instead. They were good episodes and it was the right thing to do.

It's a very different thing for me to be in the last quarter of my project having subjected myself to so many other films from Europe that are considered to be amongst the greatest films ever made. But, to torture her with a film that seemed to have no discernible purpose, was more than I could ask of her. For me, it had less of a traditional story than I thought for a Fellini film of this period. It was slow and seemed pointless. I didn't throw in the towel, I just delayed watching the last 105 minutes by 90-minutes. It felt more like Antonioni or Godard than what I'd expected from Fellini, having liked both I Vitelloni (1953) and La strada's (1954) more conventional storytelling.

Day 290

Sunday 15 April 2018

 La strada   1954

A Federico Fellini Film

La strada ranks 202nd and 26th in the respective Critics' and Directors' Polls from 2012. It's a significant achievement endorsment by directors and a significant snub by the critics. 8 critics and 15 directors voted this in their Top Ten Films Ever. The most recognisable names on the directors poll were Gillies Mackinnon, Jiri Menzel, Mike Newell and Andrei Konchalovsky. On the critics list, I didn't recognise any names.

Out of 350 directors 28 split their votes between La strada and La dolce vita and 67 split their votes between the aforementioned films and 8½ (Andrei Konchalovsky voted for 8½ and La strada, Jiri Menzel [director of Closely Observed Trains, itself a highly regarded film] voted for three Fellini films in his Top Ten: 8½, Nights of Caribria and Amarcord).

Interestingly, Mike Newell and Jiri Menzel have something in common. Both voted for La strada in their top ten and Jiri Menzel's film OSTRE SLEDOVANÉ VLAKY (1966) was in Mike Newell's top ten list, along with La strada.

Day 289

Saturday 14 April 2018 6.37pm

 I vitelloni  1953

I vitelloni is Fellini's third film. It's a straightforward drama about five young men who are drifting through life in a small Italian town. Fausto is a womaniser who has impregnated the local beauty, Sandra.  Morando, Sandra's brother, follows Fausto around, harbouring ideas of going to the city. Leopoldo wants to be a writer and is trying to find a way to start a career as a playwright. Riccardo wants to be a singer. Alberto hangs out with them, also wandering aimlessly, and is just as unambitious as the rest of them. There seems little hope for any of them escaping their small-town existence. Except for one. It is only Morando who looks to have the hope of a significant future because he breaks away from the group and boards a train taking him away from everything that that small town represents, headed for who knows where? The big smoke? Rome?

I wonder if there is an autobiographical aspect to this story and whether Fellini sees himself as someone from a small town with daydreams of something bigger, somewhere else?

Fausto - a serial adulterer - is reunited with Sandra at the end. If Fellini had any intention of putting hope into the final scene with Fausto and Sandra, it doesn't make sense to think there is one chance in a million that Fausto could change. He can't be anyone other than he has been throughout.  Everything we've seen and know about his character has told us everything we need to know about Fausto. But Alberto and Morando - they're more complex characters.

I vitelloni reminds me of the neo-realism of gritty films like Rocco and His Brothers (1955) and Never On Sunday (1960). I've always had  the feeling that Fellini films were likes circuses and contained wildly imaginative scenes, full of dream sequences and altered realities. Not with I vitelloni.

"Having dreams is not something that comes out very strongly in 'I vitelloni'. It's more a film about not having dreams"

- Philip Powers, April 2018

Day 288

Friday 13 April 2018 15.32pm

 'The Fellini Curse' 2018

This morning I watched Juliet of the Spirits (1965). I could have watched La Strada (1954), La dolce vita (1960), 8½ (1963), Amarcord (1973), I Vitelloni (1953) or Putting Fellini on Hold for Another Week. I opted for Juliet of the Spirits because I thought it was the earliest of his films I had access to, and without checking, I just put it in the DVD tray, pressed close, pressed play and watched it. I'm so mad at myself. I always watch the earliest films first and then work forward. I never like to start in the middle of a career of anyone because their earliest works always tell a tale in the development of a director. Every director ever, in the history of the world.

For me to start with his eleventh film when I could have watched his third, fifth, eighth or ninth film, first, is complete insanity. Especially believing (and deceiving myself that) it was one of his earliest works, when it was actually one of his most mature works.

I haven't liked (or had any significant praise for) any of the films I've seen directed by Federico Fellini. I don't like the bits and pieces I've seen in clips and I haven't enjoyed the style he has adopted in several films. This all begs the question, given that he is undoubtedly one of the greatest directors from any country, from the first film he ever made up until Friday the 13th, 2018, "what films of his have I seen?"

I have a memory loss when it comes to remembering what Fellini I have seen and haven't seen. I saw at least one Fellini at University, and at least two or three because two or three friends of mine admired his work. I'm pretty sure I've seen The White Sheik (1952), Amarcord, 8½ , Satyricon (1978), Fred and Ginger (1986), The Ship Sails On (1983) and Orchestra Rehearsal (1978). Definitely not La Strada, La dolce vita or Juliet of the Spirits, nor I Vitelloni. Probably The Nights of Cabiria (1957). With Fellini I have a strange absence of memory. With most other films I can remember either 1) where I saw it, 2) with whom I saw it, or 3) the year I saw it.

With Fellini: I get nothing. A complete blank.

My strongest memories are that I know the music by Nino Rota for almost all of their most famous film collaborations. I've heard it on LP and several friends have played me their favourite Nino Rota scores for Fellini films.

Next memory: I don't seem to be able to comprehend the leaps Fellini takes between what is meant to be experienced as reality and what is a dream, a flashback or some kind of alternate reality. The line, between what reality and fantasy look like, is so blurred in so many Fellini films, I don't know what's real and what's some kind of technical error in having some scenes interspersed, as if the antenna on the tv had gone haywire and was swapping between this film and another five films.

Dare I say it, I enjoyed the first Friday the 13th movie more than any Fellini film so far. While it wasn't a great film, or even a good horror film, I immediately understood what it thought it was, or thought it was attempting to be. I think I completely understood Friday the 13th and where it was coming from: its roots, its beginning, it's middle and its end. It was low-budget. It was B or C-grade but it was always very clear what it was, whereas but Fellini is a world away - from a different culture and country, in a different era, in a different language.

Fellini's films, with their episodic narrative, and their bizarre mixture of what is real, what is fantasy, what is fantasised reality, what is truth and what the viewer is left with at the end, alienate me from any kind of comprehension or any kind of understanding of what I'm meant to take as the real parts of the story and the unreal parts of the story. This need for clarity in what I see and what I read, is so fundamental to my ability to live day-to-day in my own world, that Fellini's films - partly real, partly false, partly bizarre and often crazy - do-my-head-in.

Last night I finished updating the website, writing my thoughts on The Death of Stalin (2017) and decided I needed to have 20-30 minutes winding down time. I have done this before with films or with directors who I see as threatening to my ability to understand the things in the world of cinema around me which I think I understand. What I watched was episodic, with strange flights of fantasy, with very little conventional plotting or film narrative.

Fellini is that man. I dipped my toe into the first 25 minutes of Juliet of the Spirits and found myself bewildered. There are some obvious moments which are dreams or inner thoughts and there are moments where the wife's reality doesn't match the real reality of the style of film I've been watching so far. Dream sequences are easy to spot because people close their eyes - have a dream - open their eyes, and then it's over. If you live in the world of Freddy Krueger then it's not that simple. That's the genius of Wes Craven's concept. You close your eyes, someone's chasing you with ten knives, you dream you're opening your eyes, but you're still in the dream, and despite the fact that your mind thinks you are now safe because you're awake, you're still asleep, Freddy can still get you and slice you into pieces.

I wonder if Wes Craven got his idea of blending reality with thoughts in one's mind, and dreams and nightmares, from watching Fellini films of the late sixties and the seventies. I think Wes Craven could have created Freddy Krueger out of not knowing what's real and what isn't, from his experience of watching Fellini films.

I sure as hell know that when I'm watching A Nightmare on Elm Street or Wes Craven's New Nightmare that I'm far more comfortable in my own skin, and of my surroundings than when I'm watching Fellini.

This alone probably makes Fellini one of the greatest directors of all-time. He developed an approach, which was quite original, as far as originality can possibly be viewed as original, which was then copied by many other people:

"Hello 12 Monkeys, Hello The Sixth Sense, Hello Wes Craven, Hello Stephen King and The Shining."

Tonight, I broke the barrier that kept me from liking Fellini. To not be sure of what happens in Fellini's films and where we are at the end of a Fellini film, is to accept Fellini between the early sixties and the mid-seventies. To live in a world (like Terry Gilliam's world) which is so real one minute and so bizarre the next, is to accept Fellini.

I'm surprised it took me so long to grasp this understanding because the music in Fellini's films have been describing reality and fantasy in the clearest terms. I've just never cottoned on before.

Wow. Wow. Wow. Nino Rota's music gives the viewer the cue for what's real and what's not.

I loved Juliet of the Spirits. It's a brilliantly conceived film containing a hundred different things I now want to write about. So clever. So brilliant. It all connects up until the last scene. Then I'm at sea again.

Life is made up of moments where we suspect things which may or may not be important. We mistake many things as being significant. We ignore many things which are significant. Everything we do in life is process information our brain receives. We can interpret it any which way. Mostly, I suspect, our brain deduces the right supposition, which is that our partner (a committed being, so we think) is cheating on us with someone else.

Films of course are fantasies. Sometimes they're based on novels. Sometimes based on someone's thoughts. Often based on our own experiences. But they're always a concoction of a person who sees something that rings true and wants to express it as reality, or wants to take it to the next level, what they see in their dreams.

I think it would be interesting to take all the real scenes out of Juliet of the Spirits and to write them all down, including the dialogue. Then you can set aside the fantasy elements and know what is real and what is fantasy.

Jeepers! This is an excellent film mixing different realities and different fantasies. Like dreams, they are confusing and when you try to put the storyline together, it doesn't match.

I now love Juliet of the Spirits. It's an extraordinary movie and this is how I got to see it that way despite my preconceived ideas about Fellini.

I think I finally get Fellini.

Friday 13 April 2018 1.21am

Das kaninchen bin ich  1965

A Kurt Maetzig Film

This is one of the very best, most brilliant films of the 9 weeks so far. Some were a bit of a hard slog but this film was delightful, deft, fascinating, winning, enjoyable, witty, romantic and was better scripted, better acted, had more to say than most films in the mid-sixties from any country. In every area it was expertly done. 

Here's my synopsis submitted to IMDB:

Maria Morzcek (Angelikar Waller) lives in East Germany with her Aunt Hete (Ilse Voigt). Maria narrates a lot of the story. Recently, her brother, Dieter (Wolfgang Winkler), has been jailed for three years for subversive behaviour and she's been seduced by her gym teacher at school. The school principal tries to get her to condemn her brother's behaviour. She refuses. After finishing school she is rejected by the university she applied to enter and becomes a waitress. By chance, at a concert, she meets the judge responsible for her brother’s sentencing. He is attracted to her and pursues her until they become lovers. At first she had no idea who he was but during a visit to her brother, Dieter, in prison she learned the name of the judge was Paul Deister (Alfred Müller).

He is pleasant middle-aged man who courts her and wins her affection and they begin an affair. When she is diagnosed with Spondylitis, requiring six months rest in a warm climate, he offers her the unrestricted use of his holiday home. He visits her on Sundays and Mondays and they make love. He also asks her to do some translations of Russian files he is working on, which he pays her for, making her feel more like his equal. She also gets a job as a waitress in a local bar. She tries to petition the court for Dieter to be pardoned but she recognises it is beyond her capabilities and knowledge.

Deister learns of the connection between them and is furious, thinking she is trying to manipulate him, when it is has been quite the reverse. A wedge begins to separate them. Despite everything, they are in love, and the relationship survives a few months of building tension and frustration. In the town where Maria now lives, a man’s body is found in the lake. One of the searchers, Grambow (Rudolf Ulrich), in a drunken moment, denounces the German Democratic Republic when he reveals in a public bar that the dead man was a non-commissioned officer. He compares the importance of a commissioned officer with the dead man and denounces the elitist attitude towards working class people, who were the people who enlisted and earned their rank, and those who feel entitled. Deister witnesses the situation and defuses. As a hard-liner he believes it requires the full penalty the law can adjudicate. The local Mayor (Helmut Schellhardt) tries to reason with Deister about the level at which the offence should be regarded.

A local court is convened and evidence is heard, including testimony from Maria, but she and the town refuse to condemn Grambow. He is let off with a suspended sentence of 90-days compared with the three-years that Dieter received for a similar offence. This leniency incenses Maria and causes the divide, between Paul’s beliefs and her experience, to widen.

One day a car pulls up at the house in the country. She expects Paul but it is Deister’s wife, Gabriele (Irma Münch). She’s quite restrained in her manner as she meets the 19-year old mistress, and Maria learns that Judge Deister tried to commit suicide recently, but failed. It appears that the relationship is over until Deister runs into Maria again and attempts to win her back by showing that he has listened to what she has said to him and changed. He tells her, "A new wind is blowing." He’s willing to write to the court regarding Dieter, to get him an early release. Maria realises that he’s actually looking to service his own career yet again by going with the popular belief, of a judicial system that should now show more compassion and be more lenient in sentencing. She tears his letter up and ends the relationship.

When Dieter is released from prison he learns that Maria had an affair with the judge who sentenced him. He beats her. She recovers from the beating and resolves to move out of her Aunt’s flat and make her own way in the world. She will work as a waitress as long as she needs to. Rejected from studying at a university she will try to be responsible for her own progress, using her Russian-language skills to get a position as an interpreter. She is wiser and a more mature nineteen-year old than less than a year before. There’s a determination in every step she takes to show she will make something of herself and stand up for herself. She won’t be pushed around anymore, by Deiter or Diester, or anyone.

– Philip Powers

Day 287

Thursday 12 April 2018 11.29pm

Week 9:

History of World Cinema

Typically David Stratton talks for sixty, seventy or eighty minutes, depending on how long the film he's chosen runs. He shows clips from the year we're studying and provides a bit of background information on the director and what the film is about. Often he shows little scenes without any words of judgment, not painting the film in a certain way. More often than not, however, he does have something to say, which in some weeks, like when discussing American comedies from 1965, can be overwhelmingly negative. This week, looking at films from France, Italy and Germany, he had many positive things to say, even about a big budget spectacle like, Is Paris Burning? Often the big budget spectacles get hauled over the coals, like The Hallelujah Trail which he labelled as an attempt at a Comedy Epic. "It's neither funny, nor epic," he says. With this film he noted it was modelled after The Longest Day (1962) and he read out an extraordinary list of actors to prove it, calling Is Paris Burning?, "long but quite absorbing."

"We're going to start this evening in France with a comedy." The film, The Sucker, shows two men and blonde girl in a convertible jumping out of the car to take photos of the leaning tower of Pisa. Then the phone in the car rings. [This is 1965.] The blonde answers it, and it looks like a regular phone. In another car, a man warns her of several things which might be useful to know. It's quite funny.

This was followed by René Clair's last film, La fête galante, a period film showing men protecting a fort and other men trying to climb up to the battlements using ladders, with bombs and bullets going off all around. But when the hour for lunch is reached a bugle is sounded, the leaders of both armies acknowledge how well fought the other army had fought, and take a break, the war to continue once lunch has been finished. Very amusing also.

There were also clips from Juliet of the Spirits, a Polish filmmaker's animated film, Les jeux des anges (Angels' Games), For a Few Dollars More and The Tenth Victim, in which a deadly hunting game is organized, with real guns and real bullets. Just not in restaurants or childcare centres. The restrictions are becoming so broad now that one killer sighs, declaring that you're not allowed to kill people anywhere these days.

Visconti also made Vaghe stelle dell'orsa (Sandra), in which we see the beautiful Claudia Cardinale in bed with a man, Fists in the Pocket ("a striking debut... a very powerful first film by Marco Bellocchio") - we saw the trailer, Io la conosceno bene (I Knew Her Well), where a man tries to talk a woman into paying to have nude photos taken of her and Die abenteuer des werner holt, an East German film which is typical of the kind of film the German Democratic Republic would allow to be shown. This scene was to contrast with the film, another film completely out of left field, Das kaninchen bin ich - translated in English as The Rabbit is Me.

Stratton said that the restrictions around how far you could go politically in films were relaxed a little bit in the mid-sixties, then Kurt Maetzig made his film, the restrictions were then tightened again before the film could be released. The result was a ban that last for twenty-five years. The film came to light in 1990 and screened in 1991 at a Film Festival which included a German retrospective. Until then the film hadn't surfaced and he said that it was a well-kept secret by the East Germans, because in his capacity as Director of the Sydney Film Festival, where he would travel the world looking for interesting foreign films to bring to Australia, it was usual to hear about the films that were banned in any given country even if you couldn't get to see them. In this case, the East German government kept even the film's existence a secret, along with the ban. It was hidden from the world, essentially not existing for a quarter of a century. The director was in his mid-fifties when he made it and was almost eighty when it was finally released.

According to Stratton, the film was banned for being, "anti-socialist and pessimistic", and was seen as "a revisionist attack on the state." It would have been a new direction for filmmaking in 1965 but it wasn't seen until "the [Berlin] wall came down".

Day 287

Thursday 12 April 2018 1.31am

The Death of Stalin 2017

An Armando Iannucci Film

There are several things I like about this film. Its direction and its production values: the attention to detail in art direction and set decoration, the commitment of the actors to the characters they're playing, the cinematography and the casting. More than anything, the score which is a 10/10. It weaves themes from a Mozart Piano Concerto and Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony in a self-assured way that is beyond what I would expect from a good original film score. And, it does it with some of the greatest themes or motifs in the history of music, bringing them in to underline the scenes in the film with the most drama of the film's story. The music works as the authentic, dynamic and brutal, feelings at the heart of a film of this subject matter, incongruous against the brawling comedy and the clowning of the actors with their Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, exchanges.

Love it or hate it, I don't think there's any doubt that The Death of Stalin is a bold film. Its comedy is of a level I would normally associate with a bedroom farce - or the adolescent humour of Black Adder - with its light-comedy approach of previous decades. And yet it plumbs the depths of the worst parts of human nature, its deadly machinations – a brother to Shakespeare's most serious works about kings and princes and heir-apparents – where enemies ingratiate themselves to the point they appear to be the most loyal.

Anthony Lane, for whom I have great respect, writes in the New Yorker, that The Death of Stalin is

"a startling new film from Armando Iannucci... The dumbfounding thing about “The Death of Stalin” is that it’s a comedy — the broadest and often the bloodiest of farces. It is grossly neglectful of the basic decencies, cavalier toward historical facts, and toxically tasteless... The damnable problem, however, is that it’s funny; ten times funnier, by my reckoning, than it has any right to be, and more riddled with risk than anything that Iannucci has done before, because it dares to meet outrage with outrage... Every gag is girded with fear. The humor is so black that it might have been pumped out of the ground... Here is a society on the verge of a nervous breakdown... Perhaps comedy, far from being disqualified for so unhappy a task, is the only genre that can tackle it."

What Lane sees as terrific in Stalin I see as ordinary Mr Bean. There's bad Mr Bean and ordinary Mr Bean and Mr Bean that has some good moments but which is excruciatingly awful.

That's what The Death of Stalin is: a half hour sit-com full of good ideas, expanded into a 90-minute film; but for every good idea there are nine bad ones.

Day 286

Wednesday 11 April 2018 01.05am

'Wrapping-up Resnais'  2018

Today was spent travelling from the doctor to the hospital to the x-ray place. Waiting for my name to be called in waiting-rooms for hours-on-end, gave me the opportunity to spend several hours typing up dialogue and narration relevant for my response to the two Resnais films I watched over the last few days which feature on lots of Top-Ten lists. 

As for the results on the ribs? My long-term family doctor looked at the x-rays taken three weeks ago, a couple of hours after the fall, and thought their might be fractures to the seventh and fifth ribs. He prescribed me some medication and sent me off to have new x-rays taken.

This gave me the chance to look at, and reflect on, a lot words in Last Year at Marienbad (1961).

It's a film which is intense, and dreamlike, but not nightmarish.

Day 285

Tuesday 10 April 2018 11.59pm

Black Panther  2018

I waited so long to see Black Panther I almost missed it altogether because in thirty-six hours it drops to one session a day: 9.30am.

As far back as the Oscars I heard them talking about this superhero movie smashing box-office records and providing African American audiences, just like Wonder Woman did for women, providing a superheo they could identify with. Like Wonder Woman it provides an origin story which sets up how Black Panther was introduced to the human race.

It's particularly interesting from one very deliberate and pointed attitude: it does what Hollywood films have done for decades, in reverse: it's given the film a token white-guy. It's more than humorous, it's hilarious. Things have finally come full circle and those with dark skin around the world finally have a hero who is interested in justice and fairness. The end of the film has the king of Kawanda address the United Nations, offering to share this third world country's advanced technology with the world. The King is there to build bridges with the world. Being a wise man, he notes that fools build barriers. It obvious from the reaction that the world has, as presented through the eyes of people who represent the countries comprising the United Nations, that this will not be an easy process. And why would it be easy? Whether you're an alien from outer-space, or a white man in a black man's world, or a genius in a world of idiots, acceptance of an African man - powerful in mind, body an spirit - and his culture will be for them the equivalent of pushing a snowball up a mountain. They have the desire to present their gifts to mankind gently, fairly and with humility.

Another particularly interesting aspect of the plot is that the villain is a black person in what is still essentially a white man's world, who is half Kawandan and half American. He has fought for America in all of its recent wars, including Afghanistan and Iraq, and has killed for America, his country, for his fellow-Americans. Along the way he has become blinded by hatred. This makes it impossible for him to see clearly as he wants revenge first, and then power, and then to give power to black people over white people.

It is a remarkable film in several ways, but when everything is stripped away from the film's basic storyline, it's simultaneously as simple-minded as Batman or Spiderman's motive for doing what he does - they want to do good, rescuing the innocent and punishing the guilty - and as rich and complex as suggesting that the motives for the behaviour of people shouldn't be black and white. It still reduces everything to black and white, in both senses - simplistic and racially - but when the King of Kawanda addresses the United Nations it's important to note that he does it as a human being who is head of a country, to people of all colours. At that point, no matter how anyone else listening to his speech hears his words, he's not saying them with the thought that he is a black man, with black family members, and black bodyguards and king of a race who are all black. Like Wonder Woman, who isn't thinking of herself as a woman fighting crime, these two superheroes are fighting anyone who is unfairly oppressed by others.

It's a good film, definitely an important film, and has far more to say about society and justice and the use of power than any Iron Man, Batman, Captain America, Incredible Hulk, Ant-man or Spiderman film.

However, I didn't absolutely love the film as pure entertainment and I think a lot of other comic-book adaptations have been more brilliantly written and executed.

Tuesday 10 April 2018 01.36am

Last Year at Marienbad 1961

An Alain Resnais Film

I watched the whole film last night/now and found it an unexpectedly rewarding experience. Wow. Not a hard ask at all when I've slept well and seen two popcorn films during the day, taken the girls to soccer training and had a Thai dinner with my closest friend, Kate.

More than every it is about time and memory and the inaccuracy of what is real to one or more of us, which agrees or disagrees with someone else.

It's a film of shades of visuals, audio and acting and narrative (which I define as meaning, it tells a story, no matter how discombobulated the delivery). It has a definite three-dimensional landscape - in the mind, or the hotel or the land - of many different paths or corridors or doors - and psychological setting. I'm hazy about the emotional setting as it is so disconnected that I can't determine who is genuinely, emotionally, connected to anyone else. It appears to me like it is a game without an even contest. One man keeps winning the game no matter who goes first or whether he or the opponent take a number of odd objects or even objects.

That man is the ultimate manipulator. He is a being or a representation of a living being who always defeats his living opponents. I'm fairly certain that whoever he is or represents that he can't keep the woman he thinks or believes and acts as if he owns.

It also has a title which I've always thought of in one way, 'The Last Year at (the hotel) Marienbad - Ever' instead of being about 'Last Year' at Marienbad. I don't think Resnais was trying to be tricky with the title but I took it that there was a hotel, people went there for years and years and at some point before it closed there was a 'last year' at Marienbad. I thought that this film would be about the last year at Marienbad for a group of people who had been going to Marienbad for years. I never thought it would refer to what happened twelve months ago at Marienbad which impacts everything which happens this year at Marienbad.

After Nuit et brouillard (1956) and Hiroshima mon amour (1959) I feel certain that in 1961 Resnais is still intent on representing a historical fact (in his own peculiar way). The historical fact is not apparent to me. The fact, played out through a series of games, and staged scenes, appears to be about something beyond the historical atrocities we have recognized previously. It's about a far more diabolical (and far more reaching) attack on who we perceive we are in this world based on how we perceive the people who we think are for us or against us.

At the end:
Man: "I came at the appointed time."
Narrator: "The hotel grounds were laid out like a kind of French garden, devoid of tress, flowers or any kind of vegetation. Gravel, stone, marble, and straight lines marked out rigid spaces, areas devoid of mystery. At first glance it seemed impossible to lose your way. At first glance, between statues with frozen gestures and granite slabs, where even now you were losing your way forever."

Day 284

Monday 9 April 2018 3.49pm

Love, Simon   2018

A beautiful coming-of-age story set in an American High School. The difference between this film and every film before it, is what the trailer trumpets and tells everyone anyway.

There's a big-ass secret. And it does it well. It's believable most importantly and also credible. To create life in a school that is something anyone can reflect as something they've experienced, or have knowledge of, is a tremendous achievement.

The film is well made but has too many moments where it doesn't ring true. The moments where it has plot points which are vague or have unsubstantiated emotional reactions are so frequent that it will never be regarded as an excellent film, just a good one. Just the first major Hollywood film to go where many writers and directors have gone before.

Monday 9 April 2018  12.24pm

A Quiet Place   2018

There's a quiet place in this film for two reasons. The first is because one of the three children of a couple trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world, or a dystopian world, is deaf. The second is because any sound they make which gives away their position in any landscape or building in the film means almost certain death. That's the set-up and this means that spoken words are minimal and that subtitles are the only way to understand the sign language the family (nearly always) uses to communicate with each other. It doesn't make it a 'silent film' but it does make it one of the most silent films in the last seventy or eighty years. When sound is used, it is to underlines the importance of the absence of sound for this family's survival.

If this was a book, where you told someone to not judge the book by its cover, it would be also be a film where you asked someone to not judge it by its trailer, because on the surface it seems to be something which appears trite, cliched and a clone of horror films which have done it, many, many times, far better.

The only reason I went to see it was because it was on at 10am and if I was to watch a film I did want to see, at 1pm, this was my only choice. The option of course would be to not go to the 10am film and just the 1pm film. However, it had Emily Blunt on the poster. She's an actress I've liked in three or four films. She's not actress for whom I don't have any negative feelings. I weighed up the pros and cons which were:

a) it's a horror film (from the poster) - which means it could be good or bad or anywhere inbetween.
b) it runs 90 minutes (which means it is either concise or not good enough to run longer or has been shredded)
c) it has an actress with a big name (which means she probably liked the script when she read it before choosing to act in the film) so if she saw something in it, maybe there is something in it.

What It Is and What It Isn't:

It's a standard film in the style of War of the Worlds or The Day of the Triffids or The Book of Eli or a hundred horror films where a predator (Urban Legend, Freddy Krueger, Alien), alien or zombie tries to bite or kill you.

It's not a standard film in that genre because it's about living in a relentless world where making a sound will kill you, but where trust between people is the most important ingredient for survival, where a family grows closer because of that need, or where children don't understand the need for such daily caution, or where the daily pressure mounts to a pressure-cooker situation.

It would be easy to tear this film apart and point out its flaws. It's harder to let this film be itself and not tear it apart. It's harder to allow oneself the time - in reflection - to appreciate what it does well rather than identify its flaws. That's hard, because the flaws are abundant because the film tries so hard to do something different within a stock-standard 'killer on the loose' - 'potential victim on the run'. The viewer is asked to side with those endangered and against the forces which are trying to kill them, as every stalker film tries to develop for the would-be victims.

A Quiet Place adds the element of sign-language. It reduces dialogue - all conversations and interactons - to almost nothing. It makes non-verbal sounds important beyond what I can think of in any other film.

It's an interesting film that I'm guessing will be gutted by critics but has a little something that is different from the genre it appears to be, on the outside.

A brave film to make in a hyper-critical world.

Monday 9 April 2018 09.56am

'Soldier 101'  2018

Because I went to bed so early at 12.30am I've been awake since 4am dozing on and off. I started to look up session times for the local cineplex around 5am to see if I could catch a couple of the films I really want to see which are going to disappear soon. The prime one is Black Panther because it has been, as expected, a hit, but unexpetedly gone into mega-hit-land. The news of its success was peppered through the Oscar ceremony in March making it a film I definitely want to catch on the big-screen.

But, the first session was 3.30pm which wouldn't allow me to pick up the girls from school and get them to soccer practice by 6pm. I looked at all the other options and the best fit was A Quiet Place at 10am and Love, Simon at 1pm. I'd be home by 3.30pm and could get to watch all 94-minutes of Marienbad and still get to pick C and B up from school and get them to soccer by 6pm.Time was not my friend today and I had to adapt, on-the-run.

Both girls were sick and needed a day or two to get better, plus the concern of infecting other students. Alison let her work know she would be taking a half-day of sick & a half-day work-from-home. She wasn't feeling well because she was woken up nineteen or twenty times during the night by both girls. Because B screams the place down when she is sick I'd given up my place in our bed to her and I slept in the downstairs guest bedroom. I didn't hear the screams and carry-on until around 6am when the girls came downstairs to give the lower section of the house the same dose of crying, whingeing, yelling and screaming that the upper section was subjected to all night. At 9.10am I got up and ventured through the living room door to accept what mess was awaiting me. Both girls were home and watching movies while Ali typed away on her work computer. Honestly, my wife will hardly take one sick day a year unless she is unable to get out of bed. In ten years, she's taken two-or-three sick days once - maybe twice.

I suppose I should be grateful she's so dedicated. That attitude to her employment - her paid work - is the attitude she brings to the marriage and the family. She soldiers on when others would submit to the fact they're as sick as hell, and take a sick day. Not Alison, she gives every ounce they pay her for, working when she's sick and working longer hours than they pay her to work. She faces the hard family days, weeks and months, and sticks with it. She doesn't know the word surrender.

She told me to keep to my plan and go and see the 10am and 1pm movies. She'd deal with the kids and the temperatures and the gut-aches they're experiencing. Being a male chauvinist pig, I left her with the belief that she was capable of juggling everything while I went out and watched a couple of movies as part of my year-long project.

[Privately - until this is published - I think she was amazed I was up at 9.19am and ready to confront the world when normally I'd be comatose until 2pm, 3pm... This was a different me today... ]

Monday 9 April 2018 09.31am - 5.34pm

'Writing about Hiroshima'   2018

All day long, writing about Hiroshima mon amour (1959) in between watching movies.

Day 283

Sunday 8 April 2018

01.12pm

'A startling look at Hiroshima from a French perspective'  2018

It’s 15-minutes into Hiroshima mon amour (1959) before the story starts, picking up with a couple in bed together. The man is Japanese and the woman is French. They clearly don’t know each other very well, and the questions they ask of each other underline this. It is the conversation of two people just starting to get to know each other.

It also appears to be a metaphor for something more than that, as the director attempts to begin a conversation between what he is putting on the screen and what he wants the viewer to hear and reflect on. He does it by showing real images, past and present, and narration and conversations between the man and the woman.

That one is Japanese is, of course, important. That the other is French is probably less important. I’m guessing the French person represents anyone in the world who has an ear to hear and eyes to see and a mind to understand the horror of that moment when life in the city of Hiroshima was incinerated.

Sunday 8 April 2018

00.09am

Zodiac  2007

A David Fincher Film

This is one of the few David Fincher films that’s bypassed me since the 3rd Alien film marked his debut. One of cinema’s great visual stylists – along with Ridley Scott and Steven Spielberg – it’s remarkably restrained in terms of camera placement and flashy movements. Panic Room, for instance, was extraordinary for its placement of the camera in places it couldn’t fit, and going where cameras can’t go.  But somewhere amongst the genius of the visuals in Panic Room the film was overwrought. It’s as if Fincher took the word panic from the title and then spread it across every facet of his filmmaking style.

Here, in Zodiac, the film has a different feel than any other David Fincher film that comes to mind (other than his greatest film, the serial-killing Se7en. It’s like he’s recreating All the President’s Men, with all the cloak-and-dagger, but in a complex serial-killer mystery thriller. After the first few murders are over, he settles into exploring characterisations and showing the meticulous research by the detectives and Graysmith in pursuing what was for several decades an unsolvable crime. Possibly, still, even now.

At the end, it’s all based on Graysmith’s findings, which may have been tickled to underline significant comparisons, and then may have been tickled further by Fincher to make even more significant associations of the facts on record. Who knows? This kind of riddle and how it is depicted in a film is almost always impossible for a viewer to fathom what was true and what was the use of a creative licence.

What it does do, however, is plot the research of several real people across a period of fifteen to twenty years, and make it more complex than a Michael Connelly thriller, more dimensional than a James Patterson thriller, and more intriguing than anything Agatha Christie ever conceived of.

Well done, David Fincher!

Day 282

Saturday 7 April 2018 11.44pm

'Marienbad: 1st Attempt' 2018

Last night after writing about The Dressmaker, I chose to play the first 30 minutes of Last Year at Marienbad to get a sense of how it felt. That's all I planned. I just wanted to get a sense of it as this is a film whose name has been in my mind for decades for many and various reasons. I watched just over thirty-minutes and realised it was beyond comprehension (from 30-minutes) and would require as I give all films, a complete sitting. I don't know why I sampled it. It's not a thing I ever do. But I did.

I was scared of it, actually, and wanted to know what tomorrow might look like if I watched the entire film. Would it be easy or pleasant or miserable or alienating? It was more alien than easy. At a certain point (around the 40-minute mark) I pressed pause and shut the system down thinking, I'll watch the film from start to finish tomorrow night after the 5th birthday party celebration here at my house.

Day 281

Friday 6 April 2018 11.49pm

The Dressmaker  2015

Left of them and right of them, onward they came, the six hundred. This was a film far outside of the scope of my project which I knew nothing about (but happened to own because someone offered it to me for $7 on blu-ray - which is a long story).

I had no idea that this was an Australian film. I had no knowledge of the director, writer or composer. Such is my anitpathy now towards films, made in my own country, which I once was the first person to see, that I now avoid watching most Australian films.

I'm not proud of this fact. It is probably (PTSD) Post-Traumatic Stress-Disorder. Recognise it, see it, and walk away.

But, it has a sad foundation in being burned by the industry I used to love, as good or as bad as the films are now.

After forty film credits I found that I couldn't do the ups and downs and merry-go-rounds. There's a point where beating your head against a brick wall becomes painful and bloody.

In 2016 I approached fifteen producers to put fifty important soundtracks online. The resistance and the excuses were so abundant that after a year of trying, I gave up, having achieved just one contract. It left me tired and sad that my head and brick-walls kept smashing into each other. It left me in tears.

But all of that is another story.

Meanwhile, The Dressmaker, was really well-done. Mim suggested we watch it tonight instead of La-La Land and I didn't have a strong opinion left, right or centre.

If I'd know it was an Australian film I probably would have said no.

If I'd known it was Jocelyn Moorhouse, I would definitely have said yes.

[What happened to her with Russell - the big bully - Crowe - the film that had a green light which she stepped away from - makes me her fan for life. Such courage in the face of what must have seemed to her like surrendur or defeat.]

If I'd known she wrote this film with P.J. Hogan I would also have said yes to watching it.

There's a point in filmmaking where the (apparent) point of production is unimportant anymore.

For me, it's now about someone saying, "there's a film I'm interested in watching made by BLAH and made in BLAH (an undetermined country.)"

"Okay," I'll say. Almost always.

Day 281

Friday 6 April 2018 06.58pm

Ready Player One  2018

Whatever the intention of Cline's novel, Ready Player One, Spielberg does the gaming part of it proud.

Never before (a little in Tin Tin) have I seen Spielberg hand over the reins to other people and work with them in creating something completely new.

How could he have the knowledge of people who play games 24x7 when he's producing films 24x7. I assume he has the most amazing collection of games - hardly played - but whereas games were at the cutting edge every two years, now it's twice a year, then it's every two months, and every two weeks.

New graphics are designed for games which can produce a new release which can make a billion dollars in its first day of release. A big Hollywood feature can make a billion dollars in six weeks, and only twenty - or less - films have done that.

So Spielberg and (I'm calling them) his team, have to create a gaming world which is ahead of where gaming technology currently is, to be current. At best it's a no-win situation and at worst it is a Lose-Lose situation.

The film goes far enough back into the world of Atari games that it included the people who are 50-ish. Then there are the references to Commodore-64 games and the pinball machines. The plot grabs those points in time and tries to connect them with the current creators/gamers who are creating worlds, environments and avatars and adventures which I can't even conceive of (mostly because I've not played a game since 1990).

With a billion dollars on the line I've assumed that Spielberg and his team have brought everything up to the most recent point in time in the gaming world. And if the current population can't be satisfied as easily as the older population (me) then it is a lost cause and a billion dollars of special effects down the tube.

So, for a filmgoer its about stripping away the effects and seeing what story the story has to tell.

The story is about disenfranchised youths battling against the people that make the games and tell them what they can play and what is popular now.

Where Ready Player One may miss out, is in the fact that the name harks back to arcade games, where there was a player one and a player two.

Now, it's (like the film shows) a bunch of people against a bunch of other people.

The audience is a bunch of elderly people against a bunch of new-gamers. Where I thought this film was headed was in engaging with the present, not a game from the past, which no fifteen year old has even heard of.

The Post was Spielbergs' 2018 Amistad - revealing past wrongs - and Ready Player One is Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark showing people that archaeologists and Steve Jobs and the Microsoft guy - can be cool even though they're socially challenged (in this film) beyond any standards we currently accept.

That reference to the dork mentality is the most embarrasing thing about RP1. Sure, it's a history of gaming and it looks to the future, but no thirteen-year old is going to accept James Halliday as their guru. He's beyond the dork that Spielberg must have been in his high-school days. A monumental miscalculation. But, an excellent film.

Misreading your audience doesn't mean that you misread your crowd.

Day 281

Friday 6 April 2018 02.22am

'Writing and Thinking. Thinking and Writing'

For the last 72-hours I’ve been thinking about Pather panchali and The Apu Trilogy (and the essay I'm researching and writing), and Bunuel’s second last film, The Phantom of Liberty (and the essay I’m writing). Also formulating the ideas around the great Resnais film, Hiroshima mon amour (and the essay I’m writing) and The Bedford Incident (the essay I’ve yet to start).

I’ve come to an understanding of my own mind - that before I can release 445 words about my opinion about something, I need to spend several days cogitating. Thinking about it and writing, and deleting words and sentences and then writing and thinking. To watch a film, go to your office, or your home, and write a non-knee-jerk essay, is an unreasonable expectation if you’re going to give it, or anything, its due.

Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991 – which I haven’t seen) and Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (2016 – which I have seen) are warnings of films that could become Film School Classics of Warning: Identity Thief 101. Bad films without need for a lot of second-guessing oneself. Or maybe not!

What about Ferris Beueller (good)? Or The Breakfast Club (reasonable)? Or Dude, Where’s My Car (less than reasonable)? Are they all bad just because of the ground they till or the land they mine?

Or Alien, Lethal Weapon, The Terminator and First Blood? Most things are as they seem, granted. But not all things are. They require analysis.

So, I write and I think and I analyse and I delete and I rewrite. Every now and again I immediately hate something, like Identity Thief, which I suppose makes me a bad person.

Day 281

Friday 6 April 2018 01.01am

'Film Course, Week 8 + The Bedford Incident'

Last night's film course with David Stratton resulted in the class watching a film (The Bedford Incident - which I saw just three years ago with SZ3R and my wife) which caught me by surprise (because it was the first time so far I'd seen the film Stratton chose). Only six films are picked from all countries for each year and I was never vexed about the previous choices. I was surprised though by the fact this choice was one of my personal favourites. I've watched this film at least five times previously, I'm guessing. For me, it's one of those great cat-and-mouse battles, like Sleuth or The Fugitive, where a psychological battle is waged. With a Cold War thriller like this, the consequences aren't about one person against another, or one person against the legal system. They're about one race against another race and don't be fooled by the seemingly obvious fact that it is about one man's ego against the world, because it isn't. Or maybe it actually is if Filander is Satan and the Commodore is God. Satan and Jesus, are at odds, seen in 1965 as Americans and Russians, with wisdom from a wise, German, third-party.

It's very clever to think about how best to say something about the cold war and the post-Bay of Pigs crisis and choose to have a weary German soldier say all the lines which condemn Russia and American, particularly America, 20 years after Germany's surrender in 1945. To have the voice of reason come out of the mouth of someone who wasn't part of NATO gives it great credibility. It also make those bits of dialogue less of a target to be laughed-off, dismissed, as patriotic American rhetoric where they can be perceived as holding a superior attitude about themselves against the communists and everyone else.

Day 280

Thursday 5 April 2018 11.50pm

Hiroshima mon amour 1959

An Alain Resnais Film

I watched Hiroshima mon amour today. Some films obviously deserve their greatness from the first viewing and this is one of them. Like Sans Soleil, or Persona or Pickpocket or L’avventura or Tokyo Story or Pather panchali or Ugetsu monogatari – they’re groundbreaking first-time around. So, too, 2001: A Space Odyssey (but harder to grasp why for some – just look at the reviews when 2001 was released!) So, too, La nuit et brouillard (1956) which I watched in January, which was as horrifying as it was extraordinary. As is, Hiroshima mon amour.

In some ways, more-so, but, also less so and this is why:

Resnais broke the ground with the brutal presentation of Night and Fog but he forged that style into filmmaking with traditional narrative techniques and then added another spin on it all, creating something unique with Hiroshima mon amour.

Right now, April 5, 2018, I don’t know anything about Resnais’s life. I’ve never seen any film he’s directed but from that moment in January (2018) watching Night and Fog and that moment watching Hiroshima mon amour, realising – on-the-run – Resnais was making another documentary about unspeakable horror, which continually changed as I watched, slowly morphing into an under-developed fictional love story, with some big comments about how human beings view past events and about saying goodbye, loving something and losing touch with memories. In fact, not just memories, but memories as our best attempt to allow us to remember reality. Reality through the writings and images of other people remembering a reality they may not even have experienced. It becomes second-hand and third-hand and then it becomes words on a page that a writer or filmmaker or presenter wants to dismiss or allow as part of his larger work.

Day 280

Thursday 5 April 2018 02.00am

BOSSMAN69 READY PLAYER ONE

Home from the movies, the Wednesday tradition (which used to be a Tuesday-night tradition) that turned THIRTY in February 2018. In February of 1988, when my mother died, my father and I made a pact to see each other every week on a certain night, come-what-may. With the exceptions of him going on a holiday or vice versa, we’ve kept that up for between forty-eight and fifty weeks a year for thirty-years.

It used to be that we’d go out to see a new release in a cinema but in the last decade his interest in current films has waned and he’s more-often-than-not happier to watch an old favourite or something he missed which he has an interest in. I’m okay with that because I figure when I turn seventy-five – which was around when this happened to him – my interest in current films will have taken that turn already. Dad’s quotable quote is

‘I’d rather spend two hours watching something old that I want to see again than something new I know I won’t enjoy!’

Tonight was one of those films he was unsure about.

‘Generally’, he said, ‘I like Spielberg films, although I didn’t see the one about the slaves.’

‘Or Bridge of Spies or Warhorse or Lincoln,’ I warned him. ‘But you did love The Post.‘

'Ah, The Post, a very important film,’ he said.

‘Well, I’m seeing Ready Player One (2018) the first week it’s in general release so if you want to see it with me we’ll be going next Wednesday night.’ He nodded what I took to be an ‘Okay’.

I’m a Zemeckis fan, a Spielberg fan, a Hitchcock fan, a Wilder fan and a Paul Thomas Anderson fan. There’s probably another fifteen directors I consider important enough to try and see everything they make while it’s still running in a cinema: like Scorsese, Coppola, Almodovar, Besson and J.J.Abrams et. al.

When I went to see The Post I was aware that the truly satisfying Spielberg films were now a thing of the past. I still think he does serious films well, like Lincoln and Bridge of Spies but War Horse had some terribly sentimental moments (in a way that E.T. never miscalculated). Even though those moments consisted of only a few scenes, it’s a misjudgement that he never – or rarely – used to make. The Adventures of Tin Tin felt like another misjudgement and despite the things I liked about The BFG it was still overly schmaltzy. And a film like the fourth Indiana Jones film was a shocker – a complete misfire.

Before The Post, the last two films I thought were excellent were Munich and The Minority Report. The remake of The War of the Worlds was a misfire in too many areas despite the fact I could appreciate, in all of his films, the singular, individual, unique cinematic eye that he brings to almost everything (including 1941 and Always – both of which are agonisingly bad too frequently).I like it when he is temperate in his choices now on any given film and I feel that the scripts let him down. But it’s not so much because of the author of the scripts but how he wants the scripts to be realised, which seems to be: cloying and sentimental, pulling for tears or tugging at the heart. He never used to do that.

The Post (which some may not have liked given its overt political nature) was his best film in years. And a recent viewing of The Adventures of Tin Tin reminded me how visually brilliantly he conceives any given scene. I also enjoyed it’s humour more second time around. It rose from quite a good film in my estimation to a very good film.

Ready Player One was something I thought I might enjoy parts of, and really dislike other parts. I was scared that it may be like films he executive produced like the pretty bad Eagle Eye (2008) and the really bad Real Steel (2011): both films aimed at teenagers.

Happily, I walked out of the cinema, feeling that Spielberg underplayed most of Ready Player One, and did the most justice to an era of video gaming that I’ve seen so far. If there were moments that worried me a little bit, it was not like the ham-fisted moments of War Horse and Hook. I don’t know that much could have been done to save Hook, but War Horse was very powerful in some of the scenes showing the experiences of the horse. More restraint at the end would have made War Horse a very good film, rather than leaving one with the final feeling, cringe-worthy.

My father said he didn’t understand most of Ready Player One other than the fact that you should be loyal to your friends. Those weren’t his exact words and the phrase he actually used was more sardonic, sarcastic and withering. I didn’t ask if he enjoyed anything about the film. I’d had a nice time and I didn’t want to be abruptly pulled away from that happy experience.

Usually with a Spielberg film, for better or worse, it is A Steven Spielberg Film. Mostly they are completely made from his knowledge of the world, his imagination, and things he’s passionate about. A change began at the moment in time he directed the first film where he decided not to storyboard it all before starting principal photography. I can’t remember which one it was, but I don’t think it was The Color Purple or Empire of the Sun, but it may have been. That’s when I perceived a more embracing filmmaker emerging. Ready Player One is the most thoroughly-realised group-effort of any of his films and one of his crowning achievements.

Little known fact: with Ready Player One just seven-days old in Australia, and five-days old in America (at 1.54am Sydney, Australia), only 50,617 people have voted on the IMDB and it has a rating of 8.0. It’s will be interesting to watch if it goes up or down in subsequent weeks.

[At 1.59am it had 50,929 votes.]

[2 day later, at 2.33am it had 59,484 and had dropped to 7.9. In 42-hours the IMDB only had 8,565 votes. Whoa! That's not a lot of action for a popular website, is it?]

Day 279

Wednesday 4 April 2018 02.00am

100greatestfilmsever.com

Go to my new site. 100 Greatest Films Ever.

Day 278

Tuesday 3 April 2018 02.00am

100greatestfilmsever.com

Go to my new site. 100 Greatest Films Ever.

Day 277

Monday 2 April 2018 02.00am

100greatestfilmsever.com

Go to my new site. 100 Greatest Films Ever.

Day 276

Sunday 1 April 2018 02.00am

100greatestfilmsever.com

Go to my new site. 100 Greatest Films Ever.

Day 275

Saturday 31 March 2018 02.00am

100greatestfilmsever.com

Go to my new site. 100 Greatest Films Ever.

Day 274

Friday 30 March 2018 02.00am

100greatestfilmsever.com

Go to my new site. 100 Greatest Films Ever.

Day 273

Thursday 29 March 2018 02.00am

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg  1964

I saw this film yesterday. It is a wonderful film on so many different levels. So many things to which my mind and spirit were able to respond. It’s ground-breaking and touching and well-produced, in all departments. There’s an overall conception that is so coherent and inter-related that it boggles my mind that something so bold can be done so well when it has no precedent – not of any film I know – to this extent. It’s not opera. It’s not a musical. And yet it combines the emotion of opera, the melodies of a great musical and the restraint of a film with good drama, meeting somewhere in between.

It is one of the most poignant films I’ve seen. It first made my heart ache, then made me cry, then tore my heart into pieces and then once the floodgates were open a lake of water poured over the wall until I ran out of tears.

It’s not a devastating tale. It’s very slim in what the story tells. Two people in love, circumstances change, they marry two other people, it’s not what they’d originally planned and foreseen as their feature but they’re content, then a coda, and the film ends.

But, this film is so much more than its parts. The marriage of those parts is what so emotionally engaged me. The parts combine to make something that is unique. The whole is somehow miraculously greater than the individual parts, as expertly done as they are.

There are six things which struck me immediately as aspects of filmmaking which are so hard to do, let alone do well, especially in a musical:

Capture dialogue – sung dialogue which synchronizes with the actor’s lips. It can’t be real, location, dialogue/singing. It’s either dubbed or mimed. It could be either but I suspect that everything was pre-recorded and the actors sang along to their own voices. I’m sure a book will tell me if I’m right or wrong about that. But for it to match so well, so often, I think they sang to a pre-recorded version, or a click-track.

Create a production design, with art decoration and costume designs which is uniform or matches a lot of prime colours in the same frame, as well as lots of pastels. It is brightly coloured and always beautiful.

Film on what looks like (some) real locations and integrate it with footage shot (presumably) on a film set (or soundstage).

Match the mood, instrumentation and intent of music or just sound to the mood of the scenes without overdoing it and allowing for the fact that music can be a sixth-dimension of filmmaking, depending on the style of film:

where it is never heard (The Birds) or

where it is front and centre of everything that happens (Star Wars, Star Trek, comic book movies, suspense, thrillers and horror).

Sometimes it can be used subtly to illustrate a third-dimension beyond words and images, to describe something not illustrated already in words and images (The Year of Living Dangerously). It can play against the obvious first and second dimensions to deliver a subtle description of something more elusive (To Kill a Mockingbird and any number of Jerry Goldsmith scores). Musicals aren’t required to have subtlety because they’re musicals. The words and the music are (to hijack a phrase) worn on the sleeves of the film or stage production. But here there is a combination of musical orchestration and film-scoring, all going on in the same piece of music. It’s wonderful.

Feature excellent performances which are not aimed at the back row of the theatre: naturalistic.

Use the camera to move in and out of the close-ups without drawing attention to itself. With the abundance of editing that goes into creating any scene in any film, the use of the camera in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is exceptional. There’s an effortless creation of wide-shots, two-shots, three-shots and close-ups, without editing, just through expert camera operation. It is a special kind of art, a specific skill. In this instance, it’s brilliantly done.

Day 273

Thursday 29 March 2018 00.15am

Tom Braider   2018

A big-budget film with a new actress portraying Lara Croft. It has all the elements, some of them superbly done, and yet at the end, when all the dots were connected, the picture it drew was uninteresting, an imitation of a dozen films which have done it before, but better.

Things it did well:

•  Introducing Lara Croft, with a back story. It’s like the comic book film that tells the ‘origin’ story of how the superhero chose to become a superhero. The end, one of the best shots in the film, is Lara Croft with her guns which we’ve not seen so far. She’s more like Wonder Woman with a bow and arrow than the Lara Croft of the video games.
• Alicia Vikander is likeable, pretty, toned, athletic, and has a smile behind a lot of the things she does, and manages some emotional scenes really nicely
• The relationship between Lara and someone like her, with a missing father, develops unexpectedly, but never becomes too much of a buddy movie. She’s the star, but having that relationship develop, is nice.
• The shipwreck, the action scenes on the island, the sequences in the rapids headed for a crashed plane at the top of a waterfall, all very well executed.

Things it didn’t do well:

• Create something really interesting, with any sense of feeling unique, for her archaeologist father to investigate. The Mummy films and the King Solomon’s Mines films and any good archaeological or Comic Book film requires a good set up to create something so amazing, it’s worth discovering. It tries to do it by making it something so terrible that it needs to be found and destroyed so that no one else can find it and expose the world to it. It’s a quandary. If you need to find it to destroy it so that bad people don’t find it first, then you risk leading the bad people to it. Not so smart.
• The powerful supernatural entities (from this world or another dimension or another planet) that populate The Avengers films and Transformers films and Batman, Superman, and Underworld films, threatening Earth are becoming more tiresome and less likely to have the original, brilliant kernel, that makes anyone scared about the impending doom just about to rain down on Earth – again.
• Villains, for quite some time, now kill without a second thought while the good guys continue to allow themselves to be dominated by the villain, because villains shoot first and ask questions later, and good guys won’t shoot first when it matters. The entire idea of James Bond for example – in the books – was that James Bond is ruthless. He has a licence to kill. A licence. To kill. When Roger Moore took that mantle, James Bond might as well have retired his double-oh and admitted that he’d secretly joined the boy scouts. Ridiculous.
• The sequences where the tomb raiders get to the thing that they’re all searching for, is so like Raiders of the Lost Ark’s opening sequences and climax that it’s a steal, almost scene by scene. Very disappointing.

There's only one film that has done the superhero/Lara Croft really, really well, in recent times and that is Wonder Woman.(2017). The villains in that film, and Hellboy (2004), were based on really bad people, not imagined ones.

Day 272

Wednesday 28 March 2018 03.28am 

Les parapluies de Cherbourg   1964

Not everyone has a point where a work of art taps into something very deep within and very private and causes a flood of tears. Speaking for myself I can say that my own life has often engaged me enough to shed tears for hours on end. Even in one singular case for a few days. But for a play or a book or a film or any work of art to reduce me to sobbing, long after the work of art has finished, is to have experienced something either very simple or profound.

I've lived my life treading - I'd like to say carefully, but it is more like missteps - the thin line that separates the merry-go-rounds from the rollercoasters. I can live in the land of tears and pain for years or live in the land of brain and experiencing not-much-short-of nothing.

When my brain cannot cope with the information it receives, causing an emotional reaction, it can recognize it for what it is and deal with it, or shut down. When it shuts down, it could be for a few minutes or a few hours or a few years. All three have happened.

If I'm in a period of (not deliberately) distancing my brain from my emotions there are only a few things that can break that barrier.

Number 1 is alcohol which lowers the level for enforcing the things which inhibit us. That often works against the fundamental judgement of what my brain is willing to allow and prone to reject but it allows me to embrace anger and the full display that anger has at its beck and call.
Number 2 is pain. This lowers the threshold of what I want to reject, which is - mostly - intense emotions, and what I can reject.
Number 3 is children. Having children and watching them develop and wanting to be a better experience for them than I had growing up is another, which bit by bit, allows emotion to creep in.
Number 4 is beauty. In period of being emotionally connected this one - beauty - affects me a lot. Occasionally, in periods where I'm not affected by many emotions - outside of those that alcohol or pain or children allow access - beauty gets under my skin.
Number 5 is identification - especially when mixed with alcohol or pain or children - and understanding sadness at these times can be so overwhelming it literally overwhelms me.

Today was a day of many things. Like the last eight days, it was a day of intense pain due to an injury to my ribs, cartilage and muscles. I didn't take my panadeine forte and when I picked up my girls (7 and 5) from school I was in considerable pain - breathing, walking, talking and driving. In my home I sat with my 7-year old while she did a practice and I was patient with her until it got to a point where she wanted to learn something new. While practicising I was patient. When she tried to move ahead and learn something knew I became impatient and horrible. I tried to be calm but her lack of recongition of basic patterns of the relation of notes in music to each other on a stave, and her ability to look at a note in isolation and recognize it, but her inability to recognize the same notes when hidden amongst many other notes, made me angry. Impatience became anger. Doing both girl's bedtime by myself led to asking help from my wife when she got home to get the five-year old in bed so I could finish the routine with the seven-year old.

As my wife and I sat by each other on the lounge in our living room, recognizing that she was turning forty-five in two hours, I admitted I had nothing for her birthday. I hadn't organised the girls to write birthday cards, or present from the girls, or a present from me, or a card from me, or a banner to display, or a special meal or a cake, or anything. Sure, I've got badly injured ribs and it's hard to walk, get in a car, or drive a car, but it's even harder to roll over in bed. But to get anywhere to organize anything this week is pretty much impossible. To admit this lack of foresight even more galling. To have to pick the girls up when I'm struggling to even walk because of the pain, and not feel allowed to ask for help, is worse. To be cranky and mean and horrible and nasty to those three around me in the last 48-hours when the pain has been unrelenting for the first time in eight days, is unforgiveable.

To realise that my wife is having the eleventh birthday I have been around to witness and she is still here despite the fact that her first birthday was before I had my job with the SSO and this birthday is the first birthday since my job with the SSO ended, nine birthdays in between, is tough on my self-esteem. To have curve-balls like accidentally falling several feet onto rocks, my ribs smashing directly on them, without a hand to soften the impact, is unexpected. Then there was the little matter of the Australian cricket team, or some of its members cheating, and being caught cheating, which unsettled me to the point I couldn't watch the last two days of the Third Test of Australia versus South Africa.

Then, tonight. I didn't get to Lane Cove Library to hire Viridiana or The Discreet Charm or to Daniel's place to borrow Belle de  jour, so I thought I'd watch Hiroshima mon amour tonight. I put it on a thumb drive and then realised that I hadn't returned The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. It was in my car with the other DVDs and books. It was the film that David Stratton had nominated as one of his favourites from 1964 before showing a lesser Bunuel film, Diary of a Chambermaid. He showed a clip last Thursday, which I couldn't make sense of. It could have been the end of the film, or something dramatic in the middle. I had no idea.

I've borrowed this film at least seven times before and not watched it. I don't know why. I know I've always been looking for films by a specific director or from a particular country to match what I'm watching but I don't know why I kept rejecting The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and returning it to the library unwatched.

THE MUSIC

I've never heard of the director in any other context or for any other film. I do know it did not appear on the BFI 2012 Top 100 list but it did appear on the list of Time Out and Time magazine's 100 films to watch.

I know of the composer of the music because I have the piano music for several themes he and Francis Lai have composed for movies. My regard for him is higher than any others because I love playing I Will Wait For You and The Windmills of My Mind. Then a decade later I came across his score to Yentl which is one of the most inspired scores, full of the greatest melodies in a musical where people often sing their thoughts. I have played Yentl's music on the piano for three decades as well the aforementioned songs. Years before that a score of his for an American tv movie, Brian's Song (1981) made me weep so much that when I was in Japan in 1985 and I found an arrangement of that melody in a book of film themes for piano, despite the fact that no other themes interested me I bought it anyway. 

In December last year when I set up my SONOS system to play LPs through the house on the SONOS system The Umbrellas of Cherbourg was the album that was nearest to my fingers so I put it on. Four days ago I played a piece of music on the piano by Michel Legrand from Picasso Summer and tonight I played on the piano his melody from a movie called Best of Friends. One of the Godard films two weeks ago had a strange credit for Legrand. It was something like possibly the last film score by Michel Legrand. Last week David Stratton mentioned The Umbrellas of Cherbourg was one of those films made in 1964. Tomorrow I was returning The Umbrellas of Cherbourg DVD - unwatched to Lane Cove Library for the 8th, 9th, 10th time - I don't know anymore as I've lost count. The DVDs were in my car to return tomorrow and I had to walk outside and retrieve this one. The final decision came down to the fact that I had no more Bunuel to watch and had played a new - difficult - Legrand piece on the piano tonight.

To delay The Umbrellas of Cherbourg any longer was now heading towards the land of ridiculousness. It was the opportune time.

Day 271

Tuesday 27 March 2018 03.31am 

That Obscure Object of My Desire   1977

A Luis Bunuel Film

Aged 77, Bunuel made his last film, a delightful comedy drama with Fernando Rey and the beautiful actress Carole Bouquet (who a few years later became a Bond girl and suffered the fate of most). Confusingly, if watching the film without any warning, in some scenes, Conchita is played in some scenes by Carole Bouquet and in other scenes by Angela Molina. Bunuel is attributed the following explanation in his biography: the film was in danger of being cancelled after a dispute with an actress and he amusingly suggested he could shoot the role with two different actresses playing the role. The producer liked the idea so that's what Bunuel did. It wasn't how he conceived the role of Conchita, to show different parts of her personality, as some have claimed, but as a solution to a problem. In the end, the scenes with the original actress were removed but two actresses did play the one part. 

To see it unfold as the film develops is kind of surreal. How appropriate that the man most associated with surrealism in filmmaking should invent an idea of such surreal proportions, accidentally, after shooting had commenced. It is breathtaking in its boldness. Like David Lynch did in Lost Highway, but done twenty years before. 

The film begins with a sixty-year old (but looking older) man dumping a bucket of water on a young woman from a train carriage as the train leaves the station. The people travelling in his compartment are interested to know why he would do such a thing and the episodes of several different encounters with this woman, Conchita, are show in flashback. 

Conchita is headstrong, wilful, beautiful, frustrating and a complete sexual tease, driving Mathieu crazy with sexual desire, rebuffing her again and again. How much she leads him on and how much he allows himself to be led is debatable because every time they separate, the next time they meet he desires her all over again. 

The film won Bunuel a number of awards as either writer, or director, or both. It's one his most charming films, certainly one of his most sexual, and the object of desire could mistakenly be thought to be Conchita. In fact, it is her vagina he desires and by withholding access to it, she maintains his desire over a lengthy period of time. 

There is a side story about revolutionaries. The irony of the revolution is that a bomb ends up ending the lives of Mathieu and Conchita before he has successfully found the object and satisfied his desire. It's not that he has found the object, or that he doesn't know where it is, or that it is even obscure - it's more about being constantly in a situation where is never allowed to access it, no matter how hard he tries. 

A lovely, beautiful, tantalizing, meditation about wanting something that is close enough to smell but may always be beyond one's reach. What a film to end Bunuel's career as a director. 

Deputy editor of Total Film, Jamie Graham was one of three critics who voted this Bunuel film into his Top Ten. Graham included a Hitchcock (Vertigo), Bergman (Persona), Welles (Citizen Kane), Melville (Army of Shadows), Dreyer (Passion of Joan), Ozu (Tokyo Story), Woody Allen (Manhattan), Tobe Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and Rob Reiner (Stand by Me) film. 

Director of Leaving Las Vegas and Stormy Monday, Mike Figgis, was one of two directors who put this in their Top Ten, along with Godard (Week End), Penn (Bonnie and Clyde), Boorman (Deliverance), Fellini (La dolce vita), Cassavetes (Opening Night), Truffaut (The Woman Next Door), Vinterberg (Festen), Vilgot Sjöman (I Am Curious Yellow). The other one in common: Bergman (Persona).

Day 270

Monday 26 March 2018 04.07am 

'Australia versus a World of Judgment where Judgment is Taken Too Far'

In1994 when the England cricket player Michael Atherton carried dirt in his pocket, to rough the side of a ball that was least shiny, it wasn't an instantaneous global news story. He was fined. That was the sanction.

In 2018 when Cameron Bancroft did the same with a piece of tape with some dirt attached to it from the detritus on the pitch, it was a global news story.

The fact that it was Australia versus South Africa with a 22-match record of 14-losses and 7 wins and 1 draw, in South Africa, with a character, Graeme Smith, whose first argument to deflect from his own whingeing personality, recorded 50, 60, 70 times in the media, is to accuse the other side of whinging to be pro-active in the war of the media in the mental game of delivering misinformation to unsettle the visiting team. Graeme Smith was good at doing it but not in making it effective. His team mostly lost to Australia but did well elsewhere. But he kept on whinging anyway. Mostly a mean-spirited person- a talented one by any measure - whose team can't back up the verbals.

When he came out to bat with a broken finger at the SCG, having retired hurt earlier - the little girl that he is - I applauded when he took balls on his gloves and I applauded louder than anyone when he was dismissed. There are few completely terrible people in the world of cricket but he and Nasser Hussain are the ones I would put at the top of my list. Then when they complain about being misunderstood I can see that they're just trying to be their own spin doctors when they should have left it to the experts. In contrast Andrew Strauss took the defeats and accepted the victories as did several South African players and captains. Graeme Smith, a little boy who can't stand being made to look ineffectual, comes out with heavy statements against every Australian cricketer and the sanctions he would employ against this team. There's never been a greater cricketer than Graeme Smith who has a smaller brain than any other human being. He's a creature who the rest of the world has pushed aside as an idiot who doesn't know when to talk and when to shut up. 

Then there's the Australian media.

The Australian media love to kick a person when they're down, even before there is a trial or a verdict. They react from the perceived evidence and tell everyone what they should because there are images which are damning, but before a trial.

Peter Fitzsimons comes out quickly to be judge and executioner. He judges what happened in the Australian team and he hasn't heard any evidence other than images shown worldwide and a press conference of the captain and the player, Cameron Bancroft, and then a response from Cricket Australia. What is actually truth, and what are lies said in front of a camera are - in no court of law - nothing more than visually and verbally captured electronic moments of what has transpired. The people talking were not under oath and they may not have been fully forthcoming, or they may have intended the words that they spoke to mislead people from the real truth.

The idea of a trial by a jury of their peers, presented by their counsel, and opposing counsel, with opposing witness and evidence has been jumped by a large Australian kangaroo. 

Where did the term kangaroo court come from? Clearly not a label Australians gave themselves. So where from?

Australia has the well-documented Tall-Poppy syndrome. It usually applies to people who are very successful and the people and the media of Australia attempt to cut them down. 

Then there's the Famous-and-Accused sydnrome where the media or commentators bash people who have committed (supposed) crimes, without a trial. Despite an accepted,  common belief, in democratic counties, that there has always got to be an assumption of innocence until there's a guilty verdict, we have this. As we all know from court cases, even a guilty verdict by a jury or a judge doesn't always mean that they're guilty - just that they're been found guilty. The same with a verdict of innocence. Many times those found innocent are not really innocent, but haven't been found guilty. 

Now, there is a trial by media which results in people being dismissed because the bad press is of such enormous proportions that it is better to dismiss the person accused, than have a swing against them, rather than dealing with the here and now. Better to deal with the lawsuits as they march in one by one, later, after dismissing the accused people with no other evidence than a number of similar claims.

Sunday 25 March 2018 04.07am 

'Australians are Cheaters'

A Cricketing Nightmare

In situations like this, a regular Australian can't 'legitimately' respond to the comments of South African commentators on FoxSports. As legitimate as anyone calling South Africans to accountant for their own behaviour previously, it is not a time to ask those questions. Nor a time to look at other ball-tampering issues in history. Naturally, that is the obvious reaction to such revelations, to work out the penalties to the people who have cheated or attempted to cheat.

Day 268

Saturday 24 March 2018 02.47am 

The Exterminating Angel  1961

A Luis Buñuel Film

I've used the word extraordinary and astonishing too many times over the last nine months, but so many of these films are both and this is another one in terms of its conception whilst also being expertly directed and acted. 

With The Exterminating Angel (1962) - it isn't anywhere near as straightforward as Bunuel's 1964 Diary of a Chambermaid - which credits the screenplay to Bunuel, things are simultaneously exactly like they appear and have a hidden motive or condition. 

What unfolds results in the same consequences as Diary of a Chambermaid - and also looks the upper and lower classes - at the end: nothing.

Day 267

Friday 23 March 2018

La petit soldat  1966

A Godard Film

A very strange thing happened tonight. I was searching for another Bunuel film I could watch, following on the heels of last night's Diary of a Chambermaid (1964). I came across two films, L'age d'or (1930), which I thought would be a perfect follow-up and a Godard film I didn't know I had, The Little Soldier. Thomas yarya2010

I thought I had called it quits with Godard and that I had started my week living in the land of Luis Bunuel only to find the next important Bunuel film following Le chien andalou (1929); but also another Godard film made between Breathless and the end of the 1960s. So I decided to watch them back to back, La petit soldat first. After all, I am finally, for the last time, ending Godard week. josephdnne1948atg.

