nicky wire's legs
Christ is king!
Oh! The Ascent is also on YouTube! Another top ten!
If you haven't seen it, you can watch Cranes Are Flying on YouTube. A beautiful movie with one of the best endings. Definitely in my top ten
Wise blood and l'eclisse are also on there! (Not A Man Escaped though and that's what I'm really desperately in need of!!)
oh, aubs, i thought you'd never ask!!!! i have a top ten list for everything as it turns out!!! i am nothing without my top ten lists!!!I've seen that (and The Ascent). Is Wise Blood good? I thought the novel was okay, but nowhere near as good as her best stories. She was a master of the short form but perhaps not the long. I haven't read her other novel. Have you seen A Man Escaped? Of the Robert Bresson movies I've seen, it's the only one that underwhelmed me. But Au Hasard Balthazar would be in my own top ten (or at least twenty). Are you able to do a top ten? I think I'd get stuck.
oh, aubs, i thought you'd never ask!!!! i have a top ten list for everything as it turns out!!! i am nothing without my top ten lists!!!
first let me say that i am dismayed you dont like a man escaped!!!! in fact, you'll find that movie in my top ten list below! as far as bresson films go, it would be number one, followed by mouchettte (recommended to me by the lovely zoom from gloom, then known as k-ket-kitty), diary of a country priest, pick pocket and only then au hasard balthazar, because while i could look at anne wiazemsky (what do you think of her?) all day long, i found the movie to be a whole lotta nuthin, and not in the good, ordered a man escaped kind of way where the whole movie becomes a sort of meditative experience which leaves you feeling more embodied as you go about your day.
as to my top ten list, it is as follows:
1. wiseblood
2. red desert
3. heart of glass
4. teorema
5. a man escaped
6. wanda
7. last year at marienbad
8. the ascent
9. belle du jour
10. cranes are flying
as you can see wiseblood is in the number one spot on my list, so yeah, i'd say it's pretty good!!! actually i cannot explain how much i love this movie. i was obsessed with it for a while, partly because of brad dourifs mesmerizing performance, partly because of the absurdly hilarious cast of characters, but also just something about the atmosphere. there's such a vivid feeling to this movie, from the opening credits right to the end, so that i wanted to live in that town and to breathe that air and to be blind, sitting in a rocking chair, eating my dinner as i listened to the rain outside. there is nothing else like this movie. in fact, i think im going to watch it tonight-- and you should too!!
damn you, aubs! you were supposed to have had watched it! i was looking forward to reading your review of it! you ARE allowed to watch movies out of order, you know!!! i bet you just wanted to watch the other one because there was a pretty girl in itI'm afraid I didn't watch it. I watched Ammonite instead. I have so many movies to catch up on. I even need to watch London Fields, which is infamously bad, and for which Amber Heard won a Worst Actress award. There are three movies on your list I haven't seen, but Heart of Glass is the one I'd like to see most because I really admire several other of Herzog's films from that period. Amazon Prime has it; it's a steep 5.99 rental but should be worth it. I also like Flannery O'Connor a great deal, so I owe it to myself to watch Wise Blood, and that'll be free so long as it stays on YouTube. I had never heard of Wanda, but it looks intriguing.
Sad-eyed Anne Wiazemsky is great in Au Hasard Balthazar. She's sort of Mary Magdalene to the donkey's Christ. For me the movie is emphatically not "a whole lotta nuthin." We have such opposite reactions to A Man Escaped and Balthazar. I think Balthazar is the meditative one and A Man Escaped is the yawn.
i bet you just wanted to watch the other one because there was a pretty girl in it
i love herzog too and heart of glass is ammmaaaaaaaazing. the guy who plays the factory owner, aside from being devilishly sexy, gives the most moving performance ive ever seen, all while under hypnosis!! theres this one scene in that movie that stands out to me as the most beautiful scene in all of cinema, where this same factory owner who we have seen be childish and brutal in his desire to find the secret of the ruby glass, gives up his quest, relinquishes the search, and his portrayal of the sad serenity that is the aftermath of the realization that ones heart desire is unattainable is utterly superb and pitch perfect and will move anyone to tears who has ever felt the same. that one scene alone would have ensure the movie a place on my top ten but there are so so many amazing scenes throughout!
why do you find martin amis difficult? what do you mean by that? i dont know, the book was okay. he's great at creating characters, but it wasnt the sort of book i would normally read. i preferred The Zone of Interest and House of Meetings which were both written in a unique and amusing style.No, it had been at the top of my to-watch list for years for multiple reasons, but primarily because "lesbian romance" is a favorite subgenre of mine. This is not due to prurient interest. I dislike the ones that exploit things in a quasi-pornographic way, like Blue is the Warmest Color. Unfortunately there was a little bit of that in Ammonite, and it took my enjoyment of it down a notch. I'll admit to being a prude in thinking that sex in movies should usually be suggested with something like a kiss and a fall into bed. Close the door, fade out, and move on. What I like about lesbian romance is the idea of things proceeding without, and against, men. Men by their very presence are always kind of an ambient villain in the best lesbian romances.
