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Post by Lebowskidoo 🦞 on Feb 26, 2019 18:52:28 GMT
State and Main (2000) A small town is taken over by a film crew.
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Post by Doghouse6 on Feb 26, 2019 23:49:31 GMT
A few stragglers, in which the film industry provides backdrops for varied stories: The Black Camel (1931) The earliest surviving film of the sixteen in which Warner Oland appeared as Charlie Chan, this one benefits from extensive location shooting in and around Honolulu, with prominent support from Bela Lugosi and Robert Young, along with character players like Murray Kinnell and Dwight Frye. Above, Dorothy Revier as star Shelah Fane confers with her director on the beach at Waikiki; her murder kicks off Chan's investigation. And what does movie making in Honolulu have to do with a "black camel?" Says Chan to the assembled suspects: "There is old saying, 'Death is a black camel that kneels unbidden at every gate.' Tonight, black camel knelt here." On An Island With You (1948) Naval lieutenant Peter Lawford hires on as technical adviser to a sarong-and-swimming picture with an Esther Williams-like star (played, of course, by Williams, above). Typical but bright and colorful MGMusical entertainment, with Ricardo Montalban, Jimmy Durante, Cyd Charisse and Xavier Cugat. The Star (1952) Bette Davis as faded and fallen star Margaret Elliot, convinced she needs just one good picture to put her back on top. This one also features extensive location work, imparting a grittier atmosphere than the glossy treatment Hollywood usually gives itself, and Davis, while chewing up the screen, indulges her penchant for de-glamorization to convey the self-delusion that a forty-something actress can compete with those half her age for twenty-something lead roles. Sterling Hayden, Natalie Wood and Warner Anderson are on hand to pick up the pieces when Margaret's illusions are shattered. Above, Davis utters the film's most famous line: "Come on, Oscar, let's you and me get drunk!"
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Post by london777 on Mar 12, 2019 15:17:30 GMT
Welcome to Hollywood (1998) written and directed by Tony Markes and Adam Rifkin (et al) is a mockumentary about a director trying to fast-track a young actor to stardom. Half the Hollywood A-list have cameos. I have not seen it, but it scores low on IMDb.
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Post by london777 on Apr 22, 2019 15:35:36 GMT
An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn (1997) dir: Arthur Hiller (as Alan Smithee). I have not seen this mockumentary, but it is almost universally slated. Apparently a great concept which misfired. A competent director (Hiller) and a host of cameos from Hollywood "names" could not save it. It concerns a novice director (whose name actually is Alan Smithee) who gets out of his depth trying to co-ordinate a big budget action flick. When he tries to get his name removed from the resulting disaster, it is explained than pseudonymous directors can only be credited as "Alan Smithee". Ironically, Hiller then used the pseudonym to mask his involvement, the last time the alias was used, as the rules were changed thereafter.
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Post by london777 on Apr 28, 2019 20:14:30 GMT
Pedro Almodóvar's Los Abrazos Rotos (2009) is a love story with tragic, comic, farcical and satirical episodes. The hero, a screenwriter/director played by Lluís Homar, is having an affair with his star and discovery, played by Penélope Cruz. Her husband is the producer of the fictitious movie, called "Women and Suitcases", who releases a sabotaged version to ruin the hero's reputation and career. At the end we realise that "Women and Suitcases" is essentially Almodóvar's breakthrough hit "Mujeres al borde de un ataque de 'nervios'". Not too much of the film-making process is actually shown as most of the action is away from the set.
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Post by dirtypillows on Apr 28, 2019 22:56:42 GMT
Hard to keep up, but here are a few I don't think have been mentioned: INSERTS (1975) THE DAY OF THE LOCUST (1975) HEARTS OF THE WEST (1975) THE ARTIST (2011) BIRDMAN (2014) I was going to cite "Inserts" but you totally beat me to it. Unusual movie. As usual, Veronica Cartwright is a stand out. I've never seen her give a boring performance.
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Post by london777 on Apr 29, 2019 22:17:42 GMT
I was going to cite "Inserts" but you totally beat me to it. Unusual movie. As usual, Veronica Cartwright is a stand out. I've never seen her give a boring performance.
Yes, she's a brilliant actress. She worked hard learning her craft (in the Stanislavski system) after her work as a child actress. I've always felt she deserved a much better career - and a few awards, too.
You are correct that Veronica Cartwright did appear as a child actor, but much better known was her younger sister Angela. For example, Veronica appeared in 2 episodes of "Make Room for Daddy" whereas Angela appeared in 223, as well as in 84 (every one) of "Lost in Space". Keep on plugging the Brits, Spider, and we may invite you over instead of President Trump. (Did we have a thread on acting sisters? I just stumbled on another pair, Penelope and Monica Cruz.)