What a crazy film, full of handheld camera, not much location dialogue from the actors and a lot of overdubbed narration. The date on this film, is 1966 but it's like he travelled back in time and got the gritty feel of Breathless and reduced the quotes from other sources and included a lot more scripted narration. It's a wonderful film. I love it.S Ray

It's got a make-it-up-as-you-go plot that is half-baked, like Breathless, and yet it is far more developed stylistically with the interjection of the main characters inner-thoughts whilst he is even engaging in conversation with various characters. The narration of his thoughts is superb. This is everything that Breathless tried to be. Unfortunately with Breathless Godard couldn't pull all of resources together to make it work in the best possible way, leaving it still a landmark film, just not one of his best. I wonder how this film in 1966 has so much in common with Breathless and the man-on-the-run story with the politics and the emphasis more than ever before on externalising the characters thoughts. Amazing.

Friday 23 March 2018

'Writing for Godard'

Writing about all six of the Godard films I've watched in the last seven days. I've written my individual thoughts already on each of the films and now I'm attempting to draw all those thoughts together to get a perspective on Godard from A Bout de Souffle onwards for about seven years. The most recent film I have access to is 2 or 3 Things I know About Her (1967). I'm spewing out my guts about this Godard experience and attempting to interweave the literal sources of knowledge I already had about Godard before I saw these films of his. Unlike other directors I had already spoiled my arms-length approach with too much information cradled in my neural filing cabinet. 

Uh oh! Time to go out for a family celebration of my wife's birthday. Better shut down and arise and get dressed for dinner.

Day 266

Thursday 22 March 2018 11.57pm 

History of World Cinema  1964: Part Six

The film tonight was the last thing I expected. Of all the films David Stratton mentioned I would have thought (his favourite, I thought I heard him say, from 1964), The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, would be his choice for tonight. But, as usual - using that term - usual - with only six weeks experience of Stratton's choices - he selected an unlikely film.

Diary of a Chambermaid  - Luis Buñuel's take on this famous story which was also made by Jean Renoir in 1946, in his period suffering in Hollywood at the hands of the studio bosses. Unfortunately this wasn't one of the ten Renoir films I was able to get hold off to watchlate last year, the only one from the Hollywood period, the very good The Southerner (1945).

Not a great film. Not one of his best - or a particularly significant - film amongst any generally accepted response to Buñuel's career. The more noted and accepted choices of great Buñuel would not number this one amongst these films:

Un chien  andalou (1929)

L’âge d’or (1930)

Los Olvidados (1950)

Viridiana (1961)

The Exterminating Angel (1962)

Belle du Jour (1967)

That Obscure Object of My Desire (1977)

It's probably not even quite as good as the somewhat surreal:

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)

But still, Luis Buñuel week has only just started. I immediately followed it up by going home and watching L’âge d’or and it's been a while since I've seen Discrete Charm.

Thursday 22 March 2018 11.06pm

Week #6 of the History of World Cinema

Tonight I dragged myself to the Sydney University building. The bad fall I took on Monday has crippled me. I have been in worse pain, but not like this, unable to move left, right, up or across. Turning the wheel and going up and down stairs is my limit of pain threshold.

Thursday 22 March 2018 03.36am

Satyajit Ray 

I watched Pather Panchali, (1955), then I had a fall and watched Aparajito (1956) and Apur Sansar (1959) the following nights, but couldn't even write about them as I was bound to a chair and couldn't reach a computer. Tonight I could type into a document on my little Acer computer.

I started viewing the trilogy on Sunday night and watched the second film on Monday and the third on Tuesday.

Each film built upon the previous film's momentum. That's a slightly incorrect thing to say about these films - which are viewed as a trilogy - because they weren't made like a mini-series, where the situations build to a climax which the next film (or night) subsequently builds upon. But I watched them night after night as if it was Berlin Alexanderplatz (but obviously running less than 360 minutes in total).

I liked:

Film #1 because it was about life in poverty (captured by a non-existent camera)
Film #2 was good because it was about a family experiencing poverty but allowing the son to be educated.
Film #3 excellent because it drew me into the story like neither of the previous films did and made me smile and care about Apu and his entirely accidental wife.

Apu loses a sister, a father, a mother and a wife and then rejects the only thing he's created that has substance - a son.

There must be a metaphor or an analogy that accounts for a person who wants to give life to something new - like a poem or a novel - who then rejects the life he gives life to - like a son or daughter.

Apur Sansar (1959) creates a story that accepts a ridiculous, unbelievable, circumstance that makes the unlovable (and inexperienced) Apu a husband. Through a beautifully designed number of scenes he turns a fictional accident into a fictional blessing and gives life to the warmth and commitment of these two people. These scenes are as expertly directed as anything I can recollect about accidental (and originally unwanted) unions.

Then comes the tragedy - which I didn't expect. It took me by surprise and took away something I loved about the film and replaced it with something that is more expected and believeable about people living in these times.

The last third of the film explores someone experiencing a bereavement that they can't get over. They can't surmount it. They can't jump it. They can't put it in a corner. They can't embrace it.

What they can do, is reject it. Apu rejects it.

Undoubtedly a brilliant trilogy. If someone is thinking about creating a top ten that includes one film from each of the important filmmaking countries then one has to choose from these countries:

Germany

Denmark

Sweden

Japan

France

Italy

America

Britain

Russia

India

Mmmm!

Additionally that underachiever - the 11th country:

Movies Made Before Sound

It would be very interesting to analyse the top ten lists by country and whether all lists or most of them contained a silent film or not. I'll do that one day.

Day 264

Wednesday 21 March 2018 23.51pm

'Busted ribs' 

On Monday, I went for lunch and a walk in Kurin-gai National Park with a close friend and had a fall. I jumped down into a gap between large rocks rather than risk a medium jump between the two big rocks. I was thinking about being careful instead of being my usual self-assured goat. Normally, certain I'd make the leap perfectly, I'd have just looked, judged and jumped. I knew I had slippery soles so I did something rare, and exercised caution.

I tried to slide and jump down (1.5 metres) to a patch of ground the size a tea-towel. I misjudged the depth, my feet didn't land properly and I fell sideways about two-feet and landed on the rock on my left, on my ribs.

Ouch.

I was driven to a Medical Centre then to a place that could do x-rays at 7pm then heard there were no fractures so we headed home.

Day 264

Wednesday 21 March 2018 00.00am

No Entry

Still unable to sit in a chair and type.

Day 263

Tuesday 20 March 2018 00.00am

No Entry

I was hardly able to breathe let alone type so no entry was made.

Day 262

Monday 19 March 2018 09.29am

PATHER PANCHALI 

This was brilliant.  A winner for Day 262. I'm looking forward to the second film.

Monday 19 March 2018 01.01am 

'PATHER PANCHALI' 1955

This is an exceptional film. However high the bar is, this film leaps over it. There's a reality - like I've described with other films - where the camera and the director and the crew behind the camera are invisible.

Like Mad Max or Transformers or Avengers or DC Comics, obviously, there's a thousand artists creating the unbelievable images/things behind the plot in these films.

I'm certain there's hardly any crew behind this first film about Apu that is able to vote and give the false reality, the feeling, of a true reality.

And it smacked me between the eyes and rendered me groggy.

Pather Panchali is important because it shows a state of life, or being, that is unknown and hasn't been experienced by anyone associated with the film.

It is a film and however credible they are it is still a work of fiction and not a documentary.

Despite these facts, it is so convincing that I think/believe it is more documentary than mere film.

Monday 19 March 2018 02.34am 

'Afraid of Watching Satyajit Ray Films'

I must admit that there are a few films I was dreading watching in these 52-weeks more than going head-to-head with Godard (which I've now done) and Fellini (which I have yet to do). But amongst those few films were the three Indian films by Satyajit Ray.

It's a culture I know little about other than through commercial films. All I know is that the poverty outweighs everyone who has money by 100 to 1 or 1000 to 1 or 1 million to 1 or 1 billion to 1. I'm a person who has no understanding of what poverty is like on a daily-basis, a yearly-basis or a lifetime-basis.

My context for understanding India is how I (through my Western-eyes) see Russia between 0000-1980. Or China.

This film was the experience I didn't want to have. As bad as life is in my world or the world of the Western countries, I didn't want to have Indian conditions and realities made really real-to-me.

I don't even know when Pather Panchali is set. They have umbrellas. So, it has got to be in my generation and yet they are so impoverished it is beyond my comprehension.

There's a point in time where you can't borrow any more 'things' from your neighbours and as you have no income, you'll slowly starve and die-off. But, also, in the countries which surround India it is similarly starvation by a thousand paper cuts.

Day 261

Sunday 18 March 2018 03.41am 

As the actress said to the Bishop, 'About the Soufflé'

I was about to move on to the Apu Trilogy when I realised (as I reached for the Apu DVDs) that I hadn't kept my promise to watch all the Godard films i could lay my hands upon and then watch Breathless again, to finish this period of living in the land of Godard.

Weary and ready to put Godard and his unique style of filmmaking behind me, I knew that I had to keep this promise to myself. Vivre sa vie, Le Mepris, Bande A part, Pierrot le fou and 2 or 3 Things I know About Her, needed to be followed up by another viewing of Breathless. So I'm doing it, now.

Saturday 17 March 2018 05.32am 

Oldboy  2015

A Spike Lee Film +

Having spent hours writing about Death Wish and Godard, I decided not to move on to another film by a different director when I couldn't make my copy of Alphaville play.

Instead, I watched a film Spike Lee directed in 2015 with Josh Brolin called Oldboy

It's remarkable to see the development, for better or worse, of this American filmmaker. I saw his first five or six films in theatres in Australia. I made a point to follow this man's career after seeing Do the Right Thing. That's edge of your seat filmmaking. It's like when some character in some film has a martini made and asks the bartender to pass the cork of the vermouth over the martini signifying that's enough vermouth.

Low budget filmmaking is like that. If you've got film in the camera, actors and a director and a script, the waft of vermouth can be the presence of something special that makes a martini a martini. For Spike Lee, I think the vermouth was his personality but by the time I got to Inside Man and now Oldboy it seems like he's an American filmmaking who has lost the smell of the vermouth. It's a good film. It's well-made but I wouldn't have guessed it was a Spike Le film, because Spike Lee's sensibility isn't apparent. There's no forty acres and there's no mule.

Early Spike Lee films had a sense of accepting that some blacks pass for white while underlining the need for African Americans (blacks/negroes/colored people) to stand up for their rights if they want to have recognition for the value of their opinion. It reminds me of a Jacqueline Biss film I saw which had a title that I remember as stand Up and be Counted, which was about the same kind of issue, but to do with women's rights.

Oldboy seems very generic and I don't see Spike Lee in it although I wouldn't say that every filmmaker has to make his civil or political beliefs obvious in all films.

I found this to be a peculiar film and enjoyed its crazy style and Josh Brolin's performance. The pay-off wasn't sufficiently head-turning to make the twenty years of jail a 'completely understandable' response to the villain's horrible experience.

Day 259

Friday 16 March 2018 11.59pm 

Death Wish  2018

I was planning to see Black Panther (2018) but at the last - at 2115 - moment I changed my mind and thought I'd see a Bruce Willis film that only just started in cinemas but has done almost no box office business in Sydney. With just one session a day this week in a complex with 14 cinemas I figure it will close next Wednesday. There were two other people in the cinema with me.

I like Bruce Willis, I liked the Charles Bronson film from 1974, directed by Michael Winner, and I thought this one might be quite good. Only at the end did the writer and director's names appear. That's when I discovered it was by the schlockmeister of the Hostel films (Eli Roth) and the writer/director, Joe Carnahan, of Narc and Smokin' Aces. The latter was an exciting shoot'em'up film with lots of clever twists and turns. I didn't see Carnahan's version of The A-Team.

If only you could walk up to people in a cinema and film them on your phone and ask them, "This is a Bruce Willis film, this is its eighth day in release, you're two of three people in the theater on a Friday night, it's only running one session a day, this one at 9.30pm, 1) why did you choose this over Black Panther or Finding Your Feet? 2) why did you spend $50 to see this film? 3) is it because 

Friday 16 March 2018 11.54pm 

Game Night 

It has only been a week since I've seen a film in a cinema, not counting watching The Pawnbroker (1964) on a big screen in my History of World Cinema film course. As my wife is away for two nights and my daughters are havingr two overnight stays, I saw a film in the evening - by myself - for the first time in a long time. I chose a comedy that would hopefully be amusing and I was going to see Black Panther (2018) at the 9.20pm session so I'd know what kind of film makes a billion dollars at the box office in just a four weeks.

Game Night was one of very few films where I sit through the trailer. I made an exception because I didn't think I'd be going to see a film with Justin Bateman by the people who made Horrible Bosses (2011). Most of those comedies I find to range from average (Horrible Bosses) to dreadful (Identity Thief). The premise seemed intriguing and it had one very funny sight gag in the trailer so I decided to risk two hours of my life watching something that could end up being as dumb as Keeping Up with the Jones's. I was actually surprised. Mostly pleasantly although the film owes a lot to the plots of Date Night and The Game which were both much better films. It had many amusing moments, some good fight scenes, some ridiculous humour and some good humour and the one good sight-gag from the trailer was the one good sight-gag in the film. Although it did turn out to be the kind of Bridesmaids and Bad Mom's humour which I don't really get but it wasn't stupid to the degree of The Heat which I found (almost) unbearable to watch. Only the fact that I've only ever walked out of one film in my life, Wills and Burke, that kept me there. [The reason I walked out of Wills and Burke, by the way, wasn't because of how bad it was, but because someone else walked out of it, who I really wanted to catch-up with.]

Kudos to the writers for coming up with something quite original in Game Night (despite some similarities), without pressing too hard for the overacting that comes with these kinds of films. 

Friday 16 March 2018 02.17am 

2 or 3 Things I Know About Her  1967

This is the sixth consecutive Godard film in six days. It's good and it is still progressive filmmaking but it loses the playful quality that made the previous films so multi-faceted. It is very inventive in the way that it deals with the information Godard likes to feed his audience as well as the (auto)biographical, real-life-quality, that he brings to all his films. 

But as pulls away from infusing light-hearted elements into his pulp fiction plots, so the really significant change begins, away from inviting the audience to be an observer as well as a receiver. He mixes more overtly political statements than the other five films before he made this one, which I've seen, and criticizes the French government, introduces new levels of irony into his observation of the U.S.-Vietnam conflict, and gets his actors/characters to reveal their thoughts through various styles of interview-technique.

The thing I disliked most about Breathless (1960) was the random, rambling nature of it, feeling like it was made up on the fly and that's exactly what this film feels like. What it and Breathless don't have in common is a plot. For all the cliches and banality of Breathless plot - it still had a plot. 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her doesn't have a plot in any conventional sense. And if there is a film that Godard made which is more ground-breaking than the others, it's the one where he changes from making films which are predominantly concerned with the images (Breathless) to those mainly concerned with the words. 

He started making several references - more than before - to the use of language and how it is perceived or how it is interpreted or received in Le Mepris (1964). It then grew as he referred to the fact that he's quoting other people's ideas, he's putting more of his own narration and dialogue in his films, he's making film references, he's breaking down the fourth wall - that of the audience - which was occasional before, and growing by the time of Pierrot le fou (1965) and now in numerous sequences the fact that Godard's film will be watched by an audience is a given. There's now no pretence that the actors don't realise that the camera that is filming them is actually the audience that will be watching them perform when the film gets a release or if anyone watches it, even the director, editor, composer and all of the post-production crew. There's always an audience for a finished film even if it numbers less than a hundred.

Now, Godard's films have become so self-conscious of their own existence that the technique, the assumption that the audience knows it is a movie and not a documentary - and will be suspending disbelief - is blurred beyond what I've seen before this one, in his previous films. Here, the film is so disconnected from a plot which would give the film structure that 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her is a hybrid, both (but not equally) a work of fiction and a documentary. Maybe that actually makes it Godard's most important film to date - 1967 - or maybe this is the beginning of him losing the plot (no pun intended). 

As bad as his clichéd endings have been so far - the end of Breathless, the shooting of the prositute in Vivre sa vie, the automobile accident in Le Mepris, they had enough narrative convention in them to set up a situation, allow it to unfold, and see how it played out. 

Now, Godard has made a film that has (finally) tossed out the cliched ending but ended (pun intended) without a bang. Just a pfffft.

However, there are some brilliant sequences. All of his film ideas are a compilation of scenes which often breakdown, and are further reduced, into sub-scenes within the scene. The pile of books with someone reading out disconnected sentences for someone to write down is brilliant. It's autobiographical according to what I've read about his habits before he became a filmmaker, when he was soaking up information, a sentence, a paragraph, a page, a chapter, a frame, twenty four frames - a second - a minute, or one-third of a film, half a film or all of a film. But this is where the documentarian in Godard started to take over the visual filmmaker. With a film like Breathless which is stuffed to the rafters with story cliches it is the visuals which count most. With Le Mepris, in Cinemascope they are developed to another level (thanks to his dop). With Pierrot (also Cinemascope) they are a breathtaking series of images which (literally) took my breath away (which is why I watched the film twice in 24-hours). 

Here, there are beautiful shots of building-work – construction sites – going on in Paris, like Antonioni has done in his films. But they lack the connection to something conventional. Godard has become Andy Warhol or Chris Marker and given half of himself to the things that he has read or watched which he loves and wants to share, and someone who sets up a camera and observes, or scripts the pretence of observation.

JUST SAYING, that my material, words and thoughts is subject to copyright:

All words other than within quotation marks are written by Philip Powers and are protected by copyright and under Fair Use, 10% of it may be quoted or reproduced, if properly credited, in another work.

It may not be reproduced in its entirety in any form without the written consent of the author.

The author can be contacted at philiprwpowers@gmail.com or alisonmpowers99@gmail.com. © 2018

Day 259

Friday 16 March 2018 00.10am 

'Pierrot le fou - again!'

I watched this Godard film for the second time tonight. I got home from the film course where I'd see The Pawnbroker and immediately put the dvd in its slot and watched this film again. It's my favourite of the five so far and has so much jam-packed into it that I need to see it again to get everything out it. Well, not everything, but more than I could in just one sitting.

Wow, wow, wow. This film with Jean-Paul Belmondo is the smarter, wiser, more mature, old brother to Breathless. It is more assured, it deals with the way Godard delivers other people's words to the viewer. but more inventively,, and it is less potboiler in style and more sincere. It's more from the heart and less-referential to all of the A and B-movies that Godard has seen.

Sure, Breathless did things in French cinema which were new, and which replicated a lot of bad American cinema but Pierrot le fou did it well - with class, irony, cultural comment, beauty and humour - and of course, words. Lots and lots of words.

I suppose that while Citizen Kane is the great American film, and Vertigo is Hitchcock's Citizen Kane, Breathless must be to some - or even many - France's Citizen Kane.

Day 258

Thursday 15 March 2018 10.17pm 

'Film Course, Week Five'

We're back in America and we're watching clips of films, just two minutes, often (seemingly) random, to get a taste for, or of, the film.

It's so very, very Godard.

The film we ended up watching was a mainstream American film. Or so I thought. I've known of the film since I was ten-years old and I've known of its reputation but I 'd never seen it despite dozens of opportunities. I even have a copy of it on DVD waiting for the day when I will get time to watch it, and the other 1,000 really important films I want to watch.

Stratton, however, informed my misinformation and it turns out that this film was not only an independent American film, but wasn't even distributed by one of the big Hollywood studios. I don't know where he gets his information but I'm happy to believe and accept it. The film features Geraldine Fitzgerald and Rod Steiger and was directed by Sidney Lumet. As soon as Stratton said those names, I instantly knew what the film was going to be tonight: The Pawnbroker (1964).

Interestingly he made mention of the music score by Quincy Jones which he was thought was very effective. At the end of the film when the last logos and copyright dates came up I realized that it didn't have an MPAA number. I've collected these numbers for decades and realise that this absence indicates that it wasn't submitted for a rating. It was independent of even the independent-American-filmmaking scene.

What a film! An amazing achievement on all counts. Low-budget filmmaking at its best. Forty-four years is enough time to look at the film without comparing it to everything else that was made around the same time and judging it as we would have then (even though, funnily, this course is all about 1964 and 1965 which means we are).

At the time it had mixed reviews. Not surprisingly because it is hardly a delicate film, and it's not directed with a light touch, and Rod Steiger's performance is beautifully superficial for the most part (which it has to be to portray someone who has left all of the horror in a segregated, compartmentalized, part of his brain, in a hard-to-access place, deep within his being), and then believably empathetic in the scenes where his character starts to unravel and he pushes his hand down, on to a spike, to pay penance for the emotional and psychological pain he can no longer access which would give his dead family the emotional devotion they deserve.

As I walked out of the building where this course is hosted I heard someone say to another, "blah blah blah PTSD blah blah blah".

I knew the words which those letters represent and I'd never considered that for all the trauma that regular people have to endure post-1945, that every survivor of the concentration camps was experiencing PTSD worse than most.

There is a point where, in a human being's experience, everything but the most basic functions shutdown.

It's like a device that needs electric power to function. It's plugged into the power-point and although there's just a light on the plug to show that it is getting current, it still doesn't work. We press the on-switch of the vacuum or the radio or the tv or the computer or the printer and we know it has power but it can't, it won't, start.

There is a state - a point of being - that is the same. Deprived of current, everything, every battery, eventually, shuts the device down. When the film begins Rod Steiger is in what the PC world calls SAFE Mode. If you ask too much of it, it will CRASH. It can do basic functions. It can even attempt a basic self-diagnostic.

This extraordinary film does - in 1964 - a brilliant job revealing the point in a human life where a battery runs out of life or a life runs out of energy.

The Pawnbroker is a film which earns a position as one of the best films of 1964 because Sidney Lumet pulls off almost every single moment of the film with great directorial choices and judgment. The more answers to a thousand questions a day which a director gets right, determines how good the film turns out to be. It could be as simple as pulling an actor back from hammyness (which Barry Levinson didn't do in Rain Man) or casting a stand-up comedian, Whoopi Goldberg (as Steven Spielberg did in The Color Purple).

Thursday 15 March 2018 14.17am 

'Understanding Godard'

I think I understood where Godard is headed after watching five-in-a-row.

1) He's a man who has had lot information come his way without asking for it. It's just come his way.
2) He's read a lot and seen a lot and there's no avenue for his response, to what he's read and seen, to be dispersed to the rest of the world - maybe film could be his thing.
3) What he thinks of all that he reads and sees, even in developing ideas for a novel or a film, is unimportant despite the fact that it is often different to the accepted, standard, beliefs.
4) Other people only get to write about all these clashing thoughts in a diary (secret) or a novel (published). Words on paper are almost free. To get to think words as images is costly. To somehow get finance for films that dress up as another kind of film but reveal themselves as a person trying to understand themselves or another person: Art, or Expression, or Expressionism, or the middleground that divides them all.

I think the thing in common is that everyone, who thinks about the bigger picture, has a degree of thinking which they think is worth considering. It's what everyone wants to have. It's an argument that tells someone else - convincingly - that they (me/you/him) have an opinion worth listening to or that they accept the other person has the wise mind. With Godard it increasingly obvious that he wants a platform upon which he can mount his arguments and the arguments are worth hearing. They are about not accepting the current situation or the status quo.

I think the reason that I liked Pierrot so much is that it was the most expert in attaching a story to a bunch of thoughts that Godard had going through his mind, for months, if not, years. Everything I've seen so far of Godard's is about having thoughts that are best expressed in words (through essays and interviews) or images. Godard heads down a path that makes images less important and makes words (expressed in any form) more important or universal or paramount.

Today Chris learned that not getting a response to an email or a text doesn't mean that it's the end of the world.

Chris had written Georgia off as a good thing that went sour. A decade of friendship. Then six days of nothing. Six days of nothing meant everything to Chris.

He didn't cut her or anyone out but he did say to himself that unless someone you're close to responds in six days then they're history. That's it. Give up. Go home. No more contact.

He tried to see it in any other light than the one thrown at him but it was all about rejection and rejection and rejection.

Godard reads a lot and sees a lot and experiences a lot and experiences a lot and experiences a lot.

That is the given. Everything else is like icing on the cake. It's an insight into Godard the director.

He needs to be bold and ask everyone that he sees whether he can be king or not be king.

Macbeth is about being recognised for who you/they/everyone are/is.

Without recognition you are a pretender. Or a predator. Or both. Or open to misunderstanding.

Thursday 15 March 2018 02.02am 

Pierrot le fou  1965

A Jean-Luc Godard Film

I got it today. I finally got it and understood it. I know now where Godard was headed. It is his developing ability to film his thoughts.

Pierrout gave me the insight to see that these films are a mixture of the bland - of everything that is accepted - and the current - everything Godard thinks about.

All the quotes are an expression of the inconsequential, the important, the obscure and the words that give life to the confusion and exploration that Godard lives with and seeks to understand better, everyday - himself.

Although he wants to be an anarchist, he doesn't want to replace God - or a President or a Dictator - and then be able to act like God. He wants to understand the things in life that are the most inexplicable things we are trying to wrap our heads around.

Day 257

Wednesday 14 March 2018 23.53pm 

Bande A Part  1964

A Jean-Luc Godard Film

I don't know if Godard is an anarchist or see himself as an anarchist. Or whether he is just a thief who steals - borrows is the kinder word - from everything around him and then puts it in the final creation which he calls his finished or completed film. Or whether he is just a lawbreaker who sees a set of rules and then goes about breaking them whenever he gets the inspiration to jettison what has been accepted as the norm in the past. In all of the first four films I've seen from 1960, 61, 62 and 63, he uses a lot of words written by other people, making his films, to a degree, documentaries about information. It's a crazy thing to do, creating scenes where actors as characters read another author's words instead of the words written by the author of the screenplay. That alone makes Godard extraordinary. His reliance on other people's words is unprecedented in these four films from any other writer-director. And for good reason. Because he accepted life as a jumbled mess of information from everything he read or viewed without always (of even often) needing to read or see the start or the end of the work he was inhaling, be it a book or a film. [Quotations to support this can be found by Richard Brody (New Yorker) and Richard Roud (Cinema: A Critical Dictionary) - citations needed to be included HERE.]

I think it's the second and third because if I remember correctly what anarchy means, it's to do with tearing down what exists, reducing the (previous) regime to the past tense. Isn't it about destroying what was there because you wanted to replace it with either yourself or your beliefs or ideals? Or is anarchy simply the situation or moment when there is no ruler or government? Or is it just about not recognising the rulers or rules that have hitherto been accepted as the guidelines of how we should live - in our, country, state, continent, tribe, village or house - now, refusing to accept those rules or commandments as defining how it is that we should live.

The reason I don't think it is the first is because that would be about replacing what was there with something completely different. But if anarchy merely means taking out the government and living in a state without governing authorities, to do as you please, then Godard fits that category as well.

Godard so obviously loves film and the basic state of filmmaking that I don't believe he wants to destroy it and rebuild it from his own ideals. He loves it too much to want to blow it up. And yet there are a number of assumptions which he does want to explode. The assumption that Eisenstein's theories, of framing shots, eye-matching and editing, are the essentially indisputable commandments of film places Eisenstein as God, or if not God, then Lord, or the Son of God. When I read essays by critics like Noel Burch who tear apart filmmakers who don't accept silent filmmaking rules, like Kurosawa and others, constantly talking about eyeline-matching, editing and frame composition and the dialectics of how Eisenstein in his writings believes montage and editing should be done. Burch criticizes those who don't follow what he sees as the fundamental rules of filmmaking (as described by Eisenstein). Godard definitely - I

can see it in the four films I've watched so far - believes that there aren't any rules, and gives great reverence to what he calls American B-films. His first feature films indicate a similar reverence for American filmmaking that directors like Truffaut also gave, but even moreso.

Not only did Godard base Breathless around a B-grade style, and expertly realise the deficiencies of those low-budget films, but his second film Vivre sa vie had an intertitle at the beginning which stated that it was a Homage to B-movies. I don't know who wrote the text on that title card but it probably wasn't there when the film was first released because it talks about the Venice Film Festival award - although who knows, maybe the festival was before the award was before the initial release - in the same breath as acknowledging it is a B-movie. Although I would dispute Vivre sa vie is a B-movie homage until it's final scene (when it clearly is), with Bande A Part, Godard creates a film noir homage (like Truffaut with Shoot the Piano Player) which ends with dialogue which relegates it to being pulp fiction, with narration stating, "My story ends here, like in a pulp novel, at that superb moment when nothing weakens, nothing wears away, nothing wanes." He's not saying that this moment is at the end of a pulp novel, just that it is a superb moment when things are left on a high, at a strong moment in the pulp story or the pulp film. He then follows that narration with a promotional line that indicates that this couple's further adventures will be coming to a movie theater near you soon - when it is made - like the moment when the author of a pulp novel (or movie), like those with Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, Simon Templar or The Baron will use that last moment of the current story to be the equally strong moment that tells the reader that the hero is still in control, at his peak, and ready for more. It's a cheeky nod to everything he loves about American film noir and Hitchcock and the B-films that celebrate men-slapping-women, sex, prostitution (obvious or disguised), murder, robbery, deception and amorality.

Bande A Part does this brilliantly. It does it in every single way better than Breathless and it does it with a lot more humour, with far less emphasis on the pastiche and ironic tributes to the famous Hollywood style and cliches of Breathless.

It amazes me that someone who sets out (like Truffaut with Piano Player) to attribute greatness to mostly second-rate films (which is why they are called B-films - meaning they're the supporting feature, not the main attraction, shorter in running-time and hampered by a limited budget) by copying it over and over, then becomes known as a great director by recreating the style of second-rate films nearly as well as, or as good as, or better than, the experts in second-rate films who live in California. It such a strange thing to claim as an achievement. It would be akin to Ian Fleming setting out to replicate and better all the heroes of novelists - like Leslie Charteris, John Creasy and Carter Brown - with James Bond. But Fleming didn't attempt that. He didn't imitate. He actually thought he was creating a super secret-service agent, who was an original, with a license to kill, who had a double-oh number which sanctioned his good behaviour (for the government) and his bad behaviour (for himself). It's like someone like Quentin Tarantino borrowing from a thousand films he saw and recreating his own version of them in Pulp Fiction or Kill Bill. It doesn't make them great unless Tarantino is inherently great within himself. And Godard in Breathless doesn't have an ounce of the greatness that Tarantino shows in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.

What's important in filmmaking in the long run is when a director takes a pulp fiction novel, tears away the pulp and makes it pure orange juice, like Spielberg did with Jaws and Coppola did with The Godfather. There are probably other examples like The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep, To Have and Have Not, Key Largo and all the other Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart films before they hit it big. At a point in time, which is hard to pinpoint because it was a gradual growth of respect for tawdry thrillers like The Postman Always Rings Twice, Robert Mitchum, and the potboilers he was headlining, skipped the mark that separated B from A. And what blurs that mark is the fact that because big stars were under contract a studio could require that a big star act in a film that wasn't going to be the main attraction. A good rule-of-thumb in determining (with hindsight) whether it was made to be the film before interval or the big film after interval is the movie's running time.

Wednesday 14 March 2018 04.03am 

The Outsiders  1964

A Jean-Luc Godard Film

Another good one. Here I am, in the week where I thought I would be troubled by everything Godard had to offer. Not the case, other than the first one, Breathless (1960).

Fourth day, four films, a brilliant filmmaker who seems less of an anarchist than when I started watching Breathless (1960), four night ago.

Bande A Part (1964) is a gem. A film that is more loving than the others, and more forgiving than the others. As the films go on, people dying because of one's misdeeds is less likely to be the upshot of everything. The people that die are less likely to die as a punishment for their behaviour, thoughts or deeds, than in previous Godard films.

Day 256

Tuesday 13 March 2018 03.19am 

Le Mepris  1963

Third day, third consecutive Godard film, great film.

Really amazing given the depth it has compared with the two previous Godard films I've seen. It's gone Breathless (1960), Vivre da sie (1962) and now a film that is simultaneously superficial and deep, Le Mepris (1963).

Superficial because it deals with the superficial land of Hollywood filmmaking and because of its tribute to Hollywood films, exposing how all the relationships are skin deep. Deep because it deals with emotions between people in relationships, business and professional.

A wonderful, brilliant film, that achieves the ten-out-of-ten on every level. The cinematography, location, editing and continuity are superb. Also the direction. So well-judged. This is exceptional. By far the best of the three Godard films so far. More tomorrow.

Day 255

Monday 12 March 2018 03.14am 

Living Her Life  1962

I don't know much about the French language (as I studied Japanese in High School) but the film was still known in English-speaking countries as Vivre sa vie. The words when I Google them indicated the words, loosely translated, are living her life, which makes sense as that's what Nana does, just living her life day to day as life throws up the challenges that give people the choice to make this decision or that decision.

I think Vivre sa vie (1962) is brilliant. Brilliant, excellent, wonderful, insightful, revealing and well-crafted. Everything that Breathless (1960) wasn't.

It bears the distinguishing marks of the approach to filmmaking that I have already been aware of with regard to Godard's style. That style as I understand it (at least in this early period) was a piecemeal, often fragmented, approach.

This time it works beautifully to reveal the way events have unfolded to change a woman's life from needing 2000 francs to doing something she'd never done before to earn the 2000 francs. In the twelve tabelauxs through quotations Godard reveals his interest in motivation for a person's behaviour and in giving the main character her justification for what she decides to do with her life.

Unlike other films where a regular person is driven to prostitution, but with a heavy heart, Godard treats Nana as a specimen of life. She's reluctant to go down this path but when it gives her what she wants - 2000 francs - she accepts it, and then embraces it. There's no shame in what she has accepted. She needs money and there's a way to make money that doesn't cause much grief between her mind, her body and her soul. What follows is worth a lot more than 2000 francs. Comparing it with her job selling LPs in a record store it's as different as chalk and cheese when compared with what she has to do in her new profession and what she gets for selling her body instead of records. Undressed-sex as opposed to clothed-sex is a difference of two thousand francs per client.

Godard's more assured use of camera is more about what he doesn't do than what he does do. His style is less manic and more measured in approach. In almost every instance the approach is about setting up beautifully-framed shots than doing everything on the run.

The storytelling seeme to be more deliberate. He's got a number of ideas in his head which he wants to realise as scenes in a film. He has a subtitle calling the film, A Film in Twelve Scenes. He didn't need to do that because the twelve scenes would cut together without the explanation as they still have continuity of thought and design. But it is like Godard felt he needed to clearly state what he is doing in every scene. Possibly this is in response to criticism for not doing that in Breathless (1960).

More significant than anything discussed above is the fact that Godard gives more importance to words that mean something (or count for something) in Vivre sa vie. He also creates spaces in the film where there is dialogue and would normally be effects, where there is the cold, cold silence of the complete absence of sound.

Additionally, he has created a situation in the film where he doesn't have to create a screenplay with only his own words because he is going to spend equal - or more - time quoting other people's words.

This doesn't come across as a substitution in the screenplay for words that Godard doesn't have to say by including the words of many others (even though it may well have been his intention and design). They're meant as words which have significant meaning for anyone living life - and words which are wise, beautiful and insightful as they apply to many people's life.

The way that Godard introduces the words into the scenes is inventive, doing it in several different ways. One time, for example, it is is a detailed scene which shows Nana writing a letter. She does it in real time and it is actually very peaceful, calming and relaxing to watch. Other times it is through hearing the words of a song or someone reciting the history of the laws of prostitution in France and what a prostitute needs to be careful about in her daily approach to work. Sometimes someone recounts the essential plot points of a book. That scene is quite remarkable as Nana goes and sits with an elderly gentleman, chatting him up, to see if could be persuaded to become her next client. Instead, he tells her many interesting things.

Although there's another feature film and a short film or two between his first and third feature, there's a significant maturity to Vivre sa vie which is exceedingly obvious when watching Breathless (1960) and Vivre sa vie (1962) back-to-back.

Day 254

Sunday 11 March 2018 11.29pm 

Vivre sa vie   1962

Round one of PP v Godard was bloody. I'm going into round two sure that it's going to be another struggle for me to comprehend that this is an important filmmaker despite the fact that Godard is overwhelmingly acknowledged as one of the greatest of all filmmakers.

Day 253

Saturday 10 March 2018 11.12pm 

Breathless  1960

Note: For those who think that there is an unsaid rule or obvious regard in which Breathless should be held as a film: well, that's not my conclusion after seeing a film that is 58-years old, for the first time. No film just gets their place in a list of the Greatest Films Ever Made without having to earn it.

And so Godard-week begins, as I always thought it would. What I knew was that viewing Breathless (1960) would be a solid test of my prejudice against Godard after my University experience (of just one film, Tout van bien) which resulted in me thinking Godard was a complete wankerm, and I never watched another of his films. I did the same with Fellini after watching 8½ (1963) [although I did accidentally see Ginger and Fred (1986) which was simultaneously disappointing and quite interesting]. I treated Eisenstein and Griffith with similar disrespect. And Bergman and Antonioni. And Kurosawa after seeing Seven Samurai (1954) when I was fifteen: I thought it compared poorly with The Magnificent Seven. I was eighteen at the time and teenagers are notorious for thinking they know more than they know and for youth being wasted on them. With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight aging people also come to realise that as every year passes they are more and more aware of how little they actually know - about everything. In fact, that's the point of me trying to set all these wrongs right in just fifty-two weeks of catching up on the films of everyone I marginalised.

At the same age I didn't judge Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Stravinsky and Schoenberg with that same one-dimensional mind, nor Faulkner, Joyce (I loved Portrait but didn't rush out to buy Ulysses) or Bellow (I didn't finish Mr Sammler's Planet but appreciated some of it whilst understanding not much) or any number of poets and playwrights. Just cinema.

What I've learned in the ensuing thirty-five years was that being a complete wanker wasn't always a complete disaster and that sometimes it leads to the greatest change to conventional thinking, just like it did with literature and music, which I embraced on all levels. Just not cinema.

In fact, supporting the arts, and funding wankers, wasn't an area where I thought I would be culpable, ever; but I did support them for many years, as a project officer with the Australia Council; as the Managing Director of my own recording label, firstly as oneMone Records P/L, then 1M1 Records, and lastly as 1M1 Digital P/L; and as a music producer.

That now gives me an insight into the life of wankers of which Godard is guilty, as am I, with numerous examples of musical experimentation in my past.

What is obvious, by the seeming rejection of films in a language other than English, was it was more about embracing of English and American films, and Australian, illustrating the grip Hollywood had on the vast majority of films which came to Australia (outside of Film Festivals). Still, I made it to the Dendy at Martin Place and the Academy Twin at Paddington frequently and saw films by Almodovar, Chabrol, Luna, Salles, Beineix, Robert, Veber, Truffaut, Tornatore, Benigni, Dassin, Visconti, Tati and many others. I also went to see films by many non-mainstream filmmakers like (in their early films) Jim Jarmusch, Alex Cox, Quentin Tarantino, Coen Brothers and almost every Australian film released between 1975 and 1994. Working at Film Australia for eight years, on more than four hundred documentaries and one feature film, helped broaden my narrow little mind, to accept a lot of things that fell outside of standard filmmaking. But it never brought me back to revisit Fellini, Godard, Bergman or Kurosawa. Nor to hunt down films by Mizoguchi or Ozu which other people at Film Australia told me were filmmakers who made amazing movies.

Now I'm seeing my second Godard film, Breathless, and the disservice that knowledge brings to seeing a film for the first time, is patently clear here. Unlike all the other films, which I've come to without preconceived ideas, this particular film is too famous for me not to know the circumstances surrounding its making. Godard, having finally got someone to finance a feature film that he would direct, his first, decided to go ahead without a script, just an outline (by Truffaut). The actors and crew often went days without filming because Godard was making up his ideas on the run, so to speak, much like his character, Michel, who was also making up ideas on the run.

The fact that the director and the character were both on the lam, running from the law - Michel, from the police, and Godard from the laws of filmmaking: eg. having a script in place before commencing principal photography - almost resulted in the funding being withdrawn until Truffaut placated the backers.

How I see this idiosyncracy of Godard's, in Breathless, of making things up along the way, was (I think) his downfall and his success (overall). Breathless was a surprising series of happy mistakes where something that wasn't very well done turned out to be commercially successful and ground-breaking. I don't think any film as ground-breaking has been as commercially successful. It set him up with a big hit on his first time at bat, and led to a general well-regard that enabled the rest of his career, with its ups and downs and controversy.

Breathless isn't very well made - which is self-evident while watching it - but without a doubt it fits into the Top 100 Films Ever Made. It's not one of the best films ever made but it is one of the Most Important and Influential and sits comfortably and naturally in its position amongst the Greatest Films of All-Time.

That's my first viewing. I had difficulties with Au hasard Balthazar (1966) and Cries and Whispers (1972) and many other film the first time around, although I don't think any of them were as poorly made as Breathless.

I'll come back to Breathless after I've watched the six or seven other Godard film I've been about to lay my hands on, at the end of Godard-week, and re-evaluate it. Bring on Vivre sa vie (1962).

Day 252

Friday 9 March 2018 06.33pm 

'Emails from the Class'

As I stood and handed out flyers to everyone in the class last night most of the bones in my body were vibrating with a combination of nerves and fear. I've never been so bold as to make a big deal about something that wasn't musical - my profession - which is something I do know a bit about. 

But I got a couple of emails back which were very nice. Thanks to those who got in touch.

Julie's kind and engaging email in fact inspired me to reflect on what my favourite films were growing up and the economic circumstances surrounding whether we had enough money to go to the movies any given week. I think I'll write an article about the films I saw from my earliest memory to the point in life where my parents - or the world - stopped seeing me as a child. That point was probably when they started making me pay for my own tickets.

Friday 9 March 2018 01.09am 

Suna no onna  1964

Woman of the Dunes 1964

This was one of the films I had on my list to see, particularly because it was by a Japanese director who I'd not heard of, given the fact I'd done so many Kurosawa, Mizoguchi and Ozu films - even a Takeshi Kitano - recently. I had resigned myself to not being able to get a copy to view. What a bit of luck to get this as my fourth film in the 1964 History of World Cinema course.

It was far darker than I had anticipated, essentially about a man and woman held hostage by villagers and used as slave labour, but as with all the films I've been watching I knew nothing about it before seeing it, not even the year it was made.

It digs deeply into the worst aspects of what people can do to other people for their own profit.

I've stayed awake - as in, deprived of sleep - thinking about this awful film, from 1am to 3am, writing an essay about the metaphor and meaning behind Teshigahara's film. 

If you'd like a copy, please email: 100greatestfilms@gmail.com

Day 251

Thursday 8 March 2018 11.58pm 

'Explaining the 100'

Woman of the Dunes (1964) is one of the films I was trying to track down to watch as part of this list I've developed from multiple sources of great films I must see. It was the second last film in the 100 to watch section of Time Out (2006) by virtue of it starting with W, the last film starting with Z (Costa-Gavras's 1968 film Z).

Naturally, there is no such thing as the 100 Greatest Films Ever Made and to some people it almost offensive to try and reduce all of cinema to just 100 titles. It would be just as bad if I was gin a list of the 100 Greatest Classical Music Works as voted by conductors, musicians and critics. You can't reduce twenty-centuries of composition to just 100 titles, nor even the last six centuries of music to 100 titles. The same goes for drawings (paintings), sculptures, inventions and buildings.

However, they can serve a purpose beyond whatever the person who initiated the list had in mind.

If I'm going to give a year of my life to seeing dozens, or hundreds, of films I've never even heard of, then I'm happy to allow my guide to be Sight & Sound's 2012 poll of critics, academics and filmmakers.

Because of this poll I've now seen Hour of the Wolf, Cries and Whispers, The Silence, Fanny and Alexander, Wild Strawberries, Ugetsu monogatari, Sansho dayu, Chungking Express, 2046, Late spring, Late autumn, Tokyo Story, Berlin Alexanderplatz, Ali: Fear eats the soul, Pickpocket, Mouchette, A Man Escaped, Les quarter cents coups, Jules et Jim, L'avventura, L'eclisse, Zabriskie Point, Nuit et brouillard, The Wind Will Carry Us, Shunpu den, Yojimbo, Sanjuro, The Hidden Fortress, Ivan the Terrible Part I, Ivan the Terrible Part 2, Sunrise, A Woman of Paris and Jour de fête and a hundred more. 

Everything is to a certain degree a matter of opinion although there are ten thousand films that we can rule out from being on the Top 100, or the Top 200, which allows us to start to narrow down what we think is truly great.

I'm not interested in creating my own list of what I agree with and what I disagree with: just viewing.

Day 251

Thursday 8 March 2018 11.34pm 

Admitting I'm a Babe in the Woods by Trying to do it All in 52 Weeks.

I was far out of my depth and I realised it tonight as I handed out a piece of paper (to fellow film students) about my experience of the last eight months, while trying to view too many films in far too short a time. I was bold and stupid in equal parts.

I also had one year of leave to see everything important before getting back to work again in July, 2018.

I know that I'm setting myself up for a lot of criticism for wrong dates, misspelled names and bad grammar but I am literally viewing, writing and posting, and I'm not setting myself up to be someone who even has time to run a spellcheck before I post. I'm eight months into a failed experiment where I've tried to take on a century of film in fifty-two weeks. The folly is apparent now more than ever.

I'm experiencing the process of unfolding the feelings and thoughts as it happens while negotiating everything else in life. It's a journey for me and the experience, the day-to-day understanding of watching new films multiple times, and my sense of discovery, hopefully makes up for all the errors a fifth-class ten-year old student should had weeded out in their sentences before submitting and committing anything to the page or the web.

Wiser people have taken to looking at twenty-four films from a period of four years, one year at a time. They take ten years to assimilate forty years of world cinema.

Nevertheless, I'm on a journey, blogging and posting thoughts on the films I've never seen before which are new and exciting. As I experience new films from new cultures my only hope was that some other people - people I know and other people who think The Dark Knight (2008) is the greatest film ever made - would do what the people in David Stratton's course are already doing: go and see a film not in English, or a film from a culture that is completely foreign to you.

All of that being a given, I hope there are some things that everyone can take from these posts without too much judgment and a whole lot of compassion.

Day 250

Wednesday 7 March 2018 11.11pm 

Tokyo Story  1953 

I wrote last night about where Tokyo Story (1953) sits as a great film and how the reputation that years of bias has attributed to this extraordinary status. Now I want to talk about the film and not how it is generally regarded or generally perceived because I do think it is a masterpiece. Late Autumn (1960) likewise. 

Late Spring (1949) and Late Autumn were about an unmarried daughter who is not concerned about whether she will marry or not or whether it will be now, later or never. Everyone around her is particularly concerned about the fact that she is getting older and is still single. Both films also touch on the issue of widows and widowers and the acceptability of them remarrying and whether it is shameful. In Late Spring Noriko's character even judges a family friend for having remarried. She calls it filthy. It embarrasses her to think that someone would marry again after being widowed. For herself, she's happy to not marry and look after her father as he gets older. In Tokyo Story the character of Noriko was married to one of Shukichi and Tomi Hirayama's boys, but after he was killed in the war, she didn't remarry. She seems not to be concerned with it or interested in it. Tomi, however, makes it clear to her that they wouldn't feel she would be done the wrong thing to get married again. This issue of whether it is okay or not okay to remarry is significant in all three of these films.

Tokyo Story is not about fathers and daughters (like Late Spring) or unmarried daughters or widows and widowers who don't want to remarry, but about parents and children and how they behave towards each other. The Hirayama's live in a small town with their youngest daughter, Kyoko, while their eldest two live and work in Tokyo. They are married and reasonably successful. Keizo, their other boy, is single and works for the railway and is the one who lives closest to their town. The film begins with the mother and father packing and working out the train timetable to take a journey to Tokyo which is a considerable distance away. Once they arrive at Koichi's house their visit, which should have been an enjoyable time of catching up with Koichi and Shige and their grandchildren, becomes a series of situations where the selfishness of these children becomes evident.

It's a universal theme which the film is describing, especially in an era where keeping in touch with your children is a difficult thing when they move away from home. Especially also when a lot of children want to move to a bigger town than the one they grew up in. Noriko Hirayama we learn as the film unfolds is the daughter-in-law and the film uses her good nature and love for dead husband's parents to further underline the lack of regard, time and patience of Koichi and Shige. The brief time of happiness for Tomi and Shukichi while visiting Tokyo is when Noriko is intentional in spending time with them.

The film is very serious for the most part but there are several scenes of gentle humour, often ironic. Scenes where the dialogue and the circumstance play against each other reveal a gentle irony, such as when the couple are sent to a spa so that the two Tokyo children don't have to look after them or worry about entertaining them. They collude to each put in quite a bit of money to send their folks to a spa so they can be rid of them. Then at the spa, they're so unhappy there, they come home early and are made to feel so unwelcome, they immediately leave even though they have nowhere to go. They sit with their bundles of clothing and the few things they brought with them in a park looking like a pair of hobos. Their children aren't interested in spending time with them and they've got nowhere to go and nowhere to even spend the night until they come up with a plan which allows for the most serious scene and the most entertaining scene. Tomi and her daughter-in-law have a meaningful conversation at Noriko's place while Shukichi gets drunk with two old friends, staying out all night as he has no place to go.

This rich Yasujiro Ozu film is full of the same directorial style of Late Autumn and Late Spring which has the camera set at an unusually long distance from where the action happens. The closer camera set-ups for dialogue which is important, are rare, and a moving camera (in all three films) is even rarer, when the old couple walk down the small wall at the ocean. For the rest of the time Ozu's pared back directing style makes for films that come across as very reserved and observational in tone. If you think of Wong Kar Wai's style of directing in Chunking Express (1994) and Ozu's approach you have the two extremes of directing styles. On is frenetic and involves draws the viewer completely into the scenes while the other has a quality that is typical of Japanese behaviour (except when drunk or angry), which is cool, calm and reserved. Like all three of Ozu's films I have seen they are dialogue-based and the intrinsic value and understanding of the story is in the dialogue of the screenplay. It is so revealing because Ozu gives great value and illumination to scenes which give the characters licence to state how they're feeling when so often Tokyo Story is a lesson in people not connecting with each other. The conversations between the visiting couple and everyone but Noriko underline how little communication goes on between everyone. Shukichi and Tomi don't speak up and tell their children how they feel and their children talk behind their backs, revealing the nasty, uncaring side of their natures.

With Tokyo Story, the main point is about revealing and accepting that children and parents will draw apart as they grow older, more often than not. But it still has a point to say which is that children don't respect their parents (in this case) and that parents shouldn't be so worried about being alone when their partner is dead and the last child is ready to leave home. As Kyoko, the youngest daughter, watches the train leave for Tokyo with Noriko on-board, it is a revealing moment as she looks longingly at the train headed for Tokyo, the place where everyone seems to think they will find fun and happiness. When she expresses her disappointment in the treatment of her mother and father, Noriko defends her brother and sister-in-law's behaviour, quite convincingly. With Shukichi's track record of raising children who don't care about their parents, the writing is on the wall that Kyoko will act in a similar way. It is Noriko, though, who we know will make the trip from Tokyo to visit and keep in touch with Shukichi, the father.

Tokyo Story is a beautiful and powerful observation of a Japanese family interacting. The dialogue is real, revealing and speaks of many things which occur between parents and children, husbands and wives, and widowers and friends.

Day 249

Tuesday 6 March 2018 23.39pm 

'Why is Tokyo Story (1953) Regarded as the Greatest Film of All-Time' 

I asked myself this question the first time I watched Tokyo Story, about three or four weeks before I started this project in July 2017. As I watched the film I was constantly asking it to prove itself to me and reveal why it is so highly regarded. As the film unfolded, after more than a third of the film had elapsed, bit by bit, it got under my skin and into my heart and I started to appreciate all the special qualities that so many other people have appreciated about it.

This time I had a better context to experience it, however, having watch two or three Mizoguchi films in the last eight months and eight Kurosawa films as well as forty or fifty French, German and Italian films and watched two other films by Yasujiro Ozu in consecutive nights, Late Autumn (1960) and Late Spring (1949). This time I knew what was coming up at any given moment and I got to see the films with a different set of eyes, and a differently-oriented brain than the first time.

It is far less clear why this is the greatest, best, most excellent, most important, most ground-breaking film ever made in this, my second, viewing. Now, I see it without the expectation that I had with so many of the films I've watched in the last eight months and five days. 

A New Way of Understanding Tokyo Story's Reputation

The DVD cover of the film (which I borrowed from Lane Cove library tonight so I could watch it in the context of these three days living with Ozu) virtually give this film a subtitle, under the Kangi title: THE GREATEST FILM OF ALL TIME. Under that it says Sight & Sound Magazine Directors' Poll 2012.

S&S and the BFI want to use their polling results to give the public a list of the greatest films ever made and they use their polling results to make emphatic statements which are then reported in the media by journalists and critics and reviews and by those lucky people who can write opinion pieces.

My wife watched Tokyo Story with me tonight. Afterwards she asked me, "So, why do you think it is regarded as the greatest film ever made?"

I thought about my answer for a long time. Probably more than a minute. I responded, "No one is actually saying this is the greatest film ever, except people who use the results of a poll to make that case. In fact, no one being surveyed is saying it is the greatest film ever because the poll didn't ask that question of any of the twelve hundred people surveyed and the question it did ask wasn't a question which was so specific as to ask for a black and white response. Instead, the question asked by S&S was deliberately non-specific. They asked twelve hundred people to supply their Top Ten lists. The criteria could be Ten Favourite Films Ever, or Ten Most Important Films Ever or Ten Most Influential Films Ever or Ten Most Worthy Films Ever or Ten Greatest Films Ever or Ten Biggest Films Ever.

The majority of those polled struggled to only find ten films to fit on that list, let alone actually putting the films they voted for, in an order from one to ten.

In the Directors' Poll of more than 350 recognized film directors it appeared on more Top Ten film lists than any other film. In the Critics poll, Vertigo appeared on more Top Ten film lists than any other. In both polls Citizen Kane was #2. Tokyo Story in the Critics Poll was #3 and Vertigo was #1. Vertigo in that poll of Directors was tied in 7th position with The Godfather (1972). In fact, in the Directors' Poll Tokyo Story only had six more directors polled place Tokyo Story in their Top Ten. Then 2001 and Citizen Kane were tied and Fellini's 8½ received two less votes. Vertigo and The Godfather at #7 received ten less votes.

It's not such a stupid thing to ask however as it gives an indication from more than a thousand knowledgeable people what they regard to be the Best Ten Films Ever from which the BFI and S&S extrapolates to create a list of 100 films. In fact they have the list of all the films that rank from 100 onwards including all the films which received just one vote, like Hellzapoppin' (which a friend and I went out and bought the next day).The important thing about this poll was that voters could explain their choices. For the person who voted for Hellzapoppin', if he or she had choose just ten films to take with you, marooned on an island for the rest of your life, this voter would take Hellzpoppin' (1941) and nine other films.

Tokyo Story's reputation since the 2012 S&S Poll lies in the fact that it appeared on more Top Ten Lists than any other film.

If you combine the votes for Critics and Directors the list actually reads: 

1. Vertigo (ahead by 23 votes)
2. Citizen Kane (ahead by 44 votes)
3. Tokyo Story (ahead by 23 votes)
4. 2001 (ahead by 15 votes)
5. La Regle du jeu (ahead by 7 votes)
6. Sunrise (ahead by 6 votes)
7. 8½ (ahead by 15 votes)
8. The Searchers (ahead by 3 votes)
9. Apocalypse Now (ahead by 2 votes)
10. Breathless (A bout de souffle - ahead by 5 votes)

 

By contrast the Critics list looks like this: 

1. Vertigo (ahead by 23 votes)
2. Citizen Kane (ahead by 44 votes)
3. Tokyo Story (ahead by 23 votes)
4. La Regle du jeu (ahead by 7 votes)
5. Sunrise (ahead by 6 votes)
6. 2001 (ahead by 15 votes)
7. The Searchers (ahead by 3 votes)
8. Man with a Movie Camera (1929)
9. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
10. 8½ (1963 ahead by 15 votes)

 

Contrasting again, the Directors list: 

1. Tokyo Story (ahead by 6 votes)
2. 2001 (tied but ahead by 2 votes)
3. Citizen Kane (tied but ahead by 2 votes)
4. 8½ (1963 ahead by 6 votes)
5. Taxi Driver (ahead by 1 vote)
6. Apocalypse Now (ahead by 2 votes)
7. Vertigo (tied but ahead by 1 vote)
8. The Godfather (1972)(tied but ahead by 1 vote)
9. The Mirror (ahead by 1 vote)
10. Bicycle Thieves (1948)

 

Only four films are common to all three lists in 2012:

1. Citizen Kane
2. Tokyo Story
3. 2001
4. 8½

No Vertigo, No Regle du jeu or Apocalypse Now, Sunrise or The Searchers, The Godfather or Breathless or The Bicycle Thieves.

The other factor that needs to be counted for is that many of the twelve hundred and four voters knew they had to choose one or two films from a single director’s complete works and give no representation to some directors.

Ozu's admirers were split between two films in particular, Late April and Tokyo Story

Hitchcock's admirers were split between Vertigo, Psycho, Rear Window and North by Northwest

Bergman's admirers were split between Persona, Hour of the Wolf, Wild Strawberries, The Seventh Seal and Fanny and Alexander

Bresson's admirers were split between Au hasard balthazar, Mouchette, Pickpocket and A Man Escaped

Fellini's admirers were split between 8½, La Dolce Vita, Amarcord and La Strada

Kubrick's admirers were split between 2001, Barry Lyndon, Dr Strangelove, A Clockwork Orange and The Shining

Wilder's admirers were split between Sunset Blvd, The Apartment and Some Like it Hot

Kurosawa's admirers were split between Seven Samurai and Rashomon

Godard's admirers were split between Breatheless and six other films he made

Antonioni's admirers were split between L'avventura, L'eclisse and Blow-Up

Dreyer's admirers were split between The Passion of Joan of Arc and Ordet and Gertrud

Bunuel's admirers were split between La chien andalou, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoise and Belle d'jour,

Renoir's admirers were split between Le regle du jeu and La grande illusion,

Coppola's admirers were split between the two Godfather films and Apocalypse Now

Scorsese's admirers were split between Taxi Driver and Raging Bull and Goodfellas

Tarvosvksy's admirers were split between Stalker, The Mirror and Andrei Rublev

John Ford's admirers were consistent in their voting for The Searchers although some votes were recorded for My Darling Clementine

Hawks's admirers were split between His Girl Friday and Rio Bravo

Chaplin's admirers were split between City Lights, The Gold Rush and Modern Times

Keaton's admirers were split between The General and Sherlock Jr.

Leone's admirers were split between Once Upon a Time in the West and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Murnau's admirers were split between Sunrise and Nosferatu

Fassbinder's admirers were split between Berlin Alexanderplatz and Ali: Fear Eats the Soul

Welles's admirers were split between Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil, The Magnificent Ambersons and The Lady from Shanghai as well as a few others.

Cassavetes split his admirers between six films, including Husbands, Opening Night, Killing of a Chinese Bookie and A Woman Under the Influence

And then there are the one-offs: twenty or thirty directors who had the distinction of achieving one film that enough people voted for that it made it into the Top Ten or the Top Twenty or the Top Hundred. These one-offs are interesting because it's not based on 'which film will I pick from Bertolucci's career?' or 'Costa-Gavras's career?' or Truffaut, Tati, Lynch, Lean, Ray, Forman, Herzog, Laughton, etc.

And then there are the other one-offs by excellent directors with unexpected films populating the list like Badlands and Blade Runner and Hidden and The Wild Bunch and Sans Soleil and Chinatown and I am Cuba and Don't Look Now.

There's another fifty films or directors I haven't mentioned like Alain Resnais, Mizoguchi, Vertov and Vigo. I'm only riffing off the top of my head right now. It's not an exhaustive list.

Day 249

Tuesday 6 March 2018 03.01am 

Late Spring  1949

A rich and beautiful film full of sadness and burden as a child is forced to married against her wishes.

Day 248

Monday 5 March 2018 23.54pm 

'Oscars - 90th Annual Academy Awards - Goes to Plan but is Dull, Mixed with Conservative, Mixed with Safe'

I'm home from Grumlevel and Mavis's place. I have watched the ceremony with them for the eleventh consecutive year (if my memory is accurate). It may only be the tenth year depending on whether I was close enough friends with Grum and his wife when Madge and I had only been going out for a bit over six months.

There were some very good results and some merely good results and no terrible results (except the song, arguably, but that's always hard to predict).

Good results were that talented people won awards for doing their job - their profession - brilliantly. My only real concern was the fact that Hans Zimmer had even been nominated for Dunkirk, as a composer, when the score - in the way I see music working - was more a part of the sound design than featuring actual music compositions. When relentless notes are played very very loudly for a long time, undeniably heightening the tension in numerous sequences, that's sound design, and the note that is produced doesn't really need to even have a pitch to be able to produce that result as it bounces around anyone's eardrums. That Dunkirk's (so-called) score was even nominated is a blasphemy when you consider the talent that went into producing the score for The Shape of Water (Desplat), The Last Jedi (Williams) and Phantom Thread (Greenwood).

Desplat is a composer who I have a lot of time for because he takes a slightly different approach to the conventional ways of scoring films - from Hans Zimmer to John Williams - and creates unusual moments where he does something original when nothing in the art of film scoring is original anymore. I was delighted when he won almost as much as I was relieved that Hans Zimmer didn't. Hans Zimmer has as much talent as a composer as you could fit in the left nostril of a fly (if indeed flies have nostrils).

If I had the job of making the decision all by myself and handing out Oscars I would have changed four of the top six  awards. Although worthy, Daniel Day Lewis's performance was less of a performance and more a state of being than Gary Oldman (who nevertheless gave one of the best performances to ever win an Oscar). For the same reason I would have awarded Margot Robbie the Oscar for Best Actress instead of Francis McDormand. Watching really good actors eating scenery is not as good as watching great actors not acting. For the same reason I would have given Best Supporting Actress to Laurie Metcalfe instead of Allison Janney (who nonetheless gave one of the most rip-snorting performances in the history of history). Best Director I would leave as (IMNSHO) Guillermo del Toro because he took the best of his imagination and tempered it with a story I found beautiful in all its crazy ways. [What dreams that man must have when he sleeps!] Best Film was a hard one to choose but out of the nominated choices, despite the love-hate that went on with Christopher Nolan's version of the events at Dunkirk, it would have been Dunkirk (2017) which I thought worked well in showing the other side of the coin of Darkest Hours (2017) which was another worthy option. To see those events in two different films in the same year was amazing. Dunkirk with it's very personal insight into the experience of a handful of people at Dunkirk as a counterpart to Churchill's very personal experience making decisions as Prime Minister of England. [WI personally thought  the Best Film of the Year which had nominations elsewhere on Oscar night was I Tonya (2017). I don't know how it was generally perceived by critics and the public, with its crazy mix of biopic styles, but it was astonishing despite the fact it was a derivative concoction: like how Tarantino uses a dozen genres and rehashes a dozen stories and makes them work together to create something that is often, arguably, astonishing. That Pulp Fiction (1994) is so highly regarding despite the fact that it is pulp fiction is what I'm getting at.]

I'm going to watch Late Spring (1949) now, again, because last night Late Autumn (1960) again proved to me the extraordinary powers of Yosujiro Ozu, of whom I already was in awe of because of Tokyo Story (1953).

Monday 5 March 2018 02.41am 

Late Autumn  1960

I hope everyone realises that this film is a comedy. Ozu takes bits and pieces of his various stylistic moments and integrates them into a film which is funny, delightful, funny-sad, dramatic, and, in a way, also a little tragic. Why tragic? Because the character Ayako Miwa is happy with who she is and what she's doing and the choices she has made and everyone around her wants to change her. I've read that Ozu never married. That's surely had an influence on his treatment of character who are content to be single.

I don't bandy the word masterpiece around much but I think this film is a masterpiece.

Day 247

Sunday 4 March 2018 04.02am 

Imitation of Life  1959 

This is a film which has me foxed. It appears regularly amongst the thirty Hollywood films that populate the 100-Best Films lists. I had to watch it in isolation to get some kind of indication of what it is, what it purports to be, and what it is about it that inspires some people to include it in their Top Ten Films of All Time.

In my first viewing, it comes across as a film without great craft in any particular department. The acting is fine, the production is fine, the script is fine and the direction - mise-en-scene - is fine. Everything is fine. What strikes me as out of the ordinary is the subject matter and the themes which it takes on in a very bold manner in the style of classic Hollywood melodramas. On every level it is the exact incarnation of many good, bad, excellent and indifferent, 1930s 40s 50s, Hollywood melodramas. It takes on subject matter not so different to Valley of the Dolls (1967).

But it is interesting and special because of the sheer weight of all the controversial themes it tackles. Imitation of Life is a fearless film which boldly explores topics which are tackled one at a time by most other films.

Imitation of Life tackles them all - head on - without taking prisoners. It shoots everything in sight and is an extraordinary film for doing so and for negotiating the soap opera elements that allow the studio system to see it as high melodrama and not be too concerned about its topic and theme.

It is not one of the cleverly disguised dramas like In A Lonely Place and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre of even Casablanca. It is bald-faced Valley of the Dolls mixed with All About Eve, but without the acerbic, clever dialogue lacking in the former and bubbling over in the latter.

I don't know if Imitation of Life is a great film but it is an amazing film because of all the things it embraces while appearing in every aspect to be a standard Lana Turner, Douglas Sirk, Universal melodrama.

Day 246

Saturday 3 March 2018 2.02am 

The Marriage of Maria Braun  1979

I've written, read and said so much today, I'm running out of brain power and words. But the film is so in-my-face, I have stopped it, to take a pause and write down what's happening now.

[Yes, I'm back in Fassbinder land. I do know how I got here but I need to explain that Godard is on hold for another week because of  Fassbinder and the uprising of his films once again which happened when I stumbled across a trilogy of his films in Lane Cove Library.]

The film begins with the signing of a marriage certificate and death. Thereafter Maria searches for but comes to think Herrmann is dead. She takes a black lover against what is acceptable in her milieu. Her dead husband returns one day - undead and barging in the door - and knocks her to the ground and the black lover is killed.

The times are desperate. By any measure, with Germany cut in quarters, the German people who not particularly motivated or involved in Hitler's war are nevertheless suffering and living in hard times.

Day 245

Friday 2 March 2018 11.12pm 

'The Synopsis is a Film's Greatest Disservice'

Today, my Dad and I went to see a film that was high on the list (a very short list) of the films he wanted to see in a cinema. I have a magic movie pass that gets me-plus-one to see a movie that is free to me and my guest - "it's like voodoo" as my wife described tonight with Rick and Anne about our first date, seeing the bleak film The Italian, set in a Russian (was it Siberian?) orphanage - that gets my Dad or anyone to see, any film he wants to see for free as long as he's with me which he now chooses not to do, as he no longer wants to be the man who can in any given day see three films free with me.

On Wednesday my father saw Three Billboards (2017) while I saw Molly's Game (2017). The week before I saw I Tonya (2017) while he saw the Darkest Hour (2017). The night before I saw the Darkest Hour with my friend called Larry. The week before I saw del Toro's Shape of Water (2017), again with Larry, so we could see the Oscar nods before the Oscar show. Two hours before my Dad saw Billboards (2017) I saw Lady Bird (2017) and crowed that I had seen the very best supporting act-or-ess (Laurie Metcalfe).

The film, today, we saw - my Dad and I - was called, The Greatest Showman (2017). The title put me off. I cared less if it started, ran and vanished. I don't like circuses. Or Tod Browning's show of Freaks. It's not my kind of thing to see the people not so welcome in the most important parts of life where people feel accepted or summarily rejected due to colour, disposition, race or creed, because they're not elected by anyone that matters.

