more is more

Me and Peter Bogdonavich…

Sat, 02 Feb 2013 09:34:00 -0500

Me and Peter Bogdonavich…

When Natalie Wood tells James Dean in Rebel without a Cause that...

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 10:44:00 -0500

When Natalie Wood tells James Dean in Rebel without a Cause that life is crushing in on her, and Dean responds, “life can be beautiful,” it kills me every time. It’s the greatest hustle. To confess how fucked up the world is with so much love of life. dg

There’s the story of an american soldier sitting on a...

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 10:29:00 -0500

There’s the story of an american soldier sitting on a toilet in Vietnam, his rifle on the floor. Vietcong walks in. The American pulls up his trousers first, and then goes for his rifle, but by the time he reaches it, its too late, he’s already dead. Because the most terrifying thing of all in this world isn’t death, it’s looking like a horse’s ass, in perpetuity. And yet this is the job of an actor. Every time she gets on a stage, in front of a camera, when she walks into an audition her job is to make a fool of herself, to admit vulnerability, strip herself bare and reveal herself in a room full of strangers and cynics. Like a junkie, she’s addicted to love. She’s willing to kill for it, die for it. I want what she wants but she wants it more, so I buy a ticket and a popcorn to see her suffer, a vision of my own flesh and blood on the screen, and sure enough I turn her fuck ups into my own salvation. It’s just that simple - if she can make me believe that she’s telling the truth, that her words, laughter and tears are real, then maybe, if I’m willing to go far as she goes, she might just save me, for however a brief moment, from my own fears. Can’t think of a single profession that requires more guts, more compassion, more wisdom. -dg

ultrabrilliant:

Raging Bull / Grzegorz Domaradzki

I don`t try to sympathize with my characters, I just try to...

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 06:27:00 -0500

I don`t try to sympathize with my characters, I just try to empathize with them. to try to understand. if I sympathised with the characters I would make idealized, romantic characters out of them, which I don`t do. I don`t idealize them, I just do normal characters, not very sympathetic, but just the way they are. isabelle huppert

via pablogt

In The Passenger, a gunrunner goes on about the beauty of the...

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 20:57:00 -0500

In The Passenger, a gunrunner goes on about the beauty of the desert. Jack Nicholson’s character confides that he is not interested in landscapes, that he’s more interested in people. The gunrunner replies, “But there are people in the desert.” The final image of the film is a shot of, lo and behold, a beautiful landscape. There is a house in the landscape. In this house, a love affair has just ended, and a man has been killed. dg

(via boy meets girl)

“To me style is just the outside of content, and content...

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 10:08:00 -0500

“To me style is just the outside of content, and content the inside of style, like the outside and the inside of the human body—both go together, they can’t be separated.” - Jean-luc Godard

The French New Wave changed my life. The first time I watched the movies I was twenty one years old. They articulated my desires in ways I didn’t know how to at the time. They spoke to me directly more than any other films I had ever seen. My life doesn’t have a plot. I’ve never shot anybody. I don’t know any spies. I’m not a superhero. The movies were messy, rude, hungry for the world, simple. A man and a woman misfiring, misunderstanding each other, being lost by life, trying to get laid, falling in love - falling out of love, flipping off cops, talking about everything and nothing, the sense of play, the humor, the invention, the freedom and raw beauty, life always bursting at the seems.

They were about women written by men with a real interest in exploring a woman’s internal life. Yes they were beautiful and breathtaking but they were also individual. Neither damsel in distress nor femme fatale, they were the searchers, finally, the engine of the picture.

On Aug 7, 2011, at 7:16 PM, David Gutnik...

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 09:06:00 -0500

On Aug 7, 2011, at 7:16 PM, David Gutnik wrote:

> what I love about westerns is this idea that the value of a man isn’t defined by money and power but how he wears his hat, how he rides his horse, where he draws a line in the sand. is it okay to shoot a man in the back? would you give up a friend for loot? the myth of the west is a moral proposition- are you good, bad or ugly?

should we grab some food?

David Gutnik
Sent from my phone
212.767.9361

via picturinghistory

fear thrusts me into narrative by instigating a physical...

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 14:31:00 -0500

fear thrusts me into narrative by instigating a physical reaction, it means i’m sitting at the edge of my seat, it means my palms are sweating, it means my breathing is faster than usual. dg (via toirock)

I’m interested in how people fool themselves, not how they fool...

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 20:50:00 -0500

I’m interested in how people fool themselves, not how they fool others. John Cassavetes

we cannot control the moment and what we cannot control is...

