That would be Tempo Di Viaggo/Time's Journey/Journey Of Time. Sculpting in Time is a great book though-- the introduction was really sweet, mostly a compilation of letters he got from viewers of Mirror; ranging from people saying he should be sent to the gulags for "making such filth", to a woman saying "My childhood was that, but how did you know?... For the first time in my life I haven't felt so alone".
I think October is a good "next step" after Potemkin. It's still valid in the comparison, but October is even MORE frenetic and makes even larger logical leaps between shots.
Gotta see that and the other thing and Traveling Players and Landscape In The Mist and Dust fo Time and Weeping Meadow!!!
Maybe I Should put "Angelopoulos retrospective" into the suggestionbox of the theatre that was showing Tarkovsky.
And since a class I'm in made going to Nostalghia a requirement I was thinking about its relation to "THE SUBLIME" but moreso to the contrast to the movie I saw right before it: October.
A writer tried to make a sort of pseudo-scientific post-structuralist definition of two sorts of sublime. One being "too many signifiers flooding everywhere", and "too much signified through sparseness". And these definitions perfectly describe the transcendent qualities of October and Nostalghia respectively.
It was kind of an interesting definition and fun that I read it right before going to these two movies to so fully illustrate that contrast!
View it? It's a book! I mean it's really well-designed with good proportions and typography, so I guess viewing it is good too, but reading it would be better. :P
Rublev just about gets me in tears almost constantly throughout it. Nostalghia is a perfect example of him trying to make filmic haiku (which he actually talks about in Sculpting In Time) in which it's entirely about capturing a unique and singular moment. It's also very Italian; you can kind of see that Tarkovsky was buddies with Antonioni in it.
It might move down to 9.5 at some point but it's certainly not going any farther down than that. Nostalghia, Love Streams, and Sacrifice are all in a nebulous cloud of best-anythings-of-the-1980s. I was thinking it might be more reasonable to wait until the next top-ten-whatevers to change my vote. Even then, I'm not so sure about having more than one film by a director in the top-ten-list (as many things like that have for a restriction). I was thinking what lists like that would be like if there was a "only one per country" or "only one per decade" restriction. With all three of those restrictions, it might yield interesting results.
Someone was talking to me after seeing Nostalghia that it reminded me of Angeloupoulous's Ulysses' Gaze. GODDAMMIT EVERYONE IS SUDDENLY TELLING ABOUT THIS RANDOM GREEK, I BETTER GET ON THIS.
Also if you want more Tarkovsky there's a documentary he did with Tonino Guerra (co-writer of Nostalghia) about himself/the making of Nostalghia called Tempo di Viaggo, and also a video-recording of a production of the Mussorgsky opera Boris Godunov he did between Nostalghia and Sacrifice at Covent Garden.
Also also also: If you ever notice that within 100 miles of you Nostalghia is playing at a theatre on a 35mm print motherfucking go to it.
It's real bunk that it appears to be unrecorded, or at least gigantically difficult to find some kind of bootleg. BECAUSE I AM SO CURIOUS.
Also a gigantic shame about recordings, is how little film/video there is of Maria Callas, who was as much a great singer, an amazing actress; it would have been great to SEE her do Lady Macbeth or Tosca or Lucia Di Lammermoor or Abigaille or Violetta or anybody!
Ever listened to Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Duke Ellington Songbook? Or any of her Songbooks for that matter? The Cole Porter and Gershwins ones are divine.
Where can you find it? I was curious when He-Who-Can-Occasionally-Be-Named mentioned it-- seemed like an odd choice. But I haven't been able to find recordings of it anywhere; I've only found a random little NY Times article on it.
The version I'm most familiar with is with Mirella Freni. It's quite good. With me, the jury's still out on Puccini, really. I still am kind of on edge, while some of it is moving and beautiful, there are also plenty of times where I feel like I'm being manipulated and misled by nothing but gloss and saccharine. Boheme and clips of other things are still all I know of him-- Tosca and Il Trittico are the ones that otherwise seem interesting to me.
(My favourite Callas thing, personally, is Verdi's Macbeth. She's absolutely perfect for that. She also somehow is able to make the very undramatic and ultra-mannered Norma by Bellini seem dramatic and emotional (she's the only Norma I've ever heard who can actually seem ANGRY in "Perfido! Or Basti!")
I'm not saying I don't like it or don't think it's an affecting and amazing film (you should check out the introduction to Sculpting In Time where he writes about various letters he got in response to Mirror. Really touching stuff (I guess I'd have this film closer to my heart if I was a russian in my 30s in the 1970s)) I just always found it somewhat pale in comparison to the others I've seen-- which is odd, because this is probably the densest of all his films. I guess I just prefer his haiku to his sestina. It's far from the most heinous "film for film students"-- Check out Godard for that.
