Top 10+ Music, Movies, and Visual Art of the Week (2023) - Music Diaries

Facetious

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Age: 24
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Thoughts on Badlands?

AfterHours

Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)

Facetious wrote:

Thoughts on Badlands?

Masterpiece of alienation, first in how the main characters act in the "action" scenes and conversational scenes (so awkward and removed from the emotional, intellectual requirements and consequences of their acts), but also in the wider establishing and poetic shots: how they're shot, their character dispositions against the environments, the endless vistas of the mid-west, the great skies, the Victorian houses, etc. More and more isolated and alienated and lost the "freer" they get, the farther they get from civilization, but always out of place nonetheless: from the very first scenes of Sheen as a garbage man with his idiotic "insights", comments and conversational attempts, and from the establishing shot of Spacek playing hoola hoop alone on her lawn (pretending to be a shot evoking the quintessence and nostalgia of America with the heroic male heartthrob approaching his object of affection, but infact subtly satirizing these suggestions in every way from their age difference [enhancing how blackly comic her playing hoola hoop seems in relation to him courting her], to how alone she is in relation to how empty the neighborhood is, to how idiotic we already know him to be as he approaches, to their stupid and mundane conversation with little intellect, congruity, self-awareness...).

Subtle, patient, unforced black comedy (anti-climactic and anti-emphasis of scenes, shots, editing). Most actions, plot developments "just happen", more or less listlessly, impulsively, with minimal pre-meditation and foresight from Sheen and little influence from Spacek.

Performances are extraordinary. Sheen's especially is among the greatest acting performances of all time -- constantly and awkwardly out of step with people, his actions and environment, lost in his own vanity with no self-awareness, an always mis-aligned and mis-firing attempt to act like James Dean. While the film subtly echoes in neo-Western tones and vistas (like evocations of Dean's Giant) while infact listlessly and fumblingly re-enacting the tropes of Bonnie and Clyde.
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AfterHours

Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)

Hoping to update the following during my film revisits... RECOMMENDATIONS WELCOME (May help to check out (a) and (b) and the example below first)

The selections are based on my criteria, applied to acting. In short, when evaluating a performance, I tend to most strongly consider the following:

(a) How creative/singular is the character (expressions, actions, personality characteristics), and how creative/singular is the actor's portrayal? Is it so extraordinary as to be inimitable? To what degree does it stand out -- how unique to film/acting history -- as a character and as a portrayal?
(b) How expressively compelling or amazing is the performance? To what degree does the performance express the state(s) of mind and/or emotion(s) (whether subtle or obvious, introverted or extroverted) of the character? How compelling, powerful, moving or affecting (etc) is the performance?

These tend to hold much more weight than the detailed accuracy or precise realism of the performance alone.

Ex: James Stewart is not just a great actor because he is so "iconic", or "technically sound", or because he is so "expressive". These have merit (especially how engaged he gets into his performances, his expressive range), but I would argue that he remains significant and fascinating all these years later (and endlessly watchable) at least as much because he himself is such a uniquely expressive individual (voice tones, personality, disposition) that is basically impossible to replicate and because this and such a fascinating amalgamation of his character seems to spill over into his greatest portrayals (as different as It's a Wonderful Life and Vertigo...). If you think about it for a second, the technical rendition of acting today is higher than it has ever been. Practically every performance is the perfect take it seems. But with so many performances being so "technically accurate" have they become also a bit less spontaneous, a bit less expressively singular, a bit less of a revelation, a bit less daring, a bit redundant (or "expected") in a way? It's hard to find performances these days where both the acting and individual truly explode off the screen (like the ending of Vertigo, or Brando in Streetcar Named Desire...etc) even though one could argue that the technical accuracy of performances is much more consistent than it has ever been. Whereas in Stewart's time, acting was much more split between what might be simply described as "theatrical" and "method" (or, perhaps, "stage acting" and "hyper-realism"), and where Stewart may have been a rather extraordinary amalgamation (and perhaps in the case of Vertigo, a schism) of both, much acting these days is so "perfect" or "realistic" that there isn't often as much conveyed beyond that highly competent, perfectly honed performance. Obviously -- don't get me wrong -- there are also a share of incredible performances today. I am just trying to stoke the idea that maybe a "perfect performance" isn't the "be all-end all" of acting, but perhaps there is something more extraordinary in a performance like Stewart's Vertigo that loses itself a bit more and from which seems to arise a more spontaneous, livened expressive force, a more stunning amalgamation of he as an individual and the sudden inspiration of performance, and that this may be a key reason why serious film-goers are still studying and fascinated by it today, whereas all the most technically perfect renditions in the world would have never accomplished this. Food for thought...

