11 September 2010

15 films... (from facebook)

The rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen Films you've seen that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. Tag fifteen friends, including me, because I'm interested in seeing what Films my friends choose. (To do this, go to your Notes tab on your profile page, paste rules ...



1. Dead Man - easily my favorite film. beautiful cinematography, haunting soundtrack, and a simple story told epically. plus, it's a western, and westerns usually bore me. so that's sayin' something!

2. Faces - John Cassavetes' tale of domestic boredom and collapse. brutal.

3. Trash - part 2 of Paul Morrissey's Flesh Trilogy. Joe Dallesandro plays a junkie that can't get it up, even though scores of women badly want him. plus, there's an odd love story mixed in there.

4. Totally F***ed Up - part 1 of Gregg Araki's "Teen Apocalypse" trilogy. written, directed, shot, and edited by him; with a 4AD soundtrack, to boot! this film was inspirational to me as i was graduating film school.

5. Buffalo '66 - Vincent Gallo's self-loathing love story, with Christina Ricci looking her best. shot on color reversal film, Buffalo '66 is one of the most technically beautiful-looking films of the late-90's. plus, VG's personality is so raw in this film, you can't help but feel both contempt and sympathy for him at the same time. he's easily one of america's modern film auteurs.

6. The American Nightmare - my favorite documentary. doc analyzing the societal influence upon american (and one canadian) horror films of the 1970's. Dawn of the Dead, Texas Chainsaw, Shivers, Last House on the Left... interviews with the directors, and a soundtrack by Godspeed You Black Emperor. "there's something about the american dream, and the realization that it's not the truth... that give american horror films an additional rage" - wes craven

7. Half Japanese: The Band that Would be King - my favorite music documentary. a 90-minute exaggerated fawning over an awesome indie rock band, Half Japanese. everybody in the film loves the band, but they all consciously amp up their praise to the level of the almost-absurd, with hilarious results that make you want to love the band, too. interspersed with some of the greatest "in-studio" footage ever shot of them covering a velvet underground song.

8. Sigur Ros: Heima - the most beautifully shot concert film of the Icelandic band, Sigur Ros. they play an album's worth of songs, each in a different location, all around Iceland: in a cave, in a town hall, at a swap meet, in a field destined to be flooded by a new dam, and in a huge outdoor theater. so beautifully shot and edited, it comes as close as a film can to capturing the magic that is their concert experience.

9. High School Confidential - film from the late 50's, where everybody talks beatnik. early appearance by michael landon and lots of tight sweaters and pointy bras. watch it, and you'll realize you were born too late.

10. The Seventh Continent - Michael Haneke's first feature, and arguably his bleakest. based on a true story of a suburban family in austria that committed suicide. the first half of the film is simply a series of repetitive shots of domestic malaise, over and over again. then, the breakdown happens, with no conscious explanation. one can deduce that the malaise of life has left these people trapped and hating their lives so much, that they want to die. but, the film leaves that interp up to you, as they descend into chaos for the last half of the film.

11. J-Men Forever - a series of 40's serials, cut together and overdubbed, to create a story about aliens from the moon taking over the earth with weed and rock music. i've been told that my "excited" voice is a duplicate of the films villain, The Lightning Bug. so, i guess this film had the most effect on me, in a way.

12. Three Colours Red - Kieslowski's final film of the "Three Colours" trilogy, and his final film before he died.

13. Halloween 3: Season of the Witch - partially because it was filmed in humboldt county, i love this film. but also because it's a truly original plot - an evil toymaker decides to bring back the tradition of the holiday by exploiting consumer culture to buy his deadly halloween masks for a mass child sacrifice. and that's only part of the plot! plus, my personal fave soundtrack, by john carpenter.

14. Amateur / Henry Fool - 2 films by Hal Hartley, the first of which irreversibly shaped my taste in film; the second of which is his greatest film, in my opinion.

15. Everything Will be OK - short animation by Don Hertzfeldt, the first of a trilogy. tells the story of Bill, a man dying of something mysterious - but can really be read as dying of regret and loneliness. told through the simplicity of stick-figures against a backdrop of decaying photographs and film stills, i challenge anybody watching this flick not to project themselves onto the almost-featureless face of the main character and feel genuine sadness in the same way that Bill does.

(fuck it, i'm adding one more)

16. The Holy Mountain - easily one of the most epic films ever made. that's a word i use a lot; but that word pretty much describes what the Jodorowsky set out to make. a gargantuan-sized vision quest, incorporating characters from all aspects of humanity, striving to reach the top of The Holy Mountain at all costs. metaphor? yes, but so much more...

too many to choose from, so here are the ones that would've come next: Day of the Dead, Prince of Darkness, Videodrome, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hitcher, The Rules of the Game, Gentlemen Broncos, Vernon Florida, pretty much anything by David Lynch

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