"Seven Days in May" - the movie - Is being shown on the Turner Classic Movies (TCM-TV) in one hour

[Jim DiEugenio]

I kind of liked the Ghost Writer.

I mean I understand that its not true to fact. I mean they actually did check on Blair's wife's career after and she was not CIA.

But I thought the film was really entertaining and very well done. I especially liked how Polanski shot the ending: with all the hands passing the note to the front. Kind of Hitchcockian.

I will have to check out the thread. But I've always liked Polanski. The guy has made some very good films.

And I agree that Stone's film suffers from Costner being Garrison. First of all, if you have heard him, Garrison did not speak with that allegedly Louisiana accent. And second, Costner couldn't do the accent anyway. Third, he could not even deliver that long final speech to the jury that was so necessary for the finale. And it doesn't seem like Stone could do very much with him either.

[Jan Klimkowski]

I kind of liked the Ghost Writer.

I mean I understand that its not true to fact. I mean they actually did check on Blair's wife's career after and she was not CIA.

She's certainly the power behind the, um, throne. Big American links and much smarter than Tony "I'm a pretty straight sort of guy" Blair.

But I thought the film was really entertaining and very well done. I especially liked how Polanski shot the ending: with all the hands passing the note to the front. Kind of Hitchcockian.

I will have to check out the thread.

Polanksi is a technically gifted director. He's also intimately acquainted with the Dark Side.

But I've always liked Polanski. The guy has made some very good films.

I've long loathed Polanski.

There's a lengthy DPF thread here.

He's a nasty, self-obsessed, predatory paedophile.

[Dawn Meredith]

I have not seen The Package yet.

But I will make a point to do so soon. Nowadays you can actually see older films online for free at Amazon. For instance, I wanted to see Carnage and I found out you can see Polanski's classic KNife in the Water for free at Amazon.

My favorite, sans the Package, in this genre is The Parallax View. Although that is modeled on the RFK case not JFK.

Darn: Seems everyone wants to see The Package. I just went to netflix and see I have already added it to be sent but it has "a very long wait". From the description I can't wait.

Dawn

[Keith Millea]

Kevin Costner can't act for shit.....

Phil,

Robert Mitchum in the role as Jim Garrison would have made "JFK" so much more powerful.And, he even looks like Garrison!

I can still remember watching "Thunder Road" on the old TV when I was young.Man,I loved that movie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunder_Road

And who can forget the "Love/Hate tattoos in the film "The Night of the Hunter".

[Phil Dragoo]

Harold Harris.

[Jim DiEugenio]

I've long loathed Polanski.

There's a lengthy DPF thread here.

He's a nasty, self-obsessed, predatory paedophile.

Jan, I think that is kind of unfair to me.

I didn't say anything about him as a person. I was referring to his films.

Very few directors alive today can claim to have made the equivalent of the following list:

Knife in the Water

Repulsion

Rosemary's Baby

Chinatown

MacBeth

Tess

Ghost Writer

[Jan Klimkowski]

I've long loathed Polanski.

There's a lengthy DPF thread here.

He's a nasty, self-obsessed, predatory paedophile.

Jan, I think that is kind of unfair to me.

I didn't say anything about him as a person. I was referring to his films.

Very few directors alive today can claim to have made the equivalent of the following list:

Knife in the Water

Repulsion

Rosemary's Baby

Chinatown

MacBeth

Tess

Ghost Writer

Jim, it wasn't a pop at you but, with respect, you wrote "But I've always liked Polanski."

You then continued, "The guy has made some very good films."

Now, if you were actually saying "I've always liked Polanski's films", then we have some common ground.

Chinatown is one of the greatest films ever made.

My attitude to Polanski is informed by what I wrote in the Art.. Storytelling.. Fascism thread.

Like Leni Riefenstahl, Tony Scott and his brother Ridley, Roman Polanski is a master of his craft. A technical genius who understands the impact of framing, size, order and pacing of shots, how to use the cinematic form to tell a story

Chinatown is almost flawlessly executed.

However, then we come to the question of the nature of the story being told, and how far we hold the director responsible for the emotional, political and moral worldview revealed by that story.

Leni Riefenstahl always claimed she was an artist, not a fascist.

Leni said her loyalty was to the artistic form. Not to a political cause.

In fact, the cinematic grammar she created, hacking away at Plato's archetypal marble, was the cinematic grammar of mass power.

Once revealed by Riefenstahl, it has been used by political leaders across the spectrum - Republicans and Democrats, Conservative and Labour, Fascists and Communists - ever since.

Of course, the particular Triumph of the Will that Riefenstahl's films conveyed was that of Nazi Germany.

Should she be allowed to get away with: I am an artist, not a fascist?

In that thread, I wrote:

The primary loyalty of Ridley Scott, like his now deceased brother Tony, is to cinematic story telling.

Not to historical truth.

This is a fundamental distinction.

Top Gun is a pile of fascist ordure.

Man On Fire is a searing insight into the soul of a killer for hire.

Bladerunner is tears in rain.

Black Hawk Down is racist tosh.

"Killing Kennedy" will be a cinematically breathtaking lie.

So, Man On Fire and Bladerunner, are films that speak to my soul. I like these films.

However, it is clear to me that the Scott brothers and I have very different moral consciences.

I've walked away from documentary projects that I knew were either lies or propaganda for a particular political worldview to which I am opposed.