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 18:00:00 -0500

we cannot control the moment and what we cannot control is scary. we can control how we think about past moments, how we try to face the future, but the moment itself escapes us, always. isn’t that what suspense is all about? the element of time, the thrill of the inevitable moment, the threat of being there. dg

via ace

Ben Gazzara and Audrey Hepburn in They All Laughed, the single...

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 14:18:00 -0500

Ben Gazzara and Audrey Hepburn in They All Laughed, the single greatest romantic comedy ever made, in one of the most romantic moments ever caught on screen. dg

via edgingtonmovieaday

sex and violence in 1912 (via old hollywood)

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 23:59:00 -0500

sex and violence in 1912

(via old hollywood)

This safari suit is a uniform. I wear a uniform because to me a...

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 17:07:00 -0500

This safari suit is a uniform. I wear a uniform because to me a movie is a war. And if you don’t know it’s a war you’re missing something. Brian de Palma

via de palma a la mod

It wasn’t the way I looked at a man, it was the thought...

Sat, 10 Nov 2012 06:26:00 -0500

It wasn’t the way I looked at a man, it was the thought behind it. gloria grahame

via radiocentraal

KIRSTEN DUNST has got me thinking out loud about how the...

Fri, 02 Nov 2012 09:08:00 -0400

KIRSTEN DUNST has got me thinking out loud about how the history of the world holds a mirror to the history of a human being. both are births borne of explosion—the world with a big bang, a man with a mother in labor—that set in motion a simultaneous expansion of horizons, of the world and of the mind. both strive towards a return to wholeness, the cosmos towards a state of interstellar and intergalactic connectivity, and a man’s longing for mastery of self and a return to the womb. if you look at this parallel course of history you’d be hard pressed to deny the central role of technological progress in both human and cosmic terms. each technological innovation from the dawn of mankind — ox-drawn plow, algebra, paper, telescope, telegram, telephone, plain, train, automobile, photograph, motion picture, computer, internet, facebook, twitter and onward — advances the causes of both human connection and cosmic recuperation. it’s a history of, to put it crudely, information flow. does this oversimplify? maybe. does it presume that history is rational? maybe. but let me at least for a moment entertain the possibility—and self satisfying pleasure—of a coherent model that explains, well, everything.

how does the history of movies fit into this schema? not sure. still thinking out loud. there’s a recently released video essay by matthias stork criticizing modern hollywood blockbusters and action films. the video tries to address an apparent decline of aesthetic values in hollywood movies: degraded visual storytelling, shots and cuts devoid not only of meaning and emotional purpose but of spatial and geographic consideration, built on shoddy principles of disorientation designed to beat an audience into submission through sensory onslaught powered by chaos and confusion. in other words who’s cinema values will outlast? steven spielberg or michael bay? sam peckinpah or christopher nolan? john woo or paul greengrass?

but how do you make a convincing argument about such a potentially lame subjective taste based claim as a decline in quality, without avoiding the trappings of sounding like an elitist prick snob son of a bitch, and what’s it all got to do with the history of the universe?

every era has a god. for the better part of the first two millennia god belonged to the church. during the enlightenment reason replaced the church. the promise was that reason would solve all of man’s problems. two world wars and a laundry list of unconscionable genocides later turned that claim on its ass. in america in the 60s god was social change. but vietnam, the assassinations of kennedy and king, and a guy named deepthroat transformed idealists into cynics and by the 80s god was greed, john lennon was dead, hip hop was the new rock and roll, and gordon gekko was jesus christ. within a decade consumption was king, kurt cobain he blew his own head off with a shotgun, the gods of hip hop tupac and biggie moved from sub cult to pop cult and then took turns murdering each other. so finally we said fuck it and settled on simpler pop confections like brittney spears and the backstreet boys so that if the day came when they killed themselves no would care. in 2001 god turned on america and a great depression and mountains of crushing debt exposed the false prophet of consumption. in 2008 the seas parted and god was hope incarnate, a half black half white shaman who would reconcile the races, wash away the stains of our forefathers and reverse the tide of history. but dude turned out to be a one trick pony and another false prophet. now were living in post hope 2012 and god has finally had it with all things emotional and has taken up residence in a church somewhere in silicon valley. tech at long last is a god we can trust. it’s an arab spring powered by anonymous facebook groups and tweets heard around the world. we’re reliving enlightenment naivete about the idea that man can overcome the passions this time by way of an ipad.

stork talks about the toxic influence of video games and the like, but he misses the greater point by not addressing a far more relevant reality which has to do with how we process information. remember in the 90s when we lived in front of our television sets and lamented how desensitized and overstimulated we were? well now we live on the web where the availability of stimuli - information - is infinite.

