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Babylon 2022
Well, I still don't know a few days later and I guess that alone is a good sign. I despised most of it on a scene by scene level, those "debaucheries" are all tease and no commitment (completely unlike the Kenneth-Anger-book, btw) and they're still the best parts, because the rest is mostly one strained bravura set piece after the other. What beats you into submission here is not "excess" but audience manipulation 101 turned to eleven, all the tricks…
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Babylon 2022
Estruturado como Singin' in the Rain, com acabamento à La Dolce Vita, mas com um arquiteto reprovado no exame de conclusão. O filme sobrevive de momentos até os 40 minutos finais, quando se torna ao mesmo tempo uma crítica à Hollywood demolidora de mitos e uma contextualização do papel da indústria americana na evolução do cinema.
Meu texto na Folha de S.Paulo:
www1.folha.uol.com.br/ilustrada/2023/01/sem-reflexoes-reais-sobre-cinema-babilonia-apela-para-a-provocacao.shtml?fbclid=IwAR1fL-Fjzfoaa5UYFcWlrisuFneZ2efzIBnfmAcL8x4rJrk-ukRvBoPhx40
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Babylon 2022
The name of the mental hospital where Margot Robbie/Clara Bow’s mother is institutionalized—“Thackeray Sanitarium,” was it?
“I have no other moral than this to tag to the present story of ‘Vanity Fair.’ Some people consider Fairs immoral altogether, and eschew such, with their servants and families: very likely they are right. But persons who think otherwise, and are of a lazy, or a benevolent, or a sarcastic mood, may perhaps like to step in for half an hour, and look…
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The Lady from Shanghai 1947
Complete unreality. Insane and too detached for its own good but still blows me away. Strikes me as one of the first american films to be concerned with artificiality in a modern way? Idk I’m sure there are plenty more but it’s so fresh feeling. Makes me want to watch Miami Vice (the movie).
Orson Welles mad lad for this one.
In the world of unfollowable noirs this is the virgin to Hawks’ chad Big Sleep (in a good way for both of them).
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The Lady from Shanghai 1947
Welles' weird accent has grown on me quite a bit, especially since he's using it to deliver such potent, evocative, lyrical dialog. That shark monologue is an all-timer, haunting and strange (and with a zinger at the end).
I still find the plot confusing and the courtroom scenes take a bit of the wind out of the film's sails for me, bringing us abruptly back into some semblance of daylight normality after the film's journey into the shadowy and surreal…
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The Lady from Shanghai 1947
FORGET HER OR DIE TRYING
ok i'm not a lawyer but seems like a lot of the legal loopholes are actually...illegal...??? idk, just me opinion. any hangup i had was worth it for rita hayworth saying "i'm learning to smoke now" and, of course, the fun house scene.
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The Lady from Shanghai 1947
The weirdest great movie ever made (1948), which is somehow always summed up for me by the image of Glenn Anders cackling "Target practice! Target practice!" with unbalanced, malignant glee. Orson Welles directs and stars as an innocent Irish sailor who's drafted into a bizarre plot involving crippled criminal lawyer Everett Sloane and his icily seductive wife Rita Hayworth. Hayworth tells Welles he "knows nothing about wickedness" and proceeds to teach him, though he's an imperfect student. The film moves…
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The Lady from Shanghai 1947
as gorgeous, scandalous, and twisty as i'd hoped, much funnier than i ever could have expected. wild as hell. highlights: mirrors (duh), aquarium, hayworth hats, juror sneezing repeatedly for some reason, sweaty face close-ups, the second most harrowing shark monologue of all time delivered in one of the most irritating faux accents of all time.
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Ceiling Zero 1936
No DAWN PATROL and no ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS, granted, yet this easily earns its place in the Hawks aviation canon if on slightly less spectacular merits. Like those other two, it is structured around the relationship between cockpit and control room - the necessary connection between both rooms as well as their tragic separateness. This time, though, after the magnificent Cagney introduction the cockpit is mostly cut off completely and what develops is an increasingly desperate aviation Kammerspiel confined…
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The Freshman 1990
A work of film theory smuggled into a mainstream comedy. Marlon Brando ice-skating in this might be the only scene of his later filmography he isn’t sitting down in.
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