To Have and Have Not (1944)

To Have and Have Not (1944) - great dialogue - Wm Faulkner, the chemistry is there, but I wasn't 'sold' on the story - just not as deep into the characters, I guess. Eddie was great (Pastor from Sgt. York).

Running Time (1997)

Running Time (1997)

real-time (seemingly) one continuous shot (in the vein of "Rope" - they even thank Alfred Hitchcock in the credits), b/w, heist, 70 mins, Bruce Campbell ("Groovy").

Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1926)

Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1926) "H.G. Wells called this German silent 'quite the silliest film'; Hitler was so impressed by the conception that many years later he tried (unsuccessfully) to persuade its director, Fritz Lang, to make Nazi movies ... One of the last examples of the imaginative—but often monstrous—grandeur of the Golden Period of the German film, Metropolis is a spectacular example of Expressionist design (grouped human beings are used architecturally), with moments of almost incredible beauty and power (the visionary sequence about the Tower of Babel), absurd ineptitudes (the lovesick hero in his preposterous knickerbockers), and oddities that defy analysis (the robot vamp's bizarre, lewd wink). It's a wonderful, stupefying folly." — Pauline Kael

"One of the great achievements in the silent era, a work so audacious in its vision and so angry in its message that it is, if anything, more powerful today than when it was made." — Roger Ebert

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Amazing - every bit of every scene is meaningful. Had I watched it w/o the (text) commentary, I wd not only have missed just about everything meaningful, but wd have probably been bored not realizing how much of it was over my head. W/ the commentary, it becomes so detailed and intricate that it's a poem.

I highly recommend this movie and highly recommend the commentary. This film, for me, needs someone explaining it to me. W/ it, amazing. W/o it, I'd be lost.

The mediator btwn the head and the hands must be the heart.

Matthew 2:12-15

Why does God tell Joseph to take his family to Egypt? I mean, for them to escape Herod, God cd have just hidden them locally or something. But the prophesy had to be fulfilled that "He called His son out of Egypt."

So was sending them to Egypt just to fulfill the prophesy? But that makes it sound like they are serving the prophesy. Or is it that the prophesy is in place so that when it is done (w/ good reason) by them, it is a sign that He is the Messiah???

La Strada (Federico Fellini, 1954) - 5/5

La Strada (Federico Fellini, 1954) "The theme of Federico Fellini's spiritual fable is that everyone has a purpose in the universe ... Even if one rejects the concepts of this movie, its mood and the details of scenes stay with one; a year or two later, a gesture or a situation suddenly brings it all back." — Pauline Kael

b/w, Gelsomina is great to just watch, a female Charlie Chaplan, tough road of life they are on, Gelsomina's joy of life is destroyed by Zampano's violence only when he destroys someone else (not when he hurts her). She loves him and he cd love her, but destroys them both.

Ink-Stained Wretch Movie List

Movie List

Stuff we've watched lately that you should see. Because I would never steer you wrong, would I?

(Everything here is available at my favorite video store, Videotheque. Support them, please.)

Northfork - The Polish Brothers are these twin brothers from Montana who make atmospheric indy films. I missed Twin Falls Idaho, but this one is pretty cool. Moves slowly and has all kinds of odd religious overtones, but Nick Nolte and James Woods are as good as I've seen either of them in a long time. And it's beautiful on a wide-screen TV. It nearly put June to sleep, though.

Whale Rider - I normally avoid anything where the word "inspirational" is used in the reviews featured in the ads, but this one got to me. A world you won't normally see--a Maori village in New Zealand--and an unlikely girl-heroine. Beautifully acted and nicely written, if slightly simplistic. I'm going to sit down and watch it with my 8 year-old girl soon.

I Capture the Castle - I'm a sucker for coming of age stories about writers, probably why I dug Thomas Wolfe so much in college. I just wish I had read this book back then (it was written in the late 40s). The movie is great. Good performances all around, nice writing, a great setting in an old castle (natch), and if you've ever struggled with the written word, this one will get your number. Along with Adaptation, last year was a good one for movies about writers (and I didn't even see The Hours).

The Man Without a Past - The funniest Finnish movie I've ever seen. I don't believe that the Finns are known for being funny, and the humor is dry and brittle like the landscape, but I dug it. A welder is mugged getting off a train in a strange city and wakes up with no memory of who he is. He falls in with an encampment of down-and-outers who live in converted shipping containers near a Harbor and gets a job working at the Salvation Army, where he turns the SA band into a blues band and falls in love with a stern matron of the Army. Don't know why I thought it was so funny, but sometimes it's like that. Again, June went to bed before it was over.