If I described the plot of this and many other films, the corniness would be so great you'd hate the parts that fit the history of everything that grates upon the people lacking wherewithall to understand and then accept that everyone comes in different shades of red and white and blue and green and purple, orange, mauve and brown and grey and beige and most of all just yellow, bellow, schmellow.

And I must say in every way the film was full of crazy things, and things which shouldn't work at all and scenes they'd (maybe) cut from other shows, Les Mis for instance, which they'd now inserted here.

The thing I liked was the thing that they most vigorously tried to include - that people rich and poor and green and blue and red are to be accepted as much as people who are black and white or dead. Or almost dead. Or may be dead very soon. Like, Now! Not that I want certain people to die! Although... homicidal maniacs and serial killers - they are bad people and there's an argument that they should die... And an argument that they should live - should always be allowed to keep breathing but, do that breathing, imprisoned.

Rascists, bigots, Nazis, neo-Nazis and people of the press - journalists, reporters, bloggers and anyone that feathers their nest with telling lies or spreading rumours just to increase circulation, advertising, sales or earn a buck.

To clarify, I do believe in circulation when it is about spreading blood around the body to enable life or when it is about recycling anything except bad dogma.

So, "Hey, you with the bad dogma, stop circulating it. You know who you are. Stop it."

Day 245

Friday 2 March 2018 01.12am 

A Hard Day's Night  1964

There are so many things to like about A Hard Day's Night (1964) but if you loved movies and loved the Rolling Stones or loved movies and didn't like The Beatles, it would be hard to appreciate the really truly deeply excellent qualities of the film.

To get the negatives out of the way first, the story is slim such as it is and the film doesn't have perfect lip-syncing. Other films which collected numerous Oscars or would have been made for millions of dollars around the same time were also guilty, however. Perfect lip-syncing and perfectly-told stories had been done hundreds of times by Hollywood for thirty years. But this film wasn't made by Hollywood or by a Hollywood director. Richard Lester had two modest features to his credit, each running around 80-minutes. His biggest credit and claim to fame was 5 years earlier, with an 11-minute film which Peter Seller and Richard Lester co-created, starring Spike Milligan and Leo McKern and themselves: The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film (1959).

What it does well is have the Beatles make fun of themselves and their image, show a day in the life of the Beatles (it's like a documentary at least half the time) and create some bizarre, but beautiful visuals to accompany their songs while giving a big screen experience of the Fab Four in close-up. Lots and lots of close-ups.

As David Stratton commented before starting the film, it gives an understanding of, "What people were really interested in, in 1964." What a cool statement and understanding of the film's importance and iconic value. IMDB states that the premiere was 6 July 1964 and it opened in UK cinemas the following day. Who knows if it is true but there are a lot things that are true, but maybe not correct, on the IMDB.

[To defend the incongruity of my statement, I need to emphasise that a lot of information about movies on the IMDB is factual as it comes from biographies and autobiographies and directors commentaries.

It was written and it was said but just because the words were published, recorded, or were stated with a mind recalling events from years ago, doesn't actually make them true. An underrated film released in 1982 addressed that same situation in the words of the advertising campaign,

"Suppose you picked up this morning's newspaper and your life was a front page headline...

And everything they said was accurate...

But none of it was true."

Because any given article by journalists and reporters has an Absence of Malice (1981) it wasn't something for which anyone had to be held accountable.]

Day 244

Thursday 1 March 2018 23.56pm 

'Week 3 of 1964-1965 with David Stratton'

I turned up for Week 3 and sat in the second row of the Edgeworth David building. So far, afraid of walking in late, I've always arrived early. I was only the third person in the auditorium aside from his technician. He chatted with person #1 & #2 and then walked down to his station to check a couple of things. As we had, a few times now, when we had eye contact we smiled at each other. He approached me and asked if I was new to the class? I said I was. He asked how I came to know about the course. I told him that it was through Tony Buckley who showed me the documentary film about David Stratton. 

Mr Stratton was personable, kind, generous, and left to talk to others, long-term students, who were arriving.

If you'd given me nine hundred titles, all films made in 1964, I would never have guessed any of the choices by David Stratton so far. This week's film, A Hard Day's Night (1964) was as out of left-field as the other two, The Best Man (1964) and Teni Zabytych Predhov (1964). But what a joy. A brilliant film. Inventive to a degree that reinvents the word.

Stratton doesn't explain why a film is great or even worthy. It tends to be more about facts than opinions. [This is kind of ironic given that he has spent a lifetime giving his opinion about films, one of the world's most thoughtful and adventurous critics or reviewers.] It's always just a film that was made in 1964 (which he likes, I think, although he doesn't explicitly say so). I'm so lucky to have watched this film with this crowd of people who appreciated the music and the filmmaking of Richard Lester and the creativity of The Beatles as actors.

Day 244

Thursday 1 March 2018 00.01am 

'8 Months Gone with 4 Months to Go'

I suppose when someone tries to define important milestones in a project or within a year, it would be one-quarter and three-quarters, and one-third and two-thirds, and halfway. If you have a goal, then at times like these it's necessary to see how you're travelling and whether you're on target to achieve your deliverables or annual objectives and if you have incentives, earn your bonus.

If the 2012 BFI (S&S) List is the target I'm hoping to achieve then I've got 57 more films to see and I've only seen 43 out of the 100 films in 34 weeks. But when I get to Tarkovsky, Godard, Welles and Fellini, I know I will knock off sixteen films in four weeks (28 days) if I'm very strict about my progress. That leaves 41 films to watch in 13 weeks which is an average of three per week. As I look back on 37 weeks of viewing I see that I have heavily concentrated on foreign-language films (or if you not from an English speaking country: non-English-language films). Billy Wilder, Orson Welles and the one-off directors are still to come, but so is the daunting task of the famous Russian, the famous Italian and the famous French directors + Welles. Given my knowledge of what happened to me when I started digging into Bergman, Bresson, Antonioni, Ozu, Kurosawa and Mizoguchi, I can see that it isn't going to be something I can do by assigning Tarkovsky, Godard, Welles and Fellini just one-week each as my plan is to watch four Tarkovsky films, eight Godard films, five Fellini films and seven Welles films. I'm also planning to watch five John Cassavetes films because he features heavily in the 2012 BFI (S&S) Directors List. Plus at least five Bunuel films.

Then there are the films that I've seen before in the Top 100 Films Ever Made or Top 150 Films Ever Made or Top 200 Films Ever Made. I need to give equal time and brain energy to films that I know well by watching them in the context of all the new films. That means I need to watch North by Northwest, Rear Window, Sunset Blvd, Some Like it Hot, Lawrence of Arabia, Apocalypse Now, Raging Bull, Singin' in the Rain, Sherlock Jr., Barry Lyndon, The Shining, The Third Man, The Wild Bunch, Rio Bravo, Nashville, A Matter of Life and Death, Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and Imitation of Life. Plus Casablanca which I will leave until almost last. That still leaves big films like Ordet and Gertrud; Shoah; Metropolis and M; Close-Up, The Battle of Algiers, The Leopard, Maman et la putain, Les enfants du paradis, Spirit of the Beehive, The Colour of Pomegranates, A Brighter Summer Day, Touki Bouki, Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. And Beau Travail - I don't even know what country that film represents. Plus finding Greed and Intolerance wherever I can. Surely, it can't be that difficult.

Now that I've mapped it out like this I see that it is going to be very difficult to achieve the goal. It's not within me to just watch two Bunuel films and three Welles films and four Godard films and four Fellini films. The obsessive-compulsive in me needs to watch the great films by these filmmakers in the context of their other films. But, never say die!

There's a pragmatist within the obsessive-compulsive nature within me, which has enabled me to deliver -with strict deadlines - composed scores, recording sessions produced, edited and mastered, CDs for distribution, films I've directed, to organizations like SSO, Foxtel Arts, BIS, Exton, Octavia, film producers and consulting committees for grants. My entire life has been about schedules - for better or worse - and as a contractor delivering a product by a certain date to enable the requisite goodwill to get my next project and my next contract.

The thing of it is, that I wonder if I can do it when there is no money involved? I don't get a fee for finishing this project. I'm my own boss here. Maybe I should have made it about the fee. After all, it's not about just watching the films. Anyone - smart, dumb, intellectual, stupid or challenged by a variety of mental and/or emotional issues (all of which I can appreciate first-hand), can watch movies. But to watch them and think about them and process what they're saying takes about ten times the running-time, generally speaking. Sometimes even twenty-times like Au Hasard Balthazar (1966). Sometimes just five times the running-time like Sans Soleil (1983).

Wish me luck. I've got seventeen weeks to go and a lot of viewing in front of me.    

Day 243

Wednesday 28 February  2018 11.59pm 

Lady Bird    2017    Molly's Game    2017

Today, another double-header at the movies to catch two more of the films in the 2018 Oscar race. Sixty-minutes with the psychologist, then two hundred and forty five minutes with the unpsychologist.

Lady Bird is good. It's very good. It's very well done. It tells the story of a kid growing up in a family where she's got a tough mum who loves her but finds it difficult to say the words. In fact, difficult to say anything encouraging at all. 'Lady Bird' is Christine's preferred title when addressed. It's who she sees herself as being. It's probably meant to represent the fact she's uncomfortable with being Christine - her given name - because Christine is often in trouble, mostly unloved, and is poor and unpopular. Her journey is from being uncomfortable with who she is to a point where she is accept for being someone she clearly isn't - but by popular kids - only to find that her real place in the world is with those who value her for who she is, not for who she's not. Lady Bird captures a realism that has the ring of truth to the family and the friends and how the interactions would play out in real life. It's good. It's very very good. What more can I say? Teenage angst is well expressed even if it is well-disguised within a join-the-dots version of that tale.

Molly's Game is very good. Sometimes brilliant. It tells the story of a kid growing up in a family where she's got a tough dad who loves her but finds it difficult to say the words. In fact, difficult to say anything encouraging at all. However, exactly like Tonya (in I Tonya), she's brilliant at what she does. In fact, unlike Tonya, Molly is brilliant no matter what she does. But she doesn't make a lot of good choices. She skirts the two circles which make a figure-eight. If one circle was legal and the other was illegal, for many years she skates - or skiis - around the line that joins the circles. One day a foot encroaches by a sliver into the bad circle and her life spirals upwards very quickly and downward even more quickly. Everything is well-expressed, well-written and well-directed (with only one or two brief moments of it not being so well[-done]).

Day 243

Wednesday 28 February  2018 3.29am 

2046   2004

There was never much doubt that I was going to watch the other Wong Kar Wai film tonight. It's also on the Top 100 list from TIME OUT. I may as well get the full dose of Wong Kar Wai and keep putting off Godard until tomorrow.

Chow Mo-wan is still in search of love. He's been resting in a land - or a space - known as 2046 where there is no pain or sadness. He returns however to present time and embarks on a series of sexual adventures which all seem to be headed the same place: nowhere. He's cruel and selfish and careless now in his treatment of woman. He doesn't even seem to be searching for most of the film. Just doing. It's exquisite, with some of the most visually beautifully costumes I've ever seen a woman wear, I wonder what else it has to say about life and love that Days of Being Wild (1990), In the Mood for Love (1999) and Chungking Express (1994) didn't already observe. I predict that there will be a fourth film if there already hasn't been. The first was a story of the wild days of youth, the second of finding the right one but it not being right, the third about resenting all women, and I think the fourth will be about Chow Mo-wan finding that his hardened heart can be softened by the right woman with whom he will be happy. If not, then Wong is the complete love-cynic.

Wong Kar Wai in 2046 tells the same kind of story about how men see love, the search for love and the point where they stop seeking love anymore, a story that he has told in several of his previous films. The difference is that he is now telling the same story but his main character is someone who observes more than he speaks. More about Chow watching, observing and learning from a distance than using his handsome appearance and his innate charisma to bed women without responsibility, attachment or respect.

However, as (several) great (and subsequently regarded as important) filmmakers develop, I've noticed a tendency to move away from a spoken language to a film language. In a few cases the dialogue becomes as sparse as cards in silent movies which need to inform the audience of things they can't see, understand and comprehend on the screen through images alone.

Particularly I've observed this in Bresson, Bergman, Kubrick and Antonioni. They started stripping dialogue out of their films and composing images to enable the moving photograph - not a thousand words - to illustrate and reveal several levels of meaning.

To be specific about identifying the films where a director does this, succeeding - in my opinion - brilliantly:

Bresson with A Man Escaped, Au Hasard Balthazar and Mouchette. 

Kubrick with 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange and to a lesser degree Barry Lyndon (where narration become the title cards of silent films).

Antonioni with L'eclisse, Blow-up and Zabriskie Point.

Bergman (with the films either side of The Silence, and then) with Persona, creates a film which repudiates God and then merges the main character within the mind - psyche - of the director, revealing what a world without God looks like. How beautiful and touching that his perceived world without God makes Bergman make a film that is ostentatiously a film without God, enabling him to focus on the fact that there are terrible things happening in our life, which we all can observe, which are so unspeakable as to make us mute. 

Bergman's silence that that film in the Faith Trilogy refers to, The Silence, is the silence from God. He's silent because he doesn't exist. This is my favourite of all Bergman's works in spite of the fact that he presents a silent God, who I believe is in fact a very vocal God. It is the film where Bergman - in my mind - stops trying to describe or work through his feelings about embracing or rejecting Christianity, where he ultimately concludes that the God of his own biological father is a God that doesn't actually exist.

Day 242

Tuesday 27 February  2018 11.32pm 

Moneyball  2011

My night with the girls while Ali is at the gym. A Lane Cove Library visit to returns some dvds plus Sushi Train which is always nice. Back home bedtime was easy - relatively - and Ali got her wish. She spent several weeks slogging her way through Michael Lewis's book Moneyball. Now she wants to see the film again and see how Zaillian and Sorkin and director Bennett Miller turned hundreds of pages of dry facts and even drier statistics into something that is completely satifying and engrossing. This was my third time seeing the film and, Wow! it still Pops for me. It's great. There's no longer the surprise for me of how the game of baseball could have stayed the same for so long without changing; how the talent scouts lasted this long; and how an analytical approach to statistics could turn the game on its head. Now, the film has to do the work of a film, pacing, drama, mini-climaxes, valleys and climaxes, without the surprise element and it still worked. I can't see Jaws (1975) a second-time and have it exactly the same as the first-time. Nor can I see Citizen Kane (1941) for a second-time and be more blown-away by that film than any other film I've ever seen in my entire life. Nor can Moneyball (2011). Second viewings of particular films, and I'm guessing for viewers of Star Wars (1977) and Titanic (1997) the second time was probably for a lot of people almost exactly the same experience as their first experience, but at some point any film is just a bunch of scenes, involving many different camera set-ups, edited together and appreciated in the context of its acting, its dialogue, its make-up, its costumes, its score, its lighting, its special effects, its continuity, its pacing, its production design and its sets, its synchonization of words with lips, its soundtrack and its direction. And a great film is when all of those things are great although, admittedly, a film can still be great when its effects, soundtrack and lip-sync aren't perfect, or even sometimes up-to-scratch. Moneyball still ticks all the boxes and works as a complete drama, like the most simple of stories which always works so well - Cinderella - up to the point where the girl from the sewer gets engaged to the handsome prince but just before the wedding gets dumped by the prince (unfortunate) for a prettier girl (reality) who is both Miss Universe and the winner of the World Series.

The story behind the making of Moneyball as reported by journalists and reporters is fascinating. However, it is more interesting to me that my wife who would rather read the dirt-dry, drier than red earth in outback NSW, Moneyball - the (non-)page-turning book - than read that Brad Pitt and DiCaprio (The Wolf of Wall Street) both found it difficult to get their pet-films financed and produced by a studio. Their projects almost died, if what I've read is true, just like the millions of sperms which have the hope for finding someone interested in them, a resting place that will then give their creation the chance to produce a plant, a tree, the best case scenario being fruit, or even a human life. Hoping a sperm will find an egg has betters odds and a better chance of survival than having an idea for a movie accepted, financed, green-lit and made. With all the grubby fingers that want to be recognized and fingerprinted and identified as being associated with any given film it is a wonder that Producers get second and third chances. 

The barely living body of a film that is launched but almost no one knows about or sees, or a film that is still-born, never launched, just a dead body, is a reality.

Before you write back about this lack of understanding, of me talking in these terms about people who are dead, or that creating and losing a life is a poor analogy, know that I have two brothers who were born breathing - were born alive - and lived less than seventy hours. The dead are known as Stephen and Matthew. They were conceived and produced and released and they failed at the box office. They didn't perform. Twenty-four years ago I learned the devastating effect of having children (or siblings) who didn't perform. The kids who were dead didn't have to worry about achieving the pre-set goals. The kids who weren't, did.

I'm guessing that Dances with Wolves and Braveheart and The Passion of the Christ had a strong sperm and a lot of luck and could at some point have been known as Kevin and Mel's Folly.

Day 241

Monday 26 February  2018 11.15pm 

'Do I risk doing Godard?'

Fassbinder is now in the past. I need to decide what is next. Do I stay in Europe, where I have been living for at least two months now, or do I move to Russia. My big question is whether I go to Tarkovsky or Godard? Fellini is out of the question. I'm in no mood for circuses and trying to get my head around what it is that makes his films so special. Tarkovsky, I feel, is going to like Eisenstein and Sergei Paradzhanov or the bleakness of The Tree of Wooden Clogs.

I don't feel like I want flashiness or brutal realism. But I know that if I go into the world of Jean-Luc Godard it will be two weeks of intensity that I don't know if I have the energy for. I could go into the land of John Cassavetes and watch his five or six best films. I could pick off some films by Ophuls and Sirk. I don't know whether to give myself breathing space by doing a week of one-offs before launching into another director who has eight or nine films that I have to watch to understand what he's getting at.

My gut is telling me to do the Godard films. I want avante-garde. I want broken narratives and non-sensical meaning. I want creativity that is out of the box.

My instinct is telling me to do Imitation of Life (1959) and Madame de... (1953) and Raging Bull (1980) or Touki Bouki (1973) or In the Mood for Love (2000) or Close-Up (1990).
Godard would require the time to do an insane amount of analysis and living out of my comfort zone.

It's a terribly hard decision deciding where to leap next but I've decided to do some films which require just seeing one film by a given director like Imitation of Life (1959)... I've just gone to my DVD room and found that I don't have this film. I must have been thinking of another Douglas Sirk film. Okay, I'm going to do another Wong Kar Wai film which I found in Lane Cover Library tonight: 2046 (2004). Three films of Wong's turn up

Day 241

Monday 26 February  2018 3.43am 

Sonatine  1993

An interesting Japanese crime film. Time Out's List of 100 Great Films includes not one, but two Kitano films.

Day 240

Sunday 25 February  2018 7.19pm 

'Trying to Compute where my Head is but I think my Body is stuck in the Sand'

Don't know what to do. I've been mesmerized by a book produced by Time Out, a magazine, I believe, that publishes articles on general things; and does capsule reviews of films. Their book 1000 Films to change your life (2006) has an interesting section called 100 to watch.

And guess what? It has changed my life. I've expanded my 100 films yet again to include someone else's 100 films. I should count up the films in common and list those that aren't.

I don't know what film to watch next or which director to take on next. I've got twenty-one weeks to go and I've been distracted by another Top 100 Film list although that is not exactly how Time Out titles it, but essentially that's what they're saying. It is like they're proposing these are 100 of the Best Films Ever Made. The implication is definitely that these are all excellent, brilliant or important films. I think I'm going to watch Sonatine (1993) which I spotted in Lane Cove Library's collection and remembered as being on their list, made by Japanese director Takeshi Kitano who I've never heard of.

Day 239

Saturday 24 February  2018 4.08pm 

'Racism, Love, Acceptance, Fear and Rejection'

Ali - Fear Eats the Soul (1974) (aka as Fear Eats the Soul) is a simply made film on most of its production levels and has a story that is easy to describe in a couple of sentences:
A man meets a woman in a bar and a small connection is made, which is crystallized when they bump into each other another time initiating a lovely friendship. A small misunderstanding results in them talking of marriage and they decided to take the plunge. The marriage is then subjected to unwanted interference and condemnation by almost everyone around them.

A few particular details make this a different relationship from that of a lot of people who meet, become friends and get married: Ali is in his thirties and Emmi is in her sixties. Ali is black and Emmi is white. Ali is Moroccan and Emmi is West German. Ali is a guest worker and Emmi is a cleaning lady. These dissimilarities create an environment around them that is destructive and toxic to their relationship. There's not a great deal to the story in the film but the film shows the nasty side of humanity as they reject people based on their skin colour, their age, their social position or judge them by their looks.

I don't know how to describe Ali's character other than to say he is very calm and unflappable to the point where he is too accepting of anything that happens to him. He's quite separated from his emotions and he often talks about himself in the second or third person. A beautiful, innocently loving relationship is eaten away by the people around them and their prejudices. Ali, who is always Ali, never less, never more, is a leaf on the water, drawn to his next direction by events outside of his control. Due to decisions and attitudes he can't control, he has no power to change his trajectory.

Emmi's behaviour changes in the film as she becomes influenced by the racism against her husband and starts to treat him less and less lovingly. Unaware of her own change in attitude and behaviour it drives Ali away from her into the bed of a bartender in the bar where they met. His absences from their apartment grow more frequent. They drift apart. He needs someone accepting of him and finds it in the bartender. Even though she has her own life Ali finds acceptance through sex. Emmi realises her change in behaviour has driven Ali, a dear, gentle, softly-spoken man, who treats women with respect, away. She tries to get him back but he suffers a terrible illness due to a stomach ulcer that has burst open. The film ends without a resolution. He will live, probably, and she is determined to nurse him back to health and be to him what she was at the beginning and should have been the whole time.

All of the most important themes that make up stories that are full of rich explorations of people - characters - in life are dealt with by Fassbinder. It's a moving film, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, sometimes painful, sometimes beautiful, and full of appalling behaviour from selfish people. Ali and Emmi experience the judgment and condemnation and rejection that are universal truths in the world in which we live. Whether we are a kid at school who is bullied, or a country or nation which is bullied - or presided over by a dictator - by other countries, or a race, or people of a particular religion, that is subject to inhuman discrimination and actions, Fassbinder's message - timely in any era of people trying to live together on this planet - damning such attitudes by exposing this foul behaviour, is brilliantly described and illuminated in his original screenplay.
I would not have thought so hard and so deeply about this film if I'd just watched it on television. I probably would have if I'd seen it at a Festival. More often than not Festival carefully pick the films they show and choose the cream. Fassbinder, through my experience of watching seventeen hours of his filmmaking over a period of ten days, has revealed him to be an intelligent, sensitive, socially aware observer of the downtrodden. Pimps, murderers, the poor, gangsters and prostitutes fill every episode of Berlin Alexanderplatz. Working class, or even worse-off, are people for whom he feels empathy, sympathy and an understanding of the things in life that make them who they are.

There's a rare intelligence in Fassbinder's understanding of how many different types of people there are in our lives and how there are few black and white situations in life that count for anything good. In these two Fassbinder films people are sometimes good and sometimes bad. People are even sometimes in equal measure despicable and wonderful. Or generally bad with occasional glimpses of goodness. Or mostly kind, loving, faithful, selfless and calm, with occassional brief, but terribly ugly, lapses. If ever a title of a film summed up mankind using three adjectives it is that the human race consists of the good, the bad and the ugly, and that within one being we consist of the good, the bad and the ugly. How good, how bad, how ugly - that is a matter of degree

.

Day 238

Friday 23 February  2018 01.53am 

'Wrapping up Fassbinder with Fear eating the soul'

Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) is a late film and Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is a 1975 film. This is what I need to do to create my own epilogue to Fassbinder fortnight.

While my head is in the land of Werner Rainer Fassbinder, it makes sense to see the other film of his that pops up on the 100 Greatest Films lists. I have no idea what it is about what its style or genre is like. What I know is that it is tied at 93 with nine other films, rounding out the hundred. The films it ties with are Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), Touki Bouki (1973), Madame de... (1953), The Seventh Seal (1957), Un chien andalou (1928), Intolerance (1916), A One and a Two (1999) and Imitation of Life (1959). Fassbinder's name is in the company of D.W. Griffith, Luis Bunuel, Max Ophuls, Ingmar Bergman and Michael Powell, indisputably great filmmakers. On the Director's List it ties with sixteen other films at #75. The next number is #91 which has sixteen films tied, rounding out the top one hundred.

Day 238

Friday 23 February  2018 01.11am 

'Writing and Thinking, Writing and Thinking, Processing and Thinking and Writing' 

Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) sits heavily on my shoulder again. The Epilogue has really thrown a spanner into the works. I'm confused but I haven't had a chance to watch it again, yet. Just writing down thoughts and cutting and pasting the entries from the six days without Wi-Fi last week.

Day 237

Thursday 22 February  2018 11.33pm 

Teni zabytych predhov  1965

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965) is one of the least appealing of all the films I've watched in my year of living in a world were the English language is the most infrequently spoken of all languages.

It wasn't a bad film, not by any measure. It was disjointed, leaping around from the end of one theme or issue to another, and seemed to me (often) to be crudely made but that's not a sin that casts a film out. It's a proud badge for many films. And it had amazing moments, great directorial touches and an overall apparent truthfulness which made me feel I was watching something that was real. Something like The Tree of Wooden Clogs or Tokyo Story as opposed to (Renoir's) The Southerner or The River which were always films with actors in front of the camera playing a part while trying to show gritty realism. I can't give a higher compliment than to say that I felt I was watching real people behave the way they do in real life with a camera set up - without their knowledge - recording them going about their daily life.  Bresson achieved that kind of realism in Au Hasard Balthazar. Kurosawa in Dersu Uzala. It's even more extraordinary if the people are non-actors and they're able to forget the camera and be whatever the director needs them to be. Sometimes it's just being who they are and sometimes it's doing a variation on that. But in all of these films, there's a group of people behind a camera, there's a director yelling "cut", there are multiple retakes, make-up reapplied, costume changes and a take starting from a moment of no energy until "action" is called to a sudden burst of energy to match what was happening in the previous shot, or for the subsequent shot.

If a film can create that level of realism then it is an extraorinary work of art by an extraordinary director. Sergei Paradzhanov is one of those directors. So is Kurosawa a few times. So is Kiarostami. So is Ermanno Olmi. Also Ozu (and Mizoguchi occasionally).

Great things about the film were the costumes and sets and the colours.  Exceptional things were the recording of music which was integrated into the film as real, 'live', source music. There were moment of staggering musical beauty which blew my mind.

Like a lot of films and experiences - dinners, picnics, adventures - your experience is undermined if you are tired or cranky or had a car accident on the way to the cinema (like I did on the way to see Aliens at the Hoyts complex at 600 George Street, Sydney).

I think it was one of those things for me tonight. I wasn't experiencing the second or third feeling but I definitely was feeling the first. It's been a marathon seven days going from Huskisson to Manyana to Sydney University while having Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz sitting on my shoulder the entire time.

Day 237

Thursday 22 February  2018 00.13am 

'Thinking of the Sense of a 15-hour movie'

Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) is one of the most interesting films I've ever watched. Watched it and completed it. It was a big effort and took a lot of fortitude to keep going back to it night after night. It wasn't like the shows that people binge-watch now, like The Crown, or Suits, or Westworld. Not only did I not have seven hours free, in each of two consecutive days, but it is in German with English subtitles, and the material is very intense.  The first three days, five episodes, didn't really draw me back to the next episode with enormous glee or delight. It was something I've set myself to achieve and my thought was, While I have strength I will knock it off, day by day, little by little, over a period of eight days. I'm going to stubbornly keep on going. 

In the end, the thirteen episodes were fantastic. It had all the satisfaction and power of great Charles Dickens novel, or one of those long Gore Vidal books where he uses really characters and creates fiction around them. It was, like Vanity Fair, a story that I struggled with at times, but unlike the Thackeray novel, I was never bored out of my brain. It was good filmmaking, with good casting and acting, good pacing, good scenic values and occasionally

interesting or inventive direction. Then I thought it was all over and was 14 hours not 15h 30m. The different menu on the Epilogue disc tricked me. It made me think the documentary was the epilsodue even though it didn't make sense that an Epilogue would be interviews and a behind-the-scenes look at the process of making the film. When I discovered the Epilogue was actually another episode, Episode 14 in fact, I watched that but I'd already wrapped up the end of the story in my head by this time. It probably didn't matter because the last episode is so off-this-planet (in more ways than one), that it is hard to describe anyway.

The epilogue reminded me of Kafka's The Trial: the Orson Welles film, not the book. In fact, this epilogue is like it is the main character, Franz's, trial. (Is this a coincidence: that Kafka's first name was Franz as is the character in this extraordinary film?) He's in different locations, some dreamlike, confronted by people he knew. Many confront him with the way he has mistreated them, or the fact that he has undisclosed love for them, or has many unsaid words which would have expressed what he really wanted.

I need to watch it again to begin to comprehend how it challenges everything that Franz and the viewer has accepted in the previous thirteen episodes.

Day 236

Wednesday 21 February  2018 11.42pm 

'Home and on Wi-Fi'

It's good to be home. What an amazing three days in Manyana. Cloudy with a chance of torrential rain on day one. Happened. Overcast all of day two until the late afternoon. Finally the sun showed itself. Wednesday, today, was beautiful but we had about an hour to spend at the lake and the beach before a three-and-a half-hour drive back to Sydney. It was so chilly on the evening of the second day that Mim had to build a fire: her second one ever - I've still to build my first. We spent the night watching comedy clips on YouTube of Graham Norton and a South African comedian called Trevor Noah. One of the funniest people I've ever watched do stand-up, albeit in 5-minute YouTube excerpts. 

Day 230-235

Thursday 15 - Tuesday 20 February  2018 11.22pm 

Berlin Alexanderplatz   Episodes 6 - 14

The next week-or-so, starting tomorrow, will find me caught up watching the rest of the 930-minutes of the longest movie (or one of them) ever made. I’m away for almost a week without Wi-Fi. I’ll be in Huskisson and Manyana, NSW. I’m going to buy an all-region player from JB Hi-Fi today so I can keep playing Region A blu-rays while I’m travelling, on the various television screens I come across.

It's a very bad time to try and do something like this. I took my big screen computer with me around the Outback (in the Subaru Outback) and watched several films. I also took it down the South Coast NSW where three friends are doing a triathlon. Having Wi-Fi is now such a part of going anywhere that to go on a trip and not have Wi-Fi for days, or a week, is unheard of - almost. 

For three days in January, in Mumbil, NSW, I didn't have phone reception, let alone Wi-Fi. Then in Mildura and Broken Hill, I couldn't get the Wi-Fi to work. I just had to make myself content with making notes on the computer, to upload later.

Now, down the South Coast, there's no Wi-Fi at the house we stayed in for three days, or at the home I'm staying in at Manyana for the next three days. luckily my All-Region blu-ray player is working an I can watch the rest of this 15-hour film, whilst also taking time to film some, hopefully, amazing footage for my big movie, The Year of Broken Glass, coming to a cinema near you in 2020. Or maybe going nowhere at all, never seen by anyone other than family and friends.

Day 230

Thursday 15 February 2018 11.01pm 

The Best Man  1964

This was the first of the 12 films over 12 weeks. Very good over all aspects including the politics. Really well made. Excellent performances. 

What an unusual film to have - chosen by David Stratton - as the film that represents American filmmaking in 1964.

It's a very tough film about accepting the tooth and nail, dog eat dog, aspect of politics and filmmaking where deals are done to give the candidate the support they need to win. Sometimes the human stories of the little people caught in the rush to bury someone else are actually the stories which celebrate the unacknowledged efforts of the great 'unwashed'.

Thursday 15 February 2018 5.01pm 

'Film Course, Week 1'

Just about to head out to attend the first week of a twelve-week course in films from around the world, made in 1964 and 1965, with David Stratton lecturing in the Edgeworth David building at Sydney University. Starts at 1830 and goes until 2130.

Day 229

Wednesday 14 February 2018 11.41pm 

Phantom Thread  2017

Realizing that this was the last screening of Phantom Thread (2017) in Sydney at 1000 I went to bed at 0300 and got up at 0900. And I am so happy I did, as this film is one of the most unusual films I will ever have the privilege of seeing in a theatre. It is very deliberate and very methodical in the way that it unfolds, full of great beauty and kindness as well as despicable manipulation.

My initial reaction was an uncertain response, trying to determine whether it was good or really good, or brilliant. 

That night, at A.J.'s Indian Restaurant in Eastwood, while my kids went to the loo, I had a ten-minute conversation with Alison about the extraordinary, incredible, astonishing, brilliant, creative, unexpected ways this film told its story. While being (deliberately and acceptably) short on story it was rich in detail and never flagged.

Wednesday 14 February 2018 7.21pm 

'The Day I was Birthed'

I spent most of today in the car.

That's a different entry from before. It's personal and emotional and reveals the fact that time away from watching these movies is time spent doing mundane things instead of being inspired.

This blog has become so much more than writing about the 100 or 200 greatest films ever made, as I experience them - morphing into a blog about how I tried to survive the experience as the film regime rose, again and again, to more than 400 films.

For the first few months it was definitely less emotional and more about setting a goal and achieving it. Now, it's about adapting to the changes that I've had to submit to - given in to  - and how I'm struggling week to week - often day to day - to achieve the new challenge.

The new challenge is to acknowledge that I have another life which doesn't involve music and film and is about care, nurture, and anything that is bigger than the initial project.

Today I went to Chipping Norton to put my SONY camera, FDR-AX100E - 4k - in for repair. It fried or froze in Broken Hill during my NSW Outback adventure. The heat was blistering at 3pm and it exhausted me to walk from the car to the entrance of the building.

Day 228

Tuesday 13 February 2018 9.42pm 

I Tonya  2017 

My father and I decided we would see a different film at the same time at the same cinema and then a film together.  The film he saw was Darkest Hour (2017) and I saw I Tonya (2017). Then I drove home and my wife went to see Molly's Game (2017) with my Dad because I could catch it during a daytime session.

I Tonya was amazing in the way it blended several different styles of filmmaking. It is one of the best films I have ever seen because of the way it combines different ways of dealing with a bio-pic and then finds new ways to tell the story and making it meaningful and effecting. A terrific film. Actually, an exceptional film.

Tuesday 13 February  2018 4.02am 

Berlin Alexanderplatz   Episodes 1 and 2  1980

This had a very long first episode and an hour-long second episode. I have no idea where this story is going. It's very strange and has a central character experience life outside of prison for the first time in several years. He has some strange experiences and it is very unclear who are his friends and who Eva is. I'll just keep pressing on. Nothing to write, nothing to express, nothing to say.

In essence I'm fifty-pages into the equivalence of an 800-page novel and the scene is still being set and the characters who will last the journey, still uncertain. 

Day 227

    Monday 12 February  2018 2358 

Berlin Alexanderplatz  1980

I've decided. I'm going to do it. I'm facing a long, uphill, battle to finish this project with only 19 weeks to go. And, I didn't factor in a 15h 30m film which I had taken on face-value as a regular 120 or 134-minute film, not a mini-series of 13-episodes with an additional, almost 2-hour, epilogue.

I'm starting Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) tonight: Episodes 1 and 2.

Monday 12 February 2018 2345 

Darkest Hour  2018

Larry and Harry, as we (have been for over ten years and) always do, pursue the quest to have seen all the best films nominated in the Oscars before the ceremony. We're in a rush to see Darkest Hour (2017), Molly's Game (2017), I Tonya (2017), The Shape of Things (2017), Lady Bird (2017), Three Billboards (2017), Phantom Thread (2017), etc.

I'm behind as always. It's the first Oscars I've had the time to see a lot of films since 2008 when I was working for myself with a small business called 1M1 Records. It was six months before I started to work for the SSO.

Darkest Hour is a film which if it subsequently reveals itself to be honest in its depiction of major moments is excellent in all regards.

If the scene in the underground is some creative fantasy then the film loses all my respect other than in its technical aspects. 

In fact, to have seen it in the same year as Dunkirk (2017) has been a most fortuitous thing because they are two vastly different sides of the same coin. One with a political distance from the events taking place on the beaches of Dunkirk and the other from a handful of characters' intimate perspective on the beaches of Dunkirk.

Day 226

    Sunday 11 February  2018 6.01pm

Trolls  2016

The kids have been watching their Christmas present over and over again during the last twenty-four hours. Charlotte watched it three times yesterday. Also in the afternoon with Isabella, our support person, on Friday after school. I noticed the 4k/blu-ray box on the coffee table and said, "Oh, I wanted to watch that with you guys."

"Sorry Dad," said Charlie. "But, that's okay because I'll watch it with you any time. Trolls, this movie, I will never get tired of watching ever. I could watch it again, right now!"

"Well, how about Sunday afternoon after the birthday party finishes? We can watch it in the cinema in 4k".

"What's 4k?"

"Oh, it's something amazing, where the quality of the image is even better than blu-ray."

"Yeah, sure," she said. So we did.

It was kind of a good movie, with some boppy songs in it. About three of the songs were extremely well done including an amazing version of the song Cyndi Lauper made famous, Time After Time and Justin Timberlake's hit song. Can't Stop the Feeling. Charlie knew this song a long time ago. To suddenly have it appear in a film she'd  never seen before would have been one of those great parent-moments where your child is thrilled in the discovery of that song being from this film. The nanny, Isabella, got to see it - the parents didn't.

The previous two favourite films in my girls' life were Frozen (2013) - much better - and Moana (2016) - quite a bit better. Still, there's no accounting for taste and my seven-year old tells me that Frozen is not a good movie anymore: "I hate Frozen. I never want to see it again. Everybody hates it.".  

 Sunday 11 February  2018 8.37am 

'Mother Died, Baby Cried'

I woke up at 8am and realized that my mother died on this day of this month. I texted my wife who has been in Melbourne for two days at 0827:

"My mum died 30 years ago two hours ago."

"Oh. Wow. That's a long milestone. Hugs. X"

Sunday 11 February  2018 0015 

'Avengers and Memories'

This evening, another break from The Greatest 100 - Better Make That 200 - Films Ever with a light-hearted box office blockbuster from 2015 called Avengers 2: The Age of Ultron (2015). I know I saw this in a cinema and have absolutely no memory of it.

This is where blogging about the project and blogging about me doing the project becomes blurred.

One is about being real and the other is about being business-like.

If I were to publish the real blog it would be to say that I don't remember it at all - not even one frame. Mid to late 2015 was when my body was undergoing a lot of changes when things had been travelling fine for thirteen years but a stupid psychiatrist took me off medication that I'd been on for nineteen years.

There was a period of lowering the dose of the old meds, a period of changeover and a long period of adjusting to the new meds. The entire crossover from Tryptanol (Endep) to Venafaxaline and Mirtazapine took a year, landed me in hospital for more than seven weeks, and ultimately, I believe, cost me my job with the orchestra.

There were a lot of films I saw in the second half of 2015 which I couldn't remember anything about except the emotion, even the next day. One was a James Bond film, SPECTRE, and another was Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens.

The day after I saw both films - in my head -I believed I knew what the films were about except that when someone asked me what I thought about particular things that occurred and asked me what the plot was about. I couldn't recall the things that were talking about in Star wars VII or any of the plot of SPECTRE. When my niece asked me about the fact that Hans Solo was knocked off in Star Wars VII my jaw dropped 158cms and hit the path we were walking along at the time as I stopped dead in my tracks. I couldn't believe that I didn't remember that Hans Solo's son killed his father. I was deeply shocked by the event and the lack of memory. It's was like that tonight while watching a film I know I saw in 2015, Avengers 2, which I know I enjoyed and appreciated - it's Joss Whedon, one of my favourite writers - and all 347,040 frames of the 241 minutes it ran was new to me tonight.And the film? It was good. It was funny and clever at times and it had a plot which threatened the unity of The Avengers, had some terrific special effects - and a completely lame music score - and it made dramatic sense of the implausabilities and incongruities of a band of superheroes with different, overlapping, even conflicting, powers. To write a plot for a $250 million film which makes enough sense to believe that the world and the superheroes are all in danger of being wiped out by a superior power, and then find an acceptable solution, is difficult. Very difficult. Injecting humour and interest in the characters is much the easier job IMHO.I like Avengers 2. I liked Avengers 1 also. Joss Whedon can make sense of the frailties of people with unnatural powers. He's an expect at it, coming from a background of inventing a Slayer who takes on all sorts of evil forces in the television series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and co-writing a Pixar film with Andrew Stanton about toys with personalities like Woody and Buzz Lightyear.There's not much more to say than that without going into an analysis of superhero movies and where they go right and wrong in my - more and more infrequently humble - opinion.I'd like to write a piece about ignorance and arrogance one day because there are a lot of smart people in the world who think they know what it is to be like someone else through the power of their intelligence or their personal sense of life experience, giving them a firm grasp on something they haven't experienced first-hand.For example, many people can understand what it is like to grow up in a family that made you feel inferior or stupid. Or to grow up in various schools and be bullied for their looks or their accent or their beliefs. It's true that there are many things and the experiences of many people we can understand through our own experiences. Like what it would be like to grow up in a family where separation and divorce came unexpectedly in the formative years. Or even death: the death of a parent or a sibling? Similarly, if you lost a parents when you were in your mid-twenties, that's different from losing a parent in your mid-forties.There's also the arrogance of those who have not suffered depression thinking they know something about those who have suffered or do suffer from depression along the spectrum to those who think they know what depression withinmental illness feels like because they've been very very sad, even suicidal. Then there's the chasm between thinking about suicide and attempting it - and failing or succeeding.People think they know how people would act in certain circumstances and criticise them for the way they react in those circumstances.Our life experiences changes who we are. This is how we grow. This is why there are phrases like "until you walk in another person's shoes", or "the more I know makes me realise the less I know," or "the smarter I get the dumber I get", or "youth is wasted on the young."Some obvious examples are:if you haven't experienced abuse (sexual, physical or mental) while growing up, then you don't understand what it's likeif you haven't been married, abused and threatened, then you don't know why women stay with men who do thatif you haven't been a billionaire then you don't know what you would do with a billion dollarsif you haven't lost two babies, both born and living, and almost lost another within a period of six years, you don't know what that does to a motherif you haven't had a miscarriage you don't what comes with thatif you haven't been a persecuted Jew, or a black American, then there are things you'll never comprehendif you haven't been a boss you don't know how hard it can be or the other pressure on your boss which you don't know aboutif you haven't attempted suicide, in a well-thoughout manner, thnking you'll never have another thought, and you survive, you don't what that feels like to be at that point of despair in a depressed stateif you haven't trained to be a local champion, state, national or international, then you don't what it will take or what you lose when you're no longer eliteif you haven't been brought up in a religion, and accepted all of it, you can't know what indoctrination or brain-washing can make people do which seems unnatural or unbelievableif you haven't got super powers, you don't know what you would do with them if you had them or how you would try to balance your use of themif you haven't had the experiences that led someone to be a drug user or alcoholic you can't know - and honestly judge them - what those pressures were likeif you don't have an understanding of any given religion, you can't understand why it makes people act in certain waysif you have had an experience of God or Jesus (in Christianity) you can't give your experience to anyone else to experience and believe (as proof)And, on a lesser level, if you haven't watched films from 30, 40 or 50 different countries over a period of sixty or seventy years, you can't understand film in the way that a percious few do; or what truly makes a film mediocre, good or very good. I've left out poor and excellent because those are - often - more personal reactions than cerebral.It's all very obvious. There's nothing profound about the above list. It's part of me realising how little I know, realising the arrogance of some, and becoming less arrogant about things which I think I know a lot about.To use a phrase by Inigo Montoya as penned by William Goldman (in The Princess Bride - not on the list but it should be) one could observe to someone else's evaluation of life that maybe, possibly, what it is you think you know is, maybe, possibly, wrong."I do not think that means what you think it means."This doesn't solve any dispute or make anything clearer. What it does do is acknowledge that sometimes - often, more often than not, mostly, more mostly than not for some - we don't know what we're talking about.If I've learned one important lesson in two-thirds of a year doing the greatest 200 films project, it is that I know a lot less about cinema, that I never knew I didn't know. The creativity of humankind is endless - but only ever inthe hands of a few - whether they're Sid Vicious, Mozart, Picasso, Chaplin or the person who conceived the math that sent a person into space.

Day 225

Saturday 10 February  2018 

'Single Dad Raising Two Girls'

My wife is in Melbourne for a celebration and I'm looking after the girls, 7 and 5, for the best part of three days and all of two evenings and nights. Last night was a shocker, with Becky disturbing me every hour, particularly while I was trying to unwind and get to bed. The end result was that I didn't take them to swimming lessons this morning. I spent the morning trying to catch up on sleep instead while the girls put on Trolls (2016) and watched it twice.

Day 224   

Friday 9 February  2018  2314

10 (1979)

Tonight, I have the girls in bed by 8.15pm. It's time to watch something my wife won't want to watch again but which I like on many levels, not least the music score by Henry Mancini and the piano-playing by Dudley Moore. It needed a time to watch the blu-ray which I purchased from America four or five months ago, when I can crank up the sound and listen to the soundtrack without worrying about other very local occupants (trying to sleep). There's a piece in this film which Dudley Moore performs which is the climax - unhappily for his character, not a sexual one - of the movie. The rest is Coda and denouement and deus ex machina.. Everything else that occurs resolves the plot but this is without doubt the real moment where the artistic sense of the film climaxes. Everything that occurs afterwards is part of a failed personal fantasy he has which he gets to live for two or three hours.This film, is appreciated by some but unheralded generally, presumably because it seems to be so one-dimensional on the outside that most people don't look for extra dimensions on the inside.Has anyone made a film that better explores male menopause? The point in life where they buy sleek-looking fast cars, divorce their aging wives, and take up with a blonde bimbo (or any extremely intelligent other with no requisite hair colour).

Friday 9 February  2018  0607

Week 33

If you can believe it, I'm starting the last third. 141to go.

    Friday 9 February  2018  0409

What's Happening Next Week?

If you can believe it, I've lost my way. I've lost touch with what's on the menu. I'm not eating gluten-free or sucrose-free, just hand-to-mouth.Chungking Express and The Tree of Wooden Clogs are me doing the great ad-lib. Adding The Searchers is my last ditch effort to make something of this week.I've fallen out-of-step with the program. I'm still on track if I watch all the rest of the important films for the next (thirty-one-done) twenty-one weeks. Five-a-week, nets me another one hundred and twenty-five films to add to the coffers.I know where the wheels fell off. It was Ozu and Kurosawa and Mizoguchi. I entered that land of Honshu, Kyushu, Hokkaido and Shikoku and it all fell apart. Then there was the unexpected surprise of Macbeth week: Kurosawa, Kurzel, Shakespeare and Welles.

Day 223

    Thursday 8 February  2018  2322

"Jim, it's Life as we Know It!" - Writing the Recollection of the Twelve-Days in the Wilderness' 2018  

A few good men require an evaluation of a project.

"I've written The Fault in My Brain. I've been willing to send it out there into the world to have Thom, Dick and Harry make their comments and I've taken them on-board."

Then I started a new project which I'm writing and directing, in which I'm confident and comfortable in those roles, called The Year of Broken Glass.

Then I started breaking down the scenes from both films and discovered that although I don't want to direct TFMIB, I can't let it go. Whatever anyone else wants to do, I can't let it go. It can't be turned into anyone else's project. It's got to be my screenplay which is my vision.

The very bad, very bad news, is that I now realise I can't turn TFIMB over to someone else unless they want to make the film I want to make.

I can do it within the limited resources of a limited budget.

I need Carol Hughes to organise the other bits and pieces.

I can do it myself, with a good producer. 

Day 222

    Wednesday 7 February  2018  2359

The Commuter 2018

If you can believe it, I've arrived home from seeing a movie in a cinema at a couple of minutes to midnight, again. It was a good attempt to replicate the thrills of Speed, Die Hard and Under Siege (and Under Siege 2). The hostage this time is a man who is free to roam - not tied up physically - not an unknown quantity - who is given emotional boundaries instead of physical ones. The twist, is new: 'I'm not going to kill this person even if you kill those I care mostly deeply about.' And the film is smart enough to never have characters have that particular conversation. It's a statement from the victim/hero - not a plea.

There is no way around the fact that this film is an imitation of the impetus-driven films and television that 24 , spawned by Speed, has produced.

It's smart enough to counter the problem of the last two decades in film thrillers, which is that criminals, baddies and terrorists will do far-worse to you than you would allow to happen to you or loved-ones, or that you would do to others. The only believable response of how a goodie can defeat a baddie is if the goodie is willing to sacrifice lives for the sake of those he cares about.

This now brings us into the territory of the CIA and the NSA and the willingness to achieve one's own ends through the loss of lives of those who you care about.

The U.S.  - in all their wars - known and secret - and their sacrifice of American soldiers hardly adds up to a believable sacrifice of a man or woman for his own husband or wife or child.

For all of its faults, and all of the films that have done it better, this is a film which says, You can torture or kill everyone important to me but I still won't kill for you.

The money - to the working class - is enormous; to those who have nothing - unbelievable; to those who usually have something - incredible; and unimportant to those who have more.

$100,000, wouldn't pay more than a couple of years of college fees for three kids, and if it is to be serious, should be $10,000,000. Then you could pay off your home and have enough to go to Bermuda and drink cocktails on the beach for the next twenty years before you die of cirrhosis of the liver or skin cancer.

Beside the fact that I like Liam Neeson acting tough (a James Stewart or Cary Grant standing up for himself), there was nothing to attract me to this film. For nothing, but for one fact: the man under pressure - a great Hitchcock theme - how will he react? - it's an all too familiar scenario. But treated  herewith a serious eye to where the point or the line is which stops the victims acting like the terrorists or responding with equal weight, this film draws that line in the sand and says, "No more."

Day 221

    Tuesday 6 February  2018  2354

The Searchers  1956

The Searchers is one of the mostly highly regarded films ever made and it is also 

• a Western
• a Hollywood film
• a John Wayne film
• directed by John Ford

It has most of the strengths that make all John Ford films distinctive. It also has the few things that makes a John Wayne film less of a John Wayne film and more of a film with a universal story that is familiar to many viewers.

It's the familiar story of something going wrong which gives a being a thirst for revenge.

Day 221

    Tuesday 6 February  2018  1302

'SZ3R is Inbound - It's not a UFO - visiting PPQ2'

This friend has been around for more than twenty-five years. His friendship has been less more than it has been more for most of those years. In the period where I've been married to Ali he has been around more because his mother died and we decided to adopt him in as much as we decided to give him a home outside of his home.

After weeks of cancellations and an extended oversees trip, finally, 3R is coming home to visit - a period of more than five months since we saw him last.

Tuesday 6 February  2018  0454

The Tree of Wooden Clogs  1978

This 2h58m film has been sitting on my horizon for three or four decades. Just as Last Year at Marienbad and The Rules of the Game teased me for decades.

It's all very well to vote for films you can see (and have seen) that no one else can see, but its an unfair playing field.

For those who get to go to Film Festivals, they can see an array of films most people who work between sunrise and sunset will never see.

The Tree of Wooden Clogs is one of those slow moving films which explores the minutiae of life.  Exceptional because it is a movie, not a documentary.

This film explores the visual details of farming life, in places where subsistence is difficult. .

Day 220

    Monday 5 February  2018  2344

The Shape of Water 2018

This is an unusual film by an unusual director.  I know of him through my love of dark fantasy films like Mimic, Blade II and Hellboy. He showed a great control of all aspects of the film medium in those films and then I lost touch with his work when he made Hellboy 2 and Pan's Labyrinth. 

    Monday 5 February  2018  1724

'An invitation 2 a movie '

A good friend - Larry Grum - I'm Harold to his family and friends - have been sharing the Oscar ceremonies for nine years now. I think this year, 2018, will be the tenth we have done together. In January and February we franticly try to catch all the nominated movies before the ceremony. He suggested this Guillermo Del Toro film as something we could see together when I got back to town. I said sure. He requested Monday? I said sure.

Monday 5 February  2018  1704

'Recovery&Uploading 4K'

Today was mostly about sleeping while uploading and backing up the 20-hours of 4K footage I shot on the 12-day trip happened in the background. 

Day 219

    Sunday 4 February  2018  2324

'Warm-Up and Bike Lessons'

Life with kids and a wife superseded other things today. My waking hours were all about family and supporting the various endeavours. It's fair enough. I've been away for six days and six nights. Watching the movies that people think are the best ever took a backseat again.

Alison did a trial mini-triathlon by doing the 8km-bike ride and the 2km run.

While she did the trial, I gave Becky bike lessons and she did pretty well for a five-year old even though I never let go of the bike because her steering and balance weren't so good.

Day 218

    Saturday 3 February  2018  2349

'Turning Fifty/Photos'

Today was busy in the afternoon, with a photo shoot and a special birthday party for someone special. In the evening I was still updating my website with the missing days from the Outback trip.

The friend who turned fifty invited a group of twenty-one friends to gather at her place to celebrate.

Day 217

    Friday 2 February  2018  2044

'Full House'

I drove into the driveway at 8.44pm having started the journey twelve days earlier at 11.30am. I left Wagga Wagga at 1245.

Day 216

    Thursday 1 February  2018  1149

'Apple-less Outback Experience'

I don't have a prejudice against either of the two major competitors, Apple and Microsoft. I've always used a PC. I've also had an iPad and an iPhone since they started making them - or soon after. But the day I started this trip with my daughters seven and (almost) five - five today actually - I've not had a working iPhone.

I don't want to bad-mouth the product because I've never had a problem. I've been using iPhones and iPads for at least eight years and never had an issue like this. Suddenly, dramatically, I've lost my means of communication with the entire world on the first day of my Outback Experience.

Whatever spin Apple, Inc. put on this - if they blame me or my wife for some setup that was flawed and bound to fail at some point - so far their technical help has been fantastic.

I was put in touch with Nigel at some kind of Apple Support on Day Two of the phone malfunction and he's been there for me on wi-fi every day I had wi-fi between 9am and 6pm.

Thing is, when you're in the outback you mostly don't have wi-fi. Sometimes, you don't even have mobile reception: for several days. Like when you book a house in Mumbil for three days and nights.

One pub. House on the railway line. No steaks. No lamb cutlets. Nothing gluten-free. Great service. But I can't eat anything.

One brand. Apple. No normal functioning of the iPhone. Loss of all emails associated with the ID, loss of all Notes, loss of all Contacts. Loss of all contacts, including my wife's phone numbers. Great service. But I can't do anything.

It's the same thing. Advertise you have T-Bone steak and lamb cutlets then be sure to have T-Bone steak and lamb cutlets.

If you advertise you have email and phone numbers and notes on your phone whenever you need them then be sure to have email, phone numbers and notes on your phone whenever your customer needs them.

Aside from the tormenting frustration of not being able to type in a letter of a word or a digit of a phone number imaging being gluten-free, sucrose-free, I have a list in my Notes on my iPhone and it and the vast majority of the notes disappear. How do I check as I travel what I can and can't eat?

Aside from the frustration of losing everyone's contact details and all the emails I had set up on the iPhone, there are some people I need to be in contact with, so I can go away, and even without wi-fi, just Telstra 4G, attend to those emails.

Aside from the frustration of all of that, what happens if you visit Broken Hill, they get an abnormal day of 19 degrees and rain, you travel over a 100 kms to Kinchega National Park, thinking that (if it's overcast in Sydney it doesn't mean it's overcast in Wollongong or Newcastle) it might be sunny there, you drive in and do the Lake Drive, it starts to rain, you begin the River Drive, the rain gets heavier, you turn around, it feels dangerous, you head back to Menindee, the car gets bogged?

The engine is revving at maximum (3000RPM in 1st gear foot flat to the floor) in an AWD Subaru Outback, you're moving forward by a few centimetres for a second or two before you smell the smell of an overheating engine and see you're not getting anywhere soon.

The burning smell of the engine makes you stop trying after 30 minutes. You try to make phone calls but you have a prompt to enter your password into your Apple ID code.

You try to dial your wife or the Menindee Police Station but you can't type in a letter or a digit for every three or four tries.

You're bogged. There's no traction for the tyres. It's heading night-wise and every step you take puts another layer of Darling River clay on your shoes, the car won't move forward more than a centimetres, the Menindee service station can't help, the local police don't care - well, they're not even in the realm of being helpful. You can't search for a number and it takes a lot of time to type a text to one's wife, and it begins to get a little bit scary.

• It's not scary like "I'm-gonna-die" fear.
• It's I don't know what to do,
• I wonder how cold it gets overnight?
• I'm bogged, I feel like an idiot, I'm embarrassed,
• I just want to go home (Sydney) but my car won't move.
• How long am I going to be here for?

If there is any time in your life when you want a working phone its when your mired in Darling River mud which makes your car behave like it's on skiis with a person that can stay upright but can't direct themselves in - how can I put it? - any fucking direction because you're sliding all over the road!

When I did get a call through to the Menindee Police or NRMA it was always dropping out because of the mobile coverage. The mobile service was so uncertain I sent my wife a text message, in dire straits, worst-case-scenario:

I'm in the National Park just off the river drive, Four km from Menindi (sic). This is in case I lose reception. In fact, if you don't hear from me in 30 minutes please just get someone to send help.

I'm balancing fear with the rising feeling of panic and the knowledge that it doesn't matter, nothing matters, it is what it is. You get out or you don't get out. Mostly likely it will be an uncomfortable night and then you'll get out.

Now, when I try to sign it from my usual phone, to Google and Gmail, they think I'm a new customer with a new iPhone wanting to set up an account.

As if that's not bad enough, most of the day, every single second I have my iPhone awake it prompts me for the code of the ID address. Every single second I tap NOT NOW, it requests the password again a second later. 

I use my iPhone like I used to use a computer. It gives me all my emails, all my text messages, has all my contact details, all my notes, and allows me to browse the internet whenever I have a question.

NOPE.  NOT NOW.

NOT SINCE ELEVEN DAYS AGO.

I can't update my website. I can't update my blog. I can't even contact any person I know if I don't have their number stored in my brain. And the more our phone becomes the memory for our brain the less we need to ask our brain to file away all these important bits of information in the vast filing cabinet that it has been using, naturally, for centuries.

Don't use it? You lose it!

Ain't that the truth.

Day 216

    Thursday 1 February  2018  1149

'Rules Club Without Beer'

I'm staying at RULES CLUB WAGGA WAGGA. I have decent internet. I can get a secure connection. It feels like forever since I was blogging. Can't get a beer. No mini-bar.

I've still been watching the 200 greatest movies, although not the one's I intended at this time.

I brought a blu-ray player that connects to my computer through USB. The player broke on Day 3. My eldest says it was the youngest, shaking it, but I don't know who to believe. The youngest says she didn't pick the player up and shake it up and down whilst watching Inside Out (201l).

I have had to modify my plan during the outback exploration and I've only seen a handful of films in those ten or eleven days. I've written about them all. Just not online. I'll add the entries below in a light grey colour - in between Day 206 and Day 216 - to show they weren't daily entries.

Day 215

    Wednesday 31 January  2018

Ten Films That Changed My Life (Recently) 

1 July 2017-1 Feb. 2018  

The 400 Blows (1959) Francois Truffaut

Nuit et brouillard (1956) Alain Resnais

The Silence (1963) Ingmar Bergman

The WindWill Carry Us (1996) Abbas Kiarostami

Zabriskie Point (1970) Michaelangelo Antonioni

La bete humaine (1938) Jean Renoir

Tokyo Story (1953) YasujiroOzu

Au hasard Balthazar (1966) Robert Bresson

Pickpocket (1959) Robert Bresson

Mulholland Drive (2001) David Lynch

Day 215

    Wednesday 31 January  2018

Chungking Express  1994

I knew, instinctively, that I had to watch something tonight that wasn't like conventional Japanese or European movies.

A film I'd heard of from many sources, popped into my mind - the title - and I remember hearing that it was generally well thought of.

I think, if my memory is accurate, that TIME Magazine's critics put it in the Top 100 films - ever.

It was interesting, then amazing, then fabulous and subsequently fantastic and I can't find words to explain why, because it is a completely foreign film despite its immediate connection with anyone from anywhere.

The first story was good and very sad, but the second story was funny and sweet and sad.

This was an unconventional mind making this film and writing these stories. They were weirdly out of kilter. 

Day 215 

Wednesday 31 January  2018

'Mildura 10th Day'

Tonight I'm staying at the Mildura Villas. It's a beautiful apartment and the service was exemplary and it was my favourite overnight of the whole twelve-day journey to Broken Hill and back. It was the best place and it had the most flexible check-in and check-out of any place.

Arriving late because of my setback in Broken Hill - Bridgestone putting my rear tyres on the front and vice versa and replacing the front left which had a bubble in the wall (now the spare) and doing a wheel alignment - wasn't a problem for my hosts. 

Day 214

   Tuesday 30 January  2018

'Kinchega National Park 9th Day'

If it's Tuesday, I Must Still Be in Broken Hill. 

It was 20 degrees outside - in Broken Hill - and the grey sky went as far as my eyes could see. I figured that 120 kilometres from here the weather might be fine, so I set my sights on Kinchega National Park because I wanted to see Lake Menindee. I took the Lake Drive and then the River Drive and found myself bogged in the outback in my Subaru Outback, AWD, the tyres cemented in clay from the tyre's surface area to the chassis to the axle. I was in first gear in my AWD and my rear wheels weren't rotating, the smell of a burning engine more and more noticeable, begging me to give it a rest, so I flipped it into neutral and let the engine cool and tried to call my wife with the limited coverage that Kinchega, Menindee and Telstra have agreed upon and allowed. A bloke called Tyrone Helms turned up and offered to dig me out. The local service station told them a - my words - stupid city-slicker had got himself bogged and need digging out. Ty it turns out was Ty-the-tiler, whose email address was ty_tiling@bigpond.com.

Naturally, with a lot of experience dealing with grout, he was able to identify my problem - too much grout between the tyre, the chassis and the axle - so he dug the grout out until my wheels could spin. Before he left he casually tossed a business card through the driver's open window onto my lap saying, "Just so you know who rescued you."

I don't know what he's like as a tiler but I highly recommend him if you live within a 150-k radius of Broken Hill for being a good guy if you're stuck for Bathroom Renovations. He does good grout, starting at 400mm all the way down to 1mm, mobile 0429 914 426, and he rescues city-slickers for free.

Day 213

   Monday 29 January  2018

'Broken Hill 8th Day'

If it's Monday, I Must Be in Broken Hill. 

Mistimed my leaving time from Bourke, my breaks, my time stopping to film in 4k, and arrived late in the evening, a few minutes before check-in closed at 8.30pm. Luckily they were on South Australian time.

I hadn't yet twigged that for every minute I pull over to film something I'm two-kms behind schedule. If I pull over for ten minutes to set up a few creative shots, then I'm twenty kms behind schedule. If I do that 10 times then I'm two hundred kilometres behind schedule. Woops.

Having arrived alive, yet again, while travelling after dusk, I had a couple of beers, unpacked, recharged the cameras, the phone, the iPads and downloaded the video to my external harddrives. Then I put on a movie. 

If you'd told me - I know, I know, I'm repeating myself - that I was going to see my first Alain Resnais film in Broken Hill I would have called you a liar.

Being, that I don't know what any of these new films are about before I watch them I had no idea what I was letting myself in for with Nuit et brouillard (1955). I chose it because it was 33-minutes long and I wanted to get to bed before 1am.

Nuit el brouillard  1955

In my lifetime I have seen many, and will see many more, disturbing films: but not to this extent. The English translation is Night and Fog (1956).

This film is a documentary that incorporates footage the Germans photographed themselves of what they were doing and what they were attempting to do in their efforts to exterminate the Jews. Specifically the Jews that they were in close proximity to - European Jews. It shows the men building the concentration camps to house the Jews and the men building the ovens to burn the Jews as well as the men disposing of the bodies. I know equally bad things are happening in countries around the world as governments or dictatorships try to wipe out the people who view or perceive the world differently from them, or who are so numerous that there is no worth or acceptable cost to saving them. But this is the most vivid footage.

I sat in Broken Hill in a lovely Motel while it rained and rained outside watching images of horror rain down on me over the short period of thirty-two minutes, showing Hitler's plans, and the execution of his plans, for European Jewry.

What my eyes saw... what my brain comprehended... what my spirit experienced... was... and here I paused for about two minutes searching for the next couple of words... was... the most awful thing I've ever had the misfortune and the privilege to see.

Until you see the burned but surviving skeletons of tens of thousands of Jews being bulldozed into pits that are so wide and so deep - and yet aren't wide enough or deep enough to contain the sheer number of bodies - you were where I was 32-minutes ago.

I'm crying as I write this, tears pouring down my cheeks, because my brain still finds it hard to fathom what went on. The monsters in our worst dreams are actually not as bad as the monsters who history confirms were real.

It's beyond description to try and describe the things that I saw in this documentary which my eyes can now never ever unsee.

One reads about the attempted extermination of the Jews in books or on the internet, and they are, at their most fundamental level, just words and figures until you see the untold number of bodies piled on top of each other like the trash that the garbage trucks are collecting tomorrow outside the front of our houses.

Day 212

   Sunday 28 January  2018

'Bourke, 7th Day'

If it's Sunday, This Must Still be Bourke. 

I'm in Outback NSW and it is rain, rain, rain. Driving to Bourke, I was in and out of storms for a lot of the way. In Bourke, raining. Next day, being today, raining.

Didn't watch a movie tonight, just drove around a bit, headed north, did some FaceTime, filmed some of the wet outback and headed back to the Motel.

On to Broken Hill tomorrow.

Day 211

   Saturday 27 January  2018

'Bourke, NSW 6th Day'

If it's Saturday, This must be Bourke. 

We three (because Becky was no help at all) packed up the house in Mumbil, NSW and headed for Day 2 at the Zoo. What a lovely day. It was a degree cooler for most of the day which was appreciated by all. Charlie and I had an encounter with a tiger which was up close and personal. We'd booked it weeks earlier. Only six people got to do the encounter on any single day, with three tigers who were rotated. The high price of the encounter was money well spent which went toward the maintenance of the zoo and would have hardly earned the zoo more than about five thousand extra dollars a week. Still, that's $250,000 in a year.

But, oh, what an encounter. My daughter and I had the chance to be 5cms from the teeth of a tiger and feel it's breath on my face. When it growled at me because I was really irritating her, the sound was so deep it rumbled through every bone in my body.

I've done and experienced many amazing things in my life from jumping out of a plane, to meeting Mel Gibson, meeting Harrison Ford, attending a recording session at Universal Studios with Jerry Goldsmith conducting with Joe Dante giving instructions, to working with Vladimir Ashkenazy and thirty or forty other amazing musicians - and this tiger experience was in my Top Five - EVER!

Took my three girls to Dubbo airport so they could fly back to Sydney while I set sail for Bourke - in car, mind you, not a boat.

This was another exhilarating adventure because I mistimed my arrival in Bourke to be after dusk and the kangaroos standing like statues by the side of the road, that you had two metres to see before you were upon them, was very disturbing. I had my heart in my mouth the last hour and this doesn't rate in my Top Five EVER!

The roos could have jumped to my right or my left. If they jumped right they were headed to the safety of the tress. If they had jumped left that would have been a whole other conversation between bone and metal.

I celebrated arriving alive in Bourke by having two very quick beers, a short distance apart, and putting on another movie to watch.

Shunpu den  1965

The Story of a Prostitute

A Seijun Suzuki Film

It sounds better when enunciated in Japanese than English. I had actually been searching for Koroshi no rakuin (1966) [Branded to Kill] because it was in the TIME OUT 100 films to watch...  but only found this so watched it instead.

Fascinating and so much more honest than anything Britain and America were turning out in 1965. Asia and Europe were far more open to subject matter like this while the English-speaking countries either censored or banned films such as this. It's almost like there's a cultural divide.

Beautiful and sad and eye-opening. So cruel. So lacking in tenderness. What a life! What awful things men do to have the thing they crave most. If you haven't already been aware of the despicable things that men do in the name of love and war, this is one to add to your I-hate-men list.

