The Film Books On My Desk

I decided to stack up some of my favorite film books and keep them right next to my computer.  Reference material, but I don't know, there's something about them that makes me happy, too.

Here's what currently makes up the stack.  What's on yours?

Qu'est-ce que le cinema?  - Andre Bazin (French version)
Pariscope
Hawks on Hawks - Joseph McBride
Movie of the Week - Peter Bogdanovich
The Films in My Life - Francois Truffaut
Who The Devil Made It - Peter Bogdanovich
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang - Pauline Kael
A Biographical Dictionary of Film - David Thomson
Essential Cinema - Jonathan Rosenbaum
"Have You Seen...?" - David Thomson
Le film noir american (wonderful French noir compendium)
La Politique Des Auteurs (great French book, compiling Cahiers interviews with Dreyer, Hawks, Bunuel, Hitchcock, Bresson, Antonioni, Lang, Rossellini, and Welles)
2 Copies of Cahiers du Cinema from the early 60s
Hitchcock/Truffaut
Brian De Palma (French interview book) - Samuel Blumenfeld/Laurent Vachaud
French New Wave - Jean Douchet

Good news -- MovieMaker Reboot!

Before I started this blog, I was doing weekly posts over on MovieMaker Magazine's website.  Those posts ended around November of last year. But good news: MovieMaker has asked me to reboot "my favorite film from 1926-2008" series for their site.

Starting yesterday, I have a new series at MovieMaker entitled "I Found It At The Movies" (a tribute to one of my favorite film critics Pauline Kael's first compilation I Lost It At The Movies).  This series will begin with 1926 and unfold in chronological order.  I have added one new section to each post, entitled "What moviemakers can learn".

I'm very excited to be continuing this great relationship with MovieMaker and can't thank everyone enough for your support of this series so far.  It's been a great ride.

Favorites of My Favorites #8 -- Abel Ferrara

“…they (the audience) like the pictures to be cheaply done, they enjoy the crudeness; it’s a breather, a vacation from proper behavior and good taste and required responses.”  - Pauline Kael, Trash, Art, and the Movies

Abel Ferrara, at times, demonstrates as much artistic grace and skill as anyone, but he never completely lets you forget where he started.  First it was porn and then the slasher film; Ferrara understands that a large part of the audience go to movies for sex, violence, profanity, and whatever else they might not be getting from their daily lives. 

And sure the cinema has always given us plenty of this.  But, in Ferrara’s work, it’s different.  There’s no gloss, it’s not “movie-ish”, you feel like it’s more real, like you’re seeing these things for the first time.  In Ferrara’s work, these things are also more than mere diversions.  They’re harsh, heavy, and often times so visceral they force you to engage with them.   His films are not escapist fantasies, their essays on something dark, deep, and troubling.

His work with rapper Schoolly D is one of my favorite Director/Musician collaborations.  I also love the naturalism of his work.  After Scorsese and some of the other guys decided to abandon the visual grit of their earlier work (think Mean Streets and Taxi Driver), along comes Ferrara to keep the tradition alive.  Almost all of Ferrara’s work is palpably rooted in a specific time and place. 

He’s not for everyone.  And he’s not even always for me.  But, when he’s on, he’s one of my very favorites.

*Pauline Kael probably influenced me more than any other film critic.  She passed away in 2001, and I miss her dearly.  I thought she was a fantastic writer with wonderful taste.  But, more important, I thought she was a mentor and guide for filmmakers.  She took a real interest in their careers and would try to help them understand when they did something well and when they went off course.  De Palma was one of her favorites, and I hate that I’ll never have the opportunity to read her thoughts on Femme Fatale (I have the feeling that she would have really loved it.)  I also would have really liked to hear her talk about Lynch, Ferrara, Tarantino, Jarmusch, Bujalski, David Gordon Green, and other filmmakers who have emerged, for the most part, since she stopped writing in 1991.  

ABEL FERRARA (in preferential order):

1.  King of New York
2.  The Funeral
3.  Bad Lieutenant
4.  Crime Story (pilot)
5.  Go Go Tales watched 2/5/10
6.  Dangerous Game
7.  Chelsea on the Rocks watched 3/24/11
8.  ‘R Xmas
9.  The Driller Killer
10.  New Rose Hotel
11.  Ms. 45
12.  Body Snatchers watched 4/30/10
13.  The Blackout watched 4/25/10
14.  China Girl
15.  The Addiction
16.  Fear City
17.  Cat Chaser (90-minute version)
18.  The Hold Up watched 10/15/11
19.  Nicky's Film watched 10/15/11
20.  Mary
21.  Subway Stories (segment “Love on the A Train”)
22. Could This Be Love watched 10/16/11

Never seen:
Napoli, Napoli, Napoli
Chelsea on the Rocks
Go Go Tales
The Blackout
Body Snatchers
California (short)
Not Guilty:  For Keith Richards (documentary short)
9 Lives of a Wet Pussy
Could This Be Love (short)
The Hold Up (short)
Nicky's Film (short)

The Dardenne brothers

Like most people, I hate to admit that I'm wrong.  Especially when it comes to movies.  In fact, I pride myself on my first response to a movie. And usually that response, like an instinct, becomes something that only grows in value over time.  I always wanted to be like one of my film heroes, Pauline Kael, who claimed never to need to see a movie more than once.

But, alas, like all things, that "response" can prove flawed at times.  The more I watch movies, the more I realize that sometimes the way I react to something depends greatly on my mood.  Am I growing more emotional, is my response dulling, or am I simply becoming more honest?  Hopefully, it's simply the latter.

All this to say I'm late to jump on the Belgian directors' Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne's bandwagon.  They've twice won the Palme D'Or from the Cannes film festival, and most of the critics in the world have long been proclaiming their greatness.  But I saw La Promesse and then Rosetta when they were released in the nineties, and neither really grabbed me.  So I did what any mature person does, right?   I spent the next ten years avoiding their work.

Finally, after encouragement from some of my friends, I decided to catch up with their last three films:  The Son, The Child, and Lorna's Silence. And now I finally understand that these guys do certain things as well as anyone.  You know, small things like direct actors, move the camera, and control the look and feel of their films.  Oh yeah, and they do it with little to no music at all.

The best way I can think of them is as the next generation of transcendental filmmakers.  I'm not sure they quite yet attain the height of Bresson, but I'd say they're as close as anyone I've found who is on that path.