It’s the weekend. You finally have a few extra hours to spare. Let’s catch you up on articles and film writings that are worth your while.
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Ardelle Costuna from Pacifiqa takes a side trip to the three remaining theaters in Recto, Manila.
Back in the day, Manila was where you could find everything. It was Makati, Cubao, and Bonifacio Global City all rolled into one. Well-off families shopped in Escolta, where they watched movies and live performances in upscale stand-alone theaters…
…People often forget that these theaters were stars that were once the main attractions along the streets of Avenida and Recto. They flaunted their tantalizing façades and held the brightest shows during their prime, before industrial progress came and snatched away the original meaning of cinematic and architectural wonder.
Visiting one of them has left me more questions with answers I’d rather not know.
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The New Yorker‘s Richard Brody writes on “The Cult of Marlon Brando” and/or against it.
A new piece in The Atlantic by Terrence Rafferty, ‘The Decline of the American Actor,’ is immensely thoughtful and stimulating. Rafferty brings to light a crucial fault line in the history of filmmaking and film criticism: the cinema, since its invention, has been haunted by an inferiority complex in the face of the theatre…Rafferty, in repeating that error today, replicates the misjudgments of years past. As he laments the decline of training—along with what he considers a concomitant decline in ‘American culture,’ which, he says, ‘isn’t providing a high level of sustenance right now’—Rafferty invokes another spectre that haunts the current cinema, the cult of Marlon Brando. Imbued with serious theatrical training, Brando is cherished for his theatrical impersonations, as in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” “On the Waterfront,” and “The Godfather,” when, in fact, his greatness is in his person, and shines through most clearly and forcefully in roles that depend least on impersonation—”Guys and Dolls,” “Last Tango in Paris,” and the Maysles brothers’ documentary Meet Marlon Brando. Brando was great not because of his theatrical training but despite it.
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The Guardian‘s Damon Wise on Eli Roth’s “Knock Knock,” what it means to The Sexploitation Film.
In true Roth fashion, “Knock Knock” goes a little further than “Fatal Attraction” in its riotous second act (there isn’t really a third act, just a swan-dive into anarchy), but it is not the only film this year to deal with sexuality in a post-EL James era. ‘The fact that “Fifty Shades of Grey” is a phenomenon at all,’ says Roth, ‘just shows how mainstream it is, and it’s blasted the door wide open, saying sex is back in a big, big way. Now, sex has moved to the internet, and it’s on “Girls,” and that’s where people are getting it now. They’re not going to R-rated movies for titillation; you can get it on your phone. But that kind of subject matter is coming back in a big way.’ Indeed, Roth talks spiritedly of the ‘sizzle and charge’ of 80s erotica, citing the early films of Adrian Lyne and Paul Verhoeven as a reference. But if “Knock Knock” does proves to be our “Fatal Attraction,” just as “Fifty Shades” is our “9½ Weeks,” there are a slew of imminent releases that go back even further, to the golden age of sexploitation. Generally credited to B-movie maestro Russ Meyer, who pushed the boundaries of the sex comedy with his near-plotless 1959 ‘nudie cutie’ “The Immoral Mr Teas,” the sexploitation genre reached its zenith in the 70s, when porno chic made “Deep Throat” a cocktail-party talking point and Sylvia Kristel’s X-rated “Emmanuelle” yielded seven sequels.
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THR: James Cameron pays proper tribute to film scorer James Horner.
When I was doing “Titanic,” he had just done “Apollo 13” and “Braveheart.” I thought, “I don’t care what happened, I want to work with James.” We had this very cautious meeting where we were falling all over ourselves to be polite. We laughed about it so much in subsequent years. But we developed a very transparent means of communication which made for a great working relationship. He totally committed himself to the movie. He blocked out his schedule and sat down and watched maybe 30 hours of raw dailies to absorb the feeling of the film.
I asked if he could write some melodies. I believe that a great score really consists of something you can whistle. If that melody gets embedded in your mind, it takes the score to a different level. I drove over to his house and he sat at the piano and said, “I see this as the main theme for the ship.” He played it once through and I was crying.
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Twitch‘s James Marsh makes a film school out of Samuel Fuller’s “Forty Guns”
There are many aspects of “Forty Guns” that feel strange and unfamiliar, even as the story plays out in a mostly familiar fashion. Fuller shot in black and white Cinemascope, and captures a real sense of the vastness of the great outdoors, and his characters’ vulnerability to it. However, he also uses a number of extra tight close ups, particularly in Griff’s first stand-off with Brockie. For an American western of the period, Fuller’s frequent juxtapositions between extreme wide shots and close-ups would seem strange. Of course, Sergio Leone would go on to use them extensively in his spaghetti westerns a few years later.
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A few more to call it a week:
- Jun Lana’s “Anino sa Likod ng Buwan” is competing at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
- Olivia Collette of Rogerebert.com writes on why Sadness from “Inside Out” is ‘fat.’
- American Sniper-writer Jason Hall marks directorial debut with “Thank You For Your Service”
- “An Kubo sa Kawayanan” wins Best Filipino Picture at WPFF 2015 – read our review!
- “Magic Mike XXL” trailer, starring sausages — literally sausages!
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