A very good film which I don't want to see again.

Day 210

   Friday 26 January  2018

'Dubbo, NSW 5th Day'

If it's Friday, This Must be Dubbo and this must mean we have finished Day 1 at Dubbo Zoo. 

Oh, my goodness. 42 degrees in the shade. We went through almost 20 bottles of water between the four of us and pretty much all got heatstroke.

Early to bed for everyone else. For me, a movie, for the 2nd time, in consecutive nights.

The Wind Will Carry Us 1999

I decided to watch this film again because I felt like I was missing important things. In fact, I problem hadn't, but it was great to see it again and observe the naturalistic style of this interesting Iranian director.

It is an extraordinary thing when you see films from different cultures and they are so much like watching real people who aren't acting because it comes across as something that is so convincingly real that you forget that someone is saying, Action!, or the Iranian equivalent and then later saying, Cut, let's go again. Or Cut!, check the gate, and if the gate is clear of the occasional offensive hair which somehow gets inside the camera, saying Print. Let's move on. Who knows what they say in Iran but that's generally how it goes in America, England, Australian, Canada and New Zealand, when you're filming on actual film, usually 35mm. You know sometimes in films you see that pesky crooked line that moves and flutters somewhere around the edge of the frame? That's a hair in the gate and no one checked to make sure it was clear.

The Wind Will Carry Us is such an unusual film for someone coming from my cultural background. It is set in a period, 1999, so almost present-day, where there is little technology about and the technology that they have, cell-phones, is so basic, that when the main character gets a phone call from his important boss or bosses he has to go to the highest ground so that he can get mobile coverage. This factor about how bad reception is for mobile phones in the Middle East is expertly used for comedy in this film. And so is the fact that whenever he does this trip, Behzad keeps meeting a man in a hole in the ground who is probably a real engineer, unlike himself.

The three men who are passing themselves off as engineers obviously have an agenda which is different from anything we and the villagers know about. In fact, I still don't know why they're spying on a dying woman but Behzad ends up developing a sympathetic relationship with a young boy which ultimately moves him to break his cover and rescue the boy.

The fact that the purpose of the men - which could be sinister but we're not sure - is left unexplained is part of the innocuous but deliberate charm of the film. Whatever Behzad's purpose was and what his instructions were from his superiors, in the climax his purpose changes and becomes all about keeping the young boy safe.

In 1999 this kind of behaviour could still be treated innocently while suggesting a deeper, possibly sinister, motive for the men's deception. Two years later, that innocence was blown to hell as the world started to tear itself apart and certain countries overtly declared themselves enemies of other countries.

After 2001 I don't think there would be a lot of situations where Middle Eastern men acting suspiciously would be left unexplained even in fictional filmmaking.

But what the film does do - is it inadvertently? - is show that humanity was alive and well in 1999 in Iran. This is (of course) before George W. Bush, Jr. put Iran in the same pigeon-hole as North Korea and Iraq and named all three the axis of evil in 2002.

This is an amazing film for many reasons of which the ones I appreciate the most are, comedy, irony and compassion.

Day 209

   Thursday 25 January  2018

'Wellington, NSW 4th Day'

The Wind Will Carry Us 1999

If it's Thursday, This Must be Wellington. 

Woke up to discover that kids had broken the DVD machine while playing Inside Out (2015) this morning while I had a sleep in.Becky, 5, wandered what would happen if she picked up the portable play and shook it while it was playing the movies.

Answer: It starts glitching and eventually stops turning on at all.

Great! I bought 10 movies with me to watch at night after the girls go to bed.

Went looking for kangaroos and found Lake Burrendong and the Dam and the Arboretum with 28 varieties of Australian fauna then drove to Dubbo airport and picked up their mother so we can all spend two days at Dubbo's Western Plains Zoo.

Finally got to watch a movie while away on our road trip.

I'd noticed that Abbas Kiarostami has Close-Up (1990) on the S&S list but TIME OUT has suggested The Wind Will Carry Us (1999) as their Kiarostami choice. I'll watch it again tomorrow night. There are a lot of nuances in the film and I think I missed important things such as what the main character actually does - as in what his role is. I've got to watch it again.

It honestly never occurred to me that I would be staying in Mumbil, NSW, when I watched only the second Iranian film I've ever seen and my first directed by Kiarostami.

Day 208

   Wednesday 24 January  2018

'Mumbil: 3rd Day'

If it's Wednesday, This Must be Mumbil.

Got to the house and found it stifling. The air-conditioning isn't working and there's no Wi-Fi, so I'm keeping notes on my computer.

Day 207

  Tuesday 23 January  2018

'O'Connell: 2nd Day'

If it's Tuesday, This Must be O'Connell. My daughters and I have two days on a sheep farm.

Day 206

    Monday 22 January  2018  1049

'The Outback Experience'

Feeling like crap, but have to pack the car. It's a lot of work. A lot of carrying when you're already carrying a belly that feels like its got a bowling ball inside. The exertion causes real pain which means I have to stop and lie down on the carpet in the piano room and wait until it subsides enough to start the next effort of packing.

[p.s. Finally, at 1130 I was packed and head off to pick up the girls from their overnight stays.]

With twelve days on the road doing my Outback experience I don't know how many films I'm going to get to see.

Heading for O'Connell, NSW.

Day 206

    Monday 22 January  2018  0349

Dersu Uzala (1975)

With less than twelve hours to go before I leave on the big Outback NSW trip, I thought I'd squeeze one last Kurosawa movie in. It's 170-minutes long and tells the story of a Russian' explorers experience with the nomadic hunter, Dersu Uzala, in the wilderness of Eastern Russia. I planned to watch disc one and watch disc two while travelling. In the end, as always, I decided to watch it all in the one sitting.

I read an English-translation of the book when I was thirteen and found the movie fascinating, then and now. A great study of a man's affinity with the land.

Day 205

   Sunday 21 January  2018  2215

'Australia v England'

I'm back at home. The other four guests are at the ground watching Australia require a moderate-level miracle: several fours or sixes off the last 6 deliveries. It's been done - rarely.

My recently diagnosed sucrose-intolerance has led to me feeling a lot less nauseated. There's been less bloating. Some days, my stomach almost returns to a little belly instead of looking seven-months preggers.

In thirty-four years I've never gone to the SCG to watch a day's play and had to retire hurt. Today I did. I am sick as a dog.

The Arabica coffee bean has measurable levels of surcose in it. Mostly I'm fine with coffee from most places, including the pods at home. Sometimes when I'm out I get a reaction. I had coffee at 1230 and by 2.30pm I was ill.

I gave up at 5.30pm, left the SCG and went home and lay down praying for sleep until the worst had past. At 9.30pm I got up and chased the evening's play on Foxtel.

Tomorrow is Day One of Phil's Outback Adventure with B and C. A is staying in Sydney as she has to work. God help me.

p.s. They won. We lost.

Day 205

    Sunday 21 January  2018  1045

'The Downside'

The upshot is that my personal name is blacklisted and I need to find a new host. Because my own name.com is persona non grata the best option now is to choose another name with a different host and transfer the content to the new - uninfected - domain name. I bought 100greatestfilmsever.com (and com.au). I don't know how to transfer all the formatted content.

I also have to prove that any Malware is not on my site, and it might not be, because I might have been caught up in a broad ban against my host.

It's a matter for another day.

Today I'm hosting the Annual Robards Cricket (ARC) Day. Have to be at the SCG by twelve to get the best seats in the Members Stand.

Day 204

    Saturday 20 January  2018  1645

'Fixing an Infection'

I have a meeting tonight with a mate of a mate to work out how to fix the fact that my website philippowers.com is infected with Malware according to Google and Norton and every other antivirus software that consults their black lists.

Day 204

    Saturday 20 January  2018  1214

The Four Macbeths

I  tried to watch the Ian McKellen version (1979) but turned it off after ten minutes. I don't turn films off - ever - but this time I had to. I'm trying to compare Throne of Blood (Macbeth via Japan) and Orson Welles' and Justin Kurzel's interpretations which were made as films, not filmed from the stage production.

I'll come back to this version to hear the delivery of the actors. It makes no difference that the sets are minimalist. I think Shakespeare is about the intent and delivery of the action and lines.

Likewise, it's unfair to compare Kurosawa's Macbeth with any other Macbeth because Kurosawa's film isn't giving us William Shakespeare's Macbeth. Welles (1947), Kurzel (2015) and Trevor Nunn (1979) do give us Shakespeare's Macbeth, in various lengths with various cuts. Trevor Nunn's version runs 145 minutes compared with sub-2 hours.

Like most things, there are the cut-down versions, be it a recipe, a piece of music, a play, a book or even a painting, photograph, or sculpture (often accidental).

It's all in the words. If your read a Readers Digest version of anythin you'll get lots of the great words, but more of a concentration of the plot. Same with the plays adapted for films. They choose the most pivotal scenes and the greatest words (sometimes) but not the entire recipe.

With Classical music there are definitely audio releases that have the best of or highlights but in live performances generally you get the entire work performed. Even if it's Wagner.

It would be interesting to compare the Shakespeare that Welles included which Kurzel did or didn't include and vice versa.

Welles was limited by budget to create something just a few levels above a stage performance: filmed. But he did it. It's a film, not a documentary. Kurzel has Shakespeare's words, a significant budget, a significant actor and delivers a significant film, on any level. The criticism of all of them, as always, would be in the performances no matter who plays Macbeth or any other character.

I read somewhere, some time, that Romeo and Juliet was a poem before Shakespeare turned it into a play. That fact, if it is true, illustrates that the words which describe the plot - the narrative, the story - are as important or even more important than the subject and the events within that plot.

Day 203

    Friday 19 January  2018  1158pm

Macbeth  2015

A Justin Kurzel Film

I recently joined up with Five Dock library and found this version of Macbeth, made by an Australian director. This man made the hard hitting Snowtown (2011). I borrowed it and decided it would make an interesting comparison to the one by Orson Welles.

Day 202

    Thursday 18 January  2018  1112pm

Macbeth  1948

An Orson Welles Film

I'm going to break the Japanese spell and watch the film Orson Welles made of Macbeth. It will be a good comparison with Throne of Blood (1967).

Day 202

    Thursday 18 January  2018  0322am

Throne of Blood  1957

I watched it again. It's beautiful in all the pictorial ways that Kurosawa's films are, in the 1950s and onwards!

Day 201

     Wednesday 17 January  2018  0408am

Throne of Blood  1957

This is definitely the story of Macbeth. I'd heard about it.

It's good. It's very good. It adds something new to my personal Kurosawa 'Kurosawa-Watched' internal hard-drive. 

I wasn't enthused like with the other Kurosawa films.

Day 200

     Tuesday 16 January  2018  1148pm

'Seven Samurai Tonight'

I can't stop watching the Kurosawa films. I hired Dersu Uzula and a doco on Kurosawa from the library. I signed up at Five Dock library to get access to more films. I borrowed Throne of Blood from a friend. I downloaded Seven Samurai from another friend. I'm equipped for another week in the land of Japanese cinema.

Day 199

     Monday 15 January  2018  5.52pm

'Kurosawa - Genius'

He's a freakin' genius. A genuine genius. This man has adopted the traditional American story-telling technique and then added his own style or imprint. Some say he and Japan and Hollywood were apart and developed insularly.

Day 198

     Sunday 14 January  2018  0422am

'Infectioni'  2018

Today's story is that I'm still living in Japan. I'm still living and breathing Mizoguchi, Ozu and Kurosawa.

No story to tell.

Just living. And breathing.

My website is infected with Malware and I'm trying to work out how to get the antidote.

Day 197

     Saturday 13 January  2018  0232am

'Different Kinds of Samurai'  2018

I did some research on Thursday night into what a universal definition of a Samurai might look like and discovered that what Samurais did through the centuries altered markedly depending on the social and political climate.

I'm very happy with the understanding I've arrived at about the Samurai as a soldier, a bodyguard, a military leader, a bureaucrat, a politician or a Ronin, through the centuries.

Some Samurai were more skilled with a quill than a sword, or at the very least equally adept at both.

I don't want to write anything more about my adhoc research because I did three hours of reading without any legitimate citations. So, what I read could be all codswallop.

Nonetheless, I wrote an essay about Kurosawa's Samurai.

Day 196

     Friday 12 January   2018  1157pm

Kurosawa - A Fearless Master

Kurosawa-san, like Bergman, Renoir, Antonioni and Bresson, is one of the great - previously undiscovered in my life - directors in all of film history.

I'd loved his Kagemusha and Ran films - also Dersu -  and was desperate to see Throne of Blood.

I knew I loved jumping out of planes (aged 25) and rollercoaster rides (forever) but I never knew the adrenalin of the fear factor that comes with actually driving - and trying to control - the thing, the machine, which you're going fast in.

The first time I went on a Jet Ski - Fiji, 2014 (aged 51) - I discovered fear as I tried to keep up with the leader and match his tight turns at his speed. I couldn't do it. I throttled off. Fiji, 2015, I almost matched him. I did far better in the courage stakes. I let myself go way beyond my feeling of being in control of the machine.

I knew with Go-Karts, that I would have the same approach the first time. I'd push the boundaries of feeling I was almost out of control and then back off. I told Anthony I'd have to do two races of 14-laps.

I didn't explain that it was so I could push myself enough to discover where fear kicked in and where those boundaries were in the layout of the course. I thought I'd have more guts knowing more about the larger picture in the second race.

It's got similarities with music producing and film directing - and raising the bar beyond one's own, known-levels of, competency - and viewing films that might be beyond one's capability to understand or comprehend. It takes courage to go one or two steps beyond what you've done before, where you may discover the limitations of your capabilities and look like a goose or expose yourself as being mediocre or an impostor.

With Kurosawa, Bergman, Antonioni, Renoir and Bresson, I maxed myself out. But the reward was exhilarating. I kept adding another film, another few kilometres an hour, pushing myself beyond my stamina.

I've almost come a cropper twice in this 200 Greatest Films in 52 Weeks project.

One was sheer exhaustion a few months in, not knowing how to manage the amount of information I was receiving, the things I wanted to write down and the things I wanted to explore further.

The second was Antonioni fortnight which became a third week, but one in which I didn't watch any more films. I was at capacity. My brain hadn't shut down. My brain just couldn't stop thinking about and analysing Antonioni's films, to such an extent that I couldn't give much brain power or focus to anything else too taxing.

Because I was adding additional weeks to some directors, I started spreading other directors' weeks over several weeks. Tati and Chaplin and Scorsese and Hitchcock lost their own dedicated weeks. I've also tried to compress Mizoguchi, Ozu and Kurosawa into two weeks of intensive Japanese film-viewing.

I became someone who overate and then provoked myself to vomit everything I'd eaten, as little, or as much, digested as it was, on to the page (or, into computer memory).

Day 196

     Friday 12 January    2018  1059pm

Canberra Go-Karts  2018

There are some things that you miss out experiencing because your life is headed in a direction that is so different to three or four other groups of people who live in the same city or country. Today, with less than 12-hours notice, I got to go Go-Karting, something I've never even thought of doing before.  

Day 195

     Thursday 11 January 2018  1113pm

The Hidden Fortress  1958

Despite Rashomon and Yojimbo being brilliant films, I'd add this as another. It's not only compelling - it's bloody brilliant

How different are Mizoguchi, Ozu and Kurosawa, all making films around the same time? It's extraordinary that they had some of their best decades of filmmaking, in common.

I'm not a big fan of adventure films, like Robin Hood or The Sea Hawk, The Black Swan or King Solomon's Mines. Nor The Last of the Mohicans, Rob Roy or Don Quixote. It's a curious thing, for which I have no explanation. And yet there are exceptions like Spartacus, which I think is excellent, although I didn't enjoy Gladiator. Braveheart, however, I thought was good.

The Hidden Fortress is an adventure film through and through; and I loved it. It's a mixture of adventure, comedy and drama, with a disguised princess protected by a faithful General (a samurai of sorts) and some characters right out of John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which was less of an adventure film, in my mind, than a brilliant psychological study of how, little by little, the growing desire for great wealth leads to an overwhelming greed, which colours all facets of a person's personality in the way that it affects one's ability to have stable or coherent thoughts.

I'm now in Canberra, at the hotel, writing everything down about the themes and characteristics of these six Kurosawa films and their main characters. The information - my response - is just pouring out of me.

But I have to get to bed by about 3am because I'm going Go-Kart racing at 10 or 11am with my wife's stepfather's daughter's husband, Anthony.

Day 194

     Wednesday 10 January 2018  1134pm

Yojimbo  1961

Sanjuro  1962

James reminded me that somewhere between thirty-two and thirty-six years ago he showed me one his favourite films, Yojimbo, and that I didn't like it. I told him that maybe I'd grown up a bit since then.

Certainly, with some Mizoguchi and Ozu in my mind-space in the last ten days or so, I'm much better placed to appreciate Japanese filmmaking now than ever before.

And, oh!. What a joy  Both of them were terrific.

Yojimbo, in particular. What a masterpiece of filmmaking. I don't recall it being on the best films' list, but Kurosawa was a master craftsman, normally represented by Seven Samurai (1954), Rashomon (1950) and Ikiru (1952).

This film was funny, smart, brilliantly photographed and engaged me from the first frame to the last. And, oh, what a music score: completely crazy and yet inspired.

Then, after dinner, Sanjuro (1962), was equally mesmerizing.

When Sergio Leone remade Yojimbo (as A Fistful of Dollars [1964]), I wonder if he told Morricone that he loved Sato's off-the-wall score and to take a similarly bold, original approach. How else can it be explained that a remake would also have such a distinctive, unique score. At least in my memory, Morricone's sound was unique.

It is now almost 1am and I'm going to make it three in a row and watch The Hidden Fortress (1958) , as well - a film I've never heard of. Lane Cove library had it in their excellent collection of World Movies. Mind you, I had to pay a fine of $24 in late-fees on DVDs to get my card working again. But it enabled me to borrow Ikiru, Rashomon and The Hidden Fortress. Sanjuro and Yojimbo, I borrowed from James. Seven Samurai I had myself but the subtitles didn't work.

Then at 10.30am - I should get 4 hour's sleep - we're heading for Canberra for a long weekend to celebrate my mother-in-law's 70th birthday.

Ssshh. It's a secret.

Day 194

     Wednesday 10 January 2018  4pm

Yojimbo  1961

My friend James was meant to be here at 3.30pm for our double-header of the two really famous Toshiro Mifune samurai films from the early sixties. I've blacked out the cinema  by covering the windows with heavy curtains and black sheets taped to the wall, hanging down. I hope he turns up. I'll go ahead anyway. Tried calling but no answer. I'll give him another hour before I just start.

Day 194

     Wednesday 10 January 2018  0030

Ikiru  1952

I tried putting on Seven Samurai - I was going to watch all 204 minutes - the Criterion Collection DVD, but I couldn't get English subtitles. I really wanted to see Seven Samurai (1954) before seeing tomorrow's double-feature picture show of Yojimbo (1961) and Sanjuro (1962). I changed plans midstream and put Ikiru (1952) on instead.

Day 193

     Tuesday 9 January 2018 

U.S. Marshals  1997

Some days it is just enough to have made an entry. Ali wanted to watch something like Die Hard or Lethal Weapon but not not any of the films in those series. She suggested this film because it was on commercial television tonight. I thought it was a perfect choice. Besides, it had a score by Jerry Goldsmith.

Day 188-192

     Thursday - Monday      4-8 January 2018 

SCG CRICKET TEST  2018 AUSTRALIA v ENGLAND

Thursday 4 January 0616

Less than 3-hours sleep, but it was worth it. I was writing down so many things about Psycho (1960).

Heading off to get to the SCG by 7am when the gates open for members. I need to get in line with people who have been in line since 4.30am so they can get front row seats in the Ladies Stand or the Members Pavilion. There are three entrances for members and all three probably have four or five hundred people in the queue in front of me. There aren't a thousand front-row or second-row seats available so I'm still going to be scrambling for really good seats. 

Day 188

Thursday 4 January 2018  0320

PSYCHO   1960

Have just finished watching one of the two great Hitchcock films. I know them so well, I haven't watched them in a bunch - grouping them - like the other directors whose work I hardly know at all.

It is an amazing film, if for nothing else than it is quintessentially the product of where Hitchcock's head was set, in the 1950s. Although it was released in 1960 and falls into the broad category of 1960s films, it was the last film he made in the 1950s. Post-production was completed in 1960 and the film was screened in New York in June 1960 (citation needed) and it's release was in September, Hitchcock having just turned 61.

If you listen to popular music from the fifties, anything that you don't actually (specifically) know the date it was released, the early years of a decade sound very much like the predominant sound of the previous decade. With fashion, painting, art, music and film, it always take two or three years before the new look-feel-sound of the new decade really starts to take over.

Amongst Hitchcock's creations, it followed a period of filmmaking which yielded the three films (four on the Directors' List: North by Northwest [1959]) on the Critics' List: Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958) and Psycho (1960).

It's curious, because he adopted a new style in the fifties where his films were very knowing in their treatment of his style and they were in transition from I Confess and Strangers on a Train, darker films, to more glamorous thrillers with stars who were in the Top Ten most highly paid and popular actors.

Grace Kelly made Rear Window, Dial M For Murder and To Catch a Thief within a period of three years. In 1955 she was an Academy award-winning actress. She was now a big star. So were James Stewart (3-films), Henry Fonda (1-film) and Cary Grant (4-films) and Doris Day (who had always - nearly  - always, well, mostly) played a character who was a singer.

She sang in The Man Who Knew Too Much, but as a mother singing a lullaby to a child.

Day 187

Wednesday 3 January 2018  2100

FLYING UP TO SYDNEY

Some people are Flying Down to Rio. Other people, like me, are flying up to Sydney.

But not before a trip into Melbourne because Charlotte is desperate to ride on a tram. So, with Kieran and Sylvia's two kids, my two kids, Kieran and I braved the Melbourne weather which found the early morning a little cool but wound up in the heat of the middle of the day, really hot. 

Just like my visit to Gosford to visit Buckley late last year, I captured a lot of 4K footage of Urban Movement for my film, "Wired". The first movement is Nature, the second is Urban and the third is Urban Movement. I've been working on 1 and 3 mostly, with little bits and pieces for 2. Today, however, I completed the gathering of footage for Urban Movement and got a stunning static shot in Melbourne for the second movement.

Then off to the airport, got a couple of good shots, and caught the train home from the Sydney Domestic Airport to Central, and then to Macquarie University station. I got so much footage in this 12-hour period from 9am to 9pm, that I have an abundancy.

Day 187

Wednesday 3 January 2018  0120

GOOGLE  SAYS MY SITE IS 'confirmed' as MALICIOUS AND FRAUDULENT. I HAVE LOST ALL THE GOOD WILL OF EVEYONE THAT VISITS MY JOURNEY

Everything I wrote for the last two hours is gone - for the third time since pressing SAVE and the Google-Trend Micro-Net Registry tirade is lost. I spent hours trying to find a way to contact Google about why they have labelled my website in this way. My wife woke up in the middle of the night to find me fuming, enraged by this six weeks of my site being on some kind of 'BAD' list and being called malicious and fraudulent. She promised to contact a friend of hers who works for Google and find out what I can do about it.

Day 186

Tuesday 2 January 2018

Sansho the Bailiff  0330

This is, experientially for me, like Persona, and Tokyo Story, Mulholland Drive and 2001: A Space Odyssey: one of the best films I have ever seen. I can't explain why, or present an argument (right now) justifying the statement, but it has had an emotional and psychological charge that somehow satisfactorily lets the melodrama, restrained compared with unrestrained melodrama, unfold with a mostly dispassionate presentation of what happens. Then there's the end, which is tragic and then simultaneously tragically happy and joyously sad. The restraint in the previous 118 minutes meant that I was able to accept an ending which was more emotional in it's conclusion than anything before it, without feeling like I'd been served a happy end, nicely wrapped up and packaged and given to me as a present. What happens is beautifully unpacked and revealed:

There is no happy ending. In fact, it is just a less unhappy ending than where it was heading at the 116-minute mark.

Sansho Dayu  1954 0030

This is the second of the two Mizoguchi films that feature in the 100 Greatest Films list. Just about to press play. Two nights ago was Ugetsu Monogatari (1953). Unfortunately I don't have access to the film before it, also considered a masterpiece, The Life of Oharu (1952)

Day 185

Monday 1 January 2018 1030pm

A Most Violent Year 2014

Today was a great day catching up with Melbourne friends and talking about movies. Then Rose and Jeff and Ali and I watched a very intriguing thriller by the director of Margin Call (2011) and All is Lost (2013). A Most Violent Year is the first movie for me in 2018.

Then discovered my website has a disturbing warning on it, warning anyone of visiting it: I tried to contact Trend Micro whose product protects my computer to try to find out why or how they can claim my website has been involved in fraud. Weird. And very worrying.

Wrote to customer support:

"My registered email address is confirmed by my product information as philippowers****@gmail.com but when I click "forgot password" it says that email address isn't registered. I want to know why Trend is giving me Red alert on my own website, saying: "Trend Micro has confirmed that this website... has been involved in online scams or fraud. How can this be, on philippowers.com? On what basis? How?"

Day 184

Sunday 31 December 2017 1140pm

Night Eight on the Road

Proper internet access today for the first time since leaving Sydney eight days ago. Last night was seven days exactly since I watched a movie. I had to squeeze one in - a big one - so I chose Ugetsu Monogatari (1953).

It was a matter of plugging a 256GB USB stick into a SONY Bravia television and discovering that after an hour of tinkering and reloading AVI and MP4 files, that nothing was going to play on Jeff and Rosie's tv. I then watched on a Surface Pro, 20x13cm screen, the smallest physical screen size on which I've ever viewed a film, one of cinema's greatest films.

It wasn't amazing. Very few of these films are amazing on first viewing. It was very different in the style of direction, editing and the positioning of the camera - as in the height of the camera from the ground in relation to the height of the actors and the buildings which framed the actors.  Long shots and constant reframing of actors within a single camera movement was like Hitchcock at his best.

I wrote a bunch of thoughts down on my iPhone, took my pills and fell asleep.

Before that, however, every part of my being, and every part of my fibre, knew that it should have been Jean-Luc Godard (not Kenji Mizoguchi) as my next port of call.. 

Godard ties in with Antonioni and Kubrick and the entire French period of Bresson, Truffaut and Renoir, which spanned before and after the first few years of Godard's first feature films.

It makes no sense to watch the second, third or fourth highly regarded Godard film, without watching the first, which is - generally - the most highly regarded of them all.

I bought it on Amazon, the blu-ray edition, two weeks ago, from the Criterion Collection. I have access to no other copy and I'll be damned if I start doing Godard without watching the film which broke a lot of accepted rules, which probably - maybe? - possibly? - would have made him or broken him, depending on how accessible his film was to the public and academics and how his weird sense of narrative was received. History show It made him. And like the greatest artists, he bet everything on his peculiar approach finding someone, anyone, who could accept it and embrace it cheerfully.

I know I watched Mizoguchi last night but I've written on my iPhone about Ugetsu for hours already, and now I'm still thinking about Godard and fretting and regretting not undertaking my two weeks in Godardland.

I don't know if he set out to develop his first feature film screenplay on-the-fly, intending to think up business for his actors and crew as the ideas came to him, but it was bold and ill-advised,

I don't know if interviews recorded with him looking back at how that first film was made thirty or forty years ago can be approved as accurate, or agreed upon as a reliable source of fact, describing what ACTUALLY happened.

The brain, and the process of recalling events, even with a vigilante approach to err on the side of telling it from the other person's point-of-view, more than your own, is still tainted. The cliché is that in a memoir or autobiography, you can and you can't rely on it as fact.  It's a curious state where a person's memory - which they would swear as fact, on a stack of bibles or their favourite first edition, child or mother - is just plain wrong. Dates don't add up. Legal records don't correlate. It's an inaccurate memory.

Despite the downside, and as much as I hate clichés, I love them.

Clichés are the things which guide us through what has been overused and needs to be avoided - at all cost; which tells us - as a dialectic - what is real and can't be avoided.

By virtue of the fact that there is nothing new under the sun (a clichéd sentence containing a cliché) we have the confirmation that we can't do a great deal about the cliché when we create something that we want other people to understand, no matter how hard we want to make them work to come to that understanding of it. Therefore, the only thing we can do is to accept the fact that it's all been done before, accept the cliché and be clever in the way we choose to reveal it, show it, express it.

Some of the most annoying attempts to disguise the cliché is the pretence that it will be A by indicating it can't be B - and then switching it, or by indicating it will be Denouement Cliché #1 and then by sleight of hand make it Denouement Cliché #2, then undercutting that resolution by a cleverly revealed - often illogical - 3rd twist, which is unsupported by anything the viewer has had presented in the previous three Acts. 

Day 177

Sunday 24 December 2017 0435pm 

Apologies for typos and bad grammar.  I'm only human and I can't read everything I write as many times as I'd like before pressing PUBLISH and publishing it!

11 Nights on the Road

Christmas (Eve) lunch is over, David, Catherine, Sue, Ward and Colleen have eaten their fill and left or are leaving simultaneously. We'll be doing likewise - for Canberra - in a few minutes. Four nights in Canberra, all-day drive To Bass, Victoria, two nights there, then Northcote, Melbourne for three nights, then somewhere else for a night or two.

I do not know when I'll have internet next: fast enough to update my website. Or when I'll have a chance to watch this week's movies, per the schedule.

The Antonioni Mosaic

Blow-Up (1966) is burning a hole in my brain. Al can do the driving to start and I'll do the thinking and go to that little place where I live currently, and dissociate for a while. I know a little bit of time - sometimes minutes and sometimes hours over the next few days - in this place, having my Antonioni-time, will make sense of what Antonioni is doing when he directing a film, and I will factor Blow-Up (1966) into the 1960-1975 equation. Zabriskie, Passenger and Blow-Up will match up with Avventura, Notte and Eclisse. I have the instinct that I'm missing an important piece of arithmetic - or of the puzzle - that will give me an understanding or realization of something currently eluding me which will tie the two periods together, so that Blow-Up and The Passenger are as good or as bad as Zabriskie Point.

Day 177

Sunday 24 December 2017 0542am 

'Blow-Up'  1966

Done! Finished the film and a couple of hours of writing and thinking and thinking and writing.

Kids will be up in five minutes. Christmas lunch (on Christmas Eve) guests arrive in seven hours. If I can avoid the children I can still get five to six hours sleep.

I'm happy to have seen these pivotal six Antonioni films in this order. Without Zabriskie (1970) and The Passenger (made later), I don't think I could have seen, now, what Blow-Up attempted and achieved.

I haven't seen Red Desert (1964), so I don't know how it impacts my experience of the films either side. L'Eclisse (1963) ends in an usual manner, narratively. Zabriskie (1970), too. Then The Passenger (1975), with a closing shot that is beautiful on one level and such a technical achievement of what a camera can and can't see and achieve - in focus - on another.

I do believe that technical feats make some films extraordinary. And that other feats, from one's imagination - imagined and executed - make a film extraordinary.

But those achievements can't simply be beautiful or extraordinary for their own end. They must be part of the intrinsic design of the film.

Lawrence of Arabia is extraordinary for more than it's cinematographical design. So is Life of Pi. There are hundreds of films which meet the standard of ground-breaking visual design and execution and aren't great in the other departments. Blade Runner would be one that has a split opinion.

Zabriskie has a meaningful repitition of a beautiful piece of architecture exploding into smithereens. It's majestic. It's terribly beautiful. It's seen over and over. The Passenger does it in a less majestic visual manner. A person's life is blown to smithereens, within the human body, undetectable outwardly. Inwardly the person's ability to keep on existing is equally, devastatingly, shown, without an appreciable difference to the external unit, building or body.

With L'Eclisse, it was done by showing life going on without the body - as Vittoria vanishes from the story. With Blow-Up, it is done by showing the things that a photographer knows are real - that he sees with his eyes or his camera's eye - even when they are not completely provable without a sharper camera. Once his images are stolen, the body gone, he has no more proof of what he knows, as if it only happened in his imagination.

Then there are the intersecting lines: horizontal, diagonal and vertical. They all lead to dead ends because eventually the frame of the celluloid limits them to never finishing or bouncing back down or across, and trapped like a train going between heaven and hell - vertically and horizontal. A movie, for instance, is limited to it's first frame and it's last. It can be rewound (or spooled back and forth on its reel in the old days) of fast-forwarded or even paused; but it can't extend beyond the beginning or the end of the film; and that for Antonioni is how he treats his characters for the most part.

Then, in Antonioni films,  there are the paths, passages, hallways and roads - often angled or crooked rather than straight - that are always leading somewhere, with the tantalising feeling the viewer that they're going somewhere - because what that person sees is intensely important to Antonioni's construction of the six films I've seen - because the camera moves to reveal there is more and more of that particular path, potentially going on endlessly.

Each of these films have important sequences of a main character wandering or exploring, which, as they walk, reveals more of the environment surrounding his characters. This is what I have grown to love in Antonioni films.

I've seen people write reviews or blogs about Antonioni films with headlines or comments like, "Looks beautiful, but boring as hell." That's one way of experiencing Antonioni, or similar sequences - where the journey is the important experience, not the story - like the long visual journey by Dave Bowman to Jupiter. One person's boring is another person's amazing.

Another observation in Blow-Up about lines up, down and across, is how they overwhelm the garments that the character's wear (Hemmings and Redgrave), when she tracks him down to his studio. They feature lines and boxes - in their checkered clothing - limited by the extremities of the garments - not by the camera's movement, or the director's imagination.

Look at the images of all the characters, and how constrained the boxes and rectangles of the clothes, limit the character's ability to understand what is going on with those around them and within themselves. Squares are locked off, self-contained, things. By things, I mean items, boxes, picture frames, films and prison cells. Unless there is a door or window whatever is inside the square is trapped.

Like the extraordinary opening of L'Eclisse (1962) where the two characters are trapped in a box with no words left to say to each other. Eventually a window is revealed when the blinds are drawn. Then when a door appears it allows them to move out of the space that has them trapped. Another door allows Riccardo to separate himself from Vittoria. She finds him in the bathroom, shaving, with the door closed. Two doors can be seen in the living room separated by a wall which extends a third of the way into the room. Finally a last door is shown. It is the door out of the bigger box that traps them in the smaller box (the rooms). Vittoria escapes outside and leaves Riccardo.

In Blow-Up the checkered shirts that Hemmings and Redgrave wear. It covers them. There are thousands of squares which define who they are in that moment with each other, maybe who they are in essence.

That's a pattern that is more developed here, but was already apparent in L'Avventura (1960).

Day 177

Sunday 24 December 2017 0305am 

Late Night 'Blow-Up' 0312

It's 3am and I've just finished watching Blow-Up (1966).

I definitely would have had a different reaction to this film now - and have had - than when I was 18-years old.  

I definitely would have had a different reaction to this film now because I'd only seen 100 foreign language films then and now I've seen 700 maybe 800.

I definitely would have had a different reaction to this film than when I was 18-years old because in quick succession I have just recently seen Avventura, Notte, Notte, Eclisse, Eclisse, Zabriskie and Passenger.

Now to factor in the preconceptions and the admitted bias against Antonioni, Blow-Up reveals itself in a new light. A better light.  A light which can be compared against three films made (almost directly) before it and two films made (almost directly) after it.

As well as against other great films from Europe and England (and America).

For example, Citizen Kane, at age 18, with the depth of field and the contrast in the photography, as well as the way the film revealed itself to the viewer like novels reveal themselves to the reader, made it as different to everything I'd every seen: as different as watching a silent film like Intolerance or Greed.

When I was twelve-years old how much did I know of the difference between Intolerance (1916) and Cleopatra (1963)?

Not much.

One lacked spark, music and colour and the other had it.

I was predisposed to like one and not the other. It was too much - for me - to see the silent films and the foreign films and the silent foreign films as well as Citizen Kane and Dirty Harry and Coogan's Bluff and discover the clean from the dirty, the good from the bad (or even the ugly).

We had core hours where we watched the (so-called) important films and then there were additional sessions which we could attend to watch 16mm projections of other films. I attended many, but not all, the other films.

I would love to see the curriculum of what was on offer and what I attended.

Oh, how I would love to design a course that brought students to different, difficult, films, in a different, less haphazard way than my father did and in a more constructive way than the university film course did.

What I really liked about the course run by Peter Aborsky is that alongside Tout van bien and Blow-Up, we saw films that were part of the official diet of Australians circa 1960-1980, starring Clint Eastwood, a misogynistic - predatory, embarrassing, anti-establishment, oaf. [I've since come to see the inner man. I wonder if Gran Tarino was his depiction of the change in himself from one kind of person to another kind of person. I think it was.]

The two war films (Flag and Postcards) from different perspectives shows that change in Eastwood as does Million Dollar Baby where he acknowledges the power of women and Mystic River where he acknowledges the power of our upbringing to form our core behaviour and our understanding of how we relate to the world and how the world relates to us.

I've only seen Mystic River once. It was a devastating indictment of those with power who use it to dominate others. In a Hollywood Power System, it could be seen as a tacit acknowledgment that some have power and others don't.  Some, not Eastwood, abuse it. Several of his latter films explore the power that strong people have over weak people and what needs to happen for that to change, no matter whether you're male or female. 

Day 176

Saturday 23 December 2017 

Early Morning 'Blow-Up'

A surprise on a Saturday morning. A parcel from Amazon (USA not Australia). It is the arrival of the majority of the DVDs I need to finish this project. One of the them was Blow-Up. This is ironic as at last I thought I had written the last words about my eighteen days in Antonioni - heaven - hell - bliss.

The great frustration as seen in the things below was that I didn't get to watch the film that so frustrated me during my university days and compare it with Avventura, Notte, Eclisse, ZP and TP which I have watched during December 2017.

It arrived today, I set up my USA player and watched it tonight, having spent five or six hours writing about Zabriskie Point and The Passenger last night. I thought I drew an underline after the last sentence, but I've had to erase it.

Day 175

Friday 22 December 2017

His Girl Friday, late, very late, Friday 

This week would have been a disaster if I hadn't snuck two of the top one hundred in on the last two days of Week 25. It's been a week of still being in the land of Antonioni in my head.

His Girl Friday (1940) took me out two weeks of Antonioni's grip of isolation, alienation and desolation.

I'm now reinvigorated by solid Hollywood filmmaking, which was new and ravishing in its day, breaking with the comedy staple of the 1930s and embracing a different kind of rapid fire - sophisticated - back and forth . Someone will burst my bubble, tell me that it wasn't Hawks and Hecht who created this gem. It was probably all based on the patter of Mae West and W.C. Fields, Marx Bros., Hellzapoppin' (1941) and silent German comedies no one has ever heard of.

I was in Antonioni's head for more than two weeks. It's a dark place. Not as dark as Pasolini, but still essentially, anti-social. The reason?:

It's not enough to view films, I have to make a reasonable attempt at reaching an understanding of it: or why they're highly regarded in a filmmaker's larger body of works, and so highly regarded they're considered masterpieces.

When I went into the world of Bresson, Bergman, Renoir, Chaplin and Truffaut, it was the same thing. One week became two and ended in complete immersion. Not everyone has read what I wrote last week, or two months ago, so for fear of repeating myself ad nauseum, I will say, briefly, the scope of the project has grown from something reasonable, watching 130 masterpieces by 100 directors, to watching as much as I can see of any one filmmaker. I throw in the easily digestible regular filmmaking like Night of the Hunter (1955) or Lawrence of Arabia (1962) or Blue Velvet (1986) or Blade Runner (1982) to help me get through the sheer number of films that I now realise I need to see. 

Day 174

Thursday 21 December 2017 (Later)

Reviewing the Reviewers

The last 72-hours has not been spent watching films, but - a bit bizarre - has been spent reviewing the reviewers and their opinions: Rex Reed, Kael, Ebert, Crowther, Crist and Anthony Lane who were the film critics whose opinions I valued most as I was developing my own opinions.Pauline Kael, who I have accepted as the yardstick for intelligent reviews, for decades, is now under review; a review of my own. As I mentioned yesterday, Rex Reed and Anthony Lane still write intelligently, but the reviewers from the past, Crowther, Crist and Halliwell (for instance) are seriously blinkered and lacking in perception or (worse) insight. 

I'm undertaking a review of the reviewers and I'm finding less intelligence than I had previously gauged (especially in Kael). The patterns of pathology of what they think is acceptable and what is not, is becoming abundantly clear.

What is disturbing is the frequency of the misunderstanding of a film's plot, essence, or being, by beings hired to give their opinion on new films (and sometimes old films).

It's Christmas: crack-open the Rex Reed, Anna-Maria Dell'Osso and Anthony Lane Christmas stockings: books, please!0

 Three true critics who were true to Cinema and themselves, having much more than the modicum of knowledge their colleagues had.

Day 174

Thursday 21 December 2017 (Late)

The Night of the Hunter  1955

This little film about two kids and an intruder was not one I expected to see on Top Ten Lists. It's #63 on the Critics Poll, and #26 by Directors. I've seen this film several times since I was a child. It's always been a little dark, a little disturbing, while containing a strangely charismatic performance by Robert Mitchum - not a favourite actor of mine as he always seems disconnected from everyone else - as a conman.

Not here. He's connected and frightening, but not in a Cape Fear (1962) kind of way. He's real, and frightening.

It's a film, like Sunset Blvd., Blade Runner, 2001, Blue Velvet, The Searchers, Seven Samurai, Some Like it Hot and His Girl Friday, which I know well and have seen many times.

What I noticed this time, which I've never noticed before, is how beautiful the images are. It was always a rattling good thriller of kids in danger, whether from a man or a monster, but I had never thought of it as a film which had been masterfully directed.

The film is gorgeous to look at. Whether it's the location setting or the interiors, the majority of shots are beautifully staged and framed.

Part of this quest to see all these films, including the ones I already know very well, within the same context of 52-weeks of watching more than 200 great films, resulted in me appreciating that almost all of them are a 10/10 for cinematography. I don't know why I never noticed it before, but each one is - for me, so far, in terms of cinematography - jaw-droppingly beautiful. I don't know why, but the films that are in black and white are so much richer for that fact than those in colour (with exceptions like 2001 [1968] and Blade Runner [1982]).

I wonder how much Charles Laughton was involved in the camera setups, the framing, the set design and blocking of the movements of characters and the performances by the actors.

Unlike most directors - even Vigo, they all made more than one film - Laughton doesn't have other films with which to compare it. It is what it is. There's no way to compare how the sets or photography and acting is or isn't similar to how it is in other films he directed.

As an actor I've always considered Laughton to be very theatrical, larger than life, and sometimes over-the-top. There are many exceptions but that's been my general observation over the years. That tendency to personal non-naturalistic acting style makes the acting in this film even more exceptional.

I wouldn't  put it in my top ten films or even my top hundred films [but if you like to rate and rank films, it is, without doubt, a **** (or *****) film)]. However, it's excellent, brilliant, inspired and extremely well-paced.

Day 173

Wednesday 20 December 2017  1112pm

I Admit It. It Looks as if I've (possibly) Thrown in the Towel. One film in Six Days is Pathetic. "But wait - there's more."

I'm going to do two of the accepted great films over two nights. Bang! Bang! Night of the Hunter and His Girl Friday.

Life happened again today - bastard! - took away from fulfilling the aim of this project. So, picked up the kids, went to a Christmas party, got home, packed the kids and Tim, Ethan, Josh and Lauren off to bed - relatives, nice ones - and sat down to write about the current crisis in my life.

GOAL: Four greats films a week for a year

THIS WEEK: None

Day 172

Tuesday 19 December 2017  1111pm

More Writing, But About What the Viewer Views - No Movie Tonight, Again

Part of this project brings me in touch with interesting journalistic and academic articles as well as authors of books about the different filmmakers. In the past, I've had critics who I respect and will always happily follow. I have also come across new ones, like Jonathan Rosenbaum, who'd I'd never heard of and people like Richard Roud, who served as editor of Cinema: A Critical Dictionary and Ann Lloyd, editor of The Movie, The Illustrated History of Cinema.

I've followed - as much as someone can follow who is living in "the arse end of the world" (attributed by one former Australian Prime Minister to another former Prime Minister, about Australia's place in the world: "independent.co.uk, Milliken, Robert, June 26, 1994") - great critics, reviewers and academics like Rex Reed, Pauline Kael, Anthony Lane and Denby, Sarris, Turan, Ebert, Scheuer and Maltin; as well as second-raters like Leslie Halliwell, Manohla Dargis, A.O. Scott, Peter Travers and Rob Lowing.

In Australia, we've had only three good critics or reviewers in the last fifty years: David Stratton, Anna-Maria Dell'Oso and Paul Byrnes. One of the most respected was Sandra Hall, but while she was like an erudite Maltin, a thinking-man's Ebert: consistently inconsistent and off-with-the-pixies half the time, which is now how I am beginning to see Pauline Kael's contribution.

However, even the haphazard critics who love film are always capable of coming up with an assessment that is spot-on. They havve all written well-thought-out reviews amongst their polluted dross. It's the blind-spots and the consistency (which they lack) that rile the real film-lover: me.

Up until the last couple of weeks months of the last six months, I've asked the question: why do people who dislike movies, rejecting 90% of what they review - make a career out of reviewing movies? I probably even asked that question in early blogs entries. I didn't understand it. I'm intelligent to a degree - the jury is out on that one, should I be judged guilty or innocent? - but that eluded me.

I don't ask that question anymore. I know that I am alone (and it is not "boo-hoo, woe is me" - it's an indictment of people's lack of energy to embrace non-Anglo media) on  this voyage. My close friends and my family known that I'm doing this, but no-one is interested in watching the films I'm watching - except one, sometimes. [That one, is not my wife.]

I've invited people to join me and watch one or more of these films. I've asked people to read my blog and participate in my experience.

Zero interest.

Everyone I know wants to watch Star Wars 8, Pirates 9, Transformers 10 or The Crown, Downton Abbey (EastEnders with costumes), The Walking Dead, The Good Wife - and something called House of Throwns or Game of Cards.

I'll admit it: I've watched some episodes or seasons of those show. I'm human.

I decided I wanted more.

In my search to understand the people who directed the films I've watched so far, I've written my immediate thoughts and then explored, more widely.

Two of the best biographies I've read along the way - during my first twenty-five weeks - are Gene D. Phillips book on Coppola and John Baxter's book on Kubrick. What is extraordinary about books which have this level of detail, is that in the archives, somewhere, are dated drafts of screenplays, which enable mapping of the development of a an idea into what the penultimate screenplay looked like, and what the screenplay of the finished film was, as released by the distributor, when it premiered. A third great book I've consumed during the first half of this (probably) ill-advised venture is longer than either of these books about the majority of Kubrick's and Coppola's films. It's about just one film: Future Noir. The Making of Blade Runner.

Day 171

Monday 18 December 2017  1142pm

Writing About Antonioni - No Movie Tonight

There's a lot to say about this filmmaker. He's a curious director who was responsible for developing a new film grammar. His most famous film, arguably, L'Avventura (1960, is also, arguably, his best film. He would often start shooting without a finished screenplay and get his actors to improvise.  I have no idea who first though of starting a film without a finished screenplay (without dialogue), but the same year, Jean-Luc Godard went one better with Breathless (1960), by starting without a screenplay (or dialogue) and using part of every day trying to come up with ideas of what he might like to do with his actors. They'd often hang around all day waiting for him to come up with an idea and some days the actors and crew didn't work at all if Godard found his well was dry that day.

When Antonioni was filming his first international movie, Blow-Up (1966), circa 1965, Stanley Kubrick heard, reportedly, that the lead actors, David Hemmings and Vanessa Redgrave, got the pages from the novel relevant to each day's filming, indicating what they'd be shooting; "Antonioni hadn't written a script at all, but had simply slipped pages from Julio Cortazar's short story under the doors of his stars each evening." (Baxter, John, Stanley Kubrick, Carroll & Graf, New York,1997 [reprinted 1999], p.279). Based on this, Kubrick, having finished a reasonably detailed draft of his screenplay for Barry Lyndon, based on Thackeray's The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon Esquire, according to Baxter, headed into pre-production: Convinced that anything Antonioni could do, he could do better, Kubrick argued that the draft script and the book itself constituted enough material to start shooting; the rest would be written as they went along." 

Kubrick had already made 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) without a finished screenplay. Arthur C. Clarke was constantly adding to, and subtracting from, what Clarke thought they were making. During three years of developing the concept, production and editing, Clarke wrote hundreds of pages of material which were never filmed, or if filmed, never made it into Kubrick's final cut.

Kubrick, Antonioni and Godard are cut from the same cloth. It's a legitimate garment and acceptable apparel, however, it is very limiting and not used in the manner that's generally understood by people with eyes and ears. It's like saying,

"I'm going to wear my underpants on my head, my sock on one hand, my shirt as a skirt, my shoe on my other hand, and forgo trousers altogether, keeping credit cards, driver's licence, bank notes and loose change strapped by my tie to my head and only speak in words that start with A, B, C, F and P  or contain the letters j, q and z."

If you can go to a party, engage in a meaningful way with other human beings, with those limitations, then head home and feel satisfied that you've made a real connection with people who dress and speak and are quite different from yourself: you're a freaking genius.

Day 170

Sunday 17 December 2017  7.11pm

Early Christmas Lunch - No Movie

Life is full of unexpected surprises. None more so than a beautiful lunch which was both gluten-free and sucrose-free.  Thank you, thank you girls. To eat a tasty meal and not be ill afterwards is such a rarity in my life that this meal, today, was a revelation: a wonder to behold.

This is such a big deal, because, as I have a deficiency of the enzyme that breaks down sucrose, which rules out 95% of fruit and vegetables and almost anything canned or bottled in a supermarket.

Day 169

Saturday 16 December 2017  6.31pm

Election in Bennelong Halts 100 Greatest Film Ever Project

Voting needed to be done, so I halted the project to think about issues which are more far-reaching than what is the most extraordinary,  great, brilliant, excellent and exceptional movie ever-made.

What is interesting about my political voting history is that I never voted for an Australian Liberal political candidate; and I never ever thought of myself as a Labor voter because of my mise en scene.

The first Australian election for which I was eligible to cast a vote was when Bob Hawke ran against Malcolm Fraser. I voted for Hawke. Then I kept voting for parties based on Arts' policies without thinking too much about the broader picture.

Today, I voted against Turnbull because I see him as the modern anti-Robin Hood. He takes from the poor and gives to the rich.

No matter how much rhetoric there is about how he is giving more money to Education, Health Care, and giving benefits to the people who are, living without a job, disabled, or in poverty: just like Trump, Turnbull is a man who is supporting lower taxation on the rich and less benefits for the poor.

I have never engaged in conversations about political parties since my first vote in 1980 or 1981. I voted on Arts policies. I disengaged from discussions about broader issues. Both sides are only in it for themselves, and what I saw early on was that the two major parties - anywhere - are only about getting power, adapting their platform to keep power, and giving concessions to anyone which enables them to win power for another term.

The most awful thing the politicians do is sell off National assets (privitisation) to give them a better plus & minus column: red and black. If they need to sell A1, which is bought by C and disadvantages all of A, so they can maintain power - they will.

I have lived a life only caring for the Arts (until Trump became President-elect in 2016). Now, I follow the Australian daily news (every so often - as many times as my phone updates me - so, several times a day) and care about a world beyond the world of Australian Arts.

I acknowledge that I have  - in the past - tried to give a vote to a government, and for a party, that knows just how many people who live a life that is day-to-day or week-to-week; whose next meal is not necessarily tomorrow - because they are artists.

I know how it feels because I had employment only once in thirty six years, from January 1990 to March 1993. I'm an artist who has three years and three months of superannuation and leave and has only had contracts - other than those three years - in a lifetime of work since I was seventeen years old.

As an artist, I'm itinerant. I had contracts as Music Director,  and Composer and Recording Producer and Session Producer, Arranger, Session Pianist, CD Producer and CD Executive Producer.

That's my life. But in that life - week-to-week or year-to-year - I've produced a lot of CDs. The majority of them I was paid to produce, particularly since 2008. Prior to that, the majority I was working for nothing. The 1987-2006 CDs I produced for free because it was my own record label.

Producing, however, is different from being the head of a major/minor label.

You can producer for free, but you can't manufacture and distribute CDs - locally or internationally - for free.

I raised the money, $8,000 from a silent partner and $8,000 myself. Everything else was my time and energy.

That was a fulltime part-time job (1987-1993) alongside everything else I was doing in life.  

Day 168

Friday 15 December 2017  1144pm

'Wrapping Presents - Watching Cricket'

An afternoon and evening of cricket: Australia vs England, Third Ashes Test in 2017-2018 tour of Australia by England. It was also the last day of Becky at pre-school. Next year she and Charlotte will be at Primary School, together, Kindergarten for the former and Year Two for the latter. They had little plays at St John's pre-School and normal school and Ali had to do it by herself. I watched all of the Day  2 cricket by time-shifting and wasn't around to do family things.

Day 167

Thursday 14 December 2017  1121pm

Mon Oncle  1958

I need to slip in a number of films around the normal schedule. So, Tati is not being approached by watch four in one week, but four in four weeks. First was Jour de fête (1949) then M. Hulot's Holiday (1953), now Mon Oncle.

The first was uneven, but you could see the gentle genius in Tati in many scenes. Especially the observational Tati camera, which shows French people in little French towns, being part of their surroundings. The joy isn't even mostly in the cleverly choreographed sequences or little bits of humour. It's in the life that goes on in Tati's frame.

Never moreso than in Mon Oncle, where it affected me bit by bit as all the elements accumulated, leading to a growing affection minute by minute.

For a film which was probably shot in 1957 and released in 1958, it's remarkable for its invention of inventions. I have no idea when the garage door which goes up by a sensor was invented; or the button that unlatches the front gate; or window that is operated remotely; or kitchen gadgets.

I thought Holiday was good. But not a great film. I expected the same kind of film from Mon Oncle. I didn't extend it a great deal o good will when it started but I was won over by the end.

• the little boys with their pranks
• the wedding anniversary presents
• the bicycle parked in the brother-in-law's spot
• Hulot caught - many times -  in the wrong place and blamed for something of which he was innocent
• the heads popping up in the round windows, like pupils, watching Hulot bumble around at night
• the bouncing water pitcher and the broken glass
• the one shoe in wet white paint leading up and on top of a desk up to a small window
• the little boy's hand in his father's hand at the very end

And then there's Tati's camera placement as a director. It's artisti. Beyond the invention of his jokes and observations, there's a talent I'd not appreciated before, that of the painter, the creator of images in frames. Just beautiful. 

Day 167

Thursday 14 December 2017 

The Passenger  1975

Such was my disappointment with Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017), that after making my blog entry at 3.30am, I decided to watch another bleak, intense, Antonioni film, The Passenger, in an attempt to cheer myself up.  It turned out to be another examination of people wandering through life with little joy or intent. This being the sixth Antonioni film I've watched - La Notte and L'Eclisse twice each - I've noticed that characters tend to wander around places, cities or towns, often aimlessly, while carrying a great deal of inner pain or sadness, which Antonioni isn't intending to explain in any detail, or at all. They all make connections with each other, usually around Antonioni male charqcters' desire to have sex with the female characters. As his films progress the sex becomes less meaningful as an indicator of two people who want to continue and develop the relationship. The sex is great and it is meaningful only for as long as it lasts. 

In Zabriskie Point, the alienation of the two main characters is even more emphatic than those in L'Eclisse. Although both pairs of characters don't know each other for the first half of the film, Paul and Daria's characters are even more alienated from whatever it is that is going on in their lives. Paul's attitude to the life that goes on around him, is essentially, stop talking about being radical, go and be really radical: fight with police, buy a gun, steal a plane, and head out into the world with no plan or direction.  

What we know in Zabriskie Point is that Paul is fed up with words, and protests and beating one's head against a brick wall. He walks out of a student meeting discussing their issues and the forthcoming protests. He says he's willing to die for anything that is really important, to him. He's frustrated and goes on the run.

Daria's father property developer. His world is that of expensive houses and making money. She's so dissatisfied  with her life she runs away from home and drives into the desert, deliberately keep her intentions and whereabouts from her worried father.

Two people alienated from their own world, find a brief moment of togetherness in the environment of the hot sun and the desert sands. They make love on the chalky plains of Zabriskie Point. As they have engaged and emotional sex with each other, Antonioni's camera reveals that there is more than one copulating couple. There are two, then three, then a dozen.

In an era of free love and condition-less sex, this behaviour makes sense. Antonioni doesn't explain himself, but it seems reasonable for me to hypothesize that although there are a dozen couples having sex on the sand, it's a break in the formal reality of the story, because it doesn't make sense for other characters to just turn up in the middle of nowhere. It doesn't give an indication that it's a dream or a dreamlike sequence. 

It's a statement by the director. Maybe it is underlining the background of the cultural events of the time, where people connect, then disconnect, then connect with someone else, over and over. Maybe Antonioni wanted to include a sequence with naked beautiful bodies and push the boundaries of what is acceptable in terms of censorship. He's being a radical himself, making a big budget movie for MGM, putting a sequence in it which will get it banned or an R or X-certificate, knowing that this will get him a lot of notoriety and not caring that MGM will lose their investment. Maybe it's symbolic. For every Paul and Daria there's got to be hundreds of other disenfranchised people, who feel their (personal) vote doesn't count or their opinion doesn't matter. If you stop caring about the things you were brought up to care about, which your parents cared about, then finding a point in life is through transient physical connections. The other couples surrounding Paul and Daria's loving and happy physical connection makes it clear that there are hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of unhappy teenagers who are finding it hard to see the point of life. If Antonioni has a point, it would be that in 1969, 1970, it is a discontentment that is wider spread than teenagers but best illustrated through those on the verge of becoming adults.

The mantra I see in Antonioni's films, all six of them I've watched so far, is that life is what it is, this film is what it is, what really matters is what is happening for an individual now, right now.

The state of a character in Antonioni's film is frequently about what happens now, what the viewer sees now, what they think now, what the character feels now. It is what it is. 

I don't think I've accidentally stolen,"it is what it is", from anyone other than Antonioni himself. It is implied in his films and he's probably said it in interviews.

Day 167

Thursday 14 December 2017  329am

Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi  2017

A long and disappointing film. I'm reserving judgment until I have time to digest all the things that were wrong and anything that was good. At this stage, right after the screening, I'm of the opinion that there were some terrible scenes, and some very good scenes and that an iconic character was treated very badly by the writer/director. The thing I don't want to forget is that despite the things I think were massive mistakes, there were good things. It's a matter of making a list of what went right and what went wrong.

Day 166

Wednesday 13 December 2017  1109pm

Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens  2015

Tonight is one of the events of the last few years. Another entry in the Star Wars series, Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, screening. In preparation, a 9pm screening of Episode VII: The Force Awakens with a few special guests, Luke, Matt and Jeff.

Wow, what an excellent film in the series. Also, John Williams best score in the series after A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back.

Day 166

Wednesday 13 December 2017  0025pm

Blade Runner 2049  20I7

It's great to see a film that could have disappointed, a sequel to a favourite film o mine, and walk out happy. My wife's work colleague, who watched the two David Lynch films with us, turned to me as the end titles began, saying, "That was brilliant." Interestingly, in the lead up to this screening we both watched the original Theatrical Version of Blade Runner (1992). Now, we're looking forward to seeing Blade Runner, The Final Cut, the most recent Director's Cut by Ridley Scott.

Two things that I was surprised to learn during the credits was that Ridley Scott was onboard as Executive Producer and that Hampton Fancher who wrote the very first draft of Philip K. Dick's novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. In fact, Fancher tried to buy an option on the rights of the novel from Dick a few years earlier, but was unsuccessful. He didn't know it at the time but the rights were held by someone else at that stage. In very unlikely circumstances it came back into his life in 1980. In circumstances even more unlikely, he was asked by the originating producer to write the screenplay adaptation of the novel despite the fact he was an actor and had never written a screenplay.

When Ridley Scott joined the project, opting out of his contract with Dino Di Laurentiis to direct Dune, their first dealings with each other were mostly happy. But, as Scott's vision of the film changed from Fancher's numerous drafts, Fancher became more and more reluctant to keep rewriting and inserting Scott's ideas. Despite Fancher being one the three main producers, Fancher's final draft was given to another writer, David Webb Peoples, to incorporate what Scott wanted.

There was bad blood and, for a time, Fancher, distanced himself from the production, appalled when he discovered that his screenplay was being rewritten by another writer, and that his vision and what he desperately wanted to include from the original novel was now disregarded.

Imagine my surprise when the Blade Runner 2049 screenplay is credited to Fancher (as the author of the story) and Michael Green and that the interfering 'silent' producer Bud Yorkin, who put up a third of the money for the original - more when factoring in the budget blowout - is back for the sequel as one of the producers, despite the fact he died two years before the sequel was released and over a year before principal photography commenced. As a producer on the original was this a token effort to credit the man who hounded and fired Michael Deeley and Ridley Scott (temporarily) from the original. More than anyone, Yorkin was responsible for the version that went into cinemas, hiring other writers to create additional words for Harrison Ford to record as a voiceover (three separate times), and listening to feedback from preview audience screenings. As a result of Ridley Scott running over-budget and over schedule, Yorkin's company was in the position of also being 'completion guarantor' giving him the write to take over the film, even taking it out of the director and producer's hands. This is what led to two different Director's Cuts many years later when the film had developed such a cult following that Scott got to revisit the film again and again.

Now, we have an excellent sequel. Beautifully made by the Canadian director Denis Villeneuve who impressed with the extraordinary, brilliant, film Arrival. Now he brings that measured approach to good material by approaching BR2049 in a different way to Scott's visual approach to Blade Runner.

One concern I had walking into the cinema was that the sequel would copy the visual approach, but with a difference of thirty years, a lot has happened to Los Angeles physically and the areas where this story is set. In fact, it is so vasty different visually that I did feel that it possible had gone too far away from the Blade Runner - a little - of 2019. Better, though, to have a different, individual, approach, than to copy another person's style.

Another concern for me that potentially, like a lot of sequels, this film could simply rewrap the first film in slightly different paper, holding onto to the most obvious crowd-pleasing factors and paying too little attention to the story and structural aspects of the new film. My worry was that it would be a film about a Blade Runner tracking down and retiring several Replicants. But it wasn't and what a surprising joy to discover a plot that grew out of the original film that is completely different but still about the importance of life - any life.

Day 165

Tuesday 12 December 2017  8.15pm

Heading out to see Blade Runner, Mark II

I've found obstacles, many times, to getting to a cinema to see this long-awaited sequel. I haven't gone with my normal lightness-of-feeling. I'm concerned that this film is going to be unfaithful to the style of Ridley Scott's original, or director's cut. I'm worried that Harrison Ford and Ryan Gosling are going to team up to hunt down and retire more Replicants. I'm worried that it will be violent without having enough interest in the kind of questions the original film raised; that it will draw on the obvious visual aspects of Blade Runner and - like so many sequels - pick up from where the story ended in 2019 and give a one-dimensional futuristic sci-fi narrative.

I'm getting in the car, heading towards an uncertain future.

Day 165

Tuesday 12 December 2017

L'Eclisse  1962

Zabriskie Point  1970

Last night I got hold of Zabriskie Point (1970), Antonioni's much-maligned American film which he made for MGM in 1969. I go into films knowing little or nothing about them usually, but this film, I remember, had a really bad reputation. One quote I remember reading when I was a teenager was:

"A jumbled disaster from the hugely talented Antonioni. Another essay about desolation and alienation and it's entirely appropriate... one of the locations used is Death Valley. One of the many mistakes by Antonioni was the casting of a non-professional actor, Frechette, to play the role of Mark, a radical." - *, Steven Scheuer, Movies on TV, 1978-79).

Afterwards, I watched L'Eclisse again, which was really interesting second time around. Not that La Notte and L'Avventura were particularly wordy, but the third film (in the so-called trilogy) is even less so. Strong visuals throughout. Started writing down lots of thoughts

Day 164

Monday 11 December 2017  0628am

"1st Time 2nd Time - All Comes Around"

Tonight I wrote a short story. Amongst the viewing of movies, the blog, the writing about movies, the learning to draw, the desire and inspiration to keep composing, the filming of 4k video for a film that I'm intent on making, there was a story to write about a couple who were about to be married, almost a quarter of a century ago, today.

"Jacques was in a motel room with Gerard Barry (a wonderful composer of Classical Music) and his partner Chris, Dave (Jacques's best man), and Antony Powell (a director of numerous quality cinema and television productions). Gerard was Jacques's best man and best friend, Dave was Jacques's second best man and second best friend and Antony was a very good friend - who gave-a-damn! - who was to become Jacques's best friend, six years later.

Jacques was a tradesman. He got hired to lay bricks - sometimes even entrusted with tiles - and make sure the grout was 4mm (bricks) or 1mm (tiles). He had a skill that was valued by some in the industry, as master craftsman, and by others in the business as a ("I'm a freelancer, I just need a job so I can lay some bricks") minor bricklayer.

It was now the very early hours of the same morning Jacques was to be married in, eleven hours later. They were smoking cigars and drinking copious quantities of wine which Powell kept ordering: a steady flow of red and white wine.

As Jacques did, when tense or excited, and there's general merriment, he started drinking faster and faster without a thought of how he'd get up and do whatever he had to do tomorrow. Whether it was getting to work by 9 or 10am or getting to his own wedding by 12 or 13, the calculations were nearly always out by a bit.

By the time he found his room, having held the walls of the motel corridor upright as he walked to his room, he knew it was very very late or even a little bit early and that he was a tiny bit sober or very very drunk.

Jacques clearly remembered the walls were in danger of falling down if he didn't stay upright and that the bloody key wouldn't fit in the lock because the bloody lock kept repositioning itself. No matter what he did, the lock and key were clearly disposed to dislike each other and he couldn't get them to marry, despite the numerous proposals.

His best man, or the second best - maybe even the third - was wandering down the hall during Jacques's twentieth proposal. He took the key (free will) from Jacques and guided it into destiny (the lock).

It had been an exciting evening and Jacques hadn't been temperate and had shown no discipline for being sensible.

He didn't remember anyone drinking less than him, and although he knew he'd been drinking more than most bums for almost three-quarters of a year, it was still a surprise when excessive drinking met with a (seemingly) diametrically-opposed stupor. It added up to the kind of hangover at 10am that required Jacques to be in bed until 2pm if he was going to get up and walk to the bathroom, unaided; 7pm if he was going to grab the walls and accept their help. 10pm, if he was going to think about eating again without chundering at the thought.

Brring brring. 10am. Checkout time. It became a never-ending sound of ringing sounds from a phone that refused to be silent – even off the hook – as Reception bombarded Jacques with an accumulation of aural noise and then verbal threats. It was a bursting dam of disinterest from them regarding how his head felt at 10, 11 and 12, resulting in a physical eviction.

So, Jacques had to get up and he got out. His head didn't hurt as much as his body felt the need to be horizontal. It's the kind of thing that some aren't self-conscious about admitting, but Jacques come from a background where he his behaviour should have been responsible and upright in the face he presented the world, instead of caving in to cravings.

He'd had a hard eight months after resigning from his job in March, with his brick-laying mentor, for whom he had great affection. Now, on a good day, Jacques was trying to get from one day to the next and it was the most important goal he ever set himself that year (every day – or every other day).

The effects of alcohol and drugs when someone is unwell make everything get better and better until they don't. They're the lessons you learn, to tell your kids, so they can avoid similar mistakes. But, if you've already been broken by your family, and you already have little regard for yourself, as a being, then you’re a burning match waiting to come across a slick of oil.

This even, shockingly, applies to people who came from 'good' families. Apparently, everyone thought it was a bad idea that Jacques was marrying Jules, but no one actually told Jacques that everyone thought it was a bad idea, and if they told Jules, she didn't alert Jacques. If ever there was a sign that two driverless trains were hurtling towards each other, on the same track, it was Jacques and Jules.

