“You know, I wish I had my board with me… even if I could just wax it once in a while.” —Lt. Doolittle
#Bales2023FilmChallenge June 17: Surfing on #InternationalSurfingDay
On the other side of outer space, far far away from crypto-fascist space operas and existentialist odysseys, is a little stoner cosmos where a small, dilapidated starship manned by long-haired freaks drifts about. This is #JohnCarpenter's Dark Star (1974).
#Bales2023FilmChallenge June 18: An #aquarium on #CleanYourAquariumDay
A middle-class Austrian family – father, mother and their ten year old daughter – live a mundane, almost ritualised life. There's work, school, social obligations. Stuff to maintain and food to prepare. Patients to see and fish to feed. Constant repetition begets chaos.
Der siebente Kontinent [The Seventh Continent ] (1989) ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/der-siebente-kontinent-1989
#MichaelHaneke #film #cinema #FilMastodon #CineMastodon @film
#Bales2023FilmChallenge June 19: Cardboard boxes on #InternationalBoxDay
Inmates preoccupy themselves with making cardboard boxes. While working together, talking, gaining trust, plans for an escape unfold. Le trou [The Hole aka The Night Watch] (Jacques Becker, 1960) is based on a real #PrisonEscape and introduced by one of the men involved, Jean Keraudy ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/le-trou-1960
#Bales2023FilmChallenge June 20: Filmed in #Argentina on #NationalFlagDay
A slum survives next to a railroad bridge. When the train travelling from the city shows up, the children who are old and gutsy enough run along and yell tire dié! toss me a dime! Some of them make more than their parents do. Fernando Birri's Tire dié (1958) is a sobering account of #poverty and how it's as much a part of life's schedule as a slow running train on a rickety bridge. #film #cinema #documentary @film
> Welcome home, Ethan.
#Bales2023FilmChallenge June 21: Filmed in #Arizona on #NationalArizonaDay
John Ford's The Searchers (1956)
#JohnFord #JohnWayne #NatalieWood #western #drama #USA #1950s
#Bales2023FilmChallenge June 23: A typewriter for #NationalTypewriterDay
Office worker Josef K. is brought to trial and at no point told what he is accused of, if anything. #Kafka was a trained lawyer working as an insurance agent in an impossible artifice world of reports & precise wording. W/i its extended logic a man can get perplexedly lost, either within the walls of his #office or one's bed.
#OrsonWelles' Le procès ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/le-proces-1962
#Bales2023FilmChallenge #BalesBonus Joan #Crawford as Flaemmchen [“Little Flame”] in Edmund Goulding's Grand Hotel (1932)
#Bales2023FilmChallenge June 24: Someone swimming on #'SwimALapDay
In his 1973/74 A Bigger Splash, cinematographer and filmmaker #JackHazan juxtaposes #DavidHockney working on “Portrait of an Artist” with speculative scenes about the creation of the work and the disintegration of Hockney's & Schlesinger's relationship. It did create a splash, in particular in its ordinary depiction of a homosexual relationship ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/a-bigger-splash-1973-74
#Bales2023FilmChallenge June 26: Sarah on #NationalSarahDay
Commissioned for a West-German TV series, filmmaker #HarunFarocki visits artist #SarahSchumann in her Berlin studio. The resulting documentary, Ein Bild von Sarah Schumann (1978), shows the process of creating one art piece over the course of nine weeks. Schumann's work in that period consists of collage portraits of women important in her life. ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/ein-bild-von-sarah-schumann-1978
#Bales2023FilmChallenge June 25: Let's go camping on #NationalCampCountsDay
#JohnSturges' Jeopardy (1953) is a thrilling, reverse home invasion. The haunting photography (by Victor Milner), small, intense cast, short runtime and claustrophobic sets make for a very modern, economic #thriller. And #BarbaraStanwyck is the heroine we wouldn't see much of until decades later ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/jeopardy-1953
#Bales2023FilmChallenge June 27: Someone proposes on #DecideToBeMarriedDay
Refugee Karen meets an Italian serviceman and decides to say yes when he proposes. When they go home she finds to her dismay that he's a poor Sicilian fisherman from #Stromboli, a volcanic island home to a small Catholic parish. #Rossellini's Stromboli (1950) is a peculiar melodramatic IT/US hybrid that seems to strongly dismiss the Italian aspect ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/stromboli-terra-di-dio-1950
