Back to the Future

Independent Film Channel show time alert: For those who get IFC -and don't already own a DVD of it- on Thursday the 10th, 8:30AM & 2:30PM, Alain Resnais's exquisite 'Private Fears in Public Places' can be got.
— June 9, 2010 2:56 p.m.

All Together Now

I only just noticed your comment there on the page about Manny Farber. Why was I was updating the BO receipts for 'A Serious Man', why did I consider that important? In so much as how it revealed the lack of intrest in such movies today, the lack of interest (although, they oughta be careful, those Coen's, that the Hollywood mucky-mucks don't take too big *an interest*!). And how pitiful the distribution is for Name star directors like this ('Burn after Reading' was big BO, and 'No Country...' won the freakin' Oscar[TM] only two years ago), compared to something as timeless and unforgettable as, say, that 'Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs' film...all that isn't really so important as the reality that 'A Serious Man' is always worth bringing up, no matter the context!
— December 18, 2009 4:25 p.m.

Matters of Fact

It's factually true, Mr. Marks, that the only title you named as looking bad was 101 Nights. It was not possible for me to hear more of what you had to say about the quality of any of Varda's other work because there was no broadcast time allotted to it. The comments about "bad" and "pretentious" in relation to the clip/s of Varda's movies were not only directed towards 101 Nights, at least they were not verbally delineated clearly as such. The comments were brief, vague, and didn't sound possitive about Beaches of Agnes or any other works by Varda besides Cleo from 5 to 7 and Vagabond (but then, that was when you were Quoting, right?...so the only thing we can be clear on is that the clip of 101 Nights looked bad to you?). So sorry I came off as the Master of Misrepresentation to you, and I'm so grateful to you for putting me straight on the three words I missed a letter on. I'll type slower next time, or use Spell Check. But then again, no I won't. Because I only waste one day -Wednesday- per week on this kind of user comments silliness, and to let someone pounce on me to quibble about nothing more than a slightly misspelled word in every 200 or so words: this is quite an hilariously pathetic event, and I wouldn't want to deny myself the human comedy of that spectacle. And, let the record show, it's true what Scott Marks said about The Birds being shown on digital, but they only charged $5, unlike Horton Plaza or Garden Cabaret (note: I almost put two e's in Caba[e instad of a!]ret intentionally to give the anal out there something to chew on) who charge full admission prices for their videos. As for the quotes about Varda's career being "uneven", I'm very taken aback that Mr. Shepherd would say that. But your claim about quizzing over the movies by Varda that go unreleased due possibly to "lack of commercial appeal", is perhaps what you meant, or said off air, but I remember you stateing it differently on KPBS. You said something more like 'because they weren't as good as Vagabond or Cleo from 5 to 7'. I wish I had a transcript to throw in your face, since you're taking this so passionately. Ending your diatribe with that immature, dominating "shinebox" quote, from that most poorly written of Scorsese movie, was not suprise to me. These are the flailings of a bully.
— November 4, 2009 5:51 p.m.

Matters of Fact

So many disparaging things Mr. Shepherd's "colleagues" have said about him!..as if the lamebrains from the letter-to-the-editor weren't enough! It's been quite a record I've heard over the years -live and in print & on air- from the UT's departed David Elliot, all the way down to some meathead woman writing for a nothing No. County rag. The worst continual remarks I hear and read, from someone who should know better, are the mischaracterizations and misrepresentations from our local "Movie Mavin", Scott Marks. Some of it is very mean-spirited, bullying. Most times, like this morning, irritatingly vague. Like he wants to associate himself with S.D.'s only legitimate movie critic, but can't bring himself to be accurate about the man. Was Marks also implying that Duncan Shepherd agreed with him about the clips from Agnes Varda's rarer films looking so startling bad!? Hard to believe. Am I the only man in the city who cares? Easy to believe. Alright, so Gaslamps the place for me this Friday. They pickup some refried-Landmark offerings: Oliver Hirschbiegel's Five Minutes of Heaven, Uli Edel's The Baader Meinhof Complex, and Scott (Shine) Hicks's The Boys Are Back. I hope Duncan Shepherd gets a chance to review one or two of these. Of course, none of these could be anywhere near as grand as the main feast of the day: The Birds, the grandest of all Hollywood-Hitchcock. There's such a wide disparity of opinion on this masterpiece, it reminds me of the current A Serious Man talk. Personally, the Albert Whitlock special effects are as effective as anything I've seen on that scale, to this day. They look now not a drop-in-the-bucket as hokey and offputting as the ones in the latest King Kong (as fake and ugly as the Hitchcock's are true and lovely). And since when is hoke or camp a detriment to art!? If this is Camp, it's on the loftiest outreaches of the style. As surrealist comedy, it stands alone in Hollywood for it's beautiful Technicolor and locations. Nothing like it since the glory days of James Whale. The great American fantasy movie. If it gets remade (as has been reported lately), I'll be the first to throw up.
— October 28, 2009 5:57 p.m.

