Baron Prasil (1961)

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Animation

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Samuel Fuller, Pete Walker, Death In Venice, Los Olvidados, Bunuel

Recently been kind of re-discovering Samuel Fuller. I was always a big fan of Shock Corridor, Fullers psycho-thriller about an ambitious journalist who infiltrates an asylum by pretending to be mad, but I never realised the amount of other really interesting films he made. His films remain largely unknown, and mostly unavailable in this country, but he's a legend amongst his peers. Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese have both mentioned his films as a major influence. Fullers follow up to Shock Corridor, The Naked Kiss, is a strange, noirish melodrama about a prostitute who escapes her old life to become a nurse in a small town, only to discover that the handsome town patron whom she has an affair with, seen at the end of this clip, harbours a dark secret.























Also discovered these Pete Walker films, Die Screaming Marianne and Frightmare. Walker seems to have made quite a few decent exploitation movies during the 1970's, I see him as maybe like a British answer to Jess Franco. Like Franco, Pete Walker's films are characterised by camp dialogue, unnecessary nudity, bizarre sadistic characters, pacey and unpretentious plots and cinematography that sort of harkens back to classical hollywood and old gothic horror movies.





















Having finally watched Death In Venice, the amazing film by Luchino Visconti, I can safeley say it's one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen.















Recently I bought Los Olvidados, a film directed by Luis Bunuel, about street kids in Mexico City. Bunuel left Spain to escape fascism, its pretty clear if you watch any films of his, such as Viridiana or Exterminating Angel, that he was quite radically left wing and anti church. Los Olvidados is also famous for this dream sequence.


Un Chien Andalou's eye slicing sequence is probably the most iconic of any of his films.


Exterminating Angel is about a group of South American aristocrats at a dinner party who find themselves suddenly an inexplicably unable to leave their hosts small drawing room. It seems to be about what happens when culture and propriety give way to survival.

Memorable Scores part II

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Memorable Scores and Themes

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Kubrick, Lair Of The White Worm, The Original Transformers Movie, Happiness

The genius of Stanley Kubrick is indesputable, its always there, particularly evident in the 1980 masterpiece The Shining. However, some of his stuff can be a bit hit and miss for me. He's sort of known for this very measured steady cam, but it doesn't always quite suit the subject matter of his films. Full Metal Jacket is a good example of this. I think it's a film which looks dated now because it was already alluding to another film made 50 years earlier, one of my favourite war films, All Quiet on the Western Front. You could say Kubrick's fluid camera style and his reliance on dolly's and tracking shots during the later battle scenes is a sort of homage to the earlier film. Also like All Quiet, FMJ's first segment deals with an army training school and a slightly over zealous instructor, but while in the earlier film the instructor is pompous, foolish, a harmless baffoon, in Kubrick's film this character and the entire segment have a darker edge. Whether this works or not is debatable. Another film that seems, in my opinion, to miss its mark is his adaptation of A Clockwork Orange from the novel by Anthony Burgess. It's not a bad film in my opinion, I don't think he could make one if he tried, but nevertheless the plot seems clunky, pointless. The amazing art design and iconic costumes of Malcom MacDowell's "Droogs" do little to distract from the unconvincing shallowness of the characters. It leaves me cold, but maybe thats the point. Kubrick wiseley used the inventive narration of the novel to carry the story and MacDowells performance is remarkable and iconic, bringing to mind his earlier role in Lindsey Anderson's If.

Stanley Kubrick's best films are well known as some of the greatest ever made. Classics like Paths of Glory, Lolita, Dr Strangelove and Barry Lyndon are among them. Here are my top Three.



3. Eyes Wide Shut (1999)



2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1978)



1. The Shining (1980)


























Here is the trailer for another classic by a very differnt filmaker, Ken Russell's The Lair of the White Worm.

I've ordered it from America but I don't know why more film's like this aren't available here.

Another Ken Russell film that looks quite interesting and funny is Whore.


























I Recently re-discovered the film oddity that is the original Transformers movie. Offcourse, it has some of the cynical feeling of the franchise, rather like the Harry Potter films, but nevertheless it is rather entertaining and funny. The plot never lets up and is basically a bizarre childrens adventure about a giant spherical entity, played by Orson Welles (!), who travels through space devouring technology in much the same way the giant whale in a Baron Munchausen story swallows ships. The Transformers flee to Earth after their planet is destroyed by it. Eric Idle and Leonard Nimoy also appear. The use of eighties pop rock songs in the soundtrack is fairly innapropriate and random, the film seems to have been knocked together. It's good in the same way as a Jess Franco film, a stylish accident.

































Re-watched Happiness recently, definateley my favourite Todd Solondz film. Its full of scenes like this:

More Trailers, Freak Storm, Caveman Loves Teenage Girl

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sbHcm0xED0&playnext_from=TL&videos=yy45tDhkEfI&feature=grec