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Post by manfromplanetx on May 17, 2019 22:04:26 GMT
Hi there london777 an entertaining classic Slovak variation on the subject... Cert nespi , The Devil does not Sleep (1957) Peter Solan , Fantisek Zácek Cert nespi opens as a film presented for review before an "Approval Committee". With authority to project or censor, they begin to watch the satirical episodic film, consisting of three segments each tale exposes shortcomings of society. The stories are linked together, at each interval we return to the committee members who recognise themselves in the characters on screen, they have much discussion and each voice their approval or disapproval...
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Post by london777 on Nov 3, 2019 23:43:29 GMT
Pedro Almodóvar again. His ¡Átame! (1989 and released in the Anglophone world as Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!) concerns a failing porn actress who has a stroke of luck when an established director becomes infatuated with her and creates a "straight" film as a vehicle for her, albeit a minimal budget horror flick. We see only the final scene being shot although the director, played by the great Francisco Rabal, knows this will be his last effort (because he is dying of cancer) and keeps trying to add or reshoot scenes. A good thing the shooting on his film was completed as the heroine is then violently kidnapped by a mentally disturbed man (Antonio Banderas) and kept in bondage until she falls in love with, and marries, him. I guess that storyline should ensure that this is one Euroclassic which is safe from an American remake in the present climate.
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Post by london777 on Nov 13, 2019 20:08:14 GMT
The Yugoslavian epic (or "mock epic"?) Underground (1995), dir: Emir Kusturica from his own screenplay, includes many plotlines in its 170 minute version. It tells the adventures of two friends, Marko and Crni (Blacky) from the German invasion in 1941 through to the Civil War which ceased in 1995 when the film was being completed. This may explain why the final scenes are more cruelly realistic and poignant than the earlier ones. Marko, who is essentially a thief and black marketeer, rises after WWII to the top of the Communist nomenklatura. A propaganda film is being made glorifying their war-time exploits and showing how Marko singlehandedly saved Blacky from the Germans. (In fact, we know the truth, as in previous scenes we saw him beating a cowardly retreat, leaving Blacky and their Partizan colleagues to their fate. He does however rescue Blacky later). The main storyline is how Marko keeps Blacky and his Partizan brigade, with their families, hidden in a cellar and making firearms (supposedly for the Resistance) which he then sells on the black market. This continues for 15 years after the war has ended as he conceals from his unpaid workers that the German occupiers have long since departed. Finally, Blacky escapes from the cellar bent on killing as many Germans as possible. He stumbles onto the above-mentioned film set and mistakes the unfortunate actors playing Germans for actual Nazis, killing and wounding several. This is a major movie which deserves its own thread. It is like nothing else I have seen, though at different points I was reminded of Catch-22, Apocalypse Now, and Monty Python, as well, of course, as generic Eastern bloc WWII propaganda films. The cellar scenes reminded me of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's steam-punk movies. It is not an easy film to watch, let alone write about, but I shall attempt to do so one day (while secretly hoping manfromplanetx beats me to it). There is also a so-called Director's Cut (made for TV) which runs to 300 minutes. I do not know if that will make things easier or harder to follow but I would love to see it.
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Post by london777 on Nov 20, 2019 3:28:44 GMT
Peeping Tom (1960) dir: Michael Powell follows compulsive cameraman Mark Lewis (Karlheinz Böhm) as he shoots his insane "documentary". This might not qualify it for this thread but there are also a few scenes set in the studio where he works where they are making what appears to be a low-budget "Carry On" type farce. Filming is paused when they discover the body of the star's stand-in inside a prop trunk.
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Post by london777 on Dec 4, 2019 2:05:16 GMT
Hollywood Story (1951) dir: William Castle is largely set in a disused studios (actually the old Chaplin Studios) and contains a lot of superficial dialog about scriptwriting and movie-making but only one brief scene of a movie being shot. Here four stars from an earlier epoch have cameos as themselves. How many can you vintage movie buffs identify?
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clayton12
Sophomore
@clayton12
Posts: 130
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Post by clayton12 on Dec 8, 2019 6:33:37 GMT
Mitsuo Yanagamatchi's 2005 film Who's Camus Anyway? belongs on the list - a group of film students struggling to complete their masterpiece after the lead suddenly quit. Its opening scene introduces the main characters with an extended single take shot that tracks across the campus following snippets of various conversations – at one point the scene picks up with two characters arguing over which film had the greatest opening single take extended tracking shot scene.
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Post by london777 on Jan 27, 2020 1:30:24 GMT
Panic Button (1964) is an Italian movie jointly directed by Giuliano Carnimeo and Hollywood B-movie stalwart George Sherman. It concerns an attempt by two businessmen to film a version of "Romeo and Juliet" so bad that it is guaranteed to lose a lot of money for tax write-off purposes. Of course, Mel Brooks stole the idea for his "The Producers" (1967) only three years later, but at least he did a lot more with the concept. They start by casting 64-year-old Maurice Chevalier as Romeo, and Jayne Mansfield as Juliet. This is a stinker. It is available on YouTube in an Italian language version but I guess an English language version existed.
