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Mr Sausage
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A Jean, Jean, and John Vote!

#1176 Post by Mr Sausage » Fri Aug 03, 2018 6:44 am

To coincide with the current Jean, Jean, and John list project, here are five random films from the collection directed by either Godard, Renoir, or Ford.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: A Jean, Jean, and John Vote!

#1177 Post by Mr Sausage » Mon Aug 06, 2018 9:15 am

My Darling Clementine has won!

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Mr Sausage
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A new vote

#1178 Post by Mr Sausage » Sat Aug 18, 2018 4:54 pm

Here are five randomly selected titles from the collection.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: A new vote

#1179 Post by Mr Sausage » Mon Aug 20, 2018 4:47 pm

Kanal it is!

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Mr Sausage
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It's a 30's vote!

#1180 Post by Mr Sausage » Fri Aug 31, 2018 7:02 am

Knives has been kind enough to pick five films from the 1930s for voting.

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domino harvey
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Re: It's a 30's vote!

#1181 Post by domino harvey » Fri Aug 31, 2018 10:04 am

Good choices, I've either seen or have access to all of these (and two of them made my list last time)

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knives
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Re: It's a 30's vote!

#1182 Post by knives » Fri Aug 31, 2018 10:06 am

Outside of Libeled Lady my decision making process was basically just what am I planning to watch anyway that is at least mostly available.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: It's a 30's vote!

#1183 Post by Mr Sausage » Mon Sep 03, 2018 6:30 am

It was a tie between Walking Dead and Libeled Lady, so I changed my vote from the former to the latter, giving us our winner: Libeled Lady

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Mr Sausage
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Vote for a film.

#1184 Post by Mr Sausage » Fri Sep 14, 2018 1:30 pm

Here are five random films from the collection for you to vote for.

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DarkImbecile
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Re: Vote for a film.

#1185 Post by DarkImbecile » Fri Sep 14, 2018 1:39 pm

Feels like there's some resentment re: Film Club voting/participation disparity here.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Vote for a film.

#1186 Post by Mr Sausage » Fri Sep 14, 2018 3:49 pm

How so?

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DarkImbecile
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Re: Vote for a film.

#1187 Post by DarkImbecile » Fri Sep 14, 2018 6:53 pm

I was probably acting like a fifteen-year-old reading too much into insignificant details while parsing a classmate's texts, but it seems like the vote threads usually have a title like "It's a 1930's vote!" rather than "Vote for a film.", and that combined with "Here are five random films from the collection for you to vote for" seemed when I first read it like a thinly veiled version of "Once again, here's a series of buttons for most of you to push on the basis of name recognition alone and then ignore without making a contribution"... but that's probably just me throwing out some ill-considered snark while reading the forum in a meeting I should have been paying attention to, as is my usual modus operandi.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Vote for a film.

#1188 Post by Mr Sausage » Fri Sep 14, 2018 6:58 pm

I was just in a rush. There’s no veiled meaning.

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Re: Vote for a film.

#1189 Post by DarkImbecile » Fri Sep 14, 2018 7:14 pm

I hearby cease my truthering of the Film Club vote thread.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Vote for a film.

#1190 Post by Mr Sausage » Mon Sep 17, 2018 6:30 am

Night of the Living Dead it is!

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domino harvey
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Vote for a Recent César Award Best Film Nominee

#1191 Post by domino harvey » Fri Sep 28, 2018 1:07 am

For those not aware, there is an ongoing List Project looking at the films nominated for the top César award. I was asked to curate a César-themed roster of Film Club choices, and my approach was to narrow it down to nominated films from the last ten years that have garnered not a single word of discussion on the forum by anyone but me, if even that. Rather than pick from the more art house-leaning titles, many of which could conceivably be discussed or sought out apart from the César project, I deliberately chose mainstream (or what passes for mainstream) French films that nevertheless offer great entertainment and value for viewers. Regardless of which wins, all five of these movies are worth your time and you should watch them and then weigh-in with your thoughts in the César thread!

Below please find a brief summation of each film so you know what you’re voting for. I have intentionally only selected those titles which are available on English-friendly retail releases or streaming services, and this information is included at the bottom of each brief write-up. Please consider what is feasible for you to watch from this selection when voting, as even though I plan to engage all who post in the thread and start things off with a lengthy dedicated appreciation, it’s no fun if I’m just talking to myself.

