Koyaanisqatsi (1982) We have not seen the original but suspect it could be interestingly remade with Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher. Harley Davidson And The Marlboro Man (1991) Nothing wrong with the underrated original, but since this Don Johnson/Mickey Rourke star-pairing took place in the near future, it could be remade now (about the time when the first was speculatively set) with the same cast and the same short-term futurism: an exercise in kicking a can down the road. Further remakes with the same cast at 15-year intervals would constitute a mind-bending variation on the 7-Up series.
Out 1: Spectre (1972) Jacque Rivette's original was four hours long. Come on. The Godfather Part III (1990) Be clear, this would not be Godfather IV but a remake of III which, let's not kid ourselves, was not so hot.
If the remake were successful, one could waltz back through the other two, making for a hell of a lot of Godfathers. Arriving at Godfather I or, as it was myopically called at the time, The Godfather, it is simply not possible to imagine anyone but Chris Walken playing the Sterling Hayden part. Indeed, if the director were feeling his artistic oats, Chris Walken could play all the parts.
One great film Steven Soderbergh Let me just say that I'm sick of people digging up obscure masterpieces designed to make me feel like a philistine; or, worse, arguing that an acknowledged masterpiece isn't, in fact, a masterpiece at all, but the beneficiary of some collective cultural hypnosis. I'm going in the opposite direction: I'm going to call attention to a classic that, in my opinion, is even better than we all think it is: Chinatown (1974) If you really analyse a great film, it can teach you how to make a film, and Chinatown may be the best blueprint of all. It has: a compelling and/or entertaining subject, explored through a well constructed narrative (Robert Towne's screenplay brilliantly fictionalises the true story of Los Angeles' battle for a water supply)1; a great cast, doing career-defining work (Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway both look and act better than they've ever looked or acted)2; an appropriately distinctive visual scheme (the sets, costumes and photography are painfully evocative, and Roman Polanski never puts the camera in the wrong place)3; and, most crucially, smart editing and scoring (the macro-editing has just the right press and release, the micro-editing is seamless except when it's not supposed to be; and Jerry Goldsmith's melancholy score - a last-minute addition - wraps the whole film in an intoxicating perfume of dread)4.
Of course, it also follows that bad films contain the reverse DNA, showing you what not to do. But, in general, I like to watch good films, because bad films make me sad. Actually, Chinatown makes me sad, too, mostly because it reminds me that I began watching and making films at a time when the movies really were just as great as they seemed to be.
Oh well. At least I wasn't imagining things5. 1 This is a good moment to comment on the cottage industry that has sprung up around How To .
.. screenwriting manuals.
I think of this because Towne's script is often cited as a great template (which it is) but, invariably, with no understanding or acknowledgment of the role film editing has in shaping a finished work. So any discussion that omits this issue shows a palpable lack of experience in the actual making of films on the part of the scriptwriting teacher/author. 2 I'm not kidding, Nicholson and Dunaway are fucking spectacular in this.
His smile and her cheekbones? Come on. 3 Like I say, there's everything you need to know to direct a movie here.
There's a huge difference between being economical and being cheap, and Polanski shows you the difference over and over again. You might not have noticed that he basically shoots the whole film with one lens; and check out the multiple-destination camera moves, which are invariably hidden within the actors' moves. Plus, there's nobody better at knowing when to pull the camera off the dolly and go hand-held.
4 This is a good moment to say that, currently, I think editing on a micro-level has never been better, and editing on a macro-level has never been worse. I leave it to you to decide why this is. 5 Oh no.
I've officially become a bitter, nostalgic fuck. How did this happen? Five films to avoid on medication DBC Pierre This is cinema to beware of.
The list is an advisory service, and should be consulted prior to deploying unfamiliar motion pictures. I do not say to you that these are films to avoid - indeed, some are unspeakably beautiful. I do, however, try to impart a sense of why each motion picture, in its own way, should not be watched within reach of any stabbing blade, or under the influence of heavy drugs.
Even Dwarfs Started Small (1971) Even on cannabis, or lightly depressed, Werner Herzog's second work, in which a collection of German dwarfs and midgets run amok at an asylum in Spain to very strange music, can unhinge you. And the last minute of action proves Werner is actually aiming at this, which does nothing for your paranoia. Fierce Creatures (1997) View this and recall that the force behind it, John Cleese, was once widely hailed as a genius.
This work is an invoice for the cost of a man's sanity; watching the sums add up on screen is a devastating business, and will for ever wreck your faith in any right to the pursuit of happiness. On Golden Pond (1981) If you didn't sleep through this coral-filter of a yarn about famous old Americans playing old Americans getting too old beside a lake, you are in danger of severe dismay; not from the work's inherent stupor, but the certainty that you'll never actually remember how the action went, or if, indeed, there was any, and hence enter an anxiety loop about your own declining cognitive powers. Avoid sedatives.
Mondo Cane (1962) Legendary Italian documentary that scours the globe for the most distasteful customs and occurrences, then runs overwrought violin music to them, with narration by an American who has clearly spent 20 years on lithium in Sicily. As you watch, you can't help but feel this is what they showed to Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange in order to straighten him up. Severe advisory against acid use - I mean it.
Day Of Wrath (1943) A work that starts bleakly, then plunges downhill. The opening scene is all you need to feel a weight of mud bulldozed on to your grave. And director Carl Dreyer's undoubted brilliance is deployed through a muffled, monochrome fog, making the thing even more nightmarish.
When your cries for help are over, line up your razor and pills to this one. Five films with great sex - or at least interesting sensuality Mike Figgis Sex is very difficult to translate into cinema. It's not enough just to film it, because that deals only with the surface of sex (and that's why porno is so abysmal).
So I've put together a list of the films that I find to have had some small measure of success. They seem to fall into one of two categories. One is where the actors seem to mean it - as in, they look at each other and have feelings for each other, be they tender, violent, even detached.
The second is where the director manipulates the film in the edit, to create an erotic ambience.
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