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Here are five films randomly generated from the whole collection.

Lola is out of print on DVD, right? And also not on Hulu like all of the other titles. This is the first vote where I'm not familiar with any of the films. Three Resurrected Drunkards seems like an early favorite and more Fassbinder is always cool, but I'd like to hear some voters argue their case. My vote is up for grabs.

We already discussed Veronika Voss from the BRD set, so that's OUT. Oshima is someone I know nothing, nothing about, but is obviously well-revered around here. It's also available on Netflix DVD. That gets my vote.

I know zedz at least is a big fan of the Oshima. Gate of Hell is one of the most beautiful looking films in the collection (though that might be all I have to say about it), and its candy colors could make for a nice pairing with Lola. Désiré is a fun comedy from an underrated Eclipse set and Goke is about what you'd expect from its title.

I don't own any of these, and I'm trying to limit myself to only buying Blus for the moment, so... Gate of Hell it is.

Gate of Hell is a sublime visual experience, but I exhausted everything I wanted to say about it in its thread, and 90% of that was about its historical and literary antecedents.

I'm voting for the Oshima.

Gate of Hell is a big, dumb, pretty movie. And that's about all I can say about it.

Where are all the people who voted for Vagabond? That discussion is pretty lonely (as lonely as the heroine of the film in question).

All right... sounds like Gate of Hell would suffer from a severe lack of interest, so I'll change my vote to Goke and hope I can get my hands on a library DVD of whatever is eventually chosen.

Three Resurrected Drunkards is easily the most fun film in that bunch, as well as the one with the most to talk about.

Michael, I was hoping to rewatch Vagabond for that discussion, but we've had houseguests who have insisted on watching 'really interesting and unusual' films but have completely vetoed anything remotely 'depressing', remotely sexually explicit, remotely violent or remotely 'confusing'. Quite a challenge! Oh, and they "don't like comedies."

zedz wrote:Three Resurrected Drunkards is easily the most fun film in that bunch, as well as the one with the most to talk about.

Michael, I was hoping to rewatch Vagabond for that discussion, but we've had houseguests who have insisted on watching 'really interesting and unusual' films but have completely vetoed anything remotely 'depressing', remotely sexually explicit, remotely violent or remotely 'confusing'. Quite a challenge! Oh, and they "don't like comedies."

Not to tangent further, but what did you come up with to watch?

Arrow wrote:Not to tangent further, but what did you come up with to watch?

I was wondering the same thing. I guess (sticking with good movies) something like Kore'eda's Like Father, Like Son might qualify.

Arrow wrote:

zedz wrote:Three Resurrected Drunkards is easily the most fun film in that bunch, as well as the one with the most to talk about.

Michael, I was hoping to rewatch Vagabond for that discussion, but we've had houseguests who have insisted on watching 'really interesting and unusual' films but have completely vetoed anything remotely 'depressing', remotely sexually explicit, remotely violent or remotely 'confusing'. Quite a challenge! Oh, and they "don't like comedies."

Not to tangent further, but what did you come up with to watch?

Eccentricities of a Blond Haired Girl and Orphee. We also tried Le monde vivant (on the basis of unconvincing rhapsodies about Le Pont des Arts, which we'd watched on a previous visit) but we had to turn that off half way through because they had no idea what was going on. The verdict was: "it's clearly a very early work compared to Le Pont des Arts" (yeah, he made it the year before ) and "it's not a very convincing depiction of the Middle Ages" (ya think?)

Also exasperating was the requirement that I provided a detailed plot synopsis, including any surprises, before we could agree to watch anything. I resisted this as hard as I could.

The most fun I had during the visit was when we got left alone to babysit the daughter and all enjoyed Toy Story 3 (and a couple of Tashlin cartoons, and Bowers' There It Is, which was a grand hit) together.

zedz wrote:Michael, I was hoping to rewatch Vagabond for that discussion, but we've had houseguests who have insisted on watching 'really interesting and unusual' films but have completely vetoed anything remotely 'depressing', remotely sexually explicit, remotely violent or remotely 'confusing'. Quite a challenge! Oh, and they "don't like comedies."

I have a family member who is "in to cinema", but who seems to avoid watching anything tragic. When we went to watch 12 Years a Slave, for example, they went to buy some work shirts and then hung around having a coffee until we were done. They won't watch Amour either.

And Three Resurrected Drunkards it is!

Vote for your next discussion.

I love how because there are so many Zatoichi films, the algorithm seems to make it a choice nearly every time. Also surprised about the love for Sternberg over Godard!

There are 25 Zatoichi films out of about 900 total films in the eligible pool. Statistically, that should work out to a Zatoichi film being eligible for voting about 13% of the time, or once every 7-8 votes. Which I think is more or less what we're seeing, on average.

I'm about halfway through the Zatoichi box set, and Zatoichi's Revenge is one of the best I've seen so far. So I'm gonna throw my vote away for that one, even though Scarlet Empress seems inevitable at this point.

I love Silence of the Lambs and A Woman is a Woman as much as anybody, but I voted for Makavejev's Sweet Movie, because anyone who hasn't seen it ought to and because Makavejev in general, as a figure in world cinema, strikes me as both ahead of his time and very underrated. The fluidity in form he found in the late 1960s and early 1970s working with modes from fiction, documentary and the essay film nearly paralleled Godard's experimentation. And the resulting Makavejev films are anarchically funny in contrast to Godard's self-serious gloom.

And it's The Scarlett Empress.

We have another vote. Again, vote for the film you want to discuss and don't forget to be strategic about it since you can change your vote at any time before voting closes.

Jeez every one of these films would be great. I've seen Cabiria and Blood Relation so I'll not vote on those. I've never seen Nanook in full, Monterey Pop or Ship Sails On. I'll go for the latter since it affords me another chance to watch a late Fellini, which I haven't been keen on.

I first saw Nanook in a class called "Documentary Fictions." It was kind of a revelation thinking about how deliberately preplanned and choreographed all of it was, in the service of capturing something that was meant to feel completely unaffected, to bring us into a world and preserve a way of life that really didn't even fully exist anymore. It made me realize that the criticisms some people have of more obviously openly stylized and manipulated nonfiction films like Errol Morris' spoke to a tension that had always been in documentary. Worth seeing and discussing, but probably not without also considering supplements from Criterion and elsewhere.

Cabiria is a great film but one that most have seen I'd wager and one that's also out of print thanks to Studio Canal. So my vote is with the Naruse unless fans of his chime in to tell us it's one of his worst.