Criterion Web Site

[ellipsis7]

CLOSE-UP is about an ordinary man impersonating a director, then the real director arrives... Hawaiian shirt, puss, and the multiple cinephile refs (including Blu M on arm. and huge interest in film within film), it's QT who championed CLOSE-Up stateside... No need to look further...

[Cosmo Vitelli]

CLOSE-UP is about an ordinary man impersonating a director, then the real director arrives... Hawaiian shirt, puss, and the multiple cinephile refs (including Blu M on arm. and huge interest in film within film), it's QT who championed CLOSE-Up stateside... No need to look further...

You are right.

So the pitcher and the Idlewild sign is left.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

okay so if the feather is Four Feathers (which Four Feathers, the 1939 one or the Heath Ledger one?)

The 1939 version. Criterion owns the entire Korda Fillms catalog and The Four Features is on of the major titles in the library.

[Cosmo Vitelli]

okay so if the feather is Four Feathers (which Four Feathers, the 1939 one or the Heath Ledger one?)

The 1939 version. Criterion owns the entire Korda Fillms catalog and The Four Features is on of the major titles in the library.

Thanks.

[Jeff]

I have not seen del Toro's Cronos, but IMDb lists "drinking-from-pitcher" among its plot keywords. We know that one is one the way...

[Cosmo Vitelli]

Let's try to eliminate future/rumored titles to try to figure the Idlewild and pitcher clues out.

Weekend
Stagecoach (or could it?)


I have not seen Cronos either, so I don't know about that title.

[Cosmo Vitelli]

I looked up "Idlewild" as a keyword on IMDB and got 1 title back with "Idewild airport". 1935's "Bars of Hate". Has anyone heard of it?

I don't think it's it because the clue says "Home for Ladies" and it can't be an airport then.

[fdm]

Idlewild Home For Ladies reminds me of something out of some old Burt Lancaster or Kirk Douglas film. Although I may be thinking of something or other For Dames, in which case I'm more likely thinking of James Cagney. No idea really.

(Edit, actually think I was thinking of Dolls rather than Dames).

[justeleblanc]

From Wikipedia's The Devil's Backbone synopsis:
"That night, in his bed, Carlos is distracted by noises, suggested to be a ghost. The alleged ghost knocks over a pitcher of water, which wakes the rest of the orphans."

[Matt]

Perhaps the Idlewild Home for Ladies refers to Make Way for Tomorrow?

Spoiler

The mother goes to an old folks home at the end.

[Cosmo Vitelli]

Could we see the pitcher more than just a pitcher. Maybe something "half full" or "half empty"?

[Cinéslob]

Pitcher = Milk, not water? Tarkovsky's Sacrifice?

Gus Van Sant's Milk is in the Focus Features catalogue, along with Monsoon Wedding and Ride with the Devil.

[Peacock]

But don't you think a glass of milk is more appropriate than a pitcher?

[Cosmo Vitelli]

Pitcher = Milk, not water? Tarkovsky's Sacrifice?

Gus Van Sant's Milk is in the Focus Features catalogue, along with Monsoon Wedding and Ride with the Devil.

But Milk already has a really good dvd/blu-ray release.


Is this the longest it has ever taken for a clue to be resolved? These 2 clues are either really hard or we are just passing over them and could be related to films that has already been announced for 2010.

[Fierias]

I thought the giant baby = Solaris. Upgrade to blu, perhaps?

Are you sure you're not thinking of 2001?

In Tarkovsky’s Solaris, a segment early on in the film includes a verbal description of a grotesquely large baby floating in a supernatural ocean.

[carax09]

The hotel sign made me think of Vivre sa Vie. And assuming Matt is correct about the McCarey, doesn't that leave only Lola Montes, Bigger Than Life, and Hunger as unaccounted for? I wouldn't be surprised if every title with a release date is in there somewhere. Could the baby represent Bigger Than Life, and also something else?

edit---Sorry Cosmo, I somehow missed a whole page of this discussion in which you mention Vivre sa Vie.