#Bales2023FilmChallenge June 28: A car crash on #NationalInsuranceAwarenessDay
A couple rushing home at night hit a cyclist. Knowing he's still alive, they opt to leave the site of the crash and never mention it again. Reports about the death of a cyclist cause a rupture; because of the couple's class differences, because they're lovers, and because no one can know about their whereabouts on the night of the accident ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/muerte-de-un-ciclista-1955
#Bales2023FilmChallenge June 29: A handshake on #NationalHandshakeDay
Cheated out of their wages, two broke Americans are approached by a former prospector. There's #gold in the #SierraMadre mountains, he tells them. Seemingly character driven, #JohnHuston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) is an adventure moved by a relentless #landscape, the urge to drift, and utter #greed ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/the-treasure-of-the-sierra-madre-1948
#HumphreyBogart #western #adventure #film #cinema #FilMastodon #CineMastodon @film
Wait, no one's been shaking hands with danger!?
#Bales2023FilmChallenge June 30: Driving a #Corvette on #DriveYourCorvetteToWorkDay
#CarlosSaura's Peppermint Frappé (1967) takes Vertigo with a twist of Buñuel and serves it over an anti-#Francoist tale of self-doubting machismo obsessing over The Other. Even Elena's car, American instead of a much more obvious European model, dismisses fascist Spain's perceived superiority. Indeed the Generalisimo drove a Cadillac ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/peppermint-frappe-1967
#Bales2023FilmChallenge July 1: A #joke for #InternationalJokeDay
The great Garbo was known for her beauty, her coolness, her tragedy, everything but her laughter. So typecast she became that the tagline for *Ninotchka* (1939) – Garbo laughs! – is a #joke in itself.
Penned by the great #BillyWilder, the Ernst #Lubitsch directed comedy unexpectedly revived #Garbo's career, who by the time 1938 came around had become box office poison.
And the joke? Well… ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/ninotchka-1939
#Bales2023FilmChallenge July 2: Sports journalists
Veronika Voss, once one of #Ufa's greats, has a chance meeting with sports journalist Krohn. Despite not recognising her at first glance, the faded star and her world turn out to be irresistible to him. Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss is #Fassbinder's tribute to both #BillyWilder's Sunset Blvd. and real-world Ufa actress Sybille Schmitz ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/die-sehnsucht-der-veronika-voss-1982
#RainerWernerFassbinder #RWF #film #cinema #FilMastodon #CineMastodon @film
#Bales2023FilmChallenge July 4: a movie that screams #America for #IndependenceDay
In 1982 Jørgen Leth sent 66 postcards from America. The landscape, food, language, anything an American may take for granted framed in a moving still. The American, ready for stardom, poses and orates. The scenes become show, regardless if it's a New York cabbie or a man famously falsely credited for predicting fame, slowly eating a Whopper ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/66-scener-fra-amerika-1982
#Bales2023FilmChallenge July 5: filmed in #Venezuela on #VenezuelaIndependenceDay
Cinematic poem Araya (1959) by Margot Benacerraf and Giuseppe Nisoli
#MargotBenacerraf #GiuseppeNisoli #documentary #poetry #film #cinema #FilMastodon #CineMastodon @film
#Bales2023FilmChallenge July 6: someone named Daniel for #NationalDanielDay
Daniel explores his homosexuality in #WestBerlin. Initially he opts for an almost heterosexual affair. He then probes further, swings by #Berlin's public toilets and pools. Only when he encounters a leftist, gay #commune he finds that pride, not conformity, is his way to living his life. Von Praunheim's Nicht der Homosexuelle ist pervers… > https://write.underworld.fr/settima/nicht-der-homosexuelle-ist-pervers-sondern-die-situation-in-der-er-lebt-1971
A gay couple kissing on the street in front of a black-tiled Berlin bar. A third gay man nearby looks away. #Bales2023FilmChallenge July 6: someone named #Daniel for #NationalDanielDay Daniel (Bernd Feuerhelm) is a young man exploring his homosexuality in #WestBerlin. Initially he opts for a spießbürgerlich, petit-bourgeois, alm...
