tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8347718.post116085983531751448..comments2024-03-28T02:21:05.851-07:00Comments on VINYL IS HEAVY: Week EndRyland Walker Knighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09233954424885027837noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8347718.post-1161822708954980162006-10-25T17:31:00.000-07:002006-10-25T17:31:00.000-07:00^Amen.^Amen.Boonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02857832534463228577noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8347718.post-1161709152671177962006-10-24T09:59:00.000-07:002006-10-24T09:59:00.000-07:00Manny Farber has this to say about Godard: "In sho...Manny Farber has this to say about Godard: "In short, no other film-maker has so consistently made me feel like a stupid ass."Ryland Walker Knighthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09233954424885027837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8347718.post-1161396801672590752006-10-20T19:13:00.000-07:002006-10-20T19:13:00.000-07:00Well said, Sean. I'll suspend any further sniping ...Well said, Sean. I'll suspend any further sniping on a great filmmaker til I actually see more.<BR/><BR/>But, daggit, I got the sense that this film was some kind of recapitulation/kiss-off, and minus further context it just felt like an extravagant suicide note by some child of privilege who knows that all eyes are on him--and who knows damn well he ain't about to kill himself. Abusing the attention.<BR/><BR/>I'm queing up the flicks, but now I also want to see the video works that transpired between New Wave and neo-Godard.Boonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02857832534463228577noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8347718.post-1161383958860970042006-10-20T15:39:00.000-07:002006-10-20T15:39:00.000-07:00I can't imagine what watching Week End without hav...I can't imagine what watching Week End without having seen those films Ryland recommends. The film is an elaborate parody, farewell and fuck you from Godard to himself and the whole New Wave, inspired by his own increasingly radical politics (Maoism, of all things). Without that context, it must be excruciating.<BR/><BR/>Godard's interesting because he's never didactic, even when he takes up valuable screen time with interminable speeches on the virtues of violent revolution against the capitalist elite. Instead of being lectured to by Godard, you get the feeling he's trying out every idea that floats into his head, some interesting, some profound, some tedious and some just plain wrong. The randomness, absurdity, and invention of it all is exhilarating, beyond and in addition to any considerations of style. As opposed to Cache, a film with one or two definite ideas that are neither sophisticated or alive.<BR/><BR/>If I ever have my own movie theatre, I'm calling it the End Of Cinemas.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8347718.post-1161038945373584842006-10-16T15:49:00.000-07:002006-10-16T15:49:00.000-07:00You can read the pretty groovy, if not completely ...You can read the pretty groovy, if not completely convincing article I was thinking about right <A HREF="http://www.nypress.com/18/32/film/ArmondWhite.cfm" REL="nofollow">here</A>.Ryland Walker Knighthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09233954424885027837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8347718.post-1161038525642984482006-10-16T15:42:00.000-07:002006-10-16T15:42:00.000-07:00White is my crazy soulmate: I was thinking about W...White is my crazy soulmate: I was thinking about WotW as I watched Week End. But only superficially. I can't take the leap with him and call it avant garde.<BR/><BR/>Beck: oops, tracking mud on your carpet. <I>I like his videos</I>...Boonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02857832534463228577noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8347718.post-1161036089478768652006-10-16T15:01:00.000-07:002006-10-16T15:01:00.000-07:00One other thing: you remember your boy Armond Whit...One other thing: you remember your boy Armond White likened WAR OF THE WORLDS to this picture? He said something about how Spielberg's film was the most avant garde film of 2005...Ryland Walker Knighthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09233954424885027837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8347718.post-1161034682130592382006-10-16T14:38:00.000-07:002006-10-16T14:38:00.000-07:00I think his main impetus to change was the world a...I think his main impetus to change was the world around him. Similar to the "After Auschwitz" philosophy that asks, "What's the point to make believe after Auschwitz?" In 1967 it was building ire towards Western imperialism, specifically his native country's. In the next decade it became "After Vietnam" and now it's "After 9/11". <I>[I've stolen this near verbatim from the Schrader essay in this month's Film Comment, which I'm hoping to write about soon.]</I><BR/><BR/>SO... yeah, go check out PIERROT LE FOU (pure playful magic, but sad), UNE FEMME EST UNE FEMME (probably the most fun), MASCULIN-FEMININ (perfect: really) and definitely CONTEMPT (probably the finest, formally speaking, if not the most fun) to see his command.<BR/><BR/>I will agree that Raoul Coutard kicks a lot of butt and saved his but I see the mischieviousness in Godard as fun. I guess it's diff'rent strokes...