Girlfriends (1978)

I loved Girlfriends. It's a delightful Mazursky-esque comedy that seems to prefigure the Noah Baumbach–Greta Gerwig collaborations of the 2000s. Bob Balaban and Christopher Guest both have key roles, but this is just a hilarious feminist film about singlehood and marriage and having a career and being an adult. This should be a classic. Its obscurity is undeserved.

...and two weeks later Criterion announced it was releasing this on DVD!

A Star Is Born (1976)

So... the plot of A Star Is Born is, of course, tired, and as old as, well, 1937 (and 2018), but this 1976 version is valuable for a couple of reasons.

I watched this film as part of a series on the Criterion Channel called "Style Icons of the 1970s", and I totally understand why it was shown under this rubric. Streisand is a fashion goddess in this film. She wears so many great things and truly looks amazing.

The other important factor here is Kris Kristofferson. My mom never thought he was attractive and always scoffed when anyone brought him up, and so I honestly never paid him much mind (thanks mom!) but he is dreamy in this movie. He's, like, impossibly handsome. If you ever wondered how a young starlet might fall in love with a messy drunk, here's your explanation.

This 1976 A Star Is Born makes much less sense than the '37 and '54 versions, however, and the ending – in which Barbra goes into a disco performance as a way to mourn – truly is outside of all logic.

Overdue Paul Mazursky Post

I find Paul Mazursky's films fascinating. This is due, I think, mostly to the fact that I have no idea what he's quite getting at. His films are meandering, multi-character dramatic comedies full of miscellania and charm. They possess a committed liberalism and explore the new freedoms of the 1960's and 1970's (not uniformly, of course, but I've seen three of these movies recently and he seems to be interested in this topic.) About a year ago, I finally saw his 1969 breakout Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, which I really admired (though this film confused me as much as anything), and this month I decided to watch two more of his movies. So a couple weeks ago, I rented An Unmarried Woman from 1978 and this morning I saw Harry and Tonto from 1974. The films are so hard to categorize. I'm not even sure what they're about, even. They're not what I would call experimental films in any way, really, but they seem to grasp something about everyday life in the 1970's that I just don't know about (being younger than that decade.) I find this fascinating, not to mention educational. He seems to really understand the loss and restlessness that came with the (partial) abandonment of the rigidity of the (phoney) moralism of the 1950's in this country. I mean, I truly think that these films are a schooling of sorts: like some kind of time capsule into the life and times of the generation before me.

An Unmarried Woman stars Jill Clayburgh (the poor man's Diane Keaton) as a woman a happily married woman who becomes a divorcée over the course of the film, is thrown off-balance by this (naturally) and finds herself adrift and wandering in New York City, searching for happiness and trying very, very hard not to be angry at everybody and everything (and not usually succeeding). It's a very interesting exploration of womanhood and singlehood and the trials of the recently divorced. "Interesting" seems like faint praise, but the thing is, this is a really good film with some excellent performances and a wonderful script. The trouble is that it is not about me at all: it's about my parents' generation and though it's about something many of that generation experienced, I can't relate emotionally.

I feel the same way about Harry and Tonto (for which its star, Art Carney, received a Best Actor Oscar): it isn't something to which I can really relate. Harry and Tonto (and An Unmarried Woman—and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice for that matter) has the same effect on me. These Paul Mazursky films are—I don't want to say "stuck" or "trapped" because I don't want to sound negative—specific to the 1970's in a way that, say, Woody Allen's 1970's films aren't for me. Mazursky's explorations are smaller or more decade-specific than Allen's, I guess. I'm confusing myself. Mazursky confuses me. I feel confounded by his abilities, which are numerous, and his choice of topics, which seem to me to be a variation on the idea of drawing-room dramas from the early part of the century: dealing with contemporary problems with contemporaneous solutions or not offering solutions at all (a favorite artistic solution of the 1970's.)

I don't know where this post is headed really, but a lot is running through my head about Paul Mazursky.

I should also say that nothing in this post relates to my favorite of Mazursky's films: Enemies: a Love Story from 1989.