Matters of Fact

The Beaches Of Agnes is certainly the pick of the week. On the Film Club Of The Air this morning (a show KPBS runs on the last Tuesday or Wednesday of the month at 10AM), the team of Accomando & Marks gave such short shrift to it, I couldn't understand what they were talking about. They spent much more time talking about Antichrist and Bronson, which they gave approving remarks to, whereas all that I got out of their Agnes comments were: Beth apparently doesn't know of any Agnes Varda films made prior to 1983, didn't know anything about this one, and Scott saw maybe one Varda film more than Beth, and is a WHOLE HELL of alot more opinionated about the film clips of movies he never saw than he is of The Beaches Of Agnes as a whole. He must have said "pretentious" about 7 or 8 times, without ever explaining WHAT was pretentious, let alone why it supposedly was... then he goes on to praise Bronson, again professing his love for things like Fight Club and Irreversable (which Marks never thinks of as pretentious, because -?- like Die Hard or Misson Impossible 2, they get him all lathered up??). None of his equal-parts arrogant/ignorant comments would bother me if he didn't drag Duncan Shepherd into it as well. He claimed that after the screening, Duncan agreed that Varda was a highly uneven director, and that Duncan supposed the only good ones she did were the ones released here. Please tell me this is only yet another instance where Duncan Shepherd is misrepresented by a fellow film reviewer?
— October 28, 2009 5:13 p.m.

All Together Now

More "perspective": Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is topping A Hundred and Eight Million. Well over the combined domestic grosses of Mystic River, Stevie, and A Serious Man -so far. These are the only three movies of the 'Naughts that Mr. Shepherd awarded the 5-Star rateing to. On the artistical side of A Serious Man, I forgot to mention the other week that Roger Deakins appeared to be useing the same kind of lens that Dion Beebe used for In the Cut, a primative device called -I believe- a 'swing/shift' lens, where you can change the focal plane so one part of the frame is in focus while the area surrounding blurs. I think Shepherd found it too arty in the Jane Campion film, or at least he thought the bruised-fruity color schema was. I wonder if he thought it worked better with the darker earthy hues of A Serious Man. I hope a Re-Review is on it's way. I miss those as much as I miss Tuturro from the Coen's films. My only personal note on Manny Farber can be seeing him at La Jolla's MoCA event when he intro'd Goodbye South, Goodbye, where I didn't speak with him, and at the Flowerhill mall's Pannikin Cafe, in Del Mar, where getting his response to Mystic River (then playing at the Flowerhill Cinemas) was as hard as I've heard it was, to have him speak of movies seems to be an uphill battle after the late Seventies. Sadly, his teaching days were before my time. I know some who attended his classes (most didn't like Manny's predilection to watch a movie in non-sequential order!). But we did chat a little about Stan Brakage, another film teacher who worked as much on the creative side as the critical. Naturally, a prime value to Manny's work in criticism is that a film critics job can be -needs to be- as creative as a filmmaker's. The only times I ever heard Shepherd badmouth other film reviewers, were in his asides about Gene Siskel, Jeffory Lyons, and Pauline Kael. I think reviewers need to be criticised more often for their failure to illuminate movies differently than the publicity machines do. A feller like Manny Farber cannot be goodmouthed enough.
— October 21, 2009 6:07 p.m.

