LEFT, RIGHT AND BEHIND THE MOVIES

This blog is simply dedicated to great films.

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Ingmar Bergman's letter to the Academy

Click 'Read more' to see more interesting letters.

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R.W. Fassbinder and Hanna Schygulla

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I still find any hierarchy of kinds of movies both ridiculous and despicable. When Hitchcock made Psycho - the story of a sometime thief stabbed to death in her shower by the owner of a motel who had stuffed his mother’s corpse - almost all the critics agreed that its subject was trivial. The same year, under Kurosawa’s influence, Ingmar Bergman shot exactly the same theme (The Virgin Spring) but he set it in fourteenth-century Sweden. Everybody went into ecstasy and Bergman won an Oscar for best foreign film. Far be it from me to begrudge him his prize; I want only to emphasize that it was exactly the same subject (in fact, it was a more or less conscious transposition of Charles Perrault’s famous story “Little Red Riding Hood”). The truth is that in these two films, Bergman and Hitchcock each expressed part of his own violence with skill and freed himself of it.

Let me also cite the example of Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thief, which is still discussed as if it were a tragedy about unemployment in postwar Italy, although the problem of unemployment is not really addressed in this beautiful film. It shows us simply - like an Arabic tale, as Cocteau observed - a man who absolutely must find his bicycle, exactly as the woman in the world of The Earrings of Madame de… must again find her earrings. I reject the idea that The Virgin Spring and Bicycle Thief are noble and serious, while Psycho and Madame de… are “entertainments.” All four films are noble and serious, and all four are entertainment.

When I was a critic, I thought that a successful film had simultaneously to express an idea of the world and an idea of cinema; La Régle de Jeu and Citizen Kane corresponded to this definition, perfectly. Today, I demand that a film express either the joy of making cinema or the agony of making cinema. I am not at all interested in anything in between; I am not interest in all those films that do no pulse.

- François Truffaut, 1975

[leftrightbehind-blog]

Boiled Shoe. A recipe

Ingredients for "Chaussures confit":

1 pair ankle-height leather shoes, well-worn


2 heads of garlic


4 red onions


1 bunch fresh parsley


1 bunch fresh rosemary


Hot sauce (preferably a Mexican salsa picante like Choula or Valentina)


Warm duck fat


Water

Salt

(Chef: Werner Herzog & Alice Waters)

[leftrightbehind-blog]

House was an attempt to cash in on the popularity of Jaws, by making another people-eating creature flick. Obayashi tried to think of something that wouldn't be too boringly derivative, then ended up using one of his daughter's ideas: a people-eating house.

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Nobuhiko Obayashi: House [1977]

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.gif it to me!

[ontheset]

Bill Murray with Hunter S. Thompson, Where The Buffalo Roam

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This movie left a lot of people wondering, where to buy those chic driving gloves, which the unnamed Driver wears. Answer: Here

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Though it seems a bit silly, to wear them in the subway...

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Voyeurism: a list of a few films with voyeuristic elements or theme

Rear Window - Alfred Hitchcock [1954]

Blow-Up - Michelangelo Antonioni [1966]

Funny Games - Michael Haneke [1997]

Letter from an Unknown Woman - Max Ophüls [1948]

Eyes Wide Shut - Stanley Kubrick [1999]

Peeping Tom - Michael Powell [1960]

Benny's Video - Michael Haneke [1992]

Sex, Lies and Videotape - Steven Soderbergh [1989]

Caché - Michael Haneke [2005]

Death in Venice - Luchino Visconti [1971]

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Can you think of more great films, that include voyeuristic elements or deal with this theme? Will add your suggestions to this post.

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EDIT

Blue Velvet - David Lynch [1986]

The Conversation - Francis Ford Coppola [1974]

The Man Who Loved Women - François Truffaut [1977]

Following - Christopher Nolan [1998]

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Since 1924 there have been five different lions for the MGM logo.

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Orson Welles

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Can someone contribute any information to this picture?

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EDIT:

Orson Welles sprained his ankle on a flight of stairs during his confrontation with Getty and had to direct from a wheelchair.

Thanks to projectedimages :)

[leftrightbehind-blog]

When they fell from grace

Grace, the main character in Lars von Trier's Dogville, was strongly inspired by Bertolt Brecht's ‚Pirate Jenny‘, a well-known song from ‚The Threepenny Opera‘.

This is a literal translation of the original German song, not the Marc Blitzstein English version of 1954, which is usually the version sung in English.

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Gentleman, today you see me washing glasses

And I make the beds for everyone.

And you give me a penny and I quickly thank you

And you see my rags and this shabby hotel

And you don't know who you're talkin' to.

But one evening there'll be shouting at the harbor

And people will ask: What's all the shouting about?

And people will see me smiling while I do the glasses

And people will say: What's she got to smile about?

[...]

And a ship with eight sails

And fifty cannons

Will lie at the waterfront

[...]

And hundreds will come ashore around noon

And will step into the shadows

And will catch anyone in any door

And lay him in chains and bring him before me

And ask: Which one should we kill?

And at that midday it will be quiet at the harbor

When they ask, who has to die.

And then they'll hear me say: All of them!

And when the heads roll, I'll say: Hurray!

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And the ship with eight sails

And with fifty cannons

Will disappear with me

[bbook]

I saw America in pictures and movies, and it was sort of a utopian place compared to where I lived. All I ever wanted was getting there. American music was the opposite of everything I heard in my own country, and there was rhythm and fun—the notion of fun was completely strange to me. Everything I really liked was from this mythical place called America.

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The French scientist E.J. Marey invented his ‚fusil photographique‘ in the year 1882. This ‚photographic musket‘ used a single camera to take 12 images a second on a revolving photographic plate. Marey used this camera to study the movements of flying animals, later the movements of human beings.

Little did he now, he invented the direct ancestor of the movie camera - which today shoots 24 frames per second using a revolving magazine of film.

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This picture was taken during one of the most troubled productions in Hollywood history: Apocalypse Now [1979].

Coppola lost 100 pounds, threatened suicide several times and attempted it once.

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I think there is a certain amount of misunderstanding here, at least in regard to Funny Games. That film is in part a parody of the thriller genre, and my use of John Zorn was also intended as parodical. Zorn isn't a heavy metal artist. I have nothing against popular music and wouldn't think of playing popular against classical forms. I'm very skeptical of the false conflict that already exists between so-called "serious" music and music categorized strictly as entertainment [...] I see in John Zorn a kind of über-heavy metal, an extreme and ironic accentuation of that form just as the film is an extreme inflection of the thriller. I think Zorn's style tends to alienate the listener in a sense that heightens awareness, which was effective to the points I wanted to address.

-- Michael Haneke on the use of music in Funny Games U.S.

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Filming the climactic boxing sequence of the 1976 John Avildsen film “Rocky” starring Sylvester Stallone and Carl Weathers. Click the pic to watch the entire fight.