They effortlessly turned that into an inevitably bitter, angry, 'take-no-prisoners' roll down the hill into divorce court. People know that if you have oil and you have a burning match and the two happen to come together, it will result in a catastrophic conflagration, so the only one’s surprised were the oil and the burning match. Each had their own lives before uniting to create a 43-month, slow-burning fuse. There were several hints that Jacques and Jules were heading down a path that could be disastrous but the two head-strong idiots, him and her, thought that love outweighed all of the things which could accidentally marry the stupidity of allowing oil in the vicinity of a burning match.

In fact, what they hadn't reckoned on was that love in all of its (guises and) disguises would not be enough. Not enough to overcome their childhood, their parents, their siblings, their schooling, their combined self-doubt or any individual self-loathing that may have been bubbling away beneath the surface. Definitely not their psychological and emotional challenges. 

They had no idea that before they even met, their union, which was part of the beautiful organisation of the way life unfolds in the lives of people on planet earth, was a failure. If Jacques had thought the word, doomed, it would have given a perspective that it was at one time possible, before the decline, that it could have survived. To know that their union was a failure, before they had even met, is to recognise that fifteen-years later a success had already been devised where Jacques would meet Miss Alright and then have Beautiful and Charming.

Day 164

Monday 11 December 2017  0428am

"Not Everything is Equal"

How different life is with a different mindset. There is a thing which happens when you realise that no-one you care about or that you think cares about you actually cares about you. 

It gives you liberty. To express yourself. They have been told about your blog many times, but don't read it. I don't mind that they don't read it - my wife doesn't read it - but they - many - actually don't know about, or even have the knowledge of the existence of the films I'm viewing and what I'm doing,

"despite their personal and exuberant love of film."

Day 163

Sunday 10 December 2017  1112pm

The Life that Blotted out the Moon and the Sun

I want to write about this particular film - L'Eclisse - but I'm consumed by overwhelming emotions that people say about my situation.

A STORY (by Philip Powers (c) 20171210)

Jack had a friend, Crazy Joe, who was The Man Who Was Magic. That was his secret name - which no-one ever said - but his name was Not Yet, to me, or Crazy Joe.

He manipulated situations where he controlled the amount where his different friends could interact, and where he would allow - deign - to allow them to interact.

Crazy Joe was crazy but he didn't know it and no one ever told him.

He left me alone when I needed not to be.

Crazy Joe had a good heart. His only problem - significant - was a lack of providing himself with the chance to chat about things girls were struggling with, with boys.

Crazy Joe was living a life that was all about Crazy Joe. Every day, every Joe, it was all about him. Not Jack or Jill.

Day 162

Saturday 9 December 2017  1152pm

L'Eclisse (1962)

How different is this film? I can't believe he (Antonioni) works without a script. The dialogue and the ideas are so exact in their treatment, that it defies belief that he doesn't know what he's making, despite the words he uses in interviews.

Day 162

Saturday 9 December 2017  5.17pm

Bunnings - not a film - just a warehouse  (2017)

This was a trip to get a cable and/or fitting to connect outdoor Christmas lights to an indoor power source. I piggy-backed this visit to get some boards for the broken roller shutters. What resulted was a ridiculous evening where Ali set up reindeer and a Christmas tree, and I cut pieces of black material to match the windows for which the roller-blinds no longer work.

That's a longer story than any human on the planet would care to hear.

Day 161

Friday 8 December 2017  1152pm

Wedding Anniversary Dinner  from 2008-2017

Got home at 6.42pm. Got into the car at 6.50pm and got to the restaurant for our celebration - belayed - from 29 November.

Day 160

Thursday 7 December 2017  9.02pm

Wonder Wheel  (2017)

A Woody Allen Film

A new Woody Allen film is in cinemas today. I thought I best catch it now, because it probably won't be on next week. The other gentleman in the cinema at the 5 o'clock session enjoyed it as much as I did, I think.

What an unusual film. It features strange casting. More often than not there are several big name stars in his films. I didn't know who Juno Temple was and hadn't heard of Jim Belushi in years. Although I have never liked Justin Timberlake as an actor, because he comes across the same way in every film - and I don't mean like Cary Grant or James Stewart or Humphrey Bogart, because even though its always been popular in film literature to write about how those stars always play themselves, that's bunkum, it's simply untrue, they could really act, despite having a recognizable persona - whereas Timberlake, smug and looking self-satisfied and doing the smarmy-charmy acting-thing, only worked for me in The Social Network (2010), where he was brilliant - ly cast.

I could write a book about Woody Allen. Literally, write an entire book about my reactions to his films, the good ones, the great ones and the mediocre.

In fact, last year, during five weeks in hospital - I read three books on Woody Allen and watched five of his films again. The much-praised Annie Hall, the much-maligned Interiors - which I think is really moving and beautiful in so many ways, and a bold venture, and the film that is highly-regarded (by many), and not-so-highly-regarded (by hopefully less-many), Manhattan.

Day 159

Wednesday 6 December 2017  11.59pm

M. Hulot's Holiday (1953)

This is a lovely, gentle film. My Dad's always been a huge fan of Tati, so I grew up with repeated viewings of this film and Mon Oncle (1958). In fact, I even saw Playtime and Traffic at the movies - in a theatre - like, a real cinema with a big screen. They didn't screen French films like this on television in the late sixties and seventies. Well, not often, as I recall. There was no SBS then.

The whole humour of Tati in this film is so much more refined than his earlier one, Jour de fête (1947). The gags often last less than a minute, and then there are some big ones, like the one with him in the boat, which are beautifully judged and executed.

What surprised me most, though, was how beautiful his filming of the location is. The photography and framing - just wonderful. His setup shots - establishing shots - are beautiful. Even if I see his humour here as being quite casual, and brings a smile more often than a laugh, but his skills as a director are formidable. It is such a beautiful looking film.

Day 159

Wednesday 6 December 2017  7pm

Future Noir: The Making of 'Blade Runner' (1982)

This was one of those days where I read and read for hours and hours. I'd watched Australia wrap up the last few wickets against England in the Second Test Match, in the early hours, then just kept on reading. I guess tomorrow will be when I watch the last Antonioni film in the early 1960s trilogy - L'Eclisse (1962).

Just about to watch M. Hulot's Holiday (1953), the second of the two Jacques Tati film I have set myself the task of watching. The great one (according to the S&S BFI list) is Playtime (1967) which I will get to seven days from now. If I'm going to understands Playtime's place of the list of great films, I need to do that in the context of Tati's other films, and Chaplin, who I've just finished with. It seems a natural match.

I've co-opted my 87-year old father into this Chaplin and Tati project. I've now done The Gold Rush, Modern Times and City Lights with him on consecutive Wednesdays and then tossed in Jour de fête and tonight, Hulot's Holiday. Next week Playtime.

Day 158

Tuesday 5 December 2017  7pm

Worked for a living today

I worked a full day in the recording studio, again, finishing last week's recording of George Palmer's Black, White and a Little Blue, a work for clarinet and piano. It was 7 hours of editing and finding the best bars of 5 hours 25 minutes of recording last week.

I forgot how enjoyable the process of stitching together hundreds of takes into one big work was. Nine years of doing it on a weekly basis with the SSO as their Recording Manager, often Recording Producer, had already turned grey in my mind. This was a welcome reminder.

Sent my brother a Happy Birthday email. He turned 60 today. Wow, we're all getting old.

Day 157

Monday 4 December 2017  0330am

La Notte  1961

I watched La Notte three nights ago. Now I've watched it again. It is, in fact, far more powerful the second time around. The long patches without dialogue are testament to Antonioni's skill as a filmmaker as well as a comment on the state of the marriage of Giovanni and Lidia. The film is slow, just like L'Avventura (1960), but not dull or uninteresting.

Although I only watched L'Avventura once, it was immediately remarkable what was extraordinary and amazing and incredible - the visuals, cleverly using straight lines at all sorts of angles, and occasionally, complex patterns. With La Notte, there wasn't such apparent genius in the creation and juxtaposition of the images.

Nevertheless, the excellent use of locations put a lot of beauty into most frames, just by look at the city of Milan through Antonioni's  camera.

The plot, however? A decaying marriage is shown through the decay of a number of other things. I can't see that it is very profound because there aren't a lot of words in the film until the very end. It is another observation of a relationship going down the drain, which in European cinema, as I've observed in 157 days, has unfaithfulness at the heart of it. Or maybe the decay was there and unattended to, so unfaithfulness followed.

Day 156

Sunday 3 December 2017  2258pm

A Time of Reflection and Monopoly

Not a lot of writing. Just thinking about how the characters of Betty and Diane fit in with Rita and Camilla and the fact that the dead body in Number 17, Diane Selwyn, with long dark hair, is in no way like any visual representation of Naomi Watt's character. Asked my wife why she thinks the dead body is Betty/Diane. Why is she dead? There's nothing to suggest suicide because of Rita's rejection of her. What's the money for, that Rita had with her in the car crash? Surely, the killer who is cleaning up the witness to the car accident, and the cowboy, a threatening figure, have something to do with the dead body in Selwyn's apartment. Suicide is a long stretch (my wife's idea) given that the causes of death are more likely murder, or the effect of a head-on car collision.

But how could Rita have wandered into Diane Selwyn's apartment? And if Naomi Watts is Diane Selwyn, why did the neighbour who swapped apartments with her.

When the family got home from Christmas shopping at 5pm it was time for Charlotte's new obsession, Monopoly.

Day 155

Saturday 2 December 2017  1151pm

'Blue Velvet has little velvet'

'Mulholland Drive has relentless drive'

Wow. Blue Velvet was exactly how I remembered it, except for the verbal violence of Dennis Hopper's extraordinary performance. I'd not remembered just how intense Frank Booth was. How awful.

Just two weeks ago, by coincidence, I happened to watch Twin Peaks, Season 1. That proves very valuable, because Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks have a lot in common: a small town with a saw mill, a pretty blonde whose boyfriend is a jock, and a brothel which the more despicable characters frequent. There's also velvet curtains - sometimes blue and sometimes red, music by Angelo Badalamenti, and an ineffective local police force. Lynch and his co-creator, Mark Frost, have also created a spunky, fresh-faced couple who take it upon themselves to investigate the crime - Laura Palmer's death, Donna and James, who are very similar to Jeffrey and Sandy, who sneak around investigating a mystery that is much darker than they have anything they could imagine.

In 1990, Laura Palmer is a two-faced character in Twin Peaks. In Blue Velvet, the two faces, opposites, are represented by contrasting female characters, Dorothy and Sandy. Something bad has happened to make the talented singer Dorothy Vallens, fall into a way of life that is surrounded by evil, just as Laura Palmer is not the innocent Prom Queen whose photo is seen at the start of every episode of the television series.

Mulholland Drive, also features a fresh-faced, perky blonde and a dark-haired beauty, who has something even darker in her past. This film was exhilarating, moreso than when I saw it 16 years ago. Just exciting beyond words.

Day 155

Saturday 2 December 2017  0515pm

Blue Velvet  1986

Mulholland Drive  2001

This evening has been planned for a few weeks and has been very /highly anticipated by two of the four viewers, Alicia and myself. Emily was looking forward to it. My wife was, I think, uncertain of what was in store for her.

Six hours from now I'm looking forward to tearing these films apart.

I had both films on DVD but decided for this screening on my big screen, I need to make an investment in blu-rays. I had to travel to Parramatta to blu-ray copy of Blue Velvet. That's why we didn't make our 5pm start.

Day 154

Friday 1 December 2017  0501am

Antonioni

believes in life 

We go through life without saying what we feel by saying nothing.

We go through life by not elucidating our thoughts and by saying nothing.

Friday 1 December 2017  0208am

2nd Antonioni, La notte 

La Notte. Not like L'Avventura. It is subtle. It's wordy. It's sensual.

For once, I'm going to not mention a personal thing, the feelings about the fact I played a piano duet in a concert with my daughter.

What is important: 

"I was alive and she was alive."

Thursday 30 November 2017  0518pm

This Week is Bigger Than Ben Hur, But it Doesn't Include Ben Hur

L’Avventura, La Notte, L’eclisse, Blow-Up – Michaelangelo Antonioni - last week intimidating this week; Jour de fete, Playtime – Jacques Tati; Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive – David Lynch.

Thursday 30 November 2017  0213am

L'Avventura - bella

Introduction

I’ve known of Antonioni since 1982. I was seventeen, in the middle of my study of drama and film, when I saw several films which were confusing and unsatisfying. The main problem was that they didn’t tell a story that was clear or had a significant beginning, middle or end. They were repetitive, deliberately obscure or full of long, uninteresting, passages. Everything that I was studying in drama and theatre and writing was about everything having form and structure. Everything that I'd studied in music for seven years was about form and structure. Even Citizen Kane, a film I'd never seen until my film course, had structure. In fact, the structure was so great, so amazing, because it told the story in different time- frames. It introduced material, developed it, and then satisfactorily, resolved it. Intolerance, was kind of like Mozart. Formal. Citizen Kane was like Beethoven. Structured, formal, but more intricately developed thematically.

Godard and Antonioini were more like Stravinsky and Bartok. It was the journey that mattered, not the harmonies. When I was studying cinema at University I was a year away from discovering The Rite of Spring and Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. My brain was yet to explode after hearing those mind-blowing works. This meant that some films made in the 1960s, which where thin on, introducing, developing and resolving, harmonic material, were completely beyond my comprehension.

Two of the main culprits were Tout va bien and Blow-Up. The first was difficult to understand, and I couldn’t explain how the various scenes added up to telling a story. The second had every appearance of a story, like Hitchcock used, but it ended without a sufficient explanation to satisfy me.

My diet of films up until this point was very English. The main thing I remember about the other films was that they were, often, even mostly, boring and seemed to be about nothing.

Long After Studying Cinema at University

Twenty years later, I had seen many films which had changed my perspective about - my Anglocentric upbringing  of – cinema. I’d seen Betty Blue and Jean de Florette and Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down, and The Motorcycle Diaries and Subway, and Cinema Paradiso. I know they are the easy films for Americans (and Australians) to digest, but I’ve seen many films by the directors of these films.

Of course, it’s not like seeing all the films of a culture, so while it gives me some additional insight, it is not, particularly. And when I add in the Korean, Japanese and Chinese films, they are just the ones that got a cinema release in Australia.

I got to see Dersu Uzala, Ran and Kagemusha and Hero and The Flower of My Secret and Eat Drink Man Woman.

Directors like Almodovar, Beineix, Besson, Tornatore became directors I would follow, into the dingiest cinemas in Sydney, to see them projected onto a screen. Then there were the films you see in Film Festivals, from Iran and ah, Iran and, ah, Hong Kong; oh, and then there was Salo, banned for many years in Australia  - which I saw in a porn cinema - I'm guessing - in the early 1990s. There were four patrons. The other three were men wearing  - literally - long, grey, raincoats.

Years later, you realise, if you’re lucky, that your open mind is still only being fed the films that broke out of their domestic run in their home country.

Then, if you happen to look at a list of the most successful films of any given country during the last sixty years, there are ten films you’ve never seen for every one of them that made it to American, English or Australian soil.

The wrong-headedness of what I’m doing in 52-weeks is becoming more and more apparent.

For instance, when I get to the Japanese cinema, I’m going to watch four Kurosawa films, four by Ozu, and nothing else from Japanese cinema.

This is depressing. Despite the fact I’m biting off more than I can chew in 52-weeks, and it’s going to give me insight into two, three or four films by the ‘greatest’ filmmakers of each culture, I’m not making a dent into understanding non-English-speaking films.

No matter how much I come to appreciate Bergman, Bresson, Ozu, Dreyer and Renoir, it’s the tip of the iceberg in coming to an understanding or opinion about the films made by these directors; and it’s not even on the radar of understanding how those films fit into the culture and era of all the other filmmaking.

Day 152

Wednesday 29 November 2017  1141pm

Directors who work without scripts

That would make me nervous if I didn't come from a background in music where people improvise. What I read about Godard doing after he got someone to finance one of his projects was close to insane. What I read about Kubrick and Antonioni told me that other directors had considered moving forward without a finished screenplay.

What Godard did is like hiring an orchestra, a little band, and then keeping them waiting every day while he worked out the notes he wanted to record that day.

Day 152

Wednesday 29 November 2017  1006pm

Jour de fete  1949

Coming out of Chaplin Week (which took two mystifying weeks) I thought I'd jump into a week with his own kind - Tati. I'm accepting of all directors, and how they want to represent who they are, and I'm willing to watch their films, despite bad first impressions.

This is not great Tati but it is an incredible insight into how he developed the material that was used better, later.

It has great gags and gags that lag. More later...

Day 152

Wednesday 29 November 2017  0406am

L'Avventura  1960

I have just had a very unlikely experience. I watched a film, restored by Criterion, on blu-ray, played through a 4K player (with a built-in up-scale), and projected onto a screen that is taller than my seven-year old daughter and wider than the length of my own body. In terms of big screen televisions it's about the equivalent of a 105" screen. 

The look of the film was pristine. And the visuals blew-my-mind. Are they due to a great DOP or the director? More later...

Despite the fact that the story is slim - which I don't mind anymore - I see that there is something about the recording of what the characters do and how they interact that goes beyond what the characters actually do and how they interact. 

This is an astonishing film for its visuals. Every shot, almost every frame, is exquisite. I don't mind the fact that it isn't about reaching the end of a line of thought. It's about what we see and observe about the characters, that they reveal about themselves, to us. I think I get it now. It's about telling a story to people who have been brought up with rigid thinking.

Rigid thinking is A B C D E F G H I J etc.

It's 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8  etc.

It's C major, A minor, F major, G major, E minor, etc.

It's F major, Bb major, EB major, Ab major, Db major, Gb major.

Godard's thinking, for example, would be A 1 2 3 4, B 3 4, C 5 6, D 4  5 4 5 , E 7, F 8.

Antonioni is C major, A minor, F major, G major, F# minor, E minor, B minor, E major, Ab major and then finally C# major. 

 Day 151

Tuesday 28 November 2017  2357pm

The Italian Adventure

Hooked up my brand-new, just out-of-the-box, Philips American Blu-ray player, into the Australian transformer, inserted the Criterion "L'Avventura" disc.

I'm ready for Antonioni Week. The big one on the BFI (Sight & Sound list) is of course L'Avventura (1960) but La Notte is on Kubrick's ten best films list and L'Eclisse features on many Top Ten lists. This is the film my friend Buckley was telling me had more walkouts at Cannes than his film, Bliss in 1985.

Day 150

Monday 27 November 2017  2329pm

Black and White & Blue - David, Marie and George

It went well. Seven very intense hours. Right now, however, my stomach is still protesting against either gluten or sucrose after Saturday evening's mother's group dinner. Something made me sick and it's still making me ill after 48 hours.

On Monday morning at 4am I was feeling so terrible that I was finding it hard to believe that I could function today. No matter how ill you feel you can't not turn up when you're recording. You have to find a way. I found a way. Immediately after, when the adrenalin subsided, I could hardly stand up.

I can't possibly watch one of the 100 Greatest Films tonight. I haven't for three nights now. I'll just sit quietly and read my Future Noir book on Blade Runner.

Day 149

Sunday 26 November 2017  0429am

Black, White and a Little Blue

Most days, I'm a little blue. You give everything and when its embraced, you feel green and red, but when it's not, you feel blue or even darker, black. Tomorrow, however, I have to produce a studio recording of George Palmer's Black, White and a Little , written for clarinet and piano.

George Palmer was lawyer, barrister, Queen's Counsel. Judge of the Supreme Court of NSW and - always - composer.

Since around 2011 he has been a full-time composer, whose music has been largely unrecognised by Australia's major orchestras and record labels, despite his consistent output of performances and recordings. He has an individual ear for harmony and modulation which is all his own. He consistently comes up with melodies for his works which go beyond being tunes. They don't begin and end over a duration of 8 or 16 bars. They have a life that is hinted at, often, before they begin and then merge with the next idea when they end.

I've been lucky enough to work with George as his producer for three of four years. I've recorded his Cello Concerto, Ithaca, In Paradisum, Flute quartet, The Faces of Mercy and now Black and White and a Little Blue.

Tomorrow is the big day which proves I've got it or don't have it. It's the PTS-SSO Test. Tomorrow I have to leave at 1010 to get to the recording session, which goes 11-2, 3-6. That means not staying up until dawn writing about the 100 Greatest Films Ever.

This is where I have to get back on the bike and (in my own mind) succeed or fail as a music producer who isn't the Recording Manager of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, or their Technical Media Producer.

For ten years I was an important part of the recording life of the SSO. Now, I'm not.

It's the first time I've had to produce recording sessions when I haven't had either of those two titles to back me up and give me self-confidence and courage. When you get fired ("cost-cutting" exercise) it sure takes its toll on you, especially when you loved your job and gave it everything you've got. I was terminated 36 weeks ago by the SSO after just about 9 years. 

Therefore, if I'm going to do my next session after the unceremonious firing (for "cost-saving reasons") - after almost nine years and fifty albums - it's appropriate it falls 2/3rds of the way through my first year of my new life without the orchestra.

I'm not so nervous. My ears hear what they hear and the rest is left up to the ability of the players. It's a concerto when recording- back and forth - for producer and players - me and them. Nine years tell me that I have good ears. Many musos, despite my truthful manner, do specific bars which I require again and again, despite the fact that I'm not a particularly over-the-top  music producer, always praising every take. 

After one (of about six or seven recordings) with Andrew Haveron, I took him aside, weeks later, and apologised to him because I said to him, "We have it", when I knew we didn't. I apologised because I had to lie to him. He would have known it - and I knew it - at the time.. We had to move on and wrap it up. I can be a liar or a realist and I knew that we must move on and complete the recording and find a way to pin it together, later.

There's a trust that I don't think I've ever developed with the musicians where I can feel okay with blatantly lying to them by saying that "we've got it", while hoping I can edit a passable recording in post-production. That one and only time I did it because we had the investors in the studio. 

I can't do it. I can't stroke the ego of anyone whilst knowing I don't have what we need.

Sharp or flat, out-of-time, it's a fact - not my opinion.

My world, the one I live in, is full of errors. I can call them as errors or I can be two-faced. It serves no purpose to tell everyone that "It was great but could we do it again because it wasn't great?" 

There's a whole world of producers and musicians where the producer says it was great when it wasn't and no one makes anyone responsible for the things that weren't great.

I got delivered -a hospital pass - in 2015. A  hospital pass is the opposite of a slam-dunk. It's a pass given to a player where they're going to be smash-tackled by the opposition, without any chance of advancing, probably ending up in hospital. it's a no-win situation. More specifically it's a lose-lose situation.

My boss told me, "You're recording The Four Seasons with James Ehnes next year." What a thankless task, to be told you have to produce a recording of one of the world's ten most famous classic works, which is also one of the world most over-recorded works. 

Good thing this man has a tone of complete beauty, the tone of a genius, a creator of perfect notes.

Bad thing that I can't possibly hope to succeed in making a performance that will have any legitimate merit.

Of course, it was given to me, because it's almost certainly not going to be something worthwhile, so why pay money to a really experienced session producer when it's just The Four Seasons? 

"Give it to Philip."

I didn't even know it, when I was so (unintentionally) rude to the M-D, James Ehnes, but this was a dead-end.  I only saw we had three options: do it well in the traditional manner, or be different and get torn apart by the critics, or do it James Ehnes' way. 

We kind of did it James Ehnes' way - kind of. I supported his vision. It was a vision which I didn't even know about until we started rehearsals, when I discovered that it was a completely normal, conservative approach.

It could have been completely individual and crazy, like Nigel Kennedy but it wasn't. It was just very straightforward.

We only had one rehearsal and concert but I was able to get a forty-five minute patch session after the concert.

The next day I was lambasted about my approach by a couple of the SSO musicians. "How dare I talk like that to an internationally-renowned soloist and tell him that he played some notes which weren't perfect? You have to tell him that it's always great, but ask him to do certain bars again for other reasons than because he hadn't played it perfectly."

 I defended myself, saying, "I spoken with James about the best way to approach the patching session and asking him to re-do certain bars, and he told me to just be honest with him about what I needed and he'd be happy to give me what I needed so that the recording was as good as it could be."

I was admonished again. "You never tell a soloist he played something wrong, or less than perfectly. You find another way to say it. The same pretty much applies to us as well. Especially, straight after a concert when we've just played our hearts out for the performance."

I don't know either of these performers of clarinet (David Rowden) and piano (Marie). I guess I've got three challenges: 

1. Find out if I can remain confident or whether fear and anxiety overwhelm me.

2. Find out if I can be kinder to musicians while exposing their flaws.

3. Find out if I can still be a good music producer in life-after-SSO.

Day 149

Sunday 26 November 2017  0401am

Wikipedia - Up to No Good

They now control information and comment on it and allow it though there's no need for proof of anything they print.

Day 148

Saturday 25 November 2017  0401am

Wikipedia has the power to change history if it wants

A long time ago, someone said to me that this was not a matter of free information. There would always be another card to be played by this free encyclopaedia which could take away - from us - the decisions we made and things we have done. 

Wikipedia is that card.

Day 148

Saturday 25 November 2017  0321am

Wikipedia could be Evil

I have seen the control of information by Wikipedia as they delete the being of a person or an entry of a being. If they choose, through their editors - Wikipedia employees - they can make an entry disappear as if it never existed.

They have a policy of being fair and unbiased, Wikipedia the creation of the general Public, but they have rules which allow people to attempt to delete entries, and if not objected to within seven days, a Wikipedia editor can agree with that attempt, and delete an entry. 

There was an entry about the record label I co-founded in 1988 with James McCarthy, 1M1 Records. It had quite a lot of information - historical information that was relevant to music in Australia in the 1980s and 1990 - in it and quite a lot of people had made updates and entries over the years.

I was enormously proud that someone had created an article about my label. Now it is gone. There's no entry. Someone or some people have decided that it should be erased.

My God, that's a powerful bit of power to hold. What if someone one day decides to take all reference to the Holocaust of World War II out of the encyclopaedia? Or anything that relates to the existence of Jesus Christ or Josef Stalin? Or decided to remove the entry about Stravinsky?  

Day 148

Saturday 25 November 2017  0203am

I am terrible 2017

OMG. I have just realised the fascist power of Wikipedia. I have always been a supporter of free information and a public encyclopaedia and contributed to their future, even as much as dollar a time, but they've just deleted my life. 

Day 147

Friday 24 November 2017  0301am

Ivan the Terrible Part II 1958

OMG

This is surreal. Part II is brilliant. I did a complete number on Part I, but this film is made by a master craftsman.

Part I was mostly awful and Part II is mostly brilliant.

Everything that was substandard, mediocre or average in Part  I has gone on from the change when it - startlingly - 71 minutes into the film - suddenly became a better film.

And Part II is exceptional.

This is now the work of a master filmmaker. This is now - I can see - the man who conceived Battleship Potemkin and October.

What was crass, and worth no more than a children's pantomime, is now perfectly judged. The terrible exaggeration of of Part I is now able to be viewed outside of its original context, in the newer context of the next chapter, Part II.

Day 147

Thursday 23 November 2017  2311pm

The Antidote to 'Ivan the Terrible' 1945

I have read every entry of all books in my library which references Eisenstein to get a hint of an explanation of why Ivan the Terrible is so (good or so) bad.

Nothing.

It's a worry when books which have an entire section devoted to Eisenstein suddenly stop having an opinion - or never even had one to start with - after Potemkin and October. 

Day 147

Wednesday 22 November 2017  2331pm

'City Lights' displays the Entire Bag of Chaplin

Wow. So much to see second time around.  I was very nervous about watching it with a wife who doesn't like any kind of slapstick; and my dad, a diehard teetotaller, knowing that it had a strong plot thread about alcoholism and knowing he would be repulsed by those sequences. I don't think either of them will be able to truly see beyond those things, to find the true meaning of what is disguised in pathos, cynicism, melodrama, sentimentality and exaggeration: the comment that Chaplin was deliberately or accidentally making about the effects of poverty, alcohol, violence, domination and unemployment on people who are at the bottom of the social pile, to their eternal detriment. 

Like Chaplin, himself - the man behind the writer, director and actor - he allowed his alter-ego, occasionally to end up with the hope or the real result of happiness in the denouement (or at least the appearance of it).

Any writer uses their own experience and knowledge to comment on behaviour that they know at first or second-hand even if the story they're telling isn't central to that behaviour.

In City Lights, Chaplin shows the things that arise from drunkenness and alcohol abuse. The recurring two are memory loss and suicidal tendencies.

I'm not suggesting that Chaplin was making a conscious social statement in City Lights about alcohol and drunkenness, nevertheless it is a common factor in many other skits or sketches he wrote and directed.

Like many things he commented on - by finding humour in them - in his movies within movies, they were themes which were so second-nature to him as a fully-developed adult, that those themes populate his films.

I'd only seen Modern Times, The Great Dictator and The Countess From Hong Kong prior to two or three weeks ago. Now, I've seen them again as well as The Gold Rush (1925 and 1942 versions), The Circus, City Lights and A Woman of Paris. 

Now, after watching several of Chaplin's films in a ten day period I have see many recurring themes:

• drunkenness, alcoholism and memory loss (Gold Rush, City Lights)
• the fear or rejection (Gold Rush, City Lights, Modern Times, The Circus, A Woman of Paris)
• the power of those with money over those without (City Lights, Modern Times, Great Dictator)
• violence against women and men (The Circus, The Gold Rush)
• inability to rise above poverty or keep a job (almost all of his films and, interestingly, 
• the need to steal and the ever present threat of prison (Modern Times, City Lights)
• survival at any cost (most Chaplin films)
• the hope for love by someone who can see beyond who you appear to be (most Chaplin films)

Naturally, I assume, ten thousand people have noticed these themes and written dozens of essays about them. 

I didn't read anything about Chaplin prior to this, and I assume he came from a poor background.

Must investigate more...

Wednesday 22 November 2017  2131pm

'City Lights' once again

Just about to see City Lights again. I was meant to watch this film last week - seven days ago - when my Dad made his weekly trip from Petersham to Marsfield but life got in the way.

My father's wife was diagnosed with breast cancer and as soon as possible she was scheduled for surgery. Dad couldn't come over last week because Colleen would be having her operation that day or the next day, so City Lights was put on hold.

Against all odds my stepmother survived the operation, completely calm about the danger involved in the knowledge that when she died - if it was during the operation - she would be united with Jesus Christ and God in heaven, the recipient of eternal rest.

Her faith and my father's faith in the God of the Jewish and Christian belief, and of Jesus Christ, as a personal Saviour, are like Mount Everest - something which stands as long as mankind can measure. Like Mount Everest it was there before humanity and may well be there after the last of mankind.

Day 145

Wednesday 22 November 2017  0247am

Ivan the Terrible 1945

I decided to jump into what I thought would be Russian filmmaking in the silent era - because I'm already there - only to discover that this film was made 17 years after sound became the norm.

The Eisenstein film I knew was from 1925 (Battleship Potemkin). I'd assumed the notable Ivan the Terrible films were from the silent era as well. What a crushing disappointment to discover they were made in the 1940s.

I acknowledge that not knowing that, is like not knowing the difference between when The Day the Earth Stood Still was made compared with The Sound of Music and when Close Encounters of the Third Kind was made compared with Lincoln.

The difference is that I was alive when the two Spielberg films were made and my father was not even alive when Battleship Potemkin was made and released. When Ivan the Terrible was released, my father was not yet fifteen. 

it was the end of the second world war (1945) and the film is anti-German.

It was voted by 15 critics (#102 of All-Time) in the 2012 Sight & Sound Poll as amongst their Top Ten films of all time, as well as by two directors (out of 358).

What's extraordinary about this is that Kristin Thompson (who co-authored the book I studied at University in my film course: Film Art: An Introduction, also Honorary fellow, University of Wisconsin-Madison) was one of those critics/academic, as was Ian Christie (Film historian, Birkbeck University) who was chosen to write up the Introduction - "Ian Christie rings in the changes in our biggest-ever poll." - to the results of the 2012 Poll for the British Film Institute. Michael Wood (Professor, English and comparative literature, Princeton University) was another.

For me, however, It's a very poor film for the most part. That's an arrogant thing to say in the face of people with the credentials of the aforementioned.

I think that, naturally, indicates, that it should not be taken at face value and bears investigation, to  determine why in the last third of the film it suddenly changes its previous shape and form, becoming a very different film from everything that preceded the manner in which the film described its own appearance.

What I mean by this, is that it is like Eisenstein has disguised this film in different clothing for the first two-thirds, just like Hitchcock did with Vertigo (1958) and Psycho (1960), setting the audience up with a traditional genre film, lulling us into a false sense of comfort, by giving us something we would accept at face-value.

Then, suddenly, BANG! Hitchcock makes those two films into something unlike anything he'd done before. And BANG! Eisenstein does the same thing, turning third-rate theatrics into something that is very powerful, very well-judged and has a skill that is barely revealed in the previous 71 minutes of the film. In fact, I wonder if Eisenstein wasn't attempting to parody earlier silent films by making something that comments on 

Suddenly it is much more subtle, comparatively, after the over-acting and the poor editing and poor continuity of the first two-thirds.

Knowing that Eisenstein was considered to be one the great silent filmmakers (including October [1928]) and one of the most revolutionary, and innovative filmmakers, it is inconceivable that he directed this film, with its sloppy handling of the actors and of the extravagant sets and costumes.

It makes me ask myself the question - knowing something about the composers who fell in and out of favour with Stalin depending on the style of music they composed - "is Eisenstein disguising the film in one form so that he comment, later, with less scrutiny?", like Arthur Miller commented on the McCarthy hearings in his play The Crucible.

The title cards at the beginning of the film - which may or may not have been there when it was released in 1945 - give the background to what the viewer is about to experience:

THIS FILM IS ABOUT THE MAN

WHO UNITED RUSSIA IN THE 16th CENTURY.

THE MUSCOVY PRINCE WHO WELDED SCATTERED PRINCIPALITIES INTO A MIGHTY STATE.

THE COMMANDER WHO ENHANCED THE MILITARY GLORY OF RUSSIA IN THE EAST AND IN THE WEST.

THE SOVERIGN WHO, IN ORDER TO ACCOMPLISH ALL THIS, WAS THE FIRST TO HAVE HIMSELF

CROWNED TSAR OF ALL RUSSIA.

I need to investigate and consider why Ivan the Terrible Part I has this profound change partway through the second half.

More to come...

Day 144

Tuesday 21 November 2017  0342am

Partie de campagn 1936

I went back to one of the first couple of Jean Renoir films I watched a few weeks ago. It was the one that he shot in 1936 but never completed. Nothing I've read has explained why it was unfinished, but I do remember reading that it was not available for a number of years until someone collected all the footage and made something out of it, and commissioned a score to be composed. 

I remember thinking that it was very natural, beautifully acted, containing some beautiful location camerawork by and on a river. I'm not sure why, but something drew me back to watch it again. So I went to the library and borrowed it again thinking it would be interesting to watch it now, having watched nine or ten Jean Renoir films, most of them made since 1936.

It is such a delight. The music has a lot to do with it. The score adds a great deal of life to the film, making it bubble over with joy and beauty.

Of all the photography that I've watched in his films, and there have been a lot of excellent images, this is one of the most otherworldly. It's kind of makes nature appear metaphysical and the composed frame at times is amongst the most beautiful images I've seen, whether photographs or paintings or drawings.

This film which only runs for 39 minutes is one of the most delightful I have seen, and speaks to me more than La Règle, Ilusion, The River, The Southerner or La bête humaine. Along with La bête I think Partie has the most beautifully composed images of any of the Renoirfilms I've seen. 

This version I saw was meticulously prepared and transferred and the images were far above the standard of, for instance the BFI's DVD release of La Règle. Oh, what I would give to see the Criterion version!

Tuesday 21 November 2017  0212am

Shame about Joan of Arc

I feel a lot of shame about my reaction to what is one of the - consistently - top ten films of all time. 

I have written my observations (in an essay of sorts) and they are ready to publish but I'm reticent because they reveal a side of me that is stupid and - possibly illustrates that I'm - unintellectual. 

I approached La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc as I do all films, but with a degree more excitement than normal.

I have an approach to watching movies which gives me the best chance to like a film that is possible, which also is (I believe) as the director intended:  

I watch it with the mindset that it’s going to be good, funny, fantastic, brilliant

At the very least I think there will be many good things about it in all or many of the departments. Whether it is Pirates of the Caribbean 5, Star Wars 8 or Transformers 5 (I see the hopeful hits and the near-misses), or features George Clooney, Mel Gibson or Angeline Jolie (the stars), or has a Coen Brothers or Joss Whedon script (the unwritten stars), or is directed by Buster Keaton, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Chaplin or Murnau (the authors): I give it every chance to draw me in and embrace me. When I see every film, my thought - every time - as the film studio logo comes up on the screen is,

“I’m going to like this!”

or

It's A Coen Bros. film - I'm going to love this     

or

Ron Howard-Orson Welles-Steven Spielberg hardly ever make a bad film, surely, this can't be as bad as they say.

My rules if my life

can accommodate

them:

I see it on a big screen

If you’re watching 2001 (1968) or Lawrence of Arabia (1963) or To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) on a television screen with (or without - its not what was intended either way) advertisements, that’s like looking at one of Monet’s water-lilies painting with eye-catching images of Coca Cola, McDonalds, Target, Walmart and PlayStation breaking up the continuity of the painting. 

I see it in the context of the film-going public

Whether it’s Hall Pass (2011) or Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (2016), Justice League (2017) or The Mountain Between Us (2017), La La Land (2016) or Finding Nemo (2003), I watch it with an audience. In fact, the audience has so affected my viewing of certain films that I have an indelible stamp imprinted on my memory of that film. Examples are Die Hard, Back to the Future, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Identity Thief, Old Dogs, The Towering Inferno, Child’s Play, The Final Conflict, Carrie, Jingle All the Way and Reservoir Dogs. This might not be an amazing thing but films which were either really good or really bad leave the name and location of the cinema imprinted in my brain, forever – because I saw it with an audience. 

Day 143

Monday 20 November 2017  1102pm

Longmire S0101

I've got so many thoughts going around my brain that I don't want to see another film tonight. I don't want to watch The Good Wife tonight, although it is good.

I'm reading books - just today - about Jean Renoir, Blade Runner, Robert Bresson and Charles Chaplin as well as Jean Renoir's autobiography (Memoir - My Life and My Films) and articles  in the New York Times (by A.O. Scott) and The New Yorker (by Richard Brody) about The Wolf of Wall Street. So, I just need a complete change of pace.

There's a show on Netflix that is illustrated by a beautiful image of wide open fields, in one of those amazing expanses I associate with the middle of America. It has a ***** rating: Longmire. With trepidation, I ask my wife, "do you want to watch the first episode of this?" We don't argue much, generally, but we do have different tastes in about ten percent of the television we like to watch, so I wasn't sure.

She said yes.

If I didn't give-in so often and agree to watch shows her friends say are really good, I dare say there'd be a different ratio.

My wife doesn't read my blog, so I'm fairly certain I'll get away with that comment.

Fortunately, almost all of the shows her friends watch are really good. It gives me a break from writing about every movie I ever see by watching tv instead which I don't feel the need to write about despite the fact that some of it is flipping amazing.

Day 143

Monday 20 November 2017  2008pm

Joan's passion

Today I read my writings from last night about The Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1982). I'm appalled by my ignorance in recognising the greatness of this film. I'm appalled by my dismissal of it. I'm appalled at the way my thoughts sound like someone who thought National Lampoon's European Vacation was the benchmark of filmmaking, saw Citizen Kane, and shrugged their shoulders, saying, "And?" 

Day 142

Sunday 19 November 2017  1132pm

The Good Wife S0101

We've finished watching the original Twin Peaks series from 1990 and we were at a loose end. With such an intense schedule of feature films, I often fall back on highly-regarded television series. The last two weeks have been enjoyable shows of a really raw, soap opera that sent itself up, while also embracing the fact it's almost on-the-nose - but in the most lovable way - taking the story into dark, nightmare territory, similar to David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986).

Tonight there's a number of options - twenty or thirty shows we've heard good things about. It was time, we agreed, to dip into The Good Wife. If something lasts seven seasons then there's a lot of dedicated followers. Hopefully they're not the same dedicated followers who kept Murder, She Wrote going for so many years.

We watched three episode back-to-back and it was good. The pilot in particular.

Day 141

Saturday 18 November 2017  1052pm

The REAL DEAL with the original Blade Runner

Tonight is the night I revise my thoughts on Blade Runner and upload the observations. This is a very deep film with a level below the surface which has escaped me for decades. It's a film which sets the hero (Deckard) up as the one to feel sorry for, and then undermines that with a character who is at first glance, the enemy, and then becomes the unsung hero (Roy Batty).

Blade Runner is a film with an underlying complexity that has previously been unrecognised which I now understand more fully.

Day 141

Saturday 18 November 2017  0452pm

'Moana and the kids'

My wife went to a baby shower and left me with the kids. Normally that's something I can cope with. Today, drinking a glass of water at 2pm set my stomach complaining. Weird.

I set the girls up, asking over and playing with the next door neighbour's kids, and then gave the thumbs up to watching Moana for the 124th time in the last six weeks. These days they say "it's all good" when it isn't. My body told me to stay horizontal. I obeyed for an hour then disobeyed - got up and sat up - and played a version of Toy Story Rummy with Charlie. A funny tummy is a bad feeling..

Day 140

Friday 17 November 2017  1145pm

The Wolf of Wall Street 2013

My wife has recently finished reading a book called Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis (author of Moneyball) about working as a bond salesman on Wall Street. This made her ask herself if the life of Jordan Belfort as depicted in Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio's film, The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) trod the same ground? 

With Taxi Driver and Casino under my belt, I still have plans to watch New York New York, Goodfellas and Raging Bull to complete my Scorsese quota.

I'm so glad of the opportunity to see this film again while in the midst of the year of seeing everything, and what I noticed were the similarities in the filmmaking approach and style with Casino.

One of Scorsese's themes/topics is to show people living life to a degree beyond what most people could imagine is true/possible/believable. Casino, Goodfellas, Wolf of Wall Street all fit that style. Taxi Driver and Raging Bull - I can't believe I'm writing that this is true - are completely believable, from the first viewing despite showing extremes of human behaviour.

Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, terrible as they are in their depiction of human behaviour, are more realistic. Casino, Goodfellas, Wolf of Wall Street - they're more extreme - and similarly awful in the way it shows powerful people treat people who aren't.

[It's extraordinary that the transcripts of the trial of Joan of Arc (which I watched last night) are similarly unbelievable, showing equally appalling behaviour. I can only take the fact that there are multiple sources online corroborating the legitimacy of the transcripts of her trial, as compelling evidence. Personally, I would like to see those transcripts and the evidence for their authenticity before accepting that Joan - actually - gave those answers to those questions.

The reason being that history shows that these claims of Joan of Arc - of what would happen - the word of God through angels - were fulfilled. Either there's elements that are made up or it is an extraordinary supernatural knowledge that cannot be explained through human understanding.]

The first thing I realised was that I thought the film was better than the first time I saw it three years ago in a cinema. I originally thought it was a good, sometimes brilliant, film. The relentless, outrageous, energy in the film, was more like a Baz Luhrmann film, like The Great Gatsby or Moulin Rouge. The over-the-top opening of unbelievable, appalling, behaviour made me distance myself from my gut reaction, to a point where I acknowledged the good things about the film, for which it received many nominations and awards, but reserved a definitive opinion. The reality was that I didn't know how to take the film. It was so over-the-top I had to step back and ask myself whether I was able to accept it as reality?

I couldn't and I didn't that first time. The excesses, despite having seen them before, was different when it was Pacino and cocaine in Scarface and DiCaprio and cocaine in Wolf of Wall Street. Scarface was a genre film, whereas Wolf was (apparently) a realistic film. 

That's the kind of thinking as my brain tried to make sense of Jordan Belfort's story.

I wasn't exactly naïve three years ago, but I am a completely different person now, and what was completely unbelievable then, is much more believable now. Even the dwarf-throwing.

Day 140

Friday 17 November 2017  0655pm

Justice League  2017

I had a couple of free hours in the afternoon, I haven't been to see a film in a cinema for a couple of weeks, so I took a chance on Justice League. Warner Bros. owns the rights to DC Comics superheroes and have been trying to compete with Marvel Comics universe (previously distributed by Paramount from 2008-2011, now by Disney 2012-present), arguably not as successfully. 

Man of Steel was mostly ghastly, despite a few good moments between Amy Adams (Lois Lane) and Cavill. The unrelenting stupidity of the climax was also unforgivably boring. Batman vs Superman was a significant improvement, moving from ghastly to mediocre - sometimes quite good -  but still had too many stupid moments, particularly the circumstances of the difference in approach to being a super-hero, and the antipathy between the two heroes. Now with Justice League, they've gone another step in the right direction. But it's still a blend of nonsense and good scenes, never getting the balance right. Those overseeing Marvel's cinematic universe seem to have a better idea of the blending of comic-book hero violence with humour and drama.

Zach Snyder just can't get it right, not even with his third attempt. My suspicion is that some of the good scenes are due to Joss Whedon.

For instance, the scene where Aquaman is sitting on Wonder Woman's lasso without realising it, is surely classic Whedon humour as the League realises they're going up against a villain from outer-space without their only hero from outer-space. It's clever, funny (but not laugh-out-loud ha-ha) and adds a real note of danger to the fact that this quintet lacks the firepower to beat Steppenwolf.

Since Henry Cavill wore Superman's cape and Ben Affleck,  Batman's cape, in 2013, there's been an underwhelming public and critical response despite the fact that with five films Warner Bros have grossed $3 billion. By comparison, just the two Avengers films grossed $1.5 and $1.4 billion for Disney and Iron Man 3 did $1.2 billion. The Marvel films seem to have been received with greater affection by the public and regard by critics.

Marvels films have been helmed by a variety of directors. No single director (with the exception of Joss Whedon writing and directing both Avengers films) has controlled the franchise like Zach Snyder has for Warner Bros.

It's not unusual for a single director to be given the reins with the Batman franchise. Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher did two each. Christopher Nolan did all three Christian Bale Batman films. Snyder has directed all three of the Superman/Batman films, and not very well.

Man of Steel was beyond dumb. Batman vs Superman had a few good moments but still had massive weaknesses in the overly cartoonish approach, Wonder Woman, however, had a more adult approach and serious undercurrents, like the Richard Donner Superman films of the late seventies. Richard Lester's approach was much more like Zach Snyder's approach. Exhibit one: Superman III (1983). 

Day 140

Friday 17 November 2017  0238am

The Passion of Joan of Arc  1927

 #37 2012 Director List  #9 2012 Critics List

With a great deal of excitement I anticipated watching The Passion of Joan of Arc (1927). 

It made sense to watch it tonight because I watched two more Chaplin films this week, The Circus (1927) and A Woman of Paris (1923). I've also just seen City Lights and The Gold Rush (twice) and Modern Times. If ever I was in a space to watch a silent film and appreciate it on its own terms, it's after five silent films made around the same time. 

It's also a good time to see it based on the knowledge gained having only seen Bresson's The Trial of Joan of Arc five or six weeks ago.

I'm bewildered. A disappointment.

I can recall images from Sunrise, Greed, Intolerance, A Woman of Paris and Battleship Potemkin, as well as Bresson's The Trial of Joan of Arc and the praise for this film's visuals seem undeserved unless this film was created in a vacuum and Dreyer had never seen another film.

Granted, there is a sustained use of the close-up to create an intimidating sense of relentless accusation and judgement against Joan, but the film lacks a compelling narrative thrust other than the trial transcript. The repeated images of the same faces in close-up, over and over, becomes monotonous. The close-ups don't continue to reveal knew aspects of the character of those people. It's become less meaningful rather than more.

I get it. The accusers and judges, the officials of the church were hammering at Joan until she broke. They were in her face day after day. So, close-up, close-up, close-up.

Is the greatness of the film simply that it is audacious to make a silent film based on a transcript of a trial? Is it great because it has to limit the title cards and use as much visual language as possible to tell the story?

I don't even feel that it takes us far inside Joan's head, other than the actress and director always portraying her state of mind through tears in her eyes and tears running down her cheeks. 

This is an extremely over-rated film. I watched the restored version, which looks stunning, and has lots of extremely interesting faces, but visually I didn't find it mesmerizing.

Day 139

Thursday 16 November 2017  1109pm

      'It's Not Genocide, It's Retirement'

Blade Runner (1982) is extraordinary on every level of any story or film against which I can conceive to compare it.

I loved it the first time and the second time and the third and the fourth.

I didn't love it in 1992 when the director's cut was released or in 2007 when The Final Cut was released. It dragged. It lost whatever the original film had which gave it energy and propelled it.

I can see how both of the revisions are more pure in the realisation of the film which Ridley Scott set out to make from the script in 1981-1982. Obviously they are more faithful to what he intended to make originally. 

I don't think those changes make a better film. In fact, until I saw it last night for the first time in its original form since 1992, I had forgotten that I use to be in love with this film.

The result, as released in cinemas (or theaters) in 1982 is a towering achievement of writing, setting, science-fiction, photography, music, design, futuristic invention, make up, editing, effects, narrative and mise en scène. 

I've written five or six pages in the last 24-hours about the film which originally captured my attention and my imagination which I spent two hours revising just now.

Day 138

Wednesday 15 November 2017  1136pm

      Blade Runner  1982

#67 2012 Director List #69 2012 Critics List

I have just finished watching Blade Runner (but this time it was the original theatrical version.) It's the first time in seven years that I've seen Blade Runner but also the first time in more than twenty years I've seen the original film which I have always considered the better film.

There's pacing, drama and insight into all the characters that is miscommunicated in the director's cut.

It's only the fourth time since 1993 that I've seen Blade Runner and it's the first time I can remember that I've gone back to the original film since the end of the 1980s.

I think I've seen it in its various forms more than any other sci-fi film. If there was competition for that spot it would be 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Today is the first time I have really enjoyed the film for a long time. It's also the first time I have LOVED the film since the four or five times I watched it in the 1980s before the 1992 version which - kind of - ruined it for me. 

It is a masterpiece in its original form.

Why I draw a line to differentiate the difference is that one film pays homage to the detective stories that came before it, and the other film is just a story about a cop hunting down some killers (in an extraordinarily well created future).

Roy and his gang aren't just killers. They seek to know the person or being that created them. There's a purpose to their behaviour that I feel is lost in the version without narration. 

Day 137

Tuesday 14 November 2017  1132pm

      'Gold Medal Victory' 2017

I've been editing my 4K footage from the weekend into a short film for 24- hours. Last night I stayed up all night going through half an hour of footage I filmed on Sunday of my niece, Lauren, racing in Sydney at a velodrome. 

Late last year I bought myself a 4K video camera because of all the work I'd been doing directing concert films for the SSO as well as the other jobs I pick up here and there.  I used it in directing George Palmer's In Paradisum, performed by the Sydney Youth Orchestra, as well as hiring another two 4K cameras.

Now that my time has finished with the SSO after a wonderful decade of producing music recordings and directing web-streams as well as concert specials for Foxtel Arts, I'm in the fortunate position of having a superb camera to use in my other, personal, projects. 

I'm not a cameraman so the challenge, I've learned, is to is to manually set the Aperture, the Gain/ISO, the Shutter Speed, then manually focus on the subject, which - if it happens to be a bicycle circling around a velodrome - in an oval shape - somewhere between 50 and 110 metres away - is a challenge. 

Depending on my focus, when the racers are on the far side of the track if they're in focus, 15 seconds later on the near side they're now out of focus. So, I went through everything I shot, and made a 7m43s film with some music I've written for it, called Ride. The race went for 29 minutes and I've got almost 8 minutes of usable footage so I'm pretty pleased.

It's being in the right place at the right time with the right camera and my niece happened to win the Gold medal for the Omnium November 12 2017. 

I'm making the first edit with music at the moment. The computer is crunching the zeros and ones and should be ready in 20 minutes. 

Tuesday 14 November 2017  0432pm

      Charles Chaplin's     'The Circus'  1923

Raced home so I could watch The Circus, running time 72 minutes, before I pick Charlie and Becky up from school and family daycare. This will make the five Chaplin films in the last 14 days amongst another two or three films on the Best Ever list. Very excited to see this one.

I had an appointment with my shrink, Joanne, today to check on how I'm travelling, so it was a quick dash home after we wrapped up to fire up the projector, draw the curtains & press

Things are okay, actually pretty good, and I'm on track.

Day 136

Monday 13 November 2017  1145pm

      Charles Chaplin's     'A Woman of Paris'  1923

I have read about Chaplin's other films today in the book by Paul Rotha which I've been exploring regarding his opinions on films made before and after the introduction of sound. Great respect was given A Woman of Paris (1923). I decided to add it to my overcrowded schedule. 

It's a drama by Chaplin which warns the audience at the start that he doesn't appear in it. 

It sounds as if it's a similar attempt to do something completely different, like Spieberg with The Color Purple (1985) or Woody Allen with Interiors (1978), going completely against the grain - or at the very least against what the audience expects from them.

Day 135

Sunday 12 November 2017  1102pm

Modern Times  1936

City Lights 1931

The Gold Rush 1925

Today I found the factor that explains why these films are accepted as masterpieces. 

Gold Rush  - ✅ City Lights - ✅ Modern Times - ✖️

What is a masterpiece?

Time and public opinion determine this title. Often it is wrong. With enough time, and enough opinions, we're getting closer to understanding greatness from excellence as opposed to accepted belief. 

Day 134

Saturday 11 November 2017  1102pm

Left Awake and Alone - Brain Still Active

Still trying to come to terms with Renoir and Chaplin. And of course there's the Badlands observations I've written about. 

The stigma of worldwide acceptance or rejection still motivates the opinions which are the basis of what I am watching.

I wrote a good Badlands essay/article.  I wrote a good 1894-1924 biography of Jean Renoir. I'm going to watch The Gold Rush - the 1925 version.

Day 133

Friday 10 November 2017  1132pm

Chaplin and Renoir

Very intense days as I write about Renoir still and try to sum up Chaplin. 

I'm writing a short biography of Renoir based on the ten films I've seen and the fabulous autobiography - as I now see him after intensive Renoir therapy -  which I bought online ten days ago and received three days ago.

Day 132

Thursday 9 November 2017  1145pm

Bad Meets Good and Scottie Meets the Tramp

Most of today was taken up with thinking and writing about Badlands (1973). It's a highly regarded first feature by twenty-nine-year old Terrence Malick featuring a twenty-two-year old Sissy Spacek and a thirty-one-year old Martin Sheen.

It places this film within a curious context of three undeniably important films (City Lights, Modern Times and Vertigo), by two of the most influential directors (Hitchcock and Chaplin), containing two great stars (James Stewart and Charlie Chaplin) and one great actress (Sissy Spacek). 

That's a big week to digest.

I've written down a lot of notes about Vertigo and Badlands and absolutely nothing about Chaplin.

Oh! And a lot more about Jean Renoir. I'm only up to the end of World War I and I am mesmerized by his life. 

Thursday 9 November 2017  1859pm

Renoir is a great director & his book on how he got started is - um - great

Reading, reading, reading. This book is amazing, amazing, amazing. 

Day 131

Wednesday 8 November 2017  1040pm

Modern Times  1936

One of Chaplin's four most-respected films. I didn't know how my Dad would take it tonight when I suggested we follow up last week's Chaplin with another one - and I was surprised when he was so effusive in his praise, afterwards. It was a very emotional response. He was generous in his praise of all the wonderfully creative ideas that the film displayed.

It had all the creative, mechanical, things I remembered of the factory - which were often laboured - as well as another personal story which I didn't remember at all.

The gamin was the part of the film which in 2017 was still mesmerizing. She had a life and effervescent energy which commanded the scenes she was in despite the fact she was sometimes - um - overly energetic. 

Wednesday 8 November 2017  0440am

Published my 'A Patch of Red' Essay on Vertigo [1958]

I finished my essay, then proof-read it and published it on my site with a couple of other observations.

Day 130

Tuesday 7 November 2017  2359pm

Badlands  1973

Tonight, feeling - more than normal - I'm running behind schedule, I added another stand-alone film to this week's attractions. Started watching it despite the other feelings I've got going on. It was good. Very naturalistic (which I think is the highest praise I can think of). 

I have to return the book to the library on Thursday, and I've had it for three weeks already, so its best I watch it now. Very nicely photographed and I was impressed by the direction which was obviously filmed on-the-run, in a low budget style, and yet looked terrific.

I have now spent so much time reading the Renoir book on his life and the films in his life, that I'm neglecting the blog. That's why there's hardly any entries. I'm writing a mini-biography of Jean Renoir based on his memoir. I'm breaking it down into:

FILMS

ART

LIFE

WAR

QUOTES

He's a very interesting man. 

Day 129

Monday 6 November 2017  1130pm

City Lights  1931

Decided to watch the great Chaplin film tonight instead of waiting until next week when my Dad next visits. I tossed up between the two and thought that he'd probably enjoy Modern Times better. I wanted to watch both equally.

Gosh! City Lights is the best (most-consistent) Chaplin film I've seen. It is the steadiest of the films - I'd even call it terrific - integrating sequences that don't really relate with others and yet creating a relationship that while tenuous is acceptable in a narrative sense. It has some funny things and some lovely things.

I wonder if 1970s' critics and 2010s' critics can compared humour on an equal footing? 

Monday 6 November 2017  0530pm

'My Life and My Films' by Jean Renoir  1974

Received this book in the mail as well as the book written by Scott someone on Renoir( - McDonaugh?). Started reading them both simultaneously: a few pages of one then a few pages of another.

I deliberately didn't do what I normally do, which is to look at the index and pick out the subject or films I'm most interested in and dip into the book whilly nilly.

Today, was also the day when I had some other things happen which were important to me: my daughter, Charlotte, got her Medallion in assembly this afternoon from Kent Road Public School (an honour that doesn't happen for most students in her year) and then we performed our piano duet at her 5pm lesson in front of her piano teacher. I thought I'd be perfect but I was nervous and made a couple of mistakes. I was probably more nervous and performed it with more mistakes than Charlie did.

Day 128

Sunday 5 November 2017  0610am

Re-watching Vertigo

It is now seven hours since I finished watching Vertigo (1958)with my wife and Mim. I noticed something about the colour red. I've not read about it so I don't know if anyone has examined it beyond the obvious use of that colour in important scene in the palette, because I've noticed a use of it in patches, often around where Scottie's head is in the frame, or around where the body of the person he is talking to is within the frame. I've now taken seven hours to watch the film again, scene by scene, looking at where red appears in every camera angle, in every scene. I got to 5am and I was about to give up and go to bed out of exhaustion, but I realised that I may not ever pick up exactly from where I was right then, doing exactly what I was doing, so I stuck it out and did the last twenty minutes of the film, scene by scene. It's extraordinary. 

Day 127

Saturday 4 November 2017  1130pm

Vertigo  1958

Amazing. Really amazing. It is the film I know least well by Hitchcock. I looked for circles and swirls or spirals plus any particular use of colour. I was rewarded.

Day 126

Friday 3 November 2017  1130pm

Jean Renoir on Directing

Posted an

Day 125

Thursday 2 November 2017  1155pm

Jean Renoir on Directing

Posted an observation called Jean Renoir's Camera.

Today I borrowed a book from the amazing Lane Cove Library. It's the best library I've come across. Hundreds of great, rare, films on DVD, and hundreds of great books on film. I borrowed one called Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood's Golden Age, edited by George Stevens, Jr, hoping it might mention something about Renoir; and a French book (translated into English) called Cinema, by Alain Badiou. 

I was reading the interview with Renoir tonight when I think I finally understood what it means to allow the audience to participate in the film. I've read so much about where a director positions the audience and I think I understand that we can tell a viewer everything or we can leave aspects of the film, the story, the narrative, open to them to conclude.

Once someone came up with the idea that we don't tell the audience everything, and explain it - that's where we engaged the audience to participate in the film. I wonder who that person was who decided to withhold information from the viewer. To give them partial information, and then give them more later.

It has been part of telling a story in a novel, for decades - even centuries. With film, in the early days particularly, the fact that what we see on the screen is a realistic replication of real human beings, we accept it as truth. In the early days of cinema, that truth became the thing that an audience could rely upon. When a filmmaker broke the pact with the audience that s/he would show the truth, that's when the (wonderful) unsettling brilliance of cinema came into its own. 

Things that deceive our senses make us second guess ourselves. Humans believe our sight, our hearing, our touch, our taste and what we can smell. If that's impaired, then we become anxious. Thrillers and horror revel in that fact.

As much as directors choose not to explain things in an accumulation of scenes, that's how much scope they're allowed the audience to come up with their own conclusions, on a scene by scene basis, as it unfolds.

That is, what I think is called open cinema. I've heard it said that an audience is needed to complete a film. 

I suppose a film like Mulholland Dr. (2001), which doesn't have easy explanations, is one of the ultimate examples. An earlier example was 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). By taking away all the explanatory things that Kubrick originally filmed or had in the main screenplay, it made 2001 into a frequently misunderstood, but enigmatic, film. 

Day 124

Wednesday 1 November 2017  1122pm

The Gold Rush (1942 Ver.)

I watched it and  realized it was another ordinary member of the silent movie class, regarded as extraordinary.

Today, tonight, I celebrated a birthday dinner with my 87-year old father. Then we came back to my place and we watched The Gold Rush: the 1942 version. It looked fantastic and it had a brilliant music score. It also had a narration which Chaplin put on the film in 1942, which was spoken by him.

Then we watched an introduction by someone I'd never heard of. Then a film called Totally Chaplin or Completely Chaplin or Essentially Chaplin or Today's Chaplin. I don't remember the title.

There are technical things in this film which are as extraordinary as The General. 

But, even if you paid $1 million in 1925 that doesn't meant that the money buys you anything other than 'production values'. It is, however, amazing that that much money could be spent on a film in 1925.

Wednesday 1 November 2017  1722pm

Summing up Jean Renoir

Just like the two weeks of Ingmar Bergman and Robert Bresson, I've ended up with The Two Weeks of Jean Renoir. What started out as just watching the two big ones, Illusion and Rules - and would have included The Crime of Monsieur Lange if I could have got a copy, because it was on the TIME Top 100 List by Schickel and Corliss - turned into a ten film marathon, simply because I came across several significant film people who believe him to be the greatest filmmaker of all time.

That piqued my interest and made me give him a lot more time. Today, I spent more than 8 hours just writing; mostly about French Cancan (1955), La Grande Illusion (1937) and La Règle du Jeu (1939). I'll have something to put up on the website in a day or two.

It has been exhausting and rewarding and fulfilling, although not quite as much as The Ingmar Bergman Weeks. That was just incredible. There was so much to discover and trying to pull the films apart and analyse them was difficult but revealed one of cinema's deepest thinkers. It was eighteen weeks ago, and I still have so many things I want to write and down. Whereas, Robert Bresson, was a lot more difficult, and only a little less enjoyable. 

Jean Renoir was difficult director for, with the exception of Boudu sauve aux eaux (1932), The Lower Depths (1936), La Grande Illusion (1937) and La Bête humaine (1938). The River (1951), was very good, although the story was a little bit too theatrically acted at times. I hoped for a more distanced narrative style, like his use of actors in Règle, more remote from their character's emotion. But then again, it's churlish to complain about an abundance of emotions in the main three female characters, given they're all on the cusp of, or are, transitioning from girls to women. Big emotions are more realistic in these girls than reserved emotions. The formal film aspects are superb, and that is what Renoir has proved himself to be the master of, in all these films, when shooting on location. Renoir's use of music is the most sophisticated and deliberate than in any of the other nine films where I don't get the feeling he cared much about the music in eight of the other nine. Obviously, with French Cancan (1955), music was fundamental, and it was superb.

The Southerner (1945) was a film which excited me prior to watching it, then left me caught in the middle after. I thought it was very good in depicting realism, particularly in nature and within the family unit. The relationship with the neighbour, and the acting style by those characters related to the neighbour is so different to the pared down style of the Tucker family (with the exception of the deliberately annoying - comic - grandmother). 

In Lower Depths, La bête and Southerner there are actors who are given licence to exaggerate their characters. It clashes with the other style. In Boudu, Une Partie du Campagn (1936), Grande, Rules, River, it is consistent. In French Cancan, and Elena I can't complain because they are farces and the farcical characters are mixed amongst the more restrained characters. But yet again - for me - that juxtaposition of acting styles is unsatisfactorily at odds. 

Wednesday 1 November 2017  0222am

A  Cinematic  Life

Monday was brilliant. I got to have lunch and dinner with an old friend and see a new (as in one I hadn't seen before) film: David Stratton, A Cinematic Life, which I probably would never have had the opportunity to see - given, I'm not current with what's on television, nor what is on the fringe in local cinema. If I recall correctly, he has seen and written about (even in a capsule review for his own benefit), 22,500 films. That's impressive, because I've only seen 9,764.

But, I can still feel proud that I've managed to have a career and still made a decent attempt to see the films that matter, and a whole bunch that don't.

It's curious listening to him talk about Muriel's Wedding (1994) and The Castle (1997). The first I didn't like at all. I thought the film was "terrible, Muriel". The second I thought was a fair attempt to capture a certain kind of Australian - it had it's moments. But I'm not adverse to that kind of Australian or that kind of depiction. I liked The Big Steal (1990), The F.J. Holden (1977), The Dish (2001), Crocodile Dundee (1986) and Crackerjack (2002). I do get some of it - just not Kath and Kim or The Comedy Company. 

I - shamefully - admit I never watched a single show of The Movie Show or At the Movies, or even more than one or two clips where Margaret and David were agreeing or disagreeing.

My friends were in an ongoing, probably perpetual, state of disbelief about the fact that I love movies more than anyone and I never watched that show - ever.

I'd tell them,

I  don't  want  to  be  influenced  positively  or  negatively  before I see a film. I  always  like  to  see  the  films - like  they  do - before  they  take  on-board  anyone  else's  opinion. I  don't  even  want  to  sit  through a trailer.

Mostly they've had that luxury themselves, of seeing almost every film, before the critics (and audiences) have responded positively or negatively.

But, by Crikey!, David Stratton, A Cinematic Life was excellent. It really brought together several different parts of his life and very importantly provided a significant appraisal of Australian film, through his eyes.

It gave too much time to an awful film called Razorback and yet it never mentioned Stratton's reaction to one of Australia's great writers - Patrick White - and his adaptation of The Night, the Prowler, or Peter Carey's Bliss, an unfilmmable novel. Or The Devil's Playground. I know it can't be a four-hour documentary, but seriously, there's the absent The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, The Fringe Dwellers and Rabbit Poof Fence, important films exploring Australian Aboriginal heritage.

I liked that they gave time to Evil Angels. Thank God they gave time to one of the best Australian movie ever, Wake in Fright. 

I don't know if it is - probably, potentially, terribly, highly inaccurate, or whether it's actually telling most of the story, via the whims of the writer or director - satisfying to the subject, Mr. Stratton. I hope so.

Why do most external illustrations of a life seem to end with so much dissatisfaction from people who actually know them. That dissatisfaction from the person who is the subject of the film or article is something that really concerns me.

Pet hates? 

Documentary directors, or writers, who indicate they have real knowledge about someone: they make the documentary (or write the article) they want to make; they tell the world about the person who they think they really know and understand, but it consists of preconceived beliefs and inaccuracies - or substandard research. Having grown up in the film industry (a little differently to most who can claim that), I know of so many cases where people who have been subjects, don't think they've been represented well or fairly. When biographing a person, it's important to look at the comments they have made on record, about their beliefs, loves or lives - and represent them.

How Bad Does it Get? 

It get's as bad as the directors of documentaries who want to tell the story they have become accustomed to believing during the journey, leaving out some things that don't support their vision. If they do that, then it's not a document - it's a biased opinion, with an agenda. 

How Good Does it Get?

A person who is the subject who says, "you, bastard, you've misrepresented me. but everything it says is true. You've got the things I wish people never knew, but  you've got the things that also make me tick."