it would hardly understate the fact to state that someone like mark zuckerberg has a had a profound influence on the way we live. here is a young man who managed to convert his social anxieties into a net worth of 50 billion and counting, who transformed the social experience into a social network, a global virtual city of social interaction.

our information flows are so sophisticated that the channels of communication are only beginning to radically alter the way and the amount of information we can process at any given moment. every movie whether commercial or indie has to reckon with an audience whose ability to process information is unfathomably sophisticated and rapidly evolving at every moment.

you can make the case that the fractured shape and feel of contemporary action films attempt to reflect the fracture and speed of the times. but you can say that about any era. it doesn’t really tell us anything about the quality of the films, whether they’re stacking up to the needs of a society. besides just because the times suck doesn’t mean the movies have to suck. but now that we’re on the subject, and maybe this is the question I’ve been driving at, what do movies look like in a society that spends so much time living by proxy on the world wide web?

the reality is that yes, “contemporary blockbusters, particularly action films, trade visual intelligibility for sensory overload,” but can you blame them for trying? they are addressing a bare, white knuckled fact: most people crave far more direct engagement and sensual excitement than their lives could possibly provide. admittedly, I’m a member of this group. brooklyn is okay, but it ain’t no planet of the apes. on the flip side the indie defines itself proudly in opposition to this hollywood attitude which is its own kind of distortion that deprives most of the films that aspire to be serious of dare i say pleasure.

remember in high school you’d be writing an essay for history class, you’d come up with a thesis statement because you knew that was important, you had to have a thesis statement, otherwise you’re cooked, so you wrack your brain, and after some hard soul searching you stumble upon that light bulb moment, wham, your thesis statement is revealed to you, and it’s a damn good one, then you try to prove it in your paper, you’re so hell bent on proving it that guess what you prove it, it’s beautiful, so beautiful you can burst into a million pieces just thinking about it, you’re brilliant, it’s all right there in your paper, clear as day… except you didn’t really prove anything did you, just your uncanny ability to include all the facts that support your thesis, and exclude all the facts that don’t. that’s pretty much how i feel about the vision of reality in most new movies: all pleasure no truth, or all truth no pleasure.

what do i know? i’m just a bozo with a tumblr account. but for my money our directorswhether indie or hollywood make movies the same way partisan talking heads distort reality to make a point. the probelm isn’t that hollywood films are too “sensory.” scorcese is sensory. ohpuls is sensory. welles is sensory. bergman is sensory. kurosawa is sensory. de palma is sensory. for christs sake even cassavetes and altman are sensory. the best of them all address SENSORY NEEDS, yes go figure - man was born with SENSES. but what elevates the great ones is that they also address the most profound need of all, the need to feel something.

the irony of the uncanny technological achievements made since the dawn of man is that for all the progress we have made in the information age, for all the appartuses of communication and integration right there at our fingertips, we have never been more alone. it strikes me as a raw deal… man with the big M, mankind, is riding high into the future, while man with the little m, individual man, is ever the loneliest man. is there a way to calculate the distance between two souls in virtual space?

maybe i’m confusing the limits of my own vision with the limits of the world. people smarter than i am have wrestled with big existential questions more articulately than I could ever possibly muster. perhaps i’m underestimating man’s powers of emotional survival. considering human beings have outwitted the jungles of the natural world and the concrete jungles of soul sucking cities, the jungles of as of yet unpaved digital highways and byways are likely surmountable. fact is the wild wild web is a virtual playground where the mind can bypass space and time and in the final analysis overcome the primitive limitations of the body. the soul, whatever the terrain, will always be a restless traveler.

that’s why stork’s classicist criticism of modern hollywood while in a lot of ways valid is basically reactionary and ahistorical. it doesn’t address the reality of the epic social changes we’re living through, some answers can be found in the past but not all of them. an old friend once told me movies are about one thing—how to live. therein lies the rub: how to live (and make movies) in a world not just dominated by media, but how to do it in a world where it becomes increasingly hard to differentiate between one’s actual life and the media version, when everyone is the media, all of us our own information flows, a kind of hall of mirrors.

(via yellow ghosts and armour) movies exist because pain exists...