The only reason I see so many is because I volunteer at an art theatre-- so I get in free.
Chaucer is a crazy man. And I love that Carney essay.
Derrida is an odd case: He has a lot of interesting ideas, but he clothes it in the most uselessly, pretentiously dense prose possible. It's less "dancing with his words" as my teacher says, but more him going "hey did you know I'm smarter than you? THIS MUCH SMARTER!!!". I actually find it helpful to read some kind of annotated guide to some idea Derrida says and then read the essay (had to read two essays about Parergon before being able to make head or tail of Derrida's actual Parergon essay). More likely to get something out of it that way. http://www.amazon.com/Sublime-Whitechapel-Documents-Contemporary-Art/dp/... This is the book with the Derrida essay-- for a class about the Sublime in contemporary art/society. Pretty neat generally, actually.
If you can find it, the book about him and his films "The Reality Of Terror" gives quite a good insight on them, if a little on the simple side, and sometimes kind of dumb. It's still the best-written book about Lewton.
His horror movies are neat just for how minimal they are. One of the founding fathers of "psychological horror" or even "symbolic horror"-- Cat People being more about loneliness than were-felines, I Walked With A Zombie being more about cultural memory than the undead, The Seventh Victim being more about failure than satanist murders, etc.
Re facebook-- And that guy is now acting all buddy-buddy to me in a really weird way and suggesting movies for me to see after he blocked me specifically over not-liking a movie he liked. I should ask him what the hell sometime soon.
Why do the interesting people live so far away from meeeeeeee? ;o;
You ought to check if there's a cinematheque or something like that in or near wherever you live. Lots of major cities have theatres like that.
I think this particular one in Vancouver decided to show Tarkovsky because a couple months before they showed Stalker for a week straight and thought "Well, we may as well find 35mm prints of the rest of 'em..."
Everything should be seen ASAP. D:
The next thing I'm gonna be seeing will very likely be Gotterdammerung.
That would be Tempo Di Viaggo/Time's Journey/Journey Of Time. Sculpting in Time is a great book though-- the introduction was really sweet, mostly a compilation of letters he got from viewers of Mirror; ranging from people saying he should be sent to the gulags for "making such filth", to a woman saying "My childhood was that, but how did you know?... For the first time in my life I haven't felt so alone".
I think October is a good "next step" after Potemkin. It's still valid in the comparison, but October is even MORE frenetic and makes even larger logical leaps between shots.
Gotta see that and the other thing and Traveling Players and Landscape In The Mist and Dust fo Time and Weeping Meadow!!!
Maybe I Should put "Angelopoulos retrospective" into the suggestionbox of the theatre that was showing Tarkovsky.
It took me a while to get into her myself. Maybe give the whole songbook albums a try instead of just disparate songs would be a good plan?
And since a class I'm in made going to Nostalghia a requirement I was thinking about its relation to "THE SUBLIME" but moreso to the contrast to the movie I saw right before it: October.
A writer tried to make a sort of pseudo-scientific post-structuralist definition of two sorts of sublime. One being "too many signifiers flooding everywhere", and "too much signified through sparseness". And these definitions perfectly describe the transcendent qualities of October and Nostalghia respectively.
It was kind of an interesting definition and fun that I read it right before going to these two movies to so fully illustrate that contrast!
*ramble ramble*
View it? It's a book! I mean it's really well-designed with good proportions and typography, so I guess viewing it is good too, but reading it would be better. :P
Rublev just about gets me in tears almost constantly throughout it. Nostalghia is a perfect example of him trying to make filmic haiku (which he actually talks about in Sculpting In Time) in which it's entirely about capturing a unique and singular moment. It's also very Italian; you can kind of see that Tarkovsky was buddies with Antonioni in it.
It might move down to 9.5 at some point but it's certainly not going any farther down than that. Nostalghia, Love Streams, and Sacrifice are all in a nebulous cloud of best-anythings-of-the-1980s. I was thinking it might be more reasonable to wait until the next top-ten-whatevers to change my vote. Even then, I'm not so sure about having more than one film by a director in the top-ten-list (as many things like that have for a restriction). I was thinking what lists like that would be like if there was a "only one per country" or "only one per decade" restriction. With all three of those restrictions, it might yield interesting results.
Someone was talking to me after seeing Nostalghia that it reminded me of Angeloupoulous's Ulysses' Gaze. GODDAMMIT EVERYONE IS SUDDENLY TELLING ABOUT THIS RANDOM GREEK, I BETTER GET ON THIS.