[Cinéslob]

But don't you think a glass of milk is more appropriate than a pitcher?

Perhaps. Then again, might it not be My Darling Clementine that's being hinted at? The figure in the Guevara t-shirt could as easily be Chihuahua as Lola Montez, the landscape is a desert, and the sign post in the centre of the image could be an allusion to the one in Clementine's opening credits. As for the jug:



(I can't remember what was actually in Clementine's jug, though.) My Darling Clementine on BR: how's that for wishful thinking and fanciful divination?

[Cosmo Vitelli]

The hotel sign made me think of Vivre sa Vie. And assuming Matt is correct about the McCarey, doesn't that leave only Lola Montes, Bigger Than Life, and Hunger as unaccounted for? I wouldn't be surprised if every title with a release date is in there somewhere. Could the baby represent Bigger Than Life, and also something else?

edit---Sorry Cosmo, I somehow missed a whole page of this discussion in which you mention Vivre sa Vie.

It's cool. I'm not here to say I was the first to spot something. I just want Vivre sa Vie in my hands ASAP. That goes for Weekend as well.

Also I think you're right. Every film that has been announced is in this picture besides Hunger and Bigger than Life. They could be in this somehow, but I have seen Hunger and I can't put nothing with it.

[HistoryProf]

sorry about the redundant list/post...had originally gone into the newsletter thread and it got moved here where I should have looked first.



M (Blue M on shirt of bike guy)
Red Shoes (Red shoes)
Days of Heaven (Blue Locusts)
Brakhage V. 2 (Dog Star Man)
The Leopard (The blue leopard)
Revanche (Blue Axe)
Yojimbo/Sanjuro (Blue samurai sword - also Seven Samurai perhaps?)
Bigger than Life (pitcher of milk)


Che
Close-Up (Kirostami)
Ride w/ the Devil - why on earth wouldn't this be blu?
Rossellini's WWII films (road signs)
Colossal Youth (Big baby)
Dillinger is Dead (girl w/ Che shirt holding polka dot revolver)
Four Feathers (the white feather)
Vivre Sa Vie (Hotel Sign)
Summer Hours (Funky blobby thing at base of sign post)
Red Desert


"Idlewild Home for the Ladies" is the remaining clue.

[Cash Flagg]

A pitcher of milk figures prominently in Bigger Than Life.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

A pitcher of milk figures prominently in Bigger Than Life.

How didn't we think about that! It's one of the best damn scenes in the film! The scene where the kid drinks milk is on the cover!

[justeleblanc]

[HistoryProf]

That object looks like one of those fixed binoculars/telescopes, put a coin in and you can see, top of the Empire State etc,. in Hitchcock somewhere I have lodged in my memory...

that's exactly what I thought...but it does appear to resemble whatever the fuck that pink thing is in the screen grab from Summer Hours.

[Peacock]

No, no it is definitely Summer Hours, Criterion left a post a few days ago saying how the film was voted best of the decade by some critics.

So does that mean everything has been worked out? With some doubt over Idlewild Home For Ladies.
Someone over on the facebook page suggests the feather is the western White Feather (1955)
I really do hope that sun turns out to be the Ford

[HistoryProf]

I can't think of what film might be set there, but Idlewild is a very famous resort of sorts for black entertainers and the emerging black middle/upper class in the 1920s...That terrible film titled simply "Idlewild" moved it to georgia of course, because no one would believe there were black people in rural Michigan then. I'm fairly certain there are a couple of films relevant to it, but can't recall off hand. It was known as the "Black Eden" and the 'in' place to be into the 1960s for wealthy black Americans. after the Civil Rights Act, the segregated retreat lost it's basic necessity for being, and crumbled.

Anyway, it would be cool if that figured in somehow, but I doubt it. just thought i'd throw that out there in case there's some Josephine Baker flick or something I'm forgetting.