Au revoir là-haut (Albert Dupontel 2017)
Writer/director/star Albert Dupontel justly won the Best Director trophy at the most recent Césars for this terrifically dynamic WWI tale of two Great War vets who see war profiteers everywhere in France and decide they want in by scamming a mourning nation with a memorial scheme. Dupontel has an exhaustingly fluid camera style and visual eye and here his delight in the grotesque serves him well as one of the con-artists is an illustrator who has his jaw blown off in battle and spends the rest of the movie in a series of fascinating and often disturbing masks. The film’s abundance of style, cinematographic wit, and Once Upon a Timely qualities lend it a fitting grandeur. I have no earthly idea why a major foreign film distro like Sony Pictures Classics et al hasn't picked this up for the states yet, as it sure seems like a license for printing money for whoever puts it out, but at least the French Blu-ray is English-friendly...
(Region-free Gaumont French Blu-ray w/English subs)

L’Arnacœur (Pascal Chaumeil 2010)
A professional heartbreaker, skilled in the art of splitting up undesirable romances, finds himself saddled with a much less receptive target in what is easily the most mainstream of the five selections I’ve made. This is a romantic comedy, period, with no great aims beyond that. And so what, so long as it’s a good movie, right? I think there’s something sad about how many cineastes turn their nose up at contemporary popular romantic comedies sight-unseen while still being receptive to the romcoms of the studio era, as though this same movie couldn’t have starred Rock Hudson instead of Romain Duris were it made sixty years prior (well, minus the Dirty Dancing jokes).
(R1 MP1 / RB Revolver / Available for rental on Prime Video [$12.99], as Heartbreaker)

Le premier jour du reste de ta vie (Rémi Bezançon 2008)
Twenty years in the life of a family is represented by five important days in this warm comic delight. I know comparing a film to a TV show is rarely a compliment, but the five part structure is genius here, as watching the film resembles binging a short season of a TV show. By the end it’s remarkable how invested I’d become in all of the characters: I’d laughed and cried and wished this was a TV show so I could come back and spend five more days with this bunch. This came out ten years ago and shamefully never received US distribution, but like Ne le dis à personne (or even L’Arnacœur), it’s precisely the kind of well-done mainstream movie that audiences who think they hate subtitled films would enjoy.
(R2 UK DVD, as the First Day of the Rest of Your Life)

Le prénom (Matthieu Delaporte & Alexandre de La Patellière 2012)
A group of bougie middle aged friends and lovers are pulled in an assortment of directions upon learning one of their group has decided to name his son Adolf. Stunned efforts to explain why this is a bad idea spiral into all manner of secrets being revealed in this spirited adaptation of a popular French play, here brought to the screen by its authors. Movies like this, wherein game actors going a million miles an hour spit out great dialog at each other from within a confined space, are one of the great pleasures in life. This is probably the easiest of the five selected films to see for American members without access to back channels due to it streaming for free on Amazon Prime and Kanopy.
(R1 First Run DVD / Streaming free on Amazon Prime and Kanopy, as What’s in a Name?)

Victoria (Justine Triet 2016)
Virginie Efira plays a shitshow lawyer dealing with a variety of nuisances, including an ex-husband who has taken to posting “meta-fictional” blog entries about her supposed relations with judges, a court case involving a friend in which the main witness is a dog, and her new live-in au pair, a former drug dealer and client. Efira excels in the title role in the kind of part Charlize Theron seems to gravitate towards, and it’s a fascinating look at how complex a mainstream French film allows its protagonist to be. Word of the wise to those planning to use back channels if this one wins: the circulating subs are machine-generated garbage, so if you don’t know French well enough to self-correct while watching, you’ll need to buck up and pay Amazon its four bux to rent this and get a proper translation.
(Available to rent in HD on Amazon Prime [$3.99], as In Bed With Victoria)

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tenia
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Re: Vote for Recent César Award Best Film Nominees

#1192 Post by tenia » Fri Sep 28, 2018 2:02 am

Is there a "none of the above" possibility ? :D
I'm exagerating, only Le prénom et le premier jour are quite minor movies despite their successes at the French BO. I alos know I've seen L'arnacoeur but I pretty much totally forgot about it.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Vote for Recent César Award Best Film Nominees

#1193 Post by Mr Sausage » Fri Sep 28, 2018 6:15 am

Many thanks to domino for putting this together, especially the capsules, without which I'd be rather lost. Au revoir là-haut piques my interest the most, so I'm getting behind that one. Now whether I'll actually be able to get a copy...