Beware of a Holy Whore - Fassbinder always cracks me up, and this is one of my faves, recently out on video. A depraved look at filmmaking, the way it really is on the set, with Eddie Constantine floating through this thing like a ghost and Lou Castel doing a great Fassbinder impression as the tyranic director.

Tunes of Glory - As a huge fan of The Horse's Mouth, I was really excited to see Criterion release this subsequent collaboration between Alec Guiness and director Ronald Neame. And what a strange, wonderful film this is, a battle of wills between a rough-and-tumble Scottish officer (played by Guiness against type) and an upper-crusty career officer (John Mills) for the hearts and minds of a battalion of old soldiers trying to make sense of the post-WWII world. The movie feels very modern, with two less-than-appealing lead characters and an extremely downbeat ending. Kind of like The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp meets Look Back in Anger.

People Will Talk - Get this one: Cary Grant as a pro-abortion gynecologist and medical school professor with a secret past and Hume Cronyn as the bitter fellow prof who tries to get Cary bounced from the school. And Walter Slezak and Jeanne Crain as his pal and love interest respectively. But the best part is Dr. Praetorius' (yes, that's Cary's name) assistant/pal/bodyguard named Shunderson, played by a Scottish actor named Finlay Currie. The guy has an amazing near-Tor Johnson vibe and gets to single-handedly thwart Hume's attempted HUAC-style investigation. And actually, after all the rest, that's what the movie really is, a reaction to the Hollywood blacklist, and a good one, at that. Joe Mankiewicz was a fricking genius.

Once Upon a Time in the West - 5/5

Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) - too classic!, great theme music for the leads, water & smoke themes

Movies I've Seen Lately

I'll try to do this from memory. It won't be complete or detailed, but I'll hope to keep it up to date as I go from here.

These are ones I've watched while working out.

In no particular order...

Nosferatu (1922) - 4/5 - silent, (F.W. Murnau, 1922) "To watch F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu is to see the vampire movie before it had really seen itself. Here is the story of Dracula before it was buried alive in cliches, jokes, TV skits, cartoons and more than 30 other films. The film is in awe of its material. It seems to really believe in vampires." — Roger Ebert

"The original, superbly loathsome German version of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula is a concentrated essay in horror fantasy, full of weird, macabre camera effects. Though ludicrous at times (every horror film seems to become absurd after the passage of years, and many before—yet the horror remains), this first important film of the vampire genre has more spectral atmosphere, more ingenuity, and more imaginative ghoulish ghastliness than any of its successors. The movie often seems more closely related to demonic painting than to the later, rather rigid vampire-movie genre." — Pauline Kael

Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (1972) - 4/5 - Aguirre, The Wrath of God

Nosferatu (1979) - 5/5 - German/English, Herzog, Kinski

Stage Coach (1939) - 3.5/5 - b/w, classic, (John Ford, 1939) "Perhaps the most likable of all Westerns, and a Grand Hotel-on-wheels movie that has just about everything—adventure, romance, chivalry—and all of it very simple and traditional." — Pauline Kael

Third Man, The - 3.5/5 - Welles, b/w, spy-thriller, Russia

Seventh Seal, The - 3/5 - Swedish, b/w, (Ingmar Bergman, 1957) "The images and the omens are medieval, but the modern erotic and psychological insights add tension, and in some cases, as in the burning of the child—witch (Maud Hansson), excruciation. The actors' faces, the aura of magic, the ambiguities, and the riddle at the heart of the film all contribute to its stature." — Pauline Kael

Magnificent Seven, The - 3.5/5 - western, b/w, based on The Seven Samarai

Seven Samarai, The - 3.5/5 - classic, b/w

Sergeant York - 3.5/5 - Gary Cooper, WWI, b/w

The Big Sleep (1946) - 3.5/5 - Bogie and Bacall, interested release info: some filmed in 1944 and some (refilmed) later in '46, Wm Faulkner on the screenplay - dialogue!

Not while working out:

Ray - 4/5
Spanglish - 3.5/5
Shark Tale - 2.5/5
After the Sunset - 1/5
Incredibles, The - 4.5/5

John 11:17

17 Jesus said to her, "Stop clinging to Me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father;

What is the relationship btwn clinging and whether or not He has ascended?

John 11:13,14

13 And they said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him."

Pretty amazing that Mary sees 2 angels and just goes on?

John 19:17-18

17 They took Jesus, therefore, and He went out, bearing His own cross, to the place called the Place of a Skull, which is called in Hebrew, Golgotha.