Hm. OK. I'm going to go do something else now.

Promises, Promises...

I know I promised myself I would write about every movie I saw... but I've been so busy. I saw Paul Mazursky's An Unmarried Woman last Saturday morning and I still haven't written word one about it... and it's six in the morning and I have to leave pretty soon if I'm going to make my call time in Fullerton for the Twenty-Four Hour Theater madness. I cannot believe I am awake this early on a Saturday morning. The universe is out of harmony and the world is coming to an end.

Boys' Life performances are going excellently. Both shows have been very funny. Did I mention that the show is very funny? It is. It's hilarious, in fact. I sit in the back giggling to myself the whole time. You should definitely come see it. There are four performances left: tonight and next Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Peace out. I'm off to get a doughnut.

Cinemania

Lately I've felt, again, a desire to watch (or rather to listen to) audio commentaries on DVD's. Perhaps I am becoming interested in filmmaking itself or maybe I am more broadly fascinated by the artistic processes of other people. Filmmaking, especially, seems to me to be something requiring collaboration, but it also seems to be a medium where success and vision are things that actually can be achieved.
I have been obsessed with Merchant Ivory lately, as I have said, and so I have been watching everything I can on the Merchant Ivory DVD's I've been getting. The Criterion Collection has released 18 of their films under something they've called The Merchant Ivory Collection, and these DVD's look great and have some nice extras on them: most notably interviews with Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Ismail Merchant and James Ivory (and usually Richard Robbins as well). Very few have commentaries, but they all have these interviews as well as short films from the period or in the same vein. And I've been watching all the extras on these DVD's.
Last week I came home from work and watched The Householder, several interviews about The Householder and then I watched Merchant's first film The Creation of Woman and Ivory's second short The Sword and the Flute. By that time it was so late I had to go to bed.
Then the other day I finished watching Down by Law and noticed there was a Jarmusch interview on the DVD, so I just started listening to it. An hour had gone by before I snapped out of it.
I borrowed Heat and Dust from my boss the other day and I still haven't returned it because (unlike most of The Merchant Ivory Collection) this one has a commentary with Merchant, Greta Scacchi and Nickolas Grace. So I haven't given it back because I just have to watch it. (Obsession, remember.)
And then this morning, as is my usual custom on Saturdays, I watched a film: Paul Mazursky's first feature Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. It's really great and very Sixties and I am so interested in the making of it and so I turned on the commentary, which features Mazursky and Robert Culp and Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon. I started listening to it and then I just had to stop. I can't do it.
There are too many films to see. If I am going to commit to re-watching a film, I definitely want to listen to the commentary, but there are so many films I still haven't seen at all (For instance, I have Fellini's 8 1/2 and David Gordon Green's Undertow at the house right now, just waiting for me) and I need to watch those... not to mention all of the other films from decades past that I still haven't seen. I just can't justify re-watching a movie, no matter how good. There is too much I still need to see.

He's Hoping He'll Like It

Raise your hand if you're feeling emotionally needy.

He hates posting shit like this on here.

Last night he did his homework for The Motorcycle Diaries and rented Walter Salles' last movie Behind the Sun. It's beautiful, spare and tragic. The cinematography is absolutely breathtaking. Rodrigo Santoro might be the most beautiful man in the world.

This morning he watched Sydney Pollack's Havana with Robert Redford & Lena Olin. That Lena Olin: she's smoking hot and such a good actor. The movie that sold him on her was Paul Mazursky's Enemies: a Love Story from 1989. He'll have to rent The Unbearable Lightness of Being soon. He's told that's her best movie and he feels like seeing more of her. He wonders why she doesn't work as much as she used to in the early nineties. Got old, he supposes. Everyone does.

Today, The Passion of the Christ arrives and he's hoping he'll like it.

The thing about living alone is that one has so much time for so many things. He can do all of his laundry, bake three dozen cookies, dip each of them in white chocolate for Chrissakes, watch an old movie, listen to This American Life, and read Eugene Ionèsco's Rhinoceros: all before 5:00p.