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domino harvey wrote:any help on which score to watch the film with for the first time would be much appreciated.

Don't think anyone ever answered this question and I'm wondering the same. Am finally going to get round to this for the first (and probably second, third...) time in the next couple of days. I usually prefer orchestral scores but I read somewhere that the piano one was the best way to go.

Anyone care to comment?

I've only watched it with the piano score & thought it worked very well. (My wife really disliked it though.) I imagine most here will say go with the Raben.

jt wrote:Don't think anyone ever answered this question and I'm wondering the same. Am finally going to get round to this for the first (and probably second, third...) time in the next couple of days. I usually prefer orchestral scores but I read somewhere that the piano one was the best way to go.

Anyone care to comment?

I tried all four and the improvised piano score was by far the most appropriate

domino harvey wrote:I tried all four and the improvised piano score was by far the most appropriate

Cool, cheers. I'll do that one first, then the Rabin.

Did anybody else find the commentary track incredibly tedious? Two droning voices, one with a pompous accent making not-particularly-insightful observations and the other rambling obsessively about 'the gaze' every third shot. I'm normally good with 'academic' commentaries, but this one was a snoozer. Had to give up 35 minutes in so I could stay awake.

Do they at least tear up the room with one another later on to make up? There was only one squabble in the bit I heard.

Yes the commentary is awful indeed.

For those of you wondering whether or not to delve into the 2 plus hours commentary I will summarize:

The gaze. THE GAZE. There's the gaze again. The commodization of the Gaze, the rendering the Gaze as mere commodity. The Gaze. Penetration.

I saw this last night at BAM with the live accompaniment of an ambient rock band who wrote a score for the film, and the experience was incredible. I liked the film on DVD (found the middle a bit hard to slog through) but loved it in the theater, where the movie became much more beautiful and, dare I say, riveting. It probably didn't help the fun factor that the live accompaniment skewed harshly towards somber, even in the happier first half.

Now I'm excited to go back into the DVD set and get to the special features and docs. Sounds like I'll be skipping the commentary.

I finally got round to ordering this (from Caiman via Amazon), and my copy arrived yesterday. Imagine my surprise when I opened it up to discover that instead of the book of essays, it came packaged with a DVD of Cher: The Farewell Tour (complete with headache-inducing hologram cover)!



Is this an incredibly rare collector's item that I should place in a bank vault and auction off one day for millions? Anyone experienced anything similar? Anyone want to trade?!?

I remember several years ago when I was a member of a political organization on campus, we pooled our money to buy a documentary off Amazon and ship it next day so we could screen it for the university on short notice. Imagine our surprise when UPS delivered a book for lovers over forty on how to sexually fulfill your aging partner. Not our best public screening.

This is not just a case of them sending me the wrong DVD though: the fucking thing is packaged inside the Criterion box along with the 2 Pandora's Box discs! The whole set was sealed, so it looks like it came from the warehouse like this, as if Criterion have run out of books, can't be arsed to print any more, and are hoping that noone will notice the difference between a J. Hoberman essay and a vocodered rendition of If I Could Turn Back Time...

Hilarious-- it's about the only thing I heard that beats my Warning Shadows story.. where the disc (which I'd been haunting Kims day after day for the month before the 'official' street date because I know Kims just chucks em out on the shelves whenever they get them which can sometimes be 2 wks to a month before 'official' streeting) was rushed home upon it's appearance in the store, promptly torn open, and thrown into the player (it's one of my favorite german silents, and the prospect of seeing the Bologna resto of it had me slavering)... whereby a watercolor painting instructional video was thereby launched. The encoder goofed and I got the one in a million glitch.

I go back to Kims and the countergirl was rolling. And they had only ordered that one copy of the disc thinking no one would buy it so I had no replacement. I had to call Kino and go over there to grab a proper replacement.

Hilarious!

Here it is in all its glory:

Ask Jon Mulvaney, and share his reply here. Please.