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Re: Vote for Recent César Award Best Film Nominees

#1194 Post by NABOB OF NOWHERE » Sat Sep 29, 2018 4:38 am

Mr Sausage wrote:
Fri Sep 28, 2018 6:15 am
Many thanks to domino for putting this together, especially the capsules, without which I'd be rather lost. Au revoir là-haut piques my interest the most, so I'm getting behind that one. Now whether I'll actually be able to get a copy...
There are English subs on the gaumont blu if there is sufficient pique value.

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Re: Vote for Recent César Award Best Film Nominees

#1195 Post by Aunt Peg » Sat Sep 29, 2018 6:06 pm

NABOB OF NOWHERE wrote:
Sat Sep 29, 2018 4:38 am
Mr Sausage wrote:
Fri Sep 28, 2018 6:15 am
Many thanks to domino for putting this together, especially the capsules, without which I'd be rather lost. Au revoir là-haut piques my interest the most, so I'm getting behind that one. Now whether I'll actually be able to get a copy...
There are English subs on the gaumont blu if there is sufficient pique value.
I saw it on the big screen earlier this as part of a local French Film Festival and loved it. Was so happy to be able to buy a Blu Ray with English subtitles. There is an additional disc (DVD I think) loaded with extras, sadly no subtitles provided. The extras are nevertheless great viewing. This would have to be my favourite French film of the last few years bar Elle, which only feels semi-French with a Dutch director and based on an American screenplay I believe.

I normally don't care for GCI but it is so seamless in Au revoir là-haut.
Last edited by Aunt Peg on Sun Sep 30, 2018 11:44 am, edited 2 times in total.

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tenia
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Re: Vote for a Recent César Award Best Film Nominee

#1196 Post by tenia » Sun Sep 30, 2018 5:19 am

The Gaumont release of Au Revoir là haut comes with a dedicated bonus DVD. There is a regular one which has about 30 minutes of extras, and another FNAC exclusive version which instead packs these 30 min + 30 additionnal ones. They indeed aren't subtitled.

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domino harvey
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Re: Vote for a Recent César Award Best Film Nominee

#1197 Post by domino harvey » Mon Oct 01, 2018 1:54 am

While it's a shame we won't be discussing Romain Duris singing in an all black southern choir, Albert Dupontel's Au revoir là-haut (AKA See You Up There) is the winner-- and I think, so long as our members are able to get a hold of it (I would of course never point out that it's very easy to find a copy with subtitles circulating on the internet), it's a film that many (more) here will enjoy. Mr Sausage will make a thread for discussion soon!

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Mr Sausage
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Vote for a Giallo for Halloween!

#1198 Post by Mr Sausage » Fri Oct 12, 2018 6:32 am

In the spirit of domino’s slasher vote last Halloween, I offer here five giallos I’ve curated for the occasion along with my reasons for choosing them. I can’t claim the kind of authority domino brought with his hundreds of slasher viewings. But with seventy or so giallos behind me, I feel I at least know the genre well enough to curate a decent list. I saw no point in listing the old Argento and Bava standbys, but nor was there any point is going really obscure or eccentric. I tried for a balance between films that old hands will have mostly seen, or at least heard of, but that casual viewers will be unlikely to’ve come across on their own. As well, I only picked films that were primarily and unambiguously members of the genre, so no slashers from Italy (Stagefright), mashups with giallo aspects (The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave), or crazy riffs on the genre (Death Laid an Egg), however good they were. And I've kept myself to the golden age of the genre, so no proto-giallos or modern examples. I promise my capsules are less boring than this preamble (and not just c&p’d from the giallo roundups!). Let’s watch some gloved hands stab people:

All the Colours of the Dark (Sergio Martino, 1972)
If the giallo is a genre of style, this giallo here is my choice to represent style over substance in its best aspect: thrilling, involving, and enlivening; representing the perversity of its subject matter in its need to overwhelm your senses. If not as excessive as Argento at his loopiest, its style is still restless and vibrant, the camera always casting about for compositions and rhythms to invigorate its thriller story. In a subgenre where turgid, creaky, workman-like products are routine, a giallo this lively is to be treasured. Even Martino wasn’t able to make another giallo as consistently assured as this one. Plus: that title.

