OTB#30: Amarcord

Amarcord. Federico Fellini. 1973. ⚂

Ah, yes… I saw this a few years ago, but on a horrible interlaced DVD (so the effective resolution was horrible). The is a 2K version restored by Criterion, and… it… still doesn’t really look very good?

Like… the colours are kinda all over the place and… but that’s probably just Fellini being 70s? And… it’s… It’s very shouty. I see what he’s going for; a kinda childish nostalgic over-the-top caricature aesthetic, but it’s…

It’s a lot.

It’s perhaps the same sort of thing that Bergman was mining some years later with the Xmas scenes from Fanny & Alexander. Only in a very different way. But then Swedes aren’t Italians.

[time passes]

I think that I’m “others” here.

I mean, I love 8½ and a bunch of other Fellini movies, but this is so… Every scenes begs, pleads with you to love the antics of these picaresque characters. I tries to hard to be appealing. I’m just annoyed.

It’s broad comedy just a couple of steps away from Carry On Camping. (Which I bought just the other day; I’ve never seen any of the Carry On movies.)

Well, that Woody Allen voted for this movie surprises exactly nobody, but Roy Andersson? Hm…

OK, I can see that in some of the sets, I guess.

[an hour passes]

It confusing what age the “youths” are supposed to be. 12? 22? 32? They behave like they’re 12, but look like they’re 32, kinda. It’s even more confusing when you take the mother of the viewpoint character into account: She looks and behaves like she’s seventy?

So I guess… seventeen?

I found this movie to be tedious, cloying and annoying, but it’s probably exactly what Fellini wanted it to be, so is it good?

Perhaps it would have worked better with a laugh track.

Tee hee.

I’ve had a look at the negative reviews on Rottentomatoes, and some of them are er quite telling:

“Gargantuan [lady]” and “monstrous nipples”… I think that says more about the reviewer than Fellini. (That’s Sight & Sound magazine.)

[half an hour passes]

And here’s the really trenchant critique:

Worst Movie Snow Ever.

But I did like the marriage scene.

This blog post is part of the Officially The Best series.

April Music

Music I’ve bought in April.

Oh my. That’s a lot of new music. How did that happen? Did I spend the entire month of April on my couch shopping?

Yes, I did. The two main threads here are my continuing fascination with Ze Records. They were a late-70s/early-80s New York record company (very, very New York) that released music crossing over from No Wave to disco. In this batch we have Mars and Arto Lindsay, but also Kid Creole and the Coconuts. And, yes, I know that his music is all ironic and stuff, but it’s still pretty hard to forgive the cover of If You Want To Be Happy:

DON”T LISTEN! IT”S THE WORST THING EVER IN THE HISTORY OF EVER.

(Oh, and I apologise to any of the discogs sellers I inadvertently killed by making them visit a post office. “Oops, I did it again.”)

But Ze is otherwise pretty fantastic. I mean:

The other path my shopping this month has taken was inspired by this article. I used to be heavily into industrial music in the 80s, but I fell out of the habit in the 90s. So I thought I’d buy all the albums I missed the first time around.

Here’s some classic industrial:

Tee hee.

OTB#30: L’Avventura

L’avventura. Michelangelo Antonioni. 1960. ⚅

Emacs tells me that I watched this in 2014, but that was before I started movie blogging 4 realz, so I have no recollection of this movie.

But I’ve quite enjoyed the other Antonioni films on the list, so this is probably going to be spiffy.

[half an hour passes]

I’ve re-bought this movie on 2K, and man, does it look gorgeous. Criterion has, as usual, done a spiffing job on the transfer (and restoration).

I still don’t remember the movie, quite, from when I saw it the first time… I just have a kinda vision of them finding a building… or s structure… on the island… which hasn’t happened yet, so perhaps it’s not correct.

But this is a fantastic movie. Just absolutely perfect. Well, except for the sound from the engine on the boat being a bit on the loud side.

[ninety minutes pass]

This is such an odd movie. It’s impossible to say where it’s going, and it’s so gorgeous.

Everything, from the scenery to the interiors to the costumes are impeccable.

But if you want to quibble, the only problem here is Monica Vitti. I love her, and she’s fantastic in virtually all of the scenes, but then in some of the scenes it’s like everything stops and she’s trying to remember what her lines are and it’s quite disconcerting.

And the scene with the ragazzi on the square was fascinating (and reminded me Ulli Lust comic (partly from Italy). It was like… a scene from The Birds. Totally unnerving.

[half an hour passes]

Wow. I had no idea how they were going to land an ending here, and it was just beyond perfect.

This blog post is part of the Officially The Best series.

OTB#30: The Godfather: Part II

The Godfather Part II. Francis Ford Coppola. 1974. ⚄

I’m watching the movies on this list of the officially best movies in reverse order, and since the first Godfather movie is further up on the list, I’m watching part II first.

¡Scandalo!

But I gotta keep the blogging concept going, right? Right.

I haven’t seen any of the Godfather movies (how many are there, anyway? At least three?) since I was a teenager in the 80s. This was probably in one of those double-wide VHS boxes.

I remember absolutely zilch.

[fifteen minutes pass]

My initial impression is that this seems like a good movie? I know, I’m as shocked as you are. And then: The actors’ performances are wildly uneven. Some of them are convincing, but several of the smaller characters are done by actors so amateurish they’d be booted off of America’s Funniest Home Videos.

[forty-five minutes pass]

I’m aggressively uninterested in Mafia movies, but I’m finding this fascinating — especially after we skip back to 1917. The performances also seem to work better after we skip back. I’m not wild about the oldee-tymey colour grading (well, it was probably a colour filter so it’s all in-camera?) applied. I mean:

That’s a lot of beige. Things had colour in 1917, too.

It shows a certain lack of trust in the audience on Coppola’s side to mark the past/”present” scenes in such a heavy-handed way.

[half an hour passes]

Perhaps the reason I like this movie is that it’s not really a Mafia movie at all. It’s pure fantasy about these really intelligent people who are playing 4D chess against each other. With some killing here and there to keep it hoppin’.

And I guess the poor performances were pretty much concentrated to the first fifteen minutes? It’s all been pretty engrossing since then.

[an hour passes]

There’s bits here that seem like just bad plotting, but are couched as unknowable mysteries. Like… in Vito’s time? When that guy Fettuchini was lording it over the entire neighbourhood? And Vito asked “why?” And everybody said “because”. And then he killed him? With no repercussions? So the creamy guy didn’t have anybody to back him up? What? So why kill him then an not on like any other day?

*scratches head*

[more time passes]

OK, this movie has lost me a bit now. I was all in until the Senate hearings started, and then it lost a lot of tension, I think.

Sure. Sure. Fredo is such a Fredo.

This is the third-most highest rated movie on imdb? Well, I guess.

It won all the Oscars, but Pacino didn’t win for leading role… odd…

As you can tell from all these screenshots, I’m somewhat bored with this movie now.

Hey! It’s Harry Dean Stanton as “F.B.I. Man #1”!

The last third of the movie (which seems to go on for nine hours) is a bore. It’s like Coppola (or Puzo) thought “well, we can’t have all these impressionable viewers think that being a mobster is all fun and murder, so let’s put a divorce in here!”

As if it’s possible to care in any way beyond “yay! that fucker’s finally sad now!”

This blog post is part of the Officially The Best series.