June Film Club #2

Our second film in our Summer Series comes to us from Winnipeg, MB, Canada, director Guy Maddin's weird and wonderful The Saddest Music in the World.

The Saddest Music in the World is a 2003 Canadian film directed by Guy Maddin. Maddin and co-screenwriter George Toles based the film on an original screenplay written by British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, from which they kept "the title, the premise and the contest-to determine which country's music was the saddest" but otherwise re-wrote. Like most of Maddin's films, The Saddest Music in the World is filmed in a style that imitates late 1920's and early 1930's cinema, with grainy black and white photography, slightly out of sync sound and expressionist art design. A few scenes are filmed in color, in a manner that imitates early two-strip Technicolor. The film was well received by critics. It currently holds a fresh rating of 79% on Rotten Tomatoes and Roger Ebert gave the film 3.5/4 stars saying this in his review, "So many movies travel the same weary roads. So few imagine entirely original worlds. Guy Maddin's "The Saddest Music in the World" exists in a time and place we have never seen before, although it claims to be set in Winnipeg in 1933. You have never seen a film like this before, unless you have seen other films by Guy Maddin. The more films you have seen, the more you may love "The Saddest Music in the World". It plays like satirical nostalgia for a past that never existed. The actors bring that kind of earnestness to it that seems peculiar to supercharged melodrama. You can never catch them grinning, although great is the joy of Lady Port-Huntly when she poses with her sexy new beer-filled glass legs. Nor can you catch Maddin condescending to his characters; he takes them as seriously as he possibly can, considering that they occupy a mad, strange, gloomy, absurd comedy. To see this film, to enter the world of Guy Maddin, is to understand how a film can be created entirely by its style, and how its style can create a world that never existed before, and lure us, at first bemused and then astonished, into it."

We will be meeting Thursday, June 27 at 5:30 pm

Here's a trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyAlgfHgrk0&t=17s&ab_channel=RottenTomatoesClassicTrailers

Hope to see you there!

 

June Film Club #1

 Our first film of our Summer Series: Weird and Wonderful, is David Lynch's weird and wonderful directorial debut, Eraserhead.

Eraserhead is a 1977 American surrealist body horror film written and directed by filmmaker David Lynch.  Shot in black-and-white, Eraserhead is Lynch's first feature length film, coming after several short works.  The film was produced with the assistance of the American Film Institute (AFI) during the director's time studying there.  Starring Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Jeanne Bates, Judith Anna Roberts, Laurel Near, and Jack Fisk, it tells the story of Henry Spencer (Nance), who is left to care for his grossly deformed child in a desolate industrial landscape.  Throughout the film, Spencer experiences dreams or hallucinations, featuring his child and the Lady in the Radiator (Near).   Initially opening to small audiences and little interest, Eraserhead gained popularity over sever long runs as a midnight movie.

Since its release, the film has earned positive reviews.  The surrealist imagery and sexual undercurrents have been seen as key thematic elements, and the intricate sound design as its technical highlight.  In 2004, the film was preserved in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".  The film currently holds a 91% certified fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes out of 55 critical reviews and Mike D'Angelo, writing for the A.V. Club, gave it an "A" saying this of the film, "While it's certainly possible to find metaphors in Eraserhead's bizarre imagery, the film works on such an intensely visceral level that attempts to analyze it seem counterproductive.  Can any words evoke the flesh-crawling queasiness of Henry's visit to Mary's parents' house, in which he sits uncomfortably on the couch exchanging forced pleasantries with Mom while some ungodly squeaking/squelching noise threatens to drown out the dialogue?  Is it worse when the source of that sound is unknown, or is it inexplicably worse when the source is revealed and it's not the horror show conjured up by your imagination?  Then there's that infant...thing, which hits the precise amalgam of repulsion and vulnerability that's capable of ripping one's soul apart.  See Eraserhead once and it'll lodge itself firmly in some dank recess of your brain and refuse to vacate." 

We will be meeting Thursday, June 20th at 5:30pm

Here is a trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0Eq5GtCYdA&ab_channel=criterioncollection

Hope to see you there!

Summer Series: Weird and Wonderful

 Hello everyone! Summer is finally upon us! As some of you may know for the summer months of Film Club we usually expand our movie watching. Instead of one movie a month, we do two, and those are usually part of some kind of theme: genre, director, etc. Last year our theme was Directed by Wes Anderson, a spotlight on the films of director Wes Anderson. So, I decided this year to do something a little different, or rather, very different, one could almost call it, something WEIRD. This year, our theme is "Weird and Wonderful" and will feature 6 films from 6 very strange directors.

(click the titles for a trailer)

June 20-Eraserhead

June 27-The Saddest Music in the World

July 18- El Topo

July 25- The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

August 22- Even Dwarfs Started Small

August 29- Stalker

That is the lineup for the summer. I will have individual posts and booklets available for each film, each month. Stay tuned!

Hope to see you there!