The Visitor





Liquid Sky





Schlock





Legend of the Eight Samurai





 

You've probably seen Eight Samurai, and I wish it was a better copy.

That account isn't deep, but I was thinking about posting some of the more prestigious films like Ju Dou or Tampopo.
 

Some light on Lamont Johnson, unsung 70s director.
















 

A little context: an old "special lady friend" visited from Japan last month. It just so happened to coincide with my third attempt at purchasing a copy of the 2001 anime adaptation of Tezuka Osamu's 1949 comic version of Metropolis having borne fruit, and I was excited to watch it (the first attempt yielded a repackaged copy sold as new that looked like somebody had sneezed on the bottom of the disc, and the second was a pirated copy).
So we watched Metropolis. Great movie. Might be one for the "Missing Movie Files," I'm not sure. After watching it, she told me about this Tezuka Osamu cartoon she enjoyed as a little girl (she's 63), and how her father had walked into the living room while it was playing one day, and upon witnessing it, turned off the tv, exclaimed that this was not a children's show, and forbade the kids from watching it again. 
So we did a little YouTube search, and, score. You know that feeling of finding tv memories from your childhood on YouTube. That's where she went. I watched a 63 year–old woman become her 6 year–old self before my eyes, exploding into gleeful colors of pure nostalgiagasm. 
We watched it, and oh my god we laughed our asses off. I mean this shit is crazy. Could Tezuka really have not been on drugs? Because this show would be great on drugs. I'd play this at any stoner party without hesitation. Or any drunk party, or any party for that matter. I'd show the first two episodes, anyway. Future episodes kinda fizzle into a more–or–less regular kids' show after that, though not without their moments, but those first two episodes... they are something very, very special. So, imbibe if you got em, and, well...

 

Rampop II wrote:

I dare anybody to make it 13 minutes into this Japanese children's show from 1971 by Tezuka Osamu (Astro Boy, Metropolis (2001)) and deny that it's one of the craziest things you've ever seen:



 

Some early Matthew Chapman thrillers




(This one looks interesting - a fictional take on the behind-the-scenes making of Kubrick's Killer's Kiss, with Peter Coyote playing "Stanley" the director.)



(Requires sign-in.  Helen Mirren in Hussy, from 1980)



 

Rock wrote:

Thanks for those. Heart of Midnight kind of blew me away, so I’m eager to check out more of Chapman’s work.

Heart of Midnight is such a good film that I was thinking it was made by a more well-regarded director, and was suprised to see that Matthew Chapman has not made too many other films, and doubly suprised that he's been more successful as a writer than a director, as many of the reviews of Heart of Midnight note that the film is much better in its film style than in its screenplay.  (Although it does make one wonder how much better such mundane 90s thrillers like Consenting Adults or Color of Night could have been under Chapman's eye.)

You're likely better off to find a better copy of Hussy elsewhere.  This copy is very dark and grainy, essentially obscuring the very nudity that it's supposed to hide behind the sign-in.

I wouldn't mind giving Color of Night a second chance, especially considering a better visual style and a better cast, since I haven't seen it in 30 years, and I won't deny that my opinion was colored by the poor reviews of the time.  My memory of it, however, is pretty much mundane 90s psuedo-porn, much like Body of Evidence or something.  Definitely not DePalma-esque.

In wake of Glenda Jackson, for anyone who hasn't seen it, this incredible film, from Peter Brook in 1967, of the notorious Marquis de Sade play about the French Revolution, staged by the inmates of the asylum that de Sade was committed to.  (This performance was also reinacted briefly in the 2000 film Quills, but this one is the definitive version.)



 

For Frederic Forrest, written by Terrence Malick.