Best Acting Performances in Film History (IN PROGRESS)

Isabelle Adjani - Possession - Andrzej Zulawski (1981)
Laura Dern - Inland Empire - David Lynch (2006)
Orson Welles - Citizen Kane - Orson Welles (1941)
Denis Lavant - Holy Motors - Leos Carax (2012)
Gena Rowlands - A Woman Under the Influence - John Cassavetes (1974)
Renee Falconetti - The Passion of Joan of Arc - Carl Theodor Dreyer (1928)
Bette Davis - What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? - Robert Aldrich (1962)
James Stewart - Vertigo - Alfred Hitchcock (1958)
Marlon Brando - A Streetcar Named Desire - Elia Kazan (1951)
Robert DeNiro - Taxi Driver - Martin Scorsese (1976)
Marlon Brando - Last Tango in Paris - Bernardo Bertolucci (1972)
Martin Sheen - Badlands - Terrence Malick (1973)
Emily Watson - Breaking the Waves - Lars Von Trier (1996)
Malcolm McDowell - A Clockwork Orange - Stanley Kubrick (1971)
Klaus Kinski - Aguirre, the Wrath of God - Werner Herzog (1972)
Warren Oates - Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia - Sam Peckinpah (1974)
Nicolas Cage - Leaving Las Vegas - Mike Figgis (1995)
Robert DeNiro - Raging Bull - Martin Scorsese (1980)
Mia Farrow - Rosemary's Baby - Roman Polanski (1968)
Erland Josephson - The Sacrifice - Andrei Tarkovsky (1986)
Bibi Andersson - Persona - Ingmar Bergman (1966)
Takashi Shimura - Ikiru - Akira Kurosawa (1952)
David Thewlis - Naked - Mike Leigh (1993)
Alexander Kaidanovsky - Stalker - Andrei Tarkovsky (1979)
Al Pacino - Scarface - Brian De Palma (1983)
Andy Griffith - A Face in the Crowd - Elia Kazan (1957)
James Stewart - It's a Wonderful Life - Frank Capra (1946)
Gene Hackman - The Conversation - Francis Ford Coppola (1974)
Marlon Brando - On the Waterfront - Elia Kazan (1954)
Tom Hanks - Forrest Gump - Robert Zemeckis (1994)
Robert DeNiro - The King of Comedy - Martin Scorsese (1983)
Montgomery Clift - Wild River - Elia Kazan (1960)
Charlie Chaplin - The Great Dictator - Charlie Chaplin (1940)
Catherine Deneuve - Repulsion - Roman Polanski (1965)
Joe Pesci - Goodfellas - Martin Scorsese (1990)
Dennis Hopper - Blue Velvet - David Lynch (1986)
Harry Dean Stanton - Paris, Texas - Wim Wenders (1983)
Holly Hunter - The Piano - Jane Campion (1993)
Dustin Hoffman - Straw Dogs - Sam Peckinpah (1971)
Adam Sandler - Uncut Gems - Josh and Benny Safdie (2019)
Carroll Baker - Baby Doll - Elia Kazan (1956)
Michael Gambon - The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover - Peter Greenaway (1989)
Sean Gullette - Pi - Darren Aronofsky (1998)
Aleksey Kravchenko - Come and See - Elim Klimov (1985)