#Bales2023FilmChallenge July 7: forgiveness for #GlobalForgivenessDay
Forgiveness as a tool of power, a method of control. #VilgotSjöman's 491 (1964) is an extremely, bleak, aggressive, and hopeless depiction of youth in postwar Sweden.
e of the boys carving a simple arithmetical calculation into a desk during the Reverend's lecture about forgiveness. #Bales2023FilmChallenge July 7: forgiveness for #GlobalForgivenessDay Early 60s, Sweden. A social experiment. Six hopelessly criminal juveniles are packed in a guesthouse – cynically named Objectivity –...
Note: this is *not* a mid-60s promotional picture for Trainspotting.
#Bales2023FilmChallenge July 8: skinny dipping on #InternationalSkinnyDipDay Eva (#HedyLamarr) hangs her clothes over her horse's back, then – cut through a wonderfully voyeuristic moment – goes swimming in a lake. The foal, still carrying Eva's outfit, wanders off to find a stallion.
#GustavMachatý Ekstase [Ecstasy] (1933) is full of not so subtle but beautifully framed innuendo. ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/ekstase-1933
- Good night, Gentle Jesus. Sleep well.
#Bales2023FilmChallenge July 9: a barn for #BarnDay
In the barn of a remote Lancashire farmhouse, three children stumble upon a stranger. Confused, they conclude that the fellow must be the Second Coming of Christ. In the world of the adults, a man is wanted by the police.
Whistle Down the Wind (1961) ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/whistle-down-the-wind-1961
#Bales2023FilmChallenge July 10: filmed in the #Bahamas for #BahamasIndependenceDay
#MickyDolenz's encounter with a siren while the #PorpoiseSong plays during the opening scene of #BobRafelson's Head (1968).
More about this on a non-Monday of sleep and functioning Wi-Fi.
#TheMonkees #mermaids #drugs #psychedelic #film #cinema #FilMastodon #CineMastodon @film
#Bales2023FilmChallenge July 13: a movie that is an oxymoron on #OxymoronDay
Submerged in #DerekJarman's Blue (1993), seeing through what was left of his eyes, we live through the artist's life, and love, and loss. When you leave the theatre, you're temporarily blinded by the physiological afterimage of a devastating disease. What remains is the voice of a filmmaker who lost his sight ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/blue-1993
#LGBT #AIDS #art #film #cinema #FilMastodon #CineMastodon @film
A recommended read on Sabzian: O Blue come in https://www.sabzian.be/article/o-blue-come-in
#DerekJarman #LGBT #AIDS #art #film #cinema #FilMastodon #CineMastodon @film @altfilmguide
In an interview with Jeremy Isaacs in 1993, Derek Jarman, wittingly nearing the end of his chromatic life, claimed that when he would be gone he’d like to evaporate and take his works with him: “to disappear completely.” During that interview Jarman describes his then soon to be final feature film Blue (1993) as a dedication to Yves Klein and a self-portrait of sorts. The film would be void of image and would draw its animation from a monologue performed by himself and others (Nigel Terry, John Quentin, and Tilda Swinton) on his life living with illness; and the screen would be illuminated as a rich and vibrating blue colour field – a proposal to which Isaacs cried out, “What on earth do you mean, ‘a blank blue film’?”
