Reading Movies Meme

Courtesy of MovieMan at The Dancing Image, this meme has been floating around all week and has been quite great to see. Those tagged were asked to pick the 10 most influential film books to their development as writers, scholars, and cinephiles of all sorts. I was thrilled to be tagged in MovieMan's initial post and since then Brandon was tagged by another friend – Jeremy Richey of the always wonderful Moon in the Gutter. Not wanting to cut ourselves short on things that have led this site to its fruitful existence, Brandon and I have each chosen ten books with, kind of surprisingly, no overlap.

I can't speak for Brandon (perhaps he will comment on this post with more explanation on his choices if anyone is curious) but this was especially difficult for me as I feel like my views are in a constant state of flux. With very little access to Films growing up, film books didn't enter the equation for me until late high school and early college when I really got going. But even since then, having just gone through grad school in film studies, I had to decide what makes these books influential. So, this really ends up being a mixed bag of things that first got me interested in studying movies and more scholarly works that have really influenced my own current writing and thoughts towards cinema as I look towards more schooling and an academic career. Its a tough call on all accounts, so I hope this is representative of some of my influences and may explain, as MovieMan hoped for, where some of my experimental/genre slant comes from. Who knows. Nonetheless, here are the books. I'll leave further explanation and discussion for what I hope is a lively comment section.


Brandon Colvin's Reading Movies Meme Selections

Notes on the Cinematographer by Robert Bresson
Film Theory and Criticism edited by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen
Movie Journal: The Rise of the New American Cinema 1959-1971 by Jonas Mekas
Lynch on Lynch by Chris Rodley
Everything by David Bordwell, especially Poetics of Cinema
Terrence Malick by Lloyd Michaels
Godard on Godard by Jean-Luc Godard
The film criticism of Jim Emerson, Roger Ebert, Manohla Dargis, and everyone who has ever written for the Village Voice
Tarkovsky edited by Nathan Dunne
Film Comment


James Hansen's Reading Movies Meme Selections

Cinema 2 by Gilles Deleuze
The Cinema, Or The Imaginary Man by Edgar Morin (translated by Lorraine Mortimer)
Dogme Uncut by Jack Stevenson
Film As Subversive Art by Amos Vogel
Hard Core by Linda Williams (and mostly everything else by Linda Williams too)
The Magic Hour by Jim Hoberman
Manifestoes of Surrealism by Andre Breton
Men, Women, and Chain Saws by Carol Clover
Nathan Lee (duh)
Roger Ebert's 1990 Movie Companion (most notably the discussion of Lynch's Wild At Heart entitled, if I'm recalling correctly, "The Case Against David Lynch")

More recent additions to my repertoire that would be on this list if I had a little more time to absorb them:
Change Mummified by Philip Rosen
Cinema of Attractions Reloaded edited by Wanda Strauven
Collecting Visible Evidence edited by Jane Gaines and Michael Renov
Devotional Cinema by Nathaniel Dorsky
The Most Typical Avant Garde by David James

(Update!) Chuck Williamson's List
THE PARADE'S GONE BY by Kevin Brownlow
MOVIE-MADE AMERICA by Robert Sklar
WHAT IS CINEMA? by Andre Bazin
BABEL AND BABYLON: SPECTATORSHIP IN AMERICAN SILENT FILM by Miriam Bratu Hansen
VISUAL AND OTHER PLEASURES by Laura Mulvey
CINEMA AND SPECTATORSHIP by Judith Mayne
CINEMA, OR THE OTHER MAN by Edgar Morrin
A HISTORY OF THE FRENCH NEW WAVE CINEMA by Richard Neupert
POST-THEORY: RECONSTRUCTING FILM STUDIES by David Bordwell
EARLY CINEMA: SPACE, FRAME, NARRATIVE ed. by Thomas Eisaesser and Adam Barker
FILM COMMENT

Thanks again to MovieMan and Jeremy for calling upon us to make these lists! Hope they share something about ourselves and maybe give some of you something to check out.
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Out 1's 20 Actors Meme

All heil the meme! Recently, we were tagged by Tony at Cinema Viewfinder to participate in the 20 Actors Meme. You are basically supposed to choose your 20 favorite actors, no matter the time, place...you know, a good ole fashioned free for all! Tony included his favorite performance by each actor, which I thought was a pretty good idea so we have continued that here. With our plethora of writers here, I decided to have the four of us each select our top 5 actors. A tough call for sure, but it made things much more interesting (and European) than if we all selected 20...which would have been crazy. Anyways, enjoy the list. I have listed initials by each actor for the corresponding writer who chose him. If you're not sure who's who, check the contributors list on the right side of the page. That'll clear it up.