I could never have made Black Hawk Down or Top Gun. I respect the cinematic craft that went into their making and delivery, but I hate the films and I loathe the filmmakers.

So, to Polanski.

Most filmmakers have obsessions which recur throughout their oeuvre.

Polanski has an obsession with knives, terror, pain, power, death.

His early films included Knife in the Water, Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby, Macbeth.

Watch Bitter Mooon with its themes of bondage, sadomasochism, voyeurism.

Then there's the murder of Sharon Tate by the Manson Family.

The post below is from the Naval Intelligence, MKUltra and the Hippie Movement thread:

I am reminded that Sharon Tate came from an Air Force family and lived in this area too when she was murdered. FWIW probably not much.

Paul Tate, Sharon Tate's father, was Army Intelligence.

After Sharon and her unborn child had been slaughtered, Paul Tate went on a journey into the dark, sleazy, criminal subculture that the Manson Family inhabited.

The world of garbage cans, Kenneth Anger, the Process Church of the Final Judgement, the OTO, Hollywood's wildest families, and "acid" that produced entirely different mindtrips from LSD.

A world where sex and violence, glamour and pain, manipulation and psychosis, were intricately linked.

It has been suggested that Paul Tate's journey into this otherworld was, in part, the inspiration for Paul Schrader's nightmarish movie Hardcore, starring George C Scott, and 8mm starring Nicolas Cage.

In the introduction to Vol 3 of Peter Levenda's brilliant Sinister Forces, Paul Krassner discusses the evidence of everyone from Dennis Hopper to private investigators that the LAPD found & sold hardcore films of Sharon Tate after her murder.

Hopper was one of the sources for persistent tales of the public flogging of a drug dealer (possibly filmed) at Cielo Drive just prior to the slaughter.

And, as I've written before, there have also been persistent - and briefly published - claims that Manson had a Naval Intelligence handler who provided him with highly experimental and potent drugs. Drugs from the dark side...

Rosemary's Baby was filmed and released prior to the murder of Sharon Tate.

For me, Polanski's most revealing film post that horror is The Ninth Gate.

I watch it searching for insights to Polanski's soul.

[Dawn Meredith]

I kind of liked the Ghost Writer.

I mean I understand that its not true to fact. I mean they actually did check on Blair's wife's career after and she was not CIA.

She's certainly the power behind the, um, throne. Big American links and much smarter than Tony "I'm a pretty straight sort of guy" Blair.

But I thought the film was really entertaining and very well done. I especially liked how Polanski shot the ending: with all the hands passing the note to the front. Kind of Hitchcockian.

I will have to check out the thread.

Polanksi is a technically gifted director. He's also intimately acquainted with the Dark Side.

But I've always liked Polanski. The guy has made some very good films.

I've long loathed Polanski.

There's a lengthy DPF thread here.

He's a nasty, self-obsessed, predatory paedophile.

Wow, I agree with both Jim and Jan. I too really enjoyed The Ghost and enjoy most of Polanski's work but as a human being....Jan nailed it.
I don't get it when people say he is being unfairly treated. He drugged and raped a child. Period. That she has now "forgiven" him is irrelevent.
Dawn

[Jim DiEugenio]

Jan:

I think there is a large difference between say Ridley Scott and Polanski.

Scott could make just about anything he wants to make.

And look what he comes up with.

If he lives a hundred years he will never make something like Tess. Because the beauty in that film is not there for its own sake or to support something as shallow as an android hunter story. Its to support and fulfill a tragic design, originally assigned by Hardy, translated to film by Polanski. No film by Ridley Scott has ever approached a design like that. And you can see why by listening to that silly commentary of his on Gladiator.

So personally, I think its important to sort out the personal life from the artistic vision expressed in the work. Or else we see films as personal psychodramas. Recall, films are generally joint efforts. Chinatown began as a very good script by Bob Towne. Tess ​began as a very good novel by Hardy.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Jan:

I think there is a large difference between say Ridley Scott and Polanski.

Scott could make just about anything he wants to make.

And look what he comes up with.

If he lives a hundred years he will never make something like Tess. Because the beauty in that film is not there for its own sake or to support something as shallow as an android hunter story. Its to support and fulfill a tragic design, originally assigned by Hardy, translated to film by Polanski. No film by Ridley Scott has ever approached a design like that. And you can see why by listening to that silly commentary of his on Gladiator.

So personally, I think its important to sort out the personal life from the artistic vision expressed in the work. Or else we see films as personal psychodramas. Recall, films are generally joint efforts. Chinatown began as a very good script by Bob Towne. Tess ​began as a very good novel by Hardy.

Jim - I'm fully aware that films are joint creative efforts.

I note you leave the inspiration of the amphetamine poetry of Philip K Dick out of your critique of Ridley Scott.

What soul there is in Bladerunner is quite possibly largely due to Dick.

Do you want to articulate the "artistic vision" expressed in Knife in the Water or Repulsion?

I see jealousy, pain, sexual violence, betrayal - a view of the human condition as fallen, broken.

Tess, Thomas Hardy's bleak and redemption-less view of the human lot, is perfect for Polanksi. If Sharon Tate hadn't suggested Tess, I could imagine Polanski making a film of Hardy's Jude the Obscure, possibly the single most depressing novel in all English literature.

Artists make choices.

Those choices inevitably reflect their souls in some fashion or other.