What must it have been like to have heard Jesus talking about taking up your cross and then to see Him taking up, essentially, ours... if they realized it at the time.

18 There they crucified Him, and with Him two other men, one on either side, and Jesus in between.

Why was He btwn them? I mean, what's the symbolizm/meaning?

John 19:11

Jesus answered, "You would have no authority over Me, unless it had been given you from above; for this reason he who delivered Me to you has the greater sin."

Why is that sin greater? Greater than what?

John 19:4-5

4 Pilate came out again and said to them, "Behold, I am bringing Him out to you so that you may know that I find no guilt in Him."

5 Jesus then came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, "Behold, the Man!"

Two questions:

1. Why didn't Pilate take off the crown and robe when he brought Jesus out?

It seems weird that he wd let Him be brought out like that while saying he finds no guilt in Him. Wdn't some say "This is how he treats people w/o guilt?"

2. Why does he say "Behold, the Man!"?

Matthew Henry says:

...intimating that though his having been so popular might have given them some cause to fear that his interest in the country would lessen theirs...

John 18:37-38

Therefore Pilate said to Him, "So You are a king?" Jesus answered, "You say correctly that I am a king For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice."

Pilate said to Him, "What is truth?" And when he had said this, he went out again to the Jews and said to them, "I find no guilt in Him."

He asks Jesus "What is truth?", but then walks away.

John 18:34

Why does Jesus ask Pilate this:

Jesus answered, "Are you saying this on your own initiative, or did others tell you about Me?"

John 18:28

Then they led Jesus from Caiaphas into the Praetorium, and it was early; and they themselves did not enter into the Praetorium so that they would not be defiled, but might eat the Passover.

That's when you've really lost sight of what's right and important.

John 18:20

No major revelations today, but I did noticed one thing...

In John 18:20 Jesus explains:

20 Jesus answered him, "I have spoken openly to the world;
I always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where all
the Jews come together; and I spoke nothing in secret."

I believe He's making the point that everything He's done
has been in the open and available to be known by all; He's
got nothing to hide.

But it might also be a little jab at their tactics of plotting,
arresting Him and holding trial at night, etc. - in secret.

From Matthew Henry:

He said nothing in secret contrary to what he said in public, but only by way of repetition and explication: In secret have I said nothing; as if he had been either suspicious of the truth of it, or conscious of any ill design in it. He sought no corners, for he feared no colours, nor said any thing that he needed to be ashamed of; what he did speak in private to his disciples he ordered them to proclaim on the house-tops, Mt. 10:27. God saith of himself (Isa. 45:19), I have not spoken in secret; his commandment is not hidden, Deu. 30:11. And the righteousness of faith speaks in like manner, Rom. 10:6. Veritas nihil metuit nisi abscondi—truth fears nothing but concealment.—Tertullian.

John 18:14 - Reading Slowly

If nothing else, reading in the Greek forces me to read slower and consider the words more cafefully. I tend to see things in the text I hadn't before. For example...

Caiaphas, in John 11:47-50 and then again it's mentioned in John 18, talks/teaches about one man dying for the nation. Of course, he's talking about Jesus dying to for the nation in protection from the Romans; not sin.

John 18
14 Now Caiaphas was the one who had advised the Jews that it was expedient for one man to die on behalf of the people.

(see John 11:47-50)

I never saw the irony before. Especially coming from such a man that sd know the scripture and know how He really came to die for the people.

John 18:5-6

This is not a full translation - just the parts to make my point...

4Ἰησοῦς οὖν εἰδὼς πάντα τὰ ἐρχόμενα ἐπ' αὐτὸν ἐξῆλθεν καὶ λέγει αὐτοῖς, Τίνα ζητεῖτε;

Jesus asks the cohort "Whom do you seek?"

5ἀπεκρίθησαν αὐτῷ, Ἰησοῦν τὸν Ναζωραῖον.

They say Jesus the Nazarene.

λέγει αὐτοῖς, Ἐγώ εἰμι. εἱστήκει δὲ καὶ Ἰούδας ὁ παραδιδοὺς αὐτὸν μετ' αὐτῶν.

Jesus says "I am."

6ὡς οὖν εἶπεν αὐτοῖς, Ἐγώ εἰμι, ἀπῆλθον εἰς τὰ ὀπίσω καὶ ἔπεσαν χαμαί.

They drew back and fell down.

My main point really is that Jesus doesn't say "I am He" as it is often translated, but "I am."

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