Thanks again to Tony! If you wanna participate, go for it and let me know. I'll call it a tag post-haste.

PS- You may be wondering why the Brakhage image is the heading for this post. Well...I don't know why. I just like looking at it. Can Brakhage's use of color count as an actor?


Tetsuo Abe - Boy (CW)
Charles Chaplin- City Lights (JH)
Robert De Niro - Taxi Driver (BC)
Alain Delon - Le Samourai (CW)
Bruno Ganz- Downfall (JS)
Elliott Gould - The Long Goodbye (CW)
Olivier Gourmet- The Son (JH)
Alec Guinness- The Bridge on the River Kwai (JS)
Erland Josephson - Nostalghia (BC)
Buster Keaton - Sherlock, Jr. (BC)
Klaus Kinski- Aguirre: The Wrath of God (JS)
Jean Pierre Leaud- Out 1 (JH)
Tony Leung - Happy Together (CW)
Marcello Mastroianni - 8 1/2 (BC)
John Malkovich- Burn After Reading (JH)
James Murray - The Crowd (CW)
Tatsuya Nakadai- Human Condition Trilogy (JS)
Jimmy Stewart - Vertigo (BC)
Max von Sydow- The Seventh Seal (JS)
Ulrich Thomsen- The Celebration (JH)
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Brandon Colvin's Alphabet Movie Meme

So, I got tagged by Film For The Soul for a new "Alphabet Meme" floating around. Since I just did the Best Picture meme a few weeks ago, I have extended the tag to get Brandon back in the groove and so you all don't hear my same favorite movies over and over. So...yeah...enjoy the list and thanks to Film For The Soul for including us in the action!

Here's the rules...

1. Pick one film to represent each letter of the alphabet.

2. The letter "A" and the word "The" do not count as the beginning of a film's title, unless the film is simply titled A or The, and I don't know of any films with those titles.

3. Return of the Jedi belongs under "R," not "S" as in Star Wars Episode IV: Return of the Jedi. This rule applies to all films in the original Star Wars trilogy; all that followed start with "S." Similarly, Raiders of the Lost Ark belongs under "R," not "I" as in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. Conversely, all films in the LOTR series belong under "L" and all films in the Chronicles of Narnia series belong under "C," as that's what those filmmakers called their films from the start. In other words, movies are stuck with the titles their owners gave them at the time of their theatrical release. Use your better judgement to apply the above rule to any series/films not mentioned.

4. Films that start with a number are filed under the first letter of their number's word. 12 Monkeys would be filed under "T."

5. Link back to Blog Cabins in your post so that I can eventually type "alphabet meme" into Google and come up #1, then make a post where I declare that I am the King of Google.

Drumroll, please!

A – Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) dir. Robert Bresson
B – Blue Velvet (1986) dir. David Lynch
C – Contempt (1963) dir. Jean-Luc Godard
D – Days of Heaven (1978) dir. Terrence Malick
E – 8 ½ (1963) dir. Federico Fellini
F – Funeral Parade of Roses (1969) dir. Toshio Matsumoto
G – The Godfather (1972) dir. Francis Ford Coppola
H – The Holy Mountain (1973) dir. Alejandro Jodorowsky
I – Inland Empire (2006) dir. David Lynch
J – Juliet of the Spirits (1965) dir. Federico Fellini
K – Killer of Sheep (1977) dir. Charles Burnett
L – Last Year at Marienbad (1961) dir. Alain Resnais
M – The Mirror (1975) dir. Andrei Tarkovsky
N – Naked Lunch (1991) dir. David Cronenberg
O – Out of the Past (1947) dir. Jacques Tourneur
P – The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) dir. Carl Th. Dreyer
Q – The Quiet Man (1952) dir. John Ford
R – Raging Bull (1980) dir. Martin Scorsese
S – Stalker (1979) dir. Andrei Tarkovsky
T – Taxi Driver (1976) dir. Martin Scorsese
U – United 93 (2006) dir. Paul Greengrass
V – Videodrome (1983) dir. David Cronenberg
W – Winter Light (1962) dir. Ingmar Bergman
X – Seriously? I’m just gonna put this here: Magnolia (1999) dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
Y – Youth of the Beast (1963) dir. Seijun Suzuki
Z – Zodiac (2007) dir. David Fincher

by Brandon Colvin
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Shoulda Been A Winner Meme

