Pebbles- I have those things I saw for you; now I suppose I should get a card, right, as that's the main idea? 
Kritter- I found something for you, for free, that I think you'll like a lot. If I'm in town Sunday, I'll try to get it to you. Right now, I'm trying to set up a trip to punkrockjuliette on Sunday, or else I'll see Elvis on Saturday and/ or maybe see NoControl Sunday. Got that? Well, I'll get it to you soon, somehow.
Last night, I watched Andalusian Dog and I Am Curious Blue, both first time viewings. I'd seen the other semi-collaboration of Bunuel and Dali, L'Age d'Or, and had seen I Am Curious Yellow.
I must admit to never having really dug Bunuel's films. I'd kinda liked That Obscure Object of Desire, but not The Exterminating Angel, Simon of the Desert or L'Age d'Or. Having said that, I wonder if I'd feel differently about them now... Andalusian Dog, anyway, is way better than those last 3. It is the first surrealist film, and Bunuel's son explains in an interview that it is really supposed to mean nothing, symbolically. Dali and Bunuel merely pitched imagery ideas at each other, with a simple "That's good" or "That's bad" determining the eventual movie.
Example-
"A woman is in a room and she's afraid."
"Afraid of what?"
"A jump-rope."
"That's bad."
"A golden jump-rope."
"Still bad"
"A piano"
"That's good!"
"Two pianos with dead donkeys."
"That's better!"
and so on. The film is mostly famous for opening with the man slashing the woman's eye with a razor. Is it shocking? Well... I still don't think the actual cutting part looks like a live woman's eye (and it isn't- it's a dead cow's head), but it gets your attention.
I found the disembodied hand sequences the most striking, but there's a whole lot more net pics of the eye/ razor dealie.
L'Age d'Or was originally supposed to be another collaboration, but this time Dali abandoned it for total disagreement with Bunuel over the final product. Later, he denounced Bunuel in The Secret Life of Salvador Dali as an atheist who was trying to propogate anti-clerical imagery. Bunuel confronted Dali, who said the book was just about making Dali famous and Had "nothing to do with" Bunuel, and I believe they only spoke once ever again after that.
I'd seen I Am Curious Yellow years ago; it's a documentary/ drama about a revolutionary young lady, Lena Nyman, who has conflicts with her boyfriend and lots of socio-political beefs, with the film spilling over into real life by including political messages, interviews with people on the street about issues, and the actors going in and out of their roles and just "playing" themselves.
It had a sister-film, I Am Curious Blue, which never seemed to get the attention of ...Yellow. I'd always assumed it didn't because it had less sex and nudity, and figured the films were merely just different cuts of the same film (...Yellow features constant references to the Blue version, along with the slogan, "They are different films, and the same.")
Well, it has pretty much as much nudity and sexual themes, and is a completely different film. Yellow features the relationship of Nyman with this male character; Blue makes it seem she's really trying to go out with this other, older guy who's already in a relationship, while cutting between that and suggesting the director, Vilgot Sjman (the actual film's director), is sleeping with her (he was), but that she really wants to be with the actor from Yellow, and he with her, but his character's got a wife and child (I guess?), and then it cuts back to where they're actors seeing each other behind the director's back... it's kinda like that.
(pic- Sjman and Nyman)
Also- Yellow focuses on straight politics more: political theory, revolutionaries, nuclear proliferation, wars; Blue has more argument over whether Sweden is "a class state," criticism of the church, criticism of prisons, and so on.
It also seems Blue was made after Yellow since it starts with "fan mail" to Sjman and Nyman (presumably based on their work in Yellow) in which people wish death on them both and people call Nyman a whore and so on.
I find the film funn, and still relevant in some ways despite it's heavy sixtiesism... you could say the return of the fifties to politics has made it even seem forward-looking.
Tonight, I watched Vampyros Lesbos. Quite a funn psychedelicish vampiric, lesbian romp it is. Despite the low-budget look, director Jess Franco gets a lot out of the weird imagery, bizarre-ass soundtrack (there's even this recurrent voice [starting with the very first second of film] that sounds like Rabbot from Aqua Teen; if you think I'm kidding, just watch the first 3 seconds of the film), and use of lots of repetition of shots to make the thing a real mindfuck. And Soledad Miranda is about 36,000 kinds of total hot sex.
Like
that.
