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Werner Herzog
Posts about Werner Herzog
READIN
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Last night I was watching Herzog's short documentaries; one of them is How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck... -- Beobachtungen zu einer neuen Sprache, which is a record of the 1976 National Livestock Auctions championships. Interesting and fun! The auctioneer's cant always gets my blood going. (The above song is "The Auctioneer" by The Spark Gap Wonder Boys -- the movie has a similar thing going on, but even better because there are so many different auctioneers.)
Well -- a lot to say about this film but I didn't really get any of it sorted out. There are things that remind me of Stroszek, most obviously the auction scene but other stuff too, like the lovely performance of "Country Roads" midway through. The main thing was, I thought this documentary was a distillation of Herzog's fascination with language and idiom -- my favorite part was the beginning, when Herzog was interviewing some of the contestants. The camera just hung on their bodies and heads and watched them talking. They talk about how they got into auctioneering and how they learned the cant. Bonus that they came from a lot of different places in North America so you got to watch how their inflecions come through in the cant.
I found a really well-written, informative review of Stroszek at Pajiba's Twisted Masterpieces. Recommended. Also, in comments thereto, the information that Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis killed himself after watching this film.
posted morning of September 24th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Stroszek
It doesn't really make sense to title the previous post "Replacing Aguirre in my affections"... I was meaning to get across my dawning feeling as I watched it, that maybe this is the greatest movie Herzog ever made. But actually it's great in a very similar way to how Aguirre is, though they are very different movies. I think maybe the signature feature of Herzog's story-telling -- as I watch his films anyway -- is the way he can bring me to identify with his characters at the same time as I see them as totally alien, completely different from me. So I'm inside Bruno's head and I'm freaking out about how weird and inexplicable he is. Well that and of course the amazing layout of images on the screen, and the fantastic soundtrack; these are more qualities Herzog's great films have in common...
“Silver Bell” performed by Chet Atkins and Hank Snow -- not actually on the Stroszek soundtrack, a different version of “Silver Bell” was on it and some different songs by Atkins. (Including “The Last Thing on My Mind&rdquo -- just fantastic.)
posted evening of September 20th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Music
may be Stroszek which I am watching now. This movie is exactly what a movie should be -- it is the ideal form "movie" that is in my mind when I give voice to the word. I think it is going to drive me to purchase a region-free DVD player -- am I right in thinking that such a thing exists? -- right now I can only watch it on my laptop and the image is pretty distorted; the characters and images on the screen are flattened so that it seems like you are looking up at the screen at a sharp angle.
I will try and figure out how to write a meaningful review of the movie and maybe post it later on.
(I wonder if this distortion is a property of the DVD rather than of the method of playing it. It would likely be cheaper to rent the DVD from Netflix, which will have a disk I can play on my TV set, than to buy a new DVD player. So that's what I'll do... Yep, strike all that above. I am watching the Netflix copy of the movie and it is sized properly. Way better this way.)
posted evening of September 20th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about The Movies
Sylvia did pretty well with watching Monsieur Verdoux last night, paying attention to the plot and the characters, giving indications she understood what was going on. She lost interest about a half hour before the end of the movie though. (It is 2 hours long.)
Before the feature there was a preview for Encounters at the End of the World; Sylvia asked if that was what I had seen the other night and said she wanted to see it, but at home, "So we could make it softer."
So it was, to be clear up front, not a great movie, certainly not in a class with Herzog's great works. It had a lot of visual beauty, and occasional arresting moments of clarity; but it felt to me like Herzog stumbled aimlessly into these moments, like his heart was not in this movie. Still I would recommend the movie, just for the visuals, and the cute fluffy seals. (The portions of the soundtrack which were recordings of seal grunts were fantastically good; the music portions were hit or miss.)
So I might well be heading in to the city Friday night, to see Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World, at the Flim Forum. If you'd be interested to see it then, drop me a line.
Werner Herzog's latest movie, a documentary of Antarctica called Encounters at the End of the World, will be opening at the Film Forum next Wednesday. Leonard Lopate interviewed Herzog on his WNYC show yesterday:
Update: A harsh (in a believable way) pan from David Meyer of the Brooklyn Rail. "Grandpa came to town, found what amused and repelled him and looked no further." I'm still looking forward to seeing the movie, but with some caveats now.
This is a good movie without, I think, being in the same league as Herzog's best stuff. The main two good things in the movie are: the personality and charisma of Mr. Dengler, who is kind of a natural ham; and the camera work and composition of shots. It is a good decision of Herzog's, to let Dieter talk through most of the film. Herzog's narration is not very useful; and his decision to have Laotians and Vietnamese in the film but completely without speaking parts and frequently posing as statues, just seems bizarre to me. I think I'm going to take a pass for now on watching Rescue Dawn.
Today I read about two movies -- neither one will be coming out for a while yet, but they both sound like something to look forward to.
David Lynch is collaborating with Werner Herzog on My Son, My Son: a "horror-tinged thriller" based on Œdipus Rex. This has every potential to be a fantastic movie; or it could also possibly stink.
Jonathan Demme is going to be directing a biography of Bob Marley, taking over from Martin Scorsese, who is leaving the project. This is just fine with me; I like Marley and I think Demme makes the best movies about music. (Scorsese's are good too, but I prefer Demme's.)
So it was, to be clear up front, not a great movie, certainly not in a class with Herzog's great works. It had a lot of visual beauty, and occasional arresting moments of clarity; but it felt to me like Herzog stumbled aimlessly into these moments, like his heart was not in this movie. Still I would recommend the movie, just for the visuals, and the cute fluffy seals. (The portions of the soundtrack which were recordings of seal grunts were fantastically good; the music portions were hit or miss.)
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