POSSIBLY / RANKING UNDECIDED:
Gibson Gowland - Greed - Erich Von Stroheim (1924)
Brigette Helm - Metropolis - Fritz Lang (1927)
Katherine Hepburn - Bringing Up Baby - Howard Hawks (1938)
James Stewart - Mr. Smith Goes to Washington - Frank Capra (1939)
Joseph Cotten - The Third Man - Carol Reed (1947)
Gloria Swanson - Sunset Boulevard - Billy Wilder (1950)
Vivien Leigh - A Streetcar Named Desire - Elia Kazan (1951)
Humphrey Bogart - The African Queen - John Huston (1951)
Katherine Hepburn - The African Queen - John Huston (1951)
Orson Welles - Touch of Evil - Orson Welles (1958)
Monica Vitti - L'Avventura - Michelangelo Antonioni (1960)
Anthony Perkins - Psycho - Alfred Hitchcock (1960)
Peter Sellers - Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb - Stanley Kubrick (1964)
Bette Davis - Hush... Hush Sweet Charlotte - Robert Aldrich (1965)
Orson Welles - Chimes at Midnight - Orson Welles (1965)
Catherine Deneuve - Belle de Jour - Luis Bunuel (1967)
Lee Marvin - Point Blank - John Boorman (1967)
Ellen Burstyn - Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore - Martin Scorsese (1974)
Jack Nicholson - The Shining - Stanley Kubrick (1980)
Dustin Hoffman - Rain Man - Barry Levinson (1988)
Brenda Blethyn - Secrets and Lies - Mike Leigh (1993)
Jean Reno - Leon: The Professional - Luc Besson (1994)
Natalie Portman - Leon: The Professional - Luc Besson (1994)
Samuel L. Jackson - Pulp Fiction - Quentin Tarantino (1994)
Woody Harrelson - Natural Born Killers - Oliver Stone (1994)
Juliette Lewis - Natural Born Killers - Oliver Stone (1994)
Tom Cruise - Magnolia - Paul Thomas Anderson (1999)
Ellen Burstyn - Requiem for a Dream - Darren Aronofsky (2000)
Bjork - Dancer in the Dark - Lars Von Trier (2000)
Adam Sandler - Punch Drunk Love - Paul Thomas Anderson (2002)
Daniel Day-Lewis - There Will Be Blood - Paul Thomas Anderson (2007)
Philip Seymour Hoffman - Synecdoche, New York - Charlie Kaufman (2008)
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Last edited by AfterHours on 01/17/2022 12:20; edited 8 times in total

TiggaTrigga

Recommendations:
Juliette Lewis - Natural Born Killers
Jack Nicholson/Shelley Duvall - The Shining
Gustav Fröhlich - Metropolis?
Tom Hanks - Forrest Gump

AfterHours

Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)

TiggaTrigga wrote:

Recommendations:
Juliette Lewis - Natural Born Killers
Jack Nicholson/Shelley Duvall - The Shining
Gustav Fröhlich - Metropolis?
Tom Hanks - Forrest Gump

Thanks I added Hanks, Nicholson and Lewis to main list and/or undecided list. Not sure if I would include Frohlich but it did remind me to add Helm's Metropolis performance to the undecided list.
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TiggaTrigga

Thoughts on Metropolis overall?

AfterHours

Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)

TiggaTrigga wrote:

Thoughts on Metropolis overall?

Masterpiece of unabashed audacity, of maniacal visual extravagance, editing ferocity, the sheer frantic exuberance of performance and expression. A phantasmagoria of visual and expressive symbols, rapidly fired, often erected in monumental visions (like the city scapes) or exploding upon the screen (like the German expressionist "paintings" that illustrate the subjective emotions and throes of the characters). The film is a delirious reference of symbols, of delirious visual meanings drawing from Bauhaus, Cubist, Futurist, Dada-ist, German Expressionism -- a seemingly endless visionary delirium, from the convulsion of texts, from the Biblical, to Art Deco, to the "futurist" Tower of Babel, to Roman-esque sculptures such as the Laocoon, to early Erotica, to the Middle Ages combined with Science-Fiction, to the Garden of Eden, to the Moloch, to the evangelical speeches of Maria, to the visions of Ancient Egypt, and so on in relentless, theatrical expression throughout the film -- perhaps the most visually electrifying film of all time.
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AfterHours

Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)

Anyone know when the 2022 poll and results are set to be completed and published?

Predictions? Will Vertigo hold over Citizen Kane? Or, will another film take the top spot? Major leaps from more modern or less expected films into the top 10-25 or so?

https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/...s-all-time
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AfterHours

Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)

AfterHours wrote:

Anyone know when the 2022 poll and results are set to be completed and published?

Predictions? Will Vertigo hold over Citizen Kane? Or, will another film take the top spot? Major leaps from more modern or less expected films into the top 10-25 or so?

https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/...s-all-time

Actually, in regards to S and S poll predictions, perhaps save those as there should be a poll ran for this in the Movies and TV forum and/or Games. If anyone wants to run that, I would partake. If no takers to oversee, I may originate such a poll in the near future. But if someone else does so before me, I'm all for that.
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TiggaTrigga

Oh dang, did you find Black Swan interesting (if so, why)? I literally watched it for the first time the other day.