HANDS UP
PUT YOUR HANDS UP
GIMME MORE
GIMME GIMME MORE BETTER GIMME MORE
#Bales2023FilmChallenge May 8: victory achieved on #VEDay
A constantly changing team of athletes coached by artist Ashley Bickerton play a baffling hybrid of craps, dodge ball, and roulette while arcade game noises and Brooke Halpin's catchy chants accompany the players. This is Ericka Beckman's You the Better (1983) ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/you-the-better-1983
#Bales2023FilmChallenge June 22: a movie that gives off positive vibes for #PositiveMediaDay
The groove is driving and the characters jammin' in J. Terrance Mitchell's Get Rollin' (1980). We follow entrepreneur Vinzerrelli who aims to become “the Muhammad Ali of #RollerBoogie” and to enter the Guinness Book of World Records as the first roller skater to make $1M, with in his tow, smooth-as-silk Pat the Cat ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/get-rollin-1980
#Bales2023FilmChallenge July 14: a pandemonium on #PandemoniumDay
Dan Duyu's 盘丝洞 [The Cave of the Silken Web] (1927) is a fantastic silent interpretation of Wu Cheng'en's 西遊記 [Journey to the West]. In a vigorous display of #wuxia, #horror, monkey shenanigans, and – during the pandemonium unfolding in the final act – a small glimpse into the vast pantheon of Chinese gods and demons. ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/pan-si-dong-1927 (link to the #film in the post)
Alright, final one of today, a little write-up follows when it's not a gazillion degrees 🥵 Oh the irony, because…
#Bales2023FilmChallenge July 15: arctic sea ice on #ArcticSeaIceDay
Ignacio Agüero's dreamy pseudo #documentary Sueños de hielo [Dreams of Ice] (1994)
#IgnacioAgüero #film #cinema #FilMastodon #CineMastodon @film @art_film #GlobalWarming
> 𝛼-60: Do you know what illuminates the night?
> Lemmy Caution: #Poetry.
#Bales2023FilmChallenge July 16: #AI on #ArtificialIntelligenceAppreciationDay
#Godard's #Alphaville (1965) bears similarities with #Cocteau's Orphée (1950), transported to a mirror world of sorts. It also foreshadows not only our time, but also M Hulot's, whose #Tativille could be a simulacra of 𝛼-60's simulated, dehumanised world ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/alphaville-une-etrange-aventure-de-lemmy-caution-1965
Natacha von Braun (Anna Karina) and Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine). Lights reflected in the windowpane that shields the two characters suggest “the existence of an obscure reality” (after Baudrillard↗). #Bales2023FilmChallenge July 16: Artificial Intelligence on #Ar...
#BalesBonus: for #ArtificialIntelligenceAppreciationDay, watch Stuart Hamisch's terrifying #StudentFilm Have I Told You Lately That I Love You? (1958) https://archive.org/details/HaveITol1958
Imaginative film showing how automatic gadgets in homes and workplaces alienate people from one another.
#Bales2023FilmChallenge July 17: someone gets a tattoo on #NationalTattooDay
Otsuya's (Ayako Wakao) is forced into prostitution and marked with a large spider tattoo. As the figure slowly takes shape under horishi Seikichi's skilled hands, Otsuya too transforms. ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/ci-qing-1966
#YasuzôMasumura's 刺青 [#Irezumi / Tattoo] (1966), based on the novel by #JunichirôTanizaki.
#tattoos #film #cinema #FilMastodon #CineMastodon @film @art_film
#Bales2023FilmChallenge July 18: caviar for #NationalCaviarDay
Cabiria (#GiuliettaMasina), a prostitute looking for happiness, meets famous movie star Alberto Lazzari (handsomely moustachioed Amedeo Nazzari). In his plush mansion, he treats her to an opulent – if not bewildering to Cabiria – meal of lobster and caviar.
#Fellini's Le notti di Cabiria (1957) is a love letter to hope, life, Rome, and of course his Giulietta ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/le-notti-di-cabiria-1957
#Bales2023FilmChallenge July 19: a Barbara for #NationalBarbaraDay
Barbara wakes up to a fireman entering her bedroom window. Her father reassures her there's nothing. Years later she sparks a scheme that forces the fire brigade to come to their house and climb through her window once again.
#AdolfoArrieta's Flammes (1978) has a strange, stilted quality with characters detached from yet devoted to their raison d'être ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/flammes-1978
#Bales2023FilmChallenge July 20: space exploration on #SpaceExplorationDay
Both #AntiCapitalist and pre-Stanley space odyssey; it's Jindřich Polák's Ikarie XB 1 [Icarus XB 1] (1963). Based on #StanislawLem's The Magellanic Cloud (1955).
