Touch of Evil: 50th Anniversary Edition

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#151 Post by **domino harvey** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 2:40 am

Restoration version first, toss a coin for the other two

Matango · #152 Post by **Matango** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 2:43 am

Thanks. How about docs? Save for the end? (Sorry, don't mean to sound spoon-fed).

#153 Post by **domino harvey** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 2:54 am

Haven't watched the docs yet but I'd imagine you'd want to see some version of the film first

mteller · #154 Post by **mteller** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 2:47 pm

Why would you EVER want to watch a doc before seeing the film itself?

Rick Schmidlin · #155 Post by **Rick Schmidlin** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 6:14 am

you should

Forrest Taft · #156 Post by **Forrest Taft** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 6:27 pm

I started with the theatrical cut, then the documentaries, followed by the restored cut. This worked fine for me, and I´ll probably watch the preview cut with the Rosenbaum/Naremore commentary tomorrow. Strange thing though, after I watched the documentaries I went to the cinema to see Encounters at the End of the World. Sitting beside me was a Jonathan Rosenbaum doppelgänger who himself sat next to a Rick Schmidlin doppelgänger. That freaked me out a bit.

Antoine Doinel · #157 Post by **Antoine Doinel** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 9:49 pm

Glenn Kenny weighs in.

Matango · #158 Post by **Matango** » Fri Oct 17, 2008 5:02 am

mteller wrote:Why would you EVER want to watch a doc before seeing the film itself?

Would you like to bold, underline and italicize that EVER, too?

Sometimes it's worth watching extra-feature docs for historical, background or other context before the main feature. The BBC doc on the CC Mishima is a good example. Watching one of the Jacques Tati docs before viewing a Tati film for the first time would be ok too. As long as the film-specific docs contain no major spoilers, I see no problem with those either, which is why I was asking.

Andre Jurieu · #159 Post by **Andre Jurieu** » Fri Oct 17, 2008 6:09 am

Jameson281 wrote:
broadwayrock wrote:More contributions for the 'misinformed flamers':

R2 DVD

I just received this DVD today and I popped it in to look at the image before calling it a night. I have to say, the screen cap above seems to exaggerate the amount of image that is cut-off by the 1.85 framing. Also, this framing occurs for less than a second in total time.

Rick Schmidlin · #160 Post by **Rick Schmidlin** » Thu Oct 30, 2008 6:23 pm

Has anybody see the new DVD yet?

HerrSchreck · #161 Post by **HerrSchreck** » Thu Oct 30, 2008 6:24 pm

???

Rick look up above your post & read!!

Perkins Cobb · #162 Post by **Perkins Cobb** » Fri Oct 31, 2008 1:23 am

Armond to restoration: "Drop Dead!"

#163 Post by **domino harvey** » Fri Oct 31, 2008 1:29 am

Armond White wrote:Gigi has suffered a similar infamy due to critical snobbery that denies Minnelli’s greatness.

Show me one film writer who doesn't like Minnelli. Someone can dislike a movie (and way to go to bat for one of his most indefensible titles) and not write off the director wholesale regardless. Talk about projecting!

tavernier · #164 Post by **tavernier** » Fri Oct 31, 2008 1:31 am

I saw that piece and decided not to link to it because it was even less "good" than AW's other hackery. Too bad someone else saw it!

You can't beat this insight, though:

Armond White wrote:By favoring Gigi, the Motion Picture Academy did not insult Touch of Evil or Vertigo but picked a worthy contender—the best default choice since How Green Was My Valley beat Citizen Kane. Gigi seriously challenges any official canon.

How could they insult those 2 films when neither was nominated for Best Picture? (That they weren't nominated is a separate insult.)

#165 Post by **domino harvey** » Fri Oct 31, 2008 1:47 am

White probably thinks he's a rebel for saying Valley deserved to win over Citizen Kane, but Bogdanovich beat him by several years when he said it in his Year of Movies book-- and Bogdanovich recorded the commentary for Kane! Now there's a crazy value judgment with at least some weight to it. White is just doing anything in his power to get attention... and it's clearly working.

tavernier · #166 Post by **tavernier** » Fri Oct 31, 2008 1:50 am

We 're all fascinated, because Armond White is the fatal multi-car crash of movie critics.

#167 Post by **domino harvey** » Fri Oct 31, 2008 1:52 am

He's so good at being bad that, as terrible as he is, it's of some comfort to know what the worst looks like

Tom Hagen · #168 Post by **Tom Hagen** » Fri Oct 31, 2008 2:40 pm

I like how Walter Murch -- the man behind the sound design of The Conversation and Apocalpyse Now, veteran film editor of dozens of quality films -- comes off in White's telling like some sort of studio hack best known for his Oscar-winning work on a middling Best Picture winner.

And, of course, there's this:

Armond White wrote:Finally, Paramount’s new DVD transfer of The Godfather trilogy is superfluous. But it must be stressed that the continued dismissal of Coppola’s Third Opus—omitted from theatrical presentations—not only diminishes the whole but all who go along with it.

It makes perfect sense that a desparately-needed and beautifully-executed restoration of the first two Godfather films (in Hi-Def no less!) is superfluous in the mind of a knee jerk contrarian asshole who would rather talk about the critical establishment's alleged mistreatment of the third Godfather film.

evenswr · #169 Post by **evenswr** » Wed Jan 14, 2009 6:46 pm

domino harvey wrote:White probably thinks he's a rebel for saying Valley deserved to win over Citizen Kane, but Bogdanovich beat him by several years when he said it in his Year of Movies book-- and Bogdanovich recorded the commentary for Kane! Now there's a crazy value judgment with at least some weight to it. White is just doing anything in his power to get attention... and it's clearly working.

