Oedipax wrote:Holy cow, I had no idea Dangerous Game was out. This one sounds like a complete mess, but potentially brilliant, or at least quite interesting.
I just saw it tonight and my opinion is that it is utterly brilliant. I think people looking for a standard, straightforward plot structure are going to be out of luck (sorry, Madonna fans). This is by far one of his most contemplative films, at least that I've seen, and probably one of the most intensely personal.
I really wonder how much of St. John's script was right out of his or Ferrara's lives. Though Keitel and the cast are going by different names, he is clearly a take on Ferarra himself. At one point, the movie-within-the-movie, "Mother of Mirrors", is slated with a marker with Ferrara's (and Kerschel's) name on it instead of Eddie's.
There was so much going on in this movie that I simply can't make many clear statements about what I think it was trying to do or say yet. So many layers and truths, parallels that existed in the movie being made, the film we're watching and from Ferrara's perspective as storyteller. It was a real treat and surprise, seeing as how I had heard little before viewing it.
I just got around to seeing New Rose Hotel the other day and it was as brilliant as it was often frustrating. I'm not entirely sold on the flashbacks at the end, but I'm also not convinced it's merely Ferrara running out of a budget and/or ideas. It needs another look but I found it pretty enjoyable the first time through.
I felt much the same way about the ending, but I didn't find the movie very enjoyable. I ended up doing some reading about the project and found that Asia Argento's character was originally supposed to be much younger and that her arc was supposed to be far more a surprise *because* of her age. From his statements and interest in what the story was originally supposed to be about, it sounded like they hurt themselves by making concessions in the casting process.
I noticed there's a 2-disc set of The Funeral and The Addiction in region 2, but it seems both are pan-and-scan, a shame. Can anyone confirm? Is there a good copy of The Funeral released anywhere?
There is a widescreen version of The Funeral that I keep seeing coming out of Brazil, but I'm not going to buy it until I know more about the transfer. The U.S. DVD release went out of print some time ago, maybe having something to do with October Films drying up. I don't know.
I also need to watch his Body Snatchers remake.
Really, don't bother. It's such a poor mishmash of ideas clearly due to a weak producer pushing the script through too many strong director's hands (and that of their writers'). Everytime a different auteur was involved (Larry Cohen, Stuart Gordon, Abel Ferrara), they put in different elements and made alternative choices for lead characters.
Cohen's stuff with the kid and military is scattered about like fragments or tossed away, the parents are non-entities, the teens are cypher cliches, Ferrara's Forest Whitaker character barely has anything to do and the Gordon-like effects are creepy but minimal. It's just a pot so full of stuff that there is absolutely no direction and the last half-hour is just laughably awful.
Also, avoid Fear City if you can. It's indescribably bad.
The film journal Rouge has an excerpt from a longer study of Ferrara's work
There's a really cool book that FAB Press recently released. You should check that out, it's pretty thorough.
It's a shame that Vincent Gallo dropped out of his new film (which seems to have necessitated a late rewrite, recentering the film around Juliette Binoche as an actress playing Mary, as opposed to Gallo as an actor playing Jesus).
I don't know if it was recentered. Do you still have the plotline from that incarnation? The current one sounds a lot like the one covered in the FAB Press book when he had Monica Belluci tapped to play the titular character. He made it sound like he always intended for it to center on the actress playing Mary Magdalene, due to his fascination with Barbara Hershey's comments about her part in Last Temptation of Christ. Hmm, I guess I should look up more about this movie.
Hell, I even need to catch up with 'R Xmas...
That's one of the films next on my list to see. Let me know what you think.