#JindřichPolák #SciFi #film #cinema #FilMastodon #CineMastodon @film @art_film
#Bales2023FilmChallenge July 21: a fake ID to buy alcohol on #LegalDrinkingAgeDay
Henry Levin's Where the Boys Are (1960) is chock-full of characters whose names appear to be straight space-travel-lifted from various John Waters' movies: Tuggle Carpenter! TV Thompson! Lola Fandango! Dr. Raunch for Chrissakes! It's all pretty clean, but without these girls there wouldn't be any Dawn Davenport. And that would've ruined anyone's Christmas.
#Bales2023FilmChallenge July 22: #3D to celebrate Jaws 3-D's 40th
What would you do if someone sends you a mysterious, nightmares inducing jade mask? Well, you put it on, now! In the name of science Dr Allan Barnes does exactly that and transports him and us to a hallucinatory dreamworld with Zardoz-styled floating skulls and their robed devotees.
The Mask (1961) is an extremely watchable #psychotronic affair ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/the-mask-1961
CW: stroking
Für die deutschen Leser unter euch gibt es hier einen hervorragenden 4-teiligen Artikel über 3D-Filme. #3D-Schwulenporno, oooh Boy! #CSD
Could've mentioned Allen H. Miner's Doom Town (1953) too, for you #Oppenheimer* fan boys. It's on the 3-D Rarities DVD.
https://letterboxd.com/film/doom-town/
*had to switch that 5 minute trailer off 1,5 minutes in. Read a book, folks.
#Bales2023FilmChallenge July 23: vanilla ice cream for #NationalVanillaIceCreamDay
James Lorinz's psychodrama Swirlee (1989)
#Bales2023FilmChallenge July 25: threading a needle on #ThreadingTheNeedleDay
In #VlatkoGilić's short and rather disturbing Moć [Power] (1973), Serbian hypnotist #SlobodanĆirković aka #Roko initiates a group of men to thread a needle and slowly, going from him to the next to the other, connect it through their bodies until all of them are stitched into one ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/moc-1973
#film #cinema #documentary #hypnotism #FilMastodon #CineMastodon @film @art_film
#Bales2023FilmChallenge July 26: various countries ban together for #OneVoiceDay
William Klein's Festival panafricain d'Alger [The #Panafrican Festival in Algiers] (1969)
#WilliamKlein #documentary #CinémaDirect #photography #BlackPanthers #music #jazz #politics #neocolonialism #Africa #AfricanDiaspora #PanAfrica #BLM #film #cinema #FilMastodon #CineMastodon @film
#Bales2023FilmChallenge July 27: bagpipes heard on #BagpipeAppreciationDay
Great Highland bagpipes, or a' phìob mhòr as they're called in Gaelic, are traditionally played on the battlefield. #PeterWatkins' Culloden (1964) moves the senseless bloodshed from 60s Vietnam to the Scottish Highlands of 1746. The most clearly it's seen in the men's eyes. That stare we recognise all too well from the televised horrors from the 60s and beyond ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/culloden-1964-m6lp
John Hunt Leigh in Culloden, pìobaireachd↗ ceòl mór (litt. piping “great music”). #Bales2023FilmChallenge July 27: bagpipes heard on #BagpipeAppreciationDay Great Highland #bagpipes, or a' phìob mhòr as they're called in Scottish Gaelic, is traditionally played on the battlefield. Peter Watkins' Culloden [aka The Battle of Culloden] (1964) moves the senseless bloodshed from 1960s Vietnam to the Scottish Highland...