Day 123

Tuesday 31 October 2017  1805pm

Yeah! Not a Good Day, but Also a Very Good day

Yes, Tuesdays aren't, generally, good days and there is a reason why, and the reason is something that would take a few mind-numbing chapters to tell again - not the 500-weeks I lived at the orchestra which keep coming back to me - occurring over a period of 18 hours.

When people lose something they suffer grief. When I lost my job with the orchestra, I experienced grief. Although it's now seven months since it happened, I still feel grief most days.

It's not unusual and it's not wrong. I was only two-four when my mother died and she was only fifty-six. I grieved deeply for her for eighteen months. Every day.

Yesterday I saw an old friend (which is why it was also a very good day), who was equally my best friend, along with Simon Walker. We can talk about anything. He knows the things that have been tough for me. He knows the challenge of picking myself up, dusting myself off, and, in 2008, starting all over again. Such visits bring up the memory of things that are still painful. They can bring me bad days. 

Let's say, for today, that I'm a basket case of re-living ten years joy and ten-years pain, divided by 365-days, which leaves you and me about here. Thank you Raff Wilson, you complete and utter hole, for bringing me to this point. From 2008 - 2010 I gave you three years of opportunities to produce recording sessions and work on audio post-production on CDs for the SSO Live label; I recommended you (as a reference) for other jobs and then after six years away, you came back and within three weeks of getting the Director of Artistic Planning job at the SSO in 2017, which I also recommended you for even though you didn't know it, you sacked me. You broke my three-year contract, even though it had seventeen-months to run, three days after I finished directing and filming an eight-camera shoot of two of the concerts for Foxtel Arts in Australia of Copland's Third Symphony and Rachmaninoff's Fourth Piano Concerto.

I worked from July - December 31 in 2007, on contracts which ended, every year, on 31 December. Those contracts went year-by-year for seven years. When the 2014 contract ended on 31 December, I refused to sign another contract for just 2015. Each years contract was always late anyway, so it wasn't unusual to be working in the third week of January without a contract. This time it dragged on and on, but I kept working and producing recordings and CDs for the SSO, without a contract, for eight months, hoping for a longer term contract rather than having my family live year-by-year without any security.

In 2015 I was given a new title to reflect the fact that I was now producing and directing webstreams and video productions, as well as music producing the sessions/concerts. It was Philip Powers - Technical Media Producer. I didn't like the title because it didn't indicate what I do. I accepted it because the HR officer wanted to give me a title which embraced the music and the vision of the work I did: the visuals, the camera angles, the marking up of every live cut for every bar of music, was now what I did for the orchestra, as well as producing CDs.

Then along came Toby 'Raff' Wilson. He was overwhelmed by all the new responsibilities and told me we would get together soon to talk about things. I wanted to tell him how my role had changed and evolved in the six years he was working in Hong Kong, so that he could know exactly what I do now. I never got that opportunity. 

He never gave me that chance.

It's an ignorant person who takes on a position and has a conversation with most of his staff, but doesn't have a conversation with one of his staff. Particularly, someone, who is now directing multi-camera shoots for Foxtel based on his successful Audra McDonald film and the Tristan und Isolde concert which I produced and for which I directed all of post-production. 

Then, amongst the things he doesn't know - and can't know because we never sat down and had a conversation about my role - is the unacknowledged Josh Pyke album I produced.

This is particularly important, since I took the idea of recording two concerts, from a dead dog - after months of unsuccessful discussions with Wonderlick and Sony - to a live dog.

I conceived this Josh Pyke album.  It was a $58,000 project to start, when SONY was involved; then I found ways to cut it down to a $25,000 project. His record label and his management turned it down in the last few weeks before the concerts, claiming that taking in account the studio album they were working on then, they couldn't justify another costly project, even though the orchestra was throwing in their fee for free. This was an amazing project and I didn't want it to die. 

I went to my boss and asked him, "If I could make this happen for $4,000, would you agree to give me the go-ahead?. He looked at me with his usual degree of superiority, like I was insane, and he laughingly said, "I'll give you $4,000 if you swear you can do it for four thousand,"

"I think I can. Give me 24-hours. I'll make the phone calls and make sure I can achieve that and get everyone to sign off on it, before I go ahead.".

The biggest question was whether my favoured engineer, Bob Scott, would accept it.

It was basically me asking him to edit and mix and master an album, in thirty-hours at a rate of $100 p/h. It was a flat fee.

I said to him, "You can spend thirty hours on it but I know you like to have two days just for mastering.  

I said, "I can pay for thirty hours, but you can spend two hundred hours on it, if you want. But it's about the music. Even thirty hours of your time is going to result in a good album.

Bob Scott said yes, and that's how it happened. 

[And then there is the next side to the story which is that Bob and I put in another year working on the album. Bob was always working for $3,000 and I was always working for nothing. My work with the SSO was paid on the basis of me having targets, projects to undertake and complete, achieving certain goals and anything I did above and beyond that, was me working for free, just because I was interested in making the projects happen. I worked on more than a dozen projects for free in those nine-and-a-half years.]

The next day I authorised Des to hire some extra microphones and it began.

We talked about positioning the microphones and he wanted to have a microphone behind the horns,to capture the sound as it came out of the bell and some additional microphones for woodwinds(more money).

So, I got Des to do it for $800, Bob to do it for $3,000 and Phil (me) to do it for $0,000.

I said to Bob, "You've got to do it, it's goin' to win the ARIA next year."

I was at my desk the afternoon the nominations were announced, it was just after 6pm, and Rory was leaving. He waved and said, "Goodbye" to me, the only other person in the office. He said, "Congratulations on the nomination for the Josh Pyke album."

I said, "Rory, this is the one. We're going to win."

He said, "You're sure? That's your prediction?" 

I said, "No, that's my knowledge." He laughed with the derision that comes from knowing someone said something completely stupid. and left the building.

Then it did and there were great celebrations at the SSO on that wonderful day in late 2016.

Then six-months later you sack your ARIA-Award-winning producer, who also directed Audra McDonald with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, because his position is supposedly redundant.

Sometimes, the dismissal, that just comes up and rankles me, like today.

Day 122

Monday 30 October 2017  2355pm

Is 2018 a Leap Year?

I suddenly thought, OMG, if 2018 is a Leap Year (you know, with 366 days) then 122 days is one third of that - so I'm precisely one-third through the project. If it's not, then 122 days is slightly over that, but I'd need a calculator to break it down into 33 point something or another %. 

Today I spent visiting a friend who recently turned eighty and lives on the very beautiful central coast. It's about an hour away from Sydney by car. I've been very reticent to mention real names other than my wife and two daughters so far. But, I also want this to be the Julie and Julia of blogs, providing a real experience of this careening-out-of-control adventure.

My friend was interested to hear that that ne hundred and twenty two days ago I didn't even now what L'Avventura (1960) meant, let alone that it was the name of a great film I'd never seen. 

When I mentioned that this film is on my list of soon-to-see films, he told me that when there was a mass exodus at the Cannes Film Festival during a screening of a film he made, which was in competition, that he thought that was the biggest walk-out in Cannes' history, but someone corrected him and informed him that L'Avventura held that distinction.

I don't want what is apocryphal and what is perceived as true. I know that, if you hear any three descriptions of the one event - when tested - they're all part lies. But this story goes, that at Cannes', only the director and his publicist were in the cinema when L'Avventura ended and the lights came up. My friend's film, however, was the second best  - or worst - walkout in history.

In the old maxim, it says that's there no such thing as bad publicity. That phrase worked for my friend's film, and his film became legendary and a major box office success.

Has that phrase been retired since the Harvey Weinstein story of his legendary inappropriate behaviour broke?

Up until yesterday I read the Variety reports and I accepted the news that these mounting allegations, just words from one human being about another - with no trial, judge or jury - but all telling a familiar story - were true about Weinstein, but then so too were other stories. 

When the stories circulated yesterday about Kevin Spacey's alleged behaviour toward a 14-year-old, I thought, this has become a theatre of unsubstantiated accusations and allegations. Someone now accuses someone of something in the light of the Weinstein allegations, and they're printed as if they were fact. And as long as every journalist or editor writes alleged, they can print the truths, untruths, bile, sadness and anger, expressed by anyone in the world. 

It might be true. I can accept that it is true.

I am, in fact, caught up in the whole acceptance that each new accusation is fundamentally true at this stage in the exposé. I, honestly, believe it all. 

But it is now in the awful area which Arthur Miller's The Crucible examined and showed as dubious accusations with a lack of substantial evidence. It is similar to Bresson's the Trial of Joan of Arc which he recreated from the trial transcripts. And even Stuart Gordon's The Pit and the Pendulum.  But what's happening now is not amongst zealots and nay-sayers. It's the popular media who have dive-bombed this story, printing remarks with no confirmation of truth. 

It is now open season on everyone who made a single mistake or occasional mistakes, about things which were actually not really a big deal at the time, or even now. There are minor and major mistakes and only an accusation and prosecution can determine the best thing mankind can come up with, which is to give everyone a fair trial. The recent culture that I've seen develop in the media made me think - three weeks ago - that these are career-destroying accusations, possibly without substance - but as there are so many similar stories, most likely true. Plus there's the evidence of the out-of-court financial settlements he has made previously.

Kids, for instance, are, instinctively, actors who play doctors and nurses. They show their parts and nothing happens. It's normal. When is something like that going to blow up in someone's face.

I don't doubt the veracity of the accusations but at some point this is going to turn into a witch-hunt, ala The Crucible.

Day 122

Monday 30 October 2017  0315am

A Third of the Way Through Tonight

Analysing What I Need, to Finish the Project on Time and on Schedule

It's time to work out my goal for next year and what it might look like for the coming weeks. I'm comfortable with the fact that I'm on track. I have a bunch of essays to post which I've finished on Aguirre: The Wrath of God and a few in various stages on Jean Renoir. I've watched ten Renoir films in the last two weeks, including Rules of the Game (1939) twice, and French Cancan (1956) three times. A mammoth effort.

From now on I can pretty much look at 83 of the greatest 120 films, which takes me through to next March but I'm missing seventeen of the great ones which no one I know has.

I spent time after watching Elena and the Men (1956) early this morning working out what the brilliant Criterion Collection has released of them and I can see that almost every single one, of the hard to get ones, is available. Not through them, because they don't sell outside of the USA.

Like their Chimes at Midnight and F For Fake, L'Avventura and L'Atalante blu-rays, I can get them from Amazon, but that's going to be very expensive. I'll have to consider the cost which is AUD$44 multiplied by seventeen movies which is around $800. Then factor in postage, which is about $8 on average. That means the total is $936 to finish the project and take me through to June 30 next year. That's big bikkies. 

Day 121

Sunday 29 October 2017  1015pm

Elena et les homes 1956

It's time for my tenth Jean Renoir film.  I read so much about it that like French Cancan (1955), I'm really looking forward to it - and what a cast, Ingrid Bergman and Mel Ferrer, Jean Marais and Juliette Gréco. I've read too much about these later films - accidentally - while researching the previous films.

Whereas, I watched The Southerner (1945) and The River (1951) over the last three nights with no knowledge of how they are regarded by critics and academics - but aware they don't occur in the Top 100 Films in Sight and Sounds / BFI 2012 Poll - which meant I brought few or no preconceived ideas to the film-watching experience.

With The Golden Coach (1950), French Cancan and Elena, I remember the words of Tim Milne in Roud's Dictionary, and Richard Brody's (a writer for The New Yorker since 1999) in a New Yorker article were they discussed or mentioned Renoir's American and post-American period, talking about, respectively,  

"the three golden masterpieces of the latter half of his career: La Carrozza d'Oro, French Cancan and Elena et les Hommes."

and Brody writing about the end of Jean Renoir's American period, concluding that although he kept living in California, Renoir, 

"travelled to France for another run of masterworks - including The Golden Coach, French Cancan, Elena and the Men."

No pressure, except that I've brought a dozen preconceptions to these two films where I brought none to The Southerner (1945) and The River (1951) which were both excellent on so many levels.

Sunday 29 October 2017  1000am

"Your wife's home and your house is on fire"

After four days and nights of looking after the children, I'm beat. The night time calls are the hardest. 

Sunday 29 October 2017  0205am

Seriously! Is French Cancan a masterpiece?

I have now watched French Cancan again - the third time -trying to work out how such an overripe, exaggerated, film could be regarded a masterpiece. 

If you wrote down the dramatic scenes, especially in the second half, and put them together, in a script for an episode of a modern daytime soap opera, you'd be laughed out of the room.

I wonder if, when critics/academics fall in love with a director, they start accepting everything they do with less of an eye for what isn't done well. French Cancan, second and third time around, is not a masterpiece. Each time I saw it, I enjoyed more of the comedy, but it's a flawed, happy, energetic film which isn't exceptional on any level. Surely a masterpiece has to be exceptionally on every level!

The fact that he is making a musical comedy (so named in the opening credit, A comedie musicale by Jean Renoir) apparently allows Renoir to revel in all the ridiculous machinations he would have previously hated as a realist, an expressionist and a visual poet.

Plot

Henri and Lola are lovers. Henri is in debt to Walter. Walter cares for Lola. Henri see Nini and dances with her. His respect for her dancing ultimately leads to love. Lola is jealous and creates a scene in front of all of Paris - just like Andre in Rules. Nini is also in a committed relationship with someone of her own station. She then falls in love with Henri and then is courted by the Prince. The Prince funds Henri's theatre based on the fact that he thinks this will give him a chance with Nini. When he's made aware that Nini loves Henri, he pulls a gun and shoots himself. Nini is torn between three lovers. Lola and Walter come back to Henri and offer to support the theatre while the seriousness of the Prince's injury is unknown. Lola begs to resume her relationship with Henri.

The next plot points lead to a resolution which (obviously) celebrates commedia dell'arte by celebrating its worst facets.  

Does this sound like a masterpiece or an average film which is occasionally brilliant and sometimes terrible -which even in 1955 is overcooked, even if it is tribute to, and representation of, a time and genre from a previous era? 

Day 220

Saturday 28 October 2017  1125pm

'The Southerner'  1945

Watched The Southerner (1945), the ninth Jean Renoir film. A film made during his Hollywood years 1940-1948. It's a very interesting film which follows The Rules of the Game (1939 - French), Swamp Water (1941 - 1st Hollywood film) and This Land is Mine (1943 - 2nd Hollywood film); which was followed by The Diary of a Chambermaid (1946 - 4th) and The Woman on the Beach (1947 - 5th and last). 

The name of the production company is Producing Artists and the film is A Jean Renoir Production. The film is credited at the end as being distributed by United Artists, who also distributed The River (1951).

The Southerner is both a stock-standard low-budget mid-40s Hollywood film and an insightful. It would be so interesting to know what parts of the film were Renoir's and what parts were imposed. It feels very natural, and the use of mid-level actors makes it fresh. It starts with a style that I associate with a film like the very spare, Tortilla Flats. 

The acting style ranges from being similar to performances in earlier films to the more restrained performances of later films. The story has almost no humour in it. So, whether to credit the bar scene and the wedding celebration to him, with its rambunctious, over-the-top craziness or to someone telling him to add some life to a deadly-dull story of a farmer living the hard life on the land with his family against the odds.

The cinematography is still wide and revealing but the look of the film is washed out (and it could be the print I watched. The outdoor scene often lacked enough contrast to even see the sky). A scene with (possibly back projection) the grandmother sitting on the truck at least shows a sky - with clouds. The look of the film is very disappointing.

The music neither stamps any discernible style I've noticed or is revealing of anything more than the one-dimensional. It's certainly not a Hollywood style (except for the scene in the bar, with bottles flying everywhere). 

Finally the film has everything go badly for the farmer and it certainly follows the tried and true formula of things going badly, followed by an immediate upbeat ending, where it is satisfying that when Tucker doubts himself, his wife and grandmother - for the first time doing anything that isn't negative - role up their sleeves and get dirty fixing up the place, following the storm.

Despite the optimism, the sanity lies with the cruel, selfish, neighbour who lost a wife and a child doing what Tucker is trying to do. 

Day 119

Friday 27 October 2017  1038pm

'The River'  1951

Just finished The River. Even when I watched La Bête humain I felt like I was watching Renoir's film, not Zola's story. With The River, I felt like I was only watching Godden's story.

I think that's the greatest compliment an auteur could receive if they were making a film that was more about someone else's life than their own obsessions.

With The River (just as I felt with The Story of Adele H [1975]), I felt a non-intrusive director. Or I didn't feel the intrusion of a director/auteur. Both films felt authentic and true to their origin, like The Mosquito Coast (1987)- Harrison Ford's best film - Peter Weir's best film.

Day 118

Thursday 26 October 2017  1138pm

"Mick LaSalle - Film critic sees classics for the first time"

I read a brilliant and honest article from The San Francisco Chronicle from February 24, 2008. [Don't know how I got there, but one click leads to another.]

It's about how sometimes films just elude people, and even though you think film critics have seen most things, maybe they haven't. I mean, how could they? After all, not every film critics is aged seventy to eighty years old and not every film critic goes to film school. Some are even in their twenties!

I've read Mick LaSalle's reviews online for years (before SFGate required a subscription), along with Ebert when he was alive (if you know what I mean), and Anthony Lane. And Rex Reed and Crowther and Canby and Crist and Kael.

In 2008 LaSalle wrote about setting himself the task of seeing To Kill a Mockingbird (1961, Young Frankenstein (1974), 2001 (1968) and two other films - for the first time. It's fascinating, and it has something in common with what I'm doing.

There are some films people haven't seen which they have to see if they want to understand what makes great films, well - great!.

And I don't know if there's anyone out there reading this blog, but it inspires me to tell you - by all means, go and see the latest Transformers film, and the recent Wonder Woman (2017), and most recent Jason Bourne, James Bond, Kingsman and Coen Bros film - go online and find one of the so-called great films, every month. And watch it twice, maybe even three times. Okay, don't watch it three times like me - just watch it once.

Take a risk and pick a film like Sans Soleil (1983) or Citizen Kane (1942), or Persona (1966). If you haven't seen Casablanca (1941), then pick Casablanca. If you can't find a copy of Man with a Movie Camera (1929) - watch it online at the BFI - it will blow you away - just for it's visual and historical significance.

Day 117

Wednesday 25 October 2017  1110pm

'The Lower Depths' 1936 'French Cancan' 1955

I did a double feature Jean Renoir tonight. I watched the last of the 1930s films he directed which I have access to and one of his later French films from the mid-1950s. I've still got two others to watch, The River (1951) and Elena et les hommes (1956).

Les Bas-fonds (The Lower Depths [1936]) is a very strong film but I'm becoming aware of the fact that yelling and screaming female characters - when expressing intense feelings - or even with men in scenes of  heightened emotions - could well be a norm for either 1930s' Renoir or 1930s' French films. I don't have any other 1930s French films with which to compare it, so far. As I noted after watching La Bête humaine (1938), over-the-top  acting in some scenes did the film a disservice. I wonder, however, if French people were more histrionic in that age and whether this representation is part of what Renoir was wanting to achieve. If I saw it in an American, Italian or British film of the same era, I'd react in the same way. 

If Grande Illusion or La Règle contained similar sequences it would have been at odds with the overall style. The acting was more restrained. Also, French Cancan has a sequence between Danglard and his lover Lola, a dancer, when he's issued with a summons for money he owes. She is upset by it. Her inflamed passions are realistic and believable in comparison with the earlier films. La Règle is a very obvious exception, with the actors saying their lines dispassionately, throwing their lines away as if they're mere words. 

French Cancan opens with a different credit for the writer-director than usual:

Une comédie musicale de Jean Renoir

That's what surprised me. Every film has comedy but Lower Depths was a film by Jean Renoir and very serious whereas French Cancan was just a trifle.

Day 116

Tuesday 24 October 2017

1333pm 

 The Smurfs  2011

Today is another of those days where a person has to set the plan aside and go along with the way that things unfold.

Yesterday, Becky was very sick, and I was taken aback with how ill she looked when I picked her up from Family Day-care.

Today, as I did last week with Charlie, I needed to look after one of my kids - The Beckster - in the afternoon.

Empathy and sympathy pour out of you when one of your kids is sick. Well, for most people. Instead, I yelled at Becky after she vomited everywhere, to pick up the bowl next time and vomit in the bowl, not on the floor. I felt bad immediately.

Why do children hold a bucket in one hand and still stand there heaving - bucketless - down the front of their clothes and onto the carpet?

I can't say I loved The Smurfs film. In fact, I thought it was terrible. The lead human actor was awful. I didn't recognize him. An animated-style characterization, played by a human, but worse than most I can recall.

Tuesday 24 October 2017

0247am 

Understanding the Beast Within -  

I looked at several sequences of The Human Beast (1938)again and realized that Renoir - in 1938 - had moved beyond his subject, beyond his material, and started telling the non-dialogue aspects of the story, more-with-vision than with dialogue. The dialogue parts were often still trite and some of the scenes were embarrassingly melodramatic. But there was a new - overall - visual approach to La Bête humaine which was significantly more mature and more ground-breaking than Grande (1937). The next level Renoir had achieved - beyond every previous film - was quite obvious, I could see how La Régle turned out the way it did, eclipsing all of his other work.

Today was a day of just writing and reading. I haven't read, anywhere, a claim the Human Beast is one of the greatest of all time, or that it is even one of Renoir's greatest films but it was interesting to come across the fact that it has another English name: Judas Was a Woman. It gives a further indication of the type of duplicitous, manipulative person, Sèverine is. 

Day 115

Monday 23 October 2017  

La Bête Humaine  1938

I'm assuming Emile Zola is the Charles Dickens of France. His name is as familiar to me as many authors, like William Thackeray, or Thomas Hardy, but I've never read one of his novels. In fact, I've only read one of Hardy's novels, Return of the Native, and one of Thackeray's novels, Vanity Fair, both when I was seventeen. Hardy was fine but with Thackeray I struggled to find any storytelling aptitude in Thackeray's method, or any point of interest or commonality with my experience or my life. I struggled through all six or seven hundred pages, by literally taking seven months to read it. By page 150 I was so profoundly bored I considered taking my own life. By page 160 I'd come up with a more sensible plan, which was to literally take the book a day at a time, a page at a time.

Films mainly run a couple of hours. Books take days to read. Watching Bergman and Bresson over and over wasn't like reading a book over and over. Much easier. Not such an arduous ask, to give them a second go.

I had no idea what I was going to find in The Beast Within (The Human Beast), which comes between The Great Illusion and The Rules of the Game. What I found was a director putting a camera in extraordinary places (but so did Vertov and Keaton) but a story which was a potboiler, and worth nothing more than a ten-cent read.

I cringed in the awfully-staged initial scenes between Roubaud and Severine. This was bad, even as silent movie acting and exposition. Then with Lantier and Flore, it was Renoir making it pure melodrama again. The motivation of Flore, to resist Lantier at first, then when he becomes aggressive and murderous, to finally submit to him, and declare that she loves him, is unconvincing. In fact, it is ridiculous, unbelievable and embarrassingly badly. As a director for hire he may have felt that he was being true to that aspect of the novel. In a novel, the fact that you can (cheaply) write a lot of words, you can make something like this have more scope and comes across as serious. Here, it is as if Renoir is having a laugh about it, because he hasn't treated the hereditary murderous rage that Lantier has inherited with any psychological insight. My guess, is that if you're going to use the title from a famous Zola novel you can't very well leave out the thing that defines Lantier, the main character: the beast that lives within him.

In other sequences, however, I thought, "this is absolutely incredible." It was pure-Hollywood or pure-British in the setting, but "Renoir is doing the rest of the film - in 1937 - better than (the often studio bound) Hitchcock did, because Renoir did it on location, ie. without back projection. It's the same extraordinary look that Renoir's cinematographers gives Boudu and Partie. 

Richard Roud, who was film critics for The Guardian for most of the 1960s wrote a loving tribute to Renoir in his A Critical Dictionary. At the beginning of the article he wrote: 

Renoir is the greatest of all filmmakers... For a critic like Noel Burch the essential Renoir is the silent period... For me it is the films from La Chienne (1931) to La Règle du Jeu (1931)... There are others who prefer the American period and the later French films. 

He justifies the fact that he writes about the pre-1940 films (and Tom Milne about the rest), stating, 

"I'm not saying they are the only good ones, or even that they are very different innature or quality from the others: 

I am simply saying that they are the ones that interest me most; therefore, for me, the best."

And that's interesting because I don't have access to Toni (1934), La Chienne (1931), Le Crime du Monsieur Lange (1935) which he favours. Boudu sauvé des eaux (1932) and Partie de Campagne (1936), which I did get to see, he also regards  highly. La Grande Illusion (1937) and La Règle du Jeu (1939) are masterpieces, which I did get to see. The film Lower Depths (1936), Roud regards as a minor work, distinguished by its acting, "but the combination of Gorky (who wrote the novel) and Renoir was not particularly fruitful". That's one  I can view, but I feel I'm missing out on Toni and Monsieur Lange (which Richard Corliss and Schickel of TIME Magazine, included instead of either Grande or Règle) in particular. Another major film, La Marseillaise (1938), "is often clumsy" and doesn't "ring true."

So I get to see only five out of the eight really good one from 1931-1939. 

[I've just seen the authors of some of the essays and it is a great list. How amazing to be good enough to be asked to contribute to a major dictionary like that. I see that Jonathan Rosenbaum, who wrote about Robert Bresson for The Illustrated History of the Cinema, a weekly English magazine I bought every week for two years, wrote articles on Otto Preminger and Nicholas Ray for Roud's book. And that Penelope Houston wrote the article on Orson Welles. John Russell Taylor wrote about Robert Siodmak, Satyajit Ray and Michael Powell and Robin Wood about Ken Russell and Arthur Penn. Two good books I've read on Hitchcock were by Taylor and Wood. Roud seems to be the expert on French cinema, also writing about Pagnol, Resnais and Chris Marker. Richard Corllis has some articles as well. It's a very cool book.] 

Jean Renoir is my undoing at the moment. I've appreciated six Bresson films, six Truffaut films, eleven Bergman films, two Kubrick films, two Murnau films, two Chris Marker films, two films each by Scorsese and Coppola, as well as films by Keaton, Herzog, Vertov and Ozu.

But Renoir! His films are so uncomplicated (except Rules of the Game) and they tell a story on an intimate scale, not an expansive one, which draws my attention to the narrative and the way it tells the narrative. They are genre films. They're not films which turned film on its head. Other than Règle (Rules) - which was seen by virtually no one for many years (between 1940 and the late fifties), which turned out to be extraordinary, when reconstructed fifteen to twenty years later, the other films I've watched are routine in their storytelling technique, although I think Boudu is remarkably self-assured for 1932 - and it was shot on location. 

Admittedly, they have beautiful images, beautiful composition, consistently good direction and performances, but does deep-focus photography, and a new use of screen-space, and putting a camera on location - in places that it couldn't even fit - and, filming so many of the exteriors, exterior? Does this add up to looking past the clunky filmmaking?

Maybe it does! After all, in 1936, 37, 38 and 39, there was a lot of clunky (rough) filmmaking going on in all of Hitchcock's films pre-Rebecca., despite the obviously brilliant things that were happening as well. I'm looking forward to seeing some Hollywood-Renoir films. 

Suddenly in 1940 with all the resources of Hollywood at hand, Hitchcock's filmmaking went from good - but sometimes ham-fisted - to great.

Hitchcock mainly worked indoors and Renoir loved working outdoors.

With the exception of Vertov [Man With a Movie Camera (1929), some of Sunrise (1927)] and Chris Marker, realistically, I haven't seen a camera go where Renoir took the camera between 1932 and 1939. 

Day 114

Sunday 22 October 2017  

Looking at Renoir's 'The Rules of the Game' in the light of WWII

As I was writing about my second viewing of La Regle du Jeu (1939), I wondered what Jean Renoir would have known about the impending war in Europe. If he was writing the screenplay and filming in late 1938, and working on post-production in early 1939, what would he have known about Hitler's developing plans for Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland?

I didn't really have much of an idea about what the rest of Europe would have known about Hitler's actions, particularly those countries which shared borders. If Renoir did know about the political events which were unfolding then it would have not only influenced his script for La Grande Illusion (1937), but also Régle.

If the newspapers in France were reporting the events in and around Germany, there may have been a general feeling of inevitability about war breaking out, if not in 1937, then in 1938 or 1939. If so, there could be a justification for a reading of the weekend house party in the Marquis' country estate in Régle as an allegory for what would very likely happen if a second world war broke out.

Was Renoir aware for instance of Hitler's flagrant breaches of the Treaty of Versailles, such as when he marched his troops into the Rhineland in March 1936?; that in February 1938, Hitler was trying to browbeat Austria into allowing Germany to annex Austria and that Hitler had his army doing manoeuvers on the Austrian-Germany to intimidate them?; that on March 11 1938 he had amassed troops with the intention of invading the following morning unless Chancellor Schuschnigg agreed to cancel the national vote on March 13 on whether Austrians wanted to remain independent from Germany?; that Hitler couldn't allow the vote to go ahead because if they voted for independence, then when German troops entered Austria it would be seen as an act of aggression?; that Hitler, at almost any cost, wanted the German army to enter Austria peacefully: if he was forced to iinvade Austria, the remaining members of the League of Nations may combine to go to war against him. 

Göring and Schuschnigg argued over the phone throughout the day on 11 March, resulting in Schuschnigg resigning as Chancellor. Hitler's demand was that President Miklas appoint the Austrian lawyer and Nazi-sympathizer, Dr. Arthur Seyss-Inquart, as the new Chancellor. About six hours before dawn Miklas realised his position was hopeless and that German troops would invade Austria in the morning. Rather than submit his citizens to a war which Austria was not equipped to fight. He acquiesced and appointed Seyss as Chancellor. A few hours later the German army rolled into Austria and an invasion and occupation had occurred without a shot being fired.

18-months later when similar tactics failed against Poland's government, Hitler was warned by Poland, France and Britain that if he tried to take Danzig, a free-city, they would resist. On 31 March 1939, British Prime Minister warned Hitler that if he invaded Poland, Britain and France would go to war with hm.

In October 1938, Hitler began planning to take over the rest of Czechoslovakia. After employing a series of his usual strongarm tactics, it culminated on 15 March 1939, with threats to immediately bomb Prague and invade the next morning. With the threat of total annihilation, Hitler manipulated President into signing a document receiving German's troops peacefully, putting Czechoslovakia's future in the hands of the German Fuhrer. 

Day 113

Saturday 21 October 2017  1130am

'The Film Till Now' - The 1967 Bible of Film, by Paul Rotha

I've just re-read yesterday's thoughts about critics and academics who think in terms of films being inherently, either literary or visual. It's definitely to do with where they're/we're coming from in our knowledge and expectation of film. Paul Rotha's criticism of Jean Renoir for being too literary in his films would also apply (presumably) to someone filming one of Shakespeare's plays.  I didn't really get what he was saying about 'the real' film before, but I can now see that the 'real' film in his mind is where storytelling originates in visuals, not words. Of course, Shakespeare originates in words, so that would be a minus for Rotha.

So we need to look at critiques and scholarly work in their historical context. It in no way should suggest that earlier scholarly work on films is outdated. It's not. But it does arise out of preconceptions which someone born after 1925 wouldn't have, because almost all films they've seen had synchronized dialogue.

When I quote from someone, if I have some information that isn't based on the IMDB or Wikipedia - edited by a community - I'll hope the publisher of the book was telling the truth on the dustjacket.

Paul Rotha's book The Film Till Now, was first published in 1930. My edition is 1967. In 1949, someone called Richard Griffith added a section, The Film Since Then under Rotha's editorship, enlarged, revised and published in 1960. 

It is an incredible - amazing - extraordinary - survey of World Cinema, as right or as wrong as the opinions of the authors. A must-read. But don't take my word for it.

Quotes, as dangerous on the flaps of dustjackets in 1967 as on Wikipedia today (even with sources/references), or from referees in conjunction with a job application, notwithstanding, state: 

Frank Capra (It's a Wonderful Life 1946: "... It  seems  that  no  matter  where  I  go,  local  picture-makers  read  and  quote  from  Paul  Rotha's  classic  The Film Till Now."

Carl Foreman (writer/producer High Noon 1952): "Absolutely  indispensable  to  any  serious  student  of  the  cinema."

Fritz Lang (director  Metropolis 1927):"The reprint  of  this  important  book  provides  all  young  people  who  grew  up  after  the  invention  of  sound  with  the  opportunity  of  studying  the  history  of  film  from  its  beginnings."

Fred Zinnemann (Oklahoma! 1955 / From Here to Eternity 1953): "...One  of  the  most  important,  if  not  the  most  important,  standard  works  on  the  early  cinema."

Day 113

Saturday 22 October 2017  0710pm

Tonight, for me  was what Young Frankenstein was for Mick LaSalle in 2008 (which I read about in an interesting article about famous films people haven't seen. I'll write about it soon). It was a different film, that I'd missed in 1984; a film that my wife cheekily told me, ten years ago, without which, my film education would never be truly complete. I'd seen clips from it. I'd seen parodies of it. I'd read about it. I'd even seen the Flight of the Conchords  "angry dance", but I'd never seen Kevin Bacon's actual angry dance.

It's kind of hilarious. Even moreso, that in the week of Jean Renoir (which has now become The Two Weeks of Jean Renoir) I watched La Régle du Jeu (1939) and Footloose (1984) - both for the first time.

That's a pretty broad bridge to walk down; it's also a long bow to draw; but they have a few things in common: they're both about making a commentary on a social order, and a social hierarchy; and they're both about losing one's faith (Régle with one's country, class and the decline of civilization - and Footloose, about believing or not believing the things our fathers teach us and the decline of civilization - where some people actually still burn books). Both stories are a fiction and yet they're both - unbelievably - based on ways of life that really existed or even still exist - and are set around belief systems applicable in both eras.

My film education is now complete. Well, it will be in another thirty-six weeks.

Day 113

Saturday 21 October 2017  0230am

 Moving pictures without sound

When understanding a filmmaker like John Ford or Jean Renoir or Alfred Hitchcock, it's interesting to note that their first films didn't have sound. I'd never pieced that together before. Or realised that even in the 1960s some of the most respected film criticism was done by people who knew films when they were called motion pictures and were silent.

In 1939, a 45-year old person has only watched feature films with synchronized music and dialogue since 1927. They've potentially watched movies without sound since they were ten - which was a twenty-year period - without synchronized dialogue; and that this fact has informed all of their criticism of sound film - talkies.

What they know through their experience and what they expect from movies through their experience is more about images captured on celluloid without an expectation of accompanying sound or an explanatory voice.

I read in a book yesterday, "Almost every Renoir film has been distinguished by taste, intelligence, and maturity of theme... Such qualities are rare in films... Why, then, do we feel a certain lack in nearly all his films... It may be that Renoir's desire to express important themes makes him too dependent on literary script-writers, such as Charles Spaak and Nichols. It may be that he thinks of a film in terms of isolated scenes."

It would be like an artist or writer - Shakespeare - writing words which could only be spoken, or be read, heard and remembered - but which no one could write down and re-read - and were never allowed to be spoken outside of the context of pure poetry: not by an actor - or a real being - only as words without actions.

Words without actions. Actions without words. That's a terrible straitjacket. But actions without words was exactly  what silent films were dealing with and what directors were trying to overcome..

Day 112

Friday 20 October 2017  1130pm

 Twenty articles later!

Comments made online can always come back to bite you and yesterday's comments about not really enjoying The Rules of the Game (1939), probably will. I read a lot of articles today about this film.

Last night I chose to post a very personal and very real response to my second-viewing of the film, despite revealing my complete and utter ignorance of what films are great and what's not.

I did it to be true to the project so that when I come around to understanding Régle more fully, with a completely new appreciation of it, I can look back and see the growth: the expansion of my mind, if a further expansion is even possible.

I've decided to put next week's planned films on hold, in favour of watching more films by Jean Renoir. I've watched four Jean Renoir films but I've tracked down another seven: The River (1951), La Bête Humaine (1938), La petite marchande d'allumettes (1928), The Lower Depths (1936), French Cancan (1955), The Southerner (1945) and Elena et les homes (1956). 

As much as this 100 Greatest Films Ever project has become an exercise - getting through all of the films on the list - the more serious aspect is that I'm trying to understand more about the nature of film, in all its variety: especially in its particular era and in its particular culture.

In finding a personal meaning or understanding in Régle elusive - maybe even illusive - I hopefully can discover something beyond all the words that I have read today which haven't  brought me any closer to liking this film. I appreciate it just fine. I just don't love it.

It's time to go back to square one. To re-read everything I've written down about Régle, write my observations into a kind of essay, and then move on to other Renoir films.

One of the reasons I'm staying in the land of Renoir for another week, is that in Richard Roud's book, Cinema: A Critical Dictionary, he writes,

“Every man has his own Renoir; indeed, if Renoir is, as I believe, the greatest of all filmmakers, one reason is that his oeuvre is so varied, rich and complex.”

Greatest of all filmmakers? That's a big call.

And who is Richard Roud when he's not writing critical dictionaries? He was, when the book was published in 1980, Director of the New York Film Festival, and former programme director of the National Film Theatre and the London Film Festival; and was - from 1963-1970 - film critic of The Guardian. 

Friday 20 October 2017  2117pm

 The Love Punch (2013)

It's not a film I needed to add to my brain's already bulging capacity, but I couldn't have handled anything demanding tonight. Something light and fluffy. 

I wonder why Emma Thompson and Pierce Brosnan took this on? It's one of those bad movies which people accept when they want to go somewhere they've never been before. 

I've read that Michael Caine often accepts films based on where they're based and that Nicole Kidman accepts films based on whether she wants to work with the director. The draft of the screenplay they may or may not read is secondary. It's not a bad yardstick.

Anyone who's worked in the industry for a while knows that the script you accept today will be significantly different to the script they type up at the end of filming. Better to attach your fortune to another criteria: 1) money 2) location or 3) director.

I'm not sure what happened with the The Love Punch (2013). 

Some actors just like to keep busy. Some actors need the assurance of knowing they're still desirable because they're still - well - desirable. 

Friday 20 October 2017  0415pm

 The Mountain Between Us  2017

Sitting in a cinema watching a movie. I had expected to be home looking after my oldest, who has a tummy bug, but she'd been brave and decided to go back to school today, despite two days off sick. With a window of opportunity open, I decided to see Blade Runner 2049 (2017). Right at the last moment, standing at the ticket counter, I changed my mind and decided to watch the original film again, first, and see The Mountain Between Us (2017) instead, now. I don't know anything about it and I'm not particularly enticed to see any film with Kate Winslet. I've nothing against her. She's one of the best actresses around. I thought she was very good in The Reader (2008). 

Blade Runner (1982) isn't a film I need to see to refresh my memory but as it is on the 2012 Directors list, I'm including it on the films to see this year. There's no better time than this week to see the original again. It is one of a handful of - maybe ten - films which I've seen more often than any other film.

I don't need to see it again before seeing the sequel, made 35-years-later. I've seen it more times than I've seen any of the guilty pleasures below: 

• 10 (1979)

• 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

• Back to the Future (1985)

• The Birds (1963)

• Blade Runner (1982)

• Die Hard (1986)

• Dressed to Kill (1980)

• The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

• The Great Waltz (1938)

• The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)

• Jaws (1975)

• Lethal Weapon (1987)

• The Philadelphia Story (1940)

• The Princess Bride (1987)

• Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

• Silverado (1985)

• Star Trek The Motion Picture (1979)

• Superman (1978)

• Victor Victoria (1982)

• West Side Story (1961)

• You Can't Take it With You (1938)

Day 111

Thursday 19 October 2017  1145pm

 "I think I understand the rules but I don't love the film"

I suppose this is the personal aspect that we bring to our movie-watching experience. Not everything is us.

I loved La Grande Illusion, really enjoyed Boudu and Partie, and found a lot of Régle trivial, overplayed, needlessly obvious and manipulative, and I only liked two out of the nine main characters. (Maybe, that's the point - that here Renoir left behind the optimism of his early films for something darker.)

It lacked the embracing warmth of the other three Renoir films I've watched, which are so happy and carefree despite the characters' dire situation in two of them. The personal respect and love of life, despite their predicament, was the thing that spoke to me in Boudu, Grande and Partie. Here, only Lisette and Octave had a love of life and warmth. To a certain extent the fact Marceau was incorrigible brought life into the film.

I appreciate all the technical things that Jean Renoir achieved, and I acknowledge the clever subtext, using a weekend house party to describe all of French society, and the mingling of four or more different  styles, which was possibly mind-blowing for 1939, but it's all so one-dimensional. Almost every aspect is one-dimensional, unlike the other three films, which are rich on every level. 

This is the first time in this 100 Greatest Films Ever project that I don't agree with the overwhelming general agreement of a film's greatness. I'm going to write my observations of why this is an important film in cinematic history, and an important film in Renoir's output, but is not one of his best when taken as a whole. This flies in the face of everything accepted about this film's greatness. 

It's an important film. I can see that. It's history, it's initial public rejection, and its reconstruction, are the more amazing aspect of this film's existence.

However, something intrigues me about TIME Magazine's Greatest 100 Films, compiled by Schickel and Corliss: neither La Grande Illusion or La Régle du Jeu are listed. Instead only one Renoir film appears: Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (1935). Surely they didn't argue over Grande or Régle and agree to select a third Renoir film. That has me intrigued.

Thursday 19 October 2017  0110am

 La Régle du Jeu  1939

I feel the need to watch this film again having read quite a bit about it and about Jean Renoir over the last few days. It's #4 on the British Film Institute (BFI) Critics list, as voted by 846 critics, academics and film historians. In 1972, 1982, 1992 and 2002 it ranked #2. (Critics love it slightly more than the 358 directors.) 

12% of critics voted for R3égle in their Top Ten whereas 5% of directors voted for it, so, it is a film more beloved by critics than directors which is curious because the particular aspect that is so particularly respected and ground-breaking in 1939 is the directing and the use of screen space and deep-focus photography. As I gave up trying to work this out for myself - the first time I've done so in this project - and gone seeking answers, I've read four very good articles about it. I've also watched three other Jean Renoir films. My memory is that I've seen La Grande Illusion and Régle before, on television, as a teenager. I didn't engage with either film then. This time around I loved Grande and still didn't engage with Régle.

[I've noticed that about 10% of the 130 films critics and directors voted for, aren't favoured by both. With Ozu's Late Harvest, for example, 6% of critics voted for it; 1% of directors voted for it. Ozu's Tokyo Story, however, ranking #3 and #1 received 12.5% and 13.5% of the vote, respectively.] 

Day 110

Wednesday 18 October 2017  0200am

 Boudu sauvé des eaux 1932

Decided to put the other three films out of my mind and watch a fourth Jean Renoir film, a comedy. It's highly regarded.

Apparently Jean Renoir is the greatest film director of all time according to many academics and critics. I'd not heard that before. But I read it in three separate articles in books that make up my collection of books about cinema. I don't have a big collection, but it does number around the 500 or 600 mark.

I don't know for sure as I've never counted them. I looked at The Film Till Now by Paul Rotha, The Movie and Cinema: A Critical Dictionary by Richard Roud. I found Pauline Kael's notes in her book, For Keeps, but suddenly decided against reading it until I'd put all my own thoughts on the page. 

Day 109

Tuesday 17 October 2017

"What are the rules of the game?"

Thought a lot today about what the three films of Jean Renoir have in common. I spent several hours just writing down what happened in, and what I thought of, each of the three films. In desperation I eventually went to my collection of magazines - The Movie - and looked up Renoir and found a couple of superficial articles about him and about Rules of the Game. Nothing gave me any insight into why critics, teachers, students and directors think it's a great film. I've decided to put it on the backburner and watch another highly regarded Jean Renoir film which appears on several lists of Top Ten films, Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932).

Day 108

Monday 16 October 2017 2pm 

Le Regle du Jeu 1939

This afternoon I watched the 4th greatest film of all time by the greatest filmmaker of all time according to several critics and academics. Whereas I enjoyed Partie de campagn last night and loved La Grande Illusion of a number of levels, the greatness of The Rules of the Game eluded me on all levels.

Undoubtedly well-acted  and produced, with professional cinematography, but the narrative and the behaviour of the characters didn't engage me.

Monday 16 October 2017 1am

Partie de Campagn 1936

La Grande Illusion 1937

Day 107

Sunday 15 October 2017

 "Sometimes you  just don't have internet"

Had no way of updating over the weekend. Away with friends - and, I know it is extraordinary in this day and age - but I had no way of uploading my blog.

Day 105

Friday 13 October 2017

NOSFERATU

 (1922)

Inspired to watch Murnau's original film which Herzog's film so obviously mimics. It is absolutely brilliant. Stunning.

Day 104

Thursday 12 October 2017

NOSFERATU

the Vampyre (1979)

Werner Herzog's film, Nosferatu, the Vampyre, owes a lot to the original 1922 film, made by F.W. Murnau, and appears to have based it on the 1992 film's look and feel. 

Day 103

Wednesday 11 October 2017 1159pm

KINGSMAN

The Golden Circle (2017)

The first film was a hoot. This one was more of a shoot.

As long as you're fine with the fact that violence is a big fat joke, and Colin Firth's recovery from violence isn't a big fat joke, you won't be offended by installment one or two. 

The first was understated - to a degree - and when overstated explained it away through comparisons to James Bond films - very cleverly in the coup de grâce from Samuel L to Colin F. There's irony all the way through the first film.

• Like a lot of sequels the second film leaves out understating in favour of overstating.
• I'm guessing the first one cost $50 million and the second one double that, $100 million.
• Other than Samuel L. Jackson and Colin Firth and a small role for Michael Caine, I think Mark Hamill's the next biggest star, as the professor in #1, although Jack Davenport's appearance at the start - as a super-agent - is a fabulous twist in the opening sequence.
• #2 boasts a - I can finally use this word in a really good context - plethora of stars, some who only appear for a few scenes, and some who appear in a lot of scenes.

This is my theory on casting, as pitched to the actor's agents:

"Look guys, our first film made $400 million worldwide but only about a $100 million in America, so we're going to set the next one in America, and it will do double the business. Our idea is to stack it full of big-name stars, and we'll give a bonus of 1% of box office gross in the U.S. on every ticket sold. How many days can I get with <insert star's name > for $1 million plus 1% of gross?

• Channing Tatum said five days, "but I'm starting another film the day after tomorrow, so you'll probably have to put me in a cryo-freeze for most of the film. Hey, I can do English, what about this for an English accent? - I'll even wear a suit - I swear - if I'm gonna star in the next one, right? I can even throw in a few words with my accent, like 'who is this tosser?'  But, Oh! Oh! Can we squeeze in a bit of soft-shoe-shuffle or a dance number, you know, when I'm going crazy, before they freeze my body?"
• Halle Berry said ten days
• Julianne Moore said ten days
• Jeff Bridges said three days
• Michael Gambon said four hours, "But I get paid whatever Mickey got paid for the first one. And that's a deal. But, no special make-up. No crumbly skin. I'm a regular person wearing a suit and tie or it's ixs-nay on the eal-day. Ight-ray?"
• Emily Watson said, "I'll do it for free."
• Bruce Greenwood said, "You're joking! I'll send up George W. for nothing. I love playing American Presidents. Actually, I will take the money! I'm not Jeff Bridges for christssakes! I need the money."
• Elton John said four days (he doesn't need the money but is keen to promote his back catalogue), with one rider, "It is conditional that I must be required to say or scream f*** at someone every time I'm on screen. It's not live, right?")

Amongst the films I'm watching there are the films that come up as part of everyday life. Two nights ago I watched A Room with a View (1985) because Miriam was here and that was the plan. Two weeks ago I watched Moana (2016) with the girls because none of us had seen it and everyone was keen. Tonight my dad was over and he wanted to see Kingsman Part II (2017), so off we went. Four nights ago, my wife finally agreed to watch the first Kingsman (2014) film (which I wanted to see before seeing the second one). And in the last seven day I also watched Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), Le Jetee (1962), Sans Soleil (1983) and tomorrow, Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979).

Day 103

Wednesday 11 October 2017 0243am

AGUIRRE

 The Wrath of God(1972)

Aguirre ranks 90 on the BFI's 2012 Critics List and 59 on the Directors List. It is also in the Top 100 films published by TIME Magazine. It's also 19 on the Top 100 List of World Cinema published by EMPIRE magazine. It has an 8.0 on the IMDB from 41,962 voters which is very high.

As I watched the film, I was in a very matter-of-fact mood, allowing my experience of the story to dictate my reception. It was a very cold-blooded mood of,

"Entertain me. Wow me!"

I watched it and knew that prior to the 100 Greatest Film Ever I would have given the film *** (out of four). It's a good film. It's well done, but it's not a brilliant film or great film. Kind of like how I feel about The African Queen (1951) which I've always thought was a very roughly-made film, with good performances, making it a good film, but not an excellent, brilliant or great film. The African Queen wouldn't rate in my top ten Humphrey Bogart films or my top ten Katherine Hepburn films. They made a lot of good films, and it's certainly a highlight of their careers and it is a treat to see them together but it's a pretty slim film.

Now I need to break it all down and examine Aguirre. It's reputation is mind-boggling.

It tells a story, that is very interesting, in a very matter-of-fact and traditional film narrative.

It has top-notch production values. It is very well photographed and the production is excellent - there's nothing cut-rate about it.

The way the camera is hidden from the audience is like Pickpocket (1959) or A Man Escaped (1962). Exceptional. Except, Herzog had to deal with a raft on the water and film it with a camera on the water, or zoomed in from the shore to get a rock-steady shot. There are many shots which I can't explain. How a big camera could achieve that on location is extraordinary. Maybe it was shot on 16mm not 35mm. I don't know.

What is extraordinary about it?

The fact it was made in 1972.

The fact that it was made on location in the Amazon with a film crew.

The fact that it was set on the water (not in a studio).

The fact it was seamlessly edited, with Indians on the shore and people on the craft. The arrows from the Indians penetrating the bodies of the people on the mission is excellent.

Despite the fact that they didn't have studio-like conditions because they were set up on location - obviously with a terrific crew - and probably shooting out of sequence, everything marries together well.

Day 102

Tuesday 10 October 2017 1113pm

published mother! review

I published the mother! review last night, but tonight I went on to my other (infrequently updated) blogger site, which comes with my google account 100greatestfilms@gmail.com which I noticed the search-engines are turning up more often than my own website. I re-read it and made some minor adjustments. It's not very well-expressed at all. I want to spend time on it and tinker with the structure and make it read better than it does. But, I'm not going to get things done in 52 weeks if I keep getting side-tracked by watching too many other films. I've got be more self-controlled and not let my desire to watch more of a director's work take over.

Tonight I went to the library and returned two Truffaut films I didn't get time to watch: Fahrenheit 451 (1966) and Bed and Board (1970). It killed me to do it, but they're arguably minor films, although I would argue another minor film, The Story of Adèle H. (1975), is very much a major film. I borrowed Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) and Nosferatu (1979): both by Werner Herzog (Aguirre appearing on a good number of the BFI's 2012 Lists). I set myself the task of knocking off Aguirre tonight.

Day 102

Tuesday 10 October 2017 0223am

Room with a View (1985)

Sometimes you need to have a view before you can appreciate life. Some people don't need a view because they are essentially inward-looking. Denholm Elliott's character  captures, better than I've seen before, that terrible land between having a thought and saying it.

When he offers the ladies his rooms, he does so because he can't appreciate any part of life that looks out instead of in. 

It's kind of amusing that men can't enjoy a room with a view. 

It's even funnier that being able to see things for what they are, is unusual. The film encapsulates the theme of not believing what you can see and observe. It's about lying - to oneself and to others - but not necessarily with any great intent. That's why the subtitles carry such irony, because if they're explaining what we're about to see, and what we then see is different, then it's funny in a serious-kind-of-way.

By the end, the director, the screenplay, and the film has so beaten us around the head with their view, that we accept the fact, that any room with a view is one-dimensional, and that if we're going to pick a partner - for life - our stance has to be two-dimensional. 

Sad fact - life is three-dimensional.

Monday 9 October 2017 1158pm

putting up with the mother! (2017) observations today

I'm tentatively posting my observations about the film (mother!) which tries to tell the story of creation, Adam and Eve, sin and love and death and destruction and ultimate annihilation. 

I'm so happy that - however bizarre the changes to the Old Testament - a piece of art is questioning the sense of the events in the Bible as are generally accepted. Whilst there are people exploring and making movies debunking Christian faith, this a film which explores the (out of fashion) literal  events, but as an allegory, created by a poet, through inspiration.

mother! is a title, and an expletive. I get the sense that Aronofsky is using the word as a way of venting his frustration about a world that doesn't make sense. The title is a swear word. That's why it has an exclamation mark. 

Day 101

Monday 9 October 2017 0730pm

It's one hundred days

It is an achievement, to be here, and have done what I've done. Woohoo!

Day 100

Sunday 8 October 2017 2358pm

adding up the score

I'm looking at my progress, and wondering how I'm going to achieve this 200 Greatest Films (in 52 weeks) if I keep watching more than the two or three best films by all the major directors.

For instance, in the last two weeks I've watched six Truffaut films of which only one was on the list. So I'm behind.

But I watched two films by Chris Marker, in one night, which are on the list, so I've recovered lost ground.

I know

• That I've got several big events coming up with major films which I've separated out of the usual director's breakdown (like Apocalypse Now [1979] & Raging Bull [1980] & Lawrence of Arabia [1962] and The Good the Bad and the Ugly [1966]).
• That the films which are dominating my time are the ones from filmmaking countries which I'm not very familiar with, like Sweden, France and Italy. So down the track when I see films I've seen many times before it shouldn't require such an effort to immerse myself in other films of the same period.
• That I'm grouping (non-English-speaking) films - made in Europe - together, at this point; so I'm getting a lot more information to digest than if I watched consecutive weeks of Alfred Hitchcock films, Billy Wilder films and Orson Welles films.
• That at some point I'm not going to need to watch various films two or three times to understand what they're saying or why they're important.

Day 99

Saturday 7 October 2017 2238pm

The Things I Learned Along the Way

I'm still in the mode of trying to publish articles about my understanding of the films I've watched so far. Along the way, I've learned many things about the act of examining any film, and I have started to see several pitfalls.

Critical, and Non-Critical: critical reviews which are enlightening

One of the great delights for me is reading other opinions about films I like or dislike. The more prominent the critic the greater the delight and oftentimes the smaller the critic (not a major critic), the more delighted I am to find someone who is thinking about film, critically. The great thing about the IMDB is that great minds and enquiring minds can argue for a film that they rate a 1 or a 6 or an 8 or a 10. Many times I have watched a film the majority of "real" critics have dismissed, entirely based on the fact that someone on IMDB wrote an insightful review.

Writing a review requires context, ie. "research"

After I have written my initial reaction to a film, I have often searched for a broader context in which I can understand the films that claim they are based on real events or real-life or the culture surrounding their creation. In this process I have learned so much from putting a name into a search engine and seeing what pops up. Before I publish a historical fact in a review of films based on real events I more often than not waste too much time trying to verify the validity of the claim at the start or end of a film.

Along the way I have discovered 

• Germany violated several agreements when they invaded the Rhineland in 1936
• Germany didn't invade Austria in 1938 due to some (I begrudgingly call) clever pressure and bargaining by Hitler despite having sent troops across the border.
• France was occupied in the Northern sector by the Germans and suffered more than the south, theVichy.
• The Austrians recalled their citizens, Austria was annexed and Austrians fought for the Germans, because they (Austrians and Germans) voted to be part of the union of Austria and Germany, under pressure.
• Britain put troops in Halifax (Nova Scotia - Canada), during the American Civil War (1861-1866).
• Adele Hugo was the youngest daughter of Victor Hugo and left a coded journal
• A fight-or-flight response to a situation can enable the human body to do superhuman feats which are impossible in any other situation (which science can probe through the body's reaction to stress.) [I wonder if insane affections between people who are unwise to get together are based on these heightened feelings?] 
• It's okay to use the word extraordinary every time you see and talk about a film that is excellent or brilliant or wonderfully different or innovative. If a piece of art is above the ordinary, then it is extraordinary. The word is valid, no matter the number of times it is applicable to things which are beyond the ordinary. If I use it every single I write a blog.

I should write an article about four aspects of film critics:a. why (or how) a film critic gets to verbalise their opinion in a major publication over anyone else's opinion. b. what about their credentials?c. they see a film once. That's a major flaw in film criticism, seeing a film once (maybe twice - rarely - before the first review) and having to make a judgment on its value. d. critics who gave stupid review and critics who changed their opinions (quote them).

• I have learned to really search for the meaning in any film, particularly the one's which alienate the viewer, such as mother! (2017).

Day 98

Friday 6 October 2017 1158pm

More about '2001: A Space Odyssey'

I'm still researching the critical reaction in 1968 to 2001: A Space Odyssey. I've already published an article (and I'm writing another about the response on its initial release) about how the finished result, at the premiere - and then when Kubrick cut another 19-minutes out of it - was a result of a man paring all words (and explanations) - regarding meaning - back, because the film was now purely film. And when I say film, I mean music (as well) because for the 20 years before music was synchronized with film (in the late 1920s), music was played live with most of the screenings of films for the general public.

At its most basic level, Kubrick took the majority of spoken words out of 2001 and left a film which he - basically, and in essence, at a very complex but still fundamental level - understood. He'd been working on it for more than three years - on every visual, literary and aural level - and when he decided to cut important explanatory bits of scenes out, Kubrick still knew what every scene that was cut was meant to be revealing to the viewer if it hadn't been cut.

Day 97

Thursday 5 October 2017 1158pm

'Le Jetee' 1962

'Sans Soleil'  1983

I decided to do a double-header again. I've written articles (rough as guts) on Jules et Jim and Le Dernier Metro; The 400 Blows; Stolen Kisses and The Story of Adele H as well as a recent film, mother! I decided not to watch Truffaut's Mississippi Mermaid, Fahrenheit 451, Bed and Board, and move on.

I knocked two films off the list by watching these two French films by Chris Marker this week. These are as extraordinary as some of the other offbeat films I've come across so far. It's not regular filmmaking. That's the difference between the majority of the films I've seen so far in this quest. Standard filmmaking which tells a story with an arc of emotion, a building of tension, resulting in a climax, is the basis of almost all films made - even by the avant-garde.

Man with a Movie Camera, Au Hasard Balthazar and 2001: A Space Odyssey are exceptions, even within these directors' larger bodies of work. Both of Chris Marker's films defy standard storytelling techniques. The first is told entirely with photographs and a fake documentary style narration. The second is a similar style with images the director has shot himself as well as footage from stock libraries and a commentary narrated by a fictional person who has received letters about the world the filmmaker has recently seen.

Sans Soleil is a sermon, preached in a relentless manner by a voice which is dispassionate yet still weary with the acceptance of the terrible things the filmmaker has observed. I keep hitting the display button to find how much more there is to go. First it is only 26 minutes out of 1h37m, then 43 minutes out of 1h37m. I understand a lot about what it says about Japan, but is this a bullying indictment of one nation or an encompassing statement about the people on this planet?

Sans Soleil is a full-on (fake) documentary of opinions and observations by Chris Marker. It's very intense and broaches many subjects, particularly focusing on the Japanese people. The emphasis is on dissecting the Japanese way of life: their culture, behaviour, attitudes, ethics and standards. It's completely fascinating and if it was spread over three 30-minute episodes or two 50-minute programs, it would be less overwhelming. There are so many thoughts in these two films that I'd like more time to absorb the material, rather than act as a stand-byer witnessing bullet after bullet fired mercilessly, until it's an avalanche.

Day 97

Thursday 5 October 2017 0757am

Sunrise 2017

Just got home after working on another (daytime) project filming the sun rise over the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 4K at 0623. Wow, just the right amount of cloud. Spectacular 4K results.

Day 96

Wednesday 4 October 2017 1146pm

'mother'  2017

As part of the 100 Greatest Films - Better Make That 200, I'm just back from seeing mother! (2017). I have to admit I was pretty confused and I thought the film told a very strange story. I've started breaking it down into pieces and I think I have uncovered the key, which reveals the two sides to the story. I'm still confused about Mother's role.

Day 95

Tuesday 3 October 2017

Adele H Shoots the Piano Player Subtly

The Story of Adele H. (1975) is a beautiful, captivating and surprisingly lyrical film, given its sad subject matter. 

In the character of Adele H, Francois Truffaut has found a story that deals with four recurring themes: unrequited love, alienation (and Hitchcock's two great themes), obsession and pursuit. And better than ever before Truffaut uses the tools that Hitchcock used for more bland pursuits (To Catch a Thief, North by Northwest and Rear Window) to illustrate, but more delicately than in his earlier films, suffocation, rejection and fear of rejection (like Notorious, Vertigo and Marnie).

Adele H, the film reveals, in a brilliant scene after the doctor has visited her, is Adèle Hugo. The kindly lady who runs the house asks the doctor if they should left her know that they know who she is. He thinks not. What they now know is that this Adèle, is the youngest daughter of one of France's greatest writers, Victor Hugo, author of Les miserables.

The Real Story

Adèle is so desperate to marry a lieutenant in the British army she travels from Guernsey to Nova Scotia, sneaking in without any papers - more by luck than design. She hires someone to track him down and then finds boarding with a local family near where he is stationed.

The background to the story is that in the America civil war, the South asked for help from the British in their fight against the Yankees.

The British landed troops in Nova Scotia, Canada, just north of the United States, on standby. Albert Pinson was stationed there and somehow she found and followed him there in 1863. This was around seven years after their brief romance and his proposal, which her father rejected, forbidding the marriage.

A great deal of the film concerns Adele writing letters to her family asking for money - her allowance; asking for approval to marry Pinson; and then trying to convince the poor man that her father had now agreed to the marriage. As much as Pinson was an incorrigible womaniser, a scoundrel and a complete and utter bastard, the pursuit by Adele was very intense. When he was relocated from Halifax to Barbados in 1866 she found a way to follow him there. When he left Barbados history indicates she was left there, in poor mental health, wandering around, talking to herself. 

Day 94

Monday 2 October 2017 1100pm

L'Histoire d' Adele H 1975

Tirez sur le pianiste 1960

Today I have realised there is a debilitating flaw to my plan to watch these 150-200 great films - me.

I'm not happy to just watch the two or three great ones, I also want to watch another two or three to give me a broader context for understanding the director and his work. Last week I did a double-feature one afternoon and saw The 400 Blows (1959) and Jules et Jim (1962). That was a blast. It was extraordinary being able to take the opportunity to watch the two most highly regarded Truffaut films back to back. Now this double feature. 

But, I had access through my library to Le Dernier Metro (1980), Stolen Kisses (1968), Shoot the Piano Player (1960) and The Story of Adele H (1975), so I borrowed them, and watched the first two on consecutive nights, and decided I'd do another double-bunger, this time of Adele H and Shoot. What an extraordinary treat. Both were brilliant in their own peculiar ways. Shoot was his second feature film, but in its entirety it felt like I was seeing a director's debut film.

In film, I've been very aware of the first films of directors, or the first films where they had enough money to take a decent stab at it, being (almost) full of dozens of great ideas. The first two that come to me, straight off the top of my head, are Citizen Kane and Blood Simple. Citizen Kane by Orson Welles, on whatever scale you rate it (IMDB: 8.4, 325,018), is a Top 100 film. By contrast Blood Simple isn't mentioned much when I read anything about the Coen Brothers' career (IMDB: 7.7, 72,513). Both films blew me away. One for an overwhelming canvas upon which were painted the most beautiful images and music, mixed amongst a story of great success and great failure (politically, artistically and emotionally). On a much smaller scale, Blood Simple, embellished on the A-grade and B-grade themes of many favourite films of mine to do with money-motivatated crime - often through sexual manipulation. Whether it's Sidomark, Raoul Walsh, Jacques Tourneur, John Sturges or Detour, High Sierra, The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity, these are the great film-noir movies. When Kasdan made his homage to the genre in Body Heat, that was an exciting day in my life in 1981. When the Coens did it in 1984 with Blood Simple, that was an even more thrilling night of my life. They took the genre and made clever twists in the plotting, and added a lot of Hitchcockian stylistic and visual touches. In the 1980s a few films were trying to make a present-day film-noir thriller, which incorporated a life-time of favourite visual memories. Wherever you turned in the suspense-thriller-horror genres there between three and eight Hitchcock fingerprints on the celluloid - in addition to the two bloody thrumbprints.

And then along came Francois Truffaut, 25 years before that. He'd been watching a dozen films a week since he was a teenager, seeming many of them multiple times, and then writing about them as a film critic, as a young adult. When he turned 27, it was only four months before the release of The 400 Blows. Sixteen months later, Tirez sur le pianiste was released. Two years later, Jules et Jim was released, when he was 29 (a month before he turned 30).

400 Blows was the most successful film by Truffaut at the Box Office in its initial theatrical release. It appears it gave him the confidence to throw a lot of the things he loved about how films look and feel and unfold, into his second film. There's nothing like making one of the top ten most successful film that year in France, or one of the fifty most successful films in French cinema history, or even the most successful film of all time (Spielberg with "Jaws") to give you the confidence to follow your heart.

After 400 Blows Truffaut had a lot more money to finance his next few film. I have no figures to support this argument, but a lot conjecture holds that Truffaut’s father-in-law supplied the budget for 400 Blows. If that’s true, and he formed his own company, and he then paid his father-in-law back, that leaves a lot of francs for Truffaut to play with. 

After Universal's success with "Jaws", Spielberg didn’t get rich to the point that Lucas did with Star Wars or Coppola with The Godfather. But, Columbia gave Spielberg a much bigger budget for CE3K, which gave him a better chance to fail than most people get. I don't know whether Spielberg had an outline or a draft of that script in the second draw down in his desk, but CE3K was a film that went where no one had ever been before. And even though it didn’t eclipse Jaws, it made millions and recouped enough for Columbia to be content that they hadn’t suffered a loss given their initial – ever rising - investment.

To put in in perspective, in 1959, Le Jument verte sold 5,272,066 tickets, Le Bossu sold 5,826,584 and La Vache et le Prisonnier sold 8,844,199 and in 1971 Last Tango in Paris sold 5,150,995 (the 100th highest-grossing French film ever screened in France) and A Clockwork Orange sold 7,602,396. So The 400 Blows in 1959 with 4,166,000 tickets sold was very popular. 71 films in the Top 100 were made after The 400 Blows. The 100th was Last Tango at 5,150,995. The 400 Blows did 4,166,149. This may seem to be an irrelevant, arbitrary piece of factual information I am after, but it is something I'm trying to nail down for a reason.

How big a hit The 400 Blows was that year, or in the history of French cinema goes to Truffaut's mindset when he was embarking on his second film. I think it emboldened him to make a very personal film within the structure of a widely accepted, and very successful, genre.

Shoot did a quarter of the business that 400 Blows did and Jules et Jim did forty percent of the business. Reports (which I have read somewhere) indicate that Truffaut was never as game to be experimental again. Although the film wasn't a complete failure financially, doing better than eleven of the next twenty two films he directed, it made a mark on the 28-year-old Truffaut.

In 2015, if we look back at box office figures and Last Tango sold 5.1 million tickets in 1971 (100th Biggest Gross) and in 1959 La Jument verte sold 5,272,066 (93rd Biggest Gross) and 71 films were made after 1960, then it is a reasonable guess that 400 Blows was in the Top 100 French films in 1959. And unless there were 70 films that had ticket sales of 4,170,000 to 5,272,066 then 400 Blows is within the Top 100. Depending on the box office of other films before 1960, which scored more than 4,1699,000, this was the 50th or 60th biggest grossing French film ever - in France.

In 1962 War of the Buttons sold 9,936,391. That gives an indication of the audience (or possibilities of repeat viewers).

If you've directed The Sixth Sense as your first film, it's all downhill from there. That would be an interesting statistic to analyse. What is the highest grossing (massive-hit) for a first film (or 2nd or 3rd feature film) by all directors and did anyone ever surpass it? 

Spielberg did, several times. So did Cameron. So did Lucas.

In the French film world Luc Besson probably did. He had hits with The Fifth Element, The Big Blue, Le Professional and topped them. For Truffaut, or anyone, that is a hard pill to swallow.