A prompt reply from Mulvaney about the whole Cher DVD thing:

I'm sorry to hear you got a Cher DVD instead of a booklet--this is definitely the first we've heard of that mistake! I'd be happy to send you the booklet for your DVD, and please feel free to write in again if you have other questions.

Best,

JM

I still have a sneaking suspicion they're planning an Eclipse box set of The Witches of Eastwick, Suspect, Moonstruck, Mermaids and Tea with Mussolini. Only time will tell...

Dear God, I hope this isn't some sort of hint that Cher is planning on starring in a remake.

I have taken advantage of the DD Criterion sale and bought Pandora's box.
I've been wanting the Cher DVD for ages!!!That means that i will get one Criterion for free plus one Cher DVD!The deal of the century =P~

Ya know what I blame for the mixup? The GAZE.

The probably last surviving member of the cast had his 95th birthday this year in February. It's Dr. Schön's exquisitely beautiful bride who nevertheless loses to Louise. Daisy D'Ora was additionally a Miss Germany in 1931. Here's a German article with two photos.

domino harvey wrote:

jt wrote:Don't think anyone ever answered this question and I'm wondering the same. Am finally going to get round to this for the first (and probably second, third...) time in the next couple of days. I usually prefer orchestral scores but I read somewhere that the piano one was the best way to go.

Anyone care to comment?

I tried all four and the improvised piano score was by far the most appropriate

Just watched this with the piano score soundtrack, it does accompany the film very well, also liked the musical quotations from Alan Berg's opera Lulu (also taken from Wedekind's plays).

I'm not sure that there is anybody else here close enough to care, but .....

Pandora's Box will be showing July 12 and 14 as the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor. It'll have a live organ accompaniment. (The theater is a late 1920s "movie palace" that still has its original pipe organ.)

Wish I could be there to see it...the Michigan was my favorite theater when I was growing up in Ann Arbor in the '60's. I remember my Mom taking my younger brother and I to see The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly there in 1967, when I was 8 years old. It was a great theater, and I imagine it's been restored since then. I think we also saw Yellow Submarine there too, but it was 40+ years ago, so maybe not.

Is the old Fifth Forum art theater still there on S. Fifth St.?

dr. calamari wrote:Wish I could be there to see it...the Michigan was my favorite theater when I was growing up in Ann Arbor in the '60's. I remember my Mom taking my younger brother and I to see The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly there in 1967, when I was 8 years old. It was a great theater, and I imagine it's been restored since then. I think we also saw Yellow Submarine there too, but it was 40+ years ago, so maybe not.

Is the old Fifth Forum art theater still there on S. Fifth St.?

The only other downtown theatre in Ann Arbor these days is the State...which is less than a block from the Michigan.

Tribe wrote:

dr. calamari wrote:Is the old Fifth Forum art theater still there on S. Fifth St.?

The only other downtown theatre in Ann Arbor these days is the State...which is less than a block from the Michigan.

I believe that the Fifith Forum is what was called the Ann Arbor Theater (or Ann Arbor Twin Theater?) by the time I got to town as an undergrad. It has been closed for some years now.

I'm not sure what state you would remember the State Theater being in. It was originally one big single screen, with main floor and balcony seating, also a pretty old theater. By the time I came to college it had been subdivided into four screens: two lower ones using the old main floor seating, and two upper screens seating in the old balcony. Somewhere along the line they gave up the two lower screens in favor of streetfront shops. So now they just have the two balcony screens.

And, yes, the Michigan has had a major renovation / restoration ..... probably 10 years or so ago now. (I'm not sure of the exact timeline for that.)

The State Theater was still in pretty good shape the last time I went there, in 1972. I remember it, and the Michigan, as being the 2 theaters my folks most liked to take us because they were big and within walking distance of our home, so we didn't have to fuck around finding a place to park. They were the 2 first-run theaters in Ann Arbor, although the Fox up by Maple Rd. got some first-run movies too (like Tora Tora Tora), but it was farther away.

Sure do miss Ann Arbor, at least as it was in the 1960's.