The Fifth Cord (Luigi Bazzoni, 1971)
The giallo is the detective story turned inward. In the traditional detective story, the detective, not being a participant, pieces together the mystery at a remove from her observations of the objects (people, places, things, it hardly matters) that fall under her scrutiny. By making the detective the subject and potential victim from the beginning, the giallo forces a limitation on its detective: that of perspective. Lacking the disinterested and removed perspective of an outsider, the detective is forced to turn inward to address the lack, the flaw, the blind spot in perception that has cast some piece of reality into darkness. The guiding leitmotif of the giallo is, not surprisingly, memory, especially its intersection with dreams, identity, and madness. Bazzoni made several spectacular and vertiginous movies where memory is ransacked until reality and identity crumble, but only here has he made an out-and-out traditional giallo from the material. If the need to fit the markers of a genre holds him back from exploring the outer edges of uncertainty as he did in his masterpiece, La Donna del Lago, Bazzoni nevertheless turns in the best giallo outside of Argento where the act of scrutinizing the smallest, dimly-recalled memory of a half-seen event is so important, so obsessively and anxiously returned to, that eventually everything, life included, seems to depend on it. And shouldn’t it?

My Dear Killer (Tonino Valerii, 1972)
I wavered between this and Fulci’s superb Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, but I’ve made this my choice because I think a list of noteworthies and exceptions ought to be grounded in a pure, skillful execution of the baseline form of the genre. A film where every element is done right. No one part calls attention to itself, nothing demands to be isolated for its particular excellence; it all just fits together as a perfect example of the genre’s tropes done properly and effectively. Valerii has made a reference point for the giallo, and I offer it here as that.

The Pyjama Girl Case (Flavio Mogherini, 1977)
We all know the frustration of seeing film after film in a genre repeat the same tropes, structure, style, and story beats in ever less interesting ways, and yet we know too the pleasure this tedium affords when we encounter at last a genuine surprise. This is a movie that risks alienating the viewer with sloppy narrative coherence in order to deliver a real punch at the end. Mogherini’s giallo seems to be alone in attempting the dual-pronged narrative structure here. If some of the material is tasteless and worth a good forehead smack, it’s all redeemed by the sheer control over the story that the film reveals itself to’ve had all along. This is a risky choice for a discussion because the movie works best in context--not just to appreciate its novelty, but for how other giallos will guide the assumptions and type of guesswork you bring to the movie. I offer it here as something unusual and ultimately satisfying, but that probably works best right after having seen two or three other giallos.

Who Saw Her Die? (Aldo Lado, 1972)
I said in my capsule on the movie in my first giallo round-up that “it's Ennio Morricone's score that really lifts this giallo above the merely competent ones surrounding it and brings out all of the sadness and pain hiding at its centre.” This is indeed a sad and desperate film of a man whose life hangs together only by a single ugly hope: that he’ll find the serial killer that murdered his daughter and get revenge. The a-tonal, sometimes a-rhythmic music that drives the film resembles a Catholic hymn chanted in a madhouse. Morricone’s score, and the emotions undergirding it, play a cracked counterpoint to the steady and controlled style of the movie. I can’t think of a giallo that attempts the particular emotional state of this one, and for that it’s worth seeing and discussing.

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domino harvey
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Re: Vote for a Giallo fo Halloween!

#1199 Post by domino harvey » Fri Oct 12, 2018 6:49 am

All the Colors of the Dark: Shameless RB (UK)
the Fifth Cord: Blue Underground R1
My Dear Killer: Shriek Show R1 (OOP)
the Pyjama Girl Case: Arrow RAB / Blue Underground R1
Who Saw Her Die?: Blue Underground R1

Nice selection in that even though I've seen a good share of giallos, none of them have been these! Who Saw Her Die? sounds like it sounds great, so I'll go for that, but I'll add all these to my to-watch queue

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Re: Vote for a Giallo for Halloween!

#1200 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Oct 12, 2018 5:10 pm

To add to the description of Who Saw Her Die?, this stars George Lazenby only a few years after his single Bond role in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The film itself is very much in the same 'creepy Venice' territory as Don't Look Now, almost even a strange premonition of the Roeg film!

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