Especially when you’re relying on the success of your first few ventures to fund the next projects.

Like so many Hitchcock films there’s someone on the run. In many of his films they are physically running to get away from whoever is chasing them (North by Northwest, The 39 Steps, Young and Innocent, The Lady Vanishes). Sometimes they are on the run, but they’re moving slower (Strangers on a Train, Dial M for Murder, The Trouble with Harry). Sometimes, it is in slow motion and they don’t even realise that they’re being chased (Suspicion, Rebecca, Notorious).

Shoot the piano player [Tirez sur le pianiste]

If your favourite American film director is the British film director Alfred Hitchcock, then what better way to pay homage to him than to have someone on the run. So begins Shoot the Piano Player with a man running. He runs into a pole, falls down, is dazed and confused. A stranger wakes him from his dazed state, helps him to his feet and then he has a bizarre conversation with this man about when this bloke fell in love with his wife. The discussion is about marriage and how difficult it is. It’s a very French thing, I think. It’s not a typically American conversation between characters in a film (before Robert Altman or Quentin Tarantino). Only when they had the newborn the man says did he fall in love with his wife.

The man on the run goes to his brother for help. He’s a piano player in a dive. The scenes are rich in crazy dialogue which is unlike Hitchcock. The scenes are French, with dancing and grooving. Hoodlums come looking for the brother and the pianist trips them up so his brother can flee.

A waitress, Lena, asks Charlie for money. He gives it. Then he gives money to a waitress who needs it. There’s a mixture of Sam Spade and GG narration. While Charlie is narrating about what he wants to do, the girl has split, and he’s walking alone. He’s back at home with Clarissa, a neighbour, buxom and uninhibited. There’s a bit of giggling and false resistance but the sex ensues.

The next day, Charlie is taken by the heavies. He’s offered money for his brother, but he doesn’t need the money. He refuses. Lena is seen on the street and captured and put in the car as well.

The shakedown and the chase continues. Charlie is like Cary Grant’s (Roger Thornhill) character in North by Northwest. He’s caught up in a series of events which rain down on him out of the blue. He has no say in the beginning, and things just keep unfolding.

Day 93

Sunday 1 October 2017 2245pm

Day 1 of 2nd Quarter

This is it. This is the real deal. I'm at the 25% mark. I'm beginning the second stretch of four. I'm a quarter of the way through. I've done three months out of twelve months. I've done 92 days and I'm good to go for another 92 days, which will bring in 2018.

Tonight's a second night with relatives in town staying with us, so I'm going to take it easy, not watch a film, and see if I can make a few observations into something I can publish.

Sunday 1 October 2017 1830pm

'Stolen Kisses' 1968

Stolen Kisses is the third film of Truffaut’s to feature the character Antoine Doinel, which is to some extent an autobiographical character. He was introduced in The 400 Blows, and he closely follows the real-life early teenage years of Truffaut. The character is very serious and other than a visit to an amusement park, the film has little joy or humour in it. The only time there’s any sense of joy is when he’s not at home or not at school.

In Stolen Kisses, Doinel becomes a comic character. The second film to feature Antoine was 'Antoine and Colette,' a segment in the larger film, L'amour à vingt ans. Two other feature films were about Doinel: Bed and Board and Love on the Run. 

It’s kind of sad that Truffaut diluted The 400 Blows by making lighter films about Doinel. But it’s also kind of cool that Truffaut can make different films about someone who is in essence, himself, in better times. 

And look where Truffaut took himself. He was movie-mad, turned himself into a fully-fledged film critic and then became one of France’s best directors, and his first film, and sometimes his third one, still features on most Greatest 100 Films Ever lists. It’s one of history’s great lessons, that someone can live a life, having nothing, an abject failure at school and in the eyes of others, picked on by teachers, believe they’re unloved, on the streets, beginning a life as a criminal in his teenage years – and turned it around. Because when that character hits the ocean in The 400 Blows, I was positive that Antoine Doinel’s life as a criminal, in and out of jail, was a given. 

I can imagine another story of someone else, growing up having very little, an abject failure at school and in the eyes of others, picked on by teachers, believe they’re unloved, committing petty criminal acts in his teenage years, several times lucky to have been let off with a warning by shop-owners and police and not have a criminal record, tried suicide many times without success – and turned it around.

Day 92

Saturday 30 September 2017 1159pm

Wrote about three Truffaut films all day today. Will publish the essay tomorrow. About to watch Stolen Kisses.

Day 91

Friday 29 September 2017 1159pm

'Le Dernier Metro' 1980

I watched a film out of order, which I haven't seen in thirty-seven years. It's not significant on any compilation list of 100 great films. But I've remembered this film for four decades because it had one of the most beautiful themes ever composed. I returned The 400 Blows and Jules et Jim on Friday and saw four other Truffaut films on the shelf, so despite whatever my plans for this week, I borrowed them. I figure I can watch and absorb them before I write about the two big ones, T4B and JJ. 

They were Shoot the Piano Player, Bed and Board, The Last Metro and Stolen Kisses and something about Mermaids.

After watching the film about the occupation, about a theatre group who innocently attempt to mount a play, I researched those real events and the events surrounding the Austrian and French occupation and learned some important historical details which gave greater detail to the events in these films. 

Day 91

Friday 29 September 2017 10am

Should I Go, Can I Stay

In 1981 the band The Clash wrote a song asking, ‘Should I stay or should I go?’ It’s a near perfect fit for the mounting urgency of that question for Antoine, the thirteen-year old character in Truffaut’s The 400 Blows’.

Twice before he’s run away. But it’s not been a pre-meditated action at that point. The third time, when he’s incarcerated in a boy’s home, it’s the result of a desperation transmitted to him by at least one other boy – if not all of them. This one boy, tracked down and imprisoned again, says he’ll keep escaping no matter how many times they bring him back to the institution.

Antoine heard that and it was a juvenile feeling he could identify with. When boys are in a prison for troubled youths, they already know the answer to what now is essentially a stupid question regarding life: ‘Should I stay or should I go?

It’s now, in its most distilled emotion, just a fight-or-flight question. 

Antoine has asked everyone the questions in The Clash’s song and no one has taken him up on it.

Should I stay or should I go?

If you say you are mine

I’ll be here ‘til the end of time

So you got to let me know

Should I stay or should I go?

Whether it’s a lover or family member or someone who’s part of a group of friends, or in band, it’s a timeless question.

The 400 Blows could be 1000 blows for one person or 1 or 2 big blows for another. Everyone’s different. For anyone caught stealing, given detention or caned, this film will have meaning when their act wasn’t much more than a youthful misdemeanour. For anyone caught stealing twice, or three of four times, and it involved the police, receiving detention occasionally for youthful exuberances, it resonates even louder. For those who have skirted the edge of minor criminality between the age of ten and eighteen, it’s a, “that could be me” moment.

Antoine reaches a point of emotional and psychological stress, that has him looking for any opportunity to run away again. It’s a place that is anywhere but here. It’s a place that is somewhere that I’m not in trouble.  

When he takes the chance to run away from the institution, he’s acting in a way that is a purely animal response of standing up for himself, or fleeing. It’s a physiological reaction in his body to terrible fear. Now he’s running for his life.

What is at stake is no longer the idea of wanting acceptance. It’s the need to have the freedom to be himself. He runs blindly, trying to escape from everything that is wrong with his life. He’s running from a mother who is unfaithful to him (by not wanting him) and his stepfather (sexually). He’s running from a school in which he can’t find acceptance. He’s running from an institution for bad boys, and he knows he’s not a bad kid. He’s running from friends who lead him down the wrong path

As he runs away from the guard, with long tracking shots of him running across meadows and down streets, running far beyond the endurance of any boy, it is a metaphor for the fact that he is running away from life, not toward anything in particular. When he was coming up with a plan to steal a typewriter so he’d have some money when he go to wherever he was going, it was a positive plan, which he was initiating, even though it was criminal. When he’s running away from home at the end, he is literally running away from everything he has known, with no purpose and no destination. It’s the polar opposite of the tracking shots over the credits where everything is about how beautiful Paris is, and how beautiful the Eiffel Tower looks, from every conceivable angle.

The need to belong is the feeling that motivates all of the decisions we see. At home he does the chores that enable him to belong. At school, he gets caught being wilful, and therefore isn’t accepted by the teacher. While having his crazy day in Paris, when he skipped school, he saw his mother kissing another man in the street. In trouble again at home for nearly burning the place down, and then at school for presenting someone else’s work as his own, leads him to give his trust to the friend who looks after him, gives him a place to stay on two occasions. It’s a friendship that leads him down the wrong path and into reform school.

The Science of Running

Other than Francois Truffaut’s own feelings of what it’s like to experience acute stress and run away, I don’t know if he had any understanding of the science that supports how his character, Antoine, was able to run and run and run at the end, beyond all believable endurance, and actually makes it quite feasible.

A part of the brain, the hypothalamus, sends messages to the sympathetic nervous system and the adrenal-cortical system. The nervous system tells the body to be alert. It tenses and heart rate and blood pressure increase, affected by the release of adrenaline and noradrenaline into the bloodstream. Simultaneously the adrenal-cortical system is activated, releasing the adrenocorticotropic hormone, which targets the adrenal cortex which in turn releases another 30 different hormones into the bloodstream. Epinephrine and norepinephrine change the body’s ability to do things far beyond its normal capabilities. This is seriously cool: pupils expand allowing more light in, veins constrict to allow more blood to get to the muscles, other muscles relax and more oxygen can come into the lungs, the brain’s scope is limited for finer tasks, so it can take in all the information it can collect about the threat. Where is it coming from? Who or what is it coming from? Should I run? Should I fight? The Clash who even wrote a song about that fear but in the context of love:

Darlin’ you got to let me know

Should I stay or should I go?

If you say you are mine

I’ll be here ‘til the end of time

So you got to let me know

Should I stay or should I go?

It’s very appropriate to Antoine. 20 years later, it was written about the danger of love, about the danger of hanging around, about the fear of rejection. 

No one, not even his mother in a meaningful way, said to Antoine, “you are mine.” If she or anyone had, he might have said, “I’ll be here ‘til the end of time” and acted accordingly. So, Antoine asked, “Should I stay or should I go?” And no one asked him to stay, and everything that life threw at him – in the context of the film – was circumstantial. And when he was abandoned by his parents and locked up, he saw the chance to escape and instinct, pure instinct, took over. And he ran and ran until he reached the beach, then the sand, then the ocean lapping about his shoes. 

If Antoine ran northwest it was the English Channel (193km to Dieppe) that stopped him. If he headed west, it was the Atlantic Ocean – 591km to Brest). If it was south it was the Mediterranean Sea (787km to Marseille).

Friday 29 September 2017 6am

THE 400 BLOWS -

blow by blow

I did my usual written reduction, having been grabbed by its obvious, unaffected, genuinity/genuineness but ungrabbed by its greatness. It's really interesting, I thought.

I now see, after 20 hours, that it is an amazing film, for so many reasons. But, seriously! I watched it, wondered at why it has its greatness and wrote everything down to discern its greatness. So how do filmmakers and academics know this is an extraordinary film? Did they see it once and understand it's authenticity? Was it screened in a college or university course which explained its worth?

That's actually the wrong question and won't bring me any closer to an understanding of why a number of people put this film on their top ten list.

While writing some raw notes in a file about the film, I happened onto an understanding of the emotion of the escape, and an understanding of fear outweighing reason.

Day 90

Thursday 28 September 2017 11pm

THE 400 BLOWS -

blow by blow

THE 400 BLOWS analysis

I did the same thing I do every time I'm confused by a film's status. I wrote down everything that happened in the story and tried to identify any particular themes.

Looking at the bigger picture, I wondered what themes were in Jules et Jim. Was there anything similar?

Antoine's mother was incapable of steadfast love to a boy who craved it.

Moreau's love was similarly deficient when an unbeguiled boy-man offered her his complete fidelity (Jules et Jim).

Unfaithfulness is a condition we all know is a single step away, from either party despite our pledge.

THE 400 BLOWS 1959

JULES ET JIM 1962

I was wrecked last night at 6.30pm but I woke up at 5.30am today and was back into doing everything. At 5.30 I set my youngest, the Beckster, up with her Netflix Kids' program, and continued reading John Baxter's book on Kubrick, including the end of his account of making A Clockwork Orange and everything before and after and about making Barry Lyndon.

At 8.45 the girls and I went out for breakfast at a local shop Ali likes. My poached eggs were 5% runny and 95% set. Not a fan of that. I can cook them so they're runny myself, so that's a disappointment. Mind you, I don't how to make it runny without a 3-minute timer.

At midday I started watching The 400 Blows and then I edited my own 4K video footage for 4 hours. Then my wife and Beckaroo went out for a couple of hours and I watched Jules et Jim from 4.30pm. Then I went to Lane Cove library at 8pm and returned 400 and Jules and borrowed Don't Shoot, The Last Metro and another five Truffaut titles.

I got home in time to watched the last episode of The People v O.J. Simpson episode on Netflix. It was well done. Not overcooked, and not rare.

Day 89

Wednesday 27 September 2017

AWOL

Today I just wandered off into my own blue world. I went outside into a new world where people experienced a life beyond shutters and a beam of light projecting images onto a screen.

I listened to music, mostly my own from a 100 years (or so it seems) ago. I sat down and worked out every shift in mood, and took a note of the minutes and seconds from my 1988 work, Wired. I hope to marry those 12 minutes of music with some of my images which I've shot in 4K

Then I listened to Simon's two works for that album. Then I listened to two of Jerry Goldsmith's non-film music orchestral works on CD.

Gosh, that was an amazing four hours. Then I felt sad for a long time, as I missed Simon, because we both wrote music for Music for Pianos Percussion and Synthesizers, and because we almost wet ourselves when someone recorded Goldsmith's classical works and we got to hear it. 

Day 88

Tuesday 26 September 2017

Bresson's World, Party On

Having ventured so far, I've had to acknowledge Bresson's undeniable genius. I can't let what happened in week one and two happen again. That week I was drawn into the dark, religious, symbolic, anti-Christian world of meditations on suffering, cries, whispers and silence, and Bergman's experience of a God who doesn't interact with mankind. Eleven films in thirteen days. All that I published on the site were two small essays. There are lots of notes but nothing else of substance. 

I don't know what my brain can and can't hold of the information I'm flooding it with. I'm worried that the memories of my thoughts on each of the films I have seen in the last thirteen weeks will fade before I get to week 53. 

So I'm sorting a couple of essays on various things into some semblance of order. I have a cracker one on Bresson's six films from 1950-1967. And another cracker on the faults and values of Sight and Sound vs Time Magazine 100 Greatest Film. I am waiting to hear from Time Magazine if I can use their images to illustrate my articles.

Day 87

Monday 25 September 2017

Comparing BFI & TIME's 100 Greatest Films

Today, I did an analysis of the films TIME magazine published in 2011 and those Sight and Sound (BFI: British Film Institute) published in 2012. Time magazine's list was compiled through a discussion (not necessarily in person) between their two main film critics (who are also historians and academics in any true reckoning), Corliss and Schickel, whereas the BFI's list was compiled through a calculation of votes - statistics with little regard for a foundation of any common ground. Or an acknowledgment of the uncommon ground. In fact, when any director or critic voted for a particular filmmaker's best film, we don't know if the voter has seen two, three, or thirteen of those filmmaker's films.

I wrote an essay today, illustrating the fundamental difference between the validity of two critics' judgment over 846 critics from all over the world. 

Sight and Sound claims their list is the highest marker of excellence. Time magazine attributes their list to two people. It's the result of the two main people who look at film and offer an opinion, which Time magazine has published for decades.

I hope to publish the critique tomorrow if Time magazine allows me to use some images to illustrate my observations.

Day 86

Sunday 24 September 2017

Letting Go of Bresson

This project keeps throwing curve balls. I think I'm going to do one thing one day and then out comes another curve ball. 

Tonight's was born out of needing to move beyond Bresson Week, which has now officially expired after fourteen mixed up days of eating, sleeping and breathing Bresson's mixed up world: 1950-1967.

It was meant to be seven days. It was going to end with Diary of a Country Priest, but then I had a nagging thought, which was that I should find a way to view Mouchette. The number of times it appeared on individual director's and critic's lists niggled me. It was important. If I'm going to spend this amount of time living in Robert Bresson's brain, then I've got to watch Mouchette. So, I found someone with a copy and watched it. And I'm so thankful I did, because it is an important step in the development of where Bresson's head was between 1962 and1967 as opposed to 1950: 

He was moving away from words.

I've been trying to get as much of the important information I've taken in through my viewing of six Bresson films - out of my brain and onto (so to speak) paper - so I can move on and not lose the information that provides me with whatever understanding I have of those films. Without thinking about the content of my mind, trying to break it into themes, my collection of images and words is an unintelligible puzzle of information without analysis.

I've spent four hours spewing thoughts out of my brain and into my fingertips, as words on a page - as fast as I could. I have to. I need to move on. I have to move on.

I am so glad I spent two weeks on Bresson. If Fellini or Kurosawa have this much depth to their films, I will be surprised. If Godard does, I'll be doubly surprised. I think I will leave Godard to a week when I am so confused, but thoroughly immersed in European filmmaking of the 1950s and 1960s, that my brain can accept anything.

It's also a complete surprise to me that 2001: A Space Odyssey and Au Hasard Balthazar and Mouchette could have anything in common. But they do. They're the result of filmmakers who have reduced the things at hand that most enable them to tell the stories they want to tell. I've now read a lot about what happened between 1964 and 1968 to enable Kubrick to arrive at 2001: A Space Odyssey. I've now read a lot about how he worked on a Napoleon project before abandoning it. Of how A Clockwork Orange was developed and made.

What's amazing for me in twelve weeks of amazing realizations, is: 

• Seeing Kubrick moving away from words and strip 2001: A Space Odyssey of explanations and justifications.
• Seeing Bresson embrace words and then move away from them.
• Seeing Bergman reject the words he relied on - often those in the liturgy of a church service - in so many films, paring it back, and then embrace them again.

I wondered if Pauline Kael wrote anything about Mouchette. I went to the New Yorker website and typed in Mouchette and came up with nothing resembling a review, by anyone. But up came some references to the word in some articles about Pauline Kael. Well, what an important keystroke. That Enter provided me with two interesting articles about the circumstances surrounding her writings and where her mind was, what she wanted to achieve, what she did achieve, and what she left behind.

Very relevant to the entire enterprise I'm embarked on.

Day 85

Saturday 23 September 2017 11pm

'The Fall' 2006

The Fall (2006) is full of falls. Falls from grace as well as from bridges. Falls from being worshipped and the great fall - original sin.

Tarsem Singh, who directed music videos for R.E.M. Suzanne Vega, En Vogue and Vanessa Paradis, debuted with his first feature film in 2000, The Cell, which I though was interesting visually but unconvincing as a whole. His next film, was this one, followed by a couple of films I haven't seen. In 2012 he made the stupendously mediocre  Mirror Mirror. In 2015 he directed Ben Kingsley and Ryan Reynolds in Self/less, which rated as a solid effort in the sci-fi genre despite numerous reservations.

The Production

The script is credited to Dan Gilroy [who wrote and directed Nightcrawler (2014) seven years later], Tarsem and Nico Soultanakis. I don't know who conceived this adaptation of the 1981 Bulgarian film Yo Ho Ho but given that he co-produced the film, and that his video commentary states that he funded a lot of the film personally, shooting it over four years in twenty-eight countries, it sounds like Tarsem deserves the credit. I wonder, given the low success-rate of his other ventures, artistically, if he commissioned Dan Gilroy to adapt, write or polish the script? Tarsem's screenwriting credit presumably comes from the fact that he improvised a lot of the scenes in the film with the young actor who plays Alexandria and contributed a lot of ideas that become part of the final script. 

It's a diamond in the rough, full of sumptuous locations that boggle the mind. The look, as with all of his films, is stunning. The costumes by Eiko Ishioka and production design by Ged Clarke - beautiful.

The Narrative

The final screenplay, what is on the screen and what is played by the actors, mostly unknowns, is definitely the vision of one man (along with another screenwriter and a previous film on which it was based). It is so coherent and sensible in the way it unfolds, I can't fathom why Tarsem Singh hasn't done more with the interesting premise in each of the other three of his feature films which I've seen.

The framing device of someone telling a story to another person (and in some cases featuring as the hero of their own fairytale) is as old as the hills. Much older than the silent movies that the film finally presents in a respectful montage of crazy, stupid, and spectacular falls. Everyone of those close shaves shows how and why movie stuntmen end up in hospital talking with Romanian nine-year-olds.

The other two strands of the film's story aren't quite as successfully realised as the relationship between Roy and Alexandria, which is patiently and painstakingly filmed. The story of the fantasy is undoubtedly spectacular in all aspects of vision and sound. 

It's rude to pull the film down even a peg because its achievement is vast - an achievement of marrying the talents of twenty different departments.

The story is, however, about pirates, and villains and pretty maids who need rescuing and like The Majestic and A Wonderful Year, the film within the film isn't Errol Flynn in The Sea Hawk or Captain Blood or Robin Hood. And it also isn't The Princess Bride in which William Goldman ingeniously substituted humour as an antidote to the fact that the story isn't ever going to live up to one of the great Errol Flynn adventures.

The third strand, Roy's desire to be dead, doesn't have enough definition in it's emotion to involve the viewer as a film like Betty Blue, or Jean de Florette or Cinema Paradiso does in making the main characters, as revealed to the viewer: characters who are tense, ambiguous and heartbreaking. I found Roy more ambiguous than feeling a strong emotion.

But that's me.

Day 85

Saturday 23 September 2017 2pm

Robert Bresson 1951-1966

The intention, twelve days ago, was to watch Au Hasard Balthazar (1966), one of cinema's most highly regarded films, as well as Pickpocket (1959) and Mouchette (1967), both of which popped up on several critics top ten lists.

I wasn’t able to find a copy of Mouchette but I was able to locate copies of Diary of a Country Priest (1951), A Man Escaped (1956), Pickpocket (1959) and The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962). It’s certainly more than I’d ever hoped to achieve in the last two weeks, giving me a look at a fifteen-year period of Bresson's filmmaking career from 1950 to 1966. 

I can see why four of his films frequently turn up in lists of the Best 100 Films. He's got a voice which I think was most distinctive in A Man Escaped and Pickpocket. 

I wonder if coming to these films so unprepared for what I'm going to see, and without a general understanding of the cultural and filmmaking context of the films I've not seen before, does me a great disservice? Does watching Balthazar three times to wrap my head around its greatness undermine what I'm doing?  If I'd read about it first, and read about where its value lies, I may have had a different initial response, and gone, "That's amazing. I get it."

Instead, my response to Balthazar is purely intellectual. I have no emotional connection with the film whatsoever other than hating Gerard and wondering what Marie is doing by being involved with him. In contrast, Pickpocket and A Man Escaped drew me in on an emotional level and I went, "Wow. These films are amazing." The Trial of Joan of Arc didn't capture my interest immediately but on a second viewing, I felt a lot for Joan and both times I admired the dialogue. Diary of a Country Priest left me coldest. It was the earliest of the five Bresson films I watched and undoubtedly suffered from that. Having watched the other four films, which followed Diary, already, it felt more like Balthazar, but was overstated, generally, in the acting and scripting. If I'd seen it first, I might well have look at the naturalistic style of Bresson as it developed from film to film. Coming back to it, I think it's by far the lesser of the five films. 

I'm intrigued to see where Bresson went in his next films and will seek them out in a year or so. He made 13 films and I've seen 5. It's a pretty good effort given his importance.

Day 84

Friday 22 September 2017

'Diary of a Country Priest' 1951

Today I watched Robert Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest (1951), his third feature film. Based on a novel by Georges Bernanos, it’s an episodic story about a priest’s interactions with those in his community. He’s very diligent in carrying out his duties, and sincere in his faith.

He has to deal with a young girl in his communion class who cruelly teases him in the way which children so often do with their air of childish innocence, his kindly superior’s gentle criticisms, a local doctor who has lost his faith, and the philandering wealthy count, who is carrying on with his daughter’s governess. The community is full of the typical gossip-mongering of a small country town. When the countess dies, suspicion that the young priest was too harsh with her regarding her waning faith due to the loss of her son, places pressure on him by his superiors to publicly justify what went on behind closed doors. The suicide of the doctor, plus the priest’s ongoing mysterious stomach complaints, accumulate with the other issues to causes a crisis of faith. His physical and spiritual sufferings are too much for his body to endure and he fades away and dies. Although it was only his third feature film, made at age fifty, it’s very professionally made, and one of the things consistent with his later films, is drawing naturalistic performances from his actors. The use of the camera is very confident and many of the images use effective lighting, and shadows to further illustrate the priest’s inner mind, and the relentless torment of his situation. Even sound, something which he develops and uses effectively in other films, is used occasionally to build tension as well. In one scene, the sound of the gardener’s hoe is used to underscore a conversation happening indoors. The viewer’s attention is drawn to the sound during the conversation, but sometimes the sound is naturalistic and other times it is inordinately loud, the volume level changing to underline specific parts of the conversation. Bresson’s use of music is much more conventional than in some of his later films when he used classical music. A gentle orchestral score has been composed for the film by Jean-Jacques Grunenwald. For his next two films which are very documentary-like in style he doesn’t employ a composer, but for The Trial of Joan of Arc, music is credited to Francis Seyrig (who wrote music for Alain Resnais’s Last Year at Marienbad [1961]), and for Au Hasard Balthazar, Jean Wiener (one of France’s most experienced composers with over 100 composing credits), who wrote scores for Bresson’s following two films, Mouchette (1967) and A Gentle Woman (1969). 

Day 83

Thursday 21 September 2017

'The Trial of Joan of Arc' 1962

As you do, I got up and watched The Trial of Joan of Arc again today. I felt I'd been tired while watching it a couple of days ago, never a good way to be when evaluating something, so I played the film again. This time, not on a big screen, but on a pretty much regular-sized television. The film opens with a series of title cards. The statement made is that the film is based on the transcripts of the trial and that the final scenes, her burning, were based on eyewitness accounts.

Filmmakers make all sorts of claims, and use all sorts of devices, often in the attempt to make the film seem like a real document of the truth, so I have no idea of the veracity of such a statement. I don't even know if there is such a thing. ( I will go and research it.)

If there isn't, and Bresson made up the interrogation, then it's even more extraordinary, because it has the power of something real. Again, I'm simply accepting the film on its own terms without researching it or reading about it.

There are three aspects of the film which relate to whether or not the film can be believed:

• There are transcripts of trials so maybe it happened.
• There are other things that happen to Joan outside of the trial, in her cell, for instance, which aren't part of a transcript, and whispered conversations between England's representative and the prosecuting Bishop, and some others.
• There are the final scenes when she is burned alive.

Now, I'm starting to think I'm pretty gullible if I believe that the questions and answers were based on, and condensed, from the real trial. But I'm used to films which state upfront that the story is based on, or inspired by, true events. Then they create a new character to represent three or four different people, and they create additional scenes for tension or intrigue. So, I took this statement as truth other than the other option, a bald-faced lie.

Actually, I know a lot more about the actual historical documents which support whether Jesus of Nazareth lived and breathed and was nailed to a cross and died, than I do about what Joan of Arc did or didn't do. I'm assuming that she existed, and the tale of Joan of Arc isn't just a piece of literature.

Okay, that makes me pretty dumb. But I didn't study history. I studied geology, music, english, mathematics and the Japanese language at school; and English literature and poetry, psychology, and theatre and film at university.

I didn't study geography and science and history and when I play Trivial Pursuit, I can only answer three categories, sport, literature and entertainment. Unless a science question asks me, does Saturn or Jupiter have rings? or how many inches are in a foot? - I'm pretty much stuffed.

I better do some research. [I think she was real.] (Wasn't she?)

2 hours later

So a very strange thing has occurred. I have researched the existence of Joan of Arc, her trial and what has been attributed to her. Like English kings, as dramatized by Shakespeare, I knew she was the subject of films and plays, and that whatever the bare bones of Shakespeare's Richard III or Henry IV Part I and II or Henry V, those people existed.

I grew up in a world of Christian literature, and mid-20th century Christian beliefs, in an English-speaking world. I didn't grow up in the Roman Catholic faith of Saints, but I know about the English monarchy's dispute about Catholicism, Protestant vs Catholic. 

I know that there is significantly more proof of the existence of Jesus than there is of Moses. That other - accepted - historical sources writing about events not about Jesus, but around the time of Jesus, make the existence of Jesus, son of Mary and Joseph, crucified under Pontius Pilate's rule, as reliable as the existence of Richard III and Henry V or Elizabeth II.

I haven't even mentioned the Hebrew and Christian Bible because that's not part of this discussion. I'm talking pure history at this point.

I doubted the existence (after watching The Trial of Joan of Arc [1962]) of Joan of Arc based on the unbelievable claims she made for which she was burned - more as a heretic than a witch.

Maybe it was just a play written by George Bernard Shaw.

My upbringing as - essentially - an Englishman in Australia gave me more access to an understanding of the Japanese language and their part in World War II than what Joan of Arc said she believed in. When I watched Bresson's film of her trial, I had many questions about the extraordinary nature of her claims. To me, they were like the claims of Jesus's disciples, John and Peter, and later, Saul (aka Paul), requiring a belief in God and Jesus and the idea of acceptance or rejection, that people who hear voices can only be crazy, or that they actually hear the voices of supernatural beings (under a conventional acceptable version of Christian or non-Christian belief).

I grew up in an environment which accepted the essential Christian beliefs, so the transcript of Joan's trial, and her claims, was disturbing.

My few hours of research on the internet did not- ever - lead me to read any page on Wikipedia about Joan of Arc. My experience with Wikipedia is that it is as credible as many encyclopedias up to a point. When I read about a subject - something I know a lot about - I see many tiny errors. It's a fatally flawed encyclopedia and I would never quote it as a source. It's full of quotes from magazines and books which are themselves full of opinions, some well-researched, and others completely tabloid.

The (quietly) awful nature of Wikipedia is that so much of it is true, accurate and reliable that the bits which aren't, are accepted as well. And there's no committee vetting it, discussing it and disagreeing about the validity of the content.

So, ad nauseum, I did not read about Joan of Arc in Wikipedia. Instead I looked to Encyclopedia Britannica. It has hundreds of people who specialize in research contributing. I don't even believe in everything they say, as human opinion comes into any historical capture of an accepted belief or understanding of historical events.

What I do know now, is that she was real and there are transcribed and translated versions of her answers to the questions asked at her (terribly one-sided) trial.

What we know about her claims of guidance by angels, and her firm, unshakeable, belief in Jesus, is that until she was broken by the process accusing her of heresy, she was clear, that she would only answer to God and Jesus. When she finally renounced the voices, she was very ill. When she renounced her renuniciation it was after she heard the saints reinforce once again that she was still hearing the words of God through angels.

She didn't want to even acknowledge a reality where she would be burned alive - but that's what was threatened if she didn't repudiate her previous weeks of testimony.

She desperately didn't want to be burned alive. She was happy - literally - to be killed, executed, and live in the afterlife, but not through burning in flames while breathing and feeling and smelling her own flesh burning.

As I watched the film of her trial and heard her answers to the interrogators I believed the words spoken by an actress, directed by a director, saying words written by a screenwriter. It had the ring of truth. It was very powerfully recreated.

My other question though is, what does the director believe?

It's basically the same as asking someone who composes the most incredible religious musical work, what inspired them, given their belief, or lack of, in God and all of the beliefs of Christianity.

Bresson's films are peppered with Christian symbolism and ideology and they also reveal, what I think is an expression of, a person's disappointment in the human understanding of God, sin and judgment.

Having watched Ingmar Bergman's films, which struggle with Jesus, God and the teaching of the bible by ministers and priests, I discovered that Bergman's father was a priest or parson. He rejected the faith of his father, but still was sincere in his expression of it in the lives of his characters as depicted in his films, notwithstanding all of his film's ultimate rejection of all of the Christian yardarms - mankind comprises sinners and requires the acknowledgment of that fact, with contrition and repentance, then allowing any person to be redeemed.

I'm sure someone has written a book about Bresson or made an authoritative documentary. I'll have to investigate.

Day 82

Wednesday 20 September 2017

Robert Bresson Week

When I began this project 82 days ago, I had only heard of the name Robert Bresson in the context of the British Film Institute’s list of The Greatest 100 Films. Until last week when I began Robert Bresson week, my goal was to watch Au Hasard Balthazar (1966), Pickpocket (1959) and Diary of a Country Priest (1951) and maybe Mouchette (1967) and The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962).

After 4 days of analysing Au Hasard Balthazar – I’d started it in the week I did The Godfather Part II screening – it was so unfathomable (because it’s so obviously not a film about an abused donkey with several owners) that it cascaded into me finally watching it straight through three times. I had to push everything back by a week, just as I was about to head into the next week’s films, The 400 Blows and Jules et Jim.

It seems like every week I’m having to re-write the schedule in minor ways to make allowances for including additional films that I think are important. Once you start delving into Ingmar Bergman, for instance, an easy week of three films turns into a mammoth thirteen days of watching eleven films.

It was the last day of Week 10, or the second day of Week 11 – I’m not sure as I’m living in the land of the slightly elastic schedule at the moment – and as I had copy of Pickpocket, now slightly intrigued by this director, I put it on that night – hoping that it would not prompt me to watch it three times and spend 4 days analyzing it. Wrong. It was very interesting. It was thought-provoking. It was shot in such an unusual manner for 1959, like a documentary (full of non-documentary-like close-ups of hands) or a technical manual for would-be light-fingered criminals, which could be called Be the Best Pickpocket You Can Possibly Be. Except, the film couldn’t possibly be cinema verité or a documentary, because, despite its manner of allowing the audience to observe everything as if we were somehow in the pocket ourselves, it looks like it was carefully designed and well-thought out (like, for instance the design of life on this planet) and every frame calculated to elicit a response from the viewer. With a clear understanding of how to tell a story, Bresson made it unfold very naturally, except for the incredible detail of hands and pockets and sharpened spoons.

Somehow Bresson has created a world which unfolds as if the camera was just there observing, and we - the viewer - are like God, see everything and observing everything. Not knowing anything about his methods or his budget constraints, or how much footage he shot, it could be that he had a lot of time to make the film, with lots of careful attention to detail,or that he was just out there in the world capturing actors in real locations which included a lot of real people and a bare minimum of extras or that it was a very complex shoot involving lots of extras and a proper crew.

However he achieved it, Bresson has given Pickpocket and A Man Escaped an authentic feel, like its a naturally unfolding story, almost at random, mixed with clever close-ups which would have been cheap to create requiring a minimal crew, intercut later. It's pretty clever, either way. As writer-director, Bresson really controlled the elements and the days he was shooting. He could have been very spontaneous in what he shot, using experimentation, and made a lot of it up along the way, or it may have been meticulously scripted and storyboarded and made in the traditional manner of having a strict schedule and adhering to it.

Being able to achieve the goal of experimenting with the filmmaking process or having the luxury of time and a budget for any kind of art involving several people, is rare.

Random filmmaking prior to Godard’s Breathless in 1959-1960 was unnatural, unless you were Chaplin or Griffith or Keaton or Lloyd - rich (or the works of many filmmakers I’ve never studied like Lumiere or Edison, I suppose). Random filmmaking is too expensive for most filmmakers, as they need backers. Although painters, writers and composers get to conceive anything their imagination can conjure, it still takes money to publish those thoughts, perform those works or exhibit those pictures to more than a very small audience – even to a small audience. Think of Haydn, Bach and Mozart – they were creating works to be heard in small gatherings of a few dozen people, or maybe two or three hundred, or maybe a few thousand in extraordinary circumstances.

Some people, Monet and Manet, Van Gogh and Picasso and Wagner, Stravinsky and Prokofiev and Shostakovich, came up with a different language, to express their thoughts, and they were extremely successful, but not necessarily in their own lifetime. Schoenberg invented his own musical language, within a set of self-imposed rules, which never became popular with the general public. Eventually, he returned to a neo-Classical musical base. So did Stravinsky at the end. Shostakovich trod a ground between experimentation (atonal and less atonal but heroic) which I have never fathomed musically. The different between his compositions which were accepted and rejected, other than the characteristics of the emotion or action in the music, I can’t discern compositionally (but then also, I haven’t tried to break it all down).

Wagner put his money where his mouth was and succeeded spectacularly – occasionally. Coppola did it too, and was less successful. Keaton did it. Chaplin did it. The great entrepreneurs did it in other fields. One of the great example of this was Howard Hughes who had money that could be wasted. If he created a lame duck, it didn't matter. Or if he took an inordinate amount of time to make a film, it didn't matter.

Experimentation is the luxury that few people can every afford, because the people with the money aren’t the people with the ideas. Not 9 times out of 10, not 99 times out of 100, not even 999,999 times out of a million.

Musically, if I wanted an orchestra to play an experimental composition (or a standard musical work) of 30-45 minutes I would need two sessions (each session with 100 players costing $30 thousand). Plus $5-10 thousand to record, edit and mix it. If it was purely about experimenting, then I could probably hire the Sydney Youth Orchestra or the Australian Youth Orchestra for a day for $5,000, just to play hundred minutes of music over a period of 360 minutes so I could hear how it sounded but not perfect the performance or record it at the level the notes the composition required. If I wanted to record it and it was going to be perfect in execution, then it’s $70,000. Even experimenting with the creation of film (developing) and music (an orchestra playing) is costly. Paint and ink, less so.

Godard tried it with Breathless and succeeded in making a film – highly regarded – with no screenplay, and a film crew ready to work, but not being used on some of the mornings or afternoons or evenings, for which they were being paid, while he came up with ideas for the next thing he wanted to do. Coppola tried a more measured approach with Apocalypse Now, and got his vision on film, edited and released and it was successful. He tried it again with One from the Heart, edited and released, and found himself in $50 million of debt.

I find it funny to observe that in the world of pop or rock music, such a thing was not absurd or foolhardy in the 1960s with many artists including The Beatles. An artist or band with a monster release could go into the studio for a year, at the recording label’s expense, if there was sufficient evidence of previous sales.

Spielberg’s spectacular failure, 1941 is an example. Following that, his good returns were acceptable for a low budget art film, The Color Purple, which were in contrast to the budget vs return for Empire of the Sun, which left the accountants with nothing but red ink. For the artist, when you gain that status, you merely move to a different studio, and make another Indiana Jones film. Universal Studios had to cop their failures (Always and Hook) and happily realize the joyride of their billion-dollar successes (E.T. and Jurassic Park).

Big ideas require big money - and that's not written in stone but it is obvious. You can't conceive of the orchestral requirements of Belshazzar's Feast if you're playing a Mozart symphony and a Rachmaninov piano concerto in the same concert. It's ridiculous. But the true story is stranger than fiction [:Go online and read how it happened.]

If you gave me $60,000 which wasn’t my money, or wasn’t advanced to me, and, needed to be repaid, I could easily conceive of a large orchestral piece of 40 minutes which I think would be one of the most extraordinary pieces of music ever heard or recorded. I would dazzle the audience with an oboe-flute interplay that would build to unheard of dissonances and lead to Prokofiev-like melodies and Shostakovich-like harmonies with a satisfying conclusion. It would be a journey as loving, embracing, joyful, and unsettling and disturbing as our own personal experience of life. I would offer no pre-concert talk. Just an experience like no one in a concert hall had ever experienced. It’s all in my mind at this moment. I see music in every bit of creativity my mind can conceive.

If I was Stanley Kubrick, and the year was 1965, and you gave me $4.5 million, I could create something on film, to a level never conceived of (or seen or heard or recorded). The difference is that Kubrick conceived it, and people came. People came.I don't think he could have redeemed himself or had the control over the next two projects without the previous four project's success.

But If I created something musically for $600,000 or $60,000 I'd make it new and amazing, even if there’d be no way of getting an audience to hear my creation. It would be Kubrick $10 million, receipts $30 million. Philip $60,000, receipts $1,000.

The only way to do it would be to guarantee SSO, or MSO, a fee of $60,000 for one day’s work (performance and recording, for release), contingent on three performances in an important part of their concert subscription series.

Kubrick had a guardian angel with 2001: A Space Odyssey and a film that was doomed on every level, other than its superb execution, made money; and therein lies a tale. A great mind can sometimes only be expressed with great expense. If I was a composer who would write the wordless choral music that Kubrick used for an understanding of the horror and fear and awe of the apes and humans who encountered the monolith, music which Ligeti had already written, no one would pay for the chorus or orchestra and the recording costs. Ligeti’s music which Kubrick adopted is inconceivably conceived. And yet, it only is known to the world, through a recording that became an accompaniment to a monolith as a joining of an alien world/intelligence (Ligeti’s wordless choral music) with an object, variously called a monolith, but which is a gravestone or monument essentially, married with an interaction by the beings of this planet, earth, to the vision and sound of another intelligence. How appropriate that a Louis XVI drawing room is the thing that links Bowman and the alien intelligence, which could evoke the classical music of Haydn or Beethoven, not Strauss or Ligeti, but like Telemann and Handel in Barry Lyndon (which Kubrick surreptitiously pre-empted in A Clockwork Orange).

Day 81

Tuesday 19 September 2017

Just finished a day of recovery

Didn't watch anything. Looked at some notes I wrote about Pickpocket and A Man Escaped and did minor editing. Goodbye Tuesday. Time out.

Day 80

Monday 18 September 2017

Just finished writing a lot of notes about one of the best films ever

I almost put an exclamation mark after that heading. And I never - well, infrequently - use exclamation marks. Gosh,  what a journey, Au Hasard Balthazar to Pickpocket to A Man Escaped in just seven days. I'm pretty sure, Truffaut just got bumped out of this week into next. I've borrowed The Trial of Joan of Arc (tonight - from my once, but now less so) local library at Lane Cove, and found someone who doesn't mind giving me a loan of Diary of a Country Priest. I also just realized I wrote an essay, a month ago, on how difficult it is to gather these 100 movies, and it is still sitting in the Articles and Essays section of the site which I expanded into its own section. Must go and liberate that from the now worthwhile but not updated Articles and Essays section at some point. 

Day 79

Sunday 17 September 2017 

A Man Escaped (1956)

My Robert Bresson weekend just got extended. Balthazar was good (1966), and then I chose to delve deeper and was rewarded. I added Pickpocket (1959) as my second and last Bresson film in the eleventh week, and pretty much signed off. I was winding down from the week and published my Bresson and Kubrick essays, and then noticed on my list of important films, one called A Man Escaped (1956). Then I realised that Diary of a Country Priest (1951) was also highly regarded on many critic's top ten list. Having done 18 of the 100 (in week eleven of fifty-two) I decided I was moving on to someone else's films, and then suddenly changed my mind to do five Bresson films instead of one or two, now, over two weeks.

I think the factor which pushed me over the edge was reading a New Yorker article about Godard, who married the girl in Au Hasard Balthazar. Godard then wrote a film she starred in and they separated a couple of years later in a period which was obviously distressing, for various reasons, to both.

I read some articles - true or false - which led me to notice and recognize four (ridiculously unorthodox) things: linked to Bresson.

Godard finally got to direct (more than his shorts) a feature film, Breathless, and did so without an actual shooting script, one better than Bresson who made it feel like he didn't have a screenplay in some of the films he directed,

Louis Malle got to direct Miles Davis improvising to a loop of a film, without hiring a composer, for his first film

Godard had direct influences from Bresson in the fact he got the girl (actress) from Balthazar as his girl (in a scenario) and life where he had personally been caught, as a thief (by his mother) because he needed money (Roper article in New Yorker which I skimmed), just like Gerard and just like Michel; and conceivably justified it like Michel did. 

Bresson's Michel thought that some people may be above the law, given their skill? It turned out to be right - but not in petty larceny. 

Michel (in subtitles) said:

Can we not admit that certain skilled men, gifted with intelligence, talent or even genius, and thus indispensable to society, rather than stagnate, should be free to disobey laws in certain cases?

Of course, my question is, despite that, they are being out of this world in terms of the creativity any artist can aspire to, so how did Godard do it, and then create an industry from one bizarre success?

Day 78

Saturday 16 September 2017 

Pickpocket (1959)

My Robert Bresson week didn't unfold as I had hoped. I had assumed Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) would be more immediately accessible. It wasn't. And that's why I watched it three times this week. I had Mouchette (1967) and The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962) available, but I couldn't move past Balthazar until I had a better understanding.

Last night I published my Au Hasard Balthazar observations (and an essay about the overwhelming visual achievement of 2001: A Space Odyssey). Tonight I reserved for the other film that featured prominently on many critics and directors top ten lists, Bresson's Pickpocket (1959). Interestingly (I read somewhere that) Bresson was a painter, and (after hearing an interview this week with) Kubrick was a photographer. Their images are arresting. So many frames of Pickpocket and 2001 are great visual compositions.

I enjoyed Pickpocket, appreciated it, and found it instantly more accessible than Balthazar. I don't know why it's an important film - I've written these words many times before - but I'm sure further study would reveal more than I perceived tonight.

I'm intrigued, as I was with Bergman, why four films by Bresson feature in the top ten lists of many of those who were polled by the BFI. I watched 9 Bergman films to understand the former. I've not given the same time to Bresson. There's not the time in the week to bring together my other thoughts about the previous films viewed in the past 78 days. I can't give Bresson anymore time but I'm still keen to see A Man Escaped (1956). 

Day 77

Friday 15 September 2017 

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and

Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)

- writing the essays

It's important to prepare some articles I can publish, rather than just writing and writing, so I decided to spend a couple of days polishing the 2001: A Space Odyssey and the Au Hasard Balthazar essays.

Au Hasard Balthazar is an extraordinary film in terms of its conceit. It's full of so many layers and has so much meaning buried in amongst its seemingly simple story of a donkey and his various owners.

Day 76

Thursday 14 September 2017 

Beyond the Films

Last night I watched the Special Features of (my Blu-ray) 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) with the only person I know who would be interested in doing that - my eighty-six year-old father. 

He took me and my brother along with him to see all the films he wanted to see. Between 1963 and 1983 the idea of babysitters wasn't a concept I'd even heard of let alone experienced.

If Dad wanted to see Chinatown or The Parallax View or Three Days of the Condor, I got to see it aged 10 or 11 .

That's how I know that when I was five years old I saw 2001 in a cinema, for the first time. I also know that my brother who was eleven or twelve at the time thought it was boring but cognitively appreciated the interesting idea of artificial intelligence. I also remember that for some reason my father used to take us all to see revivals of films he liked. There was no babysitting so my brother and I went along to all of the films. I got to see some things that rocked my world and scared the hell out of me.

Day 75

Wednesday 13September 2017 

More Than a Donkey

Today is a significant milestone in this crazy journey to watch the two-hundred greatest films ever - in one year. It's Day 75 and I'm still on track.

I literally thought I was going to watch one hundred and fifty great films and write and publish my observations of a hundred, or so. During the voyage I thought I would add significant films by many directors which were also highly regarded.

If there were four respected Ingmar Bergman films, I would watch the two great ones and also watch two others that figured prominently on top ten lists. In addition to Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, I would also watch Goodfellas, Casino and New York New York. I would add Coppola's The Conversation and The Outsiders to the two Godfather films and Apocalypse Now. I didn't intend to write a detailed analysis of more than one or two by each major filmmaker. 

But I want to.

Instead, I'm watching many films twice, I'm adding more films to the schedule, every week, and I'm having more thoughts going through my brain than 1981 when my brain overflowed with poems, plays and novels when studying Drama, Theatre and Literature. 1981 was the year I thought my brain would explode. That year, over a period of forty-two weeks,

• I read twenty plays, twenty novels and studied the works of six or seven poets 
• wrote music for twelve songs for a university production of The Chapel Perilous 
• sat for my 8th Grade Musicianship and 7th Grade Piano exams 
• wrote film reviews for the NSW University newspaper,
• wrote a film score for The Investigation - a student film
• composed four orchestral pieces - the twelve-minute work Snakes and Ladders, Colossus (my favourite),  and two other three-minute pieces, The Rock Pool and They Rode by Night.

2017 is quite different. It's much more intense.

Engaging the brain does get it working harder than doing nothing. For about fifteen years I didn't give it much to do other than relying on it to help me write stories, write about my experiences in the film industry, and get me to the supermarket and bottle-shop and home again.

Day 74

Tuesday 12 September 2017 

Is Balthazar a Donkey?

Au Hasard Balthazar 1966 - 3rd viewing 

I did it with Cries and Whispers (1972) and The Silence (1963). I watched them three times each in the same week. I felt that there was still something I wasn't seeing even though I was pretty sure I was on the right track after the second viewing. But I didn't feel comfortable with having really understood what Ingmar Bergman was getting at, or trying to say. So I watched them both yet again.

Today, I spent about five hours analysing and writing about Au Hasard Balthazar, breaking the film down even further. This time I was looking at the imagery and symbolism that tied in with Christian beliefs. When I had searched to find what I could about who Balthazar was historically I discovered that he was related to both the Old Testament and the New Testament. What I read, right or wrong, correct or incorrect, was that sometime after the first surviving documents of the New Testament books were found, the name Balthazar was attributed to one of the three Magi who visited the baby Jesus. The Magi have variously been described as wise men or kings who travelled to worship the baby, Jesus, bringing gold, frankincense and myrrh. The Collins dictionary described Magi as either, "members of a priestly caste of ancient Media and Persia" or "the wise men: Matt. 2:1-13". The Cambridge Dictionary (dictionary.cambridge.org) defines them: "in the bible, the three men, thought to be kings or astrologers, who followed a star to visit Jesus Christ when he was a baby and give him presents. They are also called the Three Kings or the Three Wise Men."

I also read that the name Balthasar, Baltasar and Belshazzar are related (on the Encyclopaedia Britannica site [britannica.com]). It defines him as King of Babylon. The article however states that in fact he was coregent with his father Nabonidus, who was king from 555-539 BC, but in exile from 550 onwards. Belshazzar took over and was then coregent from 550 BC, until the Persian king Cyrus II took the city of Babylon in 539 BC.

Interestingly Belshazzar was definitely the son of a King, definitely a crown prince, even if not actually crowned a king and Jesus was known in various Christian literature as the prince of peace as well as the king of kings.

Sometimes an author gives a character a name that means something in particular, and sometimes it is completely irrelevant. My experience of studying poetry and literature in my university days, is an author doesn't always expect to be taken literally and the name can mean something specific if the character is a symbol of something other than what it appears to be on the surface.

I don't know anything about the writer-director Robert Bresson's background or upbringing. But there are two possibilities for the name: 

• He didn't intend the name to have significance
• He did intend the name to have significance

From that there are three possibilities:

• He liked the name. It was of significance to him. It was the name of his father or a relative or of his favourite historical figure. Or he just liked the sound of the name
• He was trying to indicate something to whoever his audience would be, if any. Authors often create works for people who have the same general historical knowledge they have. If he intended the story to be understood on another level, other than the obvious story about a dumb animal who passes through several owners and is mistreated or abused by all but one.
• He was trying to mislead people, because he wanted obfuscate his intention

I wrote: 

"Okay, so the donkey is actually a king. And yet he doesn't do anything. Things happen to him, but he doesn't initiate things. He's the protagonist, but he's not actively progressing the events in the story. What people do to him activate the next part of the story. He's at the mercy of the people around him. Also, he never gets to be a king and rule. He doesn't rule over anything. To turn it around: in fact, he rules over nothing. And yet he sees everything."  - Philip Powers, 12 September 2017

I suddenly realised a broader understanding: that Balthazar is not just a donkey, a king, a representation of Jesus Christ, or an observer of what is going on around him. At any given point he could be all of those things, or just one of those things. 

When Balthazar is taken in by a circus owner, and he looks at the animals, who is the donkey as he looks at the polar bear, the chimpanzee, the tiger and the elephant? And equally importantly, as Robert Bresson's camera shows those animals' point-of-view, who do they see looking at them. Do they see a donkey? A mere animal? Just as they are? Or, a being, above them in creation? Do they see a king?

I wonder if there's anything anyone else has written that has asked or answered these same questions.

I like to read film articles by the New York Times, The Guardian, Variety, Time, Newsweek and The New Yorker. So I did a bit of a search. 

I saw an Anthony Lane reference in the New Yorker and one from the Chicago Reader, but they were one-dimensional and didn't add anything to what I'm thinking about. They didn't provide insight, they just confirmed the greatness of the film.

At 3am Wednesday morning it was time to watch Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) a third time.

Day 73

Monday 11 September 2017 11.30pm

Balthazar Sees Everything

Au Hasard Balthazar 1966 - 2nd viewing 

If I don't get it the first time around then I'll watch it again.

I let this quirky film from French director Robert Bresson sit with me for twenty-four hours but nothing extraordinary struck me about the film. Nothing to warrant it's high regard by filmmakers and critics alike.

I wrote down an outline of what happened in the film, and an explanation of who the characters were, and why what happened to them occurred. Several things baffled me. Why, for instance, would the lovely, compassionate, Marie take up with Gerard, a hateful young man without a single redeeming quality? Obviously, she was manipulated by him, originally, emotionally blackmailed into having sex with him, but why did she develop love for him? Why, also, when she saw him punch a man in the face, and knock him to the ground, did she slap Gerard for his behaviour, receive two slaps, each harder than the other, in return and then walk down the road with him, and affectionately rest her head on his shoulder? It was an intimate act showing love.

Time to watch the film again.

Monday 11 September 2017 9pm 

47 Metres Down 2016 

I don't often watch trailers but this one mesmerized me. I found myself captivated.So much so, that I left my wife at home and went off to see the 9pm session by myself. Very disappointing. And if things weren't bad enough, the ending, a total cheat, left me annoyed. 

Day 72

Sunday 10 September 2017 

Au Hasard Balthazar 1966 

This film is highly regarded by filmmakers and critics. Again, knowing nothing about the film, I was surprised to learn that it's about life through the eyes of a donkey's experiences. It's not a cute film, however. In fact it is an indictment about how humans treat each other, with religious references and symbols, which reveal the hypocrisy of some people towards themselves and to each other.  

Day 71

Saturday 9 September 2017 

Unexpected Disappointments can Give Us Unexpected Delights 

I started writing about why It (2017) is surprising and Dunkirk (2017) also makes an impact on me, despite it's lack of cohesion in the expected unfolding of a film narrative.

Of course, what one viewer sees as a lack o cohesion is another person's deliberate attempt (director Nolan in Dunkirk) to provide some sense of cohesion in the midst of chaos, with an aim to unsettle the viewer and to give a small indication of what it feels like to be inundated with information - aural and physical - mostly bullets, bombs and explosions - which doesn't add up to our expectation of the form in which the information cinema wants to present itself to the viewer most often, and how it reveals itself. In this film it's in a different way. Just like Interstellar and Inception, Nolan is still intent on telling stories out of order - like his first critical acceptance in the non-linear, Memento.

Like Welles in Citizen Kane and Kurosawa with Rashomon, where different versions of the same events are shown,  events revealed outside of their chronology gives greater freedom to the storyteller, writer or director.

It's one of a director's great tools, allowing manipulating of the audience. An example from the last few years, is the book and film, Gone Girl. There are two sides to every story - at least. It's not just a cliché. 

It works well if the intention is to confuse, unnerve or throw the viewer off-balance. Or to lead the viewer down one path before revealing another. In Dunkirk, it serves to underline emotional states of characters in the film.

Day 71

Saturday 9 September 2017 

Unexpected Disappointments can Give Us Unexpected Delights 

I started writing about why It (2017) is surprising and Dunkirk (2017) makes an impact on me, despite it's lack of cohesion in the expected unfolding of a film narrative.

Of course, what one viewer sees as a lack o cohesion is another person's deliberate attempt (director Nolan in Dunkirk) to provide some sense of cohesion in the midst of chaos, with an aim to unsettle the viewer and to give a small indication of what it feels like to be inundated with information - aural and physical - mostly bullets, bombs and explosions - which doesn't add up to our expectation of the form in which the information cinema wants to present itself to the viewer most often, and how it reveals itself. In this film it's in a different way. Just like Interstellar and Inception, Nolan, still intent on telling stories out of order - like his first critical acceptance in the non-linear, Memento.

Like Welles in Citizen Kane and Kurosawa with Rashomon, where different versions of the same events are shown, showing events outside of their chronology gives greater freedom to the storyteller, writer or director.

It's one of a director's great tools, allowing manipulating of the audience. An example from the last few years, is the book and film, Gone Girl.

 

Day 70

Friday 8 September 2017 

Dunkirk [2017],

American Made [2017],

& It [2017],

the 2nd Terminator [1991]

Spent the afternoon in a cinema. And it was a happy experience. It gives me less time to write about 2001 and Godfather, the first, and Part II. I feel happy that I can watch It, Terminator 2, a new film about Dunkirk, and not feel like - currently, and for the last thirty years - good cinema is dead, like so many of my film colleagues (and age-bracket) think. 

There's definitely an essay ready for writing about why Pirates 22, Transformers 21 and others, didn't claim the box office returns the previous incarnations did, and came up short. And why Split, Wonder Woman and Dunkirk and Despicable Me 3 bucked the trend

Day 69

Thursday 7 September 2017

This Week was Definitely Made in America Week

Today was going to be Dunkirk (2017) day but it didn't fit into the time I was free. The only session I could make was American Made (2017). But Terminator 2 and Dunkirk and 2001 and It, and American Made, even if it wasn't made in America, it was American-made.

Day 68

Wednesday 6 September 2017 

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) - 3D

There are more wrinkles in time than I counted on. I don't know from whom I've borrowed that phrase, but last week's wrinkle was Kubrick replacing Antonioni unexpectedly and this week, just completed, it was Coppola's The Godfather Part II replacing Truffaut's two films, with an ill-fated attempt to knock off Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928). Then along came the 3D-version of Terminator 2 (1991). I saw a trailer for it a few months ago and I realized that seeing this film in a cinema is an event, like Lawrence of Arabia or 2001 or Ben Hur or Spartacus. Like Intolerance or Battleship Potemkin. Like Dunkirk. A mate of mine, Larry the cucumber, liked Dunkirk, and was interested to know what I thought, so I prioritized it. Thursday hopefully - or Friday.

Day 67

Tuesday 5 September 2017 

George Lucas paid for Empire Strikes Back out of his Own Pocket

Spent eight hours writing and researching an essay about Coppola's quest for Artistic control and freedom, called Never Invest in Your Own Film.

It argues that the only way to have  have complete autonomy is to do what George Lucas did with The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Coppola did partially with Apocalypse Now (1979) and fully with One From the Heart (1981).

When it goes well like it did for Lucas, he not only made his money back after three of weeks in release (over $30 million worth of tickets sold), but would have made at least a fifty million dollar profit on his investment in the second Star Wars film, just from it's initial theatrical release which totalled $181,353,855.

When it goes badly, like it did for Coppola a year later on One From the Heart, the film grossed $636,796.

Empire Strikes - Budget: $18,000,000 - Gross: $181,353,855

One From the Heart - Budget $26,00,000 - Gross: $636,796

Empire Strikes profit

$160 million

One from the Heart profit - $25 million

12 - 26 February 1982 were two very bad weeks at the office for Coppola, driving him into bankruptcy. Read the essay here.

Day 66

Monday 4 September 2017 

Writing The Godfather vs Godfather Part II

Spent many, many, hours writing about The Godfather Part II (1974) before I started researching the critical reaction. And reading about the making of the film. It wasn't very well received at the time.

Day 65

Sunday 3 September 2017 

The Godfather vs Part II

It's after midnight and I'm writing about how the first and second film compare. Having now done a lot of research into the making of the first film, which was created in a pressure-cooker environment, I believe that adversity and conflict led to a film that on several levels surpasses the sequel. This is not the general consensus. In fact, over the years The Godfather Part II (1974) has been held up as one of the few examples in filmmaking where the sequel was better than the original.

If My Mother Wasn't Dead, She'd be 86 Today

Part of this experience of attempting to watch so many films in such a short period of time is that life goes on in other areas. My father, who was born a year before my mother, is still alive, and I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey with him, for the fifth or sixth time, last Wednesday. In fact, I've never seen the film without him. Any time it screens, he wants to watch it. It's one of his favourite films. One day, I'll have to ask him why.

My mother died twenty nine and a half years ago, at the age of fifty-six. I'm now fifty-four. I've now spent way more time on this planet without her than with her. She never got meet to my wife or her grandchildren. I lift a glass of red to her and as they said many time in The Godfather films, I say, Salute.

Day 64

Saturday 2 September 2017 

The Godfather Part II [1974]  11.30pm

Wow. That was something. A film as richly textured and as well written and directed as the first one. I've seen it once before, more than two decades ago, and it is just as good as I remember it. An excellent film that ranks up there in all departments, just like the original one. And, although I've not had time to digest it and take it all in, I think - already - it clearly sits a notch behind the one made two years earlier under all kinds of additional pressures and difficult circumstances, which this film didn't have to endure.

The Godfather Part II [1974]  6.02pm

The day has finally arrived. It's The Godfather Part II night. Second attempt. The first attempt was a month ago and the damned Blu-ray would not play. Assembling the same guests again, was harder than finding another copy of the film at my local JB Hi-Fi.

Another couple of kilograms of mince, two handfuls of spaghetti, tomatoes, basil, oregano, two clenched fists of salt and ground black pepper, plus brown sugar - and four hours simmering. Voilà! Add a little red wine - one for the pot and one for the chef.

The guests are here: Grumlevel and Mavis, plus Alicia, Emily and Kate.

The kids are set up watching their own film in Cinema 2, another part of the house, Moana (2016).

I'm pressing play in Cinema 1 of the Marsfield Orpheum (as it is affectionately known).

Day 63

Friday 1 September 2017 

Essays about the real Space Odyssey and the real Clockwork Orange

Today was a day of writing and writing. 7 hours straight, just writing. I realised the difference between a great film and an extraordinary film.

I don't know what that would be like in literature or painting but I know in film it is like the most brilliant Mozart work - for me, the Requiem - and the Rite of Spring by Stravinsky, which redefined the landscape of harmony or lack of harmony. 2001 is the Rite of Spring of film/music. A Clockwork Orange (1971) is Mozart's Requiem, or to be equally correct, is as great as Beethoven's 9th Symphony. But 2001: A Space Odyssey is extraordinary..

Day 62

Thursday 31 August 2017 

The Faces of Mercy 2017

Today was a day when I had to go out and do my job, and stop studying for 24-hours and earn some money.

I prepared seven videos of seven works composed by George Palmer for the production, The Faces of Mercy; plus George Palmer's Ithaca, and Breaking the Silence - George Palmer's Concerto for Cello and Chamber Orchestra.

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971)

2 hours after watching 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), I watched A Clockwork Orange (1971). I hoped to see things that would allow me to see more of the director or writer or creator, from one film to the next.

But, instead I saw a number of in-jokes. And they didn’t amuse me, they irritated me. I suppose that Kubrick was already thinking that some time in the future, these little references would be amusing references to his other work.

The beating of the homeless man (the ape killing ape)

The numberplate of Alex’s car “DAV”

The furniture in the writer’s apartment (similarly futuristic)

The record album in the store where Alex picks up two girls (2001 Soundtrack in the foreground)

Amongst many other visual references I think it’s all very cute but distracting.

They were the most immediate thoughts, which were of disappointment, because A Clockwork Orange (1971) is an extraordinary story, and suffers from the little jokes it makes, which undermine the power of its message – theme – story – value.

I’ve seen few films with the power this film has in describing a violent, anti-social, bored, dangerous, group of youths (beings). Trainspotting was the next most real (and distasteful) one that came to mind.

I was concerned about the ease of deceit as these hoodlums made their way into people’s homes.

The Cure

This is the element I thought was most extraordinary in the story. De-sensitize the rapists and killers and enable them to reintegrate into society.

It’s a double-edged sword.

No matter the validity of the rehabilitation method; either you create a defenceless person, or you erroneously think you’ve changed the inherent violent (anti-social) behaviour of hoodlums – but you haven’t.

One of the great films but sickening to watch on several levels.

Day 61

Wednesday 30 August 2017

2001: A Space Odyssey  1968 

A Clockwork Orange  1971

Today watched both films. It's a rare day in life when anyone watches 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and A Clockwork Orange (1971) back to back, in a period of seven hours.

Day 60

Tuesday 29 August 2017

Reading Pauline Kael's Tango Review

Today was reading, researching and writing about Last Tango in Paris (1972). .

Day 59

Monday 28 August 2017

Last Tango in Paris 1972

Life back in Sydney resumed and the girls went back to school, my wife went back to work, and I completed my essay of thoughts on Il Conformista (1970).

In the evening I watched Last Tango in Paris, the subsequent film Bertolucci directed.

When I started watching this film I brought several pre-conceived idea to the experience. 

• When I was a kid I remember hearing that there was an R-rated film (in Australia’s rating system – U.K. and USA it was X) with Marlon Brando, called Last Tango in Paris

• I remember hearing that it had a lot of sex scenes in it and was predominantly about sex

• It wasn’t in the major Top 100 Films Ever lists

  I wasn’t watching it with any notion that it would be a good enough film that I’d want to write about. I’d just watched the one Bertolucci film which came up on lists many times, Il Conformista (1970), and my DVD player rejected my blu-ray of L’Avventura (1960) which was the first of this week’s films. Suddenly my OPPO player wasn’t playing Region A discs. Thwarted, I decided the only thing that even met the basic critieria of needing to see and immerse myself in more European films, was the other famous Bertolucci film – the notorious one. 

It had been a resident of my movie collection for several years. One of those films you buy for $8 on blu-ray knowing that it’s famous and at some stage it needs to be seen. It turned out tonight was the night.

Day 58

Sunday 27 August 2017

Today was the continuation of two and half days away with the family in Australia's capital, Canberra. Last night, I spent two hours after my wife went to bed at 11pm researching the historical reaction to The Conformist (1970) as well as reading any articles in print about any re-evaluations of the film. I didn't get time to write anything down. I just did a lot of reading, which included a fantastic, very detailed, article in The New Yorker by Pauline Kael about her response to the film.

Sunday morning it was time to pick up the kids from Granny and head up the mountain to a nice picnic spot with nephews and nieces and uncles and aunts. The plan was an outdoor barbeque. It was interrupted by snow.

In Australia, in the capital cities, snow is a non-existent or rare event. Canberra is about the one place in Australia where it could reasonably be expected - very, very occasionally. And if it does snow in Canberra it might be called snow but it is actually sleet and melts the instant it hits the ground.

The mountains around Canberra occasionally get snow in winter. But it's one of those things you hear about. There's been snow in the mountains overnight, but you're never or rarely in the mountains to experience it firsthand.

The relatives who have lived in Canberra for the last ten years have never experienced real snow, my two girls have never even experienced sleet, and my wife and I haven't experienced snow since our honeymoon in New York and Boston, almost ten years ago.

This was actual snow and it made 10 Australians, aged 4 to 75, giddy with excitement.

Day 57

Saturday 26 August 2017 8am

Having gone to bed - early for me - at 11pm, I was up at just after 5am writing my analysis of The Conformist for 2 hours before other life surfaced. It's really interesting to write about a brand new film - that's 47 years old - and then research something that is quite unfamiliar, stylistically and politically, yet (nevertheless) make sense of it in broad brushstrokes. I'm quite happy with the thoughts and will publish them asap.

Day 56

Friday 25 August 2017 2pm

On my way to Canberra, a 3-hour drive, with my wife and two children, to visit my wife's family for the weekend.

NB. Anyone driving to Canberra from the North or from North by Northwest, don't go via the airport at Mascot. Even at 3pm it was a bottleneck. At least I got to be a passenger for a couple of hours and research and write about some of the films I've seen recently.

Il Conformista (1970) is just a total block for me. I'm not sure what it is trying to be. Avant-garde? A thriller? A psychological study of an ingrate? Propaganda? Obviously, the title tells me something important.

I need to think more about it and write down the themes I think the film is exploring.   

Friday 25 August 2017 2am

'Il Conformista' 1970

Having had a few more internet connection problems, I have up trying to edit my posted essay on L'Atalante. I shut the computer down, fired up the projector and put on an Italian film at 2am Friday morning. I decided to just watch the next film, the Bertolucci classic, The Conformist.