#Bales2023FilmChallenge July 28: playing soccer on #NationalSoccerDay
A lot of #soccer there's not, in #WimWenders' Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (1972). An early, perfect example of Neue Deutsche Film, cinematic thanks to #RobbyMüller's observant eye and Handke's precise language. And a very slow burning road movie, a Taxi Driver in reverse if you will, that doesn't suffer the neurotic showmanship of its Hollywood counterpart > https://write.underworld.fr/settima/die-angst-des-tormanns-beim-elfmeter-1972
If you love-hate the beautiful game, here's a short list for you https://letterboxd.com/12pt9/list/a-team-sport-played-between-two-teams-of/
#film #cinema #FilMastodon #CineMastodon @film #soccer #football #footie #Fußball
Summer, with its smouldering heat and sticky misdemeanour, is in many parts of the world the endless season of football, or soccer if you like. It's everywhere, and if you're blessed by living in Germany, inescapable. With that in mind, I started working on a list of films featuring the beautiful game and its noble athletes, in one way or another. Mostly the other. A work in progress. Fitting suggestions welcome. TBD Trouble on the Terraces (1994) Il mondo di notte numero 3 (1963) Xiao nian Su Qi Er (1985) Peola (1970) Zivot radnika (1987) Robbery (1967) Come cani arrabbiati…
#Bales2023FilmChallenge July 29: lipstick
With its sweeping cinematography and #Technicolor splendour, Black Narcissus establishes a stark contrast between piety and the pull of worldly desire. The bewitching #lipstick scene works as well as it does because of the scene's photography. That red smear, like blood pulsating from a fresh wound, becomes a deeply unsettling, vulgar gesture ☞https://write.underworld.fr/settima/black-narcissus-1947
Talking about #Technicolor and #Eastmancolor, this is a fascinating #film blog:
The Eastmancolor revolution and British cinema, 1955-85
https://eastmancolor.info/
#Bales2023FilmChallenge July 30: a #whistleblower movie for #NationalWhistleblowerDay
Sidney Lumet's Serpico (1973) ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/serpico-1973
#SidneyLumet #AlPacino #PeterMaas #FrankSerpico #BookAdaptation #film #cinema #FilMastodon #CineMastodon @film
#Bales2023FilmChallenge July 31: watermelon on #NationalWatermelonDay
#MarcoFerreri's Dillinger è morto (1969) is a story of food & alienation. #MichelPiccoli's Glauco, bored of his successful career, bored of his beautiful wife, bored of his beautiful house, finds sudden vigour in the act of preparing #food and restoring an item that shouldn't be where it is and with that, essentially recreates #JohnDillinger's escape from Crown Point ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/dillinger-e-morto-1969
#Bales2023FilmChallenge August 1: filmed in Colorado for #ColoradoDay
They've been planning this for months, #CanonCity's #Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility toughest inmates. It's going to happen on December 30, and all men are ready to go. Striking about #CraneWilbur's Canon City (1948) is the usage of some of the actual locations, ánd people, involved in the 1947 #prison break ☞https://write.underworld.fr/settima/canon-city-1948-yf51
#CañonCity #film #cinema #FilMastodon #CineMastodon @film @art_film
#Bales2023FilmChallenge August 3: a Michael for #NationalMichaelDay
Considered one of the earliest positive cinematic depictions of (male) homosexuality, Dreyer's Michael (1924) tells the story of a lonely artist Zoret, his bright young muse and model Michael, and the more mature art critic Switt. Though its mostly suggested, its motif of the spoken and unspoken relationship between the men is definitely one of love ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/michael-1924
#Bales2023FilmChallenge August 4: throw a water balloon on #NationalWaterBalloonDay
Roscoe Arbuckle just can't help himself while at the wonderfully hedonistic Oriental Café in his delightful short slapstick His Wife's Mistakes (1916) ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/his-wifes-mistakes-1916
#RoscoeArbuckle #USA #comedy #slapstick #comedy #ShortFilm #SilentFilm #film #cinema #FilMastodon #CineMastodon @film
#Bales2023FilmChallenge August 5: hungover on #InternationalHangoverDay
After a lovely night out, Norah wakes up with a terrible hangover and a hunch of being a murderess. The Blue Gardenia (1953) is #FritzLang's hard-bitten take on the gruesome Black Dahlia murder case and part of his newspaper noir trilogy together with While the City Sleeps and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, both from 1956 ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/the-blue-gardenia-1953
settima
Mike Babyak
