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Over the top of over the top! Flying saucers from outer space…check! Absurd, drug-fueled cartoon characters…check! Thai zombies with exploding heads…check! Loud, fast, distorted rock 'n roll…CHECK! ALL SYSTEMS GO!

We're talking about the lo-fi, lo-budget Wild Zero, the 1999 punk rock Night of The Living Dead starring power trio Guitar Wolf. This Japanese cult film pays homage to all things rock 'n roll filtered through western Pacific sensibilities. Framed within the buzzsaw roars of Guitar Wolf's "jet rock 'n' roll", you're gonna get cars, motorbikes and microphones that spit fire like the 1966 Batmobile! Of course there's the Yakuza and gallons of fake blood! There's even military-grade weaponry that wouldn't seem out of place in Michigan's upper penninsula! Oh, and the soul searching…

It's a bunch of stupid fun

Saw the 2021 documentary about the life of actor Paul Newman the other day, Pierre-François Gaudry's Paul Newman, derrière les yeux bleus (Paul Newman, Behind Blue Eyes). It's hard not to make a film about Newman's life without sanctifying the man, although he really did come close with all of his humanitarian work aside from all of the iconic roles he'd played in his career. But I'm not here to list his filmography nor his philantrophic endeavors today. Possibly another time.

Something Newman said, it had to be around 1977-1980 (it's unclear from the film exactly when), stuck with me as it's as timely today as it was 40-odd years ago—maybe more so.

It's very hard to take a lot of pride in your craft if the three biggest stars in America are two robots and a shark.

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Link 1: A Study of Black and White Filmmaking

Link 2: Film Noir: The Case for Black and White

Have you ever heard somebody say "I can't watch black and white movies?" I have a problem with this. Not because some of the most important movies are in black and white but because black and white can do just as much—if not more—than color.

Thanks, MovieSnob LinkMonkey™! Have a banana! And thanks to YouTube Channel Now You See It for both these videos succinctly and smartly analyzing the use and history of black and white in cinema.

Regarding the above opening quote (from the linked Film Noir video), an excellent recent example of this, forgive me if I'm repeating myself, is Robert Egger's 2019 [The Lighthouse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lighthouse_(2019_f

How many buttons does this movie push? The cult of personality. Stalking. Delusional disorder. Prisoner of fame. Local boy makes good. If Travis Bickle had stand-up aspirations. Today in 2023, even though Todd Phillips has already 'fessed up to it, it's hard not to notice the resemblance in Todd Phillips' Joker (2019), especially with De Niro standing in for Jerry Lewis and…himself as the neurotic Bickle Pupkin. Was Scorsese just decades ahead of his time, like with New York, New York? Yes and no.

Although Scorsese himself admits an inspiration from Porter's Life of an American Fireman (1903)[^1], in my research neither our director nor any film critics mention the resemblance to Steno's post WWII comedy [Un americano a Roma](https://

La La Land (Damien Chazelle, 2016)

New York, New York (Martin Scorsese, 1977)

_{L.A. Image by 12019, N.Y.C. Image by Noel, from Pixabay.}

I'd like to thank @[email protected] for posting this article from the L.A. Times over at [email protected]. A hot topic with some interesting (and less interesting) takes on the subject. This was going to be a mere cross-posting but, of course, you're always going to get your mouth-breathing audience in any discussion regarding the—ugh—superhero genre, so I felt the need to distance myself from that.

Did you not see the name of this community?

While I might admit under pressure to some exaggeration on Prof. emeritus Scorsese's part (it's Martin Scorsese, for Buddha's sake!), he's certainly not wrong. One thing that few have understood, like Scorsese has, is that while cinema has always had cookie-cutter formulas and copycat movie

Studio Ghibli Inc., the production company of anime director Hayao Miyazaki, is set to become a subsidiary of Nippon Television Network Corp., with the major Japanese broadcaster aiming to help manage the studio, the companies say

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.film/post/1319955

What's the connection between the iconic film 2001: A Space Odyssey and art-house purveyors The Criterion Collection? It may seem the obvious link is direct, that 2001 is part of the Criterion Collection but that's not the case—Criterion offers five of Kubrick's works and 2001 isn't among them. The connection is a terrible little English B movie from 1964 titled Devil Doll. This low-budget horror film stars Bryant Haliday, William Sylvester and Yvonne Romain but it's the first two names we're interested in today.