Kritter- I found something for you, for free, that I think you'll like a lot. If I'm in town Sunday, I'll try to get it to you. Right now, I'm trying to set up a trip to punkrockjuliette on Sunday, or else I'll see Elvis on Saturday and/ or maybe see NoControl Sunday. Got that? Well, I'll get it to you soon, somehow.
Last night, I watched Andalusian Dog and I Am Curious Blue, both first time viewings. I'd seen the other semi-collaboration of Bunuel and Dali, L'Age d'Or, and had seen I Am Curious Yellow.
I must admit to never having really dug Bunuel's films. I'd kinda liked That Obscure Object of Desire, but not The Exterminating Angel, Simon of the Desert or L'Age d'Or. Having said that, I wonder if I'd feel differently about them now... Andalusian Dog, anyway, is way better than those last 3. It is the first surrealist film, and Bunuel's son explains in an interview that it is really supposed to mean nothing, symbolically. Dali and Bunuel merely pitched imagery ideas at each other, with a simple "That's good" or "That's bad" determining the eventual movie.
Example-
"A woman is in a room and she's afraid."
"Afraid of what?"
"A jump-rope."
"That's bad."
"A golden jump-rope."
"Still bad"
"A piano"
"That's good!"
"Two pianos with dead donkeys."
"That's better!"
and so on. The film is mostly famous for opening with the man slashing the woman's eye with a razor. Is it shocking? Well... I still don't think the actual cutting part looks like a live woman's eye (and it isn't- it's a dead cow's head), but it gets your attention.
I found the disembodied hand sequences the most striking, but there's a whole lot more net pics of the eye/ razor dealie.
L'Age d'Or was originally supposed to be another collaboration, but this time Dali abandoned it for total disagreement with Bunuel over the final product. Later, he denounced Bunuel in The Secret Life of Salvador Dali as an atheist who was trying to propogate anti-clerical imagery. Bunuel confronted Dali, who said the book was just about making Dali famous and Had "nothing to do with" Bunuel, and I believe they only spoke once ever again after that.
I'd seen I Am Curious Yellow years ago; it's a documentary/ drama about a revolutionary young lady, Lena Nyman, who has conflicts with her boyfriend and lots of socio-political beefs, with the film spilling over into real life by including political messages, interviews with people on the street about issues, and the actors going in and out of their roles and just "playing" themselves.
It had a sister-film, I Am Curious Blue, which never seemed to get the attention of ...Yellow. I'd always assumed it didn't because it had less sex and nudity, and figured the films were merely just different cuts of the same film (...Yellow features constant references to the Blue version, along with the slogan, "They are different films, and the same.")
Well, it has pretty much as much nudity and sexual themes, and is a completely different film. Yellow features the relationship of Nyman with this male character; Blue makes it seem she's really trying to go out with this other, older guy who's already in a relationship, while cutting between that and suggesting the director, Vilgot Sjman (the actual film's director), is sleeping with her (he was), but that she really wants to be with the actor from Yellow, and he with her, but his character's got a wife and child (I guess?), and then it cuts back to where they're actors seeing each other behind the director's back... it's kinda like that.
(pic- Sjman and Nyman)
Also- Yellow focuses on straight politics more: political theory, revolutionaries, nuclear proliferation, wars; Blue has more argument over whether Sweden is "a class state," criticism of the church, criticism of prisons, and so on.
It also seems Blue was made after Yellow since it starts with "fan mail" to Sjman and Nyman (presumably based on their work in Yellow) in which people wish death on them both and people call Nyman a whore and so on.
I find the film funn, and still relevant in some ways despite it's heavy sixtiesism... you could say the return of the fifties to politics has made it even seem forward-looking.
Tonight, I watched Vampyros Lesbos. Quite a funn psychedelicish vampiric, lesbian romp it is. Despite the low-budget look, director Jess Franco gets a lot out of the weird imagery, bizarre-ass soundtrack (there's even this recurrent voice [starting with the very first second of film] that sounds like Rabbot from Aqua Teen; if you think I'm kidding, just watch the first 3 seconds of the film), and use of lots of repetition of shots to make the thing a real mindfuck. And Soledad Miranda is about 36,000 kinds of total hot sex.
Like
that.
VIEW 12 of 12 COMMENTS
I don't know what you're talking about, but that's one of my petnames for my Jason.