The Movies I Watched in October

Asteroid City 2023  7/10

 

Babylon Berlin, Staffel 4  2023  6/10 

Les bas-fonds 1936  6/10

Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull 2021  6/10

Brooklyn 2015  8/10

Campanadas a medianoche 1965  7/10

Diese Sendung ist kein Spiel - Die unheimliche Welt des Eduard Zimmermann 2023  6/10 

Elemental 2023  7/10

 

Frankenstein 1994  6/10

Guling jie shaonian sharen shijian 1991  8/10

 

Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles 1975  8/10

 

Le journal d'une femme de chambre 1964  7/10

 Ma nuit chez Maud 1969  7/10

 Macbeth 1948  7/10

 

Mary Shelley 2017  6/10

Ochazuke no aji 1952  6/10

Poison 2023  7/10

Posion Ivy 1992  6/10 

Princess of the Nile 1954  6/10

The Rat Catcher 2023  7/10

Respect 2021  6/10

Skinamarink 2022  6/10

The Swan 2023  7/10

 

2010: The Year We Made Contact 1984  6/10

UFO 2018  6/10

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar 2023  7/10

King Lear (1987)

 

As the world recovers from the destruction of the Chernobyl disaster, William Shakespeare Jr. the Fifth  attempts to restore the human race's great works of art.

Radically obscurantist contemplation on Skakespeare's classic play presents itself as a wild associative stream of images and sound, in a for Godard typically brilliant montage, but presupposes an audience of polymaths; for everybody else it is of limited interest.

Halliwell (no star): "Sheer nonsense doodled by the director with someone else's money."

Maltin*1/2: "Bizarre, garish, contemporary punk-apocalyptic updating of Shakespeare classic. Little to be said about this pretentious mess except...avoid it." 

 

Ye yan (2006)

 

A loose adaptation of Hamlet, "The Night Banquet" is set in an empire in chaos. The Emperor, the Empress, the Crown Prince, the Minister and the General all have their own enemies they would like to finish off at a night banquet. 

More inspired by Shakespeare than a true adaptation of Hamlet, this sumptuous and obviously expensive production with visually stunning sets and martial arts scenes, but its narrative lacks logic and coherence and is difficult to follow.

 

New Stuff: Macbeth

Need to rewatch Orson Welles' movies.

First Lines: William Shakespeare - Twelfth Night

If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.

Ran (1985)

An elderly lord abdicates to his three sons, and the two corrupt ones turn against him.

Ingenious and elaborate adaptation of William Shakespeare's King Lear to  ahistorical Japanese setting by one of the great masters of cinema.

Julius Caesar (1953)

The assassination of the would be ruler of Rome at the hands of Brutus and company has tragic consequences for the idealist and the republic.

Faithful Shakespeare adaptation with some great performances, but a bit stage-bound.

Vignettes #51

Sometimes people amaze with their kind of self-concept especially concerning the jobs they work. At my cinema we had an annual Shakespeare festival which was basically a week long screening of movie adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays. It was organized like a real festival with 3-4 different movies each day, and we printed a poster and a leaflet to advertise for the program. We tried to find sponsors and advertisers for the festival, and Ursula had the idea that the largest bookstore could support us by decorating one of their shopping windows with the author's books and our program. The man at the bookstore responsible for their promotions declined and said: "I don't see what Shakespeare would have to do with a bookstore."

A similar incident concerned a local newspaper. As a cinema we regularly informed all newspapers and periodical mags about our program. This was besides our usual advertising in any of the papers that you had to pay for. You would just write up the names of the movies and the dates and hours when the screenings would be, and once a week you'd fax this information to all the papers. Usually a good newspaper has a billboard listing all kinds of local events like club meetings, small concerts, even the old ladies' Bingo evening, but also the movies of the week.

There was one free Sunday newspaper that was new, and I had been sending them our information for about a year, when I got a phone call from one of the editors. He was obviously astounded why he was getting these faxes from me, so I told him that that's what we - and anyone else organizing events - routinely do. He asked me to quit sending our program and said: "As a newspaper we have no use for such information."