I sort of tagged myself to this meme, at the request of MovieMan at The Dancing Image, which started at Filmcability. Basically, you are supposed to go through every year since the Oscars have been awarded and make your selection for what should win Best Picture. Although Filmcability and The Dancing Image decided to revoke all rules for selection, I have chosen not to do so, although, admittedly, every once in a while, I break the own rules I am about to explain. (And just to tout my record for a moment, I actually have seen every film that won Best Picture. It's a project started in high school that I tore through for a while and then slowed down. Last summer I watched Platoon and only recently watched Wings to complete the list! And, from the looks of this list, I sure don't agree with the winners very often. I also learned that I really really love David Cronenberg...in case you didn't know.)

I think of the Best Picture Oscar as an American film award. It's by no means to discredit it, but when I think "Oscar" Godard doesn't really come to mind. Neither, for that matter, does straight-up experimental film. A film like Ernie Gehr's Side/Walk/Shuttle would easily be my favorite film of 1991, but should it be the Best Picture? If it is accepted in the mainstream can is still be avant-garde? I was getting myself bogged down in a hurry, so I just decided no avant-garde. Unless I felt like I should change my mind...

Anyways, I felt like I should stick with "American" movies. I'm in the clear now, right? Unfortunately, this gets more complicated with American releases from English speaking "foreign" directors and when Hollywood produces work from foreign directors. How do I decide what is American or what isn't? I just can't keep things simple. My mind only got more twisted from here, so I finally just said forget it. If it's American-enough, I let it slide. I am sure there more more issues with release years and I may have flubbed up when this films would have been valid for Oscars in the first place, but let's overlook that for now.

Maybe in the future I'll continue this rather productive meme by selecting foreign films and experimental films from each year. That will lead my mind to a whole variety of other problems with naming them, but I'll save those matters for a later time. Now that I have bored everyone with this meandering, here is my list.

One final note...I have decided to not italicize the titles because it would take a long time to highlight each of them and select it. Oh formatting. You are such a pain sometimes. And if anyone knows how to make italics from Word/Pages transfer to Blogger, please God send me an email and let me know. :)

1927- Sunrise (FW Murnau)
1928- The Wind (Victor Sjostrom)
1929- Pandora’s Box (GW Pabst)
1930- All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone)
1931- City Lights (Charles Chaplin)
1932- Freaks (Tod Browning)
1933- King Kong (Merian C. Cooper & Ernest Schoedsack)
1934- It Happened One Night (Frank Capra)
1935- A Night At The Opera (Sam Wood)
1936- Modern Times (Charles Chaplin)
1937- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (William Cottrell & Wilfred Jackson)
1938- The Citadel (King Vidor)
1939- The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming)
1940- His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks)
1941- Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
1942- Casablanca (Michael Curtiz)
1943- Red Hot Riding Hood (Tex Avery)
1944- Hail The Conquering Hero (Preston Sturges)
1945- Topaz (Dave Tatsuno)
1946- It’s A Wonderful Life (Frank Capra)
1947- Out of the Past (Jacques Torneur)
1948- Letter From An Unknown Woman (Max Ophuls)
1949- Porky in Wackyland (Robert Clampett)
1950- Rabbit of Seville (Chuck Jones)
1951- The Day The Earth Stood Still (Robert Wise)
1952- Singin’ In The Rain (Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen)
1953- Pickup on South Street (Samuel Fuller)
1954- Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock)
1955- The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton)
1956- The Searchers (John Ford)
1957- Bridge on the River Kwai (David Lean)
1958- Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock)
1959- Shadows (John Cassavetes)
1960- The Apartment (Billy Wilder)
1961- Something Wild (Jack Garfein)
1962- Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean)
1963- Shock Corridor (Samuel Fuller)
1964- The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies (Ray Dennis Steckler) or Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick)
1965- Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (Russ Meyer)
1966- Chelsea Girls (Andy Warhol & Paul Morissey)
1967- Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn)
1968- 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick)
1969- Salesman (Albert & David Maysles)
1970- Zabriskie Point (Michaelangelo Antonioni)
1971- Punishment Park (Peter Watkins)
1972- Cocksucker Blues (Robert Frank)
1973- Badlands (Terence Malick)
1974- A Woman Under The Influence (John Cassavetes)
1975- Jaws (Steven Spielberg)
1976- Carrie (Brian De Palma)
1977- Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett)
1978- Halloween (John Carpenter)
1979- Alien (Ridley Scott)
1980- Atlantic City (Louis Malle)
1981- Blow Out (Brian De Palma)
1982- The Thing (John Carpenter)
1983- Videodrome (David Cronenberg)
1984- Stranger Than Paradise (Jim Jarmusch)
1985- Prizzi’s Honor (John Huston)
1986- Blue Velvet (David Lynch)
1987- The Brave Little Toaster (Jerry Rees)
1988- Dead Ringers (David Cronenberg)
1989- Sex, Lies, and Videotape (Steven Soderbergh)
1990- GoodFellas (Martin Scorsese)
1991- My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant)
1992- The Crying Game (Neil Jordan)
1993- Blue (Derek Jarman)...avant garde, I know I know...or Naked (Mike Leigh)
1994- Hoop Dreams (Steve James)
1995- Toy Story (John Lasseter)
1996- Fargo (Joel and Ethan Coen)
1997- Crash (David Cronenberg)
1998- The Thin Red Line (Terence Malick)
1999- Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick)
2000- Traffic (Steven Soderbergh)
2001- Mulholland Drive (David Lynch)
2002- Spider (David Cronenberg)
2003- Elephant (Gus Van Sant)
2004- Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood) or Primer (Shane Carruth)
2005- A History of Violence (David Cronenberg)
2006- Inland Empire (David Lynch) or Borat (Larry Charles)
2007- There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson)