That's excellent praise. I will definitely watch it.
Is London Fields a good book? I remember starting it; I probably got a fifth of the way through before giving up. It might help my viewing of the movie that I have no loyalty to the book. Martin Amis is a difficult writer for me. I do like his father, though. The Alteration is great.
why do you find martin amis difficult? what do you mean by that?
im so glad you explained to me what it is you like about lesbian films because i was just under the impression that you were a dirty dirty dog
haha oh no i never thought you were like robby!! theres nothing creepy or predatory about you. it was more like "oh poor aubs, he's so smart and yet he's a slave to his lil wienie. ah, well, it happens to the best of them!"That's a good question. I don't really know. It's not that his writing is dull. He's highly talented. There's just a"tone" to it, I guess, that puts me off. I tried reading The Rachel Papers once, and it was the same as London Fields: I didn't finish it.
In that case, I'm glad I explained it too. I remember there was a poster on here named "Oh my god. It's Robby!" who frequently talked about his sexual proclivities and his fondness for pornography. Thankfully he's gone, but I would not want to be the resident forum perv in his absence. Out of prudence, I guess I should take this opportunity, since I've mentioned Jenna Jameson before, to say that I do not like her for the fact of her being a porn star. I'm really not interested in gynecological close-ups or looking at other men's johnsons or the awful bestial aesthetics of the human sex act. I just like her for her good looks—her "hair metal girl" appeal.
i do think that you're thinking with your lil wienie to a certain extent though even though you may not realize it and this is evidenced by your thinking that jenna jameson who is a total lantern jawed munter has "good looks". there are billions of women out there with ACTUAL good looks (anne wiazemsky for one!) and yet you pluck jenna jameson out of porn land, an obscure personage to anyone who hasnt an interest in porn (i had to look her up the first time you mentioned her), as an example of someone with good looks. thats just weird.
Maugham had rented a house, which came with its own servant, a man who unnerved him by gliding about almost invisibly. One evening, Maugham went on a date with Mary Soames, the daughter of Winston Churchill. He took her back to his flat and she asked for a drink: a cold lager from the fridge, as opposed to warm ale. (Interestingly, this drink recurs in the movie, but not the novel.) The fridge was just next to the manservant's room in the basement, the door of which was open; Maugham glanced in and saw a naked teenage boy on the bed. The servant appeared from nowhere and said in his odd drawl: "I see you are admiring my young nephew, sahr. Would you like me to send him up to you to say goodnight, sahr?" Maugham pretended he hadn't heard and simply went away without replying.
Well i never heard her name in my household. if i had it would've been from my sister who probably had porn star aspirations. but i spent the 90s/early aughts reading vogue magazine and watching old movies so it wasnt likely i was going to come across her. i've never heard of marilyn chambers either, and the only reason ive heard of traci lords is because she filled in as becky on roseanne when the original becky left and then of course because of the manics association (although the woman who sang with her voice in the little baby nothing video was far prettier than she could ever hope to be). in fact, the whole idea of a porn star being a household name is bizarre to me, because what would be the context for them to ever be brought up in a non-sexual setting??That's interesting; you had never heard of Jenna Jameson? Maybe it's different in Canada, or it's a generational thing. I think she had "household name" status in the late 90s/early aughts. Kind of like Marilyn Chambers and Traci Lords. I've never seen their movies, but I know their names out of sheer notoriety. I don't have an interest in porn per se, but I'm sure Jenna Jameson would've come onto my radar even if I hadn't discovered her relatively early by having worked at a video store and had to shelve the titles in the "Adult" section.
Doing an image search for her now, thirty years later, "lantern jawed munter" is sadly apt for most of the results, but there was a slender window in the mid-90s when, for a brief shining time, Jenna Jameson was good-looking (if you had been captivated in adolescence by a certain look. "The child is the father of the man" and all). But I realize that my "lil wienie" is probably contributing a vote, and that given the mountains of photographic evidence amassed over several decades to the contrary, I should probably not be using her as an exemplar of good looks.
Well i never heard her name in my household. if i had it would've been from my sister who probably had porn star aspirations. but i spent the 90s/early aughts reading vogue magazine and watching old movies so it wasnt likely i was going to come across her. i've never heard of marilyn chambers either, and the only reason ive heard of traci lords is because she filled in as becky on roseanne when the original becky left and then of course because of the manics association (although the woman who sang with her voice in the little baby nothing video was far prettier than she could ever hope to be). in fact, the whole idea of a porn star being a household name is bizarre to me, because what would be the context for them to ever be brought up in a non-sexual setting??