Bryant Haliday, in 1959 with business partner Cyrus Harvey, Jr, founded Janus Films, an American film distribution company famous for essen

Spike Lee's 1989 masterpiece. One of the best films in the history of cinema. Yeah, you heard me. I defy you to cite an example of a more powerful film. The story and the cinematography (not to mention the actors' performances) with Lee's vision deliver a 1-2 knockout to the gut then to the head that leaves the viewer reeling. Nobody's right in this film. Nobody's wrong either. Everybody's a villian and a hero. We all have our shining moments sometimes. And it all still rings frightfully true today.

We've got five great films here, and they're great for one reason: because they tell the truth. But there is one film missing from this list, that deserves to be on it, because ironically, it might tell the biggest truth of all, and that's Do the Right Thing.

—Kim Basinger, from her presentation of Best Picture nominees at the 1990 Academy Awar

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Here's one for all you not-yet-famous movie makers. As briefly as possible, lighting is essential in effective filmmaking. Like in all visual art, lighting sets the tone, be it blatently—like in classic Hollywood film noir with its German expressionist lighting—or imperceptibly, such as the flat, practical lighting in David Fincher's work.

Pouty cinematographer Rob Ellis here shows how to use a fill (secondary) light to your advantage. Of course, Mr Ellis is also trying to sell you on his master course in…forgive me, I've forgotten…but in any case it's an effective basic-level lighting tutorial.

Last Days (Gus Van Sant, 2005)

Dark Night (Tim Sutton, 2016)

🔗🐒 Hi! I'm the MovieSnob LinkMonkey™! 🔗🐒 Enjoy this link!

Thanks, MovieSnob LinkMonkey™! Have a banana! And thanks to @[email protected] for his indirect link to this link here…you can have a banana too if you'd like.

An interesting read, this linked article, which confirms what we've suspected (knew?) for some time now. Don't tell me you believe Amazon product reviews too…?

From the linked article…

…in February, the Tomatometer score for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania debuted at 79 percent…after more critics had weighed in, its rating sank into the 40s. Quantumania had the best opening weekend of any movie in the Ant-Man series, at $106 million. In its second weekend, with its rottenness more firmly established, the film’s grosses slid 69 percent, the steepest drop-off in Marvel history.

“The studios didn’t invent Rotten Tomatoes, and most of them don’t like it,” sa

Manji (Yasuzo Masumura, 1964)

La Noia (Damiano Damiani, 1963)

Congratulations, Signora Cavani! 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏

Better late than never...MovieSnob LinkMonkey™! 🐵 Do your stuff!

• https://deadline.com/2023/08/venice-film-festival-opening-ceremony-comandante-1235531289
• https://www.upi.com/News_Photos/view/upi/df4138aa2b34ba143ff3bfe1eaaee286/Opening-Red-Carpet-The-80th-Venice-International-Film-Festival/
• https://www.indiewire.com/news/festivals/venice-film-festival-opens-charlotte-rampling-liliana-cavani-1234900745/

Bonus MovieSnob LinkMonkey™ Trailer Link 01:
The original 1974 US trailer of Cavani's The Night Porter

Extra-Bonus MovieSnob LinkMonkey™ Trailer Link 02:
Cavani's The Night Porter, CultFilms' 2020 rerelease trailer

Compulsion (Richard Fleischer, 1959)

Io non ho paura (Gabriele Salvatores, 2003)

_{Image by StockSnap from Pixabay}

Let's talk briefly about Watcher (2022), a psychological thriller by written and directed by Chloe Okuno in her feature-length directorial debut.

The story is about a young American couple that move to Bucharest for Romanian-American husband Francis' career (Francis played by Karl Glusman). Wife Julia (played by Maika Monroe), who doesn't yet speak the language, tries to adapt to the new apartment and foreign surroundings alone—Francis often has to work late—when she gets the sense that a mysterious neighbor from across the street is stalking her.

It's a well-made, smart, subdued film. The performances are extremely subtle but valid; Monroe's performance waivers like the needle on some delicate scientific instrument from mildly amused to quietly bored to paranoid. The film itself is extremely stylish wi

cross-posted from: https://lemux.minnix.dev/post/62635

Our friend @[email protected], admin, creator and moderator of [email protected] writes…

Small slice-of-life drama that proves a story doesn't have to be big to make an impact. No elaborate sets, no nail biting tension, no over-acting. It's all very subtle and the barren and run down north Texas backdrop suits it to a T. Even with his understated and quiet presence, Duvall carries this film on his back the whole way with a little help from Tess Harper as his new wife and Betty Buckley as his ex. Yes, it is a redemption story, but definitely not a dramatic one and promotes realism instead of Hollywood fantasies.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ out of ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

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Part I: https://yt.artemislena.eu/watch?v=VASwKZAUVSo

Part II: https://yt.artemislena.eu/watch?v=RtjERWANv38

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