Wow...this took a long time to put together. Although I don't wish this kind of pain on anyone I tag the following people if they dare take up the task. And since I was working on this, you can push back my final NYFF entries to Friday and Sunday (most likely.) We'll see if I can stick to any kind of a schedule. Oh yeah, and if you wonder why I didn't select something feel free to bring it up, as I may have overlooked the films. I was using Wikipedia's pages for American films of each year so I think I got most of them, but I could always miss something. Thanks for reading!

Nathaniel R. at The Film Experience
Jeremy at Moon in the Gutter
Ibetolis at Film For The Soul
Adam at DVD Panache
Jacob W. at Mad Crazy Movie House
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James Hansen's 12 Movies Meme

I'm a little late on posting this (sorry!) but better late than never. I'll assume everyone remembers the rules of this 12 movie meme, started by Lazy Eye Theatre. This is my list of 12 movies for a week of programming at the New Beverly Cinema. It may not make any money, but hey...a boy can dream, right?

MONDAY

The Flicker (1965) and Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son (1969)

There isn't a better way to start the week than a couple films that explore and deconstruct the medium. Tony Conrad's The Flicker uses alternating black and white frames to create a 45 strobe-like effect that goes right to your brain. Ken Jacobs's work analyzes Thomas Edison's short film and discovers all the details that can be found within any given frame. All the flickering may cause some headaches (anyone with epilepsy should probably not attend), but these films would highlight the distinctiveness of the medim of film; a great starting point for the week.

TUESDAY

Side/Walk/Shuttle (1992) and D'est (1993)

The messages of these two "travelogues" are quite different, but seeing the similar, yet distinct, method each film takes in evoking sadness, memory, and (de)construction within the different locations (whether San Francisco or the whole of Eastern Europe) would be breathtaking. Ernie Gehr and Chantal Akerman are masters of form; these films could work as an introduction to each artist, but are also key (if not the best) works from each director.

WEDNESDAY

Flaming Creatures (1963) and Pink Flamingos (1972)

After two nights of serious meditation, the festival's halcyon days are over. It's time to have some fun with these manically hysterical works from Jack Smith and John Waters. Smith's film is an admitted inspiration for Waters, so it seems fitting to place the two side by side. And really, what is a film festival without flaccid penises and incestual blow jobs?

THURSDAY

Blue Movie a.k.a. Fuck (1969) and Crash (1996)

Continuing on Wednesday's sexual themes, these works from Andy Warhol and David Cronenberg use sexuality as a means to identify and explain other elements of human existence. Warhol's Blow Job could also work here, but for its mundanity and placement within the violence of the Vietnam War, Blue Movie is a compelling partner to Cronenberg's better known, highly controversial film.

FRIDAY

Cache (2005) and Numero Deux (1975)

Made 30 years apart, these video works are definitive statements on the changing landscapes of cinema in the face of (post)modernism and new technology. Michael Haneke and Juc Luc Godard are keen observers of people, families, and politics; these work highlight these similar obsessions and provide, at least to a small extent, a thematic counterpoint to the filmic works of Conrad and Jacobs.