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 17:30:00 -0400

(via yellow ghosts and armour)

movies exist because pain exists and because people have fantasies that can’t be satisfied in real life. until somebody comes up with the cure for a broken heart, shame, fear, money problems, sex problems, loneliness, there will always be movies.

every movie ever made begins when a shark enters the picture and ends when it’s dead. it’s the greatest dream, invented to provide some form of relief and guidance, offering up a presentation of a problem and its resolution, but disguised as entertainment. a film is an exorcism.

since the time i was born movies have been feeding me with myths about love, marriage, what it means to be a man, a woman, a hero, good and evil, a success. to be clear, i love movies, i live and die for them, but nine out of ten of them played me for a fool.

false comforts, false illusions, false characters, false promises, delusions of grandeur. naturally. i’ve never met a single person including me that doesn’t prefer to be presented in the best possible light. so why would our movies behave any different? a collective expression, collective prayer, of how we idealize ourselves.

im no different. without my illusions, I’m lost. until I make some small measure of progress that temporarily reassures me I’m fonzie all over again. so when i watch a movie that reminds me i’m not as honest and original as i thought i was, that I’m a little bit of a fraud, part conformist, sometimes a coward, i’m immediately hostile. but if the filmmaker is persistent enough, seductive, skillful, sensitive and convincing enough, i can be won. because i don’t buy the idea that people go to movies to escape. i want someone to call my bluffs.

film in america is a business and conventional wisdom has it that the client wants to escape problems, not address them, truth bombs at the box office. and yet, occasionally a commercially unviable american filmmaker manages to sneak past the censors to set the record straight, nick ray, sam fuller, orson welles, sam peckinpah, martin scorsese, brian de palma, john cassavetes. but these folks weren’t snobs. they were driven as much by a need to rebel as a need to please. they told the truth but also could put on a hell of a show. today’s current crop of indie filmmakers seem to have an abundance of truth in their arsenals plus a video recording device, but with no interest in exploring that device’s possibilities, in putting on a hell of a show. it reflects an attitude thats so jaded about hollywood it defines itself by the starkest possible opposite. but, why tie one hand behind your back? dg

the criterion collection has three reasons for brian de palma’s...

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 17:08:00 -0400

the criterion collection has three reasons for brian de palma’s april 26, 2011 blow out release. but not one for why it’s taken so long. what with the de palma retrospective at BAM organized by noah baumbach earlier this month I’d say it’s been a pretty good april for the most misunderstood filmmaker in history.

every de palma movie begins with a lie. how do you live in a world where everything you once knew to be true turns out to be a lie? alienation gives way to awakening and a reckoning is set in motion. you can say, well, that’s how all movies work. bullshit. the world’s lies are not just story points you can check off a list. de palma is one of the few if only filmmakers still working who writes his movies with a camera not a pen. the lies are embedded in the images. information is disinformation. your eyes, like in life, lie to you, about- who your friends are. what family life is really like. who wants what from whom. who’s pulling who’s leg. who’s crazy me or you.

the real horror isn’t the violence. its the war between fear and desire, between truth and lies, men and women. it’s family. it’s sex. it’s identity. it’s social corruption. it’s the moral consequences of a failure to act, or act too late. it’s the paranoia that culture destroys anything or anyone it can’t assimilate. but de palma works in visual terms so the themes and meanings are turned into simple pictures that tap into our deepest fears and fantasies. the experience of alienation - the drama - moves beyond the language of screenwriting into a purely visual realm. emotional and psychological states are made to be experienced through high impact visual tableaux sequences. there is at least one unforgettable set piece in all of the movies.

be black baby in hi mom. the confusion of friends and enemies slow motion sequence in the fury. carrie’s sexual awakening in the opening shower scene. liberty bell parade in blow out. heist in mission impossible. grand central station in carlitos way. odessa steps in the untouchables. frankie goes to hollywood in body double. the split screens in sisters. the museum sequence in dressed to kill. bait and switch at cannes in femme fatale. zero gravity dance and death sequences in mission to mars. say hello to my little friend in scarface.

how many filmmakers can claim responsibility for so many classic moments in movie history, and still get dismissed? the mastery of craft, the use of split screens, diopter effects, slow motion, doppelgangers, de palma uses these devices grammatically, the way a writer uses words, as his own personal visual language - and politically, as an expression of his point of view of the world. isn’t that the dream of movie making? -dg

character = image = story via asphaltcult

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 10:23:00 -0400

character = image = story

via asphaltcult

im·me·di·a·cy noun /iˈmēdēəsē/ (immediacies, plural) the...

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 00:00:00 -0400

im·me·di·a·cy

noun /iˈmēdēəsē/

(immediacies, plural)

the quality of bringing one into direct and instant involvement with something, giving rise to a sense of urgency or excitement.

via file magazine

Only character can bring an image to life. dg (via house of...

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 23:40:00 -0400

Only character can bring an image to life.

(via house of mirth and movies)