All Together Now

Financial update on A Serious Man: I notice it had an almost identical opening weekend gross as The Hudsucker Proxy, and it's currently about $900,000 shy of beating Proxy's total Domestic Gross. To put things is some sort of perspective, Duncan Shepherd's favorite modern American documentary, Stevie, made a domestic total of *less than* A Serious Man's *first weekend* (barely over a Hundred Thousand).
— October 21, 2009 5:25 p.m.

Something Done

I was reading another old review of Shepherd's :Mafioso (the SD Reader should make these older full column reviews available by online archive, such as the Chicago Reader does with their reviewers of lessor import), where there's a big -and hugely enjoyable- preamble talking about his history with the director's films, and the star's (Norma Bengell's) work, and his infatuation with her in the 60's-70's. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHCbEIjNTAY Here's a Youtube clip of Noite Vazia (with Bengell, Odete Lara), that rare Cinema Novo classic by Walter Hugo Khouri, for those curious. I can't find it's availability listed anywhere, but I sense there must be a Portuguese-only DVD available, somewhere (given par of it's on Youtube!). I'll keeping looking for this erotic Antonioni-esque favorite of Shepherd's and Robbe-Grillet's.
— October 14, 2009 6:17 p.m.

Something Done

Part II... And for it being " a commercial throwaway, a commercial throat-cut" (Note: it's up to $923 Thousand total US gross so far, as of yesterday!; Historical note: The Hudsucker Proxy only ever made 2.8 Million in theaters, where as Miller's Crossing and Barton Fink made a shade over 11 Million combined!), that's something of an overstatement. Even if it is, they more than earned it with the (suprisingly) big success of their last one. I was reading Mr. Shepherd's first (March 7, 1996) review of Fargo again, and right off the bat he breaths relief that The Boys scaled back production (Fargo was a return to a more simple, fluid approach to filmmaking, like their first few). Already he was worring about them becoming too much a burden on the Hollywood financiers! I can't help but be a little disappointed Mr. Shepherd doesn't do a little overview of the Coen's career this past decade, and how A Serious Man. Still, I have the tradional Re-Review (and maybe, since he likes this as much as their 90's work - a Third Review?) to hope for. I usually got more from the second reviews he did for the likes of Barton Fink, Fargo, et alia. The more Mr. Shepherd likes a Coen brothers' movie, the more conservative his first review tends to be. That's especially true of the Fargo review. I love the fact he has the personal connection to Minneapolis, and varifying the Coen's are being true to their memories growing up their, at roughly the same time as Shepherd. This enriches his reviews of their more "personal" movies. Here's an idea: would it be something Duncan Shepherd would be interested in, to Re-review A Serious Man, comparing it to their Gates of Eden stories rather than just their past movies. I see more of a connection to the "autobiographical" stories in that collection than to anything else they've done. And I don't mean just the part about how the sister spent most of her time washing her hair. Maybe some day they can make a short film based directly on 'The Boys'. They already touched on that in the diner scene in Intolerable Cruelty. It would be great to see it with two young kids and a father and waitress, instead of Clooney, Adelstein, and (I forgot the name of the waitress in that underappreciated, "unoriginal" Coen movie)....
— October 14, 2009 5:48 p.m.

Something Done

And indeed, most moviegoers have an impoverished view of what they pay 8 or 10 dollars for in the theaters, let alone video. On opening weekend (which netted them a not-so-funny $251 Thousand dollars), I suffered through three meatheads with cell phones going off, in addition to Living Room Style sqaucking throughout. Most offensive were three teen guys ("Religion is really f--ked" one loudly proclaimed during the Goy's Teeth sequence). As for this being a vital religious movie (in contrast to a mere Religion Movie: The Nativity Story, Passion of Mad Mel, so forth), I couldn't agree more. How does it compare for Duncan Shepherd, I wonder, from recent non-comedies like Cold Heaven, Under the Sun of Satan, Resurrection..? The comedy (or violence) didn't hurt the deep feeling and respect for life contained in Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother... -but will that not automatically disqualify it from much consideration? I notice there isn't much respect for this movie so far. More misunderstandings per a review than I've ever read for a Coen movie.
— October 14, 2009 5:48 p.m.