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clayton12
Sophomore
@clayton12
Posts: 130
Likes: 81
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Post by clayton12 on Jan 29, 2020 2:25:31 GMT
If you want to go ultra-meta, there's Shinichiro Ueda's 2017 film One Cut of the Dead - a film about people making a film about people making a film.
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Post by london777 on May 7, 2020 14:20:45 GMT
In C'est Arrivé près de Chez Vous [Man Bites Dog] (1992) dir: Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel and Benoît Poelvoorde, a film crew shadows a violent criminal as he goes about his gruesome business in order to make a documentary. Problems arise when they cease to be impartial observers and intervene in the action. A very black comic fake documentary with serious talking points. I wonder if it inspired "Where's Marlowe?" (1998) dir: Daniel Pyne which uses the same idea of the film-makers intervening, albeit in much milder manner.
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Post by Fox in the Snow on May 8, 2020 5:24:15 GMT
Why Don't You Play in Hell? [Sion Sono, Japan, 2013] A rag tag amateur film crew, calling themselves the Fuck Bombers, get the opportunity of a lifetime when a Yakuza boss asks them to make his passion project, a film starring his daughter. The usual Sono-esque mayhem ensues.
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Post by london777 on May 23, 2020 21:49:02 GMT
Yesterday I watched a movie that, for the most part, I did not enjoy or understand. Nonetheless it has stuck in my head ever since, which is usually a signal that I need to return to it at some future date. It was An Egyptian Story Hadduta misrija (1982) directed by Youssef Chahine, possibly the Arab world's premier director. It was his last movie and the last part of an autobiographical trilogy. It is his 8 1/2, though other influences may be All That Jazz, A Matter of Life and Death or even Woody Allen's Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask. While enduring a heart bypass operation, an eminent film director looks back over his life and career and attempts to reconcile events. There are only a few scenes of actual filming, but the movie is full of the behind-the-scenes stuff like script-writing, financing, censorship, etc. I think it will make more sense if I can view the two preceding parts of the trilogy, but they will not be easy to locate.
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Post by london777 on Jun 7, 2020 19:30:37 GMT
Road to Nowhere (2010) was director Monte Hellman's first feature for 21 years. His only movie that has reached a wide audience is Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) I have not seen any of his other films, but apparently this is in a new style for Hellman. It is a low-budget neo-noir about a talented and obsessive film director making a low-budget neo-noir about a crime and scandal in North Carolina that occurred four years previously. To the dismay of his production team and backers, he insists on giving the female lead to a non-actress, because she is a dead ringer for the girl in the scandal. It soon transpires that she is the girl in the scandal. Soon the movie and the historic events are hopelessly scrambled together. Have you ever labored over a classy jigsaw puzzle with well-made pieces, only to eventually find that some pieces are missing, so it cannot be completed? That is this movie. I cannot criticize the director's narcissism and self-indulgence too strongly. I give it a generous "4.5". And yet ... ... I find myself thinking about the film a lot, whereas many "5"s and "6"s which I have watched I mildly enjoy, then never think about again.
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Post by london777 on Aug 15, 2020 2:00:49 GMT
I could equally have written about The Intimate Stranger (1956) dir: Joseph Losey (released in the USA as Finger of Guilt) in my misbegotten "Brit Noir" thread, because it does fulfill all the noir criteria other than, for the most part, the ones which spiderwort and others deem the most important, namely noir cinematography and mise-en-scene. These latter are only evident in the climax, which is set on a studio sound stage. The plot is pure noir, though completely without violence. The villain does try to blow the hero away with a machine gun, but he forgot it was a film prop. Odd for someone who has a lifetime of service in the movie industry. Richard Baseheart is an American director who has fled the US, not because of a political witch-hunt like Losey himself, but because of a marital infidelity scandal. He is trying, in a UK poverty row studio, to make a bigger budget movie to relaunch his career. Then he is bombarded by letters accusing him of marital infidelity again, which he vehemently denies. Is he lying or is he suffering a mental crack-up? Not one of Losey's best. The musical score is a pain and the camerawork banal until the final Orson Wellesian climax. The villain reveals all by accidentally leaving his mike switched on. Where have I heard that before? Script is by Howard Koch, who shared an Oscar for his contribution to "Casablanca", but I don't think he made the best of this material. Baseheart's self-doubt could have been enhanced, while the villain is too obvious, despite a couple of other characters only being introduced apparently to serve as red herrings. These years were the nadir of British design. I was amused when American film-star Constance Cummings visits Baseheart in his ugly, clutter-filled office, looks round, and says "You have done alright for yourself". No irony was intended. One scene is set in a Newcastle pub. No "Get Carter" local colour here. Looks more like a lost property claims office. Roger Livesey does his "natural authority" thing and Mary Murphy is a perky femme fatale.
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