The 1961 Mini-List

[knives]

I'm not going to keep going back and forth with you since I'm sure it's not all that entertaining to read.

I’m sorry to hear that as I’m getting a lot of value from this conversation. That said I would like to be able to revisit the Taking Power extra again before furthering my argument as it is clear I am not fully remembering what Rossellini did rather than use a proper zoom lens. I am remembering the trick shot discussion perfectly as, as you point out, the point the speaker was making was specifically the embarrassment over Rossellini not realizing it was a zoom shot.

[ryannichols7]

I bombed it and forgot to vote...was my birthday weekend (was with dustybooks, actually, who did get his ballot in) but I know, no excuse. if anyone was curious this would've been my ballot, which would've bumped a few things up I'm sure:

SpoilerShow

13 blast of silence
12 victim
11 yojimbo
10 the innocents
09 lola
08 pigs and battleships
07 dog star man
06 viridiana
05 il posto
04 the devil's trap
03 la notte
02 the end of summer
01 last year at marienbad

but alas. I am glad to see Ozu get some votes after my plea above for others to watch it and vote for it. hopefully I won't be the only voter for it again in the orphan rescue round at the end of he year!

anyway, I did watch Pigs and Battleships and really enjoyed it, I had only seen Venegance is Mine beforehand and it was cool to go back for Imamura (and I'll continue following his works as well as check out Stolen Desire and Nishi-Ginza Station) and see this. I think this is the right amount of Japanese satire for me - I think Masumura's films (at least Giants and Toys and Black Test Car) don't go far enough with it, and I think Oshima's films are often too bleak/brutal for me. this was the right amount of it, with really good commentary about Japanese/American relationships at the time and the darker side of post-war, newly modernizing Japan. really good ending too, again to reference Oshima I feel his endings are a little too brutal (I watched Cruel Story of Youth for 1960 and felt it was way too unforgiving, but then again that's right there in the title), whereas Imamura left us with lovely ambiguity.

but hey, as much fun as ballots and polls are, it's all about the movies themselves and our enjoyment of them, and for that I was grateful for this. I'm gonna set a reminder for '62!

[domino harvey]

I have been successful in somehow not seeing any Elvis Presley movies, but my streak ended with Wild in the Country (Philip Dunne), a Clifford Odets-scripted (!) melodrama in the typical Jerry Wald style where everything is turned up to 37 on a ten point scale. The movie is so ludicrousy overblown in its hysterics that after a while, I could no longer deny it was growing on me. In fact, ultimately, the only thing here that doesn't work... is Presley, who is far too fresh-faced and declawed as a actor to play a character sculpted so baldly in a James Dean fashion. The rest of the cast understood the assignment, as the kids say, especially Tuesday Weld as the merry unwed mother whose father keeps Presley around in hopes that he can catch the two together and force a shotgun marriage. But while the film gives Presley two young women who are vying for his affections (Weld and Millie Perkins from the Diary of of Anne Frank, reminding all watching why her career left her making movies Arrow would release only a decade later), it's a third, the much too young Hope Lange as Presley's therapist, who gets it in the end. This entire third act can charitably be called an error in judgment, as their relationship never reads as anything but maternal until it doesn't. And the film as presented has nothing to say about that which would indicate the discomfort is intentional. Buuuuuuuut, it still works. Because the film gets so weirdly serious in a rather hypnotically florid fashion in its final third, it arrives on a tone far from the Dogpatch antics that it started with and I can't lie, I loved where it took it (the hotel scene is an incredible piece of one-sided eroticism, and deserves to be in a better film). Now, if only literally anyone but Presley had been cast in the lead, this might be ready for a reevaluation. As is, it's just an oddity.

And as a side note: seriously, why did Twilight Time expend so much effort on getting the works of Philip Dunne out on Blu-ray? And, why did they stop before the only one I'd want them to tackle, Lisa / the Inspector?!