SATURDAY

Doomed Love (1978) and L'Amour Fou (1969)

At a combined 517 minutes, Manoel de Oliveira and Jacque Rivette's almost completely unseen masterpieces may create an incredibly long, draining double feature, but I am convinced that it would be the best day of my life. The titles create a double feature pairing and so do the filmmakers. Always on the edge between theater and cinema, Oliveira and Rivette playfully explore convention while taking cinematic art to new heights. What a way to end a week.

Thanks to Piper from Lazy Eye Theatre and Jeremy from Moon in the Gutter for connecting us to this great meme! It was a lot of fun. Hope another one this fun comes along soon!

by James Hansen

PS- Please let me know if this post has a strange format or something. I am posting it from a really old computer at my work, so I'm slightly worried...

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Brandon Colvin's 12 Movies Meme

Happy Friday everyone! It's been a slow week for us, but we're hopping to end the week with a bang. Recently, Brandon and I were memed by Jeremy Richey at Moon in the Gutter to take a part of the 12 movie meme. It was started by Piper at Lazy Eye Theatre, and the idea (for those of you who haven't seen this meme floating around yet) is to create your own 12-movie week long film festival for New Beverly Cinema.

Here are the rules...

1) Choose 12 Films to be featured. They could be random selections or part of a greater theme. Whatever you want.

2) Explain why you chose the films.

3) Link back to Lazy Eye Theatre so I can have hundreds of links and I can take those links and spread them all out on the bed and then roll around in them.

4) The people selected then have to turn around and select 5 more people.

Although Jeremy tagged Brandon OR myself, we have decided to both do our own lists because we think it is a lot of fun, and we both created our own lists and (without telling each other) had no overlap at all in the films chosen. You can continue reading Brandon's list below...my list will be posted later tonight. (I secretly only had time to post one, and get all the materials, before I have to go to work today.)

Thanks to Piper and Jeremy for making us a part of this meme! I hope you all enjoy our lists and can fantasize about these festivals actually happening.

MONDAY:
ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS (1955) and ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL (1974)

Melodrama at its finest. Douglas Sirk presents a glossed-up meta-analysis of Hollywood fantasy/domestic unrest and Rainer Werner Fassbinder retells the same story, this time racially-charged, with his New German grit.

TUESDAY:
THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (1928) and DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST (1951)

Carl Th. Dreyer and Robert Bresson, two of cinema's greatest poets, spin tales of martyrdom and spiritual anguish while presenting wildly contrasting examples of stylized acting through the marvelous performances of Maria Falconetti and Claude Laydu, respectively.

WEDNESDAY:
NAKED LUNCH (1991) and ADAPTATION. (2002)

How does writing happen? David Cronenberg and Spike Jonze/Charlie Kaufman tackle the challenges of, well, adaptation, in these two very different films, each of which blends biography, process, exaggeration, and self-referentiality while trying to uncover how stories are made and how fiction functions in relation to reality.

THURSDAY:
DOG STAR MAN: PRELUDE-PART IV (1962-1964) and STALKER (1979)

Nearly polar opposites on the editing spectrum, Stan Brakhage's experimental opus and Andrei Tarkovsky's metaphysical masterpiece elaborate upon the strange, strange journeys of their protagonists into strange, strange lands. To see the rapidity and hyperkineticism of Brakhage's avant-garde work juxtaposed with the contemplative leisure of Tarkovsky's pacing would be pleasurably mind-stretching.

FRIDAY:
AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD (1972) and THE THIN RED LINE (1998)

Both Werner Herzog and Terrence Malick are adept at capturing the natural world in a powerful context that is always aesthetically cleansing. This pair of jungle films revolves around brutality, madness, and moments of beauty - sometimes only perceptible to the cinematographic eye.

SATURDAY:
LA NOTTE (1961) and THE PASSION OF ANNA (1969)

Emblematic of the explosion of European art cinema in the 1960s, Michelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman have been compared, contrasted, and fought over endlessly, particularly since their nearly simultaneous deaths. Undoubtedly, the two were great film artists and remain two of the most influential directors on my conception of what cinema is and should be. These two films are a couple of my favorites.

by Brandon Colvin

Hope you all enjoyed the list! I will meme a set of others with my post later tonight. Have a great (hopefully film-filled weekend!)
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