Also if you want more Tarkovsky there's a documentary he did with Tonino Guerra (co-writer of Nostalghia) about himself/the making of Nostalghia called Tempo di Viaggo, and also a video-recording of a production of the Mussorgsky opera Boris Godunov he did between Nostalghia and Sacrifice at Covent Garden.
Also also also: If you ever notice that within 100 miles of you Nostalghia is playing at a theatre on a 35mm print motherfucking go to it.
It's real bunk that it appears to be unrecorded, or at least gigantically difficult to find some kind of bootleg. BECAUSE I AM SO CURIOUS.
Also a gigantic shame about recordings, is how little film/video there is of Maria Callas, who was as much a great singer, an amazing actress; it would have been great to SEE her do Lady Macbeth or Tosca or Lucia Di Lammermoor or Abigaille or Violetta or anybody!
Ever listened to Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Duke Ellington Songbook? Or any of her Songbooks for that matter? The Cole Porter and Gershwins ones are divine.
PS: <3
Have I ever told you that you're the best?~<3
I would take you on a date if I could. I'll pay for dinner and the movie.
Where can you find it? I was curious when He-Who-Can-Occasionally-Be-Named mentioned it-- seemed like an odd choice. But I haven't been able to find recordings of it anywhere; I've only found a random little NY Times article on it.
The version I'm most familiar with is with Mirella Freni. It's quite good. With me, the jury's still out on Puccini, really. I still am kind of on edge, while some of it is moving and beautiful, there are also plenty of times where I feel like I'm being manipulated and misled by nothing but gloss and saccharine. Boheme and clips of other things are still all I know of him-- Tosca and Il Trittico are the ones that otherwise seem interesting to me.
(My favourite Callas thing, personally, is Verdi's Macbeth. She's absolutely perfect for that. She also somehow is able to make the very undramatic and ultra-mannered Norma by Bellini seem dramatic and emotional (she's the only Norma I've ever heard who can actually seem ANGRY in "Perfido! Or Basti!")
Fun thing about Element of Crime: Von Trier has since disowned that work, saying that it's "nothing but a Tarkovsky imitation."
I'm not saying I don't like it or don't think it's an affecting and amazing film (you should check out the introduction to Sculpting In Time where he writes about various letters he got in response to Mirror. Really touching stuff (I guess I'd have this film closer to my heart if I was a russian in my 30s in the 1970s)) I just always found it somewhat pale in comparison to the others I've seen-- which is odd, because this is probably the densest of all his films. I guess I just prefer his haiku to his sestina. It's far from the most heinous "film for film students"-- Check out Godard for that.
**producer.
But still!
The only reason I see so many is because I volunteer at an art theatre-- so I get in free.
Chaucer is a crazy man. And I love that Carney essay.
Derrida is an odd case: He has a lot of interesting ideas, but he clothes it in the most uselessly, pretentiously dense prose possible. It's less "dancing with his words" as my teacher says, but more him going "hey did you know I'm smarter than you? THIS MUCH SMARTER!!!". I actually find it helpful to read some kind of annotated guide to some idea Derrida says and then read the essay (had to read two essays about Parergon before being able to make head or tail of Derrida's actual Parergon essay). More likely to get something out of it that way.
http://www.amazon.com/Sublime-Whitechapel-Documents-Contemporary-Art/dp/... This is the book with the Derrida essay-- for a class about the Sublime in contemporary art/society. Pretty neat generally, actually.
If you can find it, the book about him and his films "The Reality Of Terror" gives quite a good insight on them, if a little on the simple side, and sometimes kind of dumb. It's still the best-written book about Lewton.
His horror movies are neat just for how minimal they are. One of the founding fathers of "psychological horror" or even "symbolic horror"-- Cat People being more about loneliness than were-felines, I Walked With A Zombie being more about cultural memory than the undead, The Seventh Victim being more about failure than satanist murders, etc.
Re facebook-- And that guy is now acting all buddy-buddy to me in a really weird way and suggesting movies for me to see after he blocked me specifically over not-liking a movie he liked. I should ask him what the hell sometime soon.
And Yaaaaaay I hope you like it.
And Marquee is in Halifax or something.
Why do the interesting people live so far away from meeeeeeee? ;o;
You ought to check if there's a cinematheque or something like that in or near wherever you live. Lots of major cities have theatres like that.
I think this particular one in Vancouver decided to show Tarkovsky because a couple months before they showed Stalker for a week straight and thought "Well, we may as well find 35mm prints of the rest of 'em..."