Huh.

When I first read this, I took it as a slam on Bogdanovich, so I went out to Amazon and typed in a whole bunch of text to refute the argument that Bogdanovich said that HGWMV was better than Kane. Now that I come back to actually paste it in, I see that you actually didn't say that. Not quite.

Nevertheless, I've gone and typed all this in, so I might as well past it in here anyway:

From the How Green was My Valley part:

The 1941 Academy Awards are often denigrated becausee Orson Welles's maverick Citizen Kane didn't win best picture that year. Usually overlooked, therefore, is the movie that did win-one of the finest classic American films, though it's about a Welsh coal-mining family: John Ford's profoundly touching visualization of Richard Llewellyn's best-selling novel, HGWMV. Coincidentally, both Kane and HGWMV are about the dissolution of family, but while Kane, in a modern way, seems to throw that part of the story away until the end, it is the essential plot of HGWMV. Both films were also made with the war in Europe about to expand into World War II, and the impermanence of the time is reflected in these two stories of impermanence and loss.

I think HGWMV, superbly adapted by screenwriter Philip Dunne, is the best film ever to win the Oscar for best picture, which also makes the disparagement of the Academy's choice over Citizen Kane such a poor case. If these two films went up against each other today in the heart of the country, I believe the Academy vote would reflect the public's reaction for two basic resons: Kane is about the rich and privileged, while HGWMV is about everybody else. As Welles himself-an ardent Ford admirer-said to me once, "With Ford at his best, you can feel what the earth is made of." The other reason is hope, which Welles's film doesn't give, but which Ford's does.

From the Citizen Kane chapter:

It really wasn't until the late Fifties and early Sixties that [Kane] began to gather the kind of immortal legend of priceless quality it now carries, internationally acknowledged as either the best film ever made, or certainly high among the ten best of all time.

Since May 6 is Welles's birthday, the perfect way to celebrate is by seeing his birth-fully formed-as one of the truly great filmmakers of the world. The complexity of this script and of the performances remain rare in pictures, and still seems fresh now, nearly sixty years after Kane was first seen.

Of course, the most subversive aspect of Citizen Kane, in 1941 and now-because it is still relevant thematically and still devastating in its implications-is the dark light it throws on fame, success, wealth, and the heritage of plutocracy. Imagine how its negativity seemed to an American establishment about to enter World War II; its uncompromising picture of loneliness at the top is absolutely without any feature of redemption or spiritual survival. Impossible to think of an Amercian film as essentially bleak in outlook, and yet the exhilarating freshness of its pace, wit, construction, and directorial style creates a kind of optimistic counterpoint, as if to say that only through the poetry of art can wee hope to survive.

Forrest Taft · #170 Post by **Forrest Taft** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 9:42 pm

I just finished reading the Orson Welles book by André Bazin, and his section on Touch of Evil ends with these words:

Since I have already analyzed Mr. Arkadin at some length, I don´t need to linger over the direction of Touch of Evil, which is, in some sense, the fulfillment of the previous experiments in filming and découpage. I should simply add that these experiments obviously run counter to the various wide-screen formats which Welles reproaches for restricting the plastic language of cinema.

This means the film was shown in Academy Ratio in France right? Or am I misunderstanding this quote...
I´ve never seen the film in Academy, but would very much like to. If anyone knows where I might get a copy of it, please PM me.

kekid · #171 Post by **kekid** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 10:06 pm

RobertAltman wrote:I just finished reading the Orson Welles book by André Bazin, and his section on Touch of Evil ends with these words:
Since I have already analyzed Mr. Arkadin at some length, I don´t need to linger over the direction of Touch of Evil, which is, in some sense, the fulfillment of the previous experiments in filming and découpage. I should simply add that these experiments obviously run counter to the various wide-screen formats which Welles reproaches for restricting the plastic language of cinema.
This means the film was shown in Academy Ratio in France right? Or am I misunderstanding this quote...
I´ve never seen the film in Academy, but would very much like to. If anyone knows where I might get a copy of it, please PM me.

Can someone please explain what is "the plastic language of cinema", and how does a widescreen format restrict it?

#172 Post by **Mr Sausage** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 11:56 pm

kekid wrote:
RobertAltman wrote:I just finished reading the Orson Welles book by André Bazin, and his section on Touch of Evil ends with these words:
Since I have already analyzed Mr. Arkadin at some length, I don´t need to linger over the direction of Touch of Evil, which is, in some sense, the fulfillment of the previous experiments in filming and découpage. I should simply add that these experiments obviously run counter to the various wide-screen formats which Welles reproaches for restricting the plastic language of cinema.
This means the film was shown in Academy Ratio in France right? Or am I misunderstanding this quote...
I´ve never seen the film in Academy, but would very much like to. If anyone knows where I might get a copy of it, please PM me.
Can someone please explain what is "the plastic language of cinema", and how does a widescreen format restrict it?

Well plastic in this context just means something that's maleable and easily shaped, so I suppose he's calling Widescreen an impossible restriction on film grammar for eating up screen real-estate and reducing/fixing composition space ("only good for snakes and funerals").

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