<BR/><BR/>And watch what you say about Beck around <A HREF="http://asleepover.blogspot.com/2006/07/summer-days-drifting-away.html" REL="nofollow">here</A>. He may have fallen off as hard as Freestyle Fellowship promised they wouldn't but for a while he was the shit.Ryland Walker Knighthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09233954424885027837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8347718.post-1161033627435859812006-10-16T14:20:00.000-07:002006-10-16T14:20:00.000-07:00That said, I'm gonna find time to see some of the ...That said, I'm gonna find time to see some of the beloved early Godards that I missed. Your fault.Boonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02857832534463228577noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8347718.post-1161033543563682452006-10-16T14:19:00.000-07:002006-10-16T14:19:00.000-07:00Well, damn if that wasn't a brilliant shutmeup. Yo...Well, damn if that wasn't a brilliant shutmeup. You get at the flick's aims and problems a lot better than my post. Never saw Contempt, never saw quite a few of Godard's major works, so where do I come off?<BR/><BR/>This sounds pinpoint correct:<BR/>"FIN becomes FIN DU CINEMA, signaling Godard's big break up with his first true love, cinema. He'd already started saying "It's me, not you" at the beginning of the picture but that was the last he had to offer."<BR/><BR/>But even the pre-Week End Godard seems a dour scold to me, like a headmaster who takes a stab at shooting the breeze with the kids but flashes the ugliest, meanest smile. If he were a funk musician he'd be Beck.<BR/><BR/>He had no cause to dump cinema when, to my eye, he never showed all that much mastery. Despite his passions, his camera eye isn't all that compelling (where would he and Truffaut have been without Raoul Coutard, I wonder.) Maybe cinema dumped him. If he couldn't squeeze any more love and fun and inspiration out of the form, I'd say it definitely IS him.<BR/><BR/>What's definitely ME is a prejudice for directors who love to engage the senses rather than terrorize them. Filmmakers who craft careers out of treating audiences like laboratory animals, I want to ask them, "So, what do you do for fun?"Boonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02857832534463228577noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8347718.post-1161019217904620322006-10-16T10:20:00.000-07:002006-10-16T10:20:00.000-07:00Let's start at the end, which really was the begin...Let's start at the end, which really was the beginning for the rest of Godard's career:<BR/><BR/><B>FIN</B> becomes <B>FIN DU CINEMA</B>, signaling Godard's big break up with his first true love, cinema. He'd already started saying "It's me, not you" at the beginning of the picture but that was the last he had to offer.<BR/><BR/>The entire film is a catalogue and response to his career up to that point, it seems, starting with that "absurdly long, xxx-rated monologue about a sexual threesome" as a comment on the opening scene of CONTEMPT. The continuous wreckage throughout echoes not only BREATHLESS & PIERROT LE FOU's mania but CONTEMPT again, except the bougie in that movie actually get killed, handbag and all.<BR/><BR/>I think WEEK END is great formally but somewhat of a pain to watch, to be honest. Godard anticipates and plays with preconceived notions of theory better than his fellow Caheirs homies but he takes it to such an extreme in WEEK END that the parade of chaos wears the viewer thin. PIERROT has similar aims and has fun along the way, something that WEEK END severly lacks. I have to agree that "WEEK END takes not taking itself seriously way too seriously." Where PIERROT was whimsical, WEEK END is wham bam ugly.<BR/><BR/>But that's not to say it's not an essential movie or JLG isn't an essential filmmaker. I just can't defend it well enough right now, having not seen it in forever and the last time I rented it I fell asleep cuz my gf started it at like 11 on a Tuesday night or something. My defense of JLG is that before WEEK END he seemed in love with the world as well as cinema, in spite of its flaws, but as the 60s wore on he saw more and more hypocrisy and idiot logic and it made him a sourpuss. Before, though, he was a true cinematic OG routinely throwing down some heavy, brilliant shit.Ryland Walker Knighthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09233954424885027837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8347718.post-1160961396017946092006-10-15T18:16:00.000-07:002006-10-15T18:16:00.000-07:00I can't articulate my response very well today but...I can't articulate my response very well today but for now I gotta say I dig this movie more than you despite its faults. Occasionally it veers into Haneke's arena of tween brutality philosophizing but I think Godard is a smarter filmmaker--he'd never make something as ill-conceived as <A HREF="http://imdb.com/title/tt0387898/" REL="nofollow">CACHE</A>--whose analytical skills are just as proficient as his filmmaking skills. (But then, I think people like Haneke because he marries Godard's jabbing sensabilities with Bresson's restraint. But that's another essay, I fear.)<BR/><BR/>Okay, my brain is too jumbled and my girlfriend's watching TV so I can't really say everything I want right now. I'll do a better job tomorrow. Regardless, as usual your writing is really witty and fun, so thanks. More later.Ryland Walker Knighthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09233954424885027837noreply@blogger.com