Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Film Festival

I'm sure this 1958 movie is cult. The trailer of the original is hilarious.

I found three remakes;
- The 1993 remake is a feminist B-movie.
- The 1995 remake is an R-rated slap-stick.
- The 2012 remake is a mild sexy comedy.
Well, here you have my first mini film festival. Enjoy.

When I look back to the 1000+ posts on my blog, it's about movies, all kinds of music, modern and classic ballet, photography, and some sexy stuff. All the things that make me enjoy life. Mainly old-school. Later on maybe architecture, literature, poems, paintings, performances will kick in. And writing blogs is an intellectual joy.

I'm still deep into moving pictures. It's a frantic collector's kink. I now have almost 5000 movies on my hard-disks. Mainly art-house. I've seen a lot of them but not all. Discovering new insights every time I watch a movie.

Downloading movies is legal in the Netherlands. Uploading copyrighted material is not. But on Youtube you can find lots of full movies and in the future I could upload some more. That looks pretty safe. When they get a complaint, they remove the movie.

I fantasied about organizing a small film-festval. I was triggered by the Stanley Kubrick exhibition in the EYE film-museum earlier this year here in Amsterdam. It showed many props from his movies. Very exiting. You could see (but not touch) the cardboard bomb from Dr.Strangelove. That gave me the shivers.

Me organizing a film-festival is probably a bridge too far. There are lots of people involved. Not realistic. So, I will make my own little festivals here on this blog.

You must know that I like serious interviews, the-making-of and behind-the-scene footage. It makes you much more appreciate a movie, an actor or a director. A movie is a multiyear and multimillion project. Actors do months of research and physical preparation. You grow a deep respect for these people. A few examples;

  • Jodie Foster in Taxidriver grew her pinky-nail to sniff coke. She researched that with real life prostitutes. A little detail but it gives you an impression how actors prepare themselves.
  • The shooting of Raging Bull was suspended for a few months because Robert de Niro had to gain weight for the later parts of the movies.
  • Hilary Swank trained every day for three months in the gym to gain some ten pounds of muscle-mass for her role in A Million Dollar Baby. Impressive efforts.
  • Sofia Copolla at age 7 (daughter of Francis Ford) walked around on the sets of Apocalypse Now with a camera. It gave a unique behind-the-scenes documentary of this mega-project.

Be prepared. You can expect everything from cult to classic, from gore to great, from romcoms to sitcoms, from candy to cannibals, from sleaze to splatter, from WIP to war, from silly to serious, from early sci-fi to new Japanese sleaze and even lesbian movies from Vietnam.

I still must find some coherent themes to publish my 'mini-film festivals'. On average I like old 'lost-and-found' movies that are hard to come by. They are my little secrets that I will share with other movie freaks. I'm sure you can find all the recent block-busters - but that is not my cup of tea.

I don't know where to start. There's so much great footage around. It's hard to stay focused. I start with 'the other side of' Bruce Willis. Here is a 35 min. interview in 2001 for The Actors Studio Drama School. That's a masters for actors, writers and directors. You will hear some more of it in future blogs. What you can notice in this interview is, that Bruce Willis is actually a very shy person - a sharp contrast with his hard-boiled characters he played. Revealing interview. In The Sixth Sense Bruce is a stranded child-psychologist who engages in a last challenge. It's a convincing and sensitive performance and a very entertaining movie.

I blogged this 'manual' before. Quentin Tarantino (from California) and Robert Rodriguez (from Texas) will give you some more tips about B-movies and double-bills. They talk an hour long about their Grind-house, Death-Proof and Planet-Terror project. It gives you so much insight in rural and big-city American movie culture. I loved it.

Back to the manual. Before you decide to download the 'Faster Pussycat' movie you should check;

The inviting poster, the exciting trailer and the boring movie are made by completely different people. There can be a huge mismatch. Be warned. But I guarantee you, this movie is a great cult hit. A few years ago there were rumors that Quentin Tarantino planned a remake of 'Pussycat' with Britney Spears. Well, these type of projects take some years. Let's wait and see.

Sometimes a trailer can be a piece of art on its own. But now I'm repeating myself. I mentioned this in earlier blogs. Some extreme 'New Japanese' examples that I like very much. Warning. Not for the weak-of-heart. It's over-the-top violence with chopped limbs and splitted heads and fountains of blood. Take care.

That's all for today. A nice few links to chew on. I hope it gives you some impression what you can expect. My next film-festival will be about Godzilla, Hamlet, Betty Boop or Winona Rider. Surprise, surprise. Stay tuned.



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