I was excited at the thought of starting to watch it and then was completely underwhelmed by the story and the manner in which the story was told.

Day 55

Thursday 24 August 2017

Uploaded my thoughts on 'L'Atalante' 1934

Finally managed to get my daily thoughts on line. I resorted to creating a blog under my Google account a week or more ago, to upload thoughts there as well when things went pear-shaped online..

Day 54

Wednesday 23 August 2017 

Today was an endless series of internet problems trying to upload my thoughts. I ended up beginning a proper essay about my experience of watching L'Atalante.

I spent my time researching the fall of the American studio system and writing an essay about that while trying to fight the internet.

Day 53

Tuesday 22 August 2017

Researching and exploring 'L'Atalante' 

Spent the day thinking about L'Atalante and writing down some thoughts.  It was made by a man who only made two feature films, and died at the age of 29, during the editing of this film.

Also, went back to my blog from Sunday about Simon Walker and wrote a more extended article on my friend Simon, which I published tonight.

Day 52

Monday 21 August 2017

'L'Atalante' 1934

Last night I finally watched, L'Atalante which features on many top ten film lists. I was very excited, having moved it up the list to watch earlier than I'd scheduled.

As is my custom, I didn’t read anything about this film before watching it. I knew it was directed by a man called Jean Vigo. I knew it was European, probably French. I wondered if it had anything to do with the land, Atlantis. I didn’t even know it was made in 1934.

So, every moment as it revealed itself, was a fresh moment of vision and audio, that hit me like hearing Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast for the first time or The Rite of Spring for the first time, or seeing the original painting by one of the Masters for the first time, or seeing Metropolis (1927) or Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) for the first time.

It wasn’t a feeling. It wasn’t like I was watching a masterpiece unfold, or at the end, like I’d just seen a masterpiece, and neither were those other experiences, the first time. What it was like, was as if I was experiencing something new, like tasting a fruit I’d never experienced before.

I’ve seen almost 2,000 films in cinemas. I’ve seen another 3,500 on television, Laser Disc, videotape or DVD. I own 3,000 films, most of which I’ve seen. What I’m getting at is that I’m not surprised by many films anymore.

In the last 44 years I walked away surprised very few times out of those 2,000 films in the cinema. The Parallax View (1974) surprised me, A Zed & Two Noughts (1985), surprised me, Pi (1998) surprised me. And when I saw two older films, Tout va bien (1965), Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), De Palma’s vision of Stephen King’s Carrie (1976) and Orson Welles’s interpretation of Kafka’s The Trial (1962), I was also surprised. It doesn’t happen often. Probably Citizen Kane (1941) (which I saw in 1983) and A Clockwork Orange (1971) (which I saw in 1982) surprised me more than any other film I’d ever seen.

But until last night, I’ve never seen anything like L’Atalante (1934) and more than any film so far in my 100 Greatest Films in One Year project, what I watched was: fresh, new, original and constantly surprising. If I’d seen it in 1934, or even 1954 I’d have been surprised by its flow and expression.

I don’t know where it fits into the 1000 Greatest Film Ever let alone the 100 Greatest Films Ever. It was so creative and unexpected that I can understand why 850 academics and 350 directors gave it a wrap, even if after more viewings I don’t come to the conclusion that it’s a masterpiece.

If I look at it as a film made in 1933 or 1934 and hold it against other films from England, America, Germany, I’m surprised. The unfolding of all the scenes is so fluid and full of life, completely transcending the story.

In fact, the story is not the plot. It’s not even the narrative. The story is a whole lot of little scenes that happen while the plot, one of the most slender ever – already a cliché 15 years before that – plays out.

After the introduction – which shows a couple leave the church after their wedding and make their way down to the river – once on the boat, life on the barge becomes a series of interactions that are so naturally performed that I kept asking myself, where is the camera? where is the director? are these actors, or are we watching real people?

In 1934 a camera took up a lot of room. In 1968 a camera took up a lot of room.

I kept asking myself, where is the camera? How is the camera part of these vignettes?

It's amazing.

Day 51

Sunday 20 August 2017

Making 'The Godfather'

Spent the last 48 hours writing my essay on The Godfather (1972) to publish on this website. 

This day, 37 years ago, 20 August 1980, was the day I met Simon Walker.  It was an extraordinary day that changed my life, forever. Probably not his so much, but mine, particularly.

It was a recording session for a Film Australia documentary called Drawing the Line (1980). I was currently in my last year of High School, with just three months to go before doing my final exams and this was exciting and extraordinary because:

• I'd never been to a recording session before
• I'd never met a professional composer before 
• This composer was no more than a kid himself. I was 17 and he was 18.
• There was only one thing I wanted to do in life, and that was be a composer.
• The Film Australia music producer knew that Simon and I were both fanatical about the American film composer, Jerry Goldsmith, so he wanted us to meet.
• He and I would become best friends, and our friendship survived some rocky times to be still intact in 2007, twenty-seven years later, although at this point in time, since 2000 when he moved to Queensland, we only spoke occasionally on the telephone, often if one of us had just finished watching a Goldsmith film. And once started we would talk on and on, for hours and hours.

I think it was his third professional engagement. The music was very interesting, more rhythmically based - as I remember it - rather than with a strong attractive melody in the traditional sense. I'm can't remember if I had the guts to tell him that some of it was reminiscent of Capricorn One (1978), a score I knew very well, and loved. I can't imagine I would have been so insensitive on a first meeting.

I think there are significant days like this in any life, most often to do with the day you met the person who helped you mix chromosomes. Even if you hate them 9 months later, or 9 years later, if you have created a being, then chances are that that meeting is significant. Sometimes there are days where a chance meeting led to something significant happening which changed the course of your life. Sometimes there are the 'sliding doors' moments, where you chose to not get on a bus that crashed, or were sent to the wrong place, and something significant grew out of that chance, or that piece of luck, or that accident.

That meeting, on that day, thirty-seven years ago, led to me having and sustaining a career in music and film that began professionally in 1981 and is still going in 2017.

And along the way Simon and I created little slices of Australian history together. Little pieces of musical history that will forever be recorded in Australia, as physical creations, that live on beyond the time of their conception and release.

Simon went on to write music for a dozen documentaries, many feature films and telemovies, and I was there for the recording of almost all of them.

In particular, Simon wrote two important scores for two high profile films, For the Term of His Natural Life (1983) and The Wild Duck (1984) when he was 20 and 21. He didn't permit me to go to those sessions and as they were early on in the relationship, which wasn't what I considered a legitimate friendship at that time, it wasn't something I felt I should have been allowed to attend.

What resulted, however, after I became a fully-fledged professional in 1984, were soundtracks releases I produced in 1987 for The Wild Duck and in 1988 for For the Term of His Natural Life, the first and second releases of his career, on compact disc.

Strangely I never got a professional or personal reaction or response from him about those releases. He never - overtly - seemed particularly happy or pleased they were released. I never asked for information like that. It either came or it didn't. 

The lines between friend and professional colleague were completely blurred for most of our lives. We didn't keep score, and we didn't ever charge each other for the things we did on each other's professional work and there were lots of them. Professional and personal lives coexisted happily without any feeling there was ever a quid pro quo. If we could help each other out, we just did it, and we didn't remind each other - ever - we just did it. And it went both ways. I'm guessing it was about fifty-fifty although I think he probably helped me out on projects - for nothing - than vice versa. But that's the point, we never kept count and I'd have to add it all up to find out if I'm right or wrong. As we never kept count, I'm not about to start now.

In late 2007 and then in 2008 I emailed him but didn't hear back. I'd written to him, "Hi Si. I met a girl. We're going to get married."

The next year 20 August 2009 passed and I didn't hear from him. That year for the first time on 20 August, I didn't try to contact him. The following year, my first child was born on 13 August, 2010 and seven days later I telephoned my old friend on the one and only mobile telephone number he ever had - to tell him I had a daughter - and it was answered by someone else. She'd had that number for a while she told me. And she'd never heard of Simon Walker.

I was worried because there had now been no replies to several emails over a period of three years and he'd apparently not paid his phone bill and lost his number to someone else. I rang around and spoke with two friends of his who were amongst the last closest friends I knew but they'd lost touch with him.

Towards the end of 2010 I searched the internet using Google, looking for any newspaper reference to a funeral service. Nothing. But, I stumbled on to something else, which made my blood run cold. A single line entry on his Wikipedia page which read, "Simon died in June 2010."

I felt like I'd be punched in the stomach and all the wind had been knocked out of me. I remembered that his ex-wife had remarried and I started ringing telephone numbers around Australia that had the new surname and the first letter of any of his children.

I did it week after week for a couple of months until one day I asked the usually fruitless question, "Does the name Simon Walker mean anything to you?"

There was a hesitation, then, "Yeah, he was my dad."

It was true, Simon had passed away, in June 2010, aged 48.

I lift a glass to you, my friend, so dear, and so long gone. I miss you. Bye Si.

Phil

Day 50

Saturday 19 August 2017

I've Seen Greatness 2017

I'm calculating what I have yet to see and working out my Darwinian list of film scheduling. I'm also trying to polish another essay.

I've realised that I need to 

look   reach   pull   clear  

as I plummet to earth with 20 films in my brain.  Those four words that you need to have foremost in your head when skydiving - that they go over and over, again and again, in the preparatory training, before your first jump -were good words to bring to mind seven days ago and consider while free-falling through the world of great films, dominated by - gravity - Ingmar Bergman.

During the last ten days I've been lucky enough to have time to watch the other three Ingmar Bergman films I found by accident in Lane Cove library: Through a Glass Darkly (1961), Winter Light (1963), The Silence (1963).

Winter Light is like preparation for Fanny and Alexander and The Silence is like preparation for Cries and Whispers. 

But I saw them out of order and didn't get to experience the developing artist. Now, I see where the regard for Fanny and Alexander comes from by directors and now I rate Cries and Whispers even more highly than a few weeks ago when I already thought it was ground-breaking and brilliant.

I started an essay three or four days ago, called Ingmar Bergman - Extraordinary Artist which I will add to over the weeks as my understanding of his films becomes more finely tuned. I think watching these twelve film in seven weeks would be like reading twelve of Shakespeare's greatest plays in seven weeks, or hearing twelve of Mozart's greatest works in quick succession,  

Day 49

Friday 18 August 2017

writing  writing  writing

It is the end of Week 7 and it’s time to reflect on what I’ve seen so far that is on the 100 Best Films list of critics/academics and historians and directors. Only 8 in 7 weeks, although I did watch Tokyo Story (1953) and Man with a Movie Camera (1929) in the two weeks before the project started. Technically eight, but actually ten. The General (1926), Sunrise (1927), Man with a Movie Camera (1929), Tokyo Story (1953), Wild Strawberries (1957), The Seventh Seal (1957), Persona (1966), The Godfather (1972), Taxi Driver (1972), Fanny and Alexander (1982).

This has been a week where I have tried to further determine my objectives and goals and to listen to feedback. The premise is still there, but the circumstances have altered in a few minor ways.

1. I have lots of notes and lots of thoughts and no really realized essays.  If I don’t start working on the notes and start making them into something, the year will have gone by and I will have watched 200 films and have notes which tell me that I liked The Silence and The Godfather and Taxi Driver but still found Fanny and Alexander (1982) was executed well but didn’t sit in an important place in my history of film, and nor did Sunrise (1927).  There will be no sense of the continuity I want to bring to the films by grouping them.  So, I decided, it is time to start writing and analysing.

2. My website’s format for the first seven weeks makes navigating the daily blog and the section on thoughts and the current films I’m screening – difficult. So I upgraded my hosting to a higher level, allowing better navigation, where you can jump from one section to another by a link rather than by scrolling. I didn’t have any great ambition to make it easy. I thought that the interest of diehard people in the material would make people scroll and scroll and scroll to look at the different sections.

3. I’ve worked on making and expressing my own categories of evaluation as I watch the films.  I watched Taxi Driver and The Godfather, and also watched Casino and The Cotton Club.  Four films by two directors with two indisputably great films and two others failing to live up to that exceptional level but being good or very good (in my opinion).

Now I have clearly defined markers by which I reflect on films I've watched in the 100 Greatest Films Ever.

4. Working on my own questions or categories led me to do something I adamantly didn’t intend to do, which was to rank the films I’m watching in my own - unpublished - order. The questions I ask in the evaluation process have their own way of making inadvertent rankings. So I arrived at a guiding system – for myself – to asking ‘how exceptional or extraordinary are these films in different categories?’; or when looking at different levels or layers of meaning or craft.

5. Week 8 reinforced that I need to be flexible, pliable, and go with the flow, while still maintaining the touch points of the 100 greatest films.  This led to writing some detailed thoughts on a few films (The Outsiders, Winter Light) and publishing them.  This further led me to be mindful of the pitfalls and advantages of looking at a list of films other people think are great – and the pitfalls are few and the riches are already abundant.  My spreadsheet of the different list of films started broadening, in Week 3 as I came across more and more lists, but with very few movies adding to the length of the list.  Consensus is a quite tight bond between different people.  Looking at Critics, Academics, Directors and print media (TIME magazine, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, EMPIRE) and Popular (like IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes), there is a wonderful crossover of film fans and film fanatics.

Fans and fanatics are of course the same thing as fan is a contraction of the word fanatic. Except they’re not. I reckon that the word fan actually means lover, and fanatic means more obsessive. In the way we use the word fan and fanatic in common language, with a broadly consistent meaning, fan actually means lover, and fanatic means approaching obsessive.

It’s like the difference between someone who thinks there’s really good coffee, and someone who does a Barista course and learns why some coffee-making is really good, and becomes obsessive about the pursuit of good coffee – fresh beans, tamping, water pressure, froth, foam, execution.

It’s like the difference between someone who has their favourite brand of pasta and someone who learns how the people who make the pasta make pasat (the Italian carbohydrate, not the VW automobile), and what makes the difference making it yourself and creating great pasta and Great pasta, and then obsessively pursuing the location or creation of the best pasta thereafter.

It’s like someone who has their favourite Thai restaurant until they find (accidentally) another one that is even better, but then does an all-day cooking course in Thailand, and makes 20 Thai dishes from scratch in one day – that would be moi and moi wife – and now knows what real Thai food tastes like.

It’s like someone who sees every film that screens in accessible cinemas (fan) and someone who goes out of their way to find (in addition to those films) more films, which are more esoteric (fanatic) – and someone who hunts down even more obscure films – in libraries, on Amazon, online, on the BFI Player (obsessive, compulsive – and probably an actual disorder).

When film watching becomes a disorder or neurosis – obsessive compulsive film disorder (OCFD).

The list of what I've watched so far for the top 200 is:

TOKYO STORY (1953)

MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA (1929)

THE GENERAL (1927)

THE SEVENTH SEAL (1957)

PERSONA (1966)

FANNY AND ALEXANDER (1982)

HOUR OF THE WOLF (1968)

CRIES AND WHISPERS (1972)

SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT (1955)

SCENES OF A MARRIAGE (1974)

WILD STRAWBERRIES (1957)

THE GODFATHER (1972)

THE CONVERSATION (1974)

CASINO (1995)

THE COTTON CLUB (1984)

TAXI DRIVER (1976)

SUNRISE (1927)

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY (1961)

WINTER LIGHT (1963)

THE SILENCE (1963)

That leaves 90 films (in the 100) to watch in 44 weeks.

Day 48

Thursday 17 August 2017

'In Paradisum' 2017

Amongst the other things that people do in their lives when they're not watching movies, which is working, I completed (a project on Tuesday of) a film I've directed, called 'In Paradisum'. It's a 13-minute film presenting a performance by the Sydney Youth Orchestra of George Palmer's work, written in memory of Timothy O'Brien, a young man who died at an age when most people are starting the second part of their life - adulthood. On Tuesday, the composer and I watched the two versions of the film I have made. One for the family, in memory of their son, with personal photographs interspersed; the other a complete audio-visual recording of just the performance by the orchestra. For George, the composer, and me, the director, it was a very emotional experience, as we listened to and watched the performance of a bunch of insanely talented kids, playing a piece of music which celebrates everything he was and is, now, in Paradise. 

It's been an extraordinary journey for me and one where my focus has always been that the only really important thing about making this the best film possible, is because it actually attests to the wonder of this boy's life, and the love everyone around him had for him, 'In Paradisum'. 

Wednesday 16 August 2017

'The Silence' 1963 11.58pm

I was so intrigued by this Ingmar Bergman film which I liked visually, and which completely arrested me, that I watched it for a third time in six days tonight. On Monday I searched the internet for reviews but didn't come up with anything that gave me any significant further understanding of the obvious themes: a life lacking spirituality; living with loneliness and being part of a family and being lonely; disconnection with your most immediate world - your family - as well as the rest of the world; not believing in anything except the life of a boy, whose life is in the process of experiencing the things - events and emotions - that will make him who he is, And as part of that development he has two role models: one which lives for the pleasures and emotions; and one which lives in the world of knowledge. The former is Anna who lives to be touched and feel pleasure. The latter is Ester who knows many things about the world which are appreciated through study and learning. When Ester puts her head gently against Johan's head she realises it is uncomfortable for him. She says, "Mummy's the only one who may touch you, isn't she?"  

In a career which includes the religious ceremonies of the church, and their ministers, in all of the films I've seen, this is the film which is outside the church, the worship and the ministers and bishops and the indictments of a being's behaviour.. The two sisters judge each other, but the boy who is the spirit, doesn't,. He accepts them both whereas the God that Ingmar Bergman knows would reject them both.

This film's judgment of the character comes from other people, not from a superior being. That's unusual for Bergman.

Day 46

Tuesday 15 August 2017

'The Silence' 1963 7.58pm

I managed to make it back to Lane Cove Library before it closed so I could renew the Faith trilogy.    

'The Silence' 1963 2am

Well, this is the last Ingmar Bergman film I have access to. And it is wonderful. Such a curious story and told so well from the point of view of the boy. But I don't understand it. That kills me to say it,  but I don't understand what the story is telling. I feel dumb and stupid.

Day 45

Monday 14 August 2017 

'The Communicants' 1963

I read somewhere recently that the second film (known in English as Winter Light) in the Faith trilogy is called, "Nattvardsgasterna'. When I did a translation online it came back with a meaning - 'communion' and 'ghost'.  A translation is also, 'The Communicants'. Wrote my essay on Winter Light tonight, 1,134 words. Not a lot, but not inconsiderable.

I published my essay tonight which I mentioned a few days ago, called:

Inside 'The Outsiders' (1983) - The Miracle of Creation

An Essay by Philip Powers 

At first it wouldn't upload so I just did a word count and it is 4,595 words, maybe that's why. That's about ten or eleven pages. I think my hosting plan is just about out of space.

Aaah, wrong, success.

It's in Essays section. Scroll down and down and down. Navigation isn't easy. Will have to improve that. 

Day 44

Sunday 13 August 2017

Birthday 2010

I looked at my phone at  0000  13 August 2017. I realized it was the first day of my daughter's seventh year of life. I decided to take a break from the analysis of film and do what I always do, which is write her a letter (an email, in fact) describing my perception of who she is at this particular point in time. It's usually a reflection, and it is again, of the things that are special and which I appreciate about her. That took the three hours that I would have written about Taxi Driver (1976) or The Cotton Club (1984). I'm not complaining, just saying. It was essential to the legacy of a couple of dozen emails I will write/have written (to an email address I created the week she was born) which she can read when she turns fifteen.

Day 43

Saturday 12 August 2017

'Winter Light' 1963

Last night was Winter Light (1963), the second film in Ingmar Bergman's Faith trilogy. By chance I came across this three-disc set in the library which wasn't filed under the films' titles. I watched Through a Glass Darkly (1961) a few nights ago, which was a fascinating addition to what I know about Ingmar Bergman and the themes which reoccur. Winter Light similarly was about faith, but paper-thin if someone is trying to understand it, as normal film narrative, where there a significant number of events unfolding.

 

Day 42

Friday 11 August 2017

Falling Behind, But I'll Pick Up Again  4am

If today is Day 42, then I am seven weeks into this crazy schedule. Crazy because I'm trying to do an analysis of the films I'm watching, but I'm also bringing more and more films into the project, because I have them in my collection. The idea of looking at a significant number of films by the one filmmaker while viewing the one or two great ones, is so appealing and intoxicating, I can't help myself. And this leaves less time to analyse them. So far, I have watched eight of the 100 best films as voted by critics and ten of the 100 best films as voted by directors. There is a crossover of seven films the critics and directors liked but there are three films in the directors vote not in the critics' vote: Hour of the Wolf, Man with a Movie Camera and Persona. And for the critics: Wild Strawberries.

This statistic is quite bizarre. Three out of the four films which don't feature in the top 100 of both critics and directors are by the same director, Ingmar Bergman. Only two films by Ingmar Bergman are agreed upon, Fanny and Alexander and The Seventh Seal. but that means that five films by that one director are represented on the two lists.

What is most interesting to me is that once I get into Godard, Tarkovsky, Kurosawa and Fellini, Bresson and Welles, I'll knock three films off each week from the two lists. Hitchcock and Kubrick will be big weeks also.

I need to look at my schedule to see what is in week eight.

Watching is Easy, Thinking is Harder  2am

Over and over, the hard part of this project is not watching an average of two films a week so I can view the 100 Best Films Ever, or watching four films a week so I can embrace another 100 films which are also considered to be amongst the 100 Best Films Ever. What's difficult is finding a balance between watching the films and having the time to think about how good, or brilliant, the films are. Today I researched The Cotton Club and found Pauline Kael's damning review; as well as her celebration of the greatness of Taxi Driver.

Day 41

Thursday 10 August 2017

'Taxi Driver' 1976  6am

Went a little crazy and decided to stop writing my two essays about The Outsiders and watch a movie instead of writing about them. It is after all Scorsese Week and I've only watched Casino (1995). The great one of course is Taxi Driver (1976), which I love. So at 3.45am I turned the equipment on, and screened the restored print. I've only seen it twice before, including one time in 1995, in the cinema. I would think it was sick to say I love this film if I hadn't come across two quotes which gave my feelings for the film perspective.

Roger Ebert wrote, "Taxi Driver is a film that does not grow dated, or over-familiar. I have seen it dozens of times. Every time I see it, it works; I am drawn into Travis' underworld of alienation, haplessness and anger."

Pauline Kael wrote, "I imagine that some people who are angered by the film will say that it advocates violence as a cure for frustration." 

Philip Powers wrote, "I find it hard to watch. I can't see it more than once every ten years. It is such a sinister depiction of someone who is unsettled within themselves, and little by little images, events, behaviours by others, sting us more and more sharply. Have you ever thought that your emotions were under control and you're dealing with a situation remarkably well, and then, out of the blue, you snap? Or, that something is eating away at you, but you're not seeing it for what it is, and your behaviour changes, you withdraw into yourself, you intellectualize more, and simultaneously develop a persona with less emotional connection with the people around you who love you, or the world around you which - heartbreakingly - keeps moving forward irrespective of your pain? That's what happens to Travis Bickle, and he disassociates, and BANG!

Slightly Obsessed  2am

I'm on track still with my target of watching the 100 Greatest Films in One Year, which consists of at least two hundred films. Last week was Francis Ford Coppola week (which by necessity included a Martin Scorsese film). Coppola week spilled into the following week as I included The Cotton Club and The Outsiders. This week, Martin Scorsese week, will add to Casino, by including New York New York, Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. Last week also included Murnau's silent film, Sunrise (1927), and another Ingmar Bergman film, Through a Glass Darkly (1961). Even now, I'm still energized, and writing an essay about The Outsiders and another about The Cotton Club.

I updated my LinkedIn profile yesterday, and updated my status (and end date in June 2017, after 9 years) as Former Media and Technical Producer for the SSO, to my current role as Managing Director of 1M1 Digital Pty Ltd. 1M1 Digital includes my music production work (Robin Hood and Ivanhoe composed by Mark Isaacs), my most recent film directing (In Paradisum by George Palmer with the SYO), two screenplays I'm developing (the feature film The Fault in My Brain and the documentary Brian Abbot: Mystery Star), the film I'm directing currently (Be Still), and this project which I originated, which after 40 days I should probably re-title. Currently it is 100 Greatest Films in One Year. I should rename it: The 100 Greatest Films Ever. Better make that 200. In One Year.

Day 40

Wednesday 9 August 2017

'Why Creative People Are Betrayed Over and Over'

Today I kept writing my essay about how and why The Outsiders was released in 1983 at 91 minutes, then re-released in 2005 at 114 minutes. It's about how in 1983, a Lone Star High School librarian and a number of students in Fresno; an author in Tulsa, Oklahoma; a director in San Francisco; and an actor in Los Angeles, were betrayed by a Hollywood film studio.  I'm calling the essay:

Inside 'The Outsiders' (2005) - Betrayal of the Creators by a Studio 

Gene Phillips' biography of Francis Ford Coppola provides a little bit of the detail for my essay but other research I've done has rewarded me with several newspaper articles published in The New York Times, The Guardian, Sight & Sound, Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times, which have added to my insight into how a confluence of events can result in a film's creation under unlikely circumstances, and it's subsequent destruction in too-familiar circumstances, by non-creative forces. It is with not-inconsiderable-irony that I show how in Hollywood, more often than not, the outsiders are the people who actually create the creation - make the films - and that the insiders, the Studios, so often destroy the creation. 

The uncomfortable relationship between the people with the money and the people with the talent is once again illustrated in yet another instance of - and I'm changing the wording of the cliché/paradox to suit my purpose - a resistible force (the creators) being stopped by an immovable object (the film studio), this time with S.E. Hinton's novel The Outsiders (1967) (the victim). 

That The Outsiders (1983) was then reconstructed twenty years later into its current form, The Outsiders: The Complete Novel (2005) is almost as miraculous as how it came to be, which began in 1980, which is a separate essay, which I'm calling:

Inside 'The Outsiders' (1983) -     The Miracle of Creation

An extraordinary series of events led to Francis Ford Coppola's knowledge of, and decision to write and direct the film adaptation of, S.E. Hinton's novel, which resulted in The Outsiders (1983).

Day 39

Tuesday 8 August 2017 11pm

'Spider-Man: Homecoming' 2017 'Atomic Blonde' 2017 'Baby Driver' 2017

This project has taken over my life to such a degree I haven't got to the cinema for two weeks, with the exception of Dawn of the Planets of the Apes a week ago because my father wanted to see it. He visits weekly, on a Wednesday night, but nine times out of ten these days he prefers to stay home with us and watch a favourite film rather than see anything film studios are producing currently.

Last night I hit a wall, and didn't have the energy to think past midnight, or read any more about The Outsiders and The Cotton Club. So I went to bed early and got up early today. I worked out that if I got to my local multiplex at 10am I could see three films before picking up my two children prior to 6pm.

10am: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) - quirky comedy

1.15pm: Baby Driver (2017) - quirky comedy-slash-heist film

3.20pm: Atomic Blonde (2017) - quirky action-slash-spy film

5.55pm: Pick up Children (2017) - real-life responsibilities

Day 38

Monday 7 August 2017  Researching 'The Cotton Club' 1984 / 'The Outsiders' 1983

I began to wonder, when were these films actually shot, as opposed to the date on the films, which is when they're actually released?

When you see a date next to the title of a film, it generally means that the film was shot the previous year or even the one before. It's rare for a film that requires any production values to start and finish shooting, and editing, and have marketing prepared for a release date, all in one calendar year. It's not something you'd ever want to assume, but it's a reasonable rule of thumb that The Outsiders was filmed in 1982/83 and that The Cotton Club started filming in 1983. In actually fact, The Cotton Club had been filming since 1982. Before Coppola even joined the project the film had already been in production for six months. When the last day of filming occurred on December 23, 1983 the film's shooting schedule included eighty-seven days over a period of twenty-two months. If this assertion is correct in Gene Phillips' book, then Coppola joined the project in late 1982.

If you factor in script development, and then pre-production it's reasonable to assume that any film has a bare minimum three-year period from concept to release. A few exceptions come to mind like Soderbergh's guerrilla-style movie, Full Frontal (2002), that was a far better film with a commentary track and no dialogue, than with a plot unfolding.

Day 37

Sunday 6 August 2017 

'The Outsiders' 1983 11pm

When I saw The Outsiders back then, it didn’t mean anything to me. Culturally it was something that didn’t mean much to me in the same way that culturally Rebel without a Cause didn’t really resonate with me either. I knew there was a slim novel called The Outsiders, but that was about it. The film was okay but disappointing as I experienced it at the age of 21 or 22.

Thirty years later, in 2015 I came across Rob Lowe’s autobiography in one of the secondhand bookshops that I still frequent like some people go to casinos or brothels. I knew Rob Lowe from a favourite film of mine, an early one of his, About Last Night, written by a man who became a favourite writer of mine, and directed by a man who later became known to me as the co-creator of one of my favourite tv shows, thirtysomething. I also knew Lowe from Youngblood which I remember seeing at Village Cinemas on George Street when I was twenty-three. More recently I’d heard of the problems he encountered while making Bad Influence, with a director I really like, Curtis Hanson, and enjoyed his nice guy role on The West Wing. So, I bought his autobiography and read it.

What I didn’t expect to find in it were some really interesting stories about Francis Ford Coppola and The Outsiders. Rob Lowe was dismayed (pp. 163-165) that the scenes that brought more out of him as an actor, were nearly all gone. A character that was integral to the book was suddenly absent from the film.

I’ve read a lot of biographies and autobiographies but I was rarely moved by a situation as I was by this. Lowe was invited to a screening of the film, which had been significantly delayed from its original release date. He’s still on edge, wanting to know how his scenes turned out. He’s not at a screening with the other main actors, but a smaller one, a week later.

This is an extremely select, private advance screening. I don’t think I’ve ever been more excited or more nervous. I see the cinematographer Steve Burum.

"This movies gonna make a hundred million dollars”, he says to no one in particular, staring at his feet… It’s an old, run-down room, but as the lights do down and the first elements of sound come up, I know the equipment is state of the art......... [T]he… credits begin. I see my name… I read the list – Tommy, Patrick, Emil, Ralph, Matt, Tom – and I’m so proud of them...

As the credits unfold he realises that this is a teen movie like no other teen movie but when the first scene begins, it’s not the first scene in the script, it's jumped about ten scenes, to the scene at the drive-in. Everything from the first 15 minutes of the film is gone:

I wait for the movie to stop and return to the beginning – the whole first fifteen minutes with the introduction to all the Greasers as we rescue Pony from the Socs… and the scene where Pony and I talk in bed about Mom and Dad and why we are orphans, and the other great scenes from the book that we had worked so hard on.

Day 36

Saturday 5 August 2017 

watching 'The Conversation' 1974  & listening to the film 11pm

It's fascinating to watch it with a more dispassionate eye. One thing that is unusual, is the ground-breaking collaboration between a director and a sound designer. Gene Phillips' well-researched and beautifully written book on Coppola has an interesting introduction by this fascinating sound man, Walter Murch, who explored utilizing sound - at times - where it tells more than the vision or what the eye can see. It's a new use of sound that I don't think has been attempted before this film. Even though the film narrative is conventional the film's sound narrative is avant-garde. 

In a post-Watergate era, the idea of people spying on other people, whether it is explicit or implicit, or through deception, is brilliantly explored. It can be a person in the park, maybe a mime doing street theatre, or a priest listening to your confession, or a woman who comes back to your place for a few drinks, or someone who has hired you to follow someone, or recording someone on your phone, or eaves-dropping another person's conversation, or watching the surveillance cameras in a store. What in 1974 was an interesting indictment about the lack of privacy and the growing scrutiny of everyone, and how a President could spy on himself and ultimately be the very hand of his own downfall, is rampant these days.  © Philip Powers 2017

Day 35

Friday 4 August 2017 

'The Conversation' 1974  11pm

Watched The Conversation again. Fascinating. More tomorrow.

Day 34

Thursday 3 August 2017

'The Cotton Club' 1984 11pm

I'm in the midst of gangsterland, murder, music and mayhem, as viewed through the eyes of Coppola & Puzo and Scorsese & Pileggi.  It's The Cotton Club (1984) versus Casino (1995), as secondary films by these first-rate directors' celebrated masterpieces, The Godfather and Goodfellas (1990). Not to be outdone by my crazy Swedish binge: 9 Bergman films in 11 days, I've also watched Coppola's The Conversation starring Gene Hackman and Murnau's 1927 Oscar winner for Best Picture, Sunrise.

Day 34

Thursday 3 August 2017

'Sunrise' 1927  3am   

Sunrise is a very interesting film. Again, without context, I struggle to see its greatness. I liked the music score. It made great descriptions of the mood or emotion of several scenes, as well as being beautifully orchestrated.

Day 33

Wednesday 2 August 2017

'Sunrise' 1927    & 

'War for the Planet of the Apes' 2017

Home from the new Planet of the Apes film which I went to with good spirits, believing that it had been well received, generally, I decided to put my toe into the water of Murnau who I don't know. Sunrise, the Oscar winner for Best Film in 1927.

I found War as plodding and tedious as the second one,  although I did like the first one, quite a bit. Humanity, as displayed in War are a very cliched group, illustrated with a one-dimensional performance by Woody Harrelson. It's a sad indictment of the film when CGI characters are significantly more real than real characters. Motivation for the human's cruelty towards the apes is thin, although I understand that they're angry about the virus that is spreading and taking away their voices. The escape of the apes from the compound where they are imprisoned conveniently coincides with the attack by another lot of humans against the rebel Colonel. Then even more conveniently, a freak natural event wipes both parties out leaving the apes free to be led to the promised land by a Moses-like Caesar. Heavy-handed Old Testament symbolism. I thought this year couldn't get any worse than the new (2017) Pirates of the Caribbean and Transformers films. But apparently it can. I don't want to post this on Facebook because everyone else seems to think this is a good film. I'll leave my comments here.  

Day 32

Tuesday 1 August 2017

Researching Godfather

Spent a lot of time on the internet reading different reactions to the film at the time it was first released, plus listened to Coppola's commentary track.

Day 31

Monday 31 July 2017

Thwarted

I think I reached the limit of what my website can publish on my current plan. If I add anything after Day 28 it fails, and if I remove it, it publishes, again. So, I haven't been able to upload all of what I've written, yet. 

Since Saturday, I have watched Casino (1995) and that night watched Coppola's The Conversation (1974). Sunday was a day of rest, although I still tried to up load Saturday's thoughts.

Day 30

Sunday 30 July 2017

'The Godfather' again

I watched half of 'The Godfather' again in the early hours of Saturday morning. Then after Casino, I watched The Conversation, in the early hours of Sunday followed by watching the second half of The Godfather again. Wow. Such an achievement, an extraordinary film.

Day 29

Saturday 29 July 2017

'Casino' 1995

As you can guess from the title of today's thoughts, something has gone wrong with my plan to watch The Godfather Part II (1974) tonight. I wonder if Julie Powell had to rethink her cooking schedule when things went wrong in her year-long attempt to cook all of Julie Child's recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Day 28

Friday 28 July 2017

'The Godfather' 1972

Oh, what a night. This has been planned for weeks now and finally the event of watching The Godfather (1972) has arrived. This evening has been much anticipated and I was richly rewarded. Again, I didn't do any reading on the movie beforehand, allowing the movie to speak for itself.

Is it one of the greatest films ever made?    Absolutely.

It's after midnight now, my wife's in bed and I'm going to watch it all over again, now, for as long as I have the energy. I think the aspect of watching the film I enjoyed the most was watching Brando, Caan, Pacina, Talia Shire, and some of the smaller parts, like Abe Vigoda's role. There's a professionalism that is consummate even though the filmmaking doesn't quite have the sophisticated look of another great gangster film, Once Upon a Time in America (1984).  Like all other excellent gangster films they had the benefit of hindsight. What Coppola did was visionary, and he realised that what Mario Puzo had done was also visionary.

More to come... 

Day 27

Thursday 27 July 2017

'Cries and Whispers' 1972

Decided to watch the Ingmar Bergman film Cries and Whispers again, tonight.  I realise that any attempt to understand progressive art, requires a second or third or multiple viewings. And how handsomely I was rewarded tonight. This is an extraordinary film. I don't even know how to explain how a film from Week 3 popped up again, but now that I have watched it again, I have appreciated this film on a different level. This is a brilliant film, concealed in the form of a normal film. With analysis, it now starts to reveal its greatness. © Philip Powers 2017

Day 26

Wednesday 26 July 2017

I'm still going after 25 Days, and today I've been preparing for the two films I missed out on seeing in Week 2, which I now plan to watch on Friday, (Sunrise [1927] and Nosferatu [1922]). And then on Friday evening begins the epic tale of The Godfather [1972]. And on Saturday evening it continues with The Godfather Part II [1974].

Day 25

Tuesday 25 July 2017

Surely, a 100 Greatest Films Ever List Doesn’t Make Sense! –

“It’s Not My List, It’s Their List."

As I started to think about what I wanted to say about where Ingmar Bergman’s films fit into the 200 films that much more mature minds than mine have chosen as the greatest of all time, I realized that I only had a strong emotional reaction to three of the films, Persona, Scenes from a Marriage and Smiles of a Summer Night. I actually loved them, unequivocally, on many different levels. The films for which I had a strong visual attraction were Persona, Smiles of a Summer Night, Wild Strawberries, The Virgin Spring and, of course, The Seventh Seal. The two films which overwhelmed me were Cries and Whispers and Fanny and Alexander. The film which seemed to me to be ahead of its time, moreso than the others, was The Virgin Spring. It's depiction of violence and revenge killings caused outrage at the time. Hour of the Wolf was a film I appreciated as more of a middle ground between Ingmar Bergman's film with a more conventional narrative, and the narrative-style that began anew with Persona and developed further with Hour of the Wolf and Cries and Whispers. It was fascinating and engrossing but left me feeling largely indifferent; even upon reflection.

Not having seen them before (except a lot of Seventh Seal was familiar – and I always finish any film I start and I don’t watch a film unless I’ve seen it from the beginning), meant that the only thing I knew was that The Seventh Seal, Persona, Hour of the Wolf and Fanny and Alexander were regarded as exceptional as they appeared on numerous of the 1200 Best Ten Film lists in the 2012 Sight and Sound Survey. Even then I did have an expectation which I think coloured my view, which was, “Impress Me!”

Persona did impress me, instantly, whereas the other three I had to think about for days afterwards before I arrived at a conclusion. The danger of bringing preconceived ideas to a film, even when that is minimal, is that it will influence the act of sitting down and watching the films on their own terms.

When I began watching the films that populated this 2012 Greatest Films Survey (about two weeks before I decided to attempt it in the space of a year), I watched Tokyo Story and Man with a Movie Camera. I took this attitude of “Impress Me!” into the screenings. And both films did. Enormously. They are incredible. Vertov’s collection of images, arrangement of images, incorporation of structures and other man-made things (machines mostly), showing visual relationships with those creations, rank it as one of the most impressive pieces of filmmaking I’d seen. Sergei Bundarchuk’s Waterloo and David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia (along with Intolerance and The Ten Commandments) were extraordinary pieces of filmmaking with respect to commanding resources, and so – in its way – is Man with a Movie Camera.

Tokyo Story was the opposite. I watched the story develop and I expected that it would be a very particular kind of film that only a particular kind of person could appreciate as being remarkable. And yet it told as simple a story as anything I’ve ever seen, which became more and more interesting to me as it unfolded. Beautifully created images combined with mostly peaceful human interactions and observational-filming and acting. The storytelling is moving as is the idea of showing how an elderly couple are treated by all of those they interact with. The plot could be written on the back of a postage stamp and yet the details seen in the way the camera observes events could fill pages and pages. I’m from an English-speaking background, and the film is in Japanese (with subtitles), and yet Ozu’s film language conveys things far beyond the dialogue or subtitles. It’s an amazing film. It’s amazing – to me – because it isn’t Lawrence of Arabia or Citizen Kane and was engrossing without great resources or any intricate storytelling structure. The film you see if you want to know how to make a film about a few ideas and say a thousand things. My preconceived ideas were overwhelmed by the film. It’s definitely when-less-is-more filmmaking.

As I hadn’t seen any of the Bergman films (except maybe Seventh Seal), I brought far fewer preconceived ideas to my viewing of Bergman’s films, than the four films planned for this week, because I’ve seen The Godfather twice before, and The Godfather Part II once before, The Conversation four times, and Apocalypse Now twice (both times in the cinema). So I will bring all sorts of ideas to this week’s screenings.

My preconceived ideas are:

The Godfather (1972) – “excellent film, in every regard.”

The Godfather Part II (1974) – “absolutely brilliant, inspired, engrossing, goes beyond the genre, or the normal film narrative of its time.”

The Conversation (1974) – “it’s good, all aspects are very well executed, I love the idea and I love the ending – very novel, but I don’t understand why it’s brilliant. Is it’s ordinariness its brilliance, like a Tokyo Story, where you just observe, or listen in on a conversation? It’s solid but lacking the kind of arc and climax that makes a really good thriller. Pedestrian in its pacing at times.

Apocalypse Now (1979) – “The first time, I thought it was very good, but some of the Marlon Brandon scenes were just too long and too inarticulate, and it strayed too far from Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” which I had just studied at university, and loved. With all the reports of the problems of making the film, actors having heart attacks and breakdowns, and drug use, and the film being shut down, then more delays, then Coppola running out of money, his ego running out of control: I think I bought into the media story which was that several egos were out of control and the film was cobbled together from the salvageable footage. And I still thought the film was good – very powerful. But, a diluted Heart of Darkness.

The next time was twelve years later and the second time around I wasn’t aware of any popular revisionist thinking about the film in 1992, but I was keen to see it again, as was my best friend, and my second response was, ‘Wow! One of the greatest, most harrowing, films ever made.’ I didn’t think in terms of Best 100 Films or Top Ten Films, in those days, but if I had, it would probably have been in both.

Nowadays I still don’t think in terms of a Greatest 100 Films, or a personal Top Ten, despite this (ridiculous) exercise, which is, of course, centered round the idea of The Greatest Films Ever. Those kind of phrases are invented by the people who sell newspapers and magazines. But where it proves useful, insightful, is in collecting hundreds of opinions about what the polled participants would site as their Top Ten Films if a gun was held to their head. So many of the critics and directors mentioned the ridiculousness of the task, in trying to create a list of just ten films from all they have seen.

Most people who really enjoy movies see around ten or twenty in the cinema a year. Or if you’re Rod Joyce, around a hundred a year. Plus another dozen or so at home, revisiting favourite films regularly. Or if you’re me, then it’s sometimes a hundred in the cinema, and another two hundred (films I’ve never seen) at home, every year. Or during the last ten years with the SSO, it was more like twenty in the cinema and fifty at home every year, because my energy was going into recording music rather than watching film. But despite those ten years of only seeing seventy films a year – only about thirty were for the first time – there was a twenty year period where I saw on average, one a night – all new to me; and fifteen years of watching two a night, but only half of those would have been films I’ve never seen before.

Film critics, academics and film historians, of course, would have seen far more than that, and from a far wider pool than what my local video store had available.

This brings me to the value I find in the fact that when people who want to cause controversy and raise their readership and sell more magazines and newspapers (advertising The Best Film of All Time or The Greatest 100 Films) ask for a multitude of top ten lists: a consensus forms around certain films, by people who have seen as many films in a language that is not their first, as in their first.

First, I discovered the British Film Institute [BFI] list from 2012 which polled over a thousand people who live, breathe and think film. Then I discovered the top ten lists from the same poll (also known as Sight and Sound poll) for 1952, 62, 72, 82, 92, 2002, at a certain point separated to delineate directors from critics, academics, historians, exhibitors, distributors and other important craft roles. And with the 2012 poll, the BFI provided a breakdown of every voters’ top ten list, all films voted for, and a list of the top 100 films as voted by directors and the top 100 films by critics.

That’s where the idea of this endeavour started. I looked at the two lists of 100 films, worked out the ones in common, worked out the ones which weren’t, noted the ones I hadn’t seen, and the idea germinated from there. Naturally, I already knew that the Internet Movie Data Base had a list based on a 10-point system of everyone in the world’s opinion (with an English-speaking bias), and that Rotten Tomatoes had a rating. That gave me another two slants.

The Critics 100 list has a slight bias towards embracing a cerebral view of film over one of enjoyment or emotional fulfilment

The Directors 100 list has a slight bias towards the idea of the director having the major vision of how a film turns out. The bias of the director’s list is that they see the director as the visionary who is responsible for the artistic success of the film.

[I'll digress to talk about the way the director's role has further developed in either importance or influence in: The Three Directors’ Cuts.

Due to potential studio interference we now have three versions of a film which can be called a director’s cut:

1) a lot of footage which wasn’t shown in the original, is shoved back in, to gain another marketing opportunity for the studio,

2) an actual director’s cut, where a director’s original vision, which was interfered with, is restored by the director or someone else, and

3) a new cut of the film which comes about because a director is asked to re-evaluate his original film with the benefit of hindsight, and trim certain scenes, and include other material which wasn’t used for various reasons, like pacing, in the theatrical release, or the first release.]It was at this point that I found a copy of Tokyo Story in my local library and watched it. Then I found a friend who had Man with a Movie Camera, and watched it. Both viewings left me with such a strong feeling that I was seeing something utterly amazing and quite extraordinary. And for the first time. And they were both better than some recent misfires in popular cinema, with comic book adaptations taking over the world in more senses than one.]

I’ve recovered from the disappointment of the very first film of the 52-week journey, and re-watched it. But The General wasn’t hilarious, and I expected it would be. Now, I see it as a completely different film. And now because I read anything about it’s greatness. I waited five days and watched it again.

Then I’ve gone along with Week 2 and Week 3. The Seventh Seal and Fanny and Alexander didn’t hit me between the eyes, but Persona did, and it made me want to see more of Bergman. Then came Hour of the Wolf which underwhelmed me. At this point I realized that you can’t expect to see or comprehend something immediately if the person that makes it, brings a different sensibility to their creation, than the diet I’m most familiar with. I went back to my local library, found Cries and Whispers, The Virgin Spring, Smiles from a Summer Night, Wild Strawberries and Scenes from a Marriage. And now I realise that I’ve seen nine, not eight Ingmar Bergman films in the last two weeks. I lost track. Six from Lane Cove Library, two from Quickflix, and one from a friend.

All of these lists have made me broaden my understanding of film by embarking on this adventure – and have achieved it, already, in just three weeks.

Everything else is now an additional broadening of my mind with regard to this particular art form.

Day 24

Monday 24 July 2017

'Lane Cove Library to the rescue'

When I conceived the idea of watching 100 of the Greatest Films Ever in one year, as I investigated which were the most important films, which films I had in my collection and which films friends had in the their collections, it became clear very quickly that it was a hopeless task. To attempt it over a period of three to five years was a more reasonable proposition. And even then, as I looked at the cost of buying many of these hard-to-find films, via Amazon or other retailers, it looked more and more futile. The average cost per film is around US$30 (AUD$45-$50 by the time they land in Australia). Maybe I could do it over five years by buying one of these films per month, sixty films in total, but even that was unrealistic. I started to lose heart.

I did an online search in Quickflix and was buoyed immediately to find that 25 were available for hire. Disappointment followed when only thirteen turned out to be actually available to hire. Another dozen or so were listed by Quickflix but they didn’t have copies anymore, so it went into a strange list of Reserved movies, which would be “automatically moved into your main Queue as soon as they become available.” It’s reasonable to assume they once were available but over the years they were lost or broken, so I didn’t count on getting any of those soon. And some of the ones I was most keen to see, went onto this Reserved list.

Seven years ago when I lived in Lane Cove, I signed up my firstborn with Lane Cove Library, and I had a vague memory that they had a collection of dvds. Certainly, I knew a small library, local to where I live now, had a few hundred DVDs, but nothing too esoteric. So I went to online to Lane Cove Library and, to my surprise, discovered title after title of what I wanted to see was available. 3 out of 4 of the titles I couldn’t access anywhere else, were in Lane Cove Library’s collection.

L’Avventura, Smiles of a Summer Night, The Virgin Spring, Fanny and Alexander, La Notte, The Passion of Joan of Arc, Persona, Rashomon… The list went on and on. Suddenly this was something I could actually attempt. I created a spreadsheet of all the films I wanted to see, and where I could get a copy of each of the films from. Three friends had fifteen films between them, I already had about one hundred of the films in my own collection, I hire thirteen through Quickflix, buy six from JB Hi-Fi, borrow thirty from Lane Cove Library and buy about twenty from Amazon in the U.S.

Lane Cove Library to the rescue. Suddenly I was in business.

Day 22-23

Saturday 22 July 2017

Taking a break for the weekend. Starting a fresh week on Monday with Francis Ford Coppola's four great films: two Godfathers.  The Conversation and Apocalypse Now.

Day 21

Friday 21 July 2017

'Wild Strawberries' 1957

Despite having  8 kids in the house for two days on the weekend, managed to find time to watch my eight Ingmar Bergman film in 12 days. Tonight was one of the first, if not the first, that brought Bergman to international attention, released the same year as The Seventh Seal (1957). It's quite an extraordinary film in many, but it's not, for me, the very best of his films. But then again it was only the first time I've seen it. I'll write more about it on Monday after our overseas guests have left. 

Day 20

Thursday 20 July 2017    [11.30pm]

'Scenes From a Marriage' 1974

Today and tonight, I was doing the family things, preparing for guests for the weekend, wondering when I would get to finish this wonderful and compelling film. Just before midnight I found the spot where I'd finished, backed up 25 minutes, and started again from The Vale of Tears.

Oh my God. A devastating finish. It is The Illiterates and In the Dead of Night in a Dark House and I see how the end of a relationship can be more powerful than we could ever imagine before we experienced it for real (ourselves).

 

Thursday 20 July 2017    [6.30am]

I sent an email out to my friends and colleagues this morning, letting them know what I'm up to these days. Specifically about my project.

Day 19

Wednesday 19 July 2017

'Scenes From a Marriage' 1974

Today was the second last of the Ingmar Bergman films in what has become The Two Weeks of Ingmar Bergman. In a lot of way this is one of the strongest of his films, a marathon 169 minutes. Like so many of his films it is about the breakdown of the marriage relationship and reflects Bergman's interest in the effect of adultery on relationships as well as exploring the way marriage survive, and the manner in which they can fall apart. There's not a lot of happiness, let alone joy, in the Bergman films that are considered to be amongst the greatest films in the history of cinema. It certainly looks like serious films are the kind of films that are really taken seriously by academics and critics, and Scenes from a Marriage is no exception. It's a long hard slog, running close to the length of Fanny and Alexander but without the happy scenes.

I got to the end of the fourth episode, The Vale of Tears (1h50m50s), but it was 6am, so I went to bed before my children got up, disappointed to not watch it all in one slab. I haven't seen The Illiterates or In the Dead of Night in a Dark House.

What's interesting in the unfolding of the story so far is that even when the two main characters, Marianne and Johan's, relationship seems to be good, it's still hard work.

Bergman allows just one episode of their marriage to be good and then it starts to disintegrate. Just 25 minutes into the film, cracks are beginning to show. And everything that was presented at face value in the first of six parts, was too good to be true (in a Bergman film). The second part of Scenes, is called, The Art of Sweeping Things Under the Rug. A delightful title for a delightful episode. Well, not really. It actually is an incisive piece of writing by Bergman of a detailed conversation between Marianne and Johan, where things arise, it become obvious things are becoming tense and a little difficult and both parties back off. By backing off it allows things that could have been worked through, to be swept under the rug. Ironically, Marianne is a divorce lawyer, who comes across these kinds of issues in the breakdown of marriages but doesn't recognise it in her own. By the time we get to the next episode, portentously titled, Paula, it's not just things not addressed, its things not even alluded to. The viewer is not prepared through what we've seen of the always calm and collected Johan, for the sudden and vicious verbal attack upon his wife where resentments explode from deep within his psyche.   

Day 18

Tuesday 18 July 2017

'Cries and Whispers' 1972

Suddenly is was Day 20 and I hadn't written about Day 18. In Bergman Week, with so many deep or difficult films, it did become a bit overwhelming and I couldn't move past Cries and Whispers. Everything for three days (despite the relief provided by Smiles of a Summer Night) has been about this particular Ingmar Bergman film which is the most powerful and the most moving and the most difficult to watch. Thankfully a lot of his films run 90 minute or less, so it isn't a great amount of time to sacrifice if I do what I did here which was watch it again.

Eventually I was brought back to Cries and Whispers for a second time in three days. Since Monday, I've explored reviews and critiques which are available on the internet. That brought me back to the film again to get a better understanding of how the flashbacks are to be taken by the viewer and what they reveal about the characters in the film. Very interesting to watch this film a second time. There is so much to see and to understand.

Day 17

Monday 17 July 2017

'Smiles of a Summer Night' 1955

Ingmar Bergman Week, which began with the aim of watching Fanny and Alexander, The Seventh Seal and, possibly, Persona, is turning into a marathon, eating into Week 3, which was to be Sunrise (1927) and Nosferatu (1922).  I've been caught up in Bergman's oeuvre, and added Hour of the Wolf, The Virgin Spring, then Cries and Whispers and now Smiles of a Summer Night, to my screenings. I am so glad now that I've I continued on with Bergman. Last night I watched the earliest of his films I've seen to date; one which I'd heard of but knew nothing about. It shows a completely different side to his personality, which appeared in none of the other six films, with the exception of the first hour of Fanny and Alexander, and a few moments of buffoonery in The Seventh Seal. 

It's a complete delight; and so funny. I didn't realise there was such a light-hearted side to Bergman; and when it threatens to go to the dark side, it doesn't. Instead it uses what I've come to know as Bergman's dark side from the latter films, for comedy, to great effect. More on this later. 

Day 16

Sunday 16 July 2017

'Cries and Whispers' 1972

Today, I took on another mighty Ingmar Bergman film, the sixth of his in seven days, the bleakest and most oppressive of those I have seen so far. But not depressing, enlightening. Not bitter, revealing. It exposes familial conflicts, where there should be love, and finds love where there would reasonably be expected to be nothing more than service, by a paid employee. Cruelty from family and compassion from a servant.

This journey into Ingmar Bergman is turning into a journey into darkness as well as into light. What is now self evident about Bergman's films is that they cannot be watched and absorbed like mainstream cinema. To view any of these films for the first time, is to experience only the thin skin on the surface, a veneer. It's more than apparent now that multiple viewings are required of the great films to understand why they have earned their place in film history. 

Mainstream cinema of the last fifty years has become like mainstream music, consumable in a single sitting, and while enjoyable to revisit, rarely do multiple viewings reveal additional layers which can be peeled away, exposing new insights. In Bergman there are hidden depths and multiple viewings reward the viewers for their efforts.

My most striking realisation is that great cinema, is a lot like great symphonies or great operas, or great music in general. It needs to be examined and studied to understand more of what their creators have actually created. In Classical Music, I think of Bartok or Stravinsky, in Opera I think of Benjamin Britten, in Popular Music I think of Roger Waters. And of course the same is true for the other art forms as well, whether it is re-reading Dickens for the third or fourth time, or staring at Monet long enough to see more of the detail he's infused his work with. Giving art your attention is rewarding and Ingmar Week has been a revelation.

This will be a week in review plus two new films:

Sunrise

(1927)

and

Nosferatu (1922)

are on my horizon.

Day 15

Saturday 15 July 2017 2am

It is 14 days to the minute when I started 100 Great Films in 365 Days (One Year) with The General (and created 100greatestfilms@gmail.com). Then 6 days later I watched it again, and had a completely different reaction. Living with the undertaking for two weeks has eased my misgivings and it now feels more achievable. Despite the fact that after the first week I increased the 100 films to 150, and now, after week 2, it approaches 200 films. The research in the last ten days that now makes me want to embrace a wider selection than 150 films, has added a lot of additional important/influential films to the list. 

What's followed, has been an extraordinary second week of movie-viewing. Week 1, I called The General.  Week 2 has got to be called Ingmar Week, viewing The Seventh Seal, Persona, Fanny and Alexander, Hour of the Wolf and The Virgin Spring, followed by Cries and Whispers. In Week 3, I've give myself a reprieve. Just Murnau's Sunrise (1927) and  Nosferatu (1922) while I still continuing breaking down and writing about Ingmar Week.

Day 14

Friday 14 July 2017

'The Virgin Spring' 1960

Yesterday's Bergman film, The Virgin Spring (1960) was more intense than Persona (1966) or Fanny and Alexander (1982). More intense even than Hour of the Wolf (1968), which had a disturbing, deranged edge to it, which I found similar in style to aspects of the film Orson Welles made of Kafka's The Trial (1962). In amongst the confusion and fear, and the nightmare of everything turning against the protagonist, was the quality of surrealism.

In The Virgin Spring there's nothing surreal about it at all. It is brutal. And given that it is 1960, and has no gratuitous nudity or violence, it is benign by comparison to the horrors of A Clockwork Orange (1971) ten years later, and Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975) fifteen years later.

I watched The Virgin Spring without English subtitles - I didn't understand the dialogue - and the effect of the imagery building up an intense language of its own, filled me with horror. The unfolding story of an innocent who is raped and killed by two depraved men is a precursor to the much maligned Charles Bronson revenge-movie, Death Wish (1974). In the world of film, fourteen years is a long time. In 1974, when Bronson goes after the men who killed his wife and raped his daughter, it is because the justice system can't give the men the penalty they deserve. It's not dissimilar to the justice that Max Von Sydow meters out to the men who raped and killed his daughter, Karin. Töre and Paul Kersey are similar men. Töre's murderous rage builds within him while he sits, with the point of his dagger upright as it digs into the wooden table in front of him, watching the perpetrators sleep. Then he kills them, including the boy - brutally.

Max von Sydow's character regrets his actions more than Charles Bronson's character.

The New York Times reported on February 10, 1960 (from Stockholm, Sweden, Feb. 9) -

"Ingmar Bergman, the director, and the Swedish State Film Review Board were rebuked here today because of the brutality shown in Mr Bergman's new picture... The [Swedish] newspaper suggested editorially today that there was no artistic reason to depict a rape and four murders so realistically and at such length."

I suppose there's not, unless you're trying to make a point. The validity of that point, through the eyes of Bergman, Winner and Kubrick, should still be debated. I think it is still worth discussing (be it 1960, 1971, 1974 or 2017)

the depiction of violence in film for it's own sake (box office and increased social awareness) or the film's sake (art). - Powers, 2017 

Day 13

Thursday 13 July 2017

'Hour of the Wolf' 1966

Yesterday's Bergman film was Hour of the Wolf (1968), a disturbing tale of a missing man, and  a pregnant couple's encounters with the bizarre people who live on the island where they are staying. Today, I decided to watch one of the first films that brought Ingmar Bergman to world attention, The Virgin Spring. One of the things which has been a distraction so far in watching these films, has been the subtitles. It's not that I'm unused to them; it's more about the fact that Bergman's images - along with his cinematographer, Sven Nykvist's beautiful framing - are so extraordinarily beautiful, frame after frame, that I don't want to take my eyes away from them to read the English words at the bottom of the screen. The faces of his actors become beautiful portraits, featuring the blackest of blacks and the richest of contrasts. Hundreds of camera setups in The Seventh Seal and Persona provide frames that are photographs as beautiful as one could ever hope to see in a gallery. It's also the creative juxtaposition of two actors in the frame that creates images that are so compelling.

I began The Virgin Spring without activating the subtitles and suddenly noticed their absence in the opening scene with the maid. It suddenly struck me that I should try and watch the film without the distraction of a language barrier and see to what degree the images paint the picture of the story. In a second viewing I can have the benefit of subtitles to give added nuances to the narrative.

Day 12

Wednesday 12 July 2017

Got up today, enthused, thinking that I have to see another Ingmar Bergman film as soon as possible. Literally, brushed my teeth, looked at the choices in my pile - Cries and Whispers, Scenes From a  Marriage, The Virgin Spring - and put Hour of the Wolf in the player and pressed I>, not having any idea what I was in store for.

I don't know what I expected, but as usual - after two days of knowing what usual is for this filmmaker - I discovered that the beginning of the film - a documentary of sorts - followed by the noises of a film set (while the credits present themselves) - is actually a re-enactment of the disturbing disintegration of a relationship, scuttled by the knowledge of the man's previous relationship. The revelation of the importance of the previous liaison - the one before Liv Ullmann - coupled with the lies that his diary reveals - unravels their bond of trust. 

My daughters arrived home from school during my complete immersion in the collapse of Johan Borg's mind, body and soul. I had to pause the film, settle them elsewhere, reacquaint myself with the deterioration of his reasonable mind, and press PLAY.  

Crikey. This is extremely intense.

Day 11

Tuesday 11 July 2017

10 days down - 355 days to go.

As if yesterday's effort wasn't enough, I decided, a week ago, to schedule Fanny and Alexander as my Tuesday Ingmar Bergman challenge. Wow. Long. Wow! Extraordinary.. Extraordinary and amazing.

And amazing on so many levels. I'm thinking about how it fits amongst Bergman's other films, and its position as such a favourite amongst film directors in the Sight and Sound 2002 (#22) and 2012 (#16) survey.

I couldn't just turn the equipment off and go to bed. I needed to sit with the memory of Fanny and Alexander, which then became a memory of The Seventh Seal and Persona, and let my mind wander. All three films are so arresting. In your face. And to think my brain took all of this in, within a period of less than 36 hours. I'm coming to an understanding of Bergman's place in film history, and I'm interested to watch more.

Day 10

Monday 10 July 2017

Today's plan was to watch, The Seventh Seal (1957). I had invited the owner of the film to come and watch it with me in the afternoon. I also happened to have a copy of another Ingmar Bergman film available, borrowed from my local library: Persona (1966). As we started early, we had time to include this second film.

What a blast. To watch two Ingmar Bergman films, with only a 10-minute break in between. The first was the one I'd seen before, which I always knew was considered his best or close to it. But then to watch Persona immediately afterwards - that was extraordinary.

Immediate impression is that I'm not any closer to understanding their position in the list of greatest films ever. Seventh Seal is striking, and bold, and full of (unexpected) humour. Lots of religious references. Lots of beautifully created scenes, thoughtful imagery, and memorable framing. The cinematography is stunning. 

There was no time to reflect on it, because Persona blew those thoughts away. Made 9 or 10 years later, this is completely different, and quite intrusive, obliterating the previous film for the next 85 minutes. It is compelling. I thought these two films would be difficult cinema, but it isn't, and they're not. I'm confused by a few things in Persona. I need to think about it some more.

The composition of the film frame with Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson, who occupy the frame so significantly for the last two-thirds, is magnificent.

Overwhelmed by two feasts for the eyes and the intellect.

Day 9

Sunday 9 July 2017

Back from the sheep farm my family and I visited with my wife's relatives. Great, relaxing, good time-out. Thinking about the project, thinking about The General, wondering what to do next. Accumulated information about other lists of great films that notable people or publications have created and began writing an essay on the difficulties inherent in taking a bunch of films that are important to other people, and trying to find that importance. Have decided to view The General again, rather than watch the other two, slightly less highly-regarded Buster Keaton films. With my wife and children asleep, I'm going to view The General again with an emphasis on structure, the ratio of comedy vs drama, and how the music works. This is my last act of Week 1, to view the film I watched on day one - again.

Day 6

Thursday 6 July 2017

Away for a few days on a short holiday with my family, so no opportunity for film-watching until next Sunday.

Day 5

Wednesday 5 July 2017

Actually, I've jumped ahead to watch a crazy film that appeared on one critic's list, Hellzapoppin'. If I remember correctly, it was a 'desert island film' for someone, but I don't remember who.

A friend and I watched it yesterday afternoon. It was as off-the-wall as anything you could imagine. Besides being Marx Bros and general vaudeville, I mentioned to Dan that I thought is was like a very similar film to the concept of Airplane! Bad puns and misinterpretations - galore - a thousand miles a minutes. One moment you're appreciating a joke 4 seconds ago, 5 seconds late, and then realizing you've missed the next joke about the potplant.

I am on track with the Buster Keaton week: Sherlock Jr and Our Hospitality next. I've got two days left.

Spent the rest of today doing some work to earn a crust, as well as trying to find access to a copy of Pather Panthali and L'eclisse and Nosferatu (1922).

Day 4

Tuesday 4 July 2017

Not having told anyone what I have published on my website over the last two days, I thought about writing it off as a bad idea. I have lots of creative and crazy ideas most days I’m alive, but none that I actively pursue and then prepare for, for weeks and months.

I’ve accumulated over the last 6 months 90% of the films I need to make this an achievable goal. My reaction to viewing The General – which was not negative, but left me deflated – certainly made me question the whole enterprise. Today, I created and wrote another section of my website which I’ve called The Rationale. I feel like I need to explain to anyone who reads my thoughts over the next 362 days, where I’m coming from. I’ve seen a lot of films and read a lot of books and heard lots of music. The choice of films, books and music was very intentional.

Already I am bracing for a negative reaction, so writing a defence of the deliberation I've given the choice of films, and the purpose of the venture:

I've been very deliberate in the way I have prepared for this. Life doesn’t wash over me like some vast wave which constantly surprises me and unwittingly provides me with a daily blast of information, some of which I want and some that I don’t. I've really thought about this and planned things.

There are four more days to view the other two Buster Keaton films before I move on to the next batch. What I’ve decided today is that I will watch The General again. What I also decided today is that I’m going to change yesterday’s decision, and watch Sherlock Jr. and Our Hospitality next, before I revisit, The General.

Day 3

Monday 3 July 2017, 2am

So, the big project started yesterday, on July 1, 2017. I posted a Mission statement on my website and looked at what films I have access to which I can watch this week. I haven't told anyone of the goal I've set for myself. Not even my wife. When she finds out through social media I hope she's not too annoyed.

One of the biggest obstacles to the success of the project is getting access to these 150+ films because a lot of them are very old and hard to find.

And because I want to do them based on groupings, I want to watch the groupings: 'bang' 'bang' 'bang', all in one week.

I looked at my spreadsheet and had a dozen different options for Week 1: the three great Eisenstein, Chaplin, Wilder, Visconti, Kubrick, Bergman, Bunuel, Lang, Ford, Scorsese, Coppola, Fellini, Welles or Hitchcock films, but I didn't want to start with something too obvious or too heavy. So, I chose Buster Keaton. I've a collection of his silent films, and the one that came up again and again on the list of the best films ever was, The General (1926). I've seen the film two or three times before and always thought it was funny and very clever. I haven't seen it since I was probably in my mid-twenties (which was about a hundred years ago).

The pre-conceived notion I brought to this film was that Buster Keaton is one of the great comedians and this is a comedy. I settled down to watch something that would make me laugh, or at least chuckle. Disturbed by the fact my laughing gear weren't engaged, I was in shock as what I saw unfolding was something far more serious than I expected. Life categorizes things and sometimes a general feeling in the media or amongst friends about something, becomes a legitimate thought as if it is a fact. And my pre-conceived perception of this film was that it was going to be funny and exciting, with a series of cleverly engineered close-shaves. Partly this is my own fault as my childhood memory of the last sequence is so vividly that it coloured my memory of the entire film.

Day 2

Sunday 2 July 2017

Realizations:

#1 I'm bringing old memories to the films I'm watching this year. Even if I've seen a film 5 or 6 times, if I haven't seen that film for 35 years, it could be a vastly different experience now. That's what I'm hoping for directors like Fellini, Kurosawa and Bergman. I'm hoping that I will understand the greatness of some of their films, for the first time.

#2 I may need to view some of these films two or three times in the one week to really connect with what other people see in them.

#3 This project is bigger than I thought. I’m only on Day 2 and I know now that this not like cooking 300 recipes in one year or reading 50 books in one year. This endeavour, I was certain as I undertook the challenge (self-imposed) was going to be a lot less taxing than others have done. Already, with Film #1, I’m seeing that it is going to involve repeated viewing of some films. As well as analysis.

Day 1

1 July 2017

'The General' 1927

Watched The General (1